My response is informed by two things. First, the course description, and second, the hope that our feedback to one another's work will be a critical, well informed, and above all, useful to the writer and the rest of the workshop.
The choice to include an English translation of the image text may be peripheral to your intention and the piece as a whole, it does offer a way to _discuss_ the piece as a whole. Since literal translation is not particularly stable, there's a huge opportunity for play between meanings. When I look at the image text and the text text, I wonder about everything that's been left out. Using recognizable and 'reasonable' analogs makes one or the other set redundant--the one says nothing the other one doesn't. The choice of words that _can_ be translated without ambiguity is a conservative use of language, in that you preserve a clear, recognizable correspondence between not only the words but between the piece and it's audience. The other half of the problem lies in knowing we can never know every connotations of a word. We can never escape the other meanings, and whatever we write is never what it seems. For instance, did you know La Línea is an enforcer unit of the Juárez Cartel? I didn't until I took every word of your piece and scoured for unexpected meanings.
How right you are. From the stillness of words comes literature that moves us.
ReplyDeleteLovely Liu!
ReplyDeleteMy response is informed by two things. First, the course description, and second, the hope that our feedback to one another's work will be a critical, well informed, and above all, useful to the writer and the rest of the workshop.
ReplyDeleteThe choice to include an English translation of the image text may be peripheral to your intention and the piece as a whole, it does offer a way to _discuss_ the piece as a whole. Since literal translation is not particularly stable, there's a huge opportunity for play between meanings. When I look at the image text and the text text, I wonder about everything that's been left out. Using recognizable and 'reasonable' analogs makes one or the other set redundant--the one says nothing the other one doesn't. The choice of words that _can_ be translated without ambiguity is a conservative use of language, in that you preserve a clear, recognizable correspondence between not only the words but between the piece and it's audience. The other half of the problem lies in knowing we can never know every connotations of a word. We can never escape the other meanings, and whatever we write is never what it seems. For instance, did you know La Línea is an enforcer unit of the Juárez Cartel? I didn't until I took every word of your piece and scoured for unexpected meanings.
Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images