note on glossing from sms

amlit338

An afterthought from class. I can well understand the desire to have a glossary and thus to better understand what's going on. I read poetry in translation, if only so I can get the sense, if not the music of the poem. But my experience with glossaries is that they're as often _un_helpful as helpful. Unless you write long narratives to explain cultural context, you're back where you started. Cathy Song's first book about Hawai`i had a gloss at the back. There were entries like "Waialua: town in central Oahu." Well, how does that help someone who knows nothing about the history of plantations in Hawai`i? Waialua was a plantation town, and the book is, in large part, about life on the plantation. So the honesty of presenting words that cannot be easily assimilated (I use this word consciously) is good, I think. The fact that we do not understand aspects of others' cultures is a significant part of understanding our world. Paradoxical as it seems.
Thanks for the conversation today. I hope Stacy didn't put out her back. And sorry about the dinosaurs, Sau. I simply couldn't help myself.

aloha, Susan