Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Psalm 7:16:
Chichewa Contempary Chichewa translation, 2002/2016:
“The problems which he starts return to himself;
his violence descends on his own head.” (Source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)
Newari:
“The evil that he did will fall upon his own head.
The oppression that he brings about will fall on his own head.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
Hiligaynon:
“But look, the trouble/disorder and violence/cruelty that they do goes-back to them.
(It is) just-like they are-digging a hole so-that others will-fall-(in),
but they themselves (will-be)-the-(ones-who) will-fall.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
Eastern Bru:
“So the trouble he makes returns again to him.” (Source: Bru Back Translation)
Laarim:
“The sin which he caused will return him back.
The war returned him back with his own head.” (Source: Laarim Back Translation)
Nyakyusa-Ngonde (back-translation into Swahili):
“Ubaya wake unamrudia mwenyewe,
ukatili wake unamshukia katika utosi.” (Source: Nyakyusa Back Translation)
English:
“They themselves will experience the trouble that they want to cause others to have;
they will hurt themselves by the violent things that they want to do to others.” (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.”
Here the psalmist describes how the evil that people plan to do to others recoils on its authors (see 5.10). A man digs a pit for someone else to fall into, and then he falls in it himself; see 9.15; 35.7-8; 57.6; Ecclesiastes 10.8. Good News Translation has used the more general figure of being caught in a trap that has been set to catch others, since that is more readily understood.
Pit and hole are synonyms.
In cultures where animals are caught by causing them to fall into holes dug in the ground, the Hebrew figure will serve very well. However, it will often be necessary to indicate the sequence, that is, first digging the pit and then the digger falling in it. It is also necessary in some languages to indicate the purpose; for example, “wicked people first dig a hole to catch other people, and later they themselves fall into that hole.”
The idea is repeated for emphasis in different terms in verse 16; literally His mischief (same word in verse 14b) and his violence act like a boomerang and return to hurt him. Good News Translation has avoided head and pate (the latter is today almost obsolete), preferring to use the pronoun “they.” Another possibility is to have “on himself” in line a and “on his head” in line b (see New English Bible, New Jerusalem Bible). It is often unnatural to have an abstract expression such as His mischief as the instrument or means of “punishment.” This idea must often be recast to say “they do evil things, and these very things cause them to suffer” or “because they do evil deeds their own deeds make them suffer.”
Some languages can keep the form of the Hebrew metaphor mischief returns upon his own head. The following parallel line, however, is even more difficult. On his own pate his violence descends must often be recast if it is to make sense. Violence must often be expressed as a verb or handled as an attributive to an event; for example, “because they use great strength to injure people, they will be injured in the same way themselves” or “because they are people who force others….”
It is quite clear that the two lines of verse 16 are nearly identical in meaning. However, in Hebrew the word order is different, in that the verb returns occurs as the first word in line a and descends as the last word in line b. Thus line b, which repeats and emphasizes line a, does so by reversing the word order. The translator should seek equivalent poetic devices in the receptor language which will be stylistically pleasing and emphatic in their intention.
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 .
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 7.
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 7 from the 1946 edition is in pentameter and heptameter with rhyme schemes based on -an and -ai (the 1946 edition did not have verse numbers either):
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