Most spam comments are pretty straightforward (sex sex sex sex nasty sex sex!). But every once in a while they get strangely creative. So today’s medal of honor for spam comment wackness goes to:
When I have left the fine girl on heart it was very bad, even would visit thoughts on that what to leave in other world, did not know, that to me to do further without it. But I was helped by the Internet, I long wandered on it and on eyes one site which has cheered at once me up and all has got to me as that by itself has seen reason, can and still to someone will help [Kelley’s note: followed here by the url of a porn website… ]
— a spam comment recently left in my comment queue
Is it just me, or is this oddly… hypnotic? Do you glimpse, as I do, some mad story peering through the cracks in that tangled string of words? Or is it just that had I too much wine last night and not enough tea so far this morning? Hmm, that might be it…
Perhaps it is because I am a storyteller that I insist on trying to find meaning in, well, everything, even some jumbled babel fish words. Of course automated translations are pretty unsuccessful — translation and interpretation are not simple word-for-word exchanges, that’s not how language works.
I remember being absolutely gobsmacked as a child to learn that some languages didn’t have words for things we have words for in English. I had always assumed that languages all had the same number and type of words in them, but that those Other People’s words were funny-sounding and spelled weird. My native language was so engrained into me at the molecular level that I literally couldn’t understand that other languages were differently structured, used different grammar, defined the world in fundamentally different ways.
The day I finally, really got it, it felt like the top of my head turned inside out. I felt that again thirty years later, learning American Sign Language with its spatial grammar and ability to particularize classifiers to meet a variety of needs, rather than having “a sign for every English word.” We drove our teachers nuts the first year or so asking What’s the sign for crimson? What’s the sign for trapeze? What’s the sign for mansion? while the patient look glazed over their faces and they tried once again to make us understand that it’s not like English.
Language is not a vehicle. It’s not like driving on the left versus driving on the right, where the whole experience is really weird but underneath it all the cars all work the same way. It’s not like a currency exchange, where you give dollars and get back lira… we should never assume that there’s equivalency in our different languages, that everyone has some word that means the exact same thing to them that our word means to us. Language is… so much more. How fascinating to see human experience through the lenses of different languages and therefore different meanings, different shadings, different worlds…
Fortunately, Babel Fish is not the only option these days. I use a site I really enjoy, WordReference.com, which I like because it’s a dictionary site, not a translation site. But translations are available — it’s just that you have to dip into the forums and interact with a human being to get them. And WordReference keeps a database of phrases, etc. so that you can see how the word you’ve looked up is actually used, and you can see equivalencies rather than literal translations. It’s a wonderful window into how languages actually work, the apples and oranges of it all.
I used Babel Fish to translate one of my favorite paragraphs of “Dangerous Space” into Spanish, and then back into English.
But the night. Music. The pulls of the house with people; the air is heavy with its anticipation, its alcohol and the musk, the human atmospheric disturbances of its conversations that hit. When the technology of the guitar warms up, when fixed mics, people watches to us with a directness that it never would demonstrate in the street, as if she could raise in our lives if she watches fixedly only hardly enough. We are foreplay; we walk the stage like the models of the channel, horses of races, arrogant and kind expert and, and slightly rubbed its anticipation with each movement that we do. And when you are ready, when you you are jadeando for him, the bandage comes to you with the hands of music and it touches with heat and hope and joy to him, with all they know of being human, and is so great you cannot contain it everything: sing you it and again dance and shout them. And then they give more him. Forwards and backwards, forwards and backwards. Ecstasy.
— Babel Fish translation of “Dangerous Space”, English to Spanish to English
It has its own mad beauty in places, no? But it’s not the same. All props to the literary translators of the world, the human beings who with their skills make stories into something more than converted words, who translate meaning in meaningful ways. And to the interpreters who build bridges between us by finding ways to make meaning clear when it seems sometimes that our languages are no more than mud between us, something sticky that we cannot see through to find each other.
A number of years ago, I had a job as a circulation clerk in a business library. It was my responsibility to check in periodicals and newsletters, routing them to the appropriate individuals. Some of the material which crossed my desk was interesting and I looked forward to certain publications. One was the Far Eastern Economic Review, which published a column written by a British journalist, dealing with translations and cultural confusion.
One item in particular always stuck with me because it was so hilarious and a clear example of meaning lost in translation. The journalist saw a sign in a Men’s Lavatory in China, which said the following; To stop drip, turn cock to the right.
Ever since that time I always wondered, what exactly is the Chinese word for handle?
You’re going to love the Engrish site, then.
And I did a quick translation into Spanish. Maybe if you run this one through Babel Fish, it’ll come out even stranger:
“Pero la noche. La música. La sala palpita de gente; el aire está espeso con su anticipación, su alcohol y almizcle, la estática humana de sus conversaciones que chocan. Cuando el técnico de guitarras afina, cuando acomodo los micrófonos, la gente nos observa con una franqueza que jamás mostrarÃan en la calle, como si pudiesen montarse en nuestras vidas con tan sólo mirar lo suficientemente fijo y fuerte. Somos el juego sexual preliminar; caminamos sobre el escenario como modelos de pasarela, caballos de carreras, expertos y arrogantes y absortos, y acariciamos tu anhelo con cada movimiento que hacemos. Y cuando estás listo, cuando estás jadeando por ella, la banda viene a ti con manos de música y te toca con calor y esperanza y alegrÃa, con todo lo que conocen de ser humanos, y es tan grande que no puedes contenerlo todo: lo cantas y lo bailas y lo gritas de regreso hacia ellos. Y entonces te dan más. De ida y vuelta, ida y vuelta. Ãxtasis.”
@ Rory — and isn’t it a feature of life that sometimes translation errors can be so perfect?
@ karina – Just wow. Thank you so much! You have no idea how totally cool it is for me to see this in proper Spanish.
I have always been pretty good with grammar, and I have some other language in my brain. No fluencies, but enough to make myself understood in the American Deaf community and in Paris, and to stumble through incredibly basic exchanges in Spanish assuming I have a phrase book (I remember the words when I see them, as above, but I can’t just drag them out of my brain when I need them). So reading your translation isn’t a complete exercise in head-scratching for me, and what I love is the way you have preserved the essential rhythm of the passage, which is, of course the point — this rhythm that is anticipatory, hypnotic, sexual, and then spills over into the explosion of the music.
It just gives me goosebumps! Thank you so very much indeed for this little gift.
If you enjoy reading your work in other languages, I know just the right present for your birthday. It was a pleasure to translate that paragraph, and now I’m hooked, so I must go on.
For more translation fun, try Chapter 68 of Julio Cortázarâs novel Rayuela / Hopscotch. Gregory Rabassa had to translate not only from Spanish, but also from GlÃglico, a made-up tongue “of love in that it describes amorous activity. It isn’t necessary to understand the words […] A simple reading aloud renders a feeling of what he is saying, much like the meaning we extract from a piece of music without knowing which notes are what.” -from If this be Treason: Translation and Its Discontents, a memoir by Gregory Rabassa–
I think Rabassa’s Gliglish is right on spot, and it’s one of the reasons why I worship the guy.
âAs soon as he began to amalate the noeme, the clemise began to smother her and they fell into hydromuries, into savage amboines, into exasperating sustales. Each time that he tried to relamate the hairincops, he became entangled in a whining grimate and had to face up to envulsioning the novalisk, feeling how little by little the arnees would spejune, were becoming peltronated, redoblated, until they were stretched out like the ergomanine trimalciate which drops a few filures of cariaconce. And it was still only the beginning, because right away she tordled her hurgales, allowing him gently to bring up his orfelunes. No sooner had they cofeathered than something like a ulucord encrestored them, extrajuxted them, and paramoved them, suddenly it was the clinon, the sterfurous convulcant of matericks, the slobberdigging raimouth of the orgumion, the sproemes of the merpasm in one superhumitic agopause. Evohé! Evohé! Voposited on the crest of a murelium, they felt themselves being balparammed, perline and marulous. The trock was trembling, the mariplumes were overcome, and everything became resolvirated into a profound pinex, into niolames of argutentic gauzes, into almost cruel cariniers which ordopained them to the limit of their gumphies.â
âApenas él le amalaba el noema, a ella se le agolpaba el clémiso y caÃan en hidromurias, en salvajes ambonios, en sustalos exasperantes. Cada vez que él procuraba relamar las incopelusas, se enredaba en un grimado quejumbroso y etenÃa que envulsionarse de cara al nóvalo, sintiendo cómo poco a poco las arnillas se espejunaban, se iban apeltronando, reduplimendo, hasta quedar tendido como el trimalciato de ergomanina al que se la hand ejado caer unas fÃlulas de cariaconcia. Y sin embargo era apenas el principio, porque en un momento dado ella se tordulaba los hurgalios, consintiendo en que él aproximara suavemente sus orfelunios. Apenas se entreplumaban, algo como un ulucordio los encrestoriaba, los extrayuxtaba y paramovÃa, de pronto era el clinón, la esterfurosa convulcante de la mátricas, la jadehollante embocapluvia del orgumio, los esproemios del merpasmo en una sobrehumÃtica agopausa. Evohe! Evohe! Volposados en la cresta del murelio, se sentÃan balparamar, perlinos y márulos. Temblaba el troc, se vencÃan las marioplumas, y todo se resolviraba en un profundo pÃnice, en niolamas de argutendidas gasas, en carinias case crueles que los ordopenaban hasta el lÃmite de las gunfias.â
Karina, am I reading you correctly? I hesitate to assume that you are offering to translate the entire story — and if you aren’t, I will back away quickly since I hate putting people on the spot, but I don’t know how to find out the answer except by asking the question. It’s just that it’s 25,000 words, a quarter of a novel, and it seems like a huge thing to do.
And thanks for taking the time to post these passages from Cortázar and Rabassa’s translation. Wow, again. It’s fantastic — powerful and funny and breath-catching, just like sex. What a totally cool thing to be able to do, both in the original and in translation.
Your work must be very fun sometimes.
Yes. 🙂 I’m offering to translate the whole novella. With your blessing, of course. (I’d still do it without it, but then I’d have to hide the printout in a box and forget about it.) It’s perfect timing, too. I can bring along a few copies of your book to the International Book Fairin Mexico this November. I’ll pass some translated sample pages around and if a Hispanic publisher is interested, they’ll contact Aqueduct Press and maybe both of us get some moneys 🙂 But even if there’s no deal in the near future, it’ll be fun to translate your work. And a good birthday present.
Sorry I went crazy with the smileys on the previous comment.
I enjoyed meeting Babel Fish on your site and since it was my girlfriend’s birthday that day and she is studying Japanese I had the site translate a birthday greeting to her. I wrote:
Happy birthday to you, dear woman with a truck, a motorcycle, and an airplane. May dirt roads delight you, mountain curves fly beneath your two tires, and clouds part to let you pass through on the gentle lift from two strong wings.
She received it in Japanese and had it translated back to English at Babel Fish; it looked like this:
JapaneseHappy birthday, dear woman with a truck, motorcycles and aircraft. May the cockles of the gravel road, mountain curve in your two flying under the tire, two strong-wing cross from modest gains in order to enable it to cloud the parts.
We had a good laugh at the strange poetry that arrives with translations. Thanks.
Karina —
Well, I’m gobsmacked and totally frakkin’ delighted. Yes, yes, please, to all of it. If you’ll email me directly, we can discuss whether Aqueduct can provide you with some copies of Dangerous Space to take to the Book Fair.
My goodness. Thank you very much.
Jean, how lovely your original birthday message is, and how funny-in-a-totally-lovely-way it became after leaping through the hoops of Babel Fish. I do imagine Babel Fish as a sort of exuberant wormhole through which words pass and come back with a bit of a buzz on…
Just this, thanks to Nicola for linking me to this. I love language as it plays, and these translators are a great gift to all of us.
I liked your account of being gobsmacked to learn that other languages don’t have exact equivalents for English words (and vice versa, of course). I think that’s one good reason why everyone should study a foreign language at some point; high-school Spanish got me over that misconception.
About a year ago, one of my coworkers, a southern Indiana man in his 40s, was surprised to learn that Spanish has no word for “drop” (the equivalent is two words, “dejar caer”), which he’d learned from bilingual text on a box of frozen beans. I pointed out to him that English has no word for “cuanto” (the equivalent is two words, “how much” or “how many”).
But even better as a sign of people’s incomprehension of what different languages are: back in the early 70s I was sitting in the student union with some other gay men, when two little girls (maybe 8 and 10) went skipping by, talking in some foreign language. One of us asked what language they were speaking; I guessed Swedish or some other northern European language. But another one of us said that they weren’t speaking another language, it was some made-up gibberish. After some discussion we figured out that he thought that “foreign languages” was someone speaking English with an accent, like Sergeant Garcia on the old Zorro TV show. I’m not sure we managed to convince him that other languages are really something other than that.
Duncan, wow,what a brilliant-and-scary story there at the end… and yet I can understand how it happens, even at the same time that I am horrified to hear it.
I wonder if all cultures are like ours in this way, that every culture assumes its worldview (language, customs, assumptions,beliefs…) is shared by all. The notion that Who We Are is some kind of global norm, and that everyone else is just trying to catch up… One thing I learned in a big way while I was studying American Sign Language is that there is no way to internalize another language without altering my own worldview somewhat. And the converse is, as your story illustrates, that if there is no flex in our worldview, then there are so many realities we just cannot conceive of.
*shakes head, wanders off to wash dishes….*
Wow, what a fantastic discussion! I read every word I could, which did mean some of the Spanish escaped me…
Sometimes when I’ve been listening to a language I know (I know four) for a long time, it gradually resolves into its component sounds and for a moment I sense that letting-go of meaning in favor of sounds and prosody – and then it comes back. It’s almost like recapturing what it was like when I was little and couldn’t understand all the languages I do now.
I’m still fascinated by the way that languages cover the realities of the world in different ways: how, for example, an English speaker can say a picture is “on” the wall but a Dutch speaker will say it’s “up” the wall. Category boundaries put in different places, and concepts formed around radically different world views. Since I’m a writer of fantasy and science fiction, I like to push these things into the arena of alien languages. I’m working on a story right now where I try to “un-define” the word “friend” for my readers in the course of the first scene, so that my alien protagonist can deny its existence as a concept and then define it for himself during the course of the story.
I have to share my own favorite language anecdote, which brings in the culture level… My husband and I were in a department store in Japan, and we wanted to look at some shoes, so we approached one of the employees and asked to see the shoes – in Japanese. The person replied by shaking her head and saying, “No English!” Several attempts at communication were greeted with the same response, and eventually we had to conclude that she didn’t believe we could possibly be speaking her language, so that in turn her brain refused to process it.
That was a head-shaker, for certain…
Juliette
T
Hmm, Juliette, that’s interesting about letting go of meaning…I’ve had what I think is a similar experience briefly with French (in a couple of conversations in Paris, when people were so impassioned by what they were saying that they forgot to slow down), and a few times in ASL (same thing). I found that I felt like I understood what was being told me, but when one of my Deaf friends asked me to repeat back, I couldn’t pick up the pieces and retrace the steps. I’d rather actually always be keeping up, but there is something about that experience of flow…
Fascinating story about your Japanese experience. For what it’s worth, my partner (who is English) reports the occasional similar experience of mutual head-shaking when she tries to talk to someone in the US. Sometimes we can even be separated by a common language, never mind a different one.
“I wonder if all cultures are like ours in this way, that every culture assumes its worldview (language, customs, assumptions,beliefsâ¦) is shared by all.”
I think so, Kelley. Ethnocentrism is definitely not limited to the US. When I was studying Russian, I was told that the Russian word for German, “nemetz”, means “dumb” — the implication being that those who don’t speak russkij yazik don’t have a language at all, and are mute. I’ve also heard that the Greek “barbaros” (for foreigner) originated as mimicry of foreigners’ ‘meaningless’ babble. And of course there are those American Indian peoples whose word for themselves means “human beings” — implying that outsiders are not human.
I’ve also heard stories of foreigners in Japan who speak fluent Japanese, who’ve learned to pretend to be less so because many Japanese (who love to believe that Japanese is impossible for foreigners to learn) became hostile at them for their fluency. But from the other side, I had a Japanese boyfriend whose English was very good, who had to switch credit-card companies because the telephone customer support at his old one had operators who claimed they couldn’t understand him through his accent; so he switched to one with Japanese customer service. The reason for this became clearer to me later on, when I read about an experiment that found that people hear an accent when someone foreign-looking speaks, such as an American-born Asian. For a lot of people, I suspect, their brain just shuts down when they hear even a mild accent; but this may well not be voluntary, it may be a reflex. (Which doesn’t mean it can’t be unlearned.)
I’m sorry for running on like this, but I collect stories and information like this. It’s sort of a relief to me to learn that we Americans aren’t alone in our ethnocentrism.
I’m intrigued by Duncan’s comments. I think that cultures are by their very nature myopic, that they tend to focus on “the way” that people behave – this is of course in cases where the presence of alternate ways is either peripheral or ignored. On the other hand, I’m not sure that this means they think their views are shared, so much as they don’t know any alternatives. The Japanese belief that their language and culture is impossible for others to learn is a sort of pride, and I’ve definitely encountered those who wanted me to be less good at Japanese than I am, but this was primarily in the “foreigner stratum” that runs across the top of Japanese society. More integrative foreigners are in my experience better received for their language skill because the expectations for foreigner behavior outside of this stratum are slightly different.
Kelley, I wanted to ask if I can put a link to your discussion on my blog, TalkToYouniverse ( http://talktoyouniverse.blogspot.com ). I discuss language and culture issues in speculative fiction there, and I think my readers might be interested to learn more about you and your work.
@ Juliette & Duncan — I think you are both right. I think that “not knowing any alternative” in cultural terms creates a basic assumption — so basic that it’s unarticulated — that there is no other way to be. I think that as we grow and become more aware of the differences in the world, that assumption gets challenged again and again until finally (hopefully) it’s not the default. Otherwise we’d have no successful ambassadors or interpreters or translators or even successful marriages between people of different cultures…
And please don’t stop telling stories! I find these conversations fascinating. I’m interested in language and meaning, culture and connotation.
Duncan, my partner Nicola is English. She’s been living in the US a long time. And there are still Americans who claim not to be able to understand her on the phone (hell, it even happens in person sometimes with things as simple as asking for a glass of water in a restaurant). She bears it well, but I imagine it gets very old.
I think sometimes it’s not only a question of accent, but of unexpected rhythms that native speakers don’t automatically parse. Pronunciation and rhythm and emphasis are all linked to the individual language, of course, but I’ve found rhythm to be important. I’ve had English people assume I was originally from the UK only because I changed the rhythm of my sentences to match theirs more closely (having absorbed a lot of those rhythms from Nicola). And they felt more “conversationally comfortable” with me than some other Americans they’d met. So they assumed I must not really be American.
Juliette, I’d be delighted for you to link here. I’m glad you’re enjoying it.
Juliette, I think that *people* are myopic. I think it comes from being social animals, which form groups. You can’t have an inside without an outside, and every “we” has to have a “not-we.” And no matter how cosmopolitan you are, there are always areas in which you’re ignorant, and things you take for granted as The Way Things Are. But I think another factor may well be the long human infancy, as well as consciousness itself. All I know of myself is what’s inside my mind; all I know of you is what I can observe from outside.
Kelley, I agree completely that “that ‘not knowing any alternative’ in cultural terms creates a basic assumption â so basic that itâs unarticulated â that there is no other way to be.” But it’s not just cultural. The way we did things in my family is the way things are: The foods we ate, the way they were prepared, childrearing methods, all sorts of routines. Even if I’d grown up in a more porous nuclear family, so that I’d had more experience with the customs of other families, there’d still others that I didn’t know.
I’m sure that not every Japanese reacts to fluent foreigners in the same way. I recently read a book called San’ya Blues, about Japanese day laborers in Tokyo, by an American who not only observed them but spent some time working with them. He didn’t report any hostility for his good Japanese. In Korea, about which I’ve heard similar stories (and I know that many Koreans are proud of the difficulty of their language for foreigners), I get a lot of pleased reactions and encouragement for my *very* limited Korean, and some fascination because of my good accent — I can’t say much, but I pronounce and inflect well.
I think that xenophilia is as ‘natural’ as xenophobia, and that each of us has both tendencies in widely varying proportions. I collect these anecdotes about xenophobia in other cultures just because there is a tendency among some Americans to think that we’re worse than other cultures in our insularity, so I enjoy having contrary evidence. (Even stressing our ignorance and insularity can be a kind of American exceptionalism!) That doesn’t mean I think xenophobia or ethnocentrism is okay, just that they aren’t unique to us.
Kelley, what you say about Nicola reminds me of what Christopher Isherwood wrote about English accents. After living in the US for many years, he found himself annoyed when he went home by the way the English talked — like movie or stage Englishmen, too exaggerated. And even though to Americans he always sounded English, when he went home he was told how American he sounded. I can see how you’d have picked up some of those British sounds and rhythms just from having lived with Nicola (for 20 years, right?); I have picked up some bits of Southern Indiana accent from having lived here and working with people who grew up here. And I agree that rhythms are as much a factor as pronunciation.
Yes, it’s true — worldview begins at home, inside ourselves, built in layers like an onion growing. Our family around us, the immediate culture beyond them (neighborhood, class, family history…), and the wider culture beyond them.
It’s amazing that any of us find our way outside any of those boxes (shakes head in wonder at the variety and flexibility of humans).
And yes, Nicola has been told by family members that she sounds American. It’s funny, because those same family members have been known to say about me but Kelley sounds so American! The magic word there is but… as if it’s perfectly understandable that Nicola would sound American after all these years, but not me. I’m complimented by it — I take it as an indication that they love and accept me as part of the family (and therefore “English” in a particular way) — but I still think it’s funny.
Yep, 20 years together. She’ll have been living in the US for 19 years come December. Where does the time go?
Wow, that’s interesting about the English family’s view of your accents – charming, too. I’ve been with my Australian husband for going on 14 years, and he’s definitely migrated to a place in between the American and Australian accents, so that his family says he sounds American. Not in a very positive way, unfortunately (perhaps you’ve heard the term “Yank”?). But they don’t tend to comment on my accent at all – the only one who ever did was my nephew when he was three, and he said, “You can’t speak properly!”
So I have been following this discussion for several days and something, some memory has been tugging at me trying to get out and finally, here it comes:
I was in college and in the off season we played a lot of pickup basketball at the gym by the dorms. It was a gathering of all sorts and one of my favorite players was a kid from Oklahoma City who was quick off the dribble and could leap like a lemur. We would play three on three for hours. The problem occurred one afternoon when in the midst of a discussion of who’s outs it was, he stopped and stared at me for a minute before muttering “Man, who you talking to?” I was stunned for a second and then it dawned on me, as my one words echoed in my head, that my natural inclination towards mimicry and a tendancy to talk southern had gotten the better of me. I was talking in his voice with his intonations. And he was a black kid who suddenly didn’t like this white boy making fun. I was so embarrassed I didn’t even know what to say.
Thinking about this reminds me of the times when I have heard people mimic others on purpose only to be defeated because the other person thought the mimicry sounded normal.
@ rhbee — what a story! Must have been a very hard moment for everyone.
I too have a natural inclination toward mimicry, and I find myself using it unconsciously (as with my English family). Mirroring language is a proven strategy for increasing the effectiveness of communication in stressful situations (word choices and rhythms, sensory and language modes — that link is to some ideas based on the work of Virginia Satir). Until, of course, the moment that it crosses the other person’s line and seems like mockery and manipulation instead of affiliation.
And yet I’ve also had it work really well for me. There’s a comfort in hearing that someone is “like me.” Until the similarity comes smack up against the obvious differences, I guess, and then all the complex issues of cultural power come into play.
@ Juliette — yes, they call us “Yanks” in England too. Although these days instead of recognizing me as a Yank, people in England wonder if I’m Canadian. Go figure.
Sounds familiar – I have a tendency even to pick up my friends’ speech quirks, like dentalized “t” etc. even when they don’t have a different “accent” per se.
The question of solidarity is very interesting. A lot of language moves are “alignment” moves, that allow us to affiliate with one group or another. You mention the line between solidarity in mimicry and mockery; I think it may run parallel to the fine line between expressing alignment and getting “too close.” Maybe the issue there is whether that expression of alignment is considered to be legitimately backed by other cultural issues. Gives me an idea to pick up the politeness topic at my blog, hmmm…
Thanks again for keeping up with this discussion here; super cool.
Juliette, I agree about the line between alignment and “too close,” which I am thinking of right now as something akin to appropriation. I have talked before about my experiences learning American Sign Language — that one lesson I had to learn the hard way was that I crossed that line when, at a restaurant with a Deaf friend, I allowed the hearing waiter to believe I was deaf too because I didn’t use my voice with him. I thought I was showing solidarity with my friend, and she had to point out to me that I was actually exercising privilege.
Language is a tricky thing — building bridges and burning them, sometimes all at once.
I’m wandering around virtual reality hoping to come across a page of translations of the French passages in Hopscotch…for I am American and ignorant. :]
The virtual translators are amusing but not so useful. Do you know of a site to relieve my French-poor reading of this great book? Seems like someone must have done this and posted it somewhere…
Thanks for any assistance and suggestions you may offer.
Larissa, it’s not French, it’s Gliglish. There’s no translation for that. Read the passage out-loud to get a sense of the meaning. Gliglish is meant to be understood on a visceral level.