Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

Women who want to conquer (and beat) men on their own territories, I do love the idea! It is also true that I’m said to be a feminist (and not for any reason).

You’re not the only one, Sarah.  The thing that stood out to me (among many others in this muddling article) was this:

No wonder people get muddled. So this is a little plea for the sexist alpha male – the one we all secretly think isn’t as dreadful as he’s made out to be. Isn’t it time that we gave him a break from the full force of our disapproval? We live in a furtive sort of society where lots of women fancy men they feel they shouldn’t and many men go through life pretending to be a great deal sweeter and more feminine than they actually are, because they’ve been told it’s the only way to be.

It’s unhealthy, really - smoke and mirrors masking the unavoidable fact that, underneath it all, women prefer manly men, even ones who make sexist jokes; and men prefer womanly women, even ones who whinge about being fat. Perhaps that’s a terribly self-hating and sexist thing to say. Or perhaps it’s just the truth.

Sexist and self-hating, yes. I just *love* how she wants us to forgive the Alpha male because it’s what all we silly females secretly want. I think she’s trying to make a comparison of Alpha males and Feminists but I don’t think she ever pulls it off too successfully except to say they make money than perhaps Beta males and Beta women.

But, honestly, reading this article made me go Huh? in several places.

Britain fell in love with Gene Hunt, the hulking great throwback in the BBC series Life on Mars, which was set in the 1970s. On paper the character was entirely despicable; in full flow he made his intelligent, evolved, sensitive sidekick look like a ladyboy.

Was she watching the same show, or the same internet, that I am? Gene Hunt was amusing, but as the saying goes, I wouldn’t touch him with HER ladyparts. Meanwhile, one of the biggest sex symbols in Britain? Dorky, intellectual, sci-fi-loving, weighs-100-lbs.-soaking-wet David Tennant. Whatever, lady. Go clutch your pearls and take a pay cut.

Wait, I know!  So’s we can participate in the “big dialogue of literature” and let loose our bonds of restraining ignorance we need to get ourselves a whole mess of those pron vending machines like they have in…oh, a whole mess ‘o countries.  That will totally get us on the same, uh, page as our more literarily enlightened peers. 

Great plan, yes?

I think she’s trying to make a comparison of Alpha males and Feminists

Ohhhhhh, is that what she was trying to do?  Lord, I’ve never blinked nor ran my hands through my hair in a confused manner so much in my life.  You guys should see me.  I look ridiculous.

I’m on read number 2.  I’m convinced comprehension will dawn upon repetition.  Wish me luck.

Somewhere in there confidence, asshattery, and sexism are being tossed together into a WTF salad and I can’t put my finger on the radicchio.

I think that the radicchio may be the number of logical fallacies in her argument.

(The descriptions of the various logical fallacies below come from Dr. Michael C. Labossiere, the author of a Macintosh tutorial named Fallacy Tutorial Pro 3.0 on the Nizkor site.  © Copyright 1995 Michael C. Labossiere.):

Fallacy #1:  Appeal to Belief
1. Most people believe that a claim, X, is true.
2. Therefore X is true.

Many people believe that sexist, blustering, obnoxious behavior in a man (as implied by Knight’s argument) equates “alpha male”, therefore it is “true” and should be considered a rational jumping off point of the rest of her argument.

Fallacy #2: A combination of Composition
1. Individual F things have characteristics A, B, C, etc.
2. Therefore, the (whole) class of F things has characteristics A, B, C, etc.

Confusing Cause and Effect
1. A and B regularly occur together.
2. Therefore A is the cause of B.

and

Hasty Generalization
Sample S, which is too small, is taken from population P.
Conclusion C is drawn about Population P based on S.

Even if we give her the benefit of the doubt in her observations, if she only observed a subgroup of alpha males that were simultaneously asshats, that doesn’t necessarily make all alpha males asshats.

Fallacy #3:  Begging the Question
1. Premises in which the truth of the conclusion is claimed or the truth of the conclusion is assumed (either directly or indirectly).
2. Claim C (the conclusion) is true.

Pretty much her whole argument.  And speaking of the conclusion, it contains yet another logical fallacy:

Fallacy #4:  Appeal to Tradition
1. X is old or traditional
2. Therefore X is correct or better.

Because, you know, when men were men (as opposed to those weak, “whinging” pansies who actually bring you a hot cuppa when you have those pesky cramps) and women were women (as opposed to those ball-busting, demanding broads who actually expect to not have to put up with jokes about her boobs, funny or unfunny, when she’s at work), we all were so much happier, weren’t we?

Now, I can’t say for sure that above represents the entirety of the raddicchio in Knight’s “WTF salad” of an argument, but they could be the crunchy bits that you’re trying to dig out of your teeth.

Tina C., I do believe you’ve just done more for me than my logic professor managed in an entire semester.

Rock on.

Tina C., that was awesome!

SB Sarah-  your “WTF Salad” Made my whole day!

Tina C, you are my hero!  You should email her that list and see what she has to say. hahahaha. My day is now complete.

By the by, to me, Alpha males are simply those that have the capability to lead others. Some are asshats, some are not. AND, I will say, I am NOT attracted to men who are asshats, no matter what they look like, just as I’m not attracted to ignoramouses (sp?). I have, a number of times, chosen not to associate with a good looking man who was an alpha asshat, just as I’ve chosen to disassociate myself from good looking men who have dumb ass shit falling out of their mouths.

yes88: I’ll say yes to 88 beta males, please.

Thanks Marsha & Rachel R.!  I have to say that I loved my logic class.  Of course, I’m also the weirdo that actually liked doing research papers, too.

Or maybe the whole thing is just Ms Knight’s roundabout way of hitting up her obnoxious alpha boss for a pay raise.

And while we’re on the subject—what does any of that have to do with the letters of a 17th century Spanish nun (which actually sound quite interesting, BTW.)  Was that part of another article that got stuck in the wrong place, or did Ms Knight forget her punchline?

what does any of that have to do with the letters of a 17th century Spanish nun (which actually sound quite interesting, BTW.)

I was wondering that, too.

I just snorted hot coffee through my nose, not just once:

you suck wookie ass. I got your big dialogue right here

But twice:

Somewhere in there confidence, asshattery, and sexism are being tossed together into a WTF salad and I can’t put my finger on the radicchio.

Brava, Sarah! Brava! You are on quite the roll this morning.

Now, off to read how to make WTF salad…

So ... according to this article manly man = asshat, but it’s our fault because we like him that way and reward him for it. Good to know. I’ll go out right this moment and tell my husband he’s a nancy boy because he isn’t a sexist pig. Hopefully he’ll get right to work on that, because I MUST have a manly man. In fact, I shall sally forth into the world with a mission! I shall inform any man doing something patently un-asshole like that he is a “ladyboy”. Just imagine all the violence I’ll be helping to stamp out!

Gene Hunt was amusing, but as the saying goes, I wouldn’t touch him with HER ladyparts.

THANK YOU! Cause ... eeeeewwww.

And while we’re on the subject—what does any of that have to do with the letters of a 17th century Spanish nun (which actually sound quite interesting, BTW.) Was that part of another article that got stuck in the wrong place, or did Ms Knight forget her punchline?

I wondered that myself. I had to go back and reread a bit to make sure I didn’t miss something. I think she was writing two articles at once and got her endings crossed. Somewhere out there is a really interesting article with a really effed up ending.

I think that’s the second part of her comments section. I’ve seen that somewhere else too (Observer or Telegraph, not sure). There’s one main comment and then one or more short snippets about other topics underneath.

When I read India Knight’s piece I couldn’t help wondering if someone was attacking Jeremy Clarkson again and they felt they had to defend him.

Woops, sorry. I was replying to this: “what does any of that have to do with the letters of a 17th century Spanish nun (which actually sound quite interesting, BTW.) Was that part of another article that got stuck in the wrong place, or did Ms Knight forget her punchline? “

OK, just got through the Knight article and now I need a couple of aspirin. Maybe a merlot. It’s only 7:30am.

Wheesht.

Re: the Nobel prize article. I winced when the head of the U.S. National Book Foundation is quoted as saying,

“Put him in touch with me, and I’ll send him a reading list.”

That “you come to me” attitude isn’t doing us any favors.

It’s unhealthy, really - smoke and mirrors masking the unavoidable fact that, underneath it all, women prefer manly men, even ones who make sexist jokes; and men prefer womanly women, even ones who whinge about being fat. Perhaps that’s a terribly self-hating and sexist thing to say. Or perhaps it’s just the truth.

GRRRRR. I’m really not a fan of India Knight. I read her novel Don’t you want me and it literally made my head explode from the rampant asshattery.

Hehehe, Horace Engdahl is funny. Don’t worry, nobody takes him seriously in his home country. Much.
Swedish literature suffers from celebrity navelgazing, “true stories” about the life of drug addicts/incest victims/generally whiny types, blogs-gone-books and endless, depressing mystery series featuring alcoholic cops with marriage problems and worldwide trafficking conspiracies and with some shallow political analysis/satire thrown in for good measure. There.

From Charlotte Moore The Guardian, Saturday May 25 2002(Ziggy’s link)

Knight’s flow of wisecracks and her cute line in adverbs - friendlily, ploddily, gruntily, bummily - can’t disguise the lack of heart, of genuine hilarity, of fresh air; she captures nothing of the glory of women in their prime. Don’t You Want Me ? I’m afraid I don’t.

Wow!  And the above is one of the nicest comments about the book in the whole review!

I think I’ll pass.

Well, technically, the United States is insular. I mean, our neighbors are Mexico and Canadra, and there’s, what a thousand miles between those borders? One time in high school, a German exchange student was being a snob about how he knew three languages whereas we knew one, so I pulled down the world map and said,

“Look, Robert, here is France. They speak French there.

And look, here’s Germany, they speak German.

Here’s Italy, they speak Italian.

Here’s Poland, they speak Polish.

Now look over here, on North America. Here’s Wyoming. They speak English there.

Here’s California—guess what, they speak English over there, too.

Here’s Alabama, where we are. You might have noticed the dominance of English around here.

Here’s New York—they speak English, too.

And here’s Canada—finally we run into another country….And they speak English there.

Seriously, Robert, multilingual skills are not that important here. If we could go four hundred or even a thousand miles and run into a place where the majority of people spoke other languages, we’d learn those languages.”

I mean, I normally try to get along with the foreign exhange students, because they’re having to get along with us crazy Americans, but Robert was a genuine ass.

And then I get into college and meet a couple more Germans, and it turns out they’re pretty cool people.

You know, I’m torn. I’m really, really torn.

Part of me shares the outrage—first off, dude—you wanna talk ignorance? Come on. Like it or not, we’ve got great writers here absolutely beautiful writers, worthy of any accolade or award.

But then again, take a look at what Augenbraum (head of the organization that gives out the National Book Award) said, that he assumed that Mr. Engdahl had read little of American literature outside the mainstream.

Oh, ouch—yet another diss. But not altogether surprising—“mainstream” lit is more than accustomed to being slammed by the American literary establishment. Kind of interesting to see the shoe on the other foot—the American literary establishment being slammed by a European for, in essence, the very things they tend to slam mainstream lit for.

Which, once again, begs the question, who the hell decides this stuff? At what point did deeming something “mainstream” or “commercial” automatically render it less worthy than something dubbed “literary” and what does it all mean anyway?

I know I don’t. I don’t even pretend to know. I just write books.

The No Girls Allowed book looks like the lite version of Vicki Leon’s Uppity Women books. I highly recommend Leon’s. They’ll change your whole world view.

Wha?!  I really thought that I was pretty fluent in my own language, but I am completely lost by that article.

And WTF was that whole nun thing at the bottom…was it supposed to be related in some way?

I saw on Sex Files (documentary series about human sexuality, with all kinds of research backing it up, don’t know if it’s available outside of Canada) that women are very attracted to smelly, sweaty men when we’re ovulating.  The rest of the time we find them icky.  It’s a pheromone/hormone kind of thing.

Knight’s big problem (that many of us share) is that she can’t tell the difference between self-confidence and assholery.

Men generally outnumber women in my town, and in my observation, a lot of people, male AND female, think that if you’re loud, brash, talk over people, and bully everybody around you into doing things your way, you’re alpha.  Not true.

However, many of us don’t recognize self-confidence, decisiveness, and leadership unless it’s accompanied by bullying, asshole behaviour.  Honestly, we don’t have many (any?) good models of non-asshole alpha behaviour.  We’re not really clear what it looks like.

It’s frustrating.  And one of the many, many reasons why I’m single.

The Knight article is truly bizarre and made me wonder a bit what drugs she was on when she wrote it.

I do have to say, however, that I believe it’s true that alphadome is being rewarded in men (not in women) and that it’s a shame that a topic that deserves attention is now forgotten because the author of the article is such a dizz.

Hrm. I’ve known an awful lot of alpha males in my life. One of them weighs close to 400 pounds and is the sweetest man in the world. But don ‘t mess with anyone he’s taken under his wing. His intellect will wipe the floor with you. My own husband is about as alpha as they come - former military officer, attorney, athlete, etc. He brings me flowers for no reason. I could go on. Almost all of the asshattery comes from beta males trying to prove they’re alpha. An alpha male has nothing to prove. They just are.

Conversely, not all alpha females are feminists, nor are all feminists bitches.

As for literature? Seems to me a lot of the books now considered “Literature” were basically the “pulp fiction” of their time. And don’t the “commercial” books (fiction and non-fiction) keep the doors of the publishing houses open, thus giving said houses the ability to publish the less revenue generating works of “literature”?

Just sayin’....

Haven’t had a chance to read the articles yet as I have to get to class, but I will say one thing:

They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature

Actually, the problem isn’t that we translate our books, its we don’t get books from other countries translated and brought in. Agh, don’t have time to find the article, sorry, will when I get back if someone doesn’t do it sorry.

Course, I’m talking about “mainstream” books, so its all trash anyways. Literature: for the overblown pompous ass.

And Tina C, you completely rock and deserve extra extra love.

multilingual skills are not that important here

They are important here, they just aren’t given importance. We aren’t taught (and I use that word loosely) another language until we are in high school, unless your family does something first.

effort21: half ass comments cause I’m gonna be late to class. That’s what I get for trying to have a little SB time in the morning

If that idiot woman thinks a “reprehensible oddly sexy brute” is a typical Georgette Heyer hero, then she has obviously never read any Heyer!  Assuming that because she might be attracted to brutes, all “normal” women are is a logical fallacy (I almost wrote ‘phallacy’) which no doubt has some fancy latin name.  Spamword is too31, as in “too stupid for words”.

Having read the review of Don’t You Want Me?, I think I’ve just found another candidate for my Avoid At All Costs list, along with Decadent and Big Spankable Asses.

Oh, and I second the recommendation for Leon’s Uppity series.  A great, fast read and they make you want to learn more about the people your history classes overlooked.

The US doesn’t produce any quality literature?  They need to snatch that Nobel out of Toni Morrison’s hands, then, I guess.

And someone should call up Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Melville, Hawthorne, Hemingway, Lee, and you know, about a thousand other great American writers and tell them some Swedish prick thinks they’re all crap.

Re: multilingualism.  To my everlasting shame, I’m monolingual, in spite of living in a bilingual country.  It hampers me, and it’s getting worse due to the massive influx of internationals to my community (we’re booming and importing workers from all over the world).

I read an article years ago (which I could google, but won’t) that reported a study which indicated that even exposure to other languages from an early age affects brain development in a positive way.  The inference being that the more languages you can communicate in, the better your ability to communicate in general, and the more flexible your…um, brain muscles.

We North Americans can function adequately being monolingual (depending on where in N.Am. we live), but being bi- or multilingual would allow us to function better.  (Heh, I said bi.)  It would certainly give us better insight into other cultures and, hopefully, improve our international relations.

To make a long post longer: years ago, when Quebec was having the separation referendum, I was working with a woman from Quebec (in Alberta).  She mentioned she’d been speaking with her parents (still in PQ) about the issue, and was floored when they told her they intended to vote Yes.  It turned out that most of the French media reporting on the referendum question was slanted EXTREMELY differently from the English media, so that the issues influencing which way francophones were voting was different from what the rest of Canada understood them to be.  (And in the end, the Referendum Question was incomprehensible jibberish anyway.)

All of which made for bad feelings, sucked up a lot of time, and cost way too much money; all for something people barely remember anymore.

More importantly, multilingualism would also expand the number of books, movies, poetry that we can enjoy.

**heads off to sign up for French lessons (although Punjabi would probably be more useful to me personally)**

HA! learned33

Una mujer que had tenido quarenta navidades, y ninguna noche buena!

That cracked me up so hard! I’m still giggling over it right now.

My own husband is about as alpha as they come - former military officer, attorney, athlete, etc. He brings me flowers for no reason. I could go on

My husband is also ex-military, likes to hunt (not for sport), will go “Hulk smash!” on anyone who even thinks of hurting people he cares for. He’s also a tech geek with a genius iq who will act like a goofy idiot just to cheer me up when I’m down.

I love alpha males, just not the jerk ass ones. There is a difference between alpha and asshole. Knight just doesn’t see that, I guess.

On the issue of tongues ... my first language was Spanish and I learned English when I started school. It quickly became the language I used primarily, even at home. I know several often used words and phrases in Nahuatl, Zapotec, Portuguese, French, Italian, German and Japanese. I’m currently trying to learn Esperanto, Ido seems more gender neutral, but it’s not as widely used. I’d really love to learn and be fluent in Japanese.

Here’s an interesting collection of responses to Engdahl.

This is as gross a generalization as any:

We aren’t taught (and I use that word loosely) another language until we are in high school, unless your family does something first.

This seems to assume that everyone in the US speaks English from birth.  In fact one in five people in the US speaks English as a second language.

For that matter, the US doesn’t have one unified school system, or even one per state.  In some school systems foreign languages are taught in primary school, in some they start in middle school, in some in high school.

It’s a timely conversation for me, though: last week The Scotsman ran an article saying “Half of British adults have forgotten foreign language skills they learned at school”.  An Israeli language education specialist told me that half is probably wishful thinking on the survey population’s part; without regular exposure to other languages, only the 10 to 20 percent who have a natural aptitude for languages retain much of what they studied.  He said immersion works for the short term, but again, after that constant exposure ends, only the 10 to 20 percent will retain more than a few key phrases.  (That’s one expert’s opinion; there are a jillion theories of language education.)

I’m all for studying foreign languages but even more for travel and (recognizing that travel between the middle of the US and Europe or Asia may involve a 12-hour nonstop flight) reading in translation.  Reading in other languages is a joy to me, and I do believe that understanding a language can be a clue to other cultures, but language is only one route to cultural exchange.

I’m all for studying foreign languages but even more for travel and (recognizing that travel between the middle of the US and Europe or Asia may involve a 12-hour nonstop flight) reading in translation.  Reading in other languages is a joy to me,

I absolutely agree.  Most of my vocabulary comes from reading romance novels in the original British or American English (occasionally with hilarious results with regards to pronounciation).

and I do believe that understanding a language can be a clue to other cultures, but language is only one route to cultural exchange.

As a foreign language teacher, global nomad and speaker of two languages with 2 more in the process of attrition, I have to disagree with you there.  While you might get impressions of other cultures via travel, I do not think that any significant understanding of another culture can come without language.

While the exchange student mentioned above by somebody might have been a pain in the ass, telling him it’s okay that many Americans don’t learn another language because everybody around them speaks English seems a rather poor argument (and probably just confirmed his stereotype that Americans refuse to learn about other folks), especially considering that’s just not true in many parts of the country (I live in the very rural southeast and we have lively Spanish and Chinese populations) and if you live far enough in the south, you are faster in a country with a different language than you might travel from one end of France or Spain or even Germany to the other.

Spamword: almost29… I wish

Ok, I couldn’t find the article I read, but here are two articles that also say it: “in Britain and America the best estimates suggest that the fraction of books on the shelves which started off in another language is somewhere around two percent”

http://www.atypon-link.com/LOG/doi/abs/10.2959/logo.1996.7.3.232?cookieSet=1&journalCode=logo

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/nov/16/fiction.richardlea

and please, notice the “soft” books comment. Geez.

RfP: I should have been clear (this is on me), but was rushing and didn’t read it over. I should have said generally, US students are not taught another language besides English in schools, unless taught by family (which doesn’t mean they don’t know another language, but that they aren’t taught one in school). And while there is no unified school system, language really isn’t given the emphasis there should be.  About 44-45% of students study a foreign language in high school, about 33% in middle school, and about 9% in college. I don’t have statistics on how much are repeaters (as in, learned a language in MS, continued in HS, and got a degree in college) but probably some account for it.

While you might get impressions of other cultures via travel, I do not think that any significant understanding of another culture can come without language.

I agree and I disagree.  Perhaps it’s simply that I wouldn’t state it so strongly.  I think two different travelers with the same foreign language skills can get very different experiences out of the same trip; that’s not about language but about comfort and adventurousness.  (Though I recognize that those attributes are not entirely separate from language.)

I’ve found traveling in regions where I don’t speak the language just as eye-opening as traveling where I speak the language fluently or just enough to get around.  I’m aware I didn’t come to a “significant understanding” of those cultures, but I’m not sure I came to a “significant understanding” by traveling in a country after studying that country’s modern and medieval language and literature.

Veering back toward Engdahl’s point, though: my local library has a good-size section of fiction translated into English, out front next to fantasy and romance.  I understand why it doesn’t have the same variety of originally-English fiction translated into other languages (those collections are heavily used by recent immigrant populations, so they include a lot of “useful” books), but there’s no mindbender quite like reading a familiar novel in translation.

Orgueil et Préjugés de Jane Austen:

C’est une vérité universellement reconnue qu’un célibataire pourvu d’une belle fortune doit avoir envie de se marier, et si peu que l’on sache de son sentiment à cet égard, lorsqu’il arrive dans une nouvelle résidence, cette idée est si bien fixée dans l’esprit de ses voisins qu’ils le considèrent sur le champ comme la propriété légitime de l’une ou l’autre de leurs filles

Orgullo y prejuicio de Jane Austen:

Es una verdad mundialmente reconocida que un hombre soltero, poseedor de una gran fortuna, necesita una esposa. Sin embargo, poco se sabe de los sentimientos u opiniones de un hombre de tales condiciones cuando entra a formar parte de un vecindario. Esta verdad está tan arraigada en las mentes de algunas de las familias que lo rodean, que algunas le consideran de su legítima propiedad y otras de la de sus hijas.

I got the first joke, Sarah (because I’ve heard it before in English), but I had to use an on-line translator to do the second, and it gave me:

That is a maiden?  A woman who had taken Forty Christmas, and no good night

I also got:

That is a single woman?  A woman that had had quarenta Christmas time, and any good night!

That she is a bachelor? A woman who had had quarenta Christmases, and no good night!

Clearly, translation is a delicate process.

I seem to have retained some of my French, and I think the Spanish translation isn’t quite as close to the original as the French one.

Suze, I’m not sure if you worked this out or not, but although the online translators are right that “noche buena” means “good night,” “Nochebuena” is Christmas Eve, so it’s a pun.

I seem to have retained some of my French, and I think the Spanish translation isn’t quite as close to the original as the French one.

I agree with Laura, but have to say that any time a translated text is very close in cadence and flow to the original, I get a bit suspicious about the quality of the translation as different languages do and should sound and flow differently.  Among my other sins I have a degree in Translation Sciences (I am a live long learner, what can I say :).  It’s a delicate balance between sticking close to the original and making it sound like the original just with the other language’s words stuck in it.  I’d love to read a German translation to see what my native tongue-meter would say about that.

I’ve lived in the U.S. so long I’ve started to try to stick German words into English sentences which leads to much chagrin on my part and much hilarity on the part of my family when I talk to them on the phone.

I think two different travelers with the same foreign language skills can get very different experiences out of the same trip; that’s not about language but about comfort and adventurousness.

Oh, agreed. I was coming at this topic her from the cultural understanding/linguist/language teacher angle and think that for a non-native to feel very familiar, get a good grip what the other cultures is about, works only when you dig into the language as well.  One measurement I apply for language proficiency is when you start to understand jokes in the foreign language, since that goes way beyond word x = word y, but digs deeply into cultural beliefs, gender, hierarchy, etc.

I lived in Scotland for a year, then went back home for 5 years and have lived in the U.S. since.  As immersed as I am in the language and the culture here, there are days when everything is just so alien it’s like being plunked down on a different planet.  That self-same feeling attacked me rather strongly the last time I was in Germany.  Hence, on good days I have two homes and on bad days I have none, because I don’t fit anywhere any longer which is one way to describe global nomads.

I find language endlessly fascinating.  There are many concepts that I find I can express with more nuance in English, but there are some that just do not seem to have an equivalent.  Some of these have been adopted into the language (‘Schadenfreude’) and seem to mean the same thing, but for others there do not seem to be equivalents, not just word-for-word, but for the concept behind it (‘Anstandsstueck’).

not26, no, I’m not 26, the same as I wasn’t almost 29 earlier.  The spaminator really wants to remind me of my age today… ;)

Laura, my French is better than my Spanish and I agree that the French translation captures it better.  Both are from printed editions that I picked up in France and Spain.

“Anstandsstueck” as in dining?

Reading a translation of a very familiar book into a foreign language is an excellent way of improving one’s fluency in the latter.  I remember that the first book I read in German, long ago, was a translation of Alice in Wonderland.  Actually knowing the book in English is like using a parallel text, but much faster and easier; language and meaning start to blend quickly and naturally.

I agree with RfP that there are multiple levels and nuances of cultural and linguistic understanding, but there is no doubt that even moderate fluency in the local language opens doors and deepens understanding in ways that simply cannot be achieved by the traveller that knows only his/her own language.  I know this from my own experience, with many different levels of comprehension in many different countries.

RfP,

it has to do with food, but not necessarily just with dining.  I just googled it and came across an intriguing (but unfortunately unavailable) reference on a German university website to leaving a bite on your plate.  I’d never heard of that and that’s certainly not what I mean by that word.  It refers to the last of any kind of food item offered.  One does not take the ‘Anstandsstueck’ when a guest in somebody’s home and most certainly when one is the host/ess.  Which can be lots of fun when the host/ess tries to get you to eat it and you try to behave properly and not do so. :)  It’s old-fashioned and probably not really a concept that younger folks would be familiar with, but it sticks in my mind as one of those untranslatable items.

My parents used that word, or something awfully similar, for leaving the last piece on your plate or the serving platter.  I always thought it was a familyism (which it may be: they may not have used it exactly as you define it).

It’s entirely possible that my definition is too narrow.  I tend to express myself in absolutes which I definitely ought not to.  It’s one of those tempting things when talking about something I’m very familiar with, which does not preclude error, that’s for sure.  :)

understand jokes in the foreign language, since that goes way beyond word x = word y, but digs deeply into cultural beliefs, gender, hierarchy, etc.

Yep.  Damn the puns!

Thanks, Laura, I had been assuming it was something naughty involving sleeping with 40 men and maintaining the “maiden” status.  I guess that betrays my state of mind.

Speaking of language, I read somewhere (again, I’d google it, but don’t feel like it) that your language shapes how adaptable you are to new concepts.  Native English speakers are allegedly much more comfortable appropriating new words and concepts, or making up new ones, because that’s what our language does, whereas other languages have more rules about creating new words, which allegedly limits their creativity in general.  And now that I’ve typed that all out, I’m kind of suspicious of it.

Native English speakers are allegedly much more comfortable appropriating new words and concepts [...] other languages have more rules about creating new words, which allegedly limits their creativity in general.  And now that I’ve typed that all out, I’m kind of suspicious of it.

I’m suspicious of it too. If by “appropriating new words” they mean incorporating words from other languages into their own, then I know for certain that the Spanish have done this. Spanish has quite a lot of words which come from Arabic (almohada, alcalde, álgebra, alfombra, acequia, albañilería) and I’m sure it’s picking up some from English (mitin [i.e. a meeting], internet, fútbol [i.e. football]). There’s a pdf here (in Spanish) discussing words of French origin which have made their way into Spanish, and there are a lot of them. There’s a list here of words taken from Náhuatl (including aguacate and tomate). I’m sure there must be many, many more.

To be honest, I don’t care so much about Engdahl looking down his nose at US literature—US writers get their works out there in the international marketplace without the imprimatur of the Nobel committee.

But what bugs me is the overall Eurocentrism of his comments in that interview.  The Nobel Prize is supposed to be for achievements in WORLD literature, not EUROPEAN literature.  The Nobel Prize has brought works by Wole Soyinka and Naguib Mahfouz and Orhan Pamuk and other non-European-tradition writers to my shelves. 

Also, re: “alpha males”:  in wolf packs, the alpha male has one mate, and that’s the alpha female.  This is what is wrong with many romances, because the alpha males are paired up with bumbling, fumbling TSTL heroines.  That’s not alpha behavior.

SBSarah: My friend loved your second joke, BTW

This conversation reminds me of the article by one of the translators for Harry Potter- I want to say the Portuguese one but not sure. But she was talking about how she chose words for the ones Rowling completely made up.

Ok, can’t find that article, but I did find this, which compares the Chinese, Vietnamese and Japanese versions of chapters, book titles, character names, etc. (Ok, I mostly just have a bunch of question marks, but you may get something different):
http://www.cjvlang.com/Hpotter/index.html#TOP

Also, just because I truly believe translating is very hard work, I’m impressed (he did it in a few days) even though he stole intellectual property:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6936979.stm

french33: This thing is actually kind of scary

Laura Vivanco said:

If by “appropriating new words” they mean incorporating words from other languages into their own, then I know for certain that the Spanish have done this.

This happens in all living languages. It’s called borrowing, and the borrowed words are called “loan words.”  English does this a lot, I must admit, and some countries go out of their way to limit borrowing. ie: France and the Academie Francaise

I, too, find the claims of that article suspect. I think that every living language has a means of creativity, by which I mean creating new words and ideas. It’s what keeps languages vital.  Maybe one could make an argument that English employs borrowing as a major means of new word creation, but I have yet to run into a still spoken language that doesn’t employ some means of creating new words. After all, new technology, new ideas come into language all the time. If we don’t have a means of expressing those new thoughts in a language, that language will fall behind.

Ah so much more I could write about all of this. Very good post today! I, too, am a language geek and all of this language talk has gotten me hot and bothered in the way that only language can. But! The WTF salad article got me pretty worked up, too. Clearly that writer needs to get out and meet some real alpha men. They are as diverse as any population. To sum them up in such a narrow way seems a crime.  Plus kudos to Tina C. for a very fine logical analysis of an article that made nearly no sense upon first reading. Tina, where were you when I took logic in college??

Mr Engdahl’s comments indeed smell of asshattery. However, I suspect that they are an ill-phrased (or ill-translated, since I don’t speak Swedish) preliminary rebuttal to the complaints by the US literary scene that regularly occur every single year when an American writer has not won the Nobel Prize for Literature. It usually goes something like this: “Who is author X? No one has heard of him or her. Why no prize for John Updike/Philip Roth/Joyce Carol Oates/Thomas Pynchon/insert other perpetual American candidate here? Wah, this decision is Anti-American, because Nobel Prize winning author X has criticized US politics in an article once or twice or is at least known to lean towards the left of the US political spectrum.” And frankly, it gets tiring after a while.

I think the worst incidence of that sort of complaint from the anglophone world happened the year Elfriede Jelinek won and you had both American and British columnists complaining that an obscure author no one had ever heard of had won.  Ahem, sorry, but just cause Jelinek had only been very sparsely translated into English at the time does not mean that no one has ever heard of her. She is actually very well known in the German speaking world, and while I certainly would never have bet on her to win and don’t really care for her books, I was happy for her. Besides, there have been Nobel Prize for Literature winners I have never heard of, e.g. the Chinese winner of a few years ago or the Polish poet who won sometime in the 1990s. However, I always assumed that it was my unfamiliarity with Chinese or Polish literature that was at fault rather than that the Nobel committee had chosen a writer no one had ever heard of.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d certain be happy if Thomas Pynchon or Joyce Carol Oates wins this year’s Nobel (but not Updike and Roth - sorry, don’t like them). But it’s a prize for world literature (and that’s where Engdahl is truly tragically wrong, though Orhan Parmuk will certainly be happy that Turkey counts as Europe now) and the world consists of more than the US. Besides, in terms of language, English is actually very well represented among the Nobel Prize winners of the last approx. 20 years with Derek Walcott, Toni Morrison, Seamus Heaney, J.M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, V.S. Naipaul, Harold Pinter, Doris Lessing. However, Morrison is the only one of those authors who happens to be American.

As for being multilingual, people in the US and Britain are in the position that they don’t necessarily have to learn a second language to get by, unlike e.g. the Dutch (and I have met at least one Dutchwoman who didn’t speak anything other than Dutch and yet had traveled widely). However, knowing more than one language is useful in fields that go far beyond communication. For example, learning a foreign language, particularly Latin, enormously improves one’s grip on grammar. And the insistence of a certain type of American that everybody automatically has to understand them when traveling abroad can be very annoying indeed. Just as I get annoyed by monolingual Germans who cannot abide even the simplest English term in advertising or public life and yet assume that everyone speaks German when they are on holiday.

BTW, I know what an “Anstandsstück” is, though both term and custom are somewhat outdated. My parents used to insist on it, though.

Ms. Knight’s article is indeed idiotic. And Gene Hunt from Life on Mars only became a (very unlikely) sex symbol in the sequel Ashes to Ashes, where he is paired up not with a more sensitive modern man but with a woman. Besides, the Gene Hunt from Ashes to Ashes is actually a different and softened character compared to the one in Life on Mars

I’m still boggling at the Heyer reference.  I wonder which book(s) she’s read and is referring to.  Certainly, Freddy doesn’t fall into the bad to bone alpha asshole category.  Actually, none of Heyer’s heroes do!  A few are more alpha, but even they are all brought to their knees by their heroines!

Native English speakers are allegedly much more comfortable appropriating new words and concepts, or making up new ones, because that’s what our language does, whereas other languages have more rules about creating new words, which allegedly limits their creativity in general.

Suze, do you remember where you read it?  It sounds like it could be one of those incidents where a much narrower statement came out of a research study and was over-generalized in the press.  (I admit my skepticism is partly because I’m getting jaded by various forms of exceptionalism that are back in vogue these days.)

I was going to post the link of the Nobel to my facebook and went looking out what else is out there.  I found the following link to the New Republic, and I’m sorry if someone else has already linked this, but the New Republic makes it sound like it’s more that they (the Nobel poeple) hate postmodernism than they think Americans are stupid.  It could go either way, but I’m not a big fan of postmodernism either.

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/10/02/the-real-reason-american-authors-don-t-win-nobels.aspx

re: Anstandsstück. I am familiar with this concept but for me it is a tiny little bit of food you profess you just can’t eat any more, thus leaving it. It is refered to as “elegantes Patzl” in my area of Austria…. and it was frowned upon (Waste!).

I do love the way words make it into other languages, but I seriously doubt that the way language is structures enhances or limits creativity. From everything I know about neurolinguistics, that does not pan out because we do not really think in language. I’d be really interested to see the reference to this article, though!
Some of my favourite German words in English are “rucksack” , “schadenfreude” and “zeitgeist”, as well as the particle uber/über that seems to be very popular these days!
At the moment German is afloat with English words, to the point where we make them up ourselves. Famous example is “handy” (mobile phone), but I always have to laugh at the term “neckholder” that is used in German instead of “halterneck” - I think “halter” sounded too German! ;)

As for Mr Enghdahl’s comments, I think Cora is absolutely right….

“

The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature,” Engdahl said. “That ignorance is restraining.”

It is a fact that very few international writers get translated into (American) English. It is, of course, a matter of opinion if that is good or not, but you can certainly see it as a problem - I do not see this statement as inherently evil or Anti-American. The reference to Europe is certainly unfortunate as literature should be about a dialogue of all cultures, but apart from that, I really don’t get the outrage. The idea that American culture is currently fairly insular is certainly not new and has been voiced by many people, including Americans!

It is a fact that very few international writers get translated into (American) English.

I’ve been following this particular conversation and I think that the fact that few international writers get translated in American English is probably due to a few things.  I agree that we (Americans, in general) tend to be insular.  However, I also think that there is a perception among those publishing houses that would offer English translations that such works won’t sell here because we’re insular.  If they, as a rule, think that Americans won’t buy works by foreign authors, then they, as a rule, won’t offer them.  That gives you a bit of “the chicken or the egg” situation—are we generally insular because we’re not exposed to works translated from other languages or are we not exposed to works translated from other languages because we’re insular? 

We should also consider something else that may or may not play a part in whether or not a translated work sells—the way it reads.  Because, grammatically, English is the opposite of most languages in word order and sentence structure, I have to admit that can pose a problem for me when I read some books that have been translated from another language.  I tried and tried but I simply could not get into Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  I can’t remember what book it was, possibly Love in the Time of Cholera, but the sentence structure was completely backwards to me, making it very hard to slog through.  (And it wasn’t just one sentence—it was every single one, so it was probably translated verbatim.)  Instead of being transported by the story, I was re-reading sentences over and over, because, for me, the word order was completely jumbled.  It’s probably shallow, but I don’t want to have to work that hard for my entertainment reading.  In contrast, whoever is translating Isabelle Allende’s works is wonderful!  The prose is usually beautiful and it feels like Allende’s voice, but stylistically, it’s definitely English grammar structure, so, for me, it flows.  (It doesn’t hurt that I find the stories pretty interesting, too.)  I love Allende’s work and have read a lot of it.  I’ve never picked up another Garcia Marquez book.

Tina C - try the Marquez translated by Gregory Rabassa - I can’t remember if he translated Love in the time of Cholera - but he’s definitely translated a few Marquez works, including my absolute favourite, One Hundred Years of Solitude.

DAMN my post-forty memory!  My google-fu, she’s not up for much (danged new-fangled search-engines! Where’s my card catalogue?).  After way too long putzing around looking for the flipping article, I finally remembered where I read it (native English speakers being more adaptable), and now I suspect it even more.

It’s from Holly Lisle’s Create a Language clinic.  She seems to be a pretty smart lady, but she also seems to be very vulnerable to that conservative mind-set thing that convinces her that she’s right and everybody else is wrong (and stupid).  I have no idea where she came up with the adaptability theory.

I was going to provide a link to the excerpt I read, but I can’t find that either.  Sigh.

feeling13?  No, much older than that…

the sentence structure was completely backwards to me

Tina, that sounds like a terrible translation! If you translate into another language, it has to be grammatically correct. It is hard to do, of course - translations are difficult at the best of times. But sentence structure is such a vital part of a language that you cannot impose it from one to another…. there is obviously a fine line between giving the reader a taste for the style of the author and the rules of a foreign translation, but some people manage to do it…. luckily.  Of course it is always better to read in the original language but that is not possible in many cases, and it would be sad to miss out on a great many interestng books because you do not speak the language…

Regarding the “Anstandsstück” issue, it seems that we are seeing the sometimes considerable differences between German and Austrian German at work here.

And I agree that the Marquez translation you read sounds like a really bad translation. Literary translation is a tightrope act anyway between preserving as much of the original author’s language as possible and yet producing something that’s readable for people of another language. Which begets another question? Is the reason that there is comparatively little translated fiction available in the US (and Britain for that matter) that there are comparatively few good literary translators in the US? Or are there few good literary translators because there is little demand for their services?

As for the Nobel Academy disliking postmodernism, it’s an interesting idea, but in the end I’m not convinced. A hatred of postmodernism might account for the snubbing of Pynchon and DeLillo and Umberto Eco (though I suspect there are other factors at work regarding Salman Rushdie), but perennial Nobel losers Roth and Updike are not postmodernists. Whereas several of the winners of the past few years have dipped their toes in the postmodern pool.

A few people commented on how little international literature makes it to the US, and how little attention it receives.

I keep meaning to post this resource—the Three Percent blog, “A resource for international literature at the University of Rochester”:

Unfortunately, only about 3% of all books published in the United States are works in translation. That is why we have chosen the name Three Percent for this site.

U of R offers an undergraduate certificate in translation, and they’ve started a new press for translated works:

Open Letter is the University of Rochester’s new publishing house. A trade-oriented press, Open Letter will publish twelve works of international literature every year, beginning in the fall of 2008.

Thank you for the link to India’s article - quite an intriguing/frustrating read!

french36: I’m a LADY, for goodness’ sake!  I won’t even french one! :X :X :X

I think that the radicchio may be the number of logical fallacies in her argument.

:)