Non- Equivalence at the Grammatical Categories in the Kĩkamba Bible Translation

This paper explores the challenges of non-equivalence at the grammatical categories in the Kĩkamba Bible translation. Translation involves rendering a source text message into the target text by using the register, background knowledge, and other language resources to meet the intended purpose. The process is hampered by non-equivalence, which occurs when a lexical item or an expression in the source language lacks an equivalent item to translate it into the target language. A descriptive research design was used to obtain information from a sampled population. The Bible is divided into two sections; the Old and the New Testament. It is further categorized into seven groups. Purposive sampling was used to select one book from each category and one chapter from each book to form the sample for the study. Data was collected through careful study of the English Revised Standard Version Bible to identify non-equivalences at the grammatical category leve l and the Kĩkamba Bible to analyse how it is handled, guided by Equivalence theory proposed by Nida and the Relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson). The study established four categories of non-equivalences at the grammatical category level; gender, number, person and case. According to the research non-equivalence at the grammatical level such as the third person singular and plural, the second person and pronouns in both subjective and objective case pose a challenge when the target language lacks a distinctive expression that is present in the source text, but appropriate strategies such as unit change, explicitation and specification meet the goal of translation. The study recommends that the translator needs to interpret what the categories represent in the context as a whole before translating the separate verses. It is hoped that the research will be a contribution to applied linguistics in the area of translation, specifically on non-equivalence.


Introduction 1
Lexical and syntactic levels of a language are key issues in translating one language to another (Anari &Chaffarot, 2013). According to Nida and Taber (1969), translation can be defined as reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source language message first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style. In the Bible translation the emphasis is given on the meaning since it is not written for entertainment but to communicate to the receptor audience. Catford (1965) defines translation as the replacement of textual material in one language (SL) by equivalent textual material in another language (TL). House (1982) states that translation is the replacement of a text in the SL by a semantically and pragmatically equivalent text in the TL. These definitions give emphasis on the concept of equivalence between a unit of the original text and that of the target text. Kelly (2000) defines translation as the skill of understanding and interpreting the source text and rendering it in the target language by using the register, the background knowledge and other language resources to meet the intended purpose. The purpose of translation is to transfer the message of the SL to TL and this is faced by a number of challenges, such as the concept of non-equivalence which occurs when the TL lacks a word or a concept present in the SL. This is a problem that is evident in all the levels starting from the word level up to the textual level. For example, at word level non-equivalence may originate from culture bound words, while at the grammatical level, they may occur where a grammatical aspect such as gender, number or tense does not exist in the target language. It is also evident in the textual level in terms of cohesion and coherence; for example, the translator may experience a problem when trying to follow the cohesive ties as well as the coherence in the source text to render them as they are in the target text. This paper discusses non-equivalence in the Kĩkamba Bible translation at the grammatical level.
In discussing non-equivalence, the principles of equivalence are used to assess the success in translating the message of the ST into the TT. Nida (1964) proposed three basic principles that can be used to assess equivalence in translation; general efficiency of communication process, comprehension of intent and equivalence of responses. The principle of equivalent response (effect) which aims at staying true to the source text by communicating its linguistic features such as grammar and syntax into the TL is central in Bible translation. To achieve the equivalence effect in the linguistic approach, there is a need to maintain the formal and grammatical structures of the source language in the target language. (Qutt, 2000). The communicative view looks at the concept of equivalence at different categories, such as content equivalence, stylistic equivalence, semantic equivalence, communicative equivalence, pragmatic equivalence, formal and dynamic equivalence (Hauglund, 2011). Translation is used for many purposes, and therefore, the type of equivalence is determined by what the translator wants to achieve and the type of text being translated. The translation of the Bible is purposely made to communicate the message of the ST to the TT.
Grammatical category refers to specific properties of a word that cause the word and/or a related word to change in form for grammatical reasons (Baker, 2011). Languages differ in the way various aspects of experiences are expressed, and also the degree of importance that is attached to them. English which is the working source language in this study, has over twenty grammatical categories. The paper deals with the following grammatical categories; gender, number, person and case, which pose challenges of grammatical non-equivalence in the translation process. The grammatical category choices are obligatory and only made from a closed set of options; for example, in a language where number is a category, the translator has to choose between singular and plural (Baker, 2011).
The role of the translator is to replace the language of the ST with the language of the TT, (Brisset, 2000) and the implicit focus in all translation definition is upon the concept of equivalence. Equivalence is aimed at so that the texts can be compared in terms of meaning. Proponents of the equivalence-based theory such as Tuory (1995) define equivalence as the relationship between source text (ST) and target text (TT) that allows the TT to be considered as the translation of the ST. This means that the two texts can be compared in terms of meaning. The researcher used the Revised Standard Version (RSV, 2008) as a working source language and the Kĩkamba Bible (2012) to determine cases of non-equivalence and the strategies used to solve them. The RSV was used because the team that translated the Kĩkamba Bible of 2012 mainly used it as the source text.
The original Bible was written in three languages. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew with a small percentage in Aramic. The New Testament was written in Koine Greek. Over the years, the Bible has been and is still being translated into a variety of languages due to the changes that occur in languages. The objective of the Bible translator is to communicate the word of God as exactly as possible which leads to literal translation. Translation is always unfinished work, and any new translation calls for revision and gradually for another translation as the language adapts and changes to meet the needs of evolving cultures and traditions of the society (Nida and Taber, 1982).
The work of translation in Africa was spear headed by the Christian missionaries. In Kenya, the Bible was first translated in Kiswahili which was the only written language in East Africa with rich oral tradition. Krapf, a Christian missionary in Kenya, was the pioneer in translating the scriptures into Kĩkamba which was the second oldest translation of scriptures in the Kenyan languages after Kiswahili. He translated the gospel according to Mark in 1850 while, J. Hoffman, H. Pfitzinge and Ernest Brutzer translated the gospel according to St. Luke in 1898, Acts of the Apostles in 1904 and the gospel according to St. Mathew 1909. The Kĩkamba language used in these translations was rather difficult and inconsistent (Majola, 1999 (Waruta, 1975).
A new Kĩkamba Bible translated by a team of translators was published by the Kenya Bible Society in 2012, and a later edition was done by Mbiti, who translated the New Testament directly from Greek to Kĩkamba and produced a new Kĩkamba Bible version in 2015. He asserted that he did this translation single-handedly due to the challenges he used to face while using the former edition. This paper used the Kĩkamba Bible edition translated in 2012 which uses standard Kĩkamba.

Grammar and translation
There are problems in translation that are caused by the formal differences, for examples, systematic dissimilarity of the forms that take place when one of the languages lack some grammar category leading to a lack of a corresponding form. For instance, English has one-word expression for the third person singular to distinguish between male and female gender, while Kĩkamba does not have and has to take a descriptive approach, the third person feminine gender 'she' is translated as 'mũndũ mũka' translated literally as a 'female human being'. To translate such forms, one has to compensate them or restructure the sentences. Formal dissimilarities also include differences in word combination norms and models that make up language structures. They can be categorized into dissimilarities caused by language system, by norms and by usage. The problems of forms can be explored in a number of cases, such as in translating finite verb forms, passive forms, subjunctive mood forms, non-finite verb forms, the gerund, the particle and personal pronouns among others, (Proshina, 2008).
In translation where one expression has multiple meanings, the target reader is expected to deduce the implied meaning from the context. Baker (1992) asserts that words depend on other words in the context to communicate meaning; in a text, they collocate or combine with other words to convey meaning. He states that: words rarely occur on their own; they mostly occur in the company of other words. But words are not strung together at random in any language; there are always restrictions (differences) on the way they can be combined to convey meaning. It would seem then that the patterns of collocations are largely arbitrary and independent of meaning (Baker, 1992:47-48).
According to Houbert (1998), a translator is essentially a message conveyer, conveying the meaning expressed by the original writer and therefore, the translated text is one of the many possible texts. Different readers may respond differently to the same source material text and render it differently in the target text. The translator's version is, therefore, only one of the many possible readings of the ST. Any translated text can be compared to the source text to analyze the similarity between the two in terms of content and form. This paper investigated how grammatical categories are handled in order to convey the message in the Kĩkamba Bible.

Methodology
The study was guided by the principles of descriptive research design. A descriptive research design falls under qualitative research approach. Purposive and stratified sampling procedures were used to select the sample for the study. The Bible has 66 books and is divided into two sections the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament has 39 books and the New Testament has 27 books. The books are further divided into other categories. For the purpose of this study, the researcher adopted a religious classification by the Revised Standard Version Bible (Preface, 2008) which put the Bible books into seven categories; Pentateuch, Historical books, Poetical books, Prophetic books, Gospel, the Early Church, and the Epistles. The researcher purposively selected one book from each category and one chapter in each book. The books that formed the sample were; Genesis, Judges, Song of Solomon, Isaiah, Mathew, Acts of the Apostle and Hebrews.
The process involved reading the selected chapters from each book intensively using the Revised Standard Version (2008), which served as the working source text in the study, to explore non-equivalence at the grammatical categories guided by the Equivalence theory, (Nida, 1964). The verses that reflected cases of non-equivalence were highlighted and recorded. The texts were categorized according to the grammatical categories. The process also involved reading the Kĩkamba Bible (2011) to identify non-equivalence at the grammatical level using the Equivalence theory proposed by Nida (1964). The study was guided by the Relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson, 2012) to determine whether the non-equivalence was successfully handled to transfer the message of the source text into the target text or not. Translation is a process of pursuing relevance and the task of the translator's task is to retain optimal relevance in the translation by first seeking relevance from the original communication.

4.Data analysis
A language can express any information it needs to express, but grammatical systems differ in expressing concepts, such as gender and case, among others. In this paper 24 cases of non-equivalence at different grammatical categories were identified. The data can be summarized in the following

Gender
Gender is a grammatical distinction according to which a noun or a pronoun is classified as either masculine or feminine in some categories. There are three types of gender that challenge the process of translating; grammatical gender, social gender and biological gender, (Baker 2011). This paper discusses grammatical and social gender. The grammatical gender is the most complex since some languages do not grammatically separate pronouns to indicate masculine or feminine. For example, Kĩkamba lacks the third person singular distinction of gender. One Kĩkamba term is used to refer to both she and he this is illustrated in Judges 1:14 and 15 in which a number of pronouns were used. The pronouns are underlined for clarity. B/T: Achsah answered him/her and said this, 'give me a gift! I ask you to give me wells of water because the section that you have given me is very dry, it does not have water.' So Caleb gave her/him wells that were on the upper and lower side.
In these two verses, the use of the third person singular was a challenge because Kĩkamba does not have a one-word expression although the language is able to express the concept using the nouns or the immediate environment (context) in which the word is used or even adding the word that differentiates between the two, (mũndũ mũka for a woman and mũndũ ũme for a man). In Judges 1:14 the translator resorted to grammatical specification and added a lot of information drawn from the previous context in which the pronoun 'she' was substituted with Achsah Caleb's daughter is realized from the previous context, as reflected from an earlier verse (Judges 1:13).
The personal pronoun 'him' for gender in this verse is also substituted in Kĩkamba with the noun that it represents which is also connected with verse 13, that is, Oth'ni-el who had married Achsah. In English it only implies that Achsah got married but in the TT it is made explicit through addition. This makes the information clear and according to Relevance theory it saves the target reader too much processing energy to interpret the meaning that would be unnecessary. For further clarity the translator also specifies the information more by providing the name of the father. The ST uses 'her father' but in the TT it is substituted with 'her father Caleb' which brings clarity to the TT. In the ST 'she' is used to indicate that 'Achsah alighted from her colt' but in the TT her name 'Achsah is used.
In verse 14 personal pronouns to refer to the two genders in the ST are used, the TT uses the nouns that are referred to by the pronouns since it lacks equivalent pronouns to draw the distinction. This is the specification in which the translator uses the context to retrieve the nouns referred to by the pronouns. The context is an important element in the Relevance theory, it helps the translator to make inferences on the meaning to connect the implicit information with explicit information. From the back translation it is clear that the information is distorted since it is clearly indicated that, in the ST it is 'she' who urged 'him' but in the TT it is 'he' who urged 'her' this leads to mistranslation.
Specification is manifested again in Judges 1:15 where 'she' is used in the ST but the translator substitutes it with the noun, 'Achsah' in the Kĩkamba version. The possessive form 'him' that differentiates the gender is, however, not specified but the translator resulted in grammatical generalization in which a general term that refers to both genders was used for both. According to Relevance theory, the principle of context plays a key role in the interpretation of the meaning, the receptor audience in the TT is able to interpret the expression used to substitute 'him' that has been generalized from Judges 1:14.
The use of specification when dealing with gender is demonstrated in Acts 1:7 in which 'he' is substituted with the noun it represented in the TT.
NE: 2 ST: He said to them 'it is not for you to know times or seasons which the father has fixed by his own authority' TT: Yesũ amea atĩĩ, 'ũsu ti ũndũ wenyu wa kũmanyaa syanthĩ kana mavinda ala Asa ũvangĩte kwa ũkũmũ wake mwene. B/T: Jesus told them this, 'that is not for you to know occasions or times that the Father has planned by his/her authority.
The translator in this case resorted to grammatical specification. This was done to make the translated text clear and comprehensible for the TT audience. The ST language has elaborated classification and uses the personal pronouns to distinguish between the masculine and feminine gender. The use of the pronouns 'he' is substituted with the noun 'Jesus.' While 'his' is generalized but the choice of the masculine gender is clear in the TT.
Other cases of specification are illustrated in Acts 1:9, 17 in which the use of the pronoun 'he' in both verses was substituted with the referent nouns in the TT. The two initial pronouns 'he' in both expressions are substituted with the nouns they represented, that is, Jesus and Judas respectively, the pronouns are realized from the context and thus the translation is successful. The other gender categories are generalized but the TT reader can automatically pick the correct gender within the context of the verse and thus there is no ambiguity. The researcher back translated using the two alternatives to highlight on generalization in translation but the correct gender is clear. The grammatical gender was translated successfully in the TT through unit change strategy.
Social gender refers to societal and chronological conditions; it complicates translation because of dependency on time and place. It is based on changes in the society, for example, occupational titles; a nurse was attached to a lady in many languages even Kĩkamba, for a long time, while a servant and a driver were attached to a man. The 'elders' in some societies are used to refer to men only for example as used in This is a case in which the of use hyponymy strategy through specification in which the word 'elders' was translated as atumĩa (elderly men) though the term 'elders' in English includes both men and woman. From the culture of the Hebrew community from which the Bible was written it referred to the masculine gender only (Douglas and Tenny, 1987). In the modern Akamba society the term 'elders' refers to both men and women, and any gender can be elders in the church. The translator must have the experience from the culture of the original Bible version that is acting as the source text during the process of translation and also enough knowledge on the culture of the TT. In the modern society, the translation is considered unsuccessful.

Number
This category is probably universal in the sense that all human languages use the concept of 'countability'; however, some languages do not have it or do not use the category in the same manner. In translating from a language that has number distinction into a language which does not have, the translator has two main options; omit the relevant information relating to number or encode the information lexically, (Baker, 2011). For instance, in Judges 1:30, 31 and 33 the use of singular to imply plural form in the ST was substituted with the plural form and the use of amplification strategy. In the ST language the names of the sons of Israel can be used in the singular form to represent the tribe in the religious context, but when the names are transliterated into Kĩkamba some information is lost. The translator resorted in addition to bring out the issue of plurality in the text. The implied information is made explicit in this case which according to the Relevance theory, is acceptable; an implicature can be translated using an explicature as long as the explicature renders the message successfully in the target text. The principle of reference (Relevance theory, Sperber and Wilson, 2012)) claims that exciplicitation is used to avoid ambiguity but this goes against the idea of the equivalent effect that should be the same for the audience of the ST and TT (Qutt, 2000). So much specification directs the audience in one perspective of thinking leading to one interpretation which reduces the processing effort making it more relevant.
In Kĩkamba the noun and the verb are joined together to form one expression which indicates whether the expression is in plural or singular while in English the verb and Noun are two separate words that share the subject-verb agreement factor, as reflected in Judges 1:3. In the illustration the expressions indicating 'number' are underlined.
NE: 6 SS: And Judah said to Simeon his brother 'come up with me into the territory allotted to me, that we may fight against the Canaanites; and we likewise will go with you into the territory allotted to you" so Simeon went with him. TT: Andũ ma mbaĩ ya Yuta nĩmeeie ana-a-inyia moo, andũ ma mbaĩ ya Simioni atĩĩ 'ũngai tũũendany'e tũkalike kĩsionĩ kya nthĩ kĩla tũnengetwe na tũyũkita andũ ma nthĩ ya Kanaani twĩ vamwe, ĩtina wa ũu naĩtũ nĩtũkũendany'a nenyu kĩsionĩ kya nthĩ kĩla mũnengetwe.' kwoou andũ ma mbaĩ ya Simioni na Yuta nĩmaendanisye. B/T: people of tribe of Judah told their brothers, the people of the tribe of Simeon, this 'you come we go with you to get into the section of the land that we have been given and fight people of the land of Canaan together then after that we go with you to the section of land that you have been given, and so the people of Simeon and Judah went together.
The reflection of the plural form is seen in the first 'you' (go with you) is in the verb 'ungai' which means come in the plural form in Kĩkamba. The second person 'you' is translated by the word 'nenyu' which is literally back translated as 'you' in plural form. Kĩkamba uses a number of reflections to translate the second person to differentiate whether it is in plural or in singular unlike English where 'number' of the second person can only be determined in the context. Translation, in this case was successful.
Kĩkamba has different expressions to indicate plurality and singularity for the pronoun 'who'. In the book of Acts 1:44 the relative pronoun 'who' is substituted by the noun that is in plural form.

NE: 7 SS: And all who believed TT: Aĩkĩii onthe B/T: All the believers
The use of the qualifier 'all' indicates plural form. The message of the ST is rendered in the TT but the emphasis that is brought out in the ST due the use of the relative pronoun 'who' is lost in the TT since it is omitted. The omission leads to emphasis reduction.
In Kĩkamba the relative pronoun 'who' can be translated in plural form or in singular form depending on the context of use. The use of 'who' in singular form is demonstrated in Judges 1:12.
NE: 8 SS: 'He who attacks Kir'ith-sepher TT: mũndũ ũla wĩsinda andũ ma ndũa ya kiliathi B/T: the person who defeats the tribe of kiliathi-seveli, The expression 'he who' was translated as 'mũndũ ũla' that is 'the person who' which suggests the singularity in the expression. The 'he' is generalized to include both 'he' and 'she' but the gender is automatically realized from the context. The translator resulted to unit change and explicitation strategies which are successful in conveying the message of the TT. This is in tandem with Odhiambo and Matu (2014) assertion that explicitation is longer and contains more specific information than that offered by the source text

Person
Person relates to the idea of participant roles in a language which are systematically defined through a closed system of pronouns which may be organized along a variety of dimensions, (Baker, 2011). When translating to a language that lacks this grammatical category the translator resorts to automatic specification and translating from a language that lacks the category the translator results in automatic generalization. According to Larson (1998) the translator is expected to group the words that are related together in SL and then systematically looking at the contrast between them, determine what should be rendered in the TL.
Kĩkamba does not have the one-word expression for the equivalent in English of the third person 'he' and 'she' as it is in English. The expression 'mũndũ ũsu' is used for both 'he' and 'she'. This is illustrated in the book of Judges 1:25 in which the translator resorted to grammatical generalization. The pronoun 'he' was generalized as 'that person' in this particular verse the gender is not defined through a reduction strategy in which a specific lexical item is reduced to a general one. Although the Bible verses are not read in isolation it is important that each verse makes some sense on its own. This does not however result in mistranslation since the reader can make use of the context to comprehend the person referred to in the source text. If the translator is working with a TL that does not have the grammatical category, the translator will lose some of the concrete information regardless of the translator's intention, and this is referred to as automatic generalization, (Klaudy 2001).
In translating the third person the translator resorted to grammatical specification, that is, explicitation and unit change strategies for instance in cases in which a pronoun was used in the ST, the noun it represented was used in the TT to identify the person, for example, in Mathew 28:12.
NE: 10 SS: And when they had assembled with the elders. TT: Athembi anene nĩmooombanie na atumĩa. B/T: the great priests assembled with the old men.
The third person 'they' which also has an equivalent in Kĩkamba, was not relevant in the context and would have resulted to poor construction. It was substituted with the noun as 'Athembi anene' (great priests)', which is gotten from the context. The text shows that although the TL has an equivalent term, there are contexts in which it does not replace its use in the SL successively. The substitution through the unit change strategy is successful in transferring the meaning of the source text in this context.
The use of specification when dealing with the third person is also demonstrated in Mathew 28: 11 in which the third person plural in subjective case 'they' in the ST is substituted with the noun it represented.
NE: 11 ST: while they were going, TT: aka asu me nzĩanĩ maendete B/T: while those women were on the way going The translator, in this case, resorted to grammatical specification. This was done to make the translated text clearer and easy for the TT audience to comprehend. The ST language has elaborated classification and use of pronouns that does not result in ambiguity. The use of the third person plural pronoun 'they' (asu) in this case, would have caused some ambiguity. The specification is drawn from other earlier verses (context). The unit change strategy resulted in successful transfer since the functional equivalence which is advocated for in the equivalence theory is achieved (Nida and Taber 1982) Since languages differ in terms of grammatical categories, Klaudy (2001) states that the translator resorts to translation operations which could be grammatical specification or grammatical generalization. He defines grammatical specification as a standard transfer operation (TO) as a case where a category with a general meaning in the SL is rendered in the TL with a similar unit that has a more specific meaning because TT does not have a general or unmarked grammatical category with specific meaning. For example, in Kĩkamba generalization occurs when a unit with a specific meaning in the ST is rendered a more general way or unmarked form in the TT. Vinay and Darbelnet (1995) use the term explicitation in the Relevance theory, for both generalization and specification. In dealing with the grammatical category of persons the translator used both generalization and specification, which successfully rendered the message of the ST into the TT.

Case
It is a special grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, participles, or numerals whose value reflects the grammatical function performed by that specific word in the phrase, clause or sentence. For example, English which is the working source language in this study, has largely lost its case system, although the personal pronouns still have three cases; normative, accusative and genitive case, (Klaudy, 2001). They are used with personal pronouns; subjective case which includes you, I, she, it, we, they, who and whoever. The second is objective case which uses pronouns such as me, you, him, her, it, us, them, whom and whoever. The third one is possessive pronoun such as my, mine, your, yours, his, hers, its, our, ours, their, theirs and whose Kĩkamba, the target language in this study does not have an elaborate system of possessive pronouns but some lexical terms are used to refer to a number of possessive pronouns. For example, in judges 1:1-2 the use of a number of possessive pronouns caused a challenge in translation.
NE: 12 ST: who shall go up first for us against the Canaanites, to fight against them Judah shall go up behold I have given the land into his hands… with me into the territory allotted to me, that we may fight against the Canaanites...they defeated ten thousand of them at Bezek. The people of the tribe of Judah are the ones to go first. I will give them power to defeat the people of that land. The people of Judah told their brothers the people of the tribe of Simeon this. you come we go with you we enter in the section of the land that we have been given and fight the people of the land of Canaan together and then after that even us we will go with in section of the land that you have been given; so the people of the tribe of Simeon and Judah went together. The Lord God give them authority to defeat the Canaanites and Perizzites. They killed one thousand people in the village of Bezek.
In this text the subjective case 'who' starts the sentence, though Kĩkamba has an equivalent term 'nuu' it is not relevant in the context. The equivalent theory (Nida, 1964) states that it is not enough for two terms to be equivalent as far as semantics is concerned but there is a need to measure equivalent at the level of usage which is pragmatic equivalence (Vinay and Darbelnet, 1995). Following the pragmatic equivalence principle, the translator resulted to substitution and addition. Through the use of 'which' with additions to the original statement in the ST the message of the ST is conveyed in the TT. It is a challenge of normative case in which the pronoun is used as the subject of the statement. The use of the noun in the TT makes the information that is implicit in the SL explicit in the TT. From the context (in the earlier verses) it is clear that the noun used in the TT is what is represented by the pronoun 'who' in the ST.
In the case of accusative, the pronoun 'us' and 'them' are omitted in the TT to make the structure readable and comprehensible. The accusative pronoun 'his' which is used in an idiomatic expression 'given the land into his hands' is also omitted in the TT because the expression is not translated literally but a paraphrase is used instead. In judges 1:3 the accusative case represented by 'me' is included in the verb in the TT by use of an affix 'tu' and the word used means that 'they go together'. The possessive pronoun 'their' which is used in the idiomatic expression 'given into their hand' was also omitted since the expression was not translated word for word, but a paraphrase was used. The strategies of substitution, addition, omission and paraphrase were successfully used in this text.
Kĩkamba uses a few possessive pronouns in the expressions to avoid redundancy but English uses a number of pronouns as illustrated in the Judges 1:6 in which the possessive pronouns are substituted with affixes.
NE: 13 ST: Adonibezek fled; but they pursued him, and cut off his thumbs and his great toes. TT: Mũsumbĩ Atoni-mbeseke nĩwasembie akĩĩtĩ, ĩndĩ nĩmamũsembanisye na mamũkwata. Nĩmamũtilile syaa ila nene sya moko na syaa maũũ. B/T: The king adonibezek ran fearing, but they ran after him and caught him. They cut the thumbs for the hands and legs.
The third person possessive case 'him' was translated using an affix in the text 'Mũ'. 'Mũ' in this case is used to bring the idea of generalization since it refers to 'him' and 'her'. The translator resorted to generalization to overcome the problem of nonequivalent. The generalization achieves in translating the message of the ST into the TT since the reader can make use of the context in which the generalization occurs in order to deduce what is been referred to. Words are not used as separate identity to construct meaning, they are interdependent elements when it comes to meaning. The specific meaning of a word can be retrieved from the generalized term.
In the book of Judges The qualifying pronoun 'his' in the subjective case is substituted with the noun by use of an explicit strategy that specified the noun that is referred to. While the pronoun 'him' in the objective case was generalized to 'wake' which is used for both gender 'she' and 'he' but which is clear from the context and the target audience can automatically pick the correct pronoun.
The translator used explicitation and addition to give clarity to the pronouns that carried weighty information for instance, in substituting the pronoun in the subjective case in Acts 1:22, with the noun.

NE: 16
ST: …beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us-one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection.
TT: …kuma ĩvindanĩ yĩla Yoana wavatisaa andũ kũka kũvika mũthenya ũla Yesũ wambatie ĩtunĩ. ũsu akakũsĩĩaa andũnĩ vamwe naitu kana Yesũ nũthathyũũkĩte kuma kw'a akw'ũ. B/T: from the time John was baptizing people up to the time Jesus ascended to the clouds/ heaven. That one will witness among people with us that Jesus has risen from the dead.
The translator substituted the pronoun 'he' in the subjective case with the noun 'Jesus', and the objective case 'his resurrection' is substituted with the 'Yesũ nũthathyũũkĩte (Jesus has resurrected from the dead). The use of specification through the substitution strategy makes what is implicit in the ST explicit in the TT and thus reduces the processing effort among the target text readers, which is one of the Relevance theory tenants (Sperber and Wilson, 2012). The message of the ST is communicated in the TT as demonstrated in the back translation.
To compensate the losses that are made by automatic generalization the translator can make use of intentional specification, which involves a conscious transfer operation (Klaudy, 2001 From the English versions; New International Version, New King James Version and the working source text Revised Standard Version, it is clear that the use of the objective case 'him' refers to Oth'ni-el and the subjective case refers to Achsah. In the Kikamba version Oth'ni-el is used in the subjective case while Achsah is used in the objective case. The message of the ST is that Achsah had asked Oth-ni-el to plead with her father for a field but in the TT the message is distorted, it is Oth-ni-el who is pleading with Achsah to ask for a field. The explicitation strategy through specification of the pronouns in this text led to mistranslation.
The use of the genitive case is also a challenge to the translator because it does not have direct equivalents in Kĩkamba but uses affixes to transfer the same information in the TT. An illustration is in Judges 1:18; NE: 18 ST: Judah also took Gaza with its territory, and Ash'kelon with its territory and Ekron with its territory. TT: O ta ũu andũ ma mbaĩ ya Yuta nĩmakwatie ndũa ya Ngasa ya Asikeloni na ya Ekeloni. Makwatanĩĩsye ndũa isu na isio ila syaithyulũlũkĩte. B/T: And so people of tribe of Judah invaded village of Gaza and of Ekeloni. They captured those villages with the areas that surrounded them.
The translator, through addition strategy, rendered the statement into two sentences and put the two genitive cases in to one and translated it once using a noun and a demonstrative; 'isio', and 'ila' respectively. The noun 'ndũa' meaning 'village' that is used to substitute the genitive, does not achieve the goal of translating. Since 'its territory' means the areas ruled by the people they are made to conquer, the translation refers to the area surrounding them, which results in ambiguity.
It is not enough to say that there is equivalence when the two cases exist in both the ST and the TT because their context of use may be different. There are cases where the English genitive case and the Kĩkamba genitive case were used in the same way. The The translator has relayed 'who' as 'ala' which is a literal translation of the word that means 'who' in plural form, achieving the goal of translating. From the research it is clear that 'case' as a grammatical category poses challenges in translation but through generation and specification strategies successful translation is possible.

Conclusion
This study concludes that non-equivalence at the grammatical category leads to partial transfer of the ST message in the TT. Success is achieved if the right translation strategy is used effectively. All languages have a way of expressing their grammatical categories. Out the 24 instances of grammatical categories identified four were unsuccessful in relaying the message in the TT, that is, resulted in mistranslation. In the other cases, the core message in the ST was communicated into the TT.