What does warm-hearted mean to you?
Most of us would say a warm-hearted person is kind, while a cold-hearted person is lacking in compassion. To us, these meanings are obvious, but unfortunately these expressions don’t necessarily mean the same thing in other languages. To a language community in Mali, for instance, describing a person as hot-hearted means he or she is likely to get angry easily, while having a cold heart means to be at peace.
Challenging idioms
One of the most challenging areas of Bible translation is idioms; figures of speech such as warm-hearted and cold-hearted. When translating an idiom, sticking too faithfully to the original words can end up making a translation less accurate and harder to read.
