On New Testament translations into Indonesian (the case of the Greek lexeme άρτος)

The article discusses Indonesian translations of the New Testament. Focus has been placed on methods of translating the Greek word άρτος ‘bread’. Long unknown on the Indonesian islands, bread was first brought there by the European colonizers. A study of the renditions of the Greek word άρτος in Indonesian (Malaysian) editions of the New Testament showed that translators tended to express the Greek lexeme literarily, as demonstrated by the frequent use of the noun roti ‘bread’ (also spelled rawtij or rawti in older versions). Wherever the lexeme άρτος appears in its literal sense or as a synonym of food or meal, it is replaced with units having more general meanings such as makanan (makan) ‘food, nutriment, nourishment, provisions and rezeki (formerly also occasionally translated as ridjycki or redjeki) which stands for ‘basic necessities of life, daily sustenance’. Only on rare occasions does one come across the equivalent nafkah used in a sense that is synonymous with rezeki. Only in two places in the Second Thessalonians (in a 1913 translation) has the lexeme άρτος been replaced with the noun nasi or ‘rice’. The device fits within the realm of dynamic equivalence