I think living in a very-language-mashup context where I automatically pull up different levels of English/Chinese/other mix depending on who I'm speaking to has given a kind of… inescapable audience awareness?… that carries over to the way I perceive translation when I actually decide to, y'know, perceive it. Codeswitching 2.0 in written form and all that. And of course my main contribution in fandom has always been via writing fic, so it's a comparison that immediately pops up to me – especially since I do enjoy doing constrained writing (drabbles, 3 sentence fics…) which has a similar element of "rearrange this sentence in your head until it makes sense without doubling the length" kind of puzzle-solving that's often also needed for translation.
Though actually the question of whether you can have a context-neutral translation (and if not, how close can you get to one) could probably be an interesting topic in itself! For people more inclined to Deep Thoughts about this than I am, at least…
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Date: 2022-02-12 10:38 am (UTC)I think living in a very-language-mashup context where I automatically pull up different levels of English/Chinese/other mix depending on who I'm speaking to has given a kind of… inescapable audience awareness?… that carries over to the way I perceive translation
when I actually decide to, y'know, perceive it. Codeswitching 2.0 in written form and all that. And of course my main contribution in fandom has always been via writing fic, so it's a comparison that immediately pops up to me – especially since I do enjoy doing constrained writing (drabbles, 3 sentence fics…) which has a similar element of "rearrange this sentence in your head until it makes sense without doubling the length" kind of puzzle-solving that's often also needed for translation.Though actually the question of whether you can have a context-neutral translation (and if not, how close can you get to one) could probably be an interesting topic in itself! For people more inclined to Deep Thoughts about this than I am, at least…