Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!
this post was automatically generated upon this site’s creation, as a demo for what my blog might look like. if you were to stretch your mind very hard, you might forgive me for saying in a way, this is the very first cake this blog would ever celebrate with for its birth.
i had the pleasure of attending a speech of an International Chinese Language Program alum while i was in Taiwan. his topic of choice (if i remember correctly; my memory is failing me now) was unpacking the subtleties of translation, especially when it comes to poetry — he had much to say about a colleague’s work. Mandarin does not so easily convert to English, and there are entire forms of art built upon phonic and written rules of the language that pose an incredible challenge to translators. do you translate literally? word-for-word, meaning as close as possible, even if you lose the rhyme, the wordplay, the lilting rhythm?
or do you translate liberally? translate rice balls into “jelly donuts?” adapt for a modern, (not-so-)discerning audience?
i don’t have a good answer for you, to be honest. my linguistics knowledge is barely even amateurish and even though i grew up speaking both languages i couldn’t tell you how to translate the words i’ve looked at in dictionaries over and over again. there are some nuances i really struggle to communicate. but that’s life, right?
anyways, the aforementioned speaker made an analogy that put me off at first, but i’ve come to see the beauty in it. he said that though he was a fairly illiterate Mandarin speaker beforehand, his first teacher in college changed that, as a good teacher tends to do. and though he’d been alive for coming on two decades at that point, he’d only just been born into the world of Chinese Language in that very moment. and though he has a biological mother, in that moment his Chinese teacher also became his mother, by birthing him into this new language and culture.
at the time i was like “ew dude lol why are you comparing Chinese class to the birth canal” but like i said. i’ve come around to it. life is messy. there are no really good analogies. sometimes learning this language is as difficult as forcing your silly baby lungs to breathe real air for the first time. but by gum, it’s nice to breathe fresh air sometimes, isn’t it?
it took me a very long time to get this site up and running enough to feel like i could anoint the blog with a first post. part of that terrible perfectionist streak that stamps out any precious spark of creativity inside me. but i figure there’s no better place than here to inscribe my hopes and wishes for this silly old blog.
hi blog. i hope that you enjoy your first few gasps of air. i hope that you, in all your welcoming and kindness to me, in your patience with my fumbling (several gamer rages against wordpress themes and plugins, the factory resetting of my entire home network, getting totally distracted by work…), and in your promise of potential, you find that it might suck for a while, but hopefully there will be small joys throughout. and maybe the language will be muddy and unclear, but there will be something worth taking home buried within. and i’ll do my best, too, okay?
hello, world!