Monday, June 07, 2004

Muse, wot hapnd wiv Achilles?

This is one of the most amazing things I've ever heard.
...The Iliad [will] be trivialsed by Microsoft to help it find an audience in the text message generation. According to the Sydney Morning Herald , the "translation" of the first five of the 24 Iliad books condenses 37,000 words to 32 lines of mobile telephone text message language with sad and smiley faces and love hearts. In the third book, a duel between Paris and Menelaus to determine the possession of Helen, is reduced to: "Paris went 2 fight Menelaus. But he was wiv fright. Hector told im 2 b a man. Shame on him! Helen went 2 watch from da walls."
I'm less than 100% confident that this isn't a hoax, but a Google news search yields reports from The Guardian and The Orlando Sentinel, to add to the one from the Syndey Morning News.

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