The Hebrew and Greek that is translated as “love” in English is typically translated in Hakka Chinese as thung-siak / 痛惜 or “pain-love” when it refers to God’s love.
The same term is used for a variety of Hebrew terms that cover a range of English translations that refer to God as the agent, including “love,” “compassion,” and “mercy.”
Paul McLean explains: “[Thung-siak / 痛惜] has been used for many years in a popular Hakka-Christian mountain song based on John 3:16. The translation team decided that for this and other reasons it would be a good rendering here. It helps point to the fact that God’s ‘love’ is a compassionate (cum passio, with suffering) love.”
The rhetorical questions in Greek that are also translated with rhetorical questions in English in Romans 8:31-35 had to be transformed in Nabak.
Grace Fabian (in: Fabian 2013, p. 149) explains: “Zumbek [Fabian’s co-translator] and I took fresh courage and started in. I had expected [the translation of Romans] to be much more difficult than it really was. We found Paul’s debate very logical except the rhetorical questions. For instance, in Romans 8:31-34 Paul is not asking questions for information. ‘Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?’ Paul and the people in the Greco-Roman world of his day would know that the answer is, ‘No one.’
“The Nabaks do not have this grammatical device in their language. They immediately start asking, ‘Who can separate us? Let me think now.’ So we changed the question to a statement, ‘No one can separate us from the love of Christ. Absolutely nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.’ Then the list of specific situations follows and each one is eliminated as a threat to our security. The rephrasing resulted in correct and satisfying comprehension. We liked the flow of the Nabak words.”
Translator Lee Bramlett submitted this on the translation of the Greek word that is translated into English as “love” (referring to God’s love). This letter was then reposted by Wycliffe Bible Translators (see here ):
“Translator Lee Bramlett was confident that God had left His mark on the Hdi culture somewhere, but though he searched, he could not find it. Where was the footprint of God in the history or daily life of these Cameroonian people? What clue had He planted to let the Hdi know who He was and how He wanted to relate to them?
“Then one night in a dream, God prompted Lee to look again at the Hdi word for ‘love.’ Lee and his wife, Tammi, had learned that verbs in Hdi consistently end in one of three vowels. For almost every verb, they could find forms ending in i, a, and u. But when it came to the word for love, they could only find i and a. Why no u?
“Lee asked the Hdi translation committee, which included the most influential leaders in the community, ‘Could you ‘ɗvi’ your wife?’ ‘Yes,’ they said. That would mean that the wife had been loved but the love was gone.
“‘Could you ‘ɗva’ your wife?’ ‘Yes,’ they said. That kind of love depended on the wife’s actions. She would be loved as long as she remained faithful and cared for her husband well.
“‘Could you ‘ɗvu’ your wife?’ Everyone laughed. ‘Of course not! If you said that, you would have to keep loving your wife no matter what she did, even if she never got you water, never made you meals. Even if she committed adultery, you would be compelled to just keep on loving her. No, we would never say ‘ɗvu.’ It just doesn’t exist.’
“Lee sat quietly for a while, thinking about John 3:16, and then he asked, ‘Could God ‘ɗvu’ people?’
“There was complete silence for three or four minutes; then tears started to trickle down the weathered faces of these elderly men. Finally they responded. ‘Do you know what this would mean? This would mean that God kept loving us over and over, millennia after millennia, while all that time we rejected His great love. He is compelled to love us, even though we have sinned more than any people.’
“One simple vowel and the meaning was changed from ‘I love you based on what you do and who you are,’ to ‘I love you, based on Who I am. I love you because of Me and NOT because of you.’
“God had encoded the story of His unconditional love right into their language. For centuries, the little word was there — unused but available, grammatically correct and quite understandable. When the word was finally spoken, it called into question their entire belief system. If God was like that, did they need the spirits of the ancestors to intercede for them? Did they need sorcery to relate to the spirits? Many decided the answer was no, and the number of Christ-followers quickly grew from a few hundred to several thousand.
“The New Testament in Hdi is ready to be printed now, and 29,000 speakers will soon be able to feel the impact of passages like Ephesians 5:25: ‘Husbands, ‘ɗvu’ your wives, just as Christ ‘ɗvu’-d the church…'”
In Hawai’i Creole English the love that God has is often translated as love an aloha. Aloha has a variety of meanings, including “hello,” “goodbye,” “love,” “thank you,” etc.
The Philippine languages of Cebuano, Tagalog, and Pampanga use a word (gugma, pag-ibig, and lugud respectively) that is also used for a “noble, refined love of people for each other,” distinct from romantic love. (Source: G. Henry Waterman in The Bible Translator 1960, p. 24ff. )
In Mairasi, the term that is used for love by God, for God and for people is the same: “desire one’s face.” (source: Enggavoter 2004)
The Greek that is translated in English as “Who will separate us from the love of Christ?” is translated into Tezoatlán Mixtec as “What can cause Christ to stop loving us?” (¿Ndí ki̱án kandeé ña̱ dánkoo Cristo ña̱ kúꞌu̱ ini na̱ saꞌa̱ yo̱?) (source: John Williams in the Seeing Scripture Anew blog.)
the Hebrew and Greek that is translated with “sword” in English is translated in Tepeuxila Cuicatec as “machete that is sharp on two sides,” in Lalana Chinantec as “machete” and in San Mateo del Mar Huave as “knife.” (Source: Viola Waterhouse in Notes on Translation August 1966, p. 86ff.)
Many languages distinguish between inclusive and exclusive first-person plural pronouns (“we”). (Click or tap here to see more details)
The inclusive “we” specifically includes the addressee (“you and I and possibly others”), while the exclusive “we” specifically excludes the addressee (“he/she/they and I, but not you”). This grammatical distinction is called “clusivity.” While Semitic languages such as Hebrew or most Indo-European languages such as Greek or English do not make that distinction, translators of languages with that distinction have to make a choice every time they encounter “we” or a form thereof (in English: “we,” “our,” or “us”).
For this verse, translators typically select the inclusive form (including the writer of the letter and the readers).
Source: Velma Pickett and Florence Cowan in Notes on Translation January 1962, p. 1ff.
Following are a number of back-translations of Romans 8:35:
Uma: “Who will separate us from the love of Kristus? Whether there’s difficulty or suffering, whether persecution or hunger or lack, whether there’s disaster, or if we should actually be killed, the love of Kristus for us does not let go.” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
Yakan: “Therefore we (dual) are assured that no matter what befalls/happens (connotation bad) to us (dual), Isa Almasi really loves us (dual). If we (dual) are in trouble/sorrows or in suffering/difficulties or in persecution, it does not mean that he no longer loves us (dual). Even if we (dual) lack food and clothing, even if we (dual) are in danger or even if we (dual) are killed, Almasi’s love for us (incl.) really does not move.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
Western Bukidnon Manobo: “And if that’s the case then there is nothing that can separate us from Christ; even though we are in great difficulty because of hardships and trouble and people harming us; even if we are in great difficulty because of hunger and we have no clothing; even if we are harmed and we are killed, that cannot remove our value in the breath of Christ.” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
Kankanaey: “So what then is able to separate us from Cristo’s love? Can perhaps difficulty or worry or people’s hardshipping us? Can also hunger or lack of clothes or fearful happenings or even our being killed?” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
Tenango Otomi: “Now nothing can stop Christ from loving us. Even though we suffer, he loves us. Or if we live in sad circumstances. he loves us. Or if people persecute us, he loves us. Or if there isn’t anything to eat, he still loves us. Or if there are no clothes to wear, he loves us. Or if we live in danger, hated by the people, he loves us. Or if it is we must die, still he loves us.” (Source: Tenango Otomi Back Translation)
Chicahuaxtla Triqui: “Therefore people can’t cause that Christ should not love us. It is certainly true that trouble can come to us, and we can be in agony of heart, and various things can bother us. And famine can come upon us, and clothing for us to wear be lacking. And we may have to go where it is dangerous to go, and they may kill some of us. That’s how we will suffer, but Christ will not loose his grip of us, but Christ will keep on loving us.”
Hopi: “Christ loves us, and who can separate us from him? No one. We may suffer. We may be afraid of something. We may be persecuted. We may be hungry. We may lack clothing. We may be in danger. We may be killed by the sword. But in going through these things, we will not be separated from Christ.” (Source: Waterhouse / Parrott in Notes on Translation October 1967, p. 1ff.)
Even though Paul uses a simple future in this verse (“will separate”), his meaning is best conveyed in translation by who, then, can separate us?
Although some manuscripts read “the love of God,” most translators follow the manuscripts which read the love of Christ, and this is recommended by the UBS Greek text. It is clear that the genitive expression the love of Christ means “Christ’s love for us.”
The initial question, Who, then, can separate us from the love of Christ?, may be made a statement, namely, “No one can separate us from Christ’s love for us,” “No one can remove us from Christ’s love for us,” or “No one can keep Christ’s love from reaching us.” In some instances rather figurative expressions are employed for the idea of being separated from Christ’s love—for example, “Who can take us out of the hand of Christ who loves us?” or “Who can tear us away from Christ’s heart toward us?” There is, however, a difficulty involved in introducing this question by “who,” since what follows are events, not persons. Therefore it may be necessary to translate: “What can separate us from Christ’s love?”
The first word in the list that Paul uses is a very general term and is best translated by the English word trouble (so An American Translation*); “affliction” of many translations implies something totally different to the English reader. The second of these terms is almost synonymous in meaning with the first, and perhaps is best rendered by such words as hardship (so also New English Bible) or “difficulties.” In 2.9 these two terms are rendered in the Good News Translation as suffering and pain. A number of translations take Paul’s word “famine” in a more general sense of hunger (New English Bible, An American Translation*, New American Bible; Jerusalem Bible “lacking food”; Phillips “lack of … food”). Also the word “nakedness” is often given a more general sense (Good News Translationpoverty; Phillips “lack of clothes”; Jerusalem Bible “lacking … clothes”; An American Translation* “destitution”). The last word that Paul uses is literally “sword,” but in the present context it has the meaning of death, specifically a violent death. Persecution and danger, the third and sixth words in the list, are not difficult, though it should be pointed out that persecution does not necessarily imply official action and is perhaps best taken in a more general frame of reference. Danger is, of course, also a general term describing any sort of threat to one’s life.
The principal difficulty in rendering the second portion of verse 35 is that terms for trouble, hardship, persecution, hunger, poverty, danger, death are often verbs or phrases which involve verb expressions. These are obviously not things but events. The possibility expressed by a question with the auxiliary can implies a condition, and therefore one may translate the second sentence of verse 35 thus: “If we are in trouble, if we suffer hardships, if people persecute us, if we have nothing to eat, if we have nothing to wear, if people threaten us, or even if we are killed, does this mean that Christ’s love does not hold us?” The same sentence may, of course, be changed into a statement—for example, “Nothing can separate us from Christ’s love; not even if we are in trouble, or if we suffer, or if people persecute us,” etc.
Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on Paul’s Letter to the Romans. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1973. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .