The Not Happy Thread

For the last, dunno, thirteen years or so, we've had "Ladies Only" cars on every single train in the country. Some of them are rush hours only, others are all day, depends on the line, but yes, this "first-world" country had such a problem with sexual assault that they had to give the women a safe space.

From a 2017 article:

(emphasis mine)

ETA: An even more in-depth article from Al-Jazeera, girls as young as ten being groped beneath their underwear (yes, I know that a crime is a crime, but holy hell) by men on the train:

Sexual assault in Japan: 'Every girl was a victim'

 

Yeah over here we have people that take justice into their own hands when they catch a groper of a young girl.

http://www.revelist.com/viral/brooklyn-pedophile-beat-up/5491

 

Holy shit... that's fucked up.

I spent a couple of weeks in London two years ago on business, and I traveled the Underground a lot on my own around the city, also during the rush hour when the trains were packed, and I was surprised how polite and considerate everyone was. I think I expected something worse, being used to the Underground in Helsinki.

 

I had a gun pulled on me on the tube. Twenty years ago, eye to eye, surround of silence. When he pulled the trigger a tiny flame came out the end of the barrel. He smiled, a squeak heard from my back end [hole], the whole carriage sighed.

I've framed the encounter in literature twice now and each draft I am bolder.

Anyway, I'm not happy because of work. Made this foray into agriculture three years ago and sometimes colleagues arn't so bright, it's very wearing. Need to get back to my fags and fops, my middle classes, too long at the underbelly-face

 

El Cokks by JR Wreybeo

Then many fleet of the cocks sailed in the eyeline.

'Hey you, the cocks, make way to porto for El Gordo to enter harbour of San Sebastian,' said Don Banana. He was standed at the wheel of his vessel, The Cock of Spain.

Little cocks spying the great cocks of Don Banana raised the blue cock sails and framed in a sunset of delightfulness, a big the cock, burnished and proud-natured, swelled, her anchors flung away like ribbons to the sputum.

 

When translating or interpreting* into English you translate it to what the norm would be in English. There are exceptions in Spanish when there is a tight need to differentiate, but that aside, my arm hurts is interpreted into Spanish as el brazo me duele, which is literally the arm hurts me.

*In my world the two words are not synonyms. Interpreting is live speech, translation is written documents.

 

I remember reading Umberto Eco's book on translation (he did a lot of the translation on his own novels). He said that translation is not about words, it is bout meanings, and if you miss that then you have failed as a translator. Then the poor bugger died, that is sad, but it comes to us all one day, that final veil drawing over your finite breath. But apparently the earth is hollow and there is an inner earth we can go to, or God, or some bullshit.

 

Interpretation is speech to speech, but speech to text is translation, right? Been a while...

 

Ugghh... I hate myself.

Feelings are being caught. Slowly, but they're there. What do you expect to happen when you talk to someone all day and see them every night? I mean, I don't want a serious relationship.. I don't! But I don't really want to see other people either. That doesn't make sense...

Anyway. We went to dinner last night and he brought up how we both agreed this would be a short term thing and how he doesn't understand why people can't just hang out and enjoy each other's company without turning it into more than it needs to be.. Yup. Hurt my heart a little bit. I don't know what I expected. But it still hurt.

And it just confirms to me that he won't stick around. Which is fine, I guess.. I knew it wouldn't last. I just.. I thought maybe we could..

Ugh, I hate being me.

 

I think you're making a mistake by thinking that "being me" is an immutable state.

You can change. You can be smarter. You don't HAVE to rush from one disaster to another.

But right now? Sweet Jesus, girl, BE SINGLE!

You made solemn vows that your last relationship would last forever. Instead, you've left it after, what, two years? Take some damn time to figure out what went wrong, to mourn the relationship you lost, to show respect of some sort to the vows you've chosen to break. (I'm not saying you shouldn't have left him, but, damn, you were MARRIED to him. MARRIED.)

Figure out who you are without a man. Be single, be still, meditate or do therapy or get into a really rigorous exercise program or go back to school or all of the above.

You don't have to be the same person for your whole life, and if you hate being that person then, yeah, change.

Wanting to jump back into another serious relationship with the first guy you stumble across? That's not changing. That's the same thing. So if you don't like it, don't do it.

 

Yep - just remember what Uncle Albert said: "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

 

Speech to text is transcription, which may or may not be followed by translation, depending on the needs of the end client.

 

Yes, transcription is writing it down in the original language. Hearing it in Language A and directly writing it in Language B is not something I would ever do, so I don't know what to call that, really. Doing what you mention deletes the original-language content and would leave the client having to assume that what I gave in the target language is correct to the original. This is not a standard format in which people of my ilk would render such a product. You write it down in its original language and then you translate it (assuming that need is present), giving the results side-by-side, so that the client has both in order to double-check the results, if needs be.

Case in point: Over in the In Which They Said What? thread I finally answered @NoGoodNobu with regard to how A Clockwork Orange is translated into Russian, given that the original work in English is rife with Russian words used as slang. When I did a side-by side comparison of the two translations I found, I was utterly floored at the HUGE, SHOCKING liberties taken by both translators in rendering that work into Russian. Never mind how the Russian was dealt with, in both versions Alex sounds like the Russian version of an effete nob educated at Cambridge. King's College, even. And that's ridiculous because like any language, Russian most certainly has its "street ruffian" register as well. The entire tone of the work has been bleached to a bone-white.

 

@Lea`Brooks
Sounds like playing with fire, and someone is going to burn themselves.
Better be careful their lady, or your going to get hurt again. Not ideal.

Be careful, and watch out for #1 always. Be safe and don't invest too
much into things like that right now.

Take it easy.

 

Hard to answer the why of it, but I can certainly see the conundrum it would have presented. Russians do take their literary fictions very, very, very, seriously. Either the translators simply felt beholden to bring the language up to a certain "acceptable level", or yes, acknowledging the presence of "bad" street Russian (by simply using it in the novel) would have been an issue, even if it were being used to paint Westerners in a poor light.

 

I'm new, but I find that the best way to make new friends is to find something that you can be mutually annoyed about. So here is where I will air my dirty laundry.

I'm finding it hard to find a writing group to join in Birmingham, UK. I worked on the literature festival here a couple of years ago, and one of the main things I found was just how elite the community was. I'm finding the same thing just looking for a group of people to sit down with and talk through ideas.

Groups I've found online generally come with a warning. 'Maybe don't come if you're a beginner'. And I'm not a beginner, I edit, proof read and write for a living. Maybe I just want to go to something that's a little more inclusive, or maybe I'm just being soft and I should go anyway.

 

That's reassuring. It would be great to make a few friends that are as in to writing as I am. I seem to be surrounded by people who really want to be writers, but none of them ever actually write, and I don't want to be one of those people who says that they wish they'd written that novel.

 

Oh good, Microsoft just unveiled its new console: 'X-Box One X'. Am I excited? Eh, not really because (1) I've way too many consoles as it is, (2) it feels like I just BOUGHT the X-Box One (got it around the time the first 'State of Decay' was released), and (3) I'm already planning on getting the Nintendo Switch, and now this? What's next, the PS5 is also announced? I can't keep up with the videogame industry anymore... They're going too fast...

 

I've never seen, "don't come if you are a beginner" online. But re critique groups in general, you have to find one where you begin to learn who gives good critique and which people to pay little attention to. That's a tad easier in an in-person group, (smaller group to get to know), and harder online where everyone has an opinion.

I lucked out with my critique group. I did try four other critique groups. I wanted lots of feedback. In the end, only one of the groups was worth sticking with but I still learned from the other four. I don't post much online for critique for the very reason it's hard to know whose advice to take. I know a few people, between this forum and another writers' forum that I can trust to give good critique. What works to find them is to read everyone's critiques. You'll begin to get a feel for which people know what they are talking about.

If you do that, online critique can be very useful.