I’ve often heard that Washington’s ‘Farewell Address’ — the speech he sent out (in written form) to a bunch of papers at the end of his second term — is important. Apparently he lays down a lot of good ideas for America. But the common style of writing and vocabulary has changed since then. Maybe people have gotten dumber, too. Either way, the result is that it’s kind of a pain to read sometimes. Particularly tricky are the odd compound sentence structures, where it’s hard to keep track of what the subject is.
Having never read the whole thing, I thought it would be interesting to go through and try to transcribe it into some sort of casual modern speech. I wouldn’t try to recreate the prose and would probably miss out on subtleties and shades of meaning (and no doubt occasionally miss the point completely), but at least I’d get the idea of what he was talking about.
So I pulled up a copy off Wikisource and started reading and typing. Here’s the result:
A Bastardization of George Washington’s Farewell Address
Sup.
Elections are coming up, and it’s time to figure out who we wanna give the keys to. I figure it might clear things up if I take a sec to explain why I’m not running.
Now, I care about the future, don’t get me wrong, and thanks for your trust so far. I just think me quitting is a good idea on all counts.
I’ve been president twice now, and I didn’t want to do it either time. I tried to quit the first time, but the country was in trouble and every single person around me begged me to stay on.
I’m glad to say we’re pretty much in the clear now and I can get out of here without getting screamed at or letting things fall apart completely.
I told you when I started what I thought of the job. All I’m gonna say is that I did my best to set up the government right, but the more I do this the more I realize how dumb I am, and so maybe it’s okay if I let someone else take over.
Before I go I’ve gotta thank y’all, for the awards and honors and stuff but more importantly for your supporting my projects to try to make everything right, even if they didn’t always turn out quite as well as I hoped. Remember, it’s hard to tell how things will turn out when people get all fired up, so thanks for sticking by me even when everything was going to hell. Y’all get the credit for anything good that came out of it, and by God you’d better keep taking good care of the Constitution and the lives of the folks who live here. As long as you do, we’ll be a pretty kickass country and the other guys will start noticing us.
I should shut up, but I care about you guys, so there’s some more stuff to cover. I’ve been doing some thinking and I’ve got a few things to say. You know I ain’t biased ’cause all I want is to leave, so you might wanna listen up.
Now, you all love freedom enough that no one thing here is too important.
You’re all happy that the government’s so together and unified on everything (and you should be — it’s why everything’s so good), but it ain’t always gonna be this way. All sorts of folks from both here and elsewhere are gonna try to divide it, make you lose faith in it, so please don’t sell this whole America thing short. Make it your top priority and don’t ever get in a mindset where you can let ANYTHING divide you.
You’ve gotta be Americans before all else. You’re for the most part the same religion and culture, and you’ve got the same goals, and you’ve only got what you do because you all worked together.
But even though this sounds good, when it comes to crunch time it’s easy to forget that in favor of stuff that seems more immediately important than sticking together.
The North and the South, as equals, help each other. The South gets machines and junk from the North, the North gets crops from the South. Also, the South’s got some nice boats which go out and fetch stuff we need from time to time. You’ve got a similar situation with the East and the West. The East supplies the West with what it needs, and the West gets a market for its crap as well as — once we get a navy in gear — protection on the Atlantic side. There’s really no way they could safely do what they’re doing without the folks to the East.
So, we all need each other and we’re all stronger when we’re together. Being a family also means we can get along a little better, unlike certain countries I might name who aren’t so well unified. This makes us stronger and protects our freedom, and if you wanna keep protecting it you’d better get along.
It should be obvious here that we should all try to keep ourselves together. Sure, it’s a big country, and we’re not sure if we can keep it all together, but what the hell? Let’s give it a shot and find out. It’d be stupid to call it off because we’re not sure if it’ll work. Since it’s obvious how much we have to gain from keeping ourselves together, we can safely say that anyone who tries to divide us, anywhere, hates America.
Let’s think about where those splits might come from. The big one is geography. North and South, Atlantic and West, people are gonna try to emphasize the differences. They’re gonna lie about what the other side wants, and they’ll try to make you hate each other when you should all be brothers. You saw just a bit ago how some folks were trying to stir up suspicion out West that we were trying to pull one over on them with the whole Mississippi thing, but you saw how thanks to Congress dealing with Spain and England they got everything they wanted in the end. So maybe they won’t be so quick to talk about jumping ship next time.
Government’s important, and it’s not always easy to stay together. You’ve figured this out, and that’s why you ditched the last idea and came up with this Constitution. We went over it all carefully, big and small, and it’s definitely something we can trust (we can even amend it if necessary!). Give it some credit, and if you disagree, change it — don’t just disobey. Otherwise it just screws things up.
Getting in the way of the law for the sake of power plays similarly screws things up. Playing that game creates groups just looking out for themselves, turning crazy splinter groups into a powerful force. Let this get too bad and you’ll probably have the country tossed back and forth wildly as the various parties with their pet issues fight for power, rather than nice, consensual, unified government.
Parties are probably gonna look like they’re helping with one popular issue or another, so you’re gonna want support them, but I bet the guys in charge of them will just turn out to be power-hungry assholes who want to run everything.
To keep things going nicely, quit fighting with the government and be careful with letting folk amend the Constitution to weaken it. Just, in general, give it all time and see how it works out before being quick to judge. It’s a big country and we can’t keep everyone safe without a little centralization.
I just said that parties are no good, particularly regional ones. But lemme go a step further and say ALL parties are a bad idea.
Unfortunately, it’s pretty much human nature to gather into little factions like this. It’s worst in the freeest countries, and they suffer because of it.
Control goes back and forth between one party and another, and they just get more and more pissed, and we’ve seen that get really bad in the past. But it also leads to terrible, controlling government and general suckage. This gets the people more angry, they get behind one party leader or another, and that guy just takes that support and does whatever he wants, screwing up the country.
I’m not talking about anyone in particular here, but this isn’t necessarially too far off, and it’s always gonna be a threat, so keep an eye out.
This division distracts us, enfeebles the government, it gets everyone riled up with jealousy and false alarms, it pits us against each other, and eventually creates riots and stuff. It also opens the door to other countries getting a hand in our system, since they can reach in through the party structure, and then we just become their puppets.
Now, there’s the idea that the parties are important to defend freedom and put the government in its place. That might even be true sometimes; when you’ve got a real Nazi in charge, you can afford to rally behind a party, but you shouldn’t like it, and you should dump it ASAP. And there’s always gonna be a feeling of opposition to whatever the government is, so be sure you know what you’re doing before getting all partisan, and be very careful to know when to drop it so you don’t just make the problem worse.
Also, make very sure that you keep all your politicians in their place. There’s this tendency to let all the power shift into one office, which inevitably creates tyranny (just look at human nature and how much we love power). If you just divide up the power, and get everyone to watch everyone else, we’ve seen both in the past and right here at home that things will work out pretty well. And if you think the powers aren’t laid out right, just go ahead and amend the Constitution. But be careful, because that’s an easy way to destroy everything. Make sure you’re not switching to something that, no matter how good it is for now, sucks in the long term.
Now, religion and morality are vital here, and it’s silly to say that patriotism could ever be more important than those. Politicians need to be pious and respectful folk; it would take forever to list all the ways that being a good politician is tied to being moral and religious. All you need to do is ask — without religion, how can we trust anyone who swears an oath? And be awfully careful before suggesting that we can be moral without religion. There’s a lot of philosophical junk out there, but the bottom line is we can’t possibly suggest that we can keep our morals as a country without religion.
So, virtue is the root of Government. So anyone who screws with the basis of the government is obviously a bad guy.
Make education of everyone a high priority, because the government will only be as smart as the average people are.
Public credit’s important too. Don’t run up debts during peacetime so you can afford to draw on them when there’s a problem — and then pay them back ASAP. This is the job of the politicians, but the people need to keep them in line. And remember, to pay debts you need cash, and you have to get the cash from somewhere, and there’s no way to do that which people will like. It’s a tough issue with no easy answer, so try to have a good attitude and pay up when necessary.
Try to stay at peace with everyone. Religion and basic decency both say to do this, so it should be a no-brainer. It might even turn out that God arranged it so if we’re nice to everyone, we’re better off in the end. Wouldn’t that be sweet? It sucks, though, that we tend to be jerks sometimes.
It’ll help a lot if you can avoid permanent rivalries and permanent alliances. Just try to get along with everyone when you can. Otherwise, you’re a slave to your policy, which may take you somewhere bad when the situation changes. Constantly being enemies with a particular country makes you stupid and reactive, and can even lead you to war when you really don’t need to. The government gets all involved in this, and one way or another it turns out badly. Permanent alliances are bad too, because they makes you give stuff up when you shouldn’t, cause jealousy, and divide loyalties of your own citizens, often with pretty bad results.
The idea of this kind of alliance should scare any real American because it lets foreign countries meddle with us. And remember, if a weak little nation (us) gets too attached to a big strong nation (anyone else) you know we’ll be stuck in that arrangement forever.
Now, foreign meddling is one of the worst threats around, and you should be constantly paranoid about it. But be careful to be fair and sensible about it, otherwise you’ll get so focused on one country or another that you slip into alliances with other countries. And then, like I said, you turn into tools.
The most important thing about commercial trade is to avoid getting politically tangled. We’ve obviously gotta keep the promises we’ve made, but in the future let’s try not to make new ones.
Europe has a whole lot of issues that don’t mean a thing to us. So they’re gonna be fighting, and we need to make sure not to get involved with the folks on either side. We might make some nasty enemies we don’t need to.
Since we’re out here across the Atlantic, we get to do our own thing. And if we just keep it together for a little while, we might be strong enough to stand up for ourselves. And if we’re tough enough, other countries won’t want to start anything, so the choice of whether to go to war or keep the peace will be up to us.
And why give up this great situation? Why give up our country just so we can live in someone else’s? Seriously — why get involved in Europe’s squabbles?
So, we’ve gotta avoid permanent alliances. We can’t break the promises we’ve already made — the government has to be honest just like anyone — but we don’t need to make more and we don’t need to actively make the current ones longer.
(Now, as long as we’re fighting a defensive war, alliances are okay in emergencies.)
In the same way that we should be politically friendly and stay on good and fair terms with everyone, we should be fair and open financially too. Just let everything go as it will without being biased. Let natural trade routes open up, and don’t try to mess around with the whole thing one way or another. Just keep and enforce the laws on trade and traders, and keep them flexible enough to change as the situation changes — always keeping an eye out for those foreign meddling. Never get used to paying one country or another, and never get used to expecting them to pay you.
I like you all. We’re friends. I’m not gonna hope that you’ll actually remember all this for long, but I can hope that every now and then people will look back on what I said and use it to calm down a crazy political party, remind us not to get tied up with other countries, or to try to expose phoney patriots. That’s the only payment I need — the hope that in return for my looking after you, you’ll look after yourselves.
You can look at my record. In my years in charge I’ve done my best to follow all the ideas laid out in this message.
Oh, and about the war still going on in Europe right now — check out what I said on 4/22/1793. It’s the outline of my principles on the subject, which I have followed as closely as I possibly could.
I gave it a lot of thought, decided that we could stay neutral, and then took reasonable steps to make sure that’s what happened.
You know, if you just look at basic common decency it should be pretty obvious what a good idea neutrality is.
As to the reasons it’s a good idea, you can probably come up with plenty on your own. For me, the main thing has been that we’re a pretty new country, just trying to get settled, and we don’t wanna interrupt that with war right away.
Now, I can’t think of anything I knowingly screwed up over the last eight years. But I’m sure I’ve made mistakes, and I pray that God helps to repair any harm they caused. And I hope that you’re understanding about them. I’ve spent 45 years working really hard for this country, and I hope that you won’t be too hard on my incompetences once I’m gone.
Speaking of being gone, I am really looking forward to this retirement. And I’m especially looking forward to retiring to live in a peaceful, free country of good laws under a good government — a government which is a good reward for our shared hardship, work, and love.
Wow. That was fun, depressing, inspiring, and a little bit spooky.
xkcd 
This simply rocked. I have been enjoying your webcomic since exposed to it on slashdot a few months ago. Keep up the good work
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Okay, I think Robotkin was making what could be a decent point at first — that the writing style is lame and unrealistic. And hey, modesty forbids me from arguing too much on that point — writing is largely supposed to stand up for itself without later help from the author. But I can’t help but note — I wasn’t trying to mimic any particular dialect, I was just using various slang and stuff that I know and hear. So, that said, whatever.
Donny: I’ve been living in Virginia for the majority of my life and my neighbors use it liberally. It’s less common in Northern Virginia and to a lesser degree Virginia Beach, but everywhere else it’s pretty accepted. And I’m a little confused by your point — Washington wouldn’t use *most* of the phrases I put there. That’s the purpose — putting it into my words instead of his.
As for the Gettysburg Address, I wouldn’t change the 87 🙂 I mean, changing the language and changing the content/context are fairly separate. If we’re gonna do that, we might as well change it to be about the Iraq war . . .
Metal Fatigue: I was startled by how long Common Sense was. That’s definitely a task that would take quite a while.
Dwight Brown: It’s indeed hard to top the PowerPoint Gettysburg Address. Edward Tufte did a wonderful pamphlet entitled “The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint” which should be required reading for anyone who uses that software for anything with technical or informational content (anything besides pure sales).
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Wow, well done man. It’s really sad reading that with hindsight, to realise that the US has slowly chipped away at everything Washington stood for in this address.
Also interesting that just about the only thing he was worried about that didn’t come to pass was other countries meddling in the US affairs. Instead, the US meddles in everyone else’s affairs.
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As an Englishman I could argue that my opinion on “correct” use of English is more valid than an American’s – and I use “ain’t” all the time. The second person plural pronoun around here is “yez.” Vive la difference!
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yez? I like…..I might have to start using that instead of y’all
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“yez”… okay, I’ll use it. Maybe it will catch on. Spam “yez” everyone!
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GreedyAlgorithm:
To paraphrase Dave Barry: “To this I say, ‘pish-tush,’ not necessarily because I disagree, but because I like the sound of it. I encourage you to do it as well – you’ll find yourself saying it and liking it!”
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I forgot to mention – I love this. It seems more approachable, without “sanitizing” the original (as Rev. Bowdler did with Shakespeare’s works). It is a respectful – and respectable! – paraphrasing of Washington, and I applaud the author for the audacity to do this and the skill to do it well.
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How about the “To be or not be” soliloquy? I’ve dashed this off rather quickly so I hope it makes sense.
http://www.artofeurope.com/shakespeare/sha8.htm
To live or to die – that’s the question. Is it better to suffer in silence while everything goes to hell, or kill yourself? Dying would stop all that shit. It’s like going to sleep – and you don’t feel any of the pain and aches we suffer normally – sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it? But what if we dream? That’s the problem – the dreams we may have when we’re dead frighten us. That’s what makes life so shit. For why else should we put up with that crap – bullies, arrogant dickheads, brownnosing colleagues, stupid long lawsuits, officious twats and trying to climb the greasy pole – when we could end it all so easily with a dagger? Who would suffer through their burdens, sweat and toil through a life they hate? The fact is, they’re scared of going to Hell, never to come back, so they put up with the devil they know. So the concious mind makes us all cowards, and stuff we instinctively want gets overridden by thinking too much. The most important actions get put to one side because of this and the chance to do something is lost.
[Ophelia approaches] Shut up Hamlet! Ophelia’s coming.
[to Ophelia] Hey babe, don’t forget me in those prayers.
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I would be inclined to agree with xkcd that the Gettysburg Address, while it could be an interesting basis for some kind of adaptation (and I’d totally read that, btw), does not need nor lend itself to “translation”. Lincoln’s meaning is in no way obscure, partly just because he’s closer to our own time and partly because that’s how Lincoln rolls–his points are not at risk of getting lost in a thicket of subordinate clauses or overly-formal rhetoric. Also, the Address is very short and doesn’t waste a word.
“Translating” works whose phrasing is very famous is usually a dicey proposition; Mencken can get away with it because he was a) making a satirical point and b) a genius. The Farewell Address was a good choice because it can be a tough slog in the original and because the original wording isn’t so deeply ingrained in most people’s minds that any alternate version comes off as a gimmick.
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Let’s clarify this ‘religion’ thing in equally modern terms:
“To make a country work, people have to trust each other. There’s way too much stuff going on for everyone to be looking over everyone else’s shoulder all the time.
“Now, ‘trust’ is just another way of saying you can make reliable predictions about what someone will do. If you can’t predict what someone will do in a given situation, you have to ask them, and like I said, there’s just too much stuff going on for that to work. If you can’t rely on people, then you can’t get anything done. Nobody wants to put a lot of time, effort and money into a project, only to see it all fall apart because some jackass changed his mind at the last minute.
“That means you should look for two things in people: First, they need a coherent, inclusive and generally understandable set of standards for what’s Right and what’s Wrong. Second, they need to live in a way that shows a healthy fear of doing what’s Wrong.
“I should probably define ‘fear’, here: It doesn’t mean trembling guts and sweaty palms. That’s ‘panic’. ‘Fear’ means admitting that actions have consequences, and that sometimes those consequences are bad. A person standing on the edge of a cliff can be perfectly calm, but aware that leaping around could send them falling to their death. If that person chooses to move carefully while they’re on the cliff-top, they do so out of ‘fear’.
“A person with a healthy fear of doing Wrong understands that doing Wrong will hurt them in the end. That knowledge is just part of their background awareness of the world, and trying to sell them on the idea of doing Wrong ends up being pretty much like trying to sell them on the idea of jumping off a cliff. When you meet someone whose reason for doing Right is, “well DUH!,” you’ve found someone you can trust.
“Take either of those pieces away, though, and no no longer have a foundation for trust.
“Take away the standards and you have situational ethics. That brings back the whole “can’t predict, have to ask” problem, but there’s an even more fundamental problem: There’s simply no way to trust such a person. If everything in a person’s ethical standard is really up for grabs, that includes “telling the truth about their ethical standard.” You can’t just assume they’re telling you the truth about anything, and there are lots of good reasons to assume they aren’t. And even if they do tell what they consider to be the truth at that moment, their definition of truth can change as soon as the situation changes. And ‘the situation’ changes ALL THE TIME. In practice, this means you’re dealing with a person who will sell you out to anyone who offers them a good enough ‘better deal’, or will end up shafting you royally on the mistaken assumption that they were only shafting you a little.
“Just avoid people like that.
“If you take away the healthy sense of fear, accountability goes with it. That’s situational ethics again, but of a lesser sort. People like that keep their promises the same way they stick to a diet. In practice, this means you’re dealing with someone who thinks ‘feeling Really Bad about letting you down’ is an adequate substitute for ‘doing what they promised to do in the first place’. And they will NOT go away until you agree to endorse their self-image of being a Good Person in spite of having screwed you over by doing Bad Things.
“People like that are less directly evil than the first sort, but Damn, they can be annoying. And again, you just can’t trust them.
“Now, even when you do find a person with a healthy fear of doing Wrong, it takes time to learn that person’s set of ethical standards well enough that you can make reliable predictions about their behavior. There’s only so much time in a day, and as I’ve already said a couple of times, it takes a LOT of work to keep a country going. Having a thousand people try to learn, remember, and coordinate the ethical standards of the other 999 just won’t work.
“So what a country really needs is some kind of institution that teaches everyone the same set of ethical standards and encourages the development of a healthy fear of doing Wrong. We’ll give bonus points for any institution that’s been around long enough to show that its standards do tend to work over the long run, and are complete enough to cover pretty much any situation people are likely to run into from day to day. And guess what? We have one: it’s called Religion.
“A country whose people honestly live up to the standards of a handful of religions can do amazing things. Most of the big religions teach share much the same set of rules for how to deal with people every day, and it isn’t too hard for people to accommodate each other on the few points where a difference between standards have political consequences. When it comes to making a country run, we don’t have to believe someone is going to Heaven; we just need to know that we can trust them to live up to a standard that’s basically compatible with our own.
“Keep an eye on the situational ethicists, though. Their whole concept of ethics revolves around playing word games, and they want to spread their standard just as much as the religious types do.
“Do Not Listen To Them. They do nothing but sow confusion.
“If you listen to the situational ethicists long enough, you end up believing that up is down, black is white, and freedom of speech means forbidding people to say anything that someone else doesn’t like. They live to destroy the common standards that allow a country to run smoothly, usually for personal gain, but sometimes just for the mental challenge. They produce the grease that goes on the slippery slope to factions and infighting, and they’ll be the first to explain why tyranny that works to their own advantage is actually Freedom.”
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Wow, mike, that was great. It’s remarkable how much emotion and energy there is behind these old speeches, and how gutless modern political oratory feels by contrast.
I second Metal Fatigue on the Federalist Papers. Lot of intriguing material there, though I doubt it could be as topical as Washington’s address.
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Wow everyone here types out proper english and shit on their blog comments. I’ve gotten so use to the YouTube style comments. So anyways good job xkcd that shit PWNED. Laytro.
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I am going to send this around, maybe it will reach the eyes of just the right people =)
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Haha… Javykins, haven’t you seen the xkcd YouTube comic? http://xkcd.com/c202.html
As far as “situational ethics” is concerned, I have to confess that I Wikipedia’d it as soon as I read the term–and I approved of some of the consequences. It contains mistakes, obviously, but I think the problem lies more in people than in their ethical philosophy. Which is what Washington was warning us about.
Damn, what I wouldn’t give to be able to sit every single politician down and force them to read that.
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i miss the days when the blag was filled with completely unintelligible math jargon (i study the classics) instead of the random dickbag who bases his opinions on preconceptions. i guess this is what increased popularity and a more common audience leads to.
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Welcome to the internet, NumberThree 😛
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Wow how embarrassing I forgot to capitalise the word English, but then so did all the other smarty pants on here.
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Eh, I was amused by “Stalker”‘s comments about “ain’t”–for the record, “ain’t” used to be common in some ritzy upper-class dialect in Great Britain about 150 years ago or so. When “commoners” started using it, though, it got abandoned as it was no longer a distinguishable marker of the upper-class. So it’s been both “upper-class” and “hillybilly” lingo, and now, as a contraction for “am not,” it’s steadily slipping into common usage, at least in US.
As to the Farewell Address as done by XKCD–I think it was great. I will confess that I do love the language of the original, and there are probably connotations that are lost as it’s “translated”–but that’s okay. I mean, frankly, most people either can’t or won’t get through the original work, but this translation was written smoothly enough to keep anyone reading it. And in the end, getting the bulk of what was in the address out to the general public is well-worth the possible loss of minor subtleties that most of the readers wouldn’t get in the first place. And I think an amazing job was done in getting most if not all the important points across in a way that, while easily comprehensible, still stuck out and grabbed the reader’s attention.
…funny how some things are amazingly applicable to this day and age, isn’t it? People don’t change much, I guess. And y’know… the issues GW talked about then are still relevant today… I second the motion that all politicians should read have to read the address (in either form!)… and while they’re at it, they should be required to read the freakin’ Constitution. Might do them some good.
Thanks for the enjoyable read!
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Hm… It’s great, it’s really, really great.
Now, about the original – I’ve read quite complicated and elaborate writings, I still do, but this one is… errm… a piece of needlessly overcomplicated legalese. Seriously, it doesn’t gain *anything* from the style, pardon me – *what* style? It’s horrible, and I get the impression that it was written this way to seem more… “educated”. Educated it is, but certainly waay out of smart/intelligent/comprehensible league. It feels like reeding an EULA, just worse.
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When I’m going to have kids, I’ll show them this post.
Thanks a lot for making such an important text more readily acceptable, even if isn’t perfect.
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Instead of dumbing Washington’s stirring and beautiful words down and -completely- losing the reserved passion that makes the farewell address important, modern people should be sharpening up. It sickens and saddens me that we have to ruin such an eloquent speech by dumbing it down to the level of ‘Hoes in different area codes’ for your average citizen to understand it, since really reading and reasoning over an inspiring passion would be… absurd, right?
-WP hates people.
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WP: While I agree that the passion was there in the first place, language is constantly evolving. The definition of eloquence is constantly changing, as is the use of any language. The purpose of language is both communication and dramatic delivery. While all of Washington’s wonderful diction may have been taken out, if all you got out of the speech were some pretty words then you’ve missed the point of the speech. The ideas behind the speech are more important.
And this is definitely not the “hoes in different area codes” version. I hang around teenagers all day and they’re disgustingly worse than xkcd’s translation. If anything, this translation is more conversational and less dramatic.
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WarriorPoet: I disagree.
The issue here is that language is relatively fluid; and that’s been a problem among authors throughout the English language. Dictionaries have arrested the word-for-word evolution of language, but the structural evolution, and the choices of idioms, both continue to change even to this day.
I’d have to recall Alexander Pope’s famous words, “Our sons their fathers’ failing language see / And such as Chaucer is shall Dryden be.” Well, at least dictionaries kept us from being unable to read Dryden, but it is a very different experience from everyday conversation.
A translation of idiom from late 18th century to early 21st century is nothing to be lamented.
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Damned right.
Not as much as what everyone else is saying about this ‘translation’, but damned right all the same.
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Rereading it, I definately went in with kind of a frowning bias, and it’s not ‘bad’ or anything. It just disturbs me that we can rip so much out of Washington’s stirring words but still try to retain the message. Maybe it’s the man himself that created the kind of ‘aura’ that’s missing from the translation.
I’m all for putting things in terms we can all understand, but Washington wasn’t sitting around the bar, shooting the shit with his buddies, and I guess that is what xkcd was going for. The proper frame of mind just wasn’t there, for me.
And I’ll apologize for the tone of my first post. Early morning grumpiness is a problem for me…
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Liked it.
I prefer the old version and I think that’s the one people should use, but if the original thing ain’t good enough or lacks clarity (for whatever reason) go for the updated version.
Wasa the language perfect? Probably not. Could any of us have done a significantly better version? Hell, no.
Well done
However…if everything gets simplified we get Beethoven’s 5th turned into a Barney-song. The original is THE one.
Well done, well done, well frigging done!!!
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If you’re looking for a text to put in plain modern English, here’s one that has been almost-suggested a few times in this thread:
The Constitution of the United States
Warm up with the Bill of Rights. The prose is much more transparent than Washington’s, but the needed care and precision in saying exactly what the original says is more than, if I may say so, the translation of the Farewell Address shows in all places. Still, it’s easy in places:
Amendment 9: If a right isn’t named here, that doesn’t mean you don’t have that right.
Supose someone forced the Attorney General of the United States to read that.
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This was a fantastic read, and spooky all the problems that Washington predicted that we’ve had to deal with (and are still dealing with).
I’d love to see something like this done for some good ol’ fashioned philosophy. I am intrigued and challenged by some of the ideas to be found in these works, but a lot of the time I get so bogged down with the language that I miss out some on the ideas behind the words.
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Great post! I have never read the original version of this piece, but I now feel obligated to do so. Thanks for taking the time to do this.
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love it, sent it to a couple of people. if you’re looking for american political stuff i’d suggest some inaugural addresses of former presidents.
http://www.bartleby.com/124/
has the full text of all the inaugural addresses of every president. actually, bartelby.com would be a great site in general because they have a lot of classic works on there.
hell, you could try it with some of bush’s speeches. i’d love to know what it is we’re supposed to be scared of today.
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Good lord — is THAT what he said? This makes me want to go read the original. Thanks.
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Love it. Too bad he said that “you must believe in supernatural entities without evidence in order to be moral” nonsense, but that has no bearing on the skill of the translation. Great post!
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Oh, how lovely. This could very well be the only entry in a blog I’ve ever read the entire way through.
They were right, reading IS fun!
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“The idea of this kind of alliance should scare any real American because it lets foreign countries meddle with us. And remember, if a weak little nation (us) gets too attached to a big strong nation (anyone else) you know we’ll be stuck in that arrangement forever.”
It happened, but not quite in the same way Mr Washington foresaw it… Then again, watching Blair pretend that he was in any way involved with any important decisions over the whole Iraq thing is tremendously funny, in a desperately depressing sort of way.
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Actually, English has a perfectly good second person plural pronoun. It’s “you”. What it doesn’t have (anymore) is a second person *singular* one. Though I guess one would be perfectly welcome to start using “thou” again if one wanted to. I sometimes do when I want to emphasize the singularity of my interlocutor, and if that person happens to know that “thou” isn’t just a `formal’ version of “you”. Emphasizing plurality is harder. I do use “y’all” for that sometimes, or a non-English pronoun. Ordinarily I just use “you” for both of course.
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Was Washington a Democrat or a Republican?
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King Alfred, the word Belial used was “disambiguated.” “You” isn’t optimal because it is used both in the singular and in the plural. Hence it’s ambiguous: you don’t know which context it comes from.
The Democratic and Republican Parties didn’t even exist back then, Young Abe. That’s the point: Washington was more loyal to his country and to his ideals than to a certain political grouping, and thought that was how it should be.
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I especially like the fact that you have successfully crammed over 6000 words of political speak into less than 2800 words that average Joe can understand. That’s a pretty good compression ratio given its a manual process.
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Well Done. I enjoyed it emmensly.
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On the subject of differentiating singular from plural in second person pronouns, it is not unknown for me to use thee and thou. This doesn’t feel particularly contrived or forced to me.
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Well done fo’ shizzle my nizzle.
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Nice job! But I do have some small criticisms
In the original:
8 Interwoven as is the love of liberty with every ligament of your hearts, no recommendation of mine is necessary to fortify or confirm the attachment.
“Now, you all love freedom enough that no one thing here is too important.”
I’d go with something more like:
I know you guys already love liberty so much, that I really don’t have to mention it, (or “tell you”, or “bring it up”, or “talk about it”).
I think you missed an important one here in section 12:
In the original:
Any other tenure by which the West can hold this essential advantage, whether derived from its own separate strength, or from an apostate and unnatural connexion with any foreign power, must be intrinsically precarious.
Obviously, he’s saying that the west needs to stick with the rest of the country, and not try to secede if it gets powerful on it’s own, or to hook up with a foreign country, cause that’d be dangerous (or “destabilizing”).
And just a little comment. I think that sections 17 and 18 pretty much describe the state we’re in now, with only two parties, which are financed and controlled by the wealthy elite. What a prescient dude that Washington was, eh?
In section 31, I would include the part about how we’re supposed to be a good example to other countries, because pretty soon, we’ll be a great nation.
You know, I’d love to have Geo. Bush II do a book report on this essay, or whatever it would take to get him to comprehend it. He really should be forced to memorize sections 31 through 33, as punishment for the bad things he’s done.
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Wow.
Wow.
Can you do lots of these? Can you, like, make a book of these? I mean–you can actually read! So many of our generation just can’t do that (myself included; I got dropped by Jane Austen). We have no hope with stuff like this. But /you/…
Wow.
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without religion, how can we trust anyone who swears an oath?
~~~
While I concur with most, that part is the most outrageous bigotry Christians have come up with. I’ve been cheated, lied to, robbed, screwed over and otherwise mistreated by more “Christians” than any other group.
It doesn’t matter if those individuals “Fail” as good Christians. You can’t tell the good from the bad until it’s too late, and I’ve learned to regard a crucifix as a warning symbol.
Most of my friends are Christians, and I trust them. 90% of convicted criminals are Christians, and I don’t. The moral philosophy a person embraces is not parallel with a claimed religion.
And as a 22 year veteran, sworn to an oath, I take GREAT offense at the suggestion it means less to me than someone with a particular mythology.
When a Christian starts talking about his honesty and faith, I check my wallet. The fact that he thinks that it’s a deciding factor indicates he’s not sure of his own honesty, or he wouldn’t feel a need to say it.
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