In linguistics, the “irrealis mood” refers to grammatical rules around describing events that are not known to the speaker to have occurred. The subjunctive, the conditional, the imperative—these are all moods to refer to the unreal.
Modality Irrealis is S. Qiouyi Lu’s column about the craft of writing and translation, mostly as applied to speculative fiction, which imagines the unreal.
Showing 11-12 of 12.
All translation is both an act of interpretation and an act of judgment. The translator has the power to adapt and edit texts for their target audience, and there is no such thing as a “perfect” translation that will convey every semantic nuance between languages. Still, I find prose more straightforward to translate than poetry, […]
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Tarot can be a great tool to get unstuck when writing. Not only do most decks have vivid imagery that can spark the imagination, but the openness of card readings can lead the creative mind to create unexpected associations and consider new options. This post includes a few simple three-card spreads that I often use, […]
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