In monkish company

[mistress_elaine]

I have lots more Turkey photos to share with you, but as you all know, I like a bit of variety. It suddenly occurred to me that I never finished uploading my old Burma photos. I would like to have some closure on that score (Eru knows I have enough *other* old travel photos waiting to be posted here...), so here, to kick off the Bagan series (Bagan

Comments

[taotianone]

wow! a visual feast. thank you.

'intermittent' is a perfect description of my internet usage. nevertheless, your offerings on the electronic buffet table have been much enjoyed. the 'meme' entry was one i hadn't seen previously, and although i went there for the photo, the text was quite interesting. it turns out that you're not a native of china, raised in england, educated at cambridge, and now living in holland. [perhaps i'd make a better watson than holmes.]

sorry about the lack of capitals. it's just that i don't type very well and i discovered i could do it twice as fast if i didn't use the upper case. i don't like spell-check either, so i spell them as i remember them: right, wrong, or in between. like most americans, i have flirted with the study of several languages without developing any real profeciency in any of them. however, when abroad i always try to use the local language to the best of my ability. i think most people you meet appreciate the fact that you at least try to respect your status as a guest in their country.

once in paris, i was having trouble explaining something to a frenchman. i finally said, "pardonez-moi, ma francaise et tres mal." he replied in perfect english, "oh, no. your french isn't actually evil, it's just very bad." we had a good laugh over that.

i would tell you, by the way, that you're very pretty. but i'm sure you're already well aware of it. thanks for the photographs.

[mistress_elaine]

You're welcome! I'm glad you enjoyed the pics and the meme.

it turns out that you're not a native of china, raised in england, educated at cambridge, and now living in holland.

Tee hee. No. You could be forgiven for thinking so, though. :-)

sorry about the lack of capitals.

Don't worry about that. I'm getting used to receiving uncapitalised comments; as I mentioned in the meme, I have a staggering number of LJ friends who don't use capitals. I'm learning to come to grips with it. I'll draw the line at bad grammar, bad punctuation and chat speak, though. I'll never add anyone who posts in unpunctuated chat speak. Thankfully, I seem to attract mostly highly articulate people like yourself. :-)

I totally agree with you on at least trying to communicate with the locals in their language. Even if you butcher their language, you're at least making an effort, right? It seems such an obvious token of respect to me that I was quite shocked recently to see that it took K nearly three weeks to learn how to say "Hello" in Turkish, and that she never got beyond that. But then K isn't the most sociable person, I guess.

i would tell you, by the way, that you're very pretty. but i'm sure you're already well aware of it.

Thank you very much, but I'm far from pretty. Sure, I have good days, but I also have an astonishing number of truly bad/evil photos of myself. K managed to take quite a few of them in Turkey, despite being a pretty accomplished photographer. In general, I feel much more at behind the camera than in front of it. :-)

[mistress_elaine]

Obviously, that last line should have read, "much more at ease behind the camera".

[taotianone]

actually, i was comfortable without your correction; i feel much more behind the camera myself.

i've been working at translating some 18th century french documents, handwritten by a priest. he used no punctuation, and it sometimes makes it easier to recast his meaning in modern english without having to deal with grammatical niceties.

[mistress_elaine]

Heh. Funny. :-)

The greatest linguistic challenge I've ever had (other than having to serve as a Chinese-Romanian interpreter when both my Chinese and my Romanian were a bit rusty) was translating unpunctuated Taoist texts from classical Chinese into Dutch. Translating classical Chinese is hard enough without it being full of obscure Taoist jargon, but what really gave me trouble was the lack of punctuation. See, in classical Chinese many words can be used as nouns, verbs and adjectives, depending on their position in the sentence. However, when you have no idea where a sentence begins or ends, it's very hard to determine whether something is a noun, verb or adjective, whether it's the subject or the object, etc. I was quite bad at it. I dropped the subject after a few weeks and took an English lit class instead. :-)

Why are you translating eighteenth-century French documents, if I may ask? Sounds interesting...

[taotianone]

to call what you do and what i do by the same term, translation, is to abuse the word. i couldn't do what you do on my very best day.

i'm preparing an outdoor exhibit concerning the history of the oldest cemetery in my state, and including some of the priests' entries concerning a few of those they buried. the 18th century records are all in french and generally lack punctuation. in some ways, this makes it easier to give the sense of the entry in a brief statement in colloquial english.

[mistress_elaine]

An old cemetery? Now that sounds interesting. I love old cemeteries.

Good luck with the preparations for the exhibition. Should you ever run into any problems translating these documents, I have a cousin who is a French translator. Just so as you know.

[taotianone]

thank you, that's a very gracious offer. in general, the priests' entries were short, simple, and easy to translate -- but very interesting. for example:

"On September 20th [1797] was buried in the cemetery of Ste. Genevieve, the body of a young Indian girl, daughter of the Great Chief of the Peorias, eight years of age.

In witness whereof I sign, J. Maxwell, Parish Priest"

the last photo in my lj is in the cemetery, what i call our 'rosetta stone.' the same young girl has two inscriptions, one in french, one in english.

[mistress_elaine]

You're right, that doesn't look too hard to translate. I just hope for your sake that the old handwriting in the priests' records is decipherable. I tend to find it very hard to decipher old handwriting myself. :-)

I take it that by "the last photo in your LJ" you mean the 19 May one, right? That looks pretty. I'd be interested to see more pictures of the cemetery, if you have any.

[taotianone]

yes, the may 19th. i'll see if i can get some other cemetery pics uploaded. the handwriting is always a problem at first, and then, suddenly, it makes sense...after you've become accustomed to the particular hand at hand.