METHODS OF TRANSLATING
For this Brief, I choose a poem found in Ecclesiastes 3 called “There is a Time for everything”. The decision to choose this poem was based on my personal experiences during these couple of months. I’ve been experiencing a lot of changes and starting new seasons, and it has been challenging for me to navigate all of this. There have been times when I get frustrated and anxious about what I am facing however I keep remembering that life is a process and what I am currently facing I cannot change rather than accept it, learn from it and improve.
There’s the Right Time for Everything
There’s an opportune time to do things, a right time for everything on the earth:
A right time for birth and another for death,
A right time to plant and another to reap,
A right time to kill and another to heal,
A right time to destroy and another to construct,
A right time to cry and another to laugh,
A right time to lament and another to cheer,
A right time to make love and another to abstain,
A right time to embrace and another to part,
A right time to search and another to count your losses,
A right time to hold on and another to let go,
A right time to rip out and another to mend,
A right time to shut up and another to speak up,
A right time to love and another to hate,
A right time to wage war and another to make peace.
I’ve decided that there’s nothing better to do than go ahead and have a good time and get the most we can out of life. That’s it—eat, drink, and make the most of your job. It’s God’s gift
Ecclesiastes 3:1-11 MSG
Method of Translation # 1 – Relaying
My first impulse was to make the poem visual. I didn’t put much thought into it, I just drew what the first thing that came to mind based in the parallels of the poem.
I showed this to some friends, and they didn’t understand the message behind the illustrations. It was evident that I was portraying some parallels, but the illustrations were based on my own associations. My translation was so literal that the purpose of translating (cross borders) was achieved.
What I learned from this translation is that I need to go further into experimentation. Perhaps I need to be “riskier” in my next translation.
Method of Translation # 2 – Hybridizing
One of the things that interested me about this poem was that it explores the idea that everything has a perfect time. Every cycle is part of an intricate and specific plan. To me, there is something visual about those ideas. I thought that I could create diagrams using the words.
Method of Translation # 3 – Extrapolating
I thought it would be interesting to extrapolate the poem to my current situation. There are multiple emotions that I have gone through these months so I made a list of the most frequent ones:
| Emotions | Extrapolation |
| Aspire | Achieve Expect | experience Fear | overcome Miss | have Insecurity | confidence Regret | acceptance Struggle | thrive Feel lonely | to be valued Hold on | let go Fail | succeed Improve | fall back Love | hate Avoid | deal Grow | to be content | A right time to aspire and another to achieve, A right time to expect and another to experience, A right time to fear and another to overcome, A right time to miss and another to have, A right time to cry and another to laugh, A right time to regret and another to accept, A right time to struggle and another to thrive, A right time to feel lonely and to feel valued, A right time to hold on and another to let go, A right time to fail and another to succeed, A right time to improve and another to fall back, A right time to love up and another to hate, A right time to avoid and another to deal with, A right time to grow and another to be content |
My next step was to translate these emotions into colors, lines, and forms. How can I show these emotions?
My first idea was to
Based on the idea that life is full of seasons and cycles I build these graphs that show the quantity, duration and intensity of each emotion.
However, I needed to explore further the representation of these emotions and refine the outcome. Also, in the tutorial, my classmates didn’t understood the graphs.
Further Exploration
How can I show opposites through graphic elements?
Through these experiments, I got a better understanding of these emotions. They aren’t opposites (positive/negative), they feel like seasons, changes, or in other words, transformations. It didn’t make sense to represent the 28 emotions with the same elements.
Based on the scientific approach I got to the Hybridizing exploration, I started drawing different ways in which I felt/visualize each pair of emotions.
Color was a useful tool to visualize the transformation of emotions.