Look up the words you know

When translating a text, the unknown words are not something we should fear.

It is the known words that we should fear.

'Known' are the words we have been exposed to, the words that we have looked up in the dictionary at some point, the words that we think we know what they mean.

So, why should we pay particular attention to them? 

Because we think we know what they mean.

We are not sure.

Moreover, we may be familiar with one particular sense of the word. Yet, in the text we are translating, the word may appear in a different sense. Or the word may be a false friend with a word in our language; if we use it the wrong way, we make a terrible mistake.

Take the word 'sycophantically'. It derives from a Greek word, so you may think “okay, this is a known word, let’s by-pass the dictionary and use the Greek word in question". Stop! You’re making a terrible mistake! 'Sycophantically' in English has a totally different meaning. In fact, it means 'flatteringly' whereas the corresponding Greek word means 'slanderous'. That’s one of the reasons us translators should be paying extreme attention to what we are doing, since it is not always clear from the context that we are making a mistake. Be careful!

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Czech… and the city

According to Paul Knox (1995), the city offers an immense variety of opportunities. Look how he quotes Fischer citing ‘the reaction of a ‘refugee’ New Yorker living in Vermont: 

I kept hearing this tempting ad for a Czechoslovakian restaurant… When the ad went on to say that this particular place had been chosen by the critic of the Times out of all the Czech restaurants in New York as the very best, I could have broken down and cried. We hardly get a choice of doughnut stands in Vermont; New Yorkers idly pick and choose among Czech restaurants.

This is how I want to live. To be able to pick and choose among all the interesting things the city has to offer. 

By the way, there are 2 Czech restaurants in Athens (I have been in both), 16 French, 15 Indian, 4 Spanish, 159 Italian, 41 Chinese, 5 African, and 25 Japanese-Sushi restaurants (according to ask4food.gr).

Life in the cities is quite stimulating, isn’t it?

References

Knox, Paul. Urban Social Geography. An Introduction. Third Edition. 1995. Essex: Longman. 158-159.

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The easy way of writing

I have been dreaming about becoming a writer since I was a child, and I used to write stories very often.

Yet I had a very sadistic view about writing: that writing should flow naturally out of you. That you shouldn’t fret about it, or else you were not a ‘true’ writer. If you put any effort whatsoever, you didn’t have much talent as a writer. These were my views back then.

Anything that would make my writing life easier, I regarded as ‘cheating’.

Now I embrace anything that can help me write more and better.

One book that has helped me a lot is What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter. The following writing sketches are inspired from this excellent book and its instructions.

The book advises to practise writing opening lines for imaginary novels just to get the knack of it.

The following pairs are based on opposite ideas to make it easier. And it is easier because now I am writing with a solid, concrete purpose:

PAIRS OF SENTENCES TO BEGIN A NOVEL

BIRTH

A new baby exactly at the beginning of the day, cracking alive together with the crack of dawn, can bring nothing but optimism to our black, shabby world. 

DEATH

A low moaning, together with the cry of a bird, and the shadow of a blackbird, marked his last moments of mortal sorrow. 

MOTHER

She cast her eyes down the small body, and found herself. 

DAUGHTER

A twig made a chirping sound –or was it a bird?– as Karen moved towards her mother’s table at St Tropez. 

RICH

Donna’s idea of breakfast consisted beaches, sea, and at least five of her friends. 

POOR

He looked down at his navel, and back in the mirror, he touched briefly his eyebrows, his mouth, his chest, and only then did he realise he was completely, absolutely, terribly hungry.

Do you think that these opening lines would make interesting novels?

What could be happening in terms of plot?

What about the characters these openings evoke?

Would you like to write your own opening lines? It is so easy!

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The city now and then

Whenever I go to the country I feel I somehow miss the city. The city has so much to offer. It is a pity that we all seem to hate the city. 

The night before I left for the country I was looking at a very interesting book, Paul Knox’s Urban Social Geography, reading about the attitudes of people towards the city.

People generally believe that they would live better in the country than in the city. Nevertheless, there was something that brought them to the city in the first place.

Do people really ignore the opportunities that exist in cities? Knox mentions Baudelaire, pointing out that the diversity people experience in the city can lead to change in a cultural way. Remember how important the cities have been throughout history when it comes to cultural change: it is precisely because cities embrace difference; it’s in the cities that we have the chance to meet new people every day.

How important cultural change is, and yet we forget. Nothing can easily begin in the country. Everything begins in the cities. Everything began in the ancient ones. 

I visited Ancient Messene during my holidays. This is a highly preserved site of the ancient city, with a complete stadium, various temples, and a theatre. Crammed up, this little ‘city centre’ evoked the lost era very clearly, and at the same time it was relatively easy for me to picture exactly how life could have been there.

It was the epitome of city ruins, to me. Not segmented like ancient Athens. It is all there for us to see…

References 

Knox, Paul. Urban Social Geography. An Introduction. Third Edition. 1995. Essex: Longman.

Thanks very much for reading.

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