sorrow

The Greek, Latin and Hebrew that is translated in English as “painful” or “sorrow” is translated in Huba as “cut the insides.” David Frank explains: “Huba has just one expression that covers both ‘angry’ and ‘sad.’ They don’t make a distinction in their language. I suppose you could say that the term they use means more generically, ‘strong emotional reaction’ (source: David Frank in this blog post ). Similarly, in Bariai it is “the interior is severed/cut” (source: Bariai Back Translation).

In Noongar it is translated as koort-warra or “heart bad.” (Source: Bardip Ruth-Ang 2020)

In Enlhet it is translated as “going aside of the innermost.” “Innermost” or valhoc is a term that is frequently used in Enlhet to describe a large variety of emotions or states of mind (for other examples see here). (Source: Jacob Loewen in The Bible Translator 1969, p. 24ff. )

See also grieving / sorrowful.

Translation commentary on Sirach 30:23

Delight your soul and comfort your heart: Delight your soul is literally “deceive your soul”; see the comments on this same clause at 14.16. The two clauses in this line are obviously parallel, and mean essentially the same thing, but Good News Translation captures the distinction between them better than most: “Enjoy yourself and be happy.”

And remove sorrow far from you: What brings on constant sadness, or depression, is generally not so much sorrow over anything as it is worry. “Don’t be a worrier,” ben Sira says here. This is what Good News Translation means by its idiomatic “don’t worry all the time.” That doesn’t mean that it’s all right to worry some of the time. It means you just shouldn’t be the kind of person who always finds something to worry about.

For sorrow has destroyed many is rendered “and it has destroyed many people” by Good News Translation.

And there is no profit in it may be translated “and never helps anybody.”

Good News Translation reverses the last two lines of this verse, and offers a good translation.

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Sirach. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2008. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.