How I'd like my stories podcast... maybe.
Dec. 22nd, 2009 01:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prusik[Ok, this is me blatantly cat waxing while I'm on vacation. I suppose I really ought to post parts of this at various Escape Artists forums. They would sound like conclusions there though rather than questions that I'm still puzzling out for myself. Finally, as much as I would love Escape Artists to podcast my stories, I know I need to be patient, extremely patient.]
I started thinking about this listening to Eugie Foster's Daughter of Bótù at PodCastle. Due to some miscommunication, Diane Severson received the wrong pronunciation for the Chinese words used in the story, most notably, 奶奶. (That's nǎinai in pinyin, pronounced roughly "nigh nigh", not "nay nay"). Chinese is a tonal language and she did yeoman's work of indicating that (if the tones weren't always the correct ones). On the whole, her narration met the exceptionally high standards I associate with Escape Artist podcasts. I just found the mispronunciations a little painful. The story itself is terrific.
What I found interesting is that other people had exactly the opposite reaction to how Diane Severson handled the Chinese words. i.e., no pronunciation qualms, but didn't like that she represented Chinese as a tonal language. (To be fair, they may not have realized the words weren't being pronounced correctly.) Basically, the intrusion of a different accent disturbed them. Hmm...
Fast forward to a few days ago. I listen to S. Hutson Blount's Littleblossom Makes a Deal with the Devil. In a neat bit of turnabout, the narrator is Eugie Foster. Like Diane Severson, she easily meets Escape Artist's impeccable standards, but unlike Diane Severson, she makes a different choice when it comes to pronouncing the Chinese words in the story.
It's easy to compare their pronunciations because both stories have 奶奶, grandmother, in common. Now I'm sure Diane Severson would have used the correct vowel had she known to. Eugie Foster does use the correct vowel, but she chooses English intonation rather than Mandarin. (The story makes it clear that when people speak in Chinese, they speak Mandarin. More on this later.) She does this for every Chinese word in the story. Now, I find this jarring especially when we get to place names. e.g., 東北 (Dōngběi). The good folks at the discussion forum though praise how natural her Chinese sounds. Um, ok.
They're obviously entitled to their opinion. And who doesn't favor the familiar over the foreign? I'm just a little disconcerted that throwing out half of how a language sounds makes for a more natural experience.
(Incidentally, when demonstrating tones, I don't know why everyone uses the syllable "ma." In context, you're likely to figure out whether the person meant to say "mom", "hemp", "horse", or "scold." No one ever demonstrates more interesting mix ups like "buy" vs. "sell" or "kiss" vs. "ask." Actually, ChinesePod once did a video demonstrating the latter, among others.)
I have to admit though that some of my unease also has to do with the story itself. Again, from what I've glanced, the good folks at the discussion forum praise how Chinese the story is. Well, it feels like a veneer to me, painted on as if someone had applied rouge and lipstick. I never got the sense, as I did when I read Larissa Lai's Salt Fish Girl, of a story that grew out of the culture.
Now, rouge and lipstick are not bad things. People wear them all the time to wonderful effect. In this case though, I wonder what the reaction would have been had the author written about a papoose who had named her missiles after the animal spirits, and used fire water. Moreover, the security authorization prompt was the computer asking for a sacrifice to the buffalo, or perhaps by asking our papoose to rain dance. Would people talk about how Native American the story was? (Yes, I've mixed up cliches from different Native American traditions here. Perhaps I'm making a point here.) I'm not saying that one couldn't program a computer to replicate, in metaphor, traditional Chinese culture, but why would a military do this or allow this?
Besides that, little stupid things tripped me up. It's frustrating because they're so easily correctable. If you're going to put on the rouge and the lipstick, the rouge ought to go on the cheeks and the lipstick on the lips, and artfully.
The story refers to the main character as Xiaoying. "Xiao" could be 小, meaning "small" or "little." Try as I might though, I can not find a character pronounced as "ying" in Mandarin that means "blossom." I looked in four different dictionaries, each having over 100000 entries. Now, I'm not saying there isn't one. I'm just saying that I can't find it, making for a potentially obscure, or easily misrecognized nickname. (If I guess on the tones, Xiaoying could mean "small photo of one's self" or "smiling expression" among a few others.)
The story then refers to the bad guys as gweilo. On one hand, this is pretty expected. On the other hand, it's also colloquial Cantonese. Having gone to the trouble of making it clear that everyone speaking Chinese is speaking in Mandarin, the story springs a Cantonese expression at us. Two of my dictionaries of standard Chinese don't even list it, and the term has been around forever. I understand why S. Hutson Blount used it, but it doesn't strike me as an expression that would pop up from the point of view of a native Mandarin speaker. (There are a couple similar expressions that might though.)
This is obviously my very personal and idiosyncratic reaction. I haven't mentioned anything that would make me want to throw my iPhone against the wall. Other people enjoyed it a lot praising both the pronunciation and the story's depiction of Chinese culture. Clearly, I'm not trying to dictate how other people should react. I expect I'm fairly alone on this (just like relatively few Firefly fans know or care that much of the Chinese in that show is well nigh unintelligible). That's to be expected.
If I ever podcast a story though, and there is some Mandarin in it, I'm going to pronounce it as accurately as possible. (In some cases, like "Xiaoying" you can only go so far. Then there is my own accent to consider. It asymptotically approaches "Chinese newsreader.") Likewise, if one of my stories with Mandarin gets podcast, I'd insist on the same if I can. The people who get wigged out will just have to get wigged out.
I started thinking about this listening to Eugie Foster's Daughter of Bótù at PodCastle. Due to some miscommunication, Diane Severson received the wrong pronunciation for the Chinese words used in the story, most notably, 奶奶. (That's nǎinai in pinyin, pronounced roughly "nigh nigh", not "nay nay"). Chinese is a tonal language and she did yeoman's work of indicating that (if the tones weren't always the correct ones). On the whole, her narration met the exceptionally high standards I associate with Escape Artist podcasts. I just found the mispronunciations a little painful. The story itself is terrific.
What I found interesting is that other people had exactly the opposite reaction to how Diane Severson handled the Chinese words. i.e., no pronunciation qualms, but didn't like that she represented Chinese as a tonal language. (To be fair, they may not have realized the words weren't being pronounced correctly.) Basically, the intrusion of a different accent disturbed them. Hmm...
Fast forward to a few days ago. I listen to S. Hutson Blount's Littleblossom Makes a Deal with the Devil. In a neat bit of turnabout, the narrator is Eugie Foster. Like Diane Severson, she easily meets Escape Artist's impeccable standards, but unlike Diane Severson, she makes a different choice when it comes to pronouncing the Chinese words in the story.
It's easy to compare their pronunciations because both stories have 奶奶, grandmother, in common. Now I'm sure Diane Severson would have used the correct vowel had she known to. Eugie Foster does use the correct vowel, but she chooses English intonation rather than Mandarin. (The story makes it clear that when people speak in Chinese, they speak Mandarin. More on this later.) She does this for every Chinese word in the story. Now, I find this jarring especially when we get to place names. e.g., 東北 (Dōngběi). The good folks at the discussion forum though praise how natural her Chinese sounds. Um, ok.
They're obviously entitled to their opinion. And who doesn't favor the familiar over the foreign? I'm just a little disconcerted that throwing out half of how a language sounds makes for a more natural experience.
(Incidentally, when demonstrating tones, I don't know why everyone uses the syllable "ma." In context, you're likely to figure out whether the person meant to say "mom", "hemp", "horse", or "scold." No one ever demonstrates more interesting mix ups like "buy" vs. "sell" or "kiss" vs. "ask." Actually, ChinesePod once did a video demonstrating the latter, among others.)
I have to admit though that some of my unease also has to do with the story itself. Again, from what I've glanced, the good folks at the discussion forum praise how Chinese the story is. Well, it feels like a veneer to me, painted on as if someone had applied rouge and lipstick. I never got the sense, as I did when I read Larissa Lai's Salt Fish Girl, of a story that grew out of the culture.
Now, rouge and lipstick are not bad things. People wear them all the time to wonderful effect. In this case though, I wonder what the reaction would have been had the author written about a papoose who had named her missiles after the animal spirits, and used fire water. Moreover, the security authorization prompt was the computer asking for a sacrifice to the buffalo, or perhaps by asking our papoose to rain dance. Would people talk about how Native American the story was? (Yes, I've mixed up cliches from different Native American traditions here. Perhaps I'm making a point here.) I'm not saying that one couldn't program a computer to replicate, in metaphor, traditional Chinese culture, but why would a military do this or allow this?
Besides that, little stupid things tripped me up. It's frustrating because they're so easily correctable. If you're going to put on the rouge and the lipstick, the rouge ought to go on the cheeks and the lipstick on the lips, and artfully.
The story refers to the main character as Xiaoying. "Xiao" could be 小, meaning "small" or "little." Try as I might though, I can not find a character pronounced as "ying" in Mandarin that means "blossom." I looked in four different dictionaries, each having over 100000 entries. Now, I'm not saying there isn't one. I'm just saying that I can't find it, making for a potentially obscure, or easily misrecognized nickname. (If I guess on the tones, Xiaoying could mean "small photo of one's self" or "smiling expression" among a few others.)
The story then refers to the bad guys as gweilo. On one hand, this is pretty expected. On the other hand, it's also colloquial Cantonese. Having gone to the trouble of making it clear that everyone speaking Chinese is speaking in Mandarin, the story springs a Cantonese expression at us. Two of my dictionaries of standard Chinese don't even list it, and the term has been around forever. I understand why S. Hutson Blount used it, but it doesn't strike me as an expression that would pop up from the point of view of a native Mandarin speaker. (There are a couple similar expressions that might though.)
This is obviously my very personal and idiosyncratic reaction. I haven't mentioned anything that would make me want to throw my iPhone against the wall. Other people enjoyed it a lot praising both the pronunciation and the story's depiction of Chinese culture. Clearly, I'm not trying to dictate how other people should react. I expect I'm fairly alone on this (just like relatively few Firefly fans know or care that much of the Chinese in that show is well nigh unintelligible). That's to be expected.
If I ever podcast a story though, and there is some Mandarin in it, I'm going to pronounce it as accurately as possible. (In some cases, like "Xiaoying" you can only go so far. Then there is my own accent to consider. It asymptotically approaches "Chinese newsreader.") Likewise, if one of my stories with Mandarin gets podcast, I'd insist on the same if I can. The people who get wigged out will just have to get wigged out.
