Many languages distinguish between inclusive and exclusive first-person plural pronouns (“we”). (Click or tap here to see more details)
The inclusive “we” specifically includes the addressee (“you and I and possibly others”), while the exclusive “we” specifically excludes the addressee (“he/she/they and I, but not you”). This grammatical distinction is called “clusivity.” While Semitic languages such as Hebrew or most Indo-European languages such as Greek or English do not make that distinction, translators of languages with that distinction have to make a choice every time they encounter “we” or a form thereof (in English: “we,” “our,” or “us”).
For this verse, the Jarai and the Adamawa Fulfulde translation both use the inclusive pronoun, including everyone.
Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Micah 2:4:
Kupsabiny: “You will be ridiculed on that day, (people) will sing about you, ‘ (They) are destroyed completely! God has taken away their fields and given to other people.’ ’” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
Newari: “In that day, people hate you and will laugh at you and will sing a song of lament regarding your situation: ‘we are totally ruined, Our people’s treasure has been divided. He snatched it away from us. He has divided our fields among those who have deceived us.’"” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
Hiligaynon: “In that day people will-mock you (plur.) through a very sad/mournful lament that says, ‘We (excl.) have-been- utterly -destroyed! The LORD took-(away) our (excl.) land and gave (it) to the traitors.’ ’” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
English: “At that time, your enemies will make fun of you; they will ridicule you by singing this sad song about you: ‘We are completely ruined; Yahweh is taking our land/fields from us, and he will give it to those who will capture us.’ ’” (Source: Translation for Translators)
God transcends gender, but most languages are limited to grammatical gender expressed in pronouns. In the case of English, this is traditionally confined to “he” (or in the forms “his,” “him,” and “himself”), “she” (and “her,” “hers,” and “herself”), and “it” (and “its” and “itself”).
Modern Mandarin Chinese, however, offers another possibility. Here, the third-person singular pronoun is always pronounced the same (tā), but it is written differently according to its gender (他 is “he,” 她 is “she,” and 它/牠 is “it” and their respective derivative forms). In each of these characters, the first (or upper) part defines the gender (man, woman, or thing/animal), while the second element gives the clue to its pronunciation.
In 1930, after a full century with dozens of Chinese translations, Bible translator Wang Yuande (王元德) coined a new “godly” pronoun: 祂. Chinese readers immediately knew how to pronounce it: tā. But they also recognized that the first part of that character, signifying something spiritual, clarified that each person of the Trinity has no gender aside from being God.
While the most important Protestant and Catholic Chinese versions respectively have opted not to use 祂, some Bible translations do and it is widely used in hymnals and other Christian materials. Among the translations that use 祂 to refer to “God” were early versions of Lü Zhenzhong’s (呂振中) version (New Testament: 1946, complete Bible: 1970). R.P. Kramers (in The Bible Translator 1956, p. 152ff. ) explains why later versions of Lü’s translation did not continue with this practice: “This new way of writing ‘He,’ however, has created a minor problem of its own: must this polite form be used whenever Jesus is referred to? Lü follows the rule that, wherever Jesus is referred to as a human being, the normal tā (他) is written; where he is referred to as divine, especially after the ascension, the reverential tā (祂) is used.”
In that system one kind of pronoun is used for humans (male and female alike) and one for natural elements, non-liquid masses, and some spiritual entities (one other is used for large animals and another one for miscellaneous items). While in these languages the pronoun for spiritual entities used to be employed when referring to God, this has changed into the use of the human pronoun.
Lynell Zogbo (in The Bible Translator 1989, p. 401ff. ) explains in the following way: “From informal discussions with young Christians especially, it would appear that, at least for some people, the experience and/or concepts of Christianity are affecting the choice of pronoun for God. Some people explain that God is no longer ‘far away,’ but is somehow tangible and personal. For these speakers God has shifted over into the human category.”
In Kouya, God (the Father) and Jesus are referred to with the human pronoun ɔ, whereas the Holy Spirit is referred to with a non-human pronoun. (Northern Grebo and Western Krahn make a similar distinction.)
Eddie Arthur, a former Kouya Bible translation consultant, says the following: “We tried to insist that this shouldn’t happen, but the Kouya team members were insistent that the human pronoun for the Spirit would not work.”
In Burmese, the pronoun ko taw (ကိုယ်တော်) is used either as 2nd person (you) or 3rd person (he, him, his) reference. “This term clearly has its root in the religious language in Burmese. No ordinary persons are addressed or known by this pronoun because it is reserved for Buddhist monks, famous religious teachers, and in the case of Christianity, the Trinity.” (Source: Gam Seng Shae in The Bible Translator 2002, p. 202ff. )
In Thai, the pronoun phra`ong (พระองค์) is used, a gender-neutral pronoun which must refer to a previously introduced royal or divine being. Similarly, in Northern Khmer, which is spoken in Thailand, “an honorific divine pronoun” is used for the pronoun referring to the persons of the Trinity (source: David Thomas in The Bible Translator 1993, p. 445 ). In Urak Lawoi’, another language spoken in Thailand, the translation often uses tuhat (ตูฮัด) — “God” — ”as a divine pronoun where Thai has phra’ong even though it’s actually a noun.” (Source for Thai and Urak Lawoi’: Stephen Pattemore)
The English “Contemporary Torah” addresses the question of God and gendered pronouns by mostly avoiding pronouns in the first five books of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament (unless God is referred to as “lord,” “father,” “king,” or “warrior”). It does that by either using passive constructs (“He gave us” vs. “we were given”), by using the adjective “divine” or by using “God” rather than a pronoun.
Some Protestant and Orthodox English Bibles use a referential capitalized spelling when referring to the persons of the Trinity with “He,” “His,” “Him,” or “Himself.” This includes for instance the New American Standard Bible or The Orthodox New Testament, but most translations do not. Two other languages where this is also done (in most Bible translations) are the closely related Indonesian and Malay. In both languages this follows the language usage according to the Qur’an, which in turn predicts that usage (see Soesilo in The Bible Translator 1991, p. 442ff. and The Bible Translator 1997, p. 433ff. ).
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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).
When that time comes: as so often in the Old Testament, “day” (Revised Standard Version) stands for a period longer than 24 hours, and thus Good News Translation has When that time comes…. When it does come, the rich will find themselves in the position they had so often put the poor, namely, they will have their land taken away. In this way their fate will be such a clear example of disaster, of the punishment fitting the crime, that it will become the subject of a song of despair.
The Hebrew does not make it clear who will sing this song, and most English versions retain this vagueness with the word “they” (Revised Standard Version, Jerusalem Bible, New English Bible). Good News Translation is somewhat more explicit with people, that is, people in general. They will at that time mock the rich people who are suffering the same indignities they had once inflicted on others. Another view is that the song is sung by the enemy invaders against the rich people whose property they are plundering. Other scholars believe that the song will be sung by the rich themselves, since it is in the first person. If that is so, it would be a “lament” (New English Bible) rather than a “satire” (New American Bible, Jerusalem Bible) or “taunt” (Revised Standard Version).
In order to translate clearly, each translator will have to decide which of these possibilities seems most convincing in the context, and make his translation according to the meaning he has chosen. Alternative possibilities can be put in footnotes if translators feel they are important enough. It will probably not be necessary to decide exactly who is singing the song, apart from deciding whether it is sung by the people being punished or by some other group that is mocking them. Most English translations take it to be some other group.
Use the story about you as an example of disaster means “tell what has happened to you as an example of the disaster that comes to people who do evil.” Good News Translation can be wrongly understood to mean that telling the story and singing the song are two separate things that will be done; but what is meant is that by singing the song the story is told. If we assume that the song is not sung by the people being punished but by other people, then the singers are pretending that they are the people who have been punished, and they are singing this song in mock despair. Translators may find it somewhat difficult to connect the ideas of mockery and despair. The words of the song show despair, but the whole action of singing the song is intended to mock the people who have been punished.
The song itself has four lines in Revised Standard Version but only three in Good News Translation. This is because the second and third lines have been combined into one in Good News Translation, avoiding a repetition that is somewhat obscure. The general sense of the passage is clear enough, however, and is adequately conveyed by Good News Translation. The people speaking in the song (We) are the rich people whom the Lord is speaking to in verses 3 and 4. This is true whether we understand that they really sing it, or whether it is others who only pretend to be the rich people. Once more, Good News Translation makes the actor explicit (The LORD has taken our land away) and avoids pronouns that have no clear antecedent.
The Hebrew varies in the song between first person plural (Revised Standard Version “We are … ruined” and “our captors”) and first person singular (Revised Standard Version “my people” and “from me”). Since this change sounds unnatural in English, Good News Translation has consistently used the first person plural.
The LORD has taken our land away means of course that the Lord no longer allows these rich evildoers to own the land that had been theirs; instead he has given it to others. This is one point where translators should be careful not to be too literal, or they may imply that the land itself has been moved from one place to another.
The rich people not only suffer the loss of the land they had wrongfully acquired but even see it given … to those who took us captive, that is, to foreign conquerors who have no claim at all to be among the Lord’s people. There is a play on words in Hebrew between “portion” and “divide,” which are both forms of the same root, and perhaps another wordplay between “utterly ruined” and “fields,” which have similar sounds.
Quoted with permission from Clark, David J. et al. A Handbook on Micah. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1978, 1982, 1993. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .
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