Anaphora Nefarious

Here's a story from a linguist colleague in Nigeria describing how linguistic research has made a big difference in seeing how Bible translators can mistranslate a text because they are not aware of certain differences between the source language (here English) and their mother tongue (here Tugbiri). Knowing these differences can be used to help train translators to resolve current problems and avoid mis communications in future translations.

"One of the things we have uncovered is a major difference in the use of pronouns and zero anaphors between Tugbiri and English. (A zero anaphor is when there is no word for one of the text participants, and the identity of the participant is understood from the context.) An example of this problem is found in the Tugbiri translation of Luke 14:1-4. Unaware of the differences, the translators replicated the English pronouns and zero anaphora faithfully, exactly as found in the English text, but this had the effect of completely changing the meaning in Tugbiri! On the right below, I have written out the words for the participants in full, so that you can see what the Tugbiri translation was (mis)communicating.

Tugbiri speakers understood from this incorrect translation that Jesus was rebuking the Pharisees
for wanting to heal ‘their man’ on the Sabbath, and that the man with dropsy healed the Pharisee
by means of witchcraft. Thankfully, our analysis of Tugbiri texts helps us not only to identify
problems, but also to make considerable headway in resolving them. It is a slow process, however..."