My much-vaunted freedoms, let me show you them

[desperance]

Chaz is born free, and is everywhere in chains.

At least, right here and right now, he is. Frustratedly.

I was all ready to go out: boots on, thermos filled. Laptop, biscuit. Bag packed and slung. Hand almost on the door, when I remembered I had to stay in for a delivery.

Big sigh, retreat, retrenchment. Everything unshipped, unpacked. Laptop plugged in again, fired up again; Chaz soothed - inadequately - by self, "Never mind: we have capon, soup, bread. Work to do. We're fine..."

But we are not fine, and--

Hold hard. Hark!

*departs*

*returns*

Oh blessed be DHL, who come when they say they will! Delivery has been delivered (we haz cheezes, Cornish cheezes...), and I am free again, tra-la.

Alas, I have drunk the contents of my thermos. Still'n'all, there is always more coffee. That's a law. Something akin to the conservation of energy, only more important. (Now I want to write a story called The Conversation of Energy, on account of my mistyping.)

(I should perhaps not tell you this, but the story I am now working on? Is called "'Tis Pity He's Ashore". Which is a title I have treasured for something more than thirty years, only waiting for the story to attach itself thereto. Which it now has, hurrah.)

Comments

[frandowdsofa.livejournal.com]

I was expecting to be worrying all day about a package, but they "tried to deliver" before 8 am, and very kindly left it in the outside bog. Now to finish breakfast tea and Ho! for the veggie co-op.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I have a very short file named 'unstoried titles.' Pity that my mad titling skillz seem to be restricted to this file; everything else is much harder.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Yes. It is as I have always said: start with a title, and titling is easy. Do it the other way round, it's a nightmare. By the time a story's finished, there are so many different things it could be called, and none of them is more exact than any other. Like not naming a child until it's an adult: you're just too late. Start with a title, though, write to a title, and the whole story will tend that way. We need to grow into a name.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I am currently writing The Swamp Thing, which really needs a better title (the tagline 'archaeology in Faerie' ought to yield something eventually). I also have a book with the wonderful title 'The Stone Priests' which isn't working because they're not playing the role I thought they would play when I started writing it...

[volterra.livejournal.com]

I love the title! Gave me my morning laugh!

[gauroth.livejournal.com]

In a loo in Durham I once saw the graffitto: 'Man is born free but is everywhere in chains. Smash the cistern!'

Well, it makes me larf!

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

That is an *awesome* title.

[kazdreamer.livejournal.com]

Love the title. :) The 'orginal' was one of my favourite things that we studied for A-Levels way back in the mists of time... I even... GASP! went to see 'Tis Pity (as me and my friend call it, even now) with Our Own Money after we had finished school.

"Come strumpet, famous whore!"

Good times...

[mantichore.livejournal.com]

Hate the title. But that's just the translator in me speaking; the reader co-existing with him likes it very much. Experience dictates that if the right translation of a pun or play on words isn't obvious in a couple of minutes, there's a good chance it never will be found. It's mostly a 1/0 operation: it's either obvious or impossible. The rare exceptions, obtained after long and painfully racking one's brain for a corresponding pun in the target language, are cherished memories of hardships conquered thru the intervention of the benevolent hand of Fate. Hen's teeth, we call them. ^________^

[desperance.livejournal.com]

But this is why we have good translators, to rise above the untranslatable...

It's never occurred to me to worry about translatability; I wonder if other, more widely translated authors do? If it's a part of their process, in the same way that filmed authors think about movie-adaptability while they're writing their novels?

[mantichore.livejournal.com]

Hmpf. One doesn't rise above the untranslatable: one somehow manages to muddle through it. Because it's *untranslatable*.

And you shouldn't worry about that. If only because you can't possibly cover all languages, and there will always be one where something or other simply isn't translatable, whether it's a dreadful pun (I hate those) or a word like serendipity (not a fan, either).

-- Strictly speaking from a translator's point of view, of course. ^______^

[desperance.livejournal.com]

There is no word in French for serendipity? Wow... (starts wondering how much the absence of a concept affects the development of a culture...)

[mantichore.livejournal.com]

No single word, no. Of course, we can use the cumbersome "découvrir une chose en cherchant quelque chose d'autre" or anything along those lines that fits the context, but there is no convenient sérendipité.

But then again, you have no English equivalent for camembert, so it all balances out. ^_____^

[desperance.livejournal.com]

No, indeed - but then, we have no Academy telling us that we're not allowed to say camembert. So we do.

[mantichore.livejournal.com]

I'll have you know, my fine fellow, that our Académie doesn't tell us not to use camembert, either.

So there...

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Hee. Come not between a Frenchman and his cheese...

[mantichore.livejournal.com]

Which one? We've got hundreds! General de Gaulle is reported as having said: "How can anyone rule over a country where there are more than 400 kinds of cheese !"

[desperance.livejournal.com]

When I was in Seoul, the leading article in the English-language paper was titled "How can anyone rule over a country that has 159 varieties of kimchee?"

[mantichore.livejournal.com]

Why!... The nerve!! To dare plagiarize Le Général!

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I think they may have acknowledged him...

(One time de Gaulle was holding court in Versailles, in the hall of mirrors. One particular supplicant had never been there before; he walked down the length of it towards where de Gaulle was sitting in state, and gazed about him in wonder, and murmured "Mon Dieu!" And de Gaulle leaned forward in his chair and said, quite kindly, "Quand nous sommes seules, on peut m'appeller 'Mon Général...")

[mantichore.livejournal.com]

There's a lot of stories like that one going around. It's hard to know whether they are true or not: De Gaulle has a not-inconsiderable ego, but also a not-inconsiderable sens of humour.