Translation convention and ambiguity issues...

[Darth Angelus]

Hi, folks!

I am sure you have all seen the translation convention countless times in fiction. That is, story-wise, the characters would be speaking another language (or it would make more sense if they did), but for the convenience of the audience, it is shown as English (or whatever language the intended audience is familiar with).
It happens from time to time that other languages on Earth get replaced by English, and I think you could say in fictional worlds, as well. After all, in Game of Thrones, what are the chances that the people of Westeros would actually have a language identical to English? Ridiculously small, in actuality almost infinitely small. Rather, they would be speaking Westerosian (or whatever the language is called), shown as English.

While this is usually convenient, I can see it creating ambiguity, and I do believe it makes certain things hard(er) to show. If multiple languages (narrative wise) are all show in one language (English) it may not be clear which language is spoken, as one way of showing it is lost as a tool for the author.
Another matter is that it may show certain characters inconsistently in terms of language proficiency.

I will use a small grammar example from my own native language in relation to the English equivalent...
As I am sure you will all be aware, using a verb in a sentence in a combination with not, always means adding a "do". For example, you would say "I do not like you" (or its abbreviation, "I don't like you"). When there is no "not" involved, the "do" optional, as either "I like you" or "I do like you" would be gramatically correct (although I think the latter has slightly more emphasis).
In Swedish, there would be no added "do", whether there is a "not" involved or not. Literally translating the Swedish expression for "I don't like you" into English, maintaining the exact word sequence or sentence structure by replacing each Swedish word with English equivalent, you would end up with either "I like not you" or "I like you not".

Actually, as a side note, I have seen English grammar used with a verb and a "not", but without adding a "do", but that would be archaic, as in...
"Forgive them father, for they know not what they do."
That word order uses a grammar more similar to the Swedish grammar than modern English does, funnily enough.

But the point is, as most will have realized, that grammar varies by language, as is the case here and elsewhere (and note that English and Swedish are at least somewhat linguistically related, meaning there will be clearly more dissimilar languages out there). I have seen people with shortcomings in English translating expressions from their own language (mostly from Swedish, since that is when I am able to notice it, and identify which original expression they were intending to use) directly, as shown above.

Now, think about what happens if more than one language is shown as English, for example English shown as English (naturally), and Swedish is also shown as English, by the translation convention.
Now, let us say we have a Swedish character with seriously flawed English, and he says gramatically faulty things like "I like not you" when trying to speak English. The, the same character speaks Swedish (story-wise), and being fluent there, he is not making the same mistakes. However, since the Swedish is also shown as English, by the translation convention, that actually becomes him being shown to speak flawless English, onscreen.
So, at one point he is shown speaking very flawed English, and in another flawless English. You see how that might look inconsistent, and all due to an ambiguity the translation convention creates. In the worst case scenario, it could come off as an inconsistent character portrayal, even though it is really not.

The same could happen in a fictional world, when a character is fluent in his or her native language, but not in another, and both are shown as English.
You may be aware of the backwards speech of Yoda in Star Wars. Now, Yoda's origins will probably remain a mystery, but if it were not, he might have spoken his native language with other members of his own species, and if that were shown as English, he would probably not be speaking backwards.


What do you think? Could the translation convention cause ambiguity, or even confusion, and if so, what should the author do about it?

 

[Laeraneth]

Ooo, this is a subject I've grappled with throughout my current story.

In short, one protagonist is native, the other is not.
The foreigner knows a smattering of language, picked up over a couple of years, enough to get by and be broadly understood in basic terms, but it's not even remotely natural to her to speak it, nor has she ever been taught any of it.

I've tried to take a fixed alternate grammar system for her to use based on her own language and try and be consistent with her 'mistakenly' using that basis for speaking in 'english'.
'English' being the native language of the land where the story is set.

(I think it's safe to say that everyone who reads a fantasy (or sci-fi, or any non-contemporary) story accepts that what they're reading in english (or whatever the book is printed in!) is simply 'the common tongue of the area'. As such, the language of my land looks and sounds like english, otherwise I could count the final number of readers of my novel on one hand right now! ;P)
I'm telling my story from a close third-person perspective of my protagonists. When I'm writing from the native speaker's point of view, this is fine. The foreigners words can look (and are!) confusing and often mean little to her, requiring translation or description. (and allowing me some bits of humour while the two are trying to understand each other )
When the foreigner speaks their best 'english' the meaning is generally understandable, but the syntax and grammar tends to be wrong. (much like your Yoda example - everyone knows what he means, but it's also clear it's not his native language)

Things get more complicated when I write from the foreigners point of view. Again, what I write has to be in english, otherwise my readers will just skip on a chapter because they can't understand it. But I take pains to not write conversations in the same style. It's rare - unless she is the one talking - for me to directly write out conversation as I normally would when writing from her point of view. Instead I try to write it very much in the view of what she infers from her limited understanding of the language, getting across general ideas rather than actual words.
Eg:
Spoken: "The Kestrel is coming in to port tonight. Make sure you're there."
Overheard and inferred: She only recognised a few words, but it was enough to know that something was arriving at the port and they were going to be there.

As you say, this can indeed bring up ambiguity... I suppose I make it a little easier to keep track of because of how I deal with the conversational content from their differing points of view, but it does require that the reader be happy to accept that just because both parts are written in 'english', it doesn't mean that they both understand the same things.

The more awkward bit is where both protagonists are together, but I'm currently storytelling from the foreigners point of view. THEN I show the speech for the benefit of the reader (as the native would understand), but make it clear that much of it means little to the character that I'm current 'in'. Otherwise, I'll just have to repeat myself later on from the native's point of view, which seems forced and artificial and the worse option from a written point of view.

There's definitely ambiguity. I think it's fairly unavoidable. I would be much less happy with what I was writing if I wasn't emphasising her difficulties with language. Just as I would have issues with any book that I was reading that didn't try to address the issue in some way. How believable would it be that someone could travel to an entirely new continent and then just chat to or understand the natives?

So... yes, there's ambiguity. But it's better than the unrealistic alternative

I'm trying to embrace the difference between the languages in the way the characters speak and think and make it work for the story, rather than try and work around it. I figure that's the best combination of readability and immersion.

 

[Darth Angelus]

Great post!

I think we are pretty much on the same page about this.

Ooo, this is a subject I've grappled with throughout my current story.

In short, one protagonist is native, the other is not.
The foreigner knows a smattering of language, picked up over a couple of years, enough to get by and be broadly understood in basic terms, but it's not even remotely natural to her to speak it, nor has she ever been taught any of it.

I've tried to take a fixed alternate grammar system for her to use based on her own language and try and be consistent with her 'mistakenly' using that basis for speaking in 'english'.

Sound like this could be a bit tricky to write.

'English' being the native language of the land where the story is set.

(I think it's safe to say that everyone who reads a fantasy (or sci-fi, or any non-contemporary) story accepts that what they're reading in english (or whatever the book is printed in!) is simply 'the common tongue of the area'. As such, the language of my land looks and sounds like english, otherwise I could count the final number of readers of my novel on one hand right now! ;P)

Agreed. That is the translation convention at work, which pretty much everyone understands, even when they might not have been taught about it specifically, or heard the term "translation convention".

I'm telling my story from a close third-person perspective of my protagonists. When I'm writing from the native speaker's point of view, this is fine. The foreigners words can look (and are!) confusing and often mean little to her, requiring translation or description. (and allowing me some bits of humour while the two are trying to understand each other )

Seems like you have worked a bit on this, and given it a great deal of thought.

When the foreigner speaks their best 'english' the meaning is generally understandable, but the syntax and grammar tends to be wrong. (much like your Yoda example - everyone knows what he means, but it's also clear it's not his native language)

I would like to add here, though, that Yoda speech is fairly benign, as errors go, because it just happens to not be particularly prone to misunderstanding, much like "I like you not" would probably be correctly understood by most native English speakers. There are other expressions I can think of which would mean entirely different things, or sound like ludicrous nonsense, when one language's expressions is translated to another.

- "How much is the clock?" or "What is the clock?": A native English speaker would almost definitely interpret these questions as being about the price of a clock or what kind of instrument a clock is, respectively. Depending on context, it may come off as nonsense. The Swedish expressions they are literal translations of, are asking for the time, as in "What is the time?" or "What time is it?".
I once heard, far back in my teenage years, a Swedish kid ask, in (his poor) English, "How much is the clock?". Knowing the Swedish expression it was based on, I was able to identify the meaning "What is the time?", despite that not being what it actually means in English.
It will be harder to decipher what someone is intending to say when they say something wrong, if you don't know their language.

- To know a person, as in "I know him/her", is not represented by the equivalent of "know" in Swedish, but rather the equivalent of "feel". Some Swede with poor English could say "I feel him", while meaning "I know him". Again, aside from sounding silly, it may not be immediately obvious to a native English speaker what the heck "I feel him" is supposed to mean.

I could make a very long list of expressions that would sound silly, make little sense and/or be hard to understand, if translated word by word from Swedish to English, or vice versa. I would bet the same goes for every language pairing, as in English/French, English/Italian, English/German or whatever you pick. But the bottom line is, sometimes this goes way more wrong than "I like you not" or Yoda speech.

Things get more complicated when I write from the foreigners point of view. Again, what I write has to be in english, otherwise my readers will just skip on a chapter because they can't understand it. But I take pains to not write conversations in the same style. It's rare - unless she is the one talking - for me to directly write out conversation as I normally would when writing from her point of view. Instead I try to write it very much in the view of what she infers from her limited understanding of the language, getting across general ideas rather than actual words.
Eg:
Spoken: "The Kestrel is coming in to port tonight. Make sure you're there."
Overheard and inferred: She only recognised a few words, but it was enough to know that something was arriving at the port and they were going to be there.

I am not sure I follow the last part here. Do you hide the words she does not pick up? Are they replaced by dots, like...
"...coming ... port tonight. ... there."

As you say, this can indeed bring up ambiguity... I suppose I make it a little easier to keep track of because of how I deal with the conversational content from their differing points of view, but it does require that the reader be happy to accept that just because both parts are written in 'english', it doesn't mean that they both understand the same things.

Yes, and I would say the ambiguity comes up when English becomes the placeholder for more than one language.

The more awkward bit is where both protagonists are together, but I'm currently storytelling from the foreigners point of view. THEN I show the speech for the benefit of the reader (as the native would understand), but make it clear that much of it means little to the character that I'm current 'in'. Otherwise, I'll just have to repeat myself later on from the native's point of view, which seems forced and artificial and the worse option from a written point of view.

There's definitely ambiguity. I think it's fairly unavoidable. I would be much less happy with what I was writing if I wasn't emphasising her difficulties with language. Just as I would have issues with any book that I was reading that didn't try to address the issue in some way. How believable would it be that someone could travel to an entirely new continent and then just chat to or understand the natives?

So... yes, there's ambiguity. But it's better than the unrealistic alternative

I'm trying to embrace the difference between the languages in the way the characters speak and think and make it work for the story, rather than try and work around it. I figure that's the best combination of readability and immersion.

Sounds like complex jumping between perspectives, but it would have to be. It does take some good, subtle writing to pull off, I think, just to get the reader to know who knows and understands what in the situation?

But yes, getting to a new continent and speaking fluently is not particularly realistic.

 

[Laeraneth]

Quick reply now, proper reply when I have more time later

This - "The Kestrel is coming in to port tonight. Make sure you're there." - is what I would write if I was current writing from the native protagonists point of view. I would write the speech just as they hear it, as they understand it all clearly. Then they can act on that.

This - She only recognised a few words, but it was enough to know that something was arriving at the port and they were going to be there. - is what I would write if I were currently writing from the foreigners point of view.
I figure that she will pick up on the common terms like 'port', 'tonight', 'coming', 'you', and 'there' and be able to infer enough from that that neither she, nor the reader, is left wondering what is going on.
(unless obviously, I WANT her to left wondering what was going on, in which case I'd simply say that she didn't understand clearly what it was they were saying, but it had something to do with the port)

As an extra thought, I might use the term 'harbour' instead, it's a less ambiguous word

There are other expressions I can think of which would mean entirely different things, or sound like ludicrous nonsense, when one language's expressions is translated to another.

I try and play on this quite intentionally. There is a whole section where the two protagonists are getting to know each other, and the peculiarities of language are picked over quite a bit.
As a very quick example:
"Under" is a simple word that the foreigner knows means something that's below something else.
"Stand" is another simple term that the foreigner knows (she demonstrates it by gesturing to her legs while standing, being much easier to show than tell with words)
"Understand" on the other hand is a very complex word. Its meaning in english bears NO relation whatsoever to the two words that it appears to be made up from. Naturally, this is a concept she has a hard time coming to terms with!

 

[chrispenycate]

Having lived through this experience – when I went to Switzerland in '72, it didn't seem to matter much that I didn't speak Deutsch or français, and definitely not Swiitzerteuch, as I was only there for a month (I came back last year).

The first problem is cutting the sound stream into individual words. I'd probably have stopped at this barrier if it hadn't been that I met a young lady who spoke no English, and we could laugh at each other, with each other. Before we learnt each other's languages we built a sort of mutual pidgin, a simplified babytalk containing essential terms and minimal tenses or first/second/third persons.

Which is fine when there are two motivated, reasonably intelligent characters, willing to enunciate slowly and clearly, and not afraid of mime to make concepts clear. It is less effective for one foreigner vastly outnumbered by people who don't realise that even if they think they're speaking clearly to the outsider the words come out as a continuous stream, with maybe a concept surfacing from time to time, but no possibility of hooking and landing it.

 

[Darth Angelus]

As a very quick example:
"Under" is a simple word that the foreigner knows means something that's below something else.
"Stand" is another simple term that the foreigner knows (she demonstrates it by gesturing to her legs while standing, being much easier to show than tell with words)
"Understand" on the other hand is a very complex word. Its meaning in english bears NO relation whatsoever to the two words that it appears to be made up from. Naturally, this is a concept she has a hard time coming to terms with!

Yes, indeed. Calling the word "understand" very complex might be an exaggeration, but you are right that its meaning is pretty much totally unrelated to what you would get when you combine the meanings of the words that it appears to be a combination of. Natural languages are not simply regular systems where you can just combine parts like that in order to always get an expected and regular whole.

As it happens, in this particular case, it is very similar in Swedish, as "understand" would be "förstå". Splitting it up into its apparent parts, "för" means "for" and "stå" means "stand". So, basically, it is "forstand" instead of "understand", but in both cases it is "stand" with a preposition as a prefix.

Actually, in German (which I do not know remotely as well I do Swedish or English), it is "verstehen", where again, "stehen" means "stand". In this case, "ver" doesn't seem to be its own word, but I am not entirely sure (I know it is used as a prefix elsewhere).

But anyway, at the very least three (Germanic) languages where the word for "understand" actually includes the word for "stand". Probably not entirely a coincidence, but how exactly this came to be, I am not sure, since as you say, the meanings seem unrelated.

 

[tinkerdan]

There are worse elements to this. I recently recall a discussion where a single word in English needed two or three in the other language and then one of the character speaking the other language said it's just one word, which was not right at all from their point of view. That was not even to mention trying to count the syllables in words.

Clearly if you have everyone showing up in English, though they are really speaking in another language or other languages you will be 'writing on thin parchment'.

I have seen cases where if the characters all speak the same language (not English) that it always shows up as English but if another character comes in to the room and lets say they are speaking Spanish in perfect English then a French speaker comes in that dialogue would be French (meaning the author has to write it in French (maybe with translation after.), but then if the French speaker knows Spanish but speaks it poorly I've no idea how that would look in the scenario where everyone is speaking perfect English/Spanish.

What I would do is have another character show up and shoot the Frenchman.

 

[Darth Angelus]

There are worse elements to this. I recently recall a discussion where a single word in English needed two or three in the other language and then one of the character speaking the other language said it's just one word, which was not right at all from their point of view. That was not even to mention trying to count the syllables in words.

Yes, that would happen, from time to time. There is not always a one to one correspondence between words in different languages. Sometimes, one word in one language has two or more words in another. This generally goes both ways, and there are cases where one Swedish word has more than one English equivalent. I would divide this into two cases...

1. First, we have the case where there is a (possibly slight) difference in actual meaning. For example, "effective" and "efficient" do have different meanings, but when translated to Swedish, the primary word that would come into mind is the same ("effektiv"). Similarly, "isolate" and "insulate" would translate into the same Swedish word ("isolera").
In these cases, the language with multiple words has a clear advantage in less ambiguity, reliance on context to clear up meaning and chance for misunderstanding.

2. The second type is where one language have multiple words with the same (essential) meaning, based on a grammatical feature. For example, in English, there are three present tense forms of the verb "be"; "am", "are" and "is". As pretty much anyone should be able to realize, the only difference between these three is which subject they are combined with, where "am" is for first person singular (pronoun being "I"), "is" is for third person singular (pronoun being "he", "she" or "it"), and "are" is for second person and/or plural (everything else, pronouns being "you", "we" or "they").
Since the subject has to be included in the clause anyway, there is no real ambiguity to be resolved. A sentence starting with "I am..." makes it perfectly clear that the subject would be "I", even without that information a second time in the "am".

In the past tense of the same verb, first person singular and third person singular get the same form, as both "am" and "is" becomes "was".
In the present tense of regular verbs, first person singular shares form with second person and/or plural, both using the base form of the verb, whereas an "-s" (or "-es", in case the verb's base form ends with a vowel, like "do") is added to the end when the subject is third person singular ("he", "she" or "it").
This would all be very basic grammar to native English speakers (and the difference between "am", "are" and "is" was among the first thing I learned in school about English as a second language), but the point is that sometimes lines are drawn between forms of a word in a fairly arbitrary manner, and this can certainly differ between languages (as it happens, (modern) Swedish never has different forms of verbs depending on subject, and therefore "am", "are" and "is" shares one word, "är").


But I think the difference between case 1 and 2 should be fairly clear. There is a real conceptual difference between effectiveness and efficiency, but no such conceptual difference between present tense of "be" and present tense of "be". The latter is just a convention, a grammatical feature of the English language. Having "am", "are" and "is" as separate words could be viewed as a redundancy (formal, strictly logic based languages would be very unlikely to have an equivalent redundancy), but obviously you still have to take it into account in order to write proper English.

Then again, all (natural) languages probably have these redundancies, as well as irregularities, all of which make them harder to learn as a second language. Clearly, to learn a second language well, you have to unlearn thinking in terms of your first language, at least to some extent.

Clearly if you have everyone showing up in English, though they are really speaking in another language or other languages you will be 'writing on thin parchment'.

I have seen cases where if the characters all speak the same language (not English) that it always shows up as English but if another character comes in to the room and lets say they are speaking Spanish in perfect English then a French speaker comes in that dialogue would be French (meaning the author has to write it in French (maybe with translation after.), but then if the French speaker knows Spanish but speaks it poorly I've no idea how that would look in the scenario where everyone is speaking perfect English/Spanish.

What I would do is have another character show up and shoot the Frenchman.

Yes, this is exactly the type of scenario that can become ambiguous and confusing by using the translation convention.

 

[Laeraneth]

I suppose a lot of it is down to how you're writing.

That particular example simply won't be a problem for me, as I'm writing close third person. if someone walked into the room and spoke a language my current POV character didn't understand, then the reader wouldn't understand either (unless someone else was around who could translate of course)

if I were writing in a more 'omniscient' sense, or remote third person, or whatever it's called (I forget at the moment!) then this could become a problem.
I suppose the 'simplest' option (besides shooting them ) is to base it on what you want your reader to know. If it's meant to be secret, keep it secret, write it in whatever language (made up or otherwise) it's meant to be in. Otherwise, write it in english (or whatever language you're writing in of course), but take pains to ensure that you point out the characters that don't understand it clearly.

 

[sknox]

Translation across languages is an art in itself. My favorite example is from Richard Hofstadter's book "Goedel, Escher, Bach" in which he presents the poem Jabberwocky not only in English but also in French and German. How does one translate "nonsense"?

But forgive me for wondering: what's the point here? Unless language difficulties is the point of the story (I've seen SF stories that do this), it's really a trivial matter. Cultural differences in dress, food, even gestures are also the subject of endlessly fascinating discussion, but are again irrelevant (usually) to a given story.

What matters is the story itself. If your story requires some misunderstandings, certainly having the characters be native speakers of different languages is one way to create those misunderstandings. Otherwise, I would have characters move across cultures without comment. If it doesn't move the story forward, it's not important.

 

[Laeraneth]

I think it's down to the cohesion and 'believeability' of the world.

If I had a character skip from the newly discovered continent/world, onto a ship, come over to the main populated continent/world and be happily understanding and speaking with the locals immediately, it doesn't matter how much it moves the story forward, it's an unbelievable stretch.

Obviously there's ways to work around it (telepathy, the slightly cliché highly knowledgeable explorer that knows all the languages, a universal translator) depending on the setting, but without that proper reason, it would damage the belief in the story that the author is hopefully trying to install in me.

 

[Darth Angelus]

I agree very much with Laeraneth here. Moving the plot or story forward is overrated. Don't get me wrong, it has to be done, but moving the story forward with little regard for the details is all too often an excuse for stuff that is not very believable, and this applies to languages as well as everything else. The groundwork has to be laid out for the reader/viewer to buy the world, or they may become detached.
Of course, some people have stronger suspension of disbelief than others.

 

[Laeraneth]

Some people are just there 'for the ride'. They forgive errors (continuity in TV shows, changes of actors, contradictions from a chapter late in the book to near the start) because they are watching or reading to be entertained. They know that it's just a story someone's written and acted, and can happily accept that things change or people make mistakes, as long as it's entertaining.

I'm fine with that, oddly. I can think of several TV shows I've watched that have totally contradicted something set in stone earlier on and it doesn't bother me THAT much. It depends on the tone of the show I suppose.

A few examples, all from sci-fi to be consistent:

Doctor Who can get away with basically any retcon, any revision and mass change to it's history because of what it is. It is episodic, self-contained, and it's central premise basically encourages just that sort of change. That's why it's lasted so long and remained popular.

Star Trek manages somewhat, as it plays around with time travel from time to time. Again, it's episodic, so as long as it's a good self-contained story, a bit of credulity stretching doesn't matter too much and established facts can be flexed or bent to make the show work.

Babylon 5 would totally fall apart if the universe it's set in didn't make cohesive sense. It HAS to hang together because the story is spread across the entire show. Things that single characters do early on resonate through entire seasons, influencing many other things and only show their full effects much later on.

So... it really depends on what you're aiming for.

Personally, I want a world, a history, people and societies that hang together and make sense. I want to build a story that people WANT to read from start to finish, to see how all the threads begin early on, come together, influence other things, and ultimately resolve.

And now, to return to the point... the realities of language and the interaction of cultures need to be integral to that. Language is, after all, the basis of everything we do in writing a novel. So I couldn't possibly write what I'm writing without fully considering how languages and translations (or not) should work, both for the readers benefit, and from the characters point of view.

It's also worth pointing out I have an entirely different world and work in mind for a different story, where I will be playing much looser with such details, purely because it's intended to be more of a fun adventure or 'romp' than a serious and tightly integrated story.

 

[tinkerdan]

When I read The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hasek it was interesting and informative to know that he wrote in a combination of German and Czech and how the finer points of his writing were impossible to translate, which means when possible its always best to read a book in the original language. But everything is faithfully translated in English though there were many dialogue between Germans and Czechs in their native languages. The translator of my edition Cecil Parrott has made this clear in his forward.

I think that for the most part in fiction that involves several different languages that it might be easiest to try to avoid trying to mess with this unless the writer has some great knowledge of the written languages involved. But even then some translators even admit that there are some things they simply cannot translate across fully.

But if you do start mixing in the actual other language you had best be ready to show that you do have a good grasp or you might just as well put it all into English or whatever language you are writing in.

As to writing all in one language and handling grammar inconstancies I think the best bet is to observe others and hope that you get it right. I happen to be lucky enough to work with exchange students and have been able to observe the various struggles in English for a large variety of Asians some Italians some Germans and some Russian. I'm not sure I could always keep up with each different language tick that's going to show up and where;and I certainly wouldn't be able to discern the varying degrees of grammar proficiency each had in their own language.

 

[Mirannan]

I'd like to make another point about the matter of languages in fiction. It might be considerably more difficult for someone with some proficiency in a foreign language to communicate with a speaker of that language who speaks in a strong accent, perhaps using dialect words.

To take the example of English (like most English native speakers, it's the only language I'm fluent in) a minimally fluent Frenchman might have problems talking to a Geordie or Scot. The same might apply to some other groups. Example: I have a bit of a problem understanding school-age teenagers, these days.

 

[Laeraneth]

That's a good point. I haven't considered local dialects at all for what I'm doing, I'm just working on a country/culture-wide scale at the moment... I think at the moment I don't need to worry, but it IS something I'll want to remember as time passes.

Thanks

 

[BelgarionOz]

Darth Angelus: A very interesting subject, one I've thought about too. I think though you are forgetting one thing; English is a ridiculously stupid language that should probably have been banned centuries ago, except for the fact that so many of us speak it. Oh well.

It may not be exactly the same idea but something that might add to the overall argument. Have you ever seen the British comedy 'Allo 'Allo? It is set during the Second World War in regional France. They had the issue of having to portray people from several different nationalities in the same room conversing. They each have their own language, but presumably are able to speak enough of the other to have at least a rudimentary conversation. They did it by utilising accents. Particularly strong ones in some cases, to show the different nationalities (there even was a Swedish one in a couple of episodes, though I have no illusions as to its accuracy )The show was obviously in English but I guess it shows that you aren't the only one who has thought about this issue.

In the end I guess we just have to pretend that we all have universal translators and thats why we're hearing/seeing it in our native language.

 

[Darth Angelus]

I'd like to make another point about the matter of languages in fiction. It might be considerably more difficult for someone with some proficiency in a foreign language to communicate with a speaker of that language who speaks in a strong accent, perhaps using dialect words.

To take the example of English (like most English native speakers, it's the only language I'm fluent in) a minimally fluent Frenchman might have problems talking to a Geordie or Scot. The same might apply to some other groups. Example: I have a bit of a problem understanding school-age teenagers, these days.

Yes, I know what you mean. English is my second language, and although I know I am better than most Swedes at it, I occasionally have a hard time understanding strong accents. It doesn't happen very often nowadays, and it has to be very strong, but it can happen.
One (very nerdy) character named Andrew in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and spinoff Angel called a place "Make-igo". I had to look it up to realize it was Mexico.

Darth Angelus: A very interesting subject, one I've thought about too. I think though you are forgetting one thing; English is a ridiculously stupid language that should probably have been banned centuries ago, except for the fact that so many of us speak it. Oh well.

Well, that may very well be true, but natural languages are created and evolved by habit of (average) people speaking them, unlike formal languages, which are constructed through (formal) logic by people proficient at that. Therefore, it shouldn't come as a surprise if certain expressions in natural languages are nonsensical, at least from a logician's or mathematician's strict perspective. Having studied computer science at university, I am all too well aware of how much more structured formal languages are, and how much less room for ambiguity they leave.
Swedish has its fair share of ridiculously dumb expressions as well, sometimes.

I am not sure if this is what you meant, but I think pretty much every natural language should be banned, if merely being more stupid than a formal language (from a logical perspective) were the criteria.

It may not be exactly the same idea but something that might add to the overall argument. Have you ever seen the British comedy 'Allo 'Allo? It is set during the Second World War in regional France. They had the issue of having to portray people from several different nationalities in the same room conversing. They each have their own language, but presumably are able to speak enough of the other to have at least a rudimentary conversation. They did it by utilising accents. Particularly strong ones in some cases, to show the different nationalities (there even was a Swedish one in a couple of episodes, though I have no illusions as to its accuracy )The show was obviously in English but I guess it shows that you aren't the only one who has thought about this issue.

In the end I guess we just have to pretend that we all have universal translators and thats why we're hearing/seeing it in our native language.

I have never heard of that comedy, I am afraid.

 

[Laeraneth]

I suspect it was a UK only comedy, though I seem to remember hearing many years ago that it was fairly popular in france... but I have no idea how true that was.

To be fair, it was a pretty clever way of showing 'a different language' without actually having to have a different language. Letting the audience mostly understand, yet make it clear that it's different

Of course, writing accents is a tricky enough subject as it is, some people are fine with it, other people hate it when people start using apostrophes to cut out sounds and try and make the accented dialogue obvious. So... this sort of approach wouldn't work in written form.