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

[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. ;)