@Mitch yes, that's not so hard, try starting your sleep (consciously) on the problem definition, etc.. and it may reappear during the sleep, and if you have a solution, you must repeat it several times in your sleep so you don't forget it
Most of the time I don't find solutions, but some ways to explore at least
@Jez Interesting idea, and the first couple of paragraphs have a magnetism to them. I think you explain too much, though. You're writing too much, instead of letting the writing happen, if you get my meaning.
I will tell you what I tell most new writers: write. A lot. You have a lot of crap in you that has to come out before you can get to the good stuff. Write like you mean it, but know you will throw much of it away. Maybe all of it. Doesn't matter. Nobody got to be a good writer by not writing, and if you ever take a look at the first works of some who became outstanding writers—well, you probably won't, because they don't usually show that stuff.
So take heart. You've taken the first step. Congratulations. If you keep at it, you may get good at it. But only if you keep at it.
@infinitesimal Why would you need such precise timing? One tenth of a second is good enough, since human reaction time is about of that order. It never makes sense to use 2 dp, unless you start and stop with a machine.
"The fact that it was cold was somewhat irrelevant. The downward trend in temperature had long since ceased to be a concerning factor in 1466's mind. *This just makes it easier to get to sleep. It makes me feel naturally drowsy. I haven't really the energy to shiver, so that isn't keeping me awake either.* Nevertheless, she was kept awake from time to time by worry about her predicament. *Haha!* She made herself laugh inside, sometimes. What did she have to worry about? She knew what problems she would encounter tomorrow; the same
The whole paragraph is telling too much. But for a specific example, you have her thinking Haha! and in the very next sentence you explain that "She made herself laugh, sometimes."
@tchrist: If I were to switch my keyboard to Spanish for use in that language, how easy would it be to make the accented characters? Would it be possible to keep my fingers from leaving the home keys? (I know I can leave them there when I use the Mac, but it's still awkward to do the setup keystroke and the follow-on specifier).
@Robusto I agree that the diacriticked characters require annoying setup strokes, but at least they are easy to remember: no numbers needed. The Mac does have a Spanish keyboard, but I'm not very thrilled with it and do not use it. Perhaps one could get used to it. spanishdict.com/answers/100808/…
I came upon this quote on a website ...
God helps only those who are prepared and determined to help themselves.
-Adolf Hitler, 06 Nov. 1938, Weimar
It is ironic (or perhaps not so ironic) that people confuse Scripture with statements originating from sources which are in direct opposition to ...
hey, I'm blanking out on a word. The word starts with an 's' and means someone who follows an important person around (at court) to curry favour. An important person will have many of these people around him.
@tchrist: I installed "Spanish, Spain, International sorting" as opposed to "Spanish, Spain, traditional sorting." I'm sure you know what the difference is.
@Cerberus I did. I labored over the first paragraph of 100 Años de Soledad before arriving at my conclusion.
@Cerberus Yes, but I have to achieve a critical mass of vocabulary before I can tackle literary works.
Servile sycophants forever fawning, kowtowing, ass-kissing, and brown-nosing their insinuative way up the backsides of those holding real power as if a tonsil inspection done from the bottom up instead of top down.
@Robusto That isn’t really the right diametric pairing. Traditional sorting treats ch and ll as digraphs. International sorting sounds like an unmodified Unicode Collation Algorithm, but you cannot use that on Spanish or your eñes will sort wrong. Doubtless though they actually mean the post-traditional Spanish sorting, which preserves la eñe’s special place following la ene and preceding la o.
In part because they are short stories, in part because they are speculative fiction of the "magical realism" sort produced seemingly uniquely by speakers of Iberian tongues.
But there are many Borges volumes of collected short fiction pieces.
The rest of the world could call them fantasy, but written in Spanish or Portuguese they become magical realism. I have no @#$%% clue why.
Here, try this nested microstory-within-a-story from Borges’s Al Aleph:
> Cuentan los hombres dignos de fe (pero Alá sabe más) que en los primeros días hubo un rey de las islas de Babilonia que congregó a sus arquitectos y magos y les mandó construir un laberinto tan perplejo y sutil que los varones más prudentes no se aventuraban a entrar, y los que entraban se perdían. Esa obra era un escándalo, porque la confusión y la maravilla son operaciones propias de Dios y no de los hombres. Con el andar del tiempo vino a su corte un rey de los árabes, y el rey de Babilonia (para hacer burla
I think you will find the language of Borges to be quite readable. It is his thoughts that are complex.
@noahnu Roget's (thematic, not dictionary style) is the classic English thesaurus. There's on line stuff, just keep looking. Dictionaries/thesauruses are always disappointing, but they're better than nothing.
@tchrist Didn't he write a lot in English? (non-translated)
> Borges was a notable translator. He translated works of literature in English, French, German, Old English, and Old Norse into Spanish. His first publication, for a Buenos Aires newspaper, was a translation of Oscar Wilde's story "The Happy Prince" into Spanish when he was nine.
> At the end of his life he produced a Spanish-language version of a part of Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda. He also translated (while simultaneously subtly transforming) the works of, among others, William Faulkner, André Gide, Hermann Hesse, Franz Kafka, Rudyard Kipling, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, and Virginia Woolf.
That "subtly transforming them" thing is interesting.
Reminds me of Saramago.
> Borges wrote and lectured extensively on the art of translation, holding that a translation may improve upon the original, may even be unfaithful to it, and that alternative and potentially contradictory renderings of the same work can be equally valid.[72] Borges also employed the devices of literary forgery and the review of an imaginary work, both forms of modern pseudo-epigrapha.
Esa obra
That work
era un escándalo, porque la confusión y la maravilla
was a scandal, because confusion and marvel
son operaciones propias de Dios y no de los hombres.
are operations proper to God and not to men.
@Robusto I understand the usefulness of doing that for your reasons of memorization. However, the cognate derived from Latin will nearly always be of a higher register in English than in modern Romance. Quotidian, matinal, missive, crepuscular, apocopate, antediuluvian, antebellum, fluvial, etc.
Dar con is a phrasal verb meaning "to come across".
There are a lot of ways to express "any complaint" depending on just what sort of emphasis you mean to place. This is an unusual one with the determiner postponed, so it puts more emphasis on it. Maybe "no complaint at all", "no complaint whatsoever", "nary a single complaint". Whatever, he kept his own counsel, and one soon sees why.
@Robusto Yes, that is complex. Just a sec.
The se is a dative le clitic for the other king that has been mandatorily swapped to se because the accusative clitic starts with L-.
The accusative clitic is masculine singular because it is agreeing with the labyrinth.
Darle a conocerlo something means to show something (to someone). So the offended king would, if God would be served,
show it (the lab.) to the other king some day.
The trailing clitics get promoted to the front of the verbal phrase in many cases. This is optional but common.
Cabalgaron tres días, y le dijo: "¡Oh,
They rode three days, and he said: "Oh,
rey del tiempo y substancia y cifra del siglo!, en
King of time and matter and number of the century!, in
Babilonia me quisiste perder en un laberinto de
Babylonia did I lose myself in a labyrinth of
bronce con muchas escaleras, puertas y muros; ahora
bronze with many staircases, doors and walls; now
el Poderoso ha tenido a bien que te muestre el mío,
the Mighty has seen fit to show you mine
Quisiste is the tú form, so you wanted to lose me.
The clitic me that would normally fall at the very end got promoted all the way to the front of the verb phrase. Quisiste perderme => Me quisiste perder
Luego le desató las ligaduras y lo abandonó en mitad
Soon he broke the bindings and abandoned him in the middle
del desierto, donde murió de hambre y de sed. La
of the desert, where he died of hunger and thirst. All
gloria sea con Aquel que no muere.
glory be to Him who does not hide.
> As recounted by the worthy men of faith (but God knows more), in the earliest days there was a king of the isles of Babylon who gathered together his architects and mages and commanded them to build a labyrinth so perplexing and subtle that the most prudent men would not dare to enter it, and those who did enter would be lost. That work was a scandal, for confusion and wonder are attributes peculiar to God, not to men. Over time there came to his court a king of the Arabs, and the king of Babylon (to make a fool of the simplicity of his guest) forced the
Cifra does mean digit or number or figure, but it can have other connotations — here a literal translation is actually called for.
> 1. f. Número dígito. 2. f. Signo con que se representa este número. 3. f. Escritura en que se usan signos, guarismos o letras convencionales, y que solo puede comprenderse conociendo la clave. 4. f. Enlace de dos o más letras, generalmente las iniciales de nombres y apellidos, que como abreviatura se emplea en sellos, marcas, etc. 5. f. abreviatura (‖ representación de una palabra con solo algunas de sus letras). 6. f. abreviatura (‖ palabra así representada). 7. f. Cantidad de dinero. 8. f. Modo vulgar de escribir música por números.
I chose an elevated style for the translation so that it had an old-time feel to it, as befits some old parable repeated since time immemorial.
I used to have "divine succour", but this ain’t no lollipop. "Cipher of the century" is a bit of a reach, and you have to understand the extended connotations of what a cipher is, but it preserves the alliteration of cifra del siglo.
At least, in Borges’s dialect, although not in my own.
I’ve never really considered how that Borges being bilingual in English from birth and a professor and translator of English Literature may (or may not) have at times subtly influenced his choices of words when writing in Spanish.
Arguably, English was his mother tongue, the one spoken at home, and Spanish was the language he acquired from where he lived.
Yet virtually everything he ever wrote (that I am aware of) was in Spanish.
I came upon this quote on a website ...
God helps only those who are prepared and determined to help themselves.
-Adolf Hitler, 06 Nov. 1938, Weimar
It is ironic (or perhaps not so ironic) that people confuse Scripture with statements originating from sources which are in direct opposition to ...
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…