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thanks for pointing out the delineation of xiang3 vs think. it's tempting to draw conclusions about what the two languages presume is primarily on your mind (desires vs beliefs). in general i think it's really fun to observe how the two different language (families) draw lines around concepts and group them into words -- thinking/speaking in mandarin changes how i think about things compared to english.
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balckwell
1 year ago
new essay: IS THIS WEBSITE A VALID LITERARY MEDIUM? -- in which i do, in fact, get around to answering the question
saddleblasters
1 year ago
I know we've been talking back and forth about this topic for the past year and the half, but seeing your thoughts on it all written down in a single essay was the exact jolt of motivation I needed to get out of bed and continue the neverending battle of sitting with my hands on my keyboard in bewilderment, trying once again to write
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sorbier
1 year ago
thanks beautifully for this essay, i resonate with a lot with your approach to your website. i've also been thinking about the essays in compiled form, yes all together on the website, but also perhaps in one volume (book). just like how an artist or photographer's disparate works gain a different meaning when combined and sequenced in one larger exhibit.
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balckwell
1 year ago
i've definitely thought about publishing a collection, but i know how much work it is to publish a book by one's self, and i don't know if i'd necessarily get enough out of it (creatively) to justify the whole thing. i am much more interested in archival than anything else -- for example, i tend to go for "complete works" rather than "collected works" when i have the opportunity.
balckwell
1 year ago
when creating my website, i've been thinking a lot about whether i'd like to organize the essays chronologically or by subject matter. setting aside the difficulty of determining the subject matter and/or type of many of my essays, i personally tend to prefer chronological organization, so that i can understand the writer's development over time.
balckwell
1 year ago
and that's how i tend to think of my essays: each as part as a long journey. and this is how i've always read websites/blogs i like -- starting from the very beginning. so my trouble in curating a collection would be: do i want to publish a BEST OF BALCKWELL? or do i want to publish archival volumes? and one way to solve this dilemma is to do neither.
"It makes it seem like people who read/speak Chinese do so in some utterly alien way": yes, thanks for verbalising part of why I didn't like it. also, I hadn't thought about word-by-word as mostly for illustrating grammatical construction, but it makes a lot of sense! i agree (:
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emilynhoward
1 year ago
An audio collection of some of my poems went live yesterday. I've linked it to the invididual poems so you can hear them being read by me.
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balckwell
1 year ago
added most of the essays in the "Best of Personal Essays" section + a "not_found" page because of all the links that don't yet go anywhere!
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balckwell
1 year ago
I feel like the main utility of a "literal" translation would be attempting to explain the grammatical structure of a language to someone trying to learn. The sentence that emerges is usually complete nonsense in the target language, but reveals the way that the words and particles fit together in the original.
balckwell
1 year ago
However, a "literal" translation that is just the dictionary definition of each word one after the other (like in the example you linked) is quite unhelpful, and I think you're right to say that it exoticizes the language. It makes it seem like people who read/speak Chinese do so in some utterly alien way, when in reality they parse sentences as naturally and fluidly as someone would in English.
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saddleblasters
1 year ago
I've seen non-chinese-speakers talk this way before about the two meanings of 想, but even in English, think also has (at least) two very different usages: (1) to think/contemplate about something, and (2) to think/believe something is true. the second usage isn't at all a logical necessity -- chinese doesn't really use 想 that way, you'd typically use 认为 or 觉得 to express it
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saddleblasters
1 year ago
so one could easily take an english sentence like "I think this is beautiful" and translate it word by word into Chinese to make all sorts of weird conjectures about the English-speakers' psychology
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balckwell
1 year ago
thanks to the generous advice of some fellow webmasters, i am now able to transfer essays at speeds hitherto unimaginable. Behold: the entire RAINICHI 2023 series (so far) in all its glory!!
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that said i think (haha, jue2de) that the average mandarin word performs more roles than the average english word, which renders mandarin more figurative/conceptual broadly. apologies for stating it so definitively though -- agree that it's totally my subjective impression.