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).

complete verse (Jeremiah 12:11)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Jeremiah 12:11:

  • Kupsabiny: “Those people have made that field to become a desert
    which when I look at it, it is desolate.
    The whole land has become a desert,
    and no one is thinking/concerned about it.” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon: “They will-make this into a desolate place and has no more value before me. This will-become a desolate-place, for no one will-be-concerned about it.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
  • English: “They have caused it to become completely empty;
    it is as though I hear the land crying sadly/mournfully.
    The whole land is desolate,
    and no one worries about/pays any attention to it.” (Source: Translation for Translators)

1st person pronoun referring to God (Japanese)

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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.

(Source: S. E. Doi, see also S. E. Doi in Journal of Translation, 18/2022, p. 37ff. )

See also pronoun for “God”.

Translation commentary on Jeremiah 12:11

Made … a desolation translates a verb and noun that derive from the same Hebrew root as “desolate” in verse 10. The adjective desolate is used next in this verse, followed by another occurrence of the verb made desolate. The repetition may not be as effective in other languages as it is in Hebrew. Translators in many languages will find it helpful to follow the example of Good News Translation and use three different words: “wasteland … desolate … desert.”

Desolate, it mourns to me is taken by Good News Translation with the meaning “it lies desolate before me,” which is essentially the restructuring of New Jerusalem Bible and Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch as well. New English Bible effectively translates the first sentence of this verse as “… made it a waste land, waste and waterless, to my sorrow.”

But no man lays it to heart is rendered by New English Bible and Good News Translation as “and no one cares.” Translators could also say “and no one pays any attention.” New International Version, which renders this verse as a future, translates the last two lines as “the whole land will be laid waste because there is no one who cares.”

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on Jeremiah. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2003. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .