And my “oh, come on” alarm went off, right there in the pew.
A human language could have no word for “joy”? Oh, come on…
The time of feeding the sled dogs is a time for joyous community celebration? Oh, come on…
It was my understanding that in traditional Eskimo communities, the dogs are just sort of “there”, the way you park the snowmobile out behind the garage, and that the serious breeding stock is not allowed to run around loose at any time, because otherwise they fight. They are not communal “pets”. They belong to the men. Is the filling up of the snowmobile’s gas tank also an occasion for community rejoicing? I would say rather that some white Bible translators probably misinterpreted what they were seeing in their particular village.
The Eskimo Bible really translates the word “joy” all through the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, as “tails wagging”? Oh, come on…
If so, how could a serious Bible translator be so patronizing towards the people of another culture that he would go ahead and translate it in this dorky way, instead of looking around a little harder for a word for “ultimate happiness”? “Oh, they’re only ignorant savages, they don’t have a word for joy, so I’ll just go with the ‘tails wagging’ thing.”
I have been rummaging around on Google for a while now and I haven’t found anything. Got any Eskimo Bible translators out there?
Evidently the American Bible Society has Eskimo translations, but I can’t find passages with the word “joy” in it on the Web, just “for sale” and “museum” websites.
Although not from the best of sources, here’s a quick overview from http://underwire.msn.com/underwire/social/InBrief/83inbrief.asp?c=1 Although it doesn’t address the word ‘joy’ specifically, it lends credence to the idea that the word might have once been missing from the Inupiaq and Yupik languages:
Languages are never a one-to-one match. Here are some Inuit words for which there is apparently no English equivalent:
ilira: “fear of disapproval”
nallik: “nurturing love of one’s neighbors”
unga: “love of need as a baby to it’s mother or separated loved ones”
From http://www.mun.ca/univrel/gazette/1999-2000/Jan.27/newspage9.html
Although there might be a grain of truth in what your pastor said, ultimately, he’s wrong. The Inuit word for joy is “kuviasungnerk”, from the English-Inuit dictionary at http://www.wordgumbo.com/ea/can/caninu.htm and others. Although this word might be a modern invention, I suspect not. The Inuit have a rich emotional and moral vocabulary and a wonderful oral tradition.
Try searching google with a combinaiton of “Inuit”, “dictionary”,or “language”
You can order a copy of the New Testament in Eastern Arctic Inuktitut here. (Click on “International Language Bible”.)
According to this article, they are still working on the Old Testament translation.
DDG, I agree with points #1-#3, but I can believe that someone would do what you put in #4. “Patronizing” is one of the words that comes to mind when thinking of initial contact between cultures. It is unlikely that a “serious” translator would go with the “wagged their tails” translation, but that doesn’t mean someone didn’t do something similar during the initial attempts to learn the language.
Upon preview, I just saw you’re last sentence:
So you can ignore the first part of the post. Of course, if you get your hands on one of these translations, how are you going to read it?
One story which I have substantially less trouble believing is the one that states that, there being no lambs above the Arctic Circle, the Inuktitut translation of the Bible described Jesus as the “Seal of God.” Note the preservation of the connotations of cuteness, helplessness, slaughterability…
It wasn’t Inuit or any other Eskimo language. It was Cuicatec, a native language of Mexico. And it wasn’t “joy”, it was “worship”, and the phrase was “wag one’s tail before God.” I don’t recall it applying to a Bible translation, but rather just a general remark, though I suppose if you were to translate the Bible, you would need to advise people to wag their tails before God in spirit and in truth.
You can trace the source to none other than Mario Pei, perhaps history’s greatest linguist. See his book The Story of Language, J. P. Lippincott Co., 1949. I lost my copy long ago, and I think it’s now out of print, but I remember the remark, and I believe the chapter was titled “Language and Religion”. It seems it’s available from Amazon auctions.
Well, I can confirm DDG’s analysis of how sled dogs are kept. Sled dogs are never allowed to run loose. A dog running lose is liable to be shot. Typically every dog has a little house, and a 5 foot leash. They are fed individually, in order of dominance. If you tried to feed them communally the dogs would fight over the food. These dogs are not considered pets.
Anyway, nowadays dog teams are just a hobby. Eskimos today use snow machines for serious work, or 4-wheelers in summer. Keeping a dog team is expensive.
And while it may be that some languages don’t have a word that translates with the exact connotation of “joy”, I refuse to believe that there are languages that don’t have some sort of word for the concept of “happiness”.
I was curious about the same question. I have learned that there was great difficultly in translating into the language of the Eskimo people (I realize the variety of ways and difficultly of referring to this indigenous people group).
Here are several sites that note the significance of the accomplishment and list a variety of translation issues (including tree, “lamb of God” became a baby seal, etc.).
evilhanz’ original citation is still alive and well, which is rather surprising. So TIL that an internet reference cite may remain valid for a decade-and-half. So the topic resurrection provided at least that much value.
There is also the business about language idiom and expression. Instead of a discrete word for something a language might use a phrase. There are also cultural differences that wind up in language - Jesus as the “seal of God” being one example. In some cultures the liver holds the same mystical/metaphorical position as the the heart does in English, so a Bible in that language might speak of welcoming Jesus into one’s liver rather than into one’s heart. That doesn’t mean such people have no hearts, it means they express the same concepts differently.
I also sort of doubt the account because there is not just one “eskimo language”, there are a lot of different languages used by First Nation groups of people.
Even going from the original Biblical language to modern American English idioms can be kind of tricky sometimes. In Isaiah 16:11, we have the perfectly sensible-sounding metaphor “My heart laments for Moab like a harp…” (even though all of us, Christians and Jews and atheists alike, would probably agree that the heart is merely a muscular pump). But that language is the New International Version translation; the older King James Version renders the Hebrew as “Wherefore my bowels shall sound like an harp for Moab…”, which would undoubtedly provoke some snickering from the kids in the Vacation Bible School when the poor Sunday school teacher gets to that particular verse. (And frankly sounds pretty weird and inappropriate to any 21st century American, of any age.)
If the online interlinear versions and Hebrew glossaries are to be believed, the Hebrew word me`ah really did literally mean something more like “internal organs, inward parts, bowels, intestines, belly” (and NOT “the muscular pump in your chest that keeps your blood flowing”). But it isn’t really any weirder to consider the intestines the seat of emotion and desire than it is to consider the heart as such; as opposed to locating such feelings in the brain where they really belong.
I think it’s slightly weirder, since while many emotions can make the heart race faster, it takes a special type and intensity to effect changes in bowels.
