Final Project (Blog)
For my final project, I am considering to do a blog. One thing that stood out to me in almost every reading we have done thus far, is that authors seem to be critical of the society in which they lived. However, this alone would be too broad of a topic, and so I would like to analyze how the authors in particular seemed to criticize the everyday lives and expectations people had of others and themselves.
This particular topic caught my eye in the last two reading we did (Death of Ivan Iliyich and Metamorphosis). However, I think that it’s something that could be applied to almost all of the works we have read, after a closer inspection and a different analytical approach. I hope that this topic is not too broad for a blog, and I feel like I could do a lot of interesting connections to works from outside of the class, as well.
I am interested in doing a blog post because I have never had much experience with blogging, but would like to learn more about it. I also feel like it will give me a lot of “artistic freedom” and sort of provide me with a lot of choices as far as the design of the blog and the layout go.
3 responses so far
It sound like its still a bit broad. You will run into trouble, I think, in crafting a compelling narrative–the story of the blog that shows come tons between posts and provides a sense of satisfying development. How authors push back on expectations people have of others is really big. What kinds of expectations? What people? Parental expectations? Social expectations. Expectations of how young people should act? Women? And what kind of authorial response interest you? What specific ways do authors criticize these expectations, and which ways will you focus on ? Keep thinking about it. Also, definitely plan on using some of the texts coming up, which will keep your blog correct and more relevant. There will be some leap of faith since you don’t know what’s coming, but you can make it work, since so many texts deal with this general theme, which, as you begin working on, I’m sure you can hone to a finer point.
What part of Metamorphosis did you draw your inspiration from? What part of the society did the author criticize that inspired you for this blog? I think your blog journey will help you narrow down your topic. I was thinking Diary of A Madman is criticizing the Chinese society and its political system. You can research into current China and see if it has improve from the 1910s or is it still facing the same type of problems from 1910s.
I know that you are switching to a translation project. I’m not sure what kind of work it is, only that it’s a Serbian work. I know translations may seem easy at first, but you really need to pay special attention to tone, and wording. You want to keep any unique sentence structures the author uses, while also making sure to keep any important imagery. The mood has to be the same as well; mood and tone are incredibly important in any work, especially short stories.
In my opinion the most important aspect in translating is word choice. Different words may share meanings but they don’t all share the same connotations. Most languages have many words to express different emotions, and because English is such a precise and analytical language some meaning can get lost if the wording is off. A good example is, in Japanese, there are two different words that both mean impassioned, but because of connotations and slight differences, one is closer in meaning to frenzied than impassioned. So just be careful of words with similar meanings and take connotations into account.