Yep, finally got around to a Kickstarter. If you’re interested in Aramaic (and specifically helping with preserving obscure Aramaic dialects) be sure to check it out.
(And please share around!)
Peace,
-Steve
Tag Archives: aramaic
The Three Little Pigs (And Other Stories) in Galilean Aramaic
Yep, I’m translating more children’s books! This, the Tale of Peter Rabbit, and a few others are going to be re-done and made available for Supporters on AramaicNT.org, and in PDF, ePub, and physical copies.
More info to follow in the coming weeks.
Peace,
-Steve
Coke & Aramaic: Who Would Have Thought?
I was quite surprised when some interesting things started to come into my Twitter feeds for Aramaic.
Apparently, the whole “Twitter outrage” over a Coca Cola ad that dared sing “America the Beautiful” in different languages sparked some interesting Aramaic-related retorts:
So on a lark, I figured “what the hell?” and put together the ditty in Galilean. Had to finagle things a bit, but you can sing to the same tune.
Also it was done in the middle of the night, so apologies for typos. I’ve already spotted one, and 10 points to whoever catches it before I fix it. 🙂
What other Biblical languages can we get “America the Beautiful” in?
Peace,
-Steve
“an ancient Assyrian ? Aramaic language” — How To Find Fake Twitter Accounts
So, one of my Twitter feeds pulls in every time “Aramaic” “Syriac” or “Peshitta” is mentioned, and very often I get the same phrase coming back at me time and time again:
“an ancient Assyrian ? Aramaic language”
Again… and again… and again… Not re-tweeted. Simply verbatim. It’s maddening.
What do all of these verbatim posts have in common?
They all come from shill Twitter accounts. They are bots spouting rounds of nonsense from the same book of quotes. Each of those accounts has 0 followers and most of the tweets are the same (albeit in different order). Perhaps they are to later used for nefarious purposes? I do not know. All that I do know is that there are a lot of them and that, they just junk up my feeds.
What gives? Leave Aramaic alone, Twitter bots!
Peace,
-Steve
My Work’s on the Syfy Channel! – Aramaic Exorcism in Paranormal Witness
As I mentioned the other day on Facebook, I finally got to see the scene in Syfy Channel’s Paranormal Witness where some of my translation work and consultation was used.
It’s always interesting to see how your work is used in other peoples’ art, as when I do translations for movies and video games and the like, I’m very seldom involved in the creative process or during the actual recording. This has its plusses — such as if Director has a vision and wants to use some Aramaic to attain it to get just the right effect they can do so unhindered — and it also has its minuses — like in Civilization 5 where a few words were dropped in some of dialog by mistake during the editing process.
However, this scene worked pretty darn well. An exorcism in a big dark scary room with a woman shouting in Galilean Aramaic and striking folks with a Bible? Why not? It was brief, and quite disturbing. Despite the actress (as far as I am aware) never pronouncing Aramaic before in her life, she did a pretty good job and certainly got the creepiness across. 🙂
Peace,
-Steve