WHY?

But "Why?" you ask! Well, why not? ;) Many, many years ago, to avoid swearing in front of the kids, I used ye olde English^* expression "Hell's teeth". Now this can be followed up with things like "... and buckets of blood!" or "... and damn your eyes, man!". The sort of thing you'd expect Harry Flashman to come out with. But, in one instance, "... and Satan's kittens!" rolled out. Mrs Alloydog then said it in Finnish "Helvetin hampaat ja Saatanan kissanpennut!" and low and behold, it worked and still flowed nicely off the tongue.

* another language quirk: "ye", is not actually pronouced as the IPA [j] symbol, as in yes, yesterday and so on. Rather, the letter y is a simplification (or corruption) of the old English letter thorn (Þ, þ). So, the correct way to pronounce it is the olde English...

At the time, I worked for a technical writing company, where some colleagues spoke various other languages. I challenged them to translate the phrase into their native language, with the requirement that it had to keep the meaning, litterally: The teeth of Hell and the kittens of Satan. Now, this isn't as easy as it seems, as some cultures and languages do not have the same concept of Hell and Satan as western Christian influenced cultures do. Though, everyone knows (and loves) kittens, right?

So, if any of you dear readers out there in interwebsland fluently speak a language or dialect that is not represented on the from page, and Ethnologue say's there are just over seven thousand of them, then please, send me your translation and enshrine yourself in INTERNET HISTORY!

This website has come and gone over the years, bouncing from one host to another. It first appeared in 2005, on the Freewebs hosting site. But after a while its terms and conditions didn't suit me. I then bought the URL hells-teeth-and-satans-kittens.org and hosted it on my own server (an old IBM ThinkPad running Slackware.), but then I couldn't justify the cost of keeping the URL at the time. I have tried various other hosting services, but many didn't allow various things, like server-side requests and so on. Neocities offeres a very basic service for free, which now works for me.

A couple of years ago (2018), I got a few more languages added. I was using the starfleet.com email service. However, that became unavailable and I lost many of the new translations. Then, as a double-whammy, I had a hard-drive fail. I usually back-up my work from time to time, but the saved version for this website was a bit outdated.

During the 2018 reboot, I had the idea that maybe I could add an audio file for each, so you can hear the phrase as it should be said. I have collected a few so far, but still need a way to host and share the files, so please be patient with me on this this one."

CONTRIBUTIONS

If you would like to submit a new, or corrected translation, I would love to hear from you. However, please note that I do have some rules...

1. The translator must be either a native speaker or at least fluent in the language submitted. So NO Google Translate.
2. While I prefer a literal translation, I do realise that in some cultures and religions, it just would not work, without using "borrowed" western words, such as "hell and/or "Satan: That is, we are talking about a set of teeth* belonging to the most feared place in a culture/religion and the most supreme evillest being's kittens. For example, some cultures & religions don't have a single concept for Satan/Hell, but they do have the thing and or palce to be feared most.
3. For the spoken translation, you'll need to do a bit of voice acting! The phrase should be said as if you have been surprised, shocked, annoyed or other situation where you might exclaim something like "Jumping Jelly Beans! That was awesome!, or "Flaming fiddle-sticks, that's really not good!" - that sort of thing.

* I also realise that the idea that an entrance, such a doorway, havng teeth might be a too ludicrous in some cultures and might not work in some languages, but this is a bit fun, so please, go with it ;)

In return, I offer absolutely nothing. Sorry, that's it. Well, I do put your name or pseudonym as the contributor and if you have a personal website that you would like linked to, I can do that as well - By personal, I mean it has to be about you or something that you do. No major corporations, but a small business run by yourself, or voluntary organisation kind of thing is OK.