Every time I see an ancient text translated, it always sounds like it was spoken by a classy Englishman from the 1800s. Is there a reason it’s translated that way instead of modern English?

  • MrJameGumb@lemmy.world
    8·
    8 months ago

    Language changes over time so they’re probably trying to make the translation sound accurate to the time period it was written in I would guess. The tone of the text is sometimes as important as the actual content

        • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          0·
          8 months ago

          The only people I’ve ever seen say that shit are teenage white boys with this haircut.

          Honestly I don’t think I’ve ever seen a black person say that shit. But then again I’m not a teenager and I’m only really in predominantly white and Hispanic areas.

          • FfaerieOxide@kbin.social
            1·
            8 months ago

            The only people I’ve ever seen say that shit are teenage white boys with this haircut.

            No doubt. Where do you think they stole it from?

            Today, this derogatory cultural lineage lives on in the appropriation of Black people’s language as an entertainment tool for non-Black people. These public figures’ influence leads to further spread of these speech patterns, indexed in these ways, without acknowledgement of the source and the price paid by Black people who have native fluency in AAVE. Influencers of this caliber have great potential to impact their audience, and carelessly using AAVE without acknowledging its origins will propagate the idea that AAVE is simply netspeak, which leads to the broader population of Non-Black Gen Z speakers using incorrect forms, or completely disregarding the cultural implications of knowing the language

      • milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee
        1·
        8 months ago

        You should try some Bible paraphrases. (They’re usually not called ‘translations’ once they have that much artistic licence.)

        “The Street Bible”, I think was a UK paraphrase into urban slang in the … late 90s? early 2000s? (Yeah, I could Google, but you could to and I’m lazy.)

        The most fun I found one time was a New Testament translation into Scots English. Looks gibberish (to me) but if you read it and imagine a heavy Scots accent, it all starts to make sense again as English.