שִׁלְח֣וּ בָ֭אֵשׁ מִקְדָּשֶׁ֑ךָ לָ֝אָ֗רֶץ חִלְּל֥וּ מִֽשְׁכַּן־שְׁמֶֽךָ׃
7They set your sanctuary on fire;
they desecrated the dwelling place of your name,
bringing it to the ground.
In Gbaya, the notion of a calamity affecting a large groups of people at the same time and/or a destructive fire is emphasized in the referenced verses with the ideophone gbɔyɛɛ.
Ideophones are a class of sound symbolic words expressing human sensation that are used as literary devices in many African languages. (Source: Philip Noss)
Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Psalm 74:7:
The Hebrew, Greek and Latin that is translated as “sanctuary” in English is translated in the Contemporary Chichewa translation (2002/2016) with opatulika or “separated place.” This is understood in a religious setup as a place designated for worship. (Source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)
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. )
Translators of different languages have found different ways with what kind of formality God is addressed.
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.
In verse 6 it is not clear what the Hebrew word translated carved wood means; it can mean either carvings on wood or engravings on metal or stone. New Jerusalem Bible has “carved work,” New English Bible “carvings,” and New American Bible “paneling.” The Septuagint translates “its doors.” The two words translated hatchets and hammers occur only here in the Old Testament, and they are variously translated: New Jerusalem Bible “hatchet and pike”; New English Bible “hatchet and pick”; New Jerusalem Bible “axe and pick”; Dahood “hatchets and mattocks.” Holladay defines the two as “axes” and “crowbars.” Hebrew Old Testament Text Project says the whole verse should translated “and now–the carvings, at the same time (or, all together), with hatchets and hammers, they smash them.” The main problem for the translator is to name instruments or weapons that are appropriate for that time. In some languages the means must normally precede the result; for example, “With their axes and hammers they smashed the carved wood.”
In verse 7, as Revised Standard Version shows, to the ground is the first word of line b; but it seems better to take it with line a, “They burned your Temple to the ground” or “They razed your Temple and set it on fire.” Good News Translation has taken to the ground in the sense of “wrecked” (so New English Bible “tore down”; also Traduction œcuménique de la Bible) and reversed the order of the two actions as being more natural: “wrecked … and set it on fire.” 2 Kings 25.9 reports how Nebuzaradan, the commanding general of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia, burned down the Temple and other buildings in Jerusalem in 586 B.C.
It is not stated how the enemy desecrated (or “profaned”) the Temple, that is, made it unfit for worship. The destruction itself would be an act of desecration, as would be a pagan worship service or the installation of pagan emblems (verse 4). Good News Translation “the place where you are worshiped” (verse 7b) translates the dwelling place of thy name; New Jerusalem Bible has “the dwelling-place of Your presence.” This is another way of referring to the Temple, parallel with thy sanctuary in line a. Desecrated the dwelling place of thy name is sometimes rendered “they dishonored the place where you are worshiped,” or “they made filthy the place where you are worshiped,” or “they caused the place where you are worshiped to become unclean.”
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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