“my heart rests in you” (Wè Southern) (source for this and two above: Nida 1952, p. 127).
In Nepali translations, Jesus is referred to in this expression by God the Father with the medium honorific third person pronoun yinī (यिनी) whereas Jesus addresses God the Father with the high honorific pronoun tapā’ī (तपाई) (see for instance John 17), “so that the subordination of Jesus to God the Father is rightly maintained in Nepali.” (Source: Chitra Chhetri in The Bible Translator 2009, p. 73ff. )
The Greek in Mark 3:21 that is translated as “beside himself” or “lost his mind” or other variations in English is (back-) translated by the following languages like this:
Tzeltal: “his head had been touched” (“an expression to identify what might be called the half-way stage to insanity”)
The Hebrew, Ge’ez, and Greek that is translated as “go in peace” into English is an idiomatic expression of farewell which is translatable in other languages as an idiomatic expression as well:
The Greek that is translated into English as “care for no man” or “defer to no one” (in the sense of not seeking anyone’s favor) is translated in Tabasco Chontal as “you say the same thing to everyone” and in Shilluk as “you show the same respect to everyone.” In Shipibo-Conibo it is “in your mind no one is anything,” in Chol it is “your heart is equally straight in the presence of all men” and in Tzeltal “it does not matter who — all of us are equal as far as you are concerned.”
The Greek in Genesis 12:3 that is often translated in English as “I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse” is translated in Shilluk as “I will bless those who pray for a blessing for you, and those who call a curse upon you I will call to be cursed.” In Shilluk God can only give blessings and cannot curse people.
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.”
The Greek and Hebrew terms that are often translated as “leprosy (or: defiling/skin disease)” or “leprous (person)” in English is translated in Mairasi as “the bad sickness,” since “leprosy is very common in the Mairasi area” (source: Enggavoter 2004).
Usila Chinantec “sickness like mal de pinta” (a skin disease involving discoloration by loss of pigment) (source: B. Moore / G. Turner in Notes on Translation 1967, p. 1ff.)
Hiligaynon: “dangerous skin disease” (source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
Kankanaey: “fearful skin disease” (source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
Tenango Otomi: “terrible rotting” (source: Tenango Otomi Back Translation)
Newari: “infectious skin disease” (source: Newari Back Translation)
Targumim (or: Targums) are translations of the Hebrew Bible into Aramaic. They were translated and used when Jewish congregations increasingly could not understand the biblical Hebrew anymore. Targum Onqelos (also: Onkelos) is the name of the Aramaic translation of the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) probably composed in Israel/Palestine in the 1st or 2nd century CE and later edited in Babylon in the 4th or 5th century, making it reflect Jewish Babylonian Aramaic. It is the most famous Aramaic translation and was widely used throughout the Jewish communities. In Leviticus 13 and 14 it translates tzaraat as a “quarantining affliction” — focusing “on what occurs to individuals after they suffer the affliction; the person is isolated from the community.” (Source: Israel Drazin in this article ). Similarly, the English Jewish Orthodox ArtScroll Tanach translation (publ. 2011) transliterates it as tzaraat affliction.
