I'm somewhat pissed...

[west_side]

Perhaps I should stop reading the links that come down via metafandom

...I imagine that for every ­second-­language writer there is a moment of choice, and then, after that, probably many additional moments of ­choosing.This article, of course, is not to discount the value of bilingual writers. There's nothing condescending about the remarks about how they'

Comments

[tejas]

As if writing a story, in English, for example, from the perspective of a person who is multi-cultural *doesn't* "serve" multi-culturalism. It sounds like they're saying the language used is more important than the concepts presented.

[west_side]

I somewhat agree that the concepts are dependent on the language. The language indicates the intended audience, and if you write for the outsiders, you'd self-censor out the concepts that wouldn't be clear to them. In some sense you initiate the dialog, trying to take your points across. If you write for the insiders and get translated, then you only allow the outsiders to listen in to the conversation that is not intended for them.

[glitterburn]

I'm not sure there is a choice, tbh. My German friends write in English because they find it more accessible for writing their ideas for fic and because the language is more flexible than German. Audience comes into it too, of course, but from what they say, it's a secondary consideration.

I do agree with what the article said about translations. There's a definite paucity of them about and the mass market bestseller types (Christian Jacq is the worse example) seem to have been translated through Babelfish. It's so rare to find a good translation these days.

[west_side]

Books that are translated from English often suffer from the same. Babelfish quality. And all those little details are lost because translators have no idea what they mean.

[kazaera]

The *fuck*?

I made the "choice" to write in English because, um, I only ever read English books. As a result, I *know* how to write in English. Sit me in front of a piece of paper and tell me to write in German and I will stare at you blankly. Sure, there are plenty of deep allusions and stuff you can make in German, but there are those in English as well! The difference is that in English I have a chance of using them!

And for the love of god, polysemy is just polysemy. Stop patting yourself on the back because Hebrew uses one word for a number of connected concepts where English uses several. All languages do that. It does not make Hebrew superior, which is sort of the vibe I'm getting here. I can grant it might make things difficult if you're writing multicultural stuff, but not all of us have to do that, k? That stuff is difficult *when you translate*. If you're writing in that language TO BEGIN WITH, the problem never bloody well arises in the first place.

Of course, I wouldn't really consider myself bicultural, because I didn

[west_side]

Yeah, your experience is not exotic and authentic enough. Not brewed in accordance with the German Purity Law of 1516. You're screwing up the anthropological studies by mere existence.

[kazaera]

Lol, is that a beer reference I see there?

And here I thought the only things I couldn't participate in because my existence would mess them up were the studies about accents and second language acquisition. :( (I fall into a very weird grey quantum area in between native and non-native, having learned English when I was five.)

[west_side]

When confronted with Warsteiner Dunkel I'm losing my willpower.