Three lines from the Song dynasty poet Xin Qiji (1140-1207) are repeatedly trans-musicalized; nothing approaching an accurate transcription ever emerges, although each consonant, vowel and tonal change is faithfully reproduced in some kind of instrumental analogue. Each system of translation is destined to fail. Failure, however, becomes generative: each iteration of translation decomposes the strict sonic hierarchies of language; details that emerge initially as forms of resistance or auxiliary noise later govern entire systems of translation. What emerges is a map of traces: the outlines of a phonetic materiality that escapes informatization.

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