salvation

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The Greek, Latin and Hebrew that is translated with “salvation” (or “deliverance”) in English is translated in the following ways:

  • San Blas Kuna: “receive help for bad deeds” (“this help is not just any kind of help but help for the soul which has sinned)
  • Northwestern Dinka: “help as to his soul” (“or literally, ‘his breath'”) (source for this and the one above: Nida 1952, p. 140)
  • Central Mazahua: “healing the heart” (source: Nida 1952, p. 40)
  • Tzeltal: col: “get loose,” “go free,” “get well” (source: Marianna C. Slocum in The Bible Translator 1958, p. 49f. )
  • Aari: “the day our Savior comes” (in Rom 13:11) (source: Loren Bliese)

in Mairasi its is translated as “life fruit” or “life fruit all mashed out.” Lloyd Peckham explains: “In secret stories, not knowable to women nor children, there was a magical fruit of life. If referred to vaguely, without specifying the specific ‘fruit,’ it can be an expression for eternity.” And for “all masked out” he explains: “Bark cloth required pounding. It got longer and wider as it got pounded. Similarly, life gets pounded or mashed to lengthen it into infinity. Tubers also get mashed into the standard way of serving the staple food, like the fufu of Uganda, or like poi of Hawaii. It spreads out into infinity.” (See also eternity / forever)

In Lisu a poetic construct is used for this term. Arrington (2020, p. 58f.) explains: “A four-word couplet uses Lisu poetic forms to bridge the abstract concrete divide, an essential divide to cross if Christian theology is to be understood by those with oral thought patterns. Each couplet uses three concrete nouns or verbs to express an abstract term. An example of this is the word for salvation, a quite abstract term essential to understanding Christian theology. To coin this new word, the missionary translators used a four-word couplet: ℲO., CYU. W: CYU (person … save … person … save). In this particular case, the word for person was not the ordinary word (ʁ) but rather the combination of ℲO., and W: used in oral poetry. The word for ‘save’ also had to be coined; in this case, it was borrowed from Chinese [from jiù / 救]. These aspects of Lisu poetry, originally based on animism, likely would have been lost as Lisu society encountered communism and modernization. Yet they are now codified in the Lisu Bible as well as the hymnbook.”

In the Contemporary Chichewa translation (2002/2016) it is translated with chipulumutso which is used to refer to an act of helping someone who is in problems but cannot help him/herself come out of the problems because of weakness. (Source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)

See also save and save (Japanese honorifics) / salvation (of God) (Japanese honorifics).

complete verse (Psalm 44:5)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Psalm 44:5:

  • Chichewa Contempary Chichewa translation, 2002/2016:
    “Through you we return our enemies;
    through your name we oppress those who rise against us,” (Source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)
  • Newari:
    “It is only by Your power that we chase off our enemies,
    It is only by Your name that we trample our foes.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon:
    “Through you (sing.) we (excl.) will-defeat our (excl.) enemies.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
  • Eastern Bru:
    “Because of your strength we strike down our enemies. Thru your name we crush/step on those who war against us.” (Source: Bru Back Translation)
  • Laarim:
    “And by you, we defeat our enemies,
    by your names, we push people who hate us down.” (Source: Laarim Back Translation)
  • Nyakyusa-Ngonde (back-translation into Swahili):
    “Tutawashinda maadui zetu kwa nguvu zako,
    kwa jina lako tutawakanyaga kanyaga ambao wanatupinga.” (Source: Nyakyusa Back Translation)
  • English:
    “It is by your power that we knock our enemies down and tramp on them.” (Source: Translation for Translators)

inclusive vs. exclusive pronoun (Ps 44:5)

Many languages distinguish between inclusive and exclusive first-person plural pronouns (“we”). (Click or tap here to see more details)

The inclusive “we” specifically includes the addressee (“you and I and possibly others”), while the exclusive “we” specifically excludes the addressee (“he/she/they and I, but not you”). This grammatical distinction is called “clusivity.” While Semitic languages such as Hebrew or most Indo-European languages such as Greek or English do not make that distinction, translators of languages with that distinction have to make a choice every time they encounter “we” or a form thereof (in English: “we,” “our,” or “us”).

For this verse, the Jarai and the Adamawa Fulfulde translation both use the exclusive pronoun, excluding the Lord.

female 2nd person singular pronoun in Psalms

In Garifuna the second person singular pronoun (“you” in English) has two forms. One is used in women’s speech and one in men’s speech. In the Garifuna Bible the form used in men’s speech is typically used, except when it’s clear that a woman is quoted or in Psalms where the women on the translation team insisted that the form used in women’s speech (buguya) would be used throughout the whole book.

Ronald Ross (in Omanson 2001, p. 375f.) tells the story: “Throughout most of the translation, [the distinctions between the different forms of the pronouns] presented no problem. Whenever the speaker in the text was perceived as a man, the male speech forms were used; and when a woman was speaking, the female speech forms were used. True, the women members of the translation team did object on occasion to the use of the male forms when the author (and narrator) of a book was unknown and the men translators had used the male speech forms as the default. Serious discord arose, however, during the translation of the Psalms because of their highly devotional nature and because throughout the book the psalmist is addressing God. The male translators had, predictably, used the male form to address God, and the male form to refer to the psalmist, even though women speakers of Garifuna never use those forms to address anyone. The women contended that they could not as women read the Psalms meaningfully if God and the psalmist were always addressed as if the readers were men. The men, of course, turned the argument around, claiming that neither could they read the Psalms comfortably if the reader was assumed to be a woman.

“Initially there seemed to be no way out of this impasse. However a solution was found in the ongoing evolution of the language. There is a strong propensity for male speech and female speech to merge in favor of the latter, so the few remaining male forms are gradually dying out. Moreover, male children learn female speech from their mothers and only shift to the male speech forms when they reach adolescence to avoid sounding effeminate. However they use the female form buguya when addressing their parents throughout life. So the women wielded two arguments: First, the general development of the language favored the increasing use of the female forms. Secondly, the female forms are less strange to the men than the male forms are to the women, because the men habitually use them during early childhood and continue to use them to address their parents even in adulthood. Therefore, the female pronominal forms prevailed and were adopted throughout the book of Psalms, though the male forms remained the default forms in the rest of the translation.”

See also female first person singular pronoun in Psalms and addressing God.

enemy / foe

The Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Ge’ez, and Latin that is translated as “enemy” or “foe” in English is translated in the Hausa Common Language Bible as “friends of front,” i.e., the person standing opposite you in a battle. (Source: Andy Warren-Rothlin)

In North Alaskan Inupiatun it is translated with a term that implies that it’s not just someone who hates you, but one who wants to do you harm (Source: Robert Bascom), in Tarok as ukpa ìkum or “companion in war/fighting,” and in Ikwere as nye irno m or “person who hates me” (source for this and one above: Chuck and Karen Tessaro in this newsletter ).

name (of God) (Japanese honorifics)

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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 to do this is through the usage (or a lack) of an honorific prefix as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. When the referent is God, the “divine” honorific prefix mi- (御 or み) can be used, as in mi-na (御名) or “name (of God)” in the referenced verses.

(Source: S. E. Doi, see also S. E. Doi in Journal of Translation, 18/2022, p. 37ff. )

addressing God

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 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.

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.”

In Dutch, Afrikaans, Gronings, and Western Frisian translations, God is always addressed with the formal pronoun.

See also formal pronoun: disciples addressing Jesus, female second person singular pronoun in Psalms.

Translation commentary on Psalm 44:4 - 44:5

Speaking for himself (verses 4, 6) and for his people (verses 5, 7-8), the psalmist again affirms his faith that it is God who gives victory to his people.

In verse 4 the Masoretic text is, as the Good News Translation and Revised Standard Version footnotes show, “You are my king, O God; give victory to Jacob.” While this is possible (followed by New Jerusalem Bible, Traduction œcuménique de la Bible, Biblia Dios Habla Hoy), the text of the versions (Septuagint, Syriac, Vulgate) seems better in the context and is preferred by Good News Translation, Revised Standard Version, An American Translation, New International Version, Bible en français courant, New English Bible, Bible de Jérusalem, New Jerusalem Bible.4-5 Hebrew Old Testament Text Project follows, in part, the ancient versions and recommends “God commanding” (instead of the Masoretic text “God, command”), which it translates as follows: “(it is you, my king, who) are God, deciding.”

In some languages the expression Thou art my king and my God must be recast to say, for example, “You are the king I serve and you are the God I worship” or “You are the king who rules over me and the God I worship.”

The Hebrew verb translated ordainest means “to command,” “to decide to give.” The ultimate source of victory is God’s decision to make his people win. Jacob is a way of speaking of the people of Israel.

Verse 5 has two synonymous parallel lines (see Revised Standard Version), which Good News Translation has combined and shortened into one. Through thee and through thy name (see “name” in 5.11) both mean “by your power,” “by your help.” The two verbs push down and tread down mean to “defeat”; Bible en français courant “we repel … we tread upon” (see similar language in 18.38); and our foes and our assailants are completely synonymous. The verbs evoke a picture of a wild ox goring its opponent (New Jerusalem Bible “we gore”; Dahood “we butted”). The expression Through thee we push down our foes is an event done by the people and through the instrumentality of God. In some languages it is necessary to say, for example, “we defeat our enemies and you enable us to do this” or “because you are powerful we defeat our enemies.”

The nature of the parallelism in verse 5 is that of specification in which intensification results. In line a the enemies are “pushed down,” but in line b they are dealt with more severely, “trampled down.” The two lines may be translated, for example, “You enable us to push our enemies to the ground and even to trample them to death.” Translators should consider the dynamic movement between two parallel lines as an essential part of their meaning, and avoid combining and shortening unless there is no alternative.

The translator must decide if the switching between first person singular and first person plural pronouns is an acceptable style in the receptor language. If it is not, and if it will create difficulty in understanding, it will be better to use only the plural pronoun throughout.

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 .