Maria Haskins's Blog, page 64
February 4, 2015
ODIN’S EYE now available for pre-order!
Yes, it’s finally happening! I still feel a bit terrified about the whole thing, putting my short stories out there in English, but it’s time. It’s definitely time.
My collection of science fiction short stories, titled Odin’s Eye, will be available from Smashwords on March 16th, 2015. To quote the blurb I wrote myself:
These twelve evocative science-fiction short stories follow twelve individuals in a distant, or maybe not so distant, future. Each character is facing a challenge or choice that will change the course of their life, and might also affect the fate of humanity itself.
Pre-order from Kobo or Barnes & Noble, or from Apple iBooks.
Odin’s Eye at Smashwords – you can buy it there starting March 16th!
ODIN’S EYE now available for pre-order
Yes, it’s finally happening! I still feel a bit terrified about the whole thing, putting my short stories out there in English, but it’s time. It’s definitely time.
My collection of science fiction short stories, titled Odin’s Eye, will be available from Smashwords on March 16th, 2015. To quote the blurb I wrote myself:
These twelve evocative science-fiction short stories follow twelve individuals in a distant, or maybe not so distant, future. Each character is facing a challenge or choice that will change the course of their life, and might also affect the fate of humanity itself.
Pre-order from Kobo or Barnes & Noble, or from Apple iBooks.
Odin’s Eye at Smashwords – you can buy it there starting March 16th!
January 8, 2015
Edward Hirsch, on translation
Strictly speaking, total translation is impossible, since languages differ and each language carries its own complex of linguistic resources, historical and social values. This is especially true in poetry, the maximal of language. It is axiomatic that in a poem there is no exact equivalent for the valences of sound, the intonations and sequences of words, the rhythm of separate lines, the weight of accruing stanzas, the totality of musical effects. That’s why its untranslatability has been one of the defining features of poetry. Samuel Taylor Coleridge coined the word untranslatableness. Robert Frost famously said, “Poetry is what gets lost in translation.”
Today I came across this highly accurate quote by Edward Hirsch, on translation and the impossibility of translating poetry. As a writer and translator who has written poetry and gone through the rather agonizing process of translating it, I can attest to how true this is.
In poetry you can say so much in so few words, because each word carries with it so many feelings, associations, connections, and can expresses so many things unsaid. Just replacing a word with a literally accurate translated word in another language will not necessarily convey the same things that were contained in the word in the original language. The same is true for all translations of course, it’s just exacerbated in poetry. This is also a reason why I’ve found it very difficult to write poetry in another language than Swedish, my birth-language. I have written, and am writing, poetry in English, but it’s taken me a very long time to get to that point.
The quote is taken from Hirsch’s book A Poet’s Glossary, and I found the quote online at poets.org.
December 17, 2014
This book broke my daughter’s heart: now she wants to read it again
I just finished reading George R. R. Martin’s book The Ice Dragon to my daughter, and it broke her heart. She was in tears as the book ended, and truthfully: I was on the verge of tears too. It was a fantastic ending, the kind that makes you see the story in a new light, but it was also so full of sadness and sorrow and loss. Quite beautiful, really.
Tonight my daughter wants to read it again. This time, however, I have to make up a different ending, one that is somewhat happier. But like she told me: “I’ll still know this ending”.
The book is beautifully illustrated, and there is none of the “adult content” you’ll find in Martin’s A Song of Ice And Fire, but there is war and there is loss and death and sadness. This book also makes me think that A Song of Ice And Fire will probably end with similar feeling of loss and sorrow.
Highly recommended from ages 7-9 and up.
December 2, 2014
“…all I have is a pile of paper covered with wrong words”
Today on Twitter, I came across this telegram. It was posted by @Tatum_Flynn, and it’s a telegram writer Dorothy Parker sent to her editor. Most of us, whether we are writers or whether we do some other kind of work, can probably relate to this feeling of absolute emptiness and despair. I know I can.
“…all I have is a pile of paper covered with wrong words” – that phrase really speaks to me.
It is easy to think that your work is a terrible horrible waste of time, even for a writer of Dorothy Parker’s caliber. It is easy to let those kinds of thoughts paralyze you. I know, because I have been paralyzed like that in the past. Sometimes we are just unable to see what is good about our own work.
What to do? Dorothy’s answer is right there: “Can only keep at it”. That’s it. That’s the only way.
November 19, 2014
Old story, new anthology
My short story “Bethel” from Mimers brunn (Mimir’s Well), a collection of science fiction short stories I wrote many moons ago, is included in a new Swedish sci-fi anthology: Kärlek i maskinernas tid (Love in the Era of Machines).
It’s always tough for me to sum up one of my own stories in a few words, but essentially, “Bethel” tells the story of a woman who is a prisoner in a penal colony on Mars. She is there as a sort of gladiator, fighting for the amusement of spectators, and carries dark memories with her from her past that haunt her in the present.
August 20, 2014
It’s really official: I am certified.
Yes, here it is. I am a bonafide, certified translator.
August 18, 2014
I’m certified
After working as a translator for some time now, it feels good to make it official. As of today, I am officially certified by the Society of Translators and Interpreters of British Columbia to translate from English to Swedish, and from Swedish to English.
I took the exams back in May, and it was a tough, brain-draining day with one exam in the morning, and one in the afternoon. However, it was worth the sweat, handwriting (the exams are all written by hand) and page-turning in my hardcover thesaurus and dictionary.
What I’ll do with my new linguistic superpowers? Well, I’ll keep working on those subtitle translations, and see what the future brings.
(Real certification seal coming soon. This is a placeholder.)
August 4, 2014
Summer, poetry, the sea, and mermaids
It’s summer, it’s sunny and warm and I am not writing or editing or translating anything on this particular day. It’s the kind of day when there’s almost nothing better you can do, than spend time at the beach. When I looked through my pictures from Third Beach in Vancouver today, this photo made me think of mermaids, and for some reason (even though it is a very happy place and picture), the introspective sadness of T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
It’s funny how the mind connects the dots sometimes.
And just to take the edge off that, I’ll quote some Finn and Jake from Adventure Time as well:
June 12, 2014
A beautiful poem by William Stafford
Every now and then you find a piece of literature, a quote, or in this case a poem that really speaks to you. I just stumbled across this poem online the other day, and it’s definitely good enough to share.
A story that could be true
If you were exchanged in the cradle and
your real mother died
without ever telling the story
then no one knows your name,
and somewhere in the world
your father is lost and needs you
but you are far away.
He can never find
how true you are, how ready.
When the great wind comes
and the robberies of the rain
you stand on the corner shivering.
The people who go by—
you wonder at their calm.
They miss the whisper that runs
any day in your mind,
“Who are you really, wanderer?”—
and the answer you have to give
no matter how dark and cold
the world around you is:
“Maybe I’m a king.”
Read more about William Stafford (b. 1914- d. 1993) here.
I also really like this quote by Stafford:
