any language questions will go here

[kaigou]

Questions for DE-fandom

From one of the beta-reviewers, this point/question, about this question:

Schreibst du auch eigene Geschichten/freie Arbeiten?

"...original fiction stories were mostly called "Originale" ... "freie Arbeiten" comes from the original fiction category of fanfiktion.de ... but I'd never call it that. Is it possible to discuss this with the other betas? Three parallel words
might be a bit much? *ponders*"

Any suggestions? What's the most common/best-known way to refer to "original fiction (as in, NOT fanfiction)" versus "fanfiction" -- which admittedly can be highly original, hence the massive confusion THANK YOU ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

Just thought I'd toss it out there. Once the translations are finalized, this post will come down, but until then, feel free to weigh in.

Also, question for other French speakers (in comments).

Comments

[ravensilver]

I would make the distinction as follows:

"eigene Fangeschichten" (own fanfictions)
"Originale" (original works)

[kaigou]

Since the question is about whether you write original fiction (not fanfiction), then "eigene Fangeschichten" doesn't apply (in this particular question) ... but I have no idea where I'd put the "Originale".

You're doing this just to test me, aren't you? I'm telling you, I remember nothing of that year of German! Nothing! Except maybe the part about High German and, uhm... something else. Nothing specific, just that they EXIST. And that I should thank my lucky stars my father was never stationed in Kaiserslautern because the AF kids there are Bad News And Your Father And I Don't Want To Expose You To That Kind of Element, so... in short, my German is, well, not. But I can say hello, goodbye, and "A glass of wine right away" in Swedish. Does that count?

[ravensilver]

Then I'd not put two different designations but rather just put "Originalgeschichten". That incorporates everything that is original, yours, story etc.

*gg*

Of course. *snicker*

Oh... then I have a hard one for you. A friend of mine posted this on his FB: "En uke fri." And no, it's not German. ^^

[kaigou]

"En uke fri."

Great. I'm going to be trying to parse that one out, all day. I get the uke but the rest...

my linguistic neurons are tired!

[ravensilver]

It's Norwegian and means "One week off."

A friend of mine posted that because he's going on a sailing cruise to Oslo soon. ^^

Just so we keep your linguistic neurons intact. <3

[kaigou]

*kills you ded*

You're doing this on PURPOSE!

*splody*

[ravensilver]

Who? Little old me?

I never...!

*runs and hides*

[khana]

i suppose in that case "Schreibst du auch Originalgeschichten/Freie Arbeiten?" (in case ff.de users just don't *know* the term "Originale") would be the best solution?

[ravensilver]

I would really leave out the "Freie Arbeiten" since it's not clear. "Originalgeschichten" is enough.
"Freie Arbeiten" sounds too much like something you're doing either for work or as a commission.

[billie]

Completely unrelated, but -- fancy meeting you here! :D

[ravensilver]

Actually, now that I think about it, you should be thankful that you were up in the *north* of Germany! Just think how much fun you would have had down here in the *south* where I am! *gg* We *love* our dialect. *evil snicker*

[sevilemar]

One of my flatmates is from Bavaria, and when she talks to her folks, I can't understand most of it^^ But it was the same with the father of another friend, who came from the deep east (Erzgebirge). I really had to strain my ears to understand the general gist of his words^^

[kaigou]

Ahaha, yeah. I remember asking my step-mother about some dialect in Sweden, and she replied: "I'm pretty sure they speak Swedish there. It's a Swedish that no one else on the planet can understand, but it's still considered Swedish."

[ravensilver]

My still-husband's from the Westerwald - the area around Koblenz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koblenz). It's taken me *years* to get to the point where I can *understand* most of what they're saying. Don't even *think* about trying to speak it.

Here we have several Bavarian dialects because I'm living in what's considered to be Swabia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swabia). The closer you get to the Alps, the worse it gets.

[billie]

Bavaria ≠ Germany. :P And that's at least something both sides agree on, mostly...

All jokes aside though, it's amazing how much it takes to get used to hearing "your" language spoken in a dialect different to what you grew up with. Anything north of Kassel is pretty much a-okay, but go further south and I'll be wearing a "?" expression pretty much permanently -- and that's after living 5+ years slapdash in the middle of Swabia.

[dancing_serpent]

*g* I grew up near Hanover, speaking nothing but High German. It was quite a shock for me when I moved to Hesse.

[billie]

High German is a highly relative thing. Seen as linguistically speaking "high German" refers to the dialects spoken around Swabia, Baden and the Swiss border (Alemannisch) ... but I digress.

It's weird, isn't it. It's just baffling to notice cultural differences where you aren't expecting any, and language is a huge part of that ...

[dancing_serpent]

*g* Maybe I should have decided on "standard German" when I looked for "Hochdeutsch" on Leo, then.

Oh yeah, so true. Also, baffling but fascinating, too.

[sevilemar]

I'm for "eigene Geschichten/Originale", because only one of those could be misinterpreted in one way or other, but both make very clear what is meant, imho. My experience is that people use both terms interchangeably, depending on context.

[khana]

what i was wondering was, if this thing is linked on ff.de, do they even know those term, or is "freie arbeiten" something that they *do* call those stories, there? That always made me wonder.

[sevilemar]

Hm, I did a quick search of the forums (category Schreiben Allgemein) and I've found four times more mentioning of "Original/Originale" than of "freie Arbeiten". The latter is mostly used when cataloging or reccing things in this section, sometimes in the sense we want here. The former is used in referring to the source text as much as in referring to the sense we're looking for. It's not very conclusive, I'm afraid.

[khana]

well, then they know the terms, at least, so "eigene Geschichten/Originale", or, as suggested above, "(eigene) Originalgeschichten" should work well.

Thanks for checking that.

(Bed, now. Really. Morgen Vorstellungsgespräch.)

[sevilemar]

"eigene Geschichten/Originale", or, as suggested above, "(eigene) Originalgeschichten" should work well.
Both are fine with me.

Good night and good luck!

[rodo]

When I was still a mod, there were two types of users: one who came from Animexx and only knew it as "Eigene Geschichte" or something like that (don't quite remember the word choice) and the other who got confused whenever I started calling them "Originale".

In my experience, German fandom is just terribly fractured, which is why I translated it so oddly. (Plus "Original" is also used to refer to canon in the poll, right?)

[kaigou]

Plus "Original" is also used to refer to canon in the poll, right?)

I did something a little strange in the survey, in that I use "writer" to mean fanfiction writing, and "Author" to refer to the author/creator of a canon. I used "story" as a synonym for "canon", where "canon" would've made for a very awkward sentence, and I used "fic" when I was talking about fanfic specifically. Which means: a writer could also write "origfic" (original fiction, stories) but could also write fic based on an Author's story.

This is possibly a nuance that you only get if you've got the nuances of English down pat, I'm thinking. Not sure. I did put definitions at the tops of some of the pages, though, where I thought they might be most useful, so it's not like that can't be done in the German version, too, if the terms might otherwise be confusing. Just something that clarifies that ___ refers to ___, and the term ___ refers only to ____.

[rodo]

Oh, it was always clear what it meant in the context. I did translate the writer/author thing accordingly, so I suppose I must of done the same with the fic/canon thing too. The RAM in my brain has been otherwise used since, so I have trouble remembering. I mentioned that mostly because having been a mod on ff.de has sharpened my senses to every possible misinterpretation. The users there are ace at finding them. Murphy's Law in practice.

[kaigou]

What do you call a novel that you buy in the bookstore? That's the gist of the question, really. Whether the person writes anything that would be classed as "writing you could eventually publish with your own name on it," which (setting aside out-of-copyright works) normally would exclude the majority of fanfiction.

Shorter answer: I can't tell what the terms are that's causing the debate, to help clarify where the original question was intended, to in turn give any guidance to where the translated version would go.

Even shorter would be: what's eigene Geschichten? XD

[ravensilver]

I call a novel a novel. ("Roman")

The problem with "eigene Geschichten" is that it's ambiguous. "Eigene" implies "own" - but it doesn't clarify whether you're just the author of the story, or whether you've actually thought up the story on your own - thus non-fanfiction. So you'd have to put that 'original' in there. That tells the reader that it can only be non-fanfiction that's called for. That's why I pulled both together (one of the wonderful things about the German language) and made "Originalgeschichten" out of it.

I *did* ask my colleague - who's responsible for all the project handling and beta-reading in our combined publishing house - and she said that "Originalgeschichten" would be understandable.

[billie]

+1 for this explanation, that's the way I would've put it, too.

Originalgeschichten looks like a nice compromise though! Maybe put "Originalgeschichten" first and then, later, abbreviate it as "Originale"? But then that might be even more confusing, idk.

[sevilemar]

In context of fandom, we call it "das Original" (when referring to the source text). Out of fandom, it's called novel (Roman) or with its genre name, eg "Krimi" for crime novel, or "Historischer Roman" for historic novels.

[khana]

eigene geschichten = own stories

Originale = original fiction (in a fandom context)

what's interesting to know there is that there is in german fandom a LARGE subset of folks who write original fic, but that completely works on fandom dynamics, with archives and everything. (e.g. "original yaoi". < a href="http://boyxboy.bidan.de/bxb2009/efiction/index.php">like this. Looks like every other fanfic archive, doesn't it?) and (usually) in these fandoms people are not really after "proper" publication.

so, a novel you buy in a bookstore is a "Roman". Or a short story collection, "Kurzgeschichtensammlung". But these terms don't help at all in the context of the survey, since 'stuff that can be published' is not nececarily what they should understand.

[kaigou]

That whole 'original yaoi' thing is gaining ground in the English ebook world, too. The one that stumped me was coming across a site that sold "original fanfiction" which... frankly, I have no idea what that is. Isn't that a contradiction in terms? Or, something, I don't know. I didn't actually dig any deeper, because the cover art (or more like, the total lack of it) scared me and I ran back to my favorite hidey-holes for unoriginal fanfiction. Or something like that.

[dancing_serpent]

Oh, that's a tough one for me. I spent almost 15 years in a German science fiction writer's club where everybody wrote "eigene Geschichten" and most of those were really fanfiction, even if they weren't labeled as such. That went so far that nobody even thought of mentioning the original author or gave any kind of credit or disclaimer.

So, when I hear "eigene Geschichten" I still think of fanfiction.

[kaigou]

But did they identify it as fanfiction? I would think that one trademark of fanfiction is the requirement that you denote credit (in some way, however limited) to the canonical author. That doesn't always mean a lengthy disclaimer, but most fandoms I've seen do, in some way, expect you to clearly label (or make it clearly known) that you're working in a fanfiction framework. But wouldn't it be even more ambiguous if it's (fan)fiction that has labels and expectations (or lack of both), and for which the story could just as easily be true original fiction? If there's nothing otherwise to differentiate, I mean.

[dancing_serpent]

No, they didn't identify them as fanfiction. Maybe because the main fandom we were writing for was Perry Rhodan, which was and still is written by multiple authors.

But none of the stories (published in a quarterly zine) were labeled in any way, fanfiction or original. No ratings or warnings either, no story header at all. For example: the two fics I did for that zine did have nothing but my nickname on them, and one was fanfic and the other was an original story.

[kaigou]

Doh. That is a completely different way of structuring one's sense of fanfiction, ownership, etc, than modern-US fandom does. I wonder, is that the way it worked in the original Star Trek fandoms? No identification because everyone already knew?

This is totally off-topic for this thread but still: who first started doing disclaimers, anyway?

[dancing_serpent]

No identification because everyone already knew?
Could be. Also, we had/have contact to the publishers and some of the authors and they definitely knew/know about our fanfiction and sometimes even read them, too.

That reminds me...several of us did write their own official novel for the Perry Rhodan series which was published in the same format as the original by the original publishers. Those had the subtitle "Fan-Edition" - wait, here's the link to a review (German) with picture..

My first contact with disclaimers was when I branched out from that group and started reading in English-speaking fandoms.

[dancing_serpent]

Hmmm...now you have me thinking...I definitely have to check the old zines. Maybe there was something like a general disclaimer in the "about us" section and I missed it?

[soukup]

Here's my possibly dumb question for any French-speakers who might be reading this post: une fanfic, ou un? I haven't had much contact with French-speaking fandom, so I haven't run across this much, but I feel like when I have it's been "une" -- a feeling which is confirmed by Wikipedia, and by the usage patterns I see in what sites come up under a quick Google search. Also by the fact that most abbreviations in French tend to keep the gender the full word originally had. Has anyone in here ever seen "un fanfic" in use?

Voici ma question peut-être un peu stupide pour tout francophone qui lise ce poste: une fanfic ou un? J'ai eu très peu de contacte avec le fandom francophone, alors je croise rarement ce mot, mais je crois que les peu de fois que je l'ai vu c'était « une » -- une possibilité que Wikipedia confirme, aussi bien que l'usage dans d'autres sites web que j'ai trouvés avec Google. Je sais aussi que la plupart des abréviations en français prennent le genre que portait originellement le mot entier. Y a-t-il quelqu'un ici qui ait jamais vu "un fanfic" en usage?

[sevilemar]

I have two things for the German translation:

1. "unexplored" as in "unexplored tension" was translated as "unklar", which I'm not totally happy about, but even after wracking my brain for hours I can't come up with a better term.

2. Does the concept of cultural appropriation even exist in the German language? And if it does, how best to translate "appropriative" (as in smth. feels too appropriative to do)?

[kaigou]

Specifically about cultural appropriation: I've noticed both the French and German (can't recall if the Spanish, too) inserted "cultural" in some form into that sentence. It's not there in the English version, because it seemed to me there were other ways to appropriate than just cultural: you could appropriate someone's religion, sexuality, lifestyle... or maybe those are just smaller, more localized versions of 'cultural', but the term 'cultural appropriation' (to me, at least) seemed to exclude those smaller versions.

Is there a concept of appropriation, itself, in german? (outside of whether it's cultural) I'd think that if it's possible to be broad and still understood... and it just dawned on me, I can't think of a way to define 'appropriative' in thirty words or less.


well, actually, I'm not sure I could define anything in thirty words or less, but that's just me, not the words being defined

[sevilemar]

or maybe those are just smaller, more localized versions of 'cultural', but the term 'cultural appropriation' (to me, at least) seemed to exclude those smaller versions.
Interesting. I added "cultural" because I've never came across appropriation without the adjective attached, so that in my mind, they form a standing phrase together. Also, I had no German concept to compare it to, so there. If we're about to come up with a translation anyway (which we'll have to if we ever want to get this thing finished), we can make sure it encompasses what you've said as well.

Is there a concept of appropriation, itself, in german?
I don't think there is, no. We have "aneignen", which is the same in meaning but totally lacking the negative connotations that "to appropriate" has. We have "übernehmen" but that doesn't reflect the difference in status between the two parties. Every other thing I can think of is even less fitting or needs more words than this comment.

[kaigou]

In English, the term 'appropriation' (as you note) has negative connotations, and I've been trying to think of alternate ways to say it, that convey the same thing. There's the element of disrespect, of course, which is also a difficult term to translate into French (for instance) because the terms I know in French are all much more specific. Like, insubordination, which implies being of lower rank/standing and going against something of higher/upper rank -- and that's not the same as being disrespectful... but neither is 'disrespect' necesarrily 'impolite' or 'rude'. I mean, it can be, but you can be incredibly courteous and still be disrespectful. (In fact, sometimes being too-polite is a form of disrespect itself!)

You're right that 'appropriate' does imply some kind of difference in status, but when you get into intersecting oppressions, then one's story might be appropriative but not necessarily because you're of higher taking on lower. You might be equally low (err, that sounds bad) but in different ways... So maybe the version that doesn't imply status-difference actually works better.

Now if only we had a way to say that, in English! Because 'appropriate' does imply a status-difference, but I can see how having a word that means similar but without status-commentary might be a good thing.

[sevilemar]

Oh God, this is melting my brain!! (also, do you have anyone sending you the spreadsheet with the German version of the alterations you did? Because I kinda forgot it and have just recovered your mail while I was going through my mail again only to realize that I kinda suck at the moment and can't do it properly and so I don't know if and when I have the time to translate, but beta work would prblby. be fine and oh god, I'm babbling)

So maybe the version that doesn't imply status-difference actually works better.
It also has no negative connotations (except maybe in a business context), so doesn't really work either. Argh!

but I can see how having a word that means similar but without status-commentary might be a good thing.
Maybe we both get to be creative, then^^

[kaigou]

Maybe we both get to be creative, then

OR WE JUST CHANGE THE QUESTION.*

As for spreadsheet - someone sent me a bunch of changes, and I need to find time (hopefully tonight) to put those in the spreadsheet, so at least that much is done. I'll send back out again when I've got that much.

* this is kind of like the statistical version of "when all else fails, RUN AWAY," I suspect. ehehehe.