#quinlan is so fun lololol

[meandmyechoes]

At this point the Cantonese translation of dark disciple is practically another book already:

we totally sprinted with the underworld/triad slang

of course what is cantonese without the intonation particles. I want to read it aloud! Which made their tone at least bit casual.

since there's only one pronoun for everything, and that's assigned to the pov character of the chapter. The narrator/me is a lot clearer to be on one character's side, deleting a lot of "[person] realized…"

we have specific verbs for eye, arm, leg movements as well, but it takes some time to recall/look up in a written context.

the thing we don't have, is specific verbs for smile. which means describing so are chunky with adverbs.

i still have no idea how to localize "my love" (or a nod and a wink and full on gambit. but i outsourced it ;)

naming the flora fauna is fun though!

oooh so excited to make the jedi code into a poem/nursery rhyme

Written and spoken English is practically the same but that's not entirely the case for Chinese/Cantonese. For a literary work like Dark Disciple, much more so than Ahsoka, I find myself more often wanting to pen the sentence, instead of taking the voice input shortcut. But then you have to balance how colloquial it is with the flair! And I'm not saying Cantonese isn't a pretty language, it's just, it's a mean language. It's rustic, its charm comes from metaphors to the uncannily apt. And then you have written Chinese with a long history of beautiful words, but always so subtle, so precise, and half-lost you bury yourself in another dictionary!

Specific to me, my brain runs on an English OS. I see a new word and come up with alternatives of it, in English. And I'd look at a sentence, rearranged the structure in Chinese grammar, but come up with a hybrid! Not very helpful haha.

I found myself having developed a syntax. I often describe the action, and sum it up with a four-letter idiom in the end. While so far I've been using less idioms than Ahsoka (and I do want to dial it up later), I am opting for more specific verbs. I love the paragraph I wrote for Ventress's gown. I've gotten past the most mushy-mushy parts. I'm fairly confident writing lightsaber duels despite not having read a chapter of wuxia to save my life, but the stand-off with The Sleeper still put a bullet to my brain.

Oh, and there's this habit of incorporating English words in speech. I made a rule to NOT do that with Ahsoka (well technically I cheated with one literation, but "order" has been in use for several decades ok) But the ban is lifted for this more localized project.

I… also, possibly regrettably, lifted the ban on swear words for the more adult-themed book. It's just more lively for Hondo to swear. But I'm not too keen to read (somebody other than me writing) Ventress swear. Because the (real-world) language context doesn't really lend malice, it seems a bit, unnecessary.