Cooperation/community is one of humanity's greatest strengths; if there is a way forward, it's through working together.

"That Trump-proof America is also filled with meetings, gatherings, pot lucks, and block parties. Protests and celebrations. Marches and dances. Book readings. The book industry has the opportunity to be a driving force in that Trump-proof America. Why would we ever pass that up?"

"That Trump-proof America is filled with print. Newspapers, zines, journals. Print read by hundreds of thousands of people. Print read by dozens of people. Print supported by an online presence that makes it easy to share ideas across geographic distances without becoming digital ephemera."

"And, perhaps most importantly, the law protects librarians and educators from civil and criminal liability for librarians and library staffers for their lawful work."

and transcend the mere equivalence-hunting of tools like Google Translate. As is often the case, A.I. isn’t so much changing the game as exaggerating a dynamic already at work: good translation draws on as much of life and experience and personality as good writing does."

💯

"Translators also need to trust themselves, and to commit to rendering their experience of a novel or an essay or a poem, rather than trying to make themselves disappear in the no man’s land between languages. In fact, visibility may be the key to their survival as A.I.-driven translators improve,

"Conceiving language as something you flirt and fight with, rather than a dry dictionary’s worth of words, also helps resolve the old cocktail-party question of whether everything can be translated. "

IMO "untranslatable" isn't a thing! Unpacking/explaining is still translating.

What we were taught first and most often in grad school was that we "don't translate words, we translate meanings."

“'We don’t translate words of a language, we translate uses of language,' Searls writes. The point is not to capture merely what a text means but to reproduce how it means in context."

Library sales are daaaangerous...paperbacks for $1.50 and hardbacks for $3 in 2024? I have to avoid mine because it's too tempting.

In any case, the atmosphere on this side seems much, much less putrid and gloomy, and I'm looking forward to getting to know the good people here. 🙂

I'm a *big* fan of horror specifically, but I love speculative fiction in general. I'm glad it's gaining more respect, but I think there are still lots more readers to win over. Education and empathy are also under fire, making literature more crucial than ever.

I've also decided to initiate a larger career shift—I've been trying to find my way into publishing. Plus I'm working on launching a Substack about international lit. Translated literature deserves more love and attention!