31 January 2014

Being a student is not easy. Sometimes it feels like swimming upstream against an endless current of obligations whose meaning I am not always able to grasp.

I truly love translation. I love taking Spanish (and Catalan) words and rewriting them in English. It so happens that translation is a bit more of a lucrative field than English or art, and I'm happy that I can study something I love AND eventually make a living from it. But I am beginning to fully understand why some people choose not to earn degrees in creative fields they love.

I'm a bit astonished at the apparent uselessness some of the tasks I'm given in my classes. One class requires me to essentially keep a running narrative of everything I do inside and outside of the classroom, and I do mean everything. I have to extensively document every translation choice I make in certain assignments in another class—a practice that time constraints simply do not allow to be a professional reality, setting aside questions of whether or not it's worth the effort-to-benefit ratio for the individual student (and I really don't think it is). How I wish my classes taught me time management, the thing I struggle with most in my internship. My software class is quite useful, but extremely slow-paced, given the relatively high rate of technical difficulties and general confusion, which I suppose is really nothing out of the ordinary in a software class. I may be the only student in my project management class who finds the topic interesting, though I must admit that I don't see the point in taking a master's level class in a field of work that requires a certain number of years of experience, such that by the time I might be a project manager myself I'll have forgotten all the course content.

The end result is that I spend rather little of the time I devote to my classes practicing translation or even learning directly about translation.

Being a student is not easy.

My internship is a rather different story. I've translated manuals. I've translated infomercials. I've revised the academic papers of Spanish-born scholars who think their English is good enough to write in English rather than simply write well in their native language and have their work translated into English. This is a particular nightmare the likes of which I don't wish upon anyone. All of these things are useful. But I still end up in want of actual translation to do.

I like the perspective my friend Alba takes in her blog and in this particular entry. It's in Catalan, so I've picked out a particular gem and translated it here:

"The factory that is my university is turning me into an automaton devoid of creativity and insight.... Yes, it's true, I sometimes feel like a manufactured good, but, thank God, I'm responsible for my own education."

Although both she and I are ready to protest in response to this assertion that we don't have enough time to educate ourselves, she reminds herself and her reader of the following quotation by 'Abdu'l-Bahá:

"Where there is love, nothing is too much trouble and there is always time."

Perhaps, then, what I ought to do is shift my perspective and imagine myself instead swimming downstream—fulfill my obligations to being a great translator first and be most attentive to those tasks that help me get there. Other university obligations will, no doubt, wash over me without my running to meet them. Indeed, one of my professors has already told me to take it easy, and make sure to enjoy life as well as do well in class. Where there is love, nothing is too much trouble and there is always time. The same can't be said of factories.

19 January 2014

It's been a while since I said much in the way of what my life has been like since I left Haifa. I have my excuses. First, I didn't have nearly enough to do this summer, and second, I had way too much to do this fall. Now that I have finally begun to establish a rhythm of life in Barcelona, I observe that I have not so much as recorded my two most recent relocations in its "pages". Oops. I did promise others and myself a few posts ago that I would write about things of more general import (hopefully my posts about Nanowrimo fall into this category). Indeed, it's a bit boring to read someone's blathering on about their day/week/month/year, wherever that someone may be. But I believe I will do just a spot of catching up for posterity's sake, since my travels have not yet reached their end and I should like for myself and perhaps my little ones to be able to read and/or remember them somewhat accurately someday. I spent a good portion of the beginning of the summer looking for temporary work. I hate to say it, but I made the mistake of being honest about my availability. Spain wasn't a sure thing yet, as I hadn't gotten my visa, and I had the plan B of attending UW-Milwaukee that would have served me much better in my job hunt had I put it forth as my plan A. Honesty is the best policy. That's what they say. However, making an independent living is a pretty good policy too, and my honesty ended up costing me an entire summer's worth of income. Well, to be frank, I didn't strictly need the money, so I applied to places I wanted to work at and not fast-food joints and that ilk. It was a tough job market, and I was aiming for too high a position in it. I'm just too old and, I would like to think, wise to see the point in taking a job that involves zero intellectual stimulation anymore unless I am dying of hunger. Never mind. I had more time to do things I wanted, and once I finally accepted this incredible freedom, I started to do really cool things with it. I overspent somewhat on illustration supplies and set up a little artist's studio. I experimented with setting a huge expanse of unbroken illustration paper before me and attempting to fill it with illustration utensils equipped with almost microscopic tips and nibs. Perhaps needless to say, "masterpiece" number one is still in progress. It may not have been my most brilliant idea to conceive of a piece that entailed fish scales as my first go. It's also accurate enough to say I worked my butt off applying for grants to render McGill's library science graduate program more affordable. I plugged away on a Fulbright proposal all summer. In the end, I abandoned it, ironically because of all the work I'd done on it rather than in spite of it...because through the thorough and in-depth examination of the field that I conducted, I realized that the field I'm really interested in pursuing a career in isn't library science at all. It's computational linguistics. Fifty years ago, library science would have been the field to study to have a career in multilingual information retrieval, but by now computer scientists have penetrated quite deeply into the field (so much so that in some library science degree programs, there are more professors with a background in computer science than in library science). After almost an entire summer of vacillation I finally unburdened myself of the thought of going to McGill and all the debt and hardship it would entail. Thank God! The more I've been able to distance myself from that idea that I was so attached to, the more I see what a bad idea it would have been. That's life. Not long after reaching that conclusion, I packed my bags and headed to Barcelona to get my master's in translation studies. I'm about a third of the way in, and I have the good fortune of having no doubt in my mind that I'm doing just what I should be doing. Everything I'm doing is something I love to do, translating and learning languages above all. I love the Catalan culture and language and I love learning (about) them in more depth alongside refining my Spanish. I'm even finding a little time to ride the language-learning wave and work on my French (in preparation for the next step or two in my life since I may have given up on McGill but I shan't give up on Montreal just yet). The language that's getting the most refinement of all, however, is not Catalan, nor is it Spanish, nor French. It's English! I have to admit that while I thought I had some natural talent for translating, I've been forced to reevaluate that assumption. I can't turn out beautiful, polished translations with no effort, as it turns out. I have to work and struggle, and face a lot of criticism in the process. I'm sensitive, especially since I had some faulty preconceptions about my skills, I confess, and it's just not easy at all. Still, I will not give up (again? Did I give up on nursing school or reach the conclusion that I was going too far against the grain of my natural abilities?). I'm setting about a program of self-study that involves daily practice of converting one language into another and evaluating the results. It might be surprising that I'm not already doing that, but a good proportion of my classes are theoretical in nature, and as such involve a lot of thinking about, which is exceedingly valuable, but perhaps limited in the reach of their effects without the accompaniment of doing. Naturally, I'm doing my best to take advantage of the proximity of so many beautiful, old cultures and languages by traveling around Europe as much as my budget allows. Almost as soon as my last exam of my first trimester was over, I boarded a plane to Munich, Germany, and subsequently hopped from place to place visiting friends, continuing to Salzburg, Austria; Zurich, Switzerland; several cities in Sweden; Copenhagen, Denmark; and London, England. I'm lucky to have friends in so many places. Next on my list are Paris, France; Liege, Belgium; and The Hague, Netherlands; and God willing, I'll spend a week back in Israel helping out the old office with a little project at the perfect time of year, late April when the flowers are blooming and everyone is in a joyful mood because that's the time of year when the best Baha'i Holy Days fall. During that time, I'm hoping to meet with a professional translator in Tel Aviv who has tentatively agreed to take me on as a sort of apprentice to help me find my feet in the business and professional aspects of translation (depending on how her maternity leave ends up playing out). Exciting. Tentatively, after I graduate I'd just like to get a job as an in-house, full-time translator at an agency and rack up some experience. The question of where was taking on disproportionate importance in my mind until I realized that all of my top contenders at present (Los Angeles, Montreal or somewhere in Europe) are good ones in different ways and that I can't go wrong unless I don't do the proper research and make the proper effort and instead just go wherever the wind takes me. I'd also like to take some computer science classes on the side, as has been suggested to me by Those Who Would Know, and see if taking my career in the direction of computational linguistics is the right move for me. I must say that the older I get the less I think everything is a panic and urgent. If I am going to move in that direction, I'm not going to rush it. I may be nearly 30, but life goes on and we're learning our whole lives. Besides, I'm over the false assumption that just because we're doing X (be it going to school, working, having a family, etc.) we can't be doing Y (any one of the other options). Truly, the most important thing is to always be developing into someone you like better, and to be happy that others may be made happy by you. In keeping with this somewhat new and happily lower-stress outlook on life, I've made a commitment to myself to make a serious effort to explore one new corner of Barcelona per week. This week I explored the port area and entered the Barcelona Cathedral. There is something wonderful about the old cathedrals of Europe. A lot of people think they're grungy and gross, but I love that ancient feeling. Europe abounds with things that are great and lasting, two qualities I wish that the products of American craftsmanship had in greater abundance. Yet the things that people I meet who have visited America tend to speak most fondly of are its natural features and their sheer variety. Indeed, I suppose I'm willing to forgive America its relative uniformity in terms of architecture and language because of its spectacular natural beauty.

1 December 2013

Here is the long and short (no pun intended…OK, yes pun intended) of how it went: My piece of writing could be classified as a healthy novella, about 25,000 words. It is made up of a number of stories, some quite brief and serving more of a framing function than anything else, and some quite long. One narrative thread could be a novelette in itself, if you include the related narratives embedded within it, which perhaps you don’t (this ambiguity one of the great things about frame stories). It is definitely a good foundation for a longer, more polished work of novel length.

So would I count the experience as a success? Yes and no. No in that I didn’t make the word count, which is a fundamental aspect of a “just do it!” challenge like this. It’s disappointing that another year running I didn’t meet the challenge. Yes in that I came closer than ever before. In that I’m proud of my little work and I intend to work on it to completion, whatever that means (I’m not going to equate “completion” with a word count of 50,000). Another great thing about frame stories is that you can always add stories and take stories away. They’re inflatable, compressible, expandable, shrinkable….) And I intend to make it good, which means I will take it slow and steady.

Some days I wanted to write and I wrote. Some days I didn’t want to write and I wrote anyway. Other days I positively rebelled against myself for subjecting myself to such a monstrous thing, and read a book, went for a walk or dabbled in German instead. Anything but write. Part of the struggle on those days was the struggle to overcome the feeling that I was wasting my time…and indeed, many, many things vyed for my attention throughout the month, many of which I love doing just as much as writing, and will bear a little more fruit in the here in what is essentially a critical growing season, i.e., my time in Spain. Translating, and everything to do with translating. Planning a trip. Studying Catalan. I can write a novel in English in a month anytime. But there are some things that make the most sense to focus on in the 10 to 12 months I’m in Catalonia, in Spain, in Europe, in grad school.

Though to be fair, it doesn’t have to be one thing or another. I definitely found that my work was a great platform for reflection on and consolidation of the topics I’m covering in school and the novel things and ideas I encounter in my daily life in Spain. The whole work is a pseudo-translation (rare these days) with a translator who inserts herself quite a bit into the text (rarer still in any era). For example, one of my short stories is based on the life of Gaudí.

Incidentally, because I live so close to the Sagrada Familia, and indeed in a city so permeated with the colors and textures of Gaudí—or maybe just because he was a great person—I’ve taken a great interest in Gaudí. And one of the reasons for this is his complete dedication to his craft, and indeed his increasingly narrowed and intensified focus throughout his life. He dedicated the last 10 years of his life to working exclusively on the Sagrada Familia. And when I write about and reflect on that, I begin to wonder why I’m not focusing even a little more single-mindedly on being a great translator. Indeed, there’s a section of the Sagrada Familia, a downstairs chapel, that is open to the public and contains Gaudi’s tomb. Beside it are a few pamphlets and cards for sale for 0.10-2.00 euros promoting the movement for Gaudí’s beatification. Despite not being Catholic and even having mixed feelings about the beatification process, I did get a little card for the beautiful prayer on it, which reads in part: “You instilled in your servant Antoni Gaudí, architect, a great love for your Creation…. Grant…that I also may learn to dedicate myself to a well-done work.”

Of course, we don’t (and can’t) all take things to the extreme that Gaudí did. I don’t get the impression from what I read about him that he was an altogether well-rounded human being.

Nanowrimo could be called the literary equivalent of a crash diet or a gung-ho exercise program. I don’t think I realized, before diving in, the degree to which writing is a practice, a discipline, a facet of a lifestyle—especially good writing. I’ve heard it said that completing the Nanowrimo challenge requires training and a gradual buildup throughout the year. Personally, then, I find the whole concept of Nanowrimo a little paradoxical. If you’re already in the habit of writing regularly, without great big fits and starts and stops, then you don’t really need a month-long word binge.

The whole experience has been one of mirrors and poles. I’m satisfied and I’m not. It’s a novel(-in-progress), the longest type of literary work that is commonplace today (unless you classify huge tomes distinctly), and a collection of short stories, which constitute the shortest type of literary work that is commonplace today (unless you classify flash fiction and the like distinctly). It’s a necessary act and a waste of time. It’s a translation and an original work. It’s one practice that would benefit from singleminded focus amid many. It’s about quantity, it’s about quality. To take up the Nanowrimo challenge is to play with extremes and opposites. And maybe that helps us create more powerful synergies.

I’m setting my own challenge, then. I’d like to finish a draft of my novel. A good, polished one, regardless of word count. Not this month. And not next month. But before I leave Spain, so that I can edit and polish it up properly after I leave. As one of my favorite writers, Téa Obreht, said:

“I did no writing while I was visiting the Balkans. I do no writing while I’m in Belgrade visiting my grandma. There’s a way you think about your experiences and process them after the fact that makes it much more organic. When you’re in a place, the details you focus on are different than details you focus on when you’re writing about it.”

Ultimately, I’d like to self-publish the book before 1 November 2014. It’s ambitious, but you have to set goals. It may not be very good, but as another of my favorite writers, Orson Scott Card, said, all writers have a million words of crap that they need to get out of their system. I will have come a little closer to that.

31 October 2013

For a long time, perhaps a few Novembers, the challenged posed by Nanowrimo (National [OK, international] Novel Writing Month) has beckoned. Specifically, the challenge is to write a 50,000 word novel in a month. Obviously the word “novel” has to be used loosely, since it implies a degree of completion. One can barely reach the word count by quasi-freewriting a text that hopefully turns out somewhat coherent in 30 short days. But reaching the word count in itself is a reflection of completing something: putting pen to paper, again and again and again, and in the process inevitably making manifest at least a few good ideas.

I’ve had a few conversations with a few people about this write-a-thon, and find that there are a few different attitudes out there about it. Those with positive attitudes toward it generally feel that there is something special about taking on such a daunting challenge at the same time as people all over the world, and that it’s a way to cultivate creativity. Some with negative attitudes liken it to binge eating–a literary sugar shock, if you will, and some think it’s an outright waste of time that could be better spend doing a whole range of other things.

I’ve weighed the arguments, and I am going to give it a try. Here are a few reasons why.

1. As counterintuitive as it might seem, it’s a way to meet people. A group of writers are meeting for a kickoff in the city center tomorrow. I think a certain amount of solidarity and kinship could be achieved through working separately-yet-together towards an essentially common purpose that may not be so easily achieved though a hike in the woods or something together.

2. While some do think it’s inorganic, the notion of a concrete goal really appeals to me. And in the end it’s not so hard to achieve. I’m not asking myself to publish a novel in 30 days, or even a year. I’m just asking myself to write words. Words are not scary. They’re just words. All I have to do is put one word after another. Even if my imagination doesn’t magically kick in and make the writing a breeze (right away), that mechanical, analytical part of my brain that can just produce words and string them together with an acceptable syntax has promised to do just that for all 30 days of the challenge if it has to. After all…

3. It’s more than an end; it’s a chance to generate some ideas and inject some life into my future writing.

4. While I am surrounded by Spanish and Catalan every day, even translating into Spanish, it’s a chance to play with my native language. All good translators are good writers.

5. Most importantly, it’s because I’ve always identified myself as a writer. I write a lot. But I rarely write things that I can share; my writing is often the linguistic equivalent of building staircases to nowhere. I think writing is as social as anything else; after all, language was developed as a tool for communication, and it happens that writing can be an impersonal form of this. Ideally, I would write to communicate to a particular audience things they would like to hear and to know. But even the best ideas, the most comforting and hopeful or insightful messages, cannot have much impact if they are not finished, unless they become staircases one might choose to take.

I’ve made this commitment at one of the busiest times of my life: a master’s program, an internship, Catalan courses, English lessons, and a mentorship on the horizon. Not to mention the mere fact of living on my own in a foreign country as of six weeks ago, and the ongoing process of figuring everything out for myself. And so I’ve had doubts about Nanowrimo since the thought entered my head. But all the things I’m doing are things I love. And a synergy can arise from doing things one loves that makes possible more than one would have imagined.