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 48:31)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Jeremiah 48:31:

  • Kupsabiny: “So I mourn for Moab
    I cry for all the people of Moab
    and I mourn over the people of Kir-hareseth.” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon: “Therefore I will weep for Moab and to those-who-come-from Kir Hareseth.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
  • English: “So now I will wail for Moab;
    I will cry about all its people.
    I will moan for the men of Kir-Hareseth city, the old capital of Moab.” (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 48:31

The three verbs wail … cry out … mourn have essentially the same meaning, and so Good News Translation uses only one verb: “And so I will weep for everyone in Moab and for the people of Kir Heres.” Of course, translators may use three terms if they wish to retain the parallelism; for example, “Therefore I weep for Moab; yes, I cry loudly for the whole country; I mourn for the people of Kir Heres.”

For wail see 4.8.

Men, as in Good News Translation, probably refers to “the people.”

Kir-heres was an ancient capital of Moab, about 18 kilometers (11 miles) east of the Dead Sea.

In Hebrew I mourn (first person) is actually “he mourns” (third person), which Hebrew Old Testament Text Project understands in an impersonal sense “one muses.” Then translators could have “people reflect on the citizens of Kir Heres.” However, most translations use the first person with the idea of mourning throughout the verse without noting this problem.

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 .