venting through tags, y/n?

[ratcreature]

Poll #8736 passive-aggressive tagging?

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 29

View Respondents

Starting to tag XMFC stories with a "bad German" tag where applicable, would be...

View Answers

petty.
7 (24.1%)

breaking fannish etiquette and shouldn't be done.
1 (3.4%)

pointless, because it isn't a good way to communicate the complaint as feedback to the author.
6 (20.7%)

a good way to vent frustration after multiple rants failed.
22 (75.9%)

useful information for the bookmark readers.
18 (62.1%)

So in summation, should I create a "badgerman" tag?

View Answers

Yes.
15 (60.0%)

No.
1 (4.0%)

I don't care.
4 (16.0%)

Make it a hidden tag that Pinboard offers just to vent for yourself.
5 (20.0%)

Comments

[petra]

It's all one to me if you decide to do it, but Badgerman is clearly a stout English superhero who is still angry about fox hunting.

[ratcreature]

LOL. I suppose I could make it "bad-german" to avoid any confusion. Though maybe aside from fox hunting Badgerman could also fight abuse of Google translate? A double role so to speak.

[petra]

He could! Due to entirely too many panel shows on YouTube, I think he's played by Phill Jupitus, which ticks over from stout to a little past portly.

[monanotlisa]

LOL!

[bluemeridian]

Not speaking German, it's not of help to me, but I can definitely see where it would be a fair warning to someone who does! I like knowing when I'm walking into a story that has a particular stylistic or other type of problem - "Great story! Even with typos!" is a rec I've made before. Plus, for those it does affect, they can avoid the spork to eardrums experience. :P

[ratcreature]

It's just so frustrating, also because I'm constantly wibbling whether to nag if I comment on a story. I mean, it's not what I usually want to comment on, but I also feel odd not mentioning completely atrocious and hilarious language in an otherwise fine story. And I'm torn about reccing them.

I have honestly no idea why people don't get a beta, especially for finished and polished stories (like those in a Big Bang rather than a quick kink meme response). For some languages it might be hard to find a quick proofreader in fandom, like if you needed Basque or something, that's a small language and I guess there may not be that many speakers in fandom, but it would take five minutes to find a native German speaker.

[kass]

I too read "badgerman" initially as BadgerMan -- a new superhero who dresses as a badger? :-)

I clicked a lot of ticky boxes; a "bad German" tag isn't necessarily a good way to communicate with the author, but it might be useful venting for you and also useful information for other readers.

[ratcreature]

I shudder to think how truly multilingual readers may suffer. I mean, at least I can mostly overlook bad French, and won't notice bad Hebrew, Polish, Yiddish or Russian, which I don't imagine to be handled any better. This fandom is entirely too fond of multilingual flavoring.

[chalcopyrite]

I've read plenty of things that should have had a "gratuitous fake Gaelic" tag stuck on them, and if they had, I could have skipped both the ear-sporking and the back-click of argh. Maybe it's petty, but I eventually learned to write fic without fangirl Japanese pasted on; it's not impossible to write entirely in a language one actually masters.

Badgerman needs a tag of his own anyway. Possibly his own tag sett.

[ratcreature]

I've come across a few stories where using different languages had a good reason, was well done and worked for the story, and with the canon, but those are the exception. I honestly don't understand the point of the German phrases, because Erik in XMFC is fluent in English, does not actually randomly switch languages or sprinkle German across English sentences in some bizarre affectation. So you have OOC issues on top of the language butchering.

[chalcopyrite]

a few stories where using different languages had a good reason, was well done and worked for the story

Very true, it can happen. I don't mean to knock *all* uses of not-native-to-writer languages, just the ones that are "I need a Cool Mystic Name for this doohickey," or "Erik must Demonstrate! His! Germanness!" -- which is not achieved by slapping it with Google Translate.

[krait]

Badgerman needs a tag of his own anyway. Possibly his own tag sett.

Dear Reader,

I giggled. :D

[cathexys]

OMG, I just read another one ad just wished they would stop!!! get yourself a damn German speaking beta. It's not like we're thin on the ground...

[cathexys]

And LOL. I must be half asleep. i read it as badger.ma even AFTER I saw the comments. I just thought it was a joke I didn't get.... headdesk!!!

[ratcreature]

LOL. It seems the importance of spaces for readability can't be overestimated.

[ratcreature]

Yes. Exactly this.

[lilacsigil]

And there's several Germans in the XMFC fandom (and at least one Pole) who have publically offered to beta!

[ratcreature]

Yeah. I mean seriously, last time someone asked me for help with some German sentences I did that even though I wasn't in the fandom and didn't read the whole story (that was a Captain America story), my turnaround time was less than a day, and I gave context info with multiple translation choices for some words and what connotations they have, formal vs informal choices, more literal translations vs what the common German expressions would be etc. because the author didn't send sentences in context and I didn't want to read a Big Bang in another fandom anyway, but I gave for example something like two paragraphs to explain how to best translate "What's happening?" correctly depending on who the speakers are and what they want to say to enable the author to get it right.

[astridv]

It's actually useful information for other readers; I get thrown out of a story if I encounter too much bad German. OTOH that way surely lies wank? (Well, if you use 'badgerman', that way may just lie confusion - I read it as one word, too... so the author may just look at the tag and scratch her head.)

[ratcreature]

I'm inconsistent in my delicious (well now pinboard) tags when it comes to just omitting spaces or replacing them with "-" or the like, but more often than not I just leave them out.

As for wank, I have a phlegmatic enough temperament that I'm not too bothered, and actually I had never had serious wank happening to me even from commenting or even mocking fanfic stories, even when I linked the story. As my poll indicates, I realize it's a somewhat petty reaction, but seriously, for months now I'm so often commenting with German corrections, and really commenting on someone's novel just with "you need a German beta, I got thrown out of the story by the level of fail" isn't any friendlier, if more straightforward. The latest offender was a D/s AU, and it is really hard to throw me out of those due that being one of my favorite kinks, but that one managed.

[astridv]

Oh yeah, I get where you're coming from. My personal pet peeve is omitted commas in dialog - that will ruin an otherwise interesting fic for me and I never know whether I should offer concrit or just quitely put the author on my do-not-read list.

Um, can you pm me the link to that fic you mention, or any of the worst offenders? I'm a little curious... and easily amused when it comes to bad!german.

[ratcreature]

The worst with that story is that it contains so much German, a lot of it only single words, but enough of it with mistakes (to be frank, I'm not entirely sure why the author chose to have Erik slip back into German during sex dialog and such so often, maybe it was supposed to be an effect of him having been with Shaw longer to be honest, it struck me as OOC too), anyway, I meant surrender doesn't have to mean defeat (deacertes & alishatorn) from the X-Men Big Bang. I would have quite liked it if not for the language because of my kinks and because I like sub!Erik h/c quite a lot, and it has really pretty artwork. Weirdly enough the notes claim that there was betaing for German (the notes on the AO3 version anyway), but it cannot have been a native speaker, like for example Erik bumps into someone and as apology he says “Nicht verstanden" rather than "Entschuldigung" or "Verzeihung" or such which is just a bizarre choice, and must have been some sort of context confused mistranslation for "I'm sorry" or "excuse me". It's not the most entertaining kind of mistakes though.

As for others, since I haven't tagged for it previously, I don't have links on hand, but it is incredibly common.

[astridv]

Ah, yeah. Skimmed it. I do believe it was betaed by someone who at least knows German since it was gramatically correct (and I even spotted an umlaut used properly, yay). Just, it's so random! Doesn't sound natural at all.

I saw the 'nicht verstanden' and had no clue what it was supposed to say. Und 'lasse mich kommen'... totaler Stimmungstöter, ja/ja?

[ratcreature]

It had umlauts? The author must have edited then since I read it yesterday, because I recall a persistent use of "grun" for "grün". So maybe the current version is improved a little. And yes, that sex talk did not work. I have to admit though since most of the porn I read is in English, I'm actually not sure how German porn dialog is done so that it works.

[astridv]

I have no clue, either. I actually googled that phrase before I wrote the comment, to make sure it isn't a thing in German porn. ;)

[acari]

Since I have just been told not to tag my Tumblr posts complaining about Grimm's German, I say TAG IT ALL.

[ratcreature]

What? Why would people be against Tumblr tags? The way tags on Tumblr are broken more often than not you can't even use them to find things anyway or see what people thing through tags, whereas you can do vanity searches on the social bookmarking sites to see who bookmarked your stuff and see their comments and tags.

Unfortunately most bad German in XMFC stories is not as hilarious as Grimm. Though the last episode I watched wasn't very entertaining on that front. It was the one with the rats (at least one plus, lots of cute rats running around, even if I found them oddly miscast as horror monsters) only baffled with their weird choice use a verb for the monster name, if I heard correctly when they seemed to call the rat catcher "Reinigen".

[acari]

I would appreciate "bad languageX" tags. I may still read the story but I would have a warning.

No, Grimm wasn't entertainingly stupid this time. That's why I didn't make a journal post only posted a short two or three sentence complain on Tumblr. Of course I would tag it "grimm". It's what the post is about.

[ratcreature]

Ah, so the complaint is a variant on the "don't post character or pairing bashing under the character name tag" complaint, because people just want to see squee, not mocking?

[droolfangrrl.livejournal.com]

D) I fail to get it 'cause I'm Madam le' Crankypants today. That and I don't use pinboard. But it's your party you can vent if you want to.

[ratcreature]

Well, I would have kept using delicious if they hadn't made their service unusable.