quail

The Hebrew, Greek and Latin that is translated as “quail” in English is translated in Elhomwe as ayuurwe. Ayuurwe are “small (like doves), wild birds which people catch to eat. These type of birds rot very quickly” (source: project-specific translation notes in Paratext). In Bariai they are translated as “bush hen” (source: Bariai Back Translation).

 

There is total agreement among versions and commentators that this is the Common Quail Coturnix coturnix. This bird existed in Egypt in enormous flocks numbering many millions for centuries, right up to the early part of the twentieth century. It was netted in enormous quantities, dried in the sun, and exported. The Egyptian bird has a rather limited migration route, going across the eastern side of Egypt to the Sinai, then southward into the Sudan. Other quails that migrate from southern Europe to Africa also cross the Sinai. It was during these migrations, when the birds fly only a few feet from the ground, that they were netted.

The common quail is a small brown bird streaked with white, the smallest of the game birds. It looks like a miniature partridge, with a small white patch beneath its beak, a white stripe above its eye, and another around its neck. The males have a black chest stripe above a chestnut-colored breast patch.

The quail is associated with God’s merciful provision during the Exodus from Egypt.

The common quail is found all over Africa, in southern and southeastern Europe, and in the Middle East. It is then found in a discontinuous band across mainland Asia to Japan. Other very similar species, the Harlequin Quail Coturnix delegorguei and the Chinese Quail Coturnix chinensis, are equally common in Africa and Asia respectively. The latter is also found in Australia, where it is called the king quail. In North America the California quail is well known. In other areas where the true quail is not known, a phrase such as small partridge can be used. The reference in Numbers 11:31, literally “two cubits high above the face of the earth”, should be interpreted as “they were flying about a meter 3 feet above the ground.” In the following verse, the text should be interpreted as “they spread them out on the ground,” that is, to dry in the sun.

Quail, Wikimedia Commons

Source: All Creatures Great and Small: Living things in the Bible (UBS Helps for Translators)

See also quails, manna, and dew (image).

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 Wisdom 16:2

Instead of this punishment thou didst show kindness to thy people: Instead of this punishment may be rendered “But you did not punish your people in this way” (similarly Good News Translation). Thou didst show kindness may be expressed as “instead, you showed them kindness” (Good News Translation) or “you treated them with kindness [or, were kind to them].”

And thou didst prepare quails to eat: This is actually the third line of the verse in Greek. The reference is to Exo 16.9-13; Num 11.18-20, 31-33; compare Psa 78.26-29; 105.40. In cultures where quails are unknown, we may say something like “birds named quails or even “special birds,” since the exact type of bird is not important here. There is a danger for translators here, illustrated by Revised Standard Version, which sounds like God was going to eat the quails. Possible alternative models are “You provided quails for them to eat” and “You sent them quails to eat.”

A delicacy to satisfy the desire of appetite: This line and the previous one are translated more literally in An American Translation, which has “And to satisfy the desire of their appetite, you prepared something with a strange taste—Quails for food.” “Strange taste” is always interpreted as meaning what Good News Translation says with “a rare, delicious food.” This line may be combined with the previous line: “You provided [them with] quails, a rare, delicious food, to satisfy their hunger.” But in some languages translators may prefer to use two sentences: “You provided [or, sent] them quails to satisfy their hunger. These were a rare and delicious food.”

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on The Wisdom of Solomon. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2004. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.