garden

The Hebrew, Ge’ez, and Greek that is translated into English as “garden” is translated into Naskapi with a word that means “a place for things to grow.”

Doug Lockhart (in Word Alive 2013 ) explains: “‘Garden’ was another term that had no Naskapi equivalent. ‘There are no gardens here,’ Bill [Jancewicz, a translation consultant] explains. ‘So what word do you use for ‘Garden of Eden,’ and have it communicate something logical in Naskapi? We finally came up with a word that means ‘a place for things to grow,’ like a park.'”

See also gardener.

Learn more on Bible Odyssey: Eden .

Translation commentary on Susanna 1:38

If integrated into the book of Daniel: 13.38.

We were in a corner of the garden: A corner here means an out-of-the-way place, near the edge, not a place where paths happen to cross. So we may say “We were over near the edge of the gardens.”

We saw this wickedness does not simply mean “we saw what was happening” (Good News Translation). The Greek noun for wickedness describes a lawless act, so a better rendering is “we saw that the Law was being violated.” Moore has “we saw this wicked thing,” and Contemporary English Version says “we realized they were disobeying God’s Law.”

We ran to them: A verb should be found here with connotations that are not incongruous with the context. The elder weren’t running to help them out. They weren’t running to get a better look. They were running to apprehend two people guilty of a crime. The next verse explains this further.

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on The Shorter Books of the Deuterocanon. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2006. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.