Studying studying studying...
Dec. 13th, 2010 05:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bebootsMy final exams: Introduction to Translation, Art History (1848-1914), and an American Women's History course. A few thoughts I've had over the course of studying for them...
I learned a new word while studying for translation - "Aphorism", meaning "an original laconic phrase conveying some principle or concept of thought." Also, "laconic: "using as few words as possible to communicate much information; pithy or concise." Definitions courtesy of the most awesome online dictionary I've found to date, Ninjawords (based on the three principles of being a ninja: "They're smart, they're accurate, [and] they're really fast".) That's the most interesting thing I've run across besides a few interesting examples of mistranslations while pouring over my notes for this course. :P SO HARD TO CONCENTRATE ON STUFF I CARE LITTLE FOR.
With regards to Art History, I've really started to think about the whole nature of art, "what is art?", etc.,etc., ad nauseam. I still think that art, on a basic level, needs to be aesthetically pleasing in some way. I'm not big into the whole "it's art even though it looks like a three year old could do better" scene. :P I realize that a lot of thought and innovation goes into some of these "avant-guard" works, but I think what really, really bothers me about a lot of the developments in the art world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries is the insistence on innovative artists to dismiss all that came before. Like, the salons are too oppressive and won't let artists be free, etc., so we'll just dismiss the works of those who still follow the old masters. They want to break completely free, it seems, and so seem to be "forgetting" all that artists "learned" over the centuries
...And I don't know about you guys, but even though people like Bougereau and Frith may not have been big on Impressionism and neo-impressionism and other more "innovative" art styles, I still think that their paintings (for all that they're considered "conservative") are still amazing. I'm still not that fussed about people like Gaugin or Cézanne, for all that they get talked about a LOT in Art History textbooks. I only like a few works by Van Gogh - a lot of the stuff with wonky perspectives I really don't find visually appealing. I realize that they're all still skilled artists in their own different ways, but I just don't like that many later artists felt the need to dismiss those that came before to justify the style of their own works. I may be bitter because I visited a show of Matisse's works at the Alberta Art Gallery last month and I was supremely unimpressed. The only thing that I found interesting about that show was the lengths to which the artist went trying to avoid drawing hands, which he admitted that he could not draw. Blah, "art".
It's not that I'm that conservative when it comes to art - I mean, I really, really like Manet and many of Monet's stuff isn't bad either... I don't even know where I'm going with all of this. :P I really do love art! Why can't we all just stop hatin' on people who paint/draw/sculpt differently and all accept that art is awesome?
In conclusion, studying for women's history is going well. Here, have a video with the Four Vagabonds singing their hit song "Rosie the Riveter", from whence one of the coolest icons of American womanhood came.
I learned a new word while studying for translation - "Aphorism", meaning "an original laconic phrase conveying some principle or concept of thought." Also, "laconic: "using as few words as possible to communicate much information; pithy or concise." Definitions courtesy of the most awesome online dictionary I've found to date, Ninjawords (based on the three principles of being a ninja: "They're smart, they're accurate, [and] they're really fast".) That's the most interesting thing I've run across besides a few interesting examples of mistranslations while pouring over my notes for this course. :P SO HARD TO CONCENTRATE ON STUFF I CARE LITTLE FOR.
With regards to Art History, I've really started to think about the whole nature of art, "what is art?", etc.,etc., ad nauseam. I still think that art, on a basic level, needs to be aesthetically pleasing in some way. I'm not big into the whole "it's art even though it looks like a three year old could do better" scene. :P I realize that a lot of thought and innovation goes into some of these "avant-guard" works, but I think what really, really bothers me about a lot of the developments in the art world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries is the insistence on innovative artists to dismiss all that came before. Like, the salons are too oppressive and won't let artists be free, etc., so we'll just dismiss the works of those who still follow the old masters. They want to break completely free, it seems, and so seem to be "forgetting" all that artists "learned" over the centuries
...And I don't know about you guys, but even though people like Bougereau and Frith may not have been big on Impressionism and neo-impressionism and other more "innovative" art styles, I still think that their paintings (for all that they're considered "conservative") are still amazing. I'm still not that fussed about people like Gaugin or Cézanne, for all that they get talked about a LOT in Art History textbooks. I only like a few works by Van Gogh - a lot of the stuff with wonky perspectives I really don't find visually appealing. I realize that they're all still skilled artists in their own different ways, but I just don't like that many later artists felt the need to dismiss those that came before to justify the style of their own works. I may be bitter because I visited a show of Matisse's works at the Alberta Art Gallery last month and I was supremely unimpressed. The only thing that I found interesting about that show was the lengths to which the artist went trying to avoid drawing hands, which he admitted that he could not draw. Blah, "art".
It's not that I'm that conservative when it comes to art - I mean, I really, really like Manet and many of Monet's stuff isn't bad either... I don't even know where I'm going with all of this. :P I really do love art! Why can't we all just stop hatin' on people who paint/draw/sculpt differently and all accept that art is awesome?
In conclusion, studying for women's history is going well. Here, have a video with the Four Vagabonds singing their hit song "Rosie the Riveter", from whence one of the coolest icons of American womanhood came.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-14 01:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-14 03:16 am (UTC)Also: of COURSE history of translation will be more interesting! Less theory, more stories, I should hope. I wonder if we'll have to write a research paper... if so, I definitely want to write one on the Metis translators during the creation of the Numbered Treaties in Western Canada. Some were... better than others, to put it lightly, and mistranslations and cultural misunderstandings can cause a LOT of problems, over generations. D: That's what I'd do research on if this were an actual history course, but I'm not sure what will be different in the MLCS portion...
no subject
Date: 2010-12-14 04:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-14 04:38 am (UTC)...I wanted to use the word "dictionary" as a verb just then - dictionaried over. ;)
But yeah, it does sound totally cool! I was thinking - now, what translators do I actually know about in history? I remember that apparently in the Russo-Japanese war around 1900 the peace treaty they made almost didn't come into effect because of a translation error... but the Metis are so cool I thought of them almost immediately. Have you heard of Michif, a patois language between French and Cree? It's intense. "Primarily it follows the grammatical rules of Cree (an Algonkian language), while adopting a large vocabulary of words from the French language."
no subject
Date: 2010-12-14 05:19 am (UTC)I have indeed heard of Michif - he actually had a Michif book come through the library, one of the curriculum books for the Education library (it was one of those alphabet books, you know, "A is for Apple" type things). Very cool. :D (And this is actually what happens a lot of the time with patois languages and creoles - they adopt lexical vocabulary from what is aptly called the "lexifier" language while keeping the grammar from the indigenous language. ...Yes, we totally spent a good week talking about creoles and pidgins in my sociolinguistics class. :D)
no subject
Date: 2010-12-14 05:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-15 12:36 am (UTC)