Comments | byslantedlight: Definitions of Britpicking...

byslantedlight

Definitions of Britpicking...

Aug 20, 2009 07:35

Ohmigawd, I have just seen the following sentence in someone's lj...

I did my own Britpicking (with the help of Thingie who is also not British)

To be fair, they didn't do a bad job (way better than alot I've seen), but... what is this definition of Britpicking that you can do it yourself? Isn't that actually just trying your best and not ( Read more... )

writing talk

Comments 20

madmogs August 20 2009, 08:25:41 UTC

I think you woke up grumpy...

I also think you're right, though. It's not as though they're trying to find someone who can beta Zimbabwean English, after all. There are plenty of English people on the Internets.

byslantedlight August 20 2009, 10:27:09 UTC

Hee! *g* I suppose I'm only noticing cos there are some really baaaaaad Brit-missing things in alot of Torchwood fic. Great stories, reeeeeeally bad Brit-checking. I'm so tired of reading about Ianto passing out coffee with cream *headdesk* Milk! We have milk in our coffee, unless you're at tea with your grandma and she's got the doilies out!

*grumps*

*g*

And that said, the person who said that actually really didn't make lots of horrid non-Brit mistakes, but... it's that concept of American can=Brit that just... throws me. And it was mostly stuff that could be caught on the spellcheck... *sighs more, in a grumpy kind of way* Maybe I should go get another coffee. (Made with milk, but in the American style... *g*)

lukadreaming August 20 2009, 09:38:38 UTC

*Sigh*. It would probably make me wary of reading the story. If you're on an LJ comm or a Yahoo list, it really isn't difficult to find a British person to read a story through for you.

byslantedlight August 20 2009, 10:53:16 UTC

To be fair, this story was actually pretty good, Brit-wise - in fact I don't think I was bumped out at all, and her other fic (so far) has been pretty good too. UK spellcheck would have caught the things that were there, though...

It's just the definition of Britpick here that threw me - I'd always assumed that it meant having a Brit pick through the story, so the idea of a non-Brit doing their own seems a little... contrary? *g*

solosundance August 20 2009, 10:20:05 UTC

hee I love morning grumps *g* now see, I'm definitely guilty of this in reverse, if you like. I mean, I've thrown various fics out into the ether which haven't been Ameripicked (or whatever the term should be) and probably sent readers into a complete frenzy ... in my mind these are unbeta'd stories though, not stories where I "did my own [Ameri]picking" ... cos that doesn't make sense. Or maybe it's the same thing *pokes 48 year-old brain* Anyhow - having worked with a fab American beta in writing SPN I am now beside myself with how bloody many Britisms I manage without realising and how very hard it is to spot them yourself. Lesson learned *g* doesn't stop me flinging other unbeta'd stories out into the ether tho ... ahem.

byslantedlight August 20 2009, 11:11:32 UTC

I had weird dreams too, in that interesting-weird way, which was fun... *g*

It was more the definition of Brit-check that got me, as in a Brit check wasn't actually anything to do with having a Brit check through the story... *g*

I fling unbetad stuff out too, but since I'm not writing out of my comfort zone it's not quite as risky - though I'm still mortified by whisky with a "e"... *g* I've been thinking about writing TW, though I don't know if I ever would - it's getting the voices right for me, and that includes getting the slang and so on right, never mind the spellings, cos as soon as one of them went 1970s-Brit a la Pros it'd all be... well, it'd be Pros instead... *g* I worry about modernisms when I'm writing Pros too, mind...

There's a surprising amount that goes on in America that we don't hear about/realise, despite the movies. I thought we were so inundated that we must know almost all the nooks and crannies of American culture, but having lived there for 6 years I know it's far from it! Makes me curious about how ( ... )

krisserci5 August 21 2009, 01:39:36 UTC

thought we were so inundated that we must know almost all the nooks and crannies of American culture, but having lived there for 6 years I know it's far from it! Makes me curious about how they choose what they choose to include on tv/movies,

Just remember USA is so friggin big that what is normal American customs in the South is bad behavior in the North West. We use words differently State to State. Spelling in one area is wrong in school on the other side of the country.

My point, there is no way any movie could accurately depict all of American culture. Movie makers just pick what aspect of culture they want to depict at that time. I'm not sure "they" really care if it's 100% correct.

byslantedlight August 21 2009, 06:49:21 UTC

Just remember USA is so friggin big that what is normal American customs in the South is bad behavior in the North West. We use words differently State to State. Spelling in one area is wrong in school on the other side of the country.
Oh yeah, definitely. And despite being much smaller, geographically, the same thing happens here in England - not even counting Scottish and Welsh differences.

What I was thinking of is something even deeper than those dialectical differences though - there is a definite "American culture" that doesn't come across on tv/movies (or not often), and it's made up of all the little things (just like it's the little things that make the difference over here). Actually MsMoat brought some up by accident a while ago - turning on lights! When we go into a room to turn on lights, we're always always expecting a light fittings that are wired into the building - usually a light in the middle of a ceiling, or possible wall uplighters now. It would be really weird if the main room light switch turned on all ( ... )

probodie August 20 2009, 10:43:59 UTC

Have more coffee *g*

But yes, I would have expected them to pick someone who was actually British *sigh*

byslantedlight August 20 2009, 11:12:53 UTC

Oh, I'm so tempted... I seem to have decided that I want to live on coffee at the moment... *g*

And yes! To me Brit-pick was having a Brit pick over the story! Innit weird how people have definitions of things that you're so not expecting?!

miwahni August 20 2009, 11:18:21 UTC

I would expect that Britpicking be done by a native speaker; the thing about most differences is that unless you're raised / lived in the culture you're not actually aware of the differences a lot of the time. Not so much with slang or particular sayings, which are usually fairly well-known, but in the names of ordinary things.

byslantedlight August 20 2009, 11:28:22 UTC

Yeah, totally agree, although you'd think that Brit/American checking have been talked about often enough in fandom that you'd have some idea...

I suppose I'm lucky (or just annoyingly picky as a result... *g*) in that when I was about five I was reading to my teacher and mispronounced "laboratory", because I'd only ever heard it aloud in Batfink and other cartoons (*g*) - my teacher explained then that there was a difference in the way Americans and Brits pronounced words, and that as Australians we used either, but tended towards the Brit forms... And then other primary school teachers explained about spelling differences, and then I eventually moved to the UK, and there were still differences I'd not come across before, and then I moved to the US, and whoah... *g* So... I know I'm hyper-aware, but ( ... )