Shadow of Victory Snippet #3

radagast13 wrote:

Which leads me to the question on how much of the errors do you think can be from language drift during the 2 millennia that has passed from present day Polish?

"Oligarchia" for example, can it be that the connotation of the word changed to encompass any type of oligarchy?

Of course that it can change and those words are closely related already. Semantic shift that minuscule can occur in one generation. Or in 5 years. But in the case of RFC's books the answer depends on your personal suspension of belief.

If the English used through the books is unchanged then one can assume that other languages are fossified too. ...

Oh, well, that's just the "Translation Convention".

When a group of people whose native language is not English are together, away from any English speakers, the audience may nonetheless hear them speaking perfect English.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... Convention
Because writers would have a very hard time convincing readers/viewers to learn a foreign language -- an invented foreign language -- just to get a story.

Which leads me to the question on how much of the errors do you think can be from language drift during the 2 millennia that has passed from present day Polish?

"Oligarchia" for example, can it be that the connotation of the word changed to encompass any type of oligarchy?

radagast13 wrote:Of course that it can change and those words are closely related already. Semantic shift that minuscule can occur in one generation. Or in 5 years. But in the case of RFC's books the answer depends on your personal suspension of belief.

If the English used through the books is unchanged then one can assume that other languages are fossified too. ...

Bill Woods wrote: Oh, well, that's just the "Translation Convention".

A number of fans have raised the question of how it is that English hasn't changed for two thousand years. A bit farther on Harahap has some time on his hands, and he uses it to catch up on his reading. He has to use a dictionary because archaic English.

There's an allusion to a related issue in HAE: Honor is reading what I believe to be a Horatio Hornblower book her father gave her, and she runs into the issue of monetary units. In fact, she was thinking of putting together a conversion table so she could get an idea of the _value_ of the shillings and guineas and whatnot.

This is an extremely important point, too. Almost no current readers of Forrester have a real feel for what a penny was worth back in the days of penny ordinaries and penny dreadfuls. And we don't really have a good feel for Honorverse currencies either, despite often thinking we do. There are any number of economic presumptions in our readings that may not quite be so.

JohnRoth wrote:
A number of fans have raised the question of how it is that English hasn't changed for two thousand years. A bit farther on Harahap has some time on his hands, and he uses it to catch up on his reading. He has to use a dictionary because archaic English.

You need to go further back than penny dreadfuls to understand the value of English money in the Napoleonic Wars when the Hornblower stories were set. Dickens in the penny dreadful era had a character saying the £100 a year was a good income if you didn't overspend it. Project that further back and well-researched novelists _of the time_ like Jane Austen regard a man with £3,000 a year as very wealthy indeed and eagerly sought after as husband material.

To put it into a more recent perspective, when I started work at a major UK bank in 1958 I was told that £1,000 a year was the salary of a bank branch manager and I could become one if I worked hard enough.

Or look at the wage of an 1880s cowboy, reputed to be $30 a month plus bunkhouse space and food.

Cheers
John

Louis R wrote:There's an allusion to a related issue in HAE: Honor is reading what I believe to be a Horatio Hornblower book her father gave her, and she runs into the issue of monetary units. In fact, she was thinking of putting together a conversion table so she could get an idea of the _value_ of the shillings and guineas and whatnot.

This is an extremely important point, too. Almost no current readers of Forrester have a real feel for what a penny was worth back in the days of penny ordinaries and penny dreadfuls. And we don't really have a good feel for Honorverse currencies either, despite often thinking we do. There are any number of economic presumptions in our readings that may not quite be so.

JohnRoth wrote:
A number of fans have raised the question of how it is that English hasn't changed for two thousand years. A bit farther on Harahap has some time on his hands, and he uses it to catch up on his reading. He has to use a dictionary because archaic English.

Dollar a day was a good wage right up to WWI. Room and board on top shows how hard it was to get decent help on a ranch.

In the Regency £100pa was awfully tight for someone in the Upper 10,000 active on the social scene of the Ton. IIR my source correctly you needed at least £300-500pa to be comfortable - and even then you'd not be living at the very best addresses or joining the best clubs. With £800 or so you could afford to be Someone - which gives an idea of just how big a splash you could make with £3000, and why the Darracotts were flabbergasted when they discovered that Hugo had £15000pa.

John Prigent wrote:You need to go further back than penny dreadfuls to understand the value of English money in the Napoleonic Wars when the Hornblower stories were set. Dickens in the penny dreadful era had a character saying the £100 a year was a good income if you didn't overspend it. Project that further back and well-researched novelists _of the time_ like Jane Austen regard a man with £3,000 a year as very wealthy indeed and eagerly sought after as husband material.

To put it into a more recent perspective, when I started work at a major UK bank in 1958 I was told that £1,000 a year was the salary of a bank branch manager and I could become one if I worked hard enough.

Or look at the wage of an 1880s cowboy, reputed to be $30 a month plus bunkhouse space and food.

Cheers
John

Oh dear, my head hurts with all this Polish, I hope it dies down later, but the fact RFC provides a glossary suggests not. It's not the names I object to, those are awkward but reasonable. It's all the other stuff - Polish titles for people and institutions etc - which are so unnecessary and unhelpful. This is a Polish influenced world, we get it without being assaulted by loads of words we have no idea even how to pronounce. D'oh the dialogue between characters is translated anyway, why not the titles and names of institutions? It may be a call out to the Polish fans, but I don't see what it adds to the book for all the rest of us.I'm pretty sure that we didn't get anything like this much French when we were being introduced to Haven, or at any time its government, institutions or officials were being referenced. That was a better decision.

Louis R wrote:Dollar a day was a good wage right up to WWI. Room and board on top shows how hard it was to get decent help on a ranch.

In the Regency £100pa was awfully tight for someone in the Upper 10,000 active on the social scene of the Ton. IIR my source correctly you needed at least £300-500pa to be comfortable - and even then you'd not be living at the very best addresses or joining the best clubs. With £800 or so you could afford to be Someone - which gives an idea of just how big a splash you could make with £3000, and why the Darracotts were flabbergasted when they discovered that Hugo had £15000pa.

In the government enquiry into abuses and income distribution in the Church of England c1832, a curate (in those days a junior priest often doing the Rector's or Vicar's work for him) was considered to be inadequately paid if he was on less that £200 per year, as many were. It was reckoned he needed that amount to live as a gentleman in a modest way and fulfil the social expectations of his office. That would have meant keeping a horse and a couple of servants and maintaining at least 'shabby chic'.

Randomiser wrote:Oh dear, my head hurts with all this Polish, I hope it dies down later, but the fact RFC provides a glossary suggests not. It's not the names I object to, those are awkward but reasonable. It's all the other stuff - Polish titles for people and institutions etc - which are so unnecessary and unhelpful. This is a Polish influenced world, we get it without being assaulted by loads of words we have no idea even how to pronounce. D'oh the dialogue between characters is translated anyway, why not the titles and names of institutions? It may be a call out to the Polish fans, but I don't see what it adds to the book for all the rest of us.I'm pretty sure that we didn't get anything like this much French when we were being introduced to Haven, or at any time its government, institutions or officials were being referenced. That was a better decision.

My head hurts as well, and I dare say that doubly, because being Pole I see how my language is butchered.
And I completely agree that there are too many titles translated, which makes it difficult to read for me too.

Personally I do not see how it would positively resonate with Polish fans as those reading translated book will get only Polish titles anyway, and those reading in English will be forced to stumble and wade through that overhead (even if grammatical errors and terminology are corrected).

zdlugasz wrote:
My head hurts as well, and I dare say that doubly, because being Pole I see how my language is butchered.
And I completely agree that there are too many titles translated, which makes it difficult to read for me too.

Personally I do not see how it would positively resonate with Polish fans as those reading translated book will get only Polish titles anyway, and those reading in English will be forced to stumble and wade through that overhead (even if grammatical errors and terminology are corrected).

Relax people Please go look up the eARC on Baen's website, there are several chapters available online there for free, including this one and at least one more on Włocławek. All the corrections are already included, the Polish is not butchered there anymore Good work RFC and your Polish proof-readers !

Two thousand years? Unless you are a scholar, I dare you to read Chaucer and understand even one word in ten. Even the Bard is often difficult because he invented so many words that did not become common. And English spelling continuously changes (albeit slowly). Seeing how some words are spelled in these forums, one can guess what some of the changes will be. Some believe that English is in need of a Great Spelling Reform, but they tend to ignore the historical, ethnic, and social linkage that current spelling provides. The problem with the names of people and organizations in the snippet is that English-only speakers cannot pronounce nor remember what is being represented in the string of consonants that are the slavic/Czech language used by Weber. There is even a Russian word (the name of the luxury yacht-"Torch"). What Eric Flint did inventing Amerideutsch was a better take on what is likely to happen in several hundred years. In fact, one only needs to travel in Europe for a few weeks these days to see it happening. English speakers really do not have to bother to learn a foreign language anymore because it appears that even the lowliest peasant has enough English to give you directions or a meal, etc.
I love these forums.

JohnRoth wrote:

Which leads me to the question on how much of the errors do you think can be from language drift during the 2 millennia that has passed from present day Polish?

"Oligarchia" for example, can it be that the connotation of the word changed to encompass any type of oligarchy?

radagast13 wrote:Of course that it can change and those words are closely related already. Semantic shift that minuscule can occur in one generation. Or in 5 years. But in the case of RFC's books the answer depends on your personal suspension of belief.

If the English used through the books is unchanged then one can assume that other languages are fossified too. ...

Bill Woods wrote: Oh, well, that's just the "Translation Convention".

A number of fans have raised the question of how it is that English hasn't changed for two thousand years. A bit farther on Harahap has some time on his hands, and he uses it to catch up on his reading. He has to use a dictionary because archaic English.