broken up

In Gbaya, the notion of being broken up into small pieces is emphasized with the ideophone ndúkú-ndúkú.

In Habakkuk 3:16 “rottenness enters into my bones” is translated as “my bones have decomposed and broken up,” emphasized by ndúkú-ndúkú.

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

gentiles / nations

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The Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin that is often translated as “gentiles” (or “nations”) in English is often translated as a “local equivalent of ‘foreigners,'” such as “the people of other lands” (Guerrero Amuzgo), “people of other towns” (Tzeltal), “people of other languages” (San Miguel El Grande Mixtec), “strange peoples” (Navajo (Dinė)) (this and above, see Bratcher / Nida), “outsiders” (Ekari), “people of foreign lands” (Kannada), “non-Jews” (North Alaskan Inupiatun), “people being-in-darkness” (a figurative expression for people lacking cultural or religious insight) (Toraja-Sa’dan) (source for this and three above Reiling / Swellengrebel), “from different places all people” (Martu Wangka) (source: Carl Gross).

Tzeltal translates it as “people in all different towns,” Chicahuaxtla Triqui as “the people who live all over the world,” Highland Totonac as “all the outsider people,” Sayula Popoluca as “(people) in every land” (source: Waterhouse / Parrott in Notes on Translation October 1967, p. 1ff.), Chichimeca-Jonaz as “foreign people who are not Jews,” Sierra de Juárez Zapotec as “people of other nations” (source of this and one above: Viola Waterhouse in Notes on Translation August 1966, p. 86ff.), Highland Totonac as “outsider people” (source: Waterhouse / Parrott in Notes on Translation October 1967, p. 1ff.), Uma as “people who are not the descendants of Israel” (source: Uma Back Translation), “other ethnic groups” (source: Newari Back Translation), and Yakan as “the other tribes” (source: Yakan Back Translation).

In Chichewa, it is translated with mitundu or “races.” (Source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)

See also nations.

complete verse (Jeremiah 50:23)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Jeremiah 50:23:

  • Kupsabiny: “The land of Babylon used to smash people with a hammer
    but now, the thing they used to smash others with has been broken to pieces.
    Look, how much Babylon has been subdued,
    when one looks at/compares with other communities
    over what has come to them,” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon: “Babilonia is like a hammer that shattered the nations, but now it was smashed already. The nations were- very -astonished/stunned when they saw the destruction of Babilonia!” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)

Translation commentary on Jeremiah 50:23

The constructions that begin with How in Revised Standard Version are strong affirmations. Translators can sometimes say “See how,” but in other cases they may use an expression such as “Look….”

The hammer of the whole earth: For the imagery of the hammer, see 23.29, and for its application to Babylonia, see 51.20-23. Both Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch and Good News Translation identify Babylonia as the hammer, though they each handle it differently: “Babylon, you are a hammer…” (Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch); “Babylonia hammered…” (Good News Translation). The figure is a true description of that nation, which had beaten other nations into subjection as though it was using a hammer on them. For the first two lines translators can say, for example, “Babylon was like a hammer that hit [or, hammered] the whole world. But now it has no power, for it is broken.”

Cut down: For many English readers this would make them think of what someone does to a tree; New Jerusalem Bible, New American Bible, and Good News Translation prefer “shattered.” Traduction œcuménique de la Bible renders the first two lines as “How the hammer of the whole earth is broken in pieces, shattered!”

A horror: The term is first used in 2.15, where it is rendered “waste” by Good News Translation. Here the last two lines can be expressed as “Babylon has become something that horrifies all the nations.”

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 .