forget

The Hebrew, Latin, Ge’ez, and Greek that is translated as “forget” in English is translated in Noongar as dwangka-anbangbat, lit. “ear-lose.” (Source: Portions of the Holy Bible in the Nyunga language of Australia, 2018).

See also remember and forget (Japanese honorifics).

complete verse (Jeremiah 23:27)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Jeremiah 23:27:

  • Kupsabiny: “They think that when they use those dreams it will make my people forget me like their forefathers forgot me and turned to Baal!” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon: “By their telling of these dreams, they are pushing my people to forget me, just as their ancestors forgotten me by worshipping Baal.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
  • English: “They think that because of the dreams that they tell to each other, people will forget me, like their ancestors forgot about me when they started to worship Baal.” (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 23:27

Forget my name means “forget me” (Good News Translation) or “forget who I am” (Bible en français courant).

Good News Translation takes their dreams which they tell one another as a reference to the prophets telling their dreams to the people (“the dreams they tell”). However, the text more naturally suggests that the prophets are telling their dreams to one another: “They hope, by means of the dreams they keep telling each other, ….” So Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch translates “By their dreams, by which one tries to outdo the other, they have only one goal: to make my people forget me….”

Their fathers refers to “their ancestors” (Good News Translation). See 2.5.

For Baal see 2.8.

In the text this verse is a continuation of the rhetorical question of verse 26. Most translations, however, do as Good News Translation and Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch have done, changing this to a statement:

• They think their dreams they tell each other about will make my people forget who I am just as their ancestors left me to worship Baal.

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 .