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macklives · 5 years ago

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i dont technically hardcore ship kids buuuut i will say “fuck thats hecking cute” to any and all pairings and join in on the fun wholesome content. for example, if you give me fanart, give me fics, give me headcanons, then im already sold on how adorable that specific pairing will be bc theres now some quality content to explore. as long as its not toxic, disgusting or impractical.

god okay, get motherfucking ready guys.

now, i may rant a bit on the matter to further explain my point of view on shipping in this comic and how i will go around it lol. sorry for the long note. there’s a tldr at the end.

honestly, idc who gets together, bc i just want the kids to be happy and if the pairing is happy together, thats all that matters to me. i just dont like taking shipping to the extreme, yknow. (which means having nsfw stuff for kids and flipping out if one ship is canon when another really should be. similar to many other fandoms who have those problems and i just.. dont get why?) anyways, thats not to say i will freak out if a cute pairing of mine becomes canon and especially if the rep is nice. and honestly? ill probably freak out for any canon ship as long as its healthy and theyre both happy - as ive mentioned. keep in mind im still a fan lmao, i will prob participate in the recurring ship talk and discourse bc ugh it can be so fucking cute.

anyways, regarding what we have now, i honestly like all pairings atm (obviously between the kids only and not some cursed ones ive heard about which i refuse to get into). all their interactions are so unique and cute and quite adorable. davejade is wholesome. johnrose is valid. i also like jaderose, daverose and johndave. which technically is almost every possible pairing lmfao. sometimes my opinion can vary, sometimes things could happen to make my view on that specific pairing to change. and sometimes new people come into the picture which allows me to explore more potential candidates that i think would be better for that characters rather than just having a ship to progress the plot further. if that makes sense. it always depends, doesnt it? (so keep in mind you can ask me if i ever have changed my opinion on a specific ship, character, ect in the future)

and of course, there’s a big difference between who i think are going to get together and who i wouldnt mind getting together despite canonical evidence that it wont happen. which i wont get into unless yall want me to talk about in depth who likes who and how it will probably impact the relationships of the characters vs how it should be.. well, not “fixed”, but what could be another alternative if a specific relationship seems to have its downfalls.

however, i doubt there’s going to be any “endgame” ships bc homestuck is more prone to story telling than romance. it’s a webcomic for plot and probable character growth rather than making people’s ships come true. meaning shipping is a concept that andrew will give you, and he will give you all types of interaction so you’re free to ship what you want. however, he’ll leave it open without giving us an ultimate pairing. which is where i think this comic will go. i may be wrong. but it seems the most likely situation.

so shipping is all fun and games but things happen, not everything becomes canon and even if i have theories on future relationships, i will only analyze what we were given and not necessarily based on non-canonical evidence. so as much as i like crackships (and boy do i have fun in crackships, lets be real), because this is a liveblog, i wont be able to get into depth with false claims on a ship if there’s literally nothing to go on. however, pls expect joke ships to happen. if i say cake #42 wants to be with john’s fake arms, so be it. that was a fun time on the discord, man. i love joking around but then again, they are just jokes. im not actually shipping them. its similar to how i view dave and AT. they got married duh. yet thats a joke. something i will bring up again, but that never means im serious about it. (besides imp soap opera. thats becoming massively real now, isnt it. a liveblog inside joke that got way out of hand and is now canon.)

anyways, romance is a nice bonus treat for everyone as they read a webcomic which is not centered around it. and of course ill analyse the possibilities of what we could get and how characters will go through it based on their personalities and past experiences, but i dont think itll become a main part of homestuck as of now. perhaps something.. could happen in the future? and ill keep my hopes of some pairings getting together. but, overall, i will be happy with whatever we get and i refuse to bitch about how some ship is better than the other and be mad at homestuck in its entirety. because andy here is not trying to portray a romcom, he’s making an actual story.

wow, i kind of went off a little on what you were trying to ask in the first place, but i feel this was a nice place to get that out there and explain how ill perceive shipping in homestuck. all so i wont have to explain this for the future when characters potentially start getting together. which is to say, ill enjoy shipping characters on my hs experience, hell, ill even participate in it, but they are 13 and i have my limits.

cool. i feel like i just wrote a philosophy book.

tldr; shipping is a nice gateway in a fandom, i like pretty much anything as long as its not toxic and theyre happy together. expect character/relationship analyses in the future.

#god this prob makes no sense #sorry for being illiterate #i went OFF #ask #hs56 #hs56 ask #anon #im in a ranting mood ever since ive watched it chpt 2 #made me monologue all day that i just need to get my thoughts out there

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ofcowardiceandkings · 6 years ago

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Okay, but why DO you know so much about farming? I’m not trying to be rude btw I’m just curious!

gnfkdjgfkdl no thats fine it is a bit of a weird knowledge base, its because;

1. i live way out in the country where some degree of farm wisdom is sort of the norm , but my grandfather WAS a farmer for nearly all his life until he bunked out and started a handyman business several years ago, and my grandparents still live in the same farm laborer's cottage ,, you learn shit when you spend a fair amount of time being minded by hanging around a village which is basically 2 farms and sitting on the floor of a combine harvester cab. ive been growing vegetables and planting trees and herbs and hanging around orchards all my life as well and when your grandmother knows THAT much about practical farming and plants you will eventually learn something jgfkjdk

2. my college’s archaeology course focused on prehistory so we all had to learn the ins and outs of different farming & non-farming lifestyles, and the evolution of farming and its spread across the world. like from its very start in the middle east and through various models from karanovo culture and linearbandkeramic and funnel beaker culture etc etc. ofc we ended up focusing on europe and the UK in the end because thats where my lecturers practical knowledge base is, but understanding of other models was still helpful for comparison because like with europe the model had to adapt in asia too.my major coursework got way up in that, which might seem odd since the practical part was a standing survey of the above village church, but the essay and analysis of the church structure was about the growth of the village through time since you can tell a lot about a community through its parish church and visa versa. SO i wrote a few pages on the economy around the village for the 1000 or so years its been there - its probably longer than that tbh since theres a saxon statue pasted into the norman tower but theres no other evidence OF the saxon period other than a nice statue (which is to say it was probably pretty prosperous but i cant say much else). god i read a lot of books on medieval farming economy and cotswold wool and 16th century tithes / deeds and whatever other wank nfjdkjfhjdki did take anthropology for 1 and a half years as well so that contained some decent contemporary knowledge as well as dead stuff gjfdkfjdk

aaand also 3. im a nerd lol, when i do worldbuilding i keep an eye on economics because uh the above point gjfkdfjdk. i often find myself reading articles and deconstructions of farm life and food production in various medieval cultures for background reading ??? because im boring ???? hgfjdkjfhfjdk but for real if A level Arch taught me anything its that a culture starts with its economics and food production - if its hard or labour intensive to produce food then you cant have people doing specialised jobs because they ALL need to help feed their community. it all ties into map making and product availability and populations and land usage. this is gonna sound so boring and dumb but for brain exercises if im lagging in the “my skull of pudding hasn’t been stirred” department then ive gotten into the habit of doing approximate food supply> farmers> essential/implied craft> farming adjustment > total area/population calculations for settlements in breath of the wild and other fantasy settings

so in other words , because im a dirt boy and because im Like That lmfao

#anon #asks

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thespacequail · 7 years ago

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Darling in the Franxx (ep. 15)

HOLY FREAKING...well, that certainly was a LOT that happened in only 24 minutes. A lot of plot threads, a really good fight scene, a lot of new questions, but most importantly that thing where the OP plays during the climax, amazing. There’s a lot going on here, I’ll probably miss some, but I’ll try. *warning* This is a very long post.

>”Don’t worry Hiro, we’ll be fine.” All I’m thinking at this point is cut to black, Always Sunny in Philadelphia theme playing, “The gang fucking dies.” It was a pretty good scene though, it showed me at least how much more I care about the cast now than I did back in episode 6, which if from “not at all” to “if you kill any main characters I will cry”.

>Huh, so the Nines have the guys and girls in swapped positions, that’s interesting, the guys also have holographic horns that look like 02′s, veeeerrry interesting... But like, are they bad guys? Are they neutral? What’s their angle here? Every time they show up, they just raise more questions.

>Yup, all those dudes at the end of last episode got sucked dry by 02 (*lenny face*), Dr. Franxx you are still one sick puppy, but it’s hard to tell what your end goal is here, you may act like you care about 02′s well-being, but I don’t buy it, you have some ulterior motive and I WILL FIND IT. Eventually. When it’s served up for all to see on a silver platter. BUT THEN I WILL KNOW FOR SURE WHAT YOU ARE ON ABOUT!

>So Papa and his marry group of fucks are still being cryptic as all hell, what wish do they want that needs control of the Gran Crevasse? The heck is a Hringhorni? By pests do you mean Klaxxosaurs, humans, children, all of the above? I don’t get it. But the cut away to Streliza when Dr. Franxx says he wants a front row seat, now thats good editing.

>Now this is a good fight scene! Bright colors, understandable positions of every combatant, not breaking the 180* rule, even the CG wasn’t bad. Where was this quality of animation earlier? Doesn’t matter, we got to see everyone be badass and that’s good for me.

>And now for your requisite Plot ex Machina, an even bigger Klaxxosaur that no one has even heard of. *sigh* I mean, you already burned out the Guttenberg class, and power creep is a thing, this was inevitable...fine...I’m fine...it’s fine...fight a fucking mountain, at least it looks cool. That panning side shot of the internals of the Plantation, now that was really cool looking, I paused the video to look closer at it, highly detailed for a shot only a second long, I respect that. Then Papa tells the red shirts to kamikaze the thing, which is messed up, but it confirms the whole fanaticism thing people have for him, cause despite knowing they’re being told to die outright, they do it anyway, and of course it does effectively nothing at all, good fucking job, you killed a bunch of kids for no evident reason, but you don’t care do you? I’m talking to a brick wall here, let’s just move the fight to a new backdrop yeah?

>Whoa, those are some gnarly horns 02, you feeling ok? Who am I kidding, we all know the answer is “utterly distraught but refusing to show it”, this is actually a really cool design evolution for her, I dig it, but more on that later.

>Slight tangent, how close is the Garden to the briefing room? How long did it take Hiro to calmly get there while a freaking war was taking place? And the bit with the mirror...like, I get it, it’s symbolic, but it fell kinda flat for me, was that really the only kick in the pants you could think to get Hiro down there? And not to mention after taking his sweet time he goes out and finds a training drone to get to 02. THE LAYOUT OF THE PLANTATION MAKE NO SENSE UNLESS THE FIGHT WAS GOING ON FOR HOURS ON END! AND WHO LET HIRO CASUALLY USE THE ELEVATOR IN THIS TIME OF CRISIS!? *ahem* Right, back to the battle.

>Hey look, it’s that old lady from the Zorome episode! She contributes nothing to this scene! Ok, that’s not entirely true, her being there reminds us what Zorome is fighting for, and how his resolve to fight for the adults is probably more than just orders to him. The framing is also really cool, gives some nice perspective on the size of the robots, and the lady watching as Zorome’s robot (I dont know the specific name, and yeah it’s Miku’s too, but this shot is about Zorome) is pretty poignant, provides some payoff for that episode.

>My man Goro! Finally fed up with all the bullshit and taking control. Letting Hiro and Ichigo work this out together was the best way to go about this, and he did it so well, and the bit with Zorome/Miku telling him to stop trying to act all cool was so appropriate for them, lightening the mood before things got heavy.

>And boy does shit get heavy. The mind melding thing was cool, and would you look at that, Ichigo is not a bad character, she just had to be shown what her actions meant, seeing that was a hard pill to swallow, but needed. I really like how 02′s thought captions mirror Hiro’s, but are distorted, capital letters and numbers thrown in at random, it works for her in the state she’s in. Now the fight between them was cool, but let’s be honest, WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU DESIGN A ROBOT TO HAVE HAIR UNDER THE HELMET? DID YOU EXPECT IT TO BREAK? WHY DOES IT MOVE LIKE ACTUAL HAIR? EACH LOCK SHOULD BE THE SIZE OF A FREAKING SEDAN! *ahem* It’s just dumb, but whatever, helps distinguish her silhouette against all the Nines who’s robots look kinda similar.

>Before we get to the flashback of sad, it’s time for plot revelations! Yay! Turns out the Klaxxo-cores are humans in some way! Well that was...kinda unexpected, reminds me of the Anti-Spirals from Gurren Laggan a little bit. I do like how the kids are trying to deny it, they don’t want to believe it’s possible, but here it is, right in front of your eyes. And you know what else is in front of your eyes? Papa blowing up Plantations to break the dome, cause he doesn’t give a fuck about any of you, that’s a fun pill to swallow and will definitely effect some character’s perceptions going forward. “Release them from the cages of their bodies.”? WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? THIS SCENE IS CREEPY AS ALL HELL MAN!

>FLASHBACK TIME! I AM EMOTIONALLY UNSTABLE! But I was right about the blood thing! Yes, it was obvious, but still right! GOD BABY 02 YOU ARE MAKING ME SAD! *unintelligible sounds of despair* It’s just a really good scene ok? Then her horns shattering? Beautiful. This is EXACTLY what I want from these characters, their interaction was so raw and good and the kiss, AUGH!

>OH SHIT THEY’RE PLAYING THE OPENING! OH SHIT TRUE FORM UNLOCKED! WOOOOOOO! I am fully aboard the hype train here. Ichigo’s single tear was good, I think she’s come to terms with the fact Hiro wants to be with 02, that they are in love and she has to let him go, it hurts, but it’s for the best. Still not a huge fan of the bird metaphor, but I will take it here cause we got character growth out of it, and I like that.

>A giant...hand? And the Nines knew about it because of course they do. That is one hell of a cliffhanger, I think we are reaching that point, the point in every Trigger show where the plot does a 180* and things get W E I R D, and I am so ready for that.

Ok, that went on way longer than expected, but they packed a whole heck of a lot in this episode, so I had a lot I wanted to talk about. I think this show has definitely “gotten good” and I am super excited to see them start answering some questions as to what in the hell is going on here.

#darling in the franxx #anime #anime review #spring anime 2018 #long post

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magzoso-tech · 5 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://magzoso.com/tech/meet-the-b2b-videoconferencing-startup-thats-gone-crazy-for-online-dating/

Meet the b2b videoconferencing startup that’s gone crazy for online dating

Founder Andreas Kröpfl has spent almost a decade hard-grafting in the b2b unified communications space, building a videoconferencing business with a patented single-stream system and a claim of no ‘drop-offs’ thanks to “unique low-bandwidth technology”.

His Austria-based startup’s current web-based videoconferencing system, eyeson (née Visocon), which launched in 2018, has had some nice traction since launch, as he tells it, garnering a few million customers and getting a nomination nod as a Gartner Cool Vendor last year.

Eyeson’s website touts ‘no hassle, no, lag, no downloads’ video calls. Pricing options for the target b2b users run the gamut from freelance pro to full-blown enterprise. While the business itself has pulled in a smidge less than $7M in investor funding over the years.

But when TechCrunch came across Kröpfl last December, pitching hard in startup alley at Disrupt Berlin, he was most keen to talk about something else entirely: Video dating.

That’s because last summer the team decided to branch out by building their own video dating app, reusing their core streaming tech for a consumer-focused social experiment. And after a period of internal beta testing — which hopefully wasn’t too awkward within a small (up-til-then) b2b-focused team — they launched an experimental dating app in November in India.

The app, called Ahoi, is now generating 100,000 video calls and 250,000 swipes per day, says Kröpfl.

This is where he breaks into a giggle. The traction has been crazy, he says.

In the staid world of business videoconferencing you can imagine eyeson’s team eyeing the booming growth of certain consumer-focused video products rather enviously.

Per Kröpfl, they had certainly noticed different desires among their existing users — which pushed them to experiment. “We saw that private people like the simple fun features (GIF reactions, …) and that business meetings were more focused on ‘drop-off’ [rates] and business features,” he tells us. “To improve both in one product was not working any more. So eyeson goes business plus SaaS.”

“Cloning eyeson but make it social,” is how he sums up the experiment.

Ahoi is very evidently an MVP at this stage. It also looks like a pretty brave and/or foolish (depending on your view) full-bore plunge into video dating, with nothing so sophisticated as a privacy screen to prevent any, er, unwanted blushes… (Whereas safety screening is an element we’ve recently seen elsewhere in the category — see: Blindlee.)

There’s also seemingly no way for users to specify the gender they wish to talk to.

Instead, Ahoi users state interests by selecting emoji stickers — such as a car, cat, tennis racket, games console or globetrotter. And, well, it goes without saying that even if you like cars a lot you’re unlikely to change your sexual orientation over the category.

There are no generic emoji that could be used to specify a sexual interest in men or women. But, er, there’s a horse…

Such limits may explain why Ahoi is generating so many early swipes — and rather fewer actual calls — in that the activity sums to (mostly) men looking for women to videochat with and being matched with, er, men.

And frustration, sexual or otherwise, probably isn’t the greatest service to try and sell.

Still, Kröpfl reckons they’ve landed on a winning formula that makes handy reuse of their core videoconferencing tech — letting them growth hack in a totally new category. Swipe right to video date.

“People are disappointed by perfect profiles on Tinder and the reality when meeting people,” he posits. “Wasted time. Especially women do not want to be stalked by men pretending to be someone else. We solve both by a real live conversation where only after a call both can decide to be connected or never see each other again.”

Notably, marketing around the app does talk rather fuzzily about it being a way to “find new pals”.

So while Kröpfl frames the experiment as dating, the reality of the product is more ‘open to options’. Think of it as a bit like Chatroulette — just with slightly more control (in that you have a few seconds to decide if you don’t want to talk to the next in-app match).

The very short countdown timer (you get just five seconds to opt out of a matched video chat) is very likely generating a fair number of unintended calls. Though such high velocity matching might appeal to a certain kind of speed dating addict.

Kröpfl says Ahoi has been seeing up to 20,000 new users added daily. They’re bullishly targeting 3M+ users this year, and already toying with ideas for turning video dates into a money spinner by offering stuff like premium subscriptions and/or video ads. He says the plan is to turn Ahoi into a business “step by step”.

“Everyone loves to make his profile better,” he suggests, floating monetization options down the line. Quality filtering for a fee is another possibility (“everyone is annoyed by being connected to the wrong people”).

They picked India for the test launch because it has a lot of people on the same timezone, a large active mobile user-base and cheap marketing is still “easily possible”. He also says that dating apps seemed popular there, in their experience. (Albeit, the team presumably didn’t have a great deal of relevant experience in this category — given Ahoi is an experiment.)

The intent is also to open Ahoi up to other markets in time too, once they get more accustomed to dealing with all the traffic. Kröpfl notes they had to briefly take the app off the store last month, as they worked on adding more server capability.

“It is very early and we were not prepared for this usage,” he says, admitting they’ve been “struggling to work on early feedbacks”. “We had to make it invisible temporarily — to improve server capacity and stability.”

The contrast in pace of uptake between the stolid (but revenue-generating) world of business meeting-fuelled videoconferencing and catnip consumer dating — which is money-sucking unless or until you can hit a critical mass of usage and get the chance to try applying monetization strategies — does sound like it’s been rather irresistible to Kröpfl.

Asked what it feels like to go from one category to the other he says “crazy, surprised and thrilling”, adding: “It is somehow also frustrating when all the intense b2b work is not as closely interesting to people as Ahoi is. But amazing that it is possible thanks to an extremely focused and experienced team. I love it.”

TechCrunch’s Manish Singh agreed to brave the local video dating app waters in India to check Ahoi out for us.

He reported back not having seen any women using the app. Which we imagine might be a problem for Ahoi’s longer term prospects — at least in that market.

“I spoke with one guy, who said his friend told him about the app. He said he joined to talk to girls but so far, he is only getting matched with boys,” said Singh. “I saw several names appear on the app, but all of them were boys, too.”

He told us he was left wondering “why people are on these apps, and why they have so much free time on a weekday”.

For ‘people’ it seems safe to conclude that most of Ahoi’s early adopters are men. As the Wall Street Journal reported back in 2018, India’s women are famously cool on dating apps — in that they’re mostly not on them. (We asked Kröpfl about Ahoi’s gender breakdown but he didn’t immediately get back to us on that.)

That market quirk means those female users who are on dating apps tend to get bombarded with messages from all the lonely heart guys with not much to swipe. Which, in turn, could make a video dating app like Ahoi an unattractive prospect to female users — if there’s any risk at all of being inundated with video chats.

And even if there are enough in-app controls to prevent unwelcome inundation by default, women also might not feel like they want their profile to be seen by scores of men simply by merit of being signed up to an app — as seems inevitable if the gender balance is so skewed.

Add to that, if the local perception among single women is that men on dating apps are generally a turn-off — because they’re too eager/forward — then jumping into any unmoderated video chat is probably not the kind of safe space these women are looking for.

No matter, Kröpfl and his team are clearly having far too much fun growth hacking in an unfamiliar, high velocity consumer category to sweat the detail.

What’s driving Ahoi’s growth right now? “Performance marketing mainly,” he says, pointing also to “viral engagement by sharing and liking profiles”.

Notably, there are a lot of reviews of Ahoi on Google Play already — an unusual amount for such an early app. Many of them appear to be five star write-ups from accounts with European-sounding names and a sometimes robotic grasp of language.

“Eventhough Ahoi has been developed recently, it had high quality for user about calling, making friends and widing your knowlegde [sic],” writes one reviewer with atrocious spelling whose account is attached to the name ‘Dustin Stephens.’

“Talking with like minded people and same favor will creat a fun and interesting atmosphere. Ahoi will manage for you to call like condition above,” says another apparently happy but not entirely clear user, going by the name ‘Elisa Herring’.

There’s also a ‘Madeleine Mcghin’, whose profile uses a photo of the similarly named child who infamously disappeared during a holiday in Portugal in 2007. “My experience with this app was awesome,” this individual writes. “It gives me the option to find new people in every country.”

Another less instantly tasteless five-star reviewer, ‘Stefania Lucchini’, leaves a more surreal form of praise. “A good app and it will bring you extra income, I would say it’s a great opportunity to have AHOI and be a part of it but it’s that it will automatically ban you even if you don’t show it. Marketing. body part, there are still 5 stars for me,” she (or, well, ‘it’) writes.

Among the plethora of dubious five-star reviews a couple of one-star dunks stand out — not least because they come from accounts with names that sound like they might actually come from India. “Waste u r time,” says one of these, who uses the name Prajal Pradhan.

This pithy drop-kick has been given a full 72 thumbs-up by other Play Store users.

#Miscellaneous

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samanthasroberts · 6 years ago

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Looking back, and angry: what drives Pauline Hanson’s voters | David Marr

In an extract from his new Quarterly Essay, David Marr finds that One Nation voters are richer, more urban and more liberal than you might expect. But they are profoundly nostalgic, display an unusual gloom and share a vehemently anti-government streak

Australia came late to the game. Since 1948, Americans have been polled after each election to find out why they voted as they did. The Swedes started to take these national snapshots in the 1950s and the British in the 1960s. Belfast-born Ian McAllister began the Australian Election Study after Bob Hawkes third victory in 1987. From his post at the Australian National University where these days he is Distinguished Professor of political science McAllister has conducted a dozen of these big, after-the-event surveys over 30 years. We ask how people made their choices: the effect of the election campaign, the effect of the longer-term predispositions, the background characteristics, the political socialisation. Its about trying to unravel all of these various things that come together to make simply a choice on a ballot paper.

McAllisters questions are controversial. The political science industry feeds off the Australian Election Studies. Dinner parties break up in confusion as pollsters and academics bicker over questions asked and not asked. McAllister told me: If I put in every question that everybody emailed me or wrote to me about, youd have a thousand-page questionnaire and nobody would fill it in. He says the point of the surveys sent to thousands of voters after each poll is continuity. When youve got exactly the same question being asked consistently over a period of time using essentially the same methodology, youve got an unusually reliable measure of something.

The Australian voter is a species he has come to admire deeply. First of all they have to go to the polls more than any other voter in the world that I can possibly imagine. And secondly they have to deal with a range of complexity in electoral systems, in terms of casting a vote, which again defies anything in any other society. So the Australian voter, I think, is pretty overburdened by politics. Yet they remain thoughtful. People dont make whimsical choices by and large. They do look at policies. They are not volatile. We found in our surveys early in the piece about 70% of people never ever change their vote from the very first election they voted in to the last election before they died. These days its around about 50%. So basically most people dont change. And when people do change its a relatively small proportion that change from election to election.

That weve been so stable makes McAllister particularly alert to the unexpected long-term decline of trust in the political class, in career politicians, in democracy itself. Australia has stood apart from a lot of other countries because its had very high levels of satisfaction with democracy historically, some of the highest in the world, second only to one or two Scandinavian countries. He dates the slide from 2010. Elections since then havent provided the usual upswings of faith and hope. The numbers have kept falling. One of the things I observe in our surveys is the proportion of people that believe the government would have a positive effect on the economy in the future year was at its lowest level weve ever recorded in 2016. So people dont have confidence in the government They see this quick turnover in leaders. They see scandals to do with expenses, and so on. And they become very jaded. And then I think weve had a lack of decisive leadership as well. I mean Rudd Mark I was the last popular leader that existed in Australia. We havent had one since.

Pauline Hanson in Perth with supporters on the night of the Western Australia election. Photograph: Rebecca Le May/AAP. At top: Hanson campaigns in Mandurah, south of the WA capital. Photograph: Richard Wainwright/AAP

Ever since McAllister gathered the first set of One Nation numbers in 1998, political scientists have been disputing what they mean. Do they show people flocking to Pauline Hanson because of the flags she flies particularly on race or are they falling in with her simply because theyre disenchanted with the political system? McAllister sees a shift from one to the other: My sense this time is that ONP#2 doesnt really stand for much, other than being anti-establishment, whereas ONP#1 had a more definable policy basis. So Pauline Hanson is tapping into the prevailing political distrust in career politicians from both sides. But others citing the same material come to the opposite conclusion. More of this dispute later. Its fundamental to understanding the challenge Hanson poses to public life in this country. Is she a party of policy or protest? Hanson is a puzzle with consequences.

McAllister ran the One Nation numbers from the latest AES for this Quarterly Essay. They are the best available evidence of who Hansons voters were and what they wanted at the 2016 elections. The numbers come with a caveat from McAllister: Treat the survey data because of the small numbers of ONP supporters as a blurry image rather than a precise profile. Even so, as we picked our way through the material together, McAllister identified issues where One Nations views emerge in full focus. Andrew Markus also commented on the figures for me, as did Murray Goot of Macquarie University, an expert on polling with a particular interest in the One Nation vote who has often taken a contrary view to McAllister. Finally, Ive drawn into the discussion several professional pollsters who have conducted focus groups among resurgent One Nation voters since the elections in the bush, in towns and, these days more than ever, in capital cities.

National background

One Nation voters in 2016 were almost entirely native-born Australians. Not even newcomers from the UK or New Zealand were drawn to Hansons party. Her people are absolutely ours and One Nation is the most Aussie party of them all.

Liberal 78% native-born Labor 79% Greens 82% National 91% One Nation 98%

Age and sex

One Nation is a party of old people but theres no sign they are dying out. According to the AES figures, roughly a third of Hansons voters in 2016 were under the age of 44. And women are voting One Nation. Back in the 1990s, voters were mostly men. Thats shifted. Heres the split:

1998 male 65%, female 35% 2016 male 56%, female 44%

One Nation supporters at a bowling club in Perth. Support among women for Hansons party has grown since the 1990s, when its voters were overwhelmingly men. Photograph: Rebecca Le May/AAP

Reports from focus groups suggest these are working women, better educated than the men. They looked like nice Labor voters working in nice jobs, said one researcher. We had a childcare worker, two government workers, and I think there was a teacher. Yet they like Pauline. Other reports from focus groups suggest contradictions here: Women like her because shes a woman who speaks her mind. Men like her because shes a woman who stands up against feminism. That shes a woman from the life doesnt owe us anything school is a key aspect of her political makeup. Raising four children from two husbands hasnt softened her heart towards single mothers. Twice divorced, she backs men burnt by the divorce courts. She opposes extending paid parental leave by two weeks: They get themselves pregnant and have the same problems did with the baby bonus, with people just doing it for the money.

Class

Most One Nation voters see themselves as working class. McAllister calls that pretty clear. This hasnt changed in 20 years. Hansons people may have aspirations but they dont see themselves coming up in the world.

Greens 24% identify as working class

Liberal 32% Labor 45% National 46% One Nation 66%

Religion

Hanson is not pulling the religious vote. Rebecca Huntley, social researcher and former director of Ipsos Australia, says: Were a little shielded from the worst implications of the rise of the Trump vote by the fact that this is not a highly religious group. Hansons staunch defence of Christianity in the face of Muslim hordes isnt about faith but preserving our way of life. Hansons moral agenda is to punish welfare bludgers not perverts. One Nation voters rarely worship. While 48% of Australians never attend church not even for weddings and funerals the figure for One Nation voters is 60%. Breakaway Cory Bernardi is pursuing a tiny constituency who believe in small government and high Catholic morality. Hanson backs neither: shes a secular, big government woman. Thats a big constituency.

Where do they live ?

Both the city and the bush. One Nation has always had a strong city presence despite its image as a bush party. Labor party research and focus groups report strong growth of support for One Nation in seats on the fringe of big towns and capital cities, seats on the edge of but not actually among migrant suburbs. This appears to be a pattern across Australia. On the edge of Sydney in 2016, One Nation picked up more than 6% of the Senate vote in Lindsay (75% Australian-born) but only 3% a few kilometres away in Greenway (58% Australian-born). In Lindsay they have fears rather than experience. As one researcher told me: When you probe for personal experiences on anything they say about welfare or immigration, its always second- and third-hand.

Where do One Nation voters live?

Reports from focus groups suggest city folk most respect Hanson. The bush is more sceptical of One Nation than the cities, says one researcher. In the bush they tend to say she doesnt have the answers. Those in the cities are more in agreement with her. They rate her intelligence in the city. They say shes doing better, shes learnt a lot. In the country they think shes a bit stupid.

How educated are they? Then and now, the figures show the typical One Nation voter didnt finish school. Yet they are not unqualified. They make an effort. Tradespeople are strongly represented in party ranks. But eight out of 10 have never set foot on a university campus. Thats the big political effect, says McAllister.

Hanson in 1998. She positioned herself then as the leader for those who hated government. Two decades on, that message is resonating more with voters. Photograph: Reuters

Level of education

Education is the clearest link between Hanson, Trump and Brexit. Surveys here, in the United States and in the United Kingdom all point to education as a key component of political dissatisfaction. In the UK, Matthew Goodwin and Oliver Heath found educational inequality was the strongest driver of Brexit. In the US, Nate Silver concluded, The education gap is carving up the American electorate and toppling political coalitions that had been in place for many years.

That about eight out of 10 One Nation voters dropped out of school doesnt mark them as dumb. Queensland, the partys heartland, made it extraordinarily hard for a long time for poor kids to get to university. But for whatever reason, few of Hansons people have been exposed to life and learning on a campus. Huntley wonders if the persistent attachment to clearly illogical connections between, say, asylum seekers and crimewaves, and also the interest in non-official online content, is because they never had never had at least some exposure to what happens at higher education. What strikes her in focus groups is the One Nation attitude: I can work this all out by myself.

Have they been ruined by globalisation?

No. They are in work and middling prosperous. They arent on welfare. McAllisters figures suggest theres nothing particularly special about the pattern of employment for Hansons people. One Nation voters are no more likely to be at the bottom of the management heap than anyone else. Theres a tiny and perhaps unreliable skew away from government employment. McAllister says, Thats a reflection of the fact that they tend not to have higher education.

But Hansons people are oddly gloomy about their prospects. One of the questions always asked in the AES is: How does the financial situation of your own household compare with what it was 12 months ago? This is the breakdown by party of those who thought things were now a little or a lot worse for them than a year ago:

National 25% Greens 27% Liberal 29% Labor 38% One Nation 68%

The same gloom is apparent when Hansons people are asked about the state of the economy. This is the breakdown of those who thought the national economy was a little or a lot worse than it was a year ago:

National 35% Greens 44% Labor 46% Liberal 47% One Nation 73%

So while there is a lot of gloom about, Hansons people see the national economy going to hell in a handcart. Why?

The standard explanation that these are people left behind by globalisation works for Trumps voters and is strong in the mix with Brexit. But it seems not a decisive component of the Hanson vote. This country weathered the global financial crisis in good shape. There is not a ruined class who lost their houses and savings in the crash. Employment held up. Economic growth since has been better in the cities where half Hansons voters live than the country, but her people are in work. Focus groups say many One Nation voters are working part time when they would like to be full time. Many worry about losing their jobs because they fear a new job will be hard to find. But sheeting those fears home to the ravages of free trade is difficult. Queensland is a free-trade state. Key to every trade deal this nation has signed in the last few decades is attempting to open world markets to coal, cattle and sugar. Nor does general nervousness about employment distinguish these voters from very many Australians. If Hanson were the natural choice of those wishing they had a better job and fearful of losing the one they have, she should be commanding divisions, not battalions.

The exaggerated gloom of One Nation voters in the 2016 election goes to something deeper than the economy. One Nation is the nostalgia party. Simply addressing economic inequality which is what the left has tried to do is just not sufficient, says Huntley. Prosperity is important, but what worries this group is the cultural, social slippage they feel in their life. They imagine their fathers and grandfathers lives were better, more certain, easier to navigate. Maybe they were and maybe they werent, but its the loss of that that is worrying for them. The economic argument alone isnt persuasive for them.

But of course it has to be addressed. If they think that a political party is representing their economic interest, they will vote for that party, says Kosmos Samaras, assistant state secretary of the Labor party in Victoria. But if the party doesnt, theyll vote on other interests. By that he means alienation and hostility to immigration. They feel, Im getting screwed anyway, so Im just going to turn up to vote and fuck them.

Immigration

The numbers are powerful. Twenty years ago Hansons people were hostile to immigration. Now they are extraordinarily so. One Nation is the party of those not bought off in the end by Howards great Faustian pact: close the borders to boat people and the nation will relax about mass immigration. More than 80% of One Nation voters considered immigration extremely important when deciding how to vote. Its a number that puts Hansons party way outside the pack:

Greens 40% Labor 43% Liberal 49% National 54% One Nation 82%

More than 80% of One Nation voters also want immigration numbers cut. The wishes of the party are now even more extreme than they were 20 years ago. In 2016 the AES turned up only a single One Nation voter happy to see immigration increased. The numbers all went the other way. This puts Hansons people dramatically at odds with the sentiment of a welcoming country. Here are those in each party calling for immigration numbers to be cut a lot:

Greens 7% Labor 21% Liberal 24% National 32% One Nation 83%

Their grim attitudes to migrants also set Hansons people apart. For One Nation voters, there is little disagreement that migrants increase crime, are not good for the economy and take the jobs of native-born Australians.

Those in each party who agree or strongly agree that migrants:

Position on migrants

Anti-racism protesters demonstrate outside a Pauline Hanson event in Perth. Those who see Hanson tapping into something murkier than mere disenchantment with politics fear One Nation will never be dealt with until the major parties find the courage to address the issue that haunts this country: race. Photograph: Richard Wainwright/AAP

For most Australian voters the boats are a problem solved. Not for the Greens. They are appalled by Manus and Nauru and alone continue to oppose the policy of naval blockade and turning back the boats. What sets One Nation apart here is the near-unanimous support in party ranks for that strategy. It stands to reason: this unique policy began as a Hanson special. Those in each party who agree or strongly agree with turnbacks:

Greens 10% Labor 55% Liberal 63% National 63% One Nation 90%

One Nation is an anti-immigration party. There are, as we will see, a handful of other causes that unite Hansons people. But behind all the complex calculations about what drives people into Hansons arms, these figures speak with unmistakable clarity: One Nation voters loathe immigrants. Its an embarrassing challenge for a decent country to find such forces at work, but it is much too late to pretend that a party which displays such extreme hostility to immigration is not driven by race. Thats simply not facing facts.

Anger with government

One Nation is the Pissed Off with Government Party. It was so the last time, when Australians still trusted their governments. In those days, being ignored by politicians was the base complaint of the party. Hanson was the gutsy politician who listened. Twenty years later, with trust in government sagging across the country, One Nation is coming into its own as the party that accuses politicians of not listening. Its the brand.

Nothing beats the hostility of Hansons voters here. This is the party breakdown of those who believe politicians usually look after themselves:

National 39% Liberal 40% Labor 51% Greens 51% One Nation 85%

McAllister rates this number real and something worth focusing on. He sees it as a measure of general dissatisfaction, not with government so much as the political class. This taps into Brexit, Trump, Italy this disaffection with the political class, that career politicians seem to be looking after their own vested interests and not looking after the interests of ordinary voters.

This is a bigger issue than One Nation. Huntley reports: The general conversation from the community is that politicians seem like a kind of a club: they all know each other, they all went to university. They see them as highly educated, highly connected, an elite they have never been part of. Theres anger across the board at the failure of government to solve problems. They think, There are these problems, these problems didnt exist before, governments are responsible, I blame the government. So part of it is the easiest outlet for anger but also that kind of sense that politicians seem completely remote to them.

Markus ran some figures for me from the Scanlon survey to show what those most angry with government are angry about. Gloom about the economy is clearly linked to dissatisfaction with government. But by far the most dramatic call for a shakeup of the system comes from those angriest about levels of immigration:

Immigration position linked with dissatisfaction with government

Immigration isnt everything in the current stew of discontent. Theres so much in there: scandal, logjam, a tepid economy, and the slaughter of prime ministers. But clearly on these numbers the nations discontent cannot be understood without facing the role played by minority rage over immigration. And the AES figures show no issue so unites One Nation as immigration. McAllister calls it the touchstone.

Other issues that fire up One Nation voters

Hansons people are not implacable conservatives. They arent hostile to unions and they believe this figure in the AES is quite clear that big business has too much power. Nor is One Nation preaching family values. They are not lining up against equal marriage. (In focus groups they say, Why not let them get on with it?) Hansons people are second only to the Greens in wanting marijuana decriminalised: 68% of Greens to 49% of One Nation. Not that theyve given up on the War on Drugs. They loathe ice and fear it as a source of crime and violence. And Hansons people are absolutely of one mind on allowing the terminally ill to end their own lives with medical assistance: support in the party runs at 98%.

On the other hand, Hansons people are particularly tough on crime. One of her causes back in the late 1990s was the right of parents to spank their children. She believes in the rod. But thats only a start. Heres the breakdown by party of those in 2016 calling for stiffer sentences for law breakers:

Greens 9% Labor 24% Liberal 30% National 31% One Nation 50%

And their faith in the gallows is complete. Twenty years ago, when the member for Oxley stormed into Canberra, there was a strong majority across the community for bringing back the noose for murder. That support has fallen, according to the AES, to 40%. But among One Nation voters, the passion for the death penalty is undiminished:

Greens 15% Labor 40% Liberal 42% National 54% One Nation 88%

Thelma Letch, who lives in WA, has been a One Nation supporter ever since [Hanson] went to jail. Photograph: Calla Wahlquist for the Guardian

Huntley is struck by the links between One Nations two agendas: law and order, and immigration. Where Ive worked with people who I know are One Nation voters or highly One Nationempathetic, they will give absurd examples of their fears. I once met in South Australia this man who was very, very adamant on banning the burqa because he was concerned that large groups of women in their burqas would line up behind him at the ATM and steal his pin number. But the general way this plays out in groups is for someone to say, Once upon a time you could leave your door open, or, You could go to the pub and put your wallet next to your beer and go to the loo and youd be surrounded by people just like you, people who would never even think to touch your wallet. But now you cant do that. A discussion about asylum seekers and immigration will slip very quickly into that sort of talk. Theres a really intense nexus between law and order and immigration in that group.

Yearning for the past

Huntley says: Hanson plugs into a range of complaints, most of them complaints that governments can do nothing about. Theyre the unsolvable complaints, complaints of the modern world. If you live in the modern world, it comes with divorce, it comes with open borders, it comes with refugees. People are nostalgic. If you push most people and say, All right, lets go back to the 1950s, they retreat. They say, As much as we like this, as much as we talk about that, do we really want to go back to the world of the six oclock swill and a world where a woman had to give up her job the moment she got married? They think beyond the platitudes about how nice it was to live in neighbourhoods where you knew your neighbours and all the rest of it and realise they dont want to go back there. But the One Nation group is genuinely nostalgic. They will genuinely say, Yes, I want to go back to that time. How far back? To the young adulthood of their fathers, which they imagine wasnt so long ago. And they wonder if so much thats happened since couldnt be unravelled. The picture of One Nation is much more complex than the traditional view of them as disaffected, working class, unemployed, the left-behinds from globalisation.

Which parties are Hanson voters deserting?

Rod Culleton and Pauline Hanson in the Senate chamber in Canberra in November. The controversy over her former colleagues bankruptcy hasnt touched her. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

That answer was straightforward the first time round: some Labor but mostly Coalition. Before the politicians drove Hanson out of parliament, the Coalition was in a world of pain. For every vote Kim Beazley lost, John Howard lost two. But the vote in 2016 was more complicated. Heres the AES breakdown based on the previous choice of :

Previous choice of those who voted One Nation in 1998 v 2016

First the Palmer United party collapsed. This was a classic protest party, its supporters not drawn by any policies Clive Palmer was advocating but driven by distaste for Labor and the Coalition. With the PUP perch gone, these voters have largely flown to One Nation. Most of Hansons vote at the election last year came roughly equally from Labor and the Coalition. That was then. Since her reappearance in Canberra, support for One Nation has blossomed. The most recent polls show her drawing greater backing than ever before. A Newspoll in late February put her support at 10%, more than double her showing at the 2016 election. The Rod Culleton circus hasnt touched her. Nor have defections, sackings and recriminations inside the party. Shes into double figures on a national poll and, for her, thats ridin

Source: http://allofbeer.com/looking-back-and-angry-what-drives-pauline-hansons-voters-david-marr/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2019/01/25/looking-back-and-angry-what-drives-pauline-hansons-voters-david-marr/

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adambstingus · 6 years ago

Text

Looking back, and angry: what drives Pauline Hanson’s voters | David Marr

National background

Liberal 78% native-born Labor 79% Greens 82% National 91% One Nation 98%

Age and sex

1998 male 65%, female 35% 2016 male 56%, female 44%

One Nation supporters at a bowling club in Perth. Support among women for Hansons party has grown since the 1990s, when its voters were overwhelmingly men. Photograph: Rebecca Le May/AAP

Class

Greens 24% identify as working class

Liberal 32% Labor 45% National 46% One Nation 66%

Religion

Where do they live ?

Where do One Nation voters live?

Hanson in 1998. She positioned herself then as the leader for those who hated government. Two decades on, that message is resonating more with voters. Photograph: Reuters

Level of education

Have they been ruined by globalisation?

National 25% Greens 27% Liberal 29% Labor 38% One Nation 68%

National 35% Greens 44% Labor 46% Liberal 47% One Nation 73%

So while there is a lot of gloom about, Hansons people see the national economy going to hell in a handcart. Why?

Immigration

Greens 40% Labor 43% Liberal 49% National 54% One Nation 82%

Greens 7% Labor 21% Liberal 24% National 32% One Nation 83%

Those in each party who agree or strongly agree that migrants:

Position on migrants

Greens 10% Labor 55% Liberal 63% National 63% One Nation 90%

Anger with government

Nothing beats the hostility of Hansons voters here. This is the party breakdown of those who believe politicians usually look after themselves:

National 39% Liberal 40% Labor 51% Greens 51% One Nation 85%

Immigration position linked with dissatisfaction with government

Other issues that fire up One Nation voters

Greens 9% Labor 24% Liberal 30% National 31% One Nation 50%

Greens 15% Labor 40% Liberal 42% National 54% One Nation 88%

Thelma Letch, who lives in WA, has been a One Nation supporter ever since [Hanson] went to jail. Photograph: Calla Wahlquist for the Guardian

Yearning for the past

Which parties are Hanson voters deserting?

Rod Culleton and Pauline Hanson in the Senate chamber in Canberra in November. The controversy over her former colleagues bankruptcy hasnt touched her. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Previous choice of those who voted One Nation in 1998 v 2016

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/looking-back-and-angry-what-drives-pauline-hansons-voters-david-marr/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/182305406562

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allofbeercom · 6 years ago

Text

Looking back, and angry: what drives Pauline Hanson’s voters | David Marr

National background

Liberal 78% native-born Labor 79% Greens 82% National 91% One Nation 98%

Age and sex

1998 male 65%, female 35% 2016 male 56%, female 44%

One Nation supporters at a bowling club in Perth. Support among women for Hansons party has grown since the 1990s, when its voters were overwhelmingly men. Photograph: Rebecca Le May/AAP

Class

Greens 24% identify as working class

Liberal 32% Labor 45% National 46% One Nation 66%

Religion

Where do they live ?

Where do One Nation voters live?

Hanson in 1998. She positioned herself then as the leader for those who hated government. Two decades on, that message is resonating more with voters. Photograph: Reuters

Level of education

Have they been ruined by globalisation?

National 25% Greens 27% Liberal 29% Labor 38% One Nation 68%

National 35% Greens 44% Labor 46% Liberal 47% One Nation 73%

So while there is a lot of gloom about, Hansons people see the national economy going to hell in a handcart. Why?

Immigration

Greens 40% Labor 43% Liberal 49% National 54% One Nation 82%

Greens 7% Labor 21% Liberal 24% National 32% One Nation 83%

Those in each party who agree or strongly agree that migrants:

Position on migrants

Greens 10% Labor 55% Liberal 63% National 63% One Nation 90%

Anger with government

Nothing beats the hostility of Hansons voters here. This is the party breakdown of those who believe politicians usually look after themselves:

National 39% Liberal 40% Labor 51% Greens 51% One Nation 85%

Immigration position linked with dissatisfaction with government

Other issues that fire up One Nation voters

Greens 9% Labor 24% Liberal 30% National 31% One Nation 50%

Greens 15% Labor 40% Liberal 42% National 54% One Nation 88%

Thelma Letch, who lives in WA, has been a One Nation supporter ever since [Hanson] went to jail. Photograph: Calla Wahlquist for the Guardian

Yearning for the past

Which parties are Hanson voters deserting?

Rod Culleton and Pauline Hanson in the Senate chamber in Canberra in November. The controversy over her former colleagues bankruptcy hasnt touched her. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Previous choice of those who voted One Nation in 1998 v 2016

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'It's a silent conversation': authors and translators on their unique relationship

New Post has been published on https://relationshipqia.com/must-see/its-a-silent-conversation-authors-and-translators-on-their-unique-relationship/

'It's a silent conversation': authors and translators on their unique relationship

From Man Booker International winner Olga Tokarczuk to partners Ma Jian and Flora Drew leading authors and translators discuss the highs and lows of cross-cultural collaboration

On the night of last years Man Booker International prize ceremony, two winners swept up to the podium novelist Olga Tokarczuk and her translator Jennifer Croft but a third was back at their table cheering louder than anyone. I was thrilled to bits, I still am, says Antonia Lloyd-Jones. What makes this unusual is that Lloyd-Jones is the Polish authors other translator, who has been working with her far longer, but wasnt responsible for the winning novel, Flights. With a shared purse of 50,000 at stake, was there not even the tiniest bit of envy? Were a team of course its Olga and Jennifers win, not mine, but its great for all of us who have spent years trying to popularise her books outside Poland, and its great for Polish literature in translation, says Lloyd-Jones. This was a major breakthrough after almost 30 years of work. And it has done sales of my own translations a lot of good. Nifty scheduling by the indie publisher Fitzcarraldo has meant that these include Tokarczuks Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, a quirky eco-thriller very different from Flights, which has won Tokarczuk her second Man Booker International prize longlisting. This years shortlist will be announced on Tuesday.

Its not just Polish novels that are enjoying a boost. Sales of fiction in translation were up in the UK by 5.5% last year, with sales of translated literary fiction increasing by 20%. As the UK turns inwards, caught up in an increasingly bitter fight over leaving the EU, readers are looking outwards, with literature from mainland Europe accounting for a large part of the growth. Jacques Testard, who publishes Tokarczuk, is part of a new wave of independent publishers who hope for further integration of translated fiction into the mainstream, pointing out that it is only in the UK that foreign literature is corralled into a separate compartment from that originally written in English. In France, where a fifth of all books are published in translations, youll find Balzac and Bolzano, Calvino and Carrre on the same shelf in bookshops. Its only in the Anglosphere that it gets set apart.

That separation is in evidence in the awards world, as well as the bookshop, with the Man Booker International the biggest among a host of grants and prizes for fiction in translation. How did Croft and Lloyd-Jones decide who would take responsibility for the Tokarczuk novel that eventually went on to win? Its a matter of trust, says Tokarczuk. Im definitely not the right translator for Flights, says Lloyd-Jones, but when it came to Drive Your Plow, Olga said I should do it. She joked that, at 57, she and I are more like [the eccentric narrator] Duszejko, and, well, theres some truth in that.

A matter of trust Translators Antonia LloydJones, left, and Jennifer Croft, middle, and novelist Olga Tokarczuk.

Team Tokarczuk might be close but they are not as intimately connected as the Chinese novelist Ma Jian and his translator Flora Drew, who is also the mother of their four children. Flora is the only person who has translated my books into English. She came to interview me in Hong Kong on the eve of the handover. Her Chinese was very good, so I gave her copies of my books, and said, half-jokingly, that she could translate them into English if she liked. It was a strange thing to say, but there was feeling of destiny, says the novelist. Their most recent collaboration was on China Dream, a ferocious satire charting the mental breakdown of a corrupt local government official. It was published in English last autumn but is unlikely ever to be read in the original Chinese which Ma nevertheless regards as the master copy because censorship in China is now so extreme that even Hong Kong publishers no longer dare defy the ban that has long prevented his novels from being published on the mainland.

Ma speaks little English, so he talks through Drew in life as well as work. Is it a challenge to separate the professional from the domestic? The Ma Jian I translate is a very different entity from the Ma Jian I live with, says Drew. There is never any confusion. I never feel Im translating the words of the person Ive just had supper with, or whos just taken our children to the park. Knowing him so well though means I can in some strange way become him, and write the translation not as a friend or a translator, but as Ma would if he were writing the book in English. There are times during the translation when I feel we are having a silent conversation with each other that we dont have time for in real life. Many of his books have references to places we have been together, dreams of mine that I have told him about or things our children have said.

Relationships between writers and translators are not usually so close, and not only because they can often live thousands of miles apart. Sam Taylor, a French specialist now living in the US, is also on the Man Booker International longlist with Four Soldiers, a novella by Hubert Mingarelli set near the Romanian border in the last days of the Russian civil war. He proposed the book himself to its publisher Granta. His output in the last couple of years also includes two controversial novels, Lullaby and Adle by the Paris-based Moroccan-French writer Lela Slimani. In neither case did he meet the authors before taking on the novels. I dont remember having any direct interaction with Lela on Lullaby, although she wrote me a very nice thank you email afterwards, he says. With Adle, I had a list of about 15 questions that I sent to her after translating the book (and before revising it). She answered those questions and we exchanged a few emails.

The pairing with Slimani is particularly striking in that Taylor is male, while Slimanis work is strongly sexualised and centred on the female body. Did either of them ever question whether it might be a job for a woman? Of course not! says Slimani. Littrature is meant to be universal. I write about women but I hope men can identify with my characters. And Sam understood in a very subtle way my characters and also my style, what atmosphere I wanted to instil, what music I wanted to create with my words. It is magic when you feel that someone understands and respects your work so much. When I read my book in English I always think: thats the exact word I would have chosen.

Taylor was aware of gender as a potential issue, although, he says, neither Lela nor the books female editors ever mentioned it. In the original French, all genitalia, male or female, is called simply sexe, which is a very neutral word. There are no neutral words for genitalia in English everything tends to sound either scientific or pornographic or comical so I used the word that, in each case, seemed to best fit the context. But I didnt want to be a man imposing my viewpoint or sensibility on a female protagonist and female author, so I highlighted most of those word choices in the text and asked Lela and my editors if they thought this was the right word. I dont think any of those choices were changed or even questioned, but it seemed important to put them up for discussion.

When I read my book in English I always think: thats the exact word I would have chosen Lela Slimani, left, and Sam Taylor

A novelist as well as a translator, who fell into translation after giving up a career in journalism to write books in France, Taylor doesnt take everything he is offered. I turned down the chance to translate Michel Houellebecqs Soumission because the Charlie Hebdo attack occurred a couple of days after I received the offer. I have no regrets about that, he says (the job went to Lorin Stein, former editor of the Paris Review, who has since gone on to translate two novels by Frances new enfant terrible douard Louis).

The literatures of French and English might be different, but as Taylor points out: Most European languages (and certainly French) are underpinned by a roughly equivalent set of philosophical values and a shared history. What of those languages that are the product of cultures with little common ground? The traditional answer has been that they rarely get translated, though research commissioned by the Man Booker International prize revealed the situation to be slowly improving, with a growing demand for Chinese, Arabic, Icelandic and Polish languages.

Chinese and English are as far apart as any two languages could be, says Drew. I can read a book in French easily, but after all these years, Chinese is still a struggle there are many characters I dont know, or have forgotten, classical allusions that I miss. Chinese has no tenses and is more concise than English, so meaning is often inferred through context. But although Chinese sometimes feels like a different universe, Im always surprised by how much can be translated how images and metaphors can work across cultures.

Among the initiatives that encourage a wider range of writing in translation is the new EBRD prize, which awards 20,000 to a book from the interestingly arbitrary landmass served by its sponsor, the European Bank of Research and Development (which extends from the Baltics to central Asia and the Mediterranean countries of Africa). Last years inaugural prize went to the Kurdish/Turkish writer Burhan Snmez translated by mit Hussein. This years was won by the first Uzbek novel ever to be translated into English, The Devils Dance.

Hamid Ismailov. Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian

Its author is Hamid Ismailov, a genial 64-year-old journalist who came to London shortly after being forced to flee Uzbekistan in 1992 and has had a day job at the BBC ever since. He was matched with his translator, Donald Rayfield an emeritus professor of Russian and Georgian by a new translator-run publishing house, Tilted Axis, set up in 2015 to champion neglected languages. When I meet up with them in the BBCs London headquarters, their rapport is striking. I was the last person to choose for this, jokes Rayfield, but as the Russians say: If theres no fish, a crab will do.

Rayfield not only had to learn Uzbek to translate the novel, but had to bone up on Tartar, Farsi, Tajik and Kyrgyz as well. How many languages does Ismailov speak? When you speak Uzbek, the novelist quietly explains, you understand many Turcik langages and with Russian you can understand many Slavonic ones. He is a translator himself, working in both directions between Russian, Uzbek and various European languages. Several of his own novels have been translated from Russian into English, but the impossibility of getting an Uzbek novel by a banned writer into the hands of any readers at all inhibited his reputation in his mother tongue until the internet solved the problem for him. He published The Devils Dance in chapters on Facebook and it went viral through the Stans the five formerly Soviet countries in central Asia for whom his central character, the real-life early 20th-century writer Abdulla Qodiriy who was executed in 1938, was a hero. The pair are less forthcoming about a third name that appears on the novels title page John Farndon credited with translating the poetry in the novel. There was no conversation. I was somewhat taken aback by changes to my original translations, recalls Rayfield.

The difficult birth of The Devils Dance in English underlines the extent to which translation is not only a two-way but a three-way relationship, with the publisher the person who takes the financial risk as the third partner. Tilted Axis was set up by Deborah Smith partly with the prize money from her 2016 Man Booker International win for her translation of Korean author Han Kangs The Vegetarian. Smith made substantial cuts to The Devils Dance (though it still checks in at more than 400 pages). Her decision to bring in a poetry translator was in line with a time-honoured tradition in which a named poet works from a literal translation rather than the original.

Smith is better placed than most to understand the demands of cultural transposition: as translator of three novels by Han, she had to negotiate Korean systems of religious belief, family relationships and linguistic practice. She too learned the language specifically to translate the novels and found herself at the centre of a storm when her translation of The Vegetarian was challenged on the grounds of accuracy.

A scene where I had the main character close a door with her foot instead of her arm is one Korean academics like to bring up, she says. There were 67 [errors], by the way. I like to state that publicly in case anyone mistakenly assumes its something Id want to hide. The errors were corrected in later editions and Han Kangs faith in Smith is unshaken. Smith is currently living in South Korea and working on a novel by another female Korean novelist, Bae Suah, which is due to be published by Jonathan Cape next year. Shes not about to diversify into other languages just yet. Im trying to find different ways to spread the translation gospel: publishing, teaching, mentoring. Writing about all aspects of translation: the flow between languages, the discourse around it, all the people who make it happen.

Faithfulness, as opposed to accuracy, is always a difficult issue, as novelist Tim Parks concedes. I think theres usually a mistake of nuance on every page of every book. Sometimes scandalously so, he says. As an author and a translator he has experience in both directions, and he stresses that translators are often the best readers. I have a Dutch translator who keeps writing to me and telling me about the mistakes Ive made in my own books. It can be spelling or continuity, and shes always right. Just occasionally its really embarrassing, but people like that give you the chance to fix the next edition.

Parks has written that: The translator should do his job and then disappear. The great, charismatic, creative writer wants to be all over the globe. And the last thing he wants to accept is that the majority of his readers are not really reading him. His readers feel the same. They want intimate contact with true greatness. They dont want to know that this prose was written on survival wages in a maisonette in Bremen, or a high-rise flat in the suburbs of Osaka. Which kid wants to hear that her JK Rowling is actually a chain-smoking pensioner?

But translators fall into different camps, described by New Yorker critic James Wood as originalists and activists: The former honor the original texts quiddities, and strive to reproduce them as accurately as possible in the translated language; the latter are less concerned with literal accuracy than with the transposed musical appeal of the new work, he wrote. Any decent translator must be a bit of both. Or, as the cultural critic Marina Warner has put it: Should a translator respond like an aeolian harp, vibrating in harmony with the original text to transmit the original music, or should the translation read as if it were written in the new language?

The biggest disagreement we had was whether to use the word bathroom or lavatory Jay Rubin and Haruki Murakami

Its obviously a simplification, but I imagine I would be closer to the activist side of the spectrum, says Taylor, whose less aeolian approach set him at odds with one French writer, Maylis de Kerangal. Her novels French title was Rparer les Vivants, and Taylor called his translation The Heart, while the Canadian poet and translator Jessica Moore chose the more literal Mend the Living for this story of the day in the life of a donated heart as it is rushed from one person to another. The translations were commissioned simultaneously by editors in the UK and the US, and both won awards (Mend the Living scooped the Wellcome prize while The Heart won the French-American Foundation prize) but De Kerangal has ruled that Moores is more faithful to her writing and she should therefore do all her future novels: It is so fascinating to see what choices were made at every turn. The opening sentence, for example, feels completely different to me in our versions, says Moore. Even the dead boys surname is different, though interestingly its Taylor who kept De Kerangals Limbres, while Moore went for Limbeau.

According to another busy translator, Frank Wynne, problems often arise when a writer thinks they have a better command of English than they actually do. One of his worst experiences was with French film director Claude Lanzmann who was hugely intrusively involved in the translation of his 2012 memoir The Patagonian Hare. He binned the original Italian translation and redid mine line by line. He insisted on using the phrase leonine contract to mean a contract in which one person took the lions share. I didnt in the end meet him and it might have been useful if I had, so that hed gone into it with more of a sense of trust.

A translator from both French and Spanish who had novels in both languages on the longlist of last years Man Booker International and is currently based in Mexico Wynnes relationships with writers tend to be brisk. Some dont reply at all. The trouble is the more successful a writer is, the more languages there are. One of his top-selling authors, the French crime novelist Pierre Lemaitre, deals with the problem by collating questions from all his 35-40 translators into a round-robin crib sheet.

Jay Rubin, one of the four translators who have made the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami into an English language superstar, says he learned early on to correspond sparingly. The worst thing I did was with The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I got together with him in Tokyo and drove him absolutely crazy for a whole day giving him little questions one after another. This is not a very kind thing to do to an author.

Rubin co-translated the book Bird Chronicle with Philip Gabriel, because it ran to three volumes, and its length defeated him. Did they collaborate? The biggest disagreement we had was whether to use the word bathroom or lavatory. (Murakami ruled in favour of bathroom.) But, he says, All of us stick pretty closely to the tone and style of Murakamis writing, and thanks in large part to the simplicity of his style, the voice is pretty consistent. There arent that many ways to say Sunday was another fine clear day.

If that sounds like damning with faint praise, the compliment was returned by Murakami, when he wrote the introduction to a well-received recent anthology of Japanese short stories edited by Rubin, which Rubin himself then translated. Some [stories], of course, could be characterized as representative works, but, frankly, they are far outnumbered by stories which are not, wrote the novelist. How did that make Rubin feel? I giggled when I read that frankly, he says. But youre getting the unvarnished Murakami view of the book.

Some of his dialect I intuited. Other terms, rife with violence and obscenity, he politely translated into Italian for me Jhumpa Lahiri on Domenico Starnone

For Ann Goldstein, translating a more recent superstar, Elena Ferrante, there was no such back and forth. She had no direct contact with the author, whose true identity is a closely guarded secret. She was chosen on submission of a sample translation of a previous Ferrante novel, and corresponds with her on email via her publisher. Though the novels themselves werent written in Neapolitan dialect, the dialogue in the HBO TV adaptation partially scripted by Ferrante is. My role has been translating them so that HBO can read them, says Goldstein.

Just how difficult Neapolitan can be, even to someone steeped in Italian, became clear to the author Jhumpa Lahiri when she took on two novels by another of the southern Italian citys writers, Domenico Starnone. Lahiri moved from the US to Rome and dedicated herself to writing in the language of her host country, the progress of which she documented in a fascinating bilingual book, In Other Words. Immersion in standard Italian didnt prepare her for some of Starnones language though. Some of his dialect I intuited. Other terms, rife with violence and obscenity, were politely translated into Italian for me by Starnone himself, she has said. Lahiris working relationship with Starnone is a passionate cross-cultural conversation, which for their latest collaboration, Trick, took in Kafka and Henry James. At a public launch in London last year, an overawed fan asked if it was necessary to know so much. Not at all, replied Lahiri. For most readers, its just a story of a grandfather left in charge of his four-year-old grandson.

Starnone is now going to translate Lahiris English introduction for the Italian edition of her new Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories. But she is saving the biggest challenge for herself: the English translation of her own first novel written in Italian. Dove mi trovo has already been published in several other languages. The idea of my own creation in Italian not having a life in English yet is interesting, she says. The problem is: how do I turn myself back on myself? Mentally I have to go into a place where Im two people. Is self-translation the most intimate relationship between a writer and a translator? Perhaps not. In Chinese, says Ma Jian, a soul mate is described as zhiyin someone who understands your music and that is what Flora is to me.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us

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kaleidoscopeofdreamss · 7 years ago

Text

Alone but not lonely

It's finally sunk in that I'm alone, alone, and it feels nice because I'm not lonely, which is strange considering I live by myself in a 4 bedroom apartment (yes, it's a little to big for me 😂), but I'm talking about in the relationship sense. Ive always been a creature who dwells in her solitude, which is why him and he and I decided to part ways. We also didn't want to force something, as I once did while I was abroad, based on selfish reasons of him not wanting to lose me and me feeling held back. It was a smart and mature decision on both our ends. I'm glad he was understanding and knew it was the right thing to do in this moment because it made this transition easier for us both. We both have other things to focus on, especially our personal goals and progress. He's on a different path than I am, and I'm actually quite proud of him for all the hard work and dedication he puts into bettering himself. I'm glad i met someone like him to show me there's others like me out there with a fire under their bellies--it's just a matter of finding them, or them finding me.

However, like my previous partner, he knew he couldn't make me as happy as living in Spain does. To be honest, Spain feels different this time around. The transition has been more difficult than other times, but in a peculiar way; Luckily, I was mentally prepared for this, but not culturally. Valencia is an entire different world than both Barcelona and Sevilla, and I realize now how fortunate I am to have experienced both and now the Valencian culture. And although I find it quieter than barcelona and less charming than Sevilla, there's something about it that's starting to grow on me (definitely not the food tho haha). Pa el y pa el, but definitely not pa mi 😂 All jokes aside, what has made the difficulties easier to bare are all the happen stance occurrences that have happened along the way these past 4.5 weeks. I keep laughing at all the little things that have aligned for me and all the countless "coincidental" meetings with people since the moment I landed on Spanish soil. So far, I've clicked with far more people in these short 4.5 weeks than with people I've grown up with, or have seen repeatedly back home. And that's because I'm meeting people who are go-getters like me, who want to explore the world and have seen and experienced it too. It's helping me grow as a person for once, and it feels nice. I was tired of the mundane and shallow surface level conversations, connections and perspectives on life back in San Diego. The people from my city are too small minded for me--too set in their ways--unwilling to break out of comfort zones.

I noticed this (the small mindedness) especially when I would hang out with his friends. It became more clear and evident to me that we were far to different to ever coincide long term when I started spending more time with the people he enjoyed surrounding himself with. They were close minded, small minded, traditional, boring and almost small-town type of folk, who i just didn't vibe with, but that's who he felt comfortable with. He used to say he liked people with a "raw" sense of humour, which sometimes equated to ignorant, immature and, plain out, dumb in my eyes. They lacked depth and true intellect. The people he surrounded himself were one-track minded, surface level folk, who had little disregard for the deeper meaning of life. And then I realized it was a reflection of him. It hit me hard when we had brunch with his friends once in I.B. I remember feeling out of place and wanting to leave, but I also didn't want to be dramatic because we were rocky at the time. Every part of me wanted to walk out of that restaurant. The more time I spent there, the more I cringed and the antsier I became in my chair. I don't think he even noticed my discomfort. I'm a great actress. Truth is, I'm sharp and witty and can hold an intellectual conversation, which we used to do when we first met, but then I outgrew him. I began to become interested in things that mattered and in self growth, which he didn't seem to care for. He wanted to stay stuck in his cyclical ways, with his same small circle of small-minded folk. And that's why we grew apart. And the last few weeks leading up to the breakup, I evaluated my intuition, and I scanned my body for how I felt when he was around me, how I felt around his friends, and it was uncomfortable. We had become too different; we saw the world too differently and, especially, approached it like night and day, which is exactly what we're doing now.

^^^ haha Idk why patrick is up there, but I hit paste and that gif appeared 😂 okay, tangent aside....back to talking about how the universe has been setting forth everything in my path perfectly and fatefully. So, even before I left, everything has been aligning all-too perfectly for me. It was a domino affect. It was as if there was this whole life and plan waiting for me once we detached from each other, which means, he was right, we just were never meant to be--as much as we wanted it to be. We forced it from the start. He forced it too, which is why sometimes I wish he wouldn't have tried so hard to prove me wrong; it would've saved me a lot of heartache, disappointment and pain. I keep wishing he would've let me go (as he just did) the first time I left to Spain. That was when I was ready to let him go and find the life I'm making now, but I was somehow convinced it was with him in San Diego because he put this silly idea in my head that we were meant to be. And, boy, was I wrong. He were wrong, yet I knew it all along. He was stubbornly in love, and I let him TRY to prove me otherwise. And I don't blame him anymore because I, too, had a choice, but I was too weak to say no to him and too weak to let go of us.

It was the rare connection we had that binded us and kept me bound to him but, as time went by, our differences were magnified in the real light of life after the honey moon phase was over. His voice, his caresses, the way he'd say my name, hold my hand and kiss me passionately, even towards the end, gave me every reason to stay by his side. At one point, I even fell in love with him all over again when we were doing horribly, and it made me appreciate his flaws, but it further blinded and attached me to what was no good for me. That's my biggest vice: always trying to see the good in people, ignoring their flaws and loving them anyway, instead of seeing the real and realizing when it's time to walk awal. Thats why when he hurt me and let me down, I was a total and complete sucker for him, especially since he "didn't know any better." I made a list of excuses for him and waited for him to "grow up" aka "change." Silly of me. And somewhere along the lines of waiting, wishing, hoping and romanticizing delusions and believing false promises , I forgot what i deserved, but I've reminded myself again. Spain has given me clarity of who I am again and what I deserve. Being in another relationship soon after that seemed like perfect timing also reaffirmed that timing is everything.

That's all it truly is in life and love. And, at this moment, life is giving me exactly what I need. After falling countless times, I've found my ground again, and I'm planting them firmly on Spanish soil and never looking back. I'm not sure if I'll stay in Valencia long term, but I have a nice home, an easy work schedule and a new group of friends, who have proven to be kindred spirits. Perhaps I'll try my hand at Madrid, or even head back to Sevilla. All I know is I could see myself making Spain my permanent home someday. Hopefully soon. Since I landed the international internship, it's given me the ability to live here until May or August 2019, and I'm pushing for August, which is when I'll graduate with my MSW. During that time, I'm going to figure out a way to stay for good. I've been thinking and reflecting back on my life in San Diego, and I'm glad I left everything behind. There's nothing there for me anymore. Spain, I'm finally here to stay.

Bona nit, chikis! <3

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