One day, about three
years ago, I was sitting on the side of the room overhearing a discussion among
our review committee quickly heating up into an argument – translation of something
that was totally foreign in Gmz culture. As is often the case with such terms,
there is not a simple well-accepted Gmz word just sitting on our table for easy
use. And, often times, it isn't a matter of searching harder and digging deeper
to find that perfect word buried deep in their lexicon. At some point in our
research, we need to accept that the perfect, ready-made translation simply
doesn't exist. And so, as translators, we are forced to think beyond the words themselves, often following
one of three ways to solve the problem:
1) We could choose a Gmz
word that is close and hope that the
context of Scripture expands the meaning of that word (such as what we did with
our word for holy)
2) We could use a
descriptive phrase in place of the word (such as what we did with Gentile – “people not of Jewish origin”)
3) We could borrow a word
from another language (such as we did to avoid controversy in the word for
baptism). (this option is by far the least desirable as described below)
Hearing that the
conversation among the review committee was hitting a stalemate, I stood up,
reached into my motorcycle jacket pocket and pulled out a tire gauge.
I showed it to the review
committee and, after telling them what it was and what it was used for, I asked
them what it was called in the Gmz language. Of course, I got nothing but blank
stares and “Who knows?” expressions. I went on to remind them of the three
options we have in communicating something totally foreign to our Gmz audience.
How would those three play out in the tire gauge example?
Option #1: Choose a Gmz
word that is close: maybe "stick",
or "metal". That clearly
was not going to get us far since a tire gauge is very far removed from their
culture.
Option #2: Descriptive Phrase:
"thing used for measuring air in the
feet of a vehicle" or shorter, "air
measurer."
Option #3: Borrow a term (modified to sound like
Gmz): Taaira gezha – the problem with this option, is that it communicates
absolutely nothing to a Gmz speaker, totally empty of meaning, we might as well
call it a "rubber ducky", for that would be no less correct to them.
With something as foreign
as a tire gauge, it was clear that option #2 was the best way forward, and most
often we have found that to be the case with foreign object/ideas we have encountered
in Scripture.
All that to say, in the
71% of the New Testament that we covered before arriving at John's Revelation,
we encountered many, many foreign things and took pride in becoming quite good
at skirting around them with descriptive phrases (only rarely resorting to the final
option of borrowing terms from Amharic). In Revelation, however, we were
challenged at a new level as we felt attacked not by a lone hungry hyena every
now and then, but rather by a whole pack of hyenas all at once, of course, laughing
at our feeble attempts at descriptive phrases. One category of particularly
troublesome pests was the diverse materials used by John to describe his
heavenly vision.
METALS: We have a Gmz word
for gold, so there is no problem there, silver we had encountered in previous
NT books, where, after struggling for some time before we settled on borrowing the
Amharic word birr (which unfortunately has the same name as today's local
currency - Ethiopian's of old must have traded in silver….interesting). Now in Revelation, we find not only gold and
silver, but also bronze and iron. For iron, we opted to use the Gmz phrase for "strong metal", and bronze was
translated as "red metal".
Neither are ideal, but at least we avoided borrowing two more meaningless terms
from Amharic.
ROCKS: If metals were a
partial victory, rocks was a devastating loss. We stumbled through the throne
room description of chapter four in which we encountered jasper, carnelian,
emerald and crystal, none of which were known to the Gmz people. Beginning with
jasper, we hoped to be able to describe it at least by color or shape, and so we
turned to our translation notes for help and here is what we found: "There is no complete certainty about all the stones that appear in
Revelation. The semiprecious jasper may be yellow, brown, red, or green; it is
actually somewhat dull and opaque. Some commentators suggest that the writer
had in mind an opal; others, a diamond. The same holds true for the carnelian…" Argh…so much for a
descriptive phrase! We did a quick Google images search (which we often do with
unknown objects), and up came such a variety, it was clear that we had no
chance in translating this rock with anything other than a meaningless borrowed
name Yaasp'ed. Not wanting to admit total defeat we included the phrase "expensive polished rock"
prior to our cop-out borrowing "which
is called jasper" and likewise for the others of chapter 4. However, in
chapter 18, we found our one lone victory in the realm of rocks – marble. The
Gmz DO have a word for marble because it is mined out of our region, loaded on
trucks and taken who knows where. It almost felt too easy just to stick in one
word and move on, but we welcomed the breath of fresh air. Unfortunately, it
didn't last long. If chapter 4 was a minor defeat, chapter 21, and the
description of the New Jerusalem was the knockout punch as the city walls were
made of our old friend jasper, the twelve foundations of the city wall were
decorated with 12 different rocks, none of which we stood a chance at
translating into anything meaningful to our Gmz audience. Jasper, sapphire, agate,
emerald, onyx, carnelian, chrysolite, beryl…the list of painful defeat seemed
unending.
Scattered throughout the
book of Revelation, and especially that difficult list in 18:12-13, we got
nailed with many other foreign materials and other objects, some of which we were
able to describe, at least in part. Here is a sample list:
pearls – "beautiful beads called pearl"
ivory - "elephants' teeth"
citron wood - "good-smelling wood"
linen – "beautiful thin cloth/clothes"
silk - "beautiful
cloth/clothes made of something called silk"
cinnamon - "bark of a tree
that smells nice"
frankincense - “good smelling
thing called frankincense”
carriages – “vehicles pulled by
horses”
bear – "wild animal
called a bear"
sulfur – "stinky thing which is called sulfur"
winepress – "place of squeezing
juice of grapes"
