( via/ me )

"Our investigation reveals that despite thousands of job postings, these companies offer no promise of work, but instead leverage digital workers as collateral to win Big Tech contracts."

I think i would've loved to major in what has come to be called "Translation Studies", where misunderstandings are the starting point in every issue, & "transparency" is what faster-than-light is to physics, a fairy tale. But i turned away from a career as an actual working translator, because i'd been overly impressed with the idea that words in different languages are completely not interconvertible (Latin being my chief unfortunate example): a "chien" is not a "Hund" is not a "dog" even though they are apparently used for the same things; in German, a dog is part of the class of things-that-can-be-kicked, like a football, while in France a French poodle can be higher than a German professor; in Spanish "puto" is far lower than "perro"... In that view, i would have to know every word in a language before i could translate it truthfully; more, i'd have to live in the exact country where it was used. Later i came to understand how social attitudes can be lifted out of their verbal matrix.

This reminds me, however, of an old notion of mine that, i think, is still worth pursuing. Each language has what might be called its polar axis, or a dichotomy that orders many of its concepts. German's is clean/dirty, but French is elite/vulgar. I suppose Spanish must be masculine-hard vs feminine-soft. Maybe Russian is holy/unholy (overlaid with its Francophile Enlightenment that is only skin-deep): such that only in St Petersburg did Symbolist poems become both secret (elite) AND holy... America? Clearly, popular/unpopular, but with much confusion, since every other binary has been superimposed (often carelessly), till even those of an analytical bent can't decide where a word should go... Sex is popular & fun but also dirty (& healthy?), but matrimony & babies are holy; children are pure. (--I'm sure the more i play this game, the more nonsensical the results.)

--England, of course, is U & non-U, as was figured out long ago.

"Ever since I was a child I've been able to tell when it's going to rain by the quality of the light."

"the sorry fray"

the news that's fit to print
& rumor's phatic rustle
convey less meat than gristle;
i must confront

the thought i cannot know
(can scarce triangulate),
nor wander less than mote
in the sorry fray.

"One of the most insulting parts of this push to kiddie proof the internet..."