10For the land that you are about to enter to occupy is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you sow your seed and irrigate by foot like a vegetable garden.
The Hebrew, Ge’ez, and Greek that is translated into English as “garden” is translated into Naskapi with a word that means “a place for things to grow.”
Doug Lockhart (in Word Alive 2013 ) explains: “‘Garden’ was another term that had no Naskapi equivalent. ‘There are no gardens here,’ Bill [Jancewicz, a translation consultant] explains. ‘So what word do you use for ‘Garden of Eden,’ and have it communicate something logical in Naskapi? We finally came up with a word that means ‘a place for things to grow,’ like a park.'”
Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Deuteronomy 11:10:
Kupsabiny: “I am saying like that because that land you are about to take is not like the land of Egypt where you were coming from, where you planted the seeds of your food and then used your strength to spray water on it like a garden of vegetables.” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
Newari: “The land you are about to conquer is not like the land of Egypt. There you sowed seed and watered it by foot like a garden of green vegetables.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
Hiligaynon: “For the land that you (plur.) are-to-enter and to possess/own is not like the land of Egipto which you (plur.) have-come-from. There in Egipto, if you (plur.) plant you (plur.) toil/work-hard to water it.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
English: “The land that you are about to enter and occupy is not like the land of Egypt, where your ancestors lived. In Egypt, after they planted seeds, it was necessary for them to work hard to water the plants that grew.” (Source: Translation for Translators)
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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).
Verses 10-13 are one sentence, with some repetition: you are entering to take possession of it (verse 10) and you are going over to possess (verse 11), as in verse 8. In some languages the use of this kind of repetition may have a negative effect, leaving the reader bored with the narrative. A translator should use the style that will include all the information of the biblical text and at the same time keep the reader’s interest.
Not like the land of Egypt: the main difference is the source of water needed to grow crops. In Canaan the seasonal rains supplied the water; in Egypt the water was made to flow in irrigation canals by a series of water wheels, turned by foot. This seems to be the most reasonable explanation of the expression and watered it with your feet; some believe it is simply a way of saying “by means of hard work” (Good News Translation “work hard to irrigate the fields”). Some have suggested this means urinating, but this does not seem very likely. Alternative translation models are “you had to work hard to water your fields,” or “you had to struggle just to water your crops” (Contemporary English Version).
A land … which drinks water by the rain from heaven: in some languages there may be a problem in talking about the land “drinking” rain water; in such cases something like the following can be said: “a land with hills and valleys, which is watered by the rain” (or “which gets its water from the rains”); see verse 14 for more statements about the rains.
See Good News Translation for a good alternative model for verse 11.
Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Deuteronomy. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2000. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .
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