The Greek in 2 Thessalonians 3:11 that is sometimes translated in English as “busybody” is translated in Chokwe as mukwa moko a jiji or “he with the hands of a fly.” D. B. Long (in The Bible Translator 1954, p. 87ff. ) explains: “This seems startling, but then these people have a firsthand knowledge of flies in large numbers, and thoroughly detest them. They say they dabble in everyone’s food and add insult to injury by rubbing their ‘hands’ first in front of them and then behind. So a busybody is always puttering in other people’s affairs and he does not always rub his hands in the same way: part of hit is behind his back, you are never sure that you know what he is doing.”
In the German New Testament translation by Berger / Nord (publ. 1999) it is translated as “someone killing time.”
In the Catholic Mandarin ChineseSigao version it is translated with a historical Chinese idiom: hàoguǎn xiánshì (好管閒事 / 好管闲事), lit. “easy talk (about) side matters.” (Source: Toshikazu S. Foley in Hong Kong Journal of Catholic Studies, 2011, p. 45ff.) Note that the Protestant Union Version uses the same idiom for “mischief maker” or “meddler” in 1 Peter 4:15.
The Hebrew and Greek that is translated as “thief” in English is translated in Low German as Spitzboov or “naughty boy” / “scoundrel” (translation by Johannes Jessen, publ. 1937, republ. 2006).
The Greek in 1 Peter 4:15 that is translated as “mischief maker,” “meddler,” or in various other ways in English is translated in Low German idiomatically as “someone who puts their nose in things that are not their business.” (translation by Johannes Jessen, publ. 1933, republ. 2006).
Following are a number of back-translations of 1 Peter 4:15:
Uma: “But really don’t let there be even one of you who gets suffering because he is a murderer, or a thief, or something else evil or a bad/naughty person.” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
Yakan: “If you endure difficulties/troubles never mind as-long-as the reason for it is not just/simply bad deeds like killing people or stealing or doing other bad things or interfering with your companions work.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
Western Bukidnon Manobo: “It is necessary that you not suffer punishment because of murder, stealing, or doing any kind of evil, or of meddling with that over which you have no right.” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
Kankanaey: “But may it be that if/when you are hardshipped, it will not be because of your having-done wrong such as a murderer (lit. killer of life), thief, breaker of the law or meddler in what his companions are doing.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
Tagbanwa: “I hope there won’t be any of you who will have to be sentenced to judgment because he is a murderer of his fellowman, or because he is a thief, or interferes in things he ought not to interfere in, or does whatever deeds that are evil.” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)
Tenango Otomi: “It is necessary that he who sins will suffer, like those who are murderers, thieves, evil people, those who meddle in the affairs of their fellowmen. But you are not to do so.” (Source: Tenango Otomi Back Translation)
Huba: “Even if you drink suffering, let it not be about killing person, thievery, criminality, or people that are shooting their mouth in the living of other people.” (The expression “shooting their mouth” means being a busybody, meddling in other people’s affairs.) (Source: David Frank in this blog post )
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Like a number of other East Asian languages, Japanese uses a complex system of honorifics, i.e. a system where a number of different levels of politeness are expressed in language via words, word forms or grammatical constructs. These can range from addressing someone or referring to someone with contempt (very informal) to expressing the highest level of reference (as used in addressing or referring to God) or any number of levels in-between.
One way Japanese shows different degree of politeness is through the choice of a formal plural suffix to the second person pronoun (“you” and its various forms) as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. In these verses, anata-gata (あなたがた) is used, combining the second person pronoun anata and the plural suffix -gata to create a formal plural pronoun (“you” [plural] in English).
Not all suffering, however, is cause for blessedness. This verse and the next offers a corrective and expands on an idea already mentioned in 2.20. Christians are to make sure that their suffering is not caused by foolish and sinful acts. Murderer and thief are self-explanatory. Criminal is literally “wrongdoer” and is the same word used in 2.12, 14 and 3.16 (compare the verb form in 3.17). Meddles in other people’s affairs translates a Greek word (allotriepiskopos) which is used nowhere else in the whole New Testament nor, in fact, in the whole of Greek literature before the second century A.D. Because of this, it is not easy to determine what the word really means, and translations vary in their understanding (for example, Revised Standard Version “mischief-maker”; New English Bible “one who infringes on the rights of others”; New American Bible “destroyer of another’s rights”; Jerusalem Bible “informer”; Moffatt “a revolutionary”; Phillips “a spy”). The Good News Translation translation is based on a fourth-century usage where the meaning is clearly “interfering with other people’s business,” and several translations reflect this understanding (for example, Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch “one who gets involved in the business of other people”; Biblia Dios Habla Hoy, Barclay “interfering with other people’s affairs”).
A shift from any of you (which may be regarded as a singular second person in form but actually plural in content) to he (third person singular) may be extremely difficult to duplicate in another language. A more common way of rendering this relationship may be “if you suffer, it must not be because you are murderers or thieves….” The causal relationship must sometimes be made even more specific, for example, “if you suffer, it must not be because you are guilty of being murderers or thieves….”
The anticipatory it, which refers to the following causal clause, cannot be reproduced in some languages, and therefore one may have to translate “if you suffer, you must not suffer because you are murderers or thieves.”
The series a murderer or a thief or a criminal causes certain complications because it might suggest that murderers and thieves were not also criminals. In the New English Bible the term translated in Good News Translation as criminal is rendered as “sorcery,” and the Greek term normally refers to persons who do what is bad with the implication of what is bad to others. It is of course also possible to translate the series a murderer or a thief or a criminal as “a murderer or a thief or some other kind of criminal.”
Or meddles in other people’s affairs is often expressed idiomatically, even as in English “to stick one’s nose into other people’s business,” but in some languages one may speak of “putting one’s spoon in someone else’s soup” or “looking on while another man counts his money.”
Quoted with permission from Arichea, Daniel C. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on The First Letter from Peter. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1980. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .
What Peter says in these verses is similar to what he said in 2:20.
4:15a–b
meddler: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as meddler occurs only here in the New Testament. Therefore commentators do not entirely agree about its meaning. It appears to have the general meaning of “someone who causes trouble” or “someone who causes trouble by interfering in other people’s business.” Other ways to translate this word include:
mischief-maker (Revised Standard Version)
-or-
troublemaker (NET Bible)
Living Water is produced for the Bible translation movement in association with Lutheran Bible Translators. Lyrics derived from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®).
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