The Hebrew and Greek that is translated as “love” in English is typically translated in Hakka Chinese as thung-siak / 痛惜 or “pain-love” when it refers to God’s love.
The same term is used for a variety of Hebrew terms that cover a range of English translations that refer to God as the agent, including “love,” “compassion,” and “mercy.”
Paul McLean explains: “[Thung-siak / 痛惜] has been used for many years in a popular Hakka-Christian mountain song based on John 3:16. The translation team decided that for this and other reasons it would be a good rendering here. It helps point to the fact that God’s ‘love’ is a compassionate (cum passio, with suffering) love.”
Following are a number of back-translation of John 3:16:
Tezoatlán Mixtec: “For since God loves very much the people of this world, therefore he gave his only son to arrive in this world, and whoever trusts in him, they will never die. Instead they will be able to live forever.”
Ayutla Mixtec: “Because since God loves so much the people of this world, therefore he sent me, his only son to this world. So whoever trusts in me, they will never die before God, instead they will receive life that never ends.”
Uma: “Like this God loves all people in the world, with the result that he gave his Only Child, so that whoever believes in that his Child, they will not receive punishment/condemnation, but they will receive good life forever.”
Kankanaey: “Since God’s love for people in this world is great, he sent his only Child so that whoever believes in him, he would not be separated from God to be punished, but rather there would be in him life that has no end.”
Eastern Highland Otomi: “God very much loves the people who live here on earth. Therefore he sent his only son to be killed in order that every one who believes in him will not be lost, rather he will have the new life forever.”
Tagbanwa: “For God really values very much all people here under the heavens. Therefore he gave his one-and-only Son, so that as for whoever will believe-in/obey and trust-in/rely-on him, he won’t get to go there to suffering/hardship, but on the contrary he will be given life without ending.”
Western Bukidnon Manobo: “All mankind is very big in the breath of God and because of this, even his only son he did not hold back, but rather he sent him here so that all who believe in him, their souls will not be punished, but rather they will be given life without end.”
Miahuatlán Zapotec: “Because God greatly loves people of the world, because of it, God sent his only son to earth so that all men who believe in God’s son, those men will not be lost to the evil thing. On the contrary, they will have life forever.” (Source for this and above: John Williams in the Seeing Scripture Anew blog.)
Yakan: “God really loved mankind, therefore he gave/handed over his only Son to be killed so that all who trust in his Son will not be separated from God but will live forever there in the presence of God.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
Keley-I Kallahan: “Since God loves all people on earth so much, he sent his only child, so that all people who believe-obey him will not be far from God in the underworld of darkness, but will be given a second life with God that never ends.” Richard Hohulin (in Holzhausen 1991, p. 35ff.) explains how he and his team arrived at this translation (display by clicking or tapping here)
The biblical text says that God loved “the world.” The Kalanguya [the speakers of Keley-I Kallahan] would understand this to mean that God so desired the earth that He gave His Son for it. This, of course, is not the meaning of this biblical passage. John did not mean the physical world, but the totality of all people on earth, to whom God’s love is directed. Therefore, the translator completes the sentence with “all people on earth” and thus expresses unmistakably for the Kalanguya what it is about.
Now the little word “so” is still missing. But there is simply no corresponding word. Instead, the translator discovers the prefix naka, which is placed before the verb. It expresses about the same thing: God loves with great power, beyond what can be expected. So the prefix is added and thus the meaning is established.
The next difficulty is the statement that God gave His “Son.” For this, too, the exact corresponding word is missing; the Kalanguya know only the more general word “child.” It could be supplemented to “child who was a boy.” But that would be a cumbersome, unnatural way of expressing it. Moreover, the Kalanguya would see in the emphasis on the child being masculine an indication that God just gave a boy, not a girl. So the translator leaves it with the word child. He can assume that in many other parts of the gospel it is clearly expressed that Jesus was masculine.
Now it is still said that God “gave” his son. The Kalanguya would never say this, because they use that word only for giving things. People, in their view, cannot be “given.” The translator must take this into consideration as well. Finally, the word “send” is chosen as a substitute.
Also, with the word “lost” or “perish” the translator struggles. The Kalanguya have no concept of eternal punishment or a hell. According to their traditional religion, they believe that after death people go to the underworld and continue to exist there as spirit beings. But this is not conceived as a punishment, but as the fate of all people. The translator builds on that concept, but tries to add that there is something terrible, terrifying behind the biblical concept of perishing. The result is a whole descriptive sentence for the one word “They will be far from God in the underworld of darkness.” Is this not going too far? Doesn’t the translator go beyond the original text with this? But what other possibilities are there for him? After all, he doesn’t want to give his people the idea that Jesus came only to save them from getting lost somewhere in the jungle and never being found again.
The expression “eternal life” presents a final difficulty. For the word eternal, the Ifugao expression “unending” could be used. But if left at that, people would misunderstand it. Either they would understand in their traditional idea of the continued existence in the realm of the dead or as a continued life without dying. Neither of these is the meaning of the passage. So here, too, an explanatory paraphrase must express what is meant: “They will be given a second life with God that will never end.”
A single verse — but how many questions there were to clarify, how many problems to consider! Yes, Bible translation is not an easy undertaking. It requires a good knowledge of the language, a deft touch, and also the courage to go beyond the usual notion of a literal translation in order to fully express the meaning of the original text. But it is worth the effort, because now also the Kalanguya can hear and understand it in their language: “Since God loves all people on earth so much, he sent his only child, so that all people who believe-obey him will not be far from God in the underworld of darkness, but will be given a second life with God that never ends.”
Daniel Shaw reflects on the complex translation of this verse into Samo. Click or tap here to see the story.
As I learned in Sunday school, John 3:16 is what the Bible is all about — the Gospel in a nutshell. But how was I to communicate this verse without these key words? Like any other language, Samo is not deficient. I knew Nida and Taber’s famous dictum, ‘If it can be said in one language, it can be said in another.’ I quickly realized I had to get beyond the horizontal and surface plane. This was not just about how to translate John 3:16. That would have been simply a matter of applying translation principles to a particular language problem — a transposition of human ideas. Rather, I wanted to help them deal with the theological issue of who God is: God’s power, God’s relationship with human beings, and the far-reaching implications of that relationship for dealing with is¬sues of life, death, and eternal life. I needed to get beyond the immediate text to the whole of Scripture and allow the Samo to stand in awe at this incredible God who included them in his plan for humanity. What could this mean for them individually and as a group of former cannibals living in the dense rain forest on the Island of New Guinea?
As a translator I knew how to solve the lexical and semantic problems. As an anthropologist I knew the importance of considering both the cultural setting of those who first received John’s Gospel, as well as the need to understand the Samo culture. I knew the value of analyzing collocational ranges. I appreciated the value of text /communication styles and how these are used for effective presentation of a mes¬sage. I also knew the Samo were aware of a ‘guy in the sky’ who was always ready to zap them when they did wrong (mothers would caution playing children not to make too much noise lest they attract his attention). But this was not the concept of God characterized in John 3:16 by the apostle.
Eventually I discovered the concept of the ayo, of the oldest among a group of brothers who lived in a longhouse. This was a benevolent, caring man who was never in charge but always in control — a traffic director for the entire household. They spoke of him as ‘the authority person.’ When combined with an all-inclusive possessive pronoun this term eventually became the term we used for God — oye ayo, ‘our authority person.’ (See God.) When extended to all the people who ‘sleep in all the places of the earth’ (a way to communicate ‘the world’ — see world) the Samo began to appreciate God in a whole new way, in relationship to themselves and to their enemies.
The relationship between the ayo and those in a longhouse reflected a strong, caring concern for everyone in the household — ‘love.’ For the Samo, a very practical, down to earth people surviving in a hostile environment, belief was a matter of experience. How do they know something is true? They see it, hear it, feel it! In short, they experience truth. This has profound implications far beyond trying to translate John 3:16. It relates to the broader context of all of John chapter 3, including Nicodemus’s awe of Christ and Israel’s experience with the brass serpent in the desert, particular experiences tied to the history of a specific people in a particular time and place. More broadly, it is about how humans experience God.
As a Bible translator I was, in fact, communicating through this verse in its place within a text, an entire semantic constellation tied to the very purpose of Scripture. Suddenly the Samo found themselves in the flow of human involvement with a caring God who knew them and wanted to have an intimate, family-type rela¬tionship with them — not merely sit in judgment and zap them without warning. As a result of understanding John 3:16, the Samo also found themselves in relationship with people beyond their recognized circle of alliance, with the whole of humanity beyond their borders, including people they normally considered enemies (see thief (parable of the wise householder)). That the ‘one in control’ of their feared enemies, the Bedamoni, also had authority over them was not only revelatory, it was transforming. This new understanding — experienced through relationship — had eternal implications for a ‘life that would not end’ and gave insight to a spirit world populated by evil beings, but also included the pool of ancestors who constantly reentered the world to energize a newborn baby and move through the cycle of life once again to join the ancestors and assist the living in their struggle. These new and far-reaching theological in¬sights relating to the Samo also challenged my understanding of the text, forced me to reevaluate my own assumptions, and made me appreciate more deeply the Samo from whom I learned so much about God. (Source: Shaw / Van Engen 2003, p. 177f.)
Lloyd Peckham explains the Mairasi translation: “In secret stories, not knowable to women nor children, there was a magical fruit of life. If referred to vaguely, without specifying the specific ‘fruit,’ it can be an expression for eternity.”
Translator Lee Bramlett submitted this on the translation of the Greek word that is translated into English as “love” (referring to God’s love). This letter was then reposted by Wycliffe Bible Translators (see here ):
“Translator Lee Bramlett was confident that God had left His mark on the Hdi culture somewhere, but though he searched, he could not find it. Where was the footprint of God in the history or daily life of these Cameroonian people? What clue had He planted to let the Hdi know who He was and how He wanted to relate to them?
“Then one night in a dream, God prompted Lee to look again at the Hdi word for ‘love.’ Lee and his wife, Tammi, had learned that verbs in Hdi consistently end in one of three vowels. For almost every verb, they could find forms ending in i, a, and u. But when it came to the word for love, they could only find i and a. Why no u?
“Lee asked the Hdi translation committee, which included the most influential leaders in the community, ‘Could you ‘ɗvi’ your wife?’ ‘Yes,’ they said. That would mean that the wife had been loved but the love was gone.
“‘Could you ‘ɗva’ your wife?’ ‘Yes,’ they said. That kind of love depended on the wife’s actions. She would be loved as long as she remained faithful and cared for her husband well.
“‘Could you ‘ɗvu’ your wife?’ Everyone laughed. ‘Of course not! If you said that, you would have to keep loving your wife no matter what she did, even if she never got you water, never made you meals. Even if she committed adultery, you would be compelled to just keep on loving her. No, we would never say ‘ɗvu.’ It just doesn’t exist.’
“Lee sat quietly for a while, thinking about John 3:16, and then he asked, ‘Could God ‘ɗvu’ people?’
“There was complete silence for three or four minutes; then tears started to trickle down the weathered faces of these elderly men. Finally they responded. ‘Do you know what this would mean? This would mean that God kept loving us over and over, millennia after millennia, while all that time we rejected His great love. He is compelled to love us, even though we have sinned more than any people.’
“One simple vowel and the meaning was changed from ‘I love you based on what you do and who you are,’ to ‘I love you, based on Who I am. I love you because of Me and NOT because of you.’
“God had encoded the story of His unconditional love right into their language. For centuries, the little word was there — unused but available, grammatically correct and quite understandable. When the word was finally spoken, it called into question their entire belief system. If God was like that, did they need the spirits of the ancestors to intercede for them? Did they need sorcery to relate to the spirits? Many decided the answer was no, and the number of Christ-followers quickly grew from a few hundred to several thousand.
“The New Testament in Hdi is ready to be printed now, and 29,000 speakers will soon be able to feel the impact of passages like Ephesians 5:25: ‘Husbands, ‘ɗvu’ your wives, just as Christ ‘ɗvu’-d the church…'”
In Hawai’i Creole English the love that God has is often translated as love an aloha. Aloha has a variety of meanings, including “hello,” “goodbye,” “love,” “thank you,” etc.
The Philippine languages of Cebuano, Tagalog, and Pampanga use a word (gugma, pag-ibig, and lugud respectively) that is also used for a “noble, refined love of people for each other,” distinct from romantic love. (Source: G. Henry Waterman in The Bible Translator 1960, p. 24ff. )
In Mairasi, the term that is used for love by God, for God and for people is the same: “desire one’s face.” (source: Enggavoter 2004)
Joseph Hong (in The Bible Translator 1996, p. 233ff. ) explains the translation of this kind of love into Khmer: “Expressing the idea of God’s love has also caused some problems. Since the Khmer knows only about the Buddha as compassionate, the translation team was at a loss to find an adequate term to express God’s love for humankind which is so great that God even allowed himself to become a human being. A solution was found which says that God “relates himself” to (that is, “interacts with”) human beings, srolanh (ស្រលាញ់).”
“A particularly interesting development in the history of Christianity [related to translation] took place with respect to the Greek term monogenés, literally, ‘only, unique, one of kind.’ It was used of Isaac as the son of Abraham [see Gen. 22:2], though Isaac was not the only son of Abraham, for he had a son Ishmael, and with a later wife Keturah, several sons. But Isaac was the only son of a particular kind, that is to say, the unique son of the promise. The term monogenés was translated into the LatinVulgate as unigenitus, meaning literally ‘only begotten’ [in English — or likewise traditionally in Mandarin Chinese: “dúshēng 獨 生,” Italian: “unigenito,” Spanish “unigénito,” or German: “eingeboren”] but in Greek the equivalent of ‘only begotten’ would have two n’s and not just one (monogennes). Nevertheless, the Latin misinterpretation of monogenés has constituted such a long tradition that any attempt to speak of Jesus as the ‘unique son of God’ rather than the ‘only begotten son’ is often announced as a case of blatant heresy.” (Source: Nida 1984, p. 114.)
In Waiwai, the Greek that is translated as “only begotten Son” in English in John 3:16 is translated as cewnan tumumururosa okwe, where the “particle okwe indicates dearness, and it must be included in Waiwai for the expression ‘only begotten Son’ to mean anything like what it means to God or to us as Christians.” (Source: Robert Hawkins (in The Bible Translator 1962, pp. 164ff. )
The Greek that is often translated as “perish” in English is translated in Latvian in this particular verse as pazust: “get lost” or “disappear.” (Source: Katie Roth)
In Norwegian, the 2011 and earlier editions of the Norwegian Bible Society use the phrase gå fortapt or “be damned” / “get lost” both of which carry a highly specialized Christian meaning. The 2024 edition will replace that term with gå til grunne or “perish.” (See this article and also this one for some opposition to this choice.)
The Greek that is translated as “world” in English is translated as “all the people who sleep in all the places of the earth” in Samo (source: Shaw / Van Engen 2003, p. 178) or “world people” in Lisu (source: Cooke 1947, p. 29).
The Greek that is translates as “(God) gave his only son” in English is translated in Amganad Ifugao as “(God) sent his only son” because “you can give animals and things, but you can’t give people.” (Source: Larson 1998, p. 86)
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