20 May 2016 @ 01:00 pm
ATTF: Languages  
Inspired by our two favourite assassins, this week’s ATTF topic is languages. Specifically languages and how they’re portrayed in media.

We know that Natasha’s first language is Russian and, in the comics at least, Clint can ‘speak’ sign language. Considering that they’re spies and have a history of travelling the world it’s likely that they also speak other languages.

I’ve seen comics portray other languages by putting an asterisk to a translation, or to a note saying ‘they’re actually speaking in X’. The excellent David Aja was creative the Hawkeye comics in his portrayal of languages – and hearing difficulties – in speech bubbles, but also using sign language, body language, and even symbols for a dog’s-eye view of the world:





What do you think about how languages are shown in the films and comics? What about other media and what about in fanfiction? How have you seen other languages depicted, how do you like to see them depicted, and is that dependent on circumstances? For example, if the protagonist isn’t meant to be able to understand the language/s they’re hearing. How have you depicted other languages?

Feel free to bring other films, tv shows, books, and media into this conversation. For example, in Firefly to show how the American and Asian cultures had merged in the future – and so that the characters could swear creatively – the English speaking cast swore in, and emphasised points in, Mandarin. But then I’m curious, if we’d had an Asian character would they have sworn in English?

And those of you from non-English countries, tell us about translations, dubbing, seeing your own languages as ‘foreign’, all the things. Lets talk about things that are lost in translation. Let’s talk about accents and dialect. Let's talk about swearing and getting creative with curses. Let’s talk about Allspeak and how that even works.

Let’s talk about talking: go!


Things to remember:
1) Always label NSFW (Not Safe For Work) stuff in the title and post under a cut.
2) Fic and artwork needs to have a rating and warnings (or you can say that you’ve chosen not to use warnings).
3) For people with annoying internet connections, say in the title if a comment is graphic/images/gif-heavy and post picspams under a cut.
4) Have a damn good time! (Because if that’s not happening then this post has clearly failed.)
 
 
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[identity profile] alphaflyer.livejournal.com on May 20th, 2016 10:55 pm (UTC)
Great topic!! Many different observations here, in no particular order, plus it's after midnight at the end of a 60 hour work week so I'll just list them:

1. I LOVE Hawkeye #19 and the visual absence of language. Absolutely brilliant.

2. Language and POV are closely linked. There's more to language than different tongues -- it's also got to do with class, and education, and frame of reference. One of my favourite things to do as a writer is to make sure that you can tell which characters speak by the way they express themselves. For me, Clint tends to use contractions, often speaks in monosyllables and staccato, and drops verbs ("You done with that?"), while Natasha speaks in longer, more sophisticated sentences. For Lucky, in a story where one subchapter is written in his POV (By the Book (http://archiveofourown.org/works/5797621)), I used repetitive imagery, trying to capture verbally the way David Aja had him think in pictures.

3. Pretty much everyone with a German accent in the MCU is HYDRA. (Except that old Gentleman in Stuttgart.) For an organization that is pretty much global and considered the Nazis an impediment to their expansion, why is the entire leadership German-speaking? And that the idea of having, say, a black or Asian HYDRA agent would "complicate" things, even though HYDRA, unlike National Socialism, has no noticeable race- or religion-based ideology? So, instead, German accents are still, 70+ years after WW2, profiled so as to equate evil -- a lazy shorthand.

4. The worst thing in fanfic is when someone, in an effort to appear cosmopolitan and well-travelled, uses Google translate for whole sentences/passages (it's okay for single words that require no conjugation or declension). Seriously. Just .... don't.

5. Having immersed myself in Star Trek mostly after I moved to Canada, it is the oddest thing to read Voyager fanfic in my native German. It sounds so ... stilted and unnatural! And don't get me started on dubbing! Where we live now we get a lot of German TV and I actually watched a bit of the Avengers with Other People's Voices once, and man! That was bizarre. *shudders*





Edited 2016-05-20 10:56 pm (UTC)
inkvoices: avengers:natasha thinky[personal profile] inkvoices on May 21st, 2016 12:08 am (UTC)
1. Aja was so. damn. good. at visual depiction of language and lack of language. When I reread I'm in awe all over again.

2. YES.

3. Ha, also yes. I think it's coded into Western media that German = bad guys, also Russian and that entire branch of the European language tree, but definitely German. Let's have a German SHIELD Agent or something, buck the trend!

4. This is one of the things that puts me off using other languages in fic, to be honest; lack of knowing what I'm really doing and not wanting to rely on unreliable translations. So I tend to use italics or formatting to signify when someone isn't speaking English, but I think I'd like to play around with other ways.

5. Really? Do you think that has anything to do with - to my limited, mainly sister-school of Star Trek knowledge - how American Star Trek is?

5b. Dubbing. Just no.