Revising Normal @letsjustimprovise - Tumblr Blog

as someone who has never watched any of the episode of critical role that they’re adapting into tlovm it’s very wild to me that the show will drop absolutely banger lines like “you’re at the bottom of my list” or “darling, take off the mask” or “do not go far from me” or “take me instead you raven bitch” or “i was made to pass through fire” and then i log on here and learn that they were all originally IMPROVISED in the original campaign

dj-bayeux-tapestry

the thing you need to realize about localization is that japanese and english are such vastly different languages that a straight translation is always going to be worse than the original script. nuance is going to be lost and, if you give a shit about your job, you should fill the gaps left with equivalent nuance in english. take ff6, my personal favorite localization of all time: in the original japanese cefca was memorable primarily for his manic, childish speaking style - but since english speaking styles arent nearly as expressive, woolsey adapted that by making the localized english kefka much more prone to making outright jokes. cefca/kefka is beloved in both regions as a result - hell, hes even more popular here

marchionessofmustache

yes this

a literal translation is an inaccurate translation.

localization’s job is to create a meaningful experience for a different audience which has a different language and different culture. they translate ideas and concepts, not words and sentences. often this means choosing new ideas that will be more meaningful and contribute to the experience more for a different audience.

rui-cifer

There was an example during late Tokugawa period in Japan where the translator translated, "Я люблю Вас” (I love you), to “I could die for you,” while translating Ася, ( Asya) a novel by Ivan Turgenev. This was because a woman saying, “I love you,” to a man was considered a very hard thing to do in Japanese society.

In a more well-known example, Natsume Soseki, a great writer who wrote, I am a Cat, had his students translate “I love you,” to “the moon is beautiful [because of] having you beside tonight,” because Japanese men would not say such strong emotions right away. He said that it would be weird and Japanese men would have more elegance.

Both of these are great examples of localization that wasn’t a straight up translation and both of these are valid. I feel like a lot of people forget the nuances in language and culture and how damn hard a translator’s job is and how knowledgeable the person has to be about both cultures. [x]

fromtokyotokyoto

Important stuff about translation!

Note that you can apply this to your own translations even if they aren’t big pieces of literature or something. Don’t feel bad about not translating word for word. An everyday sentence may sound odd translated literally - it’s okay to edit a little bit so it feels right!

wildehacked

Oh my god, I’m about to go on a ramble, I’m sorry, I can’t help it, the inner translation nerd is coming out. I’m so sorry. The thing is–there is actually no such thing as an accurate translation. It’s literally an impossible endeavor. Word for word doesn’t cut it. Sense for sense doesn’t cut it, because then you’re potentially missing cool stuff like context and nuance and rhyme and humor. Even localization doesn’t really cut it, because that means you’re prioritizing the audience over the author, and you’re missing out on the original context, and the possibility of bringing something new and exciting to your host language. Foreignization, which aims to replicate the rhythms of the original language, or to use terminology that will be unfamiliar to the target culture–(for example: the first few American-published Harry Potter books domesticated the English, and traded “trousers” for “pants”, and “Mom” for “Mum”. Later on they stopped, and let the American children view such foreignizing words as “snog” and “porridge.”)–also doesn’t cut it, because you risk alienating the target readers, or obscuring meaning. Another cool example is Dante, and the words written above the gates of hell: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here. In the original Italian, that’s Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate. Speranza, like most nouns in latinate languages, has a gender: la. Hope, in Italian, is gendered female. Abandon hope, who is female. Abandon hope, who is a woman. When the original Dante enters hell, searching for Beatrice, he is doomed, subtly, from the start. That’s beautiful, subtle, the kind of delicate poetic move literature nerds gorge themselves on, and you can’t keep it in English. Literally, how do you preserve it? We don’t have a gendered hope. It doesn’t work, can’t work. So how do you compensate? Can you sneak in a reference to Beatrice in a different line? Or do you chalk her up as a loss and move onto the next problem? You’re always going to miss something–the cool part is that, knowing you’re going to fail, you get to decide how to fail. Ortega y Gasset called this The Misery and Splendor of Translation. Basically, translation is impossible–so why not make it a beautiful failure? My point is that literary translation is creative writing, full of as many creative decisions as any original poem or short story. It has more limitations, rules, and structures to consider, for sure–but sometimes the best artistic decision is going to be the one that breaks the rules. My favorite breakdown of this is Le Ton Beau De Marot, a beautiful brick of a translator’s joke, in which the author tries over and over again to create a “perfect” translation of “A une Damoyselle Malade”, an itsy bitsy poem Clement Marot dashed off to his patron’s daughter, who was sick, in 1537. This is the poem: Ma mignonne, Je vous donne Le bon jour; Le séjour C’est prison. Guérison Recouvrez, Puis ouvrez Votre porte Et qu’on sorte Vitement, Car Clément Le vous mande. Va, friande De ta bouche, Qui se couche En danger Pour manger Confitures; Si tu dures Trop malade, Couleur fade Tu prendras, Et perdras L’embonpoint. Dieu te doint Santé bonne, Ma mignonne. Seems simple enough, right? But it’s got a huge host of challenges: the rhyme, the tone, the archaic language (if you’re translating something old, do you want it to sound old in the target language, too? or are you translating not just across language, but across time?) Le Ton Beau De Marot is a monster of a book that compiles all of Hofstader’s “failed” translations of Ma Mignonne, as well as the “failed” translations of his friends, and his students, and hundreds of strangers who were given the translation challenge (which you can play here, should you like!) The end result is a hilarious archive of Sweet Damosels, Malingering Ladies, Chickadees, Fairest Friends, and Cutie Pies. It’s the clearest, funniest, best example of what I think is true of all literary translations: that they’re a thing you make up, not a thing you discover. There is no magic bridge between languages, or magic window, or magic vessel to pour the poem from one language to another–translation is always subjective, it’s always individual, it’s always inaccurate, it’s always a failure. It’s always, in other words, art. Which, as a translator, I find incredibly reassuring! You’re definitely, one hundred percent absolutely, gonna fuck up. Which means you can’t fuck up. You can take risks! You can experiment! You can do cool stuff like bilingual translations, or footnote translations! You write your own code of honor, your own rules that your translations will hold inviolable, and fuck it if that code doesn’t match everyone else’s*. The translations they hold inviolable are also flawed, are failures at the core, from the King James Bible right on down to No Fear Shakespeare. So have fun! It’s all in your hands, miseries and splendors both.

sol1056

this in particular has bearing on more than just translation, but possibly in any adaptive or interpretative creative work:

knowing you’re going to fail, you get to decide how to fail

which is actually quite freeing, once you think about it

lonelyheartsmotel

(courtesy of aria aber)

silverhawk

i think one of my fave shark facts is this thing that some species of sharks do where they sorta peek their heads out of the water to see whats above the surface…..its called spyhopping and great white sharks do it all the time

thatsociallyawkwardfan

This gave me so much serotonin for some reason.

naomster

They look like they forgot they can breathe underwater and think they’re drowning

definitely-not-iorveth

#dont they reckon they learned this from whales?#bc whales have been doing this for as long as weve been observing them but sharks have only started doing it in the last decade or so#OH HEY THAT REMINDS ME#ON THE TOPIC OF SHARKS LEARNING THINGS FROM OTHER SPECIES#theres a pod of orcas that have recently started hunting sharks off the coast of south africa#started with one orca with a collapsed dorsal who reportedly HATES sharks and was the only orca on record to hunt them routinely#WELL#he taught his buddies and now theres a whole pod that hunt them#and the sharks (who arent used to being predated by anything) USED THE SAME EVASION TECHNIQUES THAT THEIR OWN PREY USE WITH THEM#so seals and turtles and etc will try to evade a GWS by swimming in a tight circle and keeping the shark in their line of sight#the GW has a larger turning circle than the prey so if the turtle/seal/whatever is able to got into the right position then they can evade#the shark. well the orcas started hunting the sharks and the sharks TRIED EMPLOYING THE SAME TACTIC THAT THEIR PREY USES#this is huge in terms of lateral learning bc its not as though the sharks have an instinctive orca evasion technique bc if they did it#would be something different. given that sharks are solitary hunters but orcas are pack hunters and the smaller turning circle method#will only work with a solitary hunter and definitely HAS NOT worked when applied to pack hunters. BUT THIS MEANS!! that the sharks are#intelligent enough to recall the behaviour of their own prey’s successful evasion techniques AND TO THEN MIMIC IT THEMSELVES.#incredible!!!!!!! but yeah as stated it very much only works against solitary animals so the sharks that employed it did not get away and#the orcas have killed a handful of GWs and literally all the other sharks have fled the area entirely - like - there’s not a single#one to be found and the ones with tracking devices show them getting the fuck out of dodge and of course this is having a big negative#impact on the local economy which runs largely on shark tourism. but yeah like the facinating thing here is that an adult orca has taught#fellow adult orcas how to hunt sharks AND the sharks have tried to employ evasion techniques that they have known to work in the past#its two instances of lateral learning and ONE OF THEM IS CROSS SPECIES LATERAL LEARNING#its amazing!??!? (via @bundibird)

ok you can not just leave all of this in the tags this is fascinating

hellolovelyscientist

can’t leave these out either #hold the fuck up what#this reminds me of how octopuses are said to be engaging in submarine warfare like..#there’s some geopolitical shit going on in the water and we don’t even know !!!#the anti-sharks orca party has successfully made their area unsafe for sharks for the first time in known sharkstory !#crazy shit !!#aquatic life

malkaleh

@lemonsharks

Do you have an onlyfans?

Nah

yumbrite

cynthia-viv-deactivated20240204

“I am a child with an old soul. I see magic in everything. But at the same time , everything tires me because I feel everything so very deeply.”

–Juansendizon

taylorswift

Midnights is a wild ride of an album and I couldn’t be happier that my co pilot on this adventure was Jack Antonoff. He’s my friend for life (presumptuous I know but I stand by it) and we’ve been making music together for nearly a decade HOWEVER… this is our first album we’ve done with just the two of us as main collaborators. We’d been toying with ideas and had written a few things we loved, but Midnights actually really coalesced and flowed out of us when our partners (both actors) did a film together in Panama. Jack and I found ourselves back in New York, alone, recording every night, staying up late and exploring old memories and midnights past. We were so lucky to also work with our brilliant collaborators Sam Dew, Sounwave, Lana Del Rey, Jahaan Sweet, Keanu Beats, William Bowery, and Zoe Kravitz. Laura Sisk was our excellent engineer. The wonderful and wise Beth Garrabrant took the album photographs. Midnights is a collage of intensity, highs and lows and ebbs and flows. Life can be dark, starry, cloudy, terrifying, electrifying, hot, cold, romantic or lonely. Just like Midnights. Which is out now

https://taylor.lnk.to/taylorswiftmidnights

dancinbutterfly

The Downlow on Hurricane Parties

Okay *presses hands together*I’ve been seeing a shit ton of posts about these and no actual explanations about How Living In a Hurricane Zone actually fucking works. Like - socially.

Reciepts: I was made homeless by 2 hurricanes in my life - once at 8 and again at 17. I have also ridden out more hurricanes than I can remember. I grew up in Hurricane Alley in florida and I have a tshirt from my senior year that says I Survived Hurricane High School because our senior year was so fucked by Hurricane Ivan no less than a 1/3rd of the student body was displaced. Aside from my parents divorce it’s probably the single most impactful thing to ever happen to me.

So let me explain a thing to those of you who don’t have hurricanes.

There’s a few types of hurricanes that make landfall on the continental US. There are REALLY BAD hurricanes - like Katrina and Harvey. Those are the ones where all you can do is Fucking Run.

But then? There’s the Less Bad Hurricanes.Those are insanely windy and full of rain and trees come down and shit gets bad but like…mostly, you get through it by hunkering down - boarding up the windows with plywood or specially made hurricane shutters(actually a thing, we had them on my house) bring in everything you have outside your house and plying it up in your living room and then just waiting shit out. Wild right?

If you live in Hurricane Alley, you realize, hey, for a Less Bad Hurricane, higher ground is all I really need. That is still an evacuation, it’s just not a Fucking Run full evacuation. When you evacuate to higher ground you almost always end up at Someone’s House and often, whoever’s place you end up at is putting up 2+families and so are other people in that area because that’s the Higher Ground.

Here’s what’s happens. The whole goddamn town shuts down. This is one of the few times capitalism comes to a grinding halt (unless you work at Waffle House. That motherfucker stays open until you pass Cat3 because they’re more intrepid than any fucking US Marine) and the whole town shuts down. There’s power - until there isn’t. There’s water - until there isn’t.

And then?

There’s just you and the people you’re trapped in a house with for hours if not days.

What you end up with is a lot of people in one place, sharing their supplies of water and food because they have to - gathered in the ONE place that might have a generator - WHICH YOU CANNOT RUN ALL THE TIME ANYWAY, DON’T LISTEN TO ANYONE WHO TELLS YOU DIFFERENTLY - when the weather is wet and also 90+ degrees, because you gotta remember this only happens in the summer. Schools are closed so a lot of the time, people are trapped in small places with their kids who dont know each other that well and cannot go outside and play which is a nightmare because did I mention the electricity is down? Yeah, this is literally the start of a fucking horror movie.

Because on top of that, after a certain point, the sun is going to go down. You may have candles but not THAT many and you wanna save them so you can’t read.

And what are you going to do with that time? Seriously, what? Fam you gotta TALK to each other to pass the time.

Plus? All the adults are fucking stressed out. Aside from the host, no one is in their own home and they’re scared. They might pretend they’re not but they are. They may not be scared for they’re life but they’re afraid for their property and their friends who didn’t come with them and they’re afraid for what’s going to happen when that motherfucker makes landfall and and and.

You know what makes that experience easier (on the adults at least)? Alcohol (and weed if you’re in Florida where that shit is legal) and revelry and generally being playful, letting the kids play too, maybe getting a brightly colored cake that makes the whole experience less terrifying.

And lo, hurricane parties.

So yeah. That’s what’s going on with hurricanes.

That’s whats going to keep going on with hurricanes as the climate crisis continues.

And if you try and guilt and shame people out of their coping mechanisms and survival tactics that scientists and survival experts have proven work (seriously, I went to a panel on how to survive an apocalypse and the first advice they gave was Throw A Party) then you’re just wrong. Stop harshing people and start being supportive. Things are only going to get worse as we move forward and trust me when I tell you, a good hurricane party can save sanity and lives.

anais-ninja-bitch

OP, thank you?? sfm?????

about the only thing more irritating than outsiders being condescending about it is carpetbaggers thinking it really is just about fun and not coping.

mylordshesacactus

Adding on to this actually because there’s another factor that I think people outside of Florida…probably SHOULD understand, but often don’t–you can watch a hurricane coming.

Like…you have around a week to understand and think about it, and there’s only so much you can do. In a lot of cases–unless there’s a) a major hurricane, cat 3 or higher b) making landfall very close to where you live–it is actually safer to bunker down and ride it out. Most buildings in Florida are designed to withstand hurricane-force winds up to a point; if you’re in a non-evacuation zone or if the storm is coming across land (ie, like me you live on the Gulf coast and the storm is hitting from the Atlantic) you are in the safest possible place.

So you stock up, you board up your windows, and you….wait.

For days.

Emphasis on the boarded windows–you generally want to wait as long as is safe to do that, because something people often fail to fully understand is that once you’ve screwed heavy plywood over all the glass in your home, you have no natural light in your house. (My dad invested in a sort of reinforced plexiglass–stronger and better than plywood, but a lot more expensive–for our living-room window specifically to counteract that claustrophobic feeling, but that’s not financially an option for everyone.) At the same time, however, you need to have them up by around the time you start getting rain bands, because otherwise you’re trying to put up large sheets of lightweight material in heavy, gusty winds.

If you’re from up north, understand–you start getting rain bands DAYS before the hurricane hits. Board up your windows and sit there for two solid days and then tell us we’re stupid for wanting some relief.

(I will say though–most hurricane parties are careful about the booze. A drink or two to help relax is normal, but people here are more sensible than y’all seem to believe. Things can go wrong, even just things as simple as a generator not working properly; everyone is aware that they’ll need to be capable of responding safely. If you’re seeing large amounts of alcohol, that probably means there’s large amounts of people and they’re planning for several days minimum without being able to go shopping.)

(Yes, of course there’s like that ridiculous 2% of people who do shit like hang out in parking garages getting drunk, but it is disingenuous and mean-spirited to act like the tiny portion of people doing something like that are in any way representative. And frankly, they’re usually tourists.)

Hurricane parties aren’t really for decompressing during the storm. They’re to help counteract the creeping dread and overwhelming anxiety of the 48 hours BEFORE the storm. They’re for giving you something to do, something to focus on–something to plan, when you’ve already done all the storm prep you can. We don’t have hurricane parties because we don’t take hurricanes seriously–we have them because we know damn well how serious the situation really is.

You have no idea what it feels like to watch the wrath of God descend upon you at a slow and leisurely pace. You have to break that tension if you want to be able to function during a storm; otherwise you’re mentally burned-out and exhausted before the actual hurricane even gets there.