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30 October 2019 | Story Rulanzen Martin | Photo Rulanzen Martin
Prof Jacobus Naude
Prof Jacobus Naudè is one of few South Africans who have delivered the Van Selms Memorial lecture at the Southern African Society Near Eastern Studies conference.
To be awarded an opportunity to present a lecture outside the domain of your own university is not only beneficial to attract new postgraduate students but also provides senior researchers with the opportunity to publicise their research on a national and sometimes international level.

This is the impression of Prof Jacobus Naudè, a senior professor in the Department of Hebrew at the University of the Free State (UFS) when he delivered the 2019 Adrianus van Selms Memorial lecture at the Southern African Society for Near Eastern Studies conference. Prof Naudè said such lectures provide an opportunity to academics and researchers to demonstrate that a particular field of study has broad implications for society. “A South African only has the opportunity to deliver this lecture every second year by invitation, so it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” he said. 

His own research seeks to understand alterity (“otherness”) in various systems of ancient culture and to preserve it while representing it intelligibly for modern users. “In my current research I utilise complexity theory to integrate seemingly disparate foci (pre-modern Hebrew linguistics and religious translation).” 

The conference took place on 16 September 2019 at the School of Religion, Philosophy and Classics at the Pietermaritzburg Campus of the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

South African Bible translations through the ages

The topic of his lecture was, Translations of sacred texts and the shaping, reshaping and circulation of religious knowledge in monotheistic religions with written traditions: A Southern African perspective, in which he provided examples from the history of religious translations in monotheistic religions (Jewish religious tradition, Christianity and Islam) to “illustrate the spreading, circulation, shaping and reshaping of our religious knowledge by translation”.  

Prof Naudè shared some aspects of how religious ideas have travelled via the medium of translation into different cultures and languages. With his focus on South Africa he illustrated how the Dutch East India Company imposed monolingualism in the Cape with Dutch being the only language in church and at school. “There was complete unwillingness on the side of the Dutch to learn the Khoikhoi languages.” The political change in beginning of the 19th century provided strong motivation for Bible translations into indigenous languages. 

There have been many attempts to reconceptualise South African translations of the Bible. The latest attempt was by Prof Kobus Marais from the UFS Department of Linguistics and Language Practice whose work aims to reconceptualise translation within the frame of complexity thinking. “Religious translation will thus need to avoid reductionism and rather focus on the source or the target,” Prof Naudè said.

News Archive

Chemistry Department expands its international footprint
2015-10-14

Prof André Roodt

Prof André Roodt from the Department of Chemistry at the University of the Free State has returned from a research visit at the St Petersburg State University in Russia. The research he conducted at the St Petersburg State University is part of a bilateral collaboration agreement between the University of the Free State and St Petersburg State University.

As part of his visit to Russia (from 17 to 28 September 2015), Prof Roodt presented a seminar at St Petersburg State University, and a lecture at the conference titled: International conference on Organometallic and Coordination Chemistry: Achievements and Challenges.

One of the local Russian newspapers quoted Prof Roodt as “world-renowned expert in the study of chemical kinetics and mechanisms of chemical reactions”. His presentation: Are detailed reaction mechanisms really necessary in (applied) organometallic and coordination chemistry' attracted great interest from the St Petersburg chemists.

The bilateral agreement came to life a year ago when the St Petersburg State University chemists won a grant in a competition to create an international research group, the International Laboratory of Organometallic Chemistry. The Laboratory is headed by Prof Vadim Kukushkin of the St Petersburg State University.

In addition to the employees of St Petersburg University, the research group consists of researchers from Portugal, Finland, South Africa, and Azerbaijan. Together, these groups of scientists are working on the problem of non-reactive metal activation molecules. The main theme of the research laboratory is in the catalysis and activation of metal inert molecules which then undergo significant change, and become meaningful to people chemicals, such as drugs.

As part of this initiative, a bilateral collaboration agreement exists between the St Petersburg State University and the UFS (Russian Science Foundation grant 14-43-00017). Students from our university have visited and conducted research at the St Petersburg State University while some of their students visit and research reaction kinetics at the UFS.

Prof Roodt hosted Valeria Burianova, a student from the St Petersburg University. During her visit at the UFS, she learned about response kinetics. A UFS PhD student, Carla Pretorius, joined the group in Russia where she conducted research on the intermetallic rhodium-rhodium interactions for the formation of nano-wires and -plates, with applications in the micro-electronics industry, and a  potential for harvesting sun energy.

The UFS Department of Chemistry extended its international footprint further with three of its students, Mampotsu Tsosane, Petrus Mokolokolo, and Tom Kama, returning from Switzerland after a six-week research visit in the group of Prof Roger Alberto from the University of Zürich. In return, Prof Roodt hosted a Swiss PhD student, Angelo Frei from Zürich, and taught him more about reaction mechanisms.

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