The Greek in 2 Peter 2:14 and 3:16 that is translated as “unstable” in English is rendered into Kahua with a simile that means “like butterflies.”
with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind
The phrase that is translated as “with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” in English versions is rendered in Kahua with a term for belly/chest as the seat of the emotions.
The same phrase is translated into Kuy as “with all your heart-liver”to show the totality of one’s being. (Source: David Clark)
Similar to that, in Laka one must love with the liver, in Western Kanjobal with the “abdomen,” and in Marshallese with the throat.
What is translated as “soul” in English is translated as “life” in Yaka, Chuukese, and in Ixcatlán Mazatec, “that which stands inside of one” in Navajo (Dinė), and “spirit” in Kele.
The Greek that is translated in English as “strength” is translated in Yao as “animation” and in Chuukese as “ability.”
The Greek that is translated in English as “mind” is translated in Kele as “thinking,” in Chuukese as “thought(s),” and in Marathi as “intelligence.”
The whole phrase is translated in Tboli as “cause it to start from the very beginning of your stomach your loving God, for he is your place of holding.”
In Poqomchi’ (as in many other Mayan languages), the term “heart” covers both “heart” and “mind.”
(Sources: Bratcher / Nida, Reiling / Swellengrebel, and Bob Bascom [Ixcatlán Mazatec and Poqomchi’])
See also translations with a Hebraic voice (Deuteronomy 6:5), implanted / in one’s heart and complete verse (Mark 12:30), and see Seat of the Mind for traditional views of “ways of knowing, thinking, and feeling.”
For a detailed look at the relationships between the Deuteronomy 6:5 quote, its Septuagint translation and the quotations in the synoptic gospels, see Adaptable for Translation: Deuteronomy 6.5 in the Synoptic Gospels and Beyond by Robert Bascom .
flattery
The term in 1 Thessalonians 2:5 that is rendered as “flattery” in English is translated with a Kahua idiom: “We did not bend our heads to please people (i.e., use flattery).” (Source: David Clark)
See also flattering lips.
smooth talk and flattery
The phrase in Romans 16:18 that is translated in many English versions as “smooth talk and flattery” is translated into Hakha Chin with an appropriate idiom: “good lip and mouth, and skill in singing.” (Source: David Clark)
See also smooth, smooth words and flattering lips.
colt that has never been ridden
The phrase that is translated into English as “a colt that has never been ridden” can be translated in Kalmyk much more succinctly than even the original Greek text since Kalmyk as arkhlata (архлата) a specific word for an unbroken colt. (source: David Clark)
In the Arhuaco translation of Luke 19:35 (in the English translation: “after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it.”) the co-translator knew how unruly unbroken colts are so they translated “they held the donkey steady so that Jesus could get on it.” (source: Paul Lundquist in The Bible Translator 1992, p. 246 .)
See also this devotion on YouVersion and donkey.
hate
In Chechen there is no word for the term that is translated with “hate” in English in Luke 14:26 that is appropriate to the context in Luke 14:26 so the sentence has to be restructured to say, “if anyone does not esteem me more than…”.
This is also the case in Kalmyk where the sentence has to be restructured to say, “if anyone does not love me more than…”.
In the German New Testament translation by Berger / Nord (publ. 1999) it is translated with gleichsam hassen or “hate, so to speak.”
See also who hate us.
cornerstone
Bawm build with bamboo and thatch in their mountainous forests. They made the apostles and prophets become the roof ridge pole and Jesus the central uprights which support it. I asked why not the corner uprights since Greek has a term that is translated in English as ‘cornerstone.’ Bawm translators responded that the central uprights are more important than the corner ones, and Greek refers to the most important stone. (“Corner uprights” used in 1 Timothy 3:15.) (Source: David Clark)
Similarly, Chris Pluger tells the following from the translation into Tsamakko: “At the end of Ephesians 2, Paul uses the idea of a building to show that people of all nations and backgrounds are united together by faith in Christ. This building is pictured as standing on a stone foundation, and believers are ‘joined together’ as parts of that building. Christ himself is the cornerstone on which everything is based. However, the Tsamakko people of southwest Ethiopia do not build on stone foundations, and their buildings are traditionally round. This makes the idea of a ‘cornerstone’ difficult for several obvious reasons. In the Tsamakko translation of Ephesians 2:20, Christ is the
In Mono, translators used “main post,” in Martu Wangka “two forked sticks with another long strong stick laid across” (see also 1 Peter 2:6-7.), and in Arrernte, the translation in 1 Peter 2:7 (in English translation: “the stone . . . became the very cornerstone”) was rendered as “the foundation… continues to be the right foundation,” (source for this and two above: Carl Gross) and in Uripiv and Sabaot it is the “post” (source: Ross McKerras and Jim Leonhard in Holzhausen / Riderer 2010, p. 50). Likewise, in Hakha Chin it is the “central upright poles of a house.” (Hakha Chin speakers are mountain people who build houses with bamboo and palm thatch, not stone) (source: David Clark)
In Ixcatlán Mazatec it is translated with a term denoting the “the principal part of the ‘house’ (or work)” (source: Robert Bascom), in Enlhet as “like the house-root” (source: Jacob Loewen in The Bible Translator 1969, p. 24ff. ), in Q’anjob’al it is translated with with the existing idiom “ear of the house.” (Source: Newberry and Kittie Cox in The Bible Translator 1950, p. 91ff. ), in Desano as “main support of the house,” and in Tataltepec Chatino as “the best stone” (source for this and one above: Viola Waterhouse in Notes on Translation August 1966, p. 86ff.).
Shuar translates as “that stone was placed to the main house pole.” The Shuar use stones in house building either at the bottom of the posthole as a base for the house pole to rest on, or as chocking material around the post to hold it firm. Either function is acceptable here particularly as applied to the main house-pole. In Ocotlán Zapotec it is “master stone of the house.” This is a special stone they put into the foundation as sort of a guide stone of how the foundation is to true up. (Source: B. Moore / G. Turner in Notes on Translation 1967, p. 1ff.)
In Matumbi it is “the great foundation stone.” It’s the first large stone you place for a house, the one that determines where all the other stones will go, but unlike in Greek thought it’s often in the center of a building instead of a corner. (Source: Pioneer Bible Translators, project-specific notes in Paratext)
See also rock / stone, foundation on rock, and foundation.
love (abstract noun) (Lamogai)
Dave Brunn reports this from the translation into Lamogai (see p. 143ff.):
“Many languages have very few abstract nouns. This means that the process of nominalization (where a verb or a word in another word class is turned into a noun) is rarely done or not done at all. When transitive verbs (verbs that require an object) have to be used to describe what in other languages can easily be said as a standalone noun, an object has to be defined.
“See the process of the translation of ‘love is patient’ into Lamogai:
“In Lamogai, ‘love’ is always a verb (antoinɛ la pe oduk: ‘his insides go toward people’). Also, anytime we talk about love in the Lamogai language, we are required by the grammar to specify both who is doing the loving and whom they are loving. It is impossible to talk about love in Lamogai without including this information. Therefore, when we translated the statement ‘love is patient’ (1 Cor 13:4) into Lamogai, it was not quite as simple as translating it into English. The first question I had to ask in translating this verse was Who loves whom? There are three possibilities:
- God loves people
- People love God
- People love people
“Obviously, the original meaning could include more than just one of these options. But in order to translate this verse into Lamogai, I had to decide which of these three possibilities is the primary focus. This type of translational choice cannot be taken lightly. As a translator, I had to thoroughly study the context and carefully weigh every option. There are two blanks that I needed to fill in here:
“(who) love(s) (whom)
“Consider the first blank. ”Who is supposed to show love in this passage? The best way to figure this out is to look at the context. Let us read 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 (NET Bible):
“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but I do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I can remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own, and if I give over my body in order to boast, but do not have love, I receive no benefit.
“Paul’s repeated use of the pronoun ‘I’ makes it clear that he is including himself in the exhortation of this passage. Obviously, Paul is a person, so it seems reasonable that we would fill in the first blank with the word people.
“People love (whom)
“What about the second blank? Whom are we people supposed to love? Again, the answer is in the context. Here is what it says in 1 Corinthians 13:4-5 (NIV):
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
“When do we most often exorcise qualities like patience, kindness, boastfulness, pride and anger? It is usually in our relationship with other people. Therefore, it seems apparent from these verses that the second blank should be the same as the first. The main focus of this passage is on people loving people. Here is one possible way the phrase ‘love is patient’ could be translated into a language like Lamogai: ‘The person who loves people acts patiently toward people.’
“I realize that a rendering like this may bother some; but in many languages, the only alternative would be to translate this phrase in a way that would result in pure nonsense. God could have designed every language on earth to use abstract nouns in the same way Greek does, but he chose not to, so we must conclude that he allows us to use other means to convey his meaning.
“Obviously, this is only one of many places where Greek uses a noun to express the idea of love. Other verses may be even more difficult to translate than this one. For example, 1 John 4:8 and 1 John 4:16 say, ‘God is love.’ A literal translation of this phrase into Lamogai would be something like, ‘God is his insides going toward.’ This literal statement sounds just as ridiculous in Lamogai as it does in English.
“As I wrestled with these and other complex translation issues, I was reminded of the eternal truth that God is sovereign, and nothing he does is random. God is the one who divinely inspired the phrases ‘love is patient’ and ‘God is love.’ Yet this same God created the Lamogai language (along with many other languages) in such a way that it cannot come remotely close to reflecting these phrases literally.”
See also love (abstract noun) (Tezoatlán Mixtec), there is no fear in love, and this devotion on YouVersion .