librarypunk - 083 - Versions, Adaptation and Translation feat. The Left Page/Here Be Media

Episode Date: February 19, 2023

Versions! Manifestations! Translations! We’re joined by Frank and Leon to talk about the material, artistic, and practical implications of how works change. This week we discover cartoons are bad and Justin displays his woeful ignorance of European countries starting with D. https://www.patreon.com/leftpage https://twitter.com/leftpagepod https://twitter.com/FrankGothic https://twitter.com/LoveLiveLeon Media mentioned https://www.dukeupress.edu/no-future  https://time.com/5388681/audiobooks-reading-books/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6OT77T7YlE https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20200104-audiobooks-the-rise-and-rise-of-the-books-you-dont-read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Kid  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_Donald_Duck https://www.cbr.com/batman-joker-iran-ambassador-retcon-qurac/  https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Socialist_Democratic_Federated_Republic_of_Carbombya

So we're going to try and keep up with the library talk, but you guys just go off. Don't worry. We can just jump in whenever. We'll keep up as best we can. Yeah. No. It's your house. We have tons of non-library guests all the time.

Of course, of course. And the only thing I know about libraries is that my dad builds them. So you're welcome. Thank you. I'm kidding. Well, it's true. But like, yeah. Even some in the United States in fucking Ohio.

But I don't think that's relevant to you guys. When? Sorry. What time? I don't know exactly. He goes there and does now maintenance stuff or something, like he's in like architect engineer stuff, but also does the online framework, Shrach.

Once again, if you're really interested, I can ask, but I never really understood anything from it. I'm sorry. We did a whole episode on library buildings. Oh, really? Yeah, because library architecture changes over time. It goes from like the brutalist stuff that you see all over universities in the country and they all look the same and they all like smelled.

same, right? And then, like, you can go all over the country and go into university libraries. They're all built, like, exactly the same in this brutalist style. They're like Mormon churches. You got your, like, Carnegie, like, upskirt libraries. Mm-hmm. Yeah. The big glass ones that are just, they're meg, they're megachurches. They're like megachurch style buildings.

Oh, that's what the downtown Seattle one reminds me of. Oh, the fucking, the fucking Suspira. Yeah. It's got like a red hallway. It looks like it's like an argento film. Smoke that shit. Now I'm in the Syspira red room. In the Seattle Public Library.

Oh, wait. Hang on. I got something good for that. Please, if you're hearing this, please get me out of the damn skin of Morinck house. I'm so damn scared. I love the new Joe Biden AI voice stuff. It's so good.

Especially love like young people tracking their like their old parents. thinking that it's like an official presidential statement because all people just don't have to frame of mind. Yeah, it's so good. And I mean, for some reason, Overwatch players have really gotten into it. And so they just do these back and forths where it's Trump and Biden yelling at each other over Overwatch. I mean, it's better than playing the game. Discourse. Got to find something entertaining to do while playing that.

Yeah. All right, let's go. I'm Justin, I'm scholarly communications library, and my pronouns are he and him. I'm Sadie. I work IT at a public library, and my pronouns are they them. I'm Jay. I am a music library director, and my pronouns are he, him. We have guests. Would you like to introduce yourselves? Go ahead, Frank. Go. Okay. I am Frank. My pronouns are they he. I am a historian and a student on science fiction and utopian studies.

I am Leon. My pronouns are he they. And I have... two podcasts with Frank because we couldn't decide on one. Marhabo, Zumalai. Welcome. Sure. Thank you. What was that? That was from the Iranian consulate, I think, or no, UAE.

They were doing a bit where the American counts of diplomatic officers were doing Texas. They were speaking Arabic with Texas accents because they were hosting a cookout or something to spread Texas culture. Oh, no. Yeah. Did you just say Iran? No, it wasn't Iran because there's, I don't. the ghost consulate. What was that?

Two soundboards. That's nice. I like this. Oh, no, we're going to do it in sound boards. Don't worry. Maybe one more time. I won't take your purpose. I do take my soundboard on other podcasts.

So, yeah. Like the dueling piano bars you can go to? Yeah, I've only used to three episodes of you guys. Loved all of them, by the way. So thank you so much for having us, first of all. Yeah, of course. Thank you for coming on. Yeah, no, totally.

We love having Jayon. And yeah, so we kind of had to. And listen to the Akeb episode, and I think I only mentioning that because it might be in the somewhat fakeish similar vein, I hope, kind of sort of. Once again, I just like to say that I really liked that episode. Thank you so much for having us. Yeah. We've had a lot of discussions about, like, media, physical media. I mean, we just did like a physical media episode.

And so we're going to talk about like manifestations of media and things like that. But first, I have, hmm, I have a news story. vamping, vamping. Ah, I've got too many drops. I've got a, I've got a, I've got a call on. Justin. I've lost their drops. Episode of Man 11, me.

Okay. North Dakota advances a bill to remove sexual content from libraries. I was kind of following this on my own. I haven't brought it up on the show, but North Dakota's had a lot of these bills. The thing that I think got me interested was this definition of like sexual content, which I find interesting because it's not like, They're not arguing about pornography, right? Because I think I saw a Twitter mutual arguing with someone about like, this isn't pornography.

Public libraries don't usually have pornography or porn collections. So what's the problem? And there's this conflation of like sexuality with pornography in these laws. And so where is the definition it is? Because libraries absolutely do have sexual content that isn't pornography is the thing. But they do have sexual education. But they do have pornography. It's called romance novels. Hey, oh. I mean, this, yeah, would basically ban romance novels, which is like a huge

circulating part of the collection. But that's what public libraries are for is for romance novels, actually. I can 100% confirm that as somebody who both works in a public library and consumes a lot of romance novels. That's what, that's, that's, that's what e-books are for. I was in a World of Warcraft Guild slash romance novel book club. So we would would play a wow and discuss the, do you remember the old vaginal fantasy podcast with, what's her name? Oh, gosh. I didn't came prepared, I think, somehow.

You don't know about the vaginal fantasy podcast. No, I didn't do my due diligence. I'm so sorry. Felicia Day. Oh, her. She had a podcast. And then so we would follow along. And they have like little sub podcast groups.

And so we would follow along with it. But yeah, it was constantly talking about like everyone in the group. getting the book to the public library and like how hard or easy it was to get a tangent. The bill defines objectional materials as content that shows or describes sexual activity, human genitals after puberty, sadomasochistic abuse, and just says, and more. Great reporting, Charlotte Observer. And more. And more.

The one that perturbs me the most is the after. So showing pre-pupescent genitals is fine then. I guess someone pointed out pregnancy books would show naked babies. And so they were like, oh, well, pregnancy, that's good. I figured that, like, the main, so if I can give, like, my two cents, coming from a country that doesn't really, has a long history of not demonizing sexual stuff. I do mean sexual stuff, like, you know, like, once again, not erotica or, like, pornography or anything like that. It's, once again, I don't, okay, so maybe you guys can meet me halfway because I don't know that much about North Dakota.

Then again, all my American fans also don't know much about. about North Dakota. So I don't know. I think I'm a good company. But once again, yeah, I think it's a bad state, right? I'd like once again, not to. So, yeah, the small resources for people who want to educate themselves, because I assume because we're at state and because the culture is there,

you do not get like sexual education during your high school period or whatever is the appropriate time slot for Americans to receive that kind of information. We get it in our first year of middle school and it's like state mandated. So, like, there are no schools that are not allowed to, essentially, like, not tell you about, like, gentle hygiene. Like, you know, like, all the whole, like, essentially responsible human being stuff. Like, you know, that's, uh... Wait, they taught, like, hygiene, too, in your sex ed? Or is that just what it's general call, like, is how not to get an STI, or is it like, and here's how you take care of it?

Okay, no, well, it's pretty broad, like, so... Because they didn't teach us how to take care of it. No, I know, but it's, like, you know, it's pretty extensive, like, both for, like, like, women, gentilia, like male genitalia, and so forth and so on. And like, just like, essentially all you need to know, like, just the basics. And like pregnancy risk and how that works, preventive measures, you know, anything really that comes to anything sexual, really. So once again, it could have been better, but it's like still, at least all the basics were there. And I am appreciative of that.

I had cool parents, by the way. So I didn't need it. But still, I was in a class with a bunch of people who might not have had that cool. parents. So, you know, yeah, but my point is, like, I, by removing it from the libraries, you are, like, essentially denying one of the bigger avenues of, how do you call it, of, educating yourself if, once again, because the school system is not taking care of that, from what I understand. Yeah, basically. And also, like, your parents can opt you out of a lot of things. It's, I mean, it really comes to a lot of discussions about, like, the rights of children to have

individual access to knowledge, like, a positive right of children to know, things, which was something actually interesting. I just saw Greenland. There's a bunch of people suing the Dutch government because children of single mothers were not allowed to, they didn't have a right to know who their biological father was until, like, the 70s. And the, oh, wait, Greenland was the colony of Denmark. Denmark, sorry.

Yeah. Don't worry. It happens all the time. It's always, like, especially my American friends, like, yeah, Danish, Dutch, it's certainly the D. It's probably the same. The Dutch. do a lot of colonialism, like, to be fair.

Greenland is a weird thing for anyone to own. Yeah, no, Denmark, like, once again, let's not get into colonialism. That's the whole thing. That's for later. Yeah. But yeah, that's the news. The thing that got me about this that I wanted to bring up to is it's exactly what I was talking about with the Moms for Liberty, where there's this conflation of school libraries

and public libraries. So this bill is inclusive of public libraries, which are, for anyone. So the argument that this is only about school libraries was just a wedge issue. It's just this conflation of school libraries with public libraries and, oh, well, children can use a public

library, therefore it's a children's library. Therefore, there can't be any sexuality in it, which is insane even also to say that children... There's been going on quite quite some time, right, in like the wider American landscape, if we am allowed to call it that? Yeah.

There's also like sort of, and we've talked about this before, like, not just the like, like, obviously they're trying to get rid of public libraries as well as school libraries by conflating. They're trying to get rid of public anything, basically. But also, even without nefarious purposes, most people conflate public libraries with as being something for children. Like, I went to a friends of the library meeting at my public library, and like all of the stuff that they reported on was all about children's programming. Every single thing was about children's programming, all of the stuff, like, anytime you hear about it. And here's all the great thing

that public libraries do. Most of it is about kids' stuff, which, like, yay, we have stuff for kids, but, like, also, I think that only adds fuels to the flames of this kind of stuff. And it misses the point. I don't know. But, yeah, it's not an uncommon thing here. Yeah. It even has some spillover effect. So in my, like, the social science that I'd done was, because once again, I live in Amsterdam, I did some social science regarding sex workers. and I know some of them personally and American senators like were trying to buy

I don't know why but like there was this wave of attacking the Olean fans platform and like so the Olin fans platform then made restrictive like for a while I believe it's now dead in the water and it's not a thing anymore once again not an incident to myself no offense to anyone

it's just like that spillover effect by attacking that Olin fans platform was also affecting Dutch sex workers which I find like fascinating really because once again I love this international interconnectivity and blah, blah, blah, and so forth and so on. But, yeah, that it was such a weird little, yeah, spillover effect from the American political arena, if you call it.

Because the internet's America, don't you know? As an interesting point on that kind of thing of like, oh, this book, but it shouldn't be available, whatever, I want the few discussions I can talk about or that I remember from, when I'm still in high school, I think, it's about this, you know, classic children's authors book was very racist and, you know, a children's book that was very racist and a whole controversy about it like, no, this shouldn't be in school libraries because, you know, public libraries aren't as much a thing here. But, you know, school libraries, a lot of them are there. And the question of like, well, but it's contextual. It's not like, oh, this book is being banned. This book isn't being

available. It's not being so. No, it's just like, this shouldn't be in this particular context. And like, to think about these books of like that have some sexual content, which, which can mean anything. And I, it's quite baffling that it's like, well, if it's about the kid in terms of pregnancy, that's fine. But if it's about the woman, then it's not. But anyway, or the person giving birth. So, yeah, it's funny how these things, they seem more focused or more charged in an American

sense or an American landscape, but they do occur similarly in terms of just this conflation of like, oh, to not let this book, it's like, oh, but then it's like, oh, but you're restricting books, they become this whole moral panic about something that is a very isolated incident. Yeah. I feel like librarians as a whole should read the No Future Queer Theory in the Death Drive

book, aka Fuck Them Kids, the book. Let's get into some anti-natalism, yeah, let's go. Yeah, be gay. Stop having children, the book. Yeah, kid check. Who's got them? Hands up. Get rid of them. Throw your baby into the skinnamarink house.

My dad would love that statement. In this house. It's too late now, but... Yeah, well, I mean, well, anyway, that was legislation alert. That was the drop. So, we're talking about versions, adaptation, translation, manifestations. We're going to talk a little bit about taxonomies. But first off, we've kind of jumped right into it, but plugs up front.

Who are you? Where are you from? What are you doing? Why are you in my house? We're Frank and Leon. We do two podcasts on the absence of one. We do one that's more focused on literature and written things, which is the left page about literature and books and stories from a leftist perspective. And it covers everything and anything. So from 200 years ago to a couple years back, that's the ambitious goal. But we achieve it one episode at a time. And then there's hereby media where we talk about the other media and that's the one that jay was on which is a great episode on velvet gold mine which which was amazing and uh really fun it is everything and we can't escape that model now it's too late it showed up in a recording we did the other day so

thank you jay you're welcome yeah by that at the time this episode is out probably the babel episode is out so i think that book uh if you're anyway any interested in uh librarians what's or like broader academia and like colonialism and leftist perspective. That's first off, go read the book. It's amazing. And then like, well, and then check out the left page episode. Okay. Well, that doesn't.

First read a book. Then if you want, you can check out the left page episode on it. That's what we do. Yeah. Well, I already said where I'm from. Well, I'm from Amsterdam. Frank is from Brazil, South Paulo. And where it is.

Yeah, where it is. We try to think of a like a group name for both podcasts. We haven't filled. We haven't managed to scrounge up anything yet. So left page TV media is the best we got. Two different podcasts, one media, one literature. Yeah, that's it. Like one big union, but for podcasts.

Of course. Yeah. It's a shame Verso. Yeah, Verso books already took Verso, which is already a pretty good, like, pot on left politics and books. But it took me years to notice that. I was just like, yeah, Verso, whatever. Oh. It's the left side of the left face of the book.

That's pretty good. It's pretty good, but not very obvious. That makes it even better for some people, I think. It's this mental masochism. Just a bunch of special collections nerds. So I was asking Jay, because I haven't had time to go through your whole back catalog, I was looking through it. I was trying to find episodes that were related to this.

But have you had a theme of talking about like adaptations of media, like going from one format to another and the consequences of that? Yes. We had the year-in-review episode, like where we talked about, all the media and stuff that came out in the year 2022. And, well, we talked a little bit about, like, the Roar-Ring series and, like, this new, this high fantasy or, like, big fantasy TV show production

and how there's this, like, sense of writers wanting to make their mark on the thing that is already exists and then change a bunch of things. And that can have, that can be good. I like the mindset. It is how, however, like, based on our observance, is executed rather controversially, I would say. That's like the best word I can think of it.

But yeah, no. So we have talked about adaptation because once again, in media that's a big thing right now. Like, it used to be like fantasy books for a while. And now I feel there's a shift in that a bunch of video game narratives are being picked up on. And like, for example, right now is airing the Last of Us, which is already a movie.

It just had some interactive gameplay elements. in it, but that's our professional opinion. But it doesn't mean it's bad or anything, not trying to step on anybody's thows, but yeah, but that success, the size of that TV show and this and success, it's probably going to herald in this new era of, I

conjecture, speculative, by the way. I would suggest that this. You're hurting here first, folks. If I'm wrong, then you don't know me. No, I didn't. I didn't say that. I'm just going to gaslight you immediately, leave me alone. That's, no, but in all seriousness, I think this is going to

like being picked up on a bunch of video game narratives, which are, it's going to be interesting, because at least with pros, you have pros, you have literature, you have something to hold on to video games not so much, but it might be a good thing, like not having so much to adapt, and this gives a lot more room for authorial reinterpretation. And it might be interesting, I don't know. What do you feel, Frank? Yeah, we've spoken a bit about this in terms of at least some Star Wars stuff. We've done Ander a bit, which is its own thing, but we've also done, like,

Knights of Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic and how that relates to the Star Wars universe broadly and that kind of thing. So, and especially The Witcher episode where we talked about the box, but we will talk about the video game at some point. So adaptation has been quite recent in our minds, but oddly enough, because a long time ago, the left page was me and another Brazilian friend. And we've always talked a bit about translation here and there, but we've never sat down to talk about it, which is quite interesting. I mean, and now recently there's the, as Leon mentioned, the Babel episode where language is everything. So, yeah, that's the example we have to give.

But there's just, it's always something on our minds because of, well, the simple fact that's like, and now with Leon, like English is not our native language. And yet, here we are doing a podcast in English or do two podcasts now. So it's how to translate and what both meaning, sense, books and what books we're talking about, how we're consuming those books, like that. That is always present, I think. So, yeah, the translation episode, eventually from a more theoretical sense, will come. So, yeah, I can promise that at some point.

But so far, it's been an underlying subject. So it's nice to talk about it here in another great part. Yeah, you do really have to read Hamlet and the original Klingon. Yeah, no, definitely. Of course. Speaking of adaptations. And when we were brainstorming, because, you know, obviously, if I go on, you know, any of us goes on another podcast, we have to have them on and vice versa, right? I was like,

okay, how the hell do we get you all on? And they, you know, they brought to me this idea of like translation and adaptation, which in library world, so often we're on the defensive about, oh, of course, audiobooks are books and are reading. Of course, e-books are books and are reading. Graphic novels, of course, are books and are reading, you know, all this sort of thing. You know, film adaptation versus a book that's not necessarily so much in the discussion. But like, we're always on the defensive of like, yes, if listening to a book is easier or better or more fun for you, that of course counts as reading that book. However, what I think that leaves out is how there are differences in how you interact with different medium, even if it's the same exact words or the same exact text. And I feel like how if we're always on the defensive about it, we actually lose out on opportunities to explore those differences, not necessarily negative differences, sometimes.

I do think there are, but there are also positive differences, too. And so I thought that would be a really cool, like, oh, yes, come on. We haven't had people on to talk about this aspect of library collections and how we interact with information. So, yay. Yeah, definitely. I think what's always interesting, and I try to, on the left page, I try to listen to the audiobook of the book that we were talking about every time. Like, I read the book mostly, and when I'm on, when I'm, like, doing my commute, I listen to the audiobook because I don't want to, like, read on a subject. because I'll miss my style because I have ADHD and I have only like five brain cells

together when it comes to concentrating. And besides that, it is, but I always like try to like talk about like, oh, the quality of the audiobook and so forth and so on. And I think it's like really interesting. It is really interesting because if you really want to get into the circle perspective, the oral tradition outdays the written tradition by quite a bit. So if you like this whole condescending attitude towards audiobooks, I personally never got it and understood it.

And but like Jay said, like I think it's a little bit. is very important to acknowledge the differences and distinctions. I think that is A valuable if this is done in a positive, how to say this, good faith type of way. So yeah, I think that's very interesting. And we should keep in mind that, you know, different cultures might have different traditions and so forth and so on. Yeah, and same thing with like translating between languages as well. Like I am one of the, one of the books I, we've been talking about maybe having me come on left page to talk about was that perfume, the story of a murderer, which is originally in German. And I own both copies. And I was going to try to read it when I was learning German, but my German never got good enough. But it's like, I love the English

version, but I've never gotten the chance to actually read the original fringe version. Same thing with like, uh, Haruki Murakami like novels. Like I, one of my worst qualities is that I love his books. Um, but I never read them in Japanese. I, I've only read them in English, right? So there's just so many interesting things here about like, are you reading what are you reading the real one? Have you actually read it if you've only read this version or if you've only listened to the audio book. Don't talk to me about the anime if you haven't read the manga. Exactly. I have the manga of Hamlet, so.

Yeah. And that's actually, I was going to make a joke about the manga Bible earlier. But yeah, it's a good adaptation. But actually, I did just have this with an anime because I watched an anime, went and read the comic and it was completely different. And it was bizarre because that doesn't normally happen. But it was just completely, they rewrote the characters to be different for what of a reason. I think because the comic book kind of sucked.

So someone just touched up the story. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the source material. This was, this was, I only know Old Testament. I'm sorry. Yeah, this was, this was, I just got reincarnated as, uh, Israelite fleeing from Egypt in my mid-30s. That's the name of the anime. I love a good Isakai. Yeah, good Issaquai. Yeah.

I, uh, actually, there's also a thing of when we're talking about physicality of, like, the, The difference is between reading an audiobook. There's a lot of things like how good is the person who is narrating, a bad narrator can really ruin an audiobook, right? But also like physicality of books. And I want to mention book art really quickly because I've got this recreation of the Jefferson Bible that the Smithsonian put out. And when they put it out, they like, I don't know if you'd be able to see this in the camera, but they artificially yellowed the pages. and any place where he had like pasted something, they recreated the little pasted pieces.

So they had to go through and add this into all the books that came out. So this was so cool and I had to buy it. But you can see, because he literally like cut and paste four versions of the Bible next to each other. So you can see there's little outlines of the original pasts and everything. So it's like an image recreation rather than the text. Yeah, like a thing I think about all the time with regard to this. This is the book House of Leaves. Oh, yeah.

You're like, House of Leaves is like the text is in different fonts, depending on whose character, like, what part of the story you're in. The different words are always in different colors. There's footnotes. The way the text appears on the page, like twists and curls and goes through and all sorts of stuff. Like, I have no idea how that would even work as an e-book because so much of it is that, like, physical experience of, like, turning the page and, like,

holding this brick in your hand. That's why I felt so weird about when I read infinite, like I finally read Infinite Jest and it was as an e-book because that way I could carry it around with me all the time and not carry around a thousand page book with me everywhere, but it felt so weird because it's like half of the point of reading Infinite Jest is having like six books marks in it, right? And so there's just like sometimes even just like the physical experience of reading it

is I have no idea how those types of aspects would be translated when I feel like it's part of reading it, right? And footnotes too, I know that when I've read nonfiction as an e-book, which I usually read an e-book because, again, they automatically return so I don't have fines and I can carry it around on my phone. But a lot of the times I caught myself not following up on footnotes like I would if I was reading a physical book because it involves clicking and going away from where I was and then having to navigate back as opposed to just being able to put a finger in where

I was in flipping to the battery, the footnote, and flipping it back, or the books that actually have them as footnotes on the page that they're relevant to. So there's a lot of information that could get missed out that way. And I've never listened to nonfiction with footnotes as an audiobook. So I don't know normally that's translated. But yeah, that's interesting thought, too. I'm not an audiobook person, unfortunately. I'm not either. I used to a lot. Actually, I've listened to a lot of memoirs on audiobooks, because if the person is still live, they normally get them to read it. And so then it's like, oh, I'm listening to Laura Jane Grace, like read her book Trane, right? Or I'm listening to Gore Vidal read one of his memoirs.

I was listening to a Gore Vidal memoir when I had my head on collision in front of a church after having a hookup on Easter. That was my like, I was too gay and God tried to kill me moment. But like normally they get the author to read them. But I notice that like I zone out when I listen. Even if I'm driving, like I will zone out while I'm listening to an audiobook. So I just can't listen to them. If I listen to a podcast, it has to be a podcast. I don't have to pay too close attention to.

That kind of thing. Like one thing I, in some of the, one of the articles I shared that with audiobooks, like even though the reading comprehension, if you are a person who can actually pay attention to an audiobook, which I'm not necessarily one of them. But if you are, the reading comprehension isn't too different, actually. That's normally where a lot of these, like, defensive, like, no, they do count. It's because there have been studies of, like, the reading comprehension and whatnot is actually not too different between these mediums. And so it's fine.

However, there are slight differences. And one of them is that with reading, like, with your eyeballs, that a lot of reading is actually back reading. It's like your eyes going and scanning back and forward all while you're reading and, like, catching things behind as you missed. or like if you do zone out for like a second or whatever you can oh wait and go back and find where you you were where you is you can't necessarily you don't have that sort of back reading when you're listening and if you do zone out it's harder to go back and find where you were and so the type of comprehension and how you comprehend is different just because you don't have that type of eye movement anymore and I was like that's why I can't pay attention to audiobooks is because I can't

go back and immediately find like where I was because I'm not having it. that back reading. I had no idea that that's what was happening. There's also a spatial element to recall, I find. Like you were saying with the adjusters, no, you can't put six bookmarks in it. But I remember if something I wanted to look at was on the Verso or the recto side of the book. And I'll like go back and go, oh, okay, I know it's, I know it's in this shape of a paragraph. So I know I can go back and do it. Yeah. And sometimes if I can't think of something, I'll literally, but I know I've read it. I'll literally go and stare at my bookshelf, and that will jog the memory out. Just staring at the book,

we'll do it half the time. This happened all the time to me in grad school, because it was just all the books for the class, because it's like 15 books per class. So then I would sit there and go, hmm, right, that's what I was thinking about. And I'd go back to typing my little discussion board for the 15th one of the week. Yeah, I mean, when reading and when trying to write academic stuff, like, because I compare an original version of an novel I read in English, then I have the physical version as well. And when I'm trying to find quotes and stuff, I look for, and a lot of the bibliographies in English, I look in the English ebook version, because I can page and word search. And then it's like, okay, how is the paragraph looking so I can find the correspondence in the physical copy? So that real, like, how is the book looking? How is it shaping? How does this dialogue end? How does this paragraph start? Those are the book works I put to myself especially when doing this reference work. And, And especially, I do want to ask how does nonfiction audiobooks do footnotes? Because that strikes me as incredibly weird.

And I think a lot of what Sadie said, that how do you, I mean, I am against end notes on principle. But when that happens, it really, good. It really becomes a sense of like, okay, is it worth looking at the end of this file to find, to check this information or not? And in a physical book, that's still a hassle, but it's a smaller hassle. And if it has hyperlinks, fine. Then you click there. It's like, oh, I can check. Okay, that's helpful.

Click, click back. But if it doesn't, and a lot of the times it doesn't with certain academic books and getting access to those, it's, yeah, it's difficult the way we handle to try and pass this information out and what choices we have to make when reading. And I'm not that much for an audiobook person. I kind of want to be, but I'm not sure how much I can. But I realized certain things that I would have to read over again and again, and I would, if I had a physical version, I don't bother when listening. Because, and I think it's one of the things that you, in our outline before we talked, that mentioned how an audiobook is a lot of the time something that you listen to when you wouldn't otherwise read.

It's not necessarily one replacing the other, but it's occupying a space that won't be felt otherwise. Yeah, that's a quote from the BBC article, I think, or maybe one of the other ones, but yeah. Yeah, and I think that I try to do the same thing, but when, I don't know, at least a novel, it, there's a lot that sometimes takes a little longer to listen to or to understand, even when reading, like to give an example that Leon will like the Witcher audio box and they're the fight scenes. and I don't pretend to understand the fight scenes. I listen to them. I hear the words, and that's fine.

But if I was reading, I would try to, okay, so he's positioned here, and his opponent's kind of like here, okay, maybe like this. Whereas I'm listening, it's like, okay, I don't, I don't care. So I don't know if I'm less diligent when listening. So it doesn't necessarily work for me, but it's a way for me to listen to something that if I want to read this other thing and another time, this I can listen to and, okay, I can gloss over. over this which isn't as important to me, but I can still gather generally what is happening

in the plot, in other discussions and other things. To really quickly give a positive example of it is that, because I agree with all you're saying, it is, but in the audiobook version of Babel, that the book that, once again, we already talked about it, I'm so sorry, but this, once first, this author was already successful. They had, like, a successful trilogy called the Poppy Wars. And so the investment into that audiobook was probably going to be higher than your average Joddy book because they knew they had like a bunch there was a market for it and they did in a very interesting way because they had just had a different voice actor because once again they're all

voice actors because you can't just you can't just let the author read a book go on it like it is an actual discipline it's an actual talent to do a good audiobook I think and but that's beside the point they just had like a different voice read the footnotes so like for a bunch of people that then like shifted their attention back to it like oh that's something different and it allows them to like mentally catalog the information that is then presented in fundamentally different manner and they even like because once again the book has so much about translation they even got like a native speaker to say every single native word when a native when like in their native language a certain word became interesting or whatever doesn't really make sense if you haven't read the book I'm

so sorry but it's cool but I also then immediately acknowledge that that is a that's a high production and audiobook that just simply is not representative of the larger audiobook landscape. And with like audiobooks, I was when I was doing a little research for this episode, and I saw, I think it was this week or last week, one of the women who was sort of one of the pioneers, that's probably a word we should not use anymore, isn't it? Pioneer of one of the people who first started doing something.

I won't tell Twitter. Yeah, please don't cancel me Twitter. She, a woman who died like this week or last week was who was one of like the first people to sort of like do audiobooks. And so I was like, oh, I didn't realize they were like that old. And so when I was going and looking, and originally, like, audiobooks, like, obviously, ever since we have had recorded sound, we have had recorded spoken word, right? But then I was looking and it was through the Library of Congress and a blind advocacy group that started in 1931, the Talking Books Program, which then I think is still around called Books for the Blind. So audiobooks, as we sort of know them, start as an accessibility tool.

They are for the purpose of people who do not have sight or the ability to read with their eyes, being able to read books by listening to them. And a similar program starts about a little under 20 years later through the New York Public Library and their Women's Auxiliary Unit. And one of the women in that, who starts the recording for the blind and dyslexic, Slash later turns into what's called Learning Ally. And this was recording books inspired by like the need for soldiers who are coming back from World War II, who had lost their sight in war and recording books for them. And so audiobooks have probably have been around for a lot longer than like probably critics of them, probably want to imagine that they have been around.

And they start out as like, yes, if you are a person who cannot look at a page and read the words off of it, here is an alternative for you. And we will hire people who can read the books and we will record them. And then so you can have them. That has been a thing for God, a little under a century now. And so I just, I thought that was cool because I didn't even think that they were that old. I don't know why they wouldn't be. you know it's like oh duh of course they would be that old and probably for that that reason as well and so I doubt this was like a hot side of discourse you know in the 30s and 40s of like oh that's not

actually you're not actually reading huckleberry finn if you're having a nice lady read it to you and record it you know so I thought that was interesting when I was going through and looking about like the history of audiobooks and and what they were for and all that. I think a recent push as well for audiobooks has been, well, once again, if more people get interested in audiobooks, you can stream it to them and like, you know, there's a big rise in Audible. Like, once again, it's bought by Amazon.

If it gets bought by Amazon, it's going to be a market. At least there's going to be an attempt. It's trying to be created as a market. And whether or not it will be successful. It's like the whole thing that I won't bore you guys with. But other than that, it is, you know, so you can then revoke that access. as an audiobook and also as an e-book. And once again, the thing that everybody loves is, of course,

subscription services. And we all want more subscription services. Nobody, why wouldn't you want the subscription services? It's great. It's amazing. Who wants to own physical media? You don't have a house anyway. Shut up.

So that's like, you know, that's their general take, I believe, or that's like the general disposition that those people have to make those decisions. I'm not sure if either of you know this or if just by like being in now our orbit for any amount of time you've picked up on this at all. But things like Audible or Kendall or anything like that, especially if it's like a subscription service most of the time. Like, one, libraries can't get those services. Like libraries don't have Audible, right?

And if something is exclusive to Audible, oh, look, we've got this famous actor to do an audiobook of this great book and it's an Audible exclusive with the full cast and all that. Libraries can't get that. Because it's exclusive to that platform. and Amazon won't do library licensing. If a romance novel by like a queer author is only on Kindle Unlimited because they're just just getting started and that if you're going to start writing romance novels and you want to get any sort of following in money, you do Kindle Unlimited until you can get on your feet enough to actually have it on other platforms. Libraries can't circulate.

They can't get a copy of it. So with this, that's I think a thing to consider is like with this push towards like audiobooks and ebooks. and especially towards like subscription services for these things. More and more, that means libraries then cannot collect these materials and people are forced to buy them. And by buy them, I mean, rent a license to a platform that will allow them to read and or listen to it under very limited circumstances. Yeah, I think it's very important to keep in mind that these big, like, not big, like tremendous colossal, whatever you want to call it. these companies like Amazon and so forth and so on. They are not doing anything with the perspective of short-term profits.

And a lot of people are like, well, I think we're paying a couple bucks for like, you know, unlimited access is a beautiful transformation of the Internet's capabilities. I'm like, even if it was, this statement on itself, we can have a nuanced discussion about, if you will. I won't. Don't. Don't worry. But it is trying to be respectful here. But in my very humble opinion, it is tremendously short-sighted.

And once again, you don't have to know it in-outs, but even I think someone who knows less about economic and like business workings and stuff like that and so forth and so on can see a very clear pattern in these cargantuan companies essentially, like what they want on like short and long-term is control. They don't, they have so much money to burn. They don't care about short-term profits. They do care about restricting, granting and distributing access. I know Libra Cal already talked about this better than I ever could, but yeah, essentially same, like, same thing like that.

Like, you know, they want, like, to be in charge of who gets access to what. Right. Like, as we mentioned in our physical media episode, it's not so much that, like, the format itself, it's not that e-books or audiobooks are, quote, a problem. It is capitalism and what it's trying to do with access to those materials as opposed to other materials. Thus always the capitalism. That is the problem, yeah. Yeah, it's the way this access is controlled, really. The problem is, like, the problems with audio, like, ebooks and audiobooks, we already talked about, like, retention.

Those are the actual, like, problems with them. The whole licensing thing, that's not a, the whole problem that libraries have and that we get licenses, we don't own ebooks or audiobooks. Neither do you, as a consumer. You have a license, right? You don't actually own the things that you stream or even the things that you purchase through, like, Kendall or whatever. That's why the whole thing, when the 19,

84, which is a very funny book for this to happen to, but like disappeared off everyone's Kendall because the license got pulled. This was like an early Kendall big story, right? I knew people this happened to who were librarians and they were like, oh, yeah, that's licensing, man. That kind of non-ownership of the physical media, it's a problem for preservation ownership, but yeah, like Leon's saying, the whole goal is to control the market. Yeah, or at least a large enough chunk.

of it so you can like cartel your way into you know like just talking to the two other big companies and you can like well let's fuck over everyone essentially because you know we'll make so much money off of it like there's a strong sense of class unity among those people let's just keep it at that this doesn't really fit into

necessarily anything but I just kind of want to say it there's one time the opposite happens throughout the history of streaming and that is still baffling move that as far as I'm aware it's never been repeated by Apple who like forcefully put YouTube album onto everybody's

phone. And I remember waking up that day because I still had an iPhone back then. I never listened to a YouTube song in my life. That's not trying to aggrandize or anything. But maybe a little. But other than that, it is just like, this is this baffling decision of like, no, you're going to listen to this. This is going to take up space on your phone.

And that, I think that, ironically, is so much more dystopian than the other way. Well, it's still fucking horrible, whichever way. But the other way around, like, we restrict this usage of your space on your phone. you have to listen to it. You don't have to. But like, we restrict like the like the maneuverability that you have, the moveability then expressed as space on your phone, like the choices, like what you

put on your phone is that is, oh, that's, that's terrible. That's, yeah. Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Sadie. Oh, I was just going to say like, for me, when I heard that that happened, it's, it's more invasive, you know, it's like you're, yeah, something's being forcefully pushed upon you. And I think a lot of the debate is sort of an, an option. in opt out. Like, you didn't opt in to have YouTube on your phone. But you do opt in to paying for a subscription for something without necessarily knowing what the exact terms of that are. So like, you know, you buy an ebook. Well, yeah, you're renting it. But you can also, there are also some places that will, they were literally, just give you the ePUB file and you can store that somewhere.

And anytime you, you know, anything they can read an ePU, you can read that book. So it's more akin to owning a physical copy. But yeah, I think not to buzzword, but the kind of the matter of consent here really, really screws with people's heads because they're consenting to something that they don't entirely understand as opposed to being, having 1984 forcefully taken away from their device to YouTube, forcefully being put onto their device, it's much more boundary breaking. So people are like, oh, no, that's not okay. But when it's, you know, Netflix getting rid of a show that was only ever on Netflix and will never be seen outside of the light of their archives if they even have it sort of thing is people don't think about that as a violation as well. You know what I mean? If that makes any sense at all. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And like because, I think this comes back around to like how we're always on the defense of a defense about these things. But like the way that, you know, like subscription models and licensing models. models and issues with physical, uh,

physical, uh, physical, physical versus digital media and like ways of collecting it and like the licensing around that. Because those, that discourse and those arguments take up so much space. And because so often any arguments where we're have to be on the defensive about, no, it is reading.

We promise. Like those take up so much time that we can't then actually in good faith, have discussions about, well, there actually could be a retention problem here, or no, this does have a benefit here because of X, Y, Z reason, and then being able to go, okay, so then what do we then do about any sort of deficiencies or this actually has an advantage on this side? So how can we maybe translate that advantage? Like, we can't then actually deal with the differences with translation, with different manifestation. That's a library word with these things

because we're always either on the defense against bad faith arguments or capitalism's happening. So. Yeah, on the track that Sadie was going with streaming, it ties into this problem of like the preservation of issues. Like Netflix probably doesn't have an HBO plus, probably don't have really good archives. So there's a very good chance like they'll just lose things.

I think when Nancy came on, She was talking about when something goes missing, like, like Metropolis. Metropolis just entered the public domain. We don't have the original mastering of it. And like, it's all down to like if someone saves something. But that also means if you don't have a physical version, there's this issue of versioning.

There's this issue of what's the final product? So like a show can come out with like really shitty subtitles. And then they can change it. They can fix it. That's not going to happen if you had bought the DVDs. but like they could also go in and remaster the audio. They can go in and make changes. This particular, I was thinking about this with like video games because it's kind of

where it's the biggest, like you can just ship a broken game these days. And it's like, yeah, we'll fix it in like two or three months. But like we got your money is the important part. We'll fix it like over the next couple months. It'll be playable. And then the next couple of years, it'll be okay. And except in the case of which or three, in which case they put out an update that just broke it for a lot of people for me twice two different updates broke it twice for me so i didn't have any

mods it just broke whereas like with probably the example most people know around like like with versioning and preservation and whatnot that's still even an issue like with physical media sometimes um because as as we have mentioned before george lucas will not give the original theatrical cut print of star wars i think of the entire original trilogy, but it might just be new hope, but I think it's of the entire original trilogy of, to the Library of Congress for Preservation, because that is not his quote, original, that is not his actual vision of it. All of the mangling he did to them is, quote, his vision of it. And like, one, George, you're not the only one who worked on those films. And the only reason

they're good is because Marshall Lucas edited them, too. Like, just because you don't like that. version a lot of people do and that also deserves its own active preservation and now those that preservation happens via piracy which yay piracy we're a pro piracy podcast and so that sort of you know what is the final product like that does happen with the physical items but then like yeah which is the version of star wars is there a difference between them and it reminded me of them and I put this in the notes, H. Bomber guy,

great YouTube video essay person, has this great video essay about director's cuts and the sort of phenomenon around them. And mainly talking about Blade Runner, the series of different versions of Blade Runner that you can get, and doesn't mention Star Wars until the very end, but how this sort of, like, how directors cuts in and of themselves,

like, capitalist meddling and the artist, the singular artist who made this entire film, don't you know? It's one person who makes a film, even though there's actors and all these other things in it. It's their singular vision and they can finally release it and how that's become a product in and of itself now. And so I can only imagine with like digital only releases now, it's like, okay, there's the theatrical cut. And then maybe there'll be like a digital cut, like a digital version that you can get. How many times is like the director decides, oh, well, shit, I missed, you know, I don't like what my editor did there. I'm going to change it and just redo your digital

copy over and over and over and over again. And then what implications does this all have for what versions libraries are expected to buy and circulate and how that even happens. God help the editors. God help the editors. And the librarians, of course. And the librarians. Yeah, yeah. You're almost expected to have like a media. additional addition specialists to be brought on to, like, the librarians or like, I don't know, outfits or what have you, that, like, knows which one is the best and, I don't know. And just, like, the metadata for it,

because, like, additions is, like, something when we create metadata for items that we pay a lot of attention to. I know Justin put in the notes. I don't know how much we want to go into Ferb or Wimmy and RDA, you know, in it, but, like, the whole idea of, there are different manifestations of this particular, work and there are different whatever's of it. Like, that is something we pay a lot of attention to in librarianship.

And when you get an item to catalog, you have to be like, okay, there's a lot of additions of this, and it might be even the same words, but just with a different cover, but it still matters that you have that version with that cover on it. And so that's the record that you, like, pick to catalog it with and everything. So it's something we care a lot about. And so just like with if things can like win the question of like what's a final version or if edits can keep being made, especially to a digital copy that you might have, I have no idea how that's going to complicate like cataloging. This is just a weird thing in my library, but speaking of like additions and changes, there's this book series that comes out that's published by like history of faculty. and one time for one of the additions, they forgot to change, you know, the copyright title information, the metadata left page.

They didn't update it from the last volume. They missed it. And so when we cataloged it, our cataloger said, no, that's the information I'm cataloging. So they cataloged the wrong information on purpose because our cataloging rules say that's how she has to catalog it instead of the title that was on the front, which is insane because you make the rules, you could change them. But you're the cataloger, right? But that's sort of why I find cataloging silly. You catalog a book that's the way it tells you to be cataloged, Justin. You let the book describe itself. Yeah.

A thing books can do. Just channel your ancient book whisperer instincts. That is the thing about RDA I agree with, sadly, is the letting an item describe itself, even if there are mistakes in it. And like, move a candle ever so closer to the book if it doesn't give you what you want. as implications. That's an interesting thing in terms of like the artistic aspect of it as well

because like when is the product or the art or the thing done? In this case then it's never done. Clearly George Lucas never got over Star Wars kept doing different and different versions again and again and like we Leon had mentioned before and at least in the notes in terms of like music and albums and different versions of songs

that maybe kind of remastered whatever, but there's only one version of that. It's not like a new album, a new remastered version. No, it's re-updating that old album or that kind of thing. And, like, when is... I feel like that is a problem that has a lot of ramifications that we've been talking about for editing, for cataloging, for storing, all that.

But from an artistic and, like, from the people involved in creating or that are doing this, it's like, you're not moving on. You're getting stuck on that particular version that's kind of like, move on, do something. else. Ideally, that's where we'd go artistically. Like that, okay, that was shit. Or that had an issue or that had a problem. Yeah, live with it for once. This...

Yeah, show your journey of improvement, I think, is so cool. Exactly. Yeah, like this update culture, the way I phrase it quite dramatically. I blame GitHub. Yeah. And version control. Yeah, the

Gittification of media. Because it hides all of that. And it's I think it didn't, this is a dramatic way of putting it again, but like, I think it stunts this development or this artistic growth or creation that's like, yeah, this had problems, this had issues. And like, that's, that's, that's how it goes for everyone. To be to update it, it should be like an extreme luxury and not something that should be that accepted, like the travesty or the absolute crime that is this business model of video games and day one patches. Like, yeah, the game release is broken, and on that same day, we'll fix a part of that. Imagine what would happen if the people who made video games reunized and didn't have, like, ridiculous deadlines imposed on them where they could actually work on a game and get it to, like, a really good level

before they released it, so that didn't have to happen. Imagine a world where that was a thing. Yeah, imagine, right? Imagine. And when you mentioned, like, narratives in video games, I've been recently playing cyberpunk, because I just don't have anything else going on in my life, right now. I'm on brain leave, which is different from dome leave. Dome leave a lot more fun. Brain leave is when your brain doesn't work and you have to

not go to work for a couple of weeks. Don't worry. There's nothing in cyberpunk that needs your brain to dissect or anything. Don't worry. No, this is the thing I've done. This is like my thing is like audio books and mindless video games. So I'm running around doing all the like side quests in cyberpunk and there are so many. There's so many, the amount of writing that they had to put in, like, is outrageous. The actual storyline is like seven or eight hours. I've been playing, and I just barely am getting all of these side quests done, and they unlock more side quests the more you do.

And someone's written an insane amount of copy to do all this stuff. I think The Witcher is even more egregious example of that. Even though I do like that game, I surprise, surprise, I don't necessarily like Cyropunk. But that's not a hero there. It's not a game. that, especially not this late into the episode. But, well, you know, it is just cyber. There's no punk.

There's just, it's just, I don't know. It's just a statistic. Cyberpunk's always been reactionary of that. Well, we'll have a nuanced discussion about that, but go listen to our Falvo Goldmine episode if you want to know what happens if there's just a staticism and no meaning behind it. But it's not yet, right?

So, but yeah, like, the witcher at least has meaningful dialogue or like at least there's some attempt at like, creating, recreating the prose that is like where the literature of the books are based off of. Cyberpunk and my humble opinion is other than it's little

like it's, once again, it's frivolous aesthetics of like having an in-world language, which I find hilarious, but that's not a hint of there. That dialogue is so straightforward and it's so empty. Like, I love all those side quests and you do a side quest and it doesn't,

it doesn't, never mind. This is going to get too much into the game. I'm so sorry, never mind. I was going to shut up now. But also, like, with The Witcher, how they just came out with this patch to, like, break the game, it's this same problem of if you don't own an actual version. Your version that you do own can be taken away from you if you don't disable updates, right? So, I mean, I'm thinking about this a lot.

We were just talking about, like, streaming a second ago. And, like, the algorithms take away all this media. Like, you don't have a broadcast catalog anymore. You don't get a TV guide telling you what was on. So if I had a TV guide from the 70s, I could show you what was airing when. I can't show you what you watched or what America watched. One, because Netflix owns that data and derives value from it,

so they need to keep it private. But also, there's very little manifestation of what you actually did and saw. Yeah, that makes sense. Like, a lot of those Netflix statistics that's like, oh, most watched this week or et cetera, et cetera, none of that is verifiable. It's all like, that's what they say. So, you know, you can believe it or, you know, we have no way of knowing, no way of checking,

no way of doubting that concretely because those are incredibly financially important information that thus the public has no access to. Definitely. Why would a multi-billion dollar company lie, though? I, for one, could never think of a reason why it would give asymmetrical information. Well, I mean, that's kind of the problem with algorithms to begin with is they're black boxes and you don't actually know how they work. And so how do you verify that the information they're pulling out is actually good information or whatever.

But yeah, that's a completely different tangent. Yeah, even people working at some of those companies don't know how their own algorithm works, which I think is like, oh, that's ringing so many bells for me. Once again, I'm not going to get into it, don't worry, but that's, oh, that's, hmm. Yeah, when those Google engineers were, like, getting fired, And then I found out that like no one at Google knows how Google works, like the search engine. Like very few engineers actually work on the search part of the business anymore.

So all these people were like, yeah, I don't know. It does something. But yeah, that was wild to me. Vives based. Might as well. The moment like your own, once again, one of your main apparatuses is working in such a Byzantine way that you no longer understand how it works. It is, a, irresponsible to keep on going. I understand that within, once again, the capitalist system stopping and not growing is not allowed ever.

Once again, that's a whole thing. But like M&B, it's, okay, I kind of don't have a B, but that first part is so important down to two. Well, like with these like companies that like, like audible and did Audible start with Amazon or was it bought by Amazon? Yeah. So often like companies will start out and they'll be doing their thing. And then as soon as they go public, as in as soon as they're. they make their stocks where you can buy stock in their company, then you are then beholden to stock, like people who buy your stocks, and so you always have to scale and innovate and do more

and more and more. And that's often where a lot of these problems come in. If we're going to be operating within this capitalist system, that's where it often happens is when you actually make your company public and then have to constantly be going more and more and more and bigger just so that you continue to grow. Like the quote growth mindset is where a lot of these problems come in as well. Yeah, and you can just have infinite growth, right? That's totally a thing. Yeah, it's totally achievable.

Yeah, it will never run into any problems. There's definitely not a finite set amount of resources or markets or anything. It's a very historically defensible position that that is possible, actually, of course. Yeah, the tendency of profits is to remain upward forever. Line goes up. Just because you want it to. We live in the greatest market to ever live, to ever exist. That did.

It has been something that I thought about a couple of times where when we're going back, to translations, speaking of Marx, I really think that, like, a lot of the problems of understanding Marxism is that we're stuck with, like, a hundred-year-old translation at this point. I think if you re-translated Capital from, like, the beginning, you probably could understand it better, but, like, you're stuck with all this terminology, because I just got a book on, like, Marxist analysis applied to 21st Century problems. And the first chapter is just, like, Capital Volume 1, okay? And it explains capital volume one, like the first like 10 chapters and like a page and a half, two pages. And it's, they're using clear language about like use value, value, value, what is Marks talking about?

How does value actually become manifested? So translation and cause like clarity and loss of clarity over time, I guess. I mean, I didn't realize how fucking goth Marx was until I listened to an episode of, of course, Horror Vanguard, where John explained what that like all whatever dissolve into error and how that's a very bad translation that it's like Galerta which is like this like weird like food jelly weird like gross substance that's like made like made of scraps that's like you know poor people like food that's like absolutely disgusting and it's like it's like gross and awful and so like that even that I just like I didn't know that until like I listened to a friend say it so

like, that thing about translation is really interesting because, like, how, in what ways do the translations or the versions that we engage or understand of it? Like, they become sort of consolidated. Like, to give an example, I don't like him, but it's somewhat unescapable. Orwell's Animal Farm. Yeah. It was translated into Portuguese for, at least Brazilian Portuguese, a long time ago. I don't remember the first one, and I don't have the curiosity to find out, into the animal's revolution. That's like the more traditionally known title of the book in Portuguese. Really?

Yeah, that's how I read it. I read it as Animal Revolution. And it only recently, I think last year or the year before, when all of like sort of the copyright ran out along those lines and then every single fucking publishers publishing it again, there were changes to the title where it was Animal Farm in Portuguese as well. And I was mortified at it's like, I mean, because there are two things like one is it a more faithful translation sure but in others in another sense like

it's more well it's familiar as with it under a different title in this country so is this what is this achieving is this being positive is this being negative like i'm not against retranslation but especially with the title uh what effects does that create and like what is that doing is like making this very classic book like be presented in a very different way so just uh just something that came up to me is like about translation how that can affect not just both the meaning and how we are introduced or shown these books i mean that's yeah yeah i'm gonna cut there i'm not going to go in a library like either a you know library in brazil you know collecting which version do they collect do they make sure to get both or in the united states um you know because often public libraries um will try to

have um some sort of bilingual collection or academic libraries will have bilingual collection or academic libraries will have bilingual collections, normally depending on the population around them, which version would they get? Would they get both? Do they have space and budget for both? Do they get the one that maybe their like Portuguese communities, like families back in Brazil would be more familiar with? Or do they get like this more, quote, accurate one? Yeah. And that's if they can even get a copy of the Brazilian title to begin with, too. Yeah. So, like, American publishing is so English-based that I can imagine that, you know, like, maybe somebody would find the, like, original Portuguese or Brazilian Portuguese title, like, more comforting, like, more of a reminder of where they came from. But I want that version, but then the library can't get it because it doesn't exist. Or it doesn't get republished. We were talking about versioning of translations now. Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. And does like the title or whatever, like, does that affect your experience of reading it? Like Pan's Labyrinth, the movie El Labyrintho del Fano, like that is not what that is translated. And how does that change this like, you know, fucking anti-fascist, like spooky fantasy movie? Like how we watch it, right? Yeah. And in what way do these different changes, versions and translations mark? Not only are they translations offering this to the people, not the culture, another language, but are also marking their own identity there. To give an example, like the godfather, in Brazilian, no, in Portugal's Portuguese,

it was quite literal that familiar relationship. It's the Padrin, which is that the godfather, with a very familiar relationship, it doesn't have the other connotations. In Brazilian Portuguese, quite interestingly, it is something along the lines of the powerful boss. So very different impacts and very different relationships. That's like, we, on the one hand, we lose that familiar relationship, but we maintain the impact of what the godfather's power is. Yeah.

I was thinking about this too, because I've been watching some anime recently, and some of the ones I'm watching are basically impossible to translate into English because the whole plot revolves around some ambiguity in the Japanese writing system or something. So there's no way you could translate this into like a dub. But even then, just watching the subtitles go by and then because I know a little Japanese catching something, I'd be like, oh, that's an interesting way that they translated that or why the hell did they do that? That's completely makes no sense that was unnecessary. Yeah, it's running into how it impacts.

The translation really impacts the experience, and you can only catch it if you're kind of experiencing both at the same time as you do with, like, subtitles. Yeah. I mean, to give an example and something like I think I briefly talked about in our year-in-review episode, like, one of the things I watched last year was the entirety of Bob's Burgers. And the way language and puns and language games play in that TV show's writing. I have no idea how you translate a pun. Oh, it's a nightmare. It's a bloody nightmare. It's like you try to find the closest possible equivalent in the language, and it usually doesn't work.

So you have to come up with another pun from somewhere else. And it's deeply entertaining because, like, sometimes it says something entirely different. Sometimes it really works by talking about something else because, like, I can't come up with anything right now. But it's just how do you really convert certain things? You don't. You try to find some approximation that, like, gives that funny. or weird or interesting idea that the original was doing.

And it says Justin was saying, it's like you only truly get both or like the experience of both, if you know both languages to a degree and are following them both kind of the same time. I think the most successful pun translation that have ever seen where it's the same thing, but in both languages,

is Jesus Christ, is then queso Christo or something. Yeah, Keseu Cristo. Yeah, I mean, Oh, my God, Frank. I'm so sorry. It's great. It's the best one.

It's like, that's proof that God's real, is that that pun works. Not that language families are a thing and that all of those words share similar roots or anything. Keizu Christ. The one that I'm thinking of is there was a pun on one of the character's names, which was Edu, and they were rhyming it with other, like, angels' names. they were calling the character an angel. But it only works, you couldn't translate that because he was saying, Gabriel,

Rafael,u. But you would have to change the character's name to make that pun work. And so they actually brought me back to, like, piracy is a lot of those fan subs would just teach you Japanese words because it's like, we're not going to translate this every time. We're just going to put the Japanese word,

and we're going to explain to you what that word means at the top. All according to Kekaku. Kekaku means plan. That's how that has. happens. And it's better, you know what? It's fucking better. I mean, the commitment to do that. I mean, like, an example that I played in, like, how they did that adaptation, that's a familiar localization as well, like a Phoenix Wright. Like, all the names are puns. And, like, one example, because it's my name, Frank saw it,

he saw it, and so on and so on. And, like, there's one version of the game, or of one of the side games that was never published in the West. and then it was fan-translated and it still maintains the same level of puns and localization and effort. It's like, this is a panwork and how they went to the same lengths of trying to achieve the same result. I love Phoenix, right? It's great. It's so fun. Somehow this just reminded me of the whole, I'm sorry to bring this up, the supernatural episode and how, what was it?

Like, the Spanish version was like translating differently. So like, Estia went candy in Spanish. Exactly. Yeah. God. So for those of you who aren't aware, in supernatural, there's an angel and then a hunky dude. And they were supposed to kiss for a whole long time for years, like over a decade.

And they never did. But we all thought they were going to. And then the angel confessed his love to the hunky guy. Literally, I, is Dean, I love you or whatever. And he got sent to super mega hell for being a fruit. And Dean just goes, Cass. And then Cass gets into Super Mega Hell for being a fruit. But this happened during the 2020 election.

So we were all just delirious anyway. And then like a week later when the Spanish localization came out, Cass goes like Teamo, like Dean Tejavo. And then like Cass responds me to like Cass, a tea or something like that. And so Destiel went canon in Spanish. The localization was what gave the fans what they wanted after 15 fucking seasons of this. No one expects the Spanish love confession. It was my favorite meme to come out of that.

That's amazing. No one expects the Spanish love confession. But anyway, that's Destiel with Sadie and Jay. Chronically on Tumblr. Yeah. I have learned it by proxy. But that does remind me of the golden age of anime in Mexico because it was too expensive to make cartoons in Mexico at the time. But it was really, really cheap to license anime for translation in the 80s.

So that's why a lot of anime is well established in Mexico simply because they've been bringing it in and translating it for a really long time. Also a huge market. They really love Dragon Ball Z over there. It's insane. We do too here. It's really popular. Real quick. That's just a cool anecdote.

In Mexico, they just like hosted, like, there was this, I don't know, like, the culmination of, like, a season of, like, Dragon Ball or something. And they hosted, like, an immense party. And, like, a bunch of people showed up. And, like, Toei, the rights and copyright holder to, like, no, you can't. And, like, try to suit the Mexican. government and like the next government was like what do you want us to do? Do you want us to send in the police force?

Yeah, essentially it's like yeah we're not going to do that actually so and so just this this cool note on like community can essentially if the community's large enough can give the middle finger to copyright holders and like license holders and whatnot I think that's cool essentially that is cool no copyright law in the universe is going to stop me

that's right Sonic that's wow oh my god That's a real Sonic clip. That's not AI. Are you serious? Yeah. Oh, Sonic dubs are insane. Yeah. No, the Sonic cartoons are always like really just out there because no one pays attention to them.

And they just have off the wall weird plots and they're really cool. But I know. It was also the Japanese embassy sent a letter to the Mexican government because I live right next to Mexico. And so I was teaching about copyright at the time. And so I was bringing this story up as it happened. It was the finale of Dragon Ball Super. Yeah. And the Japanese embassy sent the Mexican government a letter and was like,

please stop just doing piracy. We have to license public viewings. And it was like, nah, we're not doing anything about that. Oh, thank you for correcting me. I'm sorry for, I don't know. I thought it was company, the Toei, that sent also a letter. But yeah, but the funnier part was that it was the embassy. It was like, please do something.

And it's like, nah, we're not going to. But I think that also shows something really cool how, like, these very different products from a very different, culture can find acceptance really deeply. And like that is the case for a lot of, especially Japanese media. And this is why piracy is good. Yes. Yes.

But like, well, an obvious example is not as obscure. But Woody the Woodpecker is a lot more popular in Brazil than in other places. Like it's really? Yeah, it's still a meme and it's still well known today. It just had a great reception here because it maps on to certain cultural figures and exceptions of like a conman or someone like that like Woody Woodpecker, which is really odd. But a more obscure one is the 60s, maybe 50s to 60s black and white Japanese live action show National Kid by National Radio, which was essentially an ad for national radio. And he's a weird

superhero that is called via radio by kids. And somehow it was very popular in Brazil to the point where like a couple of years ago there was like a special box set thing with a with a special cap with a t-shirt thing kind of collector stuff but it's like it's this very obscure thing that no one else in the world cares

about not even Japan at this point but here it did find a following that is still significant just because it's entirely bonkers and then who owns the art at that point if it's more important to people in Brazil than it is in the people

than it is in the country of origin. Can you rightfully say that that's more of a Brazilian media at this point than it is a Japanese media? Like that also, I feel like that gets brought up in a lot of fan communities too. Who owns the media, the people that consume it, the people that create it? Yeah. That's fascinating. Yeah. That reminds me of actually a good book that I can't believe I didn't think of until now, and it would have been great to put in the notes.

but it's called How to Read Donald Duck, which was in the news not that long ago. I'll put a link to it in the notes, but it was a book written in Chile, and the premise of the book was like how American culture influences and impacts Latin America, right? And this is a book that, and the main part of the book is like the Donald Duck comics were way more popular in Latin America than the cartoons. So the comics had this huge fan base, and people were reading them all the time, and it was talking about, like, how did the comics do U.S. imperialism, like, do U.S. propaganda, right? Because, like, you know, I mean, Donald Duck has, like, always been, like, a highly propaganda. Like, those Disney properties have always been highly propagandized. I mean, he was the one in DeFier's face, right?

Yeah, Donald Duck. Oh, yeah. Yeah. the book was during the coup this book was burned I think it was and like most of the original first editions of these are like

destroyed in Chile I think a lot of them were either burned or I think they were like captured on a cargo ship and just like thrown overboard or something but it got a republication a few years ago and that pulled it back into the news but my library does have one of the 70s copies

and it's a nice little book nice I mean that's such an interesting thing about like media as an extension of imperialism is really interesting to me. My favorite example is this DC comic edition where the Joker becomes the ambassador of Iraq or something, like the governor of Iraq.

It's just so tremendously blatant or it's Iran, I'm so sorry, I don't know which one it was, but that's just like, like I, yeah, no, right? So that is just... We live in a society, folks. No, I have a counter example

to badly. No, I can't take it. The transatlantic. The Transformers cartoon Wikia has some of the craziest stuff you've ever seen. Where I'm going to regret saying this, but it's a thing. It's on there. At one point, the big, bad transformer Megatron is, or someone else, like, is the ambassador or fictional Middle Eastern country, Carbombia?

Yeah, it continues to get worse. But that's just what came off the top of my head. Yeah, I love it when they stop trying. Yeah, just say the quiet part out loud. Yeah, it's just, let the intrusive thoughts win on Maine. Like, it's just, oh, Christ, yeah. Like, normally there's some layers to it, like, oh, you have to, like, think about, like, I don't know. Like, oh, there can be layers of, like, oh, these groups of people mean less because whatever, like,

especially within fiction and fantasy and sci-fi, this is, like, such a problem. But I love it when they just, like, fuck it. I rock bad, actually. It's just, I don't know. Oh, I found the article. it's the socialist democratic federated republic of carbombia gotta toss the socialist in there I mean I do love that the the wiki has the tone that

of the like the subtitles for the images and stuff this is canon people this is so canon ever since car Marx wrote the automobile manifesto it's it has been tragedy for the world's media so what conclusions did we draw today cartoons are bad act i think have to listen bad yeah cartoons are bad

uh i think a conclusion that i would draw is that bad faith and on the defense things regarding arguments regarding the differences between media means that we can't actually have these types of discussions about the what differences there are between media and then if there are issues with those differences then we can't address them or do anything about them because we're always on the defense or always doing bad faith arguments. Definitely. And I think like these these discussions are a fun and good to have

and like, you know, let's talk about like the ontological perceptions of art slash media. And but we should never forget that sadly we do live in a society as the warrior poet Joker would say. And this society sadly is a capitalist one. And I think this should be once again, we should Like as a formality, we should just say, hey, Catholic isn't bad because this, this isn't that. And then we can move on to having this ontological, cool little philosophical discussion. You know, because it sadly affects everything. Yeah, I think, like, what I would draw attention to, and to the discussion and to your whole podcast is that you, there are a lot of, like, philosophical, theoretical, artistic discussions that, I mean, me and Leo myself, we generally have. But there's also, and this was really great, like, real material reality.

to that, especially given libraries, like how do you, thinking about how, oh, you don't own the license, or you don't have the particular version or book, like, that is a problem in itself. But, like, when thinking about storing that or being able to display it or to offer it to people, to lend it like that, like, how is that reality or those conditions compromised by this system and these structures like Amazon does? So I think just it's how that affects you all librarians and libraries and our general engagement with all that is deeply affected by all that. And sometimes that can be left aside a bit and it shouldn't. Yeah, the physicality of media just and the scale that it takes to distribute it through libraries,

but also just like through publishers and stuff, it's a scale that's really large. and then it creates all these infinite different versions and manifestations. But yeah, there's always a physicality to it somewhere, either that you own it. It's on your device. You lose the access on your device or you have multiple physical versions that you get to keep but are possibly appropriately expensive or take a lot of physical space to store. So we make compromises on them. I think that's everything.

Was there anything else that you wanted to let our listeners know to find you on or do you want them to leave you alone? But Twitter's not really working. I had to turn off my two-factor authentication today. Oh, Lord. Because it's not available unless you pay for Twitter Blue. So I just turned it off because instead of getting locked out of my account, anything else you want for people to find you while they can.

Online on, well, we do a lot of like the Patreon stuff that has text that we've written and that are open, whereas it's patreon.com. For slash left page. But looking for the left page or here. B-Media, you can find us on main platforms, and we'll have our links in your show notes, I hope. I'm grabbing them now. Absolutely not. Do you have knuckles on your soundboard talking about the glass ceiling as well?

Since we talked about, I think this is very important real quick. I'm so sorry, everyone. I do have... That's a great, that's a great canon, actual aired episode moment. Gender? What is it? Soviet Russia? Oh, that's the best I got. Oh, Work on it before we get back, okay? Yeah, I'm going to get some more sonic drops.

Everyone's going to love... No, I'm going to... Let's be real. I'm going to get more Biden drops. I'm going to get, like, a million of these, because I'm obsessed with them. I'm having such a great time watching him argue about Fortnite. It's great.

Oh, yeah. And talk about weed is my favorite ones. Oh, yeah, the... Yeah. It has a couple of words that I'm not going to say, but yeah, it's... Yeah, yeah. Nothing has ever been as good as Biden actually

really talking about bathhouses in a real actual debate that happened. I may be Irish, but I'm not stupid. Like, he talked about bathhouses in what I promise. That wasn't AI. That was a real thing that happened. Pretty good. Gay rights. Yeah, thank you so much for having us.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. It was, as they say, everything. Great time. People are going to have to go listen to the Velvet Gold Mine episode. They do. Yeah. That was good.

And good night.