Low German translation by Johannes Jessen, publ. 1933, republ. 2006: “steppe”
Yakan: “the lonely place” (source: Yakan Back Translation)
Western Bukidnon Manobo: “a land where no people lived” (source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
Kankanaey: “the place with no inhabitants” (source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
Matumbi uses various term: lubele (desert, sandy place without water) — used in John 11:54, lupu’ngu’ti (a place where no people live, can be a scrub land, a forest, or a savanna) — used in Mark 1:3 et al.), and mwitu (a forest, a place where wild animals live) — used in Mark 1:13 et al.) (Source: Pioneer Bible Translators, project-specific notes in Paratext)
Chichewa Contemporary translation (2002/2016): chipululu: a place uninhabited by people with thick forest and bush (source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)
Note that in Luke 15:4, usually a term is used that denotes pastoral land, such as “eating/grazing-place” in Tagbanwa (source: Tagbanwa Back Translation).
The Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin that is often translated as “gentiles” (or “nations”) in English is often translated as a “local equivalent of ‘foreigners,'” such as “the people of other lands” (Guerrero Amuzgo), “people of other towns” (Tzeltal), “people of other languages” (San Miguel El Grande Mixtec), “strange peoples” (Navajo (Dinė)) (this and above, see Bratcher / Nida), “outsiders” (Ekari), “people of foreign lands” (Kannada), “non-Jews” (North Alaskan Inupiatun), “people being-in-darkness” (a figurative expression for people lacking cultural or religious insight) (Toraja-Sa’dan) (source for this and three above Reiling / Swellengrebel), “from different places all people” (Martu Wangka) (source: Carl Gross).
Tzeltal translates it as “people in all different towns,” Chicahuaxtla Triqui as “the people who live all over the world,” Highland Totonac as “all the outsider people,” Sayula Popoluca as “(people) in every land” (source: Waterhouse / Parrott in Notes on Translation October 1967, p. 1ff.), Chichimeca-Jonaz as “foreign people who are not Jews,” Sierra de Juárez Zapotec as “people of other nations” (source of this and one above: Viola Waterhouse in Notes on Translation August 1966, p. 86ff.), Highland Totonac as “outsider people” (source: Waterhouse / Parrott in Notes on Translation October 1967, p. 1ff.), Uma as “people who are not the descendants of Israel” (source: Uma Back Translation), “other ethnic groups” (source: Newari Back Translation), and Yakan as “the other tribes” (source: Yakan Back Translation).
In Chichewa, it is translated with mitundu or “races.” (Source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)
Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Jeremiah 50:12:
Kupsabiny: “That land of yours will be disgraced which you considered as your mother. Babylon will become of no value among all nations, it will become a dry desert.” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
Hiligaynon: “But I will- surely -put-to-shame your nation It will-become the least of all the nations, and it will-become a desolate/lonely and desert nation.” (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. )
Your mother is a reference either to the nation of Babylonia or the capital city of Babylon. Good News Translation renders “your own great city,” and Bible en français courant has “your motherland.” It probably does not refer to an actual mother, so translators usually will translate to indicate this. One possibility is “your city which is like a mother to you.”
Shamed is a familiar concept in the book of Jeremiah (see 2.26 for the first occurrence of the verb). The most common translation is “humiliated.”
She who bore you is obviously parallel in meaning with your mother. Good News Translation does away with the imagery of the mother entirely. However, some versions have combined the two expressions and used one, such as “the city which nurtured you like the mother who bore you.”
Disgraced is used only here and in 15.9. The two verbs shamed and disgraced mean essentially the same.
The first two lines of this verse complete the sentence begun in verse 11. There are various ways to structure the passage, including the following:
• 11 You people of Babylonia, you have plundered my possession. You may rejoice and gloat over it. But even though you are now playing like a young cow at threshing time or neighing proudly like a male horse, 12 your motherland, the city that nourished you, is going to be humiliated and disgraced.
Lo: See 1.15.
She shall be the last of the nations: New International Version renders “She will be the least of the nations,” though New Jerusalem Bible is probably clearer with “she is the least of nations now.”
A wilderness dry and desert must be taken together to mean “a dry and waterless desert” (Good News Translation) or “a desert, dry and waste” (New American Bible). For wilderness and desert, see 2.6.
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 .
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