The Greek that is translated as “add a single hour to your span of life” or similar in English is translated in the German New Testament translation by Berger / Nord (publ. 1999) with den Körper um eine Elle größer machen or “make the body one cubit taller.” The translators note that the original text offers both possibilities, adding time of life or body height.
worry
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.'”
See also anxious / worried about many things and worries/cares of the world/this age.
rhetorical questions (Matt 6:27)
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 6:27a reads “Even if you worry a lot, you cannot make longer your time of living.”
Source: Marion Cowan in The Bible Translator 1960, p. 123ff.
complete verse (Matthew 6:27)
Following are a number of back-translations of Matthew 6:27:
- Uma: “What is the use of you thinking and being-nervous so much. For even if we (incl.) are continually busy thinking about many things, we (incl.) are not able to add to our (incl.) age even just one-night.” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
- Yakan: “Who of you can prolong his life even for one hour when you worry/by worrying?” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
- Western Bukidnon Manobo: “No matter how a person cherishes his life, there is no way he can add even a little bit to it.” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
- Kankanaey: “Another thing, even if you are always worrying, can you lengthen your lives by even one hour?” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
- Tagbanwa: “Well which of you can increase his life by even a little time through agitating his mind/thinking? Of course no one.” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)
- Tenango Otomi: “And how about the person who is worried that he isn’t tall, is he able to grow another forearm’s height because of his worrying?” (Source: Tenango Otomi Back Translation)
distance (long / wide / high)
The concepts of distance that are translated in English with “long,” “wide,” and “high/tall” are translated in Kwere with one word: utali. (Source: Pioneer Bible Translators, project-specific translation notes in Paratext)
Scriptures Plain & Simple (Matthew 6:25-34)
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.
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.
formal 2nd person plural pronoun (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 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).
(Source: S. E. Doi, see also S. E. Doi in Journal of Translation, 18/2022, p. 37ff. )
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