I'm talking about linguistic maturity, here. Auxlang users may sit around all day wearing pajamas and picking their nose for all I care. I'm trying to gauge reasonable literary projects for the better-known auxlangs and their learners. Essentially, the breakdown will be something like this:
New user/auxlang: anecdotes, proverbs, etc. (a paragraph or so)
Stable beginner (basic grammar/vocabulary, nothing fancy): flash fiction (a page or two)
Intermediate (moving beyond basics into optional gimmicks): short stories and novellas (about 10-100 pages; may include abbreviated novels)
Mature (advanced gimmicks generally well established: odd word order, etc.): novels without major linguistic complications (not Tom Sawyer, for example)
Advanced (can handle most anything)
Now let's get controversial:
Esperanto: Mature to advanced. Active users (verkistoj) are often "mature."
Ido: Intermediate to mature. Primary problem is slow lexical growth--not a linguistic failing but a flaw in Idist culture. Theoretically resolvable.
Occidental: Intermediate. This is a user-base problem; Occ is capable of advanced usage, but it lacks coherency and user base.
Interlingua: Mature to advanced. The Latin/Romance schism is a problem, but it can also be harnessed for literary purposes.
Lingua Franca Nova: Intermediate at best. Syntactic issues and user-base problems.
Lingwa de Planeta: Stable beginner (more or less) working toward intermediate status.
Sambahsa: Anomalous; the language itself is probably advanced, but the user base (apart from Dr. Olivier Simon himself) is both small and ill-equipped. This puts it on a par with some revival projects, such as Idiom Neutral, but with a better corpus.
So if you're interested in producing novels (original or translated), your best bets are Esperanto and Interlingua, though Ido and perhaps Occidental are also worth considering. If you'd rather pioneer with shorter works, try one of the less mature auxlangs.
Showing posts with label linguistic maturity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label linguistic maturity. Show all posts
Friday, January 14, 2011
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Not Bloody Likely: Translating Dracula
One of the blogs I follow is Dave MacLeod's Page F30, which is mostly about languages (including auxlangs) and astronomy. He also shows up on Auxlang a lot and isn't locked in to just one auxlang. At various points he has advocated Dracula as a translation project.
No. Let's stake this idea here and now.
* Length. Seriously, even in an at-sight auxlang, Dracula is a bit long. Serializing would help somewhat, but it's an actual novel (and nineteenth century, too), which means it has pacing appropriate for fluent readers. If you're familiar with the story, there's building tension in the first chapter that works really well, especially if you somehow don't know what Dracula is. But it would be tedious for a learner.
* Vocabulary. This, as they say on Monty Python, is the cruncher--or one of them, anyway. The terminological traps are legion: geographical fine points to begin with, but also architectural, medical, and nautical jargon. There are also a lot of letters, including period business correspondence. Ouch. Right off hand, I'd say that the only auxlangs I'd have any chance of translating Dracula into would be Esperanto and Interlingua, with a slight possibility of Occidental. In Eo I could work around the lexical problems by compounding, which is also a possibility for Occ. For Interlingua, I could use some existing translations into Romance languages as guides. (I couldn't translate Dracula into Spanish or French very well, either: I haven't the specialized vocabulary and the result would sound stilted.)
* Basilect/dialect issues. This is almost Vocabulary II: The Sequel, but there's more to it. Once Drac comes to Britain, we begin running into some amusing bits of dialect and basilect:
"I'm afraid, my deary, that I must have shocked you by all the wicked things I've been sayin' about the dead, and such like, for weeks past, but I didn't mean them, and I want ye to remember that when I'm gone. We aud folks that be daffled, and with one foot abaft the krok-hooal, don't altogether like to think of it, and we don't want to feel scart of it, and that's why I've took to makin' light of it, so that I'd cheer up my own heart a bit. ..."
Translate that (preserving the feel!) if you can.
But the other problem is that this would be dangerous for anything but a mature auxlang. How do you render "I've took to makin' light of it"? Perhaps (in Eo) "Mi 'as ade ma'gravigi tion"? This is nonstandard usage, friends, and that should be reflected in the translation. I might even drop the accusative. But beginners, especially in a young auxlang, should not be confronted with nonstandard usage: they're trying to get a grip on the standard language. (For this reason, I wouldn't use the English original with people learning English, either.)
This leaves an obvious alternative, however. I'll turn to that next.
No. Let's stake this idea here and now.
* Length. Seriously, even in an at-sight auxlang, Dracula is a bit long. Serializing would help somewhat, but it's an actual novel (and nineteenth century, too), which means it has pacing appropriate for fluent readers. If you're familiar with the story, there's building tension in the first chapter that works really well, especially if you somehow don't know what Dracula is. But it would be tedious for a learner.
* Vocabulary. This, as they say on Monty Python, is the cruncher--or one of them, anyway. The terminological traps are legion: geographical fine points to begin with, but also architectural, medical, and nautical jargon. There are also a lot of letters, including period business correspondence. Ouch. Right off hand, I'd say that the only auxlangs I'd have any chance of translating Dracula into would be Esperanto and Interlingua, with a slight possibility of Occidental. In Eo I could work around the lexical problems by compounding, which is also a possibility for Occ. For Interlingua, I could use some existing translations into Romance languages as guides. (I couldn't translate Dracula into Spanish or French very well, either: I haven't the specialized vocabulary and the result would sound stilted.)
* Basilect/dialect issues. This is almost Vocabulary II: The Sequel, but there's more to it. Once Drac comes to Britain, we begin running into some amusing bits of dialect and basilect:
"I'm afraid, my deary, that I must have shocked you by all the wicked things I've been sayin' about the dead, and such like, for weeks past, but I didn't mean them, and I want ye to remember that when I'm gone. We aud folks that be daffled, and with one foot abaft the krok-hooal, don't altogether like to think of it, and we don't want to feel scart of it, and that's why I've took to makin' light of it, so that I'd cheer up my own heart a bit. ..."
Translate that (preserving the feel!) if you can.
But the other problem is that this would be dangerous for anything but a mature auxlang. How do you render "I've took to makin' light of it"? Perhaps (in Eo) "Mi 'as ade ma'gravigi tion"? This is nonstandard usage, friends, and that should be reflected in the translation. I might even drop the accusative. But beginners, especially in a young auxlang, should not be confronted with nonstandard usage: they're trying to get a grip on the standard language. (For this reason, I wouldn't use the English original with people learning English, either.)
This leaves an obvious alternative, however. I'll turn to that next.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Auxlang maturity and literature
Part of the reason I've been so long in posting is my typical obsessive-compulsive problem with wanting to structure my posts. This is, however, a blog, so a "stream of consciousness" approach is eminently defensible.
As a writer and amateur literateur, I can understand the temptation to dabble in Great Projects of composition or translation in an auxlang. It's a bad idea, though. And curiously, the linguistic maturity of both auxlang and user have the same effect: younger means smaller.
The upshot is that new users and auxlangs should stick with short projects--probably just a paragraph or so. An auxlang designer may want to try something longer as a proof the auxlang works, but basically only a more advanced learner will bother reading anything over a page or so. A new auxlang has no such learners except the designer, so it's pointless to work on anything long at first.
At-sight projects skew this slightly: the less at-sight readable your project, the shorter the early texts should be. On the other hand, an at-sight project can have longer texts: Gode's Dece Contos in Interlingua are fairly reasonable both as writing and reading exercises.
Now, all this goes against the grain for newbies. "It's so easy, I bet I could do a novel!" No. Novels have all kinds of problems, even if you're just translating. Stick with short stories--the shorter the better. Otherwise you'll get a few chapters in, run into more and more difficulties, and give up.
(For readers, short chapters or sections can make even a novel seem less daunting; I've seen this sort of thing done with longer short stories and novellas on certain blogs. But the auxlang has generally been "at sight.")
What are the advantages of shorter pieces?
* Easier for writer and reader.
* Allows more variety. A novel will generally stick with a genre and setting (place and time); short pieces can cover a wider range, giving examples of numerous types of texts. How do you say, "Once upon a time"? Cliché phrases are actually useful for learners, and they only become a problem through overuse, which won't be an issue at first.
* Less likely to contain needless difficulties. I'll explain this next with a critique of Dracula as a translation project.
As a writer and amateur literateur, I can understand the temptation to dabble in Great Projects of composition or translation in an auxlang. It's a bad idea, though. And curiously, the linguistic maturity of both auxlang and user have the same effect: younger means smaller.
The upshot is that new users and auxlangs should stick with short projects--probably just a paragraph or so. An auxlang designer may want to try something longer as a proof the auxlang works, but basically only a more advanced learner will bother reading anything over a page or so. A new auxlang has no such learners except the designer, so it's pointless to work on anything long at first.
At-sight projects skew this slightly: the less at-sight readable your project, the shorter the early texts should be. On the other hand, an at-sight project can have longer texts: Gode's Dece Contos in Interlingua are fairly reasonable both as writing and reading exercises.
Now, all this goes against the grain for newbies. "It's so easy, I bet I could do a novel!" No. Novels have all kinds of problems, even if you're just translating. Stick with short stories--the shorter the better. Otherwise you'll get a few chapters in, run into more and more difficulties, and give up.
(For readers, short chapters or sections can make even a novel seem less daunting; I've seen this sort of thing done with longer short stories and novellas on certain blogs. But the auxlang has generally been "at sight.")
What are the advantages of shorter pieces?
* Easier for writer and reader.
* Allows more variety. A novel will generally stick with a genre and setting (place and time); short pieces can cover a wider range, giving examples of numerous types of texts. How do you say, "Once upon a time"? Cliché phrases are actually useful for learners, and they only become a problem through overuse, which won't be an issue at first.
* Less likely to contain needless difficulties. I'll explain this next with a critique of Dracula as a translation project.
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