kiss

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The Hebrew and the Greek that is usually directly translated as “kiss” in English is translated more indirectly in other languages because kissing is deemed as inappropriate, is not a custom at all, or is not customary in the particular context (see the English translation of J.B. Phillips [publ. 1960] in Rom. 16:16: “Give each other a hearty handshake”). Here are some examples:

  • Pökoot: “greet warmly” (“kissing in public, certainly between men, is absolutely unacceptable in Pökoot.”) (Source: Gerrit van Steenbergen)
  • Southern Birifor: puor or “greet” (source: Andy Warren-Rothlin)
  • Chamula Tzotzil, Ixcatlán Mazatec, Tojolabal: “greet each other warmly” or “hug with feeling” (source: Robert Bascom)
  • Afar: gaba tittal ucuya — “give hands to each other” (Afar kiss each other’s hands in greeting) (source: Loren Bliese)
  • Roviana: “welcome one another joyfully”
  • Cheke Holo: “love each other in the way-joined-together that is holy” (esp. in Rom. 16:16) or “greet with love” (esp. 1Thess. 5:26 and 1Pet. 5.14)
  • Pitjantjatjara: “when you meet/join up with others of Jesus’ relatives hug and kiss them [footnote], for you are each a relative of the other through Jesus.” Footnote: “This was their custom in that place to hug and kiss one another in happiness. Maybe when we see another relative of Jesus we shake hands and rejoice.” (esp. Rom. 16:16) (source for this and two above: Carl Gross)
  • Kamba: “greet with the greeting of love” (source: Andy Warren-Rothlin)
  • Balanta-Kentohe and Mandinka: “touch cheek” or “cheek-touching” (“sumbu” in Malinka)
  • Mende: “embrace” (“greet one another with the kiss of love”: “greet one another and embrace one another to show that you love one another”) (source for this and two above: Rob Koops)
  • Gen: “embrace affectionately” (source: John Ellington)
  • Kachin: “holy and pure customary greetings” (source: Gam Seng Shae)
  • Kahua: “smell” (source: David Clark) (also in Ekari and Kekchí, source: Reiling / Swellengrebel)
  • San Blas Kuna: “smell the face” (source: Claudio and Marvel Iglesias in The Bible Translator 1951, p. 85ff.)
  • Chichewa: “suck” (“habit and term a novelty amongst the young and more or less westernized people, the traditional term for greeting a friend after a long absence being, ‘clap in the hands and laugh happily'”)
  • Medumba: “suck the cheek” (“a novelty, the traditional term being ‘to embrace.'”)
  • Shona (version of 1966) / Vidunda: “hug”
  • Balinese: “caress” (source for this and three above: Reiling / Swellengrebel; Vidunda: project-specific translation notes in Paratext)
  • Tsafiki: earlier version: “greet in a friendly way,” later revision: “kiss on the face” (Bruce Moore [in: Notes on Translation 1/1992), p. 1ff.] explains: “Formerly, kissing had presented a problem. Because of the Tsáchilas’ [speakers of Tsafiki] limited exposure to Hispanic culture they understood the kiss only in the eros context. Accordingly, the original translation had rendered ‘kiss’ in a greeting sense as ‘greet in a friendly way’. The actual word ‘kiss’ was not used. Today ‘kiss’ is still an awkward term, but the team’s judgment was that it could be used as long as long as it was qualified. So ‘kiss’ (in greeting) is now ‘kiss on the face’ (that is, not on the lips).)
  • Kwere / Kutu: “show true friendship” (source: Pioneer Bible Translators, project-specific translation notes in Paratext)

See also Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth and kissed (his feet).

Ruth

The Hebrew that is transliterated as “Ruth” in English is translated in Spanish Sign Language with the sign for “respect” referring to the respect that she shows for the mother-in-law as shown in Ruth 1:16. (Source: Steve Parkhurst)


“Ruth” in Spanish Sign Language, source: Sociedad Bíblica de España

In Swiss-German Sign Language it is translated with a sign that depicts Ruth collecting ears of grain, referring to Ruth 2:2 and following.


“Ruth” in Swiss-German Sign Language, source: DSGS-Lexikon biblischer Begriffe , © CGG Schweiz

Ruth 1 in oral adaptation in Fang

Following is a back-translation of Ruth 1 from a song presented in the traditional Fang troubadour style (mvét oyeng) as part of a project by Bethany and Andrew Case. (For more information about this, see Case / Case 2019)

Verse 1 – It happened that, in the time of the chiefs, they were governing Israel, and hunger came there to the regions of those lands.

2 – It came about that a man of the town that they call Bethlehem, the clans of the lands of Ephrata, they called him Elimelek.

Then he moved from there, he moved, saying, “I will try to go and live in the regions of the lands of Moab.”

When he went there, he went with [his] wife, [his] wife Naomi, and his two sons, his grown sons.

One was named Mahlon, and the other was Kilion.

All those were people of Ephrata.

After they arrived in Moab there, then they lived there, living.

3 – It came about that Elimelek, Naomi’s husband, died, and Naomi was left a widow. (Click or tap here to see the rest.

4/5 – Left like that, [with] only just one thing her two sons, when they were left, then these two sons also married two girls, young Moabite women.

One of them was named Orpah, and the other was named Ruth.

And it came about that after ten years passed, ten years, then these two sons of hers also died there, beginning with Malon and Kilion.

Then Naomi was left only all alone [lit. point and point: a bird’s beak from which its worm has fallen] with nothing.

6 – Then it came about that Naomi, living in Moab [unclear].

There she found out that Yahweh had had compassion on her town’s/people’s pain, the famine had ended, ending.

7 – Then Naomi said there that, “right now, I’m going back to Judah.”

When she was returning, then she went together with her two daughter-in-laws.

They left the place where they were and at that time they went.

8 – When they were walking on the road, then she said to them, “Oh my daughters-in-law, go back to your houses, to the houses of your mothers, please go back.”

9 – “I ask Yahweh that he treat you well at all times just like you also treated me and my sons.”

“I continually repeatedly again and again ask that Yahweh give you a place that is just and solid/secure, that he give you homes and also give you new husbands.”

Then Naomi kissed them on the cheeks, a goodbye kiss.

10 – Then the girls wept and they said “We will not go back, oh Naomi, we will go with you to your land.”

11 – Then Naomi insisted again, and said to them, “O my daughters, please go back.”

“Do you really wish to return with me, to go and do what?”

I can no longer again have other children for them to again marry you, please go back to your homes.

12 – I am too old, I cannot again go into marriage.

Even if I did also go into it, and bear two sons this night, oh my daughters, would you begin to wait again for these sons, for them to be your husbands?

13 – In this time you are without husbands, and for how long?

No no, oh my daughters, my evil is too great, and surpasses yours [lit. my evil it exaggerates with bigness to pass this with yours].

The hand of Yahweh has struck me, striking.”

14 – Then they opened their mouths (wept), they were crying.

After they finished crying, then Orpha afterward went to kiss [her] mother-in-law, kissing goodbye.

Then Ruth, she insisted to her that she would not go.

15 – Then Naomi said to her, “Look, the other has gone to her people.

Go youuuu too with her to the place where your gods are, go with her.”

Ñeŋǃ

16 – Then Ruth answered her, “Don’t you ask me that I separate from you.

Don’t you ask me that I separate from you.”

Because the place where you go, to it also I will go.

The place where you’re going to live, there also I am going to live.

Your people this also will be my people.

Your god this too will be my god.

17 – The place where you will die, in this also I will die, I tell you truly (lit. truth and truth).

I say that may Yahweh strike me, may he punish me severely (lit. [punish me with real punishment]) if I separate from you except only that death do it.”

18 – Then it happened that, when Naomi saw that Ruth insisted [with] real insistence [firmness], she didn’t insist anymore, then she said, “Let’s go”.

They began to walk, they’re going, they’re going.

19 – When it happened that they have already entered Bethlehem, that they have already arrived.

Then there in the town people began going and looking, [saying], “wow, but who is this?

Who is this?

Is it not Naomi who’s coming over there?

Yes, wow, it is Naomi.

Aáaáaáa

Aaáǃ

20 – After Naomi knew that she was the one they were talking about, then she said, “Don’t call me again Naomi.

Naomi means I have a glad heart, I am well.

And now that I’m here, please call me Mara because God Almighty has given me bitter and bitter, bitter and bitter, this has filled my body.

21 – When I left here to go, I left here [with] my hands full.

When I was returning now, I was coming [with] my hands now emptied, because thus Yahweh has wanted it, so why do you again call me Naomi?

When Yahweh, he who is all-powerful has lowered me to the ground, this kind of punishment that I have here.”

22 – In that way, Naomi returned to Moab with her daughter-in-law Ruth, she who is a young Moabite woman.

In that way, they arrived in Bethlehem, finding that the time of harvesting food had arrived.

Translation commentary on Ruth 1:14

Though the term Again seems necessary in view of the intervening statement by Naomi, the emphasis of the Hebrew word is upon the continuation of the weeping. See Gesenius-Buhl and Brown-Driver-Briggs, s.v. ʿod. This meaning may be expressed as “they wept still more.”

The phrase started crying reflects the same expressions occurring in 1.9, which in Hebrew is literally “lifted up their voices and wept.”

Though the term for kissed in verse 14 is the same as in verse 9, it may be necessary to use some quite different expression, such as “embraced,” because of the connotations of the word kissed. Furthermore, in some languages there may be a different term used because of the difference of social position between Orpah and Naomi.

There is almost always some technical term to designate mother-in-law, but if this does not exist, one can employ some descriptive expression; for example, “the mother of her husband,” or, as in this context, “the mother of her deceased husband.”

As in verse 9, it may be necessary to translate kissed … good-bye as “kissed and said good-bye.”

At this point (that is, between … good-bye and but Ruth …) the Septuagint adds “and she went back to her people.” The Syriac version also has an extra expression, but a somewhat different wording: “she returned and went her way.” The fact that both extra expressions have a different wording makes it highly improbable that they were originally part of the primitive Hebrew text, as suggested by Dhorme (ad loc.). Instead we have to judge these extra expressions as good, early examples of the translation technique of making implicit information explicit. This information is, of course, implicit in the Hebrew text, and in some cases it may be necessary to make this fact explicit in translation.

The expression held on to is a translation of a Hebrew verb meaning “to cleave,” and it has the figurative meaning of loyalty and affection, as well as the meaning of being close to something or someone. A translation such as “to stay with” (New American Bible) is rather weak, and something like “remained close to her” may be understood only in the physical sense.

Quoted with permission from de Waard, Jan and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on Ruth. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1978, 1992. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .