posted
I'm impressed... As for "secondhand" - the chapter takes place inside of a huge cardboard box (where homeless people live in Tokio). I should have mentioned it earlier. Sorry.
Here we go...
The beggar has wrapped his legs and feet in brown paper tape, and the effect is startlingly medieval, as though someone has partially sculpted a knight from office materials. The trim calves, the tapered toes, an elegance calling out for ribbons. ??? calling out for ribbons
She swayed expertly on her stacked heels, fishing a box of Russian Marlboros from her pink patent purse. ??? stacked heels
- speaking of the Bridge in San Francisco: He asks to be taken to the bridge. The cab draws up before a rain-stained tumble of concrete tank traps, huge rhomboids streaked with rust, covered with the stylized initials of forgotten lovers. ???tank traps
AND – for those being from California (but not only for them, of course) – in Virtual Light, Idoru and ATP Gibson mentions NoCal and SoCal (officialy separated as two different countries) – is it invented by him or is NoCal and SoCal common name? I mean – would the proper translation be the Czech equivalents for “Northern California etc.” or is it better to use “NoCal” as to stress the independence?
And special thanks to Sol System for Poly ribbon!!!
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posted
"Elegance calling out for ribbons" suggests that the outfit was so elegant that ribbons should be added.
Tank traps are blocks of concrete meant to be an obstacle to tanks and other vehicles. A defensive military structure.
Stacked heels are heels (of shoes) made from thin pieces of leather or wood stacked up and glued together, then cut to shape. They can be either low or high, but are usually wider than heels made of a single piece of wood. The context here (swaying) suggests they are high and make the wearer stand unsteadily.
Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
If the Czech words for Northern and Southern blend into "Cal" (or, uh, "Kal," and here I express ignorance about the Czech spelling of "California") in a relatively cool way, I say go with that. Otherwise, I think the English is passable.
-------------------- "I was surprised by the matter-of-factness of Kafka's narration, and the subtle humor present as a result." (Sizer 2005)
Registered: Mar 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Captain... Mike: hey i bought some of that to re-captain stripe my mustard tunic!
What I just said to Simon times two.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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TORI
Ex-Member
posted
Those who have read ATP - can you imagine tank traps looking like this http://www.tostreams.org/SteelJ.htm#2 under the San Francisco bridge? And can they be described as "huge rhomboids"? And why are they there? Because of the first invasion of homeless people on the bridge? I am not being ironic, I am just asking...
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TORI
Ex-Member
posted
Ok, here's some more:
The last time he'd heard from Yamazaki, he'd wanted Rydell to find him a netrunner, and Rydell had sent him this guy named Laney, a quantitative researcher who'd just quit Slitscan, and had been moping around the Chateau, running up a big bill. ??? running up a big bill
'We have profiles," the man with the scarf says, off-camera, the face of the corpse thrown across Laney's cardboard wall, the melon blanket. 'We have a full forensic psych run-up. But you ignore them! ???run-up
Yamazaki sees that the cardboard there is shingled with tiny self-adhesive printouts, dozens of different images of a bland-looking man, oddly familiar. ??? bland-looking
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posted
The "big bill" is no doubt a credit card bill or something of that type. The use of "running" is just idiomatic. Basically, it means he's spending a lot of money (though on credit, so he's really not paying yet).
I'm not certain about "run-up" but it sounds like they're talking about a psychological profile.
"Bland-looking" means the person is rather plain and uninteresting in appearance.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Are you sure that "full forensic psych run-up" isn't actually "full forensic psych work-up"? That's the word I would use. "Work-up" means assessment, examination, or evaluation.
Registered: Oct 1999
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These are pretty common shortenings of Northern California and Southern California. I hadn't really thought about NoCal as being like 'Not California' and SoCal as being 'So Very California'. Only it would probably be the other way around. The thing is there's a bit of tension between LA and the rest of California. Los Angeles is a bit shit and it was built on a desert so there's this aquaduct which shunts NoCal water to Southern California. They also consume a disproportionately large amount of food, fossil fuels, etc. In return they produce a lot of movies and television. People North of the San Francisco Bay area think we're all a bunch of fruitcakes and that LA is filled with money grubbing idolaters out to homogenize the world one crappy television series at a time. It's way more more conservative than most people generally associate with California. At one point Northern California (actually separated above San Francisco) wanted to be a separate state. California has something like the world's fifth largest global economy so I mean it isn't all that far-fetched. There's this backlash against LA since it's a pretty ugly sprawl and they have way more money, people and political influence (They do pay like 20 cents less per gallon of gas than SF Bay area which pisses me off since the refineries are mostly across the bay in Richmond, but that's neither here nor there). Anyway so the idea was to levy more tax against SoCal for the plundering of our resources. It never happened and barring any major upheaval I doubt that it ever would. If for no other reason than we could never decide where exactly to cut off LA. There's a kind of symbiosis where NoCal needs SoCal money and political clout and SoCal needs NoCal resources and ideas. In truth I think the state is more ideologically differentiated west to east than north to south, but what do I know. EaCAL and WeCal sounds stupid.
Re: Tank Traps
He might be refering to a little pet name we had for our ugly but safe guardrails near the bridge.
-------------------- "Nah. The 9th chevron is for changing the ringtone from "grindy-grindy chonk-chonk" to the theme tune to dallas." -Reverend42
Registered: Sep 2000
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Maybe the tank traps were placed by the people living on the bridge to prevent the police from driving in an evicting them? (I read ATP a few years ago, but don't remember the details so well.)
-------------------- When you're in the Sol system, come visit the Starfleet Museum
Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
Wait a minute! How can these tank traps be streaked with rust if they're made of concrete?
And if they are made of concrete, I have an idea about what they are: in several ports around the world, I've seen moulded-concrete geometric forms, that might pass as tank-traps, used to construct artificial banks between concrete piers - and bridge pylons - and the sea.
posted
Concrete blocks have a skeleton of steel bars to increase structural integrity (damn you for making me used that word), on many blocks these bars protrude and rust in the rain, making long red-brown-black stains on the concrete.
The idea of homeless people having the resources, in effect forklifts, to systematically keep out the police with these things, when the government can just as easily remove the blocks again, does not sound like a strong theory to me.
It's possible the "tank traps" in this context are just a collective name for blocks that are placed to keep vehicles from passing but to allow for pedestrians, that means people who walk on so much street.
I like William Gibson, I am going to buy the first novel "Neuromancer" soon, but in english hardcover this time. I read it in swedish pocket but now I'm hungry for the author's original wording. Everytime I re-read a book in english that I had only read in translation it feels like a "Director's Cut".
-------------------- "I'm nigh-invulnerable when I'm blasting!" Mel Gibson, X-Men
Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
I'd imagine that the quality of translations (like dubbing) varies greatly. Do they retranslate books? And if so, how many times has Lord of the Rings been done (considering the number of times it was revised over).
I was flicking through Harry Potter with a girl who spoke French, and was amazed at the stuff that was taken out. Usually, paragraph for parapraph it was the same, but then they'd just skip a huge block of text, for no apparent reason. Except maybe that the tranlator was a bit lazy.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
I think that they usually only translate a book once (or at least only once per publisher ). As for Tolkien's book, his family is very very VERY strict on translations. I remember reading somewhere that the Dutch translator had quite some trouble with the family (or ol' JRR himself) about him translating the Hobbit names.
posted
Thanks... Masao: I would use this word too (I think "run-up" has the same meaning in this...
Here we go...
The waitress was a distracted-looking woman of indeterminate ancestry, acne scars sprinkled across her cheekbones, and she poured his coffee and took his order without actually indicating she understood English. Like the whole operation could be basically phonetic, he thought, and she'd have learned the sound of "two eggs over easy" and the rest. ??? two eggs over easy
Back in his room over Mrs. Siekevitz's garage, six blocks away and just below Sunset, Rydell had stretched out on his narrow bed and tried to get the radio in the glasses to work. All he'd been able to get, though, was static, faintly inflected with what might have been mariachi music. He'd done a little better with the GPS, which had a rocker keypad built into the right temple. ???rocker keypad
"I'm in the music business myself," Maryalice said. "My ex and I operated one of the most successful country music venues in Tokyo. But I felt the need to get back to my roots. To God's country, Mr. Rydell." ???venues
Chevette stands up, stretches, seeing the old man, Skinner, in memory, sitting up in his bed in the room atop the cable tower. What dancer she'd gotten off Creedmore has long since worn off, leaving an edge of tiredness. Long day. Very long day. "We're sleeping in a van down the foot of Folsom," she says. ??? foot of Folsom – the beginning of the Folsom Street? see also: - Carson wasn't too likely to come sniffing around the foot of Folsom, and if he did he was liable to run into the kind of people who'd take him for easy meat. … - That meant, she thought, that Tessa had gotten someone to drive her back to the foot of Folsom. Then either she'd driven back or gotten a lift.
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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