‘At the foreigner’s club Glover had picked up a cheaply produced phrasebook purporting to give a newcomer to Japan a few rudimentary expressions, conversational gambits.
I, it said was waterkoosh.
‘Watakashi‘ said Mackenzie. You was O my.
‘Omai‘. Tea was otcher.
‘Hocha‘. Silk was kinoo.
‘Kinu‘
‘First-class gibberish,’ said Mackenzie. ‘Pidgin. A bastard mongrel hybrid.’
The above is a quotation from the book I am reading at the moment. The Pure Land, by Alan Spence. I found this particular passage very entertaining and a great portrayal of pidgin versions of languages.
Pidgin is of course the name we give to a language which has been simplified by the people who use it on a daily basis, usually to facilitate communication between two peoples who do not have a language in common. The subject of pidgin language and why and how it develops is actually very interesting in its own right. Click here for more information on pidgin language.
I have less than a month to get my studying hat on and revise some theory and terminology for my upcoming Chartered Institute of Linguists Diploma in Translation. I have only got to sit one more module till I have passed the entire exam; the Science, Social Science or Law module. I will have two hours in which to translate a text from Spanish into English. I will get to choose one of three texts; each will have either a Science, Social Science or Law theme. None of the three above subjects are my strong point; except if I am lucky with Social Science… so I have a lot of work to do. I will mostly be going over past papers and trying to bang out translations, remembering to use only a dictionary, as we are not allowed computers in the exam! I will use this blog to post how it is all going and how much work I have done. In the meantime, I do also have all my regular work and translating to do! It’s going to be a long month….
Far from home Grotus dedicated an altar to Coventina
Who holds in her right hand a waterweed
And in her left a pitcher spilling out a river.
Anywhere Grotus looked at running water he felt at home
And when he remembered the stone where he cut his name
Some dried-up course beneath his breastbone started
Pouring and darkening—more or less the way
The thought of his stunted altar works on me.
Remember when our electric pump gave out,
Priming it with bucketfuls, our idiotic rage
And hangdog phone-calls to the farm next door
For somebody please to come and fix it?
And when it began to hammer on again,
Jubilation at the tap’s full force, the sheer
Given fact of water, how you felt you’d never
Waste one drop but know its worth better always.
Do you think we could run through all that one more time?
I’ll be Grotus, you be Coventina.
Seamus Heaney
I sought out this poem after reading one of Seamus Heaney’s own accounts of it in Interviews with Seamus Heaney, Stepping Stones by Dennis O’Driscoll.
To quote Heaney; ‘When you say the words Grotus and Coventina, you get immediate aural and oral pleasure, the consonants and vowels melt in your mouth like hard-boiled soft-centred sweets..’
I think it is a perfectly beautiful poem about love, family life and water. Try reading it a few times, you can see and hear the water.
I wouldn’t say that I am a huge poetry fan, but my mum brought be the above book to read recently and reading all the interviews with Seamus Heaney made me recall some magical english literature classes. Once I even won a ‘Seamus Heaney’ award, which was fittingly a potato! I remember it meant so much to me, I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away for months.
If anyone has been reading some great poetry recently I would love to hear about it.
I have just come across some great articles that I thought like-minded language lovers would love. The first is this article about a translation firm who, for the sum of a thousand pounds will have your baby’s prospective name translated into 100 different languages to save future embarrassment. Cool idea! for the rich and famous..
The other is this article about how scientists have been reserching the fact that babies cry differently depending on the lannguage they hear their parents speak. Apparently, babies are already in tune to the language spoken around them when inside the womb and a German baby’s cry is completely different to a French baby’s cry! I wonder what language my babies will cry in.. as they would hear a mixture of Spanish, English and Hebrew!
The next and possibly best (because of its sheer bizarreness) article I have come across is one about a new Japanese invention; glasses that also have the power to translate! This product is still in development, but it should allow 2 or more people to hold a fluid conversation with no common language! When it appears on the market, the gadget will cost a whopping $83,000!
Translating Gastronomic or Food & Wine related texts is one of my fortés. I love food and wine and it is a pleasure to be able to help people in the gastronomy business get themselves ‘out there’ by having their texts effectively translated into English or Spanish (what can be more annoying than a badly translated restaurant menu?). I love delving into specialised dictionaries to find exactly the right word for a particular meat or fish, or a certain way of preparing a dish. I feel I have a significant amount of experience when it comes to translating in this field.
Recently I had the pleasure of translating a new website for a local Mallorcan winery. The website was created by a great friend of mine, so if you like it, get in touch! And the winery is Son Prim, in Sencelles. Oh, for the record, they produce some exceptional wines!
You may have noticed that I have added a couple more ‘Happy Customers‘ to my list. It’s great to get new customers and it’s great to be able to be involved in new projects and cultural initiatives . One such initiative is the MAIFF* Mallorca International Film Festival. The festival is planned for 2011 and the team behind it is busy organising and promoting the festival in Mallorca and further afield. I have recently translated their website into English.
Fue un placer poder conocer a Jacqueline Tobiass, presidenta del Instituto de Relaciones Culturales Baleares-Israel, junto con Joan Aguiló Martí, referente a un reportaje que estoy escribiendo para la revista In Palma. Dejo aquí una foto de nuestro encuentro (cedida por Jacqueline), y espero poder dejaros un enlace a mi reportaje muy pronto. (Está previsto para mediados de diciembre, en la edición de invierno de InPalma).
I have now been fully freelance for more than 6 months and the whole experience has definetely been a learning curve. It has been very hard work. It has not been smooth sailing.
I have come across numerous stumbling blocks along the way, not least of all MySelf, and I am learning a lot about my work, what I like and don’t like about it, and the people I have come across along the way.
I wish I could say they have all been lovely people. But, life throws many challenges at us as we go forward and one of those challenges, for me, has come in the form of people. People who are either challenging to work with or who are not completely honest in the way they live their lives or conduct their business. The long and the short of it is that I have had to take myself along to the public courts in Palma and denounce a certain someone who obviously knows no better and refused to pay me for months on end!
I shall save you all the gory details, the knock to confidence and the frustration that this situation caused, and say that, months later, now that I have put the matter into a judge’s hand I know this was just one of the bigger tests I have had to watch myself go through, and yes, it all happened for a reason.
The good news is that there is a very helpful service open to citizens in Spain which allows you to go along to the public courts and denounce such people for not paying you monies owed (provided you issued an official invoice of course) by means of a very simple process which involves filling out some forms and providing photocopies of your paperwork. I shall let you know in due course when I get my money and how it all finished up. At the moment I am feeling pleased and slightly proud of the civilised city I live in wherein I can denounce some of the ‘baddies’ without the services of a lawyer and at no further cost to my impoverished self.
This is a meme I have just completed about writing. I am going to link to some other writers I know, see If they fill it out too.
So, here goes: 1. Which words do you use too much in your writing?
Like, of course, I think 2. Which words do you consider overused in stuff you read?
Made up words like ‘Google it’ 3. What’s your favourite piece of writing by you?
My diary! So things I write and hardly ever share with anyone else. 4. What are your other favourite blogs?
I love http://www.consuminglilly.com/, http://www.mywritingblog.com/ and http://rang-thecoloursoflife.blogspot.com/, but there are loads I love. 5. Regrets, do you have a few? Is there anything you wish you hadn’t written?
I think there is more I regret not having written than things I regret actually having written. I wish I had kept a diary while I was living in India for example. 6. How has your writing made a difference? What do you consider your most important piece of writing?
It would be quite vain of me to say my writing is making a difference to other people yet. I like to think people find some of my articles in InPalma magazine entertaining, something to read while you are waiting at the hairdresser’s or something. Otherwise I feel my writing makes a great difference to myself; it’s immensely therapeutic and keeps me sane. At the moment I have reached the point that my writing is actually paying the bills, which I am very proud of and I consider that to be quite an important achievement. To date my most important piece of writing has to be my Masters Dissertation on Zeus and his procreative power in Homer and Hesiod. I miss the hours of reading and research that involved and hope to be able to do something like that again soon. 7. Name three favourite words
Trust. Love. Courage. Slightly soppy I know but I’m trying to be honest here.. 8. …And three words you’re not so keen on
I hate ‘nice’, I think it’s really weak… there are so many better words. I’m really un-keen on swear words too; they hurt my ears, no one should ever swear in front of a lady! 9. Do you have a writing mentor, role model or inspiration?
I can’t think of any specific names, although I love Jane Austen novels and Seamus Heaney poems. Anyone who has published stories that move millions deserves a prize. 10. What’s your writing ambition?
To write a book or two after I have made my millions managing online blogs and websites! 11. Plug alert! List any work you would like to tell your readers about.
I think my friend from Durham Uni is someone to watch, I love her writing style! http://leabeegeebee.wordpress.com/
So, that’s me!
The Official Rules
If you have time to do this meme, then please link to my post here, then link to three to five other bloggers and pass it on, asking them to answer your questions and link back to you. You can add, remove or change one question as you go. You absolutely do not have to be what you may think of as a “published” or “successful” writer to respond to this meme.
Have fun, and I look forward to reading more responses!
Me llamó la atención esta noticia en el Diario de Mallorca del sábado 17 de octubre.
Ocho institutos de las islas baleares carecen de profesor de lenguas clásicas, lo cual es un problema porque si los estudiantes eligen estudiar ‘Humanidades’ en Selectividad, tienen que cursar Latín y Griego.
Parece ser que en España todavía se necesitan licenciados en Clásicas.. ¿pero, por cuanto tiempo?
