Random Thoughts for a Sunday

Dan Brown doesn’t care if I think he’s a lousy writer. And I do think he’s a lousy writer. I’m not alone. This article from the London Telegraph shows why, by dissecting 20 of Dan Brown’s worst sentences. And if anyone figures out what on earth Brown meant by “her precarious body,” please let me know! While you ponder that mystery, you can also play with Slate’s Dan Brown Sequel Generator. Plug in Major League Baseball for an especially good laugh.

If that depressed you, try visiting The Manolo’s Shoe Blog for something that will make you smile.

Finally, you can never have too many cats. Or too much bacon.

Friday Fun

I will admit, I’m slightly blue today. The economy, the cold weather, etc., etc. So I’m going to skip the book review I’d planned for today and go for the kind of post that should cheer me up. Maybe something here will brighten your day as well.

Let’s start with something funny from YouTube. It makes me appreciate my cat, Eddie, that much more.

Next, I recently shared the URL for this blog with some writers on LinkedIn. This is for you, fellow writers, or for anyone who has to write for work or school. Because we all know, accurate citations are important.

And in case you, too, are bummed out by the economy and other things, here is an Armageddon Flow Chart .

Special pre-Inauguration bonus: Arlington County, Virginia, just across the Potomac River from Washington DC, sent out an e-mail alert to residents yesterday. An excerpt:

To prepare for this event, pretend a hurricane is coming during that weekend and expect large crowds, congestion, traffic and many delays. 

I thought the part I bolded was pretty funny. But maybe that’s just me

Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov – and a Rant about Translations

Maybe some books should be left in their original languages and not translated. I reach this conclusion reluctantly after having read most of The Master and Margarita. I just couldn’t finish it, it was that bad.

 

And yet … I have read quite a bit of Russian literature, including many translations. So I’ve been wondering if the translation might be the problem. Up front, the translators explain that they tried to use exact words instead of synonyms, adhering to Bulgakov’s phrasing to the extent possible. And I think that was a poor choice. Take, for example, these two sentences, chosen from a random paragraph:

        “The stranger beckoned with his finger for Timofei Kondratyevich to come out of the kitchen and into the hall. He said something to him, and then they both vanished.”

 

Imagine reading 335 pages of that kind of thing! Had someone handed that to me with a request for editing, I would have sliced and diced and rearranged, because it’s poor, awkward, clumsy English. As a reader, I get nothing from a translation like that. Absolutely nothing. Fidelity to the original work is not as important as readability in the translated version. If nothing else, this travesty will make me appreciate good translations that much more.

 

On top of the bad English, there was a huge section at the end of the book explaining the many cultural references that are likely to go over the heads of those of us who are not scholars of Russian literature.

 

This is all very frustrating, because parts of the book were thought-provoking, humorous, or poetic. But for the most part, reading this book felt like having a Russian hockey player recite the Yellow Pages to me.

 

I have all these tape flags stuck where I would normally take a second look to see how animal lovers might react to the book, but I’m not even going to go there. If you read this book, you’re on your own. Sorry. I wish it were different.

Silly Stuff Questions for a Hot August Afternoon

Do people send more of these links around in the hot weather?

First, since this site is oriented toward animals, we have to ask: is this going too far? (Don’t worry, it’s cute.)

Second, is this couple going to have a $700 water bill for the month? They will if their toilet-flushing cat is left unattended.

And finally, what would fonts talk about if they could talk? And would they include Zaft Dingbats in the conversation?

Yeah, it’s a short post. But if you click on the links, you should get several minutes of entertainment.

Editing/Writing Tragedy for 1/22/08

When I buy a piece of furniture that requires some assembly, I want instructions I can understand. So I was quite pleased with the instructions for assembling my new bed frame. However — and of course there is a “however” — the person charged with writing those instructions must have been so absorbed in his or her mission of ensuring clarity that spelling fell by the wayside. How else would one explain the consistent use of “appart”?

Just for the record, I am amused, not outraged.

Editing/Writing Tragedy for 12/23/07

http://www.chicagotribune.com/carolquiz,0,4932856.triviaquiz

All I want for Christmas is spell check.

Or did the Chicago Tribune — the Chicago Tribune, people! — unilaterally replace “Noel” with “Nowell”?

Editing/Writing Tragedy for 12/17/07

I’m all for phonics. I learned how to read and spell that way, after all. But we all know there are words that are spelled a bit differently from the way they sound, especially if we’re mispronouncing them in the first place.

For example, I’m listening to Christmas music on an Internet radio station that has on its playlist the following: Parade of the Wooden Solgiers.

No. No, no, no, a thousand times no. Just … no.