Santiago, 20 January, 2024 / 9:03 pm (ACI Africa).
The project to translate the New Testament into Creole, a language widely used in Cape Verde, is facing various obstacles, including a lack of consensus among those involved in the exercise, one of the officials tasked with the translation in the island West African country has said.
Speaking to Rádio Nova de Maria Cape Verde, Fr. José Eduardo Afonso who is coordinating the national translation team expressed optimism that the project will be completed and circulated at the 500th anniversary of the Diocese of Santiago in 2033.
“This is a big challenge from the outset, because there is still no consensus here among the experts. There is a lot of discussion between and about the variants of Creole, about semantics,” Fr. Afonso said.
He added, in the Tuesday, January 16 address, “We are, on one hand, grateful for the trust placed in us and on the other hand, I find this as one of the biggest challenges I will ever take on.”
“What we'll end up doing is identifying specialists in the Creole language, so that we can then create the various teams or subcommittees that will allow us to work as a team,” Fr. Afonso said.