The Greek that is translated as “for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” or similar in English is translated in Muna as “what comes-out at the lips, it comes from the fullness/overflowing of the heart.”
René van den Berg explains: “It is very impolite in Muna to mention someone’s mouth (wobha) or tongue (lela). The words themselves are not taboo or obscene, but in combination with a possessor they are frowned upon and should be avoided. In fact, if you want to abuse someone, you should refer to his or her mouth or tongue. The implications for translation are obvious (…). [Sometimes] ‘mouth’ was replaced by ‘lips’ (wiwi), a perfectly acceptable term, even when possessed.”
In the German Luther Bible it says: Denn wes das Herz voll ist, des geht der Mund über or “what the heart is full of, with that the mouth flows over” (source: Zetzsche), in Uab Meto it says “his mouth says only what the heart is more than full of,” and in Tzeltal it is “in our hearts arise all those things which come out of our mouths” (source: Reiling / Swellengrebel), and in Elhomwe it is translated literally since that exact idiom is used in that language as well (source: project-specific translation notes in Paratext).
Following are a number of back-translations of Matthew 12:34:
Uma: “You are very evil! Of course you can’t speak good words, being evil like you are. Because what it is contents of our (incl.) hearts, that also is spoken by our (incl.) lips.” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
Yakan: “You are deceiving people. You cannot say good (things) because you are bad/evil in your liver. Whatever is in the liver of man/mankind, that is what comes out of his mouth.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
Western Bukidnon Manobo: “It is just the same with you. There is nothing good you can say because your customs are bad. You are like snakes, because you are harmful. What is in your breath comes out of your mouth.” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
Kankanaey: “You are admittedly too-much, like snakes that have poison! If you are bad, how then will you say good-things? Because what a person says is from what is in his mind/thoughts just the same.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
Tagbanwa: “You children of snakes! How could you say good things when your nature/ways are evil? For it really is true that whatever is in a person’s mind/inner-being, that indeed is always what comes out of his mouth.” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)
Tenango Otomi: “You do like snakes which have poison in their mouths. Because you are not able to speak a good word. Now the word which sits on the heart of a person is what comes out of his mouth.” (Source: Tenango Otomi Back Translation)
The Hebrew and Greek that is translated as “adder,” “asp,” “viper,” or “serpent” in English is translated in Lambya as chipili or “puff adder “, a highly poisonous local snake species. (Source: project-specific notes in Paratext)
There are a large number of snake species belonging to the viper family in Israel. From the contexts it is possible in one or two places to identify the particular species, and it is possible that the various Hebrew words actually refer to particular species. However, associating the various words with the corresponding species is largely conjecture, even though based on careful deduction.
The most common vipers in Israel are the Palestinian Viper Viper palaestina, the Carpet Viper Echis coloratus, the Sand Viper Cerastes vipera, and the Horned Viper Cerastes cerastes cerastes. The Palestinian viper is the largest of these vipers and is found in a variety of habitats, from the woods of the north to the desert’s edge. Since this is the most inhabited area, people are bitten by this snake more than any other. The other four vipers mentioned are found in desert areas, but in slightly different habitats. The sand viper and the horned viper live in the sand, while the carpet viper lives in gravelly areas and among rocks. It often camouflages itself among dried leaves.
The desert vipers, when moving in sand, cannot move in the normal way, so they adopt a movement known as “sidewinding”. They do this by moving a coil sideways to a position in front of the head, then the snake moves its head and the front part of its body in the air, arching over the sand as far as it can reach before falling back onto the sand. Then it repeats the movement again. This is done at some speed, and the snake moves diagonally across the sand surprisingly quickly, although not as quickly as another snake moving normally. The parallel elongated S-shaped marks it leaves in the sand look as though it has moved in a series of jumps, since they seem not to be connected. It is generally accepted that this motion caused the biblical writers to refer to these snakes as “flying” (see flying fiery serpent).
Vipers are different from other snakes mainly in that they give birth to live offspring. The females retain their eggs in a special sac in their bodies, and when the eggs hatch the small snakes emerge from the mother. The larger vipers produce as many as sixty young snakes at a time, while the smaller sand vipers have smaller broods of about twelve to fifteen. This is what John the Baptist refers to by his well-known phrase “brood of vipers”.
The vipers have long hinged fangs located in the front of their mouths. These fangs fold back as they close their mouths. When striking, vipers have to open their mouths very wide in order to get these fangs into the required position.
The carpet viper (also known as the saw-scaled viper) was very numerous in biblical Israel, and in most other areas of its range (it is found in a broad continuous band from West Africa to South and Central Asia). It is likely that this was the saraf, a name derived from a finite verb meaning “to burn something,” a reference to the burning effect of its poisonous bite.
Vipers have the same basic significance in the Bible as other snakes, with one additional feature. Since the young are carried alive inside the female viper, which then gives birth to large numbers of well-developed young, all at the same time, the viper was associated with fertility. This was also their significance in the Egyptian and Canaanite religious systems.
Although vipers are found widely all over the world, not all languages distinguish them from other types of snake. As mentioned above, the carpet viper is found across Central Africa, from the west to east coasts, and into Central and South Asia. In these areas the name for this snake can be used in all the verses that refer to vipers. In southern Africa the Puff Adder Bitis arietans is probably the best equivalent.
In order to retain the relationship of the word saraf with the verb “to burn something,” translators often try to use expressions such as “vipers that burn [people]” or “fiery serpents”. This is only possible where the word used for “burn” means “to cause a wound with something hot.” One should not convey the idea of “a viper that sets people on fire” or “a viper that is burning.” Often it is better to use a phrase meaning simply “poisonous vipers”.
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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. )
Living Water is produced for the Bible translation movement in association with Lutheran Bible Translators. Lyrics derived from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®).
How can you speak good…? may be better expressed as a statement: “That is the way it is with you. You are evil, and so you cannot say good things.” Of course, the original order can be retained, too, with a sentence like “how can you possibly say good things when you are evil?” If the rhetorical question is not natural in the receptor language, then the idea can be expressed as “It is not possible for you to say good, since you are yourselves evil.”
For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks: the noun abundance appears also in the Lukan parallel (6.45) and in Mark 8.8; 2 Corinthians 8.14 (twice). The picture is that of a substance which fills a container to overflowing. Jesus speaks of the heart as though it were a container, which may be filled with either good or evil. And whatever fills it, whether good or evil, overflows through a person’s mouth in the form of the words which he speaks. It should be noted that in Jewish thought the heart does not represent the seat of emotions (as in English), but rather the entire person conceived of as a total being who thinks and wills. New American Bible translates heart as “mind.” It is possible to translate without the metaphor of the mouth, as Barclay indicates: “A man’s words are nothing other than the overflow of what is in his heart.” It may be advisable in other circumstances to do away with the metaphor entirely: “For what a person says reveals what he is really like” or “You can tell what a person is really like by what he says.” Other languages may require the use of other body parts; for example, “Your tongue speaks what is in your liver.”
Many translators have tried to retain the image of the metaphor. One way has been to use a sentence such as “For whatever fills a person’s heart (or, mind), that is what flows out when he speaks” or “For whatever a person is really like, when he speaks, that is the thing that comes out just like a bowl overflowing.”
Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on the Gospel of Matthew. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1988. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .
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