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 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.