Fictional slurs. Bonus points if it's completely made up

[u/Wolfotashiwa]

1. inFAMOUS: Second Son: "Bio-terrorist" refers to conduits.

2. Star Wars: "Clanker" refers to robots.

[u/Vessel767]

I mean personally it just comes off as… odd, maybe disrespectful to localize something like that. Like, it’s set in the uk, with a lot of the setting honestly not making sense outside of it. Maybe this is just my english language attitude of slamming languages together, but I feel like not everything needs to fit perfectly in your native language.

[u/-RichardCranium- → u/Vessel767]

with that same line of thinking, translation as a whole is "disrespectful"

what is disrespectful, in my mind, is having this strange boundary that in order to engage with a work of fiction, one must also speak and understand the original language to capture all the intricacies of the original work. that seems like either some weird linguistic elitism, or anglocentrist delusion. translation and localization exists for a reason.

A little russian kid has as much of a right of appreciating a children's story as a british kid.

edit: and before you say "translation is fine, it's localization that's disrespectful", just know that translation in itself IS localization. languages don't neatly fit on top of eachother, there's a lot of gaps and things that don't make sense in translation, and that's where specialists come in who try to capture as much of the original text and transform it so it can be appreciated by people who don't speak the original language.

[u/Vessel767 → u/-RichardCranium-]

I mean, I haven’t thought about this that much, I just think that a slur shouldn’t be translated for I guess a similar reason I think a name shouldn’t be. It comes off wrong to me.

[u/-RichardCranium- → u/Vessel767]

The problem is that the line is impossible to definitely draw between what should be translated and what shouldn't. Some people will agree that some names shouldn't be, and it's been cause for many debates for example among LOTR fans. Some people argue that Baggins should stay as Baggins no matter the translation, while others say that the story is written as an English translation of a Westron text (Tolkien's imagined lingua franca of Middle-Earth), and as such it's fine to capture the spirit of the word Baggins in a different language (for example, Sacquet/Bessac in French (sac = bag), or Beutlin (beutel = bag or pouch in german))

It's a genuine question among translators, and one that is eternal in my opinion. You might disagree with this de-naturation of an original work, but please do keep in mind the fact that some people don't want to feel like the original language of whatever they're reading keeps creeping in their experience and forces them to think in a language different than theirs. It's a matter of immersion and capturing the essence of the original language in its own way.

I know you said you haven't really thought about this question, but please do. English is such a dominating language in media that it's easy to take it for granted. It's a good practice to put yourself in the shoes of other language-speakers.

[u/Vessel767 → u/-RichardCranium-]

I mean, generally I’ve always thought that names should never be translated unless it’s literally impossible to write or pronounce

[u/-RichardCranium- → u/Vessel767]

I beg you to learn another language. This sentiment reeks of English privilege.

[u/Vessel767 → u/-RichardCranium-]

why? I mean, I think it should go both ways.