Home > Messages from the Ether > Nobody tells me anything

Actually, I did post an announcement at my blog.

Also, my translation is slightly different of the website title:
I am here, I have spoken, behold the proof.

Seems to have a bit more bravado, almost implying that what he says is proof rather than proving that he has spoken.

Dammit...there I go being inquisitive again...

"Behold" seemed more cornball to me--it's like having to translate vocative case when all you want is something that resembles modern speech. Just because you're using a dead language, doesn't mean you have to parrot dead idioms. I use II. A. here.

I also changed the perfect tense to imperfect in order to parallel the phrases. To say "I have spoken" suggests all action in the past, yet his writing is current. It makes more sense to say "I am speaking."

(How long are you going to be Mr. Sensitive about trying to correct people?)

BTW, I was just about to do a post on verb tenses. Coincidence?

Sorry if my Latin is not up to par. Mason's initial translation is the one I based my title choice on. Personally, I like "behold", cornball or not. I also like "yea, verily" and "forsooth", though.

As to whether it's a simple declarative along the lines of cogito ergo sum or something more brazen, I leave that up to the reader. Isn't figuring that out part of the fun of the whole exercise?

P.S. Thanks to you both for digging into it, though. Up for three weeks with nary a peep and I was starting to worry I'd out-snootied myself. ;)

It took me a while to catch up with everything, but I think you actually write less on your blog than in email. !?! Anyway, sorry if I took liberties with the translation--you didn't have it, so I figured it was up to the Jr. Linguists to get their Magic Language Decoder Rings out. Regarding "behold!" and "verily," I chose "ether" over "aether" to avoid the same faux-archaic appearance.

Back on topic - I don't think blogging is actually male-dominated. It just seems that way because of our/your perspective.

Kristin blogs through a site called LiveJournal, and it is overwhelmingly female.

I think if you re-define your assessment to "stand-alone multi-format blogs" as predominantly male, you might be closer to the mark. In a variety of my academic course work, including educational methods, composition, anthropology, and sociology, a common and prevailing view is that women interact in a communal way. LiveJournal reflects highly personal content, uses cross-linking referred to as "friend-ing" another user, and appears designed to foster ad-hoc "grouping" of interests, users, and written content. All of which I have been led to believe are more characteristic of female modes of communication.

Whereas what you, Mason, JB, Chapelle, and I have are highly independent, stand-alone, electronic soapboxes. We solicit feedback and response, but the inter-linking of our content is not the real raison d'etre. Getting our words out for all to see is really more to the point. We "communicate", but we are not really a "community".

I think that a distinction can be made between "blogging" and "journaling." Some would argue that they are the same thing: a temporal collection of “posts” made fairly frequently, with the most recent post displayed most prominently. A blog could be, for example, a simple collection of links, an on-going commentary on news or current events, a personal diary, a reading journal, a photojournal, or something else entirely.

However, I tend to think that most online diaries tend to fall fairly neatly into two recognizable categories. First of all, there are those individuals who maintain formal, highly-structured, public blogs, containing (for the most part) well-thought-out and well-edited posts. The entries in such blogs can often be thought of as self-contained personal essays on personal experiences, politics, or the arts.

I fall into the second category, journallers. My posts are usually stream-of-consciousness. They exist for mostly my own benefit. For the most part, my entries only viewable by a select group of friends. I make incomplete posts. I rarely edit things. My posts are to-do lists, rants, and self-involved ramblings, with the occasional piece of real writing tossed in here or there. I chronicle my physical training and dieting goals. I bitch about my current job search. I complain, whine, and wibble. These are things that are important to me (and maybe to my close friends), but now matter how well-written or insightful such posts may be, the public in general would really have no interest in them.

My journaling can also be very interactive: I keep up with my local friends through my journal, and I often use it to get feedback on personal issues and my writing.

Now as to whether women or men tend towards one or the other, I really cannot say. Most of the people I know who use their journal the way I do are women, but truthfully, I met most of them through an online women’s literature group, so that population is most likely biased towards the female.

ipecac ad nauseam

that's what I got when I translated laurence's blog's title. in english, it roughly means to induce vomiting to an extent that you actually vomit. meta-vomiting....something like that.

I translated it back-and-forth at Babelfish and got "The meat is good but the vodka is dreadful."

Weird.