Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Psalm 32:8:
Chichewa Contempary Chichewa translation, 2002/2016:
“I will instruct you and teach you the path that you will walk in;
I will give you counsel and look after you.” (Source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)
Newari:
“You said to me –
‘I will show you the path on which you must go.
I will be teaching you and taking care of you.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
Hiligaynon:
“You (sing.) said to me,
‘I will-teach you (sing.) the way/road that you (sing.) should pass-through.
I will-advise you (sing.) while I am-watching-over you (sing.).” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
Eastern Bru:
“God says like this: "I will teach and instruct for you to know the road to go. When I speak helping you, my eye watches you constantly.” (Source: Bru Back Translation)
Laarim:
“The Lord says, ‘I will instruct you so that you will follow the way which is right.
I will advice you, and protect you.” (Source: Laarim Back Translation)
Nyakyusa-Ngonde (back-translation into Swahili):
“Bwana anasema, ‘Nitakufundisha na kukuonyesha njia ya kupita.
Nitakuwa nakueleza na kukuangalia.’” (Source: Nyakyusa Back Translation)
English:
“Yahweh says, ‘I will teach you about how you should conduct your life.
I will instruct you and watch over you.” (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.”
Good News Translation, Biblia Dios Habla Hoy, Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch, Bible en français courant, and others (Kirkpatrick, Dahood, Anderson) take these two verses to be Yahweh’s words to the psalmist; this assumes that the singular “you” in verse 8 is the psalmist being addressed by Yahweh. And in verse 9a, instead of the Masoretic text plural “you,” the singular “you” in two Hebrew manuscripts is preferred. Others, however (Briggs, Oesterley, Taylor, Weiser), take the verses to be the psalmist’s instructions to his fellow worshipers; in this case the singular “you” in verse 8 is taken to be generic, and the Masoretic text plural “you” in verse 9 is preferred. The statement my eye upon you in verse 8 seems to favor Yahweh as the speaker.
Three verbs are used in verse 8: instruct … teach … counsel. In languages which do not have more than one word for teaching, it is sometimes possible to say, for example, “I will show you the way you should go; I will teach you and tell you how to do.”
The Hebrew “(with) my eye upon you” carries the idea of concern and care, not of a veiled threat, as the English phrase might be understood. The expression with my eye upon you may sometimes be rendered “taking care of you” or “watching out for your safety.”
Verse 8 is a case of stairstep parallelism. Each succeeding line adds something to the first. Furthermore, the verse can be analyzed as a tricolon, that is, having three lines: I will instruct you / and teach you the way you should go / I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
The last two lines of verse 9 are filled with difficulties, since there is much controversy over the precise form and meaning of the separate words; but the meaning of the whole seems to be that given by Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation. The last line is translated by Dahood “Then you can approach him”; New English Bible transposes the words to the end of verse 7 and translates “beyond all reach of harm”; New Jerusalem Bible takes the words to be a warning to the hearer: “far be it from you!”; Traduction œcuménique de la Bible has “and no harm will reach you”; Biblia Dios Habla Hoy “or else they will not come to you”; similarly “so that they may not attack you.” Any one of these (except, perhaps, New English Bible) can be defended as a valid translation of the text. The translator faces a great deal of choice in this verse. If Good News Translation and Revised Standard Version are followed, readers may be surprised to learn that a horse or mule might be thought of as stupid. On the basis of the Hebrew expression, there is reason to say, for example, “Don’t be like a horse or mule; they do not know which way to go without a bit and bridle.” In some areas the horse is largely unknown and the mule is totally unfamiliar. In such cases the usual thing is to identify these animals through a borrowed word from a major language, and if necessary, to use a classifier; for example, “an animal called horse.” The bit is that part of the bridle which is inserted in the animal’s mouth. Where bit and bridle are unknown, it is best to use a short descriptive phrase (a borrowed word may be too technical). Bridle is sometimes called “animal guiding rope,” and a bit is sometimes referred to as “guide thing in the mouth.” If more information is required, a note or illustration should be provided.
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 32 from the 1946 edition is in tetrameter and the rhyme schemes are -ou, -ui, -ao, -u, and -uan (the 1946 edition did not have verse numbers either):
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