As a rule people
have no word for expressing a thing which does not come within
their own range of experience; for instance, no one would expect
that Arabs, or Somalis, or the inhabitants of the Sahara would
have any equivalent for either skating or tobogganing, nor do I
imagine that the Eskimo have any expression for "sunstroke" or
"heat-apoplexy," but one would have thought that Russians and
Germans might have evolved a word for skating.
Apropos of Eskimo, I once heard a missionary describe the
extraordinary difficulty he had found in translating the Bible
into Eskimo. It was useless to talk of corn or wine to a people
who did not know even what they meant, so he had to use
equivalents within their powers of comprehension. Thus in the
Eskimo version of the Scriptures the miracle of Cana of Galilee is
described as turning the water into BLUBBER; the 8th verse of the
5th chapter of the First Epistle of St. Peter ran: "Your adversary
the devil, as a roaring Polar BEAR walketh about, seeking whom he
may devour." In the same way "A land flowing with milk and honey"
became "A land flowing with whale's blubber," and throughout the
New Testament the words "Lamb of God" had to be translated "little
Seal of God," as the nearest possible equivalent.
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