The pains of childbirth
One of the translation problems we had was in Romans 8:22: “…the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth…”
When Doug and Abundio were drafting this verse some months back, they checked the old translation first, thinking that if it was clear and correct they would use it. However, Abundio could not understand the verse. He had no idea why the woman giving birth was groaning (actually in Embera it was “screaming”). To Doug it was obvious enough. “Well, when a woman gives birth it hurts, so they scream.”
Abundio said, “No, they don’t.”
“Of course they do,” Doug countered.
Then Abundio’s wife, Elvira, came into the room having overheard the discussion. “We don’t scream. My mother taught me to be quiet when I gave birth. No one screams.”
That is why the old translation made no sense to Abundio. So he and Doug, and later the team checkers and I, had to agree on something that would leave out the meaningless (to them) comparison but still maintain the meaning. So we have “We all know that when a woman is bearing child it hurts, so she wants the child to be born fast. In the same way, all that God made wants to be made new quickly…”
These are not Abundio and Elvira, but other Embera friends who have also been working with Chaz and Doug recently: Silvio, Enrique and Eloida