Lost in translation
so after attending classes yesterday, it got me to thinking about what i would translate. i have deffo confirmed that i will be doing Malay-English or vice versa and you know what? i'm pretty excited now! i was uber stressed yesterday - the confusion of still wanting to do French translation, but really that would just be complicating matters even worse. now that i've let it sink in a little, i just realised there's a wealth of Malay literary and non-literary materials that are just waitinggg to be translated and i'm so excited!! i started thinking of Puteri Gunung Ledang for one. i know they've actually subtitled the musical, but lets face it..that was pretty mediocre translation wasn't it. but then i gave it a go and yeah, that's the thing. to the normal joe translation seems like the easiest thing to do and god knows how many times we've laughed at the subtitling especially when it comes to movie titles (read: Mati Keras dengan Dendam - Die Hard With a Vengeance) but when you actually sit yourself down and try and translate proper then you realise how difficult it is. there's always the cultural/social aspect of translating something from one language to another language that its just totally different culturally/socially. how does one translate kekanda, adinda...whilst still maintaining that sense of respect/politeness. in english its just you, me, he, she. doesn't quite conote the same message or feel now does it?
but on that note, i'm really keen on doing classic malay translation or even pantun for that matter. i just find it absolutely awe-inspiring whenever i come across the older generation Malays who still pantun during weddings or rather engagements especially when it's done impromptu..no papers, no pens..just on the top of their head. its amazing. i wish i had that capability, unfortunately for me my Malay is attrocious, something i wish and am hoping to change. desperately.
well what do you guys think? i would love, love to get some feedback from this..like email me personally if you don't want to leave comments here i understand but yeah.. i would love to hear your thoughts on this. it is something that is playing on my mind constantly as the fear of having to do a proper translation and thesis on it (eventhough it is a year away) is scaring the living daylight out of me. i really feel the difference studying as an undergraduate and as a postgraduate. it's oh-so-serious and thrice as scary.
on a lighter note, i finally found a guy who's not bad to look at and i'm quite sure he isn't gay (more than half the men here are!!). his name is Ben and he's a jazz major...ohhhhhh you can't help but love these arty types. the ones that have to suffer for their trade? even better! tortured artists - my ultimate weakness! and please ah..you heard it here first copycats go to hell! well nah, i prolly wouldn't do anything about him, but rumour has it, he digs japanese girls. goddamit. so close yet so far! lol. annddd likkkeee omgggg i washed his bowl for him tonight when we had dinner at the Sassoon Halls after making small chitchat at the sink!! ooOOOOoo haha yes i am a loser but you guys keep coming back for more so that's something right! haha and well hey whatever helps me not think of the past and of what could've been eh? sigh.
good times, good times.. ..
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Part 1 : My London, London, London wanna go down!
so ok i've been meaning to blog for aggess but i hate how blogger is so fucked up! loading pictures is hell i tell you. so again, i'm sorry but you gotta make do with another pictureless blog. grr. well its been a little over a week now, and i'm proud to say i have survived! Ho yeah.
reached here at 7pm local time on the 14th of September and by the time we got to our campus with the Welcome to Middlesex orientation program guides it was almost 10pm. and i got to my room close to 11pm. a cold lonely room, it came with a cupboard that had no door, a rather comfy clean bed, a long desk, a pin-up wall, a sink and some other storage places. so in all my fatigue, i managed to unpack a little..i didn't know how to set up the internet so i switched my laptop on and rocked myself to sleep..haha nolah put it on for some music, coz it was a lil too quiet and i needed something to remind me of my comfort zone. then i started feeling hungry and thank the lord zefane fara zakaria (bless her soul) baked me brownies and packed it for me to bring on the plane the morning before i left - zef you are an absolut angel...as soon as i sunk my teeth into your home-baked-brownies-with-love i felt good again and slept like a babe!
the next day was basically just running around, getting my Middlesex ID card sorted n stuff like that. on Saturday, there was a tour of London and a day out shopping at Covent Garden. here i met Hana on the bus and we immediately hit it off! Hana's from Prague and she's fucking awesome. if there's one thing i realised since i got here is that the British and the Yanks only ever joke about alcohol and drunken nights - which is all fine, but can get a little stale after awhile. i mean c'mon..there's gotta be more depth than that, biensur! i get a long better with the Europeans..they're sense of humour is spot onnn man. then we have the Asians. lets just say that when they get together(Malaysian/Indonesian/Chinese/Korean/etc) the conversation goes a little something like this:
even when they fucking know i don't speak cina..abit rude right! oh well, so i wasn't yellow enough to hang out with the yellows and i wasn't white enough to hang out with the whites. what's a girl to do eh? she hangs out with the crazy girl from Czech! hahaha oh i love hanaball she's the best! k nuff bout that. my campus is pretty cool..its not your typical city uni which is just a building in a bustling town with traffic and pollution. on the contrary, it doesn't even feel like you're in London coz it is, as i have mentioned before, out in the boondocks. Trent Park is..as the name suggests..a park and you have loads of outsiders coming in on the weekends to the campus with their children and dogs running around, looking at the flourishing flora and fauna. the main building is called the Mansion and is lo and behold..a mansion! infront of it is a huge lawn where most of us have our lunch, sprawled and soaking up the sun while its still out. and facing this lawn are the halls - Gubbay Hall where i live, the student union bar/cafe/office beside it, the Stables where some classes take place at, and then Sassoon Hall. there is an open air swimming pool (open only during summer) and then a couple of steps that leads you down to the Bevan building which is where the language (my course!) and the library is at. there are a few other buildings for the music, dance and drama students. behind the mansion is sprawling greenery...it's just awesome. i'm pretty sure there's a lake at the bottom of it all, i have yet to see this lake..tomorrow perhaps!
yesterday i went for the beginners french course..thought i'd check it out before going straight for the intermediate coz you know i have "done three semesters in uni". that was all bull man! i prolly learned 4 weeks equivalent in the first class! but the great thing is that as a MA language/translation student, i can sit thru as many of these classes as i want to without having to pay a cent..woohoo! otherwise the french classes would be like 100pounds a semester..jackpot or what? ; )
today i met two other girls in my course (MA translation). Stella from Cyprus (who's frikkin hot in my opinion..and she's fuckin smart!!) and Irina from Romania. well actually i've met them before but today we hung out for abit which was good. classes started for me today, and damn..it was the reality check I needed. all of the other students were language students before except for me. Like what was i thinking. i hardly know verbs from adjectives..yes English IS my mother tongue but its more like ok what I’m saying sounds right. haha yes, i'm in deep shit.and the amount of reading we have to do is insane. so much so that i have decided to translate english-malay and vice versa. having done a semester in Malaysia i KNOW how difficult that is. its funny how not many people realize how difficult the art of translation is..but fuck them. i'm thinking of doing classic malay..syair or something like that, but then to get hold of info might be a bit of a problem. feel free to suggest any good literary malay works if you've read any, i would love to translate them!
tonight i went for a free theatre production of Kaboom the Office Burlesque in our campus with Melissa, Hanna and Ann. staged by our drama students..twas not bad. hey when you get a dose of culture for free..take it i say!
anyways, it has been fun i guess but damn i miss home so bad! ah i miss my mom, my dad, my crazy mofos..my CAR!!! ohhhh my lil black perdana...you have been so good to me!! grocery shopping when you have to walk like 15 minutes with heavy bottles and boxes is NOT fun! boo. someone please, buy me a ticket back for christmas. pleaseeeeee.
safe fasting everyone : )
so ok i've been meaning to blog for aggess but i hate how blogger is so fucked up! loading pictures is hell i tell you. so again, i'm sorry but you gotta make do with another pictureless blog. grr. well its been a little over a week now, and i'm proud to say i have survived! Ho yeah.
reached here at 7pm local time on the 14th of September and by the time we got to our campus with the Welcome to Middlesex orientation program guides it was almost 10pm. and i got to my room close to 11pm. a cold lonely room, it came with a cupboard that had no door, a rather comfy clean bed, a long desk, a pin-up wall, a sink and some other storage places. so in all my fatigue, i managed to unpack a little..i didn't know how to set up the internet so i switched my laptop on and rocked myself to sleep..haha nolah put it on for some music, coz it was a lil too quiet and i needed something to remind me of my comfort zone. then i started feeling hungry and thank the lord zefane fara zakaria (bless her soul) baked me brownies and packed it for me to bring on the plane the morning before i left - zef you are an absolut angel...as soon as i sunk my teeth into your home-baked-brownies-with-love i felt good again and slept like a babe!
the next day was basically just running around, getting my Middlesex ID card sorted n stuff like that. on Saturday, there was a tour of London and a day out shopping at Covent Garden. here i met Hana on the bus and we immediately hit it off! Hana's from Prague and she's fucking awesome. if there's one thing i realised since i got here is that the British and the Yanks only ever joke about alcohol and drunken nights - which is all fine, but can get a little stale after awhile. i mean c'mon..there's gotta be more depth than that, biensur! i get a long better with the Europeans..they're sense of humour is spot onnn man. then we have the Asians. lets just say that when they get together(Malaysian/Indonesian/Chinese/Korean/etc) the conversation goes a little something like this:
" hoshichangsherr!@#!$@!#^@*&#*&^#holengggahhh "
even when they fucking know i don't speak cina..abit rude right! oh well, so i wasn't yellow enough to hang out with the yellows and i wasn't white enough to hang out with the whites. what's a girl to do eh? she hangs out with the crazy girl from Czech! hahaha oh i love hanaball she's the best! k nuff bout that. my campus is pretty cool..its not your typical city uni which is just a building in a bustling town with traffic and pollution. on the contrary, it doesn't even feel like you're in London coz it is, as i have mentioned before, out in the boondocks. Trent Park is..as the name suggests..a park and you have loads of outsiders coming in on the weekends to the campus with their children and dogs running around, looking at the flourishing flora and fauna. the main building is called the Mansion and is lo and behold..a mansion! infront of it is a huge lawn where most of us have our lunch, sprawled and soaking up the sun while its still out. and facing this lawn are the halls - Gubbay Hall where i live, the student union bar/cafe/office beside it, the Stables where some classes take place at, and then Sassoon Hall. there is an open air swimming pool (open only during summer) and then a couple of steps that leads you down to the Bevan building which is where the language (my course!) and the library is at. there are a few other buildings for the music, dance and drama students. behind the mansion is sprawling greenery...it's just awesome. i'm pretty sure there's a lake at the bottom of it all, i have yet to see this lake..tomorrow perhaps!
yesterday i went for the beginners french course..thought i'd check it out before going straight for the intermediate coz you know i have "done three semesters in uni". that was all bull man! i prolly learned 4 weeks equivalent in the first class! but the great thing is that as a MA language/translation student, i can sit thru as many of these classes as i want to without having to pay a cent..woohoo! otherwise the french classes would be like 100pounds a semester..jackpot or what? ; )
today i met two other girls in my course (MA translation). Stella from Cyprus (who's frikkin hot in my opinion..and she's fuckin smart!!) and Irina from Romania. well actually i've met them before but today we hung out for abit which was good. classes started for me today, and damn..it was the reality check I needed. all of the other students were language students before except for me. Like what was i thinking. i hardly know verbs from adjectives..yes English IS my mother tongue but its more like ok what I’m saying sounds right. haha yes, i'm in deep shit.and the amount of reading we have to do is insane. so much so that i have decided to translate english-malay and vice versa. having done a semester in Malaysia i KNOW how difficult that is. its funny how not many people realize how difficult the art of translation is..but fuck them. i'm thinking of doing classic malay..syair or something like that, but then to get hold of info might be a bit of a problem. feel free to suggest any good literary malay works if you've read any, i would love to translate them!
tonight i went for a free theatre production of Kaboom the Office Burlesque in our campus with Melissa, Hanna and Ann. staged by our drama students..twas not bad. hey when you get a dose of culture for free..take it i say!
anyways, it has been fun i guess but damn i miss home so bad! ah i miss my mom, my dad, my crazy mofos..my CAR!!! ohhhh my lil black perdana...you have been so good to me!! grocery shopping when you have to walk like 15 minutes with heavy bottles and boxes is NOT fun! boo. someone please, buy me a ticket back for christmas. pleaseeeeee.
safe fasting everyone : )
Monday, September 25, 2006
Part 2: Riverboat Disco on the Thames (21 Sept 2006)
As part of the freshers Welcome to Middlesex orientation program, there was a riverboat disco on the itinerary and so students from the Enfield and Trent Park campuses got to mingle on a "river boat" on the lovely River Thames to witness a lovely London sunset and party the night away! i swear the boys are all fucken gay. goddam them. but i managed to meet up with Veron (yay!) and her friends which was nice : ) thanks for the late night chat babes!
Diana from Ecuadorrr..Ecuadorrr is sexxxyyyy!
lunching and munching
As part of the freshers Welcome to Middlesex orientation program, there was a riverboat disco on the itinerary and so students from the Enfield and Trent Park campuses got to mingle on a "river boat" on the lovely River Thames to witness a lovely London sunset and party the night away! i swear the boys are all fucken gay. goddam them. but i managed to meet up with Veron (yay!) and her friends which was nice : ) thanks for the late night chat babes!
Diana from Ecuadorrr..Ecuadorrr is sexxxyyyy!
The first Malaysian friend - Hui Nee!
Keane from Malaysia and Sharky from Lithuania
with the luverly gals from Enfield : )
aha where the cooool people were..top deck! ; )
oh wind wind blowing our hair!
Day out in Central (22 September 2006)
After putting my name down for the following clubs (in no particular order) at the Freshers Fayre at Trent Park:
i) Student Respect
ii) Some anti-war thing
iii) Yoga
iv) Gymnastics (only to find out its like artistic, no way in heck am i doing that)
v) cheerleading (shut up, i'm gonna cheer for Hana! haha go hankaaa. no i really am baffled by my choice)
vi) DJ-scratching (helll yea this should be fun, as well as cheaper entries into clubs woohoo.)
vii) Salsa (i figured since my mom made me bring my shoes, i mite as well!)
and
viii) Modern Language Society (alwaysss game for foreign movie watching so yeahhh! yeahhh! phoness for youuu)
we (Hana, Veron and I) decided we'd go to Central to check out London Fashion Week. obviously we wouldn't be able to get into the catwalk shows but apparently there was an exhibition so we thought what the hey. worse comes to worse, we'd snap a photo outside - who knows..if we were lucky we get to scream "beckhaammm" kan. so we go lah all the way to the Natural History Museum (where LFW is) and it looked like it was pretty much an invite thing only. so we go into the NHM and randomly camwhore as its such a nice (and free) museum. hehe.
giant! and i'm not talking about the girl in green : )
three vain girls and crazy mirrors..its a recipe for disaster!
yeargh! its jumanji all over again!
oh hello! you should go out more!
After that, we headed to Piccadily Circus for lunch at the Pizza Hut there (that was the only place I could recall and i really wanted to eat something quickly!) and after, Veron had to head back to meet up with some friends for dinner. So i took Hana to the Topshop at Oxford Street - you know..the four storey one! and omg, the bottom level is fucking amazing - the one with the vintage and bazaar stuff. we saw bags by Paul's Boutique, amazing boots..and we made an oath to find a job and blow it all only here..the lower level of Topshop Oxford St..and also in charity shop in Enfield! haha
lunching and munching after feeling depressed about not being able to afford anything, i then took Hana to the Starbucks at the nearest Borders across the street for something a little more our budget..coffee!! so we sat there, daydreaming about cute handbags while killing time before dinner. took the tube back to Edgeware Rd to meet up with Dewi and Hafzy (that's my sister and bro-in-law for you ignorant fools ;p) at Mawar. Hana was so brave she tried the Singapore Laksa which was really quite spicy! she turned red, she teared..but she finished it all!! well done Hanaball, well done! she had to leave by 9pm coz the last shuttle to Trent Park was at 10pm. I on the other hand stayed at my sisters place over the weekend to sort out my phone, winter clothes shopping and some other stuff. so yeah i've got a UK number now - 0044 7726 341577 call me call me call meee : )
we've been fasting for two days now, and today i was back in the halls..so i cooked some really delish pasta (if i may say so myself..its like my specialty dish..and the ONLY dish i can cook) seriously damn sedap and i made some for Hana as well and she reallly loved it which was good! now i can get married and my man will have to eat pasta for the rest of his life haha! we went back to her room to watch the last episode of IT Crowd and then watched this Czech movie called Samotari. the actor Sasa (pronounced Sascha) Rasilov is soo hott..anyway, gonna end this post with a quote from that movie:
"You leave a piece of your soul with everyone you break up with.
The missing piece is what hurts the most..
..because it's not with you."
i swear people high on crack have the best quotes..ever! good night and good luck people : )
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