lifestyle – Page 10 – don't confuse the narrator

the real thing

Browsing the online sales pages, I came across this:

I’m glad the description warns me that it is an imitation. But I would rather like to know what a real Mongolian cushion looks like.

On the other hand, years ago, an American colleague assured me that faux pas was pronounced “fox paw”. So perhaps this cushion is made from the fur of the Faux Mongolian – a relative of the Siberian Fox, I suppose, but adapted to a grassier terrain if the colour is anything to go by.

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.

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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on target

I’m not at all sure that I like targeted ads and automatic sign-ups to mailing lists when you buy from a website; I may have nothing to hide, but I don’t like the idea of my emails being read and of organisations – public or private – keeping tabs on me.

Sometimes the ads and mail outs are so wildly off-course that they are funny, but on occasions it’s uncanny how well they seem to know you. An email in my inbox this morning makes me suspect that Big Brother is watching me personally:

amazon targeted mail ("as you've shown an interest in books...")

It’s absolutely true: I have “shown an interest in books.”

I don’t think that can possibly be true of a few million other people whose email addresses are on record with Amazon, can it?

bees and birds

Last week I wrote a post – summing up – in which I did a quick round up of some of my recent writing activities. I think I hoped to give the impression that I was a real busy bee.

But not every insect that fumbles the flowers is a bee.