The Hebrew and Greek that is translated as “love” in English is typically translated in Hakka Chinese as thung-siak / 痛惜 or “pain-love” when it refers to God’s love.
The same term is used for a variety of Hebrew terms that cover a range of English translations that refer to God as the agent, including “love,” “compassion,” and “mercy.”
Paul McLean explains: “[Thung-siak / 痛惜] has been used for many years in a popular Hakka-Christian mountain song based on John 3:16. The translation team decided that for this and other reasons it would be a good rendering here. It helps point to the fact that God’s ‘love’ is a compassionate (cum passio, with suffering) love.”
Translator Lee Bramlett submitted this on the translation of the Greek word that is translated into English as “love” (referring to God’s love). This letter was then reposted by Wycliffe Bible Translators (see here ):
“Translator Lee Bramlett was confident that God had left His mark on the Hdi culture somewhere, but though he searched, he could not find it. Where was the footprint of God in the history or daily life of these Cameroonian people? What clue had He planted to let the Hdi know who He was and how He wanted to relate to them?
“Then one night in a dream, God prompted Lee to look again at the Hdi word for ‘love.’ Lee and his wife, Tammi, had learned that verbs in Hdi consistently end in one of three vowels. For almost every verb, they could find forms ending in i, a, and u. But when it came to the word for love, they could only find i and a. Why no u?
“Lee asked the Hdi translation committee, which included the most influential leaders in the community, ‘Could you ‘ɗvi’ your wife?’ ‘Yes,’ they said. That would mean that the wife had been loved but the love was gone.
“‘Could you ‘ɗva’ your wife?’ ‘Yes,’ they said. That kind of love depended on the wife’s actions. She would be loved as long as she remained faithful and cared for her husband well.
“‘Could you ‘ɗvu’ your wife?’ Everyone laughed. ‘Of course not! If you said that, you would have to keep loving your wife no matter what she did, even if she never got you water, never made you meals. Even if she committed adultery, you would be compelled to just keep on loving her. No, we would never say ‘ɗvu.’ It just doesn’t exist.’
“Lee sat quietly for a while, thinking about John 3:16, and then he asked, ‘Could God ‘ɗvu’ people?’
“There was complete silence for three or four minutes; then tears started to trickle down the weathered faces of these elderly men. Finally they responded. ‘Do you know what this would mean? This would mean that God kept loving us over and over, millennia after millennia, while all that time we rejected His great love. He is compelled to love us, even though we have sinned more than any people.’
“One simple vowel and the meaning was changed from ‘I love you based on what you do and who you are,’ to ‘I love you, based on Who I am. I love you because of Me and NOT because of you.’
“God had encoded the story of His unconditional love right into their language. For centuries, the little word was there — unused but available, grammatically correct and quite understandable. When the word was finally spoken, it called into question their entire belief system. If God was like that, did they need the spirits of the ancestors to intercede for them? Did they need sorcery to relate to the spirits? Many decided the answer was no, and the number of Christ-followers quickly grew from a few hundred to several thousand.
“The New Testament in Hdi is ready to be printed now, and 29,000 speakers will soon be able to feel the impact of passages like Ephesians 5:25: ‘Husbands, ‘ɗvu’ your wives, just as Christ ‘ɗvu’-d the church…'”
In Hawai’i Creole English the love that God has is often translated as love an aloha. Aloha has a variety of meanings, including “hello,” “goodbye,” “love,” “thank you,” etc.
The Philippine languages of Cebuano, Tagalog, and Pampanga use a word (gugma, pag-ibig, and lugud respectively) that is also used for a “noble, refined love of people for each other,” distinct from romantic love. (Source: G. Henry Waterman in The Bible Translator 1960, p. 24ff. )
In Mairasi, the term that is used for love by God, for God and for people is the same: “desire one’s face.” (source: Enggavoter 2004)
Many languages distinguish between inclusive and exclusive first-person plural pronouns (“we”). (Click or tap here to see more details)
The inclusive “we” specifically includes the addressee (“you and I and possibly others”), while the exclusive “we” specifically excludes the addressee (“he/she/they and I, but not you”). This grammatical distinction is called “clusivity.” While Semitic languages such as Hebrew or most Indo-European languages such as Greek or English do not make that distinction, translators of languages with that distinction have to make a choice every time they encounter “we” or a form thereof (in English: “we,” “our,” or “us”).
For this verse, translators typically select the inclusive form (including the writer of the letter and the readers).
Source: Velma Pickett and Florence Cowan in Notes on Translation January 1962, p. 1ff.
Following are a number of back-translations of Romans 8:37:
Uma: “But no matter what hits us, we nonetheless win / are-victorious, and no kidding the greatness of that winning of ours because of [the power of] Yesus who loves us!” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
Yakan: “But even though like this is our (incl.) suffering/difficulty we (incl.) are not overcome/defeated because Isa Almasi loves us (incl.).” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
Western Bukidnon Manobo: “Even though we are in great difficulty, we do not allow it to frighten us because we really rejoice in suffering these things, and by means of the power of Christ, we are the ones to win because of His very great kindness toward us.” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
Kankanaey: “But even if we experience all these-kinds of difficulty, they have no ability to defeat us but rather we will thoroughly win-the-victory because of Cristo who showed us his love.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
Tenango Otomi: “Even though we suffer, going through these things, yet let us be strengthened because of Christ loving us.” (Source: Tenango Otomi Back Translation)
This verse looks back to and answers the question asked in verse 35. Paul actually begins this verse with a conjunction (literally “but”), which must be given the force of no (so Revised Standard Version, King James Version, Phillips, Moffatt). The word translated we have complete victory (New English Bible “overwhelming victory is ours”; Phillips “we win an overwhelming victory”) is used only here in the New Testament.
If verse 37 is understood clearly as an answer to the question in verse 35, there is no difficulty involved in the introduction of the initial particle No. It is too easy, however, in some languages for people to understand “no” as a negation of the immediate preceding statement about being treated as sheep which are about to be slaughtered. For this reason, in some languages verse 37 must begin with an adversative particle such as “but.” This is particularly true if the question in verse 35 is made into a statement.
In all these things means “in every experience of life” or, as in some languages, “in everything that happens to us.”
Him who loved us is perhaps best understood as a reference to the love of Christ in verse 35, and the aorist tense may be taken as a specific reference to the act of his death. On the other hand if him is taken to be a reference to God, then the force of the aorist would refer back to the time that God offered his only Son.
Through him who loved us, an expression of agency, may be expressed as “the one who loved us helps us be victorious” or “the one who loved us makes this so.”
Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on Paul’s Letter to the Romans. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1973. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .
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