Blog stats

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While I slept last night, my bilingual blog, which now has 54 subscribers, went past the 20 000 views benchmark – this after only two and a half months of presence on the net. Daily visits vary between 110 and 180, with a recent peak of 280 on the Friday a new short story comes out.

During that time my third blog, which stocks fifteen Thai short stories in English already published elsewhere, has registered 650 visits.

As for this 33-subscriber-strong blog, after more than two years of existence (the first of 374 posts so far came out on 2 July 2009), it’s three weeks away from the 30 000 score, which marks a fluctuating but overall slowly rising trend: 1 000 to 1 800 hits monthly, with a peak of 1840 in January this year.

Blog trends in Barang City

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Netizens are strange people. When you tell them ‘Don’t click yet’, many of them click anyway, out of habit, curiosity or ‘just in case…’
The ad announcing that my new blog, thaifiction.wordpress.com, would be launched thirty-odd hours hence was clicked 384 times ahead of time. Since then, more than one thousand visits have been recorded. Here is the rundown:
– June 17, launching day: 310;
– June 18: 194;
– June 19: 200;
– June 20: 225;
And so far today, as of 8pm, 266!

This should make Khun Noo, the author of ‘Fresh Kills’ singly featured there, happy as it does me. The aggregate figure should also please those who believe that Thai literature isn’t dead yet.
Let’s see how high it can go.
As this ‘เรื่องสั้นไทย | thai to english fiction’ blog features one short story every other Friday, I expect the growing trend to reverse until on July 1^st a new story surfaces – Atsiri Thammachoat’s ‘In the night of old age’ which uncontroversially mixes reflections on life and death and dreams with the life and death and nightmare events of May 2010 in Thailand only as a master writer can.
Three addicts so far have found the most convenient solution: they have subscribed to the blog and will receive the next instalments by email. Easy does it.

As the blog came online, another did, meant as a bonus to readers: Thai fiction in English (thaishortstories.wordpress.com), carrying for the time being 15 short stories already published in print.
Same pattern: 48 clicks before launch, 20 on June 17, 17 on June 18, 7 on June 19, 9 on June 20, and 18 so far today.

Meanwhile, my two-year-old personal blog, the one you are reading, has received more than 25 000 visits (41 so far today, which is average).

When time allows, I’ll launch that fourth one, entitled ‘Chansongs’, where I’ll regroup all those translations of songs by Brassens, Brel, Cabrel, Cohen, Ferré and a few unexpected others that I have committed in days and years past, along with the odd poem by the usual culprits I favour.

But time doesn’t allow much, when Gavroche is again knocking at the door, there’s water seeping into the kitchen corner when it rains hard, I’ve made the mistake of accepting to translate a petty craftsman’s choicest short story I have to edit as I translate, the vines need cropping and I need grooming, I’ve been stuck on page 234 of that blockbuster for something like three months, house lizards shit everywhere and the skinks won’t talk to me.

But not to forget the best news of all: Chart Korbjitti, who for so long got himself knotted up in t-shirts to nurse his writer’s block, is writing again!
How do I know that? Last night, he sent me the profound reflections on the difference between ‘ideal’ and ‘ideal’ he penned for a resurgent literary magazine. Read the first issue of Writer and all will be clear.

Getting there

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It’s official: เรื่องสั้นไทย | thai to english fiction will start on Friday 17 June at 0:00 hours and 1 second. The short stories presented in that blog (one story every other Friday) have never before been translated into English or presented in both languages either.

At the same time, as a bonus to readers, Thai fiction in English will offer a dozen Thai short stories chosen among about three times as many already published in print, mostly in the Bangkok Post between 2008 and 2011, which are now hard or impossible to come by. More may follow when time allows.

Enjoy!

C’est officiel : เรื่องสั้นไทย | thai to english fiction sera en ligne vendredi 17 juin à 0 heure 1 seconde. Les nouvelles présentées dans ce blog, à raison d’une nouvelle un vendredi sur deux, n’ont jamais été traduites en anglais ni publiées dans les deux langues simultanément.

En même temps, les lecteurs intéressés trouveront en anglais sur Thai fiction in English une douzaine de nouvelles thaïlandaises choisies parmi la trentaine ou plus déjà publiées dans la presse, en particulier dans le Bangkok Post entre 2008 et 2011, et qui sont devenues difficiles ou impossibles à (re)trouver. D’autres suivront quand j’aurai le loisir de les formater pour la toile.

Bonnes lectures !

Let a hundred flowers wilt bloom

Or at least three or four.
This blog is branching out. Look at the bottom of this page and you will see three new links (don’t try them just now):

– to เรื่องสั้นไทย | thai to english fiction, where, if all goes as planned,
(Ah-hum! Take a deep breath, Marcel.)
starting next Friday, I will publish, every other Friday, one contemporary or classical Thai short story in both Thai and English with side remarks on translation problems and solutions – and comments will be welcome indeed;

– to Thai fiction in English, where I’ll offer, as a bonus to amateurs of good Thai tales, some or perhaps even all 28 short stories that were published in the Bangkok Post between 2008 and earlier this year – to make them freely and easily accessible, which is no longer the case at the esteemed periodical, which charges for Archives stuff – and a few more from earlier days; I’ve already posted a good dozen of them, to be made public as soon as the above blog starts; and

– to Thai fiction in translation, if you feel like ordering (PDF-formatted) e-books, now that digital reading platforms are becoming a must-have – let’s all Kindle that fire. But perhaps, given the below-par performance of the site, I and potential buyers would be better off with a link to a more professionally run platform, immatériel.fr, which peddles the very same books (they even offer EPUB versions now, thanks to Apple Stores!). Let me think about it and consult my elders.

Actually, I also have a fourth blog at WordPress, entitled Chansongs, where I intend to regroup all the songs and poems – about a hundred so far – I translate as a pastime from French into English and occasionally vice versa. But it is dormant and it can wait.

The next step, if my heart holds and my nemesis agrees, will be to regroup these budding flowers into a single bouquet, a fully fledged website where I will call the shots. But this might prove to be a tall order.

Oh, by the way, why Friday next?
It happens to be someone’s birthday.