What are the outstanding problems and challenges that confront contemporary Bible interpretation and translation in Africa?

Abstract

Africa's languages and dialects number around two thousand or a little more, which is about one third of the world's six thousand or so languages. The figure of 2000 is only a rough figure. It is not easy to tell what constitutes a language and what constitutes a dialect. This in itself is a real challenge in determining the language of translation and just how far it extends. We will take it up later as a serious challenge that confronts contemporary interpreters and translators of the Bible in Africa. Africa's 2000 or so languages are divided into four major language families - the Niger Congo with about 1436 languages of which around 500 or so are of the Bantu sub-family; the Afro-asiatic with about 371 languages, the Nilo-saharan with about 196, and the Khoisan with about 35. And this is without counting the numerous creoles such as those spoken in Seychelles, Mauritius or Sierra Leone; Indo-European languages such as Afrikaans, English, French or Portuguese; Malay-Poynesian such as Malagasy, among others.