Fanfic Writers' Virtual Water Cooler

[fems]

But what if you already are n amed Nausious ?

Then your parents probably never wanted children...

[Princess Awinita]

Then your parents probably never wanted children...

Unless you were born on New years day and for three years your dad was in AA because he kept seeing twins that he was sure were not his......

Its an old joke. I use it alot for many of my characters, for example, my first OC Teyilia, her date of birth was 1 January 1980. And for six years, her father thought she was his hangover, after all on New Years, you get hammered., six year hangover, that;s gotta be a record.

Now then, here is something I wonder of others; When writing in another langauge, in my case, Chinese Traditional characters, do you ever translate your work into other langauges ? I translate my stuff to english, {Amerikan}. But someteimes the translating of words and grammar into other langauges makes others confused. In this case, My second langauge is english. So I write in my first langauge, even on computer. Then I translate it to english.

twice I got insulted over my writing skills and by the same guy offered to have a beta. But the second time I ever used a beta my story was too screwed over to even post up, I had to write it over again because sentence structure was broken. Now in this matter I wonder, when writing in a native langauge then translating to english or another langauge, how harsh are the reviews on that translation ? I now do not use a beta, but several people told me I should for spell checking. I keep declining and now I wonder if I should attempt again...

[fems]

No, I write my fanfics in English. I brainstorm in English, I make notes in English and basically just do everything fic-related in English. Unless I can't think of the right word then I sometimes switch to my native language to come up with it and then look up the translation in a dictionary.

Writing them in my native language and then translating would be a lot of work and would probably drive me crazy. The sentence structure is very different, as is grammar and obviously spelling and I would probably get stuck trying to translate it and move words around etc. Also, a lot of words don't have an exact translation or more than one so it's very likely I would've given up up writing if I wrote it in my native language first and then translated it because it would look like an insurmountable task.

In high school we only had a certain amount of time for writing (or speaking) assignments so we were more or less taught to try and flip the switch to one of the other languages simply because you couldn't afford to first write it out in your native language and then translate it with a dictionary in hand. I guess that sort of stuck with me and I started to go with my gut more, like with reading assignments when you translate back into your native language and can only afford to look something up in a dictionary every now and then before the time was up. Otherwise you would never be able to answer all the questions or complete the summary and you'd fail your assignment.

EDIT: Not to mention the differences in punctuation! It would probably drive me up the wall if I'd just written a chapter (let alone a whole fic) in my native language and then had to translate it to English and change all the punctuation in the story too!

[Starfist]

Hi all, :: Brings a Jar of decaffinated coffee to put into the cupboard ::

I'm off to a convention in London next month. And I need some suggestions and maybe some advice. For on each night of the convention there will be a themed party.

The Friday night is a Toga Party Night. The Saturday night is Return to Hogwarts night. And on Sunday it's 'Computer Game Heroes'.

I have my costume for the Sunday already. I'll be dressed in my SG offworld kit complete with a P-90.

But it is the Friday and Saturday nights I've got a problem with. I don't have any costumes. Does anyone have any ideas?

[SF_and_Coffee]

You've just reminded me of my high school French classes (I'm American and my native language is American English) where we were exhorted to "think in French!" when we were in class and using that language. I soon found myself able to do that with relative ease, such that whenever I had a writing assignment for that class, it wouldn't even have occurred to me to write it in English and then translate to French. And when reading in French, my brain didn't translate it to English; I simply thought in French as I read.

My French skills are very rusty these days, but on those occasions when I do find myself using French -- for example, reading something in French because an English translation is not readily available -- I've noticed that I still switch my thought processes at least partly to French for the duration. I really ought to read more French so as to "blow the dust off" my ability to use it fluently.

[fems]

Hi all, :: Brings a Jar of decaffinated coffee to put into the cupboard ::

I'm off to a convention in London next month. And I need some suggestions and maybe some advice. For on each night of the convention there will be a themed party.

The Friday night is a Toga Party Night. The Saturday night is Return to Hogwarts night. And on Sunday it's 'Computer Game Heroes'.

I have my costume for the Sunday already. I'll be dressed in my SG offworld kit complete with a P-90.

But it is the Friday and Saturday nights I've got a problem with. I don't have any costumes. Does anyone have any ideas?

Just drape a white sheet around your body for Toga night?

You've just reminded me of my high school French classes (I'm American and my native language is American English) where we were exhorted to "think in French!" when we were in class and using that language. I soon found myself able to do that with relative ease, such that whenever I had a writing assignment for that class, it wouldn't even have occurred to me to write it in English and then translate to French. And when reading in French, my brain didn't translate it to English; I simply thought in French as I read.

My French skills are very rusty these days, but on those occasions when I do find myself using French -- for example, reading something in French because an English translation is not readily available -- I've noticed that I still switch my thought processes at least partly to French for the duration. I really ought to read more French so as to "blow the dust off" my ability to use it fluently.

For me it was actually more difficult to try and think in French for some reason, although my vocabulary and grammar comprehension were just fine. Reading wasn't all that difficult either but conversations and writing took more thought simply because I couldn't seem to flip that switch.

They tried to encourage it though and some of the older teachers were even talking about re-implementing the old policy of not speaking anything but that language in class but that was dismissed fairly quickly considering kids could have up to eight classes a day with 5 (or 7 with Latin and Greek) of them being one language or another... Of course, in 'the old days' they only had two or three so that was doable.

[SF_and_Coffee]

Just drape a white sheet around your body for Toga night?

Seconded. That's generally all that's required for a Toga party.

They tried to encourage it though and some of the older teachers were even talking about re-implementing the old policy of not speaking anything but that language in class but that was dismissed fairly quickly considering kids could have up to eight classes a day with 5 (or 7 with Latin and Greek) of them being one language or another... Of course, in 'the old days' they only had two or three so that was doable.

My French teachers preferred that we speak nothing but French in French class, and we had 6 or 7 classes a day. Most of us only had one foreign language class, or possibly two (in addition to French, my school offered Spanish, German, Italian, Swedish and Latin) but even students taking more than one foreign language generally managed it. Then again, we did have some who took only one foreign language who could barely manage in that language. I grew up hearing spoken Swedish on a regular basis from older relatives and from my father -- who, like his parents, had been raised bilingual in Swedish and English -- though I wasn't really taught to speak it beyond a few simple phrases, so my ear for language might be more acute than that of many Americans simply due to early childhood exposure to more than one.

[fems]

Seconded. That's generally all that's required for a Toga party.

With sandals perhaps? And maybe one of those hair leaf thingies?

My French teachers preferred that we speak nothing but French in French class, and we had 6 or 7 classes a day. Most of us only had one foreign language class, or possibly two (in addition to French, my school offered Spanish, German, Italian, Swedish and Latin) but even students taking more than one foreign language generally managed it. Then again, we did have some who took only one foreign language who could barely manage in that language. I grew up hearing spoken Swedish on a regular basis from older relatives and from my father, though I wasn't really taught to speak it beyond a few simple phrases, so my ear for language might be more acute than that of many Americans simply due to early childhood exposure to more than one.

Most kids at my school were bilingual, both languages having their own classes, and then German, French and English were also mandatory in the first two years (12-14 years) and more foreign languages were availble in the other years. Unfortunately most of the interesting languages weren't available until I was in my fifth and sixth (final) year so that was a shame. Would have loved to learn more Italian than the bit of holiday Italian I could manage, or Spanish or Russian or something cool like that. Apparently they also have Chinese now but I've heard that's quite difficult to learn for Westerners, especially when you're older. I believe it had something to do with having to have heard certain tones before your sixth or eight birthday? I don't recall the specifics but considering the Chinese population growth rate it would probably come in handy in the next ten to twenty years?

[SF_and_Coffee]

I imagine it would.

In the States, many people speak only one language, although in areas with a large Hispanic population, bilingualism (Spanish/English) isn't uncommon, and other immigrant groups will often teach their mother tongue to at least children and grandchildren, though it often peters out at the third generation. My hometown had significant populations who were either immigrants from Sweden or Italy, or the children/grandchildren of such immigrants, so Swedish and Italian were fairly common second languages among those segments of the population. They were popular enough that the local high school opted to include those languages as elective courses for those interested in taking them.

In some states here, students are required to study a foreign language for at least one year in order to graduate from high school, while in others, there is no such requirement and foreign language study is optional rather than mandatory. I forget whether it was required in my state, but I would have studied at least one foreign language anyway, because language itself fascinates me. But at the time I was in school (I graduated from high school thirty years ago), most foreign languages were taught only in grades 7 and up -- think age 12 to 18. Although we did get some exposure to elementary Spanish around grade 5...

[Falcon Horus]

My native language is Dutch (Flemish), but you'll never find me writing my fics in Dutch first. Though I do have to admit that I need to practice my Dutch more cause I sometimes catch myself trying to find a word in Dutch and just not knowing what it is but perfectly able to know what it is in English or French.

BUT were I to write in Dutch it wouldn't be fanfic... that just sounds wrong in my head, or more accurately it sounds off, not so much wrong.

I know that one of my fics on ff.net was translated in French though - not by me but with permission.

I do read fanfic in other languages though - German and French.

Dutch, English, French and German - languages I speak, write and comprehend in various levels (German's the weakest in comparison to the other three).

[fems]

To me it wouldn't be fanfic simply because you would be using a different language than what you hear in the show (unless they dub it in your country) and the expressions etc would all be different and wrong. I wouldn't even know how to translate some of them accurately and still make it sound credible. Mostly because I don't use subtitles but even if I did those only cover so much of what is said (and don't even get me started on some of the ridiculous translations that are too literal etc) because they can only use two lines at the time.

[Falcon Horus]

To me it wouldn't be fanfic simply because you would be using a different language than what you hear in the show (unless they dub it in your country)...

SG1 and SGA both were dubbed in French on the French-speaking channels here in Belgium. That was occasionally quite funny.

[SF_and_Coffee]

SG1 and SGA both were dubbed in French on the French-speaking channels here in Belgium. That was occasionally quite funny.

Oh, dear! I can just imagine!

[fems]

I never watched much TV when in France (it was a vacation after all) so I've never had that lovely experience! But sometimes I'd come across a German channel on TV (at home, not on vacation) when channel surfing and that was always hilarious. My mother used to watch The Bold and the Beautiful on occasion while folding the laundry so it always made me giggle when I came across the German version and heard them trying to seduce each other or fight in those weird, unfamiliar voices with that loud German sound... Not to mention how badly it was dubbed with their mouths making completely different movements or they'd simply already stopped talking

[Falcon Horus]

Or the mouth stops speaking, but the dubber doesn't....