"The Last Man in Europe" Part 2

Images from :http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/index.html

NOTE: George Orwell's original working title for the novel '1984' was "The Last Man in Europe". This is an excerpt from a larger article, written by George Orwell on the subject of Newspeak. I thoroughly recommend that anyone interested in the subject of corruption of language should read the full article which can be found at http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/ns_frames.html

For Part 1 see: http://becomingheralds.blogspot.com/2010/02/last-man-in-europe-part-1.html
From "The Principles of Newspeak" by George Orwell [Pt 2] (Italics mine)

When Oldspeak had been once and for all superseded, the last link with the past would have been severed. History had already been rewritten, but fragments of the literature of the past survived here and there, imperfectly censored, and so long as one retained one's knowledge of Oldspeak it was possible to read them. In the future such fragments, even if they chanced to survive, would be unintelligible and untranslatable.

….. In practice this meant that no book written before approximately 1960 could be translated as a whole. Pre-revolutionary literature could only be subjected to ideological translation -- that is, alteration in sense as well as language. Take for example the well-known passage from the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government. . .

It would have been quite impossible to render this into Newspeak while keeping to the sense of the original. The nearest one could come to doing so would be to swallow the whole passage up in the single word crimethink. A full translation could only be an ideological translation, whereby Jefferson's words would be changed into a panegyric on absolute government.

A good deal of the literature of the past was, indeed, already being transformed in this way. Considerations of prestige made it desirable to preserve the memory of certain historical figures, while at the same time bringing their achievements into line with the philosophy of (the age). Various writers, such as Shakespeare, Milton, Swift, Byron, Dickens, and some others were therefore in process of translation: when the task had been completed, their original writings, with all else that survived of the literature of the past, would be destroyed.

George Orwell


An example of Newspeak/English Translations from Orwell's novel :

Original English : "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that thy are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government....."

Newspeak Translation : Crimethink

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From the same website http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/index.html
see also this page:from which I have taken the following excerpt:

"This page is inspired by the language of Newspeak from George Orwell's classic novel Nineteen-Eighty-Four. Newspeak was the official language of the totalitarian state of Oceania. In the totalitarian politics of Oceania, the state possessed control over every aspect of its citizen's lives. The way they dressed, who they associated with, what they did with their free time... and most importantly - their thoughts. To achieve this goal, the government set out to construct a "perfect" language... a language in which all concepts that went against party policy were removed.

The state wanted to destroy every idea that conflicted with Ingsoc (English Socialism). The concepts of freedom, liberty, love, privacy, and democracy went against basic party principles, and therefore, had to be stamped out. And, since these concepts were becoming non-existent, there was no longer any need to have words to describe them. By destroying the words themselves, the state would be able to destroy the concepts they represented.

Once the language had been cleansed, there would be no way to form any resistance against the government. The communication of heretical ideas would be impossible, since the words to describe any "unorthodox" ideas would not be available. Any would-be revolutionaries would be robbed of the words that were necessary to spread their ideas. Moreover, it prevented anybody from even thinking any "dangerous" ideas in the first place.
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How thought provoking that Jesus Christ,
Second Person of the Blessed Trinity
chose to be called
'The WORD'
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
(Douai Rheims translation) http://drb.scripturetext.com/john/1.htm