Tuesday, 17 November 2009
Sunday, 15 November 2009
Monday, 9 November 2009
Playing with Forvo
Plucked by
ilaria
at
18:00
0
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Labels: on speaking terms
Sunday, 8 November 2009
Familiar and unfamiliar through Alice's eyes
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass (1871/1982, p.127)
Alice’s adventures through the looking glass begin with a series of considerations that are based on her experience of a reality which is familiar to her. Alice applies this experience to something that is unfamiliar, the world beyond the mirror, and in doing so she wonders whether in this unknown world she may be able to find familiar things. Soon, however, she realises that the room in the mirror may not be quite the same, it “may be only pretence”. Then the mirror acquires a gas-like texture and allows Alice to walk through. Once that solidity is overcome, the mirror indeed shows a reality that is only superficially specular and in which the established order is subverted. Alice at the beginning still retains some of her mental categories and what she first sees in the room beyond the mirror is a mixture of familiar objects and oddities, like pictures apparently alive or a grinning clock. Soon however she starts interacting with all sort of unfamiliar characters as if their existence was nothing to wonder at, and treating them as part of her familiar categories.
Familiarity and unfamiliarity are two categories connected by the “mirror” of translation, which stops reflecting a familiar image and allows the translator to walk into the unfamiliar. Initially reflecting a familiar environment, the mirror slowly reveals the unfamiliar, and the translator begins her adventure into an unknown territory. This transformation is not, however, performed by the mirror. This latter reflects (and sometimes hides) the unfamiliar, but the “activator” of such process is the person who is willing to cross over into the unfamiliar and who is able to “see” the unfamiliar behind. Alice perceives the unfamiliar behind the mirror; her specific way of seeing it gives shape to a series of adventures that are her own. Familiarity and unfamiliarity thus become two subjective categories which furthermore tend to change along with Alice/the translator's awareness of both. Considering their subjectivity, it should come to no surprise, then, that 2 translations of the same source text show a different outcome. And yet, their quality is often assessed without considering the above mentioned subjectivity, let alone their (historical) context. Which is, indeed, rather awkward.
Plucked by
ilaria
at
17:35
2
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Labels: a whiff of theory
Monday, 26 October 2009
"Ici on parle française"...
Plucked by
ilaria
at
09:26
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Labels: daily snapshots, edit this
Wednesday, 21 October 2009
The bizarre relationship cats have with autumn

Plucked by
ilaria
at
18:01
6
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Labels: everybody wants to be a cat
Tuesday, 20 October 2009
Not really
| What American accent do you have? Your Result: Philadelphia & Your accent is as Philadelphian as a cheesesteak! If you're not from Philadelphia, then you're from someplace near there like south Jersey, Baltimore, or Wilmington. if you've ever journeyed to some far off place where people don't know that Philly has an accent, someone may have thought you talked a little weird even though they didn't have a clue what accent it was they heard. | |
| The Northeast | & |
| The Inland North | & |
| The South | & |
| The Midland | & |
| Boston | & |
| North Central | & |
| The West | & |
| What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz | |
Plucked by
ilaria
at
10:04
2
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Tuesday, 13 October 2009
Localising (more or less) wines
Plucked by
ilaria
at
16:52
4
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Labels: translation mon amour




