Paul’s Powerpoint to the Corinthians

H/t to Bill Caraher on this little gem.

Gabriel Rossman translates 1 Corinthians into the language of Powerpoint. Here’s a blurb from his article at First Things. See the full TP here.

I speak of course of speakers of Terrible Powerpoint (or as linguists usually abbreviate it, “TP”). This dialect is notable for its use of bullet points, objet trouve clip art, and gratuitously intrusive animation. Speakers are commonly found in business, academia, government, and the officer corps of the military. While some TP speakers are bilingual in English, many of them see complete paragraphs as only so much babble. It is so that these TP speakers might be saved that I have translated Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians into their native tongue.

Fortunately, Paul’s use of lists, metaphors, and multi-faceted contrasts renders well into TP. Indeed, Paul’s rhetorical style adapts so well to TP that I think it’s fair to say that if the Roman empire had laptops and LCD projectors, the purple might have taken up the cross a good hundred years before Constantine. As Matthew Schmitz rejoiced on seeing the presentation, “Finally the Scripture can be heard in the meeting rooms of the world in the language of their native people. Every tongue shall confess, and now he is confessed in a new tongue.”