#with me not being proficient writer nor english speaker

[rox-of-iu]

also while we're on the topic of fics

[rpbetter]

Traditional Writing Advice & RP

I see a lot of people reblogging writing advice posts, and while it pleases me to see people trying to appreciate RP as writing, those pieces of advice don’t always translate from traditional writing to RP writing.

Following the advice for writing a traditional book manuscript you want to have published, you are going to run into some issues if you follow every point of it faithfully in an RP setting.

For one thing, this isn’t just your story, you’re telling it with another writer. In RP, our reading audience and our writing partners are the same. We have to create well-written, engaging stories that are also meant to be picked up by someone else and furthered. For another, even among the most writing proficient RPers, this is a more relaxed style of writing for a reason; we’re writing neither a paper to be graded nor a work to be published, we’re expressing creativity with other people. It can fall flat quickly, to your writing partners and to yourself, if you are writing in an extremely formal manner in RP.

Writing is one of the creative pursuits that has lent itself heavily to what I’m going to politely call snobbery, and that is part of the problem here. The RPC is rather filled with muns who are self-concious, devalue themselves and their work, and can be desperate for the approval of being A Real Writer. If you love writing and you do write, you’re a writer. No, that definitely doesn’t make you a good writer, but following rules not meant for you isn’t going to make you one either.

There is a wrong way to write, actually, there are hundreds of wrong ways to write that make me want to rip my own face off on the regular. The thing is, there is no one-size-fits-all correct way to write any more than there is such a standard in visual art. There are principles that one should know and follow, but your style might be neoclassical or modern or impressionist. Saying that, in my personal opinion, things falling under the heading of modern-style art is horrid, thus inherently wrong and not art, I’d be imposing my personal aesthetics instead of encouraging people to follow appropriate principles, run with their passion and skill, and make art that moves people who are not me. That’s important, in general, but it’s even more important when we’re talking about creative art as a hobby-as a legitimate passion project one isn’t obliged to devote themselves to.

That’s the way we need to be looking at writing as well. Not as an academic and absolute Right Way, but as an art form that has principles, and indeed, literal form. By insisting otherwise, we’ve damaged writing as a hobby and a profession, and it really shows in the RPC where you have a rather stark division of muns who, on the one side, are so ate up with bizarre concepts their professor threw out about never using “said,” forcing the ideology of their personal academic experience on others, and using traditional writing advice as Word of God to shame others and elevate themselves. On the other side, you have a ton of muns who just won’t even bother anymore, and why should they? They’re genuinely not up to par, but working on it means both a process of shaming and killing their own creative experience.

In saying all this, I want to be really clear here: I am in no way saying that shitty writing, an inability to follow basic grammatical principles, being unwilling to use the damn spellcheck that is standard everywhere, and having no concept of things like storytelling, characterization, and word flow is excusable or ideal. 

It isn’t. It’s a terribly destructive force in the RPC, and I’m not in the camp of excusing disinterest in learning, improving, and perfecting one’s hobby because it is an unpaid hobby. In my opinion, it’s part of the blight of the current RPC. However, the snobbery and inability to recognize that there is nuance to learning and writing situations has done nothing but worsen this issue.

So, that being said, some items that are 100% good to use traditionally and in RP include:

Grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

We’re not all native English speakers, and grammar is difficult anyway. It can also turn a story bland with expedience when too properly adhered to. Know the basic principles, but also, be asking yourself about both popular works of fiction and your own favorite works. Chances are, they do not strictly adhere to the rules. Experienced, naturally gifted, and learned writers all manipulate those rules to work for their stories, characters, world-building, and so on. It becomes a personalized writing style, and it’s alright if it takes you some practice to find yours.

Just remember, grammar exists for a reason. Removing or mutating too much will leave you with a difficult to read and understand mess that isn’t a style, just a fucking mess.

If you struggle with grammar, the best way to help yourself is to practice. Additionally, seeing what errors you are making can be quite helpful; Grammarly offers a free add on for both Google Chrome and FireFox that will show you spelling and grammar mistakes. It also explains the mistake, while offering you a suggested fix. This way, you can see the mistakes you’re making in action. {Presumably, there are other such resources, but since I have no experience with them, I’m not the one to recommend them.}

As I said above, spellcheckers are standard now, in fucking 2021. This has been standard on devices and browsers for so long that I highly doubt most people on tumblr even remember a time when you had to use additional software to have them.

You make a mistake or misspell, and if it isn’t corrected for you, it’s underlined very obviously for you to tap/click/float over to correct. If the word is so terribly misspelled that no suggestion comes up {not all spellcheckers are created equality; some do not recognize slang or relaxed spellings, archaic word use, myriad, particularly specialized jargon-legal, medical, technical-and so on}, we also live in a time period where we can highlight the word, right-click that bitch, and select from the menu the option to search for the word. If the word was so weirdly misspelled that your checker couldn’t figure it out, it is incredibly rare that Google doesn’t throw out the correct spelling when you search it. If the spelling was correct, but the word-use is slang, jargon, or archaic, Google is also going to tell you that-you’ve confirmed it is correct, and can now decide if you want to use it or pick a possible synonym for it instead.

There is no fucking excuse for egregiously misspelled words anymore. None. I mean...listen, I spell quite terribly myself, but no one reading my RP replies is ever going to know that fact. Having difficulty with spelling is not, and has not been for a very long time now, an impediment to writing.

Furthermore, we all miss a typo here and there, especially if we write lengthy novella. Those aren’t always going to be caught by spellcheck, and we might edit the reply five times without seeing it. That happens, it’s alright when it’s minimal! Anything other than that, though, it’s just a combination of rushing and laziness. You really couldn’t be assed to take your time with that reply, read it over at least once before posting, and/or to click the underlined word.

There. Is. No. Excuse.

Again, not all spellcheckers are the same. If you feel like yours is lacking, try an extension for your browser. Since I said it above, I obviously have Grammarly on my mine. My replies effectively go through three different checkers, actually. I write all drafts outside of my browser where it is initially checked by Pages, then, when I paste it into tumblr, it’s being checked natively and by Grammarly. It wasn’t my intention, I just wanted to be positive I was never losing a draft or cooking my ancient laptop with Google Docs. However, it’s been nice as hell to get the perspective of multiple checkers, and as such, I definitely recommend it. It isn’t like I’m putting any extra effort into this, and I’m not paying for Grammarly, either.

When you refuse to behoove yourselves of the spellchecker natively available to you, at least, you’re seriously telling your writing partners that they were not important enough for you to click a fucking word. It’s inexcusable.

Punctuation being nonexistent isn’t a writing style or aesthetic, neither is a refusal to capitalize anything. If never using a comma is part of your Aesthetic™, please, rethink your fucking life and the hobby you’ve chosen.

Punctuation is a part of grammar, and I understand that there can be complexities present that might be confusing. That is one of the reasons why you should bother to know the basics as regards when and how to use punctuation. It’s also another way in which telling people that they should adhere to advice meant for traditional and academic writing can be a shit idea. Especially in an RPC known to misunderstand shit and go overboard.

When you tell the RPC that writers use too many commas, the RPC stops using them all around. Especially, when you also attach this to the idea of evil “wordiness.” That’s something that the RPC is desperate to avoid anyway, as the majority of people here are allergic to reading and writing; anything you advise that lessens the word count for them is going to be grabbed and erroneously applied. Someone implies that wordiness and commas equals run-on sentences, and the RPC gets not only believes it, it gets this message, “if I take out the commas, it isn’t a run-on sentence.”

You have all fundamentally misunderstood what a god damned run-on sentence is. It’s not a long sentence, it isn’t a proliferation of commas. A run-on sentence is when two, or more, sentences that should be individual are conjoined without proper punctuation {a fucking comma, for example} or a coordinating conjunction.

Run-ons can be surprisingly short, in fact. As in the example I lifted from here, “I love to write papers I would write one every day if I had the time.“

That should be written with a comma, separated into two sentences, or broken with a comma and the conjunction “and.” It’s also what I see incessantly on my dash from this bizarre idea that we shouldn’t be using commas. That a run-on sentence is a very long one separated only by commas. That is literally not what a run-on sentence is.

You absolutely can use too many commas {if you want to read some examples of how to use commas, go here}, but I rarely see anyone doing so to such an extreme. The extreme being that a sentence becomes a nonsensical string of conjoined thoughts, ideas, and descriptions that could have been written better broken up into fully formed sentences. I sometimes see muns who go a little nuts with commas by putting them in wildly incorrect places in this way.

What I see constantly is either muns berating themselves for perfectly normal, readable sentence structure or muns reactively using no punctuation at all.

It is all legitimate run-on sentences or those made so short and blunt that they become nonsensical, change the tone of the writing, or have no flow together.

Which brings me to...

Sentence flow is a thing, and you should be doing it.

Unfortunately, this good writing advice tends to throw people. We’re not talking about the flow that needs to be present in academic sentence structure, or exactly the flow that is present in poetry. Though it may require practice to understand and apply well, it’s an incredibly simple concept.

You want to balance out shorter, blunter sentences with those that are longer and more flowing. It gives the text a pleasant, natural rhythm. However, it isn’t just about length, a thing that the RPC is weirdly fixated on. Rather, it’s about word use within those sentences as well.

It’s always important to write with a tone that works with your scene and, overall, with your muse. For example, in a tense, aggressive scene, or with a muse who is generally this way, it gets the message across to use short sentences and clipped words. We can feel the tension, annoyance, and threat.

Furthermore, the way your muse thinks about and uses words is relevant. A well-educated muse from the 1800′s isn’t going to have the same approach to words that a modern-day high school student does. You should be making that clear in the way they speak, but also, in the way you express their thoughts and actions. If you are only writing your muse’s personality and emotional tone when your muse is speaking, you’re not giving me the tone all the way through. It can feel like a marked delineation in flow.

However, you should be considering the overall flow of your writing as well. Did you just lay down back-to-back eloquently verbose sentences? If so, you may want to either follow them up or space them with a shorter sentence comprised of simpler words.

This is legitimately good writing advice for any manner of writing.

So is...

Show, don’t tell.

Which is another piece of advice that throws people when they try to make it more complex than necessary. That, and it grates up against the RPC’s need for short, quick writing. The idea that anything a mun gives you that your muse cannot react to verbally or with action is filler to be avoided. That idea comes from some principle advice that translates badly to RP; essentially, don’t wax poetic for three pages when it has nothing to do with the plot, characters, scene-setting elements, action, and so on. Don’t be Tolkien describing every tree and rock in excruciating detail on the way to destroy the One Ring, basically.

That isn’t fully appropriate advice in RP, where we’re having to write tiny chapters to each other to add onto. While it still has some merit, the RPC definitely has taken it to mean that you shouldn’t show anything. My muse’s private thoughts, emotions expressed and unexpressed, stirred-up memories, things they planned to say/do, but that were naturally interrupted by the flow of the thread all become Unnecessary. With...no mind to what they are showing and creating.

This particularly erodes writing muses as legitimate feeling people. As in the last example of what my muse intended to say or do that was interrupted. That’s a normal, human experience. It would be difficult and not enjoyable to read every instance of a muse’s broken thoughts and impulses or intentions, but giving one every so many replies in a natural feeling way keeps my muse presenting as a real person having a real person’s experience. Simple things like this go a long way toward your muse being “believable,” and by ignoring them or refusing to do them, you’re not making your muse very realistic. So much of the human experience is private, unknowable to outside parties.

Look...if you only knew me based upon a sterilized version of what I was saying to you or doing purely within the context of single interaction at a time, you wouldn’t know me at all. You’d have no idea what sort of nuance there is in my words, how I am expressing or withholding an opinion or emotion. I may not have any opinions, emotions, or other experiences that you are not contributing to. That’s very unrealistic, I’m not actually a person anymore. I haven’t any personality, I didn’t exist before you interacted with me.

That is the way it is with muses too. By stripping them of their internal experiences, we’re stripping them of more realistic feeling characterization. {It becomes, or adds to, a disastrous domino-effect of projected, cardboard stand-in style muses that are in no way a joy to interact with.} This is bad writing, makes for bad reading and interacting.

No one seems to understand show, don’t tell. Let me put it in a simple example: don’t tell me your muse is a good person, show me. Don’t tell me your muse is upset right now, show me.

Your muse has character traits you feel makes them A Good Person. They are compassionate, selfless, and genuinely interested in others. Don’t just leave that in the muse’s bio, or relegate it to statement-style lines like, “she cared deeply about others.” Show me these traits in action and thought. You don’t require anything dramatic to it, either. A muse like this should be a good listener, proceed with their love language in a way reflects personal involvement and a desire to comfort, be willing to sacrifice time and personal interests {don’t keep it to dramatic and literal self-sacrifice to show “selfless”}, legitimately doesn’t think of themselves first and foremost and may need reminding to care for themselves, and will be troubled by unfairness and cruelty in the world.

Your muse has been in a disagreement with a loved one, they’re not just “upset,” they are sad, angry, disappointed, and maybe even confused or surprised. While those are more descriptive and defining of the type of complex “upset” going on here, don’t leave it at these words. Don’t tell me that she said, angrily. Show me that she is having thoughts based on these emotions, actual emotional turmoil at her expectations of a loved one being devastated. Paint me a picture of the sadness in her features, the anger in her walk, how her words come out unpolished and jumbled in her surprise and turmoil.

This is what it means to show me, not tell me.

It also extends to scenes and recollections.

If your muse is happy sitting in her garden, don’t just tell me this. Show me why she is happy there, and define the sort of happiness in her thoughts, body language, voice, and expressions. Describe the aspects of the garden in tones of the happiness they bring, draw comparisons between this and her outward expression of joy with similar word use. It ties together both seamlessly in a way that we can relate to and feel, even if we hate the outdoors.

If this muse had a traumatic incident in her past, this is going to inconveniently come up, even if only in her mind. Don’t play coy about it and drop shit on your partners like, “she was thinking of things and stuff that was bad again.” No. Even if you are alluding or otherwise keeping the actual event secretive, you need to be describing how the muse is feeling, how she is experiencing the world around her through an overlay of upsetting reminders. Show me how she is having a visceral reaction to triggering stimuli while having to keep working or talking.

Additionally, even when your muse isn’t experiencing the scene you have set directly, you should show me instead of telling me about it.

Since my actual least favorite PSA on how it’s better to just tell people because no one wants to read “all that” deals with rain, we’re going to as well. Because it doesn’t have to be excessively descriptive to fucking show me it’s raining or has rained instead of just stating the fact.

Not, “it was raining.” Not, “it was wet outside.”

“In between her words, the distant, wall-dampened splash of cars driving through puddles.”

“He passed by windows beaded with moisture on his way to the kitchen.”

Wow, that was so complex, really a lot to read to get the idea that it is, or has been, raining outside without me directly telling you this!

There isn’t anything wrong with being more descriptive than this {nor is there anything wrong with using the word “rain,” so long as you’re backing it up with a description}, some of us do like to read and write about things like oil-slicked puddles in the street if our muse is seeing them or it is otherwise relevant. It’s just that you don’t have to do this, or have to do it at all times, to show instead of tell. This is yet another serious misunderstanding.

It isn’t that the description is often really that excessive, it’s more often that it is irrelevant to the extreme of sticking out weirdly. In the puddle thing, if my muse isn’t seeing it and/or I am not using that description to further experience, their mindset, personality, or tying it to an analogy later in the reply, it feels weird.

Some superfluous shit isn’t bad either, and superfluous can be purely subjective. It is, again, when it is to such an extreme as to leave your writing partner feeling oddly about a point in the text that seemed to ring with importance, but then held none. That isn’t an act of showing or telling, and neither is it your partner trying to show off as a gifted writer. For whatever reason, they just saw or felt that moment with such passionate clarity they had to include it immediately instead of waiting until a better moment for it. That’s literally it, there’s no need to project your insecurity in weird ass ways.

There are definitely other pieces of traditional-based writing advice that are great and either do transfer to RP perfectly or can with small amendments, but these are the most basic, commonly seen, and important combinations. They are also easy to better understand and apply!

When reading writing advice posts, please, ask yourself how they fit into RP. If they do at all. Many times, when it comes to the absolute basics of writing coherently and enjoyably, or developing characters, they’re great. It’s when they get into topics of some nuance that they don’t cross over so well and are outright damaging.

These pieces of advice are often being misunderstood or misapplied already, then are being passed around to a community notorious for its lacking application of critical thinking. Severe misunderstanding will happen, and terrible writing “rules” within the RPC develop from them.

Do be interested in writing, don’t separate traditional writing and RP writing into categories like “real writing and RP,” be invested in learning and improving. Just ask yourself how it applies to cooperative storytelling that is often thematic in nature, and proceed with caution and the mindset that writing is an art.

If you have the principles down and both yourself and others are enjoying your writing, you’re not doing it in an inherently wrong way because it wouldn’t be published. You’re not writing RP to have it published, and that’s not a bad thing. It’s just a difference to keep in mind when reading PSA’s about the Rules of Writing Whatever. 

[thoughts-of-a-social-worker]

Language and Reading – The Privileges We Don’t Think About

On the whole, many internet readers would consider the ability to speak a language and to read text on a page as something that “just is”. It makes sense that we might take these things for granted in a technological age where many folks have near instantaneous access to information at their fingertips – including instructions for how to make the latest Starbucks secret menu item and the ability to play and replay at will the latest viral TikTok dance. But, without the ability to understand language or to read, we would not be able to engage in these activities, nor the many others that allow us to be connected to and participate in our larger world. Language and the ability to read help us to better communicate with one another. But, it is important to remember that – depending on where we live and who we are – we all learn how to “do” language a bit differently. Not everyone will agree with our own self-assessments of proficiency or even mastery of a language, even when we share the same one.

I have lived in Iowa my entire life, and it wasn’t until I met with a group of Wisconsin and New York students that I had any awareness of how different my language was from theirs. Yes, we all spoke American English, but each group spoke its own dialect. We were traveling together as student ambassadors to Japan, and I remember one student from New York asking me to say the word “coffee” again because “It was just so funny.” Don’t even get me started on what happened when I said “ope” for the first time. For those existing outside of the Midwest region of the United States, “ope” is generally thought to be a combination of the words “oh” and “whoops” and is usually said as an exclamation of surprise or as a way to signal that the speaker has made a small mistake or accident. For instance, I may say “ope” if I drop a piece of paper while trying to hand it to someone. Regardless of its quirks, Midwestern American English is still English language, and is recognized as such by other Americans (though some may look down upon the dialect as being a bit “country” and associate it with “uneducated” farm folk – that is a can of worms I may dive into later).

Guardian writer David Shariatmadari wrote about a similar issue in his article “The Limits of Standard English” in January 2020. He spoke on the stigma tied to the dialect of American English spoken by Black individuals and how many people still deemed it as “bad” English, not unlike the word “ope”. Perhaps strangest of all, however, was when Shariatmadari wrote about the paradox of the treatment of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) where most people know what it is – and can recognize and even appreciate it when used in popular culture, such as hip hop music and movies– but at the same time dismiss it as slang that has less value than more accepted dialects of English. The funny thing is, Shariatmadari laid out a compelling argument for why AAVE makes sense, not only as a geographic dialect – due to the historic and continued segregation of Black individuals from white individuals in our country – but also as a “rule-bound and systematic” language. The things that most people take issue with in AAVE, including the use of double-negatives, may not be common in American English but they are common in other respected languages like French and Italian. Why, if we view the latter as romantic and sophisticated languages, can’t we view AAVE the same way? Part of the answer to that question is stigma. When we think about who makes the decisions, past and present, in the U.S. about what is “acceptable” and “normal,” the picture becomes more clear. This leads me to address the issue of learning to read English.

In an article written by Jaime Saavedra about learning poverty, he wrote about reading as a milestone in every child’s life that would set the course for them to be active participants in larger society. Learning to read is the first step to learning about all sorts of other subjects, and it allows us to express ourselves and communicate with others. He stated that all children have the ability to learn to read (though I would argue they may not, depending on where they live in the world and whether or not they have the capacity or resources to do so), but Saavedra also addressed the particular difficulty of learning to read in English due to its complex system of rules. Let’s look at the sound “f”. Saavedra mentions how the letter “f” can signal this sound, but that combinations of letters such as “gh” in the word “cough” or “ph” in the word “phone” make the same sound – even though none of these letters individually make anything close to the “f” sound. What about words like “there,” “their,” and “they’re”? I know very well-educated, native English-speaking adults who still struggle with using these words correctly 100% of the time. It’s no wonder that English is one of the hardest languages in the world to master. And how is mastery of this language decided? You guessed it: by those who have historically decided what is “right” and “wrong” – the same people who decided which way of speaking English was the “correct” one. 

So, if it is those with privilege and power who get to set the standard for what qualifies as “good” English and “bad” English, we have to consider which groups may have been historically favored as speaking English well. Looking at those who have long held positions of power in the United States throughout history, it is easy to see a common theme: white, male, affluent, and older (when taking into account the average life expectancy for each time period). These individuals often had easy access to quality education and generally moved in social circles with people who looked like themselves. That is not to say that those individuals did not accomplish great things, nor is it to say that they weren’t capable of recognizing their privilege – to a degree. But, when we realize that the norms and standards for our language are rooted in power and privilege, it should cause us to pause. We know more now, and we can do better. If a Midwestern “ope” can be accepted as a dialect of English and can be popularized by a internet personality (check out comedian Charlie Berens, if you aren’t familiar with him), if AAVE can be accepted as an edgy part of pop culture, what’s to stop those things from being accepted as normative – as a different way of doing English well? When we view our abilities to read text on a page and to speak a language through a lens of privilege, the world can start to look a lot different – and space for change can be made.

[never-relaxed]

On the Persona 5 translation

I’ve read a lot of extremely hot takes on the Persona 5 translation today. So many, in fact, that it’s difficult to address everything wholesale. To the their credits, the critics are both thorough & well-articulated, and their arguments are strong enough to get me thinking - strong enough, even, to kickstart me pushing out this writing blog I’ve been wanting to get off the ground.

I want to respond to the myriad of issues listed on the website being currently used as a sort of rallying-cry, http://www.personaproblems.com/ . It’s well-designed, and organizes the issues well. I’ll start at the top, then:

- “Yet no other form of media would ever get away with the number of errors found in Persona 5's English script.”

This is a very minor nitpick, but actually, yes. Other forms of media would, indeed, get away with any number of similar errors; viewers of foreign films, for instance, can tell you all about how perfect-world this sentiment is. Additionally, classic books aren’t retranslated for no reason; direct translation is not actually a Thing, and any translated work is going to display the biases, quirks, and language tendencies of its writer(s). This is why people learn dead or archaic languages just to read Cicero or Plato in the original text. It’s a bizarre claim, to say grammar issues are not a problem throughout other media. (Also, try reading a novel translated from a Slavic language, if you don’t like stiff dialog. Have fun.)

- “The baseline for any translation is this: readers of the translation should receive the same experience as readers of the original, as if the original creators had written it natively in both languages.“

If this is the writer’s goal when they go about their own work, it’s admirable. It’s also completely impossible. What does a “native” English speaker sound like? Are they American? British? Australian? Here’s the short of it: by translating a work in your own native tongue, you are co-authoring the piece. It is never, ever, going to be a 1:1 situation when facing down the realities of character limits, cultural differences, & even personal backgrounds. Some works get closer, some works get further, and it’s down to the writers to decide whether a strict or a loose translation better fits the text.

To a certain degree, the way we think - the actual way we formulate & process our thoughts - is influenced by language itself. If you ever communicate with folks who speak English as a second, third, fourth, or so on language - you’ll notice that, even when extremely proficient, they don’t just totally entirely lose the speech quirks that come with their parent language. Eliminating those quirks of speech already changes the context of the work. Is this a bad thing? No, not necessarily; but it’s presumptuous at best to believe yourself capable of understanding how another person would write “if only they were native” in your language.

- “Translation can be a murky concept, so first I'll define a standard to measure against: imagine if translation weren't necessary at all.”

I absolutely despise this. The assumption made is that any story could be told completely, and just as enjoyably, in any language, in any culture, without any change to structure. It is simply not how language works.

- “Translators do not convert words from one language to another: they convert ideas.”

Okay. Let’s keep this in mind.

- The entire “Why aren’t more people complaining?” section

This is one of the most bizarre, difficult-to-follow explanations I have ever seen. It makes totally weird assertions, such as the idea that people hold early, loose translations against current-day translators. That’s a really strange idea, considering the popularity of things like NA Kefka, or bounty-hunter-Samus. The truth is that if the translation was good back in the 90s, no one cared if it was inaccurate. Outside of Usenet, none of us really had a point of reference. The writer seems to have some sort of personal beef with Working Designs leaving Bill Clinton jokes in their work, or something. I am especially confused by the TV Tropes links here, and what they have to do with the point.

Cutting down on this section, we could just apply Occam’s razor: most people have no issue with the translation. 

- I’m not going to go through all the examples. There are some I think are silly, some that I haven’t seen yet, some that are definitely awkward.

One thing that does frustrate me about these examples - it’s noted by the writer that the script does a fine job of getting _the idea_ across. There are few, if really any, examples of the game actually failing to convey meaning. By the author’s own definition of what a translator does, the script succeeds. No, it doesn’t flow the way it would if it were written by an American. Translate dialog this way, and it sounds weird for English speakers elsewhere in the world. It’s a give and take - we don’t all speak the same English. “But these are factual errors!” is a really silly argument here; if they are, why isn’t this an issue for everybody?

- “Unfortunately, while it's possible for a translation to be stiff but understandable, stiff but accurate translations are pretty much a myth.”

I hate this idea, too. “If it doesn’t sound right in American English, it’s incorrect, & doesn’t get the idea across.” The other thing I really don’t like about this is the vast majority of dialog in Persona 5 flows very smoothly for native English speakers! The writer even seems to be aware of that fact, as I’ll address later.

- “It's definitely great to get to experience the cultural aspect of a piece of foreign writing. However, that foreign nature should be expressed by the text's content, not by the text's awkwardness. This goes back to creator intent. If the original creator were perfectly fluent in English, would they have made their writing intentionally awkward just so readers could feel how “foreign” it is?”

I really fucking hate this! How are you ‘expressing’ the cultural aspect of a text by eliminating the speech quirks of the parent language - is the implication that you intentionally add lines to express the character’s nationality? It really feels like ‘thing that detracts from my experience by taking me out of my personal cultural & linguistic comfort zone should be removed and replaced with, y’know, something.’ And that final claim! People who write in two languages - or speak fluently two languages - will very, very often include quirks, stiffness, or other eccentricities in their own personal English. If the author means “fluent in the brand of English I speak and write,” that’s extremely irritating!

- “Consider—how would readers react if George R. R. Martin released his next book and every third sentence was awkward, with every fifth sentence containing an objective error? Writing is hard, and his novels are long, after all.“

I wish this author had simply not written this blurb, I was so much warmer on the criticism beforehand. George R. R. Martin works in an entirely different medium, in one language, with years and years between each published work. The criticisms even this writer has with Persona 5 do not extend to “every third sentence,” “with every fifth sentence” containing some sort of grand, inexcusable error. People would be far, far more upset if this were actually the case. This comparison fails in every conceivable way, & is just outright ignorant.

- “One reason someone might use this defense is that they genuinely don't see a problem, because to them those flaws aren't flaws. And that's valid, so long as they accept other people's right to believe otherwise.”

I like this. I wish the author didn’t hide this at the end, behind all of the assertions of objective “failure” and “outright errors.”

- “I haven't listed every mistake in Persona 5, or even a substantial fraction of them. I've also been forced to focus on the translation aspect of localization, which means I haven't properly addressed other failings such as bad typography, untranslated images and video, and voiced lines that are unsubbed even when Japanese audio is enabled.1 Nor have I dedicated time to the sometimes strange handling of honorifics.“

The typography complaint is valid, though one of the pettiest things I’ve seen in awhile now, and the untranslated images are a series staple, but the honorifics thing HAS bothered me since P3. Just commit or don’t, guys.. Anyway, not much to say about this chunk. I just wanted to say, man that honorifics stuff can be weird (& has been for years).

Listen: If you take nothing else from this write up, understand that I have no issue with people disliking the P5 translation. That’s totally fine. My problem is with the concept of there existing a ‘correct’ English, or a ‘correct’ translation. My problem is with the repeated emphasis this writer, and others expanding on them, place on their definition of “objective” errors. The vast majority of the moments picked out by this writer are not selections of terrible grammatical errors - and I’d argue that it’s /completely fine/ for a couple of those to exist in a fucking video game - but of what the author calls stiff language. That is to say: Neither meaning nor soul are impaired by the P5 translation.

The reverence with which this author refers to the text - referencing how the translation has ruined one of the ‘greatest RPGs of the last ten years��� for them, and so on, so forth - speaks to a kind of pedestal-hoisting that does no good for anyone. For example, in the Sae moment detailed on the site from the start of the game, with the “psychic detective”; what makes the original so good? In Japanese, the detective says “There’s been a call for you” right before she receives a call on her cell phone. Is this not silly as all fuck? Why is it so much better? Why did Sae’s boss call the detective first, why didn’t he just call her cell phone if he had it the whole time? The English script changes the moment to make the detective seem aware that she’s about to receive the call - emphasizing that the detective and Sae’s boss are working together no one in the scene can be trusted, while also positing Sae as an outsider. Watch the scene again and see if you get what I’m saying. https://youtu.be/f3bVM2mxh4k?t=876

It’s super frustrating that a changes like this get flak from this writer, while the worldview being pushed is one of ‘capturing the spirit, not the words.’ It’s also frustrating that many of the game’s legitimate, real problems (that aren’t fucking, the font used to spell out ‘hello’ on a calculator, god damn guys it’s okay most people have done that before) are ignored - such as the constant battle chatter every time you hit a weakpoint in a game centered on repeatedly exploiting weaknesses, or the intensity of the writing game’s first chapter. The writing is held in extremely high regard, & the translation is being used to try to assert the truth of controversial axioms without actually needing to discuss said assumed “truths.”

I just want to leave with one assertion: There is no “correct” English. It’s okay for a text to sound awkward (especially in visual media) _with the caveat_ that it must get the spirit of the original work across. It’s all right, for sure, for a foreign text to challenge or disrupt the expectations of a native English speaker in its translation. In some ways (and not even all), Persona 5′s translation does this. Is it a perfect translation? No, no translation is. Do you have to like it? No. Should you respect the opinion of players who do (as well as ESL players & those abroad!) enough to avoid making sweeping, generalized statements about the failure of the script to appeal to your individual sensibilities, complete with long, detailed theories as to why other people don’t seem to mind? Please. _Please_. Honestly, y’all make this game sound like it’s Chaos Wars, or Arc Rise Fantasia. The hyperbole is unreal, and it simply needs to stop.