FanloreProject talk:MCYT
Question about language indicators?
Hey, so, you guys on the MCYT project seem like you have experience editing this kind of stuff, so I would like to make some questions, if that's ok? I've been a constant editor on the page for the QSMP's main article for a bit now, and I've been trying to keep the page to align as closely as possible with Fanlore's conventions, but I'm a bit unsure on how to handle the multilingualism of several fanwork examples for the fandom. In particular I don't know how to list when translations or subtitling are available, or if it is even customary to do so? Like, I know it's customary to specify if a link takes you to a page in a language different from the one the rest of the article is written in, but do I list several languages if a particular video includes substantial amounts of audio in several languages? do I list available customized/non-automated subtitles? do I list available translations for a written fanfiction? It does not seem like that's very common, but then again, Fanlore is overwhelmingly dominated by English language fandoms who tend to only link to English language fanwork examples or if they do link to any non-English language examples, most of those are only available in that one other language, so I can't find much precedent for what to do when something contains 3+ languages or has this many manual translations, y'know? I don't think there's any strongly set convention on what to do here, or if there is one I'm unsure on how to find it... and I mean, I guess I could just not list them, but given the nature of the fandom it seems kinda like it would be betraying the spirit of the whole thing, just a little bit. Also, is it completely necessary to provide a romanization for personal names written not in the Latin script? Because in the fandom (or at least my corner of it, anyway) it has become customary to use Korean names in their unromanized form, and romanization feels a bit othering when the special letters, punctuation and diacritics of all of the other languages are always kept as is whenever possible, but romanization also seems to be a Fanlore policy, so... do you have any advise? Also, if this is not the correct place to ask this, let me know and I'll move it wherever it it most appropriate, thanks:D --Tzerj (talk) 03:15, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
Hi! Not a MCYT editor but wanted to drop in my two cents...
- Videos w audio in other languages that are just external links: My guideline I'd use is what language a random person would expect the work to be in. When I edit in K-Pop fandom, I don't think twice before linking a video in Korean and I don't write that it's in Korean. Esp if the thing is subbed in English the whole way through, I'd link it without comment... But if the work is unusual in there it uses multiple languages, I might write that down? If it's not unusual but a fandom norm, I'd probably make a section about language use on the main page and leave it mostly off the examples.
- Related thought which might not be related to your problem - for works with large fandoms in differing languages, sometimes I've tried to create subheaders for different example sections since diff languages often have different tropes, norms, and even platforms for posting.
- Translations: I think when linking work as examples I would try to balance readability? I'd link the most popular language or the OG language first, then if the number of languages is less than 2 and the translations are high traffic id link all available translations directly. If the list is LONG, maybe a footnote so it's not in the article body? I'm imagining those fanworks w 10+ translations and that wld be a nightmare to read in the article body. You could also do a fanlore internal link to the work name and stub out a fanwork page, cuz...
- Translations when the page is about the fanwork: I'd create a subheader under fanwork and include info on translations there. As a page dedicated to the fanwork, I think it's totally fine to have a dedicated section to spotlight translations
- Romanisation: I think there's a help page on this I don't have on hand. I think non romanised names/words are okay if you put the romanised form in brackets when you first introduce the name - a casual reader who doesn't speak the language should be able to make a guess at reading the article out loud. The argument I see to the contrary is that fanlore isn't only for the people in the fandom but also for casual onlookers - so things like ship names might use the / form and not the ordered smushname to signal who bottoms, or trying to use omegaverse rather than the letter form to avoid repeating a slur. Or avoiding those misspellings of names common in rpf fandom, particularly in Korean RPF fandom. Overall, as an English language wiki I think romanization helps and doesn't have to be othering.
- If there's no convention, I'd just do what my heart tells me to when editing. Thanks so much for your contributions Tzerj! Edit freely - every article is a work in progress. Distracteddaydreamer (talk) 01:48, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you so much for the advice:D at the end I mixed several of the options for an ad hoc solution, and I think it ended up looking pretty neat. I also decided to use both Hangul and a romanization in the first instance of Korean-language names. As a side note: multilingualism is pretty much the expectation in this fandom since it's a huge part of the identity of the canon, and the fandom has taken a lot of efforts to unify across language barriers, but because of the number of languages (6 main ones), I think it's useful to state what fanwork is in what language, y'know? As a side, side note: the question about romanization was because in the canon of this work there's characters with 6 different mother tongues (all but one using the Latin script), and their names are usually written in their original forms, that's why romanization seemed othering, since Ramón and Étoiles get to keep their ó and é it seemed unfair not to allow 악어, at the end I settled for 악어 [Acau]. --Tzerj (talk) 02:18, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
- Meant to reply a few days ago but I forgot to hit submit, and I think Distracteddaydreamer's suggestions are really good. So I'll just second them, andalso say that I like that you've added romanization in brackets for the Korean names -- as someone who doesn't read (and doesn't have much practice with typing) Hangul, I find it very helpful!
- I agree that in this specific case it seems to make more sense to always highlight the languages (vs. DD's example of not needing to point out Korean in kpop videos). I do think you might be a little overscrupulous? For example I watched Desfruta La Isla - Cucurucho to spot check and it seems to be entirely in Portuguese except for one spoken/quoted line of English -- to me, that's not notable, I would consider that a song in Portuguese. I don't go here though -- if community standards for QSMP are different, then follow those community standards!
- Finally, I wanted to say thank you for starting this talk because I think you highlighted an important blindspot on Fanlore re: translations in general. I spot-checked a bunch of famous fanfics (ex1, ex2, ex 3, ex4) that have 1) translations into multiple languages and 2) pretty fleshed out fanlore pages and none of them mention the translations... that's something we should fix. We've been talking on the Fanlore discord server about making changes to e.g. the New Page Templates to encourage editors to talk about translations and podfics. -- Quaelegit (talk) 03:30, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
- Hi! Don't worry, it happens to the best of us jsjsjs, thank you for taking the time to respond:D And yeah, no, I agree that Desfruta la Isla, the song itself, is a Portuguese-language song, the EN tag is because there's full, customized, English-language subtitles available (YouTube mislabelled them as "Portuguese (Brazil)" on the subtitles menu, but if you activate them you'll see they're not only English, but also something that clearly took a lot of time and effort to do since they are coloured/colorized/colour-coded?(I'm not a native English-speaker, sorry) and stuff).
- And hey, if you want someone to help you make noise and/or edits to improve the way Fanlore approaches translations and non-English-language-fandom-activity in general, just let me know where you want to start:D --Tzerj (talk) 07:37, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you so much for the advice:D at the end I mixed several of the options for an ad hoc solution, and I think it ended up looking pretty neat. I also decided to use both Hangul and a romanization in the first instance of Korean-language names. As a side note: multilingualism is pretty much the expectation in this fandom since it's a huge part of the identity of the canon, and the fandom has taken a lot of efforts to unify across language barriers, but because of the number of languages (6 main ones), I think it's useful to state what fanwork is in what language, y'know? As a side, side note: the question about romanization was because in the canon of this work there's characters with 6 different mother tongues (all but one using the Latin script), and their names are usually written in their original forms, that's why romanization seemed othering, since Ramón and Étoiles get to keep their ó and é it seemed unfair not to allow 악어, at the end I settled for 악어 [Acau]. --Tzerj (talk) 02:18, 17 March 2024 (UTC)