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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Steven desJardins' LiveJournal:
| Thursday, November 26th, 2009 | |
| 2:42 pm | What's Up With Hungarian Last week I decided to take a day off, then start on a different book. In hindsight, choosing Sárga Rózsa for my first translation project was like a Hungarian choosing The Shadow of the Torturer; I was guaranteed to come across words and grammatical constructions that even a native speaker would find challenging. So, I took a day off, and then somehow I never got back to regular work habits, so I've only read about a page and a half since then. I'm going to try to make more consistent progress in the next month or so, but I don't know if I'll get back to daily progress. |
| Thursday, November 19th, 2009 | |
| 3:08 am | The Sárga Rózsa Project, Day 18 Ugh, I'm just going to pretend this day doesn't exist. After a couple of sentences, I got to a four-line song which has at least three confusing words and one inexplicable grammatical anomaly. (If it didn't appear in at least two versions of the song, I'd say the word "adjék" could not even exist in Hungarian—it should be "adják".) |
| Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 | |
| 11:56 am | The Sárga Rózsa Project, Day 17 Another day where I took a nap after a night at the theater, which turned into ten hours of sleep. Pages translated: 15.5 Pages translated since last update: 0.25 Worst day since I began this. |
| Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 | |
| 4:52 am | The Sárga Rózsa Project, Day 16 I put off working again, but I finally managed to get a decent-sized chunk of work done. If I do as well tomorrow, I'll be a page away from the end of the chapter. In hindsight, it would probably have been smarter to work on a contemporary Hungarian text. I'm running into a lot of difficulty simply because of the differences between 1893 Hungarian and 1993 Hungarian. I'll stick to it at least through the end of the month, and probably the end of the book, but I'll try to choose something easier for my next project. Pages translated: 15.25 Pages translated since last update: 1.75 |
| Monday, November 16th, 2009 | |
| 12:52 am | The Sárga Rózsa Project, Day 15 I went to three movies today—Rashoman, The Damned United, and A Woman in Berlin—and when I finally got back home, I just didn't feel like working. So I'll set a three-page goal for tomorrow, and see if I can make up for today's laziness. |
| Sunday, November 15th, 2009 | |
| 12:20 am | The Sárga Rózsa Project, Day 14 I got stuck early on, with one line I can't puzzle out: "Tunná róla, tönné róla! Hogyha tunná, tönné róla!" Tunná and tönné are clearly verbs (third person, singular, conditional, definite conjugation), but not in any dictionary I can find. (Róla and hogyha are perfectly ordinary words, no problem.) I did eventually find the rest of the song, which begins "Réten legél a liba, Párnába a tojúja. Tunná rúla, ténné rúla, hogyha tunná, ténné rúla!" Not a direct help, but I'll try translating the rest of the song tomorrow and see if it gives me any contextual clues. If I can't work it out tomorrow, I'll skip the line and move on, but I hate to do that. Pages translated: 13.5 Pages translated since last update: 0.5 |
| Saturday, November 14th, 2009 | |
| 12:21 am | The Sárga Rózsa Project, Day 13 I did a bit more work today, and watched the first part of Egri Csillagok on DVD. For some reason they translated the title as "The Lost Talisman" instead of "The Stars of Eger". The first part does feature a lost talisman, and the story hasn't yet got around to visiting Eger, but it still seems like a strange choice. For Sárga Rózsa, today's absolutely typical phrase is "But the young man didn't see the humor in it". I sure hope that point of view changes in the next chapter to someone who's not a prig. Pages translated: 13 Pages translated since last update: 1.5 |
| Friday, November 13th, 2009 | |
| 2:19 am | The Sárga Rózsa Project, Day 12 I am getting more than a little tired of the endless quarrel between this cowboy and his girlfriend. If I went faster, I could get to the end of the chapter more quickly, but of course I'm going more slowly instead. Today's linguistic discovery: "elmarad" means "not happen", so "nem marad el" means, of course, "not not happen". (I went with "cannot be avoided" in the translation.) Even worse, of course, than the weird grammatical constructs, are the cultural references I don't get. "Did I call for you to cast lead on Christmas night?" It's entirely possible that I've completely garbled that sentence, but assuming I've got it right, I have no idea what this custom is or how it applies to the issue of mutual distrust. Ah well. I've gone seven days in a row with at least one page translated, even after it turned out to be harder than I expected. That's actually not so bad. Pages translated: 11.5 Pages translated since last update: 1 |
| Thursday, November 12th, 2009 | |
| 1:18 am | The Sárga Rózsa Project, Day 11 One step forward, one step back. After going from 1.5 pages three days in a row, to 2.5 pages yesterday, I'm back to 1.5 pages today. Pages translated: 10.5 Pages translated since last update: 1.5 |
| Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 | |
| 1:12 am | The Sárga Rózsa Project, Day 10 A bit more progress, today. Today's discovery: the Hungarian verb meaning "to eat bacon". (I could have guessed it, of course, but this is the first time I've seen it actually used.) Pages translated: 9 Pages translated since last update: 2.5 |
| Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 | |
| 12:23 am | The Sárga Rózsa Project, Day 9 I had a heaping dose of "Meh" today. I got to an early start, but struggled with some of the first lines I worked on, and even after deciding to leave question marks in place of the bits I couldn't figure out, I just couldn't work up any enthusiasm for getting back to it. I finally did a bit more work in the early part of the evening, and just now had about half a page that flew by incredibly smoothly (at least, compared to the rest of this book), allowing me to salvage a performance no worse than yesterday's. Pages translated: 6.5 Pages translated since last update: 1.5 |
| Monday, November 9th, 2009 | |
| 1:01 am | The Sárga Rózsa Project, Day 8 1.5 pages today, and the Fibonacci sequence does not continue. I could perhaps do another page before I sleep, but I'm already tired. I made two separate trips to Silver Spring today to see movies, so it's not surprising I only matched yesterday's progress, instead of exceeding it. Tomorrow, I'll try to do a bit better. Pages translated: 5 Pages translated since last update: 1.5 |
| Sunday, November 8th, 2009 | |
| 2:41 am | The Sárga Rózsa Project, Day 7 The Fibonacci sequence continues: 1.5 pages today. If I keep it up, I'll do 2.5 pages tomorrow, 4 pages on Monday, 27 pages by Friday, and I'll finish the book on Saturday. My guess is that sometime between now and the end of the week, the progression will break down. I'm dropping the "Pages read" statistic since it was really only useful when I was travelling and couldn't do a proper translation. Although whether what I'm doing now can be considered a proper translation is open to dispute. I'm definitely sticking too closely to the original syntax; I'm going to have to make another few passes, polishing it, and I don't want to discard information too soon. Pages translated: 3.5 Pages translated since last update: 1.5 |
| Friday, November 6th, 2009 | |
| 10:46 pm | The Sárga Rózsa Project, Day 6 I did one page today. If the Fibonacci sequence continues, I'll do one and a half tomorrow, which will bring me to the end of the first chapter. The first couple of days, I made a list of the words in each paragraph that I didn't know and looked them all up before I started translating. Today I tried looking up the words one at a time as I read, which went faster but resulted in a rougher translation. I'm feeling much less optimistic about being able to produce a decent translation, at least not for a while. I'm running across combinations of words like "dupla szegfű" (double pink, where pink is a kind of flower) and "számadó gazda" (reckoner/accountant farmer) which obviously have a specific meaning, but one which can't be easily intuited from the separate dictionary definitions. Google helps with some of these, but not all. And even when all of the words are very simple, some of the grammar throws me. (He lifts the hat to one side and puts it on his head? I have a hard time visualizing and comprehending exactly what motion and end result is intended.) A little discouraging, but I always knew perseverance would be necessary. The only difference is, the amount of perseverance I think will be necessary is going up. In other news, I saw Made in Hungaria tonight, which is the second-best Hungarian musical and the third-best Communist musical I've seen in the last few months. That's not a terrible showing, but it is at the bottom of each category. Pages Read: 5 Pages Translated: 2 Pages Read Since Last Update: 0 Pages Translated Since Last Update: 1 |
| 8:02 am | The Sárga Rózsa Project, Day 5 Again, I did a bit of work after getting pack from a play, got tired, and thought I'd take a bit of a nap before continuing, and ended up sleeping through the whole night. This is an unusual sleep pattern for me, and a sign that I'm still a bit exhausted from my trip; I'm not sleeping much more than I usually do, but ordinarily if I feel this kind of fatigue in the evening, I can nap for a couple of hours and go back to being productive for a while before I go back to bed. Anyway. The statistics aren't so great, but I found definitions on the web for a couple of words that the massive four-pound dictionary didn't have. (One turned out to be a kind of trousers worn by Hungarian cowboys, and the other was a saddle-cloth.) So, since I feel like congratulating myself, I'll call the day a win. Pages Read: 5 Pages Translated: 1 Pages Read Since Last Update: 0 Pages Translated Since Last Update: 0.5 |
| Thursday, November 5th, 2009 | |
| 6:30 am | The Sárga Rózsa Project, Day 4 Yesterday commenced the cat-vacuuming, which took the form of five loads of laundry. I finally sat down to translate late in the afternoon, and finished one paragraph before I had to leave for dinner and Hungarian class. After I got back, I managed one more paragraph before deciding to take what I hoped would be a two-hour nap, and turned into a full night's sleep. Again, a disappointing day, but honestly if I'd done that much on Tuesday I would have been satisfied. I'm starting to get a feel for the process, which makes it less intimidating and makes cat-vacuuming less appealing. I should have done more on Wednesday than I'd counted on doing Tuesday, since I wasn't as tired, but the practical effect is that I'm basically one day behind schedule and there's no point beating myself up. So far, two observations. My first instinct when I make sense of a sentence is to dash off an English version which is—sloppy. Graceful English, but sometimes unnecessarily losing the precise nuances of the original sentence. And, on a related note, it's really hard to decide how much of a tradeoff to make between hewing closely to the original and making the sentences sound natural in English. For instance, "in the reedy area there were good work tasks belonging to the otter" is a very literal translation of one clause which I initially rendered "otters fed heartily among the reeds", and, after looking back at the original, changed to "the otter fed heartily among the reeds". I think what I initially went with is a sound translation—Hungarians tend to say things like "I like the strawberry" where we would say "I like strawberries"—but somehow I feel that when the original sentence structure is at least reasonable, I should try to keep it. I suspect my opinions on the matter may evolve over the course of the novel. Pages Read: 5 Pages Translated: 0.5 Pages Read Since Last Update: 0 Pages Translated Since Last Update: 0.5 |
| Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 | |
| 6:47 am | The Sárga Rózsa Project, Day 3 I got off to a slow start yesterday. I unpacked, got groceries, watched some fake news and as much Top Chef as my crappy Comcast signal allows (and set my TiVo to re-record that episode), and set up a workspace next to my computer devoted to translation, before going up to Silver Spring to watch a movie. I thought about skipping the movie, but decided the point of this project wasn't to eliminate activities, it was to fit one more activity in among the ones I'm already doing, and I would still have time to do a bit of work after I got home. Then I got home, and crashed. Jet lag finally caught up with me. So, I'm embarrassed, but I'll make an earlier start today and get at least a page or two done. I wasn't planning to begin in earnest until tomorrow anyway, precisely because I expected to crash for a day or two after getting home, but I had planned to do at least a bit of work each day. One weird incident. There was a note under my door dated last week saying that I needed to pick up a package, and when I went down to get it I was told that it had been there for a month and they'd sent it back. I pointed out that it couldn't possibly have been there a month, and he was insistent, right until the point where he found the entry from two weeks ago in the package book after about five minutes of searching. It turned out to be something from Amnesty International ("I think it something from a church" was what he said initially), so presumably just junk, but I sent a complaint to the building manager about the policy anyway, which seems to have gotten the front desk clerk in a bit of trouble, because it turns out that the policy is that only the building manager has the authority to decide to send something back, and she'd known nothing about it until she got my note. Oh, and the movie I saw was Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, Fritz Lang film noir with a silly situation and an indescribably stupid ending. (Well, I guess I could describe it, but there would be massive spoilers involved.) For some reason a remake starring Michael Douglas is coming out soon. Pages Read: 5 Pages Translated: 0 Pages Read Since Last Update: 0 Pages Translated Since Last Update: 0 |
| Monday, November 2nd, 2009 | |
| 11:17 pm | The Sárga Rózsa Project, Day 2 It may surprise nobody that small paperback Hungarian-English dictionaries omit much, if not most, 19th century cowboy terminology. Tomorrow I'll unpack the big dictionary and find out if it's any better. Pages Read: 5 Pages Translated: 0 Pages Read Since Last Update: 5 Pages Translated Since Last Update: 0 |
| Sunday, November 1st, 2009 | |
| 2:21 am | The Sárga Rózsa Project, Day 1 Since I've just finished a Hungarian class, and November is National Novel Writing Month, I've decided to attempt to translate a short novel by the end of November. I've chosen Mór Jókai's Sárga rózsa (which means yellow rose) for a few reasons: I like Jókai, it's very short (only 91 pages), and I thought it had never been translated. It turns out that it has been translated, and it's in Google Books's catalog, but they don't have scans and I can't find a copy for sale anywhere online, although it may be in the Library of Congress. (It's in their catalog, but "should have a copy" and "really does have a copy" are different things there.) So, a translation will be less valuable than I originally thought, but it's still a good journeyman project, and it's conceivable that it will be worth publishing when I'm done. I thought of making a cute acronym, since half the words in NaNoWriMo are inapplicable, but decided that "The Sárga Rózsa Project" was simpler. I plan to post daily updates, whether I make progress or not, but my intention is to make at least a bit of progress each day, starting on Tuesday. (I'm travelling today and tomorrow, with only a small dictionary unpacked, so for the next couple of days I'm just going to try to read as far as I can and get a rough idea of the meaning, and I'll figure out the fine details and start the translation on Tuesday, but I probably won't really get serious about it until Thursday, since I'll still need to rest up.) |
| Sunday, October 25th, 2009 | |
| 4:35 pm | Update From Debrecen I'm not sure that it was a good idea to come back to Debrecen for another Hungarian class so soon. I spent a lot less time studying since I signed up for this class than I expected to, so my vocabulary is still terribly weak. And it turns out there isn't a class this time at exactly the right level for me. Last time around, my course got to Chapter 10 of Book 2. (Out of 12.) This time, the available courses started at 2/7 or 3/7, with nothing in between. Book 3 has no new grammar, so technically I could jump ahead that far, but I decided I'd be better off going back and redoing some of the old material. So far that decision seems sound; it takes less effort to remember the grammar, so I'm able to spend more mental energy picking up vocabulary, and it's a lot easier to understand what the teacher says in class. It'll probably be at least six months before I come back to Hungary, so I bought $250 worth of books today. Most of that was for dictionaries and textbooks, but I also picked up eight works of fiction (novels and short story collections). The dictionaries should be very useful. I had a couple of dictionaries which are either so small they're practically useless, or too big to easily carry around. I now have the biggest dictionary I could get, and a useful but portable one. This should be more than enough study material until I return. |