© 2007 Whimwit.com. 
I’m always interested in how different registers of speech are rendered in translation (alas, so many Russian masters in English speak in the same, unvarying tone). Here’s a post by David Kippen on the topic.
The Stranger on n+1’s West Coast tour: “The idea was floated that n+1’s hostility toward capitalism was having a karmic effect; capitalism was being hostile back.”
This is the first installment of a three part series. All three strips are now online.
Go back to Part One
Go forward to Part Three
Go to Victory! (Part Two)/
Go to Victory! (Part One)
J has his own System D for going to sleep. He reads my Joyce and my Borges and conks right out. I don’t think he means as a criticism. Wilfrid Sheed doesn’t seem to think anyone has to:
“Toil, envy, want, the patron and the jail,” is how Sam Johnson, blues singer, described the writer’s life. Then there was Joseph Conrad, comparing writing to carrying heavy bales under a low rope on a hot day. (I’ll admit reading Conrad can be like that, for all that it’s worth it. If “easy writing makes damn hard reading,” your hard writing can be a real mother.) [From “The Company of writers,” The Good Word & Other Words]
One of the few bright spots in Chris Weitz’s screenplay for the Golden Compass were the lines spoken by the villainous Tatars. Just before the final battle begins, Lyra walks up to the line of armed men with their daemon wolves and spits. The ringleader answers by saying to another man, “Дай волчонку полакомиться.” “Set your wolf on that child,” go the subtitles and that’s probably what Weitz wrote for someone to translate. The actual Russian: “Treat your cub to a snack.”…