> I took the paper and looked at the Chinese characters. They made an agreeable pattern upon it.
"Won't you also give me a translation?"
"Tradutore—tradittore," he answered. "You cannot expect me to betray myself. Ask one of your English friends. Those who know most about China know nothing, but you will at least find one who is competent to give you a rendering of a few rough and simple lines."
https://www.douban.com/group/topic/40729214/
#SomersetMaugham and #KuHungMing to #IfThisBeTreason by #GregoryRabassa

> .. What might occur if;; the matter of native discourse were.. allowed to modify the matter implicit in the form of anthropological knowledge? it is said that to translate is to betray. But what happens when the translator decides to betray his own tongue?..
What if instead of complacently admitting that we are all native, we take the opposite wager as far as it can go, namely, that we are all “anthropologists”..each in their own way..
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.14318/hau3.3.032
#IfThisBeTreason #Anthropology

My first exposure to this thought was on a construction site with #UncleJoe #APlumber as I helped him put in a sink:
"10 different guys would come out her and do this in ten different ways"
And before reading of Arundhati Roy's reasons for refusing to sell movie rights to _The God of Small Things_ #GregoryRabassa in #IfThisBeTreason writes,
"It is a common notion that if a work has 10,000 readers it becomes 10,000 different books." (p.8)

In #IfThisBeTreason the great translator #GregoryRabassa talks about #EvergreenWords and #Cervantes. This week I talked with people who only knew #DonQuijote as a big Japanese store, or as #DonKiHotate, a shell-shaped character in #AnPanMan cartoons. The shell characters rides a snail, named #Rocinante I guess. I wonder if #SanchoPanza makes an appearance too?
I bet the 850 words of #OgdensBasicEnglish are mostly evergreen words.