Now In English! "Ficciones" by Jorge Luis Borges

For fans of Nabokov, Borges’ work is for you.

Why You Should Watch Baahubali: The Beginning

One of the most popular films of the year, S.S. Rajamouli’s Baahubali: The Beginning, is a definite must see. Rajamouli mentions the comic retelling of Indian folktales, Amar Chitra Katha as a major influence – and it's very evident in the film itself. This immersion into Indian folk-tales and mythology creates an exciting epic tale.

WebDev Update: PHP Contact Form

For the past year or so I have been returning to an old hobby – web development. You may have remembered my earlier post about coding and second language learning. First I worked on upgrading my knowledge of CSS (now CSS3) and HTML (HTML5), with some exercises in practical JavaScript and jQuery. I've also been working quite a bit with Twitter Bootstrap. I also dabbled in Wordpress and MySQL.

For the past month I've decided to primarily focus on dressing up some PHP samples. I took the The Complete Web Developer’s Course by Rob Percival, as well as the Code Academy PHP course, but it is still my weakest link.

Short-Form: Jorge Luis Borges

“There are not, in the whole vast library, true identical books…everything is there…a version of each book in all languages, the interpolation of every book in all books.” – “Library of Babel” 75 

The Translator

The Argentinian writer, translator and essayist Jorge Luis Borges may be better known as the translator of Garcia Marquez’s One-Hundred Years of Solitude. His work consists of puzzles, falsifications, religion, mirrors, and libraries. And as amazing as his fiction is (I’ll get to that in another blog post), it’s also interesting to interpret his ideas about translation.

Now In English! Al-Ghazali's “The Beginning of Guidance”

 “Woe to the ignorant one, because he did not seek knowledge, and woe a thousand times to the knowledgeable one who did not act upon his knowledge.”  20, The Beginning of Guidance

Due to the continuing conflict in Southwest Asia, the abuse of Islamic tenants by multiple terrorist organizations, and the general lack of understanding of Islam in the USA, today I will discuss a very different kind of book. Instead of fiction, I'd like to describe and suggest a book that you won't find in many debates about radical Islam, a book that supplements the Qu'ran: The Beginning of Guidance by Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali.

Imam Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali (c. 1058–1111), one of the most prominent Islamic theologians in history, penned to one of his students a methodological way to practice God-Consciousness. Translated by Mashhad Al-Allaf, The Beginning of Guidance offers rich advice to the layperson. Although it was originally geared to students of the Qu'ran, the advice given in this work can, at some level, be found across faiths, as well as among atheists and agnostics. 

Cover of The Beginning of Guidance
by Al-Ghazali

This edition in particular is extremely useful for many readers. First, the text itself is easy to read. It includes a translator’s preface, a transcription key, transliterations of the informal prayers (Du'a), and other notes. This makes it easier, especially for those who may be unfamiliar with Islam, to get an idea of the context and the sounds of prayers in Arabic. Second, the translation faces the original Arabic, with vowel marks. For the student of Arabic, this may be an excellent study material – for language as well as religion.

The work itself is divided into three sections – “On Obedience”, “On Refraining from Disobedience”, and “The Etiquette of Companionship with the Creator and with Creation”. I would describe it thus: the first section is about worship, the second on avoiding sin/negative behavior, and the third on how to interact with others. No section is more useful than the other, and I suggest rereading the entire book (some 70 pages for English-only text) to better see the cohesiveness of each section. While the wording is simple, the concepts are profound; therefore, those who wish to glean more should not only reread it but also read it slowly.

Those who come from the Abrahamic faiths, in particular the more orthodox variations, may be the most interested in The Beginning of Guidance. In Al-Ghazali’s work I was reminded of my time in Catholic school, for the most part because of the level or reverence and discipline Al-Ghazali shows through his writing.

In all honesty, it is impossible to better explain or summarize The Beginning of Guidance in a blog post. There is a great risk that I may mangle the original meaning. For anyone interested in Islam, or who wants to go beyond reading the Qu'ran and a 101 book, The Beginning of Guidance should definitely be on your list. Whether you decide to read it to seek out religion, philosophy, or just out of curiosity, it won't disappoint you!

Missed a NIE! Review? Check out last month's Balika Badhu: a Bengali Anthology

4 Tips to Start Speaking Your Second Language

Speaking is often the most difficult aspect of language learning – and it isn't always because of speech anxiety. Simultaneously producing the correct conjugations and declensions (i.e.. case systems) can be frustrating. However, there are ways to improve outside of speaking with a partner.

Why You Should Read The Mahabharata

Arjuna requests instruction from Krishna,
from Wellcome Images via Wikimedia Commons

"Poets have told it before, poets are telling it now, other poets shall tell this history on earth in the future."- Volume 1 Book 1 from the J.A.B. van Buitenen translation.

Readers of religious texts may remember reading or hearing about The Bhagavad Gita . What most people don’t realize, is that the Gita is one book of 18 – on section of one of the longest epics.

Short-Form: Walter Benjamin's "The Task of the Translator"

The philosopher Walter Bendix Schoenflies Benjamin was born on July 15, 1892 to an assimilated Jewish family in Berlin. While a bulk of his writings is directed towards exploring history and art, he also wrote about translation.

“The Task of the Translator” is dense, packed full of complex theory. It wouldn't be difficult write a dissertation based on one or two lines of the text.

This, however, will not be a dissertation. Instead, I’ll summarize and try to explain the most basic elements of Benjamin’s theory. Granted, it's nearly impossible, and it would be very easy to write a thesis on one or two lines from this article. Keeping that in mind, let's dive into the basics...

Now in English! "Balika Badhu": a Bengali Anthology

What began as Monish Ranjan Chatterjee’s project to translate ‘The Adolescent Bride’ (‘Balika Badhu’) by Bimal Kar, later became an anthology of Bengali short stories. Balika Badhu: A representative anthology of Bengali short stories spans just over 300 pages. But while it is very cohesive, it is not quite representative. Chatterjee says so much in the introduction. Although all the pieces are well paced and the writers well known in the West Bengal, no woman writer was included. This is an imperfection that the translator points out almost immediately, but regardless, this anthology is certainly worth reading.

How To Prepare For Your First Oral Exam

For many exam season is approaching rapidly, and I know for many language students, this includes oral examinations. Mock conversations, meant to be spontaneous and fluid, are often intimidating and anxiety-producing. Here are six tips to help you prepare for your exam.

Offbeat Bollywood: 5 Indian Films Americans Should See

Beyond extravagant sets, elaborate costumes, and upbeat dance sequences, there’s another Bollywood almost unknown in the US (movie buffs may be excluded). These five films diverge from the plot lines Americans expect, and reveal a whole new side of India.

Thoughts for the Post-Colonial Reader

“The close relationship between colonization and translation has come under scrutiny; we can now perceive the extent to which translation was for centuries a one-way process, with texts being translated into European languages for European consumption, rather than as part of a reciprocal process of exchange.” – from Post-colonial Translation by Susan Basset & Harish Trivedi

Post-Colonialism has long since wedged itself into the cultural limelight, notably in the realm of pop culture and cultural appropriation. Translation and foreign literature has not escaped its purview, and while many readers may shirk away for one reason or another – to political, too liberal – it’s an important factor to think about. For, to some degree, colonialism has chosen and reinforced what we read.

However, now foreign novels are not translated into English nearly enough, meaning that we know less about the world and its peoples than we did before. While novels, movies, advertisements are translated out of English and into a multitude of other languages; the international novel market in the United States is still relatively small. The US has largely monopolized its culture through exporting it.

So what can we understand that’s useful for us readers about the translation and post-colonialism?

Now In English! Review of "Broken Glass Park"

 

"Sometimes I think I'm the only one in our neighborhood with any worthwhile dreams. I have two...I want to kill Vadim. And I want to write a book about my mother." - Alina Bronsky, Broken Glass Park

Originally written in German by the Russian-German writer Alina Bronsky, and translated by Tim Mohr, Broken Glass Park (German Title: Scherbenpark) reveals itself to be a young adult novel on the axis of maturity. The opening, seemingly over-dramatic, casts readers into a side of Europe they may not be familiar with – the ghettos.

Language Goal: C2 German in India

Learning another language in another country may seem counter-productive, but this isn't too far of a stretch. Benny the Polyglot did it with Arabic in Brazil, and now I’ll be pushing myself the extra mile while living in India.

Into India: From Delta to Dust

India reminds me of nowhere I've been, and everywhere at once.

In high school I sat bent over a desktop screen watching Jab We Met, my initial contact with Bollywood. What caught me was an iconic scene – that of a train speeding away, and the protagonist (Kareena Kapoor) rushing to jump on. Years later, when I arrived in India, I hit the tarmac racing through customs, baggage claim, to the next gate. My runaway train was my connecting flight to Pune.

5 Tips for Reading International Fiction

Last week I wrote a bit about why branching into international fiction is a good idea - but I barely touched on how to do it. Whenever you come in contact with another culture, there's going to be some complications in understanding, even if the story is similar to something you may read at home. So how can we get the most out of reading outside our culture?

5 Reasons You Should Read International Fiction

As a US citizen, the plethora of brilliant English fiction seems overwhelming. Even with ebooks coming into vogue, local book stores are brimming and bursting with new books. So why add the outside world to your reading list? Well, I can give you five reasons off the top of my head.

What Coding and Language Learning Have In Common

Back in the bygone days of Myspace I learned my first foreign language. Eager to express my "individual" pre-teen self, I scurried over to W3schools and learned enough CSS and HTML to code my own layouts. With the rise of Facebook, I gradually shifted platforms, leaving my coding experience behind until college.

As I am now brushing up on my coding skills - and learning a few new tricks, I've noticed it's much easier to figure out than when I was 13. But that has little to do with age, and more about language experience. If you know how to learn another language, you can learn to code, and vice-versa. 

Wort für Wort: Material Review

Cover of the 5th edition. 

After a month of ghosting through Amazon reviews, I purchased Hodder Education's advanced Wort für Wort, fifth edition, by Paul Stocker. Spoiled by free internet resources, I didn't see the point of buying another language book, and being tight on money, I was rather cautious.

A good textbook is a diamond in the rough - and I've experienced poorly packed ones before, often in the classroom. After a certain level, it's easier to pick up new vocabulary from news articles and youtube videos anyway, so why bother? What did I have to gain - especially from using an online store.

There was a lot, apparently.

How To Use Google Translate

Scrambling to finish our Spanish before class starts, scratching our head at a convoluted paragraph-sentence, or even double-checking those multilingual"I love you" posts on Tumblr - we've all been there, hoping that Google Translate (GT) will provide a quick solution.

And it does provide something, but I doubt you could call it a solution.

Google Translate is a tool, not a translator. And in order to learn your language with a machine translation, you have to understand how it works best.

Now In English! Review of "Nostalgic Clone"

"...when we arrive at the absolutely essential texts, when the information and narratives fashioning the suppression of needs have been disposed of and the lost knowledge returns, if nothing else at least we’ll know where we are going, what possibilities remain.” - "Nostalgic Clone", Amis M.

Last November I raided my university library in search for modern Greek fiction - and to my surprise, I wasn't disappointed. Finding literature or language books with the words "modern" and Greek adjacent to one another is like trying to find a movie rental store - it's nearly impossible. Among the several poetry volumes I collected, I did find one anthology of prose - the Dedalus Book of Greek Fantasy.

While I maintain that this entire book is a must have, the story "Nostalgic Clone" by Amis Marangopoulos is perhaps my favorite.

5 Basic Skills For Translation

Transitioning from language learning to translation is difficult - often because it's easy to assume that you've been doing translation in the classroom for years. We all know those short sentence assignments - translate x into y. But textbook exercises exist to help you with grammar and vocabulary application - not actual translation.

After practicing translating for about a year, I've come up with five primary skills that one should consider when going into translation.

How To Decide On A Translation: 5 Steps for Literature Lovers

Summer has finally arrived, and somehow, you've managed to find the time to read Anna Karenina. Or maybe it's Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse or Candide by Voltaire. Whatever you're reading, it the original was written in a tongue you don't understand. And anything famous, anything translated, must have the trait of being universally understood, right? Any translation should do if that's the case.

But is it?

What I Learned From Studying Abroad: Why Learning About Learning Is Important

When I first began my trek into the territory of second-language acquisition in 2008, I had never heard of project-based learning. Likewise, there was no Fluent in 3 Months. At least at the time, my only point of reference to education was a classroom-based curriculum, with the exception of threads on community forums. My ignorance isn't surprising - missing-out on middle-school science fairs and being swamped with AP busywork, knowing how the system worked was more important than knowing how learning worked. Although I had a passion for numerous subjects, knowing how to test-take is more important than what's on the test.

After visiting Germany in 2008 and becoming enthralled with the language, how to learn became much more important. Although my methods were sloppy, after two years I tested into intermediate German at the college level. If I had spent more time with grammar, I may have been able to slip into the advanced courses. And from this experience, I modeled my entire college curriculum on self-education. My entire drive was based on this, to take as many classes as possible and find out how to use it all. I began to read articles about project-based learning, about language learning. 

Only in Germany did I learn the most about what education is and what it should be.

Language Challenge 2015

If there are two things my friends tend to know about me, it's that I love both languages and game plans. As everything had been rather topsy-turvy since I graduated from college, one of the most important thing I could do was create an action plan. A language challenge for 2015.

You might be thinking, “But the year’s already half over!” And that’s true. To be honest, my regular language studies resumed in May, while I slowly inched out of academia into the rest of the world. Since then I have designed a set of goals dotting this year's timeline, with a focus on German.

Returning in July

So I've been gone since September. As one might expect, my senior thesis engulfed my final year. Now that I've graduated (although it doesn't feel like it), I plan to be back with new posts on Friday, July 3rd. During this time, I am juggling a few different tasks: establishing myself as a freelance translator and writer, organizing documents for a trip in August, regular language practice, and fiction writing.

In any case, here are some topics I will be writing about come July:

- Current language challenge
- Language learning tips and strategies
- Translation practice, theories, etc.
- Non-English/topical book suggestions and reviews
- Travel experiences

Until then: Bis bald! See you soon!