Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Psalm 74:13:
Chichewa Contempary Chichewa translation, 2002/2016:
“You are the one who divided the lake with your power;
you crushed the heads of the beasts of the water.” (Source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)
Newari:
“By your own power you split open the sea.
You pulverized the head of the sea monster.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
Hiligaynon:
“You (sing.) split- the sea -in-two by your (sing.) power,
and you (sing.) crushed the heads of the large animals in the sea.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
Laarim:
“You were the one who divided the sea in the middle into two with your power.
You crushed the heads of beast in water.” (Source: Laarim Back Translation)
Nyakyusa-Ngonde (back-translation into Swahili):
“Ni wewe uliigawanya bahari na nguvu zako,
ulivipondaponda vichwa vya majoka ya katika bahari.” (Source: Nyakyusa Back Translation)
English:
“By your power you caused the Red Sea to divide;
it was as though you smashed the heads of the rulers of Egypt who were like huge sea dragons.” (Source: Translation for Translators)
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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-chikara (御力) or “power (of God)” in the referenced verses.
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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 morpheme are (され) is 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, kudak-are-ru (砕かれる) or “pound down” is used.
The various Greek, Aramaic, Ge’ez, and Latin and Hebrew terms that are translated as “sea,” “ocean,” or “lake” in English are all translated in Chichewa with one term: nyanja. Malawi, where Chichewa is spoken, has a lot of lakes but does not share a border with the ocean. (Source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)
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.”
Commentators are not agreed whether verses 13-15 refer to creation (Dentan, Fisher, Toombs, Anderson) or to the events of the exodus from Egypt (Briggs). It seems more likely that they refer to creation, using expressions and figures of popular pagan accounts of how the creator God defeated the primeval monsters of the deep. It is significant that seven times in verses 13-17 the psalmist uses the personal pronoun “you” as an emphatic device to assert God’s activities; by implication he is denying that some pagan god, Baal or Marduk, had done these things. If the exodus from Egypt is taken as the event being described, then the dragons and Leviathan are symbols of Egypt.
But on the assumption that creation is being depicted, verse 13a refers to the defeat of the sea, personified as an enemy (see in Gen 1.6-7 the division of the primeval waters into the upper and the lower waters); in some creation accounts the Sea (Yam) was a dragon, the opponent of the creator God, who defeated the dragon (see also 89.9-10); so New English Bible “thou didst cleave the sea-monster in two.” In languages where the sea is unknown, it is sometimes possible to speak of a collection of waters; for example, “you have divided the places of water in half.” Verse 13a may sometimes be rendered as a means-with-result in this way: “by your power you divided the waters in two parts” or “because you are powerful you….”
In verse 13b the dragons on the waters may be parallel with Leviathan in verse 14a. The Hebrew word is tanninim, the plural of tannin; in Ugaritic Tannin is another name for Leviathan, so here Dahood has “smashed the heads of Tannin.” In Job 7.12 “sea” (yam) is parallel with “sea monster” (tannin).
Verse 14a is parallel with verse 13b; Leviathan (also 104.26; Isa 27.1) is the name of the mythological dragon, which in other places is called by a different name. Notice that it is thought of as having several heads. Dragons on the waters may sometimes be rendered as “great sea snakes” or “big animals that live in the sea.” If such a descriptive expression results in confusion, it is best to provide an explanatory note.
The creatures of the wilderness (Good News Translation “desert animals”) translates what is literally “to the people to the desert dwellers” (see the latter word in 72.9a). The Septuagint both here and in 72.9a translates “the Ethiopians.” The word for “people” is used in Proverbs 30.25-26 of a group of animals. Here the whole phrase means either “desert animals,” as Good News Translation has it (Weiser, Biblia Dios Habla Hoy “desert beasts”; Bible de Jérusalem and New Jerusalem Bible “wild animals”; New English Bible and Bible en français courant “sharks”), or “desert people” (see New Jerusalem Bible “the denizens of the desert”; Dahood “desert tribes”). In languages where deserts and wildernesses are unknown, one may often use a descriptive expression such as “animals in places where people don’t live” or “animals in the lands where no one grows food.”
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 .
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