The Reading Room - 2020-09-09 (page 2 of 2)

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9:13 PM

The nice thing about song-lyrics questions is that most songs can be found free on the internet and so anyone can access them, and I don't have to buy a book or whatever. Which is good, because I'm broke. :)

The short-stories tag badge has now been awarded twice. See who the next users who might be awarded this tag badge and check the unanswered questions.

@Mithical That is definitely an advantage. I mean the texts being online, not you being broke ;-)

Well, hopefully after my test tomorrow I'll get my coaching certificate and then I can get paid. And, of course, the army does pay you... when you're done. ;)

Coaching certificate?

@Mithical It just occurred to me as I was writing out a couple questions (yes, song-lyrics) that songs might be the easiest way to get a bit more of the diversity that @EddieKal was talking about, since they're short and readily available.

@Tsundoku For teaching kids how to ride a bicycle.

@Mithical That is how I interpreted your questions about Hebrew song lyrics.

9:21 PM

(For instance, tomorrow's question is about Normani.)

@EddieKal Sure. In particular, I wish Sci Fi stopped marking story-id questions as duplicates.

@Mithical I had to check the link to make sure you weren't talking about your test tomorrow :-)

heh

Anyway, good luck with that test.

Thanks.

9:24 PM

@EddieKal No no. It does have one question about Hungarian poetry, which I should answer. And one about the Kalevala, which I should at least try to answer, and now the libraries are even open enough that I can borrow a copy to look at the chapters that are required for this and haven't photocopied the last time. And to look at the other translations too.

The Kalevala is still my to-read list; didn't get around to it during the topic challenge. But I'm still not done with Camus and I haven't even really started on The Tale of Genji, let alone the Shahnameh.

@Tsundoku Well my reading list is looking at the other translations of Kalevala, also read the Aeneis properly (I've read most of it, but I should read all and pay more attention), read Os Lusíadas literature.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1258/139 , and then figure out what other epic poetry there is because it's usually worth to read all of them. But with big pauses between these, because too much at the same time would just make me hate reading them.

2

Q: What does James Baldwin mean by 'democratic' in his open letter to Angela Davis?

James Baldwin's open letter to Angela Davis contains the following sentence (emphasis added): The will of the people, in America, has always been at the mercy of an ignorance not merely phenomenal, but sacred, and sacredly cultivated: the better to be used by a carnivorous economy which democrat...

meaning james-baldwin

I am going to answer this in a couple of days if no one beats me to it

One meaning of "democratic'" in my desk dictionary (MWC10) is "favoring social equality, not snobbish". Something that "victimizes whites and blacks alike" could, sarcastically, be called "democratic" in that sense. — user14111 Aug 14 at 8:35

@EddieKal I don't have any better ideas than what is mentioned in some of the comments, so go for it :-)

This comment plus some work would be an answer

9:36 PM

Also maybe read Rácz István's translation carefully, take careful notes of those few lines that either definitely don't have 16 syllables, or pairs of lines of which one definitely doesn't have 16 syllables depending on how many syllables a certain word has, and look them up in the old private edition, and if that doesn't give a different variant, try to figure out what the heck is up with them, because that can't be intentional.

I know I saw such lines, about a dozen of them, but was stupid enough not to take notes of them.

9:54 PM

@Bookworm I forgot to mention this earlier: I have synonymised tao-te-ching with dao-de-jing, which already existed and is based on pinyin (official transliteration that has been in use for decades now).

@Tsundoku So normally the new Pinyin system tends to present a single word in one

So it would be Tao Te Ching or Daodejing

This is also reflected in the Taiwanese Chinese Romanization difference

I personally am not a fan of Pinyin's longass one word clusters

Wikipedia has Dàodé Jīng. But I actually thought the title consisted of three single-syllable words.

After all, this is Classical Chinese, isn't it?

Hmm

I see Daode Jing on Wiki, but on that same page there's this line as well:

> The title "Daodejing", with its status as a classic, was only first applied from the reign of Emperor Jing of Han (157–141 BCE) onward.

Daode as a single word makes sense to the modern speaker

But I think it is two words

Dao and De

Wiki:

> The Chinese characters in the title (Chinese: 道德經; pinyin: Dàodéjīng; Wade–Giles: Tao⁴ Tê² Ching¹) are:

Classical Chinese rarely had any two character words

The Wikipedia page is inconsistent.

A huge chunk of modern two-character Chinese words came from Japanese

9:59 PM

@EddieKal Exactly As far as I know, those rare two-character words were borrowed from other languages.

So, I would say dao-de-jing looks fine, unless some provides reliable source saying that the title does not consist of three words.

@Tsundoku Have we had questions about Lunyu, or Zhongyong?

AKA the Analects

@EddieKal Off the top of my head, no.

0

Q: About Solaris translators Jasiensko (French), Kilmartin and Cox

I am looking for an account of, or historical information about: Jean-Michel Jasiensko's Polish-French translation of Solaris. Particularly, why did he vary the text? Also, Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox's collaborative French-English translation. How did it work? Why was Cox involved? Faber is s...

translation polish-literature stanislaw-lem solaris

@EddieKal I know :-)

@Tsundoku I prefer dao-de-jing over daodejing too, but what would we do about Lunyu quesitons?

lun-yu?

10:06 PM

Well, policy here is to use English titles for works that exist in English translation. According to that policy, we would end up with analects, possibly with lun-yu as a synonym.

Okay reasonable

Chang hen ge (poem)

Chang Hen Ge (長恨歌; lit. "Song of Everlasting Regret") is a literary masterpiece from the Tang dynasty by the famous Chinese poet Bai Juyi (772-846). It retells the love story between Emperor Xuanzong of Tang and his favorite concubine Yang Guifei (719-756). This epic poem is dated from 809. == Influence == A long list of literary, political, visual, musical and film works have been based on or referenced by Chang hen ge. Immediately after the poem had been written, its influence has already been felt. Bai Juyi's friend Chen Hong (fl. 810s) created a dramatic version, Chang hen zhuan, which later...

This would be an interesting thing to consider too

Especially considering how much Genji borrows from and references it

I think scholarship in English used to call it by the translated title. Now the trend has changed

I am happy to see the Wikipedia page uses its transcription

Newer translations have adopted the transcribed title too

amazon.com/Chang-hen-Song-Endless-Sorrow-ebook/dp/B01IGSVQU0

And you can still search "Song of Everlasting Regret" and get a pointer to the poem.

We have only 18 questions tagged chinese-literature at the moment. The three topic challenges about Chinese literature we have read so far generated relatively few questions.

Maybe we should do San Ti (the Three Body Problem) as a topic challenge

that book is all the rage now. Or was in the past few years

Also it seems sci fi topics and books are super popular in these here parts

10:28 PM

Okay, so before I respond to Mithical I'd like to echo what @b_jonas has said about Lit currently not being a place for questions about non-English literature in languages other than English. I think it is a shame and frankly we are not going to see any change about it certain conditions or mindsets change around here

I am going to say that again: if you really want non-English literature readers and interlocutors here, you really have to give good thought to if the site is welcoming. That is an inevitable issue yet excruciatingly difficult to broach

No, liking that comment may be fun to some people, but is absolutely no laughing matter

If I were Mizumura and I saw that, I wouldn't even consider answering any of the Genji questions there regardless how much I appreciated people's interest in Japanese literature

So I would like to make a few requests before I go any further and I will probably reference back to them in later discussions if the situation demands

We need to avoid a couple of discussion traps because they are but logic fallacies

Logic fallacy 1. "We don't want to engage in a theory discussion"

None of the things I am bringing up are really about theory. Chalking it up to a mysterious umbrella term "theory" is counter productive and evades the real problems

Maya Angelou getting smoked and destroyed on Lit SE by Tolkien 0 - 65 has nothing to do with theory. It is plain reality.

Logic fallacy 2. "It's not like we don't have non-English literature interest or questions about black writers"

White person accused of racial bias goes, "I am not a racist! I have a black friend! (better: My best friend is black!)"

This never gets old

You know how many times I have heard it this year alone in BLM protests from a counter protester? Or in Internet spaces like Reddit?

Not enough is not enough. And not enough really presents to some people as not welcoming. And yes we need to work on that together but without acknowledging the reality first how are we going to begin working on it?

Logic fallacy 3 & 4: "Instead of criticizing everybody why don't you try to be constructive?" This plainly dismisses the fact that I never criticized "everybody" But that's not a general logic fallacy. Logic fallacy 3 lies in equating the most vocal, talkative, and active users with "everybody"

10:58 PM

@EddieKal "counterprotestor" *rolls eyes* you mean the white supremacists showing up with machine guns or something else

A new user comes to the site and finds something unpleasant and troll-ish, they leave. They will never get a chance to swing by chat or drop a line on Meta or tell us how they feel

This is survivor bias

@Mithical Most counter protesters I am brave enough to face mano-a-mano have been peaceful. I am too timid to face pro-gun nuts like those

I have been in some life-threatening situations with the popo though. Not going to talk about it.

kudos for being at the protests in person, in any case

Logic fallacy 4, found in that same statement, is that it invalidates the fact that criticism oftentimes is constructive in nature and productive in its aim

(there was... one... in my country, that I had no way of getting to, so I was limited to Twitter and arguing with my parents that the "riots" were not actually the largest problem)

@Mithical Appreciate it. Props

Logic fallacy 5: "You are saying all these must be because you want something/you have ulterior motives". The ulterior motive argument should be retired, really. I could use examples, but Tsundoku is right that analogical inferences are dangerous and I try to steer clear of them

Again I showed my support of 111 and 80's arguments long after they stopped sticking around not because I cared so much for music and wanted to ask any music questions. Not because I wanted to curry favor with them. They are not even here. I understood their reasoning. I saw a missing link.

Also the ulterior motive argument is by definition ad hominem.

I would suggest always follow a logic link and stay clear of ad hominem arguments

Logic fallacy 6: "tu quoque" "You also" I feel bad about spelling Mithical's name wrong. I'd like to confess that I have been very embarrassed that I actually spelled a word wrong in a comment on Lit. You guys probably haven't noticed it. It is a non-English word that I failed to spell correctly. And some people who have are too kind to correct me. It was in a comment so even though I found out 20 minutes later I was unable to correct the mistake

But ad hominem tu quoque is also by definition ad hominem

In the case of that Genji comment, I'd say it was on a different level.

Ofc that OP could in any minute say "Oh I didn't realize I made a mistake. I am going to fix it." That would make me look like an ass giving him crap in chat like that

And I would be a happy ass, because at least some agreement would be reached and a mistake I consider serious would be fixed.

The last thing I wanted to say my attempt at giving some sort of explanation about my earlier words: Yes talking about voting and votes is discouraged on SE and even considered a faux pas. But with that in mind I still discussed it because I really saw no other reason than someone was actively voting against me.

I protested about comments under a post and minutes later everything that user has said under that post gets a like or an upvote

I protested about another post, same thing happened.

I could very easily have been wrong. I know

So the way I approach the issue was to focus on the likes themselves

Not the miraculous coincidences

11:28 PM

@EddieKal I didn't say that the site wasn't welcoming.

@b_jonas I did.

You pointed to a problem, and I inferred a reason on my own

I agree with the symptom you are pointing to. If you disagree with my diagnosis, please elaborate.

@EddieKal To be quite honest, I'd never heard of her before. Thanks for introducing me.

(I now have two questions about her works in my queue.)

@b_jonas Oh and another diagnosis in response to the symptom you mentioned: both the top-down and the bottom-up solution point to one thing we can't ignore. The influence of established users.

The SE network was supposed to be a more equal environment I thought.

Having a few established users wielding huge amount of influence could be unwelcoming, in my opinion.

@EddieKal Those regulars don't have to be establishing users. They often aren't, and they aren't in the case of new Lit, because Hamlet has left. And if you count that as unwelcoming, then you're trying to solve an unsolvable non-problem.

So, just want to clear one thing up, @EddieKal - I think you may have misinterpreted what I was saying earlier.

I was in no way denying or trying to refute your claim that the site has a diversity problem, and tends to focus on white Anglo authors. I absolutely agree that this is a fact, and a problem.

What I took issue with, was the impression I was getting from you that you thought that this was intentional or not recognized as a problem by the, for lack of a better term, active users of the site. This has been recognized as a problem, and things such as the topic challenges were implemented in a bid to fix them - with a debatable level of success.

2

I'd love to discuss other ways that might work better to help encourage people to help fix the issue, without assuming that people are intentionally not asking questions about diverse works.

Just... perhaps not now at 2:30AM. ;)

11:37 PM

@Mithical If you are interested, check out younger black and brown writers. They are more blunt and trenchant.

@Mithical Go get some rest. Someone said they had a test tomorrow, I vaguely recall

@EddieKal Have you heard of Ashia Monet?

No I haven't

Jun 14 at 19:59, by Mithical

in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, 3 mins ago, by Mithical

Assorted few books as a jumping point if anyone wants: Dead Magic #1: The Black Veins by Ashia Monet; Deathless #1: The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna; Binti #1: Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

@EddieKal She's, at the very least, an interesting Twitter follow. :P

@Mithical Too bad I don't use Twitter any more

I am reading off of what I found on Google about her

@Mithical that I am really glad about

@b_jonas Do you think there's anything Lit SE could do so solve the issue that we don't have enough non-English readers and questions here?

@EddieKal What? We have a lot of non-English readers. Maybe you don't count me, but look at our more active users.

As for questions not in English, that one is trickier. I don't speak enough French to ask questions in French, but like I said, I would support other users if they tried to do that.

11:52 PM

>
The reason for this is that I want to ask those questions in Hungarian, to experts (in the SE sense, not necessarily in th professional sense) who will not come here until we get Lit to a state where you can easily ask questions in languages other than English.

I am referring to this ^

>
And note that at that point, I will be answering French questions in English if they're questions that I can answer, and I almost certainly still won't be posting questions in Hungarian here, because no, we won't have enough mods who understand Hungarian, and we won't get a critical mass, because there is already a good forum in Hungarian with experts in literature and ancient history, and you can't break that sort of thing easily.

"A lot" and "enough" are two different things

270

Q: Do posts have to be in English on Stack Exchange?

Otherwise known as 必须用英语吗？(is English required?) ¿Necesito hablar en inglés? ?אני חייב לדבר באנגלית Muss ich auf Englisch schreiben? Do I have to use English when posting a question, an answer or a comment on a Stack Exchange site? Return to FAQ Index

support faq languages non-english-speakers english

You're still talking about this? :P

@Mithical Interesting how only the Chinese line has a English translation sitting next to it

@NorthLæraðr There were things to say, but I was too tired yesterday evening to say them, so I restarted the conversation today. I'm sorry.

@b_jonas Nah, I was just surprised

11:56 PM

But the Spanish sentence means pretty much the same as the Chinese one

@EddieKal The others were added later.

Also, yes, I'm still trying to figure out if I can ask a good question about illustrations and/or fine art, but it's not easy to come up with good questions, I usually can't do them at a prompt.

@Mithical I see. Fair

@Mithical Did I miss anything important

@NorthLæraðr Ice cream

11:59 PM

I scream

All gone now, none left for you

nooooooo

Selfish meanies

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