formal pronoun: Jesus addressing his disciples and common people

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.

Here, Jesus is addressing his disciples, individuals and/or crowds with the formal pronoun, showing respect.

In most Dutch translations, Jesus addresses his disciples and common people with the informal pronoun, whereas they address him with the formal form.

Scriptures Plain & Simple (Mark 6:30-44)

Barclay Newman, a translator on the teams for both the Good News Bible and the Contemporary English Version, translated passages of the New Testament into English and published them in 2014, “in a publication brief enough to be non-threatening, yet long enough to be taken seriously, and interesting enough to appeal to believers and un-believers alike.” The following is the translation of Mark 6:30-44:

One day, Jesus and his closest followers
were surrounded by so many spectators
       that they didn’t even have a chance to eat.
Jesus said, “Let’s leave here and find a place
       where we can be alone and get some rest.”

So they jumped in a boat and rowed away,
but people found out and walked there
       before the boat arrived.

As Jesus stepped ashore, he noticed the crowd —
it was like a scattering of sheep without a shepherd.
       He felt sorry for the people and started teaching them.

That evening his followers came to him and said,
       “It’s getting dark in this desert-like place.
Stop teaching and release the crowds,
       so they can start searching for somewhere to buy food.”

“You give them something to eat,” replied Jesus

“Don’t you know,” they questioned, “a year’s wages
       would barely be enough to feed this crowd?”

“Find out how much bread is available,” commanded Jesus.

They found out and reported,
       “Five small loaves and two little fish.”

Jesus instructed his followers to tell the people to
sit down on the green grass
       in groups of a hundred and in groups of fifty.

Looking up toward heaven, Jesus blessed
       both the bread and the fish.
Then he broke the bread and handed it to his followers,
       who distributed it among the crowd.
He also divided the fish, so everyone could have some.
After everyone had eaten and was satisfied,
the followers of Jesus gathered enough leftovers
       to fill twelve large baskets.

large numbers in Angguruk Yali

Many languages use a “body part tally system” where body parts function as numerals (see body part tally systems with a description). One such language is Angguruk Yali which uses a system that ends at the number 27. To circumvent this limitation, the Angguruk Yali translators adopted a strategy where a large number is first indicated with an approximation via the traditional system, followed by the exact number according to Arabic numerals. For example, where in 2 Samuel 6:1 it says “thirty thousand” in the English translation, the Angguruk Yali says teng-teng angge 30.000 or “so many rounds [following the body part tally system] 30,000,” likewise, in Acts 27:37 where the number “two hundred seventy-six” is used, the Angguruk Yali translation says teng-teng angge 276 or “so many rounds 276,” or in John 6:10 teng-teng angge 5.000 for “five thousand.”

This strategy is used in all the verses referenced here.

Source: Lourens de Vries in The Bible Translator 1998, p. 409ff.

See also numbers in Ngalum and numbers in Kombai.

3rd person pronoun with high register (Japanese)

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 choice of a third person singular and plural pronoun (“he,” “she,” “it” and their various forms) as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. While it’s not uncommon to avoid pronouns altogether in Japanese, there are is a range of third person pronouns that can be used. In these verses a number of them are used that pay particularly much respect to the referred person (or, in fact, God, as in Exodus 15:2), including kono kata (この方), sono kata (その方), and ano kata (あの方), meaning “this person,” “that person,” and “that person over there.”

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

See also third person pronoun with exalted register.

Translation commentary on Mark 6:37 – 6:38

Exegesis:

apokritheis eipen (cf. 3.33 for this construction) ‘he answered.’

dote … humeis ‘you … give’: the personal pronoun here is emphatic – ‘you yourselves give (them something to eat)’ (cf. The Modern Speech New Testament, Moffatt, Goodspeed, Translator’s New Testament).

dēnariōn diakosiōn artous ‘loaves of two hundred denarii’: the genitive expresses the price, ‘two hundred denarii worth of loaves.’

dēnarion (12.15; 14.5) ‘denarius’: at the time of Jesus the coin is generally supposed to have been the equivalent of a rural worker’s daily wage, as in Mt. 20.2.

artos ‘bread,’ ‘loaf’: in this incident probably barley loaves are indicated (cf. Jn. 6.9).

posous echete artous; ‘how many loaves have you?’

posos (8.5, 19, 20; 9.21; 15.4) ‘how much,’ ‘how many.’

ichthuas (6.41, 43) ‘fish’: here, of course, not fresh fish but prepared fish, either cooked or pickled (cf. Jn. 6.9).

Translation:

Answered is not used in the sense of ‘answer a question,’ but ‘reply to their statement’ or ‘speak in return.’

The question of the disciples is probably best interpreted as a rhetorical question, not a request for permission or authorization to go and buy; a kind of exclamatory question, implying the utter foolishness of such an idea (compare the parallel passages: Mt. 14.13-21, Luke 9.11-17, and John 6.5-13).

Denarii poses a problem in translation, for though it was a coin for which the silver content would be equivalent to about 20 cents in American money, its buying power was much greater, as a result of the relatively low standard of living prevailing in Palestine in those days among the lower classes. It would not be reasonable to translate it by some equivalent coin equal to 20 cents U.S. Moreover, if one chooses any local currency the translation may be badly out of line within a short time, due to extreme inflation, as has occurred in so many parts of the world. (Some countries have seen inflationary pressures within the last two or three years change currency rates from as much as 100 to 1 – in terms of the dollar – to as much as 10,000 to 1.) In areas where there is a relatively stable currency and there is a unit of currency roughly equivalent to a day’s wage of a common laborer, such a coin may be used. In most instances, however, it has seemed best to borrow the Greek word denarius, and speak of ‘bread worth 200 denarius coins’ (or ‘pieces of money’). One can then use a footnote and explain that a denarius (or whatever the appropriate transliterated form might be) was equivalent to a day’s wage. It is recommended that one employ a short table of Weights and Measures (see appendix) in publications of New Testaments or Bibles, and that in such a table the various units of currency be related to the basic unit of the denarius.

Five, and two fish must be reproduced in full grammatical form in some languages, ‘we have five loaves and two fish.’

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on the Gospel of Mark. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1961. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .