The Greek, Latin, Ge’ez, and Hebrew that is translated as “shepherd” in English is translated in Kouya as Bhlabhlɛɛ ‘yliyɔzʋnyɔ — ” tender of sheep.”
Philip Saunders (p. 231) explains:
“Then one day they tackled the thorny problem of ‘shepherd’. It was problematic because Kouyas don’t have herdsmen who stay with the sheep all the time. Sheep wander freely round the village and its outskirts, and often a young lad will be detailed to drive sheep to another feeding spot. So the usual Kouya expression meant a ‘driver of sheep’, which would miss the idea of a ‘nurturing’ shepherd. ‘A sheep nurturer’ was possible to say, but it was unnatural in most contexts. The group came up with Bhlabhlɛɛ ‘yliyɔzʋnyɔ which meant ‘a tender of sheep’, that is one who keeps an eye on the sheep to make sure they are all right. All, including the translators, agreed that this was a most satisfactory solution.”
Other translations include:
Chuj: “carer” (there was no single word for “shepherd”) (source: Ronald Ross)
Muna: “sheep guard” (dhagano dhumba) (there was no immediate lexical equivalent) (source: René van den Berg),
Mairasi: “people who took care of domesticated animals” (source: Enggavoter 2004)
Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Zephaniah 2:6:
Kupsabiny: “The shore of the ocean will become a grazing area where sheep are looked after.” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
Newari: “Your country by the sea will be dwelling place for Shepherds and pens for sheep” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
Hiligaynon: “Therefore your (plur.) land in the seashore will-be a grazing-area/pastureland and pen of the sheep.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
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Like a number of other East Asian languages, Japanese uses a complex system of honorifics, i.e. a system where a number of different levels of politeness are expressed in language via words, word forms or grammatical constructs. These can range from addressing someone or referring to someone with contempt (very informal) to expressing the highest level of reference (as used in addressing or referring to God) or any number of levels in-between. One way Japanese shows different degree of politeness is through the choice of a second person pronoun (“you” and its various forms) as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. The most commonly used anata (あなた) is typically used when the speaker is humbly addressing another person.
In these verses, however, omae (おまえ) is used, a cruder second person pronoun, that Jesus for instance chooses when chiding his disciples. (Source: S. E. Doi, see also S. E. Doi in Journal of Translation, 18/2022, p. 37ff. )
The various Greek, Aramaic, Ge’ez, and Latin and Hebrew terms that are translated as “sea,” “ocean,” or “lake” in English are all translated in Chichewa with one term: nyanja. Malawi, where Chichewa is spoken, has a lot of lakes but does not share a border with the ocean. (Source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)
And you, O seacoast, shall be pastures: the Philistine cities will be so completely destroyed that animals will graze on their sites. In English it sounds odd to address the seacoast directly, and so Good News Translation restructures in order to continue addressing the Philistines who lived there. This gives the more natural sentence “Your land by the sea will become open fields.” This can also be rendered “… will become bush (or, forest)” or “… will become land where sheep graze.”
Meadows for shepherds and folds for flocks: the word translated meadows is of uncertain meaning. These fields or meadows are of course places with abundant grass rather than plowed fields for growing crops. New English Bible and Good News Translation translate meadows as “huts.” The Septuagint translator apparently read this word at an earlier point in the sentence, instead of seacoast, and understood it as a proper name, Crete. This tradition is followed by New American Bible and New English Bible. The overall meaning of the verse is much the same either way. Folds or “sheep pens” (Good News Translation) are the enclosed areas where sheep can be kept safe at night.
Quoted with permission from Clark, David J. & Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on the Book of Zephaniah. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1989. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .
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