Mar. 14th, 2009 11:24 am
Interpretation and writing
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textualdevianceI know I have several folks on my flist who are either professional interpreters of some variety or other, or who otherwise study the relationships of languages to each other, so I'm bending your ears for a moment, if I may!
So, discussions of race in SF/F writing have come around to discussions of writing dialogue.
There's something about how much "foreign" dialogue is portrayed that really bugs me: Characters speaking in accented English when they're supposed to be speaking their own native language among themselves.
For instance, it's ridiculously common in movies about WWII to have scenes of Nazi officers standing around discussing strategy. And almost all of these films have those characters speaking German-accented English.
To me, this makes no sense. They should either be speaking German, with English subtitles, or they should be speaking non-accented English. If they're not talking TO me and acknowledging me as an audience member (as they shouldn't be, if they aren't breaking the fourth wall), then they shouldn't be speaking my language with an accent. I either need a written translation, or I need a Babelfish in my ear.
To me, an author writing characters speaking a foreign language is acting as an interpreter, and I've never seen professional interpreters deliberately use an accent for a translation (except for whatever accent they themselves may naturally have.) It would, IMHO, be patronizing to do so, and it would also be counter-productive, because it would make the translation difficult to understand.
Now, when you're writing characters who speak different native languages all communicating in a common tongue then sure, an accent would make sense. But I just can't see it making sense when you're supposed to be a fly on the wall, listening in to a conversation among people speaking a different language.
Anyone have any feedback on this?
So, discussions of race in SF/F writing have come around to discussions of writing dialogue.
There's something about how much "foreign" dialogue is portrayed that really bugs me: Characters speaking in accented English when they're supposed to be speaking their own native language among themselves.
For instance, it's ridiculously common in movies about WWII to have scenes of Nazi officers standing around discussing strategy. And almost all of these films have those characters speaking German-accented English.
To me, this makes no sense. They should either be speaking German, with English subtitles, or they should be speaking non-accented English. If they're not talking TO me and acknowledging me as an audience member (as they shouldn't be, if they aren't breaking the fourth wall), then they shouldn't be speaking my language with an accent. I either need a written translation, or I need a Babelfish in my ear.
To me, an author writing characters speaking a foreign language is acting as an interpreter, and I've never seen professional interpreters deliberately use an accent for a translation (except for whatever accent they themselves may naturally have.) It would, IMHO, be patronizing to do so, and it would also be counter-productive, because it would make the translation difficult to understand.
Now, when you're writing characters who speak different native languages all communicating in a common tongue then sure, an accent would make sense. But I just can't see it making sense when you're supposed to be a fly on the wall, listening in to a conversation among people speaking a different language.
Anyone have any feedback on this?
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no subject
The most successful "Oh hai, in real terms these people are not speaking something you understand" signpost, to my mind, comes in personal and place-names. Make them sound different than English. Give them a different dominant vowel and different dominant consonants and consonant clusters that aren't common in English. And then DON'T FUCKING EXPLAIN IT TO DEATH. Let my reader's ear catch it subliminally.
Also, one of the best stand-alone examples of this I can think of is a line from McKinley's The Blue Sword, in which Harry, a Homelander transplant/kidnappee to Damar, asks another young woman where she's from. Harry is from the Homeland, which is clearly a sort of England, and Homelanders call Damar Daria because "Damar" doesn't sound right in English. So she asks her question, and the young woman says laconically "Shpardith--two weeks' ride, that way" and points. Voilà: Harry is no longer speaking English. And I know that, because you do not get "Shp" clusters in English except in loan-words.