Translating Translations daya dissanayake In 1865 Mark Twain wrote the ‘Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County’. A few years later he wrote another story with a longer title, ‘The Jumping Frog in English, Then in French, and then Clawed Back Into a Civilized Language Once More by Patient, Unremunerated Toil’. He says he found someone [...]
Archive of posts filed under the Uncategorized category.
father of the eBook
A Man with a Heart daya dissanayake Michael Stern Hart was born in Tacoma, Washington, on March 8th 1947. Tomorrow is his 65th birth anniversary. On July 4th, 1971, he had typed the text of the U.S. Declaration of Independence into his computer and transmitted it to about 100 other users on the University of [...]
music, yesterday, today and tomorrow
A musical night in silence I had the good fortune to enjoy a musical night in silence, in a calm and serene corner of Battaramulla. For a tone deaf person like me to enjoy a musical night, it has to be something out of the ordinary. At least it was, to me, even though for [...]
knickerbocker
Diedrich Knickerbocker One day in the year 1809, a missing person advertisement appeared in several New York newspapers seeking information of a historian named Diedrich Knickerbocker. A hotel placed an advertisement that if Mr. Knickerbocker did not turn up to settle his bill, the hotel owner would be compelled to publish a manuscript left behind [...]
Kuveni and the Yaksa
kuvanna Opening of the Vilpattu sanctuary has brought the Kuveni legend back to us, and we find even a place called ‘Kuveni Nuwara’ near Tabbova. Despite the myth of the Mahavamsa, most of us believe that Kuveni was real, just as much as Ravana was real. We believe they lived in our country long ago. [...]
Independence of language
Independence of Language True independence can be achieved only when we become “language independent”. In order to escape from Linguistic Colonialism we should aim to build new bridges for a trilingual Sri Lanka Man can be truly “Independent” only when he has Independence in communicating with all mankind. We would have enjoyed this independence millions [...]
Sacred Couplets – Thrukural
Sacred Couplets daya dissanayake The painting was on the wall in the house of the Kurukkal of Maviddapuram kovil. A painting which had survived the ravages of the war, because the Kurukkal family held it as a precious and sacred object. It was a portrait of the poet Thiruvalluvar. The 1330 couplets written 2000 years [...]
Creative Placemaking. Colombo
Another side of Urban Arts The Independence Square has been converted into one good example of Urban Arts or Creative Placemaking, as I wrote about a few weeks ago. Enjoying the luxury of a few minutes at the new-look Independence Square however reminded me of the inequality in our society and that even the Urban [...]
Mahagama Sekera
A Halo for Sekara 36 years ago on the January 14th, one of the greatest “artists” in our country passed away. I use the term artist not because he was just a painter, but because he created music by his paintings, paintings by his poems and lyrics, symphonies by his novels, short stories, children’s books [...]
Mark Twain
‘Two Fathoms Deep’ Samuel Clemens While readers are on waiting lists for the print edition I had the good fortune to download the ‘Autobiography of Mark Twain’ onto my Kindle and start reading. It cost me only $ 4.99. If and when the printed edition comes to Sri Lanka, it would cost a few thousand [...]