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Messages - novium

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Author Craft / Re: Latin Translations
« on: August 05, 2009, 11:11:02 PM »
Quote from: neurovore on August 05, 2009, 02:48:28 PM
Any error you can avoid making, you should avoid making. It's part of taking writing seriously.



Well, I think it might be a part of taking procrastinating seriously. I mean, it would be reasonable for an author setting a story in a city that haven't been in to read a bit about the city and take a look at it on google earth, but I don't expect them to spend hours exhaustively researching traffic patterns and local slang just to make sure that every last inconsequential (and that word is key here, for me) detail is correct. I just want them to tell a good story.

Now maybe this will ensure that I will be damned forever in the eyes of my Classicist brethren, but I still don't think a little dog latin is an unforgivable faux pas.

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Author Craft / Re: Latin Translations
« on: August 05, 2009, 11:04:33 PM »
Quote from: Starbeam on August 04, 2009, 10:34:25 PM
Except that being able to read Latin and translate it into English doesn't mean you'll be able to translate English into Latin and get it correct, so it doesn't matter how much or how many books you buy and learn from.  And as far as I could tell looking at the description of Wheelock, it was the same as every translation I've done for Latin classes.  Latin to English.

Wheelock's a textbook. a lot of the exercises require going from english into latin, IIRC. I also have a hard time imagining that one could be well versed enough in latin to translated it into english but not vice versa. Sure, you might not be as practiced at it, but if you know the language well enough to successfully navigate declensions, moods, and voices, tenses, and all the rest I can't imagine you'd suddenly forget how. Maybe you wouldn't be skilled enough to write epic poetry, but a little latin here and there would hardly be beyond your grasp.

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Author Craft / Re: Latin Translations
« on: August 04, 2009, 09:14:03 PM »
I'm just saying: classicists and the classically educated are a rare breed. Even more rare are those fluent enough in Latin to notice anything short of a ridiculously obvious error without having to think about it. So, given the right context, I don't think a little dog latin is going to hurt anyone. Of course, if it's super-important to the plot or setting or in keeping with something previously established*, sure, translation is the way to go.

Plus, there's always the chance that if someone buys a copy of wheelock to try and hack their way through a translation, they will become hooked on Latin, become a billionaire, and donate a lot of money to Classics departments.



* e.g. if you're got a character who is supposed to be fluent in Latin who has just gotten seriously pissed and always swears in Latin, or is a Roman who magically pops up in the modern world or something along those lines....

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Author Craft / Re: Hero of their own stories in popular media
« on: August 04, 2009, 08:26:03 PM »
a whole list of 'em here:

dreaded tvtropes link

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Author Craft / Re: Latin Translations
« on: August 04, 2009, 07:57:00 AM »
Quote from: Shecky on July 13, 2009, 09:56:37 PM
My advice? Don't ever use a translation program or bilingual dictionary unless you know the language well enough to translate it yourself. That leads to things like "The wine was good, but the meat was spoiled" and "I marched comforter the risers" (the first via two-way bilingual-dictionary "translation" of "The spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak", the second of "I walked down the steps"). Translation programs stink, and bilingual dictionaries are SUPPORT tools; neither one should be a primary resource.

Thus the first part of my suggestion: buy a copy of wheelock. But anyway, I don't think it really matters for this sort of thing. We're hardly discussing embarking on a career as a translator. A) Latin is a fairly rare language and B) it's mostly used in fiction to make things look cool or come up with names, and so for that, I don't think a grasp of the language worthy of Cicero is necessary.

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Author Craft / Re: Latin Translations
« on: July 13, 2009, 09:38:16 PM »
My advice for do-it-yourself latin translations: buy a copy of wheelock, and download the most wonderful little program ever created in the history of the world*: "Words", at http://erols.com/whitaker/words.htm . It's a latin/english dictionary...and it'll also tell you what part of speech things are, etc.

*at least, that's how it seemed when I was having to do a lot of translation.

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Author Craft / Re: Language question
« on: September 04, 2008, 08:30:55 PM »
italicize. I think. Depending on what person you're writing in, it could be very hard to sneak in a way to overtly say they're speaking another language. Perhaps have another character react to it. Or have one ask the other how they should put something in english (or whatever).

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Author Craft / Re: Help on procedures for kids of dead parents.
« on: August 16, 2008, 05:57:45 AM »
if the sister is their closest living relative, I'd imagine they'd  at least contact her about the custody issue, given that she's legally an adult

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Author Craft / Re: Fanfic richer or poorer?
« on: June 02, 2008, 10:09:00 PM »
Quote from: Mystic5523 on June 02, 2008, 09:26:40 PM
I'm aware of that, but when Disney does its extensions, they're not just extending their Mickey copyrights, but all of them.

not to mention that copyright holders often ignore what is allowed, and go after people anyway. So easy to send off cease & desist letters, and then there's the possibility of squeezing money out of someone. That disney used so much from the public domain has not stopped them from acting as if they own it.

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Author Craft / Re: Fanfic richer or poorer?
« on: June 02, 2008, 08:01:10 PM »
Quote from: The Angel Yeratel on March 27, 2008, 08:43:44 PM
If you ever want to pass it around, or actually see it in print anywhere, though, it would be best to pick either historical characters and situations (e.g. Harry Turtledove's Guns of the South), or literary characters that have passed into the Public Domain, like Dracula (e.g. P.N. Elrod's Quincy Morris, Vampire).  There's an almost infinite number of characters and situations a writer can choose from, without stepping on another writer's copyright.

The problem is that things aren't passing into the public domain anymore, and that's across the board. There is a ton of copyright abuse, because there's no incentive not to. And on top of that the extensions to copyright passed in law every time some big corporation realizes one of its cash cows is about to pass into the public domain. As it stands, IIRC, pretty much the entire 20th century is going to be off limits until well into this one.

I honestly don't have a problem with fanfic. It tends to stay off in its own little corners of the internet, not hurting anyone, not making any money off of it, as far as I can see. If you don't want to know about it, you can happily live in ignorance (as I mostly have). Having looked into it a bit more- thanks to tvtropes, I now know a little bit more about fandoms than I did previously (which basically amounted to "they exist"). In some cases, I now wish i could go back ot that state, but anyway- I don't really see the difference between it and, oh...rampant speculation. It's just fan communities having a little fun. How is it different than having a conversation about it? And if anyone claims to have never, ever, once in their life had a conversation along the lines of, "hey, you know that movie franchise we just saw, wouldn't it be cool if in the next one they did XYZ?" I will call them a liar.

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Author Craft / Re: First Person, Present Tense, and No Backstory. Can it work?
« on: March 01, 2008, 04:53:27 PM »
Quote from: neurovore on February 01, 2008, 04:52:47 PM
There is no technical way of doing a story that cannot be made to work if you are good enough.

Look at the top selling SF/Fantasy novels on Amazon right now.  Stross' Halting State is up there in the top ten, and that's written in multiple second-person singulars, which are to my mind a lot weirder than anything that can be done with first.  Lots of people are buying that.

but are they finishing it, that is the question. I couldn't. I found it too distracting.

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Author Craft / Re: Don't Write Your Book On Company Time
« on: December 29, 2007, 08:53:27 AM »
perhaps at that point, it was merely an idle exercise to stave off boredom. I mean, don't people in those positions- especially when it's not so much of an active job as simply being a human deterrent by your presence- watch mini-tvs, read magazines and books, play solitaire, that sort of thing?

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Author Craft / Re: What do you wish would be done MORE in urban fantasy?
« on: December 14, 2007, 10:32:14 PM »
I was about to say, any quick study of irish history will reveal that while the irish may have a lot of luck, most of it is bad  :P .... which in itself would make an interesting story. someone cursed with the luck of the irish.

Quote from: neurovore on December 03, 2007, 04:18:13 PM
Particularly the luck of the real Irish, which is that everyone fights with everyone else and it rains all the bloody time. 

There is a magical payphone just outside Beaudry Metro station in Montreal which has the property that if you try calling someone from it three times they come out of the door beside you.  I have only tested this on one person, but I'm going to use it in a novel anyway.


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Author Craft / Re: What do you wish would be done MORE in urban fantasy?
« on: December 14, 2007, 10:29:28 PM »
Quote from: ailishsmom on December 02, 2007, 03:00:38 PM
I think that's what I loved about Shaun of the Dead. If some supernatural apocalypse did happen, the average population wouldn't form well-oiled platoons to take them out. The survival of the world really would depend on a couple of slacker, beer drinking buddies that thought it was all a joke initially.
Are there any books along those lines?

But that was the joke - the saving of the world didn't rely on them.  :P It was a zombie movie in which all the usual action/adventure bits with the heroes took place off stage. As a friend of mine remarked, it was like the movie was focusing on a storyline about the extras in an episode of doctor who :-P

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Author Craft / Re: What do you wish would be done MORE in urban fantasy?
« on: December 05, 2007, 08:49:40 PM »
Quote from: neurovore on November 24, 2007, 04:54:51 PM
I like them a lot.  The Atrocity Archives, which is the novel The Atrocity Archive plus the novella "Concrete Jungle", is readily available in paperback, and Jennifer Morgue is currently in hardback.  They are about the division of the British intelligence services devoted to containing Lovecraftian threats, who these days mostly tend to pick up and recruit hacker-types who are innocently fiddling around with obscure bits of mathematics.  The office politics is really something; it's like Dilbert with necromancy. Specifically, Atrocity Archive is pastiching Len Deighton, and Jennifer Morgue parodying Ian Fleming, though the central character is more of a Neal Stephenson type.  There is at least another one coming.

Disclaimer: I have beta-read for Charlie, though only one not-yet-published novella in this series.


He writes well. Too well maybe!  One thing that creeped me out about the atrocity archive is how well he managed to evoke the nazis. I was studying german history from the 1930s when I read it... and it conjured it up just a little too well for me. Usually I think the tendency is to make the nazis cartoonishly evil, to add crime after crime to their name... despite the fact that those embellishments always managed to fall far short of the true thing.  this book managed to hit up the horror, so that what he added did not seem like an embellishment as much as an extension. That if the world of the books existed, that is how it would have been.

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