17All the people who have determined to go to Egypt to settle there shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence; they shall have no remnant or survivor from the disaster that I am bringing upon them.
Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Jeremiah 42:17:
Kupsabiny: “War, hunger and sicknesses till destroy all the people who think about going to Egypt so that not even one person among them will escape the destruction that I will send to you.’” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
Hiligaynon: “Yes, all who want to live in Egipto will-die in war, famine, and disease. No one among them can-be-saved or can-flee from the destruction which I will-send to them.’” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
English: “That is what will happen to all you who are determined to go to Egypt and live there. Some of you will be killed by the swords of your enemies, and others of you will die from famines and from diseases. None of you will escape the disasters that I will bring on you.’” (Source: Translation for Translators)
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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.
All the men should be rendered inclusively as “Everyone” or “All the people.”
Who set their faces: See verse 15.
Sword … famine … pestilence: See 14.12.
Remnant (see verse 2 and 6.9) is used in the same sense as survivor, and so the two Hebrew nouns may be translated by one noun in many languages. Good News Translation retains two expressions, shifting from noun constructions to verb constructions: “Not one of them will survive, not one will escape.”
For evil with the sense of “disaster” or “destruction,” see 1.14.
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 .
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