Misinterpretations in English-Kimuthambi Church Sermons

Abstract

Interpretation is a complex task for it involves the rendering of an oral message from one language to another simultaneously. This paper looks at misinterpretations in English-Kimuthambi church sermons in Muthambi Division, Maara District-Kenya. Kimuthambi is a Bantu language spoken in Kenya. The paper lists misinterpretations in English-Kimuthambi church sermons, identifies words and phrasal categories frequently misinterpreted in English-Kimuthambi church sermons and then provides some explanations to the misinterpretations. The paper establishes that there are misinterpretations in English-Kimuthambi church sermons. It presents the findings which show that that verbs and verb phrases are the most frequently misinterpreted categories followed by the nouns and noun phrases. The findings in this paper contribute to the scholarly literature in interpretation and translation which traverses different levels of language study like translation, discourse analysis, semantics and pragmatics.