The Struggle to Read, pt. MCMLXX: Dictionary Work

Snippet from my dictionary work, 5/4

I'm really struggling to get time to read and write as I finish up this class I'm teaching, along with other duties, and of course my normal lazy leisurely activities. I haven't done such a good job since Thursday, but I did re-discover the need to consult dictionaries.

"Dictionary work" is becoming a household term. As in,

A. : "Oh I do want to watch that Cromwell film. I suppose not tonight...?"

J. : "Sure we can watch it. Just let me have the next 15 minutes for some dictionary work."

This works splendidly as a way to get 15 minutes. When it comes to crafting sentences or reading anything seriously, 15 minutes is a laughable amount of time. But when it comes to dictionary work, 15 minutes can be a great amount of time to force yourself to look up the list of terms you've circled as you've read through a chapter or essay.

There's a bit of useful tension in this activity. I might come across terms like "push-knock," tuiqiao 推敲 that really can't be defined without telling a little story. And in the course of the story, we must needs learn quite a bit about the context in which this term is used. The term itself stands for a story that tells you how to use the term. That fascinates me to no end!

But I have only 15 minutes. I must get through the dictionary work to the end so that:

a. I know all the new words in the piece that I didn't know before.
b. I can use my vocab list to write, later on. The writing will come later on.

So. It took longer than it should have, but I finished the dictionary work for Yang Jiang's essay "The Experience of Failure: On Translation." It was a fine piece that I hope to write about in a chapter on Yang Jiang's methods of translation. Now, on to the next thing!