s.penkevich > Books: translation‎ (24)

‘Hysterical women. I seriously wanted to lecture him about all the diseases women have had that have been misdiagnosed over the years—and how medication (not to mention everything else in the world) is designed for the male body-but I just didn’t have the energy for it. Or maybe I was chicken. Or maybe that’s the same thing because it’s a lot easier to gather your courage when you’re not dead tired.’

‘Centuries of socialization have conditioned us into believing that it’s our responsibility to create a cozy atmosphere and ensure that no one is embarrassed about anything. THat’s why we laugh at jokes that offend us. That’s why we smile at people who pat us on the butt. THat’s why we pretend that it’s just a coincidence when the boss repeatedly brushes against our breasts at work. Because anything else would be just so embarrassing. For everybody.’

'I could have been you...If that had happened I wouldn’t have kicked you the way you are mocking me now. And you wouldn’t have been able to save yourself. Perhaps it’s because I’m so stupid so useless that you could even become you. So if you’ll allow me to make a bit of a leap here you’re this powerful because of me. And you don’t even know that. But here you are, treating me like dirt.'

‘he associates his best friend’s wife with a summery, exotic fruit, acidic and ample…he married a clementine. He lives with a winter fruit, a banal and cheap fruit, a supermarket fruit. A small, ordinary fruit that has none of the indulgence of the orange nor the originality of the grapefruit. A fruit organized into segments, practical and easy to eat, precut, ready for use, proffered in its casing.’

‘the white of Sunday is not as simple as it seems. Optics teaches us that white is the result of a combination of every color (and not the absence of color, as I once thought). It’s not the purity of the bride or the emptiness of the blank page: Sunday is neither neutral nor naive. White is the synthesis of every color, just as Sunday is the synthesis of every day of the week. It’s the final result, the last chapter, the solution.’

‘Absorbed in my translation, I wonder if that expression, so difficult to translate into French, testifies to the fact that English-speakers love differently than us. Do they make more effort? For them, is it possible to make love last? To reignite a desire that’s been extinguished? How do they do it? ’

‘In reality, marriage didn’t calm me down. I realized at the very moment we said “I do” that my husband could still divorce me…I was constantly awaiting the next step. I discovered a world of proofs of love, with commitment everywhere and love nowhere. And fifteen years after our first date, I still sleep just as poorly.’

‘As far as the dead are concerned, chronology has no import and all that matters are the details, the degree of density, this how and what and everything to do with who.’

‘the ownership of books was distinct from other types of ownership, more like a loan that might run out or be transferred onto someone else at the drop of a hat.’

‘our relationship was the length of a breath and yet he stayed with me, as if there was something in me that bent around him, a new paradigm for all my future verbs.’

‘to run ahead and touch everything, circle potentialities with the intention of preventing them from happening, on and on and on in a process that never stops.’

‘He believes that the sacramental host cleanses him of all impurity and redeems him of all imperfection. And so, by eating Christ’s flesh and drinking His blood, he feels part of Christ. But it never occurred to him that by eating the flesh of those cattle and drinking their blood, he would also become part of the animals he slaughters every day.’

‘Shame was of no use to me, what it did was open the door to the street, and when the door closed behind me, with the whole street out in front of me, the whole world out in front of me, I let go of shame’s hand.’

‘Our teacher explained words in poems mean more than they seem, words are stretched, so where words alone can’t go, with poetry they can, they fly, like the bird, the bird that can hear loud silences, that can open up dawns, shrink rivers, horizon stretchers, only words can do that!’

‘‘I’d have followed her to the toilet or to the mouth of a volcano. I’d have peered over the edge until I saw the dormant fire, until I felt the vulcano’s dormant fire inside me.’

‘A threadlike obsession begs for a fissure through which to recall, from within a free soul, a lost moment of a past that is constantly less stable, more emaciated and evanescent. Sentences arrive not quite crystallized, as if coming from somebody talking on a beach alone, convinced no one else can hear them, that no one can collect them to confirm or deny them. Sentences that are immediately buried by the sand of that careless loss. Byobu thinks: there is no despair quite like the shadow that collapses down upon our most guarded memories, akin to a wall without ivy, the ivy piling up at its base, with no sense of purpose or beauty, a green tomb, a dark mass grave.’

‘he always looks at everything with eyes that are also tongue and touch and ears and sex, letting himself be penetrated by the world and lamenting not having a magical memory where everything seen and sensed and everything read in the prodigious coagulations of the alphabet enters for eternity.’

‘Those voices, those beloved accents arrive muffled by the interference from the bad weather. ‘They’re killing us,’ someone sobs in an interview. I fidget in my seat. I want to know more about the desperate ‘us’ that reveals itself in that broken voice.’

‘I suppose as far as this culture of medals and nationalism is concerned, going to war is enough to turn you into a hero, and even more so if you return home ground to dust in a sealed casket decorated with the colours of the flag.’

‘in Hilst's formulation, the obscene is differentiated from the erotic and the pornographic by its philosophical and spiritual elements, and also through its act of social provocation.’

‘I looked at numbers formulas equations theorems and it was a pleasure, a fiery freeze, a bodyguard for wandering alone without the speech-rupture of others, logicality and reason and nevertheless the possibility of a surprise as though we were unfolding a piece of silk, blue triangles on the fresh surface and suddenly just a dull little grid, lines that we can separate and recompose into triangles again, yes, this we could do, but where did the blue get to, where?’

‘“Some people got religion or killed themselves after losing someone, whether that person died or just left them. Dora Rosario, however, didn’t blame anyone else for her misfortune. Only herself. She loathed herself, but not enough to seek relief in death. No, she simply disliked herself, a more modest sentiment.’

‘Words are frequently polysemous, which is to say a single term may have multiple meanings. For example, in addition to the definitions listed above, ápice can also mean both tip (of your tongue, say) and apex (as in geometry: is that a science?). So the same word used several times in Spanish might be rendered many different ways in English…I have chosen to translate ápice as iota in English throughout Ten Planets. Every inch iota of my being felt compelled not to stray from this lexical choice every time an ápice cropped up. In part because it is used in idiosyncratic ways in the Spanish. In part because aside from meaning "a tiny amount' and being the etymological root of "jot"), it has, to my ear, a more science-y ring than the other options and as such lends truthiness. But what is more, it refers explicitly to the ninth star in a constellation. It's a space-y word. Stellar in all respects.’

‘With this Authorization you consent to have any information about your use of the product utilized in but not limited to electoral campaigns, national security, meat product recycling, pharmaceutical experimentation, cosmetics research, psychological warfare, market studies, and collected prose.’

‘‘Through style, the creative effort reconstructs the world, and always with the same slight distortion that is the mark of both art and protest…Art is an impossible demand given expression and form.’

‘the plague will continue to crawl out of the woodwork—out of bedrooms, cellars, trunks, handkerchiefs and old papers—as long as human subjects do not question the cruelty and injustice of their social arrangements. We are all accountable for the ills of the world.’

‘I used to be able to speak Korean, but I lost it when French became my main language. My grandfather used to correct my mistakes, but not any more. We communicate in simple English, with a few basic words in Korean and an array of gestures and exaggerated facial expressions. We never speak in Japanese.’

‘I look out of the window. Mount Fuji is shrouded in darkness now. The city has become no more than a leaden mass, lifeless. Lines are starting to blur inside the apartment too. I feel as though I can hardly move. Without the view from the window, it would be unbearable. You’d suffocate.’

‘We ought to shed our skins, like animals. The older we got, the more transparent our skin would become. In the end you’d be able to see all our insides through it. Veins, bones, feelings, everything. Our skin would be a mirror too, people would be able to see themselves in it. Eventually we’d become completely transparent, and when that happened, we’d give our last breath to our child.’

‘He hated this place. He loved it. He resented how it treated him. He still wanted to be a part of it – because it felt so good to be a part of it, to speak to its professors as an intellectual equal, to be in on the great game.’

‘Words tell stories. Specifically, the history of those words - how they came into use, and how their meaning morphed into what they mean today - tell us just as much about a people, if not more, than any other kind of historical artefact.’

‘English did not just borrow words from other languages; it was stuffed to the brim with foreign influences, a Frankenstein vernacular. 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.’

‘This is how colonialism works. It convinces us that the fallout from resistance is entirely our fault, that the immoral choice is resistance itself rather than the circumstances that demanded it.’