| User | Thread poster: Tom in London Off topic: Very long sentence for author who refused to use punctuation |
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Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 16:50
 Member (2008)
Italian to English
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Jan Willem van Dormolen 
Netherlands
Local time: 17:50
Member (2009)
English to Dutch
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I love the double meaning of 'sentence'...
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Gilla Evans
United Kingdom
Local time: 16:50
 Member (2009)
Spanish to English
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| | long sentences | Feb 21, 2011 |
I love the 'long sentence' too.
But I fear for some of our more experimental authors with the introduction of such legislation. I can think of a few top writers who would fall foul of such a law.
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Lingua 5B
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 17:50
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
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| | "Stream of consciousness" - James Joyce.. | Feb 21, 2011 |
Here's a passage from Ulysses by James Joyce; Joyce used this technique to follow the way our mind wanders ( no punctuation = no breaks in thinking). It was a very, very useful technique, and you can feel the rhythm of thoughts/musings.
The character Molly muses ( about her young days and when her boyfriend proposed):
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the old windows of the posadas 2 glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
"
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Ivan Rocha
Canada
English to Portuguese
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| | Author who refused to use punctuation | Feb 21, 2011 |
Can you say Saramago?
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Krzysztof Kajetanowicz
Poland
Local time: 17:50
English to Polish
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| | isn't this the trend | Feb 21, 2011 |
among British lawyers?
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Alexander Kupriyanchuk
Ukraine
Local time: 18:50
 Member (2009)
English to Russian
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| | Life Sentence :) | Feb 21, 2011 |
Very long sentence (without a single "punctuation mark") = Life sentence ?
Look at today's newspapers and, "yes," especially legal documents. Sometimes it would take you a life to decipher a ruling, yes. 
[Edited at 2011-02-21 17:14 GMT]
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Gilla Evans
United Kingdom
Local time: 16:50
Member (2009)
Spanish to English
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| | They may be a nightmare to translate, but... | Feb 22, 2011 |
Ivan Rocha wrote:
Can you say Saramago? |
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But he did put in a full stop every few pages... and isn't his prose just wonderful!
What about the French writer Georges Perec, who managed to write an entire novel without using the letter e (La Disparition), and his perhaps even more extraordinary English translator Gilbert Adair who produced an English version without using the letter e (A Void) either!
Are such wonderful writers to be made to conform by law?
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Ivan Rocha
Canada
English to Portuguese
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Gilla Evans wrote:
Ivan Rocha wrote:
Can you say Saramago? |
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But he did put in a full stop every few pages... and isn't his prose just wonderful! |
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I don't think so; it strikes me as puerile and one-sided, but I guess that's just me. The man won a Nobel, so he must be good.
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The translation workplace 
