Blog posts :)

Hi, welcome to my first blog post! My name is Dream, and while reading the Beyond Language Difference in Writing: Investigating Complex and Equitable Language Practices by Cristina Sánchez-Martín. All I could think about is an article that I had read my senior year of high school.

Last year, while preparing to read Albert Camu’s The Stranger, my teacher assigned us to read The New Yorker article, Lost in Translation: What the First Line of “The Stranger” Should Be by Ryan Bloom . And it discusses the translation of the book, specifically the first line “Aujourd’hui, maman est morte.” When translating the book, the translators struggled with finding a good translation. Leaving them having to keep the original word maman, instead of using a word like mommy or mother. So it was ultimately translated to “Maman died today.” I think that this was very relevant to the assigned reading because it discusses the idea that translation is something that is very difficult to do, and sometimes in the English language, people tend to just keep the original word like tacos and ceviche.

From the assigned reading I’ve also taken the idea that writing is so subjective because really writing is something that depends on how the reader or listener absorbs and deciphers it. A good quote that supports this is when the author brings up the idea that English is always in translation and that is why “every time that we compose something, we have to “rethink” and “redo” previous language and composing practices, since no writing situation is like others.” (Sanchez-Martin 271). This just shows ways that writing and language gets lost in translation, because of the constant rethinking and changing, the original meanings or impact could change because it’s almost like a continuously loop of paraphrasing.