Metal Reviews

This happens implicitly in all translations.

That's why everyone should learn English.

Censorship of school issued reading material has been happening for centuries .. just sayin, you know, in case people some people wanted to get REAL FUCKIN ANGRY.

In other news, all the other non-censored editions for sale to the general public still have the n-word intact.

Only when the language to which the work is being translated has no word that completely captures the connotations of a given word, or if the translator is incompetent, lazy or desperate to put his own stamp on the literary piece.

This applies even broader to interpretation and framing as well. For example, Nietzsche post-WWI was framed as and translated as the proto-fascist anti-semitic philosopher for the Nazis yet in the mid-40s Walter Kaufmann translated him as the pre-existentialism existentialist. Maybe this doesn't count as tampering for you but it seems as if you guys are arguing for a pure expression of art forms that I just don't think can exist. Scarface even in its entirety if framed as the logical outcome of striving for the American dream isn't going to sit the same way for the audience if they just look at it as the cool drug story with Pacino being stabbed in the back and going out desperado fashion. How these pieces of culture are being taught are ultimately going to censor the work to some degree whether it's claiming that nigger, for Twain, shows the backwardness or insensitivity of the South or if it's reading Nietzsche's use of Jew as a pejorative not as anti-semitic but as opposed to blind following of the law.

There's also the censorship that goes on at the publishing level but that is kinda off-topic. I'm out. Whatever.

Just chipping in with my two cents - I think this is complete and utter bullshit. In my school library, we had plenty of books by Stephen King, and we know how he loves to use "nigger" when the dialogue stars someone whose character would use the word. Nobody had a problem with it.

Sanitizing this kind of stuff is disgusting. We need more stark reality in our schools. History books need to detail atrocities that countries committed equally. Back when I was in school, I would stay in the library after class and read up on wartime massacres and other warcrimes. As it turned out, America had its share of skeletons in the closet. Nobody ever taught me that in school...

I went off on a tangent, I guess. Sorry about that.

JokerMachine, just a wee question... How do you feel about Victory Day still being a massive holiday in Russia?

Yeah, how much space is given in Russian textbooks to the holodomor?

I can see the reason it's around... the Russian people suffered far worse casualties than any other nation did in the second world war, and I suppose that celebrating Victory Day is our way of honoring the soldiers that are dead, and those still alive, for their sacrifices.

I guess it does make us seem more warlike as a culture, which is unfortunate.

Why do you ask?



I wouldn't know, because I lived most of my life in Alaska, and finished an American public school curriculum. When I moved to Russia, the only thing I did was finish the 11th (final) grade, in order to pass the Russian equivalent of SAT's and gain eligibility to go to college/university, etc.

I would guess that not a lot, and by that I mean probably none.

Although, in the Ukraine, there have supposedly been some improvements on that front.

http://www.unian.net/eng/news/news-320611.html

P.S. Just remembered this - part of the required reading for 11th grade literature class is "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" by Solzhenitsyn. Not the same, but still - paints the Soviet regime in a negative light and shows the horror and dehumanization of the Gulags.

You could be branded an anti-semite and negationist for saying that.

I thought that was common knowledge :S

By who, a complete retard?

That's fine with me, I've been branded as worse before.

Get over yourself seriously. Russia lost something like 20 million military and infantry lives to the six of the holocaust ffs.

Source that he statistically said Russia suffered less deaths than the Holocaust which I assume you're referring to. Weisel could make the claim that maybe the holocaust was more traumatic because it wasn't within a state of war but I doubt he would be dumb enough to say that more Jews died let alone that so many Jews were even in Europe at that time.

I'm assuming that's Elie Weisel, in which case - I have read his book, but honestly he sounds like a bit of a dickhead. He seems to think Jews suffered the most in WW2, that the Holocaust was the worst genocide ever and thus can't be compared to any other genocide, he lobbied for the exclusive inclusion (if that makes sense) of Jews into the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, excluding Romani people.

He wrote a heart-wrenching book, he won a Nobel Prize, but that's not going to keep me from thinking that he, for all his talk, he's kind of an asshole. He's even been criticized by other Jewish writers for it.

Can't supply you with an exact quote, but it's something he would generally say. Jokermachine's post is right about it. Read Finkelstein?

No. I might have to in the coming days, but it's hard to find a book like that in English in Russia, even in Moscow. I'll keep my eyes peeled, though.

Not a big deal. Jews are bitchy people.

Haven't read Finkelstein but Wiesel is allowed to say his opinion on the experience of how awful the holocaust was as long he wasn't saying stupid shit denying empirical fact. In the Wrest thread, I made the claim that murder isn't as bad as molestation and that's really all Wiesel is saying too but you want to label it a jew conspiracy so whatever.