A random observation about literature in translation: the Spanish versions of Harry Potter usually go for the letter of the law, leaving most names of characters, places, spells, and magical artifacts intact, unless it is important to change a word or phrase because it was an anagram or something in English and that anagram or something is of immense importance. To give two examples, "the mirror of Erised" becomes "El espejo de Oesed" in Spanish instead of "El espejo de Erised" and the name Tom Marvolo Riddle becomes Tom Sorvolo Ryddle. Soy Lord Voldemort!
The French versions, on the other hand, go for the spirit of the law. To excess. They change nearly everything. That was okay for a while, but now my patience has been exhausted. (That is to say, it wasn't irritating when I knew less French than I do now.) About two of every three character names are changed for no discernible reason (and believe me, I've tried discerning). The above plus the rest of the changes leaves me wanting to hex the translator until he resembles a gelatinous slug. The French translator takes such an intemperate amount of creative license that the only possible explanation is that he has absconded with Rita Skeeter's Quick Quotes Quill. Seriously.
One amusing thing I should mention about the French translation is that Tom Marvolo Riddle becomes Tom Elvis Jedusor. Je suis Voldemort! That's right, the Dark Lord's middle name is Elvis.
The human heart doesn't actually look very much like a valentine, but it is nevertheless a wondrous and beautiful muscle. About the size of a large pear, it begins to beat only a few weeks after conception, and then proceeds to pump forth the rhythm of our lives through every moment of our uterine and earthly existence....
When news anchor Neil Cavuto was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis a decade ago -- after surviving stage IV Hodgkin's lymphoma in the late '80s -- he sought second opinions in New York, Atlanta, Minnesota, and London, in his attempt to refute the undeniable.
Ten years later, Cavuto both accepts his MS and defies it. Doctors marvel at his MRI scans because they indicate a man unable to walk or talk. Yet while he sometimes has difficulty doing both, the Fox News anchor is remarkably fit, exercising on a stationary bike and treadmill to stave off muscle atrophy of the legs, a common problem in MS patients. Cavuto, 48, has the secondary progressive form of the disease, meaning it steadily worsens over time.
He has fatigue, headaches, trouble walking, some vision loss, and -- occasionally -- hoarseness. "Having difficulty talking isn't good in my profession, but my wife welcomes it," jokes the anchor, who memorizes scripts for his program, Your World With Neil Cavuto, in case he can't read the teleprompter during taping.
[...snip...]
He volunteers for the National MS Society. And children's issues, such as scholarships for kids whose parents have been immobilized by MS, are close to his heart, since he and his wife, Mary, recently adopted two boys, now ages 4 and 5...
I haven't had a copy of this book in my hands; I stumbled across it while looking online for something else at Barnes & Noble today. Given some of the artists involved in the experiment, I wouldn't want to guess how family friendly the book is or isn't, but... well, I think it falls under the 'sometimes truth is stranger than fiction' category. And besides, as I understand it, some of these people were influential. Besides, the preface and reviews are promising.
From Barnes & Noble (click on book cover above for link), the preface begins:
There's quite a bit more to the preface, much of it quite interesting, I thought.New York is full of old people, struggling to occupy their allotted space despite the pressures of the younger generations pushing in. Elbowed by joggers, hedged in by cyclists, they make their daily odysseys to the supermarket and then retreat to the safety of their homes. As one of tens of thousands of college graduates moving to New York City in the 1970s, I was as oblivious as the next twenty-two-year-old to this segment of the population. A decade later, as a new mother in Brooklyn Heights, a neighborhood of brownstones facing Wall Street across the East River, I merely noted the number of people with aluminum walkers on the sidewalks as I maneuvered my child's stroller around them. A few years on, however, when I began volunteering to deliver meals to the housebound and got to know many of these people as individuals, I began to regret my past indifference.
Many liked to talk, and I found that I liked to listen. The octogenarian who had covered her walls with her own arresting paintings told me about the silent-film actress who had once lived at the nearby Bossert Hotel and ordered up a milk bath every day. The retired city councilman with the fierce gray eyebrows described the spectacular sunsets, enhanced by post-Depression factory fumes, that he had so enjoyed on his homeward walks over the Brooklyn Bridge. The chain-smoking former navy officer recalled the rich scent of chocolate that used to waft through the streets from a Fulton Street candy factory before World War II. I learned, too, how the Brooklyn Dodgers got their name (Brooklyn residents were once called"trolley-dodgers" because of the many speeding trolley cars on the borough's streets); how a working-class girl could enjoy a free daily swim at the St. George Hotel's swank saltwater pool (all it took was a doctor's note); and what Irish-American children were told when they found an orange in their Christmas stocking ("Thank Mr. Tammany, not Santy Claus").
Most intriguing to me, however, were the references to a house that once stood at 7 Middagh Street (pronounced mid-daw), a short, narrow lane at the neighborhood's northeastern tip overlooking the former dockyards and, beyond, New York Harbor. The house had been rented, one neighbor told me, by a group of well-known young poets, novelists, composers, and artists the year before America entered World War II. Aware that enormous devastation lay ahead and determined to continue contributing to the culture as long as possible, they had created an environment for themselves to support and stimulate, inspire and protect —just a few blocks from where I lived.
When I learned that these residents included the poet W. H. Auden, the novelist Carson McCullers, the composer Benjamin Britten, Paul and Jane Bowles, and, of all people, the burlesque artist Gypsy Rose Lee—all under thirty-five but already near the apex of their careers—my interest was piqued even further. In a pictorial survey of Brooklyn's history, I found a photograph of the house—a small, shabby brick and brownstone structure with elaborate Tudor trim. The man who had signed the lease and organized this experiment in communal living turned out to have been George Davis, a fiction editor at Harper's Bazaar who had single-handedly revolutionized the role played by popular magazines in bringing serious literature and avant-garde ideas to the American masses. Davis was known for his attraction to the eccentric in culture, in entertainment, and in his choice of friends. With his encouragement, nights at the Middagh Street house became a fevered year-long party in which New York's artistic elite (Aaron Copland, George Balanchine, Louis Untermeyer, Janet Flanner, and Louise Dahl-Wolfe, among others) mingled with a flood of émigrés fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe, including the composer Kurt Weill and the singer Lotte Lenya, the artist Salvador Dalà and his wife, Gala, and the entire brilliant family of the Nobel Prize–winning novelist Thomas Mann. Days, however, were dedicated to their work —writing, composing, painting, and otherwise seeking new answers, new approaches to life in a collapsing world.
By the winter of 1940–41, 7 Middagh—called "February House" by the diarist Anaïs Nin because so many of its residents had been born in that month—had developed a reputation as the greatest artistic salon of the decade...
In 1940, George Davis, an editor recently fired from Harper’s Bazaar, rented a dilapidated house in Brooklyn Heights in which he installed brilliant, volatile artists, who spent the next year working, fighting, and drinking. Carson McCullers sipped sherry while, down the hall, the burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee typed her mystery novel with three-inch fingernails, and, downstairs, Benjamin Britten and Paul Bowles fought over practice space. W. H. Auden was housemother, collecting rent, assigning chores, and declaring no politics at dinner. Tippins’s book is a cozy, gossipy read, punctuated by solid, if perfunctory, literary criticism. Like all bohemian utopias, February House (so named because of the residents’ February birthdays) was unable to withstand the centrifugal force of its constituent egos. The artists dispersed—to return home, serve in the military, or follow wayward lovers—and the house was demolished to make way for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
Fires, wars, murders, drugs. Too often, we read in newspapers and see all over the TV and Internet the bad things going on in the world.
But what really makes the world go round is kindness, those little acts that often go unnoticed by all but those involved. Because these small acts don't get published and publicized, people often don't believe they actually happen. So it's time to share! This blog is for posting those small acts of kindness that you do for others, or that others do for you. Hopefully, in having this group effort, people will be able to read about a number of kind acts happening daily and will feel better about life, and then hopefully, in turn, go on to carry out kind acts of their own...
Do you have what it takes to be public radio's next great host? Do you have that most elusive of qualities - hostiness? Now is your chance. We're casting a wide net to find new talent for public radio, and giving away over $70,000 along the way.I'm out for lots of reasons (lack of appropriate skills being a big one), but I'd love to see the gene pool expanded in radio, so if you've got talent (and can forgive the awww-cuteness of an appeal for 'hostiness')...
The Silver Chair is also available in stand-alone; in paperback, hardback and audio. For instance:
The Silver Chair
Update: I've found a 1952 example. In the murder mystery Rose's Last Summer by Canadian author Margaret Millar, a self-centered, browbeaten, wimpy, worried and worrisome mother's boy of a man who had a body found in his garden (and has been acting suspiciously ever since) is conversing with a police officer heading the investigation (emphasis in original):
"The poor woman who died - my wife and I were discussing it last night - I hope she'll have a proper burial with flowers and all that?"
"I don't guarantee the flowers, but she'll be buried according to regulation. The county will foot the bill if no one else does."
"It seems so cold-blooded, having no flowers."
"Rose won't know the difference."
Willett turned quite pale. "I wonder - my wife and I were wondering - we feel a certain sense of responsibility in this affair. We're not wealthy by any means, but we're comfortably well off and I thought - Ethel thought - perhaps a check for a hundred dollars--?"
"You're offering to bury Rose?"
"I - yes, you might put it like that. Ethel's very soft-hearted, you know."
Greer didn't know. "You'll have to take the matter up with the County Administrator."
Willett had no idea what or who the County Administrator was, but he nodded wisely. "I see. There's red tape involved. You think it might be better to forget the whole thing? I mean, I certainly wouldn't want my generous impulses to get me into trouble. It wouldn't be fair."
"There are lots of worthy causes to give money to," Greer said shortly. "Flowers are fine, but Rose can't smell them."
Willett took out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead. He hated this callous policeman with such intensity that he felt nauseated. "I - if you'll excuse me - I'm not well."
"Sorry to hear it."
"We - we're not a strong family. Things upset us."
Greer believed it. "I just want to talk to your mother for a few minutes. I'll try not to disturb her."
Willett felt too weak and sick to argue. "Murphy will take you upstairs," he said and headed for the door, pressing the handkerchief against his mouth.
This may or may not be related, but it should tell you a little bit about where I'm coming from in this discussion. It took me a long time to realize that our bookstore was never going to survive if we didn't take into account people who wrote bad checks or otherwise managed to take stuff off the shelf without paying for it, or otherwise cost us money through no fault of our own (placing a special order and then not buying the book can hit a small bookstore very hard; more on that someday). It was a hard lesson to learn. It goes against my idealistic streak and a sense of justice to ask honest people to help pay for what dishonest people do, but for the life of me I can't see any other way to do it since we must pay for inventory regardless of what happens to it. We are always working on ways to minimize what dishonest or heedless people can do to us (and by extension our honest and more considerate customers), but the fact remains that every now and then we cross paths with someone who manages to make us bleed financially, and that has to be written into the business plan.Thanks for the invite, Kathryn.
I do have something worth adding to this discussion, possibly. I'm an orthopaedic surgeon, and I'll be the first to admit that my prices are artificially high. But they're not high in order to milk the system; they're not high so I can "get rich quick and retire early"; they're not high because I have an inflated sense of what I do.
I'd be more than willing, happy even, to cut my "usual and customary fees" by 40-50% if someone would simply guarantee me that I'll be paid - by all insurers - what I bill. I'm not. That fact makes my practice's gross income extremely unpredictable, as it's dependent each month on what the insurance mix was for the cases we did.
For some of the complex reconstructive procedures that I do on shoulders government payors and the HMO's pay me, on average, about 24-25 cents on the dollar. You read that right.
As a result I need to keep my fees artificially high because I need the occasional "good insurer" or workman's comp carrier (the private ones pay fairly well) or wealthy self-payor to make up what I lose on the government contracts. I've often said that if everyone paid like Medicare my four physician Ivy League trained group would be out of business. And we would, unless we started practicing impersonal high-volume medicine, which we don't.
So keep pushing for Medicaid, Medicare and HMO's to hold down physician payments and you'll continue to see a warped and unaffordable system for those not so privileged.
You may be interested to know that at high profile medical centers, like the Mayo Clinic, and for in-demand large city physicians most insurances aren't accepted. You pay cash, and if you want some of it back you submit your bill to insurance for re-imbursement. I have a friend from medical school who practices internal medicine in Washington DC who takes no insurance. As a result, he gets what he bills.
