addressing God

Translators of different languages have found different ways with what kind of formality God is addressed.

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Like many languages (but unlike Greek or Hebrew or modern English), Tuvan uses a formal vs. informal 2nd person pronoun (a familiar vs. a respectful “you”). Unlike other languages that have this feature, however, the translators of the Tuvan Bible have attempted to be very consistent in using the different forms of address in every case a 2nd person pronoun has to be used in the translation of the biblical text.

As Voinov shows in Pronominal Theology in Translating the Gospels (in: The Bible Translator 2002, p. 210ff. ), the choice to use either of the pronouns many times involved theological judgment. While the formal pronoun can signal personal distance or a social/power distance between the speaker and addressee, the informal pronoun can indicate familiarity or social/power equality between speaker and addressee.

In these verses, in which humans address God, the informal, familiar pronoun is used that communicates closeness.

Voinov notes that “in the Tuvan Bible, God is only addressed with the informal pronoun. No exceptions. An interesting thing about this is that I’ve heard new Tuvan believers praying with the formal form to God until they are corrected by other Christians who tell them that God is close to us so we should address him with the informal pronoun. As a result, the informal pronoun is the only one that is used in praying to God among the Tuvan church.”

In Gbaya, “a superior, whether father, uncle, or older brother, mother, aunt, or older sister, president, governor, or chief, is never addressed in the singular unless the speaker intends a deliberate insult. When addressing the superior face to face, the second person plural pronoun ɛ́nɛ́ or ‘you (pl.)’ is used, similar to the French usage of vous.

Accordingly, the translators of the current version of the Gbaya Bible chose to use the plural ɛ́nɛ́ to address God. There are a few exceptions. In Psalms 86:8, 97:9, and 138:1, God is addressed alongside other “gods,” and here the third person pronoun o is used to avoid confusion about who is being addressed. In several New Testament passages (Matthew 21:23, 26:68, 27:40, Mark 11:28, Luke 20:2, 23:37, as well as in Jesus’ interaction with Pilate and Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well) the less courteous form for Jesus is used to indicate ignorance of his position or mocking.” (Source Philip Noss)

In the most recent Manchu translation of 1835 (a revision of an earlier edition from 1822), God is never addressed with a pronoun but with “father” (ama /ᠠᠮᠠ) instead. Chengcheng Liu (in this post on the Cambridge Centre for Chinese Theology blog ) explains: “In Manchu tradition, as in Chinese etiquette, second-person pronouns could be considered disrespectful when speaking to superiors or spiritual beings. Manchu Shamanist prayers avoided si [‘you’] and sini [‘your’] for this very reason. To use them for God would be, in Lipovzoff’s [one of the two translators] words, ‘the most uncouth and indecent way to speak to the Almighty — as if He were a servant or slave.’ There was also a grammatical problem. In Manchu, si and sini could refer to both singular and plural subjects. For a faith that insisted on the singularity of God, this was potentially confusing. By contrast, repeating ama removed any ambiguity.”

In Dutch, Afrikaans, Gronings, and Western Frisian translations, God is always addressed with the formal pronoun.

See also formal pronoun: disciples addressing Jesus, female second person singular pronoun in Psalms.

Translation commentary on Judith 9:10

By the deceit of my lips strike down the slave with the prince and the prince with his servant: Use of the word deceit recalls its use in 9.3. Just as Simeon avenged his sister’s disgrace through deceit, Judith will use deceit to accomplish her goal. Lips refers to “words” and will be translated this way in many languages. Both Good News Translation and Contemporary English Version have helpful models. Good News Translation has “Use my deceitful words to strike…” and Contemporary English Version “Use my deceit to slaughter….” If it sounds strange in a receptor language for “deceit” to kill someone, we may say “Use my lies to cause the Assyrians to die [or, be killed].” Strike down the slave with the prince and the prince with his servant will be too repetitive in many languages since slave and servant have the same meaning in this context. They reflect the use of synonyms in Hebrew poetry. Good News Translation shortens the clause to “strike them all dead, master and slave alike,” while Contemporary English Version has “slaughter the Assyrian rulers and their slaves.”

Crush their arrogance by the hand of a woman: Crush in this verse does not translate the same Greek word as crushest in 9.7. In languages that cannot talk about “breaking” or “crushing” pride, one may say, for example, “let my weak hand make them humble [or, lose face].” On the use of the idiom by the hand of in Judith, see the note on 8.33. The word translated woman is not the usual word. Both Moore and Enslin are insistent that the sense of by the hand of a woman is more “by the hand of a female,” so as to emphasize the weakness of the hand that will humble the mighty Holofernes. In this light, Good News Translation‘s “a woman’s strength” or Contemporary English Version‘s “my strength” can be misread. It sounds like she is speaking of how strong a woman can be, when the emphasis is actually on powerlessness. She is stressing the weakness of a widow against the high and mighty, as the next verse will make certainly clear. Of course it would be seen as especially degrading to be killed by a woman; compare Jdg 9.54. A possible model, then, is “Let my weak hand, the hand of a mere woman, crush….”

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Judith. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2001. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.