A Quote by Hal Duncan
Where names of people or places would mean little to a contemporary reader, I figured "translation errors" could create interesting new meanings.
Related Quotes
For the version of this CD released in Japan, a translation of the English lyrics is included, but there are lots of places where meanings are lost in the process of translation.
There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.
If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!
You could have names like Hatred; you could have names that mean something like Suffering or Poverty. So names are not just names: names have real meaning, and they tend to tell the world about the circumstances of your parents at the time that you were born.
Photographs freed from the scientific bias can, and indeed usually do, have double meanings, implied meanings, unintended meanings, can hint and insinuate, and may even mean the opposite of what they apparently mean.
It is in the translation that the innocence lost after the first reading is restored under another guise, since the reader is once again faced with a new text and its attendant mystery. That is the inescapable paradox of translation, and also its wealth.
The first rule is you have to create a reality that makes the reader want to come back and see what happens next. The way I tried to do it, I'd create characters that the reader could instantly recognize, and hopefully bond with, and put them through situations that keep the reader on the edge of their seat.
I don't speak any languages well enough to make an expert assessment on writing in translation, but since I'm interested in awkwardness in prose, I find I like the way translated texts can sometimes acquire awkwardness in the process of translation. There's a discordance translation can create which I think is sometimes seen as a weakness but which I think can be a really interesting aspect of the text.
We need to create a new paradigm of development and happiness that can generate a three-dimensional peace – peace with ourselves, peace with other people and peace with mother earth. Little people doing little things in little places everywhere can change the world.
Did the nineteenth-century novelists create more generously than we do now? In a general reading of contemporary work, do you see a lot of new and different characters, or is it the same character who is a stand-in for the writer? And it's interesting enough, but it's a weakness I think. We are much more self-revealing and less able to produce new people over and over again.
I think it's different in fashion, because even if I would be an outsider, I would still be in the middle of the whole world of contemporary fashion. But it's interesting to think what outsider fashion could be. Does it mean to be completely disconnected from the regular system or just disconnected style-wise?
Depression makes you seek lonely places, and that is what I started doing during the second semester of my first year in college. The black creek, the woods, the empty fields, the old cemetery-anywhere away from people, away from their critical eyes. I would seek out these places, choosing routes and times that would mean I could avoid as many people as possible.
What's great about symbols, what a writer can do with them is provide a really vivid, interesting image, and the reader will do the rest of the work. That's always been very interesting to me. Like if I just introduce the storks, I don't have to say what they mean because the reader will do that. And if I bring in the dark history of the region, other trends come up, for example how in ancient Egypt they are associated with the souls of the dead. You can surprise yourself by introducing an image and then see how developing the story fills it with meaning that is suddenly new.
I love using unique names, so I go to a baby names site on the Internet and use the unique names. Sometimes my names have meanings such as 'strong', 'fire', and Phoenix which means dark red and is Greek. It's fun to think of a name meaning and matching it with a name. Even Frances means Victory.
The Japanese version comes with a translation, but that's different from the lyrics, so people could look things up and find a translation of their own if they're interested.
New York was always more expensive than any other place in the United States, but you could live in New York - and by New York, I mean Manhattan. Brooklyn was the borough of grandparents. We didn't live well. We lived in these horrible places. But you could live in New York. And you didn't have to think about money every second.
Related Authors
Ayn Rand Quotes
Russian
Writer
C. S. Lewis Quotes
British
Writer
Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes
French
Writer
Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes
English
Writer
H. L. Mencken Quotes
American
Writer
Haruki Murakami Quotes
Japanese
Writer
Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
American
Writer
Leo Tolstoy Quotes
Russian
Writer
Mark Twain Quotes
American
Writer
Mason Cooley Quotes
American
Writer
Ray Bradbury Quotes
American
Writer
Samuel Johnson Quotes
English
Writer
Seth Godin Quotes
American
Writer
Sherrilyn Kenyon Quotes
American
Writer
Suzanne Collins Quotes
American
Writer