Tap (cangrejo/crab)

Anthropologist Dennis Tedlock (1996: 84 and endnote) co-authored his English-language translation with aj q'ij Andrés Xiloj. When Xiloj got to the passage in which Junajpu and Xbalamke trick Zipakna into getting on his back, in imitation of a crab (tap), Xiloj began to laugh. The K'iche' elder said, "'This Zapacna is abusing the boys here, he's saying they shouldn't be afraid. It says here, kib'e ta iwab'a, which could be kib'e ta iwab'a', 'If only you would come along to iwab'a'--to point it out,' but it could also be keb'e ta iwab'aj, 'If only iwab'aj--your stones, your balls--would come along.' Today when someone runs from a fight, the saying is ke'me ta iwab'aj, 'Don't hide your balls.' So Zipacna is saying, 'Don't you have any balls, boys?' They're still young."" 

Tedlock, trying to incorporate Xiloj's reading of the text, and the multiple layers embedded in the K'iche' dialogue, writes, "The puns in this passage cannot be preserved in English, but I have tried to make its sexual dimension more obvious by using feminine pronouns for the crab (though Quiché pronouns do not have gender), since the crab is the object of Zipacna's 'hunger.'"