Narrative essay Essay Example

Narrative essay Essay Example Narrative essay Essay Narrative essay Essay The pounding of the door awakened me in the dead of the night. Distinctive voices were calling through the door. I lay in my bed quietly as I heard the footsteps of my mother in the hallway. Lights went a blazing, lighting her way, some spilling into our room. Then I heard a door open and more feet shuffling into our quiet home. Police, said an unknown voice, so loud and so clear. Put your hands up in the air and get down on the floor. My mother moved to obey the order. More feet were moving about. Voices were talking above voices. Someone asked my mother a question. As I listened, I heard the fear in her response and the frustrations in the other. Doors were opened, and then shut closed. Footsteps trekked throughout the house, as if they were looking for something or someone. I heard voices talking, but I didnt understand what was being said, all I knew was that I was scared and curious. My curiosity got the better of me and I moved to get up. My older sister, Chile, grabbed my hand. Dont move, she whispered. I asked her, what was going on. She responded, I dont know. Go back to sleep. I lay back onto our bed, but I didnt sleep. Instead, I thought about my mom. What must she be going through? Who were these people? Minutes seemed to pass by with nothing happening in the other room, but talking amongst them. I couldnt Just lay here and not do anything, I thought to myself. I have to do something. They might hurt her. With wild imaginations churning into my mind, I decided I needed to face them and my imaginations. I untangled my hand from my sister and slowly got up. With the little light spilled underneath our door, I turned my head towards my sister. Her eyes were opened and tears streamed down. Im scare, she whispered. I plied, I was too, but I wanted to know what was going on. Ill go with you, she said, moving quietly about the bed into the next one where my two oldest sisters were sleeping. She shook them, but they were awake and listening to the noises in the other room. They both got up and sat on the bed. Whats going on? I asked the Jessica. Being the oldest, she had a better understanding of the situation. Theyre looking for Jeff and Johnny, she said, referring to my two oldest brothers. Why? Chile asked. They did something stupid, she responded. What did they do this time? my other sister, Amber, asked. I dont know, Jessica said, but lets go back to sleep. What about mom? Chile asked. They wont hurt her, Amber answered. They Just want Jeff and Johnny. Deciding that was the end, Jessica and Amber laid back down onto their bed. Chile and I looked at each other. She shrugged her shoulders, and then went back to bed. Being indecisive, I sat on the bed. What seemed like hours, only took seconds, as I got up. Three heads turned my way. l need to use the bathroom, I told them. Me too, Chile said. Jessica and Amber reluctantly got up. Well go together, they said. They were as curious as I was. And not one of us needed the bathroom. With a racing heart, I hallway and saw figures walking around. They were all dressed in black; black beanies, black shirts, black pants, black shoes. Most wore vests with SWAT written across in bold letters. Some wore their uniforms and others wore street clothes. Opening the door bigger, I bravely stepped out into the light, with my sisters taking the rear. Hearing our entrance, three figures with SWAT on their vests, drew their gun. Police, the one in the middle yelled. Put your hands up in the air and get down on the floor. Those same words they had echoed to my mom. Getting down on the floor, with my hands on my head, I heard footsteps going into our room. Watching through the corner of my right eye, I saw four legs go inside. Lights were being turned on, beds were overturned, and windows were opened. Someone raised their right leg to kick the closet door opened, while another one, with his gun drawn, looked inside. Clear, they shouted from the room. Upon leaving our destroyed room, they told us to get up and walk into the living room in a single formed line. Sitting down and across from my mom, I looked about our home. There were about fifteen to went people inside and outside. I watched them talking amongst themselves. Some were in the kitchen, discussing who knew what, and others were outside. But they were all alert, ready for anything and everything. One of the officers walked up to us. He asked my mom where my dad is. Sleeping, she replied. Point to the room, he said. My mom pointed to the last room on the right. My mom then told Jessica to tell him there were kids sleeping in the room. My mom said there are kids sleeping in the room, she translated. He nodded then left. Seconds later, my dad came out of the room with his hand behind his back. He was awake, the officer said to another. Seating my dad next to my mom, he went outside, while another talked to my dad. Tuning them out, I watched my surrounding again. A couple of officers opened kitchen drawers and cabinets to see whats inside. Someone went into the bathroom to check it out again. Another looked in the garage. Most of the ones outside looked about the yard and kept the neighbors at bay, while some pretended to be busy. I looked at the clock. In a bright red color, it changed from three twenty-five to three twenty-six and my brothers walked through the front door with their hands behind heir back Just as a cry wailed into the night. My strong and prideful mother wept in despair. My father, stoic and unbending, sat defeated. My sisters turned their head away in shame. I looked at my brothers and felt disappointment in them. They slipped into their room with the officers behind them. Minutes later, they came back out. My mom got up and started to ask my brothers what had happened, where had they been, and who had they been with, but was deterred when the officer blocked her. As my brothers left, my mother collapsed onto the floor and cried. We tried to comfort her as best however we knew we couldnt. Before the last of the officers left, one came up to us to tell us what had happened. We all sat in shock as we listened to what was being explained. My oldest brother was being charged with voluntary manslaughter and my other brother to be taken in as witness. Done with delivering his news, he left, quietly closing the door. Locking up the house, my sisters and I surround our parents and cried. We cried for loss of innocence, for our now broken home, and for our brothers. We knew we could never get back those days of happiness. We could only move on from this point and learn that with every action

Translation - Definition and Examples

Translation s The word translation can be defined as: The process of turning an original or source text into a text in another language.A translated version of a text. An individual or a computer program that renders a text into another language is called a translator. The discipline concerned with issues related to the production of translations is called translation studies.   Etymology:From the Latin, translat-  carried across Examples and Observations: intralingual translation - translation within the same language, which can involve rewording or paraphrase;interlingual translation - translation from one language to another, andintersemiotic translation - translation of the verbal sign by a non-verbal sign, for example music or image.Three Types of TranslationIn his seminal paper, On Linguistic Aspects of Translation (Jacobson 1959/2000. see Section B, Text B1.1), the Russo-American linguist Roman Jakobson makes a very important distinction between three types of written translation: Only the second category, interlingual translation, is deemed translation proper by Jakobson.(Basil Hatim and Jeremy Munday, Translation: An Advanced Resource Book. Routledge, 2005)Translation is like a woman. If it is beautiful, it is not faithful. If it is faithful, it is most certainly not beautiful. (attributed to Yevgeny Yevtushenko, among others).(Literal or word-for-word attempts can result in some amusing translation fails).   Translation and Style ï » ¿To translate, one must have a style of his own, for otherwise, the translation will have no rhythm or nuance, which come from the process of artistically thinking through and molding the sentences; they cannot be reconstituted by piecemeal imitation. The problem of translation is to retreat to a simpler tenor of ones own style and creatively adjust this to ones author. (Paul Goodman, Five Years: Thoughts During a Useless Time, 1969) The Illusion of Transparency A translated text, whether prose or poetry, fiction or nonfiction, is judged acceptable by most publishers, reviewers, and readers when it reads fluently, when the absence of any linguistic or stylistic peculiarities makes it seem transparent, giving the appearance that it reflects the foreign writers personality or intention or the essential meaning of the foreign textthe appearance, in other words, that the translation is not, in fact, a translation, but the original. The illusion of transparency is an effect of fluent discourse, of the translators effort to ensure easy readability by adhering to current usage, maintaining continuous syntax, fixing a precise meaning. What is so remarkable here is that this illusory effect conceals the numerous conditions under which the translation is made . . .. (Lawrence Venuti, The Translators Invisibility: A History of Translation. Routledge, 1995) The Process of Translation Here, then, is the full process of translation. At one point we have a writer in a room, struggling to approximate the impossible vision that hovers over his head. He finishes it, with misgivings. Some time later we have a translator struggling to approximate the vision, not to mention the particulars of language and voice, of the text that lies before him. He does the best he can but is never satisfied. And then, finally, we have the reader. The reader is the least tortured of this trio, but the reader too may very well feel that he is missing something in the book, that through sheer ineptitude he is failing to be a proper vessel for the book’s overarching vision. (Michael Cunningham, Found in Translation. The New York Times, Oct. 2, 2010) The Untranslatable Just as there are no exact synonyms within a language (big does not mean precisely the same as large), there are no exact matches for words or expressions across languages. I can express the notion four year old male uncastrated domesticated reindeer in English. But our tongue lacks the economy of information packaging found in Tofa, a nearly extinct tongue I studied in Siberia. Tofa equips reindeer herders with words like chary with the above meaning. Furthermore, that word exists within a multidimensional matrix that defines the four salient (for the Tofa people) parameters of reindeer: age, sex, fertility, and rideability. Words are untranslateable because [they] do not exist in a flat, alphabetised dictionary style list, but rather in a richly structured taxonomy of meaning. They are defined by their oppositions to and similarities to multiple other wordsin other words, the cultural backdrop. (K. David Harrison, linguist at Swarthmore College, in Seven Questions for K. David Harr ison. The Economist, Nov. 23, 2010) Pronunciation: trans-LAY-shen