Let me begin with a new development on the previous post: Numbers. I was pretty confident on our translation of fractions, only to have that blown out of the water in yesterday's drafting of Hebrews chapter 7. In that chapter, we encountered a section on Abraham paying a tithe of 10% of his spoils to Melchizedek. In their drafting they didn't follow the pattern we had used only two months earlier in the book of Revelation, that is clue number one that our form wasn't working. Then, when I jogged their memory with the form “from 10 one part,” one translator said, “yea...but when you say it like that, it sounds like “one part” of ten would be one equal part, cut in half, and therefore one part of ten would be five.” Boom, back to square one on that one...welcome to our world of never-ending battles against certain difficult concepts.
On to this blog's topic: Colors. One of the fascinating things I remember from my Semantics class in Dallas was the study that has gone into how languages describe colors with a wide degree of specificity. This is exemplified in that some languages only have two basic words for colors, which could either be described as black and white or better dark and light. One step of specificity beyond the two-fold description are languages that add a third word for a color: most often red. A black, white and red language would have fit very well at describing the emblem of my high school – Sheboygan South. Languages which have four basic colors follow the black, white, red pattern, adding to those three a color referred to by linguists as grue (that is, the combination of green and blue). The fifth color to be added into a language is often either yellow or the distinction between green and blue. My study of the Gmz language very much confirms these patterns. In Gmz, we definitely have words for black, white, red and grue. Beyond these four, other colors can be derived and specified using comparison to something of that color. So for orange, they might say “like the tiny spicy pepper.” (Did you ever wonder why the color orange and the fruit orange are the same name? Likely the color derived from the fruit in this way).
As we worked our way through the book of Revelation, we encountered several colors along the way. We saw green grass in chapter 8, and then blue breastplates in chapter 9, but given that they are two different contexts and not contrasted with each other, it did not pose a problem for us to translate them with the same grue word that the Gmz language has to offer. We encountered yellow in chapter 9, which posed us no problems as it seems the language is currently in shift to use the name of a certain tree (whose pulp is very bright yellow) to refer to this color.
Later on, in chapter 17 and 18, we have three places where purple and scarlet are found contrastive of each other in the same text. After considerable conversation about different ways of describing purple in contrast to red, we came up with something that they all agreed upon – a word derived from the fruit of a particular tree. If this description passes the test of the review committee, we'll need to go back and change some earlier texts where we substituted red for purple (ie. the robe soldiers put on Jesus and Lydia the seller of purple cloth).
The first three horses of Revelation 6 were a breeze: white, red and black; however, the fourth horse brought considerable difficulty. Some might translate it pale, others grey, others light green – all of which symbolize death. We struggled and had to settle for a hung jury for the time being. That is, when the translators can't agree on something that isn't necessarily a matter of right and wrong, then we offer two, sometimes three options for the review committee to consider and decide. Such is the case with this color.
Lastly and probably the most difficult color for us to translate was clear or transparent. Part of the problem was that the Amharic used for this was a term that is most often used today for a certain type of glass used for drinking tea. And so, our most literal-oriented translator insisted that the Gmz word for cup must be inserted into these texts – that is, totally missing the point of how “a drinking glass” was being used to describe the quality of being transparent. Three times we encountered “clear as crystal” and one time “like transparent glass” and each time it was a battle. In the end, however, in chapter 21, we discovered a nice phrase which we then copied back into previous references: “which inner-light-shined like glass bling bling” (the Gmz language loves ideophones).
So as you go throughout your day, try imagining categorizing and describing your world into just four colors: black, white, red, and grue. Then you'll have a bit of an idea of what we are up against in translating into the Gmz language. Sometimes, the concepts we need to communicate are truly beyond the words available to us...and yet we find a way.
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