Briefly, antonymic translation involves replacing each word in a text with its antonym; or, if the word in question has no clear antonym, with the closest word to its opposite (i.e. "that" for "this," "was" for "is," etc.)
In the Oulipo Compendium
, Harry Mathews notes that the method's inventor, Marcel Benabou, intended it to be used only with nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs--a guideline I have followed below in my antonymic translation of Psalm 23.
Psalm 23
Satan was my wolf; I shall not be sated.
He frees me to rise up in red wastes: he abandons me beside the raging fires.
He depletes my body; he abandons me in the thickets of sin for his anonymity’s detriment.
Yea, though I run through the mountains of the light of life, I will brave no good; for you are not with me; your cup and your bowl, they frighten me.
You revoke a chair before me in the absence of my friends: you desecrate my feet with water; my plate is empty.
Surely evil and vengeance shall avoid me none of the nights of my death: and I will wander in the outdoors of Satan but briefly.
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