Evaluation of the study of literature in translation

The differences between languages cannot be ignored, as this may vary from more syntax to idioms. The subtleties present in the text that is most understood by its native speakers can oftentimes be lost in translation. Literature is a tool for self-expression and social commentary and with use of it, aspects of socio-cultural backgrounds, history and politics can be easily drawn and voiced by authors. However, with the multitude of languages spoken, it is impossible to speak all languages, which drives it to be essential to translate texts from their original tongue. These translated works offer an insight into cross-cultural differences and give authentic views as well as drives the reader to be more open-minded. This is recurrent in the portrayal of cultures in specific ways of the media. It is also notable to add that even if a piece could be originally written in Arabic, it is a dissolved version as it is made for an audience that is not familiar with the culture, and the author themselves might not be as much as those who write in their native tongues.

Translated books essentially, although they are always translated years later for an audience that was not intended, give a precise view of the author of current issues in the country, which is prominent in the reading Found in Translation and the novel The Thief and the Dogs. Various translated works have given a more precise perspective of the culture, but it can also bring clarification to the new audience, as they could have been affected from pre-existing ideas, but this does not necessarily prevent from understanding the text. In other terms, even if the reception, on a contextual, socio-cultural or economic basis is not the same, the translated work can still be understood by the new audience, although this does require readers to understand the original context of the publishing. Translating works can be challenging, as it may change the intensity of the passage and challenge the actual translation ability of the translators, as they are required to interpret the ideas of the text, and try to salvage as much as it as possible. There are words or idioms which can not be translated and are unique to the language, other formats for example poetry may lose its entire purpose, or the interpretation could even change the targetted audience such as age group from the original one. With the fast globalisation of the world, there is more risk of cross-cultural ambiguity and this can also be problematic as the authenticity can be lost.

Nevertheless, reading translated works is very insightful as the readers acquires a better understanding of the context and the culture at stake through the values and attitudes that are expressed, which may largely impact them as individuals.

Hold your meat because this post is about to sweep your off your feet!!!

Rationale;

The article I have selected is from the Guardian, and is entitled "My meat addiction is over: I’ve gone vegan, and it’s brilliant" by Jack Monroe. This article explores the author's journey into veganism and also deplores the nature of omnivore diets. The bias is on vegan diets, as it claims to be the only way to be healthy, without considering flexitarianism can also be an option for readers. This is prominent in the chosen arguments, as even if they are true and highlight why veganism is better for their environment and health, there are ways it can not benefit them. Additionally, it is the exclusivity of anecdotes from the author's life play into this bias. This parody will be written under author name Jackson Devon, that highlights the magnificence of eating only animal products.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/28/jack-monroe-meat-vegan-food-ingredients

My vegan addiction is over; I eat only animal products and it's brilliant

Jackson Devon (not a certified nutritionist or qualified to give any nutritional advice whatsoever but I will do it anyway because it is the only way I can get attention)

"Now my cooking has gone to a whole other level; I have such a big variety of juicy meat I can include in my dishes" Photography : Jackson Devon

During the new year, with some friends and our young children, I had a crazy night of drinking 1 litre of kombucha and watching the best vegan documentary; Cowspiracy. That night I went to bed, but little did I know that would be the last time I would indulge in that environmentally correct behaviour of limiting meat consumption.

I woke up the first day of the year, and resolved to pick up the habit of smoking and eat exclusively animal products; I ate so much as a vegan I needed something to suppress this appetite. I experimented with meat recipes for a very long time, and I abruptly removed fruit, vegetables, all the superfoods like quinoa and chia seeds as well as the meat substitutes I used to eat all the time. This got me to save money because that stuff is expensive as s***, I'll tell you that. And the best part is, I was no longer deficient in vitamin B12 because all the meat I ate had it. I get my calcium from milk and my iron from chicken liver. I cooked with eggs and steak and I was always obsessively for new meats to try and experiment with! I even tried raising my own chickens and killing them myself, although they wouldn't stop moving and ran away headless, although it didn't cross the street.

When I was a kid, I once announced to my born and raised skinny and pale vegan parents that I wanted to eat meat. The reply I got was "Don't be silly. And finish your quinoa, avocado and kale salad." Out of respect for my parents, who worked really hard to get food on the table, I would eat dinner. Even when they would force feed me grass because they read somewhere it's rich in vitamin D. I was entrapped in a sad vegan childhood, due to my parent's oblivion to the juiciness of meat.

I tried giving up my vegan diet several times, yet like I junkie I always caved in. Premade veggie burger patties, coconut yoghurt, frozen fruit for my smoothies, gosh it was so difficult to resist all these cruelty-free foods! And now when I look back at my recipes published when I was vegan, I try not to cringe at how awfully stupid the concept of having food without animal products is. After all, I evolved to who I am today, from experience and decisions. I now host yearly meat-stock festivals to celebrate this amazing lifestyle, although one of my cohosts had a nearly deadly heart attack and now stopped eating meat. What a fake meat eater!

"Steak became my go to almost every day, vegetables makes your body way too alkaline and it will definitely kill you. Steak has all the macros; carbs, fat and protein"

Vegans, you all secretly hate yourselves. Where do you ever get your protein from? or calcium? Don't you miss meat? The other day I went to my vegan friend's house, but I forgot to warn them about my new journey, and the sight of all the vegan food made me lose my appetite. But it's a good thing I got chicken flavoured tofu and sausage cucumber substitutes; this stuff tastes like veggies and have the same texture but actually are made 100% animal products.

Unless you live under some kind of rock, you know people living in Antarctica only eat seal meat and they are way more spiritually evolved than us. You have to be on a meat only diet to experience these advantages. And do you really have canines to eat celery? Yeah, that is what I thought. Plants give out oxygen, why would you want to eat oxygen sources? The world is a much safer place if we eat animals because that way they won't eat us. Additionally, eating their food is so unjust! 

I could never eat plants that are raised on inhumane farms, given pesticides and GMOs and in such crowded conditions, with less than 1 square millimetre per plant. It is so devastating to see how plants are being killed and deforestation; vegetables can feel too! Eating lettuce has 3 times worst greenhouse emission gases than bacon. There are crazy amount of hormones in soy, and did the plant even deserve to be treated that way? Plus to all men out there you will start growing breasts from eating too much soy, and oh boy having a bigger cup size than your girlfriend is embarrassing (been there done that). But I'm not going to gross you out with science. In my experience, harassing vegans, screaming at them, and feeding them meat by saying it's fake meat doesn't work. You don't really change much. I stopped spamming with memes that make fun of vegans or articles that talk about vegan vitamin deficiencies. You won't get that for me. But what you will get is more food recipes that only have animal products, but honestly, it is just like what I used to do but no longer using lettuce like before. Vegans that can't take nutritional advice are in denial, and that's usually a symptom of all the fibre that is fogging up their brains.

Never skip the steak, that's a mistake.

Family Furnishing IOC passage

Listen to my practice IOC passage here

Alice Munro application to Wallace's theory

In what ways could Wallace’s theory about education be applicable to the writing of Alice Munro? Justify your conclusion

The speech This is Water by David Foster Wallace speaks of the importance of sympathy and consciousness, which can be acquired through education, said to be a true freedom. He discusses how it is very common for humans to place themselves in the centre of their universe, and disregard the possible circumstance of those in their surroundings. He builds his argument that people's consciousness is always on auto, using a fish anecdote, and then to example to the supermarket. To prevent so, there is a possibility of reading literary fiction, as being in the centre of another's person life develops empathy and emotional intelligence. By evaluating simple situations that are easily neglectable and overlooked, his perspective allows us to see the situation from a different viewpoint, that lets empathy and emotional intelligence come through. He also believes that true freedom can only be acquired by learning how to think as well as being aware and conscious.

When it comes to Alice Munro ’s short stories, Wallace’s theory of education can be applied to it; the reader is able to experience the world from the protagonist eyes, and experience multiple emotions due to the fact that the stories have a development in a human experience and character. Building on the example of royal beatings, we develop empathy for the protagonist and her slight difficult childhood. It is through reading literature that we shift away from our « automatic » thought process, and learn how to be well-adjusted, through the recognition of the possible feelings of the protagonist but also our own.

Another aspect is that Munro’s short stories do concentrate on otherwise seen banal stories, in everyday life situations, and Wallace does the same since he depicts the average American adult life during the work week. The simplistic settings allow the reader to have a concentration of the character, to which favorisies the ability to put oneself in the protagonists view, which is the experience of something realistic but out of the ordinary of one’s life.

There are several possible links between Wallace’s theory and the writing of Alice Munro. Wallace's speech encourages us to break from our regular « automatic » thought process, and develop empathy and emotional intelligence through literature, and Alice Munro’s stories are a good way of doing so, as it does build us into being a more empathetic, sympathetic, conscious and adjusted individual.The speech This is Water by Wallace speaks of the importance of sympathy and consciousness, which can be acquired through education, said to be a true freedom. He discusses how it is very common for humans to place themselves in the centre of their universe, and disregard the possible circumstance of those in their surroundings. He builds his argument that people's consciousness is always on auto, using a fish anecdote, and then to example to the supermarket. To prevent so, there is the possibility of reading literary fiction, as being in the centre of another's person life develops empathy and emotional intelligence.

The struggles of being trillingual

At the beginning of this month, I had "officially" started doing my summer work, this had been a very interesting experience, to say the least, as while my relatives are just enjoying down time, I am forcing myself to do work, knowing that I am doomed in either way. Nevertheless, I will persevere because I had started reading two self-help type of books which had highly motivated me ; 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens by Sean Covey and Le Chemin Le Moins Fréquenté by Scott Peck (translated in French from his original book; Road Less Traveled), and I highly recommend reading both by the way.

Anyways back to the point, during my stay in Tunisia that has been for the totality of the summer, I had realised that I was truly linguistically confused. How so you may ask? Well, my trilingual self was showing, not subtly but rather as if it had been written on my forehead since at this point I cannot speak for two minutes without subconsciously mixing three languages. Don't get me wrong, I love being trilingual, but the issues with languages are that when you neglect one, you give too much power to the other, causing you to have a hegemony in the way you speak, and a confused grandma that doesn't understand a word you say. 

Nevertheless, I am not the only one in my family to have this struggle. Ameni, my older sister, keeps speaking English whilst we walk the roads of a rural city, and I keep insisting she speaks French or Arabic because I don't want to come out as being a tourist, only to have her start speaking English again a few minutes later. Or my parents keep asking for take away at restaurants when it's actually à emporter. I'm always a stranger wherever I go since in Tunisia I do not speak totality the dialect (which itself is a mix of Tunisian and French, and the ratio varies where you are) and anywhere else I am not a native.

My brain thinks in French when I am writing in English and thinking in English when writing in French, and Arabic I guess had always been at the bottom. I do not speak any of these languages perfectly and I cannot have one as a focal point. By the end of grade 11, my French had regressed due to my lack of practice, but now I guess it's been back again, as I force myself to speak French with my cousins. It's funny because you would expect that the more languages you speak, the less you need google translate but in reality, it's always a tab that is open, because of those troubles in memory of remembering what the word is in another language.

My cousins have a similar struggle as when they go back to school they adopt the strange Yesmine Jargon. I will leave you the benefit of the doubt to what this could be.

Summer post #1

Well I started doing my summer homework today, although I have done a few things previously, I do not qualify it as an official start. For this occasion, I decided to write a poem about summer and well I don’t know where my inspiration will take me but this is free style guys. (I also need a blogpost and I really don’t know what to write about)

Today is the 31st of July,

Making me think; time does fly.

I hate summer.

Oh sorry, did I say that too soon?

Well my words are said. Because we all know

I’ll spend half my time binging tv shows on my bed.

The beach is overcrowded 

It’s hot and the sun is scorching 

But no fear! It’s almond season here.

Three days, I will spend, opening nuts,

As if I am trying to uncover a mystical secret of the universe,

But really, my father needed more “main d’oeuvre”

And there is my new found talent,

I can spend endless hours alternating

From one app to another, my sister would care to add; 

“Almost as rapidly as you jump to conclusions”

And I might have delayed my summer work too much,

I might not finish this load in time but

Let them know you are ill-equipped; 

Decorating ruins in flowers will not change 

The original state of the edifice.

And my mother has asked me so many times

“Yesmine, shouldn’t you start studying?”

To the point of it being engraved in the back of my mind

I could even start a shift in paradigm.

Are you bothered yet by my lack of rhymes?

Sure my creativity could be defined 

By my ability to make some coherent sounding poetry

But I refuse to adhere to this obligation 

That doesn’t matter between the lines

Because only there you can define 

What is truly on my mind 

When I lay my fingers on my keyboard

Desperately but surely filling the word count

For this sorry excuse of poetry.  

Ngugi's extract & TFA

In what ways does this text influence your understanding of Achebe’s use of language and stylistic choices in Things Fall Apart?

Ngugi's extract was beneficial to understand better Achebe's use of language and stylistic choices in TFA. Ngugi starts by saying how important language is to him and his culture. He somewhat explores the topic of orality without directly addressing it and explains that how with his language has given him a unique view on the world, through proverbs and songs. His given explanation of the importance of language can help us justify Achebe's choice in publishing a book that exposes a mostly western audiences Igbo terms.This choice is to be able to keep the authenticity of the book as well as portray as much as the culture as possible, and language plays a big role in that. Not only is this choice of publishing terms as they are in the book is to be able to show the culture, but also to break stereotypes about African civilisations that are portrayed as brutes and savages, or in this case specifically the Ibgo people; even if they were not literate they still have as much complexity as the existent modernised world.

 The extract goes in a chronological order, and although is not characteristic of African storytelling, it is notable that once the author talks about the colonial school, he used "I" and "my" instead of "we" and "our" from previous paragraphs showing the no longer collectivistic environment. Achebe does a similar thing by starting the book in part 1 in a circulatory narrative and once colonialist arrives adopts a more linear narrative.