Published September 15, 2025 | Version v1
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Translating the untranslatable: Hebrew idioms in Maltese translations of the Bible

Authors/Creators

  • 1. ROR icon Jagiellonian University

Description

The present paper aims to examine the most typical Biblical Hebrew idioms and their equivalents used in three translations of the Bible into Maltese: Il-Bibbja translated by P.P. Saydon, Il-Bibbja published by Għaqda Biblika Maltija and Il-Bibbja Mqaddsa published by Trinitarian Bible Society. Some Biblical idioms are foreign to modern languages’ ways of expression. Nevertheless, the widely used translations preserved many remote Hebrew idioms in multilingual versions of the Bible. Both Hebrew and Maltese are Semitic languages. They share basic vocabulary, some ways of expressions, even some idioms, especially those which connect the Biblical tradition with the Maltese Christian cultural background. For that reason many idioms have been translated into Maltese literally. Still many of those phrases cannot be understood without a comment. In some cases the translation of Għaqda Biblika Maltija provides the dynamic renderings of such idioms when the other two don’t, e.g. 1 Sam 24:4 [ויבא שאול להסק את־רגליו]{lang=he} *way-yāḇō šā’ûl lə-hāsēḵ ’eṯ-raḡlāw*, lit. ‘and Saul went in to cover his feet’, i.e. ‘to relieve himself’, is rendered respectively as *u daħal Sawl jgħatti riġlejh* (lit.) and *u Sawl daħal fih biex jaqdi l-bżonnijiet tiegħu* (dyn.). Other idioms remain rendered literally in all the translations, e.g. [וערות אחות אמך ואחות אביך לא תגלה]{lang=he} *wə-‘erwaṯ ’ăḥôṯ ’imməḵā wə-’ăḥôṯ ’āḇîḵā lō ṯəḡallē*, lit. ‘and you shall not uncover the nakedness of your mother’s sister, nor of your father’s sister’, i.e. ‘you will have no sexual relations…’, is rendered as *La tikxifx l-għera ta’ oħt ommok jew oħt missierek*, or even following the Hebrew syntax as *Lanqas l-għera ta’ oħt ommok jew ta’ oħt missierek ma għandek tikxef*. Many such solutions resemble the classical Van Dyke’s Arabic way of translation of the Bible.
 

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Is part of
10.5281/zenodo.16893678 (DOI)