Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Psalm 85:1:
Chichewa Contempary Chichewa translation, 2002/2016:
“Jehovah you were kind-hearterd to your country;
you brought back the glory of Jacob.” (Source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)
Newari:
“O LORD, You have loved Your land,
You have made Israel prosperous again.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
Hiligaynon:
“LORD, you (sing.) (have been) good to your (sing.) land;
you (sing.) have-restored the good situation of the decendants of Jacob.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
Laarim:
“LORD, you blessed your land,
and you made the people of Jacob to stay well again.” (Source: Laarim Back Translation)
Nyakyusa-Ngonde (back-translation into Swahili):
“Ee BWANA, uliibariki nchi yako,
uliwarudishia baraka waisraeli.” (Source: Nyakyusa Back Translation)
English:
“Yahweh, you have been kind to us people who live in this land;
you have enabled us Israeli people to become prosperous again.” (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 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, s-are-ru (される) or “do/make” is used.
The psalm begins with the people reminding Yahweh of how in the past he had once changed from his anger toward them, had forgiven their sins, and had made them prosperous again. The most common interpretation is that this refers to the return of the Israelites from the Babylonian captivity; God’s anger toward them had ceased and he had saved them. Some think the reference is to the exodus from Egypt, but this seems unlikely. It is impossible to determine for sure what the present distress is; Dahood thinks the whole setting of the psalm is a devastating drought from which the people are suffering and on account of which they pray for rain. In Hebrew there is a play on the sound of the words favorable and land in line a, and restore and fortunes in line b.
The verbs in these verses are understood by most commentators as equivalent to past-time actions (either perfects or simple pasts); New Jerusalem Bible translates as futures; Bible de Jérusalem and New Jerusalem Bible translate by the present tense; Dahood takes them as imperatives. According to the interpretation favored here, the simple past tense (Revised Standard Version, New International Version) is the most suitable one; the perfect tense (New English Bible, Bible en français courant, Traduction œcuménique de la Bible, New American Bible, Biblia Dios Habla Hoy) makes the shift to the imperative verb in verse 4 difficult, for the perfect tense implies that the effects of the past actions still continue in the present. Why, then, the plea for the LORD to change? Good News Translation attempts to meet this problem by using the perfect in verses 1-2 and the past in verse 3, but it may be better to use the simple past tense in all three verses, or else the past perfect (pluperfect), as follows: “LORD, you had been merciful … you had made … You had forgiven … You had stopped … and had held back….” Then the change in verse 4 is natural and understandable.
The verb translated wast favorable is used in 44.3, “didst delight”; see comments. Thy land in verse 1a is parallel with Jacob in verse 1b; together they refer to the land and the people of Israel. In some languages it is not natural to speak of being merciful to an inanimate object such as land, and in such cases it may be necessary to say “you have been merciful to the people of your land,” or idiomatically, “you have had a warm heart for the people who live in your land.” The phrase restore the fortunes is the same as the one in 14.7; 53.6. But one form of the Hebrew text (the qere) yields the meaning “you brought back the Israelite captives” (so Bible de Jérusalem, New Jerusalem Bible, Traduction œcuménique de la Bible). Restore the fortunes may sometimes be rendered “you have given Israel back its wealth” or “you have made Israel rich (or, prosperous) again.”
In verse 2a forgive translates the verb “lift away, remove,” and in verse 2b pardon translates the verb “cover” (see 32.1b and comments). The two nouns iniquity and sin are the same two used in 51.2.
For Selah see 3.2.
The two lines of verse 3 are parallel and synonymous; at one time God had “stopped being angry” (Good News Translation) with his people, that is, he had quit punishing them for their sins, and so they had had a change in their condition.
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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