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Meaning in Translation

How does one create a context for understanding in translation when words can have a multiplicity of meanings in one language and a single meaning in another language?

Ideas require the specificity of definition with words in order to be fully comprehended in all spheres of sensation, but what happens when there is no specificity to be had in the translation of a word into an idea?

What is immediately lost?  Subtlety?  Humor?  Context?  Frames of innate understanding?

As the world crumbles in space and time how it is possible for nations — let alone people of the world — to agree on anything important that involves words and meanings and definitions that pull us beyond the universal human myth of shared beauty and aesthetic?

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Searching for Meaning and Relevance

When you do a search on the internet, are you more often looking for meaning or relevance? We search for: Meaning in others and relevance in our thoughts.

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No Bad News

Janna is fond of replying to the question — “Do you want the bad news first or the good news first?” — by saying “There is no bad or good, you have to deal with it all.”

That’s an incredibly mature way of dealing with life.

I am not quite so mature. 

I always prefer the Bad News first because that is obviously the most conditional and powerful cudgel the teller of the news hopes use to influence your behavior:  Get the chit out of the way so you can enjoy the cream.

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When Words Go Wrong

Is a writer an author or just a fixer?

Is it possible words can go wrong?

Or is only the one who fixes words against each other to blame if context and meaning are skewed in understanding?

How can we possibly begin to comprehend each other in the language of a common tongue if words can have different meanings based on position in a sentence and the character of the fixer?

Do words ever have a proper ending?  Or do they just eternally float in space waiting for new interpretations, inspirations and analysis by boring minds?

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Do Books Create Sound?

In a previous article — Audio Books: Is Hearing Reading? — we asked aloud if listening to a book with your ears provided an identical experience as reading one with your eyes.

Continue reading → Do Books Create Sound?

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Blog Depression in Fourteen Million

Do blogs create democracy and foment The Citizen Journalist?

Or are all bloggers just begging the wind?

Here are some sobering numbers reported on The McLaughlin Group over the weekend:

  • 140,000 new blogs started each day
  • One blog is created every second
  • 14 million new blogs are started a year

Is there a point to blogging any longer or will the little people with the small — but important — voices be drowned out by the traditional Big Media sites who will suck all the bandwidth and chew up all the pertinent search returns?

Is the Golden Age of Blogging now dead?

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Memory or Meme or Me?

Which comes first:  The Memory or the Meme or Me?

The meme — the invisible sharing of knowledge — comes before the memory.  The exchange of thoughts and ideas creates the expectation of moments and the living makes the shared memory.

Continue reading → Memory or Meme or Me?

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Inevitable Us and the United We

The world requires us.

We are inevitable.

We become not what we want — but what others desire of us.

If were were unnecessary, we would not be here.

What, then, do we do with this complicated life when the risk of throwing it away outweighs the rewards of righteousness?

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Text is Tricksy and I am Not Kidding

Know this universal warning:  Beware of words and their meaning!  Words are tricksy.  Text is culturally malleable!

A UK associate and I exchanged email the other day.  I live in the USA.  He lives in the UK.

Continue reading → Text is Tricksy and I am Not Kidding

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The Definition of A Dirty Old Man

As men age, I wonder exactly when the moment hits and they forever cross the line into being a “Dirty Old Man” after an inappropriate joke or offensive comment is made in the company of a younger woman.

Continue reading → The Definition of A Dirty Old Man