not sure whether it is an up or downside...

[ratcreature]

...but apparently I now know enough Russian to stumble over obvious automatic translation errors in fanfic in yet another language, even though I do not know enough to have even simple conversations.

But I can distinguish some verb forms, and the author in this particular case clearly wanted an imperative (it had an exclamation point and everything) but put in an infinitive form. Not that I knew that particular word (my vocabulary is still very pathetic). Of course in English both look the same (except for the 'to') but in Russian you conjugate more -- only google translate for example won't, even if you add the exclamation point.

They could label a language acquisition stage after this -- it comes way before even A1 proficiency (which in case you are not familiar with the European language reference framework means more or less the ability to understand and produce simple, formulaic conversations in familiar contexts).

I have no idea why authors feel the need to sprinkle other languages into their fiction without knowing the language very well or getting a beta who does. And even then, as a reader it annoys me unless I also read the language at least decently. I loathe not being able to follow all story parts. And yeah, there's hover text and what not, but that won't work on mobile devices or e-readers, so you are stuck with disruptive footnotes...

Comments

[lilacsigil]

The only thing I hate more than non-fluent insertions of other languages* would have to be written-out accents. There are a very small number of authors who can do this well, generally with their own dialect, and I have never seen it done well in fanfiction.

*Occasionally a multilingual author can do something really fun with different languages, so I added non-fluent

[ratcreature]

You can do interesting things with multilingual texts but I think for it to truly work it has to be like codeswitching in spoken language, where both people have to be (near) fluent in both languages. So the author and the reader need to know both. Like I imagine if you wrote a local Quebecois story for a Quebecois audience you could put English in because you can't escape its presence to be purely francophone. Random French words in an English story to label somebody Quebecois works much less.

But I agree rendered accents are even more horrible. People sometimes try this in German too with awful results.

I mean, traditionally before language standardization put pressure on the regional dialects they were very different from standard. The whole point of having written standard German was to create an mutually intelligible language that was the same everywhere, but in that form was spoken nowhere. I can tolerate regional vocabulary as signifier but not dialects. Unless it is a "dialect" that has a written form anyway because it is more a language, like Low German, but then I can't really read it any longer. I mean, depending on the dialect rendered I wouldn't even understand it, there's a reason they are often subtitled on tv and dialect speakers will switch for non-locals.

Also it looks ridiculous. Even if you rendered my region's German phonetically, despite it being very close to standard, as people here used to speak Low German and gave that up in favor of mutual intelligibility, it would look nothing like correctly written German. Half the Gs are weakened to ch, a lot of Ts omitted, some L sound like J, some vocals are lengthened others shortened compared to standard, obviously things are contracted (you never write contractions but spoken German contracts in various locally different ways)... It would look idiotic.

And I'm not even sure how you'd best transcribe it. I mean absolutely faithfully transcribed spoken language like you see in linguistics texts discussing some language feature or another is near impenetrable to read. Written language runs so smoothly because of the mutually agreed upon conventions, and for accents we don't have those.

[hamsterwoman]

I hope you don't mind a drive-by comment from a random person (I was checking friendsfriends on LJ and saw this post...)

clearly wanted an imperative (it had an exclamation point and everything) but put in an infinitive form

Actually, depending on context, this could be legitimate, correct usage. (Or a more subtle error. Or, of course, exactly what you say, flawed machine translation / looking stuff up in the dictionary without realizing the grammar behind it.)

The infinitive is one of the ways to convey a command in Russian -- it's more abrupt/rude than the actual imperative. Commands to a dog, for instance: "Sit!" is "сидеть", vs what it would be like informally or politely: сиди(те)/сядь(те), depending on whether they are already sitting or not. Similarly, "Стоять!" (stand) is sort of the equivalent of "Freeze!" (as in, the thing a cop will shout at a criminal). Negative imperatives are also often conveyed this way -- a "no smoking" sign will read "не курить" (not to smoke). Basically, if it's an order rather than a request, the infinitive could well be correct.

[ratcreature]

Okay. Good to know!

Unfortunately regardless it still annoys me having to do more or less puzzle solving to get all the parts of a text. The graduations in my language proficiency in various languages just change my level of annoyance and engagement with the language sprinkles in question. I mean, either way story immersion gets interrupted.

[hamsterwoman]

That's fair! :)

Code-mixing in fiction (I'm thinking pro, not fanfic here) sometimes works for me and sometimes doesn't. I guess mostly it's a case of, if it's true to the characters and integrated well enough that even without speaking the language the reader can follow, then I'm all for it (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was a good example of that for me, even though I don't speak Spanish), and if it's there to just show off the writer's ability to use Google Translate... not so much :P Definitely if it's done with errors it drives me mad.

[ratcreature]

I can't think off-hand of examples where it worked for me, I wouldn't totally discount the possibility, but mostly in my mind stick examples where it mad a lasting bad impression. And not just fanfic, though I have no idea why in pro-fiction the awful errors aren't caught either. Like, what most vividly stuck in my mind from The Time Traveler's Wife was misspelled German (the same simple sentence was repeatedly spelled wrong, so not a simple typo and I kept trying to figure out whether that was supposed to signify something).