I think I’m too old to fully appreciate the LOLcat internet meme. But it would not be right if I let this go by unmentioned: a LOLcat translation of the Bible, in wiki format so that everybody can chip in and help with the translating. (Job 1 is particularly well-done.) I notice that at the time of this posting, nobody has made any progress on the LOLcat translation of the book of Zephaniah—so what are you guys waiting for?
And while I’m on the topic, despite my grumpy-old-man inability to find LOLcats hilarious, I must admit that I did crack a smile at Fred Sanders’ collection of TheoLOLgians. Internet gibberish meets ancient church history:
There’s plenty more along the same lines.
update: fixed some broken code in the post that was causing some weirdness. My apologies.
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October 10, 2007 at 09:19
The line between reverence and making the Scripture more “accessible” to the general population may be fine, but there is a line nonetheless, and this translation may have crossed it. For one thing, the Name of the Lord is holy, and calling the Creator of the heavens “Ceiling Cat” is prophane, if not blasphemous.
In addition, the good intention of anyone who calls the Bible “darned” is highly suspicious. There are many translations of the Bible out there, many of which are easily accessible and compatible with contemporary language usages. These should be better alternatives for reaching out than the present LOLcat project.
October 10, 2007 at 11:56
I prefer my blasphemy in Swedish Chef over LOLcats, but this is still good times. “Ceiling Cat” is awesome.
ytc: no one is “translating” this to make it any more accessible to modern language. Really, it’s just a joke, or at most, an interesting exercise. It’s kinda like how translating the Bible into Klingon isn’t going to save any aliens anytime soon.
October 11, 2007 at 22:47
Brilliant
That’s all I have to say…
October 13, 2007 at 21:40
Very interesting. I thought I was the first one to have the idea of having something translated into the LOLcat argot, but these people are far ahead of me. I have to wonder if a trained linguist could find grammatical patterns and rules in this argot. I myself have seen many LOLcat images (I absolutely love them!), and it seems like there are some patterns and a few rules to the argot. I would, however, like to see this translation use more serious terms and not have ‘stfu ‘or ‘wtf.’ If I better understood the argot myself I might edit some of it, actually. The main picture/graphic on the left of the cat’s face seems to be how I imagine God would look if He had facial expressions.
A simple informal analysis on the LOLcat argot will reveal that the written argot does indeed have linguistic convetions. e. g. enything good, benficial or pleasant is referred to as ‘cheezburgr’ or something with a similar spelling. On of the grammatical conventions is also “I can haz?” Also, the auxiliary verb (‘to be’ in English) is usually conugated as ‘r,’ or ‘iz,’ regardless of the pronoun. Some of the terms used also make mention of various things in LOLcats/hacker/geek culture, and to be fulent in LOLcats one would need to understand this cultre. I think this a small amount of evidence for the validity of LOLcats as an emerging language (someone just has to figure out how it is pronounced now, and some of the spelling has to become more standardised!) and as an emerging culture. See http://www.lolcats.com and http://www.macrocats.com for more of these images with this argot.
Personally, I don’t have a problem with this translation of the Bible. I think this could be quite a neat project for Christians like myself who are interested in reaching out to others via the Internet and emerging modes of technology and communication. Over a thousand years ago the equivalent to LOLcat in Europe was probably English, which was an amalgamation of various parts of French, Anglo-Saxon, old Norse, Danish, Icelandic, German and Latin, with absolutely no standardised spelling.
What does everyone else out there think about this? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this matter, even if they are different than mine.
October 15, 2007 at 17:25
That there’s funny I don’t care who ya are!
Eric
October 17, 2007 at 14:49
dear uptight christians: WILL YOU PLEASE GROW A SENSE OF HUMOR, ALREADY??? seriously, lighten up! wwjd? he would lol! jesus never took himself as seriously as you are taking this. besides, i’m pretty sure god can take care of himself and doesn’t need you defending him (especially not on some internet message board). if something’s funny, let it be funny; don’t try to ruin it with all your self-imposed rules. the 11th commandment isn’t “thou shalt not laugh at god jokes,” so get over yourselves because ceiling cat is bloody brilliant!!!!!!!!!!