The Greek terms that are used for what is translated as “net” in English are translated in languages like Navajo where fishing with nets is not known as “instruments to catch (or: bring out) the fish.” (Source: Reiling / Swellengrebel)
“[People living close to lakes] produced further problems for us over fishing terms when we reached the revision of the Gospels. Fishing is practically unknown in the mountain streams and rivers, so there is hardly any vocabulary for it up-country. In Mat. 4:18 we read that Jesus saw two brethren “casting a net into the sea.” The word we used for net (urusenga) is used all over Rundi for a fishing net, whatever it is like, but when I read this to some people who live by the lake they said it was the wrong word, as from the context this happened during the daytime, and urusenga-fishing is only done at night. It appears that the urusenga is something like a shrimping net, and is used on moonless nights, when the fishermen hold flares over the side of the boat and attract a certain variety of very small fish which swim about in shoals. The net they use for day-time fishing is something like a drag-net and is called urukwabu. On enquiry inland, I never discovered a single person who knew this word. It was obviously the right one, technically speaking, but we felt that the few thousand lake-dwellers could not be weighed against almost the entire population of the country, so we had to employ the up-country word, putting an explanatory note in the margin that by the lake this net is called urukwabu.”
Click or tap here to see a short video clip showing net-fishing in biblical times (source: Bible Lands 2012)
In the Yatzachi Zapotec translation of the Gospel of John, any reference to the evangelist and presumed narrator is done in the first person.
The translator Inez Butler explains (in: Notes on Translation, September 1967, pp. 10ff.):
“In revising the Gospel of John in Yatzachi Zapotec we realized from the start that the third person references of Jesus to himself as Son of Man had to be converted into first person references, but only more recently have we decided that similar change is necessary in John’s references to himself as ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved.’ As I worked on those changes and questioned the informant about his understanding of other passages in the Gospel, I discovered that the reader misses the whole focus of the book as an eyewitness account unless every reference to the disciples indicates the writer’s membership in the group. In view of that we went back through the entire book looking for ways to cue in the reader to the fact that John was an eyewitness and a participant in a many of the events, as well as the historian.
“When the disciples were participants in events along with Jesus, it was necessary to make explicit the fact that they accompanied him, although in the source language that is left implicit, since otherwise our rendering would imply that they were not present.”
In this verse, the Yatzachi Zapotec says: “And we stayed in the boat dragging the fish net where the fish were. It was not far from the shore, just about a hundred meters.”
Following are a number of back-translations of John 21:8:
Uma: “The other disciples [stayed] in the boat, pulled the net that was full of fish going to the edge of the lake. They were not very far from the shore, just about one hundred meters.” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
Yakan: “The others paddled towards the shore dragging the net full of fish. They were close to the shore, the distance was about (50 deppe) 75 meters.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
Western Bukidnon Manobo: “And his companion disciples, they followed in the boat. They were dragging the net full of fish. They were very near the shore, only about 90 meters.” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
Kankanaey: “His companions however, they stayed in the boat pulling the net that was full of fish until they had landed. Because they were close, their distance from the shore of the lake being close to one hundred meters.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
Tagbanwa: “Those companion disciples of his, they brought the boat in close, continuing to drag that fishnet which was full of fish which had entered, because they weren’t very far from the shore, about ninety meters only.” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)
Tenango Otomi: “There were more than a hundred meters the boat lacked in order to get to the shore. The other learners took the boat to the shore and dragged the net full of fish.” (Source: Tenango Otomi Back Translation)
The other disciples came to shore in the boat is literally “the other disciples came with the boat.” Good News Translation makes explicit the information that they came to the shore. In Greek, all of verse 8 is one sentence, in which pulling the net full of fish (literally “pulling the net of fish”) comes last. English structure requires that this information be given in the first part of the verse.
In some languages it is necessary to specify the means by which a boat is made to move through the water. In this instance it would no doubt have been “by means of oars.” Therefore one may translate the first clause of this verse “the other disciples rowed to shore in the boat.”
Pulling the net full of fish may be translated as a separate clause, for example, “while pulling behind them the net full of fish, the other disciples rowed to shore in the boat.”
About a hundred yards (so most translations) is literally “about two hundred cubits.” A cubit is about 18 inches (45 centimeters). In English it is more natural to speak of yards than of cubits. Some translations (Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch, for example) give the measurement in terms of meters (“about a hundred meters”), an increasingly favored way of measuring distance. In some languages a natural way of incorporating the measurement into the preceding statement would be to translate “they were only about a hundred yards from land.”
Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on the Gospel of John. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1980. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .
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