complete verse (Matthew 11:22)

Following are a number of back-translations of Matthew 11:22:

  • Uma: “So, so that you know: on the Kiama Day God’s punishment on you will be greater than his punishment on the Tirus and Sidon people.” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
  • Yakan: “I tell you, when the day is reached when God judges mankind, the judgment for you will be much heavier than the judgment for the people of Tiros and Sidon.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
  • Western Bukidnon Manobo: “Don’t you forget that in the future on the day when God sees to mankind, his punishment on you will be greater than on the people there in Tyre and Sidon.” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
  • Kankanaey: “Therefore I say to you that the punishment of those-from-Tiro and from-Sidon will be less-severe than yours on the day that God judges people.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
  • Tagbanwa: “This which I will say to you really is true, that at the day of judging, really much heavier will be the judgment you are sentenced to, more so than that of the taga Tiro and taga Sidon.” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)
  • Tenango Otomi: “I tell you that on the day when people are judged, these people who have rejected the word will suffer greater punishment than will be suffered by the people who lived in the town of Tyre and in the town of Sidon.” (Source: Tenango Otomi Back Translation)

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.

2nd person pronoun with low register (Japanese)

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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 second person pronoun (“you” and its various forms) as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. The most commonly used anata (あなた) is typically used when the speaker is humbly addressing another person.

In these verses, however, omae (おまえ) is used, a cruder second person pronoun, that Jesus for instance chooses when chiding his disciples. (Source: S. E. Doi, see also S. E. Doi in Journal of Translation, 18/2022, p. 37ff. )

See also first person pronoun with low register and third person pronoun with low register.

Translation commentary on Matthew 11:22

But I tell you (Good News Translation “I assure you”) functions to make emphatic the statement which follows. New English Bible has the same rendering as Revised Standard Version; Phillips “Yet I tell you this”; An American Translation “But I tell you.” Elsewhere in the Gospel this formula is used only in verse 24 and in 26.64; it is equivalent in emphasis to “Truly, I say to you” (see comments at 5.18). Translators are referred to 10.15, where the language is almost exactly the same. But I tell you in this verse can be rendered the same as “Truly, I say to you” in 10.15, with the sole difference being the But. This marks a slight contrast, and most translators do retain it, either with a word or with some construction.

Good News Translation restructures the impersonal passive construction of the Greek (it shall be more tolerable) as an active formation with God as the subject: “God will show more mercy to.” Bible en français courant has “the punishment will be less for … than for you,” and Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch “the people of … will fare better than you.” It shall be more tolerable on the day of judgment is the same as in 10.15. Here it is Tyre and Sidon, there “the land of Sodom and Gomorrah.” A good rendering is “the people of (the towns of) Tyre and Sidon.”

The contrast in 10.15 is “than for that town”; here the punishment will be easier than for you. Keeping these differences in mind, translators will be able to render this verse very much as they did in 10.15.

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on the Gospel of Matthew. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1988. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .