Foreign Languages / Alpabets

[MindsMirror]

In several of our stories, we've used proper accent marks for French/German/Latin which intrinsically use non ASCII characters. Now we are going to have some Russian and Chinese in a story (with translation in place or near by) to keep from interrupting readability.

Would including the Cyrillic alphabet (for Russian) and ideograms (for Chinese) detract from the story or enhance it? Can these even be included in a Literotica story posted under English?

Thanks for any thoughts.
-MM

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Most Russian and Chinese characters are outside the standard ASCII and even the extended ASCII character sets. Currently, Lit uses the "charset=ISO-8859-1" character set. Which looks to me that Russian and Chinese aren't supported.

http://www.w3schools.com/charsets/ref_html_8859.asp

 

[KayceeCharles]

I tried including a few Spanish sentences as my story was set in Colombia and more than a few feedback was about how I included the English translation right after the Spanish sentence and that made the people kinda upset, broke up their reading rhythm.

I'd say limit your foreign words to one word/phrase per sentence if you use any, and if you use unsupported charset... For CHinese, stick to pinyin.

 

[NicoleZ]

Ooh! That is a hard one! Generally speaking, not specifically about Literotica, I would say very sparingly used as a spice in a very few locations, not more than three and then only one short-ish sentence", it could work. But if you start using blocks, it would look as if you're showing off.

This IMHO could probably work in a Cold War satire:

- Пожалуйста, товарищи Освободителы, вы можете изнасилование моей жены и дочерей, но не убивать моя коровы и куры!

- What the xxxx did you just say?

- I told the Comrade Liberators that you dear wife and our daughters were only too happy to demonstrate our gratitude, but please, would they spare our cow and chickens?

(Non-Consent/Reluctance or Group Sex? )

 

[MindsMirror]

We were thinking about speaking flubs where the character forgets to speak in English mostly. However, there could be short conversations translated when the character speaks to a non Chinese/Russian speaker.

We did put some tests into the Literotica form and in the preview they appear correct for Russian and Chinese, but don't know how they might appear when accepted and reformatted by the moderators.
"да (da) - um - yes, ...
"妹妹 (mèimèi) - little sister, ...

-MM

 

[ChloeTzang]

We were thinking about speaking flubs where the character forgets to speak in English mostly. However, there could be short conversations translated when the character speaks to a non Chinese/Russian speaker.

We did put some tests into the Literotica form and in the preview they appear correct for Russian and Chinese, but don't know how they might appear when accepted and reformatted by the moderators.
"да (da) - um - yes, ...
"妹妹 (mèimèi) - little sister, ...

-MM

I've got stories up on LIT with both pinyin and the odd chinese characters and they show up fine so I don't think you'll have any problems if you submit with those in.

 

[MindsMirror]

I've got stories up on LIT with both pinyin and the odd chinese characters and they show up fine so I don't think you'll have any problems if you submit with those in.

Thanks a bunch. Guess we'll give it a try.

 

[oggbashan]

I chicken out and make a statement like this:

The conversations in this story are in German but I have written them as if they were in English.

 

[Nezhul]

I really don't think that including russian or chinese text in a story would enhance it in any way. Rather, most people will find their reading flow broken by that, as they will just see a bunch of giberrish (to them).
I think you should write everything in english but specify that they were talking in Russian. A good trick is to make the text italic, so the reader clearly sees the difference.
For example:
"Hands up! Turn around!" he shouted angrily in Russian.

If you need to install a phrase that your main character did not understand, it's still better to refrain from using foreign languages. You could use phrases like
"He shouted something in Russian angrily."
or even
"............................!" he shouted angrily in Russian.
These examples do not break the flow of your book. A lot of readers will get distracted or even frustrated if they can't understand a phrase you wrote, and including both original AND translation will just break the immersion, reminding your reader over and over again that he's reading a story. While in practice he should be completely immersed and not concentrate on that he's reading a book.

 

[CyranoJ]

The standard thing to do in most fiction is, where necessary, to include Romanized renderings of whatever foreign language you're using. Bringing the Cyrillic alphabet or Chinese characters or any other writing system into it should not be necessary.

 

[MindsMirror]

Many movies that have characters bantering use correct German/French/Russian/Chinese etc and put the translation below, even for fictional sci-fi languages.

The only real difference between "....!" he shouted angrily in Russian.
and "Da!" he shouted angrily. Is that the latter carries information. Many/most people might know Da is yes.

So the only real question to us would be, does adding it in the original form (foreign alphabet/symbols) detract or enhance?

-MM

 

[CyranoJ]

Using foreign writing systems does not add anything (except for highly-specialized audiences like translators or linguists). To anyone else it's an obstruction. I don't know of any prose style guide in any context that would recommend it.

 

[Nezhul]

Well, I may be an odd-ball here, but as a Russian, if I saw Russian text in an English book - It would be rather distracting and immersion-breaking for me.

Many movies that have characters bantering use correct German/French/Russian/Chinese etc and put the translation below, even for fictional sci-fi languages.

There's a difference between movies and books.
Movies will provide you subtitles for foreign texts. But when they do so they will either translate audial information into literal (subtitles to voice) or visual into literal (Subtitles to a signpost).
WHile it may seem like there's no difference, there actually is, because when you see something written on a sign in foreign language - that information is more visual than literal to you. You see an object, and subtitles provide you explanation for it.

However in literature this is a very poor trick. Because you do literal-to-literal transcription. Your reader will read gibberish and then read explanation. You don't put subtitles to a text in a book! It doesn't make sense!

 

[CyranoJ]

Pace Nezhul, I can see doing it if you want have the "flavour" of the foreign or fictional language in there. Which might be the case for various reasons. But using foreign scripts adds a further unnecessary barrier and actually robs you of whatever "flavour" the Romanized version would impart to an average reader, as your "Da!' vs. "...!" example illustrates handily.

 

[NotWise]

The story I'm working on now has some Spanish and Spanglish-speaking characters.

I can't be authentic with the Spanish. That would required that I understand the actual dialect, which is based on 16th-century Castilian. So that is spoken in the background.

Spanglish itself is highly variable and the interspersion of English and Spanish is likely to be annoying to most readers.

What I did in the first part was introduce the characters speaking the mix, then just let that slip. That way it was part of their initial characterization, but I didn't have to make it interfere with the rest of the dialogue.

In the second part I'm (so far) having a hard time not having the characters just blurt in Spanish.

In later parts of the story it is realistic that all of the dialogue would be in Spanish or the language of the Pipil, but it will all be written in English because I will be expressing the thoughts and memories of Spanish or Pipil-speaking people through the voice of an English speaker.

 

[TxRad]

And people wondered why the universal translator was invented on Star Trek. To make it easier on the writers.. Why else?

 

[NotWise]

And people wondered why the universal translator was invented on Star Trek. To make it easier on the writers.. Why else?

Well, there was that little fish that Adams had people stick in there ears.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Well, there was that little fish that Adams had people stick in there ears.

and the TARDIS universal translator in Doctor Who

 

[MindsMirror]

We sure want to avoid calling people "ugly bags of mostly water."

 

[KayceeCharles]

We sure want to avoid calling people "ugly bags of mostly water."

It is an accurate description -- Data

 

[Bramblethorn]

My rule of thumb: stylistic choices should support narrative perspective.

Grace is a small-town dentist who's been kidnapped by KGB spies and whisked away to Russia because somebody mistook her for a sleeper agent? That ought to be a disorienting experience for her, so I should write in a way that helps readers relate to that.

Her guards are speaking Russian? She can hear the sounds, so it's reasonable to transliterate into Roman alphabet: guards say "kapusta" and "nyet" rather than "капуста" and "нет". Grace probably recognises "nyet" but it's still foreign to her; leaving it untranslated makes readers work for it a little, just like she has to.

She's on the run, and comes to a fence with a sign that says "Осторожно, собака!"? Grace doesn't have a clue what that means or even how it should sound (something about an octopus?) so that stays in the original Cyrillic.

But if I'm writing the next chapter from the perspective of the real agent, who speaks fluent Russian, I'll translate all the Russian to English; it's not an obstacle to her, so it shouldn't be to my reader. If it's important to know what language is being used, and it isn't obvious from context, I'll flag that briefly without letting it bog down the story.

 

[NicoleZ]

My rule of thumb: stylistic choices should support narrative perspective.

Grace is a small-town dentist who's been kidnapped by KGB spies and whisked away to Russia because somebody mistook her for a sleeper agent? That ought to be a disorienting experience for her, so I should write in a way that helps readers relate to that.

Her guards are speaking Russian? She can hear the sounds, so it's reasonable to transliterate into Roman alphabet: guards say "kapusta" and "nyet" rather than "капуста" and "нет". Grace probably recognises "nyet" but it's still foreign to her; leaving it untranslated makes readers work for it a little, just like she has to.

She's on the run, and comes to a fence with a sign that says "Осторожно, собака!"? Grace doesn't have a clue what that means or even how it should sound (something about an octopus?) so that stays in the original Cyrillic.

But if I'm writing the next chapter from the perspective of the real agent, who speaks fluent Russian, I'll translate all the Russian to English; it's not an obstacle to her, so it shouldn't be to my reader. If it's important to know what language is being used, and it isn't obvious from context, I'll flag that briefly without letting it bog down the story.

Very good!

 

[Hypoxia]

My prefatory Author's Note may include: "For readers' convenience, most non-Anglish-language communications are presented in loose Anglish translation." If I have a player utter something in Spanish or Hopi or Chiché Mayan, I'll follow it with a rough rendering. "Tell that cabroncito he can take his goat-smelling ass elsewhere!" or "Yes, 'áamokat polóov, he's good, very good, isn't he?" But mostly the character merely talk, and I write the gist of their dialogue.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

I haven't had a problem with other languages here.

Used very sparingly I think it can add to a story. I've stuck to European languages; a few words of Romanian in one story and some ancient Spanish in another. Here's an example where I think it worked:

She set the cup down. It immediately crumbled into dust. She smiled at the dust, her eyes strangely wide and bright.

“I know the Spanish of her era. Ya sennor glorioso, padre que en çielo estas, fezist çielo e tierra, el terçero el mar, fezist estrelas e luna, e el sol pora escalentar… we sang it endlessly in the orphanage. I know the name of the priest who collected my – her – blood. Cruz. I remember the wind of riding with Lucio, his horse’s mad uneven gallop, very fast and a good leaper. ...

I don't expect any of my readers to be able to translate, and it's not necessary that they know what the song fragment means. But if someone Googles it, they'll find it's the beginning of an actual song from the era under discussion; they'll find a translation, and they'll get a little insight into one of the story's more obscure corners. I like that sort of easter egg in stories.

The fact that the character is suddenly able to understand medieval Spanish is a plot point and had to be mentioned so a later scene would work; just having her say "I know the Spanish of her era. I remember a priest, and riding with Lucio..." wouldn't have made the fact of her language skill "stick" with the reader and would have made the subsequent scene where she clearly understands the language, confusing.

Another example:

I also picked up some Romanian. By tacit agreement, conversations in the apartment were in English, mostly so Andrei could correct his language misunderstandings. They all delighted in teaching me a little Romanian, mainly the dirty stuff. It became natural to moan vă rog – please – when Stefan had me strapped down in my bed.

That worked because the whole point of the story is a relationship between two people of very different cultures, and it highlights how the speaker is learning about Stefan's world. It loses impact without the actual example in Romanian; I wanted the reader to feel the "foreignness."

 

[Skye4Life]

Hi to all. I am the editor for MindsMirror and am the one that suggested the use of the actual language and alphabet of the different languages that is in their story. It isn't used often, and I felt that it would lend some authenticity to the story and the feel of how it is presented. Since I suggested it, I have been looking for a way to solve the problem of the mods possibly taking it out or the software that they use to convert the text files to html would not allow them or just overwrite them with gibberish.

While yes the standard ASCII character set will always work on Lit, if you embed html in your stories like MindsMirror does, using <i></i> for italics and so forth, then there is no reason that using the html code for different letters of different languages should not work. I found this answer just last night while working on an html project for a class and needed to ensure the proper spelling of a foreign word in the project. I spent almost an entire day researching this issue and found that there are codes that can be inserted into text that insures that the proper letter, from any different language, is put in the place that you need it.

However, if you aren't embedding html code already, then I am not sure how it would react and what it would do with the code.

This is my opinion on the topic and I am very interested to find out if it will work.

Many thanks to all that have tried to help MindsMirror with this and have a wonderful evening.

Skye4Life