I’ve occasionally run across novels where the author leaves large chunks of foreign text untranslated. I’m not talking about commonly understood foreign phrases like “deja vu” or “Schadenfreude,” I’m talking entire sentences in a dialogue between characters. This has never made any sense to me. The book is obviously aimed at English speakers, so do they want their English-speaking readers to understand everything that’s going on or not?
I’m not bothered by present tense, but if it’s written in second person I’m not going past the first sentence.
It’s my understanding that a lot of authors were paid by the word in those days.
Invented languages are my personal pet peeve in fantasy and sci-fi books. Tolkien did it and that was the last time it has EVER been done well - 60 years worth of authors since then have felt compelled to invent their own language, whether or not it makes sense, and pepper their character’s dialogue with it just because it’s a fantasy novel and that’s what’s supposed to be done. Even Frank Herbert realized he’d gone so over the top with it that he stuck a massive glossary in the back of Dune, and without it i’d have had absolutely no idea what was going on the entire book.
On the subject of foreign language, when I read Harry Turtledove’s Worldwar series and the current POV was from a German or Russian, he would frequently write dialogue out as:
“I’m going to check on the panzer – tanks.”
“Spasebo. Thank you.”
I read the series when I was much younger, so at the time I thought that the characters were literally saying the same thing twice and it baffled me. I think I chalked it up to character quirks at the time, but it wasn’t until later that I realized they were merely meant to be in-text translations. It’s kind of helpful, but at the same time it just comes off as redundant. Either have it all in English or just leave the foreign word untranslated.
I’ve seen that in older books where it appears the author’s assumption is that if you are capable of reading their book, you have a working knowledge of at least Latin and French and maybe Greek. Luckily, the character is usually quoting a famous passage so I can easily google a translation.
I dislike present-tense novels, too. It seems pretentious rather than imparting a sense of immediacy, and throws me right out of the story. Only once have I seen it done well enough that I read the work…and no, I don’t remember what it was.
It can be so wonderful when done well, and so annoying when done poorly. Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is the best example I’ve read of conveying a culture through language that the people of Luna developed..
I wonder if those books are translations? I’ve a raft of Finnish and some Swedish novels that don’t use quotation marks. I don’t like that, either. Causes confusion.
I’m finding that I have less and less patience when stories are told in multiple timelines, switching back and forward through time rather than just presenting events in chronological order. It’s another one that can be great when done right, but is often just a cheap gimmick. Perhaps it’s just because I have less brainpower to devote to reading these days.
As long as we’re talking about Stephenson (Anathem was GREAT, by the way), in REAMDE, his most recent book, part of the plot revolves around a WoW-style fantasy game. Partway through the design process, they got in an actual linguist to work on the fictional languages, and he ripped apart the casual way the earlier team had been flinging around apostrophes. The resulting punctuation revamp was dubbed the Apostropocolyps. Or something to that effect.
Dialects. Couldn’t stand them in Huckleberry Finn either. I don’t care if Twain is considered America’s Greatest Writer or whatever, any book that spells the same word 8 different ways is just being a dick.
Names you cannot pronounce. I have no problem if this is a novel about Bulgarian spies meeting with the Chinese Mafia (if there is such a thing), but a science fiction novel where critical characters have names like “Jflk!tk!” and “Grunxtrpl” should have been refused with the rejection letter wrapped around a rock and thrown in the authors bedroom window at 2 in the morning.
World building. I have no idea why, but if you make a mistake in your world building, I will catch it. Drives me bonkers when done wrong, right, Dan Simmons?
It was needed in CO, the street thugs needed their own argot as part of their way of distinguishing themselves from the mainstream. If Alex and his droogs didn’t use their own slang words, that would have seemed odd.
(Plus it also helped that I knew some Russian, so my view might be a big different from others.)
And thanks for the earlier link, BrainGlutton, I clicked on it of course. But then I stopped at just that page. I swear. Nope, no further clicking. None at all. I must be getting better.
Daphne du Maurier does it correctly in Rebecca, but that’s the only place I’ve seen it done that well. There’s a sequel by Susan Hill Long called Mrs. de Winter with the same trick of not revealing the narrator’s name, but it just doesn’t work.
It’s pretty standard for all of Hugo’s work. Les Miserables could have been a very different and very boring musical if they picked the chapters about Waterloo and French Politics instead of the ones about Valjean, Cosette, et al to adapt.
Dang, I wish I still had the story…there was a short story I read some time ago by Craig Shaw Gardner in which the protagonists meet someone (a wizard, I think) whose name is along the lines of X’q’z’f’d, which impresses them mightily, as someone with so many apostrophes in his name must be very powerful indeed.