“Translation involves more than the deciphering of words, words strung together in sentences, in paragraphs, in dialogue, in the years of a life. After all, a machine can do that if you feed all the data into it. Translation also involves making sense of what’s left unspoken, those ellipses, blank spaces, the dot-dot-dots when you have to guess what’s happening in the person’s mind, what the silent messages mean. It calls for the translation of surrounding events, the cultural context, as well as the translation of nonverbal communication. What was being said through that certain look, that ever-so-tiny smile, that flash of a grimace? That spark of anger? Those sarcastic comments? Those prolonged silences? What did it all mean? (249)” GriefGrief And LossFamily RelationshipsInheritanceGrief QuotesMemoir WritingTranslationGrief And Loss QuotesFamily ConflictTranslation Quotes Book:Ivy Lodge: A Memoir of Translation and Discovery Source: Ivy Lodge: A Memoir of Translation and Discovery
“Admittedly, a number of the translations of my life, of what went on in Ivy Lodge, are loose at best, warranting multiple-choice answers, never ideal in the scientifically based world of translation. You're supposed to go from the source language (the language being translated) to the target language (the language being translated into). A translation is only good when the translator knows--or can surmise--the intention of the person being translated, understands with a fair amount of confidence the exact meaning of that source language. Maybe that's one problem with my attempts to translate my family. Maybe my parents remained unclear in their own minds what they wanted to say, what their words and behavior meant, what their underlying motivation was. In that case, it makes translation doubly difficult if the source of the words and events to be translated is lost in a sea of linguistic confusion. Translators need patterns to make sense out of foreign words, or it all becomes a hodgepodge of meaningless sounds and symbols. Chaos (256).” GriefGrief And LossFamily RelationshipsInheritanceGrief QuotesMemoir WritingTranslationGrief And Loss QuotesFamily ConflictTranslation Quotes Book:Ivy Lodge: A Memoir of Translation and Discovery Source: Ivy Lodge: A Memoir of Translation and Discovery
“I don’t think I realized back then that I wanted to rewrite the past, though, perform a do-over. It’s only in hindsight I’ve come to this conclusion.” GriefParentsGrief And LossFamily RelationshipsGrief QuotesMemoir WritingSelf ActualizationGrief And Loss QuotesFamily ConflictSelf Actualization Quotes Book:Ivy Lodge: A Memoir of Translation and Discovery Source: Ivy Lodge: A Memoir of Translation and Discovery