Upset, people began to push against the status quo and protested in Tagalog. This changed in the ’70s when then-President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law to retain his rule. While Tagalog or other regional languages are used at home, English was used at school and at work. English joined Tagalog as the official languages of the Philippines. “Knowing how to speak English was the mark of an educated, cultured person,” Del Corro said. With the import of American culture and democracy, at the time “almost everything American was considered good by Filipinos,” Del Corro wrote.Įven after the Philippines gained independence in 1946, Filipinos continued to use English in the media, education, books, and business settings. When the United States took over for 50 years from 1898-1946 (with the exception of three years of Japanese rule during World War II), Americans set up the country’s public school system and introduced English. Spain’s 300-year rule resulted in Spanish words sprinkled into the vernacular, Spanish surnames, and a Philippine-Spanish creole. The evolution of language in the country is largely shaped by colonization. (Filipino and Tagalog will be used interchangeably in this article). The Philippines is home to more than 120 languages, with Filipino–a dialect of Tagalog–as the national language. “They think that it’s too easy, the Bible should be more difficult…But we in the Bible Society, we want to make sure that people understand it.” “It’s the way people speak, that’s why it is so close to the individual,” Del Corro said. Already, the completed Bible has sold out of its first printing of both the Catholic and Protestant Bibles. Bible sales reflect that interest: in the first year, the Taglish New Testament sold 100,000 copies, the most PBS has ever sold for a new translation. Others said the Bible loses its “richness and contextual meaning” when translated into Taglish and that the Word shouldn’t conform to the world.īut Del Corro and others believe the translation can bring the Word of God to a new generation of young Filipinos in the language in which they speak, read, pray, and think. “Very liberal word choices can lead the text not being taken seriously,” wrote one commenter. Beyond the initial uproar, in 2020, the debate over the translation heated up again when a Catholic bookstore posted an ad for the New Testament translation. Many pastors and churches accustomed to reading the Bible solely in English or in Tagalog frowned upon the informal mixing of languages in the sacred text. It’s also distinct from code-switching, she noted, as Taglish doesn’t just borrow English words but integrates Tagalog grammar into the structure of those words. Mixed languages arise in bilingual populations and are different from creole or pidgin where people speaking different languages create a shared language. “They know people who can’t understand the Word in other translations can use Ang Bible Pinoy Version.” (Ang mean “the” in Tagalog and Pinoy is an informal term referring to the Philippines or Filipinos.)Īng Bible Pinoy Version, which took 16 years to complete, is the first completed Bible translation in a mixed language, Del Corro said. “The users themselves are the ones promoting it,” Del Corro said. Jayson Genanda, pastor of Malaya House Church, said that when he leads a Bible study he makes sure to look at the Taglish translation to get the meaning of a passage. In contrast, when PBS launched the entire Bible translated into Taglish earlier this month called Ang Bible Pinoy Version, Del Corro felt relieved that the burden was no longer on her to do the explaining: At a launch party attended by nearly 500 people, pastors and leaders shared their personal experience using and preaching from the Pinoy Version. She stressed that the Bible’s target audience was Gen Z and milennials in Metro Manila, a region made up of 16 cities and 13 million people. So Anicia del Corro, a PBS translation consultant who spearheaded the project, started holding talks, giving interviews, and writing articles outlining how her team conducted research and painstakingly translated the New Testament from the original Greek. Many decried it as irreverent or blasphemous to translate the Word of God into a colloquial language more commonly seen on the Internet or heard at the supermarket. When the Philippines Bible Society (PBS) first released the New Testament translated into Taglish-a mix of Tagalog and English used by urban dwellers in the Philippines-five years ago, Filipino Christians were in an uproar on social media.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |