Have aliens really taken the place of angels?

Guardian Unlimited | Arts Friday Review | 'Aliens have taken the place of angels'

In Friday's issue of The Guardian, Margaret Atwood tackles issues pertaining to the importance of speculative/science fiction in contemporary society. It was an interesting read and I found much with which I could agree, even if I do still disagree with her definitions for speculative and science fiction, as I see speculative fiction as being much more than just writing fiction based on plausible technologies.

But there's an interesting point she makes in her article, that of meaning. In a world where it seems like each discovery alternately excites and confuses us, where fundamentalists of all stripes have come clamoring for their voices to be heard as a clarion call to something concrete and specific in a world where it seems such certainties are chimeras, there is something about speculative fiction (or if you prefer, science fiction, fantasy, etc.) that reaches out to us, something to which we could grasp and hold tight in a sea full of undefinables.

Recently, there was a post over at SFF World dealing with the issue of whether or not the Bible could be considered a Fantasy. While the purpose of this post is not to debate that point (and my own opinions can be found embedded in that huge thread), perhaps it does serve to illustrate certain deep connections between our cultural religious past and our current society that serves us good and evil in Star Wars cups sold at fast food restaurants. Maybe the aliens will be our angels, but will there be a shift in the meaning that these potential creatures might hold for us? Perhaps, all we can do is just speculate and wonder.

I Narrator

I might as well splash my first posting here, half a year late at the very least. Anway, I've been thinking over the past several weeks about the power of the narrated story, somewhat like Larry's post about the power of stage plays on the audience.

Over the recent weeks, I've been reading Gene Wolfe's Wizard Knight, Caitlin Sweet's A Telling of Stars, Matt Stover's Heroes Die, and Dan Simmons' Olympos. These very different novels and authors have each added to my thoughts on the power of perspective storytelling. Many of us are familiar with the pull of stories told in the typical 3rd person format. Some people are truly drawn to 1st person narrative for the obvious reasons of the immediacy of the story and the main character's reactions. For me, I've realized that I enjoy types of "Telling", to borrow Caitlin's term, a narrative within the larger narrative. This "telling" can come out in different styles and forms in written works, but they all have in common the sense of a deeper sharing of the story, readers and the characters.

Much like a play unfolding before an audience, certain aspects of this "Telling" style draw the audience into plot, setting, development, suspense, more directly than many other forms. Gene Wolf's Sir Able, in Wizard Knight, is writing a letter to his brother, a letter that we are reading. Through the process, the character has to contextualize his experiences, his gained understandings of the events going on around him. He also happens to underexaggerate, smooth over, forget, avoid and lie about certain details. The telling here becomes a living thing. The entirety of the novels exist as this letter; however, Wolfe has managed to create a story that is somehow larger, more complex than the entirety of the written work... he managed to put his letter-styled novels into a larger context without even writting it.

Caitlin Sweet's A Telling of Stars is both a telling and a story about a series and intersection of many tellings. The novel is tied together in a weave of different characters stories, partially revealed for the most part, that bring a greater understanding and deeper feel to the overall story, which turns out to be a Telling of it's own. While the novel is not directly a first person account, it does force to reader into multiple and ever-changing understandings of characters, events and situations as each new element and telling brings in a new texture to the main chracter's world. The interesting thing is that these interconnected tellings seems to be the power behind the reader's connection with the characters and the story. There is a kind of power in the constructed words of the characters in this novel that allow us to sit next to the characters for the revealing.

Both Simmons and Stover use "Telling" in more conceptual ways in the noted novels. In Ilium and Olympos, Simmons is working with a multi-part story, one part revolving around a re-telling of the epic battle for Troy, Homer's Iliad, from the perspective of an on the field scholar. This part of the novel also happens to be in 1st person narrative. Thus, we get commentary on actions, characters and developments from an observer. This device allows the reader to enter into the novel in a different way... with specific context and conversation as much as a simple reading of the plot elements. Simmons explores the ideas of "Telling" in other ways as well... the events of the war of Troy enter into another arc of the story, but as a form of media entertainment... also as an intended means of education. This gives characters not involved with the Troy arc an odd connection and interplay with the other section of the novel. As events unfold, the reader finds themselves in much the same situation, holding "observed" information from the Troy arc as new characters and events unfold. Finally, Simmons' has created a society where history has been lost, for the most part, and the power of the story has been reintroduced. So in one book, you get a narrated story of a war, a complex interaction with that narrated story, and actual stories of events and developments that happen off the page. All in all, this creates the sense of a much more developed and complex world and story than simply spelled out on the pages.

Stover goes at this in even another way. In Heroes Die, Stover creates a world that watches actors transport to another world for the purpose of adventure. It is like reality tv and fantasy high adventure combined. The interesting aspect for the reader is that Stover places us on both sides of this "Telling". We are sometimes in the PoV of a watcher of events, the PoV is actually coming from a person virtually "living" the main character's events. At other times, we are getting a more standard style of story, though the character will break into monologue for the benefit of those watching his "adventure". In this way, the reader gets involved in several different levels of the story, from the main characters personal thoughts, his carefully crafted and contextualized telling of events, and a completely removed and almost secondary connection to the story. It is an interesting concept, and it was used to great results in the novel.

What captures you when reading? Are there times when you feel more connected to a story than at others? Is there a narrative style that makes novels more immediate to you when you're reading?

For me, an author's ability to involve me in the story by changing my typical relationship to the words on the page makes all the difference. "Telling" makes me feel involved in a novel in ways that are different... I can be further removed and seeing the story through the lens and context of a character, or I can be so far into the events and actions of a character that it's difficult to make out a larger story. The styles and techniques are different, but I enjoy the results.

Anyway, I'd love to hear any thoughts or comments.

Jake

A Postmodernist Bulgakov?

I just had the pleasure of finishing a novel recommended to me by Maciek/Vanin called Perverzion. The work of an Ukrainian novelist/poet/essayist/translator, Yuri Andrukhovych, Perverzion is a great many things all bundled up into one paperback volume of 326 pages. It is in turns a murder/suicide mystery, a exploration of morality and the interstices that take place in human lives. It is a farce, a prosy poem full of allusions to other allusions. It deals with religious matters of the soul; it is concerned with the postmodern decline and fall of the Carnival. It is also a love story, and a story of love misled. It is all of these things and many more.

The story revolves around the last days of one Stanislav Perfetsky - poet, gadfly, one-time stripper in a club catering to older women. He is a romantic and yet utterly beyond this. His travels across Europe, from Lviv in the Ukraine to his apparent end in the canals of Venice, are the stuff of legend. But just who is Perfetsky? Andrukhovych explores this with a series of chapters written apparently from the perspective of those who knew him, who were baffled by him, who were sleeping with him, and who were spying upon him. It is a fascinating mosaic quilted together with a deft comic touch.

Now I mentioned Bulgakov in my title, because the translator in his introduction refers to similar thematic elements present in both, combined with a mutual gift for the absurdly meaningful. While I need to re-read Bulgakov to ascertain just how accurate these claims are, I do recall a certain sense of devilish glee in both works, as the authors tweaked the noses of the pretentious (the chapter on the conference regarding post-Feminism is something to behold, intersplicing the "saintly" Perfetsky's making out with Ada with the speaker's Andrea Dworkinesque denunciation of almost all sex as rape) in their satirical ramage through their tomes.

While this book certainly contains elements of the supernatural (as does Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita), it is very difficult to classify Perverzion as belonging to any one school or genre of writing. It is simply sui generis, which certainly would be pleasing to Perfetsky himself to know. If you are a reader who likes challenging books that have a high reward potential, then I highly recommend that you buy Perverzion.

Life is but a dream?

To be, or not to be, - that is the question -
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? - To die, - to sleep, -
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and teh thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, - 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, - to sleep; -
To sleep! perchance to dream: - ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause...

Hamlet, Act III, Scene I

Those who know me well will tell you that I am a huge lover of plays. For me, plays constitute the boundary between the Written and Spoken worlds. So much can happen in a play that cannot happen elsewhere. Unlike movies or television shows where the viewer is only a passive, non-essential part of the performance, the play often requires active audience participation. It is our applause, our interest, our own emotional baggage that the playwrights seek to attract, and in some cases, to deceive.

The actors are truly in action, moving about, morphing our perceptions with just a few well-placed words and a timely twinge of emotion that might flicker across a performer's face before it is replaced with another, possibly mysterious sign of feeling. A play is staged, but yet it conveys deep truths about ourselves when it is performed well. As Shakespeare had Hamlet's character say later in Act III, "The play's the thing."

What power in such lines as that or in Hamlet's soliloquy! I have found that good playwrights can create a world full of Feeling and Meaning just by allowing us audience members to do exactly that, to listen and to react to what is being said, and even more importantly, to how it is being said. One of the main weaknesses that I believe speculative fiction has as a whole is that this genre has failed to capitalize upon the power and beauty that is inherent in the play form.

In many ways, plays provide people with the avenues for emotional/personal escape that lovers of speculative fiction claim for that genre of literature. While watching Hamlet's dilemnia, or perhaps pondering the often-sad realities found in Thorton Wilder's Our Town, or even considering the notion that Life itself may be just only (and so much is this only!) a dream, as Segismundo does in Calderón de la Barca's La vida es sueño (Life is (a) Dream), the playwatcher can be caught up in such a way that is virtually impossible for any written work to perform unaided. For words to have true power, I believe they must resonate within the hearts of the recipiants, which means they must be spoken as well as read.

But yet plays are not as important as they used to be in everyday life. From television, movies, and video usurping some of the exciting visual moments, to radio and the above extracting the auditory elements, plays have been pushed into the background of posh theatre groups or rinky-dink high school performances. Where are the Georg Taboris daring to rewrite histories such as Hitler's youth into dreamscapes of the human psyche? Where are the Henrik Ibsens, reminding us of the often sad truths to be found within the doll's house? Where have they all gone? Is there any future left in the play format?

I believe that there might be. For as I tried to say above (and fear that I might have failed at my task), plays just offer something more meaningful for those people who "get it." There are more direct connections, as the actors and actresses may appear at the end and bow for our applause. We give immediate approval or disapproval to these performances. Seeing sometimes our hopes and fears presented in a play can just be so rewarding, that it is a wonder that we don't see more plays being written today, in this world of dislocation and alienation. Perhaps that is a field that someone with a keen interest in the speculative can explore to greater extent. Because I suspect that the play form can be paired quite well with the speculative. But maybe I'm just only dreaming. It wouldn't be the first time.

Well, time to get this blog active again, yes?

So it's been a long, strange trip since I last updated this Blog back around New Year's. Since then, I've returned to school full-time as a Social Work major and I just haven't had the time/energy/desire to immerse myself in speculative fiction like I did the year or so before. But now that summer is fast approaching, I should have some free time coming up to making at least occasional posts here.

Considering that this is basically a blog for some of the OF Admins to comment on whatever floats their boats, hopefully there will be more variety in the posts. After browsing through a few other blogs, I thought maybe we could better integrate this Blog of the Fallen with OF as a whole. So I'm going to try to do these things with my future posts here:

1) I'm going to provide more short reviews here, especially of works that might not fit exactly within the parameters of speculative fiction but which might be of interest to the reading public.

2) More comments about discussions, debates, etc. within and without the field that I encounter in my personal life or elsewhere on the Web as a means of provoking thoughtful discussion.

3) Less links to places like this.

In the coming weeks, I plan on kicking things off by reviewing books I recently received from publishers, such as Alison Croggon's The Naming, Kevin Radthorne's The Road to Kotaishi, Julie Czerneda's Migration. Also, expect reviews shortly over Umberto Eco's The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, Yuri Andrukhovych's Perverzion, and Calderón de la Barca's La vida es sueño.

If there are other things you wish to see from this blog, please leave a suggestion here and I'll see what I can do. The more that reply, the better!

Caitlin Sweet Interview

Thanks for agreeing to do this interview, Caitlin. If you don't mind, could you give us a brief biographical sketch to give us a clearer image of the person behind the pen?

I was born in 1970 in Quebec, where my father was a university English professor. We moved to Lausanne, Switzerland when I was two and stayed there until I was four. After these four years of French living (apparently I was bilingual when we came back) we returned to Canada - this time to Toronto. My parents still live in the house where I grew up: lots of stability there!

I was not an active child. I willed myself to get nosebleeds every time we played baseball in gym class, and I generally attempted to be sick for swimming lessons. I read books while I walked to school - which was, luckily, very close to my house. I read books at family gatherings, in the car (Lord of the Rings on a summer trip to Maine), in my bed in almost total darkness. I burned my biology and math notes at the end of grades 10 and 11, respectively, when I officially finished with these courses. There was no resistance by my parents to this course-dropping. My father taught Latin and Greek mythology as well as English (my bedtime stories were Greek myths, with most of the gory parts removed or toned down). My mother had a degree in Library Science. (Incidentally, my six-years-younger sister is currently doing her PhD in English lit.) They never seemed to doubt that I'd have some sort of writing success someday. If they did doubt, they never let on. I was extraordinarily lucky to have such support, right from the beginning.

I did a BA in Humanistic Studies at McGill University in Montreal. Humanistic Studies was basically a liberal arts thing: I had to take a certain number of credits in English literature, literature in a language other than English, music and art history, geography...It was fantastic. It was because of this degree that I discovered Spanish literature. These books changed my life - seriously. Coming in contact with literature that was utterly surreal (Borges and Lorca) and magic realist (Márquez) was like discovering an entirely new form of fantasy. It's likely no coincidence that I started writing fantasy again, after a long hiatus, near the end of my degree.

I taught English in Mexico after graduating. I'd been accepted to a comparative literature MA program, but decided (along with my then-boyfriend, now-husband) that I wanted to go somewhere and actually use the Spanish I'd learned. Living in Mexico was a strange, wondrous, fraught experience. After we returned to Canada I kept teaching English, to mostly Korean and Japanese students. A few years went by; I needed a change; I applied to the University of Toronto and got a job as an administrative assistant at the Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. I had this job for five years, during which I also had two children (meaning much of my time at U of T was spent on paid maternity leave!). After I returned from my first leave I decided I needed to haul my long-neglected A Telling of Stars manuscript out from my basement - which I did. I found a literary agent, thanks to the lovely Internet connection at work, and printed out several dozen versions of the manuscript - and then, after getting my second Penguin contract in 2003, I quit.

I'm now a full-time mother (my daughters are 5 and 3) who writes every afternoon from 1:45 to 3. This schedule will change next year, when I should have a bit more time every day in which to write - but it's worked so far.

You said that your father taught English and mythology. By any chance were you exposed to Irish mythology, at least in passing? Because when I was thumbing through my copy of A Telling of Stars, I couldn't help but notice how a few names (the Alilan in particular) seemed to have close parallels with Irish mythological heroes, such as Ailil (from the story of Deirdre of the Sorrows).

I was indeed exposed to Irish mythology, mostly thanks to my maternal grandparents, who made many trips to Ireland and always brought me back books (knowing me well, as they did!). But I'd definitely classify this influence as "in passing," since I haven't done any re-reading of the myths as an adult. I may have echoed the name unconsciously, or entirely randomly - but I'm very glad you noted it. I really enjoy the points readers make about my books - points I myself didn't know I was making. Deirdre of the Sorrows seems an entirely appropriate myth for Telling to evoke!

We were talking earlier in email about the character of the Keeper, found in A Telling of Stars. Without spoiling too much of the story, would you like to tell the readers here about how you came to construct that character and his role in the story?

I'd just finished my BA when I started on the Keeper section of the book. I was still reeling from the experience of reading the Latin American greats - and I was living in Mexico. I now think of that part of the book as an homage to the concept of time I'd encountered in Borges and García Márquez. "Remember the future and imagine the past" - Carlos Fuentes said this in a lecture he gave at McGill, and it stayed with me. Time loops as much as it flows; it circles back and leaps forward, and humans just don't understand it very well. Keeper is a character who does understand it. He, and the fortress and gardens he tends, are alive in moments of all time - moments Jaele, the protagonist, becomes entangled in. She considers him a prisoner - but she also begins to see that he has a sort of power, as he slips them both in and out of the present. I liked the ambiguity of his role, and of the setting.

Keeper's fortress and gardens were influenced by Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy, too. I was deeply affected by Peake's depiction of Titus Groan's castle: a sprawling, vast, decrepit place where you could always stumble upon a room or indeed a wing you'd never seen before. This sense of a place that's not exactly fixed, that could never really be rendered on a map, was precisely what I wanted to capture in the Keeper section.

Very cool! I was wondering about the exact nature of Keeper's power and to learn that you were thinking in part of what Borges, García Márquez, and Fuentes were describing in their stories is an added touch. But I'm curious about your comments regarding Peake: Are there any other elements in your stories that you would attribute to a fond reading of the Gormenghast stories?

I mentioned the sprawling, labyrinthine, apparently chaotic nature of Gormenghast castle; these adjectives also apply to Peake's narrative. I frequently refer to the plot of Telling as "organic" - meaning I didn't set out the details of the story beforehand, but let characters and setting lead me. This was the feeling I had reading the Titus books. Peake knew his places and people intimately, but the plot in which they were involved didn't unfold in linear, strategic fashion. (The third book in his trilogy, Titus Alone, is a really, truly problematic book in which chaos overwhelms any vestiges of plot.)

I too have read Borges, Lorca, and García Márquez and have recommended them to the readers here. But if you had to sum up in a few words the direct influence that these three authors have had on your writing, what would you say that you've taken from them?

A passion for the tangible power of narrative. Words, written and spoken, are incredibly transformative (in both wonderful and horrible ways) in Latin American fiction. I've also been influenced by the power of place in these stories. Houses, rooms in houses, towns, trains, the pampas of Argentina - these locales are rendered with care and intensity; they're vivid, often surreal, always essential to the lives of the characters in them.

You say that you learned a passion for the tangible power of narrative; that words, both written and spoken, are transformative - how would you say that you've applied this to your stories and the characters within?

In both Telling and Silences, the most obvious embodiment of the transformation-through-narrative idea is the Alilan. They are the capital T "Tellers," whose spoken words conjure images that seem entirely real to their audience. The Alilan are aware of the dangerous potential of this gift: Tellers are forbidden to use their words to make changes in the world. Of course, rules are made to be broken...

In Telling, Jaele often uses stories and words to significant effect. She utters words in the Keeper section that provoke a devastating (if ambiguous) change; her conversations with Ilario allow him a measure of peace and acceptance he hasn't ever had. He, in turn, teaches her how to write and urges her to write of things that matter to her; this ends up being extremely liberating (though also very difficult) for her. Lastly, Jaele herself becomes a Teller of sorts, as she recounts her story to an audience desperate for words and change.

In Silences, the words that aren't spoken (or, more specifically, written) are frequently more powerful than the ones that are. This is the distortion side of the transformation coin: when the truth is altered or simply not recorded, the stories that remain will of course be false. There's power and peril in this kind of narrative, too - though there remains the possibility that even untrue stories can be a vehicle for positive change (as is the case with the legend of Queen Galha and its effect on Jaele).

What was it, if "it" can be defined, that led you into reading and later writing fantasy?

"It" was an imprinting thing - something that happened so early I can hardly pinpoint time or place. That it did happen is thanks to my parents, who read me fantasy before I could read it myself, and certainly before I realized it was "fantasy." (Everything was just "story" then.) And thanks to my childhood friend Debbie, who gave me a copy of Lloyd Alexander's The Black Cauldron for my seventh birthday. That moment I remember, probably because I was so intrigued by the cover (the one with Taran, sword drawn, peering anxiously at the nasty cauldron and its three witchy keepers). As soon as I discovered that this was the second book in a series, I nagged my mother to buy me the first, which she did - and that was that. I devoured the Prydain Chronicles, and shortly after that, I started to write stories. Really, really long stories. Too long, in fact, for my grade two teacher (who was probably just plain tired of reading them, and of supplying me with more and more Hilroy notebooks!).

My reading of fantasy began early, before genre definitions apply - and so did my writing of it. I wrote "once upon a time" stories, and stories in which someone has all sorts of surreal adventures, only to discover they've been dreaming (I thought this a very sophistical literary trick when I was seven). By the time I was about 11, I had become aware that fantasy was its own genre. By the time I was 14, I was aware that fantasy had zealous detractors and zealous defenders. "Read Judy Blume," my friends demanded, and I tried, but I just didn't get it. "Read Dickens," my English prof father urged, and I tried, but again didn't get it (until several years later). Which isn't to say that I read and enjoyed only fantasy. But fantasy was most definitely where my heart was, as a young adult.

Something changed when I got older. I moved from y/a to adult fantasy, and started finding that the adult books just weren't satisfying me in the same way that the y/a ones had. It seemed there was less wonder, less care taken with language and characterization. I started understanding what fantasy detractors meant when they claimed all fantasy was "escapist." Lots of battles, lots of complicated lineages and magic systems - but, to me, very little real magic. I stopped reading fantasy, mostly. And I stopped writing it. I'd written my first novel-length work at 14, another at 15, another at (yes!) 16 - but after that I wrote only historical fiction for a few years, and after that (late high school, first two years of university) nothing at all. I didn't write again until my third year at McGill, in 1991 - not coincidentally, just after re-reading the Prydain Chronicles yet again. It was amazing, the rush I felt: the reinvigorating sense of wonder and possibility. I decided to begin something. A fantasy story I'd attempt to imbue with the sensibility of the y/a books I'd loved, but a story for me, at 21 years old. This story became, over the course of six long years, A Telling of Stars. It was difficult, slow going - but it was also such a joy. I'd returned to fantasy - the reading of it as well as the writing - and it felt good.

Does that answer your question?

Which authors have had the most influence on your decision to write fantasy?

I've already mentioned Lloyd Alexander. Early on there were also Eleanor Estes, E. Nesbitt, C.S. Lewis (the box set with the Pauline Baynes covers!), Susan Cooper, Ursula LeGuin, Alan Garner. Another huge influence on my early writing was Rosemary Sutcliff - not a fantasy writer, exactly, but her historical novels were as beautiful and awe-inspiring to me. As were Mary Renault's, which I read a bit later.

I've found through many conversations with other authors that they are as much readers within (and without) the genre as they are writers. As a reader, what sorts of things have you found in fantasy/science fiction writing that have appealed to you and which they would you wish to see more authors use in telling their tales?

I've always found a distinctive use of language very appealing. Obviously, there has to be a compelling plot to go along with the words - form over function definitely doesn't do it for me. But what I find so inspiring about the genre is that form can mirror function in a way it just can't in mainstream literature. Magical events can be described using magical language. (It's almost a kind of narrative-sized pathetic fallacy.) I certainly don't think that stylized prose is a requirement of fantasy story-telling - but I do think that the language of fantasy can and should be used with just as much polish and care as that of any other type of fiction.

When you state that the language of fantasy can and should be used with as much polish and care as any other genre of fiction, is this in reference to critical reviews of the genre and the styles (or possible lack thereof) that is perceived as being inherent in the genre?

I tend to attempt to defend fantasy against pejorative "critical reviews." Sometimes, though, I find myself straddling a tenuous line: I defend fantasy to its detractors, but I also understand some of the detractors' criticisms. One of these, as you've mentioned, is the low quality of genre writing. Now, there are certainly enough examples of badly written mainstream books to go around, and I'd extend my "polish and care" demand to them, too - but, frankly, it's the ghettoized genre stuff that gets blamed the most for sloppy writing. So I insist, "There's wonderful writing in that crazy section at the back of the store!", and also, "More fantasy should achieve narrative polish, panache and rigour!" It's a pretty bipolar existence.

In your first book, A Telling of Stars, you introduce a group of people, the Alilan, who seem to make the world come alive with their stories. Any insight as to the connection this might have with stars, or would that be spoiling the story too much?

The Alilan (who worship twin Goddesses of Earth and Fire) believe that stars are the fires of their dead ancestors. The connection between storytelling, memory, grief and redemption is extremely strong in the book - and that's all I'll say!

I recently read and really enjoyed your second book, The Silences of Home. I noticed it was markedly different from A Telling of Stars in both form and content. In which ways were these differences the result of the story being told and what other ways were more due to authorial development?

I started A Telling of Stars when I was 21, broken-hearted, mad at bad fantasy and desperate for all kinds of catharsis. The language I needed to use to tell this story was intensely poetic. The story itself was simple, plot-wise, but complex in emotional ways.

Fast-forward 12 years. Telling was finally done (i.e. edited, bound, on shelves!) and I was ready to write another book. I knew it would be connected to the first - but I also knew right away that its tone and content would be almost completely different. The story was not going to be related to my own cathartic needs. It would have to be complicated: lots of characters and shifting points of view, lots of tension and different kinds of resolution. I needed to plan this one. Minutely. I needed timelines and chapter synopses and point form lists of all sorts (hardcore fantasy readers who've read Silences may be thinking, "She thinks her plot's complex??" But it was. For me!). When I finally started writing, the language I used was different too. Less poetic description; more dialogue. The book ended up being longer than Telling, but it was also somehow less wordy.

So, as to your query: The kinds of stories Telling and Silences were determined the language I used to tell them. They were also written many years apart, meaning my "voice" was bound to have changed. I love that the two books are set in the same world, but so different; and I love the reasons for this.

Related to the above question: How do you respond to reviews and criticisms of your work? Have there been comments on your style and content that you've addressed in The Silences of Home?

Reader reaction to Telling was pretty polarized. Re: style: "What a joy to read such beautiful writing!" and "What a load of quasi-poetic twaddle!" Re: content: "How great that there are no wizards and battling armies!" and "Where's the plot?" I expected this polarity, and the negative responses didn't devastate me (too much!).

While I was writing Silences, I was aware that my different approach to content and style might make the book more accessible to more fantasy readers - but this wasn't what made me write it the way I did. I won't be disingenuous and claim that the prospect of reaching more readers didn't excite me - it did, and does. But the differences in approach were not the direct result of negative feedback to Telling.

Relatively simple question: What are some of the silences referred to in The Silences of Home?

The empty spaces left by absent friends and family, and by words that might (or should, or could) have been spoken. The sudden strangeness of a place that was once beloved and familiar.

You said above that reviews of your books have been rather polarized. I'm curious, what would you say to those readers who seem to have been very quick to dismiss your approaches toward telling your stories?

I'd say: If the kind of fantasy I write isn't the kind you like to read, don't trash it - try a "not my thing, but it's a big genre" approach and move on. Or at least be considered about your criticisms: give me something reasonable and respectful to react to.

More and more fantasy/science fiction authors these days appear to be depending upon internet sites such as wotmania to get the word out about their books. What are some of the good and bad things that you've noticed about sites such as these?

My first online writing experience was becoming a member of the Del Rey Online Writers' Workshop - something that galvanized me into starting the search for a literary agent. I "met" people on that workshop who are friends of mine today (Scott Bakker and Karin Lowachee, to name two). They gave me confidence, convinced me that the first three chapters of A Telling of Stars actually made them want to read more. Who knows how long it would have taken me to get my query letter written if I hadn't found this forum.

I've recently dipped my e-toe back into the vast genre pool that's out there/here on the Internet (via my forums at sffworld.com and caitlinsweet.com) - and again, I can say that I've felt welcomed, supported, encouraged. It's tempting to feel isolated as a writer - artistic, driven, misunderstood - whatever. But after a few minutes and days on a respectable online forum, you realize you're most definitely one of many. It's a comforting feeling.

And yet...for me, anyway, it's possible to feel too comfortable - and overwhelmed by all those other voices. About three months after I'd joined the Del Rey workshop, I left it. I was working on agent-requested revisions at that point; on a practical level I just couldn't keep up with the demands of the site (I was supposed to critique every writer who'd critiqued me). My head also felt like it was on the verge of exploding, all the time. I was getting so many different reactions to my writing, and I felt I had to navigate through them: choose the ones I wanted to act on, dismiss others. This became really, really confusing and time-consuming. Three months in I had to say, "Enough: now I have to get back into my own brain and just write." I'm feeling the same sort of semi-explosive sensation now. It's wonderful, talking and writing about my books, hearing about other writers' books - but I'm also feeling the need to burrow away somewhere and get on with the next one.

As usual, the Delphic oracle gives the best advice: "Know thyself" and "All things in moderation." (There's a bad "moderator" pun in there somewhere!)

Speaking of Scott Bakker, and because I know he will be reading this interview, are there are any funny/weird stories involving him?

Funny/weird and Scott Bakker in the same question…Hmm…

I can honestly say there’s been no weirdness of any sort. Except perhaps for that incident at TorCon involving him, five girls, and the “hey, chiquitinis!” comment. And the infamous “so hot, so smart; whaddya say?” encounter at the autograph signing at last year’s Ad Astra. And the time last summer when his sweet illusions/delusions about the essential goodness of the female mind were rudely shattered at the Fran's Diner on College Street in Toronto. And there’s been an awful lot of beer, and goofiness of the most erudite kind. So funny and weird, yeah – but mostly just cool, cool beans.

Other than that, my lips are sealed!

*whistles innocently*

And moving on now...

What questions, if any, would you like to have the readers here consider, whether it be about your works, your writing, fantasy in general, or even life, the universe, and everything?

(42's the answer, of course!)

Is "magic system" an oxymoron?

Who are/were your Fantasy Greats? Has your love of their work limited as well as inspired you, as either reader or writer?

What has surprised or intrigued you about the work of any new fantasy authors you might have come across recently? Do you like to be surprised by the books you read, or do you prefer familiarity?

What kind of escape do you look to fantasy to provide?

How does fantasy inform your "real" life?

And now for something completely different: The traditional wotmania "Monkey Question" (Aren't you just thrilled right now that this is the last question?):
If you were to own several monkeys and/or midgets, how many would you own, and what would you name them?

I'll go with the monkeys. I'd have three. (Three is a mystical number, especially when it comes to non-human primates.) Their names would be Gurgi, Chewbacca and Animal, in honour of my favourite childhood hirsute creatures. Or, going with the Star Wars theme, I might call them Sidious, Vader and Maul - because those are kick-ass monkey names.

Thanks, Larry. Not just for the monkey/midget question: for all of them. You've put a tremendous amount of thought and energy into crafting this interview, and you've made me think really, really hard about a lot of things. Gracias.

And thank you as well, Caitlin. Been a real pleasure working with you on this.

Scott Gall Interview

Editor note: Scott Gall is a translator who works for a Japanese company, currently working on localizing a MMORPG for American audiences. Unfortunately, due to a non-disclosure agreement, he was unable to tell what company, nor what game. The interview was carried out by our own lord-of-shadow on the Games Board, and it takes a look at the difficulties of translation from one culture to another, using games as the medium.

So, that being said, enjoy
Scott Gall is a localization project manager for a game publisher in Japan.

Max Nichols (lord-of-shadow): My first question was one that came up quite often while I was asking for input from the online gaming community. How much freedom do you have while translating? Are you given strict guidelines by your company and told to follow them carefully, or are you given some leeway in adopting things for different audiences and cultures? And a few were curious about whether you ever get to put in personal touches. Maybe you name an NPC after a friend, or put in an old family joke, or maybe even a reference that only you and some friends would understand?

Scott Gall: Different types of freedoms are awarded and withheld. The first one that comes to mind is the public relations freedom, which I don't have as a localization lead, to mention my project and company here. I'll do my best to avoid boring you to death with generalities though.

The poetic license type of freedom to liven up the dialog, stretch meanings, and ignore certain text elements is different from game project to game project. Some loc projects are set up to trust the translators, some are not. Two in-house translators working for the same company, but on different titles, could have different levels of freedom awarded. Even something like schedule problems, which often result in lighter or more haphazard editing, have sway over what the publisher intended to allow the translators to do.

I used to expect to see a more progressive or enlightened language lead or editor above a translator whose text takes liberties, but I haven't found that to be true. Schedule and budget and managerial oversight often end up playing a part in the amount of translation freedom. In business management terms, much of the game industry is still immature when it comes to localization.

Translation, however, will eventually offer the chance to leave one's personal touch. I suppose the difficulty of inserting a coded personal phrase depends on how big of a mark you try to leave. I don't know anyone who hasn't inserted a little footprint here or there, but these days it isn't as often or as big as players imagine. After a while I think as a translator you realize that there's no reason to sneakily insert esoteric meanings at every turn like a Free Mason. All you have to do is keep working month after month, year after year, and eventually you will have a hundred thousand words that are more or less an expression of you. A few "Look what I got away with!" stories are nice to recount at parties but it's a fleeting joy. I recommend shooting for volume of text as a footprint.

That covers footprints in text translation. Naming, on the other hand, is done separately from translation and is sometimes nothing but a collection of people's footprints. Many of the translators may be asked to participate in naming. They should. Naming is a hugely political task in both the original and overseas versions of every game, and it affects translation freedom indirectly. Before I got into the game industry I worked with marketing text and other entertainment industry writing. I saw very quickly that every human has a burning passion to name something. Especially in text-heavy games like fantasy RPGs, naming and its approval process take weeks. In-game content names are hotly contested within loc (localization) teams, and between dev (development) and loc teams. Usually the loc team is striving to keep the dev team from enforcing use of words with sounds that are too strange or lame in other languages. The dev team might see this as encroaching upon their intellectual property and simply refuse even good naming suggestions because they don't have the ability to differentiate between reasonable and unreasonable ideas for another language. Then you've got the UI command names, which might also need their own abbreviations for certain menus. Then the biggie: the game title. Naming might be the most accessible and visible part of every localization project but it can cripple a project's schedule from the beginning.

The preferred loc process is to create a glossary first. A glossary is what holds all the names decided for items, characters, locations, etc. It's a collection of the company's preferred terminology for that title. The style guide exists separately to help translators know how to notate the mechanics of their writing to achieve a look and feel of uniformity throughout the game. Style guidelines can be assembled quickly but glossary approval is like a first child: It just doesn't want to come out and labor is long and sometimes painful. A delayed glossary inhibits the freedom of translators when beginning work on the text. I mean, imagine you are asked to go through an entire day without using a name. You can use any word to describe a person or thing, but if it has a known proper name, you can't say it. Can't say Knife, can't say Robert, not even Sweater. Try to pass a couple hours like that. You'll know how uncomfortable a translator can feel when starting text without a finalized glossary. I call that lacking translation freedom because the power to envision the whole story in detail has been curtailed, at least for a while.


Max Nichols: Humor, especially humor containing cultural references, must be very hard to translate. When you come across a joke or something that, if translated normally, would simply not be understood by the new audience, what do you do?

Scott Gall: The first thing I ask myself is whether there's anything I can change in the preceding or subsequent text to better frame the material in a more humorous light. Then within the joke, I might shoot for a lesser laugh but at least stay within the flow of conversation or narration. The point of laughter is often context dependent and if you step too far outside the context flow to get a laugh at the same time as the source text, you also might end up introducing some needless confusion, all for what might not have been a very big gain anyway. Not to mention that translators are always on deadline and don't have the time to sit back, have a beer, and brainstorm over how to handle every single instance of humor.

Unless the joke is critical to depicting character or story at that precise moment, you might just sacrifice a difficult joke altogether and opt for plain phrasing, knowing that you can make up for lost ground in the laugh department in other spots where the source text is flat. That's easier to get away with if the acting on screen is not too specific.

If the timing in conversation or narration is truly critical and a laugh must be attained now, then I like to look back several lines for a place where I can introduce background explanation earlier. Try to get the imagination pointed toward where I know it needs to go for their joke, or replacement joke, to have some impact. The price paid is that for a few sentences before the joke, the translation might resemble the source text very little.

Then there are one-liners where there is no buildup at all in the source text. If there's no time to really fudge anything, you're stuck so you rack your brain for a while and do your best. On deadline, you might be able to skip to another file and come back when you have an idea, but humor in games is everywhere, almost in every batch of translation. Try explaining the situation to a friend or coworker and ask for a funny replacement punchline. I know a few hilarious but logical people who can sometimes imagine a replacement for me.

You'll notice a pattern of problems with humor as a translator. In Japanese-to-English work, a translator is repeatedly challenged by having to make a laugh out of content that is often too timid or subtle to amuse most North Americans, and I would guess Europeans too. Japanese translators, on the other hand, are tasked with trying to bring some semblance of meaning to English jokes, which often rely on knowledge or sensibility that is too spontaneous or ironic or violent or simply unimaginable to be even faintly realistic or relevant for a Japanese person in the situation at hand.

So you've got English game players who are hard to surprise and amuse with text that was interesting but not funny, and the translators are working hard to sharpen the jokes. And you've got Japanese game players who are easy to confuse or bore with text that is funny in extremity but not necessarily clever, and the translators work to boil it down to its core and just translate that, so that it is at least understandable. It's safer to bank on Japanese appreciating cleverness more than volume of humor, so if the joke has some layers to it that highlight the human condition, it will be easier for the translator to get some mileage out of it.

Here's a film example I would teach in translation class if I were a teacher. I saw Wayne's World in Japan when it was first released in theaters. The Grey Poupon TV commercial campaign of rich people interrupting each other to borrow mustard was known in the States, but it was totally unknown to Japanese people. Now, rather than fudge the lines leading up to "Might you have any Grey Poupon?" so that some attempt could be made at understanding the high society angle, the Japanese subtitles simply replaced "Grey Poupon" with "condom." I've asked over a dozen Japanese people through the years who saw the film if they thought that was funny and not one has answered yes. However, none of them were perplexed with the sudden abstractness of that sentence until I asked them to reexamine the scene. I used to think of that subtitle as a failure but years later I've decided it's genius. The translator used a word that does not make sense or generate laughs, and almost any single word there would fail to do so. But the word "condom" is apparently just within the scope of conceivable wackiness for the Japanese that they can subconsciously brush it off as "That silly guy, he's asking for that? What will he ask for next!" The moral is if you can't get a laugh, at least you can stay in character of the person speaking, and then you might be able to keep from drawing attention to the fact that it wasn't actually funny.


Max Nichols: Cultural differences are certainly not limited to humorous situations. What do you do about symbols such as a swastika, which I understand is considered a lucky symbol in some Asian countries, but would be instantly associated with Nazi Germany in America?

Scott Gall: What I would do is ask the dev team what they were smoking when they designed it in the first place!

There should be few surprises these days about what upsets people so much that sales are impeded and bad publicity results. At least, in the markets usually shipped to. Doing your homework during development can fish out a lot of problems. What you can't avoid is current events. What if an original symbol in a game halfway through development turned out to be similar to, I dunno, the signature of a murderer who gets arrested one month before the game's release? You're stuck and you say a prayer to the PR god of your choice and hope everything will be better in the morning.

A dev team should take some time in the beginning to decide what it will create for each market. If they determine that 90% - but only 90% - of their target audience can accept a middle finger or swastika or nudity, and therefore only one version of the game will be sold everywhere, then they really have no right to complain if their sales or rating in 10% of markets is bad. For any reason.

If a game was never intended for loc but somehow was picked up for international sales later, the publisher should review the game carefully before deciding where to sell it. In the case where something must be deleted or added to the game after it has been completed, I suppose a contingent of people from the dev team, quality assurance, and localization would come together and crank out whatever changes are needed. When a game asset unexpectedly upsets an overseas culture or ratings board, everyone in the industry learns from it and life goes on. Game content adjustments may be expensive but in the long run they pay off. If the swastika-looking symbol absolutely must be kept by the dev team for the notion of artistic integrity, then expect a higher age rating for the game or lots of little print from the legal department and even a ban here or there. That's how it works in just about every business I can think of that depends on exports.


Max Nichols: Censoring has always been a big deal among many people I know. Do you find yourself having to constantly alter things to make them more suitable for their new target audience? In my experience, things that might be considered taboo or unspeakable here in America (incest in the Fire Emblem games, for example) are less so in other cultures¡­ and vice versa.

Scott Gall: I've never worked on a project that pushed the envelope on sensibility. What I notice is that you constantly have to change the NPC dialog to make it interesting.

If I felt I ever wanted to recommend a game element, I would go to the dev team and producer and state my case.

North American culture has low tolerance for child exploitation, for example, but has high tolerance for violence and themes of lawlessness as self-defense. I think this goes back to your question on culturally sensitive symbols. Most of the time, a developer sees the hot water ahead before stepping into it. You can either try to change a society and its laws to accept your art, or you can change your game. I can't say which is better, but I think you can see which way is more profitable in the short term.


Max Nichols: I have known fans that are angry at the slightest change to the original meaning, people who would prefer to have the Japanese originals translated as literally as possible - cultural references, taboo subjects, and everything else. And that makes sense, to some extent - the original intent and meanings should never be lost in a translation. Yet it would not be in the best interests of the companies involved to make a game that is inaccessible to the general American public, due to a translation that is too literal. Obviously, a balance must be reached here. How do you go about achieving this balance? And what is your opinion on the subject of original intent and meaning versus localized intent and meaning?

Scott Gall: First a translation must be understandable and enjoyable or the publisher won't stay in business. Enjoyability is achieved with the highest success rate when the translator knows the culture of the people he is translating for and adjusts to their sensibilities while maintaining as much of the flavor as is permitted within the localized sensibility. This issue has been blown out of proportion past what is really happening in real-world translation. Have you ever seen a translation of second-generation Korean-Japanese gang members calling each other "Nigga"? I haven't. But I should be seeing that and other similar text, according to this argument that dialogue is being overly localized. There are words that Japanese street punks call each other that are slightly derogatory but which also show the closeness of brotherhood and which cannot be used by anyone outside that circle without inciting a fight. People who don't know any foreign languages well are more likely to mistake current translations as a sell-out, but in fact that's nowhere near the case.

Japan megafans who want the Japanese sound effects or extremely literal translation should go study Japanese and then buy the original game. The localized English version exists for people who have no intention of studying Japanese. Translating some of the English but keeping Japanese-isms sprinkled within is a whole different version and would require a separate localization project. I admire the energy of those fans who are willing to accept harder gameplay in exchange for cultural adventure, but look, just because a comic or game or animation is Japanese doesn't mean it's intrinsically more hardcore and accurate and cool than the same thing produced in Seattle.


Max Nichols: Many niche titles are already bought almost exclusively by fans of Japanese culture and language, or at least by those who have some appreciation of it. Seeing that this is the case, why don't we see more subtitled games, or at least games with the option to keep original Japanese voice-acting? I myself have set some games to Japanese voice acting with subtitles, rather than subject myself to the torture of poorly done English voices.

Scott Gall: I would go back to the reason of money again. If you, Max, establish a Paypal account and collect $50 from tens of thousands of people and then contact a game exec, I think you'd get a game with English UI and text, with the original Japanese voice acting. Unless you go that far, you're asking a company to take a gamble that the money they make from Japanophiles will cover the customers lost who only wanted English. I agree that's a short-sighted way of looking at it, because some of the titles people seem to want in Japanese are the same games that never sold well to begin with, so why not take a risk and fill that obvious niche market? And depending on how heavy the data is, maybe you could just toggle it on or off the way you do on a movie DVD. I don't have a definitive answer for you, but I'd remind you to take a look at the human mind. No one wants to be the first to fail at something new anyway, and Japanese companies are particularly terrified of this.

Another thing, a game company must adopt different licensing and payment for the original voice actors if that plan comes to pass. If an expensive voice actor was used in the country of origin, that person might actually ask for so much money for international release that it becomes much more attractive to use those "poorly done English voices."


Max Nichols: Connotations - I imagine they can be very, very annoying. Heck, even within a single language, these can cause communication issues. How carefully do you translate connotations? Do you just stick to the straight definition, or do you make an effort to incorporate other meanings and implications?

Scott Gall: I think you have to translate text with important connotations just as much as they need to be translated. No more, no less, best you can. With games and subtitling you're always working with text length restrictions, so you can't afford to get fancy at every turn. Reasons why you might find subtle meanings untranslated are space, time, translator ability, and editor ability. Or you're reading too much into the original text! Stop imagining connotations! No, seriously though, you can't judge the quality of a translation based on single lines here and there. In the end, most games are created to be lighter and faster than an essay or poem. If a player or a translator is obsessed with text containing layers of subtlety line after line, then I'd recommend literature over electronic entertainment. Not every game has a lot of subtlety to the text, and not every translation is able to capture it, for one reason or another.


Max Nichols: What's your approach to translating honorifics, such as chan, san, and sama? I've talked with non-professional translators before, and these usually present problems. It's hard to effectively communicate the same levels of respect, restraint, relationship, and everything else in English, without getting to wordy.

Scott Gall: It's hard to do without getting wordy, but not impossible by any means. Failure to do it repeatedly in proper brevity doesn't mean Japanese is a hard language. It means the translator was a mediocre English writer before he or she ever got into translation.

Not everyone realizes that, in daily translation business, translation is often done by people who are not bilingual. They might be hotshots but aren't necessarily bilingual. And that's ok. The "weakness" of a non-bilingual translator is covered by having him or her translate *to* his or her native language. Johnny translates J to E, Taro translates E to J. So nowadays you've got native English speakers, for the most part, responsible for translation, or at least for the editing. If the text is too long or clunky or just plain boring, blame Johnny for not honing his English writing craft. Taro is probably innocent.

Japanese honorifics are expressible in the five registers available to the average native English speaker. A linguist told me there were many more than five registers, but whatever, five is plenty for those without a graduate degree in linguistics. You, as a native English speaker, have the word choice and voice tone that you use for immediate family and best friends, and another for a professor or police officer, and yet another when you give a speech. Those are three easily recognizable registers. By mixing registers, one can achieve a mix of high and mid-level politeness found in many languages, including daily Japanese.

In Japanese, -chan and -kun and other name add-ons can be chosen to show affection and social proximity. Just because it's not -san doesn't mean the person is being spit on. I know at least two cases where a female is called -kun, though it's fairly uncommon, and then there's the sarcasm, or sometimes just the innocent teasing, of attaching -sama. So you can't bet on those words to be the best road signs for how much respect is present, and carrying them over into English, they're just dead weight. Unless you're trying to stress a Japanese presence in the text for some odd reason, just drop those words and call characters by their names in English. Everything will be ok. Trust me.

If someone wants to worry about names, I advise them to spend time on a practical issue, such as whether [Japanese text cut due to formatting problems] should be translated as Taro or Taroh or Tarou.

Max Nichols: How would you go about translating something with a standardized form, like haiku or certain types of poetry? Would you prefer to try to maintain the original form, or the original meaning?

Gall Scott: I'd choose to aim for the original meaning. I wouldn't take the job if someone told me to match the syllables. Or I'd take it but quadruple my price. Or I'd attach the condition that kanji could not be used, which would hopefully kill the deal right there. If you exclude abnormally long scientific words, the average word length in English is about six letters. That represents fewer syllables than the average Japanese word. Poetry, I'll pass. Unless it's my girlfriend's poetry.

With music lyrics translation you're up against a similar challenge. However, the canvas tends to be bigger and this can help you get by as a translator. With a bigger canvas, you're more likely to be able to get the meaning across, and even have some fun doing it.

Last year a Japanese guy at the pub I went to a lot at the time in Tokyo asked me to translate his song. He's an amateur musician. I showed my translation to an American friend of mine and he said "Oh, I didn't know you write songs." So I thought it was gonna be good enough. Then I handed the translation over to the Japanese guy and he said, "This is not what I imagined. You made it stick to a time structure. Don't worry about that. Just be cool." Yes, sir!


Max Nichols: In English, forms of onomatopoeia, such as "bang" or "pow," or just attempting to emulate a real sound, are usually regarded as childish or unsophisticated. That is not the case in Japanese, where it is considered a formal part of the language, and has its own nuances and the aforementioned connotations. How do you go about translating these?

Scott Gall: When X-men the movie was released, I taught my Japanese friend the famous SNIKT for the sound of Wolverine's claws. At the time she wasn't an accomplished English speaker, but she managed to remember that word and when we were at a pet store months later she was holding a cat's paw and repeating, "Snikt! Snikt!" I'm like, "No, um, that's not quite right, but nice try!" The point being, to a Japanese person, the sound of one set of cat claws could be the same as the sound for another set of cat claws. The biggest difference between Japanese giongo and English onomatopoeia is that where you and I will argue whether it should be SWAPT or SWAAP or SWIFF, Japanese people more or less agree which spelling of which word best represents a given sound. Japanese comedians get a lot of mileage out of throwing a slightly modified giongo word into a story. Everyone knows that the comedian knows that it's not the usual choice for that sound and so it becomes funny.

To me, translating giongo gets tricky only when it's part of the dialogue. The same character might use it several times, or several characters might use it once each to describe the same item. If it's in dialogue, I do believe it should be translated. Try to pick something that a reader wouldn't get annoyed by after three times. I think you have to accept as a writer that others will have their own way of envisioning a sound in English. All you can do is try to be neutral in spelling it. If you do decide not to translate it, that's fine too, but watch out if it's within dialogue. It probably should be translated. If it's in narration or straight sound effects, the service you do a native English reader by translating every instance is debatable.


Max Nichols: Have you ever found a passage or section of writing that is almost completely untranslatable? If so, what would you do to tackle this problem?

Scott Gall: I would send it back and ask the client, or the requestor, to reassess what kind of translation would be best. That's the voice of experience speaking. I was once lucky enough to get a freelance translation assignment for Japanese children's language public TV programming. They wanted one episode to be subtitled in English so the show could compete for an educational programming award in Europe. I struggled with the translation severely but after two days I'd finished no more than five lines. Feeling totally defeated, I went to see a Japanese friend who was an accredited teacher of Japanese as a foreign language. I said to her, "Take me out back and shoot me, I can't do this." The show featured classical Japanese, giongo, syllable-based songs, children's whiney pronunciation, and it was all to be subtitled. A subtitling nightmare.

My mistake was in trying to translate in a way that explained why certain key words and lyrics were being introduced. Kids who watch that show don't understand the Why of the phrases in the skits, they just learn the What. But I was determined to get the meaning across for the sake of the programming judges and I failed to see that the meaning was not the point. The point was to have fun with words, and it wasn't fair to the content to be boiled down to just an explanation. The client tried to edit my translation and I think then they finally realized what I'd been up against. In the end they decided to let a lot of things go untranslated with just a short explanatory title at the beginning of each skit. Unfortunately, the visuals made little or no sense that way. You needed a slight understanding of the words to appreciate the interplay with the visuals. Looking back, I think the best way would have been to provide playful subtitling and then provide a separate explanatory script translation. That would have been unfair to other children's programming entries in the competition but I don't know how else to do it. I imagined the German competition judge watching this and wondering whether the entire show was thought up by hippies on acid who'd come through a wormhole from Woodstock. Visually, the show was all over the map.

The moral is, the monolingual client isn't always right, and not every kind of text is "ready" for translation. When you are told to "Translate this!" it can pay to sit down and think about how much to translate, and how.


Max Nichols: How much story is lost in translation, would you say? Obviously this would depend on how literally you're translating it, but it must still be something you need to worry about. I certainly know some fans that worry about it, and even go so far as playing Japanese versions that they don't understand to avoid translations they consider poor (I don't get their logic at all, but hey¡­.

Scott Gall: Plot? Very little is lost. It's all there usually. Emotion and reason and motivation? It can vary. What a Japanese person considers ample motivation for an action is not always going to make sense to someone from another culture, and vice-versa. In those cases you have to find a way to make the emotions more believable. You have to jettison the source text. You have to cut the anchor loose or else the ship will just sit there and get hammered by the storm of confusion. Let the boat of words float away and go where it must to find safety. If that's not acceptable to a player, then again I say, with all due respect, that you can buy three language textbooks for the price of one new game.


Max Nichols: Have you ever found a translation that you would consider superior to the original? If so, what was it? Or is that even possible, in your mind? After all, for a translation to be better than an original, it would have to deviate from it a bit, and that may not be acceptable.

Scott Gall: Lots of things can be said more clearly in translation than in the original language. But that doesn't necessarily make for a superior text. I wouldn't want Myst to have a translation that leaves no margin for doubt, wonder or imagination.

In cases where I think a translation feels crisper and more inspiring, I expect to see a very finely crafted source text. Translators recognize inspired writing and can motivate themselves to do a better job when they're working from something that started on a higher level. When I spot those rare cases, naturally I applaud the translator, but I also have come to applaud the loc project manager for being able to get the right translators enough time to create such careful work.


Max Nichols: Living in Japan and working for a Japanese company is something very few of us will ever experience, in all likelihood. Naturally, we're very curious. Do you enjoy it?

Scott Gall: My emotional outlook on working for a Japanese employer is similar to what you hear parents say after many years of raising children. Parents say, "I wouldn't trade the experience for the world. But if I knew it was going to be this hard then I wouldn't have had a second one." That sounds about right.


Max Nichols: How long did it take you to learn the language? Was it a difficult language to learn?

Scott Gall: I am still learning but the answer you are looking for is "four years." I studied for two academic years in the States, one semester in Japan, then busted ass in self-study for a while after moving to Japan. In some areas I have an affinity for the language that others don't. I believe that comes from genuinely liking the sound and, more or less, the structure, and having respect for the people I meet. Reading and writing are a hassle. Speaking is a reasonable challenge. The U.S. military still ranks Japanese as one of the most difficult to train for but I disagree. How can you compare it to all the verb tenses in Spanish, the consonant-heavy pronunciation of Eastern European languages, or the pronunciation of Dutch for that matter, or the gender issues in Italian, or all the different rules for referring to people's names in Russian, or the four-thousand more kanji in play at any given time in any of the Chinese languages. There are languages easier to fail at than Japanese.

Where students of Japanese really suffer is the learning process. The variety of educational materials is weak and many teachers seem tragically incapable of coming up with effective approaches to explain the age-old sticky points of the grammar and usage.


Max Nichols: Do you see yourself as an outsider at your job and in the area you work in, or is it an easy place to adapt to, in a business setting?

Scott Gall: Localization teams are an outsider in software development, unfortunately. You're either making the program or selling it, and everyone else in the process seems to be thought of, at times, as expendable. Within localization I'm not even a native Japanese person. I'm the minority of the minority in my company, and it can feel that way sometimes. But you have to be careful in assessing whether you feel isolated because you're a foreigner or because you're in localization. I used to work at a loc vendor, which means that all we do is localize software 24 hours a day. Literally. There were times when our clients simply used us a punching bag and tried to blame us for all the bugs in their original programs. I felt isolated, powerless and wondered if I would live through it. If you let your respect for yourself slip away or if you let your health slip, things can get dark fast, and then it doesn't matter who's picking on you or why. As for working under most Japanese managers, it's not an environment that a lot of people will thrive in. There's little or no encouragement to tackle problems from new angles. Get used to being your own cheerleader and guru and critic. Your foreign coworkers are critical for staying sane.


Max Nichols: Finally, a question asked by someone who said they're actually interested in a career of this sort: How do you get a job like this? What sort of things did you need to do and learn, what do employers look for

Scott Gall: Foreign language ability, strong writing and speaking skills in one's native language, a positive attitude, an international outlook, extended time living abroad, and a history of consistently accepting and completing cross-cultural challenges. All of that together is 50% and the rest is timing and luck.