Category Archives: Translating Metamorphoses

On Translating Latin On This Particular Plateau

March 11, 2013 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc New (Bloodroot) Moon

Latin. I’ve found a method that works for me right now and I want to write it down before I lose it. First, translate one sentence a day. Keep going until several verses have been finished, perhaps two or three days before a session with Greg. Then, go back and review, one sentence at a time, the work that has been done.

In that review nail down the whys of the translation and identify specific questions, i.e. type of subjunctive clause, that extra word left over.

In general I’ve discovered that the faster I want the process to go, the more anxious I get and the less attention I pay to the details. Yet, in Latin, the devil is truly in the details. A great spiritual and intellectual exercise for me, the paying close attention demanded by my buddy Ovid.

Art and Culture, Cinema and Television, Family, Latin, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

And Jazz Saxophone after it all

March 4, 2013 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

Here we go. A perfect day. Revising Missing before 11:00 am. A sentence from Ovid before lunch. Nap. Working with pre-Raphaelites until 4:00. Some chess until 5. Workout. A movie with Kate. As I said.

Latin, Translating Metamorphoses

Plateaus

February 27, 2013 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

After the Swede saw, lunch and a nap followed by another sentence, 6 verses long, in Ovid’s retelling of the Jason and Medea narrative. When I have a week off from translating, or almost a week, like I had when I spent time rearranging and reorganizing, I wonder if I can still do it. Sometimes I convince myself that what I’ve learned has dropped away and I’ve wasted all the time up to that point. Silly, yes, but real nonetheless.

(Medea, Batumi, Georgia)

As a result, it is a relief when I return to the work and find myself able to translate. This time in fact I managed a translation of a clause without looking up a word. Something is seeping into the lower crevices of my brain. Language work, at least for me, is slog, slog, slog, plateau. Plateau, plateau, plateau. Slog, slog, slog, slog. Plateau. So on.

Right now I’m gaining facility at recognizing words and verb forms and sussing out grammatical forms, though I’m wrong as often as I’m right. That’s without Perseus (the online classics web engine), without Anderson (the scholarly commentator on Ovid) and without Wheelock (the grammar text). There’s the plateau.

I can only advance part way into the text without the books. With the books now I increase my facility by maybe another 25%. So a lot of the time I can translate the literal sense of Latin correctly, but at least a quarter of the time, I’m lost. That’s where my tutor comes into play.

(Ovid, Constanta, Romania, 2012)

He unsticks me from my stuck places and has been invaluable as a role model for tactics and strategy when approaching unfamiliar text. He also guided me through the initial learning phase, about two years, when the grammar and vocabulary were still largely alien (foreign) to me.

My personal goal is to be 90 to 95% successful on my own by the end of this year. Then, I imagine, I’ll use Greg (my tutor) less often and then as a backup. That’s unless we decide together to get back on the commentary track. That still sounds fun to me.

Latin, Minnesota, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

GO D Park

February 25, 2013 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

Saw the full Valentine Moon rising over Gold Medal Park near the Guthrie yesterday late afternoon. Some clever vandal has knocked out the L on the large metal sign there so it reads GO D MEDAL PARK. This is the park given by plutocrat and former CEO of UnitedHealth Partners, William McGuire. Why both rich people and the public seem to think the wealthy have a fine aesthetic that should get public spaces for expression continues to be beyond me. The saving grace here is that a well-known landscape architect designed the park, Tom Oslund.

Back to the Latin this morning, resuming my work on Ovid and about to start up on the novels again, reading the last of the Eddas today and tomorrow. Still a good bit of reorganizing work to do, but the vast bulk of it in here (study) has been accomplished.

Art and Culture, Asia, Feelings, Third Phase, Translating Metamorphoses

Percussive

February 24, 2013 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

Woke up. Turned on the phone. Nothing. Frozen. Onto the internet. Tried several fixes. Nothing. Over to Verizon. No joy there either. I’d had my HTC Thunderbolt for four years, so I opted to get a new phone, an HTC DNA. Another Android phone, in the same lineage as the Thunderbolt so I already understood its basic use. Not cheap, not outrageously expensive. Did add one feature to the plan, text messaging. Yes, after four years of owning a smartphone I’m catching up with today’s elementary school kids.

Later on Kate and I went into the McPhail Center, a place for music learning and performance, now located very near the new Guthrie and the Mill City Museum. We were there for a performance by the Bakken Trio featuring the gamelan. The gamelan is an Indonesian instrument, a percussion instrument played by several people. It includes gongs, zithers, xylophones and upside down bronze pots that each have a tone and are struck with a mallet.

The gamelan’s music organizes around rhythm and melody, having as a particular feature density of tone achieved by the layering of one rhythm on top of another simultaneously. There are no harmonics.

Joko, an Indonesian gamelan artist who teaches gamelan, has lived in the Twin Cities now for 18 years. He said that a full gamelan orchestra is the largest percussive ensemble in the world. (see image above for an Indonesian setting). Gamelan concerts typically run 8 hours and gamelan musicians in Indonesia may play 8 hours during the day and another 8 at night. Geez.

I wanted to see this because I’m fascinated by how other people do things. In this case, music.

The concert itself featured quartet pieces by Ravel and Debussy, both influenced by a traveling program focused on Javanese culture, plus a work by a contemporary composer, Louis Harrison. Impressed with the gamelan music and its difference from the Western tradition Debussy and Ravel both incorporated it. Especially in pizzicato and in movements with narrow tonal ranges.

(Ravel)

Both Debussy and Ravel are in the romantic tradition and, for some reason I can’t explain, I don’t like romantic classical music. I say for some reason because in painting and literature I find myself a romantic by nature and inclination. There were some beautiful melodies, especially in the Ravel, his String Quartet in F Major.

The Harrison piece, though, Philemon and Baukis (for violin and gamelan), was wonderful. It was airy and spacious, filled with the rapid changing of tempos typical of gamelan music. Harrison builds and plays the gamelan himself. Philemon and Baukis, btw, is a story found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. It was the only piece in which the gamelan played.

Following the concert we ate at Sea Change. We had a miserable experience there a few years back, but tonight was pleasant. Then back home to the burbs.

Over the meal Kate and I discussed a possible (probable) move into the city at some point before infirmity strikes us so we can enjoy the city life again. I’m hesitant about it, having spent 19 years adapting myself and my life to the exurbs, but aging has its own relentless pressures.

Latin, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Oh, My

February 15, 2013 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

Up at 7:00 am. Crack of dawn at this time of year and a good hour before I normally unfurl myself. So a little groggy.

Breakfast with Mark Odegard at Keys. More feedback on Missing. Very helpful stuff. He’s doing some archival work as a volunteer at the American Refugee Committee. Sounds like a really good fit for him.

Back home for Latin. I’m getting called out less and less by Greg. We translate at times as colleagues, at other times as teacher and student. I’m getting better.

Family, Feelings, Friends, Latin, Third Phase, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Getting My Kicks

February 14, 2013 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

Woke up, saw fluffy white snow outlining the trees, shrubs and fences. A beautiful way to start my 66th year. Spoke with brother Mark, Mary kept off by technical issues. A new hard drive. Always a good way to lose a program or two. As they say in the Old Testament, blessings and curses.

I’ve been motoring along this morning finishing up a lengthy session in Ovid. Or, I should say, several one hour or one hour + sessions that equal a lengthy one. I’ve translated 21 verses and I’m confident of most of what I’ve done. There are still hitches in my git along, but at least for right now I seem to have a flow underway.

Almost finished with the Eddas. Then I’m going to put pencil to large format desk pad and start roughing out Loki’s Children. I want to get it thought through to some extent before I start my revision of Missing. That way, if I have to change things in Missing (and I think I will) I can do that in the upcoming 3rd revision. I hope #3 is what will make me ready to start the search for an agent.

As I said the other day, I’m cruising into the third phase of my life, which I count as having started with the arrival of my Medicare card, with clarity of purpose, emotional support from family and friends, and good health. Here we go. Charlie, the final chapter.

Aging, Dreams, Family, Garden, Latin, Our Land and Home, Third Phase, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

The Life Ahead

February 13, 2013 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

So. 66. Tomorrow. How that long-haired, green book bag carrying, dope smoking political radical could be turning 66 is, I admit, a puzzle. Yes, he looks a bit different in the mirror. Well, ok, quite a bit different. Instead of long hair, little hair. Instead of the book bag, a kindle. Not smoking at all. Hmmm, still a radical though. Guess the other stuff is detritus of past fashion.

After passing the last great social milestone before the final one, that is, signing up for Medicare, my life has taken on a new cast. I’ve written about it here, a change that came gradually but with a strange persistence. That new cast has home, writing, Latin and friends as its core. It entails reduced traveling into the city, a much lower profile in terms of volunteer work in either politics or the arts. A word that sums it for me is, quieter.

Quieter does not mean less energetic or engaged, rather it signals a shift in focus toward quieter pursuits: more reading, more writing, more scholarship, more time with domestic life. Unlike the pope I do not intend to give up my beloved theological writing. (Kate believes he’s suffering from dementia.) I intend rather a full-on pursuit of the writing life, novels and short stories, a text on Reimagining Faith. This full-on pursuit means active and vigorous attention to marketing.

The primary age related driver in this change is greater awareness of a compressed time horizon, not any infirmity. How many healthy years will I have? Unknown, though I do actively care for myself. Still, the years will not be kind, no matter what I do. So, I had best get my licks in now, while I can still work at my optimum.

So, the man turning 66 has a different life ahead of him than did the man turning 65. An exciting and challenging life.

Asia, GeekWorld, Latin, Literature, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Just Stuff

February 9, 2013 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc New (Valentine) Moon

The images, each moved from their numbered folders into new folders named for the organizational scheme that moved me at the moment, have a new home. I’ve checked the prior machine for missing images, found a few and they’ll get added in tomorrow, but in essence the big image reorganization, self-inflicted, is over.

(Valkyrie (1908) by Stephan Sinding located in Churchill Park, Copenhagen, Denmark)

On March 1st I’m going to hit Missing with my third revision. I’m hoping this one puts me close to finished that I can begin shopping it to agents. I think it will, but until it’s done, I won’t know. Research for Loki’s Children goes well, too. I’m almost done with all the Eddas, then I’ll go back over them again, looking at my notes and underlining, taking pieces here and there that I’ll use.

With the image reorganization I’ve felt a bit off my game this last week, but I’m back now. Time to step up again.

Each day, though, I have (for the most part) finished a sentence of Jason and Medea. That doesn’t sound like a very ambitious rate, but by the time a sentence is done, which can be between 2 and 14 lines long, I’m ready to put away the Lewis and Short, the Wheeler and the Anderson, close Perseus and go upstairs. It’s a pace that, for now, allows me to work at an intense level, get work done steadily and yet allows enough time to do a quality job.

Been reading Civil Servant’s Notebook by Wang Xiaofang. Author of 13 novels, all about Chinese bureaucracy, this is his first translated into English. Published by Penguin. Of all the material I’ve read on China of late this one seems to have the most insight into contemporary China. Wang gives a satirical perspective on life inside municipal government, but he also strips the veins of a culture deep with history and short on ethical guidance. I’ve read elsewhere of a moral aimlessness that inflicts contemporary China, but I was never able to put my finger on it until reading Civil Servant’s Notebook. I don’t have it down here with me now, but tomorrow I’ll quote a few lines from it to show you what I mean.

Cinema and Television, GeekWorld, Great Work, Health, Latin, Our Land and Home, Translating Metamorphoses

95%

February 7, 2013 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Cold Moon

So the parade of salesmen has begun. First up was Reliant heat and cooling. They sent out a really good guy. Told us what would fit, how much it would cost. Very reasonable price. Good furnace. If I hadn’t had the others scheduled, I would have bought this one. Still, we’ll hear the others out, too. You never know.

This furnace runs at 95% efficiency. As opposed to our current 80%. Think about a difference of 15% less gas used. Then multiply it by hundreds and thousands of homes. Hard to believe. Of all the strategies to combat global warming, the easiest and most immediate ones involve conservation. More fuel efficient cars, furnaces. Better insulation in homes. Switching from coal-burning electricity generation. Having cleaning crews in large buildings clean during the day. Strategies that have broad application yet involve relatively straightforward choices and proven technologies.

Finally wrenched myself away from the image moving to work on the Edda’s some more. Brunhild today. A sad story. Sigurd jumped into that burning ring of fire, but boy it really didn’t work out for him or Brunhild.

Also back to my one sentence of Latin. Again, it seemed to flow today. Based on past experience I’ll hit an impossible head-slapper tomorrow, but today. All right.

I’m in my second week of rest for my patella-femoral syndrome. I’ll start back on the workouts on Monday. I’ll see how, or whether, this helped.

Been watching House of Cards on Netflix. As the brave new face of television, I like it. 13 episodes up all at once. We can watch it as we like it. Cool.