complete verse (Jeremiah 29:6)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Jeremiah 29:6:

  • Kupsabiny: “Marry women/wives and produce children, arrange marriage for your sons and give your daughters to be married so that they can also get children. Multiply and do not become few.” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon: “[You (plur.)] marry/[lit. take-a-wife-in-marriage and take-a-husband-in-marriage], and give-birth-to-children. Let- your (plur.) children -marry/[lit. take-a-wife-in-marriage and take-a-husband-in-marriage] also so-that they will- also -give-birth-to-children. [You pl] multiply and produce-many.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
  • English: “Get married and have children. Then when they grow up, choose wives for your sons, and husbands for your daughters, in order that they also may have children. In that way, the number of you people will increase, not decrease.” (Source: Translation for Translators)

formal 2nd person plural pronoun (Japanese)

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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 formal plural suffix to the second person pronoun (“you” and its various forms) as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. In these verses, anata-gata (あなたがた) is used, combining the second person pronoun anata and the plural suffix -gata to create a formal plural pronoun (“you” [plural] in English).

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

Translation commentary on Jeremiah 29:6

Take wives reflects the marriage custom of the day. In Good News Translation Take wives and have sons and daughters is expressed simply as “Marry and have children.” Take wives for your sons … bear sons and daughters appears in Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch as “Give your sons and daughters in marriage, so that they may also have children!” For some translators these solutions of Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch and Good News Translation may cause problems because they seem to obscure the Jewish culture in which marriage was seen as a male action. However, in this verse Jeremiah is not discussing how marriage took place, only telling people that it should take place, that they should go ahead and lead normal lives. So translators can use the normal expressions from their language for marriage, as Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch and Good News Translation have done.

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on Jeremiah. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2003. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .