(no subject)

[catslash]

Things that combine poorly:

* Reading Les Miserables, which may be a story of redemption, but it is also a story of the seriously shitty and terrifying things people will do to each other;

* Attending a talk from a prospective Senator (Go Tom Allen!) during which he addresses exciting things like the economy, which scares me, and the energy situation, which is just depressing;

* Being on the bus and looking out to see a line of people outside the soup kitchen, waiting for it to open.

Any one, or maybe even two, of these things? Fine. It is grim, but I will deal. All three of them working together in my brain to cast a BLACK SHADOW OF WOE? I am not so good with that.

Luckily, after a few truly dismal, despairing seconds, I realized that my MP3 player was helpfully contributing by playing the most depressing song from The Fix's soundtrack, and I just had to laugh at the overkill. I mean, it was either that or pitch myself under the wheels of the bus.

Uh. In the interest of lightening this entry up a little, a question: When you guys read books that take place in other countries, do you find yourself going around trying to pronounce every non-English word you see with that language's accent, even when you know it's a completely different language? EVERYTHING IS FRENCH RIGHT NOW. Also, I usually default to Spanish pronunciation, so when I came across the name "Austin Castillejo" IN Les Mis I very nearly had an aneurysm from the resulting conflict in the language center of my brain.

Comments

[twoseamfastball.livejournal.com]

Oboy, I had the joy of reading Les Mis in the original French, which both screwed up my brain while I was reading it (cause it was so long and the original French is, obviously, a little archaic, EVERYTHING in my head would turn into that French even when I had put the book down hours previous), AND screwed up my brain when I subsequently got around to reading it in English. It was like when you're watching a movie in another language that you speak, and it's subtitled in English, and you can hear the stuff that's not making it into the subtitles and it drives you crazy, you know?

I remember at least one thing that was just straight-up translated wrong in the English version (the translator wrote 'Russian mountains', which is the literal translation of the French phrase that actually means 'rollercoaster') that drove me so insane I had to stop reading for a few days, ha ha. The moral of the story is: DON'T READ BOTH UNLESS YOU HAVE TO.

[catslash.livejournal.com]

Heh. I couldn't, not unless it was a seriously watered-down grade school version. I took one year of French in high school, and pretty much all I remember is how to pronounce things, and how to say, "I'm sorry, sir/madam/miss/whatever, but I don't speak French."

I love the translation I'm reading now, but I get the distinct impression that it's not exactly literal - a lot of the word choice and sentence structure is very old-fashioned, but much of the colloquial slang is distinctly modern and probably chosen more for flavor than accuracy. That's fine by me, since the entire point of slang is flavor and an awkward translation (or worse, NO translation) would completely ruin it, but if I knew the original French, it would probably drive me batshit.

[wakeupnew]

GO TEAM ALLEN. I'm actually a pretty big fan of Snow and Collins, which is more than I can say for most Republicans, but I like Allen even more.

[catslash.livejournal.com]

Olympia Snowe is good people, but I hate Susan Collins. She spoke at my graduation in 2003 and used it as an opportunity to plug the then-upcoming war in Iraq. I was livid, and I wasn't the only one. A handful of us neither stood up nor clapped when she finished. I hate her, and Tom Allen gave a great talk today and had some good answers for the questions that were asked, I've got my fingers crossed hard for him.

[wakeupnew]

... Did she really? WHAT. UGH!

[catslash.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah. (And she preceded it by bashing raw oysters, which similarly did not win any points with me. I know raw shellfish is something of an acquired taste, but maybe NOT bashing seafood in MAINE is a better way to go? Just a thought.) It's really all I remember of the ceremony now. Thanks a heap, Susan Collins.