[syndicate] Colloquy‏

[Séamas Cain]

This "Colloquy" is wonderful!

Best regards,

Séamas
http://www.freewebs.com/seamascain

_____________________________

2009/8/27 jeff harrison <worksonpaper03 at yahoo.com>:
> SIGNUM: See that figure there, across the water? In profile? Seated. The
> reader. That's The Translator.
>
> ONYMA: Translator of what language?
>
> SIGNUM: You have to ask? You haven't heard of The Translator?
>
> ONYMA: Not this one. Is there a story?
>
> SIGNUM: This translator, whether by decision or cause, I don't know, neither
> speaks nor writes any living language.
>
> ONYMA: Dead languages, then?
>
> SIGNUM: Only one. English. It could even be said that The Translator hears
> only in English, since words are translated immediately, or with
> near-immediacy, into English as soon as they are spoken. The Translator has
> said this, and also says this of written words.
>
> ONYMA: Impossible.
>
> SIGNUM: Honestly, I heard it from none other than Talu.
>
> ONYMA: Then perhaps The Translator is untruthful.
>
> SIGNUM: If not truthful, The Translator is guilelessly misstating or
> willfully misrepresenting. It could be a matter of miscommunication, since
> someone who knows English is the rarest of rarities.
>
> ONYMA: I know a few words.
>
> SIGNUM: Veracity aside, as a premise The Translator's condition is
> thought-provoking. For instance, would The Translator hear an untranslatable
> word as silence?
>
> ONYMA: Hear as silence, or translate as silence?
>
> SIGNUM: Would an untranslatable word be replaced from a store of
> deliberately falsely-translated words?
>
> ONYMA: The notion of a store of deliberately falsely-designative words could
> serve as a definition of language.
>
> SIGNUM: Or a history of language. Does The Translator incorporate
> untranslatable words, or any kind of foreign word, into English? How true is
> The Translator to the spirit of English?
>
> ONYMA: English! What if I were to cry the word "poesy"?
>
> SIGNUM: I...
>
> ONYMA: Poesy! Unyielding impassivity -- surely, hearing an English word is
> worth something.
>
> SIGNUM: The Translator is out of earshot, I believe. "Poesy"? Isn't the word
> "poetry"?
>
> ONYMA: I understood it to be "poesy". "Poetry" must be a porphyrogene youth
> of yet another epoch.
>
> SIGNUM: Within a dead language, what of anachronism, and what of archaism?
> Does The Translator change our native language, say, into
> Chaucerian English? Is what The Translator hears -- or, a comprehensive,
> converting Echo, instantly repeats -- a melange of English epochs?
>
> ONYMA: Different epochs for different days! Different hours! Months! Years!
>
> SIGNUM: Is it, as with the possibility of incorporating untranslatable and
> other foreign words into English, a matter of context and consistency?
>
> ONYMA: Does The Translator know all living languages, not an impossible
> task, and hears English with every word?
>
> SIGNUM: Like I said, food for thought. Let's move on.
>
>