lacuna
Aster Lit Issue 10
lacuna
n.
1) a word, sound, or meaning for which no equivalent can be found when translated into another language
lacuna
n.
2) a blank space or missing part; gap
culture, untranslatability, and lexicon
what cultural or linguistic experiences cannot be translated? how else might we represent and share those experiences?
how does language and its limitations shape our worldview?
time, space, and missing pieces
what stories have yet to be told?
how can we bridge the gaps between generations, cultures, and families?
read the editors’ reflections
What does lacuna mean to the Aster Lit team? Which images, ideas, and emotions does it invoke? Read our editors’ reflections on the theme here.
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Rita Mae Brown
“Language exerts hidden power, like the moon on the tides.”
Günter Grass
“Translation is that which transforms everything so that nothing changes.”
Albert Einstein
“Time and space are not conditions of existence, time and space is a model for thinking.”
Thomas Merton
“What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous.”
Ken Liu
“And yet, whatever has been lost in translation in the long journey of my thoughts through the maze of civilization to your mind, I think you do understand me, and you think you do understand me. Our minds managed to touch, if but briefly and imperfectly.
Does that thought not make the universe seem just a bit kinder, a bit brighter, a bit warmer and more human?
We live for such miracles.”
Tennessee Williams
“For time is the longest distance between two places.”
Heinrich Zimmer
““Limitless and immortal, the waters are the beginning and end of all things on earth.”
Sonali Bendre
“All we have is the knowledge passed on to us by our elders, experiences we inculcate and hardly negate. But to bridge the generation gap, one needs to adapt to the new while retaining the goodness of the old.”