hoist by my own petard

[truepenny]

The Chinese translator of Mélusine, who I am very grateful to be working with, sent me a list of names from the book to get clarification on how they are pronounced.

This has led to the extremely embarrassing realization that in some cases I don't know the answer. Every way I try 'em, they sound wrong.

Behold, I am the centipede who has been asked to explain how it walks.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

In the thing I am now revising, I have decided that all reasonable pronunciations of all names exist, they just depend on where you're from or where the first person of that name you ever met was from. The protag's name is Yaritte, and she pronounces it YARE-itt, but there are people in her country who would name their daughter that, same name, and mean it as yah-REET, or as yah-RITT-(tuh).

Should this become wildly popular (yah, right), I will make a con/parlor game of telling people where they'd be from based on how they pronounce the names.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's nifty.

[cleverthylacine]

That would be true in a lot of languages actually; dialects are real and powerful.

[lenora-rose.livejournal.com]

I have that problem with a David.

If you think that's not problematic, I should add that it's pronounced in French. And he uses a very English/Canadian "Dave" most of the time. I think he decided it had to be the French just to mess with people.

[kirilaw.livejournal.com]

Or he's deliberately using the English nickname so anglophones don't automatically pronounce his name "wrong". I've known lots of francophones who to that kind of thing.

(Frankly, I usually use a nickname, except at work with francophones, because francophones can pronounce my full name, but not my nickname)

[lenora-rose.livejournal.com]

There's some of that, too. But he's also doing it to undermine the more elegant "David" and his (French) surname both; a self-deprecating joke of sorts. (He's also, while a French speaker, not ethnically French - that 1/8 of him just happened to be the one whose name he got tagged with - so there's another layer of undermining. That's a lot of burden for just saying "Dave", but names can be extremely political.)

He's also entirely made of fiction, of course...

[libskrat]

Any help a linguist and an ex-linguist can offer?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Thank you--I deeply appreciate the offer--but I've got it sorted.

[libskrat]

Cool. :)

[tsubaki-ny.livejournal.com]

You could let the translator go wild, and ask them to just make sure nothing gets translated into something offensive or excessively hilarious. ;-)

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

*g*

Well, it's not like I personally am ever going to know the difference.

[(Anonymous)]

Or ask them to keep meanings the same for some names. I'd like to see Mildmay the Fox translated as whatever the first two syllables of the Chinese phrase "mild may your sufferings be at the hands of the wicked" and word for fox. Though it will probably end up being something like My-er-may fwo-ke.

-lurker who will probably try reading the Chinese translation

[tsubaki-ny.livejournal.com]

This is likely a bit tangential, but I am way struck by that proverb. There's a world of meaning in there.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

"mild may your sufferings be at the hands of the wicked"?

It's not exactly a proverb. I made it up to have an explanation for Mildmay's name. (His mother was a member of a cult which seems to have had more than a passing resemblance to the seventeenth century Puritans who named their children things like Deliverance, Fly from Fornication, Praise God, and Hopestill.) It turns out I needn't have bothered, since the name Mildmay actually has nothing to do with the month of May, but I'm not sorry.

[tsubaki-ny.livejournal.com]

What I intensely like about it, and how much it reveals about whatever person/character speaks it, is the expectation of suffering (of this type). It can't be avoided, only ameliorated. It's a pretty nice, subtle piece of worldbuilding, actually.

(Full disclosure -- I thought Mildmay was a surname. I own Melusine and Mirador (because of saratales, actually) but haven't read them yet. I will, I will! I have such a backlog...:-( )

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I feel your pain re: the backlog. I don't know if there are actually more books I haven't read in this house than books I have, but sometimes it sure does feel that way.

And, yes, I'm afraid suffering at the hands of the wicked is pretty much a given in the world of these books. (Not to be a complete backseat driver, but I feel like I have to warn you that Mélusine is the first and The Mirador is the third book of the quartet. The Virtu, whence comes this icon of Mildmay, is the second.)

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

*nods* they may be words in your written language but not pronounceable in your spoken language. fwiw (qed ;)

[regnet.livejournal.com]

I was so glad when you read Corambis, because it was nice to hear the way you were pronouncing the names of all the people and places. Thanks for your efforts, by the way - loved your excerpt. Definitely looking forward to its release.

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

When is the Chinese edition scheduled to be available? I could use the reading practice.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I regret to say I either don't remember or never knew in the first place.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

It occurred to me -- far too late -- that I'd never gotten around to replacing Eochu Airt's name in Ashes with something I knew how to pronounce.

Think my publisher would be ticked if I altered it in proofs? ;-)

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Is that an Irish or Scots name? Just curious, because it really looks like one.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Irish. And it's been too long since I studied the language for me to remember how that "Eo" is supposed to be pronounced . . . .

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

If it's Irish, "Eo" is like plain old "O". (Hence Eoin or Eoghan being Irish equivalent of Owen, and pronounced the same.)

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Ah! Thanks, that sounds right. I'd just forgotten (and, well, cross-bred it with the pronunciation scheme I created for a particular setting).

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Which cases? Now I'm curious.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

The two that completely threw me--as in, I should have known these two, and yet I didn't--were Perblanches and Verpine.

[paulakate.livejournal.com]

Does that mean they are not pear-BLAHNSH and vair-PEEN ?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

At least in Mélusine, Perblanches is pronounced with a flat a. And the first syllable of Verpine rhymes with fur, not with fair.

(In my head, the language that Felix and Mildmay speak is roughly analogous what Anglo-Norman would be if it were the principal language of the southern and midwestern United States. So there's lots of French, but it's all pronounced by American rules.)

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Having grown up in Missouri, which has lots of very strangely-pronounced French placenames and surnames*, that makes excellent sense.



*Frex, a river north of St. Louis which is spelled "Cuivre" and pronounced "quiver", another named "Fourche á Renault" and pronounced "Forsharno", and I don't imagine I need to get into the how Missourians and Kentickians handles "Versailles", either.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Yes, I know they have their faults, but they do deserve better spelling from me. Kentuckians. Sorry about that.

[lenora-rose.livejournal.com]

Or Winnipeg, where the Main street is Portage: Portt-uj. And Notre Dame: NOte-er Daim. And we *have* a whole Francophone quarter.

[(Anonymous)]

My favourite example of this is Pierre St. in Windsor Ontario - it's pronounced "PEER-ee."

Kristi

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

but you have to say "NO-ter Daim" because otherwise the word "Dame" wouldn't rhyme with "game" and that would throw off the greatest university fight song's rhyme scheme.

...I'll be in the corner, horrifying my French friends.

[paulakate.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you; that helps tremendously.

[adelev.livejournal.com]

This entry made me laugh out loud. My husband made what I think is a very good point: better to find out now than when working on the movie adaptation! ;-)

[girlpunksamurai.livejournal.com]

*sympathizes*

Don't take it too hard; Chinese is one of those languages. I took it in high school and once we got into the serious complexities of the language (i.e. Chinese III) I started failing, badly. The possibility of uttering the pronunciations to make sentences flow coherently was about as likely as me winning the lottery back then and I wouldn't even attempt the language now, so don't feel alone.

I actually read somewhere that it is better to start learning languages when one is very young, before the English language becomes too deeply ingrained in that strange grove in our minds that, once things imprint upon, becomes impossible to shake loose. Like the whole 'parent as pillar of society thing'. That sort of innate belief never goes away. Because of that strange grove inside your head that thing have inlaid themselves too deeply to be removed. Which explains the popularity of religion if you ask me :p

Oh, the parent example is for the parents who ~nurture~, not the other ones-you know the type; the sort of people you wouldn't entrust the care of a pine cone to never mind a human child >.>

[litalex.livejournal.com]

Just curious, is the translated version going to Taiwan or mainland China?

P.S. As to Mildmay's name, will the translator know about the saying before translating the name? He/she might translated it differently otherwise...

[(Anonymous)]

The lovely thing about those names is their literal meaning (and their irony). Perhaps the translator could go with that? In a poetic sort of way? Zaf

As the translator..

[(Anonymous)]

I certainly *have* read the explanation before I translated it! And I did my best to translate Mildmay's name. For Chinese readers, you'd see for yourself when it comes out.
As for other readers that are curious, I would like to answer any questions as to how I deal with any particular problem in translating...
I'm afraid that a lot of meanings do get lost in the process of translation, which is sad but inevitable.
And it's gonna be a mainland publication.