Translation Criticism: Implementing House’s TQA Model on “Jesus Paid It All” into Kirundi

The article probed into the quality of the Kirundi translation of Hall’s “Jesus Paid It All”, a hymn in The Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal (1985). The study is a translation criticism centered on House’s translation quality assessment (TQA) model. The descriptive qualitative method with inductive orientation was used. The primary data were collected from the original American English hymn “Jesus Paid It All” as written in the current church hymnal and the Kirundi lyric “Numv’ Umukiz’ ambwira”. Books and articles pertinent to translation criticism, House’s TQA model, and Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) hymnody were consulted for secondary data. Covert errors distorting the ideational and interpersonal meanings concerning Christ’s sacrificial atonement and the Christian individual’s response to it were found. They were characterized by shifts in the transitivity system, topical lexis, mood structure, and thematic construction. At the non-dimensional level, a manipulation of the original was discovered. The highest rate of overt errors was represented by the cultural filtering of the topical lexis and inadequate substitution of metaphorical constructions and culture-bound items. It was concluded that the TT is an inappropriate covert translation and its quality is inadequate.