Apali: “God’s one with talk from the head” (“basically God’s messenger since head refers to any leader’s talk”) (source: Martha Wade)
Michoacán Nahuatl: “clean helper of God” (source: B. Moore / G. Turner in Notes on Translation 1967, p. 1ff.)
Noongar: Hdjin-djin-kwabba or “spirit good” (source: Warda-Kwabba Luke-Ang)
Wè Northern (Wɛɛ): Kea ‘a “sooa or “the Lord’s soldier” (also: “God’s soldier” or “his soldier”) (source: Drew Maust)
Iwaidja: “a man sent with a message” (Sam Freney explains the genesis of this term [in this article ): “For example, in Darwin last year, as we were working on a new translation of Luke 2:6–12 in Iwaidja, a Northern Territory language, the translators had written ‘angel’ as ‘a man with eagle wings’. Even before getting to the question of whether this was an accurate term (or one that imported some other information in), the word for ‘eagle’ started getting discussed. One of the translators had her teenage granddaughter with her, and this word didn’t mean anything to her at all. She’d never heard of it, as it was an archaic term that younger people didn’t use anymore. They ended up changing the translation of ‘angel’ to something like ‘a man sent with a message’, which is both more accurate and clear.”)
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 to do this is through the usage (or a lack) of an honorific prefix as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. When the referent is God, the “divine” honorific prefix mi- (御 or み) is used as in mi-tsukai (御使い) or “messenger (of God).” (Source: S. E. Doi, see also S. E. Doi in Journal of Translation, 18/2022, p. 37ff. )
Bender / Belt (2025, p. 2f.) report about the translation of “angel” in Cherokee: “In John, the concept of angel is translated using a descriptive neologism rather than a semantic extension, suggesting the lack of a ready parallel. The plural is dmikahnawadidohi, ‘the law-givers’ or ‘those who go around looking after the medicine.’ Cherokee speakers argue that the Cherokee word for ‘law,’ dikahnawadvsdi, expresses the intent to maintain social, physical, and spiritual health and has at its core the word for ‘medicine,’ mwoli, which encompasses all aspects of social and spiritual well-being, including balance and order (Altman and Belt 2009), much more than the English word. Thus, the Cherokee word for ‘angel’ represents a new perspective on this category of spiritual beings named in the Bible. It does not derive from the concept of messenger present in both its Greek (angelos) and Hebrew (malak) antecedents perhaps because the Cherokee word for ‘messenger,’ atsinvsidasdi, is widely used to translate the foreign lexeme ‘servant.'”
Ayutla Mixtec: “see that which will happen” (source for this and seven above: Viola Waterhouse in Notes on Translation August 1966, p. 86ff.)
Tagbanwa: “being caused to dream by God” (source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)
Chichewa: azidzaona zinthu m’masomphenya: “they will see things as if face-to-face” (interconfessional translation, publ. 1999) (Source: Wendland 1998, p. 69)
The Greek in the books of Revelation and Acts is translated as obq-rmwible: “look-dream” in Natügu. Brenda Boerger (in Beerle-Moor / Voinov, p. 162ff.) tells the story of that translation: “In the book of Revelation, the author, John, talks about having visions. Mr. Simon [the native language translator] and I discussed what this meant and he invented the compound verb obq-rmwible ‘look-dream’ to express it. Interestingly, during village testing no one ever had to ask what this neologism meant.”
Orthodox Icons are not drawings or creations of imagination. They are in fact writings of things not of this world. Icons can represent our Lord Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the Saints. They can also represent the Holy Trinity, Angels, the Heavenly hosts, and even events. Orthodox icons, unlike Western pictures, change the perspective and form of the image so that it is not naturalistic. This is done so that we can look beyond appearances of the world, and instead look to the spiritual truth of the holy person or event. (Source )
Following is a hand colored stencil print on momigami of Peter by Sadao Watanabe (1970):
Image taken with permission from the SadaoHanga Catalogue where you can find many more images and information about Sadao Watanabe. For other images of Sadao Watanabe art works in TIPs, see here.
Following are a number of back-translations of Acts 12:9:
Uma: “Petrus did follow. But it was not-yet really clear in his heart what the angel was doing. He said/thought he was just seeing a vision.” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
Yakan: “Petros then followed him going out of the prison. But Petros did not know if the things that angel was doing were real/true or not. He thought-mistakenly that he only had a vision.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
Western Bukidnon Manobo: “Peter followed him toward the outside, however he did not know that it was not just a dream, his being helped by the angel.” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
Kankanaey: “Pedro, he followed the angel in going-out, but what was in his mind/thoughts was that what the angel was doing with him was not true, it was a mere dream and that’s-all.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
Tagbanwa: “Pedro followed-closely going out. He thought-mistakenly that the help of that angel which was happening to him wasn’t true/real. ‘Maybe,’ he said, this is just my dream.'” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)
The King James Version, “and he went out, and followed him,” represents a fairly literal translation of the Greek, but it suggests that first Peter went out of the prison and then followed the angel. The meaning is “he followed him out” (Phillips, New English Bible) or, more explicitly, Peter followed him out of the prison.
It is not always easy to translate the expression real. In some languages one must employ some such form as “he did not know whether he was really going out of the prison, or whether he was simply imagining this,” “he did not know whether he was dreaming or whether this was actually happening,” or “he was not sure that he was going out of the prison; he thought he was seeing a vision.”
Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on The Acts of the Apostles. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1972. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .
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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