Wycliffe Bible. Bible Gateway, Apr. 12 2015. Web. Apr. 12 2015. <https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+1-5&version=WYC>.

Revelation 1-5Wycliffe Bible (WYC)

1 Apocalypse of Jesus Christ [Apocalypse, or revelation, of Jesus Christ], which God gave to him to make open to his servants, which things it behooveth (OED) to be made soon. And he signified, sending by his angel to his servant John, (Wycliffe Bible)

1. A revelation of Jesus Christ, which god gave to him to show his servants what things are needed to be made soon. And he showed this by sending by his angel to his servant John

2 which bare witnessing to the word of God, and witnessing of Jesus Christ, in these things, whatever things he saw. (Wycliffe Bible)

2 who was a witness of the word of God, and a witness of Jesus Christ, based on the things he saw.

3 Blessed is he that readeth, and he that heareth the words of this prophecy, and keepeth those things that be written in it; for the time is nigh (OED) (Wycliffe Bible).

3 Those that read, heard and live by the words of Jesus, the time is near.

4 John to the seven churches, that be in Asia, grace and peace to you, of him that is, and that was, and that is to coming [grace to you, and peace, of him that is, and that was, and that is to come]; and of the seven spirits, that be in the sight (OED) of his throne; (Wycliffe Bible)

4 John said to the seven churches in Asia: Grace and peace to you, him that is, that was, that is coming and the seven spirits that are before his throne

5 and of Jesus Christ, that is a faithful witness, the first begotten (OED) of dead men [the first begotten of dead], and prince of kings of the earth; which loved us, and washed us from our sins in his blood, (Wycliffe Bible)

5 and of Jesus Christ, a faithful witness, the first man risen from dead, and prince of kings on earth; who loved us and washed us from our sins with his blood.

6 and made us a kingdom, and priests to God and to his Father [and priests to God and his Father]; to him be glory and empire into worlds of worlds. Amen. (Wycliffe Bible)

6 and made us a kingdom, and priests to God and to his Father; to him is the glory and the power of the world. Amen. 

7 Lo! (OED) he cometh with clouds, and each eye shall see him, and they that pricked (OED) him; and all the kindreds of the earth shall bewail themselves on him [and all kindreds, or lineages, of earth shall wail themselves on him]. Yea, Amen! (Wycliffe Bible)

7 Attention! He comes from the clouds, everyone should see him, even those who doubted him; and all of the people of the earth should cry his name for he is the creator. Amen!

            For my translation I wanted to
create a very casual reading of The Bible. One of the reasons I decided to go
about this assignment this way is because I have yet to see a version that is
completely dumbed down and easy to read in the way that we speak today. I feel
as if in today’s world some may be turned off to The Bible because of the
difficult language. Just as is the case of the works of William Shakespeare in
today’s society. Some people may not want to take the time to understand what
is being said or look up what some of the words may mean and as a result, they
might just steer clear of it. It takes me at least twice as long to read The
Bible as it would any modern text because of the language and sentence
structure. So, my goal was to translate the Wycliffe version to the most
accurate, less intimidating, easier version of the text.
            The majority of the work that came
from this translation was going through and reworking the way sentences were
structured. The way that The Bible is written is obviously not how one would
speak today. In moving these words around I found that there were words that
were unnecessary due to the way we speak today. These words that were cut out
did not have any significance or else I would have kept them. Along with the
outdated sentence structure cam outdated words. Some were easy to translate.
For example, “Keepeth”, “Heareth” and “Readeth”, where all there was to be done
was remove the “eth” from the end of the word. However not all of the words
were that easy to figure out. In verse 3, the word “nigh” is used in the
phrase, “for the time is nigh!” For this I used, Oxford English Dictionary to
find out that the word means “near”. 
Given that, I then was able to rearrange the sentence to a way that made
sense to me.
            This assignment was difficult for me
because I feel like some of the changes I made may have been important in
language could have caused the text to lose some of it’s meaning. The Bible is
an interesting text because it is said to be the word of God. So should we even
translate it at all? It was in a language that most don’t understand so what do
we do? Learn the language? Translate it as closely as possible barring
understanding? Or just translate to best get the word across a large population
of people? I cannot decide. For me, I have two extremely contradictive views
that can’t really work together. Part of me says it is the original word of God
so leave it as is and don’t touch it. However the purpose of The Bible is to
spread the word of God, so make it accessible to as many people as possible in
as many different ways possible.
 

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Works Cited

 
Oxford
English Dictionary.
Oxford University. Web. 16 Apr. 2015. http:
 
Wycliffe Bible. Bible Gateway, Apr. 12 2015. Web.
Apr. 12 2015. <https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+1-5&version=WYC>.