The Greek that is translated as “saint” in English is rendered into Highland Puebla Nahuatl as “one with a clean hearts,” into Northwestern Dinka as “one with a white hearts,” and into Western Kanjobal as “person of prayer.” (Source: Nida 1952, p. 146)
Chichewa “(person with a) white heart” since “white” is the word that is used in Chichewa for the translation of “holy.” (Source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)
The Greek that is translated as “was raised from the dead” is translated as “rose from the dead” (Xicotepec De Juárez Totonac), “came up again from where he was buried” (Huehuetla Tepehua) or “returned from among the dead” (Ojitlán Chinantec). (Source: M. Larson / B. Moore in Notes on Translation February 1970, p. 1-125.)
The Greek that is often translated as “church” in English is translated into Avaric as imanl’urazul ahlu: “the community of believers” or “the believing people.”
Magomed-Kamil Gimbatov and Yakov Testelets (in The Bible Translator 1996, p. 434ff. ) talk about the genesis of this term (click or tap here to read more):
“The word ‘Church’ presents particular difficulties, as we might expect when we think that even many Christians do not understand it correctly. When people today say ‘church,’ they often mean a particular building, or an organization consisting chiefly of clergy (priests and monks). It is even harder to find a word or combination of words which adequately translates the meaning for people unfamiliar with Christianity. Surprisingly, the Greek word ekklesia, indicating in the classical language ‘an assembly of the people,’ ‘a gathering of citizens,’ has come into Avar and other Dagestani languages in the form kilisa. This, like the word qanch (‘cross’), is an ancient borrowing, presumably from the time before the arrival of Islam, when Dagestan came under the influence of neighboring Christian states. In modern usage, however, this word indicates a place of Christian worship. Thus it is completely inappropriate as a translation of its New Testament ancestor ekklesia.
“We were obliged to look at various words which are closer to the meaning of the Greek. Some of these words are dandel’i (‘meeting’), danderussin (‘assembly’), the Arabic-derived mazhlis (‘meeting, conference’), zhama’at (‘society, community’), ahlu (‘race, people, family, group of people united by a common goal or interest’, as in the Arabic phrase ahlu-l-kitab ‘people of the Book’ or ‘people of the Scriptures’), which describes both Jews and Christians, and ummat (‘people, tribe’). In Islamic theology the phrase ‘Mohammed’s ummat’ means the universal community of Muslims, the Muslim world, in the same way as the Christian world is known as ‘Isa’s ummat.’ None of these descriptions on their own, without explanation, can be used to translate the word ‘Church’ in the New Testament. Thus, after long consideration, we adopted the phrase imanl’urazul ahlu, meaning ‘the community of believers,’ ‘the believing people,’ This translation corresponds closely to New Testament teaching about the Church.
“It is interesting that the same word ahlu with the meaning ‘tribe, community’ has been used by translators for different reasons in the introduction to the Gospel of Luke in order to translate the expression in the original Greek pepleroforemenon en hemin pragmaton (πεπληροφορημένων ἐν ἡμῖν πραγμάτων), which the Russian Synodal translation renders ‘about the events well-known amongst us’ (Luke 1:1). The expression ‘amongst us’ cannot be translated literally into Avar, but has to be rendered ‘among our people’; and here the same term was used as for the word ‘church’, literally ‘among our tribe, community (ahlu).'”
In Kamo “church” is fang-balla (“owners of writing-people”) when referring to the church community and “house of writing-people” when referring to a church building. David Frank explains: “In Kamo culture, Christianity was associated with writing, so Christianity is called balla, which they say means ‘people who write.’ Christianity is balla, and Christians are called fang-balla, which means ‘owners of Christianity.’ That is the term that is used for the church, in the sense of people, rather than a building. In Philemon 1:1b-2a, Paul says he is writing ‘To our friend and fellow worker Philemon, and to the church (fang-balla ‘owners of Christianity) that meet in your house.’ The word fang “owner’ is very productive in the Kamo language. A disciple is an ‘owner of learning,’ an apostle is an ‘owner of sending,’ a believer is an ‘owner of truth,’ a hypocrite is an ‘owner of seeing eyes.’ The expression ‘house of writing-people’ is used in Matthew 16:18, which reads in Kamo, ‘And so I tell you Peter, you are a rock, and on top of this rock foundation I will build my house of writing-people, and never even death will not be able to overcome it.” (See also Peter – rock)
In Bacama there also is a differentiation between the building (vɨnə hiutə: “house of prayer”) and the community (ji-kottə: “followers”) (source: David Frank in this blog post ).
In 16th-century Classical Nahuatl, a transliteration from Spanish (Santa Yglesia or Santa Iglesia) is typically used rather than a translation, making the concept take on a personified meaning. Ottman (p. 169) explains: “The church building, or more precisely the church complex with its associated patio, has a Nahuatl name in common usage — generally teopan, something like ‘god-place,’ in contradistinction to teocalli, ‘god-house,’ applied to a prehispanic temple — but the abstract sense is always Santa Iglesia, a Spanish proper name like ‘Dios’ or ‘Santa María’, and like ‘Santa María’ often called ‘our mother.’ As a personified ‘mother,’ in the European tradition as well as in Nahuatl, She instructs Her children or chastises them; as Bride of Christ, She both longs for Her heavenly rest and bears witness to it, in the ‘always-already’ of eschatological time; as successor to the Synagogue, the blindfolded, broken-sceptred elder sister who accompanies Her in painting and sculpture, She represents the triumphant rule of truth. ‘The Church’ can mean the clerical hierarchy; it can also, or simultaneously, mean the assembly of the faithful. It dispenses grace to its members, living and dead, yet it is also enriched by them, living and dead, existing not only on earth but in purgatory and in heaven.”
In Lisu the building (“church”) is called “house of prayer” (source: Arrington 2020, p. 196) whereas in Highland Totonac the community is referred as “those who gather together” (source: Hermann Aschmann in The Bible Translator 1950, p. 171ff. ), in Huehuetla Tepehua as “those who gather together who have confidence in Christ” (source: Waterhouse / Parrott in Notes on Translation October 1967, p. 1ff.), in Uma as “Christian people” (source: Uma Back Translation), in Kankanaey as “the congregation of God’s people” (source: Kankanaey Back Translation), and in Tagbanwa as “you whom God separated-out as his people because of your being-united/tied-together with Jesus Christ” (source: Tagbanwa Back Translation).
In American Sign Language, “church” (as in the community of believers) is made up of the combination of the signs for “Jesus-into-heart” (signifying a believer), followed by the sign for “group.” (Source: Ruth Anna Spooner, Ron Lawer)
“Church” in American Sign Language, source: Deaf Harbor
While British Sign Language also uses a sign that focuses on a group of people believing in Jesus (see here ), another sign that it uses combines the signs for “ringing the (church) bells” and a “group of people.” (Source: Anna Smith)
“Church” in British Sign Language (source: Christian BSL, used with permission)
“Hope is sometimes one of the most difficult terms to translate in the entire Bible. It is not because people do not hope for things, but so often they speak of hoping as simply ‘waiting.’ In fact, even in Spanish, the word esperar means both ‘to wait’ and ‘to hope.’ However, in many instances the purely neutral term meaning ‘to wait’ may be modified in such a way that people will understand something more of its significance. For example, in Tepeuxila Cuicatec hope is called ‘wait-desire.’ Hope is thus a blend of two activities: waiting and desiring. This is substantially the type of expectancy of which hope consists.
In Yucateco the dependence of hope is described by the phrase ‘on what it hangs.’ ‘Our hope in God’ means that ‘we hang onto God.’ The object of hope is the support of one’s expectant waiting. In Ngäbere the phrase “resting the mind” is used. This “implies waiting and confidence, and what is a better definition of hope than ‘confident waiting’.” (Source for this and above: Nida 1952, p. 20, 133)
Enlhet: “waitings of (our) 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. )
Kwang: “one’s future is restored to one’s soul like a fresh, cool breeze on a hot day.” (Source: Mark Vanderkooi right here )
Noongar: koort-kwidiny or “heart waiting” (source: Warda-Kwabba Luke-Ang)
Anjam: “looking through the horizon” (source: Albert Hoffmann in his memoirs from 1948, quoted in Holzhausen / Riderer 2010, p. 7)
Ron: kintiɓwi or “put lip” (source: Andy Warren-Rothlin)
Alekano: “wait not hearing two ears” (meaning to “wait without being double-minded” — source: Ellis Deibler in Notes on Translation June 1986, p. 36ff.)
Marathiaasha (आशा) with a stronger emphasis on desire
In Mwera “hope” and “faith” are translated with the same word: ngulupai. (Source: Pioneer Bible Translators, project-specific translation notes in Paratext)
C.M. Doke looks at a number of Bantu languages and their respective translations of “hope” with slightly varying connotations (in The Bible Translator 1954, p. 9ff. ):
Xhosa and Zulu: themba “hope, expect,” also “have faith in, rely upon”
Tswana: tsholofelo “hope, expect, look for confidently”
Southern Sotho: tshepo “trust, rely on, believe in, have confidence in”
“Unlike English, which uses the word hope broadly, the French language uses two words that derive from the word espérer (to hope): espoir and espérance. Both can first refer to something hoped for. In this sense, the word espoir usually refers to an uncertain object; that is, someone who hopes for something in this way does not have the certainty that it will happen (“I hope the weather will be nice tomorrow”). On the other hand, espérance describes what, rightly or wrongly, is hoped for or expected with certainty. It often refers to a philosophical or eschatological object (‘I hope in the goodness of human beings’; ‘I hope for the return of Jesus Christ’).
“When we speak of espoir or espérance, we then have in mind different types of objects hoped for. This difference matters, because both terms also commonly refer to the state of mind that characterizes the hopeful. And this state of mind will be different precisely according to the object hoped for.
“Having espoir for an uncertain yet better future in these difficult times may be a good thing, but it is not enough. Such hope can be disappointed and easily fade away when our wishes and expectations (our hopes) do not materialize.
“The opposite is true with espérance, which is deeper than our desire and wish for an end to a crisis or a future without pain and suffering. To face the trials of life, we need peace and joy in our hearts that come from expecting certain happiness. This is what espérance is: a profound and stable disposition resulting from faith in the coming of what we expect. In this sense, it is similar in meaning to the English word hopefulness.
“If we have believed in the Son of the living God, we have such a hope. It rests on the infallible promises of our God, who knows the plans he has for us, his children — plans of peace and not misfortune, to give us a hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11). By using the two meanings of the word, we can say that the espérance that the fulfillment of his promises represents (the object hoped for) fills us with espérance (the state of mind).”
Following are a number of back-translations of 2 Corinthians 1:1:
Uma: “This letter is from me Paulus, whom God lifted to be an apostle/messenger of Kristus Yesus according to his desire, and from Timotius, our (incl.) one-faith relative, we (excl.) send it to you relatives who believe in God who are in the village of Korintus, including [lit., until] all the Kristen people in the province of Akhaya.” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
Yakan: “This letter is from me, Paul and from Timoteo our (incl.) brother. From the will of God I was commissioned by Isa Almasi, commanded to proclaim his message. I send this letter there to the gathering belonging to God there in the town of Korinto and also (lit. including) to all of God’s people throughout the place of Akaya.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
Western Bukidnon Manobo: “I am Paul; I was given the title of an apostle by Jesus Christ because God wanted it. I and Timothy, our (incl.) brother, we write to all of you believers in God there in the town of Corinth, and also all of the people who belong to God within the province of Achaiya.” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
Kankanaey: “I am Pablo who am an apostle of Cristo Jesus according to what God wants. My companion here is our brother Timoteo. Here is our (excl.) letter to you who are God’s people in Corinto and in-addition all his people in the province Akaya.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
Tagbanwa: “Corinthians (lit. those in/from Corinto) who are trusting and believing/obeying God, and others whom God has separated-out to be his people now there in the whole province of Acaya, there-with-you is our (excl.) letter, I Pablo who is an apostle of Cristo Jesus according to the determined-plan of God, and Timoteo who is our sibling in believing.” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)
Tenango Otomi: “I am Paul, whom God appointed to be Jesus Christ’s representative. I, with our brother Timothy, greet God’s people who gather there in the city of Corinth, and also those other people who are in God’s hand, who live in the places in the land of Acaya.” (Source: Tenango Otomi Back Translation)
Highland Totonac: “I Paul am the one who is writing this, Jesus’ sent one, because that is God’s will. Then too, there is our brother Timothy, we send you this message, you who gather together at Corinth, as well as all those who are God’s chosen who live throughout the whole of Achaia.” (Source: Herman Aschmann in The Bible Translator 1950, p. 171ff. )
Following are a number of back-translations of 2 Corinthians 1:2:
Uma: “Many greetings: we (excl.) call-out to God our Father and the Lord Yesus Kristus, that he bless you from his white insides [grace] and give you goodness of life [i.e., well-being, peace].” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
Yakan: “May our (incl.) Father God and our (incl.) Leader Isa Almasi always care for you. May they always cause peace in your livers.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
Western Bukidnon Manobo: “May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ show you favor and bless you with a peaceful situation.” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
Kankanaey: “May you have mercy/grace and peace that comes-from God our Father and the Lord Jesu Cristo.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
Tagbanwa: “We (excl.) are praying that hopefully with you always is the grace/mercy and peace of mind/inner-being that God who is our Father and the Lord Jesu-Cristo give.” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)
Tenango Otomi: “We want that God our Father with our Lord Jesus Christ will bless you and will put peace in your hearts.” (Source: Tenango Otomi Back Translation)
Following are a number of back-translations of 2 Corinthians 1:3:
Uma: “Let us praise God the Father of our Lord Yesus Kristus! For he is our Father whose love is big, he is God who strengthens our hearts.” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
Yakan: “We (incl.) thank God, he is the Father of our (incl.) Leader Isa Almasi because he is really merciful/kind and he is really always-ready-to-help.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
Western Bukidnon Manobo: “Let us (incl.) praise God who is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is our merciful father, and the origin of any kind of help for us (incl.).” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
Kankanaey: “Let us praise God who is the God and Father of Jesu Cristo our Lord, for he is our merciful/gracious Father who is the source of all help and comfort.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
Tagbanwa: “Hopefully we are always praising and thanking God, he who is the Father of our Lord Jesu-Cristo. And he is our Father also who is exceedingly gracious/merciful and the source of far-from-ordinary comfort (lit. that-which-can-make-happy) of the mind/inner-being.” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)
Tenango Otomi: “Concerning God, who is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, let us thank him. God, our Father, pities us and he comforts our hearts.” (Source: Tenango Otomi Back Translation)
Highland Totonac: “Blessed be God and the father of the Lord Jesus Christ, the type of father who is merciful, and the type of God who comforts.” (Source: Herman Aschmann in The Bible Translator 1950, p. 171ff. )
Following are a number of back-translations of 2 Corinthians 1:4:
Uma: “He strengthens our (excl.) hearts in all kinds of difficulties that hit us (excl.), so that with the strength that we (excl.) receive from him, we (excl.) strengthen the hearts of others who are in difficulties of whatever kind.” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
Yakan: “Whatever our (excl.) trouble is he encourages us (excl.) so that we (excl.) also know how to encourage our (excl.) companions when they are in all kinds of troubles. We (excl.) can help them because we (excl.) have already experienced help from God.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
Western Bukidnon Manobo: “He helps us (incl.) in all of our (incl.) troubles and because of this, we (incl.) can help other people who have any kind of trouble. The help that we (incl.) give, it is just the same as that which God helped us (incl.).” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
Kankanaey: “He comforts us in all our hardships/sufferings so that we will also know-how to comfort our companions when they have whatever-kind of hardship and we will be able-to-help-them -with that same help of God to us.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
Tagbanwa: “He really does not leave us alone in our hardships, but rather he comforts (lit. causes-to-be-happy) our mind/inner-being, so that we also can cause-to-be-happy whoever has hardship. For whatever God gives us by-which-to comfort our mind/inner-being, that is indeed what we can give our companions who are being hardshipped.” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)
Tenango Otomi: “Each time we suffer, it is God who comforts our hearts. But he wants that we also will comfort the hearts of our fellow men when we see them suffer. Let us do to our fellow men just like God does to us, in that he comforts our hearts.” (Source: Tenango Otomi Back Translation)
Highland Totonac: “He is the one who comforts us as we are in trouble, so that we too may comfort others who are found in whatever trouble the same comfort with which God has comforted us.” (Source: Herman Aschmann in The Bible Translator 1950, p. 171ff. )
