Sunday, January 8, 2012

Found in Translation

It's commonly said that things get lost in translation. I think that the opposite is also true, that new meanings emerge.

Cocker - I - I heard there's your problem with the sauce in a hospital that got unplugged from the growth of hair in the ears.
I Bless you Mr. Shin
Yan dying old man - I like that (laughs).

Is this how it feels to be an anthropologist? To find meaning in a jumble of words in the dead language of a dead culture? Teasing out real ideas from what looks to be lunacy? There was probably a coherent train of thought in the original. What was it? Is it possible to know from what we have?

There's a problem with the sauce, indeed.

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