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.

complete verse (Psalm 74:16)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Psalm 74:16:

  • Chichewa Contempary Chichewa translation, 2002/2016:
    “The afternoon is yours and the night is yours as well;
    You established the sun and the moon.” (Source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)
  • Newari:
    “You created both day and night.
    You caused both sun and moon to exist.
    You put them in place.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon:
    “You (sing.) made the day and night,
    and you (sing.) set the sun and the moon in their place/position.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
  • Laarim:
    “The day is yours, and also the night is yours.
    You who made the sun and the moon.” (Source: Laarim Back Translation)
  • Nyakyusa-Ngonde (back-translation into Swahili):
    “Mchana ni wako na usiku ni wako,
    uliumba mwezi na jua.” (Source: Nyakyusa Back Translation)
  • English:
    “You created the days and the nights, and you put the sun and the moon in their places.” (Source: Translation for Translators)

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.

Honorary "rare" construct denoting God ("prepare")

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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 rare (られ) 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, sonae-rare-ru (備えられる) or “prepare” is used.

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

Translation commentary on Psalm 74:15 - 74:17

Verse 15 seems more naturally to lend itself to the events of the exodus from Egypt, specifically of the splitting of the rock for water (Exo 17.6; Num 20.7-11); it is perhaps significant that here the verb “to split” is used. But, in keeping with verses 16-17, this may also refer to the creation of springs and brooks. And in verse 15b the reference can be to the drying up of the Jordan (Josh 3.14-17; 4.23); but in line with parallels in other creation accounts, this may also refer to acts of creation (see Anderson). Lines a and b are opposites, and in some languages it is necessary to mark this kind of shift. For example, “In some places you made springs and streams flow with water, but in other places you dried up the rivers.” Springs and brooks may be rendered “springs and small streams.” Good News Translation‘s “fountains” may suggest a jet of water maintained by a power supply, which is not intended here; “springs and streams” is better. Ever-flowing streams refers to streams or rivers that continually flow. The focus is not so much on their size (as in Good News Translation) but on their unfailing flow, or as New English Bible says, “rivers never known to fail.”

In verse 16a the day and the night are said to belong to God. The meaning may be that he rules over them and determines everything that happens in the daytime and at night. Or else it can mean that God created them (as in Good News Translation), and so they belong to him, not to human beings. In line b the statement thou hast established the luminaries and the sun seems to support the idea that line a refers to the creation of the day and the night, since in the creation story in Genesis the sun and the moon were created to rule over the day and the night (Gen 1.14-18). The word translated luminaries may refer to the moon alone, as Good News Translation, New English Bible, Traduction œcuménique de la Bible, Bible en français courant, New International Version, Biblia Dios Habla Hoy, and Dahood translate it. But it may mean “the moon and the stars” (so Weiser, “the stars”).

Verse 17a may refer to the boundaries of the land that God gave to his people, or to the division of the surface of the earth among the various nations (see Deut 32.8); but it seems more likely that it refers to the creation of the earth, in line with verse 16, that is, establishing the limits of the dry land as it emerged from the waters (Gen 1.9-10).

Summer and winter in verse 17b stands for the seasons of the year. The verb translated made is synonymous with the verb “to create.” In many areas summer and winter will be rendered “hot season and cold season,” “dry season and rainy season,” or “light rains and heavy rains.”

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 .