He and She and You and Me

Pronouns can be fascinating, I think. They seem like such a basic part of a language that you just don't realize how differently each languages uses them. These differences can cause some interesting difficulties in translation.

Some languages are very precise in their pronouns, others are not so precise. (Now I'm going to get a bit technical for a minute, so bear with me.) English personal pronouns usually distinguish person as well as number, gender, and case, except in the second person, where we have only one pronoun form - "you". Hebrew and Greek are both quite precise in their pronouns. Hebrew, for example, has four words for "you" - masculine singular and plural forms, and feminine singular and plural forms. There is also a "they" masculine and a "they" feminine.

Because Hebrew is so precise, it is common to use a lot of pronouns when telling a story in Hebrew, switching the antecedents back and forth without bothering to use people's names. Many languages can't do this so easily. Here's an example of the confusion that pronouns caused in one language. This is quoted from our recently revised Translator Training Manual:

Many years ago there was an American missionary who had a tremendous gift for learning to speak other languages. He spoke the language like a native, so he was chosen to try to translate the Bible. He worked hard to translate the book of Mark, and, when he was finished, it was published complete with illustrations. The nationals enjoyed reading it. It sounded so good, but again and again they became hopelessly confused. Why? Because the missionary did not understand the use of pronouns in story telling. Everywhere the English Bible had a pronoun, he put in the same pronoun in the target language, but that was often misunderstood. Every page had serious errors even though the words were all correct and used appropriately. His translation had failed to show the difference between masculine and feminine. Pronouns were very limited in story telling by speakers of his TL. Only one person at a time could be referred to as he or she.

This limitation caused a lot of confusion in passages that said things like, "he did this to her, and then she did something," such as in Mark 1:31 - "And he came and took her by the hand, and lifted her up; and immediately the fever left her, and she ministered unto them." In English and Greek, it is clear who the pronouns are referring to because we have different words for masculine and feminine pronouns - "he" and "she". The grammar of the missionary's language didn't show this so clearly. The manual continues:

...The people understood his translation to teach that after Jesus had healed Peter’s mother-in-law, it was Jesus and not the woman who made supper for everyone. His translation also led them to believe that when the angels came at the close of the Lord’s temptation, they came to minister to Satan rather than to the Lord.

So how do you solve a problem like this? Where there is confusion like this, you simply replace the pronoun with its antecedent. So for Mark 1:31, for example, you could say that "Peter's mother-in-law ministered unto them." Nothing has been changed or added to the original by doing this. There is no question that "she" and "Peter's mother-in-law" are referring to the same person. All you are doing is saying the same thing as the original, in a way that will be understood by the readers of the translation. As I heard one consultant explain, it is like taking your handkerchief out of your pocket: it was always there, you are just putting it where others can see it.