21 December 2007

when it hurts the most

Having all of one's conlangs in a shambles, down for maintenance, in the shop awaiting repairs, can be downright painful at times. For me it hurts most when I find some brief poem or quotation that I would like to translate into The Conlang Formerly Known as Vorlin or The Conlang Formerly Known as Penta. Most recently these pangs were caused by my discovery of a series of short poems written by Tachibana Akemi.


What a delight it is
When, sitting alone on the tatami in my little hut,
I make myself at ease.

What a delight it is
When, having borrowed a rare book from a friend,
I open up the first chapter.

(A few more of these poems are here.)


How idiotic of me to want to translate these translations; to want to do it so intensely that I consider whipping up a ”five minute euroclone” just to make it happen. I sometimes pretend to study Japanese, so I should be busily appreciating the originals instead of entertaining such idle thoughts.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The originals are online here, for reference.

Anonymous said...

There is a spinoff thread about tweaking in alt.language.artificial