#or go somewhere else and teach german maybe while also learning the language of the country i'm in
Text
Transcript Lingthusiasm Episode 18: Translating the untranslatable.
This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 18: Translating the untranslatable. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 18 shownotes page.
[Music]
Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics! I'm Gretchen McCulloch.
Lauren: And I'm Lauren Gawne, and today we're talking about how to translate untranslatable words. But first, it's our Patreon anniversary!
Gretchen: Yay!
Lauren: And we are super excited to revisit the topic that we visited for our first episode, which is swearing. Yayyy, rude episode on Patreon!
Gretchen: So our first Patreon episode was all about the sounds of swearing and swearing in different languages, and this time we're talking about the grammar of swearing, and we already have reports that it made somebody laugh out loud in public, so maybe don't listen to it around young children or in public, because you might have to explain to them why you're laughing so hard. You can go check that out at patreon.com/lingthusiasm.
Lauren: We also, conveniently for our anniversary, unlocked a new Patreon goal, which we are really excited about. This one is a goal to commission some Lingthusiasm-themed art.
Gretchen: Yes! So we're very excited to have some exciting art and for you guys to get to see concept sketches and where things go from here! Stay tuned for more exciting Lingthusiasm art news.
[Music]
Gretchen: Untranslatable words! Lauren, have you come across any untranslatable words lately?
Lauren: It's because I came across, like, three in the space of a day that I was like, "We really have to talk about this topic." Because it's a bit of a linguist meme, or talking about language meme, is this idea that there are some words that just aren't translatable, or meanings for which we don't have a single word and maybe we should. So the first is a Language Log post from Mark Liberman. He was talking about how there was a big, windy, wintry, weathery event in Philadelphia that meant that there were a lot of discarded umbrellas left around, and he talked about how there's no word for a dead umbrella.
Gretchen: Isn't the word for a dead umbrella just "dead umbrella" or "broken umbrella"?
Lauren: Well...
Gretchen: I don't know why this has to be so hard!
Lauren: We can chat about it, but he felt like it was something that needed a word and a blog post. And the other one –
Gretchen: Is it an UNbrella?
Lauren: An unbrella.
Gretchen: We need to write in to Mark.
Lauren: Yep. We solved it!
Gretchen: You have your umbrellas and then you have your unbrellas.
Lauren: And the second blog post about untranslatable words, or no word in a language, was from my favourite gynaecologist, Dr. Jennifer Gunter, who has a really fabulous blog, and she she was talking about – I'll just read the quote. "I believe there is no word in any language to describe that unique experience that's simultaneously running out of both pads (or tampons) and toilet paper when you're sitting on the toilet and in immediate need of both."
Gretchen: This is a terrible situation, but I think she's described it! I don't know, like, am I the untranslatable word sceptic here? But I think she's, you know, just put several words together and it did a pretty good job of describing this relatable experience.
Lauren: But there's no single word that encapsulates – I mean, there are plenty of single words and most of them are more appropriate for a Patreon episode than this episode – but none that specifically encapsulates that meaning.
Gretchen: Yeah, I mean, so this is a thing that I've been thinking about in terms of what I've called "the schadenfreude effect," which is, you know when you learn the schadenfreude and you're like, "Wow! The Germans! They really do have a word for everything, like taking pleasure in someone else's misfortune! It's not just me who's uniquely terrible by doing this sometimes! Other people do this too! Whoa, mind blown!" And the thing that I think makes us resonate with these lists of untranslatable words or ideas that certain concepts are untranslatable or there should be a word for something is that words are way of packaging our experiences, and if we have a word for something, then we know that someone else has thought of packaging that particular experience before. And so saying, "Oh, is there a word for this?" is also kind of trying to reach for "haven't other people also had this common experience" or "isn't this something else that other people have also felt."
Lauren: I really like that you've coined the term "schadenfreude effect" to really encapsulate the meaning of feeling pleased that you found a word that neatly translates a concept that you thought didn't have an elegant word for it.
Gretchen: Yeah, it's kind of when you encounter a word that describes something you're already familiar with. And I came up with it actually because there's this paper that I really like about people learning words and how best to teach people new concepts and new vocabulary. And so they did this study, and I think was a biology class or an economics class, I don't remember, an intro class at a university somewhere, and some of the students got a reading, kind of your standard textbook reading that is, like, you know, "Mitosis is blah blah blah..." and "Supply and demand is blah blah blah" – I don't remember whether this was biology or economics, so...
Lauren: The biology/economics textbook.
Gretchen: In the highly in-demand Intro Bio/Econ course! So anyway, they got your kind of standard reading that had a bunch of terms with their definitions, and then the other people got a different reading which was a version where you had all the concepts explained to you, saying, "There is a concept in biology where cells divide blah blah blah" or in economics where people buy things at different rates. And then for those students, they got to class and they got a brief list of vocabulary words that said, "These concepts that you were exposed to in the reading, here are the words for them." And then they did a post-test on how well the students did in learning these concepts, and they found that the students that had been exposed to the concept before the jargon did better than the students that were exposed to the jargon and the concept at the same time or even the jargon first.
Lauren: So it's not just a matter of smashing words into your brain.
Gretchen: Yeah, and it's – you know, when you come across a word like "schadenfreude" and you're like, "Wow, this is so satisfying to learn this," the reason it's satisfying to learn the word "schadenfreude" is because you're already familiar with the feeling.
Lauren: Right.
Gretchen: And it's less satisfying to learn a word like, I don't know, "mitosis" or something because you're not familiar with this concept before you learn the word, so you're having to learn the word and the concept at the same time.
Lauren: I guess it's why – and this is gonna date this podcast horrifically – why "hygge" has resonated so much with people in the last 18 months. It's just been like a hygge bonanza of like –
Gretchen: Mm-hmm!
Lauren: – Danish/Scandinavian, cosy, thoughtful, living books.
Gretchen: Yeah, and it's all about this, like, okay here's this concept that we'd like to be able to reach for, or this idea that we'd like to be able to articulate better, like, doesn't everyone want more cosiness in their lives? And it comes with a lot of cultural stuff, but it's around the idea of people wanting more cosiness, or more of whatever it is that thing that the Danes have. I think this is the same reason why words like "tsundoku" often show up on untranslatable words lists as well. So this is the Japanese word for the pile of books that you haven't gotten around to reading yet.
Lauren: What's wrong with "my pile of unread books"?
Gretchen: Yeah, I mean, I know a lot of people who talk about their "TBR pile," which is their "to be read" pile, or their reading list?
Lauren: Mmm.
Gretchen: And as far as I can tell, they're used pretty similarly to "tsundoku"! But we're familiar with the idea of "of course you have this pile of books you haven't gotten around to reading yet."
Lauren: Yep.
Gretchen: And, oh, isn't it convenient that there's this convenient package for this thing that you either are intimately familiar with, or that you would like to be more familiar with, as in the case with "hygge."
Lauren: It's interesting how sometimes these words will enter into English. So, like, schadenfreude I think is – I mean, you can tell from my very Australianising of it, like it's a comfortable piece of my vocabulary, I can use it actively in a sentence, and I feel really comfortable with it. But, like, I think "hygge" is kind of crossing into that at the moment? I don't – I think it's too faddy, personally.
Gretchen: Yeah, I think it may still be too much of a fad at the moment, but it may be crossing over. I heard someone saying "tsundoku" in a sentence in English, but she was someone who'd lived in Japan for a while, so I don't think she was using it Anglicised? So I don't know which ones of these are crossing over.
Lauren: Yep.
Gretchen: But one of the things that I always think about what I think about these lists of "oh, here's a bunch of words that are untranslatable," is first of all, well, here is this convenient column B where someone just provided a bunch of nice translations for them. So how untranslatable are they, really? And also that if you look at a language just through the lens of its lexicon, you can end up with some really weird conclusions.
Lauren: Yeah.
Gretchen: And my favourite example of this is French doesn't have a word for "please." Therefore, obviously, the French, they must be very impolite...maybe. But what they do have is a four-word phrase, "s'il vous plait," which comes in another form, which is "s'il te plait," which both mean effectively "please." And in fact they come in formal and informal versions, this phrase that means effectively "please." And so, sure, if we look at the lexicon of French, the individual, atomisable words with spaces in between them, like, "Oh dang, there's no equivalent for please! Like, how do you even be polite in this language?" But if you look at it even just one step further in subtlety, of course there are lots of ways to be polite in this language! And so, seeing a language just through the lens of its lexicon – on the one hand, it gets us some of these interesting packages, but on the other hand it misses out on a whole lot of what a language actually is if all we're doing is looking at the lists of words and their translations.
Lauren: It reminds me of the "there's no way to say 'yes' and 'no' in Mandarin" meme?
Gretchen: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: That there isn't just a convenient word like "yes" we see that you can use to answer an affirmative, and no equivalent of "no" that you can just use to say no to a question that someone asks. And it's because you say – if, you know, someone says, "Do you want this?" you use the equivalent of "want" or "don't want."
Gretchen: Oh, Gaelic does this too.
Lauren: Yeah! So just because you can't find "yes" or "no" in a simple word list doesn't mean you're unable to say it.
Gretchen: Like, "Whoa, you can't do negation or affirmative in these languages!" Clearly the speakers are capable of agreeing and disagreeing with things.
Lauren: "Yes and no are untranslatable!" And it's just like, oh, they have some way of expressing affirmative and negative. Life is going on.
Gretchen: Yeah! But something that interests me is the subtler domains where things are actually harder to translate as well. And one of the big areas for me for that is poetry, because what makes a poem, essentially, is that you have a relationship with form and meaning that is aesthetically pleasing.
Lauren: And contextually dependent.
Gretchen: And different languages do have different relationships between form and meaning. So to take a very simple example, a pair of words that rhyme in English don't necessarily rhyme in another language you might be trying to translate a poem to. So if you have something like "roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet, and I love you" the kind of classic, four-line, parodisable poem in English –
Lauren: All versions of that poem are said in deep, deep earnest, Gretchen. It's the most moving piece of poetry.
Gretchen: So moving. Why wasn't this our Valentine's Day episode?
Um, so you have something like this, but "blue" and "you" rhyme in English, and they don't rhyme in many other languages. There's no particular reason why they have to rhyme, it's just they happen to in English and so they make good subjects for poems, and that's why we don't say "violets are purple" because "purple" doesn't rhyme with "you." And so when you try to translate that in another language, either you've got to be unfaithful to the meaning and use a different pair of words that do rhyme, or you've got to be unfaithful to the rhyme and then not reproduce the aesthetic experience of getting the poem. And so because there's this inherent asymmetry, because different languages have different words – shockingly! – it's really hard to translate things that rely on both the form and the meaning simultaneously.
Lauren: I remember learning to read Old English poetry, and I just couldn't get my head around it – it involves alliteration, they weren't really big into rhyming.
Gretchen: Mm!
Lauren: And I was just like, "I don't have a feeling for this being good." You know, my Old English teacher would just be like, "Yeah, this is such a great poem, you can feel the rhythm!" and I'm just like, "Oh, but there's no rhyming..."
Gretchen: Everything's gotta rhyme.
Lauren: Yeah, I don't know how to evaluate this.
Gretchen: I remember I tried to read Hamlet in French once because, you know, whatever.
Lauren: How did that go?
Gretchen: Well, what was really interesting for me is, you know, the thing about Hamlet, and Shakespeare in general, is that Shakespeare is all in iambic pentameter, right?
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Gretchen: And so you have your, like, duh-DUH beat, your iamb, with weak-strong –
Lauren: Yeah, even my "mm-hmm" was in iambic pentameter, I was really impressed. Mm-hmm.
Gretchen: Mm-hmm! There you go. And you have five of those per line, but in French you can't do that, because French doesn't have word-level stress the way English does.
Lauren: Right, yeah.
Gretchen: And I'm sure we'll probably do, at some point, a full stress episode, but in French you just only ever stress the thing that's at the end of the whole sentence or phrase. That's it, that's all you do, you have to do it that way.
Lauren: Okay. Yup.
Gretchen: And so you can't divide a poem into beats like that, because French doesn't do beats that way. And so what French poetry has instead that's, like, stylistically similar to iambic pentameter is something called the alexandrine, which is twelve syllables per line. So iambic pentameter gives you ten syllables per line, the alexandrine gives you twelve, which is pretty similar, and so this translation of Hamlet was all written in alexandrines with the twelve syllables per line.
Lauren: So they get an extra two syllables per line.
Gretchen: Yeah!
Lauren: The whole thing goes for like an extra 20% of time.
Gretchen: But it often takes more syllables to say the same thing in French anyway.
Lauren: Oh, okay.
Gretchen: Because French is kind of spacious like that.
Lauren: Yep.
Gretchen: So I think it kind of balanced out. But yeah, you just got this very different –
Lauren: And was it in modern French or ye olde French?
Gretchen: I... don't remember. I think it was in pretty modern French, though, it didn't feel super ye olde.
Lauren: Right.
Gretchen: But I also don't necessarily know what ye olde French would sound like, you know?
Lauren: Fair enough! Because sometimes, like, translating across time – you know, we talk about translating between cultures and what I think is, dare I say, a bit of fetishisation of, like, Scandinavian and Japanese social life that we overextend, one way of kind of borrowing their words that translate interestingly. And we forget that translating from older texts, like translating from Shakespeare, or going back further to something like Beowulf, there's actually a lot that's not easily translated between those.
Gretchen: Yeah, and when you're translating something like – you know, Shakespeare's stuff was written in current English to the original audience he was writing to, he wasn't writing in fake ye olde English, and so do you try to be faithful to that for the modern reader, or do you try to reproduce the experience of the modern reader in experiencing that as something old? Something I've been really fascinated about recently has been the Emily Wilson translation of The Odyssey.
Lauren: Mmm!
Gretchen: Oh, it's so cool. I follow her on Twitter now, it's really great. So, she is heralded as the first woman to translate The Odyssey into English, which is kind of shocking that we've gotten this far and it took that long.
Lauren: I'd have to say most of the versions that I have ever come across have been quite dusty, dry, like they feel like they were written at the time of Homer, even though they're in English.
Gretchen: Well, not quite Homer, but like this kind of 1800s feel.
Lauren: Yep.
Gretchen: And that's the thing, like even the ones that were written in, like, I don't know, the 1950s, often have this fake ye olde thing because, like, oh, well, Homer is a classic and so you need to make him sound olde.
Lauren: So what's Emily Wilson done?
Gretchen: And so Wilson doesn't do that. She's not doing ye olde, and her first line that she translates the poem as is, "Tell me about a complicated man," which is referring to Odysseus.
Lauren: Oh, that could be a text that I sent someone.
Gretchen: That's an Avril Lavigne song! Like, "Odysseus, why did you have to go make things so complicated? Right now I'm just unweaving this loom and man I really hate it!" You know, like, that's a very real translation! But she also – and this is something that the other translators also don't do – she also translates the whole epic poem in verse, and she does all of her lines in iambic pentameter.
Lauren: Right.
Gretchen: And the other translators tend to render it in prose, or in, like, shortened lines, but without paying attention to that beat in the same sort of way.
Lauren: Yeah.
Gretchen: And so I'm also really holding out for the audiobook version of this translation of The Odyssey, because I want to hear it read. It was originally an oral piece of a literature, and I really want to hear someone render it to me in that sort of way.
Lauren: Mm, that would be fun.
Gretchen: Yeah! I'm excited. It's one of my post-book projects, I'm gonna dive into that pretty deeply, I think.
Lauren: Awesome.
Gretchen: Yeah! So untranslatability, when it comes to things like how do you render – and I think the Greek word that she's trying to render with "complicated" is "polytropos"? I'm probably getting that wrong. But it means, like, "many-turning"?
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Gretchen: "Poly" meaning "many" and "tropos" is "turning," like a heliotrope is a flower that turns towards the sun.
Lauren: Yep.
Gretchen: But "many-turned" is not really an idiom in English. And so different translators try to render that idiom in different sorts of ways that both try to make it legible for the reader and also try to make it sound somewhat idiomatic and give you a sense of the feeling of the source text, in a short amount of space.
Lauren: I mean, idioms are super difficult because they're often multiple words, or if it's just one word, alluding to the whole idiom. Like, idioms already come as complicated sets of words that have a specific meaning that you can't just go, like, "word + word." You know, "looking a gift horse in the mouth," you can't say "look + horse + gift + mouth = ..."
Gretchen: That's a nice Greek idiom, Lauren!
Lauren: Yeah, I'm just keeping on-theme. You have to know about how gifts work and how horses work – and actually I don't actually know how horses' mouths work, I just know that you want to make sure they're healthy and that's apparently the mouth!
Gretchen: Yeah, I remember I was reading a book that I'd – when I was practising French I was reading stuff in French I'd already read in English.
Lauren: Yeah.
Gretchen: And the English passage of this book had said something like "doing this thing was carrying coal to Newcastle," which, I've never been to Newcastle, but I know that this is an idiom for, you know, Newcastle is a big producer of coal and so why would you bring coal to Newcastle, Newcastle already has the coals.
Lauren: Yeah. Was it "taking croissants to Paris"?
Gretchen: I wish it was! They just said something like "it was just a drop of water in the ocean".
Lauren: Taking mustard to Dijon.
Gretchen: I don't think those are idioms in French the same way that "coals to Newcastle" is an idiom in English, right? So that would be kind of bringing you out by saying, "Oh, what what is this weird idiom that they have?" So instead they had just "is a drop of water in the ocean," which is kind of idiomatic, but is also something you could interpret at a very literal level and it doesn't particularly require context for the idiom.
Lauren: Yeah.
Gretchen: Because also the book wasn't supposed to be set in France, so it'd be weird to have a very French-y idiom.
Lauren: Uh-huh. So, we can have this kind of translatability complication over time in English, but we could also have it over space because English is a language that is spoken in many places, and many places have their own words that have their own specific meaning.
Gretchen: Yeah, I really do like adding to those "untranslatable" lists, like, here's this very specific meaning that this Japanese pile of books brings to you. English has a specific verb for "to deceive someone into watching a video of Rick Astley's 'Never Gonna Give You Up.'"
Lauren: Hey, wait! We do!
Gretchen: What does it say about the English speakers that we have the verb "to rickroll."
Lauren: Oh my gosh. It's such a profound reflection on what it means to be an English speaker on the internet that we have created the word rickroll.
Gretchen: I know, right?
Lauren: I never thought about it like that before, it's really fun to flip this trope around!
Gretchen: Yeah! You know, like, the English speakers – like, it's gonna be on a French word list somewhere and be like, "Look at those English speakers, look what they've done!"
Lauren: Oh, that one's gonna date really badly as well.
Gretchen: Nah, rickroll's a classic. And there's different words in Canadian English and Australian English that sometimes have different connotations.
Lauren: And since we bump into this occasionally, I thought we would do a mini quiz round!
Gretchen: Okay! Are you gonna quiz me?
Lauren: I'm gonna quiz you. I have some words here that have very specific meanings in Australian English.
Gretchen: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: And I want you to have a go at what you think they mean.
Gretchen: Okay.
Lauren: The first word is "bogan."
Gretchen: I'm familiar with "bogan," but I don't know if I could actually define it? Is it kind of like a hick, but in Australia? Or like a chav, but in Australia?
Lauren: I like that you're going for definition by triangulation.
Gretchen: Yeeeah... like, it's kind of more like working-class, salt-of-the-earth, but also the people that politicians kind of try to make up to?
Lauren: Yeah, that's actually – you did pretty good there. That's good.
Gretchen: Yay!
Lauren: But you can identify them from the particular sports that they're interested in, like the footy, like the cricket, something something outdoors, something something wearing flannel.
Gretchen: Okay.
Lauren: It's kind of a set of meaning that goes together to define –
Gretchen: I mean, in Canada they like the hockey, so I think I may somewhat understand this demographic.
Lauren: Yeah. The next word is "mateship."
Gretchen: So, because I know that you say – people say "mate" in Australian English to be like, "G'day, mate," or like, "What are you doing mate, that was a bad idea." So mateship is like the quality of having mates or like the relationship that you have with your mates? Or... this kind of thing?
Lauren: Uh, yeah! I mean, that is great, you've just kind of said the meaning of both of those words at the same time. Good start!
Gretchen: Is there something else I should be adding?
Lauren: It's something to do with the ineffable quality of reciprocal support. It's tied in a lot with the idea of community – not gonna lie, it has a kind of Anglo vibe. It's –
Gretchen: Oh my god, it's Australian hygge.
Lauren: It's Australian political dog-whistling to like –
Gretchen: Ohhh.
Lauren: – you know, the way things should be, i.e. back when Australia was quite Anglo. (It never really was, but that's another point.) Or this kind of idea of Australians as like battlers forged through hardship and adversity and are now somehow all kind of closely knit for that. Is my kind of definition of mateship.
Gretchen: Okay. Yeah, I definitely don't have the political context there.
Lauren: It doesn't stir your soul? That's what it's meant to evoke.
Gretchen: It just... ships my mates, mate!
Lauren: The final one is "early mark."
Gretchen: I have no idea.
Lauren: Have a guess, just make up...
Gretchen: A... like, something that... like, when you're like "on your marks, get set, go" so it's like the early... first thing you do?
Lauren: Mmm... no.
Gretchen: I told you I didn't know!
Lauren: This one is not even – like, so this is not a word that I have in my active vocabulary.
Gretchen: Okay.
Lauren: And it shows that like even in a country like Australia, which has a really quite homogeneous use of language across Australia, given how big it is, this is from New South Wales and Queensland?
Gretchen: Okay.
Lauren: And an "early mark" means you get to leave school or work early.
Gretchen: Ahhh!
Lauren: I have no idea why. New South Wales never really explained it to me.
Gretchen: I have a word for that, but I don't remember what it is.
Lauren: Is it "leaving work early"?
Gretchen: Yeah, okay. No, no, there's like an idiom to it, and I'm sure my high school self is reaching through time and being like "how did you forget this??"
Lauren: It was very important to you.
Gretchen: Yeah, it was really important to me for 13 years, and now I can't remember. I can remember the concept, but not the term.
Lauren: Well, there you have – it's an untranslatable word for you, Gretchen! It's a concept you're very familiar with and you've never had –
Gretchen: No, it's a schadenfreude thing!
Lauren: It's the schadenfreude effect from English to English.
Gretchen: Okay, can I give you a Canadian one?
Lauren: Sure.
Gretchen: So, are you familiar with the Canadianism "toque"?
Lauren: I am, but I feel like I'm not gonna know where to draw the boundary on it.
Gretchen: Okay, well, try.
Lauren: So, I know it's a hat.
Gretchen: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: Umm... yay for having Canadian rellos.
Gretchen: "Relatives" for the non-Australians.
Lauren: Thanks for translating for me!
Gretchen: Welcome!
Lauren: Um, it's a hat, but it's like a hat you wear in the cold.
Gretchen: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: Like, I'm gonna translate it into my English and say it's a beanie, which is like a knitted, or like thick, woollen hat that doesn't have a brim or anything, it's just like an egg-warmer for your head.
Gretchen: Yeah, Americans do call it "beanie," so I wasn't sure if you'd have beanie as a term, because it's like kind of warm to wear beanies in Australia. So yeah, people call it a beanie, I have a beanie as something very different.
Lauren: What's a beanie, then, for you?
Gretchen: A beanie is one of those, like, round caps that has like a spinny thing on top? That they wore in like the '20s or something?
Lauren: Ahhhh. No. Gee, that's so confusing. How do we even talk to each other? Sometimes it's a complete mystery to me.
Gretchen: I know.
Lauren: It's going to be very difficult if I ever come and visit you in the cold. "Don't come here with a beanie, you need to bring a toque."
Gretchen: I may own a few toques, but I do not own any hats with little spinny things on top, and I do not aspire to.
Lauren: Ah, well. So, even when we speak the same language, we still kind of reach these moments of translation where we have to hopefully figure out that we're not talking about the same beanie.
Gretchen: Yeah. I know, personally, I think that my favourite really difficult word in English to translate is "the."
Lauren: That's not gonna look nice on any lists, Gretchen.
Gretchen: But it's so difficult! Because, you know, some languages don't have articles like "the" and "a" and "an" at all! Russian doesn't have them, Chinese doesn't have them I don't think, and there's a whole bunch of languages that don't have this at all, and so trying to translate into those languages is really hard, and for speakers of those languages, trying to learn English and being like, "Should I be using the 'the'? But how do you know?" And then there's a bunch of languages that have, like, several of them!
Lauren: Yeah.
Gretchen: And then even languages which have what is ostensibly still a definite article don't use them in the same sorts of ways.
Lauren: Yeah.
Gretchen: So in English, if I want to say "I go for a walk on Mondays," I don't put the "the" on Monday. But in French, if I want to say "I go for a walk on Mondays," then I have to say "le lundi," not just "lundi."
Lauren: Go for a walk on the Mondays.
Gretchen: Go for a walk the Monday. Singular.
Lauren: Okay. The Monday.
Gretchen: Yeah, so it's like, even in languages that ostensibly have things that map to this category, figuring out how to use them slightly differently depending on the language is a rich and difficult area of of investigation.
Lauren: So, we've established that it's not untranslatability, it's unable to translate into a single convenient word. And it's not untranslatability because it happens across Englishes, too...
Gretchen: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: So what is happening here?
Gretchen: I think it's about – there's two kinds of meaning that come with a word.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Gretchen: There's the kind of one-sentence, easy-to-describe, dictionary sort of meaning.
Lauren: Yeah. Which is what we often think of as meaning.
Gretchen: Yeah. And then there's all of the kind of surrounding context: the social context, and when you learned a word, and what it means to you, and these kinds of things. You know, I was coming across in one of these lists a word about, I think it was a Swedish type of coffee break.
Lauren: Fika!
Gretchen: Fika!
Lauren: It's a good one.
Gretchen: And they were saying, "Well in the Swedish coffee break you're not allowed to talk about work, and you must only talk about things that are not related to work."
Lauren: Uh-huh.
Gretchen: And I don't necessarily think that it is an intrinsic property of "fika" as "fika" specifically. I think this is a Swedish property of coffee breaks.
Lauren: Right.
Gretchen: Like, I know what a coffee break is.
Lauren: So it's conflating the coffee break and the – oh, I always think, 'cause with fika it's about having coffee and food, I think of it as, like, "let's do coffee"? You know, the act of doing coffee.
Gretchen: Yeah.
Lauren: That's what I think of fika as.
Gretchen: Let's get coffee, or let's do coffee.
Lauren: Yeah.
Gretchen: Not just like you're sitting by yourself at your desk having sad desk coffee.
Lauren: That is definitely not fika. I know that, and I'm not Swedish.
Gretchen: But you know, the cultural things are like what you do at a coffee break, or, you know, if you talk about different – I don't know, to go back to the school example, different recess traditions, or different school break traditions, like do you go out and play in the playground, or do you stay inside because it's very cold in Canada in the wintertime sometimes and they wouldn't let us outside, even with our toques.
Lauren: So, now that we have the concepts of these two forms of meaning, do you want the jargon?
Gretchen: Yes, I'd like the jargon.
Lauren: Okay. So the specific, to-the-point meaning – dictionary meaning, more or less – is "denotation." Which I always remember because denotation and dictionary start with the same letter.
Gretchen: Mm!
Lauren: And then connotation is all the context to the meaning. (Do you see what I did there?)
Gretchen: Ah, good.
Lauren: So I'm gonna explain denotation and connotation using sandwiches.
Gretchen: Okay.
Lauren: And of course we pulled sandwiches apart – not literally, just semantically – in a Patreon episode. But I want to come back to sandwiches and talk about a historical anecdote in my family that kind of explains where denotation and connotation are in tension. So as I've mentioned, my grandmother is an English second language speaker.
Gretchen: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: I've mentioned it on the show before. She's a Polish and German native speaker, came to Australia, had to learn not only English, but also raise a family of very Anglo-educated children. So, my grandfather's English, they went to school in English, and they wanted to kind of fit in with the other kids. And so the denotation of a sandwich is very simple: it's two pieces of bread with filling between it.
Gretchen: Yep.
Lauren: And my grandmother would send my mum and her siblings to school with sandwiches, but where my grandmother fell down was on the connotation of a sandwich, because my grandmother took the "two pieces of bread with some kind of tasty filling" quite liberally.
Gretchen: Uh-oh!
Lauren: There are stories of her sending my mum to school with butter and peanuts? Because she couldn't get the hang that peanut butter was a specific thing? Or sending them to school with – and I've never tried this, personally – but like chocolate biscuits in bread.
Gretchen: That's very interesting!
Lauren: And so this is completely violating the idea of what a sandwich – what its connotation is. But she's still meeting the denotation of it.
Gretchen: Yeah, I mean, I think in our sandwich episode she's passing the sandwich test with flying colours!
Lauren: She's doing better than a burrito!
Gretchen: Yeah!
Lauren: Or a pierogi.
Gretchen: Yeah, or a pizza or whatever. Like, she's got the the two pieces of bread, which is pretty key, and you could make a chocolate chip cookie sandwich...
Lauren: And so when we have these ideas of untranslatable words, we're trying to pull all the connotation along with the denotation. I mean, sometimes it's just denotation?
Gretchen: Yeah.
Lauren: And the denotation that it has cuts the world in a particular way our language doesn't, and that would be nice to have. But often we're trying to drag a lot of the connotation along as well, and I think that's why "hygge" feels like such a complicated thing to bring into English, because we could just say it means cosiness, and we've kind of hit the denotation pretty well.
Gretchen: Yeah.
Lauren: But we want to bring alllll of the Scandinavian knitwear, candles, prettiness in along with it.
Gretchen: Yeah. And it's kind of aspirational, like, this is how it could be. There's a quote from Dinosaur Comics that I really like that expresses this. So they're talking about meanings of words and what's the opposite of various things, and T-Rex is getting more and more frustrated and says, "Language is hard!" And the other character says, "No, life is hard. Language is just how we talk about it."
Lauren: Oh, that's so true. And it does – these connotations make it really hard, they make it hard especially for machine translation, because machines can't weigh up all the different connotations of different words in a way that a translator can. And that's part of the skill of translation, is knowing what words to use that have the same connotations.
Gretchen: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: You know, if you're translating a scene about someone at a market, then the word "cheap" as opposed to "inexpensive" – something that's cheap has this connotation of inferior quality compared to using the word inexpensive.
Gretchen: Yeah! Or "a good deal," you know, they could be the same thing, like a "bargain."
Lauren: Oh, yeah! Suddenly that's not only like – it's like good cheap.
Gretchen: "Wow, that's good cheap!" And, you know, "bad cheap," or "inexpensive," there's all these different levels there and –
Lauren: But words are connotation magnets. I mean, it's why we need euphemisms all the time, because as soon as we start using a word in a particular context, it just amasses all these connotations and they become either pejorative and negative and that's how slurs kind of get cycled through, which is not great, or they kind of make all these other cultural inferences.
Gretchen: Yeah, and I think that one of the things that talking about words as "untranslatable," even though it can be satisfying to say, "Oh wow, here's these new concepts!" or "Here's the thing that I hadn't thought about in this way before," in some respect, every word is untranslatable and yet we managed to learn them all anyway.
Lauren: Yeah.
Gretchen: How do we learn any new word if no word has an exact equivalent somewhere? Well, you know, we live a life and we figure it out! And in many cases, the word side of translation is very easy. It's the grammar side and the aesthetic side that's a lot harder.
Lauren: And all those connotations. I know when I learnt Nepali, I had to keep track of three different formality levels, which, like, I know how to be polite to different people to different extents in English, but suddenly I had to do it in another language and in the grammar, and I remember just knowing who to use which level of formality with was a whole set of translation that I took a long time to really feel comfortable with, so I would definitely agree that the kind of grammatical encoding of things adds a translation complication that can be quite hard to master.
Gretchen: Yeah, and yet you don't see different forms of "you" in "difficult to translate" lists, even though maybe they should be there.
Lauren: We're gonna start our own very exciting list.
Gretchen: Let's make a "difficult to translate for linguists" list! I'd be down for this!
[Music]
Lauren: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on iTunes, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, or wherever else you get your podcasts. And you can follow @Lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. You can get IPA scarves and other Lingthusiasm merch at lingthusiasm.com/merch. I tweet and blog as SuperLinguo.
Gretchen: And I can be found as @GretchenAMcC on Twitter, and my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com. To listen to bonus episodes, ask us your linguistic questions, and help keep the show ad-free, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm, or follow the links from our website. Current bonus topics include the semantics of sandwiches, language games, how to teach yourself linguistics, and a double feature: two episodes about swearing! And you can help us pick the next topic by becoming a patron. Can't afford to pledge? That's okay too, we also really appreciate it if you can rate us on iTunes or Apple podcasts and recommending Lingthusiasm to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life.
Lauren: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our audio producer is Claire, our editorial producer is Emily, and our production assistant is Celine. Our music is by The Triangles.
Gretchen: Stay lingthusiastic!
[Music]
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
#linguistics#lingthusiasm#translation#words#untranslatable words#translating#untranslatable#transcripts#episode 18#podcasts
123 notes
·
View notes
Text
EVAN ROSIER is A DEATH EATER in the war, even though HIS official job is as THE HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT OF INTERNATIONAL MAGICAL COOPERATION AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS. the THIRTY year old PUREBLOOD is known to be PERSUASIVE and SHARP but also CORRUPTIVE and DESTRUCTIVE. some might label them as THE DEVIL ON YOUR SHOULDER. fc: chris evans
ANTHEMS.
ICARUS - BASTILLE // INTRO - THE XX // FRIEND OF THE DEVIL - MUMFORD AND SONS // NOT ME - TWO FEET // MALT LIQUOR - LEWIS DEL MAR // LETTING IN - BEAUVILLE.
pinterest board ------ did you ever have a heart?
full playlist ------- too bright, too harsh, too divine.
AESTHETICS // VIBES.
flying too close to the sun ( his life has just begun ), leather brief cases, ancient typewriters, a devilish grin, the absence of a heart, red wine, always getting even, wool sweaters, unfinished sketches, grinning as he approaches an early grave, dried paint on pale skin, ‘there’s a god in the dark and he’s got a hand between your thighs’, making friends with the devil, humming while cooking, always ready to make a new deal ( sell a new soul ), daring you to do something unspeakable, running headfirst into danger, writing long letters at the crack of dawn, collecting old books, half empty bottles of champagne, soft laughter as you take your last breath.
BACK TO BASICS.
name: evan edward rosier.
occupation: head of the department of international magical cooperation and foreign affairs.
nicknames: rosie, ev.
+ persuasive, sharp, well spoken, daring.
- corruptive, destructive, stubborn, tyrannical.
age: 30.
date of birth: november 12, 1950.
zodiac: scorpio.
hometown: portsmouth, england.
current location: lives in a penthouse apartment in london.
gender: cis male.
pronouns: he/him.
orientation: bisexual.
spoken languages: english, latin and french fluently. can also get by on german, spanish, welsh.
moral alignment: lawful evil / neutral evil.
element: water.
house: slytherin.
BACKGROUND // FAMILY.
Evan grew up as the lone heir to the Rosier legacy, and thus had to endure the overbearing attention of both of his parents. They both had teachings they wanted to instill ( his father, determined to make Evan strong, powerful ---- well adept at the dark arts. and his mother, equally as determined to form her son into a diplomat. someone who could use words to bend people to his will ). From his birth and onward, he became stuck in a tug of war. His mother pulling him one way, and his father pulling him the other. They could never find common ground, realize that maybe Evan could be both.
Eliana Malfoy and Edward Rosier were a far cry from the perfect parents, but the pureblood society have seen worse.
His parents weren’t in a loveless marriage, at least not at first ( both had met at Hogwarts, knew each other quite well, used to be best friends ). But they were also very different people, and both were incredibly stubborn. Used to getting their way. Once upon a time, they used to be in love. Once the stakes were raised, they fell out of love ---- instead, becoming enemies, bound by marriage.
Both had vastly different ideas of how to do.... pretty much everything, and Evan was the only thing to unite them. After the wedding, they never got along, but stubbornly stayed married, always bickering over everything. Most arguments had Evan at its core. Should Evan learn German or French first? Should Evan be tutored by himself or with other kids? Should we really let Evan hang around Tom? Should you really teach Evan how to torture someone, already? As a child, Evan was more of an argument, a conflict, than he was a son.
Kind of grew up with two different personalities, depending on what parent was around? Sort of formed himself into whatever they wanted him to be, at that given moment. Mostly to just make the nagging, the bickering, the arguing stop. He grew tired of hearing their constant instructions / demands well before he left for Hogwarts. Most of it may have been well meaning ( or self serving ), but it was also constant. There is only so much advice that a ten year old can absorb.
His parents were also very adamant on forming strong connections for Evan, so he was forced to go to all of the parties and socialize with an abundance of pureblood kids ( constant play dates? yes ). There was also a bit of competition involved in this, since his mother was VERY determined that Evan should be better than all of the other pureblood kids. To her, he was more of a trophy, than he was a son.
Once his cousins were born, competition increased.
Evan was sort of an apathetic child? Just went along with whatever.
Examples! Though he was never really drawn to torturing animals / muggles himself, his father wanted him to learn, so Evan obliged. Played the role he was meant to play. Nowadays, he only ever really tortures someone if it gets him what he wants.
Tom Marvolo Riddle was initially a friend of his father, and the two were heavily involved during the 1960s. Edward was part of Tom’s gang ( The Knights of Walpurgis ). But then Edward became a little too ambitious, a little too sly. Tom suspected a plot behind his back, and murdered his former friend in cold blood. At the time, Evan was eighteen, and had already idolized Tom for years. Evan ( none the wiser to how his father had met his end ), stepped into Edward’s shoes, taking over the role as Tom’s avid supporter and friend.
HOGWARTS YEARS.
Coming to Hogwarts was a relief. Though he received constant letters from both his mother and father ( with completely contrasting advice, telling him to do completely different things ), they were easier to ignore than their nagging voices. Finally, he could breath.
Sort of started a correspondence with the family’s long time friend, while he was at Hogwarts. Tom’s advice and guidance always laid somewhere in the middle of what Evan’s parents wanted him to do, and sometimes, it went way beyond. While Eliana was raising Evan to be a diplomat, and Edward hoped for his son to become a tyrant, Tom seemed to see something else. The middle ground.
If it wasn’t for Evan’s talent for backdoor politics and back handed affairs, he would have made quite the Gryffindor. He’s a bit impulsive, so so brave, incredibly stubborn, willing to die for his cause, a little bit righteous, reckless to the point of it being lethal. It also helps that Evan doesn’t want to be a Gryffindor so.... we all know that the sorting hat listens to that.
But the Sorting Hat saw all that ambition ( his mother’s doing ), that slyness ( inherited from his father ), the longing for belonging ( Tom’s doing ) and the will of steel and decided that Evan would excel in Slytherin. And he would.
Evan joined the Quidditch team as a beater, and was notorious for being one of the few Slytherin beaters that actually played a fair game ( in contrast to his baby cousin smh ).
Also joined a fair amount of clubs while at the school. The dueling club, the potions club, the slug club, the astronomy club to name a few.
Did very well in school, and stayed out of trouble... mostly. Was eventually made prefect, and later head boy. Evan, though slowly acquiring a taste for violence and bloodshed, was bright enough to realize how to keep that part of himself in the shadows.
INSTEAD. Evan’s shtick was to make other people do bad things for him. He could talk almost anyone into doing almost anything. Making good people do bad things was ( and still is ) one of Evan’s absolute favorite past times.
Also... kind of known for being able to talk himself out of anything? At one point, it became a sport to see exactly... how much he ( and others ) could get away with. He would dare other Slytherins to do more and more elaborate things ( like jinxing muggle borns tbh ), and then he’d get them out of trouble.
On that note, Evan also became known as quite the deal maker while at the school. Would help others out, for something in return. Would also lowkey blackmail people into agreeing to different deals and unbreakable vows with him.
Though the Death Eaters weren’t officially a thing until after Evan graduated, Tom was gathering up a following, and Evan ( who looked up to Tom quite a lot ), joined without hesitation during his sixth year. Pureblood principles had already been drilled into him by his parents, so it wasn’t a great leap for Evan to support his cause.
Evan is so devoted to Tom? He really, really believes in him as a person, and thus, his cause too.
AFTER HOGWARTS.
Evan started off his career in the ministry as the assistant to the head of the department of law enforcement, and he slowly worked himself up the ranks until he transferred to the department of international magical cooperation and foreign affairs, where he would shine. At the age of twenty four (1975), he was promoted to the head of the department.
Was originally a sleeper agent, as he started working within the ministry before the war started. He was very careful at the time, making sure to not associate with anything that could make him look like a suspected Death Eater. Purposefully tried to make himself look softer, warmer. Adopted a dog, started going for runs, brought in coffee for the office, got a girlfriend, a favorite Quidditch team. Everything and anything to make himself look like the everyman, a normal ministry worker, just trying to get by.
His department is considered to be quite difficult to run, especially during the height of a war. Evan was promoted after the former department head swiftly quit and left the country due to supposed exhaustion ( or maybe... someone had something to do with their very Odd disappearance.... hmmmmm..... ). Either way. Evan took over, and has managed to keep his position for the last five years.
He’s sort of well liked within the ministry? He seems a lot less shady than some other ministry officials, so that’s a win for him.
Works a lot, and does a lot of traveling with work?
Likes painting, and also art !!!! His father frowned upon his mother’s insistence of letting Evan develop his creative side, but art is just something that has stuck with him. In his apartment, he has a small studio in which he paints.
He’s currently part of Voldemort’s inner circle.
Runs his department with an iron fist.
Very much into brewing poisons ( was highkey good at potions while at Hogwarts too ), and poisoning people is kind of his thing? Like it’s his favorite way of getting rid of someone he doesn’t like. One would do best to never drink / eat something offered by Rosie... In case he suddenly doesn’t like you.
Currently living with his two dogs in a large penthouse apartment in London.
AS A PERSON.
Bit snarky, has a rapid fire tongue. But also good at controlling himself, and lowkey always knows what to say. Can also be incredibly sassy, it’d be a problem if it wasn’t because he’s so controlled and knows how to hold his tongue.
Proud motherfucker. That’s his vice, his deadly sin. Ultimately how, and why, he will eventually be killed.
Was raised to be a constant paradox, and remains that way today.
ALWAYS OUT TO MAKE DEALS. That’s probably why he’s so good at his job. But he’s making deals with everyone else too, not just for his job. #crossroad demon
Always expecting something in return. Everything has a steep price when it comes to Evan.
Highly intuitive, mostly follows his gut instincts when doing... anything.
A diplomat to his very core ( #thanks mom ), and has a silver tongue. He’s good at getting what he wants. Very good at persuading people too.
Incredibly curious, wants to know how far he can make people go. How far he himself, can go. Also very much interested in seeing what makes people tick and how things work.
Good at making himself seem very warm, inviting, friendly. Whatever he thinks people currently want him to be, he becomes. If he cares enough. But really, he is fairly cold, very cut throat, incredibly ruthless. Constant calculation and logic runs deep in his veins, and he approaches every situation with immense planning and plotting.
Highkey looks down on people who are overly emotional ( which in his book, is basically showing any strong emotion at all ). Evan values logic, rationality, common sense.
Has cared about a total of like... two people in his life. It takes a lot for Evan to actually... give a fuck about other people? Like he just. Doesn’t care. Mostly cares about himself and his work.
Loves his mom a lot. Also a big fan of Tom. : ~ )
Sort of two faced. Can be warm one minute, ice cold the next.
Thrives off violence, but is pretty lowkey about it. His favorite forms of violence are duels, explosions of magic, lethal spells, poison slipped into coffee cups. ALSO of course, making other people do stuff, let’s not forget That™.
Though he will also sometimes let off steam by just kicking someone’s ass / having his ass kicked. But that doesn’t happen very often. If at all. He mostly stays in his lane !!!!!! Way more into backdoor affairs like poisoning his opponents.
Very patient. Can make people bend to his will very slowly, asking for small favors, asking them to do small things. Before they know it, they’re doing something unforgivable, something maddening.
Good at talking!!!! Seems kinda nice even! What! Doesn’t seem like my type of villain at all!!!
Pretty rational. Cares about the big picture. Doesn’t mind waiting for a decade before acting ( # the long game ).
He’s gonna literally die next year because he’s too stubborn & proud to surrender and I think that says a lot about him and his personality.
STYLE / FASHION / APPEARANCE.
Evan has pale eyes that seem to go from a dull grey to an soft blue, depending on the lighting. His hair is a sort of honey blonde, almost brown color, and he wears it short and meticulously styled. He also wears a neatly trimmed beard, on most days, but also sometimes shaves it off.
Mostly wears well pressed, dark suits for work.
Outside of work, Evan is the type of person to wear wool shirts and knitted sweaters in earthy tones. Mostly wears leather boots. Looks very wholesome!!!
CHARACTER INSPIRATIONS ( under construction tbh ).
QUOTES:
" his skin tasted of wine and his
voiced dripped of divinity;
you’re so foolish, little lamb.
nevermind, the story of Lucifer;
this is the story they shall speak of,
on how a man burned for his messiah” (x)
“ iv. you think of how, sometimes, he thrusts into you like feral, like animal, like redemption. you don’t have the heart to tell him he won’t find it here, don’t have the heart to tell him he’s damning you too. “ (x)
“ in case of flight, remember this:
icarus belongs not to the sun,
but to his drowning. “ (x)
“sunlight glinting off your skin,
the trick is to be hollow, really,
nothing inside, just empty.
I remind you not to fall like icarus,
but I forget you already have.” (x)
“apollo comes for you and he is
too bright too much too harsh too divine too
light. “ (x)
“ i. he bites your lower lip hard enough to draw blood and it comes out, dark and primal. everything is agonisingly slow and still - sometimes you forget he’s a warrior and he can go like this all day long. “ (x)
INFLUENCES:
a modern day dionysus - the same devilish smile, cheeky grins, the same tendency to corrupt, to ask that you do something unspeakable.
patch cipriano ( hush, hush ) - bit broody, very sly, always scheming. the fallen angel aesthetic.
kaz brekker ( six of crows ) - literally. cold and ruthless, cares little for morals. quick witted. always has a trick up his sleeve.
icarus - how he meets his end. always pushing it a little too far. some situations you can’t talk your way out of.
elian ( to kill a kingdom ) - the quick wit, the smooth talk, the deadly demeanor.
elijah mikaelson ( the vampire diaries ) - very controlling and cold. hardened emotions. ambitious and cruel. very clever.
clay haas ( quantico ) - polished, political, diabolical, a diplomat to his very core.
more to be added... later.... thats it for now
4 notes
·
View notes
Text
hello, i’m bea & this is my little bird of flight, külliki ozolinš. below the cut is a very awful introduction but if you would like to plot pls go ahead and give this a heart. külli is quickly becoming one of my favorite babies, so i’d love to write her more.
( GABRIELLA WILDE / CISFEMALE / SHE/HER ). KÜLLIKI OZOLIŅŠ WASN’T EXPECTING TO BE GIVEN A SECOND CHANCE AT LIFE. THE TWENTY-FOUR YEAR OLD LAST REMEMBERS LIVING IN THE 1950S IN TALLINN, ESTONIA. ONE THING THEY REMEMBER FROM THEIR PAST IS A MODEL AIRPLANE. THEY’VE BEEN DESCRIBED AS BEING RESOURCEFUL AND IMPULSIVE, BUT THAT IS TO BE EXPECTED SINCE THEY ARE A LEO.
trigger warnings: war, plane crash, death, talks of occupations. | pls let me know if I miss anything & I’ll add to the trigger warnings. I apologize in advance if I do miss anything!!
Also sorry it’s stupidly long, pls love me.
okay so bullet points bc I’m a lazy lad/i’m student teaching and took a nap for like four hours.
Külli was born in late July of 1932 in Tallinn, Estonia but she spent the first few years of her life in her mother’s hometown of Český Krumlov, Czechoslovakia. She held papers for both Estonia and Czechoslovakia. Her father was a proud Estonian pilot and her mother was a Czech musician and educator.
The family had a habit of moving between Tallinn and Český Krumlov, primarily in time with her father’s flight schedules. Regardless of which country they stayed in, Külli was well loved and educated. She spent many hours at the airfield, learning the ins and outs of every airplane that came across her path. She had a natural curiosity and affinity for the intricacies of flight. It was an art, and planes themselves were masterpieces.
In 1938, despite growing tensions in the world, Külli and her family made the trek back to Tallinn to visit her grandparents on her father’s side. Their health had been declining, and it had been several years since the family had made the journey to visit them. Unfortunately, they did not return to Czechoslovakia before the Nazis invaded and found themselves stuck in Estonia.
The family considered moving out of the capital city but that was where her father held work and her mother was able to find work tutoring. Soon they would find themselves under Soviet rule, while their second home in Czechoslovakia remained under German rule. Trapped between two aggressors, the family tried to build their life in Estonia under the USSR.
In the summer of 1941, the Nazis launched their invasion of the Soviet Union. Northern Estonia was the last to fall to the Germans, but with the joint Estonian-German army surrounding the capital, the Soviet rule ended and the Nazis took control.
Külli was 9 when the Germans successfully took control of Estonia, and she and her family were among those who did not welcome them with open arms, as they still held to their Czech heritage and grieved for the way their country had been overlooked by supposed allies.
The German occupation was also more personal and something Külli remember more than Soviet rule, because she was older. Losses of friends, unfair treatment, and cruelties were felt more deeply and with a larger understanding. She loathed the Germans and dreamed of the day they would be chased from both of her beautiful countries.
She and her family found themselves in a difficult spot politically, as they did not trust the West for their treatment of Czechoslovakia during the Munich agreement, they loathed the Nazis, but had faced hardship under unfair Soviet rule as well. They longed for a return to autonomy and independence, but would never see it in their lifetimes.
The Soviet Union returned to Estonia in the autumn of 1944, and it was all Külli would know until her death in 1956.
Külli found herself mixed up with intelligence forces when, in 1951 she tried to make the (illegal) trip back to Czechoslovakia. It was during this attempt that she was introduced to the Czech VZ as she had been nearly successful in her attempts.
Her position in the VZ quickly paired her with Aleksandr Láska. She made her abilities as a pilot known, and with the multitude of languages she could speak and an ability to fit in, she was trained for infiltration and flight missions.
Unlike Aleksandr, she did not covet the Soviet Union. She prayed for Czech independence, and did not believe in everything she was tasked with. Still, she became a skilled operative and worked well alongside her partner. Aleksandr quickly became her greatest love, and she trusted him even if she did not trust the USSR or the VZ.
In 1956, she was tasked with a late night pick up. She was to fill in for another pilot who had taken ill, even though the original plan had been to leave with Aleksandr. It was a routine pick up, one that should have had her back before dawn but instead there were system malfunctions and she lost control of the plane.
She tried to land it in a field, but it was a losing battle as she crashed into the ground, dying in the impact.
Now that she’s been given a second chance, and with the knowledge of Aleksandr’s death being work related and shortly after her own, she has become suspicious that the routine checks and the set up of the situation were not coincidence but purposeful. The only question on her mind is why. Was it the VZ that wanted one of their own dead, or the infiltration of another group? It’s unlikely that she’ll ever find out, but it’s something she wants to find out about anyway.
Now she’s living on her own in a little flat and in the process of looking for a new job. She needs something to keep herself busy, but is finding it difficult to put the past behind her, and even more difficult to live in a world where she’s afraid of the one thing that made her happier than anything else. She is not a flightless bird, and yet, her wings are squarely on the ground these days.
Possible connection ideas:
Honestly, I’d love for her to have a flatmate or neighbor.
Give me an Estonian and I would love you forever. Especially if it’s someone from her childhood who maybe found themselves moving somewhere elsewhere.
Are there any other flight fanatics around here? Give me someone trying to get her back on an airfield.
Coworkers are fun I just have to figure out her job still.
I’m 110% open to anything, please just come love my bab.
#decades:intro#( file://oaktree | about )#tw: war#tw: death#tw: plane crash#tw: occupations#tw: nazi mention
1 note
·
View note
Text
Flying away—two experiences flying outside the US
I am not referring to leaving. I am referring to flying in other countries away from home where customs, regulations and people are different. I have only flown in two other countries but each was an interesting experience in different ways. In Iran, where I spent a year Fulbright Grant teaching at Tehran University, life was a challenge in many ways. Language and culture were an obstacle to teaching. The challenge was dealing with obstacles, including the government, its bureaucracy, and its secret police. I would summarize it as a year of obstruction and frustration.
When I learned that there was a glider operation at Doshen Tappeh airport where civilians could fly, I decided that would be my relief from the university. I was to learn that obstruction and frustration prevailed in all aspects of Iranian life. There was some relief at the glider field in that there were many of us foreigners in the club. We all shared a mutual love of soaring. We could compare notes on what we had learned about overcoming the obstacles or just relieve stress by complaining to each other.
Flying anything in Iran, even a glider, is frustrating.
The glider club, like almost every activity in Iran, was supported and controlled by government bureaucracy, often with many nonsensical rules. The rules often seemed to be created to prevent enjoyment or accomplishment. Everything was supplied and controlled by the government. The support personnel, a winch crew, the maintenance staff, and the instructors employed by the government, seemingly had no interest in the activity and did not really understand the interest we had in soaring.
The operations chief changed frequently and the operation rules changed each time. It was rumored that each new chief got the job because of a mistake made somewhere else and the position was actually punishment. The new chief‘s sole concern was to have nothing go wrong in his new position, so he established very restrictive rules to avoid that. With each new arriving chief, all pilots would be required to do another check ride with an instructor. No previous flight checks were trusted. This used up a lot of good flying time. Often when thermal activity was good, either the winch crew would leave with the winch because it was time for tea (the national drink—chai, pronounced cha eee) or flying was cancelled by the chief because of “too much turbulence.”
Since all gliders had radios, you were constantly bothered by being asked what your altitude was. There was a weird rule that you had to be wearing a parachute if you were above a certain altitude. If you were flying without a chute and reported an altitude too high, you were told to come down. It was hot in Iran and chutes were a discomfort. Chutes are necessary when flying with many other gliders and collisions are possible. We seldom had many gliders in the air and none flying near each other so no chute was necessary.
This rule was circumvented by using a method developed by Fred Sharp, a Canadian with much experience in the Middle East and India. Fred said each time you arrive at the field, find out who the new chief is, and ask him repeatedly what the parachute altitude is. This was not so you would not forget, but that he wouldn’t forget what he told you and create a new one while you were in flight. If asked your altitude, you made sure your reply was an altitude below that. This could not be contradicted from the ground. In spite of all the obstacles at the glider field, it did help me survive everything else in Iran. at least for a year.
The other flying I did away from the US was twice in Switzerland, two years apart. I flew gliders at Grenchen in the western part of the country, adjacent to the 2000-foot Jura mountains near the French border. In spite of not being fluent in German, I could speak enough to be made translator on one occasion for a couple of other Americans there. The purpose was to tell them that all landings at Grenchen were to be full stall landings, not wheel landings. The checkouts were simple, brief, and approval was given by the universal word OK. I was then towed up by the mountains in a Schleicher K 8 glider to use the ridge lift.
On one of the occasions the wind was from France, so I was towed over the mountain ridge. I then discovered the wind was at an angle to the mountain face and not producing much lift. I could see pastures below and thought I would be landing out trying to avoid cows on the rollout. It would be a long trailer retrieve across the mountains back to the field.
I spotted a long, narrow ridge which had a spoon-shaped notch in one end that faced into the wind and I decided to see if this notch was producing any lift. I flew to where I suspected lift and fortunately found some. It was narrow and not very strong. I was able to climb in it by flying tight, steep circles. Each time I got to the altitude of the main mountain ridge, the lift died out. I had no other choice but to keep trying to use it for more altitude but the result was the same. After four attempts I got high enough that I thought I could clear the ridge and make it back to Grenchen.
I left the lift and headed directly for the ridge. I made it across but I startled a farmer cutting hay with a scythe in an alpine meadow by flying about fifty feet above his hayfield. The field sloped away toward Grenchen. I paralleled the slope until the mountain dropped almost vertically. Suddenly my altitude above the ground changed from fity feet to two thousand and a clear glide back to Grenchen airport.
I ate in the little airport restaurant and heard a comment made by another nearby diner that I always remember. He had just returned from an aerobatic flight in a Bücher Jungmeister biplane. It was not about flying. It was about my attempts at German and the local food. He spoke English about as well as I spoke German. I had ordered in German with a little hesitation so it was clear I was not a local. When the other diner was asked by the waiter how the food was, he replied in accented English, no doubt for my benefit, “For vat it vas… It vas aaalll right.” The food was simple but delicious, contrary to his remark. I have since often thought of using that in many restaurants that were not that good.
There were quite a few glider pilots who were there from elsewhere, other parts of Switzerland and also Germany. They had brought their gliders and were staying in a dormitory that had been built into a hangar. I arrived early one morning and found them eating breakfast at picnic tables outside the dormitory. One of them asked me where I was from. I told him America and added I was half Swiss and half German. I believe I said this in German: “ halb Schweizer, halb Deutcher.”
Flying gliders in Switzerland is a great way to learn about a foreign country.
This brought an immediate response from several of them, both Swiss and Germans. I heard “das ist unmöglich,” that’s impossible, and a good natured argument broke out among the whole group. It seemed to end with the Swiss telling the Germans that they would not be flying there if they were allowed to fly in their own country, without all the regulations imposed by the government. Besides, the Swiss said, it was better flying in Switzerland anyhow. I had inadvertently started a ruckus. I then remembered my mom, who was Swiss, and my dad, who was German, would kid each other the same way.
My checkout in a Super Cub in Switzerland was at Le Locle, a tiny town right on the French border. French was spoken in that area. There was a very nice, small airport there. I was there because I had met a Dutch girl, Desiree Vierheim, who was managing the desk of the hotel in La Chaux De Fonds, where I was staying. I was visiting there to attempt to have a clock I design produced. She knew of nearby places that she had not yet visited. I had a VW Squareback I bought and picked up in Germany to use and then ship home. She became my guide in the region as well as a translator. I provided transportation. She spoke at least five languages: Dutch, English, French, German, Spanish, and maybe Italian.
We went to Le Locle to a locally well known, excellent restaurant. While in Le Locle I spotted the airport. I asked her if she had ever flown in a small plane. She said no and was reluctant to try. The airport had a Super Cub and I had flown Super Cubs in America. I was checked out by a French-speaking instructor. The checkout was brief: a trip around the pattern and again the universal word OK on landing. During my checkout, Desiree had been convinced to go for a ride with me in the Cub by the airport manager. He convinced her I was a capable pilot and she would enjoy it.
We took off and flew along the Doubs River on the French border, viewing some beautiful country. At some point I attempted to turn back to the field and was disturbed to learn I could not budge the stick to use the ailerons to bank into the turn. It would move fore and aft, but not side to side. I began to worry and think both of how to use only the rudder for turns to control the aircraft for landing and if I should tell Desiree, who had initially been reluctant to fly, that we had a problem. Cubs have tandem seating and dual controls. I looked back at Desiree to see if she was aware of our problem and how she might be reacting, when I discovered what our problem was.
Desiree was not enjoying the flight as much as I was. I could see she was quite tense and had tightly pressed her legs together against the control stick. Desiree was the problem. When I was able to get her to relax and give control of the Cub back to me, we landed. She enjoyed the restaurant, which was excellent, much more than the flight. I had forgotten flying is not a joy and addiction that all of us share.
The post Flying away—two experiences flying outside the US appeared first on Air Facts Journal.
from Engineering Blog https://airfactsjournal.com/2020/10/flying-away-two-experiences-flying-outside-the-us/
0 notes
Text
Apocalypse Soon-Ish
I was tagged by @ubiquitouskitty asking what kinds of skills would make me an asset in the event of social collapse and Fury Road-level mayhem. Hoo boy here's the list: -In terms of physicality, I'm used to running and long-distance travel, especially on hikes through forested and alpine wilderness. My physical strength output in terms of lifting is lower than average for someone my height, but by god I can carry a pack with tent, bedding, and all the necessary survival tools I need for a whole day if it means being in the clear -Speaking of camping, I have both equipment and (more importantly) experience in camping in mountainous and forested areas, so I know what kinds of things are necessary for a good settling spot, how to properly treat cookware and avoid getting everything dirty within the first few days, and basic stuff like finding good water and staying away from possible predator territory. In terms of equipment, I both own and regularly use basic wilderness survival tools (compact cookware, a flint&steel) as well as some cheap yet valuable things such as water filtration tubes and neodymium magnets. Oh, and if that equipment isn't available, I can still make a burn bowl to boil clean drinking water and make a shelter from mud, sticks, and a few leaves affixed to a rocky overhang. -Archery. For the better part of 9 months I've been practicing more and more with traditional archery with a flatbow made of 100% hickory wood. All in all, I'd say I'm a much better shot than when I first started, and I know more about bows and arrows to the point where I started fletching my own arrows a few months back. Knowing how to properly shoot a bow is one thing, but knowing how the weapon actually works and how to both maintain and create materials to sustain the hobby is a much richer and I'd say valuable skillset. Only downside is that I'm not super quick on draw-and-release because I've been practicing more for accuracy than anything, but hey, take when you can get, eh? -Firearm experience is a very VERY new concept for me, as I've only shot a firearm twice in my life. Of course, I have experience with both BB and pellet pistols to the point where I can hit a plastic water bottle 30 yards out, but that doesn't count for actual firearms. Not the best shot when it comes to rifles, but better than the average first-timer with a handgun. Again, my only experience is through BB and pellet pistols, but with those I'm pretty confident in myself. -I've had experience in carpentry using traditional tools, though I know my way around a modern workshop. Through both my grandfather and my father I have had a basic mechanical understanding of furniture, housing, and other carpentry-based craft, and I think that's helped in my understanding of making shelters when a tent isn't available in the wilderness. However, if it comes time to build fortifications or just a chair for an elderly person caught in the shit, then I'm your guy. Who needs a jigsaw or a fancy wood-sculpting machine when you've got some chisels, a pedal-turned lathe, and a few good saws, hammers, hand-drills, and screwdrivers? Oh, and I have enough metallurgy experience to make nails from small bits of iron using Viking-era technique of pulling-pinching-punching. -Electrical experience isn't huge for me, but through my electroplating internship I've picked up a bit on how to run circuits that don't fry the rectifier you're using for power. I also think that my chemical knowledge from the same job will be helpful. When all your War Rigs are rusty from driving in the sand, maybe you'll need some chrome or zinc playing to stave off corrosion? If so, I know the chemical makeups of some commercially successful baths and the places to get said chemicals if all goes to shit. Chemistry experience also helps if you want to know how to neutralize certain toxic chemicals getting on your skin. Rule #1: washing acid off is cool, but caustic will take skin no matter what you do unless you neutralize that shit first. Sulfuric acid also will take skin if you try to wipe it with a paper towel without rinsing it COMPLETELY first. -I may or may not have started a fight club my freshman year in college and I may or may not have participated in a fight or two. Turns out that while I don't punch as hard as the next guy, I'm almost always faster, know where to hit, and have enough drive and stamina in me where I can just keep going until the other one gets tired. Don't matter the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog. I guess my black belt in taekwondo helps in regards to speed and vulnerable areas :D -I know a shit ton about wildlife. I love animals. If there's an animal somewhere that someone doesn't know how to deal with, they could end up dead. You don't try to intimidate a big brown bear, but black bears it might work. You don't fuck with the diseases that coons and geese can carry. And it's nice to know what kinds of birds go after which kinds of seed and food, and how to avoid pests in crops. Capsaicin is a good deterrent for mammals if you're raising birds and don't want coons getting in your seed! I think that having some basic knowledge of the creatures that live alongside us would help in surviving the natural world and not wind up hurt or dead because you didn't respect the boundaries of certain animals. Giant anteaters will fuck you up, man. -I taught Sunday school to kids for years and want to be a teacher in the somewhat near future, and I think that education will be an important tool in a post-contemporary world. Not only in the matters of faith, but also in things like science and language. LITERACY!! I'd like to think that I would be effective in keeping younger members of our species engaged and invested in learning so that they can have a broader understanding of the world both as it is and as it was. History contains useful lessons in dealing with other people and protecting the natural environment, and I think that these lessons are important to share with children. -My experience teaching kids comes from a religious background, and I'm writing an honors thesis in the religious studies department in my university as part of my second major, so I think that something people may not consider is the role of spiritual guidance when all goes to shit. I'm not Catholic myself, I will not pretend to have a deep connection to the divine if I have not found it yet, but being able to cite examples of religious people and events that can help console and lend guidance to those who question their faith is something I think may be overlooked -I'm okay at understanding and speaking Spanish, have basic one-year experience in German, and know enough Mandarin Chinese from 3rd-10th grade, so that may come in handy if there's nobody else around that has more applicable experience. That about wraps it up. I tag @cripotle @guardianlioness and @neurodoodle, have fun y'all.
2 notes
·
View notes
Note
all of them
woooooaaaaah thats a lot but thanks thatll keep me busy for a while!!
1) What images do you have set for your desktop/cell phone wallpapers?
me and my bf
2) Have you ever had a crush on a teacher?
nah
3) What was your last text message?
“nice :D thats my boy haha”
4) What do you see yourself doing in 10 years?
oh god i really dont wanna think about it i mean ill be 30 then meaning ill be an old ugly hag with nothing to live for :/
5) If you could be anywhere else right now, where would you be?
somewhere warm where ive never been before or with someone i love
6) What was your coolest Halloween costume?
i went as magenta from the rocky horror picture show last year that was really cool
7) What was your favorite 90s show?
i didnt watch tv in the 90s yet, the only things i know are some 90s anime but i do really like those generally
8) Who was your last kiss?
my boyfriend
9) Have you ever been stood up?
nah
10) Favorite ice cream flavor?
uhh i like nut flavours and mango
11) Have you been to Las Vegas?
nah 12) Your favorite pair of shoes?
brown brogues with thick lighter soles i love them i cant wait for it to be warm enough to wear them again 13) Honestly, have you ever cheated on your significant other?
no 14) What is your favorite fruit?
figs!!! i also rlly like mangoes and peaches
15) Have you talked to anyone on tumblr that you could see yourself dating/having sex with? If possible?
nah
16) Are you into hookups? Short or long term relationships?
still havent figured up how exactly a hookup is defined, generally both can be p nice i guess but i gotta really really REALLY like a person to even consider a relationship
17) Do you smoke? If so, what?
yeah tobacco and a fun stick every now and then
18) What do you do to get over your anger?
nothing i should probably figure out some method for that sooner or later haha
19) Do you believe in God?
nah
20) Does the person you’re in love with know it?
yes
21) Favorite position?
as in sex position? spooning and that legs on shoulders thing 22) What’s your horoscope sign?
cancer :/
23) Your fears?
MAKING A WRONG DECISION!!!!, aging, missing out on stuff
24) How many pets do you have? What kind?
2 cats 25) What never fails to turn you on?
woah idk man
26) Your idea of a perfect first date?
im not really into that whole dating concept but lets say dinner and drinks
27) What is something most people don’t know about you?
dont think there is anything tbh
28) What makes you feel the happiest?
the people i love and the beauty in the world
29) What store do you shop at most often?
grocery store probably haha
30) How do you feel about oral? Giving and/or receiving?
its nice but neither is really like my fav thing ever you feel me? 31) Do you believe in karma?
nah
32) Are you single?
no
33) Do you think flowers or candy are a better way to apologize?
depends on what the person in question likes better
34) Are you a good swimmer?
i guess? i used to swim a lot as a kid
35) Coffee or Tea?
while tea has more to offer taste-wise i need coffee to function so if i had to decide on one for the rest of my life im gonna have to go with coffee
36) Online shopping or shopping in person?
shopping in person
37) Would you rather be older or younger than your current age?
younger
38) Cats or Dogs?
cats
39) Are you a competitive person?
oh i can be
40) Do you believe in aliens?
yeah duh
41) Do you like dancing?
kinda but i have zero sense of rhythm :/
42) What kind of music to you listen to?
thats a broad field lmao i esp like classic rock but it ranges from anime music to opera so idk
43) What is your favorite cartoon character?
homer simpson? haha
44) Where are you from?
the glorious danube monarchy
45) Eat at home or eat out?
eat out when im with others and at home when alone
46) How much more social are you when you’re drunk?
like 5 more social
47) What was the last thing you bought for yourself?
i gotta be really stingy rn but it was energy drinks 48) Why do you think your followers follow you?
i have no fuckin clue
49) How many hours do you sleep at night?
8+
50) What worries you most about the future?
everything hahaha
51) If you had a friend that spoke to you the same way you speak to yourself, how long would you be friends?
we wouldnt i guess lmao
52) Are you happy with yourself?
no
53) What do you wish you didn’t know?
there is nothing i think
54) What big lesson could people learn from your life?
dont drink on an empty stomach and dont try to be yourself ever
55) If you could live in any home on a television series, what would it be?
oooh thats tough
56) What’s your favorite Website?
no clue youtube??
57) What’s the habit you’re proudest of breaking?
i have never broken a single habit in my entire life
58) What was your most recent trip of more than 50 miles?
woah no clue whas that teneriffa a year ago?? woah its been long apparently
59) What’s the best bargain you’ve ever found at a garage sale or thrift store?
once at an anime convention i got a limited edition manga (only 500!!) for like 2 euros
60) What do you order when you eat Chinese food?
i always try to order something different but im usually into stuff involving noodles beef or seafood
61) If you had to be named after one of the 50 states, which would it be?
i dont know all the states
62) If you had to teach a subject to a class, what would it be?
german as a first language
63) Favorite kind of chips?
not so fond of chips tbh
64) Favorite kind of sandwich?
avocado toast? salmon? tuna? caprese? idk
65) Which do you use more often, the dictionary or the thesaurus?
no idea
66) Have you ever been stung by a bee?
no
67) What’s your favorite form of exercise?
strength training i fuckin hate cardio
68) Are you afraid of heights?
not particularly
69) What’s the most memorable class you’ve ever taken?
no idea
70) What’s your favorite breakfast?
just an apple or something
71) Do you like guacamole?
they call me avocado girl
72) Have you ever been in a physical fight?
yeah as a kid
73) What/who are you thinking about right now?
my bf
74) Do you like cuddling?
yeah!!
75) Are you holding onto something you need to let go of?
dont think so
76) Have you ever experienced one of your biggest fears?
i am in fact aging as we speak
77) Favorite city you’ve been to?
prague, vienna, lisbon and berlin are the first to come to mind
78) Would you break the law to save a family member?
yeah i guess
79) Talk about an embarrassing moment?
once i puked into my crushes garden on his birthday it was very funny
80) Are there any causes you strongly believe in?
nah
81) What’s the worst injury you’ve ever had?
had to get stitches on my lip once bc i fell on the playground :/
82) Favorite day of the week?
friday!
83) Do you consider yourself sexually open minded?
sorta yeah
84) How do you feel about porn?
not my cup of tea
85) Which living celebrity would you like to know?
bob dylan maybe??
86) Who was your hottest ex?
only have 1
87) Do you want/have kids?
please no
88) Has anyone ever told you that they wanted to marry you?
nah
89) Do you get easily distracted?
oh yeah and how
90) Ass or titties?
lmao
91) What is your favorite word?
i have several but most of them are in german
92) How do you feel about tattoos?
i really like them and i do wanna get one but not anytime soon bc i dont have any concrete plans yet and absolutely no cash
93) Do you have any pets?
yeah
94) How tall are you?
160 cm :(
95) How old are you?
20 :(
96) 3 physical features you get complimented on a lot?
eyes, figure, breasts
97) Is there anything you’re really passionate about?
love and beauty??
98) Do you have trust issues?
i dont think so
99) Do you believe in love at first sight?
nah
100) What are some words that you live by? Why?
do everything as much as possible but also dont make a wrong decision ever
it makes everything very complicated and quite a mess
3 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
randomthoughtslvl1
Random Thoughts
xavionmarlo
Fullestop
akafred32092
Um...Yeah...So...
mandylove1000
Mandy Love