Category: TV series

Literary Translation, Recommendations, Translation, TV series, Writing

New Words #14: Good Advice

lnlanguage

If you’re engaged in some kind of creative pursuit, it’s almost certain that you’re going to get frustrated at some point and conclude that you’ve been approaching it “the wrong way.” The good news is that there’s plenty of advice out there. The bad news is that there’s so much advice out there—just, like, way, way too much—and it’s contradictory and confusing, and a lot of that advice isn’t going to apply to you, even if it’s what somebody else swears by.

I started thinking about this topic after witnessing an online tiff about whether or not rough drafts produced in a generative writing workshop must always have a title. (Yes, the internet is a treasure trove of low-stakes controversy.)

Keep reading this post on Substack. (Don’t worry—nothing is behind a paywall!)

Films, Literary Translation, Recommendations, Translation, TV series

New Words #9: Meet My Pal Hyacinthe

lnlanguage

Folks, it’s high time I introduced you to this fine fellow.

A nineteenth-century lithograph depicting an older man with a large white mustache sitting on the floor and playing a small stringed instrument. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Merimee_Hyacinthe_Maglanovich_la_Guzla.jpg
Lithograph of “Hyacinthe Maglanovich” by F. G. Levrault, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

There he is, in all his glory: Hyacinthe Maglanovich, outlaw turned cowherd, renowned poet, virtuoso of the gusle, the finest bard in all of Dalmatia, and my unlikely companion through the early days of the Covid pandemic.

Continue reading this post on Substack. (Don’t worry—nothing is behind a paywall!)

Books, Recommendations, Translation, TV series, Writing

New Words #8: Why the Computers Aren’t Coming for My Job

lnlanguage

This is not a newsletter about ChatGPT (if you want to read one of those, I’d recommend this one), but our topic this time around was prompted by reports of the chatbot just plain making up “facts.” That has disturbing implications—if there’s one thing we’ve already got plenty of, it’s online misinformation—but it didn’t surprise me. After all, for nearly two decades, I’ve been bombarded with confident-sounding nonsense spewed by the translation apps that supposedly threatened to render my work obsolete.

Credit where credit’s due: Google Translate and similar tools have improved somewhat since the ubiquitous “paper jam” / “mermelada de papel” screenshot was taken. But being programmed to recognize commonly used two-word phrases is not the same thing as understanding context, much less recognizing nuances or errors in a source text.

Continue reading this post on Substack. (Don’t worry—nothing is behind a paywall!)

Books, Irish, Language Acquisition, Links, Recommendations, TV series, Writing

New Words #4: Force of Habit

lnlanguage

Here’s a story about making things a little more complicated than they need to be—on purpose. Later this week, I’ll take the final set of exams in my Irish translation program, and even though I’ll need to submit my answers in a Word doc within a time limit, I’ll write about half of each exam by hand before I type a word. (Don’t worry! I did the same thing the last two semesters, and it all worked out!) The reason is simple: my written Irish is way more accurate when I write by hand.

To read the rest of this post, visit me on Substack. (Don’t worry—nothing is behind a paywall!)

Irish, Language Acquisition, Links, Literary Translation, Translation, TV series

New Words #2: Complicated as 1, 2, 3

lnlanguage

Has there been an uptick lately in clickbait about “untranslatable” terms? Maybe the algorithms are just increasingly determined to lure me in. Either way, I’m not falling for it.

I suspect this focus on untranslatability leads people to believe that the challenges of translation are concentrated in a handful of terms per language, which isn’t the case at all. In fact, the grammatical impacts of simple, everyday concepts in a given language can affect its syntax, rhythms, and sounds in ways present as much of a challenge to translators as they do to language learners.

Continue reading this post over on Substack. (Don’t worry—nothing is behind a paywall!)