A Question of Translation

Newsweek is currently running an article about Hip-Hop Liturgies, which I found vaguely interesting until I got to the hip-hop translation of Psalm 23. Take a minute and compare it to the original, and then ask yourself if "and I know that I am a baller and life will be phat" is really semantically equivalent to "thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over". I'd say most emphatically not. For example, "I am a baller" implies that the "balling-ness" (??) is an intrinsic property of the speaker, whereas the traditional translation attributes the anointing etc. to extrinsic sources (presumably God). I tried to find out more how about Ryan Kearse, the gentleman who adapted this particular psalm, went about the task without any luck. Most of the links that I was able to find quote the psalm itself or are talking about the source, The Hip Hop Prayer Book; I couldn't find anything about the adaptation process itself. Though its interesting to note that it appears to be making some Anglicans cranky (search the page for "burnings"). Right now I'm trying to figure out if this is just a misguided guy trying to do something good, or if its another sign of the general miasma of anti-intellectualism that seems to surround modern religious practice. As they point out here, this may just be a cause of "'a 40 year old white guy trying to sound all street and shit'". But the guy who edited the book, Reverend Timothy Holder, got his MDiv from Harvard Divinity School; presumably he understands the problems of maintaining nuance when translating a text. I have to assume that Rev. Holder is more interested in making scripture relevant than in maintaining its actual message. Which is fine by me, but once you admit that you're making shit up in order to draw people into your church it really becomes hard to maintain your moral authority.