12And he said, ‘Look up and see that all the goats that leap on the flock are striped, speckled, and mottled, for I have seen all that Laban is doing to you.
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)
Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Genesis 31:12:
Newari: “‘He said — ‘Look, all the goats that are mating are only spotted and striped. For I have seen all that Laban has done to you.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
Hiligaynon: “and he then said, ‘Look, all the male goats that are-mating with female goats are spotted. I have-done this because I have-seen everything that Laban is-doing to you (sing.).” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
English: “He said to me, ‘Look up and you will see that all the male goats that are mating have black and white stripes on them, or are speckled or spotted. This is happening because I have seen all that Laban has done to you.” (Source: Translation for Translators)
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)
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 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, iw-are-ru (言われる) or “say” is used.
Lift up your eyes is the command form of the same expression used in verse 10. See Good News Translation.
All the goats that leap upon the flock are striped, spotted, and mottled: see verse 10.
For I have seen all that Laban is doing to you: this statement suggests that God has arranged for the animals to breed in this fashion so that Jacob will receive the wages Laban has withheld from him. In this way Jacob’s trick in chapter 30, in which the striped branches are placed before the mating animals, is now explained as God’s intervention to make the trick work for Jacob.
In some languages it will be necessary to adjust the final sentence of verse 12 to show its relation to the rest of that verse. For example, we may need to say “I have caused them to mate that way because I have seen how Laban has cheated you.” Note Good News Translation “I am making this happen because….”
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 .
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