Translating the Bible into Toba...
text and graphics© 2010 Michael Browne
www.michaelandsilvia.com/revelation13_2.html
Beasts and dragons. Translating the book of Revelation wasn’t as difficult as we might think. The Tobas are well accustomed to dreams and visions, so the concepts involved in Revelation were not too strange. But some of the vocabulary was difficult, as there are no equivalents in Toba. So how did we translate the beast and the dragon...?
Revelation 13:2
So this is what José’s translation of Revelation says:
Jo'me jiyaq polio' jo'ne jauana ena'am jena'me quedoc, nataq'aen naa'me lapia'te ena'am ta'le potae lapia'te, qama'le jena'me degaĝat ena'am ta'le jauaĝaic nedegaĝat. Qama'le ñe'me ñaĝadiaq polio' yanem da'me lañoqotaĝanaĝac jejo'me, nataq'aen jaga'me neje'onaĝaiqui choqoda'me en lejaliaĝa let'adaic jo'ne yanem.
Which means:
The wild beast which I see is like a jaguar, and its feet are like an anteater’s feet, while its mouth is like a puma’s mouth. Then the crocodile-like creature gives it it’s power and its throne as well as makes it have great authority.
The beast first appears in Revelation 11:7, and the dragon in 12:3. Then in 13:2 we have the two together. The New International Version translates the verse as follows:
The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority.
In the original Greek, the word translated beast, , is a general word that means animal, but is used in the sense of a wild beast or monster. In Toba, as in English, to say “the animal” would sound rather unnatural. But how do we translate “beast”? There is a word for wild animal, jiyaq, but it is used in a natural sense, and might be a deer, a fox, or any other of the wild animals of the region. So we needed something else. And what José decided was to use the word for wild animal together with another word which suggests something mythological: jiyaq polio’.
Now the dragon. In the Greek, is a legendary beast, like a huge snake or lizard, generally thought of as living in the ocean depths, and is a figure of the forces of destruction and chaos. In Toba there is no legendary equivalent, but José thought it might be something like a crocodile, so he translated it as ñaĝadiaq polio' - a mythological creature like a crocodile.