This Is My Secret: The Blog and Website of Writer Kristin Cashore

It's funny how you can speak the same language as someone, yet still have no idea what they're talking about.

I followed a link to a very short English-language article on the Indian movie website Filmi Tadka because the headline interested me: "Shahrukh Khan - Don't Mix Religion with Politics." Reading the article, I learned that at the distinguished India Today Conclave, "SRK expressed his concerns about the politicization of Mumbai by saying that Indian cinema is heading from Mumbai to Melrose. And though he would have preferred the transition as Bombay to Beverly Hills he thinks that that kind of alliteration is not allowed to Muslim actors."

Huh?

I know all those words, but because of my own ignorance, I don't have the political or cultural context needed to understand them. First, what's he referring to, exactly, when he talks about the politicization of Mumbai, and what does that have to do with global cinema and Hollywood? Second, if I&…

¡Hola amigos!

Here's something I saw written on a wall inside a building today in Madrid:

I have sometimes dreamt that when the Day of Judgement dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards -- their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble -- the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without certain envy when he sees us coming with our books under our arms, “Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them. They have love reading.”

-Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), fromHow Should One Read a Book?

Some random thoughts today...

When the weather outside is frightful, the weather is even more frightful at the top of the Eiffel Tower.

On the weekend in Paris, I ordered a crepe on the street with ham and cheese, and accidentally also ordered it with egg -- perhaps I tripped and cried out "Oeuf!" while I was ordering? Such are the perils of trying to communicate in a foreign land. That&#…

My character Fire's name seems to have created a challenge for almost all of my translations so far -- for a bunch of reasons, but most often because the direct translation of the word "fire" tends to be masculine.

The Italian word for "fire" is the masculine "fuoco." The Italians kept Fire's name as Fire -- but flipping through a copy, I noticed that Archer is named Arciere, the Italian word for "archer." I like it!

In French, the word "fire" would be pronounced like "fear," more or less, which isn't a very nice name, and the French word for "fire" is "feu," which isn't a nice name, either, and is masculine.... so the French renamed Fire, and the book itself, Rouge. Makes sense... but a few things are lost. Primarily, the explicit connection between the character Fire and all the references to actual fire -- flames -- in the book.

I just got my Dutch version of Fire. I don't have a c…

This article makes me sad. And mad.

Changing topic... I've been having some great exchanges with my Korean translator for Graceling, Yoon Hoh, as she works through some of the trickiest parts to translate. At a certain point, I realized that you guys might find this stuff interesting, so I asked her permission to share some of it. I never really thought about the challenges of translating before, but... well, here are some examples:

First, there are the words I made up for the book. The first time Yoon contacted me, it was to ask me to explain what "borderlords" and "underlords" are.

I was able to explain borderlords pretty easily -- they're lords who live on a kingdom's border, i.e., Lord Davit is a Middluns borderlord because his Middluns estate is right near the Nanderan and Estillan borders.

But... underlords? *...* What the hell is an underlord, and why did I make up such a silly word? I had to go back to the text -- thank goodness, I have the pdf…