Language-specific Insights

complete verse (1 Peter 3:3)

Following are a number of back-translations of 1 Peter 3:3:

  • Uma: “If you want to be beautiful, don’t [have] beauty just on the outside, like fixing your hair or beautifying the self/body with gold or expensive clothes.” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
  • Yakan: “Don’t think that that is what makes you beautiful when you make your appearance good/beautiful, like when you comb your hair and when you use jewelry and when you dress well. It is not this that makes women beautiful.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
  • Western Bukidnon Manobo: “As for you women, do not think that the way you will become beautiful is by means of excessive decorating your hair and dressing yourselves with expensive things like gold and expensive clothing.” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
  • Kankanaey: “Your beauty, it should not be based on beauty-aids (al-alti: includes make-up, jewelry, etc.) that women use such as their fancifying (same root: alti) their hair, their putting on expensive bracelets and necklaces, and their putting-on-expensive -clothes.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
  • Tagbanwa: “Remember that what makes you beautiful is not fixing the hair, using of gold body ornaments and dressing in top-quality clothes, all of these being only on the outside.” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)
  • Tenango Otomi: “Concerning how you beautify yourselves, let it not only be that you fix your hair to look beautiful, or that you decorate yourselves with gold or that you wear very good clothes.” (Source: Tenango Otomi Back Translation)
  • Tz’utujil (verses 3 and 4): “Don’t set your heart on dressing yourselves up more than on having a good inner life. Don’t set your heart on on fixing your hair or in things made of gold or on expensive clothes. But what is necessary is a good inner live (…).” (Source: Callow 1972, p. 79)

complete verse (1 Peter 3:4)

Following are a number of back-translations of 1 Peter 3:4:

  • Uma: “Real beauty appears from in our hearts, like for example a woman who is quiet/thoughtful and whose character is smooth/kind. That [emphatic] is the beauty that never changes, and the price of which is expensive in the sight of God.” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
  • Yakan: “But/instead your beauty should be from inside your liver, that means your customs are good and you have a humble/lowly liver. This beauty will not go away/move and it is really valuable in God’s eyes/sight.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
  • Western Bukidnon Manobo: “For it is necessary that the way you become beautiful is by good works which come from your breaths, such as soft speaking and peaceful actions, for beauty like this cannot, by contrast, be removed, and it is very precious to God.” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
  • Kankanaey: “But rather it should be based on what is in your mind/thoughts. Because the beauty that never-goes-away that is very-valuable in God’s sight, it is the beauty of a patient/gentle and peaceful person.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
  • Tagbanwa: “Rather, take good care of what is in your mind/inner-being. For what really is true beauty which doesn’t fade is that you are correctly-behaved/nice and meek/patient in all you do and say. That is beauty which God really values.” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)
  • Tenango Otomi: “That which you beautify yourselves with is to be that which always lasts, the beauty in your heart in that when you speak, you speak beautifully. This is what God likes very much.” (Source: Tenango Otomi Back Translation)
  • Tz’utujil (verses 3 and 4): “Don’t set your heart on dressing yourselves up more than on having a good inner life. Don’t set your heart on on fixing your hair or in things made of gold or on expensive clothes. But what is necessary is a good inner live (…).” (Source: Callow 1972, p. 79)