So, taking into account the context of the passage as a whole, this is how we translated it into Toba:

Which means: “It’s good that truly you know the power of him, as he helps us everyday, there’s no limit to his power, truly there’s no end to it.”

How do we translate the Scriptures into Toba? Sometimes it’s difficult to maintain the impact of the original message...

The Greek text of this verse says (with literal translation word for word):







The New International Version translates it as follows:

This verse is full of superlatives, describing the power of God. Now, the problem here is how to reproduce the force (!) of Paul’s language. In Toba, there’s not the same richness of superlatives as in Greek or English: if we wanted to translate “surpassing greatness” fairly literally, we’d not do much better than “really big” power. And then we’d still have to face “the might of his strength”, which might come out like “really big strength”.

So in cases like this, we have to take a look at the Toba language and see what other linguistic devices are used to express the things we’re looking at, in this case superlatives.

What Hilario felt would be correct in Toba was to use repetition to highlight the superlatives: to talk about the great strength of God, and then to reinforce the idea with additional phrases - “without limit” and “without end”.