remember

The Hebrew and Greek that is translated as “remember” in English is translated in Mairasi as “it is (or: place it) in your liver’s crack” (source: Enggavoter 2004) and in Noongar as barrang-dwangka, literally “ear-hold” (source: Portions of the Holy Bible in the Nyunga language of Australia, 2018).

In Kalmyk, there is no equivalent to “remember,” so the translation there is “don’t forget.” (Source: David Clark in The Bible Translator 2015, p. 117ff. )

See also forget, wisdom, God remembered Noah and Seat of the Mind / Seat of Emotions.

Translation commentary on Sirach 38:22

“Remember my doom, for yours is like it: yesterday it was mine, and today it is yours”: Revised Standard Version puts this verse in quotation marks to indicate that these words are those of the dead person. Good News Translation does not need to do this since it has changed the first person pronouns to third person. There are textual problems here that can easily be resolved by reading the Hebrew. Good News Translation is probably not reading the Hebrew, but rewording the Greek in order to avoid the awkward situation of having a dead person speak. However, Good News Translation is a fairly good translation of the Hebrew, and we urge translators to follow it. In our judgment a footnote is not necessary. A simple model keeping the poetic structure is:

• Just remember, yesterday he died,
and tomorrow you will die just as he did.

This model uses “yesterday” and “tomorrow” instead of the literal yesterday and today. This was done for naturalness in English. Good News Translation has “today” and “tomorrow.” Translators should use whatever sounds most natural in their language. The point here is that we all will die some day.

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.