Deceiving at his leisure?

As we were working through Job today with our consultant, we came across the verse which in the NIV is rendered:

"If I have walked in falsehood or my foot has hurried after deceit, ..." (Job 31:5)

In Monkolé we had translated it as:

"N ci ya n sɔ ibo, n ci ya n saasa n koo n zamba inɛ ŋa" which means "I didn't tell lies, I didn't hurry to go and deceive people" (we had changed the structure slightly, taking away the "If" at the beginning of the sentence and making it a negative affirmation rather than a hypothetical).

However, when we were reading it through, one of the translators said, "Does that mean he did deceive people, but just didn't hurry to do it?"

This made us realise that our Monkolé version was ambiguous, and so we decided to alter it to be similar to versions such as the CEV, which simply says, "I am not dishonest or deceitful".

Such details tend to be thrown up when the text is read out loud, and it is good to get them straightened out!