Timeline for How can I keep my dialogue nuanced and informal without breaking the illusion that the story is a translation (from a fictional language)?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
13 events
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| May 14, 2019 at 3:56 | history | edited | Cyn |
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| Feb 9, 2017 at 9:21 | vote | accept | TheTermiteSociety | ||
| Feb 9, 2017 at 9:15 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackWriters/status/829619820693950464 | ||
| Feb 8, 2017 at 22:16 | answer | added | SF. | timeline score: 4 | |
| Feb 8, 2017 at 21:47 | answer | added | user16226 | timeline score: 3 | |
| Feb 8, 2017 at 20:54 | comment | added | O. R. Mapper | "trying to guess what the original phrase was, and my immersion in the story is broken" - this seems to be a matter of perception of the story. Your immersion into the events of the story ("what you read is happening around you") diminishes, but at the same time, one might perceive the immersion into the story-document ("what you read is actually a translated representation of true events") to increase. In other words: You think about an "original phrase" in a fantasy setting. This implies a high degree of immersion of some kind. | |
| Feb 8, 2017 at 18:48 | answer | added | Chris Sunami | timeline score: 8 | |
| Feb 8, 2017 at 17:00 | answer | added | ggiaquin16 | timeline score: 1 | |
| Feb 6, 2017 at 13:43 | comment | added | Lauren-Clear-Monica-Ipsum | Mostly. Literal realism is not your goal. You can create "local flavor" as @KyleLi notes by using slang and accents which your English-speaking reader will recognize, and your audience will understand that your Klangton speaker isn't actually speaking in a Received English or Southern American accent. It's to get across the idea that "the accent this person uses would be heard by other native speakers as being posh/uneducated/formal/hick etc." Your accent is sort of symbolic or representative in that sense. I've seen Mercedes Lackey do this, so it's not unprecedented. | |
| Feb 6, 2017 at 13:38 | comment | added | TheTermiteSociety | @LaurenIpsum Thank you, yes, well, it wouldn't be the first time I've overthought something like this. I think "lossless translation" isn't really possible in the real world, but it seems like you're saying that since the translation in my story is really just a literary device, it doesn't need to be completely realistic in that respect, and I should just focus on getting the information across to the reader. Is that the gist of it? | |
| Feb 6, 2017 at 1:10 | answer | added | Kyle Li | timeline score: 8 | |
| Feb 5, 2017 at 21:31 | comment | added | Lauren-Clear-Monica-Ipsum | To be honest, I would be more distracted by the direct translation of an idiom than something which gets the idea across. In Sicilian, an idiot is a testa di cipuda, which is literally "head of an onion." But in English, you'd say idiot, or possibly blockhead. If Person A called Person B "head of an onion," I'd wonder if there were more to it. (Does the person have layers? Does the person make other folks cry?) My sense is that you're overthinking your conceit of "translation." | |
| Feb 5, 2017 at 18:23 | history | asked | TheTermiteSociety | CC BY-SA 3.0 |