The Hebrew in Psalm 43:4 that is rendered in English as “God my exceeding joy” is translated into Poqomchi’ as “God who makes my heart delicious.”
See also joy.
Language-specific Insights
my son / child
The Hebrew that is translated in English as “my son” or “my child” was translated in Poqomchi’ as “you my son (as it were)” because “in many languages (including the Mayan ones), can only be said to one’s offspring.”
consecrate, consecration
The Greek and Hebrew that are translated as “consecration” or “consecrate” in English is translated in Poqomchi’ as “set apart” (when applying to a ritual not to a moral status). (Source: Robert Bascom)
In Newari it is translated as “make holy” (source: Newari Back Translation) and in Kwere as “put to holy work” when it refers to making someone or something suitable for priestly duties, when it refers to individual consecration outside of the priestly duty, “offer (yourselves) for my sake” is also used. (Pioneer Bible Translators, project-specific translation notes in Paratext)
See also holy / sacred / taboo.
bitter, Mara
The Hebrew name Mara means “bitter” which is here used as a designator for the state Naomi finds herself in (translated in English: “call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me.” or similar). “However not all languages use the word for ‘bitter’ to describe things like lives, or feelings. In Poqomchi’ we had to translate this as ‘sadness,’ because ‘bitter’ would have meant nothing in this context, and the proposed name change would have been as meaningless as if left unexplained.” (Source: Ronald Ross)
In Noongar the word for “bitter” is djadam which also means “sour.” (Source: Bardip Ruth-Ang 2020)
narrative order (Ruth 3:14)
The Hebrew that is typically translated in English as “So she lay there at his feet, but she got up before it was light enough for her to be seen, because Boaz did not want anyone to know that she had been there.” needed to be reordered in languages like Bribri and Poqomchi’ “to reverse the order of the cause and effect, putting the cause first: ‘Boaz didn’t want anybody to know that Ruth had slept there. Because of that, Ruth got up very early the next morning (to go).'”
hear the words of the LORD
The Hebrew in 2 Chronicles 18:18 that is typically translated in English as “hear the words of the Lord” is translated in Poqomchi’ as “look at what the Lord has shown me” because “what follows are not words of the Lord at all” (the text continues with “I saw the Lord” in the English translation)
purify
In Nehemiah 12:30 reference is made to ritual purification. In Poqomchi’ it was felt necessary to emphasize that is “not simply taken a bath and hosing down the new walls. The Poqomchi’s did this by clarifying ‘according to the commandment of God.'”
merchant
The Hebrew in Job 41:6 that is translated as “merchants” (for Leviathan) in English had to be translated more specifically in Poqomchi’.
Ronald Ross explains: “In at least some Mayan languages the word for ‘vendor’ cannot be used without expressing what it is they sell. So here, in Poqomchi’ we have had to put ‘fish vendors,’ even though we are assuming that Leviathan is a crocodile. [See Leviathan] It seems that even in the Hebrew the context is that of a fish market, which is logical since Leviathan is considered to be a sea monster. This may be a case of Hebrew classification of anything that swims or lives in the water being a fish, like anything that flies is a bird (bats, for example).”