In many, if not most of the languages in the Philippines, proper nouns, such as personal names, are tagged with a marker that signals their grammatical role within a sentence. For Tagalog and the Visayan languages , this typically includes si to mark the proper noun as the actor or subject (nominative case), ni to mark the proper noun as an owner (genitive case), and kay to mark the proper noun as as an indirect object, i.e. the one to or toward whom an action is directed (dative case). All of these also have plural forms — sina, nina and kina respectively — and unlike in the biblical languages or in English, the plural form has to be used when only a single proper name is mentioned but implicitly that proper name includes more than just one.
In this verse, where English translates “(fought with) Joab,” the Tagalog translation translates “sina Joab” because the context of the text makes clear that Joab was with his troops. (Source: Kermit Titrud and Steve Quakenbush)
Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of 2 Samuel 11:17:
Kupsabiny: “Then the enemies fought the soldiers of Joab. Some people of Joab were killed together with Uriah.” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
Newari: “Men of the city came suddenly and did battle with Joab and they killed some of David’s soldiers and Uriah the Hittite was also killed along with [them].” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
Hiligaynon: “The enemies attacked against Joab and company, and Uria died together with some of the soldiers of David.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
English: “The men from the city came out and fought with Joab’s soldiers. They killed some of David’s officers, including Uriah.” (Source: Translation for Translators)
The men of the city: that is, the soldiers who were defending the city of Rabbah. This will be better translated “enemy troops” (Good News Translation), “defending soldiers,” or “the men who were protecting the city.”
Fought with Joab: this, of course, should not be taken literally as meaning that Joab was fighting alone against these men, but rather as indicating that the Ammonite troops were fighting against the troops whom Joab was commanding.
Servants of David: as in previous verses of this chapter (1, 9, 11, and 13), this refers to officers in David’s army who were under Joab’s command.
Fell: on the use of this term for death in battle, see 1 Sam 4.10.
Uriah the Hittite: Uriah is qualified five times in this chapter alone as “the Hittite.” If such repetition is awkward in the receptor language, it need not be repeated every time. But the writer was obviously making this a point of emphasis, that a non-Israelite was more righteous than David, and this should be retained wherever possible.
Quoted with permission from Omanson, Roger L. and Ellington, John E. A Handbook on the First and Second Books of Samuel, Volume 2. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2001. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .
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