Thursday, July 27, 2006
A Christian author in Australia has translated the Bible into "Strine." (That's Australian for...Australian.) Here's a taste:
"Out of the blue God knocked up the whole bang lot.... God said 'let's have some light' and bingo – light appeared. ...
"There was this sheila who came across a snake-in-the-grass with all the cunning of a con man. The snake asked her why she didn't just grab lunch off the tree in her garden.
"God, she said, had told her she'd be dead meat if her fruit salad came from that tree, but the snake told her she wouldn't die. So she took a good squiz [look] and then a bite and passed the fruit on to her bloke.
"Right then and there, they'd realized what they'd done and felt starkers [naked]" – so begins Richards' account of the temptation in the Garden of Eden.
Naturally, some people are upset, which is predictable but also quite silly. The Bible, after all, was not written in English (duh), so any translation is bound to be a corruption, if I may use that term, of the original. It's not as though Jesus walked around talking in iambic pentameter.
At least, not as far as we know.
"Out of the blue God knocked up the whole bang lot.... God said 'let's have some light' and bingo – light appeared. ...
"There was this sheila who came across a snake-in-the-grass with all the cunning of a con man. The snake asked her why she didn't just grab lunch off the tree in her garden.
"God, she said, had told her she'd be dead meat if her fruit salad came from that tree, but the snake told her she wouldn't die. So she took a good squiz [look] and then a bite and passed the fruit on to her bloke.
"Right then and there, they'd realized what they'd done and felt starkers [naked]" – so begins Richards' account of the temptation in the Garden of Eden.
Naturally, some people are upset, which is predictable but also quite silly. The Bible, after all, was not written in English (duh), so any translation is bound to be a corruption, if I may use that term, of the original. It's not as though Jesus walked around talking in iambic pentameter.
At least, not as far as we know.
