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)

complete verse (Genesis 31:10)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Genesis 31:10:

  • Newari: “‘Once in a dream at cattle mating time, I saw male goats mating with spotted and striped female goats.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon: “Jacob yet said, ‘When the time of the breeding of the animals, I dreamed. I saw that the male goats that were-mating with female goats were spotted.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
  • English: “‘ne time, when the animals were mating, I had a dream. In my dream I looked up and was surprised to see that some of the male goats that were mating with the female goats had black and white stripes on them, some were speckled, and some were spotted.” (Source: Translation for Translators)

goat

The Hebrew and Greek that is translated as “goat” in English is translated in Cherokee as ahwi dinihanulvhi or “bearded deer.” (source: Bender / Belt 2025, p. 18)

Translation commentary on Genesis 31:10

In the mating season of the flock: this serves as a time setting for the dream that Jacob reveals to his wives. In some languages it may be necessary to give more detail and say, as Biblia Dios Habla Hoy does, “One day when the animals were in heat….” Mating season refers to the time when the animals breed or mate. Since in many places this is at a fixed time of the year, some translations say “In the month when….”

I lifted up my eyes is an idiom meaning “I began to look.” What Jacob saw was the animals mating. It may be necessary to restructure this by saying, for example, “I had a dream and saw….” See Good News Translation. The word usually translated “behold” occurs in the Hebrew and marks this as a dream.

He-goats: that is, male goats or sheep. Leaped upon the flock is used here as a way of referring to the mating act, in which the male mounts on the back of the female. Good News Translation says “male goats that were mating.” In some languages it is expressed as “the male goats that were covering the females” or “… climbing on the females,” or as in Bible en français courant, “The males that coupled with the sheep or the goats.” Translators should make certain that the expression used for mating is both the correct expression in their language and acceptable for public reading.

For striped and spotted see 30.35. Mottled translates a word that has the same meaning as “spotted.” In English the terms “mottled,” “dappled,” or “piebald” are sometimes used. These terms refer to the skin or hide of an animal that has different colored spots or blotches.

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 .