C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 71

On Bren’s job as a translator/diplomat…

I commented on this on FB because I was struck by comments from a number of language-bound minds, then thought you all might enjoy it.

The art of translation—as practiced by Bren Cameron — or others— is NOT a straightforward equivalency which a machine could do easily. I taught foreign language for a decade. And I coped with students who thought, for example, that a ‘wave’ was a ‘wave’ was a ‘wave’ and that the dictionary would always be right. No. The word ‘to wave’ a handkerchief—”agitare’ . The word ‘wave’ in your hair —’crispata’. The word ‘wave’ in the sea—’unda’. That’s a SIMPLE one. There are a number of translations that are made limpingly and with difficulty, because they’re abstracts, and the BELIEF of the people is different. Greek, the language of the New Testament, owns no word for ‘sin.’ The word used is actually ‘goofup’ [hamartia]—or a ‘try and a miss’ in archery. I could go on for hours about the kind of tradeoffs you have to make when rendering something from one language into another…and sometimes you just throw up your hands and ‘make it like us,’ because, say, no American is going to automatically understand what a Roman meant by ‘pietas’—and ‘piety’ ain’t it! [It was simultaneous right relationship to the celestial, terrestial, and infernal realms, achieved by proper respect and treatment of the gods, neighbors, and ancestors.]

And then words change meanings or applications, so knowing the era matters. ‘Let’ can mean ‘prevention’ or ‘rented’ or ‘expanded’ or ‘allowed…’ somewhat depending on the era from which the particular MODEL for the statement originated. So we say, antique form: ‘without let or hindrance’—a fossilized form. He ‘let the apartment.’ He ‘let the jacket out.’ He ‘let the dog out.’ And he ‘let his daughter drive the car.’ All different—and some from different ages.

I find it not too amazing that translated works and texts come under debate—and are subject to a lot of varying interpretation. Once a work leaves its context in time AND culture, interpretations are going to be different in every new era and locale in which it is read. The Bible is one example. Ayn Rand. Plato. All linguistically and temporally dislocated. The US Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Thomas Payne’s writings. Thomas Jefferson’s. Abraham Lincoln’s…shifted in time. And requiring mental flexibility and historic context to truly ‘get.’

I screwed up Jane’s page rather spectacularly…

She had some 200 spammers and asked help clearing the pile. I don’t know what piece of nastiness was contained in that lot, but when I tried to clean up her list of members to her site, a category appeared that doesn’t exist on my page, and when I tried to clear that…some of her actual members that I know began vanishing.

We do have backup and have contacted Lynn to see if we can recover the list.

In the meantime, please be advised it’s my fault, and be patient. We’ll try to get everybody back.

Beautiful morning here, blue sky and a golden glow on snowy branches…

…Jane, bless her, got out in the darkish smalls of 5AM and lugged our garbage to the curb through 6″ of snow, while I was sleeping away.

You have to read her account of Shu-shu’s stunt last night. We laughed, OMG, we laughed.

And Dragon and I are getting along very well: using it means sessions of intense concentration, usually a couple of hours until my ears overheat. There are moments I have to stop and coax it to understand that there’s a diff between mani and money—to my ear, very, very different, no way you could mistake the two, but because it’s set for English, it’s reluctant to hear the accent on the second syllable, and didn’t pick up that one is mah and the other is muh—

On the other hand, I was amazed that it picked up Bren and Cameron without my having to ‘train’ it — it just knew the words.

And it is a lot easier on my fingers.

I can also say that someone using it with a word processor like WordPerfect or Word is going to be a lot happier than someone using it for social media. The wp’s themselves have some settings that clean up the edges.

I think I can recommend this technology as finally ready for prime time. Getting a good headset helps a lot—I used the free one provided and it hurt my ears after about 30 minutes. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003... is the one I bought. Andrea brand. And it’s very comfortable: no pain, just a sense of ‘ok, my ears are officially too warm and I want a rest’…after a couple of hours.

I spent many, many hours in the mandatory language lab at OU, using headsets that were probably military surplus. Not bad ones, but OMG, after a while your ears begin to protest. I wish they had one adjustment: the amount of pressure they exert on your ears. An earbud would be even nicer. But this set I have is mike and headset and the working time I can easily tolerate with it is about the limit at which my brain begins to go to mush in a writing session. Time then for a break.

Because it is capable of filtering background noise, I can also keep my habit of watching telly while I write…it’s my white noise and colored lights. And I’ve done it since the days when I lived alone in a small house and wrote at a desk (the only chair in my living room that ever wore out) and the only way I was going to keep in touch with the world was watching telly WHILE at the keyboard…

Now I do knock off at 5 pm. Even on birthdays and Christmas and New Years I usually get in a few hours. But I am relieved to say my fingers are feeling a lot less stressed. Just because I CAN type over 100 wpm doesn’t mean I want to do that for hours every day.

Now I’m happy…we’re snowed.

About 5″ by this morning, fat flakes at dawn and now sifting down powder. Now I can feel we have an actual winter. I hope it stays a while, though we are running out of people food.

We’re perfectly ok with cat food.

The great chalk event…and cat food…

Back in my teaching days, I was presented a note from admin that said we should order supplies now because it was a ‘use it or lose it’ appropriation from the legislature. So—I ordered something like a dozen boxes of chalk, because, well, teachers use it. Unfortunately our order list didn’t mean ‘boxes’ like people would use. What I had delivered to my classroom was a pickup-sized chunk of the white cliffs of Dover.

I took a lot of ribbing for that. People would drop by to borrow a box of chalk…

Well, I got tired of hunting down our kitties’ favorite chow, which is Whiskas Purrfectly Fish/Chicken. Store’s always out of it. Or I get one box. So…I have Amazon Prime, which means free shipping on almost everything.

I ordered four boxes of chicken and 6 or 8 of fish.

It came.

It’s the chalk. When they mean boxes, they mean boxes each containing half a dozen boxes…

We are well-supplied in catfood for a while.

CHANGING our membership procedures:

50 spammers a day is a pita—so I’m making a simple requirement. If you want to join us, and you’re very welcome to—just sign up, BUT!!!! you must make one post. This lets me know you’re real. You won’t be able to see your post until I approve it—but once I do approve it, you can post away as you please, or just go on lurking.

This saves me time to write.

Waked to 2 inches of snow.

It’s pretty out there.

Triumph! A pesky weight plateau!

I haven’t seen 172 since the 1980′s. Jane was right: I was using about a cup of cheese a day for each of us, and it was not our friend…so I went to parmesan, not cheddar, on the morning eggs, and everything through the day quite light, and bingo! off comes the pesky pound.

Your weight has set-points that your body remembers for decades. And when your diet hits one it can take weeks to break through. The set-point then becomes a ceiling rather than a floor you can’t get through—you now will rise to that point if you are ‘bad’ and have a little grace before getting beyond it.

Physiology is a weird and wonderful thing. But y’know, when you’re good on a diet for most of a year, you’ve gotten rid of most of your bad habits, and it’s time to start finding the pony under all this effort.

I think Jane was quite right. Far less cheese. I may make it to size 10 jeans.

And it’s snowing! Glorious fat flakes! Hurrah for snow! [with apologies to places that have had way too much of it!]

Such a sleepy, disgusting winter…WE want the snow. The East Coast and South…

…generally don’t.

We have snowplows. We have coats. We’re ready for this stuff.

Our sky is grey and the trees are leafless and the place is constantly sodden with condensation that should be frozen. Glug.

On a brighter note, the Dragon Speech thing is working well. I’m really happy with it.

It’s 11:18 our time and I have 2 cats perched on the bureau between me and the telly, reminding me that if I do not feed them soon they will consider other options.

Jane’s got a new slideshow up—and we got a very, very cool thing…

Thanks to some wonderful friends. This is going to be a project, and Jane can explain it…as it develops.