The combined account of Matthew and Luke describe not only the pivotal birth of Christ but also the arduous journey that His family had to endure. Within one verse, Joseph and Mary traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem. That same journey, if we are to endeavor now, takes more than 30 hours one-way (no stopping), covering 145km according to Google…
Author: yubo.du
What IS Christmas?
No, really, what IS Christmas? I used to think Christmas means Christ más, which loosely translates to plus Christ in Spanish. I know, it’s absurd, but it made just enough “sense” that I didn’t bother asking, until now. It turns out, the mas in Christmas is short for mass, another name for worship service in Catholicism. So Christmas originally meant the special worship…
Less Is More
As I have previously mentioned, simple organization of speech can potentially save us a great deal of time and effort. If you have just started the journey of interpretation, you are well-advised to employ a fewer number of words in order to convey your idea to the audience. Should you achieve a higher level of…
Colossians
歌羅西書/歌罗西书 {ge-luo-xi-shu}New Testament – Epistles [kuh-LO-shuhnz], as in “coca–LOT-nations“ Colossians is Paul’s letter to the church in Colossae [kuh-LO-si]. It’s the best name for a city if you ask me. Colossae is still there if you want to visit, although it’s no longer part of the Roman or Byzantine Empire, but Turkey.
雅歌 & 雅各書
Both are Books of the Bible and sound identical except for their tones in Mandarin. 雅歌 {ya3-ge1} is “Song of Solomon” or “Song of Songs“. 雅各書 {ya3-ge4-shu1} is “James“. (Yes, him again. Anyone needs a baby name?) The good thing is, you will only hear the speaker say “雅各書” instead of “雅各”, and “雅歌” instead of “雅歌書”. So…
The Juggling Economist
When the rubber meets the road, interpretation takes on the shape of an economy. The way I see it, we are given a few seconds; and we spend them to complete a handful of tasks. Lather, rinse, repeat. A few seconds may not sound like much to us, but they’re quite enough for our brains. Within…
Shadowing II
I hope you are still practicing Shadowing. By far, I think it’s the most important exercise for interpreters. If you are getting a hang of it, let’s add a little twist. Recall from Shadowing I, we repeat the speakers verbatim while they keep talking. The time delay between us and them is called the lag. I…
Deuteronomy
申命記/申命记 {shen1-ming4-ji4}Old Testament – Pentateuch/Torah Pronounce as [dyoo-tuh-RO-nuh-mee], as in“deuce-today-ROT-gonna–me“ Why the long name? “Deuteronomy” is made of two parts: deuteros (δεύτερος = second) and nomos (νόμος = law), i.e. the second time Moses stated God’s laws to the Israelites after their first generation passed in the wilderness.
Name Above All Names
Have you ever wondered why the “J” in “Jesus“? 耶穌{ye1-su1}, Ιησούς, イエス, יֵשׁוּעַ, and many others sound a lot like each other. What’s the story of that “J”? Long before we had the Bible in English, it was first translated into Latin, where the New Testament Greek “Ιησούς” was translated to “IESVS“, sounding almost identical to its Greek…
Knock, Knock!
Nothing makes us more nervous than jokes. It takes nothing short of all our tact, wit, and mental capacity, plus a dash of divine intervention to do them right. Maybe that’s why the official policy of interpreters on Earth is: WE DO NOT INTERPRET JOKES However, we sometimes don’t have the choice to stand like…