traduttore tradittore

not sure if i got the spelling right. it's an italian maxim that says "translation is betrayal." and for some reason, after centuries of theorizing, it still seems to hold true. translating from one language/code to another will always entail making choices, deciding what to carry over and what will have to be sacrificed in the name of brevity, readability, &c. there are lots of fancy words for this: information load, cultural content, etc. anyway, the current darling among translational approaches is target-oriented translation, aka fluent translations, in which the text must not appear to be a translation, so that the translator is in effect rendered invisible. sort of like a magic trick.

i would love to be able to do this 100% of the time but with the kinds of texts i'm working on, it just doesn't seem possible. i'm on my third batch now, each batch being a section in a book of poetry characterized by linguistic play and other such experimentation. the first batch of seven poems was difficult because of the various language registers used (dated slang, archaic Tagalog, some dialect) and the fact that several of these featured acrostics. good grief. but i managed to finish those in 2 weeks.

wrestling with the second batch turned out to be much much bloodier. that took me...well, much too long. on the surface, it looked like just four poems that played with repetition and patterns. the first, "balimbing", was easy enough. the second proved more difficult but it was mainly a problem of language register. the third poem was hellish, involving an acrostic, and seemingly endless repetition of the same 8 words in 80+ lines but with different patterns, and therefore different meanings.

the last "poem" in that section was actually a whole series of 20 concrete poems (!!!) that also used a lot of punning, aural and visual. that was like mission impossible for me. most translations scholars will tell you that you just don't/can't translate concrete poetry . at most, you do a prose translation or write a note explaining the content. but no... i actually finished the darned thing, and even managed to replicate some of the sound play via alliteration and assonance. yes, i'm that good, haha. ha.

and now this last batch. fifteen pages of rhyme and meter (the poems follow a traditional tagalog form), some very obscure references and even words that don't apear in my tagalog-english dictionary (the one prepared by father leo james english). argh. been working on this for four months now but very little progress. good grief.

okay, back to work.

meet my friend, kim mincheol

taken one sunday in may outside some museum at the grounds of some palace. i know i should've taken notes of where we went exactly but i just couldn't be bothered at the time. the palace brochure is among my piles of notes here somewhere.

at 3:51 pm today, my good buddy mincheol sent me an sms, which i'm reproducing in its full korean-english glory:

"Your camera have been repaired~! [1]
It costs 33000 won
Whenever the repair shop open,
we can receive your camera~!"

i felt so happy, i almost cried. really, i don't know how i can ever say thank you to this guy. from the day we met, he's been nothing but helpful--giving me lessons in korean language, taking me ice skating, bringing me to the acupuncturist when i hurt myself ice skating, bringing me to palaces even if it bored him to tears, teaching me the fine art of swilling soju like a true kuryo de hakkyo student. he's helped me send postcards at the ujekuk (post office), has waited for me in the rain for follow-up acupuncture sessions, even showed up to watch me take part in some ridiculous fashion show activity in between his exams and job interviews.

technically, he's my dowoomi, a helper or buddy assigned to me by the korean language and culture center of the institute for foreign language studies of the korea university. he volunteered for this because as he says, "i want to help foreigners adjust to life in korea." and he's so devoted to the task that he even sat through a whole church service in english with me, even if he could follow only 15% of what was going on. other people met their dowoomis only once or twice; we've been meeting up at least once a week, sometimes more because he says i really need to practice korean.

mincheol is 26 in korea but is actually 24 anywhere else in the world. like most korean guys his age, he's done his two-year military service. he'll be graduating with some kind of engineering degree in january and has recently been accepted by the software division of samsung. his girlfriend, hyun-ook, has the prettiest brown eyes i've ever seen (apparently a rare kind of beauty in korea) and is an environmental science major. they make a cute couple, spending the late evening hours studying at the library together. last month, they gave me a copy of shel silverstein's the giving tree in korean translation, just so i can practice my hanggukmal.

when i broke my camera at the korea-togo football game, he was the first person i called. he was studying and watching the football game on tv at the time but immediately, he said, "yes, i will help you when i'm free." and true to his promise, he did bring me to technomart last sunday to have my casio exilim repaired. he lives more than an hour away but he was there to meet me at the korea university subway station, looking as always like a woozy 5-year old just up from a nap. but for once, he wasn't carrying a schoolbag.

"today, i am free!" he lisped. he has a funny way of talking, half-lisping in english, and miming like a kindergartner. he had just finished his exams and a final project where he figured a way to use a mobile phone to control the elevator even from your apartment. it's perfect for lazy, perpetually late people living in high-rise apartments or for people who just don't want to waste a single minute or five waiting for an elevator to come up to the 38th floor from the lobby. what a brilliant kid.

his doowomi duties technically ended with spring term but here he is, still helping me. he said he signed up for dowoomi duties again for summer term, and wants us to be buddies again, if that's possible. i doubt if we'd be allowed to do that but it doesn't really matter. we're good friends now.

taken one saturday afternoon in april by mincheol's friend, kelly (can't remember her korean name). that's mincheol, hyun-ook, and my then-new pink fedora. at an italian fusion place somewhere along chamsari-gil, near the anam subway station.

[1] since i arrived in seoul, i've noticed an inordinate use of the tilde among koreans. maybe because it's frillier (and therefore, better) than any other punctuation mark.

things looking up

had a good sleep last night, which is to say i actually did some sleeping instead of the tossing and turning that had been my wont the past week or so. and today i actually woke up in the morning, at 6:30, instead of noon. am also getting ready to have a breakfast of barley tea and nutella on wheat-and-rye bread. i know this is the most mundane & boring blog post in the world but i am just so glad right now to be going through a normal boring morning.

photos stolen from jon's blog*

this was taken at sokcho beach. me telling tenzin to stop filming me drunk. he didn't stop. i am such a source of amusement for these crimson house boyz.

me and tenzin on the subway, on the way to the football game event at city hall. this is what happens when two strong jawlines meet--nothing much, heh heh.

pinoyz at sokcho beach. me, all puffy-faced and tipsy. chef tristan the gym addict the only sober person around (he was chugging some kinda sports drink). the intrepid jose carrlos working to add something to project J. yes, he always turns red with too much alcohol.

this is sokcho. not quite like the beach towns we're used to at home. lots of dilapidated condos and deserted lots. but always always trying to make things better. never got to visit those mountains, me too lazy. the beaches face the opposite direction--east. the sea here is very wittily called "the eastern sea." clever, eh?

this is jon dewey doing an impression of a crazed football fan. and me with horns (a gift from min, siege's buddy) doing an impression of a happy sairo. probably taken before i broke my camera.**



* not really stealing because he gave me permission. yay.
** which is now at the repair shop, well...being repaired. thanks to my good buddy mincheol for all the help. you rock! kamsahamnida!

perma-smile

it's starting to rain here and it's gloomy outside. what passes for sunshine is cold and grey and smoggy. still, i'm so giddy it's ridiculous. and my cheeks are starting to ache. hee hee.

about a boy

i have a playlist on my palm that i've been listening to for the past few days. see, i'm having such a hard time sleeping lately. been thinking too much, i guess. and apart from reading posts and looking at paris photos in my favorite person's blog, this is the only thing that helps.

nick hornby's high fidelity (the book and the movie) was the first to make me realize (yes, i'm dumb that way) that a mix tape--or in these mp3-intensive times, a playlist--is a narrative of sorts. at the very least, it can be a compendium of sounds, feelings, thoughts*, longings, memories and promises.

• los amantes - ana d
  
• womb - sugar hiccup
  
• nothing but the sky - ivy
  
• un rayo del sol - le mans
• cry me a river - ella fitzgerald
  
• when i'm thinking about you - the sundays
  
• on paper - three o-clock
• a waltz for a night - julie delpy
• sexual healing - marvin gaye
• thank you - dido
• je t'aime tant - julie delpy
• panaginip - brownbeat allstars cover
• come here - kath bloom
• teardrop - massive attack
  

* incidentally, the title of wislawa szymborska's poetry collection. been savoring this since i arrived here end of march. and as with this sojourn, i'm just about halfway through the book. i don't know what the last poem in the book is but i want to read it with the person most important to me.

just three things

1) back in the 80s, korean tibaks apparently studied pinoy tibaks so they could learn how to fight park chung-hee. i met a korean man named saeed recently who is in love with the idea of the philippines having jungles so that the CPP-NPA would have a place to hide. labo.

2) palestinians are very very persistent people. and here, for a particular group of korean writers, they are the cause-of-the-moment. said korean writers are some of the coolest koreans i've met, in that they're not brainwashed into thinking 'corea da best, corea number one' like everyone else in this country. they're a little more critical, and may seem like left-wing bleeding heart liberals because of it. or maybe they really are that.

3) had tequila for the first time last night. (yes, i'm a pathetic late bloomer in that sense. but then, i've always been a straight vodka or dark beer kinda person.) anyway...it ain't all that. i don't see the whole point of it, the so-called thrill or mystique. had 5 or 6 shots and i didn't get drunk at all. just a bit buzzy at the edges. where's the traydor-ness of it all? or is this beginner's luck?

like being underwater

almost like drowning, but not quite. it's a good feeling. this is how i've been all day since i had a talk this morning with a person very important to me. was crying during most of the call and so i'm not sure whether he said what he said, or if i'd just imagined it. it sounded like there was a promise in there somewhere.

so at the risk of saying something tacky... right now there's something like the beginnings of a smile--not sure where exactly--but it's in here somewhere. maybe at the corner of my mouth or in that place a little below my heart. it's lodged in here somewhere so that there seemed times today that i had to remind myself to breathe.

LSS

argh.

listened to my new mp3s on the train to daejon today and now i can't get this one thing out of my head. it's not a riff, not even lyrics... it's the start and refrain of that old "womb" song by sugar hiccup ("uh-ha, uh-HAH...uh-ha, uh-HAH...uh-ha uh-HAH..." ad nauseam).

argh.

and it's not even something i can sing along to, because that melody chick's voice is like 8 octaves higher than mine. so it's just here in my head bouncing around. maybe going into that sound chamber at KAIST today messed up my circuitry.

tama naaaaaaa!

HUBO't hubad...

...yung nakita naming robots kanina, except for one who just got back from a junket in singapore. said jetlagged robot's name is HUBO (human + robo) and he speaks with an american accent. funnily enough, he only understands commands in korean, and can only answer in english. HUBO was an honored guest at a recent CNN special on future technologies. nitpicky me noticed slight lapses in the robot's grammar. but it was still really really cool. which you can't really say about them call center flunkies, give or take a few exceptions.

we spent the day at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology), a sprawling campus in daejeon city, 50 mins by express train from seoul. it's where they grow science nerds here in korea, their MIT of sorts.

it's very competitive there, only half the graduates of top science high schools here make the cut. the science high schools already are hard to get into; only 30 students per level. so most KAIST fresh meat are 16 or 17 years old, very young by korean standards because most kids here enter college at 19 or 20. so those bespectacled little geniuses we saw tooling around in cool-but-dorky bicycles should actually still be in middle school but breezed through high school in 1.5 years. at KAIST, says our guide, they never have vacations. no sem breaks!!! no wonder there were all these crazy installations all over the campus.* mass nervous breakdown, anyone?

HUBO is only one of many robots being developed at KAIST, and they all have their special talents. we took photos of ourselves with the little darlings, of course. actually, the other writers took photos while i pathetically begged them to take pics of me too. now we have robots to add to Project J. if you haven't seen the Project J photos, look at them now. you won't regret it, i promise.

so anyway, and this robotics lab we visited is just one of more than a hundred labs at KAIST working on projects too esoteric for me to comprehend.

for example: a sort of "soundless" lab that has these foamy spongy wedges on the walls, ceilings and under our feet (beneath some metal mesh floor) to absorb sounds and echoes. they use this room to study sounds in a "pure/clean" environment. the waves bounce into the wedges, become smaller and sorta disappear into that place where the sloping parts meet. i'd show you a picture if i could. curse me for breaking my camera. argh.

entering the soundless room was...unsettling. we could feel some kind of pressure, like walking and breathing underwater. but of course there isn't any water or pressure. it's just that the absence of ambient sound affected the way our minds/bodies processed/experienced that place. and when we talked in there (asking questions, ooh-ing at the otherworldly feeling, whispering secrets into wedge-shaped holes a la 2046), it was like you were hearing everyone's voices inside your head.

we were there for only a few minutes and i felt weird for a long time after. imagine what it would be like to stay they for an hour. or a day. or a week. our guide, prof. kim**, said the longest a person's been in the room is 20 minutes. longer than that and you start going nuts. and they're not really interested in trying to see how long a person can last in there. they study music and physics, not madness. yes, i asked.

so why were we there? to talk literature with prof. kim tak-hwan, one of the few cool korean writers we met at the seoul young writers festival at the beginning of may. he teaches digital storytelling at the graduate school of culture technology in KAIST. it's a 10-year experiment, all about studying the tech side of humanities -- music, film, writing, photography, internet, etc. the cool thing about kim tak-hwan is when he writes, he thinks multi-platform: one story can be a novel (2 versions: with footnotes for geeks & critics, tapos lite pop version para sa madlang people), a tv drama series, a movie, a video game, etc.

what's funny is that he made his name writing historical novels. and his best-seller is has a feminist tone and agenda, and the persona is a gaesang (korean equivalent of a geisha) who was also recognized during her lifetime as an exceptional poet. the novel is told from the first person POV, mimics the language of the joseon dynasty, and uses no conjunctions at all. but now he's decided to focus on SF because of where he teaches now (how can he not???).

and he's in the middle of writing a historical love story about a frenchman and a korean chick and is set in various exotic locales like paris & casablanca etc. there's enough romance & tragedy in it so that it's going to be filmed, a collaboration of 3 countries: korea, france and the US. he'll be flying to paris and morocco next month to do ahem research for the story. lucky.

* e.g., an eviscerated toilet bowl lounging in an inflatable kiddie swimming pool, foil-wrapped topiary, and what siege called 'old school'--some big super mario coin thingies pasted on some building's wall. i didn't get what he meant, being old school enough myself to know only atari-era games like pong, pacman, space invaders, etc.

** prof. kim something. i feel awful not remembering her name because she is such a character. she's a cellist and sound scientist who also teaches at KAIST. but dammit, why do they all have to be called kim something-or-other. honestly, i know the following people: kim yeajin, kim tak-hwan, kim mincheol, kim eung hwa, and my professor who i just call kim sonsengnim (an honorific equivalent to ma'am or sir). every other kim, i just forget.

shite, i just cannot resist saying this, even if i know it will make me feel dirty: i know kimchi and kimbap. ang corny ko talaga pag madaling araw.