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Ok, so here& #39;s a thread about how I use words in worldbuilding. (1/?)
Words are super important, and their connotations are going to vary across languages and cultures, and across people. When I& #39;m trying to convey how a given culture thinks, words are a super nice shortcut. The names of things, the similes, the metaphors people reach for (2/?)
I& #39;m a big fan of the background exposition, which is that I throw a couple words at the reader, which are meant to evoke a world without actually stopping and pausing the narration for a complete exposition. Small details, needed to flesh out the world and make it feel real (3/?)
An example from In the Vanishers& #39; Palace
"They were the youngest of the elders, ascended to the council because their family still had the wealth of their scholar-magician ancestors, and their wife’s relatives held most of the land around the river." (4/?)
"They were the youngest of the elders, ascended to the council because their family still had the wealth of their scholar-magician ancestors, and their wife’s relatives held most of the land around the river." (4/?)
I never explain what a scholar-magician is (not in this sentence, and not in the book). The context tells the reader that it& #39;s an important position, and that it brings wealth. It tells you that magic and scholarship are intricately linked (which is important for later) (5/?)
Another example from "Of Dragons, Feasts and Murders":
"An investigation? Into matters of disloyalty? With powers to ignore the constraints of the law?" Asmodeus looked like a child who& #39;d just been handed a red envelope full of unexpected money. (6/.)
"An investigation? Into matters of disloyalty? With powers to ignore the constraints of the law?" Asmodeus looked like a child who& #39;d just been handed a red envelope full of unexpected money. (6/.)
Here again the context is doing a lot: I don& #39;t need to explain that in this culture children get red envelopes for New Year and that they contain money. I& #39;ve carefully phrased the metaphor so that the text tells the reader, unobtrusively. (7/?)
The word "unexpected" is doing a whole lot of heavy lifting. It says that the red envelopes are a custom, it hints that kids usually get them, and that it explains why Asmodeus is so satisfied: a very large gift handed to him.
(I rewrote the sentence a LOT to get there) (8/?)
(I rewrote the sentence a LOT to get there) (8/?)
There& #39;s a limit to this trick: it& #39;s not unlike translating, in what it transplants one set of words from one culture (the one in the book I& #39;m writing) to another (the reader& #39;s culture). So it relies on existing connotations. (9/?)
I get away with "scholar-magician" because it& #39;s not completely at odds with the idea of the wizard/magician in SFF. I lose meaning as well: a scholar in Vietnamese thought is... a valued position, a way of life, a set of values that doesn& #39;t translate to a western reader (10/?)
There& #39;s some expressions I find harder to put in a narration: for instance, "em ruột", lit "little sister of one& #39;s guts" which means "younger sister by blood" (but you can see how the English doesn& #39;t put the accent on the same meaning and how I& #39;ve had to work to get there)
So you can see that I& #39;m picking carefully what I can and can& #39;t do, and that some sentences end up being rewritten a lot of times to get across meaning in a sneaky fashion. (12/?)
One more from "Of Dragons, Feasts and Murders":
"All the society need to do is imply bad fortune."u2029
"Like what?"
u2029"I don& #39;t know! Like making all the banh tet be rotted inside, or the tray of five abundance fruit fall to dust on the ancestral altar." (13/?)
"All the society need to do is imply bad fortune."u2029
"Like what?"
u2029"I don& #39;t know! Like making all the banh tet be rotted inside, or the tray of five abundance fruit fall to dust on the ancestral altar." (13/?)
I never tell you what banh tet is, or what the five abundance fruit involve (it& #39;s this: https://vietnamlawmagazine.vn/the-five-fruit-tray-at-tet-4307.html">https://vietnamlawmagazine.vn/the-five-... ). I don& #39;t need to, again because the context, and the deliberate choice of "abundance" as a qualifier makes it clear it& #39;s a custom for good fortune. (14/?)
So anyway, this is why I& #39;m often on twitter pulling my hair out about certain words and certain translations: because sometimes I need just the right word and just the right set of connotations to avoid a hell of a lot of needless exposition. (15/?)
It& #39;s particularly effective, but it has to be done just right. (16/?)
If you enjoyed this thread, I have a book out that& #39;s all of metaphors and sneaky references to Vietnamese culture, and it came out just yesterday:
https://www.aliettedebodard.com/dragonsfeasts ">https://www.aliettedebodard.com/dragonsfe...
https://www.aliettedebodard.com/dragonsfeasts ">https://www.aliettedebodard.com/dragonsfe...
