pray / prayer

The Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin, and Greek that is translated as “pray” (or “prayer”) in English is often translated as “talking with God” (Central Pame, Tzeltal, Chol, Chimborazo Highland Quichua, Shipibo-Conibo, Kaqchikel, Tepeuxila Cuicatec, Copainalá Zoque, Central Tarahumara).

Other solutions include:

  • “to beg” or “to ask,” (full expression: “to ask with one’s heart coming out,” which leaves out selfish praying, for asking with the heart out leaves no place for self to hide) (Tzotzil)
  • “to cause God to know” (Huichol)
  • “to raise up one’s words to God” (implying an element of worship, as well as communication) (Miskito, Lacandon) (source of this and all above: Bratcher / Nida)
  • Shilluk: “speak to God” (source: Nida 1964, p. 237)
  • Mairasi: “talk together with Great Above One (=God)” (source: Enggavoter, 2004)
  • San Blas Kuna: “call to one’s Father” (source: Claudio and Marvel Iglesias in The Bible Translator 1951, p. 85ff. )
  • Ik: waan: “beg.” Terrill Schrock (in Wycliffe Bible Translators 2016, p. 93) explains (click or tap here to read more):

    What do begging and praying have to do with each other? Do you beg when you pray? Do I?

    “The Ik word for ‘visitor’ is waanam, which means ‘begging person.’ Do you beg when you go visiting? The Ik do. Maybe you don’t beg, but maybe when you visit someone, you are looking for something. Maybe it’s just a listening ear.

    When the Ik hear that [my wife] Amber and I are planning trip to this or that place for a certain amount of time, the letters and lists start coming. As the days dwindle before our departure, the little stack of guests grows. ‘Please, sir, remember me for the allowing: shoes, jacket (rainproof), watch, box, trousers, pens, and money for the children. Thank you, sir, for your assistance.’

    “A few people come by just to greet us or spend bit of time with us. Another precious few will occasionally confide in us about their problems without asking for anything more than a listening ear. I love that.

    “The other day I was in our spare bedroom praying my list of requests to God — a nice list covering most areas of my life, certainly all the points of anxiety. Then it hit me: Does God want my list, or does he want my relationship?

    “I decided to try something. Instead of reading off my list of requests to God, I just talk to him about my issues without any expectation of how he should respond. I make it more about our relationship than my list, because if our personhood is like God’s personhood, then maybe God prefers our confidence and time to our lists, letters, and enumerations.”

In Luang it is translated with different shades of meaning (click or tap here to read more):

  • For Acts 1:14, 20:36, 21:5: kola ttieru-yawur nehla — “hold the waist and hug the neck.” (“This is the more general term for prayer and often refers to worship in prayer as opposed to petition. The Luang people spend the majority of their prayers worshiping rather than petitioning, which explains why this term often is used generically for prayer.”)
  • For Acts 28:9: sumbiani — “pray.” (“This term is also used generically for ‘prayer’. When praying is referred to several times in close proximity, it serves as a variation for kola ttieru-yawur nehla, in keeping with Luang discourse style. It is also used when a prayer is made up of many requests.”)
  • For Acts 8:15, 12:5: polu-waka — “call-ask.” (“This is a term for petition that is used especially when the need is very intense.”)

Source: Kathy Taber in Notes on Translation 1/1999, p. 9-16.

complete verse (James 5:18)

Following are a number of back-translations of James 5:18:

  • Uma: “After that, he prayed again, until the sky let-down rain and as a result there was the fruit of farming.” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
  • Yakan: “After that he prayed again that it should rain now. So-then immediately it rained very hard, and the plants grew again.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
  • Western Bukidnon Manobo: “Then he prayed again, and it rained hard, and then the plants sprouted.” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
  • Kankanaey: “After that he again prayed that it would rain, and it truly rained and the plants grew.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
  • Tagbanwa: “And then he next prayed that it would rain then. Without anything further, it rained, that being what strengthened the plants again and made them fruit.” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)
  • Tenango Otomi: “When he prayed to God again to ask that it rain, again it rained. The fields which the people worked produced.” (Source: Tenango Otomi Back Translation)

Translation commentary on James 5:18

Then he prayed again: the expression does not mean that Elijah did not pray for three and a half years. The rendering “when he prayed again” could also be so misunderstood. What it means is that Elijah did not pray for rain again during this time (compare Contemporary English Version, “But when he did pray for rain…”).

The heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth its fruit: we should notice the neat balance in the pair heaven and earth in this sentence. Some translations ruin this balance by dropping the word heaven (so Living Bible, Revised English Bible). It is certainly more natural in English to use the word “sky,” for that is where the rain comes from. But in some languages “heaven” is where the rain comes from, not “sky”; and in this case “heaven” should be used. This should present no problem in languages where the same term is used for both “heaven” and “sky.”

Some commentators understand heaven to be a reference to God. This is not impossible, but in the present context heaven is used in contrast to earth. The word fruit here means “crops” (Good News Translation, New International Version, Revised English Bible), or more generally “vegetation” (Phillips) or “harvest” (New Revised Standard Version).

In languages that commonly use the pair “heaven [or, sky] … earth” it is desirable to keep the balance in translation by rendering the sentence as:
• The heaven poured down rain, and the earth brought forth vegetation.

Quoted with permission from Loh, I-Jin and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on The Letter from James. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1997. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .

SIL Translator's Notes on James 5:18

5:18b

the heavens gave rain: The phrase the heavens may refer to:

(a) the clouds and the sky. For example:

rain came down from the sky (New Century Version)

(b) God, who sent the rain. It did not just come automatically. (See 1 Samuel 12:17; 1 Kings 18:1; and Acts 14:17 for the idea of God giving rain.) For example:

God caused rain to fall
-or-
God again brought the rains to the land

In some languages, it may be natural to combine (a) and (b). For example:

God caused rain to fall from the sky

5:18c

the earth yielded its crops: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as the earth here means “the ground,” “the soil,” or “the land.” After the rains came again, in due course the ground produced the crops that it normally produced.

Some other ways to translate this clause are:

and the land produced crops again (New Century Version)
-or-
and the fields/farms grew plants
-or-
and the crops grew well in the fields

In some languages, it is not necessary to translate the phrase the earth. For example:

and the crops began to grow again (New Living Translation, 1996 edition)

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