The Hebrew in 1 Samuel 2:12 that is often translated in English as “worthless men” is translated in Anuak as “people (with) their heads bad” (i.e., rascals).
house (descendants)
The Hebrew in 1 Samuel 25:28 that is translated as “house” in many English versions is translated into Anuak as “mouth of your house” (= descendants). (Source: Loren Bliese)
foreskin
heart (conscience) hurt
The Hebrew in 1 Samuel 24:5 that is translated as “heart (conscience) hurt” in many English versions is translated into Anuak as “liver fell.”
See Seat of the Mind for traditional views of “ways of knowing, thinking, and feeling.”
harden heart
The Hebrew that is translated into English as forms of “(to not) harden heart” is translated into other languages with their own vivid idioms; for example, Thai uses “black-hearted” (source: Bratcher / Hattoon, p. 272), Pökoot uses makany kwoghïghitu mötöwekwo: “do not let become hard your heads” (source: Gerrit van Steenbergen), Anuak has “make liver strong” (source: Loren Bliese), and The Hebrew that is translated as “divination” or similar in English is translated in Elhomwe has “dried heart” (source: project-specific translation notes in Paratext).
See also hardness of heart, harden, and see Seat of the Mind for traditional views of “ways of knowing, thinking, and feeling.”
compassion
The Hebrew, Greek, Ge’ez, and Latin that is typically as “compassion” in English (“compassion” comes from the Latin compatior and means suffering with) is translated in various ways:
- Shilluk´: “cries in the soul” (source: Nida, 1952, p. 132)
- Q’anjob’al: “crying in one’s stomach” (source: Newberry and Kittie Cox in The Bible Translator 1950, p. 91ff. )
- Aari: “has a good stomach” (=”sympathetic”) (source: Loren Bliese)
- Una: “has a big liver” (source: Kroneman 2004, p. 471)
- Uma: “heart is moved (lit., far-away)” (source: Uma Back Translation)
- Chitonga: “to have the intestines twisting in compassion/sorrow for someone” (kumyongwa) (source: Wendland 1987, p. 128f.)
See also pain-love, moved with compassion (pity), and Seat of the Mind for traditional views of “ways of knowing, thinking, and feeling.”
preach
The Greek terms that are translated into English as “preach” or “proclaim” are regularly rendered into Aari as “speaking the word of salvation.” (Source: Loren Bliese)
Other languages (back-) translate it in the following manner:
- Mandarin Chinese: chuándào/傳道 or “hand down the Way [or: the Logos]”)
- Kekchí: “declare the word”
- Kpelle: “speak God’s word”
- Tzeltal: “he explains, they hear” (“the goal of all preachers”)
- Copainalá Zoque: “a preacher is ‘one who speaks-scatters'” (a figure based on the scattering of seed in the process of sowing) (source for this and above: Bratcher / Nida)
- Shilluk: “declare the word of of God” (source: Nida 1964, p. 237)
In Luang it is translated with different shades of meaning:
- For Acts 9:20, 10:42: nakotnohora: “talk about” (“The generic term for preaching.”)
- For Acts 8:4, 8:5, 8:25: rodkiota-ralde’etnohora — “bring words, give news about.” (“This term is used when the preacher is moving from place to place to preach.”)
Source: Kathy Taber in Notes on Translation 1/1999, p. 9-16.
tradition
The Greek that is translated as “tradition” in English is translated in these ways:
- Kekchí: “the old root-trunk” (in which the life of a people is likened to a tree)
- Central Tarahumara: “to live as the ancients did”
- North Alaskan Inupiatun: “sayings passed down from long-ago times”
- Navajo (Dinė): “what their fathers of old told them to follow”
- Toraja-Sa’dan: “the ordinance maintained by the forefathers”
- Tzeltal: “the word that has been kept from the ancients” (source for this and all above Bratcher / Nida)
- Gumuz: “the life of your fathers” (source: Loren Bliese)
- Obolo: “the deeds of the ground” (orọmijọn̄) (source: Enene Enene)
- Mairiasi: “the old things that are being held-onto” (source: Enggavoter 2004)
- Western Bukidnon Manobo: “handed-down customs” (source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)