GR translation: patches will flash up now and then

[David Morris]

Understanding anything is impossible.

On Saturday, September 5, 2015, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Des tours de Babel
>
> "What the multiplicity of idioms comes to limit is not only a 'true'
> translation, a transparent and adequate interexpression, it is also a
> structural order, a coherence of construct...."
>
>
> http://users.clas.ufl.edu/burt/deconstructionandnewmediatheory/destourdebabel.pdf
>
> On Sat, Sep 5, 2015 at 9:08 PM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
> > The Task of the Translator
> >
> > "... any translation that intends to perform a transmitting function
> > cannot transmit anything but communica- tion-hence, something
> > inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations. But do we not
> > generally regard that which lies beyond communication in a literary
> > work-and even a poor translator will admit that this is its essential
> > substance-as the unfathomable, the mysterious, the 'poetic'? And is
> > this not something that a translator can reproduce only if he is
> > also--a poet? Such, actually, is the cause of another characteristic
> > of inferior translation, which consequently we may define as the
> > inaccurate transmission of an inessential content. Whenever a
> > translation undertakes to serve the reader, it demonstrates this.
> > However, if it were intended for the reader, the same would have to
> > apply to the original. If the original does not exist for the reader's
> > sake, how could the translation be understood on the basis of this
> > premise?
> >    "Translation is a form. To comprehend it as a form, one must go
> > back to the original, for the laws governing the translation lie
> > within the original, contained in the issue of its
> > translatability...."
> >
> >
> http://users.clas.ufl.edu/burt/deconstructionandnewmediatheory/walterbenjamintasktranslator.pdf
> >
> > On Sat, Sep 5, 2015 at 9:01 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
> >> Yes, but that threshold is too high for normal world translators. Real
> >> translation of poetry is impossible. The reader must become the learned
> >> translator, eventually.
> >>
> >> On Saturday, September 5, 2015, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com
> <javascript:;>>
> >> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> ... too many resonances to catch to translate "literally" (see, e.g.,
> >>> my earlier notes on hysteron proteron in GR).  You're not just
> >>> translating words, you're translating relationships ...
> >>>
> >>> On Sat, Sep 5, 2015 at 8:33 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
> >>> > I think Mike's translation challenge with Pynchon is in NOT
> interpreting
> >>> > the
> >>> > text. Be literal, because poetry should be translated prior to
> >>> > interpretation.
> >>> >
> >>> > David Morris
> >>> >
> >>> > On Saturday, September 5, 2015, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
> >>> >>
> >>> >> Getting specific, patches flashing up on the visible mountainsides
> >>> >> resembles a divisional patch.  That association is the point. But it
> >>> >> shouldn't be explicit in translation. Indeed it can't be translated.
> >>> >>
> >>> >> David Morris
> >>> >>
> >>> >> On Saturday, September 5, 2015, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com
> <javascript:;>>
> >>> >> wrote:
> >>> >>>
> >>> >>> This passage is trying to relate a drug induced experience, and
> thus
> >>> >>> is
> >>> >>> impossible to translate into a normal experience, except by extreme
> >>> >>> analogies, which is what Pynchon so often does. So throw out normal
> >>> >>> analogies.
> >>> >>>
> >>> >>> In extreme drug-induced experience, "patches" of perception will
> flash
> >>> >>> brightly. Messages from the paranoid beyond, which might, or might
> >>> >>> not, be
> >>> >>> crucial to survival. And which you might forget having received in
> the
> >>> >>> next
> >>> >>> second.
> >>> >>>
> >>> >>> David Morris
> >>> >>>
> >>> >>> On Saturday, September 5, 2015, Mike Jing
> >>> >>> <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com <javascript:;>>
> >>> >>> wrote:
> >>> >>>>
> >>> >>>> V640.30-641.2   On the mountainsides, patches will flash up now
> and
> >>> >>>> then, bright as dittany in July at the Zippo’s ceremonial touch.
> Pfc.
> >>> >>>> Eddie
> >>> >>>> Pensiero, a replacement here in the 89th Division, also an
> >>> >>>> amphetamine
> >>> >>>> enthusiast, sits huddling nearly on top of the fire, shivering and
> >>> >>>> watching
> >>> >>>> the divisional patch on his arm, which ordinarily resembles a
> cluster
> >>> >>>> of
> >>> >>>> rocketnoses seen out of a dilating asshole, all in black and
> >>> >>>> olive-drab, but
> >>> >>>> which now looks like something even stranger than that, which
> Eddie
> >>> >>>> will
> >>> >>>> think of in a minute.
> >>> >>>>
> >>> >>>> Are these patches of vegetation, or something else entirely?
>
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