#What language communicates

[carolinemillerbooks]

New Post has been published on Books by Caroline Miller

New Post has been published on https://www.booksbycarolinemiller.com/musings/in-search-of-meaning/

In Search Of Meaning

The woman on Facebook said I didn’t understand her comment and accused me of being sarcastic.  I thought I was engaging in subtle teaching.  She needed to see what she’d written made no sense and that blaming others for misunderstanding her wasn’t kosher.  The person who sends the message is responsible for its clarity.  My nudge enflamed rather that pacified, however.  I might as well have written she was writing drivel and moved on.  Recent discoveries in the animal kingdom suggest mammals and birds have language skills. While not advanced, they can combine ideas. A bird can caw both a warning and advice to its neighbor. “A snake hides beneath your branch so come here.”  Humans can do more than cobble two thoughts together.  They can express complex ideas. Complexity invites errors, of course, because words carry emotion as well as information. Science abandoned communal language in favor of mathematics for this reason. The symbol for Pi, (π,) rarely enranges an individual.    Whether the brain is engaged in emotional or logical thinking, it is an inventive machine. It uses the senses to shape our world, giving us snippets of information that may differ from what dolphins and trees require, but which keeps us safe.  Prediction is its primary function.  “If I fall from this branch, the snake concealed in the autumn leaves below will eat me.”   Ironically, the organ on which we heavily depend is a mystery to us.  Why, for example, does the dying brain continue to function after the heart has stopped?  In its final moments, it floods its tissues with the same gamma rays that produce dreams or hallucinations, conjuring blissful scenes, if near-death survivors can be believed.  Are these visions intimations of heaven?  If so, why do dying rats share the same gamma experience?  Unsurprisingly, one question begets another. When a person falls into a prolonged catatonic state, where does consciousness go? Science has made some progress in this direction. They’ve learned these comas have to do with antibodies that alter receptors that bind glutamate…disrupting how neurons can send signals to one another.  As scientists learn more about our biology, they may discover how to restore somnambulists to full consciousness. But will we ever learn where these dreamers have been?  Sigmund Freud devoted himself to exploring the unconscious, that world to which the afflicted may have escaped. Mainly, that part of the brain regulates bodily functions.  Conscience is unnecessary to keep our hearts beating, for example. Even so, stress can pierce our hidden mind’s armor. We may suffer inexplicable breakdowns or possibly go mad. Sometimes artistic or spiritual revelations explode from the same murky depths like bursts of fireworks. Several years ago, I commented on Barbara Ehrenreich’s book, Living with a Wild God.   In it, she described a moment when the heavens opened and poured into her.  A non-believer, she didn’t rush to the nearest church to bend a knee before its altar. Nonetheless, the experience did give her pause. Having had a similar one, I, too, was forced to pause.  Had I stumbled upon an alternate form of consciousness?  Was the mind, like the elevator of an infinite department store, capable of opening its door on many levels? So much of what we think we know is ephemeral.  Yet in our hubris, we dare to pursue a multiverse of our making, one where we are both omniscient and omnipotent. I refer to Artificial Intelligence (AI). With it, we explore meta-worlds where no human thought has gone before.  Optimists see AI as a plane of good intentions. One day, they imagine,disease will be no more.  One day, even death shall die.  Not everyone is sanguine.  How will this tool fare in the hands of bad actors, they wonder.  Creating ethical standards is a necessary step, but then… few rogues will care about that. And who should create these standards? Russia? Saudi Arabia,? Perhaps North Korea could suggest a shining path. At a crossroads in a giant step for mankind, AI poses many questions. My choice would be to move slowly.  Paraphrasing a line Robert Frost’s famous poem, ”Before I built a Universe, I’d ask to know about the rules, who was being admitted or barred, and to whom it was likely to give offense. * Our species has wandered the planet for 200,000 years, yet we have no agreement on the meaning of good and evil. Linguistics is a weak vessel for this purpose as it can both clarify and disassemble. No wonder even the most sincere stumble.  Whether language informs our brain or the brain informs language, or the process is some endless loop between the two, I do not know.  What’s certain is that communication is difficult and words are incapable of judging the worth of their cargo.  Whether we convey truth, ignorance, or lies rests with our intentions and much of that lies in our unconscious.   Language does manage to communicate, though.  Mostly, it reveals information about ourselves.   *Adapted from Rober Frost”s “Mending Wall.”

[chrissy-kaos]

Cuddles anyone?

[swamp-milkweed]

roque dalton, "como tú," tr. jack hirschman

[lazylittledragon]

ok i swear i'm not going to talk about my breakup forever but the thing that just keeps bothering me:

i know that not getting what you need in a relationship is a COMPLETELY valid reason to end it but also. i feel like having a very vulnerable moment where i opened up about my struggles with intimacy and being relieved that i didn't have to keep doing things i wasn't comfortable with, then being dumped a YEAR later because of my lack of intimacy. is something i should be allowed to be very hurt by???

[phoenixkaptain]

Reading the novelization of A New Hope already changed how I saw Luke as a character but Splinter of the Mind’s Eye is going one step further and making me question the very fundamentals thought to be obvious about Luke.

Like, Luke is, for lack of a better term, a nerd. He studied languages and cultures -

“”Yes,” Luke admitted modestly. “I used to study a lot about certain worlds, back on my uncle’s farm on Tatooine. It was my only escape, and educational as well. This,” and he indicated the creature resting a massive long arm on his head and shaking him in a friendly fashion, “is a Yuzzem.””

-he wants to study more languages and cultures-

“Empty doorways beckoned to him and he was tempted, very tempted, to enter one of the ruined structures to find out if its interior was as well preserved as the outside.

This was not, he reminded himself firmly, the time for playful exploration. Their first concern was to find a way out, not to go poking around this ancient metropolis. However wonderful it was.”

Luke wants to know about people. He wants to know about cultures and creatures and he wants to be able to communicate and…

He really just. Is a great Jedi. He jumps between Leia and danger and he befriends the Yuzzem the prison guards thought would kill him and he wants to explore the creepy abandoned ruins of a civilization long past and he uses Anakin’s lightsaber underwater to cut the stem of a lilypad they use as a boat and he comments that the rock formations are almost too beautiful to cut down and he knows how to work Imperial explosives and

He’s a Jedi, man. He’s a Jedi. He’s been a Jedi this whole time, before any of us even knew what that actually meant.

[fl00mie]

honestamente, no sé

to prevent confusions i'm giving credits of every fankid in order (starting with the tall one)

layden (fresh x ink fankid) by @/sugary-alienn dot (cross x ink fankid) by @/yo-honne abstract (reaper x ink fankid) by CATA-824 on wattpad gradient (error x ink fankid) by @/askcomboclub paper jam (error x ink fankid) by @/7goodangel palette (dream x ink fankid) by @/angeutblogo blueprint (swap x ink fankid) by @/pepper-mint aiden (zack x ink fankid) by ariscastleart

[jewreallythinkthat]

Just seen someone say "am yisrael chai" is a dog whistle.

Like a dog whistle for what? It's a Jewish term which has been around for fucking forever and literally had dnothing to do with anyone not Jewish. They really are taking our word and sayings, deciding a new meaning which is totally bogus and then punishing us for something they made up and pretended was true.

And they call us colonisers.....

[uhbasicallyjustmilex]

the body language. the fucking body language ?????

[sysig]

The familiarity is not very comforting (Patreon)

[smovs]

sketches & screenshot studies for my Barret gold saucer date rewrite

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Try Morse Core. Women Love Morse Code.

[First] Prev <--> Next

[lurkingteapot]

Every now and then I think about how subtitles (or dubs), and thus translation choices, shape our perception of the media we consume. It's so interesting. I'd wager anyone who speaks two (or more) languages knows the feeling of "yeah, that's what it literally translates to, but that's not what it means" or has answered a question like "how do you say _____ in (language)?" with "you don't, it's just … not a thing, we don't say that."

I've had my fair share of "[SHIP] are [married/soulmates/fated/FANCY TERM], it's text!" "[CHARACTER A] calls [CHARACTER B] [ENDEARMENT/NICKNAME], it's text!" and every time. Every time I'm just like. Do they though. Is it though. And a lot of the time, this means seeking out alternative translations, or translation meta from fluent or native speakers, or sometimes from language learners of the language the piece of media is originally in.

Why does it matter? Maybe it doesn't. To lots of people, it doesn't. People have different interests and priorities in fiction and the way they interact with it. It's great. It matters to me because back in the early 2000s, I had dial-up internet. Video or audio media that wasn't available through my local library very much wasn't available, but fanfiction was. So I started to read English language Gundam Wing fanfic before I ever had a chance to watch the show. When I did get around to watching Gundam Wing, it was the original Japanese dub. Some of the characters were almost unrecognisable to me, and first I doubted my Japanese language ability, then, after checking some bits with friends, I wondered why even my favourite writers, writers I knew to be consistent in other things, had made these characters seem so different … until I had the chance to watch the US-English dub a few years later. Going by that adaptation, the characterisation from all those stories suddenly made a lot more sense. And the thing is, that interpretation is also valid! They just took it a direction that was a larger leap for me to make.

Loose adaptations and very free translations have become less frequent since, or maybe my taste just hasn't led me their way, but the issue at the core is still a thing: Supernatural fandom got different nuances of endings for their show depending on the language they watched it in. CQL and MDZS fandom and the never-ending discussions about 知己 vs soulmate vs Other Options. A subset of VLD fans looking at a specific clip in all the different languages to see what was being said/implied in which dub, and how different translators interpreted the same English original line. The list is pretty much endless.

And that's … idk if it's fine, but it's what happens! A lot of the time, concepts -- expressed in language -- don't translate 1:1. The larger the cultural gap, the larger the gaps between the way concepts are expressed or understood also tend to be. Other times, there is a literal translation that works but isn't very idiomatic because there's a register mismatch or worse. And that's even before cultural assumptions come in. It's normal to have those. It's also important to remember that things like "thanks I hate it" as a sentiment of praise/affection, while the words translate literally quite easily, emphatically isn't easy to translate in the sense anglophone internet users the phrase.

Every translation is, at some level, a transformative work. Sometimes expressions or concepts or even single words simply don't have an exact equivalent in the target language and need to be interpreted at the translator's discretion, especially when going from a high-context/listener-responsible source language to a low-context/speaker-responsible target language (where high-context/listener responsible roughly means a large amount of contextual information can be omitted by the speaker because it's the listener's responsibility to infer it and ask for clarification if needed, and low-context/speaker-responsible roughly means a lot of information needs to be codified in speech, i.e. the speaker is responsible for providing sufficiently explicit context and will be blamed if it's lacking).

Is this a mouse or a rat? Guess based on context clues! High-context languages can and frequently do omit entire parts of speech that lower-context/speaker-responsible languages like English regard as essential, such as the grammatical subject of a sentence: the equivalent of "Go?" - "Go." does largely the same amount of heavy lifting as "is he/she/it/are you/they/we going?" - "yes, I am/he/she/it is/we/you/they are" in several listener-responsible languages, but tends to seem clumsy or incomplete in more speaker-responsible ones. This does NOT mean the listener-responsible language is clumsy. It's arguably more efficient! And reversely, saying "Are you going?" - "I am (going)" might seem unnecessarily convoluted and clumsy in a listener-responsible language. All depending on context.

This gets tricky both when the ambiguity of the missing subject of the sentence is clearly important (is speaker A asking "are you going" or "is she going"? wait until next chapter and find out!) AND when it's important that the translator assign an explicit subject in order for the sentence to make sense in the target language. For our example, depending on context, something like "are we all going?" - "yes" or "they going, too?" might work. Context!

As a consequence of this, sometimes, translation adds things – we gain things in translation, so to speak. Sometimes, it's because the target language needs the extra information (like the subject in the examples above), sometimes it's because the target language actually differentiates between mouse and rat even though the source language doesn't. However, because in most cases translators don't have access to the original authors, or even the original authors' agencies to ask for clarification (and in most cases wouldn't get paid for the time to put in this extra work even if they did), this kind of addition is almost always an interpretation. Sometimes made with a lot of certainty, sometimes it's more of a "fuck it, I've got to put something and hope it doesn't get proven wrong next episode/chapter/ten seasons down" (especially fun when you're working on a series that's in progress).

For the vast majority of cases, several translations are valid. Some may be more far-fetched than others, and there'll always be subjectivity to whether something was translated effectively, what "effectively" even means …

ANYWAY. I think my point is … how interesting, how cool is it that engaging with media in multiple languages will always yield multiple, often equally valid but just sliiiiightly different versions of that piece of media? And that I'd love more conversations about how, the second we (as folks who don't speak the material's original language) start picking the subtitle or dub wording apart for meta, we're basically working from a secondary source, and if we're doing due diligence, to which extent do we need to check there's nothing substantial being (literally) lost -- or added! -- in translation?

[goldkirk]

I don’t know how to explain any more clearly that it doesn’t MATTER if it seems legitimate to you. You have got to fact check every single headline and post and claim on the left just like you need to do on the right.

The left is NOT immune to misinformation and rushed reporting. And the more emotionally polarizing or shocking the talking points, sound bytes, and headlines are, the worse it is and more frequently it happens.

Learn to verify through multiple independent sources. If you can’t do that, you can’t trust it.

If you have to wait extra hours for the real information to come through vetted channels—NOT just one individual somewhere everyone links to, and not just one single media source either, EVEN if it’s a major news network—thats just how it has to be. What news outside of genuine local disasters near you TRULY needs your outrage and post-sharing in the next hour specifically?

Misinformation works best by not seeming like misinformation and by fitting in with the rest of what you already expect to see. It doesn’t help anyone to not be able to recognize and avoid the stuff.

[scoriarose]

The Language of Love

If you are already convinced snakes are incapable of love, this post is not for you. But if you are open to the possibility that maybe they do, and maybe they love us too, this post explores that thought. Perhaps snakes feel it differently, perhaps they feel it the same humans do- though even humans experience love, be it platonic or romantic, differently from individual to individual. Different people also show their love in different ways as well! Yet still even with a divide between species most of us have felt love from our furry and feathered friends. Perhaps our scaly friends are also telling us they love us, we just might not understand.

When I first got my girl Scoria, if I could tell her only one thing it would be, "I love you." When I held her, I wondered if she understood how much I cared about her, and would do anything to protect her. When I pet her, I wondered if she knew how amazing I thought she was and enjoyed spending time with her.

And then I started watching livestreams of wild snakes, and how they act toward each other. (The above still is from Project Rattle Cam!) When the babies see a trusted adult, they slither all over them! How many times had my girl happily slithered all over me going no where in particular? I imagine that my finger petting her soft as a feather was probably quite similar to another snake greeting her in such a way.

Sakura is much more shy, yet wants to form a bond with me. I see it when she fights her fear to vibe with me. Sometimes she'll sit for hours at the edge of her tank nearest me, not wanting to come out, but just be near me.

Snakes like rattlesnakes and garter snakes will vibe peacefully with each other, with baby rattlesnakes sleeping near the adult rattlesnakes they trust to keep them safe.

Perhaps, when our shy snakes sits with us, facing their fears they're saying, "I'm scared, but I want to be closer with you." And maybe when our snakes slither all over us, going nowhere in particular, like their wild counterparts do with each other they're saying, "I'm so happy to see you! You're my favorite to be with!" I wonder if they could tell us one thing it would be "I love you, best friend!" And it's okay, best friend. I love you too, and already know. <3

[royalarchivist]

Wilson took over Rubius' setup today and refused to let him move the camera, going so far as to grab his arm with his tiny little paws MULTIPLE times so Rubius would keep petting him 🥹💕

Wilson is my favorite streamer.

[mhaikkun]

the foxes hunt the hounds