Yesterday at Hay 1. Two slices of toast at home before I left and not a minute throughout the day to snatch a bite until dinner at 20.30; diminishing blood sugar levels a powerful stimulant to harsh critical reactions.
Edward St Aubyn. Famous for Melrose trilogy of novels. One of VR's favourite stylists. Has lived a tortured life and novels reflect this. Good laconic interviewee, very much in the English style.
Translation. Huge project aimed at pointing out how differences in languages and difficulties in translation of philosophy source books, etc, lead to "foreign" versions of such philosophies. Eg: "justice" in English is thought to embody such ideas as fairness, whereas in France same word is concerned with punishment and penalties. Demanding stuff but worth it.
WW1 novels by two young women (Shamsie/Young), one from Pakistan, the other English, shockingly badly served by young, inadequate, rambling interlocutor from British Council. He should have been horse-whipped and fed to ravening pigs.
Massive civil engineering projects involving tunnelling. Including underground railway station, built only 34 meters away from Big Ben in London's Crossrail project. A "high profile project" given that Big Ben already tilts a few millimeters out of vertical (which I didn't know). All ended happily; our legislators were not rained on by falling bell.
Bercow (Speaker of House of Commons). A complete tennis nut has published his choice: Twenty Best Male Tennis Players ever. Equally tennis-nut audience.
No lunch break listed in the program? What about tea? (Should tea be capitalized here?) Sounds as though you neglected your lower appetite in favor of your upper, but the reviews don't seem all that harsh.
ReplyDeleteI've wondered about difficulties with translation, mostly in poetry, and said so in my blog somewhere, long ago...ah...it's at:
http://mykwerks.wordpress.com/2012/02/04/hello-wislawa/
Big Ben's tower tilts a few mm's?.....engineers cannot just say "It's perfectly plumb!" can they? Maybe an inclinometer reading in decimal form would have freed the tunnelers to proceed in a carefree manner, ignoring the more robust lichen growth on the north face of the masonry.
MikeM: No tea (ror even Tea) either. Became wobbly and tetchy.
ReplyDeleteTranslation becomes even more important when what's translated rules our lives. These days the Welsh are self-governing: new legislation is written in parallel in English and Welsh for obvious reasons: for it to be translated from English to Welsh would deprive people of self-governing identity.