25“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?
The Greek and Hebrew that are translated as “worry” or “anxious” in English are translated in Navajo (Dinė) as “my mind is killing me.” (Source: Nida 1952, p. 24)
Nida (1952, p. 124) also gives other examples:
“The Piro in Peru use almost the same idiom when they say that a worried man is ‘one who is hard chased.’ The worried person is like a pursued animal in the forest trying to elude the hunter. The impenetrable jungle of the future, the failing strength, and the exhaustion of doubt all press hard upon the soul. And one’s heart seems to fail and even disappear. This is the very phrase employed by the Tzeltal Indians in the rugged mountains of southern Mexico. They describe ‘worry’ by the words ‘their hearts are gone.'”
During the translation of the New Testament into Huixtán Tzotzil, translation consultant Marion Cowan found that questions where the answer is obvious, affirmative rhetorical questions, as well questions raising objections tended to cause confusion among the readers. So these are rendered as simple or emphatic statements.
Accordingly, Matthew 6:25b reads “Your food is not important: your life is important. Your clothes are not important: your body is important.”
Following are a number of back-translations of Matthew 6:25:
Uma: “‘That is why I say to you: don’t be afraid or say: ‘What are we (incl.) going to eat, and drink?’ Don’t be afraid or say: ‘What shall we (incl.) wear?’ Because your life is more than food and clothes.” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
Yakan: “‘Therefore I say to you: do not worry about your livelihood as to what you will eat and as to what you will drink so that you live, or about your body as to what shall be your clothing. Life is more valuable than food and the body is more valuable than clothes.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
Western Bukidnon Manobo: “And because of this I say to you, my disciples, that you should not be concerned about food and drink which is your means of staying alive. Don’t also worry about clothes to put on your body. For God has given you your breath and your body which are very precious. It’s not possible that he won’t also give you food and clothing.” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
Kankanaey: “‘This is the reason I tell you, don’t be worried about food, drink, and clothes which you need in this life. Because your lives are far-away more valuable than food, and your bodies are emphatically more valuable than clothes.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
Tagbanwa: “That’s why I am saying to you not to cause your mind/thinking to be agitated about where you will be able to get all you need for your body like food, drink and clothes. For isn’t it so that life is more/greater than food and your body is more/greater than clothes? Well since life and body are indeed God’s gift to you, of course he will also give these things which you need, which are food and clothing.” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)
Tenango Otomi: “I tell you that you must not worry about what you will eat and drink or about what you will wear. For the soul of the person is more valuable than what one eats. The person’s body is more valuable than what he wears.” (Source: Tenango Otomi Back Translation)
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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 first person singular and plural pronoun (“I” and “we” and its various forms) as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. The most commonly used watashi/watakushi (私) is typically used when the speaker is humble and asking for help. In these verses, where God / Jesus is referring to himself, watashi is also used but instead of the kanji writing system (私) the syllabary hiragana (わたし) is used to distinguish God from others.
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 formal plural suffix to the second person pronoun (“you” and its various forms) as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. In these verses, anata-gata (あなたがた) is used, combining the second person pronoun anata and the plural suffix -gata to create a formal plural pronoun (“you” [plural] in English).
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 Matthew 6:25-34:
I tell you not to worry about food, drink, or clothes!
Life is more than what you eat and wear.
Birds don’t plant or harvest,
yet your Father above takes care of them,
and you are worth much more than a flock of birds.
You may think the more you worry, the longer you live.
That’s simply not so.
Why worry about what you will wear?
Even royalty looks drab beside daffodils and regal lilies,
yet God colors and clothes the wild flowers,
even though they will wither in the summer heat.
Why do you have such little faith? God will take care of you.
Worry — wearisome worry about food, drink, and clothes —
Only a heathen would nurture such worries.
Put God first in everything you do and worry no more,
then all your needs will be met.
Why worry about tomorrow? Today is worrisome enough.
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 Translator2002, 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.
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