The transliteration of New Testament proper nouns into Zulu

Abstract

To determine how New Testament proper nouns should be transliterated from Hellenistic Greek in to Zulu, the characteristics of such nouns in existing translations from circa 1837 to 1986 are examined. At times the phonemic and syllabic structure o:f Zulu has taken second place to that of the original Greek, and the linguistic, academic and ecclesiastical background o:f the Bible translator. There is no agreement among scholars as to exactly what the Greek phonemes were. Biblical proper nouns transliterated into Zulu should be based on the Greek, not the language o:f the translator, and should be :fully adapted to the phonemic and syllabic system o:f Zulu, the rules of Zulu, and not those o:f Greek or some other language, being the determining :factor in how they should be pronounced and spelt in Zulu.