LOST, so Lost

So yesterday we had professor Pilinovsky in our classroom discussing Russian Fairy Tales with us.  I coincidentally am taking her Fairy Tale class at the moment.  We however are going over the original Fairy Tales and different versions of them.

Translation is a difficult thing to do well.  Going from English to Spanish for example changes the meaning of what is originally meant in the Fairy Tale.  What I found really interesting about what professor Pilinovsky said about translation was that it got me thinking about who is allowed to fiddle with the translations from one language to another.  To fully understand the meaning of the work one needs to have grown up in that culture and environment so they truly understand what a small part of the work is referring to.  I grew up in America and I still don’t understand millions of things about our culture and our history.  I’m thinking that in order to be able to get every single pun, reference, joke, phrase and so on, you just have to be a genius because there is no way I can comprehend the world in its entirety. 

Anyways, translating works through different languages is difficult for even the best of scholars, I think, because even if one knows a language and its history and its culture extensively, they still have to factor in what the work is meant for.  Even to go so far as to think about who the target audience is, when it was written, in what circumstances it was written in, why it was written, who it was written by, etc. and the list goes on.  The translator has to make the decision of how to translate the work because every language is structured differently and it is important to understand that we will never be able to get the full meaning out of a translation because there are problems when it comes to trying to find the right word or phrase to substitute for a sentence that doesn’t translate fully into another language. 

The phrase “lost in translation” is an understatement.

Recent readings

For April 29, 2008

 

Doris Sommer touches from the very beginning on a very important point about learning another language.  Sommer writes, “The sociologists Alejandro Portes and Lingxin Hoa therefore recommended language maintenance-that is, a “selective acculturation” option that adds languages instead of subtracting them (910)-because forced forgetfulness and the corollary disrespect of parents cannot produce strong societies” (Sommer 4).  I really like what Sommer says here because language is a lot more important than people think.  Holding onto a native language as well as learning a new one helps to reinforce each other in many ways.  One such way for example is that of how the order of words are put in English compared to Spanish.  These organizational skills will help the student, or language learner of whatever language, to understand why a specific word comes before another and how it can be adjusted to form a different meaning in the sentence.

 

 

For May 1, 2008

 

Society is very difficult to analyze because of how diverse it is.  I didn’t realize until recently how complicated the meaning of a word can actually be for someone who immigrated into the United States of America.  Conversation is one of the most difficult forms of our culture to analyze because we constantly have new words being added to our slang as well as the dictionary.  Society plays a large role in determining the meaning of words and when it is appropriate to use that word.  Heidi Byrnes writes, “It may instead lie in lack of topical or sociopragmatic knowledge, in different social orientations, in different forms of discourse socialization or conversational styles, or in different assignments of roles” (Byrnes 59).  If I am to understand this quotation correctly then it means that language itself is the culture.  Without the culture you have no genuine language for its people.

Byrnes writes, “The process is not one of “acquiring” or coming to know the other language in native speaker-like perfection but one of mutually accomplishing conversation or, more broadly, of creating meaning” (Byrnes 59).  This is such a great quotation because it helps support the fact that if you truly want to learn a language you must immerse yourself into the culture.  In order to understand the jokes, slang and different concepts that a certain language has and practices one must live in that culture.  Even if someone lives in the culture for ten years they still don’t know everything because they weren’t raised in the culture so they don’t have the understanding of the background.

 

For May 6, 2008

 

Rebecca Moore Howard writes, “Part of my maturation as a scholar has been to learn that full citation in not actually a desideratum for professional writers; equally important is the appearance of autonomy, of having one’s “own” words and ideas” (Howard 53).  I really like what Howard says about scholars including herself.  I too thought that using the entire quotation was necessary but just in the past year I’ve learned that if you find the important portion of the quote and eliminate all the excess information your essay, or journal or whatever, turns out to flow much better together with your own words.  Most of the time it’s easier to get your point across with just using the needed parts of a long or short quotation. 

Howard writes, “Axelrod and Cooper then list three causes of plagiarism: ignorance of citation conventions, sloppy note-taking, and students’ “doubt[ing] their ability to write the paper by themselves”” (Howard 54).  Let’s face it.  We all doubt our abilities in writing someway or another and we all need to improve our writing someway or another.  What is important is that we try and if we fail we keep working at it until it is perfect.  Giving up and caving in to plagiarizing is a weak thing to do.  It may be the easiest.  But it nonetheless is the worst thing to do.  Howard explains that students sometimes have no confidence in themselves so they have to resort to stealing another persons work.  I must admit that I have and still have trouble writing essays because my mind wanders and I don’t think that some of my ideas are worth writing about.  I still write them down whether I like them or not.  And what truly helps me is to type up my essay and then print it our and correct it as I see fit.  This has helped me out so much because I am then able to see my work on that sheet of paper and I can mark down what I want to change, adjust or even take out.

Some Long Lost Blogs

For April 8, 2008

 

In Christine Farris and Chris Anson’s Under Construction, the useful piece of information that I found was the idea that teaching creates knowledge.  Farris and Anson write, “Increasingly, compositionists have more confidence in the recognition that teaching makes knowledge, and that practice, overdetermined as it is, continually calls into question the traditional purpose of theory-to explain unaccounted-for phenomena and solve new problems” (Farris; Anson 4).  I really like this quotation because when you teach you are in fact learning information yourself as well as teaching others the same or maybe even different information.  Teaching is the best way to know that you understand the material and it helps to know that there is always something to learn.

 

For April 10, 2008

 

I really like what Farris and Anson write on page 25 about how a teacher needs to know his/her material well enough to teach it or they will do more damage than good to a student.  Farris and Anson write, “…it recommends that effective teaching demands knowledge-possession-of the professional literature itself” (Farris; Anson 25).  Without understanding what we as teachers teach how are we going to be able to help our students who don’t understand?  Teaching a subject wrong is worse than not teaching at all.  It can actually mislead how students think and perform in their daily work and lives.  Learning something wrong is a very unfortunate thing because it is was the student will base their ideas and work around because they were taught it.  This can hurt their further learning processes because it can mess up how they will learn in the future. 

 

For April 15, 2008

 

In David G. Nicholls’ Introduction to Scholarship in Modern Languages and Literatures, I discovered something that I definitely never thought about in depth before.  I always thought that Aristotle and Socrates spoke in rhetorical terms and explained rhetoric to their students as well as other listeners.  But I never for some stupid reason thought that they actually had an official name for themselves.  They would be classified as Rhetors because they prepared their rhetoric and spoke it to their listeners.  I also really like the specific definition and idea of where the root of the word comes from that Nicholls gives us, “Rhetoric comes from the Ancient Greek root rhe, meaning “speak,” and the various forms of this root open onto multiple sites of rhetorical activity” (Nicholls 76).  His definition of this word clicked with my thinking about why we call it rhetoric. 

 

For April 17, 2008

 

In Thomas Mann’s The Oxford Guide To Library Research, I really liked the section that gives two specific databases to use when looking for material in a specific time period.  They are: America: History and Life and Historical Abstracts.  I didn’t realize until this section that there was a specific database that had the option of limiting down the search to a desired time period so that it is easier to find an article or journal or maybe a book that is exactly what I want.  I am definitely going to remember these databases so that when the time comes I can use them. 

 

For April 22, 2008

 

In David G. Nicholls’ Introduction to Scholarship in Modern Languages and Literatures, he discusses the importance of culture and social meanings to literature.  Nicholls writes, “Several important studies view this subject though the lenses of particular genres, exploring their social and cultural meanings as well as the dynamics of their receptions” (Nicholls 186).  I really like what he says here because it is true that culture influences what we write and the way we write.  Our experiences throughout life help to shape the way we view the world around us.  Also I like how he emphasizes that one needs to look at literature through the specific genre it is written in as well as how it was written by the author.

Hello everyone

Hi everyone.  My name is Leontine Armstrong and I am working on my Master’s Degree in English Literature at CSUSB.  I am a Substitute Teacher and one day I want to be a permanent high school English teacher.  I love poetry and stories and I think the reason I do is because I was raised with books surrounding me at every turn at both school and home.  My parents would read me stories and I would read them stories as well as to my siblings.  English is a very important part of my life and I don’t know what I’d do without all that I have learned and read.

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