I’ve been up at the Arthur’s Hill health centre this morning, meeting with my brilliant tuberculosis nursing colleagues. The precipitous drop in the number of cases of TB over the last half century is one of our greatest public health success stories, but there is still much more to do if we are to reach the World Health Organization’s goal of eradication.

As the clinic doesn’t make for a great picture, here’s another: the gurdwara round the corner.

I found this Aoen essay by Mark Polizzotti very interesting. He talks, with enormous knowledge and experience, about the art of translating texts and what the ultimate goal of translation should be.

I read quite a lot of books in translation, not least because English is the only language I can read to any reasonable level of competence. When I really enjoy a translated book, I often wonder whether I would have liked the original to the same degree. I also sometimes find myself wondering whether particular annoyances in translated texts are attributable to the original author or to the translator.

The article reminded me of my amazement a couple of years ago at Megan McDowell’s masterful translation of Alejandro Zambra’s Multiple Choice, a book with only a very small number of words, all clearly carefully chosen to have multiple layered meanings. I’ve no idea how McDowell approached the task, but the result is astounding.

There were three paragraphs towards the end of Polizzotti’s article which I found particularly interesting:

At its best, translation exposes us to minds and voices able to stir in us a particular sense of delight or kernel of insight, a shiver of discovery that would be available nowhere else – minds and voices that are truly unique, that have something to say that is dissimilar from what anyone else has to say, in any language. Such minds and voices are exceedingly rare, and we cannot afford to be ignorant of a single one of them. They are the reason that humans have hungered after stories since consciousness began. We are as enriched by having come in contact with them as we are unwittingly impoverished by having forgone or been denied that contact.

For this reason, translation is often cited as a preventative against cultural atrophy and homogenisation. If done well, the translation of a foreign work is uniquely positioned to usher in viewpoints different from what we see at home and make them resonate in another context, giving them a new and vibrant voice that they would not otherwise have had. What this means, somewhat paradoxically, is that translation in the best of cases not only bridges distances but, even more so, safeguards them – not by keeping cultures at a safe remove, but rather by helping ensure that the contact produces sparks rather than suffocation.

In our increasingly interconnected world, it is tempting to posit the end of national and cultural boundaries. But there’s another aspect to it, and it has to do not with the repressive aspect of boundaries but with their utility, for boundaries can also be guardians of difference. The flip side of heightened familiarity, of potentially infinite contact (including, of course, the kind of contact made possible by translation), is the erosion of diversity. Just as the notion of barriers can call to mind a vast gulag of barbed wire, so their absence can as easily conjure an endlessly uniform expanse. The diffusion of ideas, the intellectual and aesthetic free-for-all of arts, literatures, philosophies and viewpoints ricocheting throughout the world, could bring one of the greatest revitalisations in the history of humankind, a new Renaissance. Or it could lead to the blandest global monoculture we’ve ever known.

I hadn’t previously considered translations of books as having the potential to break down cultural barriers to the extend that ‘it could lead to the blandest global monoculture we’ve ever known’. I wonder if the language barrier, and the fact that we are reading a translation and hence having slightly different experiences, is at least slightly protective.

But then, I suppose the same argument could be made for anything: there are mild differences in the taste of Coca-cola around the world as a result of different recipes and manufacturing processes, but no-one could deny that product’s contribution towards a bland global monoculture.

Something to think about!

I was surprised to see how many people were on the beach on a rather cold Sunday afternoon in January!

I’m back at the hospital which gave me my first job as a doctor this afternoon – though the bit in this picture didn’t exist back then. I worked for this Trust for two years almost a decade ago, and yet still rarely walk through it without a familiar face saying “hello”.

My energy supplier, Ovo, has been out today to replace my gas and electricity meters with ‘smart’ equivalents.

Wendy and I had smart meters installed some years ago in our previous house, and they did little other than submit their own readings, which was very handy as they were in an awkward spot. They did come with an ‘in home display’, but it was pretty useless, merely reporting how much gas and electricity we were using at any given time.

I’ve been surprised today by how much the technology has moved on. This photo is of the snazzy ‘in home display’ which came with my new smart meters. It seems far more useful: it has a clock synced with the meter system, it know what tariff I’m on, and it can give accurate cash figures for the amount of energy used each day, month or year. I can also set an energy budget, and as the screen above shows, the display will compare my usage to that budget. It also manages to avoid being offensively ugly.

All-in-all, this is better than I expected, and far better than the early smart meters we had in our last home.

Once the proud centrepiece of the Metrocentre’s Christmas decorations, the oversized reindeer has now been stuck outside in the car park – although, in fairness, this does give a clearer idea of the sheer scale of the piece.

I posted a picture of Glitzen on this site five years ago, almost to the day. And posted something else about the decorations another couple of years before that. I’m going to assume that blogging for over fifteen years means the same odd ground comes up repeatedly from time to time, not that I’m an unoriginal tedious bore who pays far too much attention to corporation festive activity.

Wendy and I went out for a lovely meal with my parents and my brother’s family this evening to celebrate New Year’s Day!

Margareta Magusson, a Swedish grandmother “aged between 80 and 100”, wrote a funny and heartwarming book about The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, or basically tidying up your stuff before you die. This was a delightful book full of humour and sage advice. I really enjoyed it.

The Little Snake by A.L. Kennedy was a modern fairy tale centered on the relationship between a young girl, Mary, and a little snake, Lanmo. I found it a rather charming exploration of life, death, friendship and love. It was apparently inspired by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, and the experience of reading Kennedy’s book has inspired me to add this to my ‘to read’ list.

I really enjoyed Sarah Langford’s book In Your Defence. This was a collection of case studies from a career as a barrister, chosen to illustrate particular points about the law and the legal profession. I recently read The Secret Barrister, and found it interesting to reflect on the different approach to similar subject matter taken by the two different authors. While I really enjoyed The Secret Barrister, I think I preferred Langford’s approach overall.

I found With the End in Mind by Kathryn Mannix to be rather sadder that I initially expected, which was perhaps a bit silly of me given that it was a book about death. It was a book I could only read in small chunks for that reason, though it had a lot of interesting points to make about palliative care and society’s approach to death.

I’m not someone who would be naturally drawn to a book about Prince Charles, but Tom Bower’s Rebel Prince has received such praise from so many corners that I had to see what the fuss was about. Bower concentrated on the period of Charles’s life from his divorce from Diana onwards. Bower portrayed a likable but perhaps fatally flawed Prince, keen to do his best for his country, but held back by impetuousness, and limited intellect and a very thin skin. I felt that this biography left me with a much better understanding of Charles as a man, and ended up feeling a little sorry for him.