#usermace

And Robin found it incredible, how this country, whose citizens prided themselves so much on being better than the rest of the world, could not make it through an afternoon tea without borrowed goods.

“i think translation can be much harder than original composition in many ways. the poet is free to say whatever he likes, you see – he can choose from any number of linguistic tricks in the language he’s composing in. word choice, word order, sound – they all matter, and without any one of them the whole thing falls apart. that’s why shelley writes that translating poetry is about as wise as casting a violet into a crucible. so the translator needs to be translator, literary critic, and poet all at once – he must read the original well enough to understand all the machinery at play, to convey its meaning with as much accuracy as possible, then rearrange the translated meaning into an aesthetically pleasing structure in the target language that, by his judgment, matches the original. the poet runs untrammeled across the meadow. the translator dances in shackles.”

books i read in 2021 ☼ crooked kingdom by leigh bardugo

“those who do not care, those who are violent, those who delight in that which is terrible”—marshall shrugged, waving his hands about as he chose the right words—“they thrive. they come outside.”

— iron widow by xiran jay zhao

— “she can’t believe jane had the nerve, the audacity, to become the one thing august can’t resist: a mystery.”

nora is the cool brainy one, the one who makes inappropriate jokes on twitter about whatever sci-fi show everyone’s watching, a bar trivia team ringer.

“All they were—all they had ever been—was a pair of sunflowers who each believed the other was the sun.”