the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the
deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. (3) And God
said, "Let there be light," and there was light. (4) God saw that the
light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. (5) God
called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there
was evening, and there was morning-the first day.
El en principio, Dios creó los cielos y la tierra. Ahora la tierra era desordenada y vacía, ocsuridad estaban sobre la superficie de la profundidad, y la espíritu de Dios se movía sobre las aguas. Y Dios dijo, "Hagase la luz," y fue la luz. Dios vio que la luz era buena, y él separó la luz de la oscuridad. Dios llamó la luz "día" y la oscuridad "noche." Y era la tarde, y era la mañana- el primer día.
Changes/Decisions that I made:
1) "created": was it created in a quick moment, or over time? (creó or creia- preterite versus imperfect tenses in Spanish differentiates a moment in the past versus a process in the past)- important distinction of meaning
2) Also, "cielo" can refer to both the heavens (as it does here) or the literal sky.
3) "earth" = el mundo or la tierra (the planet earth or the earth/soil/foundation of the earth)
4) I noticed that the phrase "now the earth was formless and empty" seems to make little sense grammatically. It is interesting that when you read the sentence in context, it makes sense, but when you actually dissect the sentence grammatically, it does not. I feel as though this applies for both English and Spanish.
5) Two Spanish verbs for to be: ser and estar. I chose "estar" because the phrase relates to a location (perhaps momentary) rather than a set characteristic, for example.
6) "Let there be light": In Spanish, the "let" takes on a new verb form: the command form. This distinction does not exist in English.
7) A smaller linguistic difference: "tarde" in Spanish translates as both "afternoon" and "evening"
8) In the end, instead of "haber" which translates directly to "there was," I used "estar" which seemed to fit into the context / general idea that "there was the first day" (it is less literal than I understand "haber" to be).
I used to know more Spanish than I do now, but I was thinking about how I would translate this into Spanish, and I'm amazed how the verbs make such a huge difference in the meaning. I could see how the preterite or imperfect tenses could cause a huge debate and discrepancy in the "true" meaning. If these five short verses cause so much confusion, it makes me wonder how much the entire Bible has been tweaked since its origins.
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