This week was (hopefully) my last rough patch at work for a while. I had fallen behind on 伊坂幸太郎エッセイ集 last week but had a few solid days where I read quite a lot over quota and slowly but surely caught up to pace (my best was 49 pages on Sunday and I hit around 20 most days). Unfortunately this week honestly barely had any essays that left an impression. Paradoxically I feel like the earlier entries (when the author was still inexperienced?) were more enjoyable. He actually comments at one point that while he feels his own work is easy to read, he actually prefers difficult writing, which I thought was kind of interesting.

I’ll be doing a little reading tonight as I fall asleep but probably won’t end up finishing my book today as I planned (tomorrow for sure! I’m heading to Japan and will have a lot of time on the plane).

The other main source of input this week was the audiobook for ナルニア国物語・最後の戦い, the final volume in the series (6:42, high focus). I’ve been keeping an ear out for weird translations and I feel like this book actually had quite a few — most notably, the prophecy that the talking animals would revert to “dumb beasts” was translated as 馬鹿な動物, which I think misses the nuance that “dumb” is in reference to their inability to speak, not their intelligence per se. On the flipside, I did like the Japanese rendition of Jill’s “get down, thee better” (where she’s avoiding S sounds so she won’t be heard) — the translation had her say ふふぇて（伏せて）which I thought was pretty clever.