Got my reading set for a quiet Tết holiday in Hanoi 🧧

My translation of Nam Cao’s short story “A Full Meal” was just published in Asymptote as part of their translation Tuesday series www.asymptotejournal.com/blog/2026/01...

Came across this passage in the final pages of Constance Garnett’s 1914 translation of Crime & Punishment, from Dostoevsky’s 1866 original. Wow… it seems to have something to say about the madness of the world we live in today, 160 years later

In no particular order, foreign languages I wish I knew so I could read these authors in their original Han Kang - Korean Mo Yan - Chinese Alejo Carpentier - Spanish Jon Fosse - Norwegian Needless to say I won’t be learning anytime soon, so for now bless the translators, thank you thank you

Opening paragraph of Renee Gladman’s “The Ravickians” is wonderful on the limitations of translation

Some publishers will try this. It may even be passable for some major languages (ie English/French) today. It will continue to get better and better over the years. But imo the real work of translation is about subjective decisions that only humans working as *artists* can make. Translation is art

I just completed a rough, first draft translation of Chí Phèo to English! There’s a lot left to do, but the hardest part is over. One thing that stood out to me after so much time with the text is the richness and variety of vocabulary used by the author—it’s deceptively high level.

Nam Cao often turns to onomatopoeia in his more intense scenes. This, from Mò Sâm-panh: Tề rơi đánh thóm. Thì bỗng cửa ngoài lịch kịch rồi có tiếng giày tây cồm cộp đi vào. We've got: đánh thóm - plop lịch kịch - a lock rattling cồm cộp - shoes stomping None of this in the dictionary of course.

Nam Cao makes such wonderful use of Vietnamese reduplicatives: sành sanh = every last bit trừng trừng = unblinkingly thui thủi = all alone dửng dưng = indifferent Thai is better known for this feature (hence the well-known "same same"), but VN I think has a far richer vocab set of reduplicatives

I think I'll spend my afternoon finishing the last story in that Nam Cao collection I have sitting around... A good reminder to log off from time to time. open.substack.com/pub/jmarriot...

My life on bkuesky

The fish rots from the head… and, as they say in Vietnam: the house leaks from the roof (Nhà dột từ nóc)

The squeaky wheel gets the grease Or… The crying baby gets mom’s milk; in Vietnamese: Con có khóc mẹ mới cho bú Always liked this one 🍼

I’m mostly familiar with the Vietnamese word “nàng” as a feminine prefix for words like fairy (nàng tiên) or mermaid (nàng tiên cá — “fish fairy” lol) Thai has this word for madam/lady, นาง (naang), and as you can see it sounds a LOT like the Viet “nàng” … Follow me on a journey if you will 🧵

Man, Thai is complicated. I’ve got two words meaning roughly “to wrap around” or “coil around” but the usage seems to defy logic for memorization. Any ideas?

TIL there is a royal prefix: ทรง 👑

กล้วยๆ!! Banana-banana! กล้วยๆ!! Banana-banana! กล้วยๆ!! Banana-banana! The Thai way to say: “it’s a piece of cake!” Pronounced: “gluay-gluay!” with a satisfying falling tone. 🍌

Omg I just found the Thai equivalent to this!! ขี่ช้างจับตั๊กแตน (khìi cháng jàp dtàk-gtàen), “riding an elephant to catch a grasshopper” 💚💚 damn that’s good

Airing your dirty laundry? How about “pulling up your shirt for others to see your back” ?? Vạch áo cho người xem lưng — I like this a lot

Dead giveaway that you're a beginning Vietnamese language learner is using the verb "to go" when talking about travel to Hanoi or HCMC. No... the Vietnamese have a specific pair of verbs they use when talking about visiting one of Vietnam's two biggest cities...

I'm enjoying discovering that Latin is the total opposite of Vietnamese & Thai. It's hyper logical with its cases and conjugations, whereas Viet/Thai are as chaotic as it gets and word order is everything. A very enjoyable change.

China’s controversial “9-dash line map” staking claim to the entire East Sea is known in Vietnam as the “đường lưỡi bò” and translated as: “cow’s tongue line” 🐮👅 Now you can’t unsee it.

Which do you prefer: a wolf in sheep’s clothing 🐺🐑 OR an old fox dressed as a young rabbit? 🦊🐰 The second is the Vietnamese version of the common expression (Cáo già đội lốt thỏ non)

This feed is not the totality of who I am. Felt like I needed to make a note of that.

Similar to the verb "to wear", the verb "to wash" is more complex in Vietnamese than English. In English we can "wash" anything: our bodies, our hair, our cars and our clothes. Vietnamese has specific verbs for each action that have to be strictly followed... 🧵

In English we can “wear” anything: a hat, a shirt, shoes, etc. Vietnamese and Japanese however use different verbs depending on what part of the body you wear something on. A stubborn thing to internalize for English speaking learners…

👻 Discovered an amazing new Vietnamese saying for "too many cooks in the kitchen" — lắm thầy nhiều ma - which I translate roughly as, "if you have a lot of psychics you’re gonna get a lot of ghosts." I love this so much.

Found a cool passage about these Greek & Latin prefixes today in the first chapter of Helen DeWitt’s The Last Samurai.

Minor tonal shifts can make a big difference in some languages สวย = beautiful (rising tone) ซวย = cursed/screwed (flat tone) Both sound kinda Ike “sooh-way” in English. Funny to think about all the dudes learning to say “beautiful” in Thai and actually going around telling women they’re cursed.

youtu.be/H419qQQVEx4?... @djsabrina.bsky.social

Both Thai and Vietnamese make a distinction between head hair, and hair elsewhere on the body (tóc/lông and ผม/ขน). In English we just call it all "hair" 🤔

Ways to say "pick up" in Vietnamese...

"You're preaching to the choir" can be rendered as "không cần dạy đĩ vén váy" in Vietnamese. That is, you don't need to teach a prostitute how to lift her skirt.

Vietnam does pickleball better www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzSY...

One of the strangest parallels of linguistic development I’ve come across from two languages that couldn’t be more different—English and Vietnamese— is the way they both borrowed from culturally dominant languages (Latin/Greek, and Chinese) to structure some number-based words/systems similarly… 🧵

I feel like people pointing out ChatGPT is bad at counting the r’s in strawberry are sort of missing the point

I’ve got a filthy one today, but which is truly illustrative of its subject… In Vietnamese, one particularly vulgar way to describe oral sex performed on a woman is “vét máng” which means, literally, “to dredge the trough”, or understood simply to clean up where the farm animals eat. 🐷

The grass is always greener on the other side? How about: when you’re standing on one mountain you’re always looking at another mountain 😂 from Vietnamese “Đứng núi này trông núi nọ” 🏔️

It’s always surprising when you find idioms that are perfect analogs in two completely different languages. “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” is the exact same in Vietnamese: “đừng bỏ tất cả trứng vào một giỏ”. I can’t think if any other English/VN examples though there are a few Thai/VN

Reduplication (where a word is repeated twice) is common in Asian languages. What I found odd is these three insects are all reduplicative nouns in Vietnamese: dragonfly, grasshopper and firefly — chuồn chuồn, châu chấu and đom đóm. But I couldn’t find any other reduplicative animal/insect words.

In Thai the word ตี (“dee”)is a prefix used to indicate time between the hours of 1-5am. ตี2 for 2am. Why ตี? It’s also a verb that means “to hit”, as in when a monk at the temple hits the bell in the hour, every hour 😂😂 Hence, ตี.

Caught with your hand in the cookie jar? How about “sneaking a bite but forgetting to wipe your mouth” — in Vietnamese: Ăn vụng không biết chùi mép. I love this one when someone gets caught red handed. Alternatively: hiding your head but letting your tail show (“Giấu đầu hở đuôi”)

Congrats to @miketatarski.bsky.social and the VN weekly for the return of their podcast. Fascinating and sad topic for the first episode back. These Chinese scammers in Sihanoukville are also covered in a section of the book “Number Go Up” which covers the crypto industry.

Like firing a curator from the Louvre because you've got DALL-E. www.theverge.com/2024/1/17/24...

Here’s one i quite like: Nước chảy bèo trôi — literally: water flows, the lily pads float. A bit more poetic and evocative than the English, “whatever happens, will” or “let nature take its course.”

When the cat’s away the mice play. Pretty standard English idiom right? Quite coincidentally, Thai has the more or less the same phrasing: แมวไม่อยู่หนูร่าเริง. But then there’s Vietnamese. “When the owner is away, the chicken sprouts a shrimp tail” — vắng chủ nhà gà mọc đuôi tôm 🦐 🤷‍♂️

“Taking the last bite” is fine in English… but the viet version “the fish that cleans the tank” is just so much better. “Cá dọn bể”. Perfect to deploy when you have that one friend who can always finish when everyone else is full 🎂