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Language: Portuguese
Portuguese (por) is a(n) Indo-European language of Andorra, Argentina, Bolivia, Plurinational State of, Brazil, Colombia, Spain, France, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Portugal, Paraguay, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of, marked as not endangered
The Greek word that mean both (the organ) “tongue” and “language” (glossa) allows for a word play in Acts 2. While English still has some traces of “tongue” also being used as “language” (such as in “mother tongue“) it is generally considered archaic in that use, although a number of modern English Bible translations (New International Version, Christian Standard Bible, English Standard Version) maintain “tongue” as the word for “language” in Acts 2:4.
Other languages have a more natural match between the words for “tongue” and “language”:
The Hebrew, Ge’ez, and Greek that is translated as “bear (a child)” or “give birth to” is translated in Mairasi as “go to the forest,” reflecting the traditional place of childbirth for Mairasi women. (Source: Enggavoter 2004)
In Spanish it is translated as dar a luz, literally “to give to light.” Likewise, in Portuguese (dar à luz) and Italian (dare alla luce). (Source: Mark Terwilliger)
The Hebrew in Ezekiel 9:4 and Ezekiel 9:6 that is translated as “mark” or “sign” in Protestant English Bibles was translated in the LatinVulgate translation as signa thau or “signs of Thau.” The Hebrew had used tav (תָּו) which means “mark” or “sign,” but was interpreted here as strictly referring to tav (taw) (ת), the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
This is a tradition that Catholic Bibles, for into the 1940s which the Vulgate was the source version, have maintained until the present day. While the 16th century EnglishDhouay-Rheims version translated this directly as mark Thau, later versions either translated this as “X” (New American Bible, including its Revised Edition), but were more commonly using cross (Knox, Jerusalem Bible, New Jerusalem Bible, New Catholic Bible, Christian Community Bible). In a footnote it usually says something like this: “Literally, ‘with a tau.’ This was the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and in the old script a cross was the symbol for it.”
Indeed, this is what tav looked like historically:
Protestant Bibles in English, with the exception of the recent Evangelical Heritage Version (2019), all use a form of “mark.”
Other languages have the same tradition. The French Catholic La Bible de Jérusalem uses croix, the Mandarin ChineseSigao translation says 一個十字記號 (yīge shízì jìhào) or “a mark in the sign of a cross,” the PortugueseBíblia Ave Maria uses cruz, the PolishBiblia Tysiąclecia uses Taw (and mentions in a footnote that taw used to be written in the form of a cross), the German EinheitsübersetzUng has Taw as well, and the SpanishEl Libro del Pueblo de Dios has “T.”
This last translation (“T”) also found its way into a series of stained glass window from the Three choir windows in the Marienkirche, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany, of the 14th century (note the “T” in the antichrist’s halo as well as on the forehead on his followers):
Incidentally, the German word for devil is “Teufel” (in the spelling “tiuvel” in the 14th century), which likely helped the choice of the “T” for the mark.
The Hebrew proverb in Ezekiel 16:44 that is translated as “like mother, like daughter” in English is rendered in Medumba with the existing expression tshu’ fu ngùt: “the character (nature) resembles the lineage.”
The now commonly-used English idiom “eye for an eye” (meaning revenge or retribution) was first coined in 1526 in the English New Testament translation of William Tyndale. (Source: Crystal 2010, p. 285)
Likewise in Mandarin Chinese, the phrasing that was coined to translate “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” — yǐyǎn huányǎn, yǐyá huányá (以眼还眼，以牙还牙 / 以眼還眼，以牙還牙) — has also become a Chinese proverb (see here ).
Other languages that have idioms based on the Hebrew that is translated “an eye for an eye” in English include:
In Alekano it is translated as “if someone gouges out your eye, gouge out his eye,” since in that language body parts need to have an obligatory possessive designator attached. (Source: Larson 1998, p. 42)
The word pun that Jesus makes in Matthew 16:18 in Greek (using similar words for “Peter” and “rock”: πετρος and πετρα) is lost in most languages (such as in English) but is naturally preserved in some languages, such as French (Pierre and pierre), Portuguese (Pedro and pedra), Italian (Pietro and pietra), Latin (Petrus and petram), Corsican (Petru and petra), Friulian (Pièri and pière), Occitan (Pèire and pèiro), Sicilian (Petru and petra), Modern Greek (Πέτρος and πέτρα), and — to a lesser degree — in Spanish (Pedro and piedra) and in Romanian (Petru and piatră).
Despite the similarity between the words in those languages, readers might not automatically catch the word play, as Carlo Buzzetti (in The Bible Translator 1983, p. 308ff. ) explains for Italian (click here to read more)
“In many languages it is not possible to repeat the same word, because the equivalent of Petros has become a personal name, while the equivalent of petra is a common noun, the gender of which may be different from that of the equivalent of Petros. The Italian linguistic situation seems at first sight to be very similar to the Greek: to translate Petros—petra we can use Pietro—pietra. But unfortunately this conveys a different meaning to the average Italian reader: first, because Pietro is now not a new nickname, but a common traditional personal name; and second, because pietra is a feminine noun similar in form to Pietro, but carrying no suggestion that the two have the same meaning. Indeed, Pietro, like ‘Peter’ and most personal names, carries no meaning at all for the average reader or speaker.
“The common language translators felt that it was possible to make the identification between Petros and petra explicit, and at the same time exploit the similarity between the two words. We thus translated: tu sei Pietro e su di te, come su una pietra, io costruirò la mia comunità [in the original Common Language Version: Chiesa] (‘you are Peter and on you, as on a rock, I will build my community [originally: ‘Church’]. Our te (‘you’) connected Pietro and pietra. while our come (‘as’) expressed the fact that the connection was based on an image. In this way we suggested the meaning of Pietro.”
Like the Peshitta translation in Syriac Aramaic (Classical Syriac) with the term ܟܹܐܦܵܐ (kēpā), the Neo-Aramaic languages of Assyrian and Chaldean use terms for both “Peter” and “rock” (and “Cephas”) that are identical (ܟܹܐܦܵܐ and كِيپَا, both pronounced kēpā) so the word pun is preserved in those translations as well. (Source: Ken Bunge)
In the German New Testament translation by Berger / Nord (publ. 1999), the meaning of the pun is somewhat recreated by its translation of Petrus, Felsenmann or “Peter, rock man.”
The name that by some English 20th century translations was transliterated as “Junias” but is now widely recognized as a female name and typically transliterated as “Junia” is translated in Libras (Brazilian Sign Language) as a male name with a combinations of the signs for “young man” (which is assumed to be the meaning of the name) and “3” (because Junias was one of three prisoners along with Paul and Andronicus). (Source: Missão Kophós )
This is likely a reflection of the majority of Portuguese Bible translations that with some exceptions (Versão Fácil de Ler 1999, Nova Tradução na Linguagem de Hoje 2000, Almeida Revista e Corrigida 2009, Nova Versão Internacional 2023) use the male form Júnias rather than the female Júnia.
The Tigris river , which flows from today’s Turkey through Syria and Iraq was transliterated in many early English translations and most other languages with a long translation history as Hiddekel or similar from the Hebrew Ḥiddéqel before using the current geographic designation of today. An exception is the European Portuguese 2009 edition of the “Good News Bible” (BÍBLIA para todos Edição Comum) that reverted back to Hidéquel, partly because the geographical Portuguese term “Tigre” also means “tiger” (as in the large cat).
A new oral translation into Yao / Ciyawo, spoken in Mozambique, uses Dijlah, a transliteration of the Arabic دِجلَة. Tobias Houston (2025, p. 236) explains: “On a practical level, ḥiddeqel, Tigris, and Tigre are unfamiliar to the Yawo as names of a real river in modern-day Iraq. Although the actual river in Iraq is indeed called Tigre in Portuguese and Tigris in English, this holds little significance for most Yawo people, who are unacquainted with either term. Consequently, to align with the Yawo’s Islamic identity and the reality of influence from the Arabic language, the new Mozambican Ciyawo translation of Genesis has opted for a different approach by using the term Dijlah (دِجلَة), the contemporary Arabic name for this very same river. The name Dijlah appears to derive from earlier etymologies. It bears some resemblance to the Aramaic Diglath (דִּגְלָת)—a form carried over into Greek texts such as Josephus’s Antiquities, also transliterated as Diglath (Διγλἀθ). Given the Yawo people’s predisposition to Arabic influences in their language, and considering that Yawo men, in particular, occasionally travel to the Middle East to study Arabic and Islam, the choice of Dijlah is both logical and practical. Indeed, this translation strategy demonstrates a keen awareness of the Yawo’s existing cultural and religious narrative frames and that their frames are not our frames.”
