The passive construct in Ephesians 3:16 that is translated in English with “I pray that he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit” or similar is translated in Mokole as “I ask him to let his Spirit give you power in your liver.” Mokole grammar doesn’t know a passive voice and the translation has to therefore render anything that is passive in the Hebrew or Greek text with a grammatical subject. (Source: Hilary Deneufchâtel in Le Sycomore 17/1, 2024, p. 21ff. )
In Nicholas King’s English translation of the New Testament (2004), the translator decided to use bullet point lists in some case in the Ephesians, Colossians, and Titus. “There are elaborate groups of nouns strung together, and the sentences are rather long. I have tried, not entirely successfully, to make these long sentences more manageable by the use of bullet points.” One such list is Ephesians 3:14-19:
For his sake I bend my knees to the Father,
from whom all fathering in heaven and on earth is named,
that he might grant you, in accordance with the wealth of his glory, to be mightily strengthened through his Spirit with regard to the ‘inner person’,
that Christ should dwell through faith in your hearts,
[that you may be] rooted and founded in love that you may have the strength
to comprehend with all the saints
what is the breadth and length and height and depth, to know
the overarching love of Christ which transcends knowledge,
that you may be filled with regard to all the fullness of God.
Following are a number of back-translations of Ephesians 3:16:
Uma: “I pray to God whose power is very great, I ask that from his great power he strengthen your hearts with his Spirit,” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
Yakan: “I pray-to/ask-of God because his love and his mercy and his power is very great, may he really strengthen your livers because of his Spirit.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
Western Bukidnon Manobo: “And I begged Him that starting with His very big power, He might give to you very strong faith by means of His guiding you by the Holy Spirit,” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
Kankanaey: “And I request from him that his Spirit strengthen your minds according to his power and highness which have no equal” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
Tagbanwa: “I am praying to him that from the big-size of his praiseworthiness/glory which has no exhausting, hopefully he will give you strength of mind/inner-being, in that your believing/obeying will really intensify by the help of the indwelling Espiritu Santo.” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)
Tenango Otomi: “He overflows with power. Therefore I ask the Father that he will strengthen your hearts by sending the Holy Spirit to strengthen you.” (Source: Tenango Otomi Back Translation)
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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 benefactive construction as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017.
Here, tsumete (強めて) or “strengthen” is used in combination with kudasaru (くださる), a respectful form of the benefactive kureru (くれる). A benefactive reflects the good will of the giver or the gratitude of a recipient of the favor. To convey this connotation, English translation needs to employ a phrase such as “for me (my sake)” or “for you (your sake).” (Source: S. E. Doi, see also S. E. Doi in Journal of Translation, 18/2022, p. 37ff. )
God transcends gender, but most languages are limited to grammatical gender expressed in pronouns. In the case of English, this is traditionally confined to “he” (or in the forms “his,” “him,” and “himself”), “she” (and “her,” “hers,” and “herself”), and “it” (and “its” and “itself”).
Modern Mandarin Chinese, however, offers another possibility. Here, the third-person singular pronoun is always pronounced the same (tā), but it is written differently according to its gender (他 is “he,” 她 is “she,” and 它/牠 is “it” and their respective derivative forms). In each of these characters, the first (or upper) part defines the gender (man, woman, or thing/animal), while the second element gives the clue to its pronunciation.
In 1930, after a full century with dozens of Chinese translations, Bible translator Wang Yuande (王元德) coined a new “godly” pronoun: 祂. Chinese readers immediately knew how to pronounce it: tā. But they also recognized that the first part of that character, signifying something spiritual, clarified that each person of the Trinity has no gender aside from being God.
While the most important Protestant and Catholic Chinese versions respectively have opted not to use 祂, some Bible translations do and it is widely used in hymnals and other Christian materials. Among the translations that use 祂 to refer to “God” were early versions of Lü Zhenzhong’s (呂振中) version (New Testament: 1946, complete Bible: 1970). R.P. Kramers (in The Bible Translator 1956, p. 152ff. ) explains why later versions of Lü’s translation did not continue with this practice: “This new way of writing ‘He,’ however, has created a minor problem of its own: must this polite form be used whenever Jesus is referred to? Lü follows the rule that, wherever Jesus is referred to as a human being, the normal tā (他) is written; where he is referred to as divine, especially after the ascension, the reverential tā (祂) is used.”
In that system, one kind of pronoun is used for humans (male and female alike) and others for natural elements, non-liquid masses, and some spiritual entities (one other is used for large animals and another one for miscellaneous items). While in these languages the pronoun for spiritual entities used to be employed when referring to God, this has changed into the use of the human pronoun.
Lynell Zogbo (in The Bible Translator 1989, p. 401ff. ) explains: “From informal discussions with young Christians especially, it would appear that, at least for some people, the experience and/or concepts of Christianity are affecting the choice of pronoun for God. Some people explain that God is no longer ‘far away,’ but is somehow tangible and personal. For these speakers God has shifted over into the human category.”
In Kouya, God (the Father) and Jesus are referred to with the human pronoun ɔ, whereas the Holy Spirit is referred to with a non-human pronoun. (Northern Grebo and Western Krahn make a similar distinction.)
Eddie Arthur, a former Kouya Bible translation consultant, says the following: “We tried to insist that this shouldn’t happen, but the Kouya team members were insistent that the human pronoun for the Spirit would not work.”
In Burmese, the pronoun ko taw (ကိုယ်တော်) is used either as 2nd person (you) or 3rd person (he, him, his) reference. “This term clearly has its root in the religious language in Burmese. No ordinary persons are addressed or known by this pronoun because it is reserved for Buddhist monks, famous religious teachers, and in the case of Christianity, the Trinity.” (Source: Gam Seng Shae in The Bible Translator 2002, p. 202ff. )
In Thai, the pronoun phra`ong (พระองค์) is used, a gender-neutral pronoun which must refer to a previously introduced royal or divine being. Similarly, in Northern Khmer, which is spoken in Thailand, “an honorific divine pronoun” is used for the pronoun referring to the persons of the Trinity (source: David Thomas in The Bible Translator 1993, p. 445 ). In Urak Lawoi’, another language spoken in Thailand, the translation often uses tuhat (ตูฮัด) — “God” — ”as a divine pronoun where Thai has phra’ong even though it’s actually a noun.” (Source for Thai and Urak Lawoi’: Stephen Pattemore)
The English “Contemporary Torah” addresses the question of God and gendered pronouns by mostly avoiding pronouns in the first five books of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament (unless God is referred to as “lord,” “father,” “king,” or “warrior”). It does that by either using passive constructs (“He gave us” vs. “we were given”), by using the adjective “divine” or by using “God” rather than a pronoun.
Some Protestant and Orthodox English Bibles use a referential capitalized spelling when referring to the persons of the Trinity with “He,” “His,” “Him,” or “Himself.” This includes for instance the New American Standard Bible or The Orthodox New Testament, but most translations do not. Two other languages where this is also done (in most Bible translations) are Twents as well as Indonesian and Malay. In the latter two languages this follows the language usage according to the Qur’an, which in turn predicts that usage (see Soesilo in The Bible Translator 1991, p. 442ff. and The Bible Translator 1997, p. 433ff. ).
Click or tap here to see the rest of this insight.
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).
This verse continues the prayer from verse 14. Verse 15 is a parenthetical comment which slightly interrupts the prayer; that is why here in verse 16 Good News Translation has restarted the prayer with I ask God. This may be rendered as “I pray to God.” If, however, one uses a term meaning “ask,” it is important to use one which refers to asking for something rather than to asking a question.
“According to the wealth of his glory” (Hdb|fig:Table_EPH3-13.jpg): see 1.18 for the same phrase; here the phrase stands for spiritual resources, blessings from heaven, so it can be translated, “because of the great blessings he has in heaven.”
Verses 16-17 embody the request “that he give you”; the objects of the verb are the two infinitives “to be strengthened” (verse 16) and “to dwell” (verse 17).
“With power (for you) to be strengthened”: the noun power is in the dative case and so denotes the instrument or means (see Revised Standard Version); it can be taken as an adverb: “mightily/strongly strengthened”; Good News Translation has power … to be strong (similarly Jerusalem Bible); New English Bible, Translator’s New Testament express the meaning with two nouns “grant you strength and power.” The Greek verb for “to make strong” (from a noun meaning “might, strength”; see 1.19; 6.10) is used here in the passive voice “to be made strong.” Although not formally expressed in Greek, the subject is “you,” “for you to be made strong.”
To give you power … to be strong may be rendered as “to cause you to be strong,” but this must not refer merely to physical strength. In order to suggest something of the spiritual aspects involved, one may translate “cause you to be strong in your heart” or “… in your mind.”
Through his Spirit: the Spirit of God is the means by which he gives strength to his people. In some instances this must be a separate sentence, for example, “it is God’s Spirit that causes this to happen” or “it is God’s Spirit that makes you strong.”
In your inner selves translates “in/into the inner man”; this is virtually the same in meaning as in your hearts in the next verse. The readers need spiritual strength, not physical force. For other instances of the phrase “the inner man” see Romans 7.22 (Good News Translationinner being) and 2 Corinthians 4.16 (Good News Translationspiritual being). But eis may be given the meaning “into,” indicating motion, by reading the Greek “through the Spirit, who enters (or, works in) your inner selves.”
In some languages an expression such as “strong in your spirits” will convey the correct idea. Others will use something like “strong in your hearts,” and still others will have an expression such as “strong in yourselves.” Many translations emphasize the fact that it is God’s Spirit that makes his people spiritually strong: “I ask God from the wealth of his glory that his Spirit give you power so that you are strong in your spirits (or, in yourselves).”
Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert C. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1982. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .
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