Discussion How do you know which character is speaking?

Discussion in 'Novel General' started by EnuoFH, May 26, 2019.

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  1. EnuoFH

    EnuoFH Well-Known Member

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    After many and many novels, i have yet to find a good way to actually discover which characters are speaking in dialogues that have nothing to indicate which one is speaking, most of times you can at least know some characters that have a more different personality from others but a lot of times its still not possible to actually be 100% of who is the person in question speaking

    Why would you translate something and not say who is the one speaking in dialogue or a thought? Not always its obvious and sometimes its tiresome to actually understand since you are not aware who are speaking, and if the author didnt really mention the character or something like that then its not even translator fault

    Maybe its morea personal problem? I know there is a lot of books and others that dont put characters names on it but its just something that really bothers me since i'm one of those that arent able to actually know sometimes who is speaking, maybe there is something that could help to with it?
     
  2. moto

    moto Spam Bot

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    Takes alot more time to tl and edit when you yourself have to list the names.

    From what I understand is there multiple ways to talk and address themselves in the native language.
     
  3. BigBadBoi

    BigBadBoi Well-Known Member

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    The tone, the way of speaking, wether it is formal or casual, and special quirky characteristics like saying nya at the end
     
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  4. L0pez

    L0pez Well-Known Member

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    Never read anything untranslated but I'd assume that usually indeed it isn't translator's fault.

    As for "how do I know?"
    If I don't know, despite it being important and that happens too often, then I get irritated and drop the novel.
     
  5. Doomr

    Doomr Well-Known Member

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    It’s usually quite distinct in the original texts from speaking styles. It’s just poor translation or a case of “lost in translation”. Or the author is bad.

    Many of the fan translations are translated from web novels, and compared to published text, it’s usually rougher, not as polished in language and not gone over by a professional editor. To add on, Japanese web novels are usually written by amateurs, and light novels are usually aimed towards the middle school and high school readers. I’ve read full on Japanese literature texts (usually aimed at university readers or adults), and it’s much more detailed. But also much more difficult to read, or translate because it requires high level of language skills in the case of fan translation.
     
    Last edited: May 26, 2019
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  6. ValiDxD

    ValiDxD 『White Dragon Emperor』『Wine Lover』

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    no idea how to help you bro I always know who's speaking even in the novels that are translated bad
     
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  7. Asdq

    Asdq RSS FEED SECT! I WANT YOU FOR THE RSS ARMY!

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    idk, i think goes naturally
     
  8. PotatoZero

    PotatoZero Well-known Potato

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    When it's between two people, it's mostly the two characters taking turns talking. Sometimes it isn't, but often it's easy to spot it.
    When it's more.. well, coin toss?
     
  9. Jigoku Shounen

    Jigoku Shounen An Envoy From Hell

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    Well.....intuition?:hmm:
    Usually, you can identify who and who by the context of the conversation/narration. But well....some cases you can't, that even the Translator pointed out that they didn't know who was who. In those cases, well, if you could ask the Authors themselves, then mostly likely you could only guess.
    And....nowadays, JP novels,like LN, aside, KR and CN novels Usually don't have the indication of who is talking. You can only guess, or understand it by yourself, or maybe the Translator add in for you then you are lucky.
     
  10. raitei

    raitei ⟪Procyon lotor paronomasiaabsentii⟫

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    Actually, it all depends on the author the most, rather than the translator.

    A good author would give their scenes a clear distinction to differentiate which lines is whose, either by setup (limiting the characters involved in dialogue) and/or by giving the each characters their own speaking tone and personaity; of course, that would be the most ideal way to do it, to the point the readers will feel each lines belong to whom naturally.

    Nevertheless, the translator themselves could help by adding some name labels inside parentheses or anything similiar to each lines, but that would be pushing it way too much for them.

    I can't really suggest anything else than figuring it out by yourself by intuition, which can be sharpened by continually training to recognize the tidbits/bells and whistles/mental note/whatever that gives the 'feeling'.

    ......Yeah, not exactly helping, but again, it heavily relies on the author's side, if you can't help it. The translator cannot and shouldn't be expected to do all the work.
     
  11. Doomr

    Doomr Well-Known Member

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    The same could be said about a good translator, rather than a good author. The translator would attempt to change speech styles to fit each character’s speech style in the original text.

    But yeah. Either hope for a good translator and good author, or read it in the original text :blobpopcorn:
     
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  12. Crywolf641

    Crywolf641 Well-Known Member

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    Yeah uhm. I don't really know. I've been reading novels for a long time now.
    I could only say it's instinct? So yes just like what others said. Intuition.
    :cookie::blobparty::blobpeek::blobangel::blobunsure::blobwoah:
    I mean I could see how the character would speak and based from that, it's easy to know. Who is who. From their lines to the tone of the sentence.
    :blobwink:
    But we can't really help you on this one. It just comes naturally for some people (like me for example). I've even read google translated novels to mtl's I could still figure out who's talking.
     
    Last edited: May 26, 2019
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  13. unkxz

    unkxz Lurker

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    I only found these kind of problem in MTL, especially in jp novels when the gender swap all the time when MTL.
     
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  14. Matteus

    Matteus [潜んでいる] [Com Fome]

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    Well, I don't remember having that problem, that's strange, unless the translation is horrible you shouldn't have such problem, I'm not even a native English speaker, practice may help though.
     
  15. Myriadfold

    Myriadfold 『Silkmaid』『Ishhara's Devotee』『Daoist』『WW Vet.』

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    if its not in the original... don't add it.

    and that's ignoring the fact the same person can speak a single line or up to 3 lines of quotes. you are expected to know the characters well enough by that point to know who is the one that is asking and who is answering for any given conversation. but its less questionable in western novels because the stories are often written in such a way that the description announces the speaker.

    you are setting your expectations for WN/LN too high lol
     
  16. Overclock

    Overclock Well-Known Member

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    I get what he means. If more than 3 people are speaking in some novels it's hard to tell who saying what. Its more on the author's inability to tell you who's talking as I've seen some novels do it well.

    I once wrote a story on RRL with names to the side to tell who's speaking. I liked to have the whole group at times contribute to discussions rather than two or three people taking the lead while the rest were just decorations. Found some people either didn't like this, or were just not too used to it though. Can't satisfy everyone.
     
    Last edited: May 27, 2019
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  17. AliceShiki

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

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    That's generally just a case of a bad translator.

    Dunno about Chinese, but in Japanese Webnovels all characters tend to have easy to recognize speech patterns, usually with how the refer to other characters or a word they generally end their phrases in.

    This gets totally lost in translation almost all the time, it's really hard to make this pass from Japanese to English... So any halfway decent translator would just add who said the phrase at either the start or end of the phrase.

    If they don't... Well, tough luck I guess.
     
  18. sgrey

    sgrey Well-Known Member

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    I find it confusing as well. I don't think it's translators fault though, and I don't expect them to label the dialog, but thankful to those who do.
    I think the issue arises from the fact that in Japanese and Chinese language people address themselves in a different way or have some sort of quirk when they talk, which is lost in translation. Again, this is not translators fault, as for example how do you translate many different ways of saying "I"? In my opinion, a bad dialog where you can't tell who is talking is the fault of the author. Some of them go as far as just randomly introducing new participants in the dialog and not telling us.
     
  19. Kuro_0ni

    Kuro_0ni Cocooned in a Life transition

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    Translating Japanese dialogue to English is a learned skill. To differentiate which character speaks a certain way, you'd need to pick up on those minor dialogue quirks.

    Like when characters refer to themselves. The use of "I" or "me", in some cases its obvious which character speaks and in others you'd need to infer based on nuance.

    Watashi, watakushi, boku, ore, atashi, uchi, are some of the few ways people can refer to themselves.

    --------------

    In a literary sense, please dont put webnovels on a pedestal. Because these works are an authors story draft.

    I'd recommend a published Light Novel, because by then the author would have made distinct character variations in dialogue.

    I mention this because in some cases, Japanese webnovel authors sometimes make all characters speak in one way. And there isnt enough context to differentiate which speaker is who. It happens, it's also why pure MTL sometimes translates the dialogue in a flat or confusing way.
     
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  20. ongoingwhy

    ongoingwhy Meat Pie Lover

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    I am surprised that no one has mentioned dialogue tags. :hmm:

    Once the author has established on the order of who's speaking, they may start leaving out the tags.

    Sometimes, when a dialogue gets really long, the author may break a speech up into parts. You can tell from the fact that there's no closing quotation mark for the first part.

     
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