languages.

[wakeyouupinside]

Okay, briefly. This is more for my clarification than anything else... I mentioned this in my app, but Noriko is from Japan. This would be unremarkable except that when she gets to Izarkland... it's not the same language. She makes a point of learning it. Which does mean that she parrots a lot of things until she gets the hang of what words

Comments

[classprotector]

What I did with Hiro til he figured out the universal translator is assume that the translator does replies in the language he's speaking. So because he's in America, he talks in English and assumes everyone else will be in English, and they are. He'll usually only switch to Japanese for Japanese speakers. And it worked out for me because he wants to get better at English, so even after he figured out the translator, it wasn't hard to keep him primarily in the more comfortable broken English voice. Which...might not be helpful for you at all! But it's worked for me so far.

The biggest advice I'd have is that if it matters, figure out a way to differentiate between Izark!speak and Japanese, just for convenience's sake. I do italics for spoken Japanese, just because it's easier for me.

[wakeyouupinside]

I think that... the translator, for Noriko, may translate into izark!speak by default for her, because that is the language that she has been conversing with other people with... it should let her not know some words and stuff like that, every once in a while.

I don't know how I'm going to handle the Japanese aspect yet, because... I think she'll freak out if she can tell people are speaking it, due to canon reasons. I... I have no idea.

I appreciate your information, though, because Hiro was one of the few characters that came to mind when I was thinking about language!

[classprotector]

That makes sense. I think the translator, like everything else in camp, works in mysterious ways.

I think if you want to avoid her thinking people are speaking Japanese, one thing you might want to do is make names come through the translator differently. Playing Hiro one of the things I noticed most quickly was that Japanese names were, of course, really obvious, and I had more trouble justifying him not speaking in Japanese to people who were, well. Obviously Japanese. So saying that Japanese names come through as something else to Noriko (names like the ones in Izark's country, say), and that they just get translated back when she says them might help with that possible problem. If that makes sense/is a problem.

[sothewindblows]

It's going to have to come up sooner or later, but I may have the translator drop anyone's honorifics and stuff because those. would be really obvious to her. Hmm.