John as a first-person evangelist (John 9:1)

In the Yatzachi Zapotec translation of the Gospel of John, any reference to the evangelist and presumed narrator is done in the first person.

The translator Inez Butler explains (in: Notes on Translation, September 1967, pp. 10ff.):

“In revising the Gospel of John in Yatzachi Zapotec we realized from the start that the third person references of Jesus to himself as Son of Man had to be converted into first person references, but only more recently have we decided that similar change is necessary in John’s references to himself as ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved.’ As I worked on those changes and questioned the informant about his understanding of other passages in the Gospel, I discovered that the reader misses the whole focus of the book as an eyewitness account unless every reference to the disciples indicates the writer’s membership in the group. In view of that we went back through the entire book looking for ways to cue in the reader to the fact that John was an eyewitness and a participant in a many of the events, as well as the historian.

“When the disciples were participants in events along with Jesus, it was necessary to make explicit the fact that they accompanied him, although in the source language that is left implicit, since otherwise our rendering would imply that they were not present.”

In this verse, the Yatzachi Zapotec says: “We were walking together with Jesus when he saw . . .”

complete verse (John 9:1)

Following are a number of back-translations of John 9:1:

  • Uma: “While Yesus was walking, he saw a person who had been blind from his birth.” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
  • Yakan: “While Isa was walking, he saw a certain person blind from birth.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
  • Western Bukidnon Manobo: “And while Jesus was walking around he saw a person who, beginning from his birth, he was already totally blind.” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
  • Kankanaey: “When Jesus was walking-along, he saw a man who was born blind.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
  • Tagbanwa: “Once when Jesus was journeying, he came across a blind man. This blindness of his was from birth.” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)
  • Tenango Otomi: “There where Jesus was going by, he saw a man who was blind from since he was born.” (Source: Tenango Otomi Back Translation)

behold / look / see (Japanese honorifics)

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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 to do this is through the usage (or a lack) of an honorific prefix as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. When the referent is God or a person or persons to be greatly honored, the honorific prefix go- (御 or ご) can be used, as in go-ran (ご覧), a combination of “behold / see” (ran) and the honorific prefix go-.

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

See also Japanese benefactives (goran).

Translation commentary on John 9:1

In Greek, Jesus is literally “he.” Since this verse opens a new section and a new chapter, Good News Translation makes the reference to Jesus explicit. Phillips and Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch do essentially the same thing, and New English Bible has “As he went on his way Jesus saw a man blind from his birth.” In a self-contained unit like this chapter, it is more natural in English to introduce the participant first by his name and then to refer to him by a pronoun, rather than the other way around, as in New English Bible.

Who had been born blind is literally “blind from birth.” The expression “from birth” is a good Greek idiom; the equivalent Hebrew idiom would be “from his mother’s womb.” In English it is more natural to speak of a man born blind than to speak of a man “blind from birth” (as in most translations). For this reason Good News Translation restructures the sentence. As suggested, it would be possible to translate “who had always been blind.” It is also possible to fill out the meaning expressed in born by saying “who had been blind from the very time his mother gave birth to him” or “… caused him to come into the world” or “… caused him to be born.”

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on the Gospel of John. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1980. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .