Wiadomości

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Форум по-русски / Re: Ляпы переводчиков? (шутка юмора)

« dnia: Listopada 02, 2010, 10:17:30 pm »

Спасибо.
Если не ошибаюсь, "Пан" в польском - это ведь тоже в первую очередь "хозяин", а потом уже другие значения. Кроме того, по сюжету проект, курируемый Пентагоном, не мог носить название Glos Pana.

Во вступительном слове профессора Уоррена (От публикатора) сказано, что рукопись Хогарта содержит в черновике фрагмент, место которого  неясно: то ли это вступление, то ли послесловие. И что будучи "уполномоченным" как коллега и друг автора, он "решил" сделать данный фрагмент введением к книге.
Но если бы профессор Уоррен внимательно читал публикуемую им работу Хогарта, он бы обнаружил, что автор сам делает отсылку в основном тексте на тот самый фрагмент как на "предисловие"! (Место, где речь идет о смехе "из трусости")

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Форум по-русски / Ляпы переводчиков? (шутка юмора)

« dnia: Października 27, 2010, 09:34:45 pm »

Купил в книжном пару пейпербеков, один уцененка - Евгений Прошкин, pulp fiction, но качественная, мне нравится. А вторая - подороже, Глас Господа. Подозреваю, что перевод названия , мягко говоря, неточно соответствует оригинальному варианту, по одной простой причине, что слово Master на русский однозначно не переводится.
Ладно, суть.
Лет  5 назад я уже это Глас читал, причем с большим удовольствием. Теперь читаю - как будто другую вещь, еще более интересную. И всякие анахронизмы конца 60-х, вроде "информационщиков" и "арифмометров" - не смущают абсолютно.
Главная интрига в том, что каждый абзац и каждое предложение у Лема продуманно структурировано с той целью, чтобы выразить мысль наиболее точно и компактно, по возможности исключая двоякие толкования.
От одного этого эффекта текст читается с таким ощущением, будто пьешь живую воду - с каждым глотком прибавляется по чуть-чуть живого осознания.
И вот посреди этого великолепия плавного течения чистых формулировок натыкаюсь на корягу. Ближе к середине книги, там, где говорится об эффекте Ромни-Меллера, есть такое:

"Все нейтрино, в особенности низкоэнергетические, одинаково легко пронизывают галактические просторы и материальные тела, включая планеты и звезды; материя для них несравненно прозрачнее, чем стекло для света."

Это чего? Может кто пояснит?
На Лема вообще не похоже. Перевод Душенко, последняя редакция 1994-го года Р.Нудельмана.

Кто читал оригинал, помогите. В принципе теоретически допускаю, что и автор мог слажать, это ему не особо страшно, менее 0,001% брака, при общеприемлемом уровне 5-50%, но хотелось бы разобраться.
 

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Forum in English / Re: Guidelines For Lem-Inspired Stories?

« dnia: Września 26, 2010, 11:43:13 pm »

Ok. I must admit that I presently cannot name authors who are worth to compete  Lem in constructing stories. Just one link for those who knows Russian
http://www.rusf.ru/lukin/
I really hope to find others, would they be Spanish or French or Chinese or Japaneese - doesn't matter. I'm sure we'll recognize the proper one right away

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Forum in English / Re: Guidelines For Lem-Inspired Stories?

« dnia: Września 13, 2010, 10:52:31 pm »

 Yeah, I love Strugatsky brothers. It was quite a pleasure for me to find out that Lem said about their Picnic with an admiring envy that he felt somehow he himself had had to write this story.
On the other hand he didn't approve the Hard to be a God novel because the planet described was inhabited with humanoid race and that assumption was strongly antiscientific.
May be the reason was that Strugatskie felt slightly more sympathy towards English/American sci-fi than Lem did and therefore they could afford using the recognizable archetype.  

Well all that should be a separate topic here.
The fact is that Strugatskie already are world-wide known authors so there's no need to further. However I believe there are authors mostly unknown whose works could really challenge Lem or Strugatsky or Phillip Dick ones.
The explanation is simple: an author who really cares about quality simultaneously having necessary competence in fact is not sure to mind business.

So that would be wonderful if we could discover such authors for ourselves and may be for others too.
Actually I'm far from hope those works appear to be somewhat of a breakthrough in SF. The art of posing real practical questions and suggesting non-trivial answers which inspire using your brain - that  is more important  





 
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Форум по-русски / Re: Необходимость признания

« dnia: Września 12, 2010, 08:00:23 pm »

... Станислав Лем и так настолько популярен и цитируем, что впору подумать об организации Международной премии имени Лема и присуждать ее философам, писателям, фантастам, исследователям.

Идея мне очень нравится. Сам с радостью впрягусь в ее реализацию, когда научусь на этом уровне работать. В Штатах лет уже 25 действует премия им. Ф.К.Дика очень метко предназначенная для лучших пейпербеков. У нас есть семигранные гайки (АБС-Премия). И то и другое - весьма качественный фильтр потока текстов, претендующих на интересное и полезное чтиво. Но это все раздельно: у "них" свое, у "нас" свое.
Творческое наследие Лема интернационально. Это вообще уникальный случай, по-моему. Попробуйте предложить другое такое же авторитетное имя, которое бы не было существенным образом ассоциировано с какой-то определенной культурой, слоем, строем или стилем.
 

Цель деятельности института-организатора присуждения премии им. Лема будет состоять в поддержке литературных, научно-популярных, научных и публицистических работ, выражающих независимые от приоритетов бизнес-сообщества, политически неангажированные мнения, обладающие достаточной практической ценностью в перспективе технологического, социального и этического прогресса. 

  О, как загнул.


 

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Forum in English / Re: Guidelines For Lem-Inspired Stories?

« dnia: Września 12, 2010, 08:49:59 am »

People don't read much, and if they do, it's often just some crappy books .

Ok, so we are getting back to the topic.
If you want your books to be sold in million copies you have to be provided with investors, an experienced publisher and marketing specialists. That doesn't mean that you need to be a talanted writer. One or two fashionably old ideas and a set of time-tested plot templates are quite enough. Market promotion will do the rest.
But creating innovative mind exciting texts is the other matter.
I am sure there are some authors who write story good enough to gain interest of Lem fans, the most hard-to-please part of the audience. But they are certainly unknown to the public.
Please if anybody could name them or give links - I would appreciate it very much. If those works appear to deserve attention than we may spread the information farther therefore contributing to good taste in literature  

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Forum in English / Re: Guidelines For Lem-Inspired Stories?

« dnia: Września 07, 2010, 11:02:22 pm »

However still I am on a position, that it's better to have choice over 1000 books, than to have 10 poor books . It's just that we have stronger pressure to choose correct data sources.

So you are generally satisfied with the way things presently are in scientific progress, aren't you?
Well honestly if  I was deaf or blind and could use the appropriate new devices to compensate my disability - then I would be satisfied too. That's where the progress shows best results. I agree.
All in all we should appreciate our living in technology. You shouldn't work like a dog for a living, you have more free time to waste, more choices. You have your right to make mistakes at last. Because they can be corrected easily.
On the other hand every coin has it's other side.
From 1000 books most of us choose 1 or 2 or maybe 10 poor ones and read them instead of continuing to search the better.
How many people read Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown and other bestsellers alike? And what's your estimation on how many of them ever try to get familiar with Lem works?

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Forum in English / Re: Guidelines For Lem-Inspired Stories?

« dnia: Września 05, 2010, 08:00:17 pm »

No, I've never participated in some scientific debates. I was graduated as an oil processing engineer and presently work as an administrator in a company which deals in information security issues.
What does "me" means to myself (or "you" to yourself)- that's the great question! You might try to seriously ask this question to a friend of yours or a relative. And in most cases the answers wouldn't satisfy neither you nor the person who'd been asked. It's kind of magic question.
And I'm not satisfied with my own answer to that also   (Terminus you doubt it right)

As to the problem of "manifestations": well, it really exists as well. Too often we see things which are not  real objects but seem to be the projections of our own (?) psychic activity. Even in everyday life - when communicating with the family, at work, with friends etc. How to distinguish things inspired mostly by your mind from ones related to outside world? That is the key point when you choose how to react, isn't it?
Thanks to St. Lem and some others, we can at least aware the problem.
I'm sure after decade or two this matter will be taught at school. Otherwise we are hopeless.

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Forum in English / Re: Guidelines For Lem-Inspired Stories?

« dnia: Września 04, 2010, 12:16:52 am »

Thanks Terminus. The fact that we presently are describing Human Intelligence simply as a collection of features such as imitation of communication, semblance of ability to conclude, pattern recognition, and so forth - this fact somehow confirms that we are unfortunately unable see the root of the phenomenon. We see only its manifestations which we try to recostruct, but  the engine of all those is still left unknown.

Tzok, I might be wrong but the last decades of progress have shown that we can extensively develop only computer calculating capacity and speed. However no new quality such as an independent judgement of computer "mind" has been achieved so far.
Speaking of Rennaissance Age there were hundreds of naturalists like Leonardo. He is the famous one for us - that's all. You may request info about Kardan for example. A dozen more names can easily be found in Wikipedia. And I'm sure the others couldn't leave a trace in history just because of the poor information exchange at that time.  They remained unknown magician and alchemists. But they practiced science and succeded.

Free access to vast volumes of information nowadays has actually  revealed a problem when user lacks the ability to process that information the way to get some use of it. We have learned to compile pieces of information to produce a resemblance of some report or a science work.
But that all is 99% of nonsense. So the number of actual scientists has approximately been staying constant during last hundreds of years.

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Forum in English / Re: Guidelines For Lem-Inspired Stories?

« dnia: Września 01, 2010, 10:46:05 pm »

Just as well, if we're 'wild & stupid', then it should be easier to construct AI that matches our intellect

Terminus, no way 

Ok, let me be so stupid not to believe that a today's "perfect consumer" could invent and produce technology for improving himself. The first stage to that for him is to learn to become aware that he's nothing more than a "perfect consumer". As I've read in one of Eugine Lukin's books: To get started from zero you should first achive that zero point.
 

Tzok: "Then the "only problem" human needs to solve is to program the algorithm appropriately."
Well that's where we differ. It's a classical problem: to put the question the right way means to almost answer it, something like that. 

One more from you: "is there EVER a possibility to create true artificial intelligence? Second - if yes, where are we now?"

I'm an optimist, I believe yes. Where are we  now? The same place as ever before, may be even farther from the solution than we where in Rennaissance age for instance. At that time  naturalists constructed mechanisms and made an autopsy by their own hands. And now you have only be able to push the computer key to be a scientist.
I think the first thing on the way to create an AI is to establish what an "ordinary" intelligence is and how it can be reproduced or replicated.
Do you agree with that? 
Thanks for keeping the dialog alive!

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Форум по-русски / Re: Альпинизм

« dnia: Sierpnia 28, 2010, 10:54:28 pm »

Лемолог, благодарю!
Альпинизм, конечно, круче прогулок (причем "круче" в буквальном смысле - редкий случай  )
Если не ошибаюсь. по-моему, это был пилот Пиркс, чей альпинистский опыт в пересказе Лема мне запал в душу. Я тогда уверился, что и автор несомненно имел этот опыт.
Очень, кстати, полезный для тех. кто претендует на роль творческого деятеля и на право выносить вовсеуслышание свои субъективные этические оценки. А таких в последнее время...

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Forum in English / Re: Guidelines For Lem-Inspired Stories?

« dnia: Sierpnia 28, 2010, 10:18:54 pm »

Thanks, tzok.
First. Who has produced the robots? Human.
Second. "We will "only" have to program computers to do it" - to develop AI. Sorry, pal. We are now still as far from that as we were when Lem wrote HMV. It's mere sci-fi so far.

I wish  you read his later works.
Lem was trying to ensure the audience that interstellar voyages, contacts with extraterrestrial mind, artificial intelligence, journey through time and other old-fashioned sci-fi stuff is not essential now.
Yes, we are facing technological breakdown. Brand new magical substances, medicine recycling life organs and rejuvenation, more astrophysics resuts, Large Hadron Collider and so on. But we are still alone, we are still human, we are still animals. Wild and stupid. And that is the problem to handle and work out. Not AI.   

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Forum in English / Re: Guidelines For Lem-Inspired Stories?

« dnia: Sierpnia 22, 2010, 02:53:30 pm »

  that's great. I wish there could be another third man able to discuss this theme. To me the most interesting issue here is the difference between I and AI. I cannot boast of my high iQ (but I honestly can complain to my low one =) The question is that AI is the product of  I (could you imagine the contrary?) so it cannot be smarter that its producer. Is there someone to argue that?  So the perfect story-teller cannot exist

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Форум по-русски / Re: Альпинизм

« dnia: Sierpnia 22, 2010, 01:53:25 pm »

Расскажи хоть, в какие горы он ходил и с кем?

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Forum in English / Re: Guidelines For Lem-Inspired Stories?

« dnia: Sierpnia 11, 2010, 09:13:22 pm »

respect to trx. I agree. The art of story-writing is far from being practicing some algorithms. That is why  I like Lem and Strugatskyie. I think the crucial factor here is personal expirience of existance. Funny, it sounds somehow vague in English, but I'm sure my Polish friends can understand it alright. Plus something else of course. May be the ability of seeing things as they are and the courage of being able of sharing this knowledge with  others?
  Sorry, I'm getting too complicated.
I'm sure if you were brought up in an intellectual family having pure gene code and were graduated with high level academic education, but if you've never seen life as it is with its absurd stupidness, violence and psycosis - and from the other hand - with those men who can adequately stand it all showing good resistance and professionalism - then you hardly have a chance to be undersood by people. Leave alone composing stories which could impress us.