quietness

The interconfessional Chichewa translation (publ. 1999) uses the ideophone bata to describe complete quietness. (Source: Wendland 1998, p. 105)

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

inclusive vs. exclusive pronoun (Jonah 1:11)

Many languages distinguish between inclusive and exclusive first-person plural pronouns (“we”). (Click or tap here to see more details)

The inclusive “we” specifically includes the addressee (“you and I and possibly others”), while the exclusive “we” specifically excludes the addressee (“he/she/they and I, but not you”). This grammatical distinction is called “clusivity.” While Semitic languages such as Hebrew or most Indo-European languages such as Greek or English do not make that distinction, translators of languages with that distinction have to make a choice every time they encounter “we” or a form thereof (in English: “we,” “our,” or “us”).

For this verse, the Adamawa Fulfulde translation uses the exclusive pronoun, excluding Jonah.

The Jarai translation differentiates between the first occurrence of the pronoun (“What shall we do to you” in English) which they translate as exclusive and the second occurrence (“that the sea may quiet for us” in English) where Jonah is being included.

complete verse (Jonah 1:11)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Jonah 1:11:

  • Kupsabiny: “The sea continued to become tough/wild. So, those people asked Jonah, ‘Tell us, what shall we do to you to make the storm leave us?’” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
  • Newari: “The storm became more and more dangerous. So they said to him — "What should we do to you now, to stop this storm?"” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon: “When (the wind) was- now -blowing- very -strongly, the sailors said to Jonas, ‘What are- we (excl.) -to-do to you (sing.) so-that the sea will-become-calm and no-longer trouble us (excl.)?’” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
  • Kankanaey: “When the typhoon was-growing-stronger, they said to Jonas, ‘What shall we (excl.) do to you (sing.) so-that the typhoon will stop?’” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
  • English: “The storm kept getting worse and the waves kept getting bigger. So one of the sailors asked Jonah, ‘What should we do in order to make the sea become calm?’” (Source: Translation for Translators)

sea / lake

The various Greek, Aramaic, Ge’ez, and Latin and Hebrew terms that are translated as “sea,” “ocean,” or “lake” in English are all translated in Chichewa with one term: nyanja. Malawi, where Chichewa is spoken, has a lot of lakes but does not share a border with the ocean. (Source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)

Translation commentary on Jonah 1:11

Here again, in this verse Good News Translation substitutes the historical order for the Hebrew narrative order to give the background to the situation before introducing the words of the sailors. New English Bible retains the Hebrew order, and as in the previous verse introduces the last sentence with an explanatory “for.” Knox gains the same effect by a parenthesis “(Even as they spoke, the waves grew more angry yet).” The description of the storm may, in fact, be a continuation of the words of the sailors, “for the storm is getting worse and worse.” Against this, however, is the fact that precisely the same words occur in verse 13, where they cannot be a part of a speech. The sailors, having learned not only that Jonah was the person who was to blame for the storm, but also that he had done something to arouse God’s anger, now ask how the situation can be saved. In other words, since he knew what had happened to cause the storm, that ought to qualify him to suggest a remedy.

The Revised Standard Version shows a clearer understanding than King James Version of the Hebrew idiom used here: “more and more tempestuous.” In other words, the two verbs used in the Hebrew do not refer to different actions but to the progressive intensification of one action. As against the storm of Good News Translation and New English Bible, some others follow the Hebrew more closely by referring to the “sea”; for example, Revised Standard Version, Jerusalem Bible, An American Translation, Moffatt. In neither Good News Translation nor New English Bible is there any mention of the relation of the storm to the sailors themselves, as in the Hebrew, with its “from upon us.” (Compare Revised Standard Version, Luther 1984, New American Bible, “for us.”)

The question What should we do to you to stop the storm? must often be expressed as a causative; for example, “What should we do to you in order to cause the storm to cease?” or “… cause the wind no longer to blow?”

Quoted with permission from Clark, David J. et al. A Handbook on the Book of Jonah. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1978, 1982, 1993. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .

SIL Translator’s Notes on Jonah 1:11

1:11a

Now the sea was growing worse and worse: All the time the sailors were talking to Jonah the sea grew rougher. The Hebrew idiom used here has the sense of “more and more,” that is, “the sea continued to get rougher.”

1:11b

What must we do to you to calm this sea for us?: Now that the sailors knew that the storm had happened because Jonah had disobeyed the LORD, they asked Jonah what they should do to him to make it stop. They felt that they needed to punish him so they could be rescued from the storm.

© 2020 by SIL International®
Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.