brothers

“Brothers” has to be translated into Naro as “younger brothers and older brothers” (Tsáá qõea xu hẽé / naka tsáá kíí). All brothers are included this way, also because of the kind of plural that has been used. (Source: Gerrit van Steenbergen)

This also must be more clearly defined in Yucateco as older or younger (suku’un or Iits’in), but here there are both older and younger brothers. Yucateco does have a more general word for close relative, family member. (Source: Robert Bascom)

brother (older brother)

The Greek and Hebrew that is translated as “brother” in English is translated in Kwere as sekulu and in Mandarin Chinese as gēgē (哥哥), both “older brother.”

Note that Kwere also uses lumbu — “older sibling” in some cases. (Source for Kwere: Pioneer Bible Translators, project-specific translation notes in Paratext)

complete verse (Genesis 37:11)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Genesis 37:11:

  • Kankanaey: “So then his siblings were-jealous-of him, but his father thought-and-thought-about what that-aforementioned dream of Jose meant to say.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
  • Newari: “Seeing him, the hearts of his elder brothers envied [him]. His father, however, kept stirring this matter in [his] heart.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon: “The siblings of Jose became-jealous of him, but Jacob on-the-other-hand just hid this thing in his heart.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
  • English: “Joseph’s older brothers were furious/angry with him, but his father just kept thinking about what the dream meant.” (Source: Translation for Translators)

Translation commentary on Genesis 37:11

Brothers were jealous of him: jealous translates a word that means to become red in the face from intensive emotions. In the context of verse 11, the term expresses something more akin to anger than to jealousy. Anchor Bible says “his brothers were wrought up with him”; New Jerusalem Bible has “held it against him,” and Moffatt “bore him malice.”

Father kept the saying in mind is literally “his father guarded the word [matter].” The idea of “guarded” is that Jacob kept thinking about it. Von Rad suggests that it means that Jacob couldn’t get the thing out of his mind. The saying refers to what Joseph had told about his dreams, or about the second dream in particular. We may translate, for example, “but Jacob kept thinking about these dreams” or “Jacob kept in his heart [did not forget] this matter of Joseph’s dreams.” Two examples from Pacific translations are “All the time his father kept thinking about it all” and “His father was thinking about that dream all the time.”

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, William D. and Fry, Euan McG. A Handbook on Genesis. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1997. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .