Rephrasing Ecclesiastes

Here’s George Orwell complaining about the state of English usage in 1950:

I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Here it is in modern English:

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

But really it seems to me that things are going the other way: the classic phrasings from King James would be thrown overboard in today’s climate because they lack “clarity.” A modern translation of that passage from Ecclesiastes might look like this:

No matter how good you think you are, bad things will happen to you. Why? I don’t know. But I know who does know. God!

Or the self help version:

You are a special person. You have many, many things going for you. There are people out there trying to tear you down, to turn your beautiful ugly, but guess what? Those people don’t matter. Sure, one day, a long time from now, you might die. But flowers die too. Focus on your joy. Be your joy. God is a rainbow.

Or the instant message version:

u can try but shit happens deal w/it

Language is a terrible tool for expressing thought, but it’s very good at manipulating it. Media consultants and Bush administration officials earn their keep by figuring out how to phrase things for maximum deception. Vague words muddy concrete ideas, and concrete words disguise reasonable doubt. Euphemism is the science of massaging meaning.

And, by the same token, a banal thought, expressed beautifully, can become beautiful — and a beautiful thought, expressed poorly, can become commonplace.