Thank you for focusing on the important creative work of translators. We are too often overlooked.
I just read a book review of a recent Eng translation of a novel, and the name of the publishing co was mentioned but the name of the translator was not. 🙄
And then I read this post and felt better. Looking forward to the next post too.
Thank you George! I love an exercise where everybody's right. Love playing around with words. Of course, the reason this is so fun is because the words don't belong within a paragraph--and aren't even a sentence. (I see that some people here are relying solely on rhythm and feel while others are choosing to think about word meaning/order.) Once you change even one word in a sentence within a paragraph....well, the whole house of cards can come down. Suddenly, the sentences that came before and the sentences that come after need tweaking in order to re-establish the rhythm. I know some people don't like that part of revising, but I find it super fun.
Great exercise. I love rhythm and sound (maybe explains why I am a drummer) and my sentences need to flow and halt in a specific way I don’t necessarily plan this out, rather, it comes to me automatically. I know immediately when I don’t like the way a sentence unfolds. I’m partial to simple declarative sentences. I don’t always catch problems on first or second revisions, however. Also, a sentence’s construction can be determined by those directly preceding it. (A lot of “I’s” here. Sorry.- look forward to others’ process.)
It is killing me that none of the hundred comments I've read so far start with "bright-fresh." Those words are paired in my mind and work so well at the start of a phrase
Fresh, fulsome, nascent, ghostly, bright. I guess I liked easing in with a one-syllable, and with alliteration, and ending too with the little bang of another one-syllable. I was going with my ear mostly, and then thinking about the meaning of the words, how it might be nice to end on the surprising “ghostly,” but my ear wouldn’t let me.
some kind of pre-linguistic howl. In my opinion style is not separate from "meaning"; rather, it shows how the words are always pointing to something beyond/beneath/inside them.
“…whenever I am engaged on a translation project, I experience continually, offside my vision, a sensation of veils flying up. As brightness blows the rising wide cold rush the skull. I’ve come to call the sensation Cassandra because I first noticed it one day in school when I was reading a passage of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon – the passage where Cassandra cries out ‘OTOTOTOI POPOI DA!’ This cry is famous - it leads into 300 lines of vision and prophecy in which Cassandra tells the past and future of the house of Atreus, including the fact of her own death. At the midpoint of this telling she utters these lines: ‘Behold no longer my oracle out from veils shall be glancing like a newly married bride but as brightness blows the rising sun open it will rush my oceans forward onto light – a grief more deep than me’. What is it like to be a prophet? Everywhere Cassandra ran she found she was already there. Everywhere Cassandra ran the glue was coming up off the edge of the page and, when she pulled at it, this page was underneath, this page on which I am telling you that everywhere Cassandra ran she found she could float…
…But let’s return to her opening line: ‘OTOTOTOI POPOI DA!’ This utterance is a scream. It is untranslatable, yet not meaningless. A scream conveys specific emotion and can make things happen. In this case the scream is also metrically exact, fitted into the scansion of the verses around it. Often in English translation, such utterances are rendered by the word ‘Alas.’ Should ‘Alas’ seem inadequate, the translator may choose to transliterate the Greek letters of the scream into English sounds…on the grounds that this is more pure and true. Is it more pure and true? Perhaps a prior question is in order: What is Cassandra doing speaking Greek? She is, after all, a Trojan princess who has never been away from home before. Now, generally, we refrain from asking this kind of question about the logic of a play. We don’t really want to listen to Cassandra speaking Trojan for the next half hour, and there is a dramaturgic convention called ‘the willed suspension of disbelief’ that makes it ok. But in this play, Aeschylus has already punctured the convention, for he begins the Cassandra scene with Cassandra standing silent on stage for 270 lines. Then Clytemnestra shouts at her, ‘What’s the matter, don’t you speak Greek?’ Aeschylus would like us to see the veils flying up in Cassandra’s mind; would like us to be wondering at what level of herself she is translating some pure gash of Trojan emotion into a metrically perfect line of Greek tragic verse, and what that translation has to do with the arts of prophecy, because in both cases there is some action of cutting through surfaces to a site that has no business being underneath. What is the future doing underneath the past? Or Greek metrics inside a Trojan silence? And how does it alter you to see it there, floating, and how can it float?
...I am interested in people who cut through things…Cracks, cuts, breaks, gashes, splittings, slicings, rips, tears, conical intersects, disruptions, etymologies…
…Let’s pause to consider the etymology of the word ‘etymology’. It comes from Greek ‘ἔτῠμος’, an adjective meaning ‘real, true, actual’, and ‘λόγος’, the basic noun for ‘word, story, account, analysis’. But the adjective ‘ἔτῠμος’ in turn has an etymology, probably derived from the verb ‘εἰμῐ́’: ‘to be, to exist’. So an etymology can be thought to give the true meaning of a word because it has is-ness in it. The etymologist makes cuts that show being as it floats inside things and how it floats and how can it.”
nascent, ghostly, fresh, fulsome, bright: A progression; emergence ↠ so present it shines forth.
Things I noticed:
• I was deliberately suppressing my first impulse, which was to make the best of (or settle for and live with) the order in which I first read them.
• A couple of my choices were partly informed by associations I have from some specialties I studied. Every specialty has its jargon, and I often enjoy learning the lexicon at least as much as the practice of the thing.
Things I noticed after reading others':
• I assumed a visual or conceptual meaning when I could have as easily assumed a material and physical one. Interesting.
• I'm enamored of many other results and reasons as soon as I read them.
fulsome, fresh, nascent, ghostly, bright. Realized just now this nearly trochaic pentameter. Perhaps meter subconsciously plays a part, at least for me anyway.
Bright, Nascent, Fulsome, Ghostly, Fresh. Bright was an obvious first choice for me - the word itself is bright: hard consonants, big, wide-open mouthed long vowel, hard ending. Love it. Then Nascent, because it is the most interesting word. I think I chose Fresh at the end, because it mirrored the sharp, single syllable start (although the 'f' start and 'sh' ending are softer...), and I think I threw Ghostly in between Fulsome and Fresh, because both words seem dull to me, and having them together would have magnified that, so Ghostly kind of deflects from their beigeness...
nascent, fresh, bright, fulsome, ghostly...the evolution of a flower?
Thank you for focusing on the important creative work of translators. We are too often overlooked.
I just read a book review of a recent Eng translation of a novel, and the name of the publishing co was mentioned but the name of the translator was not. 🙄
And then I read this post and felt better. Looking forward to the next post too.
Cheers from Athens
When I see someone writing it in the order that I didn't put it in, I think: no. It's so funny! ; )
Fresh, fulsome, nascent, ghostly, bright. I knew right away that I wanted "ghostly, bright" together, at the end. But why?
Thank you George! I love an exercise where everybody's right. Love playing around with words. Of course, the reason this is so fun is because the words don't belong within a paragraph--and aren't even a sentence. (I see that some people here are relying solely on rhythm and feel while others are choosing to think about word meaning/order.) Once you change even one word in a sentence within a paragraph....well, the whole house of cards can come down. Suddenly, the sentences that came before and the sentences that come after need tweaking in order to re-establish the rhythm. I know some people don't like that part of revising, but I find it super fun.
Great exercise. I love rhythm and sound (maybe explains why I am a drummer) and my sentences need to flow and halt in a specific way I don’t necessarily plan this out, rather, it comes to me automatically. I know immediately when I don’t like the way a sentence unfolds. I’m partial to simple declarative sentences. I don’t always catch problems on first or second revisions, however. Also, a sentence’s construction can be determined by those directly preceding it. (A lot of “I’s” here. Sorry.- look forward to others’ process.)
I take photos of sunrises over Lake Michigan so:
Ghostly, Nascent, Fresh, Fulsome, Bright
I like ending with the boldness of “Bright;” the other words have a softness to them...
It is killing me that none of the hundred comments I've read so far start with "bright-fresh." Those words are paired in my mind and work so well at the start of a phrase
Fresh, fulsome, nascent, ghostly, bright. I guess I liked easing in with a one-syllable, and with alliteration, and ending too with the little bang of another one-syllable. I was going with my ear mostly, and then thinking about the meaning of the words, how it might be nice to end on the surprising “ghostly,” but my ear wouldn’t let me.
I’m flabbergasted by all the hate for fulsome in these comments, when it’s CLEAR that nascent is the real problem.
Calling all fulsome haters: please explain.
ghostly bright fulsome nascent fresh
some kind of pre-linguistic howl. In my opinion style is not separate from "meaning"; rather, it shows how the words are always pointing to something beyond/beneath/inside them.
“…whenever I am engaged on a translation project, I experience continually, offside my vision, a sensation of veils flying up. As brightness blows the rising wide cold rush the skull. I’ve come to call the sensation Cassandra because I first noticed it one day in school when I was reading a passage of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon – the passage where Cassandra cries out ‘OTOTOTOI POPOI DA!’ This cry is famous - it leads into 300 lines of vision and prophecy in which Cassandra tells the past and future of the house of Atreus, including the fact of her own death. At the midpoint of this telling she utters these lines: ‘Behold no longer my oracle out from veils shall be glancing like a newly married bride but as brightness blows the rising sun open it will rush my oceans forward onto light – a grief more deep than me’. What is it like to be a prophet? Everywhere Cassandra ran she found she was already there. Everywhere Cassandra ran the glue was coming up off the edge of the page and, when she pulled at it, this page was underneath, this page on which I am telling you that everywhere Cassandra ran she found she could float…
…But let’s return to her opening line: ‘OTOTOTOI POPOI DA!’ This utterance is a scream. It is untranslatable, yet not meaningless. A scream conveys specific emotion and can make things happen. In this case the scream is also metrically exact, fitted into the scansion of the verses around it. Often in English translation, such utterances are rendered by the word ‘Alas.’ Should ‘Alas’ seem inadequate, the translator may choose to transliterate the Greek letters of the scream into English sounds…on the grounds that this is more pure and true. Is it more pure and true? Perhaps a prior question is in order: What is Cassandra doing speaking Greek? She is, after all, a Trojan princess who has never been away from home before. Now, generally, we refrain from asking this kind of question about the logic of a play. We don’t really want to listen to Cassandra speaking Trojan for the next half hour, and there is a dramaturgic convention called ‘the willed suspension of disbelief’ that makes it ok. But in this play, Aeschylus has already punctured the convention, for he begins the Cassandra scene with Cassandra standing silent on stage for 270 lines. Then Clytemnestra shouts at her, ‘What’s the matter, don’t you speak Greek?’ Aeschylus would like us to see the veils flying up in Cassandra’s mind; would like us to be wondering at what level of herself she is translating some pure gash of Trojan emotion into a metrically perfect line of Greek tragic verse, and what that translation has to do with the arts of prophecy, because in both cases there is some action of cutting through surfaces to a site that has no business being underneath. What is the future doing underneath the past? Or Greek metrics inside a Trojan silence? And how does it alter you to see it there, floating, and how can it float?
...I am interested in people who cut through things…Cracks, cuts, breaks, gashes, splittings, slicings, rips, tears, conical intersects, disruptions, etymologies…
…Let’s pause to consider the etymology of the word ‘etymology’. It comes from Greek ‘ἔτῠμος’, an adjective meaning ‘real, true, actual’, and ‘λόγος’, the basic noun for ‘word, story, account, analysis’. But the adjective ‘ἔτῠμος’ in turn has an etymology, probably derived from the verb ‘εἰμῐ́’: ‘to be, to exist’. So an etymology can be thought to give the true meaning of a word because it has is-ness in it. The etymologist makes cuts that show being as it floats inside things and how it floats and how can it.”
(from this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZOd2nDVk84)
I got my t-shirt and hat, and what I want to know is: when and where is Story Club Camp this summer?
nascent, ghostly, fresh, fulsome, bright: A progression; emergence ↠ so present it shines forth.
Things I noticed:
• I was deliberately suppressing my first impulse, which was to make the best of (or settle for and live with) the order in which I first read them.
• A couple of my choices were partly informed by associations I have from some specialties I studied. Every specialty has its jargon, and I often enjoy learning the lexicon at least as much as the practice of the thing.
Things I noticed after reading others':
• I assumed a visual or conceptual meaning when I could have as easily assumed a material and physical one. Interesting.
• I'm enamored of many other results and reasons as soon as I read them.
Fun exercise!
fulsome, fresh, nascent, ghostly, bright. Realized just now this nearly trochaic pentameter. Perhaps meter subconsciously plays a part, at least for me anyway.
Bright, Nascent, Fulsome, Ghostly, Fresh. Bright was an obvious first choice for me - the word itself is bright: hard consonants, big, wide-open mouthed long vowel, hard ending. Love it. Then Nascent, because it is the most interesting word. I think I chose Fresh at the end, because it mirrored the sharp, single syllable start (although the 'f' start and 'sh' ending are softer...), and I think I threw Ghostly in between Fulsome and Fresh, because both words seem dull to me, and having them together would have magnified that, so Ghostly kind of deflects from their beigeness...
Words. Gotta love 'em.
ghostly bright,
fresh fulsome,
nascent
(I'm just thinking in sound and rhythm, rather than any logic - obviously. ;)