Words Hard to Translate

[John of Japan]

I'm going to major here on Greek words and phrases that are hard for a missionary translator to render in another language, but you are welcome to add a Hebrew word if you like.

First or all, we have ἐκκλησία (ekklesia), usually translated into English as "church." The first century background of this word is that it referred to the government of a city-state such as Athens or Sparta. We see this meaning in the NT in Acts 19 (esp. 39 & 41), where it is used to refer to an unruly assembly that, nevertheless, had the characteristics of an official meeting. It was officially dismissed in v. 41. Such an ekklesia consisted of all the adult male citizens of the city. Then obviously it is the word chosen by the Lord to represent local meetings on Sunday of His believers.

The difficulty in translating this word is that not all cultures have similar meetings. Therefore, the word is translated into Chinese and Japanese as "teaching meeting" (教會 in traditional Chinese characters, 教会 in Japanese with the characters being the same, but the Japanese form is simplified).

This strategy would probably work with most tribal languages. It's simple, yet conveys the core meaning fairly well.

 

[Squire Robertsson]

In American terms, I've always thought of an ekklesia as a New England town meeting.

 

[John of Japan]

In American terms, I've always thought of an ekklesia as a New England town meeting.

Very close. In translating this word the translator has to find a balance between a secular meeting and a meeting of believers. Sometimes the secular word is best, or a value-neutral word. The translator does not want a word that already has religious overtones, like a meeting of Muslims of some kind.

 

[Squire Robertsson]

I would not use term term "town meeting". Rather, I would use the words "assembly" or "congregation".

 

[Yeshua1]

I'm going to major here on Greek words and phrases that are hard for a missionary translator to render in another language, but you are welcome to add a Hebrew word if you like.

First or all, we have ἐκκλησία (ekklesia), usually translated into English as "church." The first century background of this word is that it referred to the government of a city-state such as Athens or Sparta. We see this meaning in the NT in Acts 19 (esp. 39 & 41), where it is used to refer to an unruly assembly that, nevertheless, had the characteristics of an official meeting. It was officially dismissed in v. 41. Such an ekklesia consisted of all the adult male citizens of the city. Then obviously it is the word chosen by the Lord to represent local meetings on Sunday of His believers.

The difficulty in translating this word is that not all cultures have similar meetings. Therefore, the word is translated into Chinese and Japanese as "teaching meeting" (教會 in traditional Chinese characters, 教会 in Japanese with the characters being the same, but the Japanese form is simplified).

This strategy would probably work with most tribal languages. It's simple, yet conveys the core meaning fairly well.

is there any trouble in trying to get across the concept of being submissive?

 

[Bassoonery]

I had always heard that ekklesia referred to the "called out ones" but thanks to your thread I have discovered I was wrong, as explained here: Nope: Ekklesia means “called out”

The Mizo word for church is kohhran, meaning "called separately" (called to be different, called to be separate...). I suspect the first missionaries thought this was an accurate translation of ekklesia in light of the above fallacy. Kohhran refers to the church body. The church building is called a biak in, a "house of worship".

As for Acts 19:39 and 41 in the Mizo Bible, the words used are inkhawm pangngai and awmkhawmhote respectively. The former seems intended to indicate an official gathering, but inkhawm is more commonly used to refer to the act of church worship/attendance so I imagine this might be confusing for modern Mizo readers. The second (v41) means "the ones gathered together" - not a bad equivalent to "assembly".

Interesting question!

 

[John of Japan]

Welcome to the Baptist Board. I trust you will be blessed here.

I had always heard that ekklesia referred to the "called out ones" but thanks to your thread I have discovered I was wrong, as explained here: Nope: Ekklesia means “called out”

Good link.

"Called out" is of course the origin of the word, its etymology. When the etymology of a word is thought to be the contemporary meaning, that is called the etymological fallacy. It's not entirely wrong, since someone had to give the message that there is a meeting to the members of the ekklesia of a Greek city-state. However, the "called out" idea was not current at the time of the writing of the NT.

If you are interested in further study, a great book with further information is Exegetical Fallacies, by D. A. Carson.

The Mizo word for church is kohhran, meaning "called separately" (called to be different, called to be separate...). I suspect the first missionaries thought this was an accurate translation of ekklesia in light of the above fallacy. Kohhran refers to the church body. The church building is called a biak in, a "house of worship".

As for Acts 19:39 and 41 in the Mizo Bible, the words used are inkhawm pangngai and awmkhawmhote respectively. The former seems intended to indicate an official gathering, but inkhawm is more commonly used to refer to the act of church worship/attendance so I imagine this might be confusing for modern Mizo readers. The second (v41) means "the ones gathered together" - not a bad equivalent to "assembly".

Interesting question!

Interesting answer!

May I ask if your are fluent in Mizo? Maybe a missionary there?

 

[Van]

Yes, when a target language does not seem to have a word with a similar meaning, a phrase must be uses to convey that meaning. Ekklesia is a Greek compound word literally translated "out from called." The first word in the compound (ek) is a preposition of origin, thus out from. The second word (kaleo) means "called" or "selected". The NT meaning refers to those "called out of darkness into His marvelous light" and thus comprised of those actually saved and those professing or believing they are saved. The word does not refer to the place or building where the called out congregate, but the congregation itself. The NASB95 translates the word as "church" or "assembly" or "congregation."

 

[John of Japan]

Believe it or not, in many languages the most problematic word to translate is θεός (theos), meaning God. There is a great controversy among translators into languages spoken by Muslim people groups as to whether or not "Allah" should be used. One of our MA students has started a new translation into Farsi, but says that Persian has a good word commonly used for God that is not "Allah." However, many other languages that are quite different from either Arabic or Persian use "Allah" for God. There are a lot of sources out there on this, so I'll not pontificate.

A discussion I know more about is the word used for God in Chinese and Japanese. The Japanese word is 神, with the onyomi (Chinese influenced reading) being shin, and the kunyomi (strictly Japanese reading) being kami. Fortunately, there is not much of a controversy about the right word in Japanese. Chinese, however, is a different matter. The controversy there is whether or not to use the generic word 神 (same as in Japanese, only pronounced shen), or to use the word for the original monotheistic God of China, 上帝 (Shang Di). You can actually buy copies of the main Chinese version, the Union Version, with the word for God being one or the other.

My thought is that normally a generic word for God is best. What must be avoided is a word that already has religious baggage (thus the Allah controversy). The translator must think: What will the reader be thinking about God when he or she reads this Bible?

 

[John of Japan]

is there any trouble in trying to get across the concept of being submissive?

I wouldn't think so. All cultures would have the idea of obedience, I would think.

 

[Bassoonery]

"Called out" is of course the origin of the word, its etymology. When the etymology of a word is thought to be the contemporary meaning, that is called the etymological fallacy. It's not entirely wrong, since someone had to give the message that there is a meeting to the members of the ekklesia of a Greek city-state. However, the "called out" idea was not current at the time of the writing of the NT.

Ah, well that makes me feel better then!

May I ask if your are fluent in Mizo? Maybe a missionary there?

I'm married and settled here so I use Mizo on a daily basis. I can't claim to be fluent but my postgrad research was a study of Mizo congregational singing, which required studying the language, history and culture. Now I help run my in-laws' school. We are not missionaries but they are retired missionaries and I was also born to missionaries in Japan, so it's all rather in the family. Are you a missionary in Japan? I wonder if we have mutual contacts! Much to my shame, I didn't learn Japanese.

Looking forward to whatever other Greek words you bring up on this thread. I do enjoy digging into the Mizo translation and trying to understand the decisions that were made.

 

[Van]

Yes, words with baggage lead the reader to include the baggage in the message. Thus if a translation uses "tongues" when foreign languages is the meaning, an unintended message is sent, as the bogus angelic tongue might be inferred. Compare Acts 2:4 with Acts 2:6 in your English translation of choice.

 

[John of Japan]

Ah, well that makes me feel better then!

Good!

I'm married and settled here so I use Mizo on a daily basis. I can't claim to be fluent but my postgrad research was a study of Mizo congregational singing, which required studying the language, history and culture. Now I help run my in-laws' school. We are not missionaries but they are retired missionaries and I was also born to missionaries in Japan, so it's all rather in the family. Are you a missionary in Japan? I wonder if we have mutual contacts! Much to my shame, I didn't learn Japanese.

Great to know how you are serving God over there.

We were missionaries to Japan for 33 years under Baptist World Mission. We lived in Saitama Pref. while I studied the language for two years (Tokyo School of the Japanese language alumnus). Then we lived in Yokohama for 16 years, after which we moved to Asahikawa, Hokkaido, for the rest of our time there. We were involved in evangelism, church planting, teaching in Bible institutes, and working on a new translation of the Japanese NT. (The Shinkaiyaku is a good translation, but we wanted something that could be printed or otherwise used without permission.)

Looking forward to whatever other Greek words you bring up on this thread. I do enjoy digging into the Mizo translation and trying to understand the decisions that were made.

I'll do my best for you.

 

[Salty]

According to Wiki: Mizo:
Religion
Protestantism (Presbyterian majority, large Baptist minority; other minor sects) • Theravada Buddhism

 

[Yeshua1]

I wouldn't think so. All cultures would have the idea of obedience, I would think.

That was where to me the challenge would be , as what would be submissive in america might not fit for say Islamic lands!

 

[Yeshua1]

I wouldn't think so. All cultures would have the idea of obedience, I would think.

I have heard there is some hardship with trying to translate Jesus as Son of God when doing it for Muslim bibles, and that one tribe of people had no word for Lamb, so Jesus was the goat of God?

 

[John of Japan]

I note that Van brought up the word "tongues" in his post. The two verses he mentions actually have two different words for this. The first word (v. 4) is the well-known γλῶσσα (glossa). It does indeed mean "language." In fact, in 1611 the English word "tongue" meant "language." And no one in 1611 spoke the kind of "tongues" that the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement speaks. The second word (v. 4) is διάλεκτος (dialektos), from which we get our word "dialect," and that is pretty much what it means in 1st century koine Greek. Friberg's Analytical Lexicon says, "of the form of speech characteristic of a nation or region dialect, language, way of speaking" (accessed through BibleWorks).

If a translation is intended for a general Christian audience, the translators may fudge a bit and look for a word that can be embraced by both tongues speakers and non-tongues speakers. That's what the typical Japanese translations have done, using the word 異言 (igen), meaning literally "strange language" or "other language." However, this is not the typical word used in Japanese for "language," and it has come to mean the "tongues" of the Charismatics, as witness this online dictionary definition: 異言 - Jisho.org.

In our Japanese NT translation, we avoided this word, but used instead 言語 (gengo), which is the normal word for "language" in modern Japanese. In Acts 2:6 we used 言葉 (kotoba) for διάλεκτος, which means "word" but has a wide range of meaning, so that in this context it indicates one's individual language--dialect, in other words.

 

[John of Japan]

I'm about out of time, but feel free to post without me. Tomorrow I plan to post about the difficulties in translating θεοῦ υἱός, "son of God."

 

[John of Japan]

I have heard there is some hardship with trying to translate Jesus as Son of God when doing it for Muslim bibles, and that one tribe of people had no word for Lamb, so Jesus was the goat of God?

I'll try to post about that tomorrow, but the short answer is, if this is true--They have got to be kidding!! "Goat of God" destroys the metaphor, which is based on OT truth.

 

[Yeshua1]

I'll try to post about that tomorrow, but the short answer is, if this is true--They have got to be kidding!! "Goat of God" destroys the metaphor, which is based on OT truth.

Many Christians hated it when translations in Arabic decided to translate God/Yahweh as Allah!