One thing I’ve learned over the past few years is that everything resembles physical exercise: if you stop practicing, you’ll eventually lose the hang of it. Talent means nothing.<\/p>\n
During this long hiatus, I have lost my singing voice, my ability to write and draw, and pretty much my command of all the languages I used to speak. I became a\u00a0technical translation machine, unable to write anything remotely compelling. Contracts don’t have\u00a0to be compelling. Birth certificates don’t have\u00a0to be compelling. My writing is\u00a0now devoid of feeling. Proof of that is the fact that\u00a0I haven’t written here in ages.\u00a0I wonder, though\u2014is it my writing that’s devoid of feeling or is it me?<\/p>\n
I was recently asked to translate an advertorial into English. I failed spectacularly. The text didn’t make sense to me even in Spanish. All this empty hyperbole, this quest for\u00a0sweet\u00a0business-pleasing terms. I was left wondering where my English had gone. Had I ever learned those terms that had failed to show up in\u00a0my brain? I used to consider myself an okay writer in English.\u00a0I know for a fact this is no longer true. Perhaps the Internet is making me stupid. No, seriously. All these bite-sized easily digestible bits of useless information have narrowed down my ability to focus, let alone\u00a0my vocabulary.<\/p>\n
Still, I wonder if replacing\u00a0my unhealthy reading\/writing diet with\u00a0a more wholesome one is going to improve my chances of succeeding at long-form advertising. But I guess that’s not the point. After all, I may never be asked to translate an advertorial\u2014or any other form of journalism, honest or dishonest, for that matter\u2014ever again. The point is, I’m failing at things I used to excel at. \u00a0And that’s a matter of\u00a0concern.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One thing I’ve learned over the past few years is that everything resembles physical exercise: if you stop practicing, you’ll eventually lose the hang of it. Talent means nothing. During this long hiatus, I have lost my singing voice, my ability to write and draw, and pretty much my command of all the languages I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olaviakite.com\/maianebula\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olaviakite.com\/maianebula\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olaviakite.com\/maianebula\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olaviakite.com\/maianebula\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olaviakite.com\/maianebula\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=878"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/olaviakite.com\/maianebula\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":882,"href":"https:\/\/olaviakite.com\/maianebula\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878\/revisions\/882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olaviakite.com\/maianebula\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olaviakite.com\/maianebula\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olaviakite.com\/maianebula\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}