love (honorifics)

New Testament Greek is by Balinese standards an extremely impolite language. Consider, for example, the second person pronoun. When speaking to God, to a nobleman, to a friend, to a pupil, or to a slave, the same word is used. In Balinese this is completely different. In the above examples one would differentiate various social ranks and use terms which, more or less freely translated, mean “adored one” or “he who is borne on the head”, “feet of Your Highness”, “older (or younger) brother”, “little one”, and “you”. (…) In Balinese one has to cope with three vocabularies within the language, each of which, at a moderate estimate, includes some hundreds of words. One employs the ordinary common language (“Low Balinese”) when speaking with intimates, equals, or inferiors; polite terms must, however, be used as soon as one begins to speak to one’s superiors or to strangers; and “deferential” terms are obligatory in all cases when one is so bold as to speak of parts of the body, or the acts, possessions, and qualities of important people. The Balinese sums up the two last named vocabularies under the term alus (“fine”, or “noble”): we say “High Balinese”. (…)

[The Greek that is translated with] “love” [in English] of a superior for an inferior must be indicated by one term and that of an inferior for a superior by another. Thus we must translate twice the word “love”: “You shall give respectful love to God, …further, you must love your neighbor as yourself”.

Source: J.L. Swellengrebel in The Bible Translator 1950, p. 124ff.

the wicked are snared in the work of their own hands

The Hebrew in Psalm 9:16 that is translated as something like “the wicked are snared in the work of their own hands” in English is rendered in Medumba as “the works of the hands of the wicked man throw him into the pit” (“‘To throw into the pit’ is a figure of speech for ‘betraying’, ‘condemning’, and the pit symbolizes a difficult situation from which there appears to be no way out.”)

Source: Jan de Waard in The Bible Translator 1969, p. 143ff.

purification

The team that translated the New Testament into Paraguayan Guaraní (in the 1960s) had to translate the Greek that is translated as “purification” in English. Jacob Loewen (in The Bible Translator 1967, p. 33ff. ) tells this story:

“An interesting lesson regarding intelligibility grew out of the translation of Luke 2:22 speaking about ‘the days of purification’. Each of the translations carried rather high-flown euphemisms and no one seemed to be satisfied with the euphemism of the other. There was a mother of seven children present at the meeting, and so she was asked to complete the following sentence in what would be publicly acceptable Guarani: I have given birth to seven children. After each childbirth 1 observed a period of . . .. The mother of seven immediately came back with an expression which back-translated into English would mean the ‘forties’. It was a reference to the forty days of purification which local culture required. When the translators were asked how such an expression would sound in Luke 2, one of them objected: ‘Why, if we use that idiom, everybody would know what we are talking about!’ In the discussion that followed, the committee realized that it is the translator’s responsibility to provide a message which will speak the truth clearly.”

wrath

The Hebrew in Genesis 49:7 that is typically translated as “wrath” in English is translated in Bari as “to break out.” (“The sort of anger that bursts out as bees from a hive against an intruder, the sort that doesn’t stop to ask questions but rushes into the fight.”)

Source: Source: P. Guillebaud in The Bible Translator 1965, p. 189ff.

resurrection

The Greek and Latin that is translated as “resurrection” in English is translated in Chicahuaxtla Triqui and Pohnpeian as “live-up” (i.e. return to life) (source: Reiling / Swellengrebel) and in Iloko as panagungar: a term that stems “from the word ‘agungar,’ an agricultural term used to describe the coming back to life of a plant which was wilting but which has been watered by the farmer, or of a bulb which was apparently dead but grows again.” (Source: G. Henry Waterman in The Bible Translator 1960, p. 24ff. )

Likewise, in Matumbi yu’ya carries the meaning of “raise from the dead, resuscitate, come back from near death” and is used for dry plants that come back to life when you water them or sick children who revive after being healed. (Source: Pioneer Bible Translators, project-specific notes in Paratext)

In Estado de México Otomi, it is translated as “people will be raised from the dead,” in Teutila Cuicatec as “the dead having to come to life again,” in San Mateo del Mar Huave as “arose from the grave” (source: Viola Waterhouse in Notes on Translation August 1966, p. 86ff.), and in Kriol as gidap laibala brom dedbala or “get up alive from the dead” (source: Sam Freney in this article .)

In Kalmyk and Russia Buriat it is translated as “revival” and in Tuvan as “coming back to life, reviving again.” (Source for this and one above: Alexey Somov in The Bible Translator 2017, p. 51ff. )

See also resurrect / rise again (Jesus).

Learn more on Bible Odyssey: Resurrection .

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. ).

In Orma, the phrase is translated as “I, the Lord your God, will not tolerate if you bow down and worship them.” George Payton explains: “When we translated Exodus in Orma, we had difficulty translating ‘jealous’ in the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20. The first commandments in vv.3-5 read, ‘You shall have no other gods before me. 4 ‘You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents…’

“Verse 5 says ‘I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God’ The word jealous/jealousy in Orma is hinaafa. This word brings two negative connotations. One is feeling envious of someone else’s property, or of the prosperity of their livestock or the produce of their farms. In other words, envy or coveting what someone else has but you do not. The word hinaafa can also refer to a jealous husband in a bad way. When a husband is always suspicious of his wife being unfaithful, he easily flies into a rage when she does something that triggers his suspicions, even if she is innocent. Sometimes the husband attacks her or someone else and harms them because of his jealousy. Hinaafa communicates that idea of blind rage, often unreasonable or irrational. We had to choose a different way to communicate God’s attitude. God promised to punish them if they worship any gods because He will not put up with them if they do. We ended up translating vv3-5: ‘Apart from me, you shall not worship any other gods. You shall not make a statue of anything in heaven or anything on earth or anything in the waters. I, the LORD your God, will not tolerate if you bow down and worship them. If you do, I will punish even the children for the sin of their parents…'”

In Chichewa “‘jealousy’ very commonly includes a prominent sexual component” so the solution there was to translated “(a God) who does not allow competition with me” (source: Wendland 1987, p. 127) and in Chamula Tzotzil it is not appropriate to use the usual word for jealousy of humans in relation to God when translating the Hebrew term that is translated as “jealous” in English versions. Here “I get angry with those who go with others” is used (source: Robert Bascom).