16These are the statutes that the Lord commanded Moses concerning a husband and his wife and a father and his daughter while she is still young and in her father’s house.
Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Numbers 30:16:
Kupsabiny: “These are laws that God gave to Moses about something that a woman who is married and/or a girl who still lives with her father have vowed.” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
Newari: “Between husband and wife, and between father and his unmarried daughter living at home, these are the decrees that the LORD gave Moses.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
Hiligaynon: “These are the rules which the LORD gave to Moises concerning a husband and his wife, and concerning a father and his young female child/(daughter) who lives still in his household.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
English: “Those are the rules that Yahweh gave to Moses/me for husbands and wives, and for young women who are still living with their parents.” (Source: Translation for Translators)
The name that is transliterated as “Moses” in English means “taken out of the water,” “saved out of the water,” “a son.” (Source: Cornwall / Smith 1997 )
American Sign Language also uses the sign depicting the horns but also has a number of alternative signs (see here ).
In French Sign Language, a similar sign is used, but it is interpreted as “radiance” (see below) and it culminates in a sign for “10,” signifying the 10 commandments:
The horns that are visible in Michelangelo’s statue are based on a passage in the Latin Vulgate translation (and many Catholic Bible translations that were translated through the 1950ies with that version as the source text). Jerome, the translator, had worked from a Hebrew text without the niqquds, the diacritical marks that signify the vowels in Hebrew and had interpreted the term קרו (k-r-n) in Exodus 34:29 as קֶ֫רֶן — keren “horned,” rather than קָרַו — karan “radiance” (describing the radiance of Moses’ head as he descends from Mount Sinai).
In Swiss-German Sign Language (and Hungarian Sign Language) it is translated with a sign depicting holding a staff. This refers to a number of times where Moses’s staff is used in the context of miracles, including the parting of the sea (see Exodus 14:16), striking of the rock for water (see Exodus 17:5 and following), or the battle with Amalek (see Exodus 17:9 and following).
In Vietnamese (Hanoi) Sign Language it is translated with the sign that depicts the eye make up he would have worn as the adopted son of an Egyptian princess. (Source: The Vietnamese Sign Language translation team, VSLBT)
“Moses” in Vietnamese Sign Language, source: SooSL
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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 usage of an honorific construction where the morphemes rare (られ) or are (され) are affixed on the verb as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. This is particularly done with verbs that have God as the agent to show a deep sense of reverence. Here, meiji-rare-ru (命じられる) or “order/command” is used.
These are the statutes which the LORD commanded Moses …: This verse clearly concludes all the instructions concerning vows and pledges in chapter 30. In some languages such a summary needs to be marked in a special way: for example, Chewa begins this verse with “These very ones, they are the commands that….” As mentioned at 9.3, the Hebrew for statutes (chuqqah) can mean “task,” “obligation,” or “law.” The target language may have a specific legal term that refers to the type of regulations found in this chapter.
As between a man and his wife, and between a father and his daughter, while in her youth, within her father’s house: This literal rendering sounds awkward in English and will probably sound the same if translated correspondingly in other languages. Good News Translation offers a more natural model, saying “concerning vows made by an unmarried woman living in her father’s house or by a married woman.” For while in her youth, within her father’s house, see verse 3.
Quoted with permission from de Regt, Lénart J. and Wendland, Ernst R. A Handbook on Numbers. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2016. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .
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