The woes of a traveller

I can't wait to get home where the wifi is good and always works, where the water in the shower doesn't fluctuate temperatures whenever it feels like it and where I know exactly how long ago the bathroom was cleaned. 

Suffice to say, I'm a bit over #hostellife

Italy

I miss Italian. I can't wait to get Italy. 

My whole Europe trip has been surreal but I think the most surreal part of it is still ahead - a few months in Italy. 

I'm afraid my expectations will be too high though, and I'll be disappointed (especially after how much I love Austria).

I can't wait for Italy. 

I'm almost there. 

4 more days. 

 

Homesick

It's weird the things that make you feel homesick. 

I've been travelling for just over a month and for the most part I haven't really missed home. Nothing beyond the superficial level anyway. Just a bit of longing for my bed, my bathroom, my language. But tonight I saw a Facebook post about a flight to Canberra. (Now Canberra is literally a hole, it's at the bottom of like a valley so it is literally in a hole.) And I got a little home sick. Canberra isn't exactly home, it's the capital city, it's part of Australia but I think I've been there, maybe twice? but it just made me think of domestic flights. I've travelled Melbourne to Sydney once a year (sometimes twice) pretty much every year of my life. Domestic flights are home to me. 

It's just funny, the little things that'll set you off, that you wouldn't ever think would. 

🎶Je vous aime mais je pars.🎶

I love you but I'm leaving.

It's fitting. I mean the original song is about a young adult leaving his parents but I think it fits here too - I love you but I'm leaving. 

Sort of like Gotta Go My Own Way too (though I was trying to be a bit more highbrow with the French and everything and not quote High School Musical).

Polyglot Problems #6

I think sometimes I forget that Italian is my third language and that I've only been learning it for 4 and half years. I think, sometimes I expect a little bit too much of my Italian language abilities for only 4 and half years of pretty half-assed education (4 hours a week is certainly not enough time in which to acquire a language).

So while I berate myself for not knowing simple words like "rather" or "instead of" or "overall" off the top of my head or knowing how to conjugate verbs in the present or past tense without thinking or which words are masculine or feminine (I'm pretty sure it makes even less sense in Italian than it does in French), I think I forget that this is language number 3 for me, that in 22 years of life I've attempted to acquire three different languages (despite their apparent similarities) and that Italian is still about 3 years behind the rest of the pack.

So while I get frustrated that it doesn't slip off the tongue the way French did, or that my friend in Italian seems to do so much better than me sometimes, I still have years to go (and some time spent in-country) before I can really expect my Italian to be at the same level as my French.

That still doesn't stop the frustrations now that I'm just not there yet.

Google, you're my hero!

If Google ain't the best thing since sliced bread!

First of all, Google docs can spell-check in multiple languages (automatically) in the one document, which is a God send for someone like me - sure solved my red squiggly line problem!

Secondly, I can upload photos directly from my iPhone to Google Drive and I have 15gb of free Google Drive space - thus solving my "what do I do with all the photos I take on my iPhone while I'm in Europe?" problem. 

Wowee Google, what can't you do? 

Interpreting and Translation troubles

What I've learnt so far about interpreting and translating is that it's really subjective. It depends on the context, the source text, the target audience and target culture, the relationship between the source culture/language and the target culture/language, what the client/publisher wants, the position of the moon and whether you're wearing pink underwear or green underwear that day (okay, I'm kidding about those last two).

So far what I've learnt about interpreting and translating is that "you'll just know" and I get it I really do, but I hate it. I hate subjectiveness, I hate not having one right answer and that whole thing about there not being a wrong answer in that case? there totally is, it's like all there is, is wrong answers. 

"I can't tell you what's right but I can tell you what's wrong."

With the subjects I've chosen to study throughout my life you'd think it'd be super into this subjective stuff (language, history, lit, crim, psych), otherwise I should've just done a Bachelor of Science and then I'd either be wrong or right (and probably a uni drop out tbh because science is too much for my brain to handle).

Questions of translation

I am quite conflicted on the whole translation thing.

One the one hand, sharing texts/concepts/ideas with people/cultures who otherwise never would've been exposed to them is awesome and important (imagine life with no Dante, no Confucius, no Aristotle etc.).

On the other hand, things undoubtedly "get lost in translation," the original is always better (imagine Shakespeare not in English - it wouldn't be the same - I know for a fact it isn't) and this concept from the Italian traddure = tradire (to translate = to betray).

Recently I wrote an essay comparing the French and Italian translations of Harry Potter to the English.

The Italian translation was pretty bad and when I asked my cousin in Italy if she'd read Harry Potter she said no, which I found astounding, but after reading the translation I can sort of understand why. It's just not the same. Granted, word choice isn't exactly Rowling's forte her creativity and wit regarding names is and that wit and creativity sometimes can't be translated. If you think about how much word play goes on in Harry Potter in particular, some of that just can't be translated. Especially considering how much exposure there is to Harry Potter in other countries thanks to the movies, somethings you can't change, and some translations don't change names and the like.

How do you get the same feel and meaning of (or lack thereof) of names or words like Hogwarts or Whomping Willow?
It's hard, if not impossible, and requires a lot more creativity than I think translators think they need, after all translation is just copying right, imitation? All you need to translate is be bilingual, right? How hard is it to exchange one word in one language for the same word in another language?

The best translators are writers themselves in their native language, because they understand writing in general, but particularly how it works in their native language. But why translate another's work when you can write your own?

Sure, translating literature (especially poetry/songs) is at the top end of the "most difficult things ever" scale and translating political thought, ideologies, technical/scientific advances is easier as it's the meaning that's important, not so much the form. For example, MLK's "I have a dream" speech gets the idea across in Italian and if you watched the video with Italian subtitles you'd be able to feel his whole awesomeness thing (the same way, even though you don't understand German, Hitler's speeches sound really compelling - probably because you can't understand the subject matter).

Studying interpreting and translating is bringing up more philosophical and ethical questions than I would've thought.

Define me this

How do you define "best friend"?

Is it the person you've known the longest?
Talk to the most?
See the most?
Have the most in common with?
Spend the most time with?

Is it the person you tell those silly little random thoughts to? You know those ones like, "I saw a number plate that said PEN15 today" (because I basically have the maturity of a 13 year old boy tbh).
Or is it the person you don't have to see or speak to for weeks but when you do catch up again everything falls back into place like no time has passed at all?

Because, with a few exceptions, the answer to every one of those questions are different people for me.

Or is at any and all of those things at varying times throughout a friendship and life?

I think "best friend" is a pretty abstract and ephemeral concept. It's fluid but the whole "BFF/BFFL" concept threw us off a little bit, at least it did me. If someone doesn't stay my best friend forever/for life, does that mean they never were my best friend at all? Merely a close, but not best, friend?

I have had best friends that at one point in my life I thought I would love and be close to for the rest of my life. I could never have imagined not being ridiculously close with that person. Yet, at one point or another, we drifted apart. Sometimes we drifted back together again, and sometimes we didn't. Does that negate the fact that we were once "best friends"? Because we aren't anymore? Like, if you say you love someone and then in future you break up, or realise you don't, does that mean you never did? Because if you had truly loved someone then you never would've stopped. Or are there just different types of love? Different types of "best friend"?

I don't think so. At one point, someone can mean the world to you and you can't imagine what your life would be without them but just because it doesn't stay that way forever doesn't mean it wasn't the case in that moment. I don't think that because I don't love you anymore, or because you aren't my best friend anymore, that I never did or that you never were. It's not like you cease to exist in my memory as an important person because you no longer are. Present feelings don't affect the memory of the past.

These are just the things I think about sometimes (read: a lot).

Polyglot Problems #5

After listening to the advanced interpreters do their thing today I think I've come to the conclusion that I don't love Italian the way I love French.

Maybe it's because I haven't reached that point in Italian where it all makes sense. That culminating point where everything's solidified, I know enough words to get my point across, conjugating verbs is second nature,  forming sentences that are grammatically correct isn't so impossible and, lastly, confidence. 

Maybe it's because I haven't been to Italy. 

France is such a massive part of French to me, Paris, the Eiffel Tower, Versailles, croissants, all of these things that I love about French. And while I was still nervous about speaking in France, despite my host family being wonderfully patient, when I came home I felt 100 times better and more confident. 

French is just something I sort of...fell into (and don't all the best things happen that way? By accident?). I wanted to learn Italian and French was the next best thing. And I loved it. I was good at it, it was challenging in all its foreigness yet also simple - memorise everything. 

French sucked me in and Madame is the most amazing teacher I've ever had. I worked hard for it too and my hard work paid off. 

On the other hand Italian was always just something I wanted to understand because I've been surrounded by it all my life. Half-Italian, half-English conversations, half understood requests and "secret" conversations. 

I think that I wanted it so long that I've just kept on wanting it and forgotten why. 

Maybe it's just this interpreting thing has got me burnt out. 

I need a holiday. 

 

Horoscopes

So, don't laugh but sometimes I wonder about astrology... 

I always read the astrology things in the paper for fun. And sometimes they are just seriously accurate, 100% that Taurus bit is me, completely. 

Sometimes they're so irrelevant I can't even connect to half of it.

I always find it just that little bit ridiculous though. 

But just sometimes I wonder if it's all sort of legit... Sometimes it's so right it's seriously uncanny. Then I think of the "Weird Al" Yankovich parody.... 


"Now you may find it inconceivable or at the very least a bit unlikely

that the relative position of the planets and the stars could have

a special deep significance or meaning that exclusively applies to only you, but let me give you my assurance that these forecasts and predictions are all based on solid, scientific, documented evidence, so you would have to be some kind of moron not to realize that every single one of them is absolutely true."

Write it all down, let it all out

Writing things down really is therapeutic. It's cathartic. 

I write letters. 

I write hate letters, I write whining letters, I write love letters and friendship letters. I write letters where I rage, I write letters where I laugh, I write letters where I cry. 

I write them to myself, to my friends and family, to people I've never even met.

No one ever sees them of course but, like this blog, just the act of writing it all down, or typing it out, helps me get it out of my head, my version of Dumbeldore's pensive I suppose. Of course it doesn't quite work as well as Dumbeldore's pensive (nothing ever does in the muggle world) and sometimes I write letter after letter, a whole series of them, spanning weeks, months or even years, tucked away all just for one person. 

Sometimes it helps to just say what I want to say, what I know I can't, or shouldn't, say out loud in real life, to have a record of it somewhere outside of my head that, even though it's highly unlikely the person to whom it pertains will ever find out, still exists. 

Sometimes it does the exact opposite of help, that it's seemingly so easy for me to say what I want to say on paper, in a letter, just makes it that much worse when I can't say it in real life. 

Sometimes I pour my hopes and dreams through ink (or lead, I am a fan of the pencil) on to paper, making them something real, something concrete, and it's awful when those hopes and dreams come to nothing or crash and burn at my feet. 

Sometimes, I think I'll look back at these letters, all the highs and lows, and see how much has changed and say that I need not have worried so much, all turned out well.

Sometimes I wonder if I'll share the letters with their owners, the people I wrote them to. To show them how they made me happy or made me sad or proud or angry.

Peace

I hate conflict. I hate arguing. I think it is because it doesn't matter if I win or lose I still end up feeling bad. Each person tries to make their point heard but wont listen to the other, and end up riling each other up beyond proportion, which happens quite often in my own household. I think I argue with my family so much because I always know they will be there for me. But I want to aim to argue with them less. I want to be as calm and peaceful with them as I am my friends. I hardly remember a single argument with any of my friends. I believe this hate of conflict is why my partner and I get along so well. He hates conflict more than me, and will avoid arguing with anyone, even his parents at all costs. He puts up with my imperfections, and I put up with his (though to be fair there aren't that many). I know you're thinking that it is not a healthy environment and that eventually feelings bottle up and one day we will implode abruptly and be ruined beyond repair of even the elder wand! But we are honest with each other and if something is weighing on our minds we speak openly. I mean we do burst into a fight once in a blue moon, but it usually lasts about 10 minutes and we come crawling back to each other.
So is it too late to make a new years resolution to live in calmer existence with my family? I know it is already february, but I went to buy a diary the other day and they are not yet on sale so I think it's acceptable.

The troubles of friending - part 2

Do you ever wonder in a relationship who's the "better friend"?

Who texts first? Who tries more? Who buys the better (more thoughtful) presents? Who talks more? Who listens more? Who gives more? Who takes more?

For a long time I thought it was me. I was more thoughtful, I was more giving, I didn't have a boyfriend to distract me and take away from friend time, I was always there. 

Now though...now I'm pretty sure it's not me. 

Maybe the tables have turned, maybe the years of "being the better friend" are paying off, maybe my friends are realising how lucky they are to have me. 

Those are awful, self-centered and selfish things to say and not at all in the spirit of friendship.

I wish I was the better friend, or rather on equal footing (where true friendship really should be) but I don't think I'm either anymore. 

Maybe there's a little bit in all of us

I wonder sometimes, especially with all the time I spend on the Internet, if perhaps I have a slight case of social anxiety. I've always been pretty shy, though extremely talkative once I get to know you. 

Catching a plane by myself this week (not for the first time and not to anywhere I haven't been before) caused me a bit of worry, over what exactly I couldn't tell you. It's not the flying part, I have no problem with flying and in fact I love turbulence (it's like a free roller coaster!). I just grew anxious as the car skirted the city towards Tullamarine. Not enough to stop me though. I got out of the car, said goodbye to mum and dad and didn't look back. So perhaps calling it social anxiety is too strong, after all it's in no way crippling. 

Still, faced with the plan to go visit my cousin via public transport and all the necessary, though basic, knowledge that requires I'm again a bit anxious. I know how to catch a bus and a train but travelling in a different city where I have no sense of direction makes me a bit nervous. What if I get lost? What if I end up going in the complete opposite direction? What if I can't find where I'm meant to be going? Silly things really, remedied easily enough with Google Maps and asking for directions, but still enough to cause me worry. 

I'm a bit of a control freak too and I think part of it is that it's the unknown. I don't know how people I come into contact with will react, what the situation will be, how I'll deal with my plans going awry. 

Most of the time I'm pretty good at grinning and bearing it, so to speak. I know it's something that has to be done so I do it. I apply this method to other things too, ringing up for appointments, speaking to people in stores, talking to people at uni. I've got significantly better since starting a job that involved approaching and calling people. Approaching people still takes a bit of effort for me and sometimes I do still put it off. 

I'm a bit socially awkward too I suppose, even with people I know (though not the ones I know well), either I ramble aimlessly or sit there in what I perceive as awkward silence. I hate the awkward period before you really get to know someone, where you just sprout niceties and ask the same inane, if perhaps necessary, questions. 

The rational side of my brain knows, whatever it is, I'll get through and come out the other side one way or another but the (perhaps) irrational side of me still worries. Maybe it's just doubt. And maybe there's a little bit of that in all of us.