The Idiomatic Translation of Lugwere Proverbs into English

This study sought to explore the idiomatic translation of Lugwere proverbs into English. Twenty-six Lugwere proverbs were identified from Lugwere written literature. The objective of this study, was to examine the idiomaticity of translating these proverbs into English. The study was guided by the Skopos theory of translation, cultural theory and the interpretive theory. The latter mainly informed the study explaining the representation of the source text (ST) messages in a target text (TT) with a real sense and meaning. Although this study is a qualitative one, some quantitative analysis of the information was essential to make sense of incidences of happenings of certain kinds of data. Within theme, certain references occurred oddly often, so that a “quantity†of such features in the data could be used to supplement the qualitative descriptions. Thus a more concrete understanding of the information than otherwise could be created, portraying trends and delivering a more reliable interpretation of the data. Questionnaires highlighting specific Lugwere proverbs were administered to three community translators/interpreters with good knowledge of Lugwere and English. Accordingly, the study, indicate that the translation of Lugwere proverbs into English took different dimensions. Whereas there are points to observe in the translations, the purpose of this specific paper was to examine the idiomaticity of the translated Lugwere proverbs into English. The study recommends that researchers ought to start publishing Lugwere proverbs and their translated versions in order to enhance communication between the Lugwere and non – Lugwere speakers