*flails wildly*

[donutsweeper]

In news of the awesome in nature, faikit on AO3 has translated my MCU fic "Old Dog, New Bun" into Russian!

Oddly enough, my one semester of Russian twenty-mumble years ago isn't enough for me to be able to read it, but it looks awesome and I'm super thrilled they liked my story enough to do a translation of it. If you know any Russian please go take a look at "Старый хот-дог, новая обертка" and drop them a comment or kudos!

Comments

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

That's pretty impressive for Google! I suspect it is constantly improving with that kind of thing.

Fandom, and reading fanfics by authors from other countries, has really opened my eyes to how many different terms and phrases people can have for things and OOC it can sounds when you hear the some of those things out of different characters' mouths. Some are easy dialect switches (i.e. lift/elevator) but some are whole phrases that are just oddly disjointed words to someone in a different culture (there was one fic I read where a (US) character was positive another didn't like him because he didn't bring grapes when he visited him in the hospital and I was all.. o.O and confused because I didn't know that was a thing people did in certain cultures)

[awanderingbard.livejournal.com]

As much as I try to mimic British ways of speaking in my writing, even Britpicked, I know the way I word things can be very North American sometimes. You're right, it's more than just words, it's the way they're ordered and used. One thing I like to do is go to IDEA (http://dialectsarchive.com) and find the region my character is from to get a feel of how they sound. I don't like doing phonetic accents unless my character is having trouble understanding or making a point of how odd it sounds to them, but even getting the rhythm of how it sounds is helpful when choosing words for them.

And I remember confusing someone very badly when I called a tortoise a turtle, because of all the things in the world, I never thought that they would be such distinct creatures in England as to require clarification. In fact, it took me quite a lot of research even after it was pointed out to find out exactly what the problem was. It comes down to: a turtle has fins and a tortoise has legs. At least where I am, any creature with a shell is a turtle, but in England, unless it's in the sea, it's a tortoise. Someone was very distressed about this.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

I love the dialects archive!

I had no idea that was the actual difference between turtles and tortoises. I mean, I knew they were actually different creatures, but not the specifics of how they were different.

Dialects are so difficult! Especially in fic where you're trying to get the sense of someone's accent without writing it out (I've come across far too many authors who attempt writing out accents and it can be terribly painful to try to read them sometimes) but a lot of times you can get by with just using the little things like "I've not" vs "I haven't" or whatever to give the greater sense of their rhythm of speech.

[awanderingbard.livejournal.com]

a lot of times you can get by with just using the little things like "I've not" vs "I haven't" or whatever to give the greater sense of their rhythm of speech.

Yes, exactly that! I do that with child characters, too, to show their age. Dialogue is my favourite part of writing, I love coming up with how original characters speak and distinguish them from each other.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

It shows what a dedicated writer you are to do that :)