Topical Guide 393
Mark Dorset
Language and Languages: Learning and Translating
Language classes, of the type geared to teaching foreign clichés and phrases useful for a traveler, were especially popular, and Punta Cachazudans who had taken these classes loved to season their speech with the exotic phrases they had learned, with the result that many a conversation in Punta Cachazuda had a Babelic flavor:
“Hey, guten Tag, Ray. Comment ça va?” [Hey, good morning, Ray. How’s tricks?]
“Oh, not too bad. Pas mal. Can’t complain. Es muy caliente, though, nein?” [Oh, not too bad. Not bad. Can’t complain. It’s wicked hot, though, ain’t it?]
“Bozhe moy, you said it! Sehr warm, sehr warm.” [OMG, you said it. Wicked hot. wicked hot.]
“Buon giorno, Ray, George. Wie geht es Ihnen?” [Top o’ the mornin’ to ya, Ray, George. How’re they hangin’?]
“Oh, pas mal, Harry. Pas mal, gracias a Dios.” [Oh, all right, Harry. All right. Thanks, God!]
“Can’t complain, Harry. How about you? Kak vy pozhyvaete?” [Can’t complain, Harry. How about you? How ya doin’?]
“Well — ” [Well—]
“You keeping busy? Fuyez-vous les dangers de loisir?” [You keeping busy? Keeping your idle hands out of your shorts?']
“Pretty much. Thought I might do some fishing this afternoon. Want to come along?” [Gairebé. Vaig pensar que podria pescar una mica aquesta tarda. Vols venir?]
“I don’t know. I’m kind of pooped.” [Jeg ved ikke. Jeg er på en måde pooped.]
“Oh-ho, out with the lustige Witwe again, Harry?” [Ho, denove eksteren kun la gaja vidvino, Harry?]
“Well, heh-heh.” [Well, ha-ha.]
“You know what they say — a buen bocado, buen grito. [As the poet says—rich dishes may be hard to digest.]
“Ha, ha, ha.” [Honh, honh, honh.]
“Cela va sans dire, nein?” [Das versteht sic von selbst, non?]
“Mais, oui. Das versteht sic von selbst all right.” [Ach, ja. Cela va sans dire.]Herb ’n’ Lorna, Chapter 19 [bracketed translation annotations by MD and Google]
WARNING: The following skit insults Hungarians, male homosexuals, authors of language phrasebooks for travelers, and publishers of language phrasebooks for travelers. MD
The Artist, the Work, and the Audience
Life was pleasant, their time was filled, and they were doing some of the best work of their lives, but sometimes, watching the sun set into the Gulf, they had the thought that something was missing. They had no audience.
Herb ’n’ Lorna, Chapter 19
“You are the audience I want! Please take a seat—one of the good ones, up close. I’m so glad to have you here. I need you. It’s impossible to have a real, honest-to-goodness work of art—”
She took a graceful, elaborate bow.
“—without audience participation. I threw in the acknowledgment that I knew you were there for our pleasure—yours and mine. We artists do this all the time—throw something in just to please ourselves and you—the best of you. We find a way to turn our work inside out, like a sock, and let you see how the knitting was done. We open the stage door and let you in to see the chaos behind those unforgettable onstage moments. And in my case, since I’m an artist of the self, I let you see me naked—”
An expectant shuffling.
“Well, of course. You’ve had ten years of that, haven’t you? But I mean truly naked, in those moments when I’ve let my shell go transparent for you and you can actually see me. I know that only the sharpest of you notice what I’m doing, but you’re the ones I work for—not the ones who glance and walk by, certainly not them, but you, the ones who stand up close, breathing all over the work, inspecting every dot and stipple. We need each other, you and I. Without you, I’m just a woman up here talking to herself, and without me, you’re only someone sitting in the dark. There’s a bond between us. We’re bound by tacit, reciprocal promises, exactly as if you had been hitchhiking and I stopped to pick you up. As soon as you hop into my car, as soon as you walk through the door of my little theater, you agree to let me take you for a ride, and I promise you—well—I promise you that the ride will be worth your while, more interesting than walking, that the little time you spend in my company will be less disappointing than it would have been if you’d spent it alone.”
Conventions known to all well-socialized members of a society make possible some of the most basic and important forms of cooperation characteristic of an art world. Most important, they allow people who have little or no formal acquaintance with or training in the art to participate as audience members—to listen to music, read books, attend films or plays, and get something from them. Knowledge of these conventions defines the outer perimeter of an art world, indicating potential audience members, of whom no special knowledge can be expected. …
Audiences learn unfamiliar conventions by experiencing them, by interacting with the work and, frequently, with other people in relation to the work. They see and hear the new element in a variety of contexts. The artist teaches them what it means, what it can do, and how they might experience it by creating those contexts. …
Each work in itself, by virtue of its differences (however small or insignificant) from all other works, thus teaches its audiences something new: a new symbol, a new form, a new mode of presentation. More important, the entire body of work by a single artist or group gradually, as innovations develop (perhaps through an artist’s entire career), teaches the new material to so many people that we can speak of the training of an audience. …
You [the artist] need not use the [art world’s distribution system] to provide economic support for your work if the medium does not require extensive expenditures, if you have sufficient resources to cover even high expenses, or if you can get what you need by barter. But you may still want to bring your work to the attention of an appropriate audience. If you can mainly, or only, reach that audience through the established distribution system, you must still deal with it, devise an alternative way of accomplishing the same end, or do without audience participation. …
The operating public-sale systems serve some artists well, providing support, contact with an audience with taste, and opportunities for the effective public display of their work. They do less well for artists whose work doesn’t quite fit the system, and very badly for artists whose work doesn’t fit at all.
See also: Language TG 11; Language: Dialect, Slang, Idiolect, Shibboleths, Jargon TG 137; Language: Slang, Insults, Terms of Abuse TG 140; Slang TG 169; Reading and Readers TG 98; TG 99
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