Thursday, 7 July 2022

Dialogue And Subtitles

"Time Patrol."

Manse Everard and Charlie Whitcomb are with Whitcomb's fiancee, Mary Nelson, scheduled to be killed that evening in an air raid. Everard addresses Mary in English but Whitcomb in Temporal:

"'Look, fellow, there isn't any place or any time you can hide in. Mary Nelson died tonight. That's history. She wasn't around in 1947. That's history.'" (6, p. 49)

He says a lot more but my present point is that he converses first in English, which we would understand, then in Temporal, which we would not. Any stage (!) or screen dramatization should reflect this. I would want someone to invent enough Temporal for the actors to speak it with subtitles - on screen. I don't know how to handle that on stage. A screen above the stage, showing the dialogue in English? I didn't think of that problem until I was writing this post.

There is also the Exaltationist language and other (real) languages spoken in the past.

In Technic History films, we should hear Planha and Eriau. Ideally also, Anglic and post-Anglic languages, but then the entire screen series would require subtitles except "The Saturn Game" when the characters would still be speaking English.

14 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I think you would need at least two savants, a linguist and a physicist, before a stab could be made at inventing Temporal.

By Nicholas van Rijn's time (assuming he was born in AD 2421) our English had changed enough that it had become Anglic. And, centuries later in A CIRCUS OF HELLS, I recall Dominic Flandry thinking the Anglic spoken by the long isolated Wayland AI was quaint sounding. Meaning Anglic had changed yet more by Georgios' reign.

While I agree some effort should be made at inserting some invented bits of Eriau and Planha should be insersted in any hoped for filmed versions of some Technic stories, the rest should be in English, with a few hints telling us it was not really English. Otherwise you run the risk of making any filmed versions too complicated and cumbersome.

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

In time travel stories, one should note that varieties of speech change constantly.

For example, as you go back the "standard dialect" gets closer and closer to the written forms, particularly among educated upper-class people.

I mentioned that Teddy Roosevelt once called out to his cowboys in the 1880's: "Hasten forward more swiftly there!"

That was how people in his social circle (old-money Knickerbocker New Yorkers) -actually talked-. They spoke like a rather formal book, and they didn't use contractions.

S.M. Stirling said...

What we think of as classic "posh" British English is largely a product of the late 18th and early 19th centuries -- the dropping of "r", for example (pronouncing door as do-ah, darling as dahhling, etc.)

What had become standard among the upper classes by, say 1900, started off as a mixture of schoolboy slang and upper-aristocratic affectation three generations earlier.

Before then, -everybody- used regional accents. They didn't become a marker of lower-class speech until the early 19th century.

Sheridan's family spoke with strong Irish accents, for example; most British officers in Wellington's army would reveal where they came from every time they opened their mouths.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

Your comments here made me recall that I don't recall any such variations in speech patterns and dialects in many, if any, of the stories of Isaac Asimov. He always seemed to have used only standard middle/late 20th century American English. No matter where or when he placed them. This "flatness" of tone might well have contributed to my increasing dissatisfaction with his fictions.

Ad astra! Sean

Jim Baerg said...

"A screen above the stage, showing the dialogue in English?"
Surtitles.
That is exactly the solution used for opera sung in a non-local language.

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

There you are, then.

S.M. Stirling said...

Translation convention in writing lets the reader "get into" the action of the book more. If you're continually reminded of the fat that they're speaking a different language, you're 'distanced' from them.

There are more subtle ways to do it. Different word orders, for example.

S.M. Stirling said...

Conan Doyle once commented on how he handled speech in his historical novels.

He noted that in the 14th century of "Sir Nigel", Samkin Aylward would actually be talking a rustic and old-fashioned version of Chaucerian (Middle) English(*), and that Sir Nigel would be fluent in both that, and a rather insular dialect of Norman French.

He couldn't actually show them speaking that; it would be incomprehensible. So he used analogues -- having Aylward's speech be rather rustic -in a 19th century style-, and Sir Nigel's more formal and "latinate", but showing a good deal of code-switching by Nigel and other upper-class characters, where they can drop into the demotic (Middle English) to talk to their subordinates.

(Two generations later, btw, a country squire who didn't go to court wouldn't be bilingual any more.)

Or that Aylward had picked up a lot of French during his years in France -- but it wasn't the courtly/noble style Sir Nigel had, it was peasant/townsmen stuff, full of swearwords and the sort of dialogue you used to chat up a barmaid.

He handled it rather well, though it's been 'dated' by the fact that most people are no longer familiar with the linguistic conventions of late-Victorian England.

(*) in the 1300's, the grammatical changes that resulted in Modern English were about 70% complete, at least around London, but the -sound- system was extremely different and English still sounded a lot like Dutch or Frisian or Low German does now; the Great Vowel Shift only got under way after 1500. The language was much more guttural and spoken further back in the mouth and more slowly.

That's why -written- Chaucerian English is (just about) comprehensible to us, but the spoken form would have taken quite a bit of work to learn.

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

For example, take the following stanza: it's almost as comprehensible as something by Shakespeare written just under two centuries later: To thee clepe I, thou goddesse of torment, Thou cruel Furie, sorwing ever in peyne; Help me, that am the sorwful instrument That helpeth lovers, as I can, to pleyne! For wel sit it, the sothe for to seyne, A woful wight to han a drery fere, And, to a sorwful tale, a sory chere. -- but while you could probably follow most of what was said at "The Globe" if you were taken back by time machine, you wouldn't be able to follow the above with Chaucer declaiming it in the same room unless you had it written down and could read it as you heard it spoken. The -grammar- changed very rapidly indeed between 1000 and 1350; but then the -sounds- changed even more between 1500 and 1700, while the grammatical changes continued but at a slower pace, in the same direction (fewer inflections, more positional, etc.)

(FRom SM Stirling.)

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!]

Very interesting, and I too noticed the points you made about Doyle's novel SIR NIGEL when I read it last year.

And Chaucer would be one of those men who still used the French spoken at court during the late 1300's. He too was a royal official and courtier.

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Chaucer in fact humorously comments on the linguistic transition in THE CANTERBURY TALES, when he mentions that the Prioress can speak French (and is obviously very proud of it) but that her French isn't that of France, but was "after the school of Stradford-atta-Bowe".

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean: Chaucer did his first writing in French, then switched to English -- he was at court at a transitional time, when English finally became the predominant language there.

(From SM Stirling.)

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

The previous two comments should be in reverse order.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

But even when English became predominant at Court, many officials and courtiers still spoke French, for varied reasons, for centuries to come. E.g., the German speaking George I, who knew little English, customarily used French with his ministers and courtiers.

Ad astra! Sean