#but i unfortunately do enjoy being in contexts where it's being paid lip service at minimum. it feels homey

[unopenablebox]

Tell me more about the worst things about the rationalists? The point about “you are experiencing a feeling as though you’re having an insight” (sorry don’t have your exact wording in front of me) is sort of giving me a light bulb moment re: their whole thing

so... the answer is at least kind of "yes, i can do that", but in attempting to answer your question i found myself writing several thousand words of explanation about who i think "rationalists" even describes anymore/ever, why i've encountered them and what my background is, etc, so if you'd like to write back clarifying your own knowledge of/level of interaction with internet rationalism that might help me cut out some of the thousands of words of historical context. regardless i'll think about it and try to figure out which takes i think i'm actually qualified to air in public/which will be meaningful to anyone less immersed in weird rat history inside baseball than i am

[shijiujun]

On Translations

Once again, I’m just plain incensed by dumbasses who think it’s okay to firstly, steal someone else’s hard work and secondly, think they’ve got some right to edit that person’s work because they think they’ve got a better grip on English (not true btw) - It didn’t happen to me (well, as far as I know) and I’m not in the Guardian fandom and I don’t personally know the person who’s dealing with this ridiculous shit, but oof am I angry after seeing the tweet.

Just saw on twitter that some asshole stole a translator’s works (Guardian, Chinese to English) and edited it - Yes it’s just like the MDZS saga a few weeks ago when some white person who doesn’t have any Chinese language knowledge, tried to ‘improve’ translations done by another person who actually knows what they’re doing in both Chinese and English - And then put in on Wattpad with a ridiculous letter and intro where they said: “Great things can be made greater” to explain why they edited the English of the original translation.

“Great things can be made greater,” said the thief.

“I hope my actions will be appreciated,” said the thief again.

Like wow, once again, the audacity - There’ve been extensive arguments on translations since the MDZS saga a few weeks ago and obviously the fan who took ExR’s translations and ‘made them better’ stupidly stepped on a landmine by fucking with the MDZS fandom that has a longer history, more resources and clout than the amount of time she’s been exposed to MDZS via CQL, and got bitch-slapped by the rest of the fandom where there exists a majority of fans knowing clearly what to do and not to do.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of all fandoms, especially smaller ones - The user i saw is a translator for Guardian and the mofo 1. Stole their translations 2. Edited the translations to ‘better english’ 3. Wrote that they don’t know who did the original translations but “they know where to find me” *cue my eyeroll* 4. And after op commented to say please credit at the very least in May, they’ve been ignored so far - but luckily they’ve got some supporters as well to help report the mofo.

Aside from the ridiculous thievery (not crediting, blatantly lying and stealing, being an arrogant, indecent person stuck on that high horse) of course, the “I believe that great things can be made greater” is a fucking load of bullshit in this instance, and I mean taking someone else’s translations and adding your own spin to it because you think you’ve taken tests in English as a first language in school all your life (fuck off, a lot of these translators did too), that you’ve got some superiority over English or because you think it reads funny?

Granted, most fan translators don’t put up flawless translations (once again, these translators are FREE LABOUR), but you get it for free and you don’t have to (and can’t) read the original text, so suck it up.

Moreover, the disgust that I feel at the claim that the thief’s work is now ‘greater’ is extremely visceral - It’s not a greater piece of work because the thief stole it, period. No one asked for the thief’s help.

(In case you guys are curious the stolen post on Wattpad is here: https://my.w.tt/7dehLj7D56 and if you’d like to report just follow the instructions)

On Chinese to English translations:

1. If you don’t have good grasp of the original language, you have no right editing the translated work after, regardless of language. Until you can clearly understand the original idioms, context, characters etc. or have at least lived with the language for a substantial part of your life, honestly, just stop, you’ve got no right! 

Sure, some translators aren’t as good as you like them to be, but the argument is always, well, you wouldn’t even have this minimal translation if they didn’t do it, so yay you’re like a few sentences and words closer to the text than you were before. If it’s really that bad, hopefully there are better translations and you can ignore the one you’re looking at, but the same rules apply across all translations!! Don’t disrespect the translator (especially when they’ve done nothing wrong except try to give you access to more content).

2. For Chinese, it’s even worse because the language is known for its hidden nuances and complexities within just two to four characters that, when translated into English, can sometimes take up to two long sentences to explain. That’s why sometimes shit reads funny. It’s not that these translators can’t do English, but Chinese to English acrobatics is beyond your comprehension, hell sometimes it’s beyond translators’ comprehension, so thanks for editing something you’ve got no idea about. This user Bee made a very good argument thread IMO about this on Twitter which I suggest people read

3. Adding your edits to a translated piece of work especially without permission or discussion with the translator, honestly who the fuck are you to do that? Either work your damn ass off by painstakingly translating the original and then editing it however you like, or just... enjoy the free content. Chinese BL novels (in this instance and as in many instances i’ve seen) and some of these translators have been around for longer than you’ve been in the fandom, so suddenly when you have an interest in the content, in a culture and language that you’ve never seen before, are unfamiliar with and have zero knowledge about, you think that as a fan you now have the right to edit someone else’s work that was already done correctly? 

The fact is if the translator wrote a bogus line in the English translations, you wouldn’t have known, and when you upload it as your own and ‘improve’ it, you would be a joke, but you didn’t read the original text did you, so what makes you are any sort of authority to edit the translations?

4. Of course this is not to say that non-Chinese speaking people can’t enjoy the same content or have excellent, poignant discussions and understanding over the content, but honestly a lot of translations don’t capture 100% of a Chinese novel because the nuances are just that complex, and translators do their best to convey it regardless - This is why RESPECT FOR THE TRANSLATOR IS IMPORTANT. And I don’t mean simply paying lip service and typing “we respect all translators for their hard work on this work”, and then disrespect it entirely by not crediting, by the simple act of editing without permission etc.

Respect their interpretation and translations, because it can differ from translator to translator translating the same sentence (and people who don’t speak the original language want to compete with that, I don’t understand?!)

5. Honestly, considering how people are still arguing on the semantics of the Bible for example, not only in its original language but also in English alone - if people can’t agree on every sentence of the holy text and what each sentence means to different people, fan translators get a fucking pass

6. I read in Bee’s threads where someone disagreed with their argument of ‘only people who understand the original language can translate and edit’, saying that it’s okay if the editor doesn’t have a grasp of the original language - I understand that yes, someone else’s English might truly be better (for e.g. actual editors but also please don’t proclaim that you’re one just because you think the translator hasn’t lived with English for most of their lives or whatever), but even then, the editor has to work really closely with the translator because the translator is the primary source of the translation i.e. they know exactly what is going on in a particular sentence in their heads that may not have been translated fully, so how can non-Chinese reading editors truly understand the translated text on its own, editing in silos?

7. Perhaps in actual publishing houses that deal with official translations, this is a fallacy that is ever-present and editors do that anyway without understanding the original text (not sure about this, I’m bringing up the point for consideration, hypothetically putting this out here), but my issue with ‘editors’ in the fan translations space is that they come off sitting on some high horse because they think they’re better in English than you are (which of course yes, might be true, but then read points 1-6 again)

8. A thief is a thief, don’t put up an open letter or disclaimer explaining your motivations. It’s plain and simple, you stole someone else’s work, claimed it for your own and are riding on the great (sometimes not so great but still great, if you get what I mean) work that the translator did. You don’t get to claim ownership for any part of it, even your edits. And once again, “original work belongs to the translators” without actually naming the translators? Fuck off.

9. God, I hate Wattpad and Instagram (okay sometimes Twitter but Twitter seems to be a halfway point) - The Sanctuaries for Lazy Content Thieves Where The Platform Endorses Their Shitty Behaviour

10. Aside from translations, I’ve also seen assholes stealing like shitposts and jokes - These are the hardest to prove as well and it’s almost impossible to claim ownership when someone steals your jokes. Thieves only wish they had as creative a brain as some of you (didn’t happen to me but to a mutual) do. The audacity. The audacity! if the work was actually done and paid and recorded, if TurnItIn.com was available for fandom posts, these thieves would be out of gas.

11. Fan translators are not obligated to answer to any of their readers when it comes to why they translated something a certain way. You don’t like it or don’t agree with it, simply ignore, close the tab and go find another translation you like, it’s that simple. Nowadays readers 1. Threaten/Diss the translator directly and rudely 2. Steal the work 3. Add their own spin on it without understanding the original content and say: Yay! Look at this I made it so much better so give me some attention 

*****

The point of this post is not to claim ownership over any fandom or content just because translators or Chinese-speaking/reading people in the fandom know the content better. It’s also not to say that non-Chinese speaking/reading people can’t enjoy, understand, have great discussions over original Chinese content, because just from MDZS alone you can see that they can. Of course there are also individuals who might not be able to speak the language but are familiar with Chinese culture etc. because they’ve studied or lived it well, or maybe they’ve actually watched decades of Chinese drama to be able to analyse it properly now, all that’s awesome. 

Also, I’m all for people who are learning Chinese (or any language for that matter) to translate something as practice. That’s great, that’s good, that’s to be admired!! 

It’s non-Chinese speaking/reading people who claim they know the original content better than translators without any discussions, claiming some superiority over the content because they think the translation is not done well enough without doing any of the ground work that I really have an issue with (and also the fuckers who steal of course XD).

*****

And unfortunately I had too much time on my hands today and got pissed off after seeing the tweet so some of you have to read through this drivel XD

[aestheticsxemotions]

B613 / "Sin City"

April 13th, 2007 "I suppose the point of me writing this to put every card on my table. To have the deck laid out. To expose my hand in this ridiculous game of Texas Hold 'Em. To explain...her. It. Us. Let me start, I guess, by saying; I was a murderer. Am a murderer. Black and white, plain and simple. No heroic undertone. I need to make money; I'm good at what I do. I'm an assassin if you want to use a different term but I use murderer cause that's what assassins are. I'm an assassin. Murderer. Synonyms. I kill people for money, is the moral of the story. I've spent 27 years living so far and about 13 of them killing people. I know I'm harping on the "killing people" part of this. There's a reason for that. I need you to understand, I'm REALLY good at what I do. I've created "asthma attacks", "heart attacks"......there are cold missing persons cases from '98 that are a result of me being good at my fucking job. I'm good at this. Great at this. No one had to teach me, I can do it on my own and I'm good at it. Which I guess is how she found me. I pride myself on being thorough and anonymous....and expensive. It can be anywhere between $50,000-$500,000 for a body....depending on how easy you want the trace to come back to you. So she was automatically on the wrong foot, offering me far too much money for a one body job. "Kill her rapist." That was the request she made. In a club. Where people could hear her. After speaking to me for 20 minutes. "Kill her rapist for $2M." You don't get to where I am in my....career by being stupid. You don't get all the way here by actually doing blatantly illegal things for shiny girls in dark clubs. So I laughed, bought her another drink and told her I wished we lived in a world where I could. Which I didn't by the way. I barely knew her at the time; that was an unfortunate history to have but it wasn't my problem. The irony in that is that very few of the problems I deal with are mine. The counter irony was that it wasn't her problem either. She was lying. But I'm getting sidetracked. That night, she persisted. She told how easy she thought it would be, how dumb the people around her were, how simple it was to get rid of bodies. True statements, accurate statements, statements I agreed with. Just....definitely not statements you say in a club to a stranger. I told her if she felt so strongly she should save herself two million dollars and kill her rapist herself. We laughed two harmonious fake laughs. Then I fed her petty, pointless compliments, paid for our drinks and left. I actually had a job to do within the next 13 minutes and she was an adorable waste of time but a waste of time was she. Her existence stayed on my mind though. On the walk to the bus stop, as I chatted with the lady there and slipped small pieces of glass into her drink when she turned around, as I pulled up my hoodie and walked away while she began to die- The Girl was plaguing my thoughts. A club full of people, she sits across from me and begins to blather about her homicidal intentions. That was bizarre, wasn't it? I could've been a cop for all she knew. She could've been a cop for all I knew. It didn't matter in the long run, though. It was weird but I didn't know her, she'd never see me again and I definitely hadn't incriminated myself in any way. So I went on with my life. Until the day of my next job, where she miraculously appeared again. I had to make a congressman look like he wanted to take his own life. But I had about an hour to do that. Except I spent about a 20 minutes or so trying to get the hell away from Victoria. "Hey, it's Riley, right?" she asked, taking it upon herself to sit across from me in this coffee shop. I widened my eyes at her before checking my wristwatch. 48 minutes. I had 48 minutes to create a suicide. "Riley. Right." And I smiled politely. "Wrong." she quipped. "Excuse me?" "Your names not Riley." I was floored and annoyed. Who was this girl? Why was she interrogating me? Why was she in my way again? On a job day. Again. I think that's when the wheels first started clicking in my head. "And your names really Quinn?" I'd asked. She stirred and sipped her coffee. My question went unanswered. Don't misunderstand me, I found her attractive and in another life, we probably could've...I don't know, slept together? Isn't that what people do? Have sex with people they like? Whatever it is you people do, I could've with her. If I wasn't an assassin. If I wasn't always on a job when we were in contact. If something didn't feel endlessly....off about her. But right then, I had 40 minutes left to a job and she was in my way. Again. So again, I paid our coffee, told her how pretty she was and politely slipped away. As I was on my way out of the door, I heard her voice raise above all the other commotion in the coffee place. "Victoria Black." I turned back around in confusion but she wasn't at our table anymore. I scanned the coffee place. She'd vanished. But that was her voice, I would bet anything on it. Within the following 40 minutes, she psychologically haunted me the way she had that first night. I followed a tour group into the building congressman Kayleigh was meeting in, slipped into his office, typed up his suicide note while waiting for him to walk in, then when he did, I brought him to his knees and broke his neck. I rigged up three extensions cords to the radiator by his window, wrapped them around his neck then put him on his feet on the windows edge. In 5 seconds, he fell. I heard people scream. I had 2 minutes and 17 seconds to get out of Kayleigh's office. But I did. I did and it felt...secondary. Everything did. I didn't even enjoy that kill. Because Victoria lingered on my mind. I couldn't deal with this emotion that this young lady was putting into my stomach. Two weeks passed. Two weeks of me going back to that coffee shop, that club and never seeing her. Of moving around that city, our state and never seeing her. Then I got another job. In New York. For historical context, I'm from Arizona but I met Victoria in California. So New York was exactly what I needed. It was cross country, it was away from her, it was always busy. I packed up shop (some clothes, my masks, my tools and Derek the Cat) and left. On the road, I'd felt this twang of....something. Longing or regret? I knew it was for Victoria. I knew that this was what some of you called "missing someone". But I couldn't miss her, clearly. I didn't know her, I didn't want to know her. I wrote it off to the desire for the unknown and kept my foot to the gas pedal. New York was about as loud and busy as had been said which was perfect because it gave me a challenge. I had to plant a bomb where no one would see me, where no one would find it but it had destroy a specific group of people. I spent a week running the semantics. What time did these people meet up, where did they go, who did the moving around and of what? How easy was it going to be to blow up this church? Answer: Fairly. I went back to my hotel on Saturday, rigged up the explosives and put them neatly in a tote bag. Woke up the next morning, dressed myself and went to that very same church, pretending to give glory to some deity. And then in an accidental, coincidental, oops how silly of me mistake, I left my bag there after the service. The news that night restored a feeling in me that Victoria had taken. 156 bodies. Or matching body parts, I suppose. I was liberated. I was validated. I was back in the game. I was being followed. I didn't know it at the time of the job but I knew it when I got back to my hotel. Because I carried my bag in my right hand. I also ate, shaved and changed the channel with my right hand. And I drank coffee with my right hand. But back in my room, my coffee mug was on the left hand side of my desk. The left hand. The hand I'd watched Victoria use to do just about everything since I'd met her. I'll be the first to admit. I lost it that night. I went into a frenzy, I was going to know who this girl was and what the hell she wanted. I called up contacts of mine, I called in favors. I did my homework. And I found her. Two floors above me, five rooms down. In New York. Victoria had followed me from California to New York. What do you do when your flirt-buddy gone stalker manages to track you across the country to yet another egregious and wildly illegal hit against other human beings? You confront her. I made my way upstairs in a frenzy, the same two questions playing cat and mouse in my head. Who was this girl? What did she want? Who was this girl? What did she want? "Took you long enough." she quipped, opening her door the moment I arrived. Let me take this moment to say: on the list of things I know are wrong with me, the fact that I have control issues plays a big part in just about everything I do. I don't like being outsmarted or thought ahead of. I don't like feeling behind. I don't like being runner up. It bothers me. A lot like Victoria bothered me. I kissed her. The first one was to make sure I could. The second and thirty following were with her consent. I had this nerve burning need for her. It was literally eating me alive from the inside out. I threw her on the bed, her robe open. Matching white underwear. Fucking Christ, she'd been expecting me. This time, I elected to ignore that. I climbed on top of her, my lips all over her skin. At some point, she tried to pull my shirt off. "Do not touch me." I practically growled, gripping her hands above her head. "Alex." she whimpered. My head spun at the use of my actual name but right behind that was the whimpering itself. Finally. She was submitting. I was in control. I needed more of that. A lot more. Her skin tasted like vanilla. Her pussy tasted like mangoes. Not two flavors I thought I'd ever like together. You learn something new everyday I suppose. 3 hours later, she passed out from exhaustion and I was finally completely back at peace. 156 people were dead at my hand. I'd orgasmed my stalker out of consciousness. I was good again. I started looking around her hotel room, rifling through her stuff as I was entitled to do considering she was stalking me. She had regular girl stuff. Tampons, makeup, a Coco Chanel collection. The also had case files. On 3 of the men who'd hired me. On their companies. On me. Which I should've expected, right? Except that's when it hit me. Why she was so good at finding me, why what I did didn't bother her, why she was so goddamn persistent. Someone had put a hit out on me. And they were her orders. Victoria was sent here to kill me. I'd been hunted before. This wasn't the first time. If I survive, it won't be the last. You don't get to where I am by not making any enemies. But she's looking for me now. She has to know I know. And to answer that question you're asking yourself; I tried. I went over to that bed where I'd just fucked her to sleep and contemplated killing her right there. But....I didn't want to. I didn't want to kill Victoria. She hadn't killed me yet, right? She'd had more than one opportunity to. She could've but she didn't so I couldn't. So I left. I left the room, the hotel, the state of NY. I'm in Miami now. But I'm not dumb. She'll follow, she'll find me. Maybe she'll kill me. Maybe she won't. But Victoria was my story to tell. Of all the things I'd been through, Victoria was the first story I felt worth telling. I don't know who I'm writing this for. Or why. But when I die, you will know why. Victoria Black killed me. I let Victoria Black kill me. And I probably loved every minute of it. -Anastasia Alex DeRosa