Wednesday, March 14, 2012

B: Wednesday: Trials and Tribulations

Anything is possible if one tries hard enough, but the thing is one has to know: what one is trying to accomplish, like translating a monument or a story-line.  A monument is a short form of honorable mention, the right for a ruler to rule, glowing terms that go nowhere; while a story-line gives a lot more information about the ruler himself or about an event that caused the old ruler to die, allowing a new one to begin his own rulership. Without the story-line, one cannot hope to translate events that are completely unknown to the translators. Myth, cultural lore, or tradition retain parts of the story, but not all of it. Memories retain good, or bad, but never the whole history of an era.  Too many different versions appear; one may be of the merchant colony; another may be about a princeling that never made it to the throne, but was it the story of the king or a tale for children that happened to survive the test of time.

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