GR translation: White Visitation

[David Morris]

I've thought about this a bit more. The names of WV & Veronica's are
presumably leftovers from their earlier religious days. Any irony is
inherited. So I would vote for a plausible but silly religiously based
name.

On Sunday, June 26, 2011, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, I like this suggestion best. In fact, I would apply this
> suggestion to the Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese?)  translation project.
> Something Monroe sent over this wire yesterday about archaic English
> words that might make a comeback links to a list of the easiest and
> toughest languages to learn if your first language is English. Arabic
> and Chinese languages, Korean, Basque, are on the tough list. If this
> is true, translation from English to Chinese or Korean or Arabic is
> much tougher than translation from English to German or English to
> Spanish. I think this is true. So, trying to work woth the lexicon and
> the syntax is probably not the best method. A more creative and poetic
> translation may be best. Finding the best fit, as Paul suggests, will
> not be easy. There will be times when the idiomatic and poetic
> ambiguities are lost in translation, but something exciting and
> beautiful, with new poetic and ambiguous multiplicities will emerge.
> This also, as David Morris suggests, forces the reader to do some
> work. I'd be interested in reading what is made of these passages in
> Pynchon, not so much to see how the poet-translator missed the mark,
> as how the poet-translator used the Chinese language and culture, for
> example, a comical phrase, to evoke a particular and related response
> from Chinese reader.
>
> On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 7:11 AM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net> wrote:
>> Mike
>>
>> I had a thought during the night.
>>
>> Is there a comical phrase in Chinese that means roughly what we mean in the
>> U.S. (and maybe Britain too) when we say "the men in the white coats are
>> coming to get you."  It means you're alarmingly psychotic and have to be
>> institutionalized.  That's the image I think I receive when I hear "The
>> White Visitation" in the context of what's going on in GR.  The place
>> formerly, in now sadly gone peacetime,  housed mental patients.  Now it
>> houses another groups of nuts who are trying every possible scheme they can
>> think of to help win the war. Could you think up a place name that would be
>> suggestive of that?
>>
>> I do also hear the religious, devotional overtones of a care-giving facility
>> (like St. Verionica's) so if that could be worked in, all the better.
>>
>> P
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>