there may be words

Music hours!

…because I may or may not have spent an enjoyable-if-slightly-repetitive hour on these Music Lab games. (Oh who am I kidding, I love this sort of stuff. Even if my answers for the super-listener one were hampered by my inability to consistently differentiate left and right… still scored well enough anyway XD)

I do want to do a Zhou Shen post this weekend though! if I have enough time leftover after errands, at least *vaguely annoyed squinting* Both because the 光环之下 interview is out and so is episode 1 of 天赐的声音, the latter of which I am watching (well, pausing on) to type this. May put my non-ZS-specific thoughts here later if I have them? We'll see.

Also on the to-listen list: the new WTNV episode, and probably other things I'm forgetting. In the meantime, though, have some farmers.

ETA: Redid the super-listener one while consciously trying to not be a spatial 左右不分 disaster and scored almost a 90th percentile this time (definitely an increase, since I only did average for the level 3 exercise on my first try). Which explains a lot, and I know exactly who to blame… (subtweet @ my band conductor)

Uh. Some of us gif to cope?? I guess???? ( ramble bramble )

Aaaaaaanyway. Gifs! Gifsets! Two of them!

For this absolutely gorgeous line from Anne Carson's H of H Playbook, because it is Very Very Shen Wei:

And a pair of MDZS gifs coloured with just one adjustment tool each, for week 1 of lan-xichens' March challenges:

Original for comparison:

Also, on a tangential note: a thing I answered a while back with regards to gifs + my learning process, which I just recalled exists in the process of answering a different anon ask. ( further tangent )

ETA: Masterpost of gifset previews + links now up at sid_guardian!

Aaaaand we're back! Having finally found the time to both watch and gif things this week – obviously key components of a balanced diet…

( new songs! )

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( gifs! )

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( and a watchlist )

No rec section this week, but allow me to point you to last week's 2021 releases playlist! With my completely objective rankings, for Science.

As it says on the tin! Because I finally figured out the scenes and layout I wanted to go with this quote (from Robert Desnos' I Have Dreamed of You so Much) that practically shouts Shen Wei from the rooftops…

I don't do overlay gifs very often, but the effect is always fun to see. Also doubles as my first gif fill for guardianbingo!

Finally finished my discussion of episode 24 (i.e. the hospital episode leading up to the bomb scene) over at sid_guardian! Featuring language notes and so many, many gifs, because it's me and that's what I do…

(I'll probably post the gifs on Tumblr later too, if anyone wants a rebloggable version! …once I figure out how to split them up, at least.)

ETA: First gifset up!, with 5(!?) more parts queued over the next couple days!

Crowdsourcing some Chinese handwriting practice over at guardian_learning on this uneventful day, feel free to nudge things my way! And of course I will take any and all excuses to pull up that quote from Chapter 50…

No full post this week… but hey, I'll take the chance to gush incoherently about Zhou Shen's new song 星鱼 aka Star·Fish instead! Which you know is gonna be good right off the bat from the opening text in the MV:

(What can I say – any association of Zhou Shen with ocean and/or star motifs gets my immediate and enthusiastic agreement.)

Trivia time: I looked up the quote while writing this and turns out it's adapted from a 2019 book of the same title by award-winning children's author 周晓枫/Zhou Xiaofeng. And I'm glad I did look it up because the quotes I found were beautiful! …and not to make everything Guardian, but the Shen-Wei-and-Ye-Zun vibes are real.

( sidetrack + translation time… )

…anyway. On to the song! And my various thoughts about it.

( only about 1mm short of keysmashing )

In conclusion: I really want to hear this live because it's definitely gonna sound even better. Pretty please? Someone give him a stage for it?

Also! Two diametrically different CNY performances that I've already mentioned in last week's post, but taking the excuse to share here again with proper uploads:

( 错位时空 and 你看起来很好吃 )

A KNIFE!! On a Roomba! Because why not. The adventures of Stabby deserve to exist in all possible universes, space or otherwise, and you can't tell me Zhao Yunlan would not like to cause chaos in this way.

automation, the perils of
(Also on AO3!)
Rating: G
Length: 1.7k words
Prompt: "foot" on fan_flashworks / "Snake Tribe" on guardianbingo
Summary:

This is not gonna be a super well-thought out nor structured post, but it's a post anyway because reading superborb's translation thoughts post gave me translation thoughts of my own. It catches! In a non-pandemic way.

And in the context of Chinese to English translation, said thoughts obviously circle back to 知否 aka known, unknown, further aka the Nirvana in Fire epic fix-it fic spanning a whole 100k words translated (or 44 chapters + 2 extras, all of which remain eternally shocking numbers).

(Also hence the title, because what are translators if not 卷帘人… or mainly because the song has burned this poem permanently into my brain. Literature-as-music is my favourite and possibly only kind of voluntary classical text consumption.)

Necessary caveats: (a) I primarily make translations and don't read them myself these days; (b) this pertains specifically to Chinese translation, for reasons I will probably end up elaborating on; and finally (c) while I've ostensibly framed this in context of 知否 it's only in the most general of terms (owing to me not having reread the entire translation since finishing it, among other things).

Anyway! I promised thoughts, so here they are…

( foreignisation vs localisation: decisions, decisions )

( translation as transformative work, and its impact )

( non-conclusion: it's all relative )

Made this at-least-30%-self-indulgent exercise set for 的地得 over at guardian_learning based on chapter 38 on the Guardian novel, because I don't know how to leave well enough alone and probably needed a refresher myself anyway. Fun!