lawless / godless / without justice

The Hebrew and Greek that is translated as “lawless,” “godless,” “without justice” or similar in English is translated in the Catholic Mandarin Chinese Sigao version with a historical Chinese idiom: wúfǎ wútiān (無法無天 / 无法无天), lit. “no law, no heaven.” (Source: Toshikazu S. Foley in Hong Kong Journal of Catholic Studies, 2011, p. 45ff.)

enemy / foe

The Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Ge’ez, and Latin that is translated as “enemy” or “foe” in English is translated in the Hausa Common Language Bible as “friends of front,” i.e., the person standing opposite you in a battle. (Source: Andy Warren-Rothlin)

In North Alaskan Inupiatun it is translated with a term that implies that it’s not just someone who hates you, but one who wants to do you harm (Source: Robert Bascom), in Tarok as ukpa ìkum or “companion in war/fighting,” and in Ikwere as nye irno m or “person who hates me” (source for this and one above: Chuck and Karen Tessaro in this newsletter ).

addressing God

Translators of different languages have found different ways with what kind of formality God is addressed.

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Like many languages (but unlike Greek or Hebrew or modern English), Tuvan uses a formal vs. informal 2nd person pronoun (a familiar vs. a respectful “you”). Unlike other languages that have this feature, however, the translators of the Tuvan Bible have attempted to be very consistent in using the different forms of address in every case a 2nd person pronoun has to be used in the translation of the biblical text.

As Voinov shows in Pronominal Theology in Translating the Gospels (in: The Bible Translator 2002, p. 210ff. ), the choice to use either of the pronouns many times involved theological judgment. While the formal pronoun can signal personal distance or a social/power distance between the speaker and addressee, the informal pronoun can indicate familiarity or social/power equality between speaker and addressee.

In these verses, in which humans address God, the informal, familiar pronoun is used that communicates closeness.

Voinov notes that “in the Tuvan Bible, God is only addressed with the informal pronoun. No exceptions. An interesting thing about this is that I’ve heard new Tuvan believers praying with the formal form to God until they are corrected by other Christians who tell them that God is close to us so we should address him with the informal pronoun. As a result, the informal pronoun is the only one that is used in praying to God among the Tuvan church.”

In Gbaya, “a superior, whether father, uncle, or older brother, mother, aunt, or older sister, president, governor, or chief, is never addressed in the singular unless the speaker intends a deliberate insult. When addressing the superior face to face, the second person plural pronoun ɛ́nɛ́ or ‘you (pl.)’ is used, similar to the French usage of vous.

Accordingly, the translators of the current version of the Gbaya Bible chose to use the plural ɛ́nɛ́ to address God. There are a few exceptions. In Psalms 86:8, 97:9, and 138:1, God is addressed alongside other “gods,” and here the third person pronoun o is used to avoid confusion about who is being addressed. In several New Testament passages (Matthew 21:23, 26:68, 27:40, Mark 11:28, Luke 20:2, 23:37, as well as in Jesus’ interaction with Pilate and Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well) the less courteous form for Jesus is used to indicate ignorance of his position or mocking.” (Source Philip Noss)

In the most recent Manchu translation of 1835 (a revision of an earlier edition from 1822), God is never addressed with a pronoun but with “father” (ama /ᠠᠮᠠ) instead. Chengcheng Liu (in this post on the Cambridge Centre for Chinese Theology blog ) explains: “In Manchu tradition, as in Chinese etiquette, second-person pronouns could be considered disrespectful when speaking to superiors or spiritual beings. Manchu Shamanist prayers avoided si [‘you’] and sini [‘your’] for this very reason. To use them for God would be, in Lipovzoff’s [one of the two translators] words, ‘the most uncouth and indecent way to speak to the Almighty — as if He were a servant or slave.’ There was also a grammatical problem. In Manchu, si and sini could refer to both singular and plural subjects. For a faith that insisted on the singularity of God, this was potentially confusing. By contrast, repeating ama removed any ambiguity.”

In Dutch, Afrikaans, Gronings, and Western Frisian translations, God is always addressed with the formal pronoun.

See also formal pronoun: disciples addressing Jesus, female second person singular pronoun in Psalms.

Translation commentary on The Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Young Men 1:9

If integrated into the book of Daniel: 3.32

Thou hast given us into the hands of lawless enemies, most hateful rebels: Given us into the hands of means “let … conquer us.” Lawless enemies means these enemies refused to obey God’s Law. Obviously they obeyed the laws of their own country. So we may translate “enemies who didn’t obey the Law of our God.” Since enemies in some languages will be translated something like “those who hate us,” it will be necessary to make it clear that hateful here means “the ones we hate.” The Greek for most hateful rebels can also be translated as “hateful, and defiant” (Good News Translation), bringing out the meaning of rebels. Azariah virtually spits out a series of abusive adjectives without bothering to join them with “ands.” So this whole line may be rendered “You have given us into the hands of enemies—lawless—hateful—defiant.” However, in some languages it will be necessary to restructure it somewhat; for example, “You have let enemies who don’t obey the Law of our God conquer us. They are hateful and defiant people” or even “… They are defiant toward you and we hate them.”

To an unjust king, the most wicked in all the world: In the context of the narrative, the wicked king is Nebuchadnezzar, but the writer may well be thinking of a king who may have been ruling Palestine in his own time, Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175-164 B.C.). See 1 Macc 1.20-50.

Alternative translation models for this verse are:

• You have given us over to enemies—lawless, hateful, defiant enemies—and to an unjust king—the most wicked the world has ever known.

• You have let enemies whom we hate conquer us. They refuse to obey your Law and are defiant toward you. You have also let the most wicked king in the whole world conquer us.

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on The Shorter Books of the Deuterocanon. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2006. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.