Brett
I’m the co-founder of a little marketing agency in Vietnam and Thailand. I love bookstores, fizzy water, crosswords & foreign languages.
- 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
- I might need to add more 0’s to my translations
- 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
- The pushback won’t come from the readers but rather from the authors who won’t want to consent having their works translated by AI. I suspect. I could very well be wrong.
- 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 🧵
- Both nàng and นาง (naang) share a common Sanskrit ancestor: nāyikā (नायिका) which means heroine. This is normal for Thai. Thai, Lao, Burmese and Khmer have TONS of Sanskrit words. But Vietnamese? Not so much. 50-70% of Viet vocab is Sino-Vietnamese (from China). NOT Sanskrit… So, whence nàng?
- 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.
