Yesterday, on another thread, I sought the meaning of a term (old ham) that I had encountered in a short story. Thanks to the suggestions of the responders and some further research I learned that “old ham” refers to Karsk Ham, a type of ham prepared in Slovenia and still made by Slovenian immigrants in the American Midwest. This was not an important point in the story, but it raised a question in my mind. What is the responsibility of authors to explain obscure words and terms they use in their work? Any thoughts?
Ideally, authors wouldn’t use obscure terms, but they do add flavor. I don’t think an author should explain the term unless it can be done naturally. That’s hard to do without making it sound like an info-dump. Info-dumps slow down a story, but so does having to stop and look up a word.
If I think an author used an obscure term just to show off, I’ll dump the book. But sometimes the obscure term is the only term. If knowing the meaning of the term is important to the story, the author should find a natural, unobtrusive way to explain it. It’s annoying to have to stop reading to look something up.
There are two options:
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Make the meaning obvious in context. “I’m going to grab a forgie for lunch.” Here’s it’s clear that a forgie is a type of food you eat for lunch.
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Find a logical reason to explain it. “I’m going to grab a forgie for lunch.” “What the hell’s a forgie?” “Oh, right. You’ve not from around here. It’s a hamburger with tartar sauce and goat cheese.”
There are variations on these:
“I’m going to grab a forgie for lunch. Want one?”
“No. My doctor says to cut out the obblex.”
“Really? You don’t look particularly tall.”
“And I want to keep it that way.”
As for responsibility, it’s the author’s job to make clear anything that’s important to the plot. Things used for color don’t have to be explained as long as the reader can get a rough idea what they are.
They have no, and by that I mean zero, responsibility to explain obscure words and terms.
I like it when it adds regional flavor to a story, and when I can learn something, like RealityChuck’s Example 2 above. If I’m reading a story set in a place I’ve never been, and I can learn about some local custom or food or dive bar, it’s all the better for me. And we had a thread a while ago about how important it is, or is not, to be accurate in those little details. I think it is extremely important. Maybe 0.00001% of your readers will know that a forgie isn’t made with tartar sauce but with remoulade, but do your damn research.
Sure they have – depending on the context. If the reader is going to be confused, then you need to explain things. If you say, “There was a chichevache in her room,” then you are obligated to give some idea what a chichevache is.*
There are degrees of obscurity, of course. You don’t have to explain FTL or transporter in a science fiction work. But if the reader has to go to the dictionary to find out what’s going on in the story, then the author is not doing his job (and is basically just snidely showing off that he knows more than you do).
It’s like those old jokes in the Catskills with a Yiddish punchline (e.g., I told my doctor my wife doesn’t want to make love with me. What should I do? “Do you know Jacob the carpenter?” “Yes.” "Well, ask him to lchid acher bishemal b’sroy.) Lots of people laugh, but if your audience isn’t a bunch of Yiddish speakers, you’re the one who’s not doing your job.
*A fabulous beast, usually depicted as a cow that eats only virtuous women and is thus always starving (don’t blame me – blame the OED).
I was going to mention Gene Wolfe as a counterexample to the “is basically just snidely showing off that he knows more than you do,” but then I realized that he used the obscure vocabulary so expertly in the New Sun stories that I never needed to “go to the dictionary to find out what’s going on in the story.”
Why is the term there?
Is it there because it’s something common to the author that they take for granted? “What do you mean you’ve never heard of meatloaf? It’s meatloaf!” Is it something from their ethnic background they don’t realize is a regionalism?
Also, what role does it play in the story - why was it mentioned? If it’s just an afterthought, a minor detail to execute the scene that isn’t really important, then as long as the context makes it clear what role it serves it doesn’t really matter if you know meatloaf is made with ketchup or whether you can’t use ketchup but must use fresh tomatoes. It’s dinner, that’s all.
The author has the responsibility to explain the term to the extent that understanding the term is necessary for understanding the story. I know, woefully generic and vague.
Example: If the climax of your story is the surprise killing of the vampire by eating the garlic in the meatloaf that he didn’t suspect, then the audience at some point needs to have some idea what meatloaf is. And if garlic is the surprise, then it probably needs to be commented on - say, the characters saying,
“How did the vampire die?”
“Must have been the garlic in the meatloaf.”
“Who puts garlic in meatloaf?”
“You don’t?”
But if the characters are discussing some plan over dinner and mention in passing that dinner is meatloaf tonight, that doesn’t really need much clarification. If you don’t know what meatloaf is, from context you know it is some kind of food dish (probably containing meat), and since it isn’t otherwise relevant to the plot, you don’t have to look it up unless you are completely puzzled how meat is in a loaf.
Wolfe used context so adroitly that an explanation was never needed.
Harry Turtledove is really bad about this when he uses non-American characters. Although the dialogue is written as English, every so often he throws in a random foreign word just to gussy it up. The kicker is that he then feels the need to immediately translate it, so you get lines like:
“I have to take the panzer–tank–to the front lines,” he said.
For the longest time I could not fathom why the character would presumably be talking in German, say a German word, then immediately repeat himself…in German? It finally clicked that the character wasn’t repeating himself at all, that it was a direct “aid” to the reader. All it ever did was jar me out of the story. Either use the foreign word or the English translation, not both.
Clockwork Orange … the entire book is damn near all in slang…
However, I found it a blast to read, just trying to figure out what the slang was for =)
One of Michael Crichton’s best novels, “The Great Train Robbery” is loaded with cockney/criminal slang from Victorian times. However, the presentation is so well done that the reader has no trouble figuring out what is going on.
How many Dopers know what a “snakesman” is?
I was half joking (by explaining what “no” means in my reply) to make the same point - that there are degrees of obscurity. Not only that but it differs from person to person. I’m splitting hairs here, but I think claiming an author has “responsibility” to do such and such is implying a burden that doesn’t really exist. If Umberto Eco explained every obscure term he uses in his books, they might become unreadable glurge. Anyway, I’m not an expert on the craft like you, but it’s just my humble opinion .
If looking up obscure terminology because the author doesn’t explain it is not your idea of a good time, you’re well advised to steer clear of the Master and Commander series.
many years afo, I was reading Fawn Brodie’s No Man Knows my History, her biography of Mormon Church founder Joseph Smith*, and came across a sentence that read something like “…it was an ordinary hypocephalus.”
Right. Not a word of explanation of what a hypocephalus was, as if everyone knows what they are. I have half a dozen in my freezer.
I HATE when an author does that.
Now that we have Internet Search Engines, it’s not as troubling. But did she really think that no one was going to ask? And it’s pretty esoteric. Your average home dictionary wouldn’t have it:
*The title is from a quote by Joseph Smith. It’s pretty obvious to me that Brodie, being a woman, not a man, chose that on purpose.
There’s obscure terminology in the Master and Commander series? I never noticed.
Coincidentally, I’m reading Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun and while he does drop some obscure words in with only context for a guide there are other terms the narrator explains. Fuligin, for example, is defined as the color that is darker than black. I think “carnifex” is also explained, possibly by the master torturer. While other ones pop up and don’t get explained or appear again for more contextual clues, I don’t feel the need to rely on a reference to enjoy the story. I was thinking yesterday that it’s a neat trick how the narrator seems to explain only what he thinks his assumed audience would need explaining.
I did feel the need for a Latin/English dictionary to enjoy Eco’s The Name of the Rose. And the first time I read A Clockwork Orange I felt like kicking myself when I got to the end-- there was a glossary.
Once when reading a story the author mentioned that the hero had an omulgate in his dreikmuss.
I puzzled over this for quite some time but then carried on reading the story anyway.
Luckily a couple of pages on the author revealed that an omulgate was primarily used to mesocark any flanhisterts that looked like that they go mumple if there was the liklihood of trumplilhood in the near future.
It was a relief to me I can tell you,until the explanation i was going mad with curiousity.
Why I damned near troccled my fludamp I can tell you.
I don’t like an author to explain too much, it’s jarring. Unless it’s something pretty dang obscure and not in an ordinary dictionary, I wish they wouldn’t do it.
The Lemony Snicket books take it way too far and it’s so irritating that I never read any of the books. Even Fancy Nancy goes overboard, and the point of those books is to teach five-dollar words to preschoolers.
Beatrix Potter always made sure to put at least one very long word in each of her books, and she never explained. She felt that children liked big words and preferred not to be talked down to.