笨蛋挞就是我吧

[nnozomi]

· Still working slowly on the Guardian Chinese script, except now I'm stalled because I dislike the end of 24 and all of 25 so much. Must get on with it. Otherwise fortuitously, this process means actually rewatching the whole thing in little bursts; I always forget how intense the bomb scene is, how they're both out of breath from tension by the time the bomb is disarmed.
(Reminded me of setting Guardian to Rachmaninoff 3 as here, where you can "hear" the wires being cut; maybe if the wishlist fest happens again I should ask for a little snippet of this as an actual vid?)

·Speaking of requesting fannish things, clevermanka and I were talking about Yamaguchi Akira's artwork, and I realized I should nominate the general world of his paintings for Yuletide next year. Ideas?

· Happy translation of the week: writing about the freethinking educational journal ひと (person/people) and trying to come up with an appropriately nuanced equivalent English title, I settled on Mensch.
In other translation/interpretation news, I had to fill in as interpreter for a business colleague of my partner's. D, the colleague, spoke mostly Korean, put into English by his wife S, which I then put into Japanese for my partner, and back... They were very nice and it went fine, but it was the first time I've listened seriously to Korean in a while and I could tell how much I would have been able to understand ten years ago. I also found myself, unhelpfully, totally unable to say anything in Korean myself without having to cycle through Chinese words and syntax first. It was like having my brain braided.

· Two nice encounters on my way home the other night. The cats that live behind the temple usually meow demandingly at me and then run away; this time one said "meow!" very loudly and ran right up to me to head-butt me and slither around my knees, letting me stroke it all over. Its friend saw this and decided not to get left out, so for about five minutes I had two very demanding cats to cope with. Maybe they decided it was cold enough that humans could come in useful?
Also two ladies chatting in Chinese outside a little Chinese deli; one dropped some change and, when I [saw my chance and] picked it up, said absently 谢谢. Before she could switch to Japanese I said 不客气, and got to practice Chinese with them for a few minutes--speaking okay, listening terrible as usual, but they were very nice and the deli lady sold me a delicious 蛋挞 egg tart (h/t Wang Zhuocheng). Promising for future conversation practice and snacks...

· Rereading Sylvia Plath's early letters, another writer whose letters and diaries I prefer to her fiction and poetry. As a college senior, she writes to a boyfriend "my new philosophy of life is...in times of crisis Assume-The-Worst-But-Serve-It-With-Parsley (that last is out of my 'joy of cooking' book from the section on what to do with leftovers)." Words for our time.

·Photos: Two varieties of persimmons, a green-eyed cat, a Gaudi-esque train car, park lights at night (long story), parent turtle being roused from a nap by insistent baby, two morning glory views (the edge-on ones are on my veranda, where the morning glory, after months of sulking, has suddenly decided to bloom daily), and a shrine tree...umm...camphor tree.




Be safe and well.

Comments

[elenothar]

trying to come up with an appropriately nuanced equivalent English title, I settled on Mensch.

Laughing a little at the irony of loanwords 😂

I think the first time I watched Guardian I stalled out in the mid-twenties for the same reason. I tend to not remember the bits I didn't like (much more fun to concentrate on the majority that I do), but there definitely were some

... I just considered if I could do Chinese to German (or vice versa), and the answer is very much a no without having English as a buffer. On the other hand, I can't do Latin to English or vice versa, that needs to be routed through German. Ah, brains.

[nnozomi]

Laughing a little at the irony of loanwords 😂
yeah, I guess "mensch" in that sense is a double loanword really, German --> Yiddish --> English.

the answer is very much a no without having English as a buffer. On the other hand, I can't do Latin to English or vice versa, that needs to be routed through German.
Fascinating! trobadora was saying the same about Chinese and English above. Latin and German maybe stick together because of the cases???

[elenothar]

Oh, in my case it definitely has less to do with the actual similarities of the languages such as cases, and everything to do with which language I learned them in. I did Latin at school for seven years, and all the translation and vocab learning was Latin to German, so I have no connection at all to English with Latin. And now I'm learning Chinese in English rather than German and creating the same kind of connection.

[nnozomi]

I did Latin at school for seven years, and all the translation and vocab learning was Latin to German, so I have no connection at all to English with Latin. And now I'm learning Chinese in English rather than German and creating the same kind of connection.
That makes good sense. No wonder I get confused sometimes during Chinese conversation with my ex-colleague Yu-jie, our common language is Japanese, but most of my Chinese is filtered through English...