mourn

The Hebrew, Latin, and Greek that is translated as “mourn” or similar in English is translated in Newari as “have one’s heart broken” or “have a bursting heart” (source: Newari Back Translation).

In Cherokee it is translated as “going around feeling badly” (source: Bender / Belt 2025, p. 16).

complete verse (Isaiah 19:8)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Isaiah 19:8:

  • Kupsabiny: “Everyone who is catching fish shall cry.
    Those who fish with nets and hooks shall mourn.
    All those people shall lose hope (stomachs die)” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
  • Newari: “The fishermen [lit.: the ones who catch fish] will be in mourning,
    their nets and fishhooks have become useless.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon: “The fishermen in the Nile River will-cry, will-lament, and will-weaken,” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
  • English: “The fishermen will throw into the river lines with hooks on them and nets,
    and then they will groan and be very discouraged;
    they will be sad because there will be no fish in the river.” (Source: Translation for Translators)

Translation commentary on Isaiah 19:8

The fishermen mourn because the fish have died due to the drying Nile River. There are three parallel lines in this verse, which New Revised Standard Version shows clearly:

Those who fish will mourn;
all who cast hooks in the Nile will lament,
and those who spread nets on the water will languish.

The three Hebrew verbs rendered mourn, lament and languish all begin with the same letter and are similar in sound. This further heightens the parallelism, but these two features of the Hebrew text almost certainly cannot be mirrored in other languages.

The fishermen will mourn and lament, all who cast hook in the Nile: Revised Standard Version places the verb lament with the first line, but it should go with the second one (see New Revised Standard Version above). The fishermen is parallel to all who cast hook in the Nile. Good News Translation partly combines these two phrases by saying “Everyone who earns a living by fishing in the Nile.” It expresses hook in the second half of the verse. All who cast hook may be rendered “all who cast hook and line.”

And they will languish who spread nets upon the water adds to the description of the dejected fishermen. The method of fishing here is by casting nets, whether from a boat or from the shore. The Hebrew verb rendered languish often means “be exhausted,” but here it means “be discouraged” (Contemporary English Version). New Jerusalem Bible and Revised English Bible say “lose heart,” which is a good model.

For the translation of this verse consider the following examples:

• The fishermen will mourn;
all those who cast hook and line into the Nile will lament,
and those who cast nets upon the water will lose heart.

• Fishermen will mourn;
all who fish with hook [and line] in the Nile will lament,
and those who fish with nets will give up.

Quoted with permission from Ogden, Graham S. and Sterk, Jan. A Handbook on Isaiah. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2011. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .