XPost: alt.folklore.computers, alt.unix.geeks   
   From: lars@beagle-ears.com   
      
   On 2025-12-24, c186282  wrote:   
   >    Hmm ... how long since 'writers' actually WROTE - ink   
   >    on paper ? Quill pens ?   
   >   
   >    Since the 1930s they 'wrote' mostly on typewriters.   
   >    The 'feel' isn't the same, dealing with the machine   
   >    surely affected what they composed, added its own   
   >    bit of 'businesslike feel' to the process.   
   >   
   >    Then word-processors ... easy to add, delete, copy,   
   >    paste and fix typos in an instant. No more tappety-tap   
   >    sort of machine "feel", something different.   
   >   
   >    From now on, everything Gen-A2+ "writes" will be   
   >    what they tell an "AI" to compose FOR them. Most   
   >    won't even know how to spell half the words, may   
   >    not even KNOW half the words. It's more "Old   
   >    storyteller, tell us a story about werewolves"   
   >    and they can get back to being depressed and   
   >    shooting Fentanyl while the "AI" does it.   
   >   
   >    Writing traditional Chinese or Japanese script with   
   >    brush on paper ... it fuses 'art' into the actual   
   >    written meaning for the author, more and different   
   >    brain pathways than seen using a Corona or Word.   
   >   
   >    A few years ago I saw a 'travel show' that involved   
   >    some westerners visiting China. There was a sort of   
   >    street vendor who made banners and such in traditional   
   >    characters. He challenged the tourist to paint just   
   >    one character ... and judged they got it all WRONG   
   >    even though to the western eye the results were   
   >    almost identical to the natives. Thing is, they   
   >    did not perform the correct 'swish' and 'swash' and   
   >    'blob' and such - and it showed, changed the fine   
   >    meaning of the character, the attached emotional   
   >    content at the very least.   
   >   
   >    It has long been thought that language unto itself   
   >    can affect, channel, limit, what the speaker CAN   
   >    frame as 'reality'. Might be more or less true.   
   >    But 'writing' - the nuances - may also affect   
   >    the kind of output in many subtle ways.   
      
   This is one of the most important things you learn when learning   
   a foreign language to conversational profiency. While "technical"   
   facts can be translated, translation becomes MUCH harder then the   
   text contains emotional and cultural overtones. Being an "outlander"   
   (from Denmark) now on my second marriage to an American nurse, I have   
   often needed to explain why I am chuckling at something I read in   
   either language and found it hard. Because the words I want/need   
   to describe the item in either language have ambiguities that   
   diverge for almost every word. This is most famously exemplified   
   by the (possibly apocryphal) example from early work in machine   
   translation in the 1980s.  The project had been somewhat successful   
   in translating academic journal articles, and they wanted to expand   
   the field of use, so they tried some snippets of bible texts, such as   
             "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."   
   When translated into Russian and back, it turned into   
             "The Vodka is fine, but the meat is rotten."   
      
   Translating poetry is VERY hard, because on top of the challenges   
   of prose, you often need to match one or more of rhymes, cadence   
   and allitterations.   
      
   The most famous Danish rock band Shu-bi-dua (managed to produce   
   20+ top 10 albums over a carrer spanning three decades) wrote   
   exclusively for a Danish audience, and I find them   
   untranslatable. They did write two songs in English:   
   One ("There is a dogshit in my garden") was a parody of a sweet   
   ballad from their early years called "Vuffeli-Vov" about a   
   and old man and his dog getting an evening walk so the dog   
   can pee on the fire hydrant and the guy can get a beer in the   
   pub on the corner. So to understand it, you have to know the   
   old song.   
   The other one, "We wanna be free", is mostly in Danish, but   
   the chorus is in English, about a revolutionary in a Caribbean   
   island, who over throws a mean dictator, only to become one   
   himself.   
      
   Another band did a faithful recreation of the arrangement of   
   the hit version of "Wimoweh: The Lion Sleeps Tonight" but the   
   words are about a young boy whose way home from school takes him   
   past a house where a woman tends to her garden while wearing no   
   panties. My wife loves it, and wants me to record it with a   
   translated voice-over so that she can share it with her family.   
   That is way beyond my ability.   
      
   And it is hard for me to explain why it is hard, because she never   
   learned a foreign language.   
      
   --   
   Lars Poulsen - an old geek in Santa Barbara, California   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)