Among the 27 books in the New Testament, some have names that are plural in nature and others, singular. That means we have certain books whose names end in “s” and others that don’t. Until we have them memorized, it’s possible to make the mistakes such as “2 Peters” or “Hebrew”. The rule of thumb is: Only two…
Author: yubo.du
The Almighty Name
Ask any Chinese believer “Who is the God of Israel?”, and the answer would easily be “耶和華” {ye1-he2-hua2}. No surprises there, as His name can be plainly read from the pages of the Old Testament. But if we ask an English speaker the same question, we might get “Jehovah” or “Yahweh”, yet we can’t find either in…
Put It Together
By now, we’ve seen multiple training exercises including basic shadowing, shadowing with longer lag time, and shadowing by paraphrase. If live interpretation is “running”, these will be the baby steps that get us to that point. There will be more of those on the way. But as some say, sometimes we need to run before we can walk. So, let’s…
Know Thy Enemies
Well, maybe not exactly THY enemies, but certainly those of Israel. Even before Israel became a nation, it had plenty of enemies, and things did not get better from there. We of course understand that the presence of enemies by no means implies the absence of blessing or God. Naturally, it serves us well to know…
Nebuchadnezzar II
尼布甲尼撒二世 I know, what a way to start, right? Short and easy are not necessarily memorable. It’s often the strange (Sorry Nebu) that wins our mind. So, let’s break it down:Nebu chad nezzar, as in “NEt-book-cadaver-NEt-razor“尼布甲尼撒 {ni2-bu4-jia3-ni2-sa4} I’ll call him “Nebu” for convenience, no offense. Nebu is mostly famous in the Book of Daniel, being…
Meet the Cast
Scanning the millennia of narratives contained in the Bible, we witness the rise and fall of empires from the Egyptian to the Roman; we read about the dozens of tribes from friends to foes; we see thousands of names ranging from our famous Lord Jesus Christ to outright mind-boggling ones like Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz. To know all these names in multiple…
Translation Vs Interpretation
Although translation and interpretation have many differences, most people use the former to mean both for simplicity’s sake. That’s totally fine for the folks outside this circle, but we can benefit from a bit of distinction. Largely speaking, interpretation converts verbal speech from one language to another. Translation, on the other hand, focuses on language conversion in the written…
怎麼感動
IMHO, the hardest word to translate in the Bible is 感動 {gan3-dong4}. It makes perfect sense in Chinese but has no perfect equivalent in English, or even Hebrew or Greek. It means something in one context and something else in another. Sometimes it’s not even there in the text. Incidentally, it’s one of the favorite words…
Tools of Trade
Right tool for the right job. It’s no different when it comes to interpretation and translation (more on their difference here). Here are a few tools that I’ve found to be tremendously helpful over the years. All of them are free to use, so, go nuts! Quick Draw Ironically, interpretation is where we need the most…
Happy New Year Again
Ah… Chinese New Year. It always brings me back to the chilled dry air permeated with a gunpowder smell, walking down the streets of red, where everyone seemed to be your friend that day. Nothing excites a little boy more than lighting up firecrackers thicker than his arm, or waiting for minutes for those million-pop firecrackers…