complete verse (Job 33:18)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Job 33:18:

  • Kupsabiny: “He guards the life of a person so he is not lost,
    saving us from calamity.” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
  • Newari: “He does save his soul from the world of the dead,
    and saves his life from being destroyed by the sword.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon: “and so-that he will-be-saved from death.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
  • English: “He does not want us to be destroyed;
    he wants to prevent us from dying while we are still young.” (Source: Translation for Translators)

Honorary "are" construct denoting God ("do/make")

Click or tap here to see the rest of this insight.

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 usage of an honorific construction where the morpheme are (され) is affixed on the verb as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. This is particularly done with verbs that have God as the agent to show a deep sense of reverence. Here, s-are-ru (される) or “do/make” is used.

(Source: S. E. Doi, see also S. E. Doi in Journal of Translation, 18/2022, p. 37ff. )

Translation commentary on Job 33:18

God’s actions are taken to save man from a fate such as described in this verse. He keeps back his soul from the Pit: keeps back renders the terms used in 7.11; 16.5, 6, with the sense of “restrain” or “check.” Here it means “to spare, to save someone.” New Jerusalem Bible translates “preserves his soul.” Soul translates the Hebrew nefesh, referring to a person’s physical life. Pit, as in 17.14, refers generally to the world of the dead or more specifically to “the grave.” Good News Translation has avoided Pit in this line, which it translates negatively, “He will not let them be destroyed.” Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch is closer to the original with “So he rescues their life from the grave,” which gives a good translation model. In some languages this expression may have to be restructured, for example, “When they are about to die and be buried, he saves them.”

His life from perishing by the sword suggests a violent death, but there is nothing in the context to support this rendering. The verb translated perishing can mean “pass through, cross over,” and although the word translated sword sometimes means “weapon,” neither that meaning nor sword are suitable as a parallel to Pit in line a. Accordingly some scholars identify the Hebrew word translated sword with a “canal” or “river,” as in Nehemiah 3.15 and Isaiah 8.6, and associated in ancient mythology with the underground river on which the soul travels to its destination. Others, like Good News Translation, understand sword not as the instrument of violent death, but of death generally, and so Good News Translation “He saves them from death itself,” which gives the same thought without the appeal to the mythological image of crossing the river to death. Some translators may feel that this line repeats line a so fully that to translate it will be repetitious. Parallelism may best be retained in the translation by following the thought of crossing the river, and translating similarly to New English Bible, “and stops him from crossing the river of death.” In this case “river of death” may also be expressed as “the river that leads to death” or “the river that carries away the dead.”

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 .