Christmas – Page 4 – don't confuse the narrator

winter sunshine

This was not what I expected to find when I went for a walk today:

It is, however, a useful reminder that some blog readers are enjoying glorious summer sunshine today. For others, whether they donned their best bikinis to eat their Christmas lunch al fresco, or wrapped up warm alongside a roaring fire while a blizzard swirled outside, it is presumably already the middle of the night and Christmas is all over, while I still haven’t finished cooking lunch.

There is no doubt some moral to be drawn from all this. Perhaps it’s a reminder that we shouldn’t assume everyone else is seeing things the way we do – that we are all in different places emotionally and physically, and our perspectives will differ accordingly; perhaps it’s a reminder that “Old Time is still a-flying”; or perhaps it’s simply a reminder that even in the middle of winter there are bright spots we can focus on.

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Edited December 28th to include additional paragraph:

The time stamp on the original blog post would suggest that I was at my computer writing rather than watching the Queen address the nation in her Christmas Day speech. Apparently, though, her message reached out, carried on the loyal air, to influence what I wrote. For others who weren’t watching her and who have avoided reading reports of the speech, I understand that she closed with the reassurance that, “even in the unlikeliest of places hope can still be found,” – a sentiment with which I must agree.

unconsidered trifles and other seasonal fayre

Today is the shortest day, but that doesn’t mean there is any less to do than usual, so rather than try and write a well-planned single-theme post, I am going to gather together a whole host of notes I’ve jotted down over the last few weeks, none of which is really worthy of more than a few lines:

Last week, I posted about the hippo at the manger; since then, it’s been pointed out to me that it isn’t really so out-of-line in these days of modern nativities, and perhaps if I’d seen the lobster scene from Love Actually I might have been less surprised.

The hippos weren’t the only things to catch my eye at the local exhibition, though; there was a Russian nativity scene that had me pondering:

Does Mary really bring forth an angel, a donkey and the Baby Jesus?
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more than words

I’ve been thinking a lot about translation recently. In particular I’ve been considering what happens to a poem that changes form or other details in transposition to another language, and when it ceases to be a translation and instead should be considered an original work: the point at which it becomes a poem inspired by another work, rather than an attempt to render the source in a different language.

This is a complex question, but not the only complex question to occur when considering translation.

In a recent discussion with some translator colleagues, we considered the problems arising when a central symbol means little in the target culture.
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groundhog day?

In the UK, when Christmas falls at a weekend, there are compensatory holidays; this means that if you invite friends over for Boxing Day, you need to be absolutely sure they all turn up on the same day.

This year, with the 25th falling neatly on a Wednesday, there was no potential confusion: Boxing Day was the day after Christmas, it was Thursday, December 26th, it was St Stephen’s Day, and no one was likely to dispute that.

Except Amazon, it seems, whose constant messages flood my inbox:

"Today's Boxing Day deals" screenshot — The Twelve Days of Boxing Day?

vegetarian options

Hallowe’en and Bonfire Night are long gone, Remembrance Day is here, and all the supermarket and lifestyle magazines are already looking ahead to Christmas. I am less than interested in the recipes for fish, flesh and fowl, so am glad to see that the latest Waitrose weekly is catering for the vegetarians among us: