Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Psalm 21:10:
Chichewa Contempary Chichewa translation, 2002/2016:
“You will destroy their children on earth,
their grandchildren among the people.” (Source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)
Newari:
“Not even any of their children will survive,
The king will put an end to all of them.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
Hiligaynon:
“You (sing.) will-kill all their descendants,
and no one at-all will-remain/be-left.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
Eastern Bru:
“All of their descendants will be destroyed from this earth, because this king will surely kill everyone of them.” (Source: Bru Back Translation)
Laarim:
“You will finish all of their children down here,
their children will not be.” (Source: Laarim Back Translation)
Nyakyusa-Ngonde (back-translation into Swahili):
“Ee mfalme, utaangamiza watoto wao wote duniani.
Uzao wao hautakuwepo kabisa.” (Source: Nyakyusa Back Translation)
English:
“You will remove their children from this earth; their descendants will all disappear.” (Source: Translation for Translators)
Translators of different languages have found different ways with what kind of formality God is addressed. The first example is from a language where God is always addressed distinctly formal whereas the second is one where the opposite choice was made.
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Like many languages (but unlike Greek or Hebrew or English), Tuvan uses a formal vs. informal 2nd person pronoun (a familiar vs. a respectful “you”). Unlike other languages that have this feature, however, the translators of the Tuvan Bible have attempted to be very consistent in using the different forms of address in every case a 2nd person pronoun has to be used in the translation of the biblical text.
As Voinov shows in Pronominal Theology in Translating the Gospels (in: The Bible Translator2002, p. 210ff. ), the choice to use either of the pronouns many times involved theological judgment. While the formal pronoun can signal personal distance or a social/power distance between the speaker and addressee, the informal pronoun can indicate familiarity or social/power equality between speaker and addressee.
In these verses, in which humans address God, the informal, familiar pronoun is used that communicates closeness.
Voinov notes that “in the Tuvan Bible, God is only addressed with the informal pronoun. No exceptions. An interesting thing about this is that I’ve heard new Tuvan believers praying with the formal form to God until they are corrected by other Christians who tell them that God is close to us so we should address him with the informal pronoun. As a result, the informal pronoun is the only one that is used in praying to God among the Tuvan church.”
In Gbaya, “a superior, whether father, uncle, or older brother, mother, aunt, or older sister, president, governor, or chief, is never addressed in the singular unless the speaker intends a deliberate insult. When addressing the superior face to face, the second person plural pronoun ɛ́nɛ́ or ‘you (pl.)’ is used, similar to the French usage of vous.
Accordingly, the translators of the current version of the Gbaya Bible chose to use the plural ɛ́nɛ́ to address God. There are a few exceptions. In Psalms 86:8, 97:9, and 138:1, God is addressed alongside other “gods,” and here the third person pronoun o is used to avoid confusion about who is being addressed. In several New Testament passages (Matthew 21:23, 26:68, 27:40, Mark 11:28, Luke 20:2, 23:37, as well as in Jesus’ interaction with Pilate and Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well) the less courteous form for Jesus is used to indicate ignorance of his position or mocking (source Philip Noss).
In Dutch and Western Frisian translations, however, God is always addressed with the formal pronoun.
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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 usage of an honorific construction where the morpheme are (され) is affixed on the verb as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. This is particularly done with verbs that have God as the agent to show a deep sense of reverence. Here, horoboshiteshimaw-are-ru (滅ぼしてしまわれる) or “(adversatively) destroy” is used.
In verse 9a You will make them as a blazing oven means that the king (or Yahweh) will destroy the enemies with fire; they will burn up like the fire in an oven. Should a translator retain the word oven, it should be remembered that this was one made of hardened clay or of brick; it would not be made of metal.
When you appear translates “at the time of your face,” in which “face” stands for presence, here an angry presence (see 34.16).
In the second half of verse 9, swallow and consume are used synonymously, appropriate to wrath and fire. The fire is to be thought of as an expression of Yahweh’s fury; and Dahood translates “his fire,” carrying over the “his” of “his anger” to “fire.” In some languages it will be necessary to indicate an object of the destroying fire; for example, “he will destroy them as a blazing fire destroys things,” or idiomatically sometimes, “he will eat them as fire eats things up.”
Swallow them up in his wrath may require more recasting than was done in Good News Translation. One way is to expand the expression into two clauses, one the cause and the other the consequence; for example, “because he is angry he will swallow them up.” Swallow as an idiomatic expression of destruction may need to be replaced by other figures such as “eat,” “wipe away,” or “blow into dust.”
The parallel lines of this verse display intensification. In line a God (according to some, the king) makes them as …; in line b he will swallow them up; and in line cthe fire will consume them, which is literally “eat them.” If the heightening in the succeeding lines is to be preserved with God as the subject of the first two lines, it may be translated, for example, “When the LORD appears he will turn them into a fiery oven; more than that, he will angrily swallow them up, and fire will devour them.”
Translators should be aware that the structure of intensification is often changed when recast as cause and effect clauses. However, in some cases there will be little or no choice. The main task of the translator is to determine the devices in the receptor language which most clearly reveal the heightening effect found in much of biblical parallelism.
In verse 10 the two Hebrew phrases used for “descendants” are “their fruit” and “their seed,” both used metaphorically of offspring.
Their offspring is commonly rendered as “their children” or “their grandchildren.” It is possible sometimes to say “those who follow after him” or “those who came down from him.”
From the earth serves to express the totality of the action of destruction, and is rendered in Good News Translation through the use of “None … will survive.” In some languages it will be more natural to say “he will kill every one of their children” or “he will not stop killing until he has killed the last child.”
In order to avoid needless repetition the translator will note that Good News Translation has employed the pronoun “them” in line b instead of using another synonym for descendants.
For the phrase the sons of men, see 11.4.
Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Reyburn, William D. A Handbook on the Book of Psalms. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1991. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .
John Wu Ching-hsiung (1899-1986) was a native of Ningbo, Zhejiang, a renowned jurist who studied in Europe and the United States, and served as a professor of law at Soochow University, as a judge and the Acting President of the Shanghai Provisional Court, and as the Vice President of the Commission for the Drafting of the Constitution of the Republic of China, before becoming the Minister of the Republic of China to the Holy See. Wu has written extensively, not only on law but also on Chinese philosophy, and has also written his autobiography, Beyond East and West, in English. Wu was a devout Catholic and had a personal relationship with Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975). Wu began translating the the Psalms in 1938, and was encouraged by Chiang to translate the entire New Testament, which he corrected in his own handwriting. (…) John Wu Ching-hsiung’s translation of the Psalms (first draft in 1946, revised in 1975) was translated into Literary Chinese in the form of poetic rhyme, with attention paid to the style of writing. According to the content and mood of the different chapters of the original psalm, Wu chose Chinese poetic forms such as tetrameter, pentameter, heptameter [4, 5 or 7 syllables/Chinese characters per stanza], and the [less formal] Sao style, and sometimes more than two poetic forms were used in a single poem. (Source: Simon Wong)
John Wu Ching-hsiung himself talks about his celebrated and much-admired (though difficult-to-understand) translation in his aforementioned autobiography: (Click or tap here to see)
“Nothing could have been farther from my mind than to translate the Bible or any parts of it with a view to publishing it as an authorized version. I had rendered some of the Psalms into Chinese verse, but that was done as a part of my private devotion and as a literary hobby. When I was in Hongkong in 1938, I had come to know Madame H. H. Kung [Soong Ai-ling], and as she was deeply interested in the Bible, I gave her about a dozen pieces of my amateurish work just for her own enjoyment. What was my surprise when, the next time I saw her, she told me, “My sister [Soong Mei-ling] has written to say that the Generalissimo [Chiang Kai-shek] likes your translation of the Psalms very much, especially the first, the fifteenth, and the twenty-third, the Psalm of the Good Shepherd!”
“In the Autumn of 1940, when I was in Chungking, the Generalissimo invited me several times to lunch with him and expressed his appreciation of the few pieces that he had read. So I sent him some more. A few days later I received a letter from Madame Chiang [Soong Mei-ling], dated September 21, 1940, in which she said that they both liked my translation of the few Psalms I had sent them. ‘For many years,’ she wrote, ‘the Generalissimo has been wanting to have a really adequate and readable Wen-li (literary) translation of the Bible. He has never been able to find anyone who could undertake the matter.’ The letter ends up by saying that I should take up the job and that ‘the Generalissimo would gladly finance the undertaking of this work.’
“After some preliminary study of the commentaries, I started my work with the Psalms on January 6, 1943, the Feast of the Epiphany.
“I had three thousand years of Chinese literature to draw upon. The Chinese vocabulary for describing the beauties of nature is so rich that I seldom failed to find a word, a phrase, and sometimes even a whole line to fit the scene. But what makes such Psalms so unique is that they bring an intimate knowledge of the Creator to bear upon a loving observation of things of nature. I think one of the reasons why my translation is so well received by the Chinese scholars is that I have made the Psalms read like native poems written by a Chinese, who happens to be a Christian. Thus to my countrymen they are at once familiar and new — not so familiar as to be jejune, and not so new as to be bizarre. I did not publish it as a literal translation, but only as a paraphrase.
“To my greatest surprise, [my translation of the Psalms] sold like hot dogs. The popularity of that work was beyond my fondest dreams. Numberless papers and periodicals, irrespective of religion, published reviews too good to be true. I was very much tickled when I saw the opening verse of the first Psalm used as a headline on the front page of one of the non-religious dailies.”
A contemporary researcher (Lindblom 2021) mentions this about Wu’s translation: “Wu created a unique and personal work of sacred art that bears the imprint of his own admitted love and devotion, a landmark achievement comparable to Antoni Gaudi’s Basilica of the Sagrada Família in Barcelona, Spain. Although its use is still somewhat limited today, it continues to attract readers for the aforementioned qualities, and continues to be used in prayers and music by those who desire beauty and an authentic Chinese-sounding text that draws from China’s ancient traditions.”
The translation of Psalm 21 from the 1946 edition is in pentameter and the rhyme scheme is -ong (the 1946 edition did not have verse numbers either):
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