purple

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).

In Kasua was a little bit more involved, as Rachel Greco recalls (in The PNG Experience ):

“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.”

2nd person pronoun with low register (Japanese)

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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 second person pronoun (“you” and its various forms) as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. The most commonly used anata (あなた) is typically used when the speaker is humbly addressing another person.

In these verses, however, omae (おまえ) is used, a cruder second person pronoun, that Jesus for instance chooses when chiding his disciples. (Source: S. E. Doi, see also S. E. Doi in Journal of Translation, 18/2022, p. 37ff. )

See also first person pronoun with low register and third person pronoun with low register.

Translation commentary on Ezekiel 27:7

Of fine embroidered linen from Egypt was your sail, serving as your ensign: The sail was made of fine embroidered linen. Fine … linen is an expensive cloth woven from flax (see the comments on 9.2). This cloth was embroidered, which mean people had sewn colored patterns on it with needles (see 16.10). The best linen in the ancient world was produced in Egypt. For sail see the comments on Ezek 27.5. The Hebrew word for your sail is literally “something you spread out” (similarly King James Version / New King James Version). The sail was serving as the ship’s ensign, that is, its “banner” (New International Version, New International Reader’s Version, New Living Translation, New American Bible), “distinguishing mark” (New American Standard Bible), or “flag” (New Century Version, Jerusalem Bible/New Jerusalem Bible). The function of the ensign was to make the ship “Easily recognized from afar” (Good News Translation; compare Contemporary English Version “so everyone could see you”). The Hebrew word for ensign can refer to a military standard or flag, but this is unlikely to be the meaning here. Some translations have rendered this word as “sail[s]” (King James Version / New King James Version, Revised English Bible, New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh), but it is unlikely that it ever means that. One way to express these three lines is “They used linen cloth [or, expensive cloth] from Egypt to make your sail [or, cloth that catches the wind to move the ship], and they sewed [or, wove] colored patterns on it so everyone could see you from far away.”

Blue and purple from the coasts of Elishah was your awning: The awning was probably some sort of a cloth shade over the open area of the top deck to keep the sun off, so New Century Version says “cloth shades over the deck” (similarly Contemporary English Version, New International Reader’s Version, Jerusalem Bible/New Jerusalem Bible). The awning was made of blue and purple material. It is difficult to be sure what these precise colors were (see the comments on 23.6), but they were both purple, that is, mixtures of blue and red, the former probably bluish purple, the latter reddish purple. Essentially, here translators should look for the term in their language for something dark blue, and for something that is a mixture of red and blue for purple. Whatever the precise colors were, it is clear that this material was the “finest cloth” (Good News Translation) that was very valuable and expensive. It is often described as the cloth that kings wore. This information may be put into a footnote. The cloth for the deck shade came from the coasts of Elishah, which was another town on the island of Cyprus.

Quoted with permission from Gross, Carl & Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on Ezekiel. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2016. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .