How a Translator Chooses Words

Uncle Miya and John of Japan

If anyone would like to see what Uncle Miya looks like, I've added an album to my profile.

 

Thanks for checking out the pictures. I treasure his wisdom, especially in the area of Japanese linguistics.

 

Thanks, Mexdeaf. Glad you're enjoying it. :wavey:

 

A Difficult Word​

Let me take you through how we translated a difficult word in Japanese: “cup.” That’s right, the seemingly simple word “cup.” Why would that be difficult, you say? Because traditionally Japan had nothing like the cup Jesus drank from in the Bible. So, here are the possibilities.​

(1) 杯 (sakazuki). This word refers to the traditional ceremonial sake (rice wine; pr. sah-keh,) cup, which is a flat, slightly concave small cup, in secular Japanese used for sake in ceremonies. The Japanese Daijiten dictionary says, “A small vessel used to fill with sake to drink” (my translation). My MS Japanese-English computer dictionary says, “a sake cup.” In spite of this, it is the word traditionally used in Japanese Bible translations for “cup.”
(2) 茶碗(chawan). A teacup. The cha character is the word for tea. (It can also contain rice.)
(3) コップ (koppu, with a long “o”). A glass. This is a loan word, either from Portuguese (copo) or Dutch (kop), both of which had an early influence on Japanese.
(4) カップ (kappu). A more modern loan word from English, referring to a coffee or tea cup.
(5) 容器 (yohki—Please note that this is not the usual Hepburn or Yale Romanization, but something to help you pronounce this word if you don’t know Japanese). “A container, a receptacle, a vessel” (MS Shogakukan Bookshelf Basic Version 2.0).​

In the first draft I decided to go with a new word, rather than sakazuki, used by all Japanese translations to date. The word sakazuki in secular Japanese means nothing like what Christ drank from. The Greek word pothrion (poterion) was no doubt a Roman type of cup, and it was used for all sorts of drinks: water (Mark 9:11), wine, etc.​

I didn’t consider chawan for long, because of its narrow usage. I briefly considered koppu, but rejected it since it almost always means a glass. I considered kappu also, but I finally went with yohki, because I saw this word used in modern Japanese for a vessel much like what people in first century Rome must have used. For example, I saw it on a Starbucks paper cup: “Please be careful, the liquid in this vessel is hot.” (Yes, folk several years ago we got a Starbucks in Asahikawa!)​

When I ran this by Uncle Miya in our discussion of John 18:11 he nixed the idea. We discussed it extensively and finally decided to go with kappu. Why? It seems that yohki is more of a general word with a wide range of meaning. It can be used for many different kinds vessels, everything from a paper cup at Starbucks to a cardboard box! We wanted something with a narrower meaning: a vessel to drink from. And kappu fits that meaning.​

Some might think that this rendering is archaic—that is, that we are reading a modern meaning back into the original Greek. But this is actually the word in modern Japanese that best fits the meaning of the Greek word. Here is the Friberg definition of the Greek word pothrion: “literally cup, drinking container.” So kappu is our word.​

A sakazuki cup:
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Compare with this replica of a Roman cup:
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Aha! Ahem.

 

Especially a ceremonial sake cup. What kind of fate would that show? I've always been curious as to why the original translators of the Japanese Bible used that term, but they probably could find nothing better: no dictionaries, only Japanese informants who were completely ignorant of the Bible.

 

They have a couple of words for fate or luck, but don't seem to think much about it in spite of being nominal Buddhists. (Really convinced Buddhists are rare here.) The Japanese are more of a practical people--money and business. And you should see all the TV shows about food!

 

The country has changed quite a bit since then, as has the language. But they still bow every chance they get.

 

The Final Draft​

After the committee (Uncle Miya and I nowadays) finishes the second draft of a chapter, the file goes out to the editors for more corrections. One person may and often does translate a literary work on his own, but this won’t do for the Bible. One man or even two man translations are less than ideal, since the NT is such a deep book, and so the wise translator seeks out those who can help perfect the translation.

First among our editors is an up and coming Greek scholar who grew up in Japan and speaks Japanese like a native. He also has finished his class work for his Ph. D. in NT Greek linguistics under well-known Greek professor David Alan Black, and works as grader for Greek professor and textual critic Maurice Robinson. (Hmm. Have I mentioned this scholar on the BB before? :saint And he’s not afraid to tell his fellow translator in a nice way what is wrong with his rendering. So he is ideal as one of our editors.

The editor goes over the file, noting corrections and suggestions after each verse. Here is an example from his comments on our 1 Peter 1:1—イエス・キリストの使徒の一人であるペテロより、ポント、ガラテヤ、カパドキヤ、アジヤ、ビテニヤに散らされ、住まいの定まらない人たちへ。

For those who don’t know Japanese or Greek, here are some salient points. For the first word, parepidhmoiV (paredidemois) the editor consulted various scholarly sources and came up with a better sense of the Greek word than I had. I made the necessary change to 巡礼者, a word that seems to fit the bill.

The second word, diaspora, is a difficult one. It has made its way into the English language as “diaspora,” a loan word. We pretty much think we know what this word means in English, but do we? The problem is not an English one, but a Greek one, so it must be interpreted according to the thinking of a first century Jewish Christian who spoke Greek! What I ended up doing was following the editor’s tentative thought that the word might be put into katakana. In addition to using thousands of kanji (Chinese characters), Japanese has two syllabaries (syllable alphabets) of 48 characters representing the same sounds, hiragana and katakana. The hiragana is used for Japanese words that don’t need kanji, and for word endings, particles and the like. The katakana is used for loan words, foreign names, etc.

In this case, my final decision was to write “diaspora” in katakana, then add a footnote to give the reader context (as per the relevance theory of communication). We’ll see how that is accepted by other editors and our target audience.

 

This would be a fun one to research.

Historical footnote: Jews lived and practiced their faith in a village in China called K'ai Feng Fu for at least 800 years, well into the 20th century. This is well documented in The Jews of China, ed. by Jonathan Goldstein. According to their traditions, their ancestors migrated there during the Han Dynasty, 225-206 BC (Chinese Religions, by D. Howard Smith, 166-169).

 

Well, that is a little off the subject, but thanks anyway! :thumbsup:

Having said that, lots of things Chinese explain lots of things Japanese. For example, since the samurai had to study the Confician classics as part of their education, Japan is today more Confucian than China in many ways.