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The Secret Ray: Query about the native islanders's dialogue?

Jon God
Member
#1 · Posted: 19 May 2016 23:08
As it looks like The Secret Ray will not be republished in English anytime soon, I've gotten copies of the two French books which it contained.
I've transcribed them, and was translating them by going through Google Translate, then trying to turn what I got into something that sounded like real dialog.
It was going fine, I almost made it through the entire The Manitoba No Reply - until I got to the natives, where the speech comes out in gibberish.

Basically, I was wondering if there is someone with the books that could help me with that, along with anything else minor I might come across.

I am not sure if this is alright to ask, but if I am in the wrong, please let me know, mods.
jock123
Moderator
#2 · Posted: 21 May 2016 16:04
It's a border-line case, to be honest.

What you are doing in your own home for your own is absolutely fine; where it becomes difficult for the site, is that you are basically needing people to regurgitate large portions of the text in French and English, which is something we'd rather you avoid, I'm afraid.

What information I can provide is that, like the Arumbayas in The Broken Ear, the islanders in the original are speaking colloquial French, but with a Brussels dialect flavour to it, then written phonetically in such away as to disguise the fact, but which becomes clearer if you read it out loud.

This is the same as the Arumbaya language in English being written to hide that it is English, but with a Cockney "accent", written phonetically.

So automatic translation just isn't possible - you will have to sound out the words, work out what they are in French, and continue from there.

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