Awards, Awards!

My first blog at Blogspot, Bonde Andando, is now running for an award: TOP BLOG.

It's been with surprise that I got the stamp. I was not told a word about by whose appointment my blog is now running for a Top Blog award. I have no previous experience whatsoever with awards, and never thought I ever would. Maybe I have already got secret friends somewhere the blogosphere over, who knows?

The surprise was no doubt a very pleasant one. Lucky me, I thought. I'm not an important blogger. Not a famous one, either. True, Bonde Andando enjoys a relatively small - however faithful - readership. But I just can’t help thinking of my blog in its own right as average, just average.

The themes dealt with therein are average. My wording is plain. There's neither any great depth nor any far reach ever to be found anywhere in my text. It’s nothing much, in all senses, whatever the viewpoint. I like to write poems and I post some there, but I never thought of myself as being much of a poet. In fact, I feel I'm more of a free time rhymester. I’m just someone who likes to scan and rhyme lines exclusively for the fun I find about the whole thing.

The blog is not visually beautiful, which may represent one attraction of less. Just words, just text, plain text. I never exploited the tools available, most of them I haven't even taken the time to learn how to use.

Only the readership of Bonde Andando I deem really special. It's nothing short of an asset to the blog. A relatively small gathering of fellow bloggers from all walks of life, with all sorts of backgrounds generously share their opinions by commenting my posts. They give me much support by reading and liking whatever I write and then by telling me so through their comments.

But what if the blog ends up a winner? Considering such a possibility - no matter how realistic it is - is just natural now.

Well, in case my Brazilian "streetcar on the move" ever comes to be awarded, then I will in all likelihood start viewing the blog as somehow outstanding on the account of such award, though still as average as always. Something like an "outstandingly average" blog.

On what will come next there is of course no telling.

Come what may, I'll always acknowledge here, there and everywhere an indebtedness to my readers, my commenters, all my virtual friends.

On New Tricks and Old Dogs

If there are old dogs that still can learn new tricks, I'm certainly one.

True, my fluency at German, at typing, and at sheet music reading and at God knows what else don’t seem to be improving at all these days, but I just refuse to lay the blame for that on the fact that I'm already in my 50's.

I'm not a lazybones either - a conclusion too many people who know me seem to be so ready to jump at.

Those who don’t have the slightest idea of how much effort it takes to master … no matter what (especially when there is no money and no one around to help) will in all likelihood look down on your initial efforts, shrug at your progress and frown at your laboriously worked end results. It’s no use to try to explain a thing to them. No matter what you say or do – which will never be understood at all – you can only be doing the wrong thing, the wrong way, at the wrong time and for the wrong reason.

In the capacity of my own personal trainer for a lifetime, however, I know that I still can learn new things and exactly how fast, and I also know exactly what I want to learn and what for.

I got used to assessing on my own all the resources at hand, the skills and limitations I have, at what clip I can get ahead, in a nutshell, everything. And I find myself now as determined to learn as I've always been and always will. Drawbacks do exist. Stagnant phases too. It's simply natural.

The experience I enjoy now with French came as a windfall. I've been speaking French almost on a daily basis recently, which never happened to me before. I’m delighted. It’s always been no travels, no French speakers, nothing at all but my readings. No wonder my spoken French is still a little stiff, no wonder I still produce stilted utterances and make unreasonable mistakes. Lack of practice, that's all. Readings alone can – and do – work wonders to someone's knowledge of a foreign language, but nothing can replace practice. Now I’m finally practicing. Something I find nothing short of serendipitous.

However, I’m no longer blogging much. My typing is still too sorry. My music is not being sufficiently practiced and I'm not making enough money yet, either. There isn’t really much to be preened on. I’m just musing.

In French, too. Why not?

My contact with french is old indeed. My eyes have been fed with much French in print ed words for longer than four decades. This gave me in the long run conditions to express myself well enough in the language.

I've been on the whole self-taught. In the beginning, cheap manuals with indications on how to pronounce more often than not misleading. French songs of the day (most thereof I still like to hear) were not understood for lack of ear trainig, nem the same for the few films I could see.

I have never lived in France (or any French-speaking country), never even been there. Never lived with French people nor even with fluent speakers. Never spoke French on a daily basis for any period of time or kept correspondence. So my writings in French naturally may sound bookish but that just can't be helped. My knowledge of argot is really poor. The literary language is what I know better.

If you view a vocabulary as something built overnight you just won't believe mine. When I read my French-Portuguese dictionary some twenty years ago (while reading i scored at every page the number of existing entries and that of the words I knew, ranging from none to all, accordingly). I knew a little over 61% of them. The balance of vocabulary forgotten and learned over these two decades must be positive, because today I know much more French than I did then.

It's not without difficulties that I write in French today, and the same holds true for Spanish, Italian, English or even Portuguese, my mothertongue. It never will. Many doubts still arise when I communicate in French today, and the same holds true for Spanish, Italian, English or even Portuguese. They always will. I still make many mistakes in French and ... You know.

To keep fit, I need to train. So I just write. Nobody in my acquaitance can be a reader, but there is the blogosphere, always affording incredible interactive possibilities. That's why I starded another blog: En Français Aussi. Pourquoi pas?

If you can read French, welcome to http://neo-orkuteiro-pourquoipas.blogspot.com/

À bientot

On me

Brazilian, 52, divorced, children and grand children.

I work professionally with English, French, Italian, Spanish, Latin and Portuguese.

I have never denied myself the pleasure of reading in many languages. In fact, I have been reading a good deal for decades on end, and of course amassed a something of a fund of knowledge.

I'm really no intellectual, no scholar, but I have an idea of the historical evolution of all languages I work with and some contact with their respective literatures.

I appreciate good anapestic tetrameters like "For the moon never beams without binging me dreams" (E. Poe) or "Les parfums ne font pas frissoner sa narine" (A. Rimbaud) and lots of others.

The benefits of lengthy reading may be subtle. I enjoy a certain degree of confidence whenever I write no matter what in no matter which language, one I don't think likely at all without some intimacy with texts from the best authors.

When finding the precise word or turn of expression will make a difference, there is much pleasure in searching for it and much reward in finding it. I don't think I would ever know what such pleasures and rewards completely unrelated with money are like without my readings.

I don't think I would be able to explain (opr even notice, for that matter) too many a distillation of choice found in a line or another without my readings.

I have been recommending very experienced writers to younger translators (like Eugene Nida, Garcia Yebra, Paulo Rónai, John Catford, Eric Partridge, George Mounin, just to mention some). Those who actually read what I told them to must have felt the difference and know what I'm talking about with perfect understanding.

I also recommend fetching copies of the Bible in all languages of interest and reading all of them, cover to cover. Such an experience will make a difference, and what an one, I tell you. This book is believed to have been authored by God himself, with humans as "ghost writers". You'll be greatly rewarded for having done such reading, regardless of any faith, let alone religion. The Bible is also just a book availabeble to every man willing to read. Whatever your case is, you're likely to find there a very well translated work, if not a masterpiece of translation, too often the work of a lifetime. Reading it really pays.

Good dictionaries and assorted reference works can also be read through and actually doing this proves in the long run nothing short of a very rewarding idea.

In the long foreword to his Plays Pleasant, G. B. Shaw says: "I could explain my plays, if I chose, but those who misunderstood the plays will misunderstand the explanation ten times more".

One of the most fascinating aspects of my profession is that no matter how much I learn, I am confronted with my ignorance on an everyday basis. No matter how much vocabulary I acquire and grammar I master, I am always introduced to new knotty problems, always putting my tens of thousands of hours of reading to shame. That is why I can resist preening too much on my "fund of knowledge", as it were.

Mistakes do happen and to err is human (and to lay the blame on anything like a computer program is still more so). To make my work as neat as I can make it, I endeavor not to be too "human" when I translate.

Italian Eyes

You've been so far
Beyond my reach
That long past beach
How far you are!

Italian eyes
That made me love
Forever lost
How far, how far!

Your eyes I'll see
For life, you bet
In memory
To my regret

Inside my mind
I still have you
And deep inside
The pain is true

Who's out there?

Welcome comments have long ceased to come to this and unwelcome ones never came (I'm in doubt now - should I thank or regret?).

I'm all too left to myself here with this blog meant to fetch me readers the blogosphere over.

This blog is certainly visible virtually everywhere now and so I tell you all, folks, that feeling ignored by the whole world has a certain intrinsic grandeur, for sure, not the kind I have first envisaged, though.

The girl who gave me the boat photo has told us all that the story connected therewith will remain untold by not saying a word about it. Readers who once dropped there and then apparently went God knows whereto for good since they never came back don't seem to care much, either.

Aren't I right in feeling forsaken? Whatever the case I just can't help feeling so. Upon my word, I hate feeling like that and being as much of an idiot as telling you so is the sole explanation I can find for having told I feel forsaken. Especially when I take into account the fact that I still expect to be read. Well, in case no one else reads this blog I won't merely feel forsaken, but will have actually been.

Can I withstand so much? Of course yes, I lie to myself (in utter bewilderment, since I hate to the limit of my strength all lies, liars and lying alike) while the mere though gives me an impression of actual forsakenness that's almost unbearable.

Is anyone out there? Is anyone out there?

On the Wing

The following poem I wrote this year and posted in another blog, Veleidades, where I also gave a literal "translation" of it into Portuguese, without any concern for the formal elements, just to give an idea of what it is about for those readers whose English is not fluent.
I don't consider the renderings into a language whatever of something an author wrote himself in some other language whatever translations. I take them for originals in their own right. That was exactly the case, as I wrote then.

Now, the poem:

I don’t know what you think,
I don’t know what you want
I don’t know what you need,
I don’t know what to say

I sometimes think you think
I am not what you want
I am not what you need
Which you don’t want to say

If you do, you may lose
Altogether with me
This man, whom you could choose
To make happy and free

Well, while sipping your drink
You were charming, blithe, pure
There’s much fun, don’t you think?
In all that, to be sure

There's a fact in my eye
Unbelievably true
I can’t easily lie
Let alone lie to you

So, next time when I stay
Anywhere you don’t see
Will you call just to say
You’ve been thinking of me?

I am home, here comes spring
In the sky, what a blue
Look! May heart’s on the wing
All the way to meet you