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月亮圆圆
More on my Li Kotomi translation project: she has an essay describing some of the details of the process of her translation of one of her own novels from Japanese to Chinese, with examples, which not surprisingly is hard to deal with (especially because for the Japanese reader, most of the quotations from the Chinese translation will be at least semi-comprehensible from the characters without needing additional explanation, but the same does NOT go for English). I enjoy her extended metaphor of Japanese and Chinese as “two independent machines” (although I’m not sure I agree with all of it).
Reading Measure for Measure with yaaurens and company, and finding it interesting for many reasons (also I need to go back and reread a_t_rain’s excellent epilogue fic. My brain in silly mode suddenly related it to The Mikado, with Angelo as Koko, guilty of the sex-related crime he’s cutting off other people’s heads for; which would make the Duke the Mikado, I guess, and Mariana Katisha. The plays certainly don’t map one on one, not to speak of the differences in tone, but they would make a fantastic theatrical double bill.
okay, so listen to the melody line of 祝我幸福 (Wu Qingfeng) and then of Meditaçao ; cross-cultural pentatonic scale friends. (As my dad used to remind me, there are only twelve notes, and the major pentatonic scale happens all over, see also Chinese dizi flutes etc., so it’s just a common and garden coincidence, but I still like the resemblance.)
I’m still playing the bassoon and still in a local amateur orchestra, for the moment (*circumstances unrelated to anything here may interfere). I’m also still very bad at it, but not as bad as I was. (I will never be more than a mediocre amateur as a performing musician, because I can never find the technical fingers/lips/tongue etc. parts of playing an instrument interesting at all. I like music because of melody and harmony and rhythm and timbre, not because I remembered to move my left hand just the right way or adjusted my embouchure just so! What does the one have to do with the other? I suppose it’s people who can find both interesting who become the real performers, good for them. Anyway, I kind of wish I’d taken up the bassoon years ago, because I enjoy it more than I ever liked playing the cello—I like having a part all to myself, I like the way breath vibrates into sound and the way it’s an instrument nobody notices but also penetrating and exciting. The other day we had our first rehearsal with a contrabassoon and sitting right next to the contrabassoonist was SO NEAT, I want to try playing one SO MUCH, it’s like a dinosaur that can sing in tune.
No new farmboy words today, although I did make a wrap-up post about watching the series (so far) here. Unrelatedly, A-Pei taught me a Chinese phrase for “the grass is always greener”: 外国的月亮比较圆, the moon is rounder abroad.
Discovered via YouTube, the architect Hamaguchi Miho’s Nakamura House. Unfortunately for my purposes she was too late for![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
senzenwomen, active after the war, but very interesting, and the house looks gorgeous on the inside (although Y rightly compared it to an elementary school gym on the outside, I have to say)—look at the high ceilings and the teal glass tiles and the light, and the wall of bookshelves (scroll down for some before/after renovation pictures). Both pretty and actually livable, which is far to seek.
Photos: the usual, including an ex-bicycle and a castle. 
Be safe and well.
For me … Japanese and Chinese are like two independent machines. … In almost all cases, the quality of the products produced by the two machines is similar, but one of them—the machine marked “Japanese”—is a little unstable in its operation and occasionally produces defects, so that its parts require more frequent inspection, refilling with raw ingredients, and lubrication.
Although the two machines are independent, they run off current from the same outlet. The amount of current is limited ... . When I am writing a novel or an essay in Japanese, I turn off the Chinese machine entirely and direct all the current to the Japanese machine in order to ensure its products’ quality. Conversely, when I write in Chinese I stop the Japanese machine. … [W]hen translating from Japanese to Chinese, I have to use about 30% of the current for the Japanese machine and 70% for the Chinese one, and the other way around when translating from Chinese to Japanese. However, since the products have been produced on 70% current, they must be inspected more carefully and thoroughly than usual. …
Each of the two machines has its own specialized production field, with unique functions the other does not possess. The Japanese machine includes special functions like hiragana, katakana, kanji, and ruby text, and excels in the production of fluid sentences and thoroughly variegated text. Because hiragana and katakana are capable of expressing sounds alone, effacing meaning, they have high affinity with other languages, meaning that various different languages can be used to supplement the raw materials. The kanji function has various additional options such as onyomi and kunyomi readings, which can be cleverly used in combination with the ruby function to weave a florescent world like the pattern on a kimono.
Elsewhere, the Chinese machine basically has a single hanzi function, but because this function combines overlapping aspects of sound and meaning, it enables the generation of more rhythmical, more formally beautiful couplets than in Japanese. Because each individual character takes up its own definite space, this function does not lend itself to flowing, variegated sentences, but excels at regular, definite text as well as sentences of silvan density. Also, because hanzi are highly neological, new words can be created even more freely and improvisationally than in Japanese. Further, the Chinese machine has a secret time-machine function which enables free connection to the many poems and chengyu sayings created over four thousand years of Chinese literature. This feature is not included with the Japanese machine.
Although the two machines are independent, they run off current from the same outlet. The amount of current is limited ... . When I am writing a novel or an essay in Japanese, I turn off the Chinese machine entirely and direct all the current to the Japanese machine in order to ensure its products’ quality. Conversely, when I write in Chinese I stop the Japanese machine. … [W]hen translating from Japanese to Chinese, I have to use about 30% of the current for the Japanese machine and 70% for the Chinese one, and the other way around when translating from Chinese to Japanese. However, since the products have been produced on 70% current, they must be inspected more carefully and thoroughly than usual. …
Each of the two machines has its own specialized production field, with unique functions the other does not possess. The Japanese machine includes special functions like hiragana, katakana, kanji, and ruby text, and excels in the production of fluid sentences and thoroughly variegated text. Because hiragana and katakana are capable of expressing sounds alone, effacing meaning, they have high affinity with other languages, meaning that various different languages can be used to supplement the raw materials. The kanji function has various additional options such as onyomi and kunyomi readings, which can be cleverly used in combination with the ruby function to weave a florescent world like the pattern on a kimono.
Elsewhere, the Chinese machine basically has a single hanzi function, but because this function combines overlapping aspects of sound and meaning, it enables the generation of more rhythmical, more formally beautiful couplets than in Japanese. Because each individual character takes up its own definite space, this function does not lend itself to flowing, variegated sentences, but excels at regular, definite text as well as sentences of silvan density. Also, because hanzi are highly neological, new words can be created even more freely and improvisationally than in Japanese. Further, the Chinese machine has a secret time-machine function which enables free connection to the many poems and chengyu sayings created over four thousand years of Chinese literature. This feature is not included with the Japanese machine.
Reading Measure for Measure with yaaurens and company, and finding it interesting for many reasons (also I need to go back and reread a_t_rain’s excellent epilogue fic. My brain in silly mode suddenly related it to The Mikado, with Angelo as Koko, guilty of the sex-related crime he’s cutting off other people’s heads for; which would make the Duke the Mikado, I guess, and Mariana Katisha. The plays certainly don’t map one on one, not to speak of the differences in tone, but they would make a fantastic theatrical double bill.
okay, so listen to the melody line of 祝我幸福 (Wu Qingfeng) and then of Meditaçao ; cross-cultural pentatonic scale friends. (As my dad used to remind me, there are only twelve notes, and the major pentatonic scale happens all over, see also Chinese dizi flutes etc., so it’s just a common and garden coincidence, but I still like the resemblance.)
I’m still playing the bassoon and still in a local amateur orchestra, for the moment (*circumstances unrelated to anything here may interfere). I’m also still very bad at it, but not as bad as I was. (I will never be more than a mediocre amateur as a performing musician, because I can never find the technical fingers/lips/tongue etc. parts of playing an instrument interesting at all. I like music because of melody and harmony and rhythm and timbre, not because I remembered to move my left hand just the right way or adjusted my embouchure just so! What does the one have to do with the other? I suppose it’s people who can find both interesting who become the real performers, good for them. Anyway, I kind of wish I’d taken up the bassoon years ago, because I enjoy it more than I ever liked playing the cello—I like having a part all to myself, I like the way breath vibrates into sound and the way it’s an instrument nobody notices but also penetrating and exciting. The other day we had our first rehearsal with a contrabassoon and sitting right next to the contrabassoonist was SO NEAT, I want to try playing one SO MUCH, it’s like a dinosaur that can sing in tune.
No new farmboy words today, although I did make a wrap-up post about watching the series (so far) here. Unrelatedly, A-Pei taught me a Chinese phrase for “the grass is always greener”: 外国的月亮比较圆, the moon is rounder abroad.
Discovered via YouTube, the architect Hamaguchi Miho’s Nakamura House. Unfortunately for my purposes she was too late for
senzenwomen, active after the war, but very interesting, and the house looks gorgeous on the inside (although Y rightly compared it to an elementary school gym on the outside, I have to say)—look at the high ceilings and the teal glass tiles and the light, and the wall of bookshelves (scroll down for some before/after renovation pictures). Both pretty and actually livable, which is far to seek.Photos: the usual, including an ex-bicycle and a castle.
Be safe and well.
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