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

[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.