wild ass

In the context of being in the wilderness, the Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek that is translated as “wild ass” in English is translated in Chitonga as cibize or “zebra,” because “from the Tonga perspective, no ‘donkey of the bush’ [the literal correspondent of ‘wild ass’] could be expected to live very long, due to predators like lions, etc.” (Source: Wendland 1987, p. 130)

See also wild ass of a man / wild donkey.

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.

Translation commentary on Jeremiah 48:6

A wild ass (Good News Translation “a wild desert donkey”) translates the Septuagint, which represents a somewhat different form of the text than the standard Hebrew, which has the word ʿaroʿer. The Hebrew word is actually a juniper bush (a type of desert shrub), as in 17.6 (Revised Standard Version “shrub”), and this is the rendering proposed by Hebrew Old Testament Text Project. Thus the translation could be “Be like a bush [or, shrub] in the desert.” If the image of wild ass is kept, refer to 2.24.

Note that Good News Translation inserts the words “they say” to indicate that these are the words the people of Moab are shouting to each other.

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 .