I’ve been learning Chinese through group classes, private lessons, and apps over the last few years, and each tool works differently because each tool serves a different kind of need. The app is perfect for vocabulary drills when I have five minutes between meetings. The private lesson is essential for conversation practice when I have […]
Thai sellers have a wonderful phrase for tourists who are comparing products. You point at a shirt you like, and they show you a similar shirt with a different color or a slightly different fabric or a lower price. “Same same but different,” they say with a smile. The phrase is charming because it’s genuinely […]
Germans have a reputation for punctuality that precedes them almost everywhere in the world. Ask anyone (not in Germany) about German stereotypes and you will hear it within the first few answers. German trains run on time. German people arrive early. And German efficiency is legendary. Then you actually live in Germany and wait forty […]
When I started learning Chinese, I couldn’t say very much. I knew a few random nouns and verbs and could count to 10. There was no way I was building a sentence. But living in Shanghai, I learned something surprising. A single correct word, placed correctly, worked better than a dozen guessed ones. “Water” got […]
When you read a translation, you notice the seams. A slightly unnatural phrase catches your eye. A sentence that feels too American for a Japanese novel makes you pause. A word choice that seems odd forces you to reread. As you’re reading, you’re watching someone work. That awareness is the core skill of copyediting. You […]
A translator sits with a sentence in Korean, Japanese, or Italian and faces a hundred possible English versions. One is literal. One captures the rhythm. One preserves the emotional weight. The translator cannot have all three so a choice has to be made. Deborah Smith, who translated Han Kang‘s The Vegetarian and Human Acts, faced this constantly. A […]
For the last year, jazz has been my project. Miles Davis. John Coltrane. Thelonious Monk. Bill Evans. I have been working through the history of the genre, trying to understand what makes it work. Tension and Release What struck me first was the tension. A jazz soloist plays a phrase that bends away from the […]
James Joyce does things with punctuation that should not work. Long stretches of prose with no periods. Sentences that start without capitals. Dialogue that runs into narration without quotation marks. A copyeditor would have a heart attack. The writing works. The punctuation choices make it work. The Breathlessness of No Periods Near the end of Ulysses, […]
Over the years, I have played piano in churches, rock bands, country bands, and folk groups. Each genre has its own vocabulary, its own rules, its own expectations. You do not play a rock song the same way you play a hymn. You do not comp chords for a country singer the same way you […]
Miles Davis built a career on playing less. While other trumpet players filled every bar with notes, Davis would hold a single note and let it hang in the air. He trusted that one note, held long enough, could say more than a hundred fast ones. The Virtuosity of Restraint The same restraint shows up […]