Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Psalm 80:16:
Chichewa Contempary Chichewa translation, 2002/2016:
“Your vine has been cut and burned with fire;
at your rebuke your people have been destroyed.” (Source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)
Newari:
“The enemy has cut down Your grapevine,
and setting it on fire, has burned it.
Show them [Your] anger,
and destroy them.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
Hiligaynon:
“O God, (it) seems that we (excl.) (are) as-if a grape-vine that was-cut-down and burned.
You looked-at us (excl.) with anger and you (sing.) destroyed us (excl.).” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
Laarim:
“Our enemies cut down your tree of wine,
and the fire burned it,
you destroy them by your anger.” (Source: Laarim Back Translation)
Gbaya: “People pulled up the vine and threw it into the fire and it burned gbulɛɛ [ideophone to express wickedness] like dry cow dung. If you frown and look at them, they will all die gbuɗuk [ideophone to express a calamity befalling many people at once — see here].” (Source: Philip Noss)
Nyakyusa-Ngonde (back-translation into Swahili):
“Maadui wameukata mti wako wa mizabibu,
wameuchoma katika moto,
uonyeshe hasira zako, uwangamize.” (Source: Nyakyusa Back Translation)
English:
“Our enemies have torn down and burned everything in our land;
look at them angrily and get rid of them!” (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.”
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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-kao (御顔) or “face (of God)” in the referenced verses.
The psalmist closes with a final plea to God. The enemies have ruined the nation, and the psalmist asks God to destroy them.
Cut it down in verse 16a is taken by most to be from a verb meaning “to cut down,” but Bible de Jérusalem and New Jerusalem Bible take the form to be “like dung”: “They have thrown it on the fire like dung.” It is better to translate cut it down. Biblia Dios Habla Hoy reverses the two verbs as being a more natural order of events: “they (who) cut it and burn it.”
Most translations take verse 16b to refer to the enemies; some, however, instead of may they perish, translate “they perish,” that is, the Israelites themselves (Weiser, Traduction œcuménique de la Bible, New Jerusalem Bible, New International Version); this, however, seems unlikely. Rebuke of thy countenance or Good News Translation‘s “look at them in anger” must be recast in some languages where the sense of judgment is not conveyed by “angry looks.” In such cases verse 16b may be rendered, for example, “look at them and judge them” or “judge them and destroy them.”
Revised Standard Version gives the form of the Hebrew text in verse 17; the man in line a is parallel with the son of man in line b. The son of man here has the meaning “the human being.” Good News Translation interprets the man and the son of man as references to the nation of Israel (so Kirkpatrick, Cohen, McCullough, Weiser, Dentan). But some (Dahood, Toombs, Anderson, Briggs) take them to refer to the king (see Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch, Biblia Dios Habla Hoy, Bible en français courant, New Jerusalem Bible footnote); see 110.1, where the king is spoken of as at the right side of God. It is impossible to be dogmatic, and a personal reference may be intended. But the lack of mention of the king in the rest of the psalm may argue against this interpretation.
Let thy hand be upon means “Preserve and protect,” and of thy right hand means “the one you have chosen.” In the way in which Good News Translation has structured verse 17, line b does not repeat the verbs from line a. If the translator follows Good News Translation, it will be necessary in some languages to repeat the verbs from line a. It is also possible to say, for example, “Protect the people you have chosen, preserve the nation you made so strong.”
At the end of verse 17, for thyself may be the meaning intended by the Hebrew; New Jerusalem Bible, somewhat differently, translates the line “the one You have taken as Your own.” And New English Bible has “the man whom thou hast made strong for thy service.” But the Hebrew may be simply emphatic; in Good News Translation language it would be “the nation you yourself made so strong.”
Dahood takes verse 18a not as a promise but as a statement: “We have never turned away from you” (similarly An American Translation, New English Bible). It is better to take it as a statement.
Give us life is a plea for the restoration of the nation, that it may continue to exist. We will call on thy name is a promise to praise and worship God.
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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