Even though it feels like a million years ago now, I was once a Classics major in another life. I am in fact a Master of the Classics. Many people don’t always know what I mean when I tell them what I received my degrees in. Once upon a time, I spent a lot of time with my nose in various books reading about Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Egypt, and the other civilizations they came into contact with. Some of this was in English, but I spent many hours with my trusty translation dictionaries translating texts from the original dialects. It is not uncommon for me to rant about how imprecise the English language is, and this is solely due to my time spend immersed in Classical texts. Many Ancient languages were so precise that you could tell what role a word played in a sentence just by looking at it. This means that a sentence could be jumbled up and would still mean the exact same thing. Sort of like with a puzzle, regardless of how you find the pieces there is only one correct way to put the puzzle together. Now I don’t want to bore anyone with too much technical talk, but I just wanted to explain my excitement to see the following text in the “sample post” on my new blog page:

“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Curabitur dolor ligula, feugiat eget urna a, elementum ultricies ex. Integer in tincidunt nisl. Proin pretium nec dolor sit amet mollis. Vestibulum lacinia consectetur ipsum, sit amet ornare orci sodales sit amet. Quisque efficitur lorem in suscipit dignissim. Suspendisse sed accumsan eros, euismod mattis mauris. Sed lacinia a ante eget tincidunt. Nunc nulla lorem, tempor in rhoncus sit amet, facilisis vitae sapien. Nunc facilisis varius augue, vel pulvinar est pretium nec. Integer magna urna, euismod non sodales et, finibus ac libero. Fusce mollis elit lorem, porta faucibus risus laoreet ut. Cras malesuada, urna sit amet consectetur dapibus, justo lacus tristique massa, nec lacinia est turpis sit amet sapien. Suspendisse non magna sed nibh tempor faucibus.”*

Seeing the Latin instantly reminded me of how excited I used to be when I would sit down to translate a new to me text from the original language (and I’ll admit that I immediately googled to see what this text might be). Skimming through the text quickly to see if anything jumps out as familiar and looking forward to piecing together sentences piece by piece as the meaning slowly becomes clear. While my dead language reading skills are definitely no longer what they once were, I still feel happy when I see writing in Latin, Ancient Greek or hieroglyphics. This excitement was also piqued through the movie my husband and I just saw this last weekend. We went to see Arrival, which was one of the most thought-provoking sci-fi/alien movie that I’ve seen in a while. The main character is a linguist, and much of the movie dealt with the problem posed by translating from one language into another. This was the subject of my honor’s thesis in undergrad. No matter how well you know another language, there are always nuances to a language that someone who does not use that language as a primary language can never fully comprehend. This was addressed in the movie when they talked about how your primary language colors how you interact with the world. The fact that the language nerd was the hero in the film really made me happy. It’s rare to see people who study languages as the hero, but people who can translate a text hold the ultimate power in how the people who read the translation interact with the text. Any translator will bring their own biases and beliefs into a text even if they weren’t there in the original text. In a world where we have access with so many texts in so many different languages, its easy to just accept translation as direct representations of the original text, however, it is important to view them as a mere interpretation.

In a way, I view my foray into this blog as a new translation of myself. Fashion and fitness have become my way of presenting myself to the world. This will be my place where I can leave the real world and all my responsibilities behind to share my love for the gym and fabulous clothes with the world. I will be the first to admit that sometimes my fashion taste can be a little bit eccentric, but I like to show people that they don’t have to be afraid to embrace their own unique style. I’ve also really found that I’m happiest when I focus on getting strong instead of skinny. My body (and therefore my mind) do so much better when I focus on lifting and intense cardio. There’s nothing I love more than reaching a new PR or seeing improvement in my average running pace.

* For anyone who might be interested in the source of the latin, it is a standard text used in publishing and graphic design as a placeholder. While it does appear to have been adapted from a 1st Century BC text by Cicero, it has been altered so that it’s not actually proper latin. For more on this, check out the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum