nnozomi

Mostly little language-related things:

·One of my Guardian fics, "a language without an army," was translated into French by Loaric; it's an honor to have any fic translated, especially this one, which is all about language anyway. My French is only just about good enough to follow along, but there are some lines which sound far more gorgeous in the translation--"les consonnes coulissant les unes dans les autres," "égrainant du Haixinghua vif et aiguisé," and the rhythm of the last line, "sans l’accent, Zhao Yunlan aurait compris."

·Still very slowly organizing the Chinese Guardian script; amused by a passing moment in episode 30 when you can see Minister Gao think “one Zhao is more than enough stress, now I have to cope with two of them at once?”

·The meta-ness of translating a text that's all about the value of transcribing versus the value of writing (the meaning of creativity, especially for women), with reference to a Tawada Yoko story. (Tawada Yoko's novels are too weird for me, but I like her essays about language a lot.)

·(mildly icky content) The irony of writing in my original thing about magic done with a drop of the caster's blood, when my actual real-life hands are cracking and bleeding here and there (nothing serious, cold weather + frequent handwashing). Inspiration where we can get it!
So far, knock wood, writing is going well, a fairly steady 500+ words a day (minus one day when I just fell stone asleep). Well over 40K now, getting into the second half when basically there's always something dramatic happening; I don't know if I can make it work but it's fun to try, and I love the way that the more I write, the more ideas and themes seem to fall into place.

·New Chinese conversation partner, Xi-laoshi, a friend of a friend in Beijing. Sadly she had not heard of Zhu Yilong; she was coaching me through pronouncing his name correctly (shows you how terrible my accent is, you'd think that's one word I could get right) when I remembered that interview clip of Z1L and Bai Yu teaching each other to say their names in dialect ("Zhu-laoshi? Ju-laoshi?"), and had a hard time keeping a straight face... .

·Music: A YouTube channel based on the history of music compiled by Otto Maria Carpeaux, an Austrian-Brazilian Jew who seems to have been a piece of work. I don't necessarily agree with all his choices of major works in the history of Western classical music, but there is a lot of good stuff in there, and if you want a playlist of almost 400 pieces in chronological order from 13-something to 1962, this is where to go. (The one thing I object to is that the performers aren't cited; that needs fixed.)

Photos: just a few. The year's first 梅通信, letter from the plums; they're hell to take good pictures of but I can never resist trying. Also my four-season strawberries, living up to their name in a modest way; if they survive into a second year maybe they'll be bigger?