Appropriateness versus Naturalness in the Jamaican Creole Bible Translation Project

In May 2007, the Bible Society of the West Indies (BSWI) announced its translation of the New Testament into Jamaican Creole. This paper examines the perceived weak point of the project, the issue of the “crudity” or “vulgarity” of the Jamaican language in the area of sexuality, which renders it unsuitable for the holy Scriptures. The project designed a set of focus-group instruments to test acceptability in the area of sexual terminology. Findings indicated that focus-group participants generally preferred the uses of English-like forms rather than the more natural Jamaican Creole ones when dealing with sexual concepts. They preferred prignant over briid or get beli, and vorjin over uman we neva tek man yet, and so on. The challenge to the project was how to manage the association of Jamaican sexual terms with vulgarity while remaining faithful to the language. The paper concludes with an account of how this was managed.