Thursday, July 29, 2010

Lack of a good definite article affects the meaning

A, or THE? This is how my Tom back-translated our translation of Mat 13:44: 44 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought a field.

It SHOULD have said, "...he sold all he had and bought THAT field (that is, the one that had the treasure box on it." But our definite articles aren't that clear in Tannese. So, we had to make it explicit: "he went and bought the field that had the treasure."

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