desert, wilderness

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The Greek that is translated as “desert” or “wilderness” in English is translated in a number of ways:

Note that in Luke 15:4, usually a term is used that denotes pastoral land, such as “eating/grazing-place” in Tagbanwa (source: Tagbanwa Back Translation).

See also wilderness and desolate wilderness.

vineyard

The Hebrew, Latin, and Greek that is translated as “vineyard” in English is translated in Noongar as boodjer-djildjiyang, lit. “land for fruit.” (Source: Portions of the Holy Bible in the Nyunga language of Australia, 2018).

shepherd

The Greek and Hebrew that is translated as “shepherd” in English is translated in Kouya as Bhlabhlɛɛ ‘yliyɔzʋnyɔ — ” tender of sheep.”

Philip Saunders (p. 231) explains:

“Then one day they tackled the thorny problem of ‘shepherd’. It was problematic because Kouyas don’t have herdsmen who stay with the sheep all the time. Sheep wander freely round the village and its outskirts, and often a young lad will be detailed to drive sheep to another feeding spot. So the usual Kouya expression meant a ‘driver of sheep’, which would miss the idea of a ‘nurturing’ shepherd. ‘A sheep nurturer’ was possible to say, but it was unnatural in most contexts. The group came up with Bhlabhlɛɛ ‘yliyɔzʋnyɔ which meant ‘a tender of sheep’, that is one who keeps an eye on the sheep to make sure they are all right. All, including the translators, agreed that this was a most satisfactory solution.”

In Chuj, the translation is “carer” since there was no single word for “shepherd” (source: Ronald Ross), in Muna, it is dhagano dhumba: “sheep guard” since there was no immediate lexical equivalent (source: René van den Berg), in Mairasi it is translated with “people who took care of domesticated animals” (source: Enggavoter 2004), in Noongar as kookendjeriyang-yakina or “sheep worker” (source: Warda-Kwabba Luke-Ang), and Kwakum as “those-who-monitor-the-livestock” (source: Stacey Hare in this post ).

See also I am the good shepherd.

Translation commentary on Jeremiah 12:10

Shepherds (see 6.3) are to be understood as “foreign rulers” (Good News Translation); Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch has “Foreign shepherds.”

For the picture of Israel as the LORD’s vineyard, see 2.21; 5.10. The imagery is brought out in more detail in Isa 5.1-7. If translators believe their readers would understand the expression too literally here, they can express the comparison directly: “my people who I care for like a farmer tends his vineyard” or simply “my people, my vineyard.”

Portion translates a noun that in the context means “field” (New English Bible, New International Version); Good News Translation uses the plural “fields.” The noun is here used parallel to vineyard.

Pleasant is first used in 3.19; see also 25.34, where Revised Standard Version translates the term as “choice.” My pleasant portion is represented in Good News Translation as “my lovely land” and in Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch as “the magnificent fields”; New English Bible has “my pleasant field.”

Desolate is first used in 4.27, where it is rendered “desolation.” For wilderness see 2.2.

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on Jeremiah. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2003. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .