35He has filled them with skill to do every kind of work done by an artisan or by a designer or by an embroiderer in blue, purple, and crimson yarns and in fine linen or by a weaver—by any sort of skilled worker or designer.
Ixcatlán Mazatec: “with your best/biggest thinking” (source: Robert Bascom)
Noongar: dwangka-boola, lit. “ear much” (source: Portions of the Holy Bible in the Nyunga language of Australia, 2018 — see also remember)
Kwere “to know how to live well” (source: Pioneer Bible Translators, project-specific translation notes in Paratext)
Dobel: “their ear holes are long-lasting” (in Acts 6:3) (source: Jock Hughes)
Note that in Chichewa, there is only one word — nzeru — that encompasses both “knowledge” and “wisdom.” (Source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)
The Greek that is translated as “purple” in English is translated as “blue-red” in Ojitlán Chinantec (source: M. Larson in Notes on Translation 1970, p. 1ff.) and in Elhomwe (source: project-specific translation notes in Paratext).
“The Kasua people of Western Province have no word for the color purple. They have words for many other colors: black, red, white, yellow, green, and blue, but not for the color of royalty.
“About nine New Testament passages mention people placing a purple robe on Jesus. The Kasua translation team always wanted to use the word ‘red,’ or keyalo, to describe the robe. Tommy, one of the translation team helpers, disagreed because this is not historically accurate or signifies the royalty of Jesus.
“One of the main rules of translation is that the team must stick to the historical facts when they translate a passage. If they don’t, then how can the readers trust what they’re reading is true? Other questions about truth could bubble in the reader’s minds about the Scriptures. For this reason, Tommy was not willing to change the word purple. So the team hung up the problem, hoping to revisit it later with more inspiration.
“God did not disappoint.
“Years later, Tommy hiked with some of the men near their village. They saw a tree that possessed bulbous growths growing on the side of it like fruit. These growths were ‘the most beautiful color of purple I’d ever seen,’ explained Tommy.
“’What is the name of this tree?’ Tommy asked the men.
“’This is an Okani tree,’ they replied.
“Tommy suggested, ‘Why don’t you, in those passages where we’ve been struggling to translate the color purple, use ‘they put a robe on Jesus the color of the fruit of the Okani tree’?
“’Yeah. We know exactly what color that is,’ the men said enthusiastically.
“Everyone in their village would also visualize this phrase accurately, as the Okani tree is the only tree in that area that produces this kind of purple growth. So now, among the Kasua people, in his royal purple robe, Jesus is shown to be the king that he is.”
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 usage of an honorific construction where the morpheme are (され) is affixed on the verb as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. This is particularly done with verbs that have God as the agent to show a deep sense of reverence. Here, mitas-are-ru (満たされる) or “fill” is used.
He has filled them with ability is literally “He filled them [with] wisdom of heart.” (See the comment at 28.3.) To do every sort of work done by, literally “to do all work of,” introduces the list of four skills. The word for craftsman is a general term that refers to one who is skilled in different crafts, such as carpentry, masonry, or metalworking. New Revised Standard Version has “artisan,” but Durham has “metal-worker,” and New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh has “carver.” Good News Translation and others limit this to “engravers,” since the word is used in this sense in 28.11. Another form of the same word is translated as “craftsmanship” in 31.3, so it is better to use the more general term here, such as craftsman or “artisan.”
The word for designer comes from the verb “to think,” which also means to invent as well as create artistic things. The word for embroiderer refers to one who works with colored fabrics, so the familiar list of yarns is mentioned again, in blue and purple and scarlet stuff. (See the comment at 25.4.) The fine twined linen should be simply “fine linen” (Good News Translation), as explained at 25.4.
The word for weaver is the participle of the verb that means specifically “to weave.” Most translations list this as the fourth skill, but Good News Translation considers this to have the same meaning as embroiderer and translates “weavers” for both. It is better, however, to list four different terms for these skills in the receptor language, if this is possible. By any sort of workman or skilled designer is added in order to include all other skills not already mentioned. Repeating some of the terms already used, the Hebrew literally says “a doer of all work and a designer of designs.”
Quoted with permission from Osborn, Noel D. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Exodus. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1999. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.