solid / inflexible

In Gbaya, the notion of something solid or in an inflexible position (including the “plaster” in Sirach 22:17) is emphasized with ngeraa, an ideophone that expresses something solid, compact; in an inflexible position.

Ideophones are a class of sound symbolic words expressing human sensation that are used as literary devices in many African languages. (Source: Philip Noss)

complete verse (Acts 27:41)

Following are a number of back-translations of Acts 27:41:

  • Uma: “But in fact it didn’t keep going to the land, it instead struck sand because the water was shallow. The prow [head] of the ship stayed-stuck in the sand, with the result that it no longer moved. Yet on its back side it was struck by the big waves of the sea, with the result that it was smashed.” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
  • Yakan: “But they met a shallow place so-then the ship was grounded there. The ship’s prow was the part that was aground and could not move but its back part was destroyed/broken-to-pieces because of the strength of the waves.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
  • Western Bukidnon Manobo: “The ship struck some shallow land and stuck. The forward end could not be moved, however the after end began to break up from the strength of the big waves.” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
  • Kankanaey: “But whereupon the ship struck-against the ridged sand/gravel, and its front became thoroughly stuck. As for the back of it, the waves repeatedly-smashed-against-it, and it was-coming-apart.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
  • Tagbanwa: “But the ship was taken by the current to where waves were meeting. What else but the bow grounded for there was evidently a pebble-ridge. It couldn’t get away. And because it was there where waves were breaking, the stern of that ship at once was broken to pieces.” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)

    • Isthmus Mixe: “There were waters meeting against each other there. Then the boat struck a big hill of sand in the water. Then the front of the boat got stuck in the sand. The boat would not come out of there. Because the water was making big waves the boat split in back.” (Source: Viola Waterhouse in Notes on Translation August 1966, p. 86ff.)

Translation commentary on Acts 27:41

The meaning of the word rendered sandbank (“shoal” or “reef” in many translations) is disputed. It literally means “a place between two seas,” and for this reason the New English Bible has rendered it as “between cross currents” (see Jerusalem Bible “But the cross currents carried them into a shoal”). It is not, of course, strange to encounter this type of difficulty of translation in the rendering of sandbank, since such a bank normally does develop when there are two currents running either parallel or even against each other.

The term sandbank may be translated in some languages as “a mound of sand underneath the water” or “a hill of sand underneath the water.”

The phrase went aground may be translated as “stuck in the ground,” “hit the ground and stopped” or “was stopped by the hill of sand.”

The second clause of verse 41 explains more precisely what is involved in “going aground”—for example, “the front part of the ship hit the sandbank, and no one could move it” or “the front part of the ship struck a hill of sand and stopped firm.”

The last clause of this verse is rendered in some languages by “the strong waves broke to pieces the back part of the ship.” This is a perfectly possible rendering in most languages, since one often cannot say that something is broken … by the violence of the waves. The term violence must in some way be related to the waves since they are the objects which do the breaking.

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 .