Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Ezekiel 36:10:
Kupsabiny: “and I will make the people of Israel become many there. (People) shall return to the cities and live (there) and the ruins shall be built and renewed.” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
Hiligaynon: “I will-cause- your residents -to-become-many — the entire people of Israel. Your towns that were-ruined will-be-built again, and these will-be-inhabited by my people.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
English: “I will cause the number of people who live on you mountains and everywhere else in Israel to greatly increase. People will live in the towns and rebuild houses where there are now only ruins.” (Source: Translation for Translators)
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 first person singular and plural pronoun (“I” and “we” and its various forms) as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. The most commonly used watashi/watakushi (私) is typically used when the speaker is humble and asking for help. In these verses, where God / Jesus is referring to himself, watashi is also used but instead of the kanji writing system (私) the syllabary hiragana (わたし) is used to distinguish God from others.
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 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. )
And I will multiply men upon you, the whole house of Israel, all of it means God will make Israel’s population grow. The pronoun you refers to Israel’s mountains, except in Good News Translation. The people who multiply will be the whole house of Israel, that is, the Israelites who will come back from exile. All of it stresses that those who return will include all twelve tribes of Israel, not just Judah.
The cities shall be inhabited and the waste places rebuilt: Because there will be so many people living in Israel, they “will live in the cities” (Good News Translation) again, and “the ruins will be rebuilt” (New Century Version). This is in direct contrast to the situation the mountains were in at that time (see Ezek 36.4).
A model for this verse is:
• I will make your population grow. The people of Israel will live there, the whole nation. People will live in the cities and they will rebuild everything that was in ruins.
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 .
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