#tlblogging

[leahsfiction]

i find word-by-word glosses of classical chinese poetry to be incredibly useful sometimes as a learning aid:[1] to indicate a proper noun,[2] an archaic meaning, a literary device, or linguistic feature not immediately obvious in a poetic translation. also in the case of regulated verse, it's a great visual way to appreciate the technical beauties of parallelism.

however i don't usually write & post them, for a few reasons:

it's extremely easy for them to look like "broken" english -- something i'm sensitive to as a second-gen [diaspora/person of hyphenated experience/etc.]. like i grew up in an area that was like 40% asian and still managed to hear "me love you long time", random gibberish syllables, etc.

that aside. there's a tradition of western readers of classical chinese poetry coming away with all sorts of overgeneralizations about how each character is a world unto itself, etc., etc., how the poet is not present in the poem because they never use the word "I",[3] etc.

also, they look like a "bridge" or intermediate step in the translation process when that is not the case for me.[4] creating a word-by-word gloss is kinda an entire translation process of its own, with different objectives & priorities!

so yeah! my (extremely amateur) translations are trying to be poetic more than scholarly translations, but at the same time i yearn for people to engage with them as translations and talk to me about the process (which i am terminally lazy about writing up). word-level glosses would probably help, but those are my reasons for not writing them.

my fav resources for learning classical chinese poetry as a beginner both make extensive use of individual word glosses: the East Asia Student blog and How to Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology, ed. Zong-qi Cai 

a lot of times, with brevity being prized in classical chinese, names (and thus entire careers, moral lessons, eidolons) get abbreviated to a single character 

obviously there are lots of instances of ancient poets using the word "I" or referring to themselves in general, but also. just in my limited experience. SO many poems are autobiographical or have a specific voice??? 

i do rely heavily on dictionaries and annotations, but also on my accumulated experience with reading and discussing poetry, my knowledge of the language, my personal tastes/interpretations/goals/mood when it comes to composing a specific translation... you know, things that are less tangible & easy to point to. most of the time i don't know exactly why i've made a specific choice until @/garden-ghoul asks me about it. 

#translation #tlblogging #xposted from cohost - i hope the tumblr markdown processor doesn't mangle this too much

[thelightmx-blog]

¡Bienvenido 2020!

Aunque odie admitirlo, he estado posponiendo y posponiendo los blogs y el cómo retomarlo y eso me perturba mucho. Así que decidí sólo hacerlo y ya. Así que ¡heme aquí! Gracias por leerme, si es que alguien lo hace aún jajaja. Me encanta no saber si alguien está leyendo esto pero si lo estás haciendo, ¡bienvenida!

...... ¡let’s do this!

Últimamente he estado en una temporada de mucho aprendizaje, sobre mí, sobre el mundo laboral, y muchas cosas más y he aprendido que soy F A N de los podcasts. Y he encontrado uno que desde el primer capítulo me encantó, se llama “Girls Club” y hablan de muchas cosas pero los temas principales últimamente han sido “relaciones y amistad”, algo que para mi personalmente no ha sido fácil de lidiar.

No me avergüenza decir que he intentado tener amigas y he fallado en el proceso, no me avergüenza decir que he confiado en personas y me han defraudado, y probablemente yo lo haya hecho también y ahí está el problema, en que muchas veces no nos fijamos en que no es que tengamos “amistades tóxicas” sino que a veces nosotros somos esa “amistad tóxica”. Y yo he sido una. Eso sí me avergüenza.

Cuando tengo que hablar con alguien sobre noviazgo, (un tema que me gusta mucho porque soy una persona súper romántica), me encanta decirles que hagan una lista para autoevaluarse y ver qué cosas les hacen falta para ser la/el novi@ que quisieran tener y me he dado cuenta de que eso aplica no solo en las relaciones de noviazgo sino en las relaciones en general.

Una frase que me quedó muy grabada del podcast del que les hablo fue “be the community you want” (sé la comunidad que quieres) y WOW

Nunca nos ponemos a pensar que deberíamos ser la clase de amigas que queremos tener, lo único que hacemos es exigir que nuestra amiga esté siempre para nosotras, para escuchar nuestros problemas, para salir cuando estemos aburridas, para ir a tomarnos fotos pero no nos ponemos a pensar en qué le estamos ofreciendo a esa amiga, ¿qué clase de amistad estás ofreciendo?

He tenido muchas amistades diferentes y al final del camino, todas han terminado de la misma forma, mal. Y para serles sincera, no tengo la menor idea del por qué. No sé si he dicho algo que no debería, no sé si me he preocupado de más por la vida de mis amigas y sienten que soy una metiche, no sé si malinterpretaron algún comentario que hice, sinceramente no lo sé y al día de hoy la verdad no estoy interesada en descubrirlo. Solo quiero pedir disculpas. Perdón Joselyn, perdón Amparito, perdón Estefy, perdón Cam.

Con cada amiga que he tenido, he tratado de abrir mi corazón, mi vida personal y cada vez que siento o pienso: “tal vez esta amistad sí dure”, pasa todo lo contrario. Y ahora sé que probablemente yo fui el problema en cada una de ellas, porque en el momento en el que no sentí su apoyo, las hice a un lado, en lugar de preguntar si necesitaban algo, aún cuando yo sabía que tenían problemas, porque me enteraba por alguien más y eso me dolía, porque yo creía que nos contábamos todo, porque creí que eso era ser amigas, “contarse todo” y NO LO ES, la amistad es mucho más que eso. Una amiga es alguien que te escucha, te entiende cuando estás ocupada y no puedes estar ahí 24/7, te enseña, está contigo cuando la necesitas y si no, no se enoja, no te juzga, es comprensiva. Y yo no fui absolutamente nada de eso y aún no lo soy pero estoy trabajando en eso. Y ese es uno de mis propósitos de Año Nuevo, aprender a hacer amigas y amigas de verdad. No amigas que solo están para la foto, o para las salidas. Sino amigas con las que compartes hobbies, tienes cosas en común, etc. Y espero lograrlo...

#girlstalk #relationship #reading #friends #friendship #life #lifestyle #friendship goals #thelight #blog post #TLblog

[leahsfiction]

made a blank zine mockup out of scrap paper the other night and just now i filled in... basically all 24 pages (not including the cover) with my translated poems. and the two original poems

#there's a LOT of li he. is anyone surprised #i'm surprised i didn't find more li qingzhao or du fu or any pre-tang stuff #i guess i just spent a lot more time reading them than doing translations #tlblogging

[leahsfiction]

(translationzine 2022 pdf btw. 15 poems + 1 scan of my process notes + 2 rough draft versions)

#tlblogging

[leahsfiction]

man i wonder if i could set up a bare-bones podcast feed for my poetry translation readings

#tlblogging

[leahsfiction]

it's still ambiguous to me whether du mu characterizes the people of qin as following the extravagance of the emperor, or if he's saying they're victims of said wastefulness:

where can they get one last grain of copper / to be spent like sand in water?

where to find the last zi or zhu [ancient weights of money, small fractions of a tael] / and use them like silt

is a more literal translation of 奈何取之尽锱铢，用之如泥沙？

#tlblogging

[leahsfiction]

graham's translation of the first line of li shangyin's "untitled 含情春晼晚" as

Bite back passion. Spring now sets.

is striking and as dramatic as the sunset in the rest of the line! but also the verb han 含 (the "bite back") literally means "to hold in one's mouth". it probably IS the closest english idiom in meaning & which part of the body it's located in but in terms of sound it's different. the b and t are so crisp and forward in the mouth! han is a gulp stopped at the soft palate! not the same asdfjlk

idk can someone use circlusion theory or something to continue this thought.

#tlblogging

[leahsfiction]

god is it too early to start thinking about what to put in translationzine 2023. so many more to choose from than last year...

#tlblogging

[leahsfiction]

OKAY OKAY OKAY

#audio #mine #tlblogging

[leahsfiction]

i hate when analyses of classical chinese poetry begin and end at "this is a collection of images with barely any grammar! so you can interpret it as you like :)"

or, worse, "look, each word itself is a little picture, isn't that weird???"

idk maybe i'm just making up a guy to get mad at

...

i think the second type (the dreaded Ideogram Analysis) has fallen out of favour by now but i hope i don't have to explain in detail why it's absurdly irrelevant and, frankly, othering. like that's just a writing system like any other whose primary function is to convey meaning by making marks on a surface. please be at least 80% more chill about it.

#crossposted from cohost #tlblogging

[leahsfiction]

how many allusions to anaïs mitchell's hadestown can i make before it's too many

#tlblogging

[leahsfiction]

insane dialogue btw. (i need to do another pass with the actual video on but it should come through even in text:)

--How many times has Ying Zheng sent his people to the King of Yan to fetch you? All for the love of that sound, we suppose.

GAO JIANLI ["arrogant to the point of madness"]: If he is sincere, let him come to me himself.

--Yan would be crushed under the feet of Qin's army by then.

#tlblogging

[leahsfiction]

YING ZHENG: Only half of the Six Kingdoms gone -- I still have three swords hanging over my head, and all you can bring me is this simpering trash? Are you trying to get me to crawl in bed with each of your mamas?

#pan to: the literal three swords ying zheng has mounted to hang above his work desk in the grand hall #when he commits he COMMITS #the emperor's shadow #tlblogging

[leahsfiction]

i sure don't fuckin remember translating this but it seems to be my work, in my folder of translations, on my hard drive

Why is Mt. Chongnan this sorrowful? Ghost rains dot the empty grass. Chang'an nights, advanced in autumn On the cusp of the wind, how many have aged? … … The moon strikes noon, trees become upright shadows All the mountain turns to white dawn. Painted torches … …

i feel like the lacunae really add Something, lol

#my translation #li he #tlblogging

[leahsfiction]

WAIT i just realized it literally IS gushiwensday. wtf. going back and tagging these now

#i think the air quality yesterday made me like. sleepy and woozy #and TODAY i had my blood stolen. so. #tlblogging

[leahsfiction]

i've found Li Bai's matching poem about hanging out at Scholar Fan's with Du Fu and like. looking at the first few lines alone

leave some for the rest of us!!!

geese passing through, far above autumn a fixed sun, no clouds for ages my wanderer's heart is never content - where shall its vast floods lead?

#tlblogging