In many, if not most of the languages in the Philippines, proper nouns, such as personal names, are tagged with a marker that signals their grammatical role within a sentence. For Tagalog and the Visayan languages , this typically includes si to mark the proper noun as the actor or subject (nominative case), ni to mark the proper noun as an owner (genitive case), and kay to mark the proper noun as as an indirect object, i.e. the one to or toward whom an action is directed (dative case). All of these also have plural forms — sina, nina and kina respectively — and unlike in the biblical languages or in English, the plural form has to be used when only a single proper name is mentioned but implicitly that proper name includes more than just one.
In this verse, where English translates “Abimelech (fought),” the Tagalog translation translates “sina Abimelec” because the context of the text makes clear that Abimelech was with his company. (Source: Kermit Titrud and Steve Quakenbush)
In Gbaya, the notion of a calamity affecting a large groups of people at the same time and/or a destructive fire is emphasized in the referenced verses with the ideophone gbɔyɛɛ.
Ideophones are a class of sound symbolic words expressing human sensation that are used as literary devices in many African languages. (Source: Philip Noss)
Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Judges 9:45:
Kupsabiny: “After that, Abimelech came to fight other people who remained in the city. They fought the whole day until they had defeated and taken the city. After that, they killed all other people who were in the city and set fire to the city and then, they spread salt to show that this place would become a deserted place forever.” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
Newari: “The battle continued the whole day. Abimelech captured the city, killed all the people and destroyed the city. Then [he] scattered salt on the ground there.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
Hiligaynon: “The whole day long Abimelec and-company fought. Some time later they really put-under- (their) jurisdiction the town, and they killed its residents. Afterwards they destroyed the town and then scattered- salt -upon (it).” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
English: “Abimelech and his men fought all day. They captured the city and killed all the people. They tore down all the buildings, and then they threw salt over the ruins in order that nothing would grow there again.” (Source: Translation for Translators)
This verse explains that the battle against the city of Shechem was intense and long. The word city occurs three times, emphasizing that this place and its inhabitants were completely destroyed.
And Abimelech fought against the city all that day: The Hebrew waw conjunction rendered And introduces the next event in the story, so it is an appropriate connector here. However, many versions prefer to omit it, moving the temporal phrase all that day to the beginning of this verse (New International Version, New Jerusalem Bible). Fought renders the Hebrew verb lacham meaning “battle” or “wage war” (see verse 1.1). Translators must find a word here that can describe continued fighting and not a single attack. Though the word city often refers to its inhabitants, here it probably also refers to its strongholds, walls, and other defenses. The phrase all that day means throughout the entire day, probably referring to the daylight hours.
He took the city, and killed the people that were in it: This sentence has a chiasmb in Hebrew to emphasize the total destruction of Shechem. It reads literally:
Quoted with permission from Zogbo, Lynell and Ogden, Graham S. A Handbook on Judges. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2019. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .
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