Every morning, I've been trying to wake-up a bit earlier than usual to have a bit of time to read. The books of choice lately have been some causal reading of linguistics textbooks (I know you're shaking your heads at that incredible display of nerd-dom , but trust me there is a valid reason for it, that's just not the topic of this blog!).
Well, Thursday of this week I read a line which nailed one of the struggles we faced in translating the book of Revelation, it said something to the effect that Majority Languages of the world (like English) are often simple in their grammar (having been watered down over centuries of use in contact with other languages), yet they are extremely rich in their vocabulary (having stolen words from other languages along the way). That definitely makes sense for English. On the other hand, Minority Languages of the world are the opposite in both categories. They are complicated in their grammar and limited in their vocabulary. The second of these is particularly true of Gmz. The W-I-D-E range of meaning covered in some Gmz words has been no small thorn in my flesh. How can I wrestle though the minute variations of meaning found in different Greek words for “love”, when in Gmz we have only one choice, daafeesh, which also can mean “like,” “accept,” or “welcome.” Likewise, we have one word for the whole range of “ruler,” “king,” “authorities,” “boss,” “chief,” “commander,” and “wealthy person.”
So, as with the foreign materials post previous to this one, struggling with finding and modifying words to translate and describe normal everyday things is not new for us, but Revelation posed us the unique problem of piling up many such problems in each and every chapter!
For example, though we have tried many different ways, we cannot find a suitable way to refer to “a voice.” In the baptism and transfiguration texts, we encountered a voice coming from heaven, both of these we translated simply, “a word came from heaven,” and that seemed to work in those texts. However, in Revelation, there were voices coming from all over the place, and the sounds of the voices are compared to very strange things like “a voice like the sound of many waters,” “a voice like thunder” “a voice like a trumpet” and “like a lion's roar.” Likewise we have no word for “sound” which we would have found quite helpful in a number of passages where John describes his vision in terms of what he heard. Grrr…in the end, we alternated between two phrases depending on if their voice was described to sound like an animal (in which we used a phrase which literally means “crying-mouth”) or if the voice was like that of a person (in which we used “word” as in the Gospels.)
Other examples include:
1) We don't have a word for “peoples” or “nations”, and so we used “crowds” and “lineages.”
2) We don't have a word for “right” as in “I will give him the right to eat from the tree of life” and so we had to leave it implied by saying “I will allow him to eat from the tree of life.”
3) Of course, seals placed on scrolls are a big deal in the book of Revelation, and of course, the Gmz people have nothing like it in their culture. And so we manufactured a phrase using the term for scar and modifying it to say the “pounded-scar” (with a footnote to go along with it).
4) Sadly, the Gmz culture has no words to communicate the concept of an inheritance. This may be due to the fact that their unfortunate funeral traditions which suck dry any and all remaining assets the deceased may have left behind (and then some). Yet, the Bible is full of promises of the inheritance that is ours in heaven and our role as co-heirs with Christ. Following many of the translation notes, we acknowledge that the metaphor of inheritance used by Scripture is not perfect in the sense that it is not something that we, the children, receive upon the death of our Father, God. Rather Biblical inheritance is better understood as God's “children” receiving the fulfillment of that which God promised, that is, the fulfillment of hope. And so that is how we have tried to translate around this concept in the absence of a nice clear term for inherit or heir.
5) In regard to building structures, Revelation challenged us a bit further, specifically when we needed to refer to the outer courts of the temple (which John was told not to measure). For that we translated “the land that is inside the fence of the temple.”
6) And even more difficult, we struggled with describing the foundations of the New Jerusalem's wall. We had seen foundations of buildings before and we weaseled our way around those fairly well by just describing the process of digging deep and planting the wall sticks deep into the soil. However, the wall of the New Jerusalem had 12 actual foundations, each decorated with jewels, and upon which were written the names of the apostles. We needed to rethink our strategy in this, eventually landing on – “the strengthening/supportive beginning of the walls.” It is yet to be seen how the review committee reacts to that. If it passes their test, we will need to search through previously translated passages and make the appropriate adjustments.
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