[Gorefest]

Sehr gut, Herr Macros. Es gibt noch hoffnung fur dich.

[Macros]

hoffnung is not in my vocabulary yet

[Zetubal]

Macros, on 18 April 2018 - 01:39 PM, said:

no wait, I just said I dont speak english

J'ai parley non FRancais?

Close.


Je ne parle pas français.

[Dolmen 2.0]

Zetubal, on 18 April 2018 - 05:46 PM, said:

Macros, on 18 April 2018 - 01:39 PM, said:

no wait, I just said I dont speak english

J'ai parley non FRancais?

Close.


Je ne parle pas français.

Which always begs the follow up remark:
Mais...tu le parles si tres bien (but...you speak it so well.)

[Gorefest]

Not sure which French people you have encountered. Most of the ones I run into just phase you or egg you on if your Frnch isnt good enogh, even when you make a genuine attempt.

[Macros]

I was in the south of France where most of the people I encountered were in the service industry and as such spoke passable English.
But when in Paris when we tried our french locals just looked down their nose at us like we were barbarians.

[Maark Abbott]

Shouldn't that be Dolmen-chan? I've always had a mental image of you as Madoka.

[Dolmen 2.0]

Maark Abbott, on 19 April 2018 - 07:43 AM, said:

Shouldn't that be Dolmen-chan? I've always had a mental image of you as Madoka.

I am not a chan. if anything I'm an Aniki.

(this is one of the few times the google image search just wins on every level.)

[Cause]

I have always been amazed, I wanted to quickly say, that the forum has always had many non English speakers. Which is pretty impressive I would argue for an English speaking forum. You can forget that Morgoth, Apt, Emperor and countless others are not native speakers. Their flawless mastery of English sometimes embarrasses me when I realize I can't speak any languages besides English.

Id be interested to know the split of the forum between English speakers and non English speakers. I would not be surprised if its quite high.

I wonder if its because Erickson is good enough to have a global fan base but not popular enough to have fan bases in every country.

[James Hutton]

I'm a Dutch native speaker, and I won't be able to top Gorefest's sentence. Funny how I would never use the words "kernplot" and "voorgeschiedenis" I think, but use English words like main series and prequels instead. To me, those words are already incorporated into the Dutch language, just like the word computer. That's maybe just me though.

I learned English, French and German in High School. My subesquent studies at uni (Geology) were taught mostly in English, because the teachers came from all over the world. And especially during my Master's Degree I spoke English most of the day, since all courses were in English and half the students weren't Dutch. I then worked five years at that uni, speaking English most of the time. I have no trouble at all speaking English and I think in English half the time. If you give me an English text to read, and ask me if it's in Dutch or English I probably have to look at the text again, since that language is as 'normal' for my brain as Dutch is.

My French and German however saw practically no use after High School, so I don' feel comfortable using them at all. Despite German being so close to Dutch, and visiting France yearly on holidays with my parents (though that's a been a looong time ago). I've learned some American Sign Language for fun, and I really enjoyed that, but my learning partner quit some years ago, so I've nobody to talk to anymore.

I just downloaded Memrise, because I've been wanting to learn Chinese for a while. Quite a few of my colleagues at uni are Chinese, so that might be fun. But also, the language might come in handy when their economy takes over that of the Western world. I'm not an expert on global politics/economy, but that seems to be happening.

[Itwæs Nom]

Cause, on 19 April 2018 - 01:30 PM, said:

Id be interested to know the split of the forum between English speakers and non English speakers. I would not be surprised if its quite high.

According to this poll it's an even split

[Zetubal]

Cause, on 19 April 2018 - 01:30 PM, said:

I wonder if its because Erickson is good enough to have a global fan base but not popular enough to have fan bases in every country.

Well, I can only speak for myself (and maybe Germany by extension), but here are a few guesses as to why there are a handful of Germans here. Short version of what I'm about to say is: it feels more natural to talk in English about the series because I'm willing to bet that most Germans who are active on the forums read the books in English.

With that said, on with my guesses:

For one thing, most ppl here in Germany prefer to read translated versions of novels, and to this date the translation of the MBotF to German is still ongoing. Ah, and crafty German publishing houses decided to split every single novel of the MBotF into two separate novels (except for Gardens of the Moon). So if I were to read them in German, I'd right now be waiting for the 16th volume, which releases in August. And there are still three or four to come after that. Also, there are no translations of Ian Esslemont's novels at all. Considering that this splitting basically screws the pace of all the books, and that the publication takes so long, MBotF isn't all that popular in Germany, which means that there isn't a huge fanbase for the novels.
If you're an avid reader of fantasy novels in Germany, and you're somewhat confident in your command of English, your best course of action is to read novels in English. Doesn't take forever until they are published, and there's no bs splitting of novels (Wheel of Time here is 37 novels, ASoIaF is 10). English books (including e-books) are also generally at least 20% cheaper (bound version of Ken Follett's Column of Fire in English sits at 15,99€ or $19,77 whereas the German translation is 36€ or $44,5).
Getting your hands on English books is also fairly easy since you can just order them at any store even if you're living in a rural area.

So, first factor: Germans are kind of "indirectly incentivized" to read MBotF in English.

The second big factor that would make it kind of hard for me to adapt to a German MBotF-Forum (even if there were one with noticeable activity) has to do with the names. I guess you could say that German translators did a very throrough job because they translated all names of characters and places to German as well. I know this because the father of my girlfriend is an avid reader of fantasy novels with basically no command of English. So what did I do? Bought him Gardens of the Moon in German. So he reads that, likes it, and then wants to talk with me about events in it. Turns out that the translation really makes it tough to get on the same page because half of the time neither of us knew whom or what we were talking about.
To top it off, the translations are also kind of ... weird. Dancer in German literally translates to Tänzer (with these two dots above the a - making it a mutated vowel). German MBotF calls him Tanzer (without these two dots) - which isn't even a real word. "Sorry" in German would be "Entschuldigung" but German MBotF calls her "Leida" instead. "Leida" sounds like a drunk German saying "Leider" (equivalent in English would be like Sorry being named Sorraaay" - sounds really dumb in German, trust me). Leider is a word but an adverb that means sth. like "regrettably". Then there's guys like poor Mallet. Any sensible German person would translate Mallet to sth like "Hammer" or "Schläger". German MBotF calls him Fäustel. As a native speaker of German who studied German language for 3 years at university I can confidently say that I've never heard or read that word before.
Even the father of my girlfriend who doesn't understand much English at all said that the German names for the characters often times just sound silly.

So, bottomline: German translations take forever, buying whole series in German costs a buttload of money, the practice of splitting novels ruins the reading experience in German (if you don't already have the next book), and translated names sound really odd. All the while, English books are much more affordable, and easy to get your hands on.
Considering all of that, I think it makes sense why I (and many others) would seek out an English forum.


Ah, just briefly on the language competence thing: I'd say if you're able to read and understand MBotF, and then after that feel the desire to talk about it online, I'd say your English is probably half-decent at least.

This post has been edited by Zetubal: 20 April 2018 - 12:25 PM

[Gorefest]

I think the above explanation holds true for Dutch readers as well, although I must say that I have never even seen a Dutch translation of MBotF. I was told they exist, but I was introduced to this series by a Dutch friend of mine who just gave me GotM in English. I got it back in 2001 or sometime around then, so perhaps atthe time there wasn't any dutch translation available. Nevertheless, I would have opted for the English version anyway because Dutch is a relatively small language area and that means that the quality of translations and time spent by publishing houses on generating them is very hit and miss. Much easier to just read them in English.

[Coltaine -]

Zetubal, on 19 April 2018 - 07:33 PM, said:

Cause, on 19 April 2018 - 01:30 PM, said:

I wonder if its because Erickson is good enough to have a global fan base but not popular enough to have fan bases in every country.

Well, I can only speak for myself (and maybe Germany by extension), but here are a few guesses as to why there are a handful of Germans here. Short version of what I'm about to say is: it feels more natural to talk in English about the series because I'm willing to bet that most Germans who are active on the forums read the books in English.

With that said, on with my guesses:

For one thing, most ppl here in Germany prefer to read translated versions of novels, and to this date the translation of the MBotF to German is still ongoing. Ah, and crafty German publishing houses decided to split every single novel of the MBotF into two separate novels (except for Gardens of the Moon). So if I were to read them in German, I'd right now be waiting for the 16th volume, which releases in August. And there are still three or four to come after that. Also, there are no translations of Ian Esslemont's novels at all. Considering that this splitting basically screws the pace of all the books, and that the publication takes so long, MBotF isn't all that popular in Germany, which means that there isn't a huge fanbase for the novels.
If you're an avid reader of fantasy novels in Germany, and you're somewhat confident in your command of English, your best course of action is to read novels in English. Doesn't take forever until they are published, and there's no bs splitting of novels (Wheel of Time here is 37 novels, ASoIaF is 10). English books (including e-books) are also generally at least 20% cheaper (bound version of Ken Follett's Column of Fire in English sits at 15,99€ or $19,77 whereas the German translation is 36€ or $44,5).
Getting your hands on English books is also fairly easy since you can just order them at any store even if you're living in a rural area.

So, first factor: Germans are kind of "indirectly incentivized" to read MBotF in English.

The second big factor that would make it kind of hard for me to adapt to a German MBotF-Forum (even if there were one with noticeable activity) has to do with the names. I guess you could say that German translators did a very throrough job because they translated all names of characters and places to German as well. I know this because the father of my girlfriend is an avid reader of fantasy novels with basically no command of English. So what did I do? Bought him Gardens of the Moon in German. So he reads that, likes it, and then wants to talk with me about events in it. Turns out that the translation really makes it tough to get on the same page because half of the time neither of us knew whom or what we were talking about.
To top it off, the translations are also kind of ... weird. Dancer in German literally translates to Tänzer (with these two dots above the a - making it a mutated vowel). German MBotF calls him Tanzer (without these two dots) - which isn't even a real word. "Sorry" in German would be "Entschuldigung" but German MBotF calls her "Leida" instead. "Leida" sounds like a drunk German saying "Leider" (equivalent in English would be like Sorry being named Sorraaay" - sounds really dumb in German, trust me). Leider is a word but an adverb that means sth. like "regrettably". Then there's guys like poor Mallet. Any sensible German person would translate Mallet to sth like "Hammer" or "Schläger". German MBotF calls him Fäustel. As a native speaker of German who studied German language for 3 years at university I can confidently say that I've never heard or read that word before.
Even the father of my girlfriend who doesn't understand much English at all said that the German names for the characters often times just sound silly.

So, bottomline: German translations take forever, buying whole series in German costs a buttload of money, the practice of splitting novels ruins the reading experience in German (if you don't already have the next book), and translated names sound really odd. All the while, English books are much more affordable, and easy to get your hands on.
Considering all of that, I think it makes sense why I (and many others) would seek out an English forum.


Ah, just briefly on the language competence thing: I'd say if you're able to read and understand MBotF, and then after that feel the desire to talk about it online, I'd say your English is probably half-decent at least.

As a fellow German I totally agree with this post. I couldn't convince any of my friends to start reading the series because non of them regularily reads books in English and they didn't ant to start a series with 19 books to buy and read.

The translation is often very strange (Why translating Adjunct as Mandata? Was it really necessary to create a strange new word?), but sometimes gets also something right. Like translating Tattersail as Flickenseel. In that case the direct translation would have sounded stupid, but they found nice alternative. But as I work at both the German and the English wiki I never had big problems with the different names.

I guess most of the German MBotF-Forums got killed by the huge delay between the First half of TtH and the second one. Five years if I remember correctly. And currently there is again a delay of more than one year between this last book and the first part of DoD.

[Maark Abbott]

Dolmen 2.0, on 19 April 2018 - 08:19 AM, said:

Maark Abbott, on 19 April 2018 - 07:43 AM, said:

Shouldn't that be Dolmen-chan? I've always had a mental image of you as Madoka.

I am not a chan. if anything I'm an Aniki.

(this is one of the few times the google image search just wins on every level.)

You're not an aniki. If anything, you're an Okuyasu.




Z A H A N D O

[Macros]

So there's a German and Swiss guy just moved into my room (this is not the start of a stereotype laden joke)

I thought I was getting on well with my German (kicking ments ass on memrise) but listening to them jabber at each other I realised how far off I am. I caught maybe one word in ten

[Mentalist]

Macros, on 09 May 2018 - 03:35 AM, said:

So there's a German and Swiss guy just moved into my room (this is not the start of a stereotype laden joke)

I thought I was getting on well with my German (kicking ments ass on memrise) but listening to them jabber at each other I realised how far off I am. I caught maybe one word in ten

What's this Melmrise thing that I'm apparently terrible at? Lol

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 09 May 2018 - 11:45 AM

[Macros]

Oh wait.
It's dolmen.

[Macros]

But I encourage everyone to use memrise so I can feel good about beating all your daily scores

ETA

Memrise.com

This post has been edited by Macros: 09 May 2018 - 01:51 PM

[Zetubal]

Macros, on 09 May 2018 - 03:35 AM, said:

So there's a German and Swiss guy just moved into my room (this is not the start of a stereotype laden joke)

I thought I was getting on well with my German (kicking ments ass on memrise) but listening to them jabber at each other I realised how far off I am. I caught maybe one word in ten

Well, I'm a native speaker of German and some thick Swiss accents are barely intelligible for me. Same goes for some (mostly southern) German dialects. Don't let that discourage you, mate.