flemmings | Entries tagged with wa

This is a good time of year to do that 'what makes you happy' meme. Many disked sets of Uncle Ming is a good start, but today it was followed by

kickinpants' Christmas package. It contains a Hasui calendar, and I nearly wept when I looked at the plates.
( Reason being-- )

I've been vaguely aware for the last six months or so of people saying WA4, oh where is the translation of WA4, does anyone have a translation of WA4? to which I respond FINGERS IN EARS LALALA I DON'T HEAR YOU. The trouble with WA4? It has this important untranslatable word I can't decide how to translate. The word might well be the 'kotodama' 言霊 that shows up on the third page of the story. The spirit/ soul of words and how saying a thing can make it real and a bunch of related animistic Japanese ideas. Except kotodama isn't the problem word. It's the 'tsumaranai' that also shows up on the third page and that I couldn't translate without a footnote so it's easier not to.

Equally I was desultorily translating a Yumemakura story but couldn't bring myself to go back to it. Partly a problem of how to phrase a longish quote from Konjaku Monogatari in middle English to parallel the medieval Japanese of the original and *not* sound idiotic when I translate Yumemakura's modern Japanese paraphrase right afterwards, and partly because translating = yuck boring and-besides-my-teeth-hurt. (They do. It does. Whichever. Ow ow ow.)
( And kickinpants gave me a manga for Xmas )

Drabbles are indeed looking at the white spaces instead of the drawing. You have to make that white space your friend, something that works /for/ you, because you're deprived of the usual stock of words to work with. I see now why people use conversation and that reflective omniscient- they give you the meat with the fewest trimmings.

Drabbles are also close to poetry as I've written poetry, which usually is haiku/ waka or something rhymed and metre'd, where again you don't have much leeway. Put in a word here, take out another there: a word for a word, always.
( And just to make things harder for yourself... )

Off the Cliff

The rodents are running hurrah! hurrah!

Entries tagged with wa

Happiness

How all occasions do inform against me

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