Discussion today was fantastic, by the way. Here are the topics from the agenda we maybe didn't get to go really in-depth with, and my explanation of a couple of them below.
Translating Japanese
• Agency: Emphasis on verbs and adjectives rather than subjects. p 145.
Global Market
• "Diplomat" electronic translation, p 8-10
• Homogeneity and translation: Mass culture, colonial/neocolonial capitalism
• "Transnationally translatable monoculture", p 3
• Babel stories, p 7-9
• Summary, p 11-12
• Formation of a mass cultural object [think too of the "mass culture" described later on in Just a Couple of Days!]
Fake Farsi
• Riffing and diggability
• Linguistic determinism, p 44
• Relationship to Grammar Games p 94
• Stopping all language but poetry [link to Q'uranic recitation, if applicable: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6ZNPSHnqGk ]
• What does Shiloh think?
• Exile and cultural identity p 139; politics of choosing a language in Global Market, p 5
Clockwork Orange
• Discernability of words
• What's the point of slang?
• Why Russian?
What does Shiloh think about the Fake Farsi article?
Well, this wasn't the sole article that made me want to teach this class; reading A Clockwork Orange over the summer actually made me completely and utterly thrilled about the potential that playing with language has in both a creative context and with linguistic implications—like why Anthony Burgess chose to use anglicized Russian as the slang counterpart to the youth subculture, and what that might say about the culture. Do I know for sure? No, not at all, but it's fun to speculate, and I'd love to see or hear thoughts along those lines [especially for those of you who might know something about Soviet culture in 1962 when the book had its first copyright]. I think the Fake Farsi article has valid points—you can fool someone who doesn't know the language well by mimicking the sound contours of a language, and for a concrete example, babies do this when they start to babble. They have spent their lives up to that point listening to the particular sounds, both phonemic and prosodic, of their native language, and when they begin to babble, they like to play with sounds that they have heard, possibly in an effort to open more lines of communication. It's clearly not the language and some would argue that it isn't a language at all, but it's the beginnings of one.
In addition to that, the Fake Farsi continues with the point that we've spent a lot of time discussing, that of the question of culture and language being related. Sometimes it helps to look at things from a lot of different angles.
Possibly my favorite article dealing with topics of translation is to be read next week, the one with Queer Caribbean Localities in its title. It was one of those that really brought home some of the realities of translating and some of the real difficulties in doing so, in particular building a character with particular traits [as it were]. As always, open-ended speculation is always welcome.
Some of the words in Clockwork Orange [first two pages] appropriated from Russian, with their meanings intact:
• horrorshow: хорошо, khorosho, good
• glazzies: глаз, glaz, eye
• rot: рот, rot, mouth
• moloko: молоко, moloko, milk
• droog: друг, droog, friend
• mesto: место, mesto, place
• skorry: скоро, skora, quickly
• starry: старый, staryih, old
• rassoodock[s]: рассудок, rassudok; reason, mind
• raz: раз, raz, time
• veshch: вещь, veshch, thing
• Bog: бог, bog, God
• mozg: мозг, mozg, brain
• peet[ing]: петь, peet', to sing
• deng: денг, deng, money
• vidd[y/ing]: видеть, videt', to see
• veck: человек, chyelovek, man
• ptitsa: птица, ptitsa, bird [i.e., girl]
• tolchok: толчок, tolchok; hit, impact
• kartoffel: картофель, kartofel', potato
• smeck[ing/ed]: смех, smekh, laugh
• rooker: рук, ruk, hand
• litso: лицо, litso, face
• litsa: лица, litsa, person
• pletcho: плечо, plecho, shoulder
For the most part, they've just been phonetically rendered and made to sound vaguely English in the same [or similar] meanings to what they have in Russian, even if they're used in the slangy kind of way; for instance, the usage of "ptitsa" isn't in the idea of flying birds but is in the English slang of "bird" meaning "girl". Other slang you might see is rhyming slang [see "appy polly loggys" for apologies, for instance]. The main point of reading this chapter from Clockwork Orange was to see how untranslated language could be manipulated in a creative way and what effect it would have on the literature in question—this could also be applied to novels with, say, Spanish sprinkled throughout. Thoughts?
A link to a dictionary of the slang used in Clockwork Orange: http://www.soomka.com/nadsat.html
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Before one summer my friend was reading a Clockwork Orange and she was describing it to me. What she told me was that "when you first start reading it, it's difficult to understand and you feel like putting it down after the first page, but after that first page you can't put it down." So i picked it up and it is one of the things that really got me interested in language and is what inspired me to do a final project on slang. I loved how Burgess was able to create this slang that went so well with the society he showed us in his story. It was sooo cool for me to find out that he used Russian and other languages to create his slang.
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