The Greek that is translated as “hardness of heart” in English is translated as “large heart” into San Mateo Del Mar Huave, “tightness of heart” in Shilluk, “blind in their thoughts” in Copainalá Zoque, “hard heads” in Chicahuaxtla Triqui, “ears without holes” in Shipibo-Conibo and “do not have pain in their heart” in both Tzotzil and Tzeltal. (Source: Bratcher /Nida 1961)
The Hebrew and Greek pesach/pascha that is typically translated in English as “Passover” (see below) is translated in a variety of descriptive ways of various aspects of the Jewish festival. (Click or tap here to see the rest of this insight):
Umiray Dumaget Agta: “the celebration of the day of their being brought out of bondage”
(source for this and above: M. Larson / B. Moore in Notes on Translation February 1970, p. 1-125.)
Obolo: ijọk Iraraka — “Festival of Passing” (source: Enene Enene)
Yakan: “The festival of the Isra’il tribe which they call For-Remembering” (source: Yakan Back Translation)
Wolof: “Festival of the day of Salvation” (“the term ‘pass over’ brings up the image of a person’s crossing over a chasm after death”) (source: Marilyn Escher)
Bura-Pabir: vir kucelir fəlɓəla kəi — “time-of happiness-of jumping-over house”
Sabaot: Saakweetaab Keeytaayeet — “Festival of Passing-by” (source: Iver Larsen)
Language spoken in India and Bangladesh: “Festival of avoidance”
Vlax Romani: o ghes o baro le Nakhimasko — “the Day of the Passing”
Saint Lucian Creole: Fèt Délivwans — “Feast of Deliverance” (source: David Frank)
Finnish: pääsiäinen (“The term is very probably coined during the NT translation process around 1520-1530. It is connected to a multivalent verb päästä and as such refers either to the Exodus (päästä meaning “to get away [from Egypt]”) or to the end of the Lent [päästä referring to get relieved from the limitations in diet]. The later explanation being far more probable than the first.”)
Northern Sami: beas’sážat (“Coined following the model in Finnish. The Sami verb is beassat and behaves partly like the Finnish one. Many Christian key terms are either borrowed from Finnish or coined following the Finnish example.”)
Estonian: ülestõusmispüha — “holiday/Sunday of the resurrection” — or lihavõttepüha — “holiday/Sunday of returning of meat”
Karelian: äijüpäivü — “the great day” (“Here one can hear the influence of the Eastern Christianity, but not directly Russian as language, because the Russian term is Пасха/Pasha or Воскресение Христово/Voskresenie Hristovo, ‘[the day of] the resurrection of Christ,’ but the week before Easter is called as the great week.”) (Source for this and three above: Seppo Sipilä)
Russian (for Russian speaking Muslims): праздник Освобождения/prazdnik Osvobozhdeniya — “Festival of-liberation” (source: Andy Warren-Rothlin)
Spanish Sign Language: pass through + miracle (source: John Elwode in The Bible Translator 2008, p. 78ff.)
English: Passover (term coined by William Tyndale that both replicates the sound of the Hebrew original pesah — פסח as well as part of the meaning: “passing over” the houses of the Israelites in Egypt) — oddly, the English Authorized Version (King James Version) translates the occurrence in Acts 12:4 as Easter
Low German: Osterfest “Easter” (translation by Johannes Jessen, publ. 1933, republ. 2006)
Many Romance languages follow the tradition from Latin that has one term for both “Easter” and “Passover” (pascha). Portuguese uses Páscoa for both, Italian uses Pascha, and French has Pâque for “Passover” and the identically pronounced Pâques for “Easter.”
In languages in francophone and lusophone (Portuguese speaking) Africa, indigenous languages typically use the Romance word for “Easter” as a loanword and often transliterate pesach/pascha. In Kinyarwanda and RundiPasika is used, in Swahili and Congo SwahiliPasaka, and in LingalaPasika. In some cases, the transliteration of “Passover” is derived from the European language, such as Umbundu’sPascoa (from Portuguese) and Bulu’sPak (from French).
As John Ellingworth (in The Bible Translator 1980, p 445f. ) points out “in most contexts only the presence or absence of the definite article distinguishes them [in French la pâque for Passover and Pâques for Easter]. Since most African languages do not have definite articles, there remains no way to distinguish between the two terms where the general population has borrowed the word for Easter and the Bible translators have borrowed the word for Passover to use in their translation. Some even consider the references to [Passover] before the death of Christ as prophetic!”
The Greek that is often translated in English as “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God” is translated in Saint Lucian Creole French as “for us to be able to see that light and understand how great God is great.”
David Frank (in: Lexical Challenges in the St. Lucian Creole Bible Translation Project , 1998) explains: “Greek is rich in abstract nouns, and that was another problem area when translating into St. Lucian Creole. [Since many] abstract nouns are semantically related to verbs, adjectives, or adverbs that do exist in Creole, the best solution is often to adjust the sentence to use a part of speech other than a noun to translate an abstract noun. To express ‘the light of the knowledge of the glory of God’ (…) after a great deal of study and thought we came up with pou nou sa wè klèté sala épi kopwann mizi gwan Bondyé gwan, ‘for us to be able to see that light and understand how great God is great.’ Here the abstract noun ‘knowledge’ was translated by a verb meaning ‘understand,’ and ‘the glory of God’ was translated as ‘how great God is great,’ using an adjective and an idiomatic grammatical construction that is natural in Creole.”
The Greek that is translated as “do not give what is holy to dogs” or similar in English is translated in Saint Lucian Creole French as “do not take things that are for God alone and give it to people who don’t appreciate it.” (Source David Frank)
The Greek that is often translated in English as “on the third day” is translated in Saint Lucian Creole French as apwé dé jou or “after two days,” taking into account the traditional way of including the day when counting starts as a full day. (Source: David Frank)
The Greek that is often translated in English as “on the eighth day” is translated in Saint Lucian Creole French as “after seven days,” taking into account the traditional way of including the day when counting starts as a full day. (Source: David Frank)
The Greek that is usually translated as “scribe” in English “were more than mere writers of the law. They were the trained interpreters of the law and expounders of tradition.”
Tboli: “one who taught the law God before caused Moses to write” (or “one who taught the law of Moses”) (source for this and 5 above: Reiling / Swellengrebel)
Nyongar: Mammarapa-Warrinyang or “law man” (source: Warda-Kwabba Luke-Ang)
Mairasi: “one who writes and explains Great Above One’s (=God’s) prohibitions” (source: Enggavoter 2004)
Chichewa: “teacher of Laws” (source: Ernst Wendland)
Lalana Chinantec: “one who is a teacher of the law which God gave to Moses back then”
Tepeuxila Cuicatec: “one who know well the law” (Source for this and four above: Viola Waterhouse in Notes on Translation August 1966, p. 86ff.)
Huixtán Tzotzil: “one who mistakenly thought he was teaching God’s commandments”(Huixtán Tzotzil frequently uses the verb -cuy to express “to mistakenly think something” from the point of view of the speaker; source: Marion M. Cowan in Notes on Translation 20/1966, pp. 6ff.)
Germandas Buch translation by Roland Werner (publ. 2009-2022): “theologian”
English translation by Scot McKnight (in The Second Testament, publ. 2023): Covenant Code scholar
In British Sign Language it is translated with a sign that combines the signs for “expert” and “law.” (Source: Anna Smith)
“Scribe” in British Sign Language (source: Christian BSL, used with permission)
“The primary meaning of that Greek word is ‘bright, visible splendor.’ The same word has a variety of secondary and extended senses. Since there is not a well-understood Creole word for ‘glory’ and we had to translate it according to meaning, the renderings of ‘glory’ in Creole were diverse, as the following examples, all from the book of Luke, show:
Luke 2:9: èvèk klèté Bondyé té ka kléwé toupatou anlè yo (‘and God’s light was shining everywhere on them’)
Luke 2:14a: An syèl yo ka glowifyé Bondyé, yo ka di i gwan (‘In heaven they are praising God, they are saying he is great‘)
Luke 2:32b: èk i kay fè Izwayèl on plas pou moun konnèt (‘and he will make Israel a place for people to know‘)
Luke 4:6a: Mwen kay ba’w tout pouvwa èk wichès sé wéyòm sala (‘I will give you all power and riches of these kingdoms’)
Luke 9:26b: lè mwen kay vini an pouvwa mwen ka kléwé kon zéklè (‘when I will come in my power shining like lightning‘)
>Luke 12:27b: pa menm Sòlomonn an tout wichès li ki té sa abiyé otan bèl kon yonn anpami yo (‘not even Solomon in all his riches was dressed as nice as one of them’)
Luke 14:10b: Sa kay ba’w lonnè wèspé an zyé lézòt sé moun-an (‘That will give you honor respect in the eyes of the other people’)
Luke 17:18: ki viwé di Bondyé mèsi (‘who returned to tell God thank you‘)
Luke 19:38b: Annou glowifyé Bondyé (‘Let’s praise God’)
Luke 21:27: épi pouvwa èk gwan klèté (‘with power and great light‘)
Luke 24:26: èk apwé sa i kay jwenn wèspé (‘and after that he will get respect‘)