wild animal

The Hebrew, Latin and Greek that is translated in English as “wild animal” or similar is translated in Newari as “animal that lives in the jungle.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)

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.

Click or tap here to see the rest of this insight

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.

Translation commentary on Wisdom 16:5

For when the terrible rage of wild beasts came upon thy people and they were being destroyed by the bites of writhing serpents: Since this verse begins a new section, the connector For may be omitted. The wild beasts are the serpents the two lines are similar in meaning, and can be combined. Good News Translation renders rage … came upon thy people with “attacked your people.” It translates destroyed by the bites as “killing them with their poison,” because in English we speak of large animals like lions and bears killing with their bites, but snakes and such creatures killing with their venom or poison. This is an idiomatic matter, and translators should of course say what is natural in their own language. Rather than speak of the terrible rage of wild beasts, Good News Translation shifts to the easier “terrible, fierce snakes.” Good News Translation, however, does leave out writhing. To “writhe” is to make the twisting, turning, coiling motion that a group of snakes caught in a sack might make. Good News Translation probably omits it because it could not find a good word at an appropriate level. But translators in languages other than English may not have such a problem. At any rate, the purpose of the word is not to describe the movement of the snakes, but to convey horror, and any word that does this would be appropriate here. An alternative model for these two lines is “When horrible bunches of fierce, repulsive [or, slithering/writhing] snakes were attacking your people and killing them with their poison.”

Thy wrath did not continue to the end: This means that God did not keep punishing the people with these snakes until the people were all dead. A possible rendering for this line is “you were not angry enough to destroy your people completely.”

It is possible to restructure the verse as follows:

• When you were angry with your people and sent horrible bunches of writhing snakes to attack and kill them with their poison, you stopped being angry before you completely destroyed your people.

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on The Wisdom of Solomon. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2004. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.