The Hebrew in Zechariah 8:16 that is translated as “peace” in English is translated in North Alaskan Inupiatun as “absence of conflict” (not tranquility).
“In the whaling community of the Inupiat in northern Alaska, the whale is all but revered and respected as one of God’s creatures which bring life and sustenance. I was recently with our Inupiatun Bible Translation Team, working on the Book of Jonah. In popular culture, as we all know, the ‘big fish’ in this tale is often equated with what we know as the whale; Sunday school curriculum teaches it; art recreates it; collective memory recalls it. Therefore, they wanted an illustration of a white whale in their publication of the Book of Jonah.
“As a biblical scholar, I know this is erroneous and irresponsible. A biblical scholar assumes a ‘big fish’ is simply to be taken as a ‘big fish.’ The identity of this fish is not necessary to understand the tale: that God provided it is the point. As a Bible translator, hopefully a culturally sensitive one, however, I was quickly reminded in that moment that this Inupiatun community ‘needed’ that ‘Jonah’s big fish’ to be nothing other than a whale.
“This made the tale of Jonah even more meaningful because they ‘read’ the source of God’s deliverance of Jonah as the same source of God’s provision of food and sustenance to them.”
In the majority of Arabic translations, hut (حوت) or “whale” is used. This could be due to the influence of the Quran that uses hut (حُوت) in its story of Jonah (Yunus) or to the influence of the Ancient GreekSeptuagint which uses kítos (κῆτος). Kítos could either mean “sea-monster” or “whale.” (Source: Sameh Hanna)
The term for “dolphin” in Turkish is yunus baliğı — “Jonah’s fish” or simply yunus (“Jonah”). (The term used in the Turkish translation of Jonah, however, is büyük balık or “big fish.”)
Cherokee: “putting one’s hand up to someone” (source: Bender / Belt 2025, p. 16)
In Bauzi “swear” can be translated in various ways. In Hebrews 6:13, for instance, it is translated with “bones break apart and decisively speak.” (“No bones are literally broken but by saying ‘break bones’ it is like people swear by someone else in this case it is in relation to a rotting corpse’ bones falling apart. If you ‘break bones’ so to speak when you make an utterance, it is a true utterance.”) In other passages, such as in Matthew 26:72, it’s translated with an expression that implies taking ashes (“if a person wants everyone to know that he is telling the truth about a matter, he reaches down into the fireplace, scoops up some ashes and throws them while saying ‘I was not the one who did that.'”). So in Matthew 26:72 the Bauzi text is: “. . . Peter took ashes and defended himself saying, ‘I don’t know that Nazareth person.'” (Source: David Briley)
The Greek in Romans 11:24 that is translated as “contrary to nature” or similar in English is translated as “where you didn’t spring up” in Isthmus Zapotec, as “contrary to what you belong to” in Highland Totonac, and as “which is contrary to your normal way in that you are not the good branches of the good tree” in North Alaskan Inupiatun. (Source: Waterhouse / Parrott in Notes on Translation October 1967, p. 1ff.)
The Greek terms that are translated as “reconcile” and “reconciliation” in English are translated in various ways. Nida (1952, pp. 140) says this:
“The North Alaskan Inupiatun describe reconciliation in the simple terms of ‘making friends again.’ That is to say, ‘God was in Christ making friends again with the world.’ The Uduk in the Sudan express this same truth, but in the rather interesting phrase ‘meet, snapping fingers together again.’ This expression is derived from the Uduk’s practice of snapping fingers together when they meet each other. Instead of shaking hands, they extend their thumbs and middle fingers and snap fingers together, but only friends will do this. Men who have something against each other refuse to acknowledge each other in this way. And so it is that the natural man is an enemy of God; he refuses to snap fingers with God, but God has come to reconcile man to Himself and through Jesus Christ has brought man into fellowship with Himself. Man and God may now meet ‘to snap fingers together again.’
“The Tai Dam of Indo-China employ quite a different figure of speech. They say that reconciliation consists in ‘rubbing off the corners.’ This does not refer to social acceptability, but to rubbing off the corners so that two objects, meant for each other, will fit together. Man is regarded as being incapable of fitting into the plan and fellowship of God because of the sin which has deformed him and which stands out as an ugly growth on his personality. The corners of iniquity must be rubbed off so that man may be reconciled to God and made to fit into God’s eternal plan for the world.”
