Is Harry Potter translation akin to Bible Translation?!

I read an article today about a professor who is displaying all 67 translations of the Harry Potter book. There are several random thoughts that crossed my mind about that.  Are Harry Potter translations becoming the modern "mark" of language development?  For so many languages throughout history (and for many languages in much of the world today), the Bible used to be the first translated book that gave a language "real" status.  Even if people didn't believe in the message of the Bible, somehow having a written translation of the book in a language did a lot for the standardization and acceptability of the written language.

Is that standard slowly shifting towards the standardization of Harry Potter?  Can contextualization studies now look to Harry Potter to see how the form of the meaning has been shifted for each language?  Anyways, it just brought up a few little interesting random thoughts this morning.

A few crashes?

Once again, I'm sitting in my parent's basement, enjoying the Winter Olympics. How about those Canadian girls, eh?  We always knew Canadian girls rock :)  Didn't they use to make a t-shirt that proclaimed that very fact?  I have seen a few crashes, though, both in the alpine skiing and aerials.  Looks like they could have hurt :(

But I didn't do too much crashing this past weekend, even though I was involved in my very own Olympian feats!  There was yet another Adventure Race out in the mountains, which I was involved in as the "motivational" speaker.  I think I almost had more fun this past weekend than I did on the first weekend - partly, perhaps, because I had a little better idea of what to expect.  For a girl who lives in Africa and lives with rather a lot of uncertainty, I realized this past weekend just how much a little bit of knowing-what-to-expect helps me feel a lot more comfortable!  Anyways, the speaking went well, I think, and I had some really interesting conversations with some of the participants, which was cool.

Also, a funny little story... A different linguist had come out this past weekend to do the intro to linguistics.  I've met her once before - because we happened to be assigned seats on the same plane coming home from London!  It was one of those crazy "coincidences".  I always say a little prayer that I'll end up sitting next to someone friendly, but not too friendly, on those long plane rides.  There's nothing worse than being grumpy and jet-lagged and stinky and sitting next to someone who makes you feel even more grumpy.  Anyway, when I got on the plane in London (after 15 hours in the airport, plus a 9 hour flight from Uganda), I found myself sitting next to a friendly looking young woman.  As you do, I struck up a bit of a conversation just to establish where we were going and where we were coming from.  Turns out, she was also en-route from Africa, and had been doing some linguistic work over there!  She works for the same organization that I do, and is from the same city that I'm from... but we'd never met before we were assigned seats next to each other!  How crazy is that?!  Anyways, here she is in the Lodge, teaching some basic linguistics to the racers:

 

The next day dawned bright and clear (and yes, I was up BEFORE the dawn again... sigh...).  It was pretty cold at the start line, but quite quickly warmed up. I didn't think the weather could get better than it was the previous weekend, but it was incredibly warm!  Which was good, because while the teams ran up a mountain, I took the short-cut to the frozen water fall, which was all set up for climbing!

First, the crampons went on:

 

Then Jared let me and Jen across the tiny little path to the base of the water fall.  I think that was the scariest part of the whole ordeal!

 

Are these crampon things actually going to keep us from sliding down to certain death? 

Once we reached the climbing area, we got some good coaching from the experienced climbers.  I was so impressed by how patient and encouraging these guys were!  For those of you who know me... well, you know that I really don't have an athletic bone in my body. For me to even think about attempting to do something like climb a frozen waterfall... well, that's a pretty big achievement right there!  So I was really encouraged by these guys - they're obviously really good climbers, but didn't make me feel like a dork for being a complete klutz up there!  That's a major achievement on their part!

Lucky for me, there were a bunch of experienced climbing tutors waiting around for someone to tutor, so I had two of them literally giving me step by step instructions.

 

Once I was roped up, I felt pretty safe.  I didn't find the actual climbing scary at all - maybe it was because I was just concentrating so hard on getting the pesky little picks into the ice!  I realized that my left-arm triceps are pretty pathetic little muscles!  

I did completely slip out at one point.  Probably that should have been a bit scary, because there was quite a lot of bounce in the rope!  But the only thing I could think about was the fact that I had few inches on my way up the waterfall and had to re-climb a little way.  Man, it was tough!  Once I got the hang of it, it got a bit easier near the top, but the first 5 feet of climbing seemed to take forever and took SO much effort!

 

But I didn't give up!  And I made it to the top of that little climb.  Which, looking at the pictures now, it doesn't look so high.  But man, by the time I got to the top point there, my body felt like I had scaled to the top of the Empire State Building! 

 

The best part was the coming back down!  It was good fun, like sitting in a Laz-y-boy recliner and letting myself be lowered down on the rope!

 

I really felt quite proud of myself for doing something like this - how often am I going to get the chance to do it again?!   The hike out was gorgeous, as well. It was just such a beautiful day!  Once we got down to the meadows, we had a little picnic, enjoying the sun and the amazing clear blue sky.  How lovely it was.

 

After lunch, we drove back to the camp property, where I continued to enjoy the sun and fresh air by taking a walk around the lake... my Starbucks mug filled with Earl Grey tea.  Such a civilized way to enjoy nature, I'd say!

 

The second day of the weekend started out frighteningly cold.  I think my toes almost turned into little ice cubes whilst telling my inspirational story at the start line on Sunday.  But once again, the sun came out and warmed everything up.  By the time I made it out to the village with the villagers in tow, it was sunny and warm once again.

I got to learn a bit of Vietnamese at this village, so I had a great time munching on spring rolls and exclaiming how tasty they were in Vietnamese!  Gotta love words with tones and word initial velar nasals :)

It's not that late...

I shall no longer feel guilty about being a night-owl :)  One of my favourite bloggers has just posted:

"Assuming God is a morning person and Satan is a Night Owl"

Back from the races... take two

Um, right.  I was planning on posting a very impressive post, since I haven't posted in a seriously long time.  But the internet out here in the forest ain't too good.  And it won't let me post photos.  And the stories I have to tell of the heights I have risen to this past weekend just aren't good enough without the photos.

So you must wait a day.  When I get back to "real" civilization in the city, I will try to post a post, along with some photos!

I know, you can hardly wait!  Try not to lose any sleep over it, though, ok?

Back from the races... and watching more!

I've got lots to say about how the weekend went (well!), but I've been too busy watching the races at the Olympics to write much about it! 

My sister and her family are amazing - they knew I really wanted to watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, so they downloaded it from iTunes for us to watch all together when  got back from the race!  How thoughtful is that, eh?  I know it's probably old news, too, but I actually really enjoyed the opening ceremonies.  I think I enjoyed them more than I've ever enjoyed opening ceremonies in the past!  We were musing as to whether that's just because we're Canadian, and it appeals to our sense of patriotism or uniquely Canadian aesthetics or if it was just better than other ceremonies... dunno.  But I liked it.  Sorta made me feel proud to be Canadian or something.   It was a neat end to a great weekend!

The race was also great to be a part of!  It was really just like one of my all-time favourite tv shows, The Amazing Race.  Except that this race took place in the mountains (SO beautiful) and raised a ton of money for literacy and translation programs!

And I was even up before the sun both days!  That's quite an acheivement for me!

 

The weather, as you can see, was absolutely gorgeous!  I couldn't believe how warm it was - I hardly got cold toes at all.  I don't think it could have been any better.  Hopefully next weekend will be just as good, though, in terms of the weather!

 
 

And I think the speaking thing went pretty good, as well.  Thanks for praying for me, all you praying-types!  A couple of my stories were told while we were standing out in the open air - one of the reasons why I'm rather thankful for the lovely weather! 

Off to the races...

Well, I put some words down on my computer, and printed them out.  And I put some photos with those words.  So we'll see what happens!

I'm leaving in the morning for the weekend adventure race!  I'm looking forward to it, but truth be told, I'm a little on the nervous side about it all.  So, we'll see what happens... but I'm sure something good will come of the weekend.  God will be there, so I know something good will come of it!  I'm also just looking forward to enjoying being in the mountains and being surrounded by some lovely creation.  And thankfully, the forecast is for some warm-ish weather!  It's supposed to hover around 0C all weekend up there, which is definitely bearable!

Right, gotta go get my stuff together so I don't have to do it in the morning... pray for the group of us together this weekend as we have adventures in the forest and hopefully with the speaking, too!

Tme is ticking...

... and I have a bit of a block on what to say on the weekend for the big camp-out.  I'm meant to be the "Inspirational storyteller", but am having trouble getting all my inspirational stories to hang together in a coherent form.  And time is running out.  Plus I've got a few other things on the go which require me to do something about, which would make it really easy to procrastinate organizing my stories for the weekend!

What to do, what to do?

Otherwise, things are going great!  Two of my nephews came to visit for the weekend, so we had some good fun with them, including a trip to the science center.  The weather is getting nicer here.  It's 0C at the moment outside, as opposed to 40C back in Jb!  Must admit, I'm not sorry to be missing out on that!

Right.  Gotta get back to work.

My day

I had a great time today with a good friend of mine and her two little boys at the zoo!  I love zoos, and we seem to have a particularily nice zoo in my city.  Obviously, I don't go very often, and things have changed quite lot since I was there last.  And going with a couple of little kids somehow makes it that much more fun, though I think I start acting rather kid-like when I get into the zoo, as well!  My poor friend had three kids to herd around the zoo today :)  It was a gorgeous sunny day - a little on the cool side, but still really warm for February in this part of the world!  It was great to see some of the animals running around out in the snow.  The tiger was out and we got a great view of him through the frosty glass:

 

The red panda was in fine form, as well.  He's just so cute!

 

And it was just so odd to see some more "familiar" animals running around in the snow!  The zebras, camels and ostriches all seemed to be enjoying the snow today!

 

  

Of course, I think for the first time ever, when I wanted to take some other photos, my camera battery was dead!  So I missed getting pictures of some of the other amazing animals we saw today - the snow leopards, gorillas, colubus monkeys, the cute little blond human creatures that I spent the day with...

But I did get some pictures of the special creatures that are just in town for a little while.  They were a bit scary, but I did my job in making sure they didn't eat any of us as we ran past them!

  

Yup, it was a tough job, but someone had to do it!  These creatures even roar at you and move when you walk past them!  Pretty scary stuff, I tell you!  But it was so nice to go out and enjoy the zoo and the crazy creatures that God has made for us to enjoy.  Of course, I had to take a few flower photos, too!

 

I was feeling very much at home in the conservatory where they had all sorts of plants and trees just like I see every day in Africa :)

Some random thoughts

Yes, I'm a procrastinator.  I just had a conversation with someone about the brilliance of procrastinators, though.  We're a special breed, us procrastinators. 

On that note, I'm going to go and continue working on some stuff for my colleague back in Africa.  I hope she doesn't read this so she doesn't know that I've procrastinated on putting a few ideas down on paper for her :)

But I am proud to say that I did NOT procrastinate on getting my presentation done for my church on Sunday.  I have my 7 minutes of fame to talk about my life in Africa.  It's quite a challenge to craft 7 minutes of words to say just the right thing.  What do people want to hear?  What do people NEED to hear?  How much do they already know?  But I think I have my 7 minutes down.

I also had a great time with the senior's group in my church yesterday!  What a lovely group of people they are - and they were so keen to hear about our translation and literacy work.  They had some really interesting questions, too.  I quite like those old folks - our culture sometimes doesn't afford them as much credit as they deserve, I think.  It's so opposite from African culture, where everyone listens to the old folks. Good thing I'm growing a couple of grey hairs so folks over there might start listening to me!  And just because I haven't posted a photo in a while, here's a picture of a wonderful old man back in Africa:

In fact, I've been thinking quite a bit about how the African view of things is so very different from our views over here.  And there are a few things that I really appreciate about the African view of things.  I like old people.  I think they have a lot to offer!   But our culture so much celebrates youth and beauty.  And of course, you can't be beautiful unless you're young and skinny in our culture.  But yet so many people struggle so much with their weight, which comes a lot from just generally eating junk food.  I must admit, part of my procrastination includes watching a bit of daytime TV (though I also see this as part of "re-integration" into my own culture :) ), and so many of the shows are about diet and fitness and how we're killing our bodies because of the junk we're eating... And yet it's completely socially incorrect to really admit or talk about the fact that some of us are on the "chubby" side.  Whereas in Africa, people are much more open and realistic about their weight.  Because of living in Africa, I'm ok with saying outloud that I'm a "strong" woman! 

There are a lot of random thoughts floating around my mind about all of this, and perhaps someday I'll construct them into something that's slightly more coherent... but enough procrastination - I gotta go back to my supervisor training workshop at the moment!

Can I still call myself a Canadian?

Because I'm just not digging Red Rose tea. It just isn't comparing to Lipton Yellow Label tea. Have I become a tea snob by sharing a house with a Brit in East Africa? But then again, I had the loveliest cup of Earl Grey tea at the very Canadian Second Cup the other day. So maybe I'm just confused about my tea.

But I do know that a good cup of tea does wonders for a girl. When I was in Bible School in Northern England, the Dean of Students was a wonderfully sweet British woman. We could go to her with everything - the good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful! And everything was shared over a good cuppa. There's nothing that a good cuppa doesn't make even better!

And on that note, I'm off to rummage through the cupboard for that Earl Grey I found in there earlier this afternoon...

But I'm still feeling a little guilty that I just don't like Red Rose anymore... oh well, nothing that a good cuppa won't make better!