pride

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The Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, and Latin that is translated as “pride” in English is translated as

  • “continually boasting” (Amganad Ifugao)
  • “lifting oneself up” (Tzeltal)
  • “answering haughtily” (Yucateco) (source for this and above: Bratcher / Nida)
  • “unbent neck” (like llamas) (Kaqchikel) (source: Nida 1952, p. 151)
  • “praising oneself, saying: I am better” (Shipibo-Conibo) (source: Nida 1964, p. 237).
  • “bigness of head” (existing idiom: girman kai) in the Hausa Common Language Bible it is idiomatically translated as or (Source: Andy Warren-Rothlin)
  • “trying to make yourself the leader” in Mairasi (source: Enggavoter 2004)
  • “make oneself important” (sick upspeeln) in Low German (source: translation by Johannes Jessen, publ. 1933, republ. 2006)
  • “a haughty liver” in Yakan (source: Yakan Back Translation)
  • “lift head” in Upper Guinea Crioulo (source: Nicoleti 2012, p. 78)

See also proud / arrogant.

complete verse (Jeremiah 50:32)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Jeremiah 50:32:

  • Kupsabiny: “An arrogant person shall stumble and fall,
    and no person is there who will raise (him/them) up to stand.
    I will set fire to the cities,
    everything will be destroyed
    that is in those cities.” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon: “You who (are)-proud will- surely -be-destroyed and no one will-help to rise- you -up. I will-burn your cities and all the towns around it.’” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)

1st person pronoun referring to God (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 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”.

Translation commentary on Jeremiah 50:32

The proud one: See verse 31. If this is retained as a name, translators can say, for example, “You [who are named] ‘Proud One.’ ”

I will kindle a fire in his cities is better rendered “I will set the cities of Babylonia [or, your cities] on fire.”

Devour; that is, “destroy.” See 8.16.

Round about him; that is, “around the proud one, that proud nation.”

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 .