#just language things

[ghostlament]

It's never not funny to me when Shadowheart says she's Sharran in game because in my language it sounds like šaran which means

carp

[nordic-language-love]

there’s this friend i haven’t talked to or heard from much over the past few months so i thought i’d send her a message to see if she’s okay but i couldn’t decide whether to say “hi” or “hey” or “hey there” so i just sent her a cool etymology fact instead and tbh this is probably why i don’t have friends

[chibisfanartcave]

Hey how are you doing I forgot to ask

Im good, i recently bought the first two manga books for mha now that they are translated and in stores…. though im having a hard time stopping myself from laughing whenever they say the word quirk, since the word they use is very similar too the name of a fish. so now i just keep thinking about everyone throwing fish around instead of using they’re quirks.    

god i love language sometimes.

[nordic-vibes]

when you switch from swedish to german and suddenly write something like “en Junge och eine kvinna”

[kotikala]

Actually, now that I think about it, English is actually a very gendered language for not being a very gendered language…… (like German or Spanish) ……

Also, have a daily dose of awesomeness!

Right, though?

And it's not even really grammatical gender in English either - that shit's been gone for centuries. It's deliberate socialisation and conditioning to interpret a vast amount of English words in a gendered way where the words may not actually be gendered. It's also repetition of conventions to use gendered language even if the meaning is neutral or in place of words that are neutral. The English I've been exposed to and have learnt as my primary language is heavily covertly and implicitly gendered, even if not overtly grammatically. It's all a binary system too.

And thank you!!! Have an ASL sign I came across randomly!

[kotikala]

I have just discovered some Finnish dramas on Netflix, and it’s nice that the subtitles reflect more of what’s being said (as opposed to being dubbed), but would you have any idea why not all dialogue is subtitled…?

Ah that's another thing I've noticed with Finnish shows and subtitling/captioning!

The ones that come to mind immediately are Sorjonen (English-language title: Bordertown) and a little web series called Luottomies (Wingman). From what I can catch if I watch either with English subtitles, yeah, whatever is expressed in Finnish tends to be expressed in English subtitles as well.

I haven't watched Sorjonen with Finnish subtitles/captions yet, but Luottomies does have the patterns I've noticed of the subtitles/captions not reflecting what's actually being said. We would watch certain episodes for my class and do activities with them; one of the things I usually did was to find a little section of dialogue and listen to it over and over again so I could record in writing the subtitle/caption, the translation, and then what was actually said. Here's one I did:

Tekstitykset (Subtitles):

Myyjä: Hei! Mitä sais olla? (Seller: Hi! What'll [it] be?) Tommi: Hei. Synttärikakku nimellä Mäkinen-Renwall. (Tommi: Hi. Birthday cake for [name] Mäkinen-Renwall.) Myyjä: Hetkinen. (Seller: Just a moment.)

Puhuttu (Spoken):

Myyjä: Hei. Mitä se teille sais olla? (Seller: Hi. What'll it be for you?) Tommi: Hei! Eeh Mäkinen-Renwall nimellä synttärikakku. (Tommi: Hi! Er, [name] Mäkinen-Renwall has a birthday cake.*) Myyjä: Hetki pien’. (Seller: One moment.)

*The re-arranged word order works in Finnish but not in English, so this is my next-best approximation for English, albeit a tad awkward.

It's not like the dialogue would have made the subtitles/captions too long, there's minimal difference between the two sets.

I honestly don't know why these alterations are made. I don't understand why what's actually spoken wouldn't be rendered in writing verbatim, especially if there is plenty of space and/or timing in the frames and scenes to do so. I can't make sense of it.

I've noticed this too in the film Amélie (which I mentioned in another answer). There's one scene where she's in a cinema watching a film, and she says a couple of things that stand out:

English Subtitle: I like noticing little details that no one else sees. Spoken French: Puis j'aime bien repérer le petit détail que personne ne verra jamais. Closer Translation: And I really like to spot the little detail(s) that no one will ever see.

English Subtitle: But I hate it in old movies when drivers don't watch the road. Spoken French: Par contre j'aime pas dans les vieux films américains quand les conducteurs regardent pas la route. Closer Translation: However, I don't like [it] in old American films when [the] drivers don't watch/look at the road.

Here too I don't understand the discrepancies. The second quote is actually what got me to start paying attention to dialogue vs subtitles years ago. It irked me so much because English and French have a lot in common, and can take up very similar amounts of space and timing in film. Some things don't directly translate between the two, but more things do than I think many people generally realise. The English translations have stood out as misrepresentative and skewed to me since. There was no reason to omit words, intensify the emotions, or create nuance where there needn't be any.

The last one I can think of is the Swedish-Danish series Bron/Broen (The Bridge), and it happens a lot in this that entire lines of dialogue just aren't subtitled/captioned/translated. I can't remember the specific episode I'm thinking of right now, but I still haven't been able to get the missing dialogue. Pretty sure it was Swedish and Danish dialogue too.

I don't know if the dialogue was deemed 'unimportant' for some reason and intentionally left out, if it maybe was included but there was a technology issue that caused it to go missing and it hasn't been fixed, if something else happened that I don't know...I don't know. But it drives me mad whenever I rewatch the series. Characters are clearly reacting to the dialogue at times, but my audio processing and grasp of Swedish and (especially) Danish aren't strong enough to catch it yet.

I think the only kind of explanation I've been able to form is that it may be an autistic/non-autistic thing, or more broadly an ND/'NT' thing. I know that my being ND and particularly autistic influences how I view language and translation, and why I'm a firm supporter of the most verbatim translations possible. I want to know the base information so that I can analyse, interpret, and infer on my own.

Too many of the subtitles/captions/translations I see, though, look like someone else's interpretation of dialogue. Sometimes this can help if there are unspoken things that need to be coded into words a certain way in order to work across languages. Interpreting and translating objectively from a sociocultural framework makes perfect sense. But usually I just end up with more work to do to identify and remove a bias. I have to shift to the source language and sometimes learn enough of that in order to translate on my own, and/or just understand the dialogue in that language and bypass needing a translation entirely.

Maybe many non-autistics and 'NTs' are fine with another's interpretation as their guide. Maybe they don't even think about it or realise, especially if they're adding their own interpretations and inferences onto it, making things more and more indirect. I don't know.

But that's the most I've been able to suspect. Otherwise, subtitles/captions/translations that do not match dialogue seem a bit shoddy to me.

[kotikala]

Something that I always get hung up on, and it may or may not be kind of trivial, is when I’m thinking a sentence and not saying it out loud, is how I’m supposed to roll my r’s in my head…? Or, do I just not do that, mentally?

I deleted emojis, so *shrugs*

Oooooh I'm not the only one who thinks about this too!

I didn't even know how to roll my r's for years, into my late teens. Part of why I took French in school instead of other languages is because I could actually pronounce the French r's.

But I love the sound of tapped and trilled r's, especially in Icelandic and Welsh (oh god, the voiceless ones especially hhhhhhhhhhhh). They are sensory bliss to my ears. I specifically listened to Sigur Rós obsessively trying to mimic the sounds and figure out how to do it. I'd find vocabulary lists in languages I liked, try to listen to them and mimic them, over and over for years. I'd exhaust myself trying, not get it, feel discouraged, and stop for a time. But always come back.

And then one day I'm looking at Swedish words, not really paying attention but just saying words casually, and I hit 'bröd' (bread) and my tongue just rrrrrrrrrrred. I think I jumped and almost knocked something over; I was so startled that I had finally done it without trying, but I didn't know what it would feel like? I took a pause to process, and then tried it again - and did it again!

And since then I've just gotten better and better at it. I still have days where I can't, and I have trouble doing it after certain sounds ([d], [t], [s], [θ], and [ð], and in consonant clusters of languages like Georgian and the Western South Slavics in the Balkans).

It's still very much a sound that doesn't yet feel like mine. I don't even mean that in a possessive way, I think I just mean that I don't have an intimate connection to the sound, so I can't hear it in my mind's voice. I always have to substitute it with an audio memory of someone else making the sound. If I decide to have my mind's voice affect an accent, then I can hear it. (I'm very good at accents...in my head.) But that's still a sense of Not Me.

It depends on the language as well. If I've heard enough of a given language, I have enough audio memory to sound things out in my head before attempting to speak them. If not, then I won't hear anything in my head. Like, I was looking at Armenian words the other day on Wiktionary. I haven't memorised the alphabet, so I was looking at IPA transcriptions. But I've never heard Armenian before. So, even with the IPA transcriptions, and seeing symbols for tapped or trilled r's, I heard nothing in my head. I can't bring an Icelandic or Finnish audio memory into Armenian; I've got to find Armenian audio and make memories from that.

So, depending on how you are and what works for you, you might try using audio memories in your thoughts like I do. If you need to feel the sound and you're just not there yet, audio memories are a good substitute.

And I guess we'll see if r and I ever truly fall in love.

But what I really want to know: how the fuck do people whisper tapped and trilled r's. That boggles my damn mind. *confused face*

[kotikala]

Are hän and he related terms? Like they (singular) and they (plural), respectively? Sorry, it just befuddles me more and more why that’s not how hän is typically translated...

No apologies necessary!

You know, I've never even thought about this. I always explicitly include singular they in my translations of hän, but never made the connection that hän and he could correspond/be interpreted similarly to singular they and plural they, respectively. It seems so obvious to me now, like, how did I not think about it like this!?

I blame the forcibly ingrained gender binary that my agender they/them ass is still unlearning.

I personally love it! I am a fan of translating in ways that literally preserve as much of the original language's wording and meaning as possible. Since hän and he inherently do not express sex or gender, singular they and plural they would be the most sensible translations into English, with he/she/it being secondary English localisations of hän. but singular they should always be listed as a translation of hän, and it's...just...not. That has to change.

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