disappearance

In Gbaya, the notion of the the disappearance of someone is emphasized in the referenced verses with ɓɛlɛm, an ideophone that expresses the disappearance of someone unnoticed or a sudden action such as holding one’s breath.

Ideophones are a class of sound symbolic words expressing human sensation that are used as literary devices in many African languages. (Source: Philip Noss)

complete verse (Psalm 90:4)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Psalm 90:4:

  • Chichewa Contempary Chichewa translation, 2002/2016:
    “For 1,000 years in your eyes
    they are like one day that has gone
    or like a small second at night.” (Source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)
  • Newari:
    “For You a thousand years is like one day,
    [like] yesterday gone by.
    It is like a short time in the night.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon:
    “One thousand years to us (excl.) is-like just a day to you that has-passed-by,
    or just a short hour in the night.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
  • Laarim:
    “You see one thousand years
    to stay like only one day, that came and went,
    or they are the same like only one night.” (Source: Laarim Back Translation)
  • Nyakyusa-Ngonde (back-translation into Swahili):
    “Kwa maana miaka 1,000 mbele yako,
    iko kama siku ya jana ambayo imepita,
    ni kama muda mfupi wa usiku.” (Source: Nyakyusa Back Translation)
  • English:
    “When you consider/think about time,
    1,000 years are as short as one day which passes;
    you consider that they are as short as a few hours in the night.” (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.

Translation commentary on Psalm 90:3 - 90:4

Verse 3 opens the second segment of the poem, which calls attention to mankind’s mortality, and this theme will be sustained to the end.

Verse 3 in Hebrew is “you turn man to dust, and you say, ‘Return, humankind.’ ” By most commentators and translators the two lines are taken as synonymous, indicating God’s activity in deciding a person’s time to die, by which that person returns to the dust from which God made the human race (Gen 3.19). The time of a person’s death is God’s decision. Some have understood the word translated dust to mean “destruction” (King James Version, Revised Version [ver RVver*]) or else “contrition” (see Jewish Publication Version, New Jerusalem Bible footnote); the majority, however, take it to mean the soil, the earth. Some take “return” in verse 3b to mean “repent”; this is possible but does not seem likely. Most understand the two lines to be parallel. Good News Translation reverses the two lines for greater ease of understanding.

Briggs and Dahood change the vowel mark for the last word of verse 2 in the Hebrew text from ʾel “God” to ʾal “not,” and connect it with what follows: “Do not turn man back to dust.” This is possible, but it is not widely accepted.

For comments on children of men in verse 3b, see 11.4.

The whole verse may be translated as follows:

• You order human beings to return to the soil,
you change them back to the soil they came from.

Verse 4 extends the meditation on mankind’s limited existence by looking at time as it were from God’s point of view. The poetic process is that of narrowing time from a thousand years to a day (yesterday) to a single watch in the night. The end point of this shortening of time is night, which prepares the reader for the next line, which is about sleep. In this way cohesion between the two verses is established.

Good News Translation has added, for clarity, “one day” in verse 4a, but this may not be necessary. The following may be said: “For a thousand years to you are as brief as yesterday, which is already gone….” A confusion which may arise in some languages in this verse is related to in thy sight or Good News Translation‘s “to you.” In some cases it will be clearer to say, for example, “A thousand years of ours is like one day of yours” or “The way people count time, a thousand years is the same as one day in the way you count time.” The Hebrew for “a short hour in the night” (Good News Translation) is “a night-watch,” which was a period of four hours (see also comments on 63.6); for a person asleep, this is a short time.

There may be an allusion to this verse in 2 Peter 3.8.

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 .