What, no Burton?

Was watching the BBC program last night on the Arabian Nights, featuring Richard Grant. When they started dealing with the issue of translations, it surprised me a little that not a single word was said about Sir Richard Burton, though a fair amount of air time was spent on Edward William Lane, whose version of the Thousand Nights and a Night was extremely sanitized.

I find myself wondering whether some scholar involved with the program had a bug up the butt about Burton's fairly explicit translation. Granted, it's not as if the man isn't a source for continuing controversy: you run into scholarly opinion suggesting that Burton had committed that most heinous of offenses, "getting too close to the material" -- the literary version of "going native". Stilll, it's odd to see an analysis of the Nights that doesn't even mention his name. I wonder what was going on...

It's interesting also to note in passing that Burton discusses Lane in his introduction to his own translation. "That amiable and devoted Arabist," Burton calls him, and then gently takes him to task for "converting the Arabian Nights to the Arabian Chapters. Worse still, he converts some chapters into notes. He renders poetry by prose and apologizes for not omitting it altogether; ... he is at once too Oriental and not Oriental enough. ...Worst of all, these handsome volumes are rendered unreadable ...by the stuff and stilted style of half a century ago when our prose was perhaps the worst in Europe." (Well, don't mince words, Sir Richard, tell us what you really think...)

It was only a matter of time: Romulan Ale

It had to happen, didn't it? (As a commercial product, I mean. Heaven knows it's been around SF conventions in one form or another forever.) And naturally, it now happens as an energy drink.

"Romulan Ale Star Trek Energy Drink will not make you drunk. What it will do is ramp up your body for anything. It's got vitamins (like B6 and B12), ginseng, and loads of caffeine (84 mg per easy-to-drink-in-one-sitting-because-it-tastes-so-good can), all wrapped up in a yummy berry taste. And it's blue. Aaaand, it comes in a six pack, just like you'd get at your local Romulan Quickie Mart. Romulan Ale Star Trek Energy Drink is full of alien technology and taste to keep you awake and alert. You know, so you can keep on trekkin' (sorry, we had to)."

(headclutch) Oh well.

 

 

 

 

 

What a delightful review!

It's always fun when someone exactly gets what you were trying to do. :)

""Omnitopia Dawn, dot Hack, and also, surprisingly, Fantasy in Death by J.D. Robb, all have an element in common, that of using video gaming worlds to affect the so-called “real” world. But J.D. Robb uses the next step in virtual reality as a murder weapon. In dot Hack, the theme is mind control. But Omnitopia Dawn is much more deeply layered. The company behind the game is intended as a jab at high tech companies with their own internal geek culture, like Apple, Google, and even Microsoft back in the day.

"But in Omnitopia Dawn, the real world is going to be affected in real ways, not virtual ones. Real competitors of the corporation behind Omnitopia plan to use the launch of the next upgrade to launch a very real attack on Omnitopia’s servers using very real viruses, denial of service attacks and other tools that read like natural progressions from today’s headlines. And the intent behind these attacks is to steal very real money from the company, and if possible to drive Omnitopia out of business, so that its competitors win."

...The real meat, for me, though, was closer to the end of the review. Thanks, Marlene! You hit one of the underlying issues of the book right on.