On writing other cultures

[feuervogel]

nb: This is a bit of a braindump as I put thoughts together. I'm not locking this, because I like discussion.

A somewhat recent post from Ekaterina Sedia on being a Russian writer with an American audience, building on one from last year which she wrote about "foreignness" in translation and how people mark foreigners as "other" by having them speak broken English, sticks with me.

But wait, some of you are possibly (probably) thinking, what about American books translated into foreign languages? And yes, there are a lot. In fact, there are a lot of SF/F books translated from English, and most Hollywood movies do release abroad. In fact, Western cultural influences are so ubiquitous as to become familiar – and inescapable. I will posit that people in other cultures don’t really mind translated works because they are used to being exposed to different perspectives, and thus stepping outside of one’s own head is not a chore – it’s a necessity. It is also my hunch that part of this necessity recently has been reinforced by the Western cultural hegemony – refusing to accept American perspective or ignoring it is not really an option in the current extent of Western cultural colonization. [...]
So the issue with books set in foreign cultures, I think, that even though many SF/F readers call for more perspectives and diversity, they don’t really want that. They want someone familiar to show them some exotic stuff without actually challenging the readers’ assumptions or values.

From last year's:

A couple of years back I was on a panel that compared several translations of Zamyatin's We, and both the audience and the panel participants seemed to prefer the translations that sounded the most broken, the most alien. I alone liked the one which translated Zamyatin's text into normal English (with a few quirks of the original preserved), and I still remember the vertiginous sense of trying to explain how alienating that broken English felt while realizing that my own accent, in turn, is rendering my point useless (after the panel, several people saw it fit to compliment me on my accent; just FYI.)

She posted that around the same time there was a discussion on how to translate manga into English, wherein someone argued that it's best to keep the honorifics (-san, -kun, -sensei, etc) even if you're translating a work set outside Japan. (I argued that keeping them marked the text clearly as "other," because what kid New York City that isn't of Japanese descent speaking to a Japanese teacher (or in other contexts where addressing someone as -sensei/-san/etc is relevant and appropriate) is going to say "Hello, Smith-sensei"? Or "How's it going, Jeff-kun?" In a manga set in Japan, it's more appropriate to leave it as "Good morning, Tanaka-sensei" or "How's it going, Yuki-kun?" But that's a long-past discussion.)

And back on the subject I originally intended to discuss.

I'm an American, writing in English, ostensibly for an American audience. Yet my principal characters are essentially future space German-Turks (and Germans), except the ones who are future space Iranians. I aim for an insider perspective; I've left a lot of things unremarked-on (like what sucuk and Maultaschen are), and my characters make soccer references on occasion (and they call it football, dammit). I don't want to have the American-looking-in perspective, or have these characters be future space Americans with European names. I also don't want to have the white person writing about "exotic" cultures thing, either.

Though, in some sense, I'm targeting a German audience as well. I'd LOVE to see my work in German. I don't think, sadly, that I'll ever be quite good enough to write novels in German. There are too many nuances I don't have. Though living there again could help, because I'd have to use German most of the time. I'd even make Ben speak German at home. (Maybe not always...)

Of course, some of the assumptions I've made for these future societies could probably be seen as imperialistic colonialist crap. (For starters, at some point, Turkey joined the EU, before that split into western and central/eastern European trade unions, and Germany got its head completely out of its ass regarding citizenship and "integration." And in 500 years, nobody cares if you're gay, and they can marry and serve openly in the military. WHY NOT? Jeez.)

I call this whole universe "space Germans," but my principals are Turks. I think that not having Turks in future Germany shows ignorance of reality, like having LA or NYC entirely white. My little special forces unit is ethnically similar to the 2010 German World Cup squad (though there are no Africans among the named characters. There are 68 of them; maybe they're unnamed and in a different platoon.)

I have no idea if anyone will buy my novel. It's got some Baen-tastic action, but gay Muslims aren't exactly something their main demographic is particularly keen on, or most of the editors, for that matter. *sigh* I just have to have faith that I can make the story compelling enough that I can get an agent, and that s/he can sell the damned thing.

Comments

[zombieallomorph]

I'm totally gonna buy your book =D
I would love to read about future multi-cultural queer-friendly Germany. That's what I call proper escapism.


(By the way, German translations are very similar. There are Japanese honorifics and English forms of addressing people. It's so common (and I can't think of a single movie without people calling each other "Mr" "Mrs" etc), it even feels weird and unnatural to me when there's a story or movie (that is originally German) using "Herr" and "Frau". I don't know if anyone else feels that way, though.)

[feuervogel]

:D It's an actiony space opera with mercenaries, so there may be other sketchy issues (ohai, let's go in and make some regime change by force! though when your people live in a tin can in space, it's really easy to be a dictator and hard to be a rebel, let alone get things like weaponry or training. I've hopefully made it clear enough that there is an active resistance movement, but they're outclassed by the dictator's mercenaries, and the dictator isn't afraid to resort to, say, shutting off life support in certain sectors to make his point. So it's not quite analogous to the CIA waltzing in and knocking over governments. I hope. Ugh, I worry about that so much.)

That's an interesting point. When I watched Iron Man 2 last year, it was dubbed, and Tony was Mr Stark. I didn't see any other dubbed films, though, so I couldn't compare. I just thought it was because it was set in the US, so it made sense. (Whoever they got to dub RDJ had a really high voice. It was odd. But the patter worked, I think.)

[yhibiki]

Oh my god I have this whole pet peeve about language translations and broken dialogue and... ugh. To make matters worse, it's not like the broken English any of these people use is actually equivalent to real ESL English. Movies, games, books are all "good" at portraying foreign accents -- but until the character speaks with the same grammar and vocabulary mistakes as a real foreigner would, those accents mean nothing. When was the last time you saw a "German" character on American TV who used the perfect tense instead of simple past? My mom does it all the time -- "Last summer I have gone to Argentina" -- because that's how you would say it in German -- "Letzen Sommer bin ich nach Argentinien gegangen."

And also, IN THE FUTURE, ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN. Society gets more open with time, not less. ... well, unless entire empires fall or there are invasions or something.

[feuervogel]

Yes, exactly! And using when instead of if! And some other adorable misconstructions that are perfectly syntactical in German! There are a few Germans on my futbol twitter feed who tweet in English, and they make minor syntax errors like those. And of course we know what they mean, even if we'd probably never word it that way. Just like I probably make weird DaF syntax or word choice mistakes.

I'm trying to decide if the people who originally went to space would be more or less strictly religious. I can imagine it either way, and from things I've read, Turks in Germany are more likely to be religious than Turks in Turkey. Though that could be more an effect of many Turkish immigrants coming from rural areas, which are more religious to begin with, than them using religion to create an identity, an Us. Or a combination of the two.

What I want to do is organize this mess into something coherent and put it on my blog-blog.

[yhibiki]

So, recently I've really noticed the phenomenon of becoming "more" or your own culture when in a foreign country. Basically, I've never felt particularly American (or German, or Argentinean). Even when I was at Kansai Gaidai in 2007/08, it was hard to place myself culturally. When I first arrived her at IUJ, I just had to laugh and explain how nope, I wasn't really American.

But these past two months, I've started hanging out with other Americans on campus (they're in a different program, I hadn't really talked to them much before). And suddenly, I feel so completely American. The people I hung out with before have commented on it, and I can't help but both feel a bit bad and feel really happy that I've found people with whom I "click" so well -- the "click" being the shared cultural values and backgrounds, the same sense of humor.

I mean, it helps that they're the type of people I would have hung out with anyway. But I feel like I've shifted closer to "American" than I ever was before, and I'm not sure that would have happened if I'd met these two in the States.

Oh cultural identity, you are so complicated.

[feuervogel]

That makes a lot of sense, and I wonder if I moved to Germany, if I'd find myself more American. I wasn't the most introspective college student ever, so I can't really say if that happened before. There weren't other Americans in my dorm, so I didn't really have that experience. The Australian gal who moved in next door in the summer semester made friends with these British gals, and we all hung out a lot.

I had more culture shock going from NC to Oregon than MD/PA to Germany, which is kind of surprising...

Last year in Berlin, the 2 other Americans in my class and I took great joy in busting people's stereotypes (flag-waving, Bush-loving, gun-toting, capitalist religious nuts) by being atheist socialist democrats. A variety of people told me they were surprised I wasn't like the people they see on TV. Yay?

But (and this is kind of embarrassing to admit) the Hetalia episode "America's Closet Cleaning" got me kind of misty-eyed. So yeah, I'm very deeply American, for the definition of American that includes "give me your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

[krait]

Dude, if the last three military SF novels I read can get published -- and they self-evidentially have -- then you can! :P

[feuervogel]

Ha, true. I think this rides the line between military SF and space opera with mercenaries, so it could have a slightly broader appeal than the typical USA!USA!USA!-type who reads mil.sf.

I'm pretty sure it won't get published through Baen, but I'm not at liberty to disclose why.

[krait]

Hmm, that would be nice. (It's strange sometimes, being a military-SF fan while coming from a completely different political side than its writers tend to be on.) One of my favourite novels in the universe could be described as "space opera with mercenaries", so that packs a lot of appeal right there. :D

Since Baen is responsible for the far-rightwing-political-agenda-masquerading-as-a-novel that I'm currently slogging through, I have to say I won't be heartbroken if you go elsewhere. Sigh. There ought to be a rule, like there is about Mary Sues: if you have to keep putting little comments in the text about how your character world is not a Mary Sue utopia... it's a Mary Sue utopia.

Thought it ought not be, because People Don't Really Act Like That; if you remove all government oversight and expect corporations to not poison their customers and work their employees to death, you have not read anything AT ALL about the Industrial Revolution, and I will regard your novel as the product of a particularly ill-educated twelve-year-old boy.

[feuervogel]

I prefer to think of my stuff as a descendant of Bujold and Cherryh, rather than idk Ringo, Drake, or whoever.

Minarchist/anarcho-capitalist utopias are so full of shit. That's why I had to end it with the libertarian I was dating last year. I wanted to punch him for his ill-educated smugness. Dare I ask what you're reading?

I still need to organize my thoughts on Darkship Thieves and blog it. Very rightist/anarcho-individualist (gag), and full of male-gaze-y tropes, but if you can stomach the anti-Muslim sentiment and anti-liberal sentiment, there's a good story in there.

[krait]

Eurgh, Ringo. I have a rock-solid stance on Ringo: I will not buy anything he has written or cowritten. No matter how cheap, or no matter who the coauthor is. There Shall Be No Ringo. (And I blame him for the worst bits of the one series -- coauthored -- that I did read, before I knew what a wankstain he was.) But yaaaay for Cherryh and Bujold! I would kill to find an active fandom for Cherryh's Foreigner or Chanur series! Whhyyyyy is there no fandom? *pouts* I need more books like those!

Dare I ask what you're reading?

Currently reading Somebody Williamson's Freehold. Keep waiting for someone to blow something up -- halfway through the book, at least, and nothing very military has happened except for her going through Basic Training! But there has been lots and lots of how wonderful Grainne is and how little government it has and how everyone is armed but is deeply personally responsible (I guess government causes mental instability, since no one seems to worry about random weirdos getting a gun and blowing away Congresswomen, as happened in AZ?) and it is wonderful and free and the heroine has magically become bi (in the "has both a male and a female partner" sense) and there are hokey sex scenes galore.

Kudos to the author for, quite unexpectedly, treating a skeevy sexual situation with realism and sensitivity. Randomly, in the midst of all the rest of it. It's like he had a ten-second total comprehension of how patriarchy screws things up... and then forgot it again.

[krait]

Eh heh, "Somebody Williamson" should be Michael Z. Williamson. That'll teach me to check my placeholder text before hitting Post Reply. :D

[feuervogel]

My idiot libertarian ex LOVES Ringo. When I saw him at D*C last year, wanking on about "the business of business is profit," not, like, those wacky commie ideas of paying their workers a living wage or not polluting, I wanted to punch him in his smug, condescending smile.

I wish there were more Cherryh fic! There's a smallish LJ community (cj_cherryh) that's never had fic that I've seen.

Michael Z Williamson is on my never-read list because of some anti-"pc" rant on his blog around the time of Moon-fail. I'm kind of glad to know there's a writing reason to avoid him -_-

[krait]

Michael Z Williamson is on my never-read list because of some anti-"pc" rant on his blog around the time of Moon-fail. I'm kind of glad to know there's a writing reason to avoid him -_-

Oh, yes -- his writing is definitely what I'd call uninspired. (I am still no farther in the book -- I seem to be avoiding it.) Wish I'd known about his crazy anti-"pc" antics earlier, but oh, well -- live and read and learn. :P Honestly, I keep going back and forth over which book (I've read two -- well, one and a half -- of his) is worse, and I won't be buying any more.

If you've still got links to his bit in Moon!fail, I'd be interested... In fact, I wouldn't mind any and all links pertaining to Moon!fail, because I neglected somehow to bookmark anything and now can't find anything now, and especially Bujold's bit of fail-ness when she briefly became involved (or at least decided to add her bit; don't think she was involved in any direct way).

[feuervogel]

For some reason, he's made it impossible to link individual pieces, but if you scroll down a little here http://www.michaelzwilliamson.com/blog/archive/1/2010-10/catid/7 you can find it (The worst crime of all) Given the complete lack of logic and empathy evidenced in his blog, I'm not surprised to find his writing is uninspired.

I didn't see LMB involved in the Moon imbroglio, but she put her foot in it in the whole Thirteenth Child mess.

Larry Correia posted an anti-tax rant about how the government should be taken out back and shot. If it's so onerous to pay the tax bill on your writing income (royalties, etc), Larry, how 'bout we help you with that by not buying your books so you don't GET any writing income to pay nassssty nassssty taxes on, eh?

[a-nightengale.livejournal.com]

gay Muslims aren't exactly something their main demographic is particularly keen on, or most of the editors, for that matter.

Ha, thanks for saying "most" instead of "all"--though sadly, I have almost no influence on what gets plucked from the slush pile.

[feuervogel]

You're welcome :) I don't officially/publicly know the political leanings of Baen's staff, so I had to hedge a bit.

I still wish space opera were a less conservative subgenre. Though CJ Cherryh's books do quite well, and it's possible to bring a lefty reading to them. Anti-colonialism (the atevi), subverting the Dances With Wolves/Mighty Whitey trope (the Faded Sun), anti-authoritarianism (Alliance-Union, especially Union space and the azi). And she's got GAY PEOPLE. Still mostly whitish future Americans, but.

I was kind of shocked to find gay relationships (in the background) of Darkship Thieves, while there's some very dogwhistley anti-Muslim sentiment (and that perplexing bit on p 87, which I still can't figure out the meaning of). Gay is OK but Allah isn't. Right then.

[a-nightengale.livejournal.com]

*nods*

And there are some gay characters in Dave's Hammer's Slammer's series, and have been from the beginning.

Which led to one of the most hysterical emails ever to come to my work email one day--someone wrote in to us, claimed to be a longtime Drake reader, who had picked up one of the most recent Lt. Leary novels and finally noticed a gay character in that series and accused Dave of suddenly caving in to political correctness.

I think the howls of laughter were heard 'round the globe.

It IS an interesting study how people can be conservative on one issue and liberal on another.

[feuervogel]

Steuben is such an interesting character. I wrote something about that when I finished the first collection, but now I can't find it :P It was sometime in June or July last year, or maybe August, and possibly in comments. It's not under my books tag, for some reason. -_-

LOLWUT. Dave Drake isn't somebody who could ever be accused of caving to PC. That makes me laugh so hard.