Using our powers for good

Thursday, April 24, 2008

So, the thing is, I'm a linguist. Playing around with made-up languages is fun; I get that. But there's a sobering statistic that bothers me.

2,251 of the world's languages need a Bible and have none of it. Not a single verse.

On the other hand, there are at least partial translations of the Bible into:
Lolcat
Klingon
Pig Latin
Quenya (that's Elvish, for non-LotR fans)
D'ni (okay, I'm the guilty party here)

...and any number of other conlangs, probably. Think about all the translation power that's getting used up in wikis and forums across the net. Imagine what that could do, were it loosed on natural languages, ones that actually need translations.

The internet is a great place to see the power of lots of people to do little things that add up to big things, like Wikipedia or Knitters without Borders. I wonder, are there ways to loose this flood of power into the realm of Bible translation or literacy?

While I wonder about that, ponder this bit of good news:

"So liek teh Ceiling Cat lieks teh ppl lots and he sez 'Oh hai I givez u me only kitteh and ifs u beleevs in him u wont evr diez no moar, k?'"

Iz John 3:16, k?

1 comments:

Masterwabbit said...

*groan* I hate the LOLcats. With a passion. And a chaingun.