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
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    7 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

      • milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee
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        7 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.