“translations”
30 posts under this tag.
It is possible to believe that all the past is but the beginning of a beginning, and that all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn. It is possible to believe that all that the human mind has ever accomplished is but the dream before the awakening… All this world is heavy with the promise of greater things, and a day will come, one day in the unending succession of days, when beings, beings who are now latent in our thoughts and hidden in our loins, shall stand upon this earth as one stands upon a footstool, and shall laugh and reach out their hands amidst the stars.
H. G. Wells
Es posible creer que todo el pasado es solo el principio del principio, y que todo lo que es y ha sido es solo el crespusculo del amanecer. Es posible creer que todo lo que la mente humana ha logrado jamas es solo el suenho antes del despertar… Todo este mundo esta cargado con la promesa de cosas mas grandes, y el dia llegara, un dia en la interminable sucesion de dias, cuando seres, seres ya latentes en nuestros pensamientos y escondidos en nuestras ingles, habran de erguirse sobre esta tierra como se yergue uno sobre un banquillo, y habran de reirse y estirar sus manos entre las estrellas.
First read it at Alcor’s epilogue. It has kept me in thrall since.
(Alcor’s website, apropos, has a wonderful, content-rich website. See, for instance, their detailed FAQs on cryonics or Mike Darwin’s rousing, impassioned Why we are cryonicists)
No creo que ganen tales o cuales caballos porque les apostamos, sino que les apostamos para legitimar mejor nuestro deseo de que ganen, de que el ganar los haga nuestros.
..no deseamos a nuestros amantes por su belleza, sino que deseamos que tengan belleza para asi poder justificar nuestro deseo.
Fernando Savater, A caballo entre milenios, emphasis mine
I don’t believe these or those horses win because we bet on them, rather that we bet on them to better legitimize our desire for them to win, for them to become ours in their winning.
..we don’t desire our lovers for their beauty, we rather desire that they be beautiful so that we may justify our desire.
I can barely believe that this blog has been up for 2 years already (!) and I had’t yet posted this quote, which is one of all my all time favorites.
Una sociedad es subdesarrollada cuando no es ella quien sabe mas sobre si misma, sino que hay otros pueblos que la conocen mejor.
Marcelino Cereijido, Laura Reinking, La ignorancia debida
A society is underdeveloped when it’s not her who knows more about herself, when other countries know her better.
The words came to mind when I was looking for a great Mexican restaurant around town (figured better late than never to get to know my city!) and by far the best online resources I found where English-language Frommer’s and Fodor’s.
I ended up going to Sacromonte and it was excellent. Interestingly, I ate some of the best Mexican food this city has to offer surrounded by foreigners.
La cultura del terror/4
Fue en un colegio de curas, en Sevilla. Un ninho de nueve anhos, o diez, estaba confesando sus pecados por vez primera. El ninho confeso que habia robado caramelos, o que habia mentido a la mama, o que habia copiado al vecino de pupitre, o quiza confeso que se habia masturbado pensando en la prima. Entonces, desde la oscuridad del confesionario emergio la mano del cura, que blandia una cruz de bronce. El cura obligo al ninho a besar a Jesus crucificado, y mientras le golpeaba la boca con la cruz, le decia:
—Tu lo mataste, tu lo mataste…
Julio Velez era aquel ninho andaluz arrodillado. Han pasado muchos anhos. El nunca pudo arrancarse eso de la memoria.
Eduardo Galeano, El libro de los abrazos
The culture of terror/4
It happened on a school run by priests, in Sevilla. A boy of nine years, or ten, was confessing his sins for the first time. The boy confessed he had stolen caramels, or that he had lied to mother, or that he had copied from the neighboring desk, or maybe he confessed he had masturbated thinking on his girl cousin. Then, from the darkness of the confessional emerged the hand of the priest, brandishing a bronze cross. The priest forced the boy to kiss the crucified Jesus, and while he punched his mouth with the cross, he said:
— You killed him, you killed him…
Julio Velez was that knelt Andalusian boy. Many years have passed. He could never tear that from his memory.
A Spanish version of Mika’s Billy Brown. Apologies beforehand, I just have this hobby of translating songs—if the mood strikes one day I may even hurt your ears with my French version of Gloria Trevi’s Hoy me ire de casa
Update 15/January/2007:
Billy Brown
Oh Billy Brown had lived an ordinary life.
Two kids, a dog, and a cautionary wife.
While it was all going according to plan
Then Billy Brown fell in love with another man.
He met his lover almost every single day
Making excuses for his dodgy holiday
(Unto religion that he said and duty found
They didn’t know his faith was earthly bound)
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Juan Alazan
Oh Juan Alazan vivia una vida primorosa
Dos ninhos, un perro y una esposa fastidiosa
Aun cuando todo iba yendo acorde al plan
Juan Alazan se enamoro de otro galan.
De ver su amante ningun dia se perdia
Haciendo excusas por tan locas correrias
En cierta religion nueva y extranha.
Lo que no sabian es que su fe era mundana.
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Brown…Oh Billy Brown.
Don’t let the stars get you down.
Don’t let the waves let you drown.
Brown…Oh Billy Brown.
Gonna pick you up like a paper cup.
Gonna shake the water out of every nook.
Oh Billy Brown.
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Juan… oh Juan Alazan
No te dejes por tus estrellas tumbar
No te dejes por las olas ahogar
Juan… oh Juan Alazan
Habra que desdoblarse como carton
Habra que sacudirse el agua de cada rincon.
Oh Juan Alazan.
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Oh Billy Brown needed a place, somewhere to go.
He found an island off the coast of Mexico
Leaving his lover and his family behind.
Oh Billy Brown needed to find some peace of mind.
And on his journey and his travels on the way,
He met a girlie who was brave enough to say,
When they made love he shared the burden of his mind.
Oh Billy Brown you are a victim of the times.
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Oh Juan Alazan tenia que huir a cualquier sitio.
Encontro una isla costa de Puerto Rico,
Dejando su amante y su familia por detras..
Oh Juan Alazan solo buscaba paz mental.
En aventuras en su larga travesia,
Conocio una chica que valiente le decia,
Cuando hacian el amor y el desahogaba sentimientos,
“Oh Juan Alazan eres una victima de los tiempos.”
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Brown…Oh Billy Brown.
Don’t let the stars get you down.
Don’t let the waves let you drown.
Brown…Oh Billy Brown.
Gonna pick you up like a paper cup.
Gonna shake the water out of every nook.
Oh Billy Brown.
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Juan… oh Juan Alazan
No te dejes por tus estrellas tumbar
No te dejes por las olas ahogar
Juan… oh Juan Alazan
Habra que desdoblarse como carton
Habra que sacudirse el agua de cada rincon.
Oh Juan Alazan.
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[...]
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[...]
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Brown…Oh Billy Brown.
Gonna pick you up like a paper cup.
Gonna shake the water out of every nook.
Oh Billy Brown.
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Juan… oh Juan Alazan
Habra que desdoblarse como carton
Habra que sacudirse el agua de cada rincon.
Oh Juan Alazan.
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Oh Billy Brown had lived an ordinary life.
Two kids, a dog, and a cautionary wife.
While it was all going according to plan
Then Billy Brown fell in love with another man
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Oh Juan Alazan vivia una vida primorosa
Dos ninhos, un perro y una esposa fastidiosa
Aun cuando todo iba yendo acorde al plan
Juan Alazan se enamoro de otro galan.
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Yo soy un pozo de rencor—como amigo puedo tener defectos, pero como enemigo soy perfecto…
Efrain Bartolome, Educacion emocional en veinte lecciones
I’m a cesspool of bitterness—as a friend I may have defects, but as an enemy I’m perfect…
Boy, how much fun has this book been! Efrain Bartolome’s Educacion emocional en veinte lecciones [review] is exactly what the title implies —an emotional education, a coginitive-behavioral approach to learning to handle your emotions—, I just never thought it would be this much fun.
I stumbled on it combing the city’s book fair for books originally written in Spanish, as has been my custom for the last couple of years. It was a difficult choice, it was pricey ($200 pesos), had too facile a title and yet managed to be intimidating with its 300 pages of dense prose. It apparently lied somewhere between selfhelp and psychotherapy, both of which I dislike. But then its recency (2006), its being written by a Mexican UNAM professor, its initial quote:
Sistema, poeta, sistema:
empieza por contar las piedras,
luego contaras las estrellas.
Leon Felipe
System, poet, system:
start by counting the stones,
then you shall count the stars.
its excellent typography (!), its suggestive index and its author being a renowned poet besides a psychologist made me put out.
I’m glad I did. Whatever the book’s merits the best compliment I can give it is that it has changed me, far more deeply that I can tell this close to the reading but I think and feel different ever since.
How not to love a book that manages to be densely precise and technical while still being fresh, humble, and (Mexicanly) casual—always struggling for clarity, for precision.
How not to love a book that manages to delve deep into theory while being chock-full of practical suggestions—always struggling to convince you, to change you.
How not to love a book that suggests buying a pornographic magazine as an exercise in selfcontrol, proposes a condom-buying dare, explains respiratory meditation, entrances you with the stream-of-consciousness of an addict, and finishes lessons by sprinkling a sufi story (the tale of the two brothers) or a beautiful metaphor (“Se como el sandalo que perfuma al hacha que lo hiere” / “Be like sandalwood that perfumes the axe that hurts it.”)?
If you care about selfhelp books this is by far the best I’ve ever read. If you care about psychotherapy this is by far the best I’ve ever read too (no Freudian bullshit!). I earnestly and sincerely recommend it, grab it wherever you can find it.
(I’m personally looking for extra copies to give away but Gandhi doesn’t have it in stock and its editor, Paidos, doesn’t list it online—do drop a message if you find it somewhere).
My father, who is very fond of sayings and good phrases (a formist!), surprises one often with some bizarre and rather tactless answer that is however perfectly appropriate. “Stop looking for five legs in a dog 1...”, he admonishes, tired of pointless dabbling, pausing to smile and lull you, ”...or tits in a hen”.
A while ago, building a huge and pretty warehouse, he had to endure a terribly inefficient contractor that was however friends with the client. He had a excuse for everything, a but, an it wasn’t my fault, a there’s no way, an it can’t be done. “Look, when one doesn’t know how to fuck…”, interrupts him my father one day, tired of delays and pretexts, “balls get in the way”.
Ahora en el Espanhol original, (llano, claro)
Mi padre, que es muy dado a los refranes y las buenas frases (a formist!), sorprende de vez en cuando con respuestas mas bien bizarras y de poco, digamos, tacto que sin embargo suelen ser perfectamente atinadas. “No le busques tres pies al gato…,” te reganha, cansado de necios devaneos, pausando para sonreir y arrullarte, ”...ni chichis a las gallinas.”
Hace poco, construyendo una bodega enorme y muy linda, tuvo que aguantar un contratista ineficiente pero amigo del cliente. Para todo tenia una excusa, un pero, un no fue mi culpa, un no hay manera, un no se puede. “Mira, al que no sabe coger,” lo interrumpe mi padre un buen dia, cansado de retrasos y pretextos, “hasta los huevos le estorban.”
Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder, “Why, why, why?” Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand.
Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s CraddleWP, AM
El tigre tiene que cazar, el pajaro que volar; el hombre tiene que sentarse y pensar, “Por que, por que, por que?” El tigre tiene que dormir, el pajaro regresar a su nido; el hombre tiene que decirse que ha comprendido.
I read this in a great post, 15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else Ever Has Or Will, soon after heWP died—which was, personally, surprisingly sad—SlaughterHouse 5WP, AM has got to be among the best books I’ve read. Anyway, I’m still fascinated by the phrase and particularly by the interpretation offered there (which seems obvious and inevitable now, but you never know so maybe you—virgin you—may want to make your own unadulterated meaning before reading the following):
[A] koan of sorts from Cat’s Cradle and the Bokononist religion (which phrases many of its teachings as calypsos, as part of its absurdist bent), this piece of doggerel is simple and catchy, but it unpacks into a resonant, meaningful philosophy that reads as sympathetic to humanity, albeit from a removed, humoring, alien viewpoint. Man’s just another animal, it implies, with his own peculiar instincts, and his own way of shutting them down. This is horrifically cynical when considered closely: If people deciding they understand the world is just another instinct, then enlightenment is little more than a pit-stop between insoluble questions, a necessary but ultimately meaningless way of taking a sanity break. At the same time, there’s a kindness to Bokonon’s belief that this is all inevitable and just part of being a person. Life is frustrating and full of pitfalls and dead ends, but everybody’s gotta do it.
So the songpiece has lived inside me since and served as an interesting flashlightELZR. Hope it’s useful to you too.
Oh, and here’s an interesting elaboration on it, from, of all places, a Grey’s Anatomy writer (yup, I’ve become such a rabid fan I gobble up the writers’ blog…shut up already):
Real life—where terrible things happen to us, to our friends, and to the world around us without warning or explanation. And we’re human beings, most of us, so when terrible things happen, we want to know the reasons why. We want the suffering to mean something. And when the meaning isn’t immediately evident, we assign meaning as a way of comprehending, if not controlling, what seem like random acts of terribleness. When bad things happen, we make sense of them by calling them tests. Tests we either pass or fail before moving on to the next level of experience, but ones we hopefully learn from either way.
Mi kredas je la Bono. Kaj, male al multaj homoj, mi kredas, ke Bono tute ne simetrias kun Malbono, sed ege superas ĝin. Malbone konstruita domo disfalas. Bone konstruita rezistas al la atakoj, eĉ plej teruraj, de naturaj fortoj.
I believe in Good. And, as opposed to many people, I believe that Good is not at all symmetric to Evil, but surpasses it by far. A badly build house falls down. A well built one resits the attacks, even the most terrible, of natural forces.
I’ve treasured this quote since I read it and the crucial semantic confusion—good as in righteous; good as in quality, as in utility—that lies at its heart, the one that English’s irregularity obscures, has never failed to cheer me up. For it’s a confusion I happily share.
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