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In the best traditions of transliterations, we’re a little late with the wrapping up article. We’d hate to disappoint you by being on time. (I'm not as beautifully striped as the usual wrapper-upper but I'll do my best to wrap up regardless. zebrazebrazebra will be back at the helm soon.)

It was a little over a month ago that we showed you twelve pictures a little like the ones below. We asked you to pick two and translate the space between them.


<da:thumb id="245638458"/><da:thumb id="288934579"/>

Mature Content

World Naked Bike Ride 37 by jrockar
Small talk by sandas04
Rail Man by myraincheck <da:thumb id="331132061"/> <da:thumb id="334807674"/> Scotland 01 by yanjin

So you did.

We received a veritable smorgasbord of submissions (seven, specifically). Please take the time to read them:



The Happenstance on Bricker Street    It was the hottest day Jennifer Mae could remember. She sat on the front porch with a pitcher of sweet tea and fanned herself to keep the heat and the bugs away.
    Across the street, a gaggle of neighborhood boys sprawled out under the shade of a tree, halfheartedly pushing a soccer ball between them. Jennifer Mae sipped her tea and wondered if they were waiting for the sun to go down so they could continue their game. She thought about offering them tea, but then thought better of it.  They’d kicked a ball into her azaleas last week and her poor flowers hadn’t been the same since.
    It seemed like a perfect time to drift into a nap. She considered it as she rocked and even put her tea down so it wouldn’t spill all over her feet, but then she was startled nearly out of her chair when a camper rolled across her field of vision and came to a stop in the alley behind her house.
    A man in an outback hat climbed out a
The WaitAnd the old women wait for death
like he’s the lover of their youths;
people-watching from train station benches
crossed ankles swollen
checking pockets for change to pay the ferryman’s fare.
When silent, they curse each other’s bones.
Speaking, their talk is small as grains of rice—
in death, they want only to be allowed their plaid skirts,
their leopard-print bags.
<da:thumb id="383010344"/> The Dance of the Black DressIf he ignored almost everything, it was just as he remembered.
“Is this the right place, doctor?” one of his guards asked kindly. The voice of the young man was muffled by the gasmask he wore.
“This is it,” the old doctor said. (At forty, he was not old, but other survivors were so young.) “You should have seen it my day. All that over there . . . that used to be a park.”
And there used to be people here. Families walking past as he sat on his spot and watched the street performers. There were birds. There was life. The pavement used to be clean enough, but now it was covered with angry words, sprayed to stay here for a few more years at least.
“It’s like I remember,” he said, to make the thought more true. “There. There! That’s my spot. I came here all the time.”
His two guards allowed him to make is own way to the edge of the old city square. There were plenty of benches to sit, but those were not for him. He sat
The vanNik and Ludis drove the van across Germany and into Belgium.  It was a dying security truck with a mattress in the back.  There were seven of us plus the kid and the dog; nine in total. Four travelled in the car and the rest in the van.  We took turns on the mattress.  At nights we sat by the river and smoked and talked and when the stars got up and the smoke got in our blood we got out an old guitar, the veteran of a hundred climate camps we’d been given by a hippy in exchange for twelve apples, and sang.  During the day whoever wasn’t driving slept.  Only Jimmy and Max claimed to be able to handle the obstreperous van, and nobody disagreed because it meant longer hours driving.  The hours between dawn and dusk belonged to the day people and the tarmac, but the night was ours.  
We parked in fields far from any main roads, on traveller sites and by riverbanks.  More than once the van wheels caught in soft Belgian mud and it took



Please also give some love to the photographers of the pictures of the prompts of the court of King Caractacus.

The next prompt, a music-based thingy, will be up in a matter of mere days. Give or take.
More Journal Entries

Transliterated DDs

When God Sleeps.I. So it comes to this: pangea tearing itself raw
from our throats to pour into squares of newly open sky
where the stars grew aches and darkened lakewater
once bloomed into bruised winters. Somewhere
beyond the thick of snow, prayers are strung
on moon-rattled winds
and birds' teeth tear apart the poetry
of our hands. They will raise something beautiful
from these ruined words.
Continents shift slowly. They are
dirt-bound titans, these beasts;
rootless giants that mold themselves
to fit the vision we hold inside our heads. Oceans sigh
and their tides crawl ever upward.
II. Our shadows become umbilical
in certain light. Unknown children cast
dark shapes of water
to nourish the gardens springing forth
from the dirt's wrist like a eulogy for lost sky.
Morning doves sing because they see what we cannot:
the years between us laid out like miles and our feet
that never mark the reddened earth and
the passion-trees birthing flowers of such cold, untamed souls.
We are walking in the wombs of
AppassionataClaire does not find him at his funeral.
Dean's body lies in an open casket, face-up with soft wrinkles and loose muscles. There is nothing of her husband in this corpse. He was rough and jagged. It seems wrong to see his edges smoothed down.
She hovers over his body and feigns sorrow. She hears family and friends weep and whisper comfort into each others' ears behind her. They offer their words and shoulders to her and she nods politely and pretends to cry.
All the while, she traces the ring on her finger and does not flinch when the diamond cuts into skin.
Claire looks for her husband. It is exhausting, but she has time.
In the rooms of their house, she does not find him. Instead she finds the ghost of him, his scent lingering in the cracks and crevices of the floorboards. Two weeks after the death of his body, her husband still has not returned.
His disappearance cuts into her now, making her grief raw and causing a tightness in her chest. There is a pressure on her lungs, as if her
illuminate my heartSeptember falls outside his window and the two-story house feels June. Time tilts here, the days canted to the left like the apple tree their grandchildren planted sometime last winter. It hasn't grown much since then, a few leaves on dry branches but no blooming flowers when spring arrived.
Today his fifty years seem like thirty. Sitting up in bed is easier. He doesn't feel as weak as before. The Pacific breeze touches his hair, chills his pale face and he thinks, Maybe Anna and I could drive down to the beachfront today.
He rolls to his side. She's burrowed under the covers, a blue blanketed lump, white hair poking out over dark blue pillows.
"Anna?"
John reaches his hand out and presses down.
The lump rolls over. The lump doesn't breathe.
The lump deflates like a balloon.
The lump is blankets and no flesh.
"Mmm, good morning," Anna murmurs in his ear.
Cold lips kiss his cold cheek. John frowns.
There's nothing there--
Anna squeezes his hand, drags him out of bed. "Breakfast?"
John t
I Chingscratch deep
language should be a startling of birds
letters mad as March hairpins
gratifying too: war on muddy Spring brings
gifts of demons
tears from home
end of shorter days
to life in this defeated country
Me and My Shadowi.
My shadow slips to silence among the aquatic acacias. Even here, leaves abound, draped over the fuzz-curves of his figure as he soaks up the moonlight. Papa's soft voice turns my gaze to the moon. Remember, Carlos, our shadows are but imprints of the moon. Remember the Eclipse. I shiver and hold onto an acacia branch. I'm careful not to let my shadow near the shoreline where sea meets sand. That's why acacias are aquatic; they drowned their fate with the sea, Papa says. We cannot, we must not let it be our shadow's fate. We are nothing without our shadows. And yet the tide sweeps towards my toes as the moon charioteers across the silver nightscape. I leap back onto the thorns, onto the blue leaves and pray my shadow seeks dry ground. Sometimes he doesn't pay attention.
ii.
My shadow ripples to the privacy of the umbrellas. Some aquatic acacias were born like that, shaped like the human plastic as though it would dispel their liquefied sin. I think about joining him, bu
ffeminyddiaethEn road: Il y a du frost outside sur les fields ou el moëbius sobre la historia de la humanidad ou 'ffeminyddiaeth'
                  (I was feeling very lost
                  very utterly defeated
                  until this yesterday with the
                  travel and the Southern Cross
                  now know this: i can tell all there is)

                  
When all was god, drugs or new eyes there were also the ma
:thumb256290568: The World is Made of Stories by julietcaesar to Yellow Plumto Yellow Plum (in blue
china bowl):
      
     afternoon's slit of sun slips
     between thick curtains
     & woos you to ripeness.
    
     it chooses you
     not for flecks of honey-russet
     held low in your seam of shadows,
     nor your symmetry & swell;
     but because
     
     you slink in shade, sink
     behind green pear & clementine
     & cannot hide
     from each spear of light
     that ricochets
     through--
     even now
     nested warm
     against these lips
     even now:
     a tea-stain stone
     hugging close
     the trashbin floor.
a shut in placeMeg's world is a world of uneven earth and blue skies, surface rock cracked and blown about by howling wind. She runs through wasteland, stumbles with purpose towards a wooden desk in the distance. She runs and runs, dirt and stones scuffing Mary Janes, but the writing desk is a finish line she can't reach.
"Why a writing desk?" her friend Alex says when she tells him about the dream. He emphasizes the question with a hand, waving the sandwich he's holding towards her before taking a bite.
She's left out details: how she is smaller, younger, a smooth-faced child with little hands dressed in her Sunday best instead of the twenty-one-year-old English major she knows herself to be. How the desk speaks of a familiarity she can't place and screams of a significance she can't understand. How she's been having the same dream for weeks and how it haunts her every waking moment with an urgency of impending consequence and menacing complexity that reminds her of Kafka.
Meg shrugs, the motion cau

Notice

transliterations is about quality writing, kickass prompts and off-kilter living. If you've come to ask us to actually translate something for you, you may be in trouble.

On the other hand, if you have any suggestions for upcoming prompts and activities, please note us. Or throw a brick through our window with a note tied to it.

Wait, don't do that.

transliterations stamp by ikazon

Group Info

transliterations aims to promote and prompt literature in translation. Translation here means to move from one language to another, whether that language be English, Greek, paint, photography or music; we are all about bringing different artforms and artworlds together.
Group
Founded 13 Years ago
Dec 30, 2010

Location
Global

Group Focus
Art Creation

Media Type
Literature

330 Members
312 Watchers
52,773 Pageviews

Testimonials


'I was utterly inspired by the work of transliterations, of the power of translation between mediums and the stories that can arise from that, and the ideas became fused just like that.'--julietcaesar





'transliterations is a the best sort of dA group. It provides its members with interesting prompts and then rewards them for participating. Sometimes with prizes. Other times with love. It goads a person into producing work: work that is silly, or fun, or serious, or Art with a capital "A". Work of which one may be proud.' --CailinLiath

Affiliates

:iconhammeredpoetry::iconscreamprompts:

Deviants

Comments


Add a Comment:
 
:iconfireember345:
FireEmber345 Featured By Owner Jun 24, 2015  Hobbyist Digital Artist
Can you guys translate some of my stuff?
Reply
:iconatheshya:
Atheshya Featured By Owner Oct 1, 2014  Professional Writer
*poke poke*
Reply
:icondacoda-buchan:
DaCoda-Buchan Featured By Owner Mar 19, 2014
I am trying to get back into things, is the group up to date and active still?
Reply
:iconmoonlitwindypath:
moonlitwindypath Featured By Owner Mar 6, 2014
Are y'all still doing prompts? I wanna make some poems :) 
Reply
:iconichigomurasaki:
IchigoMurasaki Featured By Owner Feb 5, 2014  Hobbyist Traditional Artist
Hi! Could someone please, help me translate a classic Japanese manga? I can give links if interested? And for offerings I can only give free artwork. :iconsweatdropplz: I'm in desperate need in reading this manga.
Reply
:iconzebrazebrazebra:
zebrazebrazebra Featured By Owner Feb 6, 2014   Writer
I think you may have come to the wrong place.
Reply
:iconichigomurasaki:
IchigoMurasaki Featured By Owner Feb 6, 2014  Hobbyist Traditional Artist
Where do I go for translations?... I've made a Project Forum thread but no one has replied to it.
Reply
:iconzebrazebrazebra:
zebrazebrazebra Featured By Owner Feb 7, 2014   Writer
Sorry, I have no idea. I don't think this is really a translation site.
Reply
:iconsenescentwolf:
SenescentWolf Featured By Owner Dec 22, 2013  Hobbyist General Artist
*Prod* XD Hope you're doing well
Reply
:iconatheshya:
Atheshya Featured By Owner Sep 2, 2013  Professional Writer
Is it generally considered okay to go through old prompts and do them, just for fun?
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