purple

The Greek that is translated as “purple” in English is translated as “blue-red” in Ojitlán Chinantec.

In Kasua was a little bit more involved, as Rachel Greco recalls (in The PNG Experience):

“The Kasua people of Western Province have no word for the color purple. They have words for many other colors: black, red, white, yellow, green, and blue, but not for the color of royalty.

“About nine New Testament passages mention people placing a purple robe on Jesus. The Kasua translation team always wanted to use the word ‘red,’ or keyalo, to describe the robe. Tommy, one of the translation team helpers, disagreed because this is not historically accurate or signifies the royalty of Jesus.

“One of the main rules of translation is that the team must stick to the historical facts when they translate a passage. If they don’t, then how can the readers trust what they’re reading is true? Other questions about truth could bubble in the reader’s minds about the Scriptures. For this reason, Tommy was not willing to change the word purple. So the team hung up the problem, hoping to revisit it later with more inspiration.

“God did not disappoint.

“Years later, Tommy hiked with some of the men near their village. They saw a tree that possessed bulbous growths growing on the side of it like fruit. These growths were ‘the most beautiful color of purple I’d ever seen,’ explained Tommy.

“’What is the name of this tree?’ Tommy asked the men.

“’This is an Okani tree,’ they replied.

“Tommy suggested, ‘Why don’t you, in those passages where we’ve been struggling to translate the color purple, use ‘they put a robe on Jesus the color of the fruit of the Okani tree’?

“’Yeah. We know exactly what color that is,’ the men said enthusiastically.

“Everyone in their village would also visualize this phrase accurately, as the Okani tree is the only tree in that area that produces this kind of purple growth. So now, among the Kasua people, in his royal purple robe, Jesus is shown to be the king that he is.”

Translation commentary on Exod 25:3 - 25:4

And this points to the long list that follows. The offering which you shall receive from them repeats what is said in verse 2, so Good News Translation simply says “These offerings are to be:….” Contemporary English Version has “Here is a list of what you are to collect:….” Gold, silver, and bronze are metals known in just about every culture. The word for bronze may also refer to copper, since bronze is an alloy, or mixture, of copper and tin. A few translations prefer to use “copper” (New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh, Revised English Bible), but “bronze” was more useful and decorative, and the people would more likely have brought along tools and objects of bronze from Egypt. If cultures do not have these metals, they are so important throughout the Bible that translators should use descriptive terms such as “metals named ‘gold’ ” and so on, and also have descriptions of these metals in the Glossary. (See the Word List in Good News Translation as an example.)

Blue and purple and scarlet stuff describes three different colors of material, which was probably yarn made from wool. But the Hebrew only names the colors, and stuff has been added in translation. New Revised Standard Version adds “yarns” instead of stuff, and Good News Translation has “wool.” In some languages this will be termed “sheep’s hair.” The word for purple also refers to the wool that is dyed a purple color. New Jerusalem Bible simply uses “materials.”

It may be difficult to distinguish between the three colors, for they are all various shades of a mixture of red and blue. The difference between the words for blue and purple seems to be that the first has more blue and the second has more red. But both colors were purple. New Jerusalem Bible translates these two terms as “violet-purple” and “red-purple.” Both colors came from dyes made from the secretion of certain mollusks, or shellfish, along the Mediterranean Sea. Materials dyed in the “red-purple” color were the most valued and were worn by kings, but both colors were signs of wealth.

A Handbook on the Gospel of Mark, page 482, has excellent suggestions of ways for translating the color purple. In brief, translators are urged to: (1) select an indigenous term which is approximately the color of purple or red-blue; (2) find an approximation of the color, employing other terms that identify colors that are reasonably close; for example, “dark red,” “burnt red,” and so on; (3) identify the color through the color of some bird or flower; for example, “sheep’s wool dyed with the color of…”; or (4) use a phrase identifying the process of dyeing cloth; for example, “sheep’s hair like that dyed in….” Then introduce the proper plant in the culture that is used for dyeing cloth or other materials with a purple color.

The third color, scarlet, came from the larvae of an insect found on the oak trees of that area. The Hebrew uses two words to describe this color, literally “worm-scarlet.” This should be considered a deep, rich red, like “crimson,” which New Revised Standard Version now uses instead of scarlet.

And fine twined linen is just one word in the Hebrew, but it refers to a high quality of linen, a cloth made from the long fiber of the Egyptian flax plant. For a description of the flax plant from which linen is made, the translator should consult a Bible dictionary. In cultures where linen is unknown, however, one may say, for example, “a good white cloth from the flax plant,” and include a note in the Glossary. (New Revised Standard Version has removed the word twined, since this is not specified here as it is in 26.1.) This should be distinguished from the more common linen referred to in 28.42. Goats’ hair is also one word in the Hebrew for the female goat, but here it refers to the “cloth made of goats’ hair” (Good News Translation).

Quoted with permission from Osborn, Noel D. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Exodus. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1999. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .