addressing God

Translators of different languages have found different ways with what kind of formality God is addressed. The first example is from a language where God is always addressed distinctly formal whereas the second is one where the opposite choice was made.

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Like many languages (but unlike Greek or Hebrew or English), Tuvan uses a formal vs. informal 2nd person pronoun (a familiar vs. a respectful “you”). Unlike other languages that have this feature, however, the translators of the Tuvan Bible have attempted to be very consistent in using the different forms of address in every case a 2nd person pronoun has to be used in the translation of the biblical text.

As Voinov shows in Pronominal Theology in Translating the Gospels (in: The Bible Translator 2002, p. 210ff. ), the choice to use either of the pronouns many times involved theological judgment. While the formal pronoun can signal personal distance or a social/power distance between the speaker and addressee, the informal pronoun can indicate familiarity or social/power equality between speaker and addressee.

In these verses, in which humans address God, the informal, familiar pronoun is used that communicates closeness.

Voinov notes that “in the Tuvan Bible, God is only addressed with the informal pronoun. No exceptions. An interesting thing about this is that I’ve heard new Tuvan believers praying with the formal form to God until they are corrected by other Christians who tell them that God is close to us so we should address him with the informal pronoun. As a result, the informal pronoun is the only one that is used in praying to God among the Tuvan church.”

In Gbaya, “a superior, whether father, uncle, or older brother, mother, aunt, or older sister, president, governor, or chief, is never addressed in the singular unless the speaker intends a deliberate insult. When addressing the superior face to face, the second person plural pronoun ɛ́nɛ́ or ‘you (pl.)’ is used, similar to the French usage of vous.

Accordingly, the translators of the current version of the Gbaya Bible chose to use the plural ɛ́nɛ́ to address God. There are a few exceptions. In Psalms 86:8, 97:9, and 138:1, God is addressed alongside other “gods,” and here the third person pronoun o is used to avoid confusion about who is being addressed. In several New Testament passages (Matthew 21:23, 26:68, 27:40, Mark 11:28, Luke 20:2, 23:37, as well as in Jesus’ interaction with Pilate and Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well) the less courteous form for Jesus is used to indicate ignorance of his position or mocking (source Philip Noss).

In Dutch and Western Frisian translations, however, God is always addressed with the formal pronoun.

See also female second person singular pronoun in Psalms.

Translation commentary on Job 10:10

Didst thou not pour me out like milk: related thoughts on the formation of the embryo are expressed in such passages as Psalm 139.13, “For thou didst form my inward parts, thou didst knit me together in my mother’s womb.” Some of the ancient Greeks taught that the semen clotted to form the fetus. The Koran speaks of the marvel of procreation through a drop of semen or a clot of blood. Pour translates the causative form of the Hebrew verb, which means to make flow, and is used in Ezekiel 22.20 in the sense of making metals molten, and in 2 Kings 22.9 of melting down silver coins for other purposes. Good News Translation has chosen to set aside the metaphors in this verse with “You gave my father strength to beget me” in line a. In so doing Good News Translation changes the nature of the poetic description of procreation. In verse 9 Job says God has made him of clay. Gordis sees the process referred to in this verse as the semen being poured like milk into the womb, where it solidifies like cheese. In verse 11 it will finally be knitted with bones and muscles and covered with skin.

This poetic description appears to be unaware of the active participation of the female ovum uniting with the male sperm to form the fetus. The adjustments made by Good News Translation affect the intention of the author and distort the nature of his description of prenatal formation. It is likely that the significance of the images in verse 10 will be lost in many languages unless more of the implied information supporting the images of milk and cheese is provided. For example, Bible en français courant translates verse 10 “One day you formed me in the body of my mother as one curdles milk in the bottom of a pot.” It is also possible to render the line as a rhetorical question, “Did you not pour me like milk into my mother’s womb?”

And curdle me like cheese: this line is parallel to the previous line, and a comparison is used again here. This time it is the curdling of cheese. The primary meaning of the verb translated curdle is “coagulate.” Here it is used in its causative form, meaning to “stiffen or congeal,” and so with cheese, curdle. The word translated cheese, which is cognate with Arabic, is found only here. The line may be rendered, for example, “and caused that milk to curdle like cheese.” In areas in which the making of cheese is unknown, it will be better to avoid these images and say, for example, “Did you not pour me like water into my mother’s womb and make my body start growing there?”

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, Wiliam. A Handbook on Job. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1992. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .