The Post in Which I Talk About Gay Marriage

So right now Minnesota's government is discussing a ban on gay marriage.

I, unfortunately, am not registered to vote in Minnesota, and so have confined my activities to getting entangled in a comment war on Facebook.  At least my friend who originally posted this is an ally.  A good ally. 

See, a recurring motif of the people who commented was "I have gay friends, but I don't think gay people should get married because the Bible says no."  I am not going to argue the religious aspect.  I do not care what you do in the privacy of your own home - and honestly, people with those opinions aren't going to change them unless they want to.  What bothers me is the hypocrisy. 

If you can look someone in the eye and tell them that you never want them to get married, are you truly their friend?  If you tell your friends that it's okay that they are gay, but you are trying to "change yourself for God," do you think they really believe that you are okay with the gay?  And if you say it's okay for people to be gay, as long as they don't get married, then are you really approving of the gay?

It also bugs me how people think they can just say anything, as long as they follow it with "But I have gay friends, so I'm not homophobic."  Do you think your gay friends approve of your favorite complaint being "That's so gay!"  Do you think a piece of their souls does not quietly wilt every time they hear that phrase? 

Back to marriage.

I think our society has progressed to the point where homophobia is for the most part frowned upon.  Most people will say they don't mind gay people in theory; what other people do in the privacy of their home is their own business.  But being gay is not confined to the privacy of one's own home.  You take it with you to school, to work, to parties, to the grocery store, to the dentist, to the voting booth.

Being married is not confined to the privacy of your own home.  You display the ring for the world to see.  Women go from Miss to Mrs.  In casual conversation, the second question after "How are you?" is "How is your significant other/family?"  You go together to neighborhood get-togethers and family obligations.  When you fill out forms and surveys, you check the box labelled "Married."

That is why gay marriage is frowned upon by apparent non-homophobes.  Gay is okay, as long as no one sees it.  Marriage is far too in your face.  Let's just go back to the subculture of the 1950's.

The problem with people who do not use logic to back up their arguments is that it is impossible to use logic to counter them.

And so now that I have a proverbial bruise from proverbially banging my head against the wall, I leave you with the reason more people should know German:

Lyrics and translation to follow in next post.

Nuts and Bolts

Translation is harder than you might think.

Presumeably you know that it requires more than a dictionary, and more than a basic grasp of the grammar of a language - there is a reason foreign language teachers always advise against using online translators. 

I can read German very well.  In fact, I would likely have been able to read Frostfeuer without a dictionary and still been able to follow the story.  Translation is another matter.  That is when you find out that although many of the words you can guess at something close to the meaning, you don't quite know exactly what the particular mood of a word is, what sort of connotations it is meant to bring to mind. That is when you discover the relationship between two languages.

For instance:  I almost feel like I have to credit co-translatorship with my online dictionary (dict.cc is the best).  The lovely thing about online dictionaries is that you can type in a word, and it will give you a whole list of translations with all the different shades of meaning that the word you are looking for uses.  That is excellent for comprehension.  But when you are translating, you have to choose just one.  And it has to be exactly right, or as close as you can make it. 

Some words that gave me difficulty:

Der Zapfen
That "Zapfen" was a bitch.  It can mean either pine cone, or icicle, or various cone-shaped pieces of machinery.  All I gleaned from the text was that it contained the heart of the Snow-Queen.  And it is fairly important to the story.  Though after finishing the book, I am fairly certain that it is an icicle.  "Eiszapfen" is supposed to be the word that means icicle - and of course there is no entry for "Herzzapfen" - the icicle of her heart (Or perhaps the pine cone).

Der Schneeadler
Okay, a snow-eagle.  Pretty straightforward, right?  Except in German, the word for "eagle" is masculine, so in the text it was referred to as "he," even though we find out that the eagle is female.  Which makes you wonder if that sounds normal to Germans.  Another peculiarity of the German language is that the word for "girl" is actually neuter.  So girls are sometimes referred to as "it." Those crazy Germans...

"Gen"
I may never run across this word again.  It is an archaic word for "towards." I could have just used "towards," but that does not have the same archaic feel.  "Thither" was the closest English equivalent I could come up with.

If there is a point to knowing any of this, it is that while many translations are wonderful, and that it is great to experience other cultures without having to spend years learning a language, no translation is exact.  I will save my Bible rant for another time, but the short version is - the original Bible was written in Greek and Hebrew, then translated into Latin, and it was the Latin text that was translated into English and considered the definitive edition for a long time.  It was used to create laws and put people to death and all kinds of insanity.  Some people today still base their entire lives on the translation, without checking to see if they are missing something that did not transfer from the original text (not that I think one's life should be entirely modelled on a single book anyway, but that's yet another rant).

It is probably worth throwing in there that I am in fact slightly bitter that the gays have been screwed over for centuries because of a shoddy translation job - turns out there is no Hebrew word for "gay." 

So as a follow up to why I want to be a translator - I want to be a good translator.  And while I will probably never have the opportunity to translate a text as important as the Bible, that story still demonstrates why it is important to translate well.

I promise I'll post something interesting next time.