22 February, 2008

"Loster" in Translation

Below you will find an excerpt from Joel Osteen's Your Best Life Now. Below that you will find an English version that has been translated through several languages using a popular online translation website. I suppose the question is whether or not Osteen's writings actually might make more sense when one does this.

Original:

"You, too, may have assumed that you’ve already peaked, that you’ve reached your limits in life, that you will never be more successful. I’ll never achieve significance, do something meaningful, or enjoy the good things in life that I’ve seen others enjoy.

Sad to say, you are exactly right . . . unless you are willing to change your thinking. That’s why the first step to living at your full potential is to enlarge your vision. To live your best life now, you must start looking at life through eyes of faith, seeing yourself rising to new levels. See your business taking off. See your marriage restored. See your family prospering. See your dreams coming to pass. You must conceive it and believe it is possible if you ever hope to experience it.

To conceive it, you must have an image on the inside of the life you want to live on the outside. This image has to become a part of you, in your thoughts, your conversation, deep down in your subconscious mind, in your actions, in every part of your being."


Translation: from English to Spanish, Spanish to Russian, Russian to English, English to German, German to French, French to English, English to Arabic and finally Arabic back to English.

"We can also assume that you have already reached the optimum level, which reached its limits, and succeed in life. For each case, it is important that we try to do something useful, or enjoy more things in life, I saw the rest of you.

Unfortunately, not only to you ... If it is not ready to accept the change in his thinking. Of this first phase in the life of its Assembly on the expansion potential of substances. Find the best experiences of his life, and now, we should start life seen through the eyes of faith, has risen to a new level. Vidte case has been disconnected. Consultation in his new marriage. The family to prosperity. See dreams happen successfully. Got pregnant and I think it is possible, if it hopes to live.

Pregnant women, and you should have an opportunity, within the framework of living in life, outside of the page. The image must be part of yourself, in his opinion, and he, in your Subconscious, in their actions, which covers all or part of the entity."


8 comments:

Jerry Boyce said...

Reminds me of people that take a Hebrew word, tranlate it into Greek, then take that tranlation and make it into English.

Jacob said...

So according to Hyper-Translated Joel, your best life now is only possible if you can get pregnant. I guess we're out of luck, guys!

Peter Kirk said...

Jacob, isn't that what Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 2:15? Note that there is nothing about women in the original of this verse, although the first part could be about Eve.

mmforrest said...

What about the LOBSTER tanslation?

Anonymous said...

I'm waiting for the Klingon version myself!

http://translate.klingonreference.com/index.asp

Bill Cook said...

I don't think either version makes any sense... the Klingon translation might clarify what Stuart Smalley (er, I mean, "Pastor" Joel) is trying to communicate here...

Can't we run it through the synthesizer thing from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"?

Anonymous said...

I...I really get this guy. I look at him and I say, "Yes!" I want to look like that man. I want his power tie, his great hair, his confident smile. My life is over; from here on, this is my mentor, my pattern in all things, my guide. yes, I do see it now; I see it with a clarity that baffles me while silultaneously enlarging my clarifiedness. I need only visualize my completeness, then expand my vision until it fills me and me and it fill each other and it's me and it together and uh, well, if there's more after that, I'll get back to you.

Anonymous said...

Tom, I like your system. It works! Not only do I understand the end result better, I believe it's more biblical than the original quote!