fat, oil

The different Hebrew and Greek terms that are translated as “(olive) oil” and “(animal) fat” in English are translated in Kwere with only one term: mavuta. (Pioneer Bible Translators, project-specific translation notes in Paratext)

drink

In Telugu different verbs for humans drinking (tāgu / తాగు) and animals drinking (cēḍu / చేడు) are required.

complete verse (Ezekiel 39:19)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Ezekiel 39:19:

  • Kupsabiny: “When you eat these corpses as a sacrifice that I have prepared for you, you shall eat the fat parts until you are constipated and you shall drink their blood until it splits you.” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon: “In this feast which I have-prepared for them, they will-sufficiently eat and drink until they will-be- very -full and drunk. They will-sufficiently eat horses, horse riders, and brave soldiers. I, the LORD, (am) the-(one) saying this.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
  • English: “At that feast that Yahweh is preparing for you, you will eat fat until your stomachs are full, and you will drink blood until it is as though you are drunk.” (Source: Translation for Translators)

1st person pronoun referring to God (Japanese)

Click or tap here to see the rest of this insight.

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 first person singular and plural pronoun (“I” and “we” and its various forms) as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. The most commonly used watashi/watakushi (私) is typically used when the speaker is humble and asking for help. In these verses, where God / Jesus is referring to himself, watashi is also used but instead of the kanji writing system (私) the syllabary hiragana (わたし) is used to distinguish God from others.

(Source: S. E. Doi, see also S. E. Doi in Journal of Translation, 18/2022, p. 37ff. )

See also pronoun for “God”.

2nd person pronoun with low register (Japanese)

Click or tap here to see the rest of this insight.

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. )

See also first person pronoun with low register and third person pronoun with low register.

Translation commentary on Ezekiel 39:19

And you shall eat fat till you are filled: This clause and the next one are based again on the picture of an ordinary sacrificial feast in which people ate meat and drank wine in celebration of God. The fat refers to the best parts of the sacrifice (see 34.3). Till you are filled means the birds and wild animals can eat as much of it as they like, until they can eat no more, until they are “completely full” (New International Reader’s Version).

And drink blood till you are drunk: If people drank too much wine at a sacrificial feast, they would become drunk. In the same way God says the birds and animals will drink a large amount of blood, and this will cause them to act in a strange way as if they were drunk. If it does not make sense in a language to make drinking blood the cause drunkenness, it is acceptable to focus on the resulting actions of the birds and animals by saying “and you will drink so much blood that you will stagger around as if you were drunk.”

At the sacrificial feast which I am preparing for you: See verse 17. In some languages it will be more natural to move this clause to the beginning of the verse (so Good News Translation). A model for this verse that does this is:

• When I kill these people like sacrifices to prepare for your feast, you will eat the best meat until you are completely full and you will drink their blood until you are drunk.

Quoted with permission from Gross, Carl & Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on Ezekiel. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2016. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .