The Greek in James 1:12 that is translated in English as “crown of life” is translated in Navajo (Dinė) as “the life-way prize” (source: Nida 1964, p. 238) and in Owa as “the wage of your souls” (source: Carl Gross).
In Chichewa (interconfessional translation) translated as mphotho or “prize (of life)”. Ernst Wendland (1987, p. 120) explains: “A Chewa Chief might wear a special sea shell or bracelet as a sort of badge of office, but these would be magically endowed to give him super-natural protection against his enemies. Because of these underlying associations, such terms would not be appropriate here. Instead the word mphotho ‘prize,’ ‘reward’ (for achievement) has been used.”
Many languages have terms for siblings that define whether one is younger or older in relation to another sibling.
In Fuyug, Tae’, Batak Toba, and Mandarin Chinese, Martha was assumed to be the older of the two sisters because she is mentioned first. (Sources: David Clark [Fuyug] and Reiling / Swellengrebel)
Navajo (Dinė) translates accordingly but for a different reason: “since Martha seemed to take the responsibility of the housework, she was probably the older of the two” (source: Wallis 2000, p. 103f.) whereas in Mandarin Chinese he is the younger brother.
In Fuyug, Lazarus is assumed to be the oldest sibling on the grounds that he died first, whereas in several Thai translations he is described as the youngest of the three. (Source: David Clark)
The Greek that is translated as “all generations” in English is rendered “all people in all time” (Sranan Tongo), “all descendants of man” (Apache), “all those-who-will-be-being-born as-time-goes-on” (Navajo (Dinė)).
The Greek in Philippians 2:1 that is translated into English as “comfort from love” or “consolation of love” is translated into Navajo (Dinė) as “if by loving your minds can be put to that place of refuge.” (Source: Nida 1964, p. 228)
In Western Highland Purepecha “consolation” in this verse is translated as “God takes sadness from our hearts” and in Aymara as “preparing the heart.” (Source: Nida 1952, p. 131)
The Greek terms that are used for what is translated as “net” in English are translated in languages like Navajo (Dinė) where fishing with nets is not known as “instruments to catch (or: bring out) the fish.” (Source: Reiling / Swellengrebel)
“[People living close to lakes] produced further problems for us over fishing terms when we reached the revision of the Gospels. Fishing is practically unknown in the mountain streams and rivers, so there is hardly any vocabulary for it up-country. In Mat. 4:18 we read that Jesus saw two brethren “casting a net into the sea.” The word we used for net (urusenga) is used all over Rundi for a fishing net, whatever it is like, but when I read this to some people who live by the lake they said it was the wrong word, as from the context this happened during the daytime, and urusenga-fishing is only done at night. It appears that the urusenga is something like a shrimping net, and is used on moonless nights, when the fishermen hold flares over the side of the boat and attract a certain variety of very small fish which swim about in shoals. The net they use for day-time fishing is something like a drag-net and is called urukwabu. On enquiry inland, I never discovered a single person who knew this word. It was obviously the right one, technically speaking, but we felt that the few thousand lake-dwellers could not be weighed against almost the entire population of the country, so we had to employ the up-country word, putting an explanatory note in the margin that by the lake this net is called urukwabu.”
Click or tap here to see a short video clip showing net-fishing in biblical times (source: Bible Lands 2012)
“The rod was described as a dead piece of stick cut from a certain tree. The informant wanted to know what kind of tree, and when told that it was an almond tree, he asked what color the blossoms were. The encyclopedia disclosed that almond trees in the Middle East bear yellow blossoms. He had to know this before he could give the proper term for “budded,” since the color of the bud is incorporated in the word. The translation is: . . . Éran bigish ch’il nahalingo bilátah da’iichiihée “Aaron his-stick plant it-being-like its-top-along plural-something- (unidentified subject) -were-becoming-yellowish-red-the-former-one.” (Source: Faye Edgerton in The Bible Translator 1962, p. 25ff. )
