Ken Liu, Translator’s Postface to The Three Body Problem (via as-if-falling)
Andrew Scott performing Hamlet’s soliloquy ( Act III, Scene I), from Almeida Theatre's 2017 production of Hamlet
“The Chomskians viewed the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis as the vilest slander—not just incorrect, but hateful, like saying that different races had different IQs. Because all languages were equally complex and identically expressive of reality, differences in grammar couldn’t possibly correspond to different ways of thinking. “Thought and language are not the [same] thing,” the professor said [...]
In my heart, I knew that Whorf was right. I knew I thought differently in Turkish and in English—not because thought and language were the same, but because different languages forced you to think about different things. Turkish, for example, had a suffix, -miş, that you put on verbs to report anything you didn’t witness personally. You were always stating your degree of subjectivity. You were always thinking about it, every time you opened your mouth.
[...]
There were things about -miş that I liked: it had a kind of built-in bewilderment, it was automatically funny. At the same time, it was a curse, condemning you to the awareness that everything you said was potentially encroaching on someone else’s experience, that your own subjectivity was booby-trapped and set you up to have conflicting stories with others. It compromised and transformed everything you said. It actually changed the verb tense you used. And you couldn’t escape. There was no way to go through life, in Turkish or any other language, making only factual statements about direct observations. You were forced to us -miş, just by the human condition—just by existing in relation to other people.”
— Elif Batuman, The Idiot
Rebecca Solnit, The Mother of All Questions (via luxe-pauvre)
Gold earring with head of a lion, Metropolitan Museum of Art: Greek and Roman Art
The Cesnola Collection, Purchased by subscription, 1874–76 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY Medium: Gold
metropolitan musem guide to virtual museum / collections / timeline of art / youtube / over 500 books free online / 360º project
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I didn’t know you’re from Cyprus! I love your blog and have been following you for a long time! I find it very interesting since I studied translation and interpreting~ anyway, love from Greece! and good luck with all your projects 💛
Thank you, you’re too kind! I’m actually not Cypriot (by ethnicity or nationality), I was merely born there!
Ellie Mae O'Hagan, Losing my Welsh: what it feels like to forget a language (via mothersofmyheart)
The Rosetta Stone
A Ptolemaic era stele with carved text made up of three translations of a single passage: two in Egyptian language scripts (hieroglyphic and Demotic) and one in the classical Greek of the country’s Greek rulers. It was created in 196 BC, discovered by the French in 1799 at Rosetta, and transported to England in 1802. Once in Europe, it contributed greatly to the deciphering of the principles of hieroglyphic writing, through the work of the British scientist Thomas Young and the French scholar Jean-François Champollion. Comparative translation of the stone assisted in understanding many previously undecipherable examples of hieroglyphic writing. The text on the stone is a decree from Ptolemy V, describing the repeal of various taxes and instructions to erect statues in temples.
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