Toraja-Sa’dan

I the LORD your God am a jealous God

The Hebrew that is translated in English as “I the Lord your God am a jealous God” or similar is translated in Toraja-Sa’dan with an established figure of speech: “I am the Lord your God who will not that His face is drawn as water is drawn” (i.e “who will not that a person treats Him without respect, or refuses to figure with Him, or dishonors Him, or in passing Him by honors others above him.”) (Source: H. van der Veen in The Bible Translator 1950, p. 21 ff.).

you shall not commit adultery

The Hebrew and Greek that is translated in English as “you shall not commit adultery” is translated in Toraja-Sa’dan with an established figure of speech: Da’ mupasandak salu lako rampanan kapa’ or “you shall not fathom the river of marriage” (i.e “approach the marriage relationship of another.”) (Source: H. van der Veen in The Bible Translator 1950, p. 21 ff.).

It is translated as “practice illicit relationship with women” in Tzeltal, as “go in with other people’s wives” in Isthmus Zapotec, as “live with some one who isn’t your wife” in Huehuetla Tepehua, and as “sleep with a strange partner” in Central Tarahumara. (Source: Waterhouse / Parrott in Notes on Translation October 1967, p. 1ff.)

vain (worship)

The Greek that is translated into English as “vain” or “in vain” in English is (back-) translated in various ways:

Cashibo-Cacataibo: “say I am important, but they do not believe it”
Kekchí: “has no meaning when they praise me”
Toraja-Sa’dan, Pamona: “uselessly”
Copainalá Zoque: “uselessly they remember”
Farefare: “their religion is their mouth”
Southern Subanen: “their worship has no meaning”
Tzotzil: “they say they love me, but this means nothing”
Southern Bobo Madaré: “they worship me but they do not mean what they say”
Central Mazahua: “it is of no value that they honor me”
San Blas Kuna: “their thinking is not in their hearts” (source for this and above: Bratcher / Nida)
Mairasi: “tribute of theirs for me [which] will-be-on-their-own” (source: Enggavoter 2004)
Guhu-Samane: “with the front teeth of their mouths they worship me” (“‘In vain’ caused puzzlement [because] why should their efforts to worship God produce no results, try as they may? [But the idiom] ‘with the front teeth of their mouths they worship me’ comes from the picture of one who is making a pretense at eating food, hence their deceit is apparent.’ Source: Ernest L. Richert in Notes on Translation December 1963: p. 4-7; reprinted in The Bible Translator 1965, p. 198ff.)

bread of the presence, consecrated bread, showbread

The Greek and Hebrew that is translated as “showbread,” “bread of the presence,” or “consecrated bread” in English is translated as “bread set before the face of God” (Luvale), “loaves which are laid before the face (of God)” (Toraja-Sa’dan) (source for this and above: Bratcher / Nida), “bread to-do-homage” (Tae’), “holy bread” (Pohnpeian, Chuukese), “placed bread” (Ekari), “church-bread” (Sranan Tongo) (source for this and three above: Reiling / Swellengrebel).

adultery

The Greek that is translated as “adultery” (typically understood as “marital infidelity”) in English is (back-) translated in the following ways:

Highland Totonac: “to do something together”
Yucateco: “pair-sin”
Ngäbere: “robbing another’s half self-possession” (compare “fornication” which is “robbing self-possession,” that is, to rob what belongs to a person)
Kaqchikel, Chol: “to act like a dog”
Toraja-Sa’dan: “to measure the depth of the river of (another’s) marriage.”
North Alaskan Inupiatun: “married people using what is not theirs” (compare “fornication” which is “unmarried people using what is not theirs”) (source for this and all above: Bratcher / Nida)
In Purari: “play hands with” or “play eyes with”
In Hakha Chin the usual term for “adultery” applies only to women, so the translation for the Greek term that is translated into English as “adultery” was translated in Hakha Chin as “do not take another man’s wife and do not commit adultery.”
Chicahuaxtla Triqui: “talk secretly with spouses of our fellows”
Isthmus Zapotec: “go in with other people’s spouses”
Hopi: “tamper with marriage” (source for this and two above: Waterhouse / Parrott in Notes on Translation October 1967, p. 1ff.)
In Falam Chin the term for “adultery” is the phrase for “to share breast” which relates to adultery by either sex. (Source for this and three above: David Clark)
In Ixcatlán Mazatec a specification needs to be made to include both genders. (Source: Robert Bascom)

Seat of Emotions, Seat of the Mind

Cultures and languages equate different parts of the human body with the seat of the mind. Following is a theoretical framework that categorizes different approaches:

“[We] use the word ‘mind’ as a shorthand term for ‘ways of knowing, thinking, and feeling’ of which different cultures, or different periods of the same culture, may have different understandings. (…) Cultural models of the mind and more scientific approaches in philosophy and/or medicine have in various cultures invoked central parts of the human body as the locus of the mind. The major loci have been the abdomen region, the heart region and the head region or, more particularly, the brain region. These three types of conceptualizations can be labeled ‘abdominocentrism’, ‘cardiocentrism’, and ‘cerebrocentrism’ (or ‘cephalocentrism’), respectively. These three labels only intend to capture the idea that the region in question is the main centre, which does not exclude a similar role for body parts in other regions.”

(Source: Sharifian, Farzad et al. (eds.) Culture, Body, and Language: Conceptualizations of Internal Body Organs across Cultures and Languages. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2008. p. 3f.)

Equally, and related to that, the seat of emotions is located in many different, culture-specific parts of the body. Bratcher / Nida (p. 78) say: “Though the heart is spoken of in the Bible as the center of intellectual and emotive elements of human experience, in other languages the heart may have no such value. In some languages the corresponding centers are the viscera (Western Kanjobal), the liver (Laka), the stomach (Uduk), the gall (Toraja-Sa’dan) and the head (Anuak), though in the neighboring Shilluk demons may be in one’s head, but the liver and heart are the center of most other psychological activities. Whether one is to use ‘heart’ or some other part or organ of the body depends entirely upon the manner in which in any language such psychological experiences are described.”

cross

(To view the different translations of this term in a simplified graphical form on a new page, click or tap here.)

The Greek that is translated as “cross” in English is often referred to a description of the shape (in Chinese, for instance it is translated as 十字架 shízìjià — “10-character-frame” because the character for “10” has the shape of a cross), elsewhere it refers to the function, e.g. a coined term, made up of two Sanskrit words, meaning “killing-pole” (Marathi NT revision of 1964), “wood to-stretch-out-with” (Toraja-Sa’dan), or “nailing pole” (Zarma). A combination of the two seems to be used in Balinese, which employs a word for the crossbeams in a house, derived from a verb that can refer both to a beam that stretches from side to side under a roof, and to a person stretched out for torture (source for this and above: Reling / Swellengrebel). Similarly, in Lamba it is translated “with umutaliko — ‘a pole with a cross-piece, on which maize was normally tied’ from the verb ‘talika’ which, strangely enough, is used of ‘holding down a man with arms and legs stretched out, someone gripping each limb.'” (Source C. M. Doke in The Bible Translator 1958, p. 57ff.)

“In Mongolian, the term that is used is togonoltchi mott, which is found in the top of a tent. The people on the steppes live in round felt-yurts and the round opening on the top of the tent serves as a window. The crosswood in that opening is called togonoltchi mott. ‘Crucified’ is translated ‘nailed on the crosswood.’ This term is very simple, but deep and interesting too. Light comes to men through the Cross. What a privilege to be able to proclaim such a message.” (Source: A. W. Marthinson in The Bible Translator 1954, p. 74ff.)

In Mairasi it is translated as iwo nasin ae: “chest measurement wood.” “This term refers to the process of making a coffin when a person dies. The man making the coffin takes a piece of bamboo and measures the body from head to heel. He then breaks the stick off at the appropriate point. For the width he measures the shoulders and then ties the two sticks together in the shape of a cross. As he works, he continually measures to make sure the coffin is the correct size. At the gravesite, the coffin is lowered. Then the gravecloth, palm leaves, and finally the chest measurement stick are laid on top of the coffin before the dirt is piled on. This term is full of meaning, because it is in the shape of a cross, and each person will have one. The meaning is vividly associated with death.” (Source: Enggavoter, 2004)

In Lisu it is translated as ꓡꓯꓼ ꓐꓳ ꓔꓶꓸ DU — lä bo tɯ du: “a place to stretch the arms across” (source: Arrington 2020, p. 215) and in Nyongar as boorn-yambo: “crossed tree” (source: Warda-Kwabba Luke-Ang).

The English English translation of Ruden (2021) uses “stake.” She explains (p. xlv): “The cross was the perpendicular joining of two execution stakes, and the English word euphemistically emphasized the geometry: a cross could also be an abstract cross drawn on paper. The Greeks used their word for ‘stake,’ and this carries the imagery of what was done with it, as our ‘stake’ carries images of burning and impaling. ‘Hang on the stakes’ for ‘*crucify’ is my habitual usage.”

glorify God

The Greek that is translated as “glorify God” in English is rendered as “to wake God up” in Guerrero Amuzgo.

Other translations are “say that God is very great” (Central Tarahumara), “how good God is, they said” (Tzotzil), “to speak about God as good” (Tzeltal), “to give God a great name” (Highland Puebla Nahuatl), “to give God highness” (Kipsigis), “to take God out high” (in the sense of “to exalt”) (Huautla Mazatec), “to make great, to exalt” (Toraja-Sa’dan, Javanese), “to lift up God’s brightness” (Kpelle), “to show God to be great” (Central Pame), “to make God shine” (Wayuu), “to make God’s name big” (Huastec), “to make God important” (Isthmus Zapotec) (source for this and above: Bratcher / Nida), or “say to God: You are of good heart” (Huichol) (source: Nida 1964, p. 228).

In Waama this is translated as “make God’s name big.” (For the translation into Waama, five categories of verb doxazo and the noun doxa were found that were all translated differently, see glorify (reveal God’s or Jesus’ glory to people)).

In Shipibo-Conibo it is translated as “to brag about God” (“This may strike some at first as being an unspiritual approach, but it surely is Pauline, for Paul used the word ‘to brag’ when he declared his confidence in Jesus Christ and in the salvation of the world which God wrought through His Son.”) (Source: Nida 1952, p. 162)

fox

The Greek and Hebrew that is translated as “foxes” in English is translated in Mam as “weasel.” Ron Ross explains: “Foxes is often a difficult concept to express in this part of the world. The Mayas don’t seem to know them. In the Mam project we finally put ‘weasel’ rather than ‘coyote,’ which were basically our choices.”

In Toraja-Sa’dan it is translated as sindallung or “civet cat.” H. van der Veen (in The Bible Translator 1950, p. 21 ff.) explains: “This animal is a real chicken thief, and is a type of cat with a head resembling that of a fox.”

In Nyongar, it is translated as mokiny or “dingo” (in Luke 9:58) (source: Warda-Kwabba Luke-Ang).

sons of men

The Greek that is translated into English as “sons of men” is translated with the expression “the offspring of Adam” in Toraja-Sa’dan.

on a journey, traveled

The Greek that is translated as “as he journeyed” or “(who) was on a journey” in English is translated as “a man from afar” (literally for “on a far journey”) in Toraja-Sa’dan, which implies that the Samaritan was a foreigner, which the priest and Levite were not.

generation

The Greek that is translated into English as “(this) generation” is translated as “the people now” into Chol, “those who are in space now” into Tzeltal or “you people” into Tlahuitoltepec Mixe. (Source: Bratcher / Nida; Mixe: Robert Bascom)

Generic terms for the Greek that is translated as “generation” include “(people of one) layer” (Ekari, Toraja-Sa’dan, Batak Toba), or “one storey of growing” (Highland Totonac, using a term also denoting a storey or floor of a building). (Source: Reiling / Swellengrebel)

See also generations and all generations.