striped / speckled / spotted

The Hebrew that is translated as “striped,” “speckled,” and “spotted” in English did not have an immediately accessible translation in Orma.

George Payton tells about how the translation team went about finding the right terms: “In Gen. 30 Jacob is living with uncle Laban taking care of Laban’s livestock. Then when Jacob complained about what his payment should be, Laban said that Jacob could keep all the livestock that were spotted, speckled or striped, but the solid colors white and black belonged to Laban. The trouble was how to translate ‘speckled, spotted, striped.’ The people we were translating for were herdsmen; they kept goats, sheep and cattle. They told me that they have one set of words for colors and patterns for describing the cattle, and a different set of vocabulary when talking about goats and sheep. I thought maybe we could tap into their rich ‘goat’ vocabulary and use some of their words in Genesis. So we went to a friend’s livestock to see the animals. I saw a pattern that was ‘strip-ish’ and asked what they called that pattern. Then I did the same for ‘spot-ish’ and ‘speckle-ish.’ Our goal was not to get an exact representation of the patterns mentioned in the Bible, but to give a general picture of some common patterns that people would know. So we used those terms in the translation and it read very well. When we tested it, no one asked what those words meant because everyone knew them.”

In Low German the different colors are swartbunt / “black pied” or swartbrun / “black-brown,” the traditional colorings of cattle in Northern Germany, where Low German is spoken (translation by Johannes Jessen, publ. 1937, republ. 2006).

In Gbaya, the concepts of notion of “striped,” “speckled,” and “spotted” are emphasized with lop-lop (“speckled”), zɛrɛŋ-zɛrɛŋ (“striped”), and laɓo-laɓo (“spotted”), all ideophones to describe the respective patterns. Ideophones are a class of sound symbolic words expressing human sensation that are used as literary devices in many African languages. (Source: Philip Noss)

Translation commentary on Genesis 31:8

If he said: If does not indicate in this context a situation that may or may not have happened. It probably refers to Laban’s having said the words that follow on certain occasions, and especially saying them on repeated occasions. In this case we may translate “Whenever he said,” “When he would say,” or “Every time he would say.” Another approach to the “if … then … if … then” construction is represented by a translation that says “First he said I could have the all the spotted…; and at that time the flocks all bore spotted young. After that he said I could have all the striped…; well, then the flocks bore young that were striped.”

The spotted shall be your wages: this expression may need to be filled out to make it clear; for example, “The spotted animals that are born will be given to you as your wages” or “I will give you the spotted young animals for your pay.”

Then all the flock bore spotted is the consequence of the “if” clause at the opening of this verse. Bore spotted may need to be expanded to say, for example, “bore spotted young” or “gave birth to spotted young animals.” For spotted see 30.32.

The second half of verse 8 follows the same pattern as the first half. For striped see 30.35. For comments on the rendering “goats” in Good News Translation, see 30.39.

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, William D. and Fry, Euan McG. A Handbook on Genesis. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1997. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .