Forum:Information revealed in a foreign language

Index → The Panopticon → Information revealed in a foreign language

Spoilers are strongly policed here.
If this thread's title doesn't specify it's spoilery, don't bring any up.

Opening

How do we handle in-universe information that is divulged in a language other than English? Whether it be spoken verbally, or through writing? Furthermore, if it's the latter kind, what if it's a language that doesn't use the Latin alphabet??

I recently came across this scene early in The Bells of Saint John:

• 

This shot, set in Tokyo, contains an advertisement for a real world Japanese music album - Rockbound Neighbours by Nana Mizuki. From the English side of things, the title for Miss Mizuki's page can only be drawn from conjecture. However, the poster has her name written right there in Japanese (水樹 奈々).

Would one be allowed to take this info into account? WaltK ☎ 22:58, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Discussion

I feel like that would be reasonable, allowing us to translate stuff in stories. (Also I initially thought this was a thread about translation-exclusive material like GoldenEye 007) Cookieboy 2005 ☎ 23:03, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Considering there are full stories released in other languages (Amser Gwyllt and Daleks, invasión a la Tierra año 2150) I think it's perfectly acceptable to translate information. (Also ditto @Cookieboy 2005, J too initially thought this thread was about translation-exclusive material.)

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

23:51, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Ties into Forum:Loosening T:NO RW. Suffice it to say that I strongly disagree. (Even putting aside the fact that translation is impossible.) You can sometimes pin down what words mean, IU, from context, imo, but that makes it very difficult to then say that information is revealed from foreign languages, except through painstaking analysis of how new phrases relate to old ones, what these new phrases mean, and then these new phrases referring to things IU and giving you info. See, for instance Talk:Aztec calendar for some gestures in this direction. It was a fair bit of work, and I think that this is how we should proceed, not just assuming that phrases mean the same thing IU as they do OOU. (Most obviously there's reason to be skeptical that a prop department would get labels correct for a foreign language, or that actors in Britain in a period that ranges from the 1960s to today would speak a foreign language in ways that aren't without controversy.) Najawin ☎ 00:05, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

While I understand your viewpoint I'm not sure I'm convinced by it. If we're not allowed to translate anything, then how the hell do we cover Daleks, invasión a la Tierra año 2150, which is exclusively published in Spanish? And then, what do we do if a character speaks another language in performed media but no subtitles or translation is given?

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

00:55, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

I simply don't understand the equivalence between something being originally published in another language than English, while the characters are still (ostensibly) diegetically speaking English and diegetically, within a work originally published predominately in English, there being words from languages other than English. These seem to me to be entirely different scenarios.

And then, what do we do if a character speaks another language in performed media but no subtitles or translation is given?

See my prior comment. If we can derive a translation from solely IU sources, sure, we can talk about that. If we can't, we can mention that a statement in another language was made (perhaps mentioning what it was, if we know IU), explain its IU effects, and then in the BTS section we can elaborate further. Najawin ☎ 01:34, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Well it calls to mind intermediate situations — stories that expect a bilingual reader, or anyway a reader with a dictionary or Google Translate to hand. If we accept that Invasion a la Tierra expects a readership that speaks Spanish, and should be covered as such, shouldn't that extend to an English-language story including material in another language that it expects the reader to be able to understand?

To take an example close to my heart: Auteur's French asides are meant to be intelligible. His dialogue and asides are written in the expectation of readers who either have a smattering of French to start with, or will bother to go investigate. Treating what he says in French as wholly impenetrable unless explicitly translated in a DWU sources seems wholly at odds with the nature of the text. (Although I am reminded of the fact that Golden Age has an appendix giving official translations for all the lines spoken by a secondary character who, due to a faulty translation device, has all his lines rendered in German within the body of the novel.)

I also wouldn't put too much emphasis on the Invasion characters diegetically speaking English. Seems to me to be entirely likely that the characters in Amser Gwyllt are diegetically speaking Welsh, though I haven't read it. Even if not, it's only a matter of time.

And yes, production might sometimes not pay attention to the meaning of foreign-language signs in the background… but then production has been known to not pay attention to what English texts on background props is saying, if it's not meant to be noticeable. It's a wider puzzle of coverage. (See the infamous "Sil is a Pokemon" situation.)

All this being said, I do share apprehension at the thought of naming pages after translation. That would be a bridge too far, and indeed run into all sorts of issues about the impossibility of One Correct Objective Translation of anything. But transliterations into Latin character seem fine, and ditto placing references in the proper context based on their meaning in a given foreign language. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 02:15, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

I also wouldn't put too much emphasis on the Invasion characters diegetically speaking English. Seems to me to be entirely likely that the characters in Amser Gwyllt are diegetically speaking Welsh

And that the Doctor is diegetically speaking Gallifreyan, sure. My point is of the lack of analogy between the two cases. A text renders acts of speech in one particular language, generally. That some of these texts might, as a whole, require translation, doesn't reflect on how we should handle the case where there are texts that render acts of speech in general in one language but then specific acts of speech in another language - whether or not the second language instantly gets to be treated in the same manner as we would a "primary language" of a text.

I'm still not thrilled with the suggestion, as there are examples in the DWU, similar to definitions, where words in other languages are specifically translated. How would we distinguish between these cases for our user base? How can we explain to them that in some instances you're just supposed to know what certain words mean, others you're supposed to infer from context, others you have a dictionary in the back of the book, and others still the book, diegetically, tells you? It's the exact same problem as the T:NO RW thread. Najawin ☎ 03:37, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

[Edit conflict]

I think we should be very careful with this. Stories written in another language and intended for an audience which speaks that language should be treated like English texts, with the caveat that actual quotations should be qualified with a {{note}} that this is a good-faith translation, along with the original text transcript.

But I broadly agree with Najawin here: what we do for Latin phrases is generally the way to go. I don't see why we can't have category:French words and phrases, mainly for things Auteur says, that provides a full translation with context in the BTS. That seems most valuable to readers, in fact, since they can look up phrases they're seeing verbatim, or follow a link... instead of being presented with a text that seems to pretend the French (in an otherwise English text, for an English-speaking audience) was really in English all along.
×   SOTO contribs ×°/↯/•]   💬•| {/-//:   03:42, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

It's thorny. But I'm not talking about creating a Cheese page if Auteur says Fromage, you understand. Rather, I'm thinking of what we can say in a plot summary or biography, when the normal course of action would be to paraphrase the DWU text rather than quote it directly. If a story otherwise written in English has a crucial plot point which is expressed only in French, on the understanding that the reader will understand — say, a disguised character in a Reign of Terror story says at the very end "C'est moi le roi" — we should be able to write "At this point, the disguised beggar reveals he is secretly the King" in the relevant plot sections and summary, not "At this point, the disguised beggar pronounces the mysterious syllables C'est moi le roi" with a footnote laboriously explaining that in the real world this means "I am the king" and thus implies the beggar was really the king. That would seem, to me, absolutely backwards.

(Also, grumble grumble in most stories the Doctor isn't speaking Gallifreyan grumble grumble. But never mind.) --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 11:34, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Not sure where the idea that the Doctor is speaking Gallifreyan and it’s just being translated comes from. We know the Doctor is speaking English in mostly all instances. Danniesen ☎ 11:57, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

(Well, it's not as if most stories elaborate upon it either way, and accounts aren't always consistent on how the translation fields work. Prima facie it's not unreasonable to assume, if you construe the TARDIS translation circuits as an external translator à la Babelfish, that Time Lords wouldn't ever bother to learn any languages other than their own.) --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 12:13, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

…in reference to the singer I mentioned, what if I used (the commonly-accepted English rendering of) her name as a conjectural title, while make the actual article something like "A woman, whose name was rendered in Japanese as 水樹 奈々, was etc."? WaltK ☎ 14:11, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Why not simply title the page 水樹 奈々, with a redirect? Aquanafrahudy 📢 🖊️ 14:43, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

I mean, I think what Walt is suggesting is an obvious solution to this particular problem. Also, I'd like to note that I think there's a difference between romaji and translation, and the two solutions for each aren't necessarily going to be the same. We might accept that it's appropriate to use romaji throughout this wiki for our readers to be able to actually "read" the sounds of a word. It also creates consistency across the wiki, because in text we already use romaji and pinyin in a variety of places. So we might interpret "桜" as "sakura" but we might not translate that as "cherry blossom". In general, since this is the English wiki, I suspect we should probably be using the romanization of languages for page titles when possible, but there's obviously some discussion to be had here. Stuff like the Doctor's name, or maybe we have some Cyrillic pages floating around.

Also, Scrooge, do you have any thoughts on my concern about the different types of translations that might appear in a biography section? Najawin ☎ 00:12, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

To be brutally truthful and with my user hat on, my innermost thought is that over here in the real world no one other than, apparently, you, cares about the possibility that French words mean different things in the DWU than they obviously do. I am not wholly deaf to your broader concerns at the T:NO RW thread (there's a reason it hasn't been closed yet!), but while I can just about imagine some writer who cares whether mice have specifically been established to be non-sapient mammals or not, I just don't think "but we might falsely be giving the impression that the word roi explicitly means 'king' in the DWU even though that has never been clarified" is. Uhm. A real problem. This seems to me like hatbox territory.

To be more conciliatory and with my balanced objectivity-striving admin hat on, even if we grant that this is a meaningful issue, it seems like one that could be handled via phrasing in most cases and/or more precise citation in others. That is, when an explicit translation is given, we could, as relevant, quote it with quotation marks to make it clear it's direct from the source, and use a {{cite source}} to point directly to the appendix if there's one of those. Should this fail and ambiguity linger, footnotes may be used, as has increasingly been the case to clarify the fiddlier dating controversies outwith the burden of in-universe text. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 00:43, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

"Roi" is perhaps a silly example, we can all agree. But what about statements made in Mandarin? It's a tonal language, and I think there's incredibly strong reason to believe that the meaning of a phrase we infer from the surrounding context might not be the same as what an actor actually says, even if they're trying to get it right, and expect us to understand the meaning from context. Najawin ☎ 00:51, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I can't say I speak Mandarin, but it seems like cases where there's a discrepancy between the supposed and actual meanings of language could be handled by the behind the scenes section or {{note}}. Something like "The Doctor claims he can speak Mandarin, but Tom Baker can’t, so his speech is wrong/unintelligible," or "The English subtitles read x, but [insert character] actually says y," or "The episode presents this as an alien language, but it's actually Tagalog and they're really saying [insert here]." A page that comes to mind is Ding Xiaolian, where the behind the scenes section notes that her name is written with wildly incorrect characters.

(In cases where no such discrepancy exists, I think that info gleaned from translation should be acceptable.) Fennel Soup ☎ 04:29, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Okay, but this doesn't actually specify whether x or y has priority in this situation. If subtitles say 'x', if it's authorial intent that the character said [p], which translates to 'x', if we can infer from context surrounding the scene that the character seems to mean something that has similar semantic content to 'x', but the character utters, [q], which, in the real world, translates to 'y', do we say that the character said [p] or [q], and if we say they said [q], do we say that this translates IU to 'x' or 'y'? That's the issue we're discussing. (nb: I assume we say they said [q], because that's just true. But the second part of the question still exists.)

Quick googling gives an example like 妈妈 and 马马. If the script asked for the first to be used after reading it from a sign, but the second was used, but we could still figure out what was meant from context, would we say [马马] (or [mǎmǎ], I guess) meant "mother", rather than "horses"? Najawin ☎ 07:50, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Specifically regarding the subtitles hypothetical, I don’t think one necessarily takes "priority" over the other. Not by default, anyway. Hard-coded subtitles aren't somehow less a part of the published source material than the audio track. (Hard subs are more akin to the text given in establishing shots, like "Somewhere in the Arctic Circle" or "Two days later".) You could probably "according to one account" this kind of thing, if it became necessary. (Like if there were some case with a significant discontinuity in meaning between the subs and audio, beyond just the actor having a poor but still interpretable accent. Maybe if the sub track was altered late in production but the audio track still reflected an earlier version of the script, or something like that...)

To me, the mother/horse sign hypothetical just seems like another "leave a note" situation. If we're still capable of telling it’s a production error from its context, we can still leave a note clarifying how the IU and RW information is at odds.

Going to agree with/echo Scrooge’s point from above: In the same way we assume English words mean the same thing they do IRL unless a text gives us some reason to think otherwise, I don’t think it’s a problem to assume words from other languages mean the same thing they do IRL unless a text gives us some reason to think otherwise. Fennel Soup ☎ 00:20, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

You may be interested to know that I've already done this with Mavity and Pacifico Del Rio. I translated the Traditional Chinese on the screen and put it in numerous articles that related to it. I had no idea it was against any rules. I specifically didn't state that it was "Traditional Chinese", I simply stated that it used the alphabet. Maybe worth a peek at how I handled it. If you guys think I overstepped, then remove it but as has been said... the information is all there, it's just not in English. Thefartydoctor ☎ 00:26, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Specifically regarding the subtitles hypothetical, I don’t think one necessarily takes "priority" over the other. Not by default, anyway. Hard-coded subtitles aren't somehow less a part of the published source material than the audio track.

To clarify, I'm not talking about hard subs, but about closed captioning. But I'm also not sure if this is true? They're usually not considered diegetic, so we're trying to interpret non narrative information from a narrative source? This gets into UnBruce territory imo.

To me, the mother/horse sign hypothetical just seems like another "leave a note" situation.

This is simply not an answer to the question I posed. It literally does not address the issue in any way. If we were to have the page [[mǎmǎ]], if we wrote it to say "mǎmǎ meant horses" we'd leave a note, and if we wrote it to say "mǎmǎ meant mother" we'd leave a note. Each option has a note. I also want to stress that the horses/mother hypothetical is simply a specific example of the general question I mentioned there, they're not different problems.

You may be interested to know that I've already done this with Mavity and Pacifico Del Rio.

This isn't quite what we're discussing. But it's close to the "they uttered [q], we say they said 'y'" option, imo. Najawin ☎ 01:27, 20 November 2024 (UTC)