Terms ruined by Novels

Discussion in 'Novel General' started by Demintika, Jun 13, 2021.

  1. Demintika

    Demintika Dragon

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    Fun Fact: Parallel Dimension is a contradiction because Dimension are supposed to be Perpendicular.

    Joke aside, I do use Dimension in place of World/Universe all the time. Just that recently I read a novel using it in its corr- original definition and I went to look for more.

    However, Time Travel tagged wrongly is a problem unrelated to definition. Sure, "going back to the past" in the start of Second Chance is Time Travel; but Time Travel fictions require a lot more, to the point of being a genre.
     
  2. aShinyVaporeon

    aShinyVaporeon Well-Known Member

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    Well, other than "dimension", which is technically wrong but oft used nowadays to refer to another world, the other ones you mentioned are very well inside my acceptable range.

    Second chance, as mentioned previously by a few other posters, is technically a subtype of time travel, as it is backwards time travel, like regression. It's just that taggers are tagging it wrong when they should be mutually exclusive--this isn't a term ruined by the novel community, just ignorants tagging things wrong.

    As for Dimension being used incorrectly, this may be because of translation inaccuracies, and it also doesn't help that people use dimension to refer to other worlds a lot. This isn't ruined by novels either, just language in general changing. It's not really specific to this novel community but the whole fiction community. As for 2D, 4D, just brush it off as bad sci-fi. What can you say? It's like hearing explosions in space, just the author's poor understanding of the term. Side note, I've only seen this in Low Dimensional Game, one of the reasons why I dropped it. The author seems to think that if it's displayed a screen or 2D plane, it's 2D, even if it's simulating a 3D world.

    Smart MC is fairly relative, @Fluffums made a good point on this one. What's smart is your opinion, what's in the tags is the author's portrayal of the MC by making the in-world MC look smart to other characters. It's there for people to find MCs that use strategy, that's all.

    This depends on the book's definition of gene, just like how the terms "immortal", "fairy", "sage", "warlock" and "sorcerer" differ between media despite having a real-world definition. In D&D, for example, warlocks explicitly refer to those whose magic power stems from a contract with a higher being, while sorcerers are those who have a magic bloodline. Yet, in real life, the two have no distinction and mean exactly the same thing. In most novels, it kind of just refers to a vaguely hereditary thing. Most don't explicitly use the word gene, either.
    However, you should note that it is fiction. Why can you accept people having magic powers, but not hereditary magic powers? The rules of science are different in fantasy, that's why it's called fantasy. Maybe magic powers just work in a different system than our modern understanding, and just happen to also be referred to as genes in-universe.
    When sci-fi starts to use it, again, nothing to do but accept the author's poor understanding of it. Not to mention that most sci-fi here is also fantasy or supernatural, in which my above point would apply (it's magic, bro, accept it). Just because it's called a gene doesn't mean it's your understanding of a gene--the definition of gene from Oxford Languages states that it is "(in informal use) a unit of heredity which is transferred from a parent to offspring and is held to determine some characteristic of the offspring." In other words, a unit of something hereditary. Doesn't have to be your system of heredity.

    Not really ruined, but hydromancy, pyromancy, and geomancy refer to divination by those means, not just magic in general, which is how it's used a lot.
    Similarly, necromancy refers to the communication to dead people, not death magic and control of undead.
     
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  3. AliceShiki

    AliceShiki 『Ms. Tree』『Magical Girl of Love and Justice』

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    Time travel is a tag, not a genre. At least that's how it is on NU.
     
  4. Demintika

    Demintika Dragon

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    I'm not even sure how "tagging" works now that you say it that way.

    Time Travel is a tag used to tag novels of Time Travel genre, but people just tag it if there is remotely any Time Travel in the novel.

    On an unrelated / related note, my sister just complained today that a Manhwa she reads has Harem tags, despite having only 2 possible female interest.
     
  5. Nimroth

    Nimroth Someone

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    Except it actually doesn't require more than that, the important thing isn't how much time travel there is in a story, it is how important the time travel is to the story, and for second chance stories usually the entire plot relies on that single return to the past, unless the author screws up anyway.
    If you are arguing that there need to be more than that then you are not talking about the Time Travel genre itself but rather some specific sub-genres of it.
     
    Last edited: Jun 14, 2021
  6. Wujigege

    Wujigege *Christian*SIMP*Comedian

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    In summary, the novelty has worn off and you need to get out of this community and go buy published books.
    Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out
    [​IMG]
     
  7. asriu

    asriu fu~ fu~ fu~

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    nah it typical langue discussion, or if you must insist word definition~
    a word may change it definition, get new definition, additional definition, lose definition or just cease to exist~ nothing new really~ be it from mistake to common mistake to accepted new meaning or slang to commonly use definition~

    term is just a word to explain something, a shortcut~ on science or rigid study that require strict use of term such thing really matter, on fiction a word may change new definition cuz various reason~

    translation of novel, manga and anime which scattered on various sites pretty loose on term of definition more so if lack on administration aka moderators~
    let say discussion about this thread while its ok the impact almost none if there no strict regulation upon tagging on NU cuz whining here without doing nothing else mean just talking but doing nothing to fix it~

    let say wuxia, this cat know some title misplace it but cuz doing nothing to it (this cat is lazybum) nothing change~

    so the term rather than ruined it just change~ at least to common cat perception~
     
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  8. babybb

    babybb Well-Known Member

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    One term I can think of is ‘space’ as it’s typically used in rebirth apocalypse novels, like the space that MC uses to store and carry stuff around. Technically ‘space’ can be used that way, but for me, it means other things.

    First and foremost, I think of ‘space’ as the great cosmic expanse. Second,
    the word ‘space’ reminds me of the corner of a kindergarten classroom where little kids go to cool off if they get worked up. Like, they have their own space where they can think about why they got angry and work towards resolving what happened. That’s probably not a very common meaning for ‘space’ but it’s what I think of.:blobjoy:
    So… whenever a ‘space’ is brought up in a novel, I alway imagine MC getting all sulky and stomping away to their corner to think about their actions. I’m willing to bet I’ll always have this image in my head when I see the word ‘space’ used in a non-science context.

    Is the word ruined? Technically no, but also… I’ll never see it the same way again, so you could also argue yes.
     
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  9. ToastedRossi

    ToastedRossi Well-Known Member

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    This is a good example of a problem caused by the translator. The reason why you perceive this as an issue is because the word "space" encompasses all of these meanings. In languages like Chinese though, all of these are different words. In the Chinese original the term is probably "空间", and while it does mean "space" it's not something that would ever be mistaken for outer space and the like. I wouldn't say that this is quite a mistranslation but the translator could definitely chosen a better word.
     
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  10. babybb

    babybb Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, I agree. Unfortunately, it seems like this is a pretty common translation for whatever word it is in the raws, so I doubt there’ll ever be a novel that doesn’t refer to this ‘space’ as ‘space’. Oh well.:blobwhistle:
     
  11. ToastedRossi

    ToastedRossi Well-Known Member

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    It's a consequence of translators picking the first word that comes up in the dictionary. It'd be better to translate a whole sentence and rewrite it so that it flows well in English instead of translating word by word. But this takes a certain amount of skill and good translators get paid pretty well in the real world. At least this isn't one of the worse examples out there, and the meaning of the original is somewhat retained.
     
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