Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Psalm 19:11:
Chichewa Contempary Chichewa translation, 2002/2016:
“Your servant is warned by them;
in keeping them there is a great reward.” (Source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)
Newari:
“O LORD! These give me, your servant, insight.
By obeying them I have received great reward.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
Hiligaynon:
“These also give warning to me your (sing.) servant, O LORD.
And if I obey/follow these I can-receive great reward.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
Eastern Bru:
“All of those things teach those who do the work of God to know clearly, and the one who obeys those things, surely he has great blessing.” (Source: Bru Back Translation)
Laarim:
“Your servant is warned by them,
the person who keeps them, gets great gift.” (Source: Laarim Back Translation)
Nyakyusa-Ngonde (back-translation into Swahili):
“Kwa hayo, mtumishi wako anaonywa,
ambaye anayashika, anafaidika sana.” (Source: Nyakyusa Back Translation)
English:
“Furthermore, by reading them I learn what things are good to do and what things are evil,
and they promise a great reward
to us who obey them.” (Source: Translation for Translators)
Translators of different languages have found different ways with what kind of formality God is addressed.
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Like many languages (but unlike Greek or Hebrew or modern 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.
In these verses, in which humans address God, the informal, familiar pronoun is used that communicates closeness.
Voinov notes that “in the Tuvan Bible, God is only addressed with the informal pronoun. No exceptions. An interesting thing about this is that I’ve heard new Tuvan believers praying with the formal form to God until they are corrected by other Christians who tell them that God is close to us so we should address him with the informal pronoun. As a result, the informal pronoun is the only one that is used in praying to God among the Tuvan church.”
In Gbaya, “a superior, whether father, uncle, or older brother, mother, aunt, or older sister, president, governor, or chief, is never addressed in the singular unless the speaker intends a deliberate insult. When addressing the superior face to face, the second person plural pronoun ɛ́nɛ́ or ‘you (pl.)’ is used, similar to the French usage of vous.
Accordingly, the translators of the current version of the Gbaya Bible chose to use the plural ɛ́nɛ́ to address God. There are a few exceptions. In Psalms 86:8, 97:9, and 138:1, God is addressed alongside other “gods,” and here the third person pronoun o is used to avoid confusion about who is being addressed. In several New Testament passages (Matthew 21:23, 26:68, 27:40, Mark 11:28, Luke 20:2, 23:37, as well as in Jesus’ interaction with Pilate and Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well) the less courteous form for Jesus is used to indicate ignorance of his position or mocking.” (Source Philip Noss)
In the most recent Manchu translation of 1835 (a revision of an earlier edition from 1822), God is never addressed with a pronoun but with “father” (ama /ᠠᠮᠠ) instead. Chengcheng Liu (in this post on the Cambridge Centre for Chinese Theology blog ) explains: “In Manchu tradition, as in Chinese etiquette, second-person pronouns could be considered disrespectful when speaking to superiors or spiritual beings. Manchu Shamanist prayers avoided si [‘you’] and sini [‘your’] for this very reason. To use them for God would be, in Lipovzoff’s [one of the two translators] words, ‘the most uncouth and indecent way to speak to the Almighty — as if He were a servant or slave.’ There was also a grammatical problem. In Manchu, si and sini could refer to both singular and plural subjects. For a faith that insisted on the singularity of God, this was potentially confusing. By contrast, repeating ama removed any ambiguity.”
They (verse 10) and them (twice in verse 11) refer back to “the ordinances” (Good News Translation “The judgments”) of verse 9b. In translation it is often necessary to reintroduce the subject of line a; for example, “The judgments of the LORD are worth more than gold.”
In verse 10 gold and fine gold refer to the same kind of substance, as do honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Good News Translation has combined the terms and used superlative forms: “finest gold … purest honey.” Fine gold in line b is a more specific instance of the general category of gold in line a. In the same way drippings of the honeycomb in line d is the more visual sense of honey in line c. In this verse Good News Translation makes no attempt to keep the double parallelism. The translator, however, should consider how the psalmist is creating a focusing movement between the lines through the use of increasingly picturable images. The translator’s task is to use the devices available in the receptor language to accomplish the same effect. The honeycomb is the structure built out of beeswax by bees, to hold their eggs and the honey. The same comparisons are used in 119.72, 103. Finest gold must often be expressed as “gold without any sand.” “The purest honey” must sometimes be said “honey without anything added.”
Moreover translates a Hebrew word often used to associate two items, or else to emphasize an additional item, as here. It appears also at the beginning of verse 13 (where Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation translate it “also”). Here something like “In addition” or “They also…” will express the idea.
In verse 11a the verb is usually translated is … warned or “… instructed.” Dahood and Traduction œcuménique de la Bible, however, take the verb in another sense (as in Dan 12.3): “to be enlightened.” New Jerusalem Bible has “your servant pays them heed.” Verse 11a must sometimes be rendered “Your judgments instruct me.”
It is debated whether thy servant is generic, meaning anyone who obeys Yahweh, or specific, referring to the psalmist (so Good News Translation, Bible en français courant, Biblia Dios Habla Hoy), as it clearly does in verse 13. It seems better to understand it as specific. The expression thy servant should not refer to a domestic employee, or a slave, or one of the many kinds of workers who are bound to an owner through indebtedness. In this verse the psalmist calls himself a servant because of his obedience and faithful devotion to God. If the receptor-language term for servant has unwanted connotations, it will be best to recast this verse. The sense is made even more difficult for some languages by the psalmist referring to himself in the third person. For example, one may translate “I follow you faithfully, and your judgments teach me” or “Your way of judging people teaches me, and I obey what you say.”
The reward is primarily spiritual, but it includes the material. Verse 11b may often be expressed “I receive good things when I obey them.”
Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Reyburn, William D. A Handbook on the Book of Psalms. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1991. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .
John Wu Ching-hsiung (1899-1986) was a native of Ningbo, Zhejiang, a renowned jurist who studied in Europe and the United States, and served as a professor of law at Soochow University, as a judge and the Acting President of the Shanghai Provisional Court, and as the Vice President of the Commission for the Drafting of the Constitution of the Republic of China, before becoming the Minister of the Republic of China to the Holy See. Wu has written extensively, not only on law but also on Chinese philosophy, and has also written his autobiography, Beyond East and West, in English. Wu was a devout Catholic and had a personal relationship with Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975). Wu began translating the the Psalms in 1938, and was encouraged by Chiang to translate the entire New Testament, which he corrected in his own handwriting. (…) John Wu Ching-hsiung’s translation of the Psalms (first draft in 1946, revised in 1975) was translated into Literary Chinese in the form of poetic rhyme, with attention paid to the style of writing. According to the content and mood of the different chapters of the original psalm, Wu chose Chinese poetic forms such as tetrameter, pentameter, heptameter [4, 5 or 7 syllables/Chinese characters per stanza], and the [less formal] Sao style, and sometimes more than two poetic forms were used in a single poem. (Source: Simon Wong)
John Wu Ching-hsiung himself talks about his celebrated and much-admired (though difficult-to-understand) translation in his aforementioned autobiography: (Click or tap here to see)
“Nothing could have been farther from my mind than to translate the Bible or any parts of it with a view to publishing it as an authorized version. I had rendered some of the Psalms into Chinese verse, but that was done as a part of my private devotion and as a literary hobby. When I was in Hongkong in 1938, I had come to know Madame H. H. Kung [Soong Ai-ling], and as she was deeply interested in the Bible, I gave her about a dozen pieces of my amateurish work just for her own enjoyment. What was my surprise when, the next time I saw her, she told me, “My sister [Soong Mei-ling] has written to say that the Generalissimo [Chiang Kai-shek] likes your translation of the Psalms very much, especially the first, the fifteenth, and the twenty-third, the Psalm of the Good Shepherd!”
“In the Autumn of 1940, when I was in Chungking, the Generalissimo invited me several times to lunch with him and expressed his appreciation of the few pieces that he had read. So I sent him some more. A few days later I received a letter from Madame Chiang [Soong Mei-ling], dated September 21, 1940, in which she said that they both liked my translation of the few Psalms I had sent them. ‘For many years,’ she wrote, ‘the Generalissimo has been wanting to have a really adequate and readable Wen-li (literary) translation of the Bible. He has never been able to find anyone who could undertake the matter.’ The letter ends up by saying that I should take up the job and that ‘the Generalissimo would gladly finance the undertaking of this work.’
“After some preliminary study of the commentaries, I started my work with the Psalms on January 6, 1943, the Feast of the Epiphany.
“I had three thousand years of Chinese literature to draw upon. The Chinese vocabulary for describing the beauties of nature is so rich that I seldom failed to find a word, a phrase, and sometimes even a whole line to fit the scene. But what makes such Psalms so unique is that they bring an intimate knowledge of the Creator to bear upon a loving observation of things of nature. I think one of the reasons why my translation is so well received by the Chinese scholars is that I have made the Psalms read like native poems written by a Chinese, who happens to be a Christian. Thus to my countrymen they are at once familiar and new — not so familiar as to be jejune, and not so new as to be bizarre. I did not publish it as a literal translation, but only as a paraphrase.
“To my greatest surprise, [my translation of the Psalms] sold like hot dogs. The popularity of that work was beyond my fondest dreams. Numberless papers and periodicals, irrespective of religion, published reviews too good to be true. I was very much tickled when I saw the opening verse of the first Psalm used as a headline on the front page of one of the non-religious dailies.”
A contemporary researcher (Lindblom 2021) mentions this about Wu’s translation: “Wu created a unique and personal work of sacred art that bears the imprint of his own admitted love and devotion, a landmark achievement comparable to Antoni Gaudi’s Basilica of the Sagrada Família in Barcelona, Spain. Although its use is still somewhat limited today, it continues to attract readers for the aforementioned qualities, and continues to be used in prayers and music by those who desire beauty and an authentic Chinese-sounding text that draws from China’s ancient traditions.”
The translation of Psalm 19 from the 1946 edition is in pentameter and the rhyme schemes are -ong, -ang, and -i and (the 1946 edition did not have verse numbers either):
The following are presentations by the Psalms: Layer by Layer project, run by Scriptura . The first is an overview, the second an introduction into the poetry, and the third an introduction into the exegesis of Psalm 19.
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