What makes a good gloss?

What makes a good gloss? This can be a difficult question.

A gloss is not a full dictionary entry. It does not give all of the possible meanings of a word. But one word may require several different glosses.

For instance, in 1 John, the Greek word ὁμολογέω might need different glosses, depending on the language.

In 1 John 1:8 the idea is confession of sins:

ἐὰν ὁμολογῶμεν τὰς ἁμαρτίας ἡμῶν, πιστός ἐστιν καὶ δίκαιος, ἵνα ἀφῇ ἡμῖν τὰς ἁμαρτίας καὶ καθαρίσῃ ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ πάσης ἀδικίας. (1 John 1:8)

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:8; NIV)

In 1 John 4:2 the idea is making a statement about one’s own faith:

ἐν τούτῳ γινώσκετε τὸ πνεῦμα τοῦ θεοῦ· πᾶν πνεῦμα ὃ ὁμολογεῖ Ἰησοῦν Χριστὸν ἐν σαρκὶ ἐληλυθότα ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ ἐστιν, (1 John 4:2)

This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, (1 John 4:2; NIV)

This will be different for different languages. So, it would be a bad idea just to translate the English glosses. It would be better to look at a translation of the Bible in your language.

You can decide how much you want to help your readers. The Hebrew word נכה has many possible translations—“strike” or “kill” and maybe others. Do you want to help the reader see each individual translation, or do you want to force the reader to think about how one Hebrew word can have several different meanings?

These are decisions that each individual has to make.

Verbs

For verbs, things are more complicated.

In Greek, you might want to provide different glosses for active and passive forms of the same verb. For instance, you could gloss βάλλω as “to throw” when the verb is active, or “to be thrown” when the verb is passive.

In Hebrew, you might want to provide different glosses for verbs in different verbal stems (binyamim). For instance, you could gloss לקח as “to take” in the qal active, but “to be taken” in the qal passive. You could gloss מות as “to die” in the qal, but “to kill” in the hiphil.

(You can configure your project to only suggest glosses that match the voice/binyan. See General Settings.)

Tips

Keep the glosses grammatical neutral. Example: Even though you see τεκνία (which is plural) in the text, make the gloss singular (e.g., “child”). The reader will see from the rest of the footnote that it’s a plural word.
With Hebrew words, you may want to have different glosses for different stems (e.g., qal vs. niphal).