walls of my heart / heart is beating wildly

In Gbaya, the notion of the agony of the heart (“walls of my heart”) in Jeremiah 4:19 is emphasized with baram-baram, an ideophone used to describe the heartbeat for emotional reasons, and a wildly beating heart is emphasized with mgbut-mgbut, an ideophone used to describe the pounding feeling inside one’s chest.

Ideophones are a class of sound symbolic words expressing human sensation that are used as literary devices in many African languages. (Source: Philip Noss)

See also thrust his hands into / inmost being yearned and heart trembles.

feel (terror / pain / suffering / anxiety / thirst)

The Greek and Hebrew that is translated as “feel (terror, pain, suffering, anxiety, thirst)” or similar in English is translated in the Contemporary Chichewa translation (2002/2016) in association with the verb kumva or “hear,” “as if the feeling is heard in the ear.”

In Psalm 115:7 the stand-alone “feel” is also translated as “hear.” (Source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)

See also angry

horn

The musical instrument that is most often translated as “(ram’s) horn” or “trumpet” in English is translated in the following ways:

  • Yakan: tabuli’ (big sea shell used to give signals) (source: Yakan Back Translation)
  • Mairasi / Bariai: “Triton shell trumpet” (source: Enggavoter 2004)
  • German Luther translation: Posaune, today: “trombone,” originally with the meaning of a wind instrument made from cow horn (from Latin bucina [bovi- / “cow” + the root of cano / “sing”]. Incidentally, bucina is also used in the Latin Vulgate translation). By the time of Luther’s translation it referred to the natural trumpet or a fanfare trumpet (see also trumpet). Once the meaning morphed to “trombone” in the 19th century, trombone ensembles started to play a central role in Protestant German churches and do so to the present day. In 2016, “Posaunenchöre” became added to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list . (Note that Exodus 19:13 is the only exception in the Luther Bible. From the 1956 revision on, Widderhorn or “ram’s horn” is used here) (source: Zetzsche)

In the UBS Helps for Translators‘ Human-made Things in the Bible (original title: The Works of Their Hands: Man-made Things in the Bible) it says the following:

Description: The horn was a wind instrument made from the horn of an animal, usually a male sheep.

Usage: The animal horn was softened so that it could be shaped. The point of the horn was cut off to leave a small opening through which the user blew. The vibration of the lips produced the sound.

The ram’s horn served two general purposes:

1. It was blown in certain religious contexts, not as musical accompaniment to worship but as a signal for important events. Some of these events were the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai, the Day of Atonement, the bringing of the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem, and the coronation of kings.

2. It also served as a signal or alarm when war was approaching. Such references are particularly common in the prophetic books, when the prophets are calling the people to repent (Hosea 5:8; 8:1; Joel 2:1; 2:15; Amos 3:6).

Translation: In many passages the purpose of the ram’s horn called shofar in Hebrew was to sound an alarm. This will be easy to express in those cultures where the horns of animals are used as musical instruments to give signals to large groups of people. In other cultures it may be possible to find another instrument that is used for an equivalent purpose. In some languages, for example, instruments such as bells or drums are the warnings for war. Some translations have transliterated the word shofar. Unless the instrument is well known, such a borrowing should normally be accompanied by a footnote or a glossary entry.

In some passages it will be necessary to expand the translation in order to indicate that the blowing of the ram’s horn was not just for music; for example, in Ezekiel 7:14 Contemporary English Version has “A signal has been blown on the trumpet,” and the German Contemporary English Version says “An alarm is sounded” [elsewhere, the same German version refers to the horns as Kriegshörner or “war horns.”]

Man blowing ram’s horn (source: Knowles, revised by Bass (c) British and Foreign Bible Society 1994)

Quoted with permission.

complete verse (Jeremiah 4:19)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Jeremiah 4:19:

  • Kupsabiny: “This is painful!
    I cannot endure it any more.
    My stomach has broken seriously (I am shocked)
    and my heart is jumping amazingly fast in me
    and I am unable to keep silent.
    I am hearing horns
    and the noise of war.” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon: “‘My anguish/pain is extreme. I can- not -bear it! My groaning is too much. My chest is-pounding and I can- not -be-still. For I heard the sound of the trumpet and the shout of the enemy.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
  • English: “I am extremely anguished/sad;
    the pain in my inner being is very severe.
    My heart beats wildly.
    But I cannot remain silent
    because I have heard our enemies blowing their trumpets
    to announce that the battle against Judah will start immediately.” (Source: Translation for Translators)

Translation commentary on Jeremiah 4:19

This verse contains a number of dramatic expressions by which Jeremiah describes his inward anguish and pain. Anguish is more literally “entrails,” which the Hebrews considered the seat of emotion. In 31.20 the same noun is translated “heart” by Revised Standard Version: “Therefore my heart yearns for him.”

My anguish, my anguish should be seen as an exclamation, and the cry is not necessarily linked directly to what follows. The repetition is a poetic form that gives dramatic intensity to the expression. Some languages will retain this, but others will have something such as “How great is my anguish!” or “My anguish is too great!” Or translators may use some other form that conveys this strong emotion.

The image of someone writhing in pain is undoubtedly known everywhere, so that I writhe in pain! does not normally present a translation problem. It can be a separate sentence, as in the text, following the exclamation My anguish, my anguish, although some versions, such as Good News Translation, combine the two: “The pain! I can’t stand the pain!”

Oh, the walls of my heart! is abbreviated by Good News Translation to “My heart!” New International Version renders this with another exclamation: “Oh, the agony of my heart!” In fact the exact meaning of the Hebrew phrase is in doubt, but most interpreters see it being used here as some kind of exclamation, and translators should therefore find something similar to one of these English translations.

My heart is beating wildly (Good News Translation and Revised Standard Version) is more literally “My heart is making an uproar in me.” Revised English Bible has “how my heart throbs!” and New International Version “My heart pounds within me.”

Keep silent is the same verb rendered “left off speaking” by Revised Standard Version in 38.27. Jeremiah is pained so deeply by the hurt of his people that he cannot keep silent.

I hear is more literally either “my soul I hear” or “my soul you hear.” The form of the verb in Hebrew (whether first person or second person) is debated, but the meaning is clear, and Hebrew quite often uses “my soul” as an equivalent of “me” or “myself.”

The sound of the trumpet: See the comment at verse 5.

The alarm of war may be taken either as the equivalent of “the sound of the trumpet” or, and this seems the more likely interpretation, as a separate reference to the tumult of war in general (Good News Translation “the shouts of battle”). New English Bible has “the sound of the battle-cry” and Jerusalem Bible “the cry of war.” Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch translates the last two lines as “I hear signal horns and battle cries!”

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 .