complete verse (Psalm 73:20)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Psalm 73:20:

  • Chichewa Contempary Chichewa translation, 2002/2016:
    “Like a dream when someone wakes up,
    so when You wake up, You Lord,
    you will mock them like just a dream.” (Source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)
  • Newari:
    “It will be like a dream which vanishes
    when one wakes up in the morning.
    O LORD, when You get up,
    like a shadow, they will be of no concern to You.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon:
    “They (are) like a dream that in the morning (is) does-not-exist now.
    They will- not -be-remembered anymore when you (sing.) punish them, O God.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
  • Laarim:
    “They stay like dreams that will disappear in morning.
    Lord, when you wake up,
    you will despise them who are like a dream.” (Source: Laarim Back Translation)
  • Nyakyusa-Ngonde (back-translation into Swahili):
    “Ee Bwana, wakati unasimama,
    utakuja kuwaona kuwa watu ni wa bure,
    kama vile mtu ambaye ameamka usingizini,
    anasahau mara moja ya ndoto zake.” (Source: Nyakyusa Back Translation)
  • English:
    “They will disappear as quickly as a dream disappears when a person awakes in the morning;
    Lord, when you arise, you will cause them to disappear/forget all about them.” (Source: Translation for Translators)

addressing God

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 Translator 2002, 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.

See also female second person singular pronoun in Psalms.

Honorary "are" construct denoting God (“despise/scorn”)

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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, sagesum-are-ru (蔑まれる) or “despise/scorn” is used.

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

Translation commentary on Psalm 73:20

This verse is not very clear in Hebrew, but it seems reasonable to understand it to say “(they are) like a dream after one awakes, O Lord; when you rouse, you despise their shadows.” The meaning is that the wicked will last no longer than the images in a dream (see similar figures in 39.5-6), that disappear as soon as one wakes up. In line a Revised Standard Version substitutes the Masoretic text “Lord” by the conjectural text They are; this is quite unnecessary.

Revised Standard Version phantoms conveys the notion of something frightening, which is not implied in the Hebrew word. When the Lord rouses himself (see similar expressions in 35.23; 44.23; 59.4-5), he “despises” them; the word here has the idea of “forget intentionally” (see discussion of the same verb in 69.33). Good News Translation “they disappear” does not have God as the subject of the action, which is what the Hebrew text does. So something different should be said, perhaps “When you rouse yourself (or, arise), you dismiss them (or, you forget all about them).”

It should be noticed that the first two words of line b in Hebrew can be read “in a city of (their) shadows.” Dahood takes “the city of phantoms” (as he translates it) to be another name for Sheol; most take the Masoretic text to be a defective spelling of a form of the verb “to rouse,” or else they emend the text slightly to arrive at this meaning (see Anderson). The Septuagint (also Syriac, Vulgate, Jerome) has “in your city.”

Perhaps it is best to reverse the two lines, as Bible en français courant and New Jerusalem Bible do, and translate “Lord, as soon as you rouse yourself, you forget all about them, just as the images of a dream are forgotten when one wakes up.” In translation it may be necessary to reintroduce the subject “evil people.” It may, in addition, be necessary to make clearer how it is that the bad dream images depart when the Lord rouses himself. Otherwise the reader may have the impression that the Lord, too, suffers from the dream; for example, “Evil people are like a bad dream that goes away in the morning. The memory of them goes away when you, Lord, come and help me.”

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 .