Words, Words, Words 3: Puppers, Hell-Hounds, and the Dogs of War

Young Heretics

Is the Message a good translation of the Bible? Is it even a translation? This is one of the questions I get asked all the time, and with good reason: people like the vividness of a more plainspoken translation, but they worry about the accuracy of bringing the Bible so far down to earth. How can we tell the difference between a faithful but idiomatic translation, and one that goes off the reservation? How do translators think about these things, and how should we? It's such a profound issue that I'm going to do a few episodes about it, dipping into ancient Greek literary criticism, cockney slang, and the French translation of Harry Potter to explain how we ought to think about tone and register. Someone oughta stop me: I am having way too much fun.

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Check out the Guardian's guide to Cockney slang:

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jun/09/guide-to-cockney-rhyming-slang