- Joined
- Dec 18, 2008
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- 85
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- New Hampshire, USA
- Website
- www.tomekjankowski.com
Greetings,
I have a dilemma, and though I've asked elsewhere I'd like as much feedback as possible so I'll do so here as well.
All feedback is appreciated. I am taking a stab for the first time at a full-length fiction piece, a satire of sorts, which has been immensely fun so far but I am having trouble figuring out how to best present a character, a main character in the sense that he drives the story but one who lurks in the background of the story.
Put bluntly, he's dead, a ghost, but the story is more about those who interact with him. Being a ghost, his ability to interact with the other (living) characters is obviously very restricted, and indeed that's part of the fun as the living characters interpret the few small bits of his communications that somehow get through by filtering them through their own cultural prism(s) of what a ghost is, what it could possibly want, etc., further fowling an already very challenged communication process to the extreme frustration of the ghost. To emphasize this disconnect, but also because there's a historical dimension, I've made my ghost a 17th century Dutchman who meets his demise before the English take Nieuw Amsterdam/New York. To this end I am having him only speak Dutch. (I speak several languages but not Dutch; I recruited a Dutch university student for translations.) Now, he only has a few lines in the entire story, maybe ten total in 200 pages, but in putting this together I've unpleasantly discovered a disconnect of my own which needs resolution:
I really love the use of a foreign language to emphasize the communication disconnect between the dead protagonist and the various (English-speaking) living characters who parade through his "home", but I'm not sure how best to provide the translations of what the ghost is saying to the reader. At the end of the story, a communication connection will be made when an Indonesian side character is accidentally present and stuns all present when she understands the ghost. (Indonesia was, until 1949, the Dutch East Indies, and many Indonesians today still learn Dutch or study in the Netherlands.) So there's how it all wraps up - but in the meantime, I want to somehow let the reader in on some of the fun of what the ghost is saying, but at the same time I don't want to lose that sense of disconnection, of foreign-ness between the characters. Here are my options as I see them, but please feel free to add any:
1. Just have the ghost communicate in Dutch, and provide footnotes with translations. Again, the ghost's lines are mostly throw-away lines and not so important themselves as his frustrated reactions to the living characters' obvious misinterpretation of his intent, often to the extent of complete obliviousness that a sentient being is trying to communicate with them.
2. I've thought of *not* translating the ghost's few statements at all, leaving them just hanging out here in Dutch for the reader to wonder what they could mean right along with the characters. This is very appealing to a devious side of my nature, but besides fearing I may just tick some readers off, the ghost is saying *something*, and it's definitely more enjoyable knowing what he says. His frustration drives the fun.
3. Maybe I could not translate the ghost's statements on the page, but provide a list of translations in the back of the book. This seems a bit too gimmicky, and flipping back and forth between pages is never a good way to keep up the flow of a story.
4. I could go with option number 2, but provide another release valve in mid-story to provide a glimpse into at least some of the ghost's statements. In one scene I created a (living) character who is a maintenance man, a Dutch immigrant, who during a routine inspection in the c. 1940s -- the story spans three centuries -- is confronted by the ghost. This character is very down-to-Earth and not rattled at all, but rather it is the ghost's turn to be surprised when in a cynical (and frustration-driven) attempt to scare the maintenance man, he finds this gritty working class character responding to him with a fountain of Dutch profanity. I could insert a quick sort of dialogue venting some of the earlier Dutch statements but I want to make sure it falls short of resolution; the Dutch maintenance worker is simply not interested in the situation and saunters on in his duties, again leaving the ghost frustrated but too surprised to react on the spot.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. Again, any and all input is very welcome. Thanks!
I have a dilemma, and though I've asked elsewhere I'd like as much feedback as possible so I'll do so here as well.
All feedback is appreciated. I am taking a stab for the first time at a full-length fiction piece, a satire of sorts, which has been immensely fun so far but I am having trouble figuring out how to best present a character, a main character in the sense that he drives the story but one who lurks in the background of the story.
Put bluntly, he's dead, a ghost, but the story is more about those who interact with him. Being a ghost, his ability to interact with the other (living) characters is obviously very restricted, and indeed that's part of the fun as the living characters interpret the few small bits of his communications that somehow get through by filtering them through their own cultural prism(s) of what a ghost is, what it could possibly want, etc., further fowling an already very challenged communication process to the extreme frustration of the ghost. To emphasize this disconnect, but also because there's a historical dimension, I've made my ghost a 17th century Dutchman who meets his demise before the English take Nieuw Amsterdam/New York. To this end I am having him only speak Dutch. (I speak several languages but not Dutch; I recruited a Dutch university student for translations.) Now, he only has a few lines in the entire story, maybe ten total in 200 pages, but in putting this together I've unpleasantly discovered a disconnect of my own which needs resolution:
I really love the use of a foreign language to emphasize the communication disconnect between the dead protagonist and the various (English-speaking) living characters who parade through his "home", but I'm not sure how best to provide the translations of what the ghost is saying to the reader. At the end of the story, a communication connection will be made when an Indonesian side character is accidentally present and stuns all present when she understands the ghost. (Indonesia was, until 1949, the Dutch East Indies, and many Indonesians today still learn Dutch or study in the Netherlands.) So there's how it all wraps up - but in the meantime, I want to somehow let the reader in on some of the fun of what the ghost is saying, but at the same time I don't want to lose that sense of disconnection, of foreign-ness between the characters. Here are my options as I see them, but please feel free to add any:
1. Just have the ghost communicate in Dutch, and provide footnotes with translations. Again, the ghost's lines are mostly throw-away lines and not so important themselves as his frustrated reactions to the living characters' obvious misinterpretation of his intent, often to the extent of complete obliviousness that a sentient being is trying to communicate with them.
2. I've thought of *not* translating the ghost's few statements at all, leaving them just hanging out here in Dutch for the reader to wonder what they could mean right along with the characters. This is very appealing to a devious side of my nature, but besides fearing I may just tick some readers off, the ghost is saying *something*, and it's definitely more enjoyable knowing what he says. His frustration drives the fun.
3. Maybe I could not translate the ghost's statements on the page, but provide a list of translations in the back of the book. This seems a bit too gimmicky, and flipping back and forth between pages is never a good way to keep up the flow of a story.
4. I could go with option number 2, but provide another release valve in mid-story to provide a glimpse into at least some of the ghost's statements. In one scene I created a (living) character who is a maintenance man, a Dutch immigrant, who during a routine inspection in the c. 1940s -- the story spans three centuries -- is confronted by the ghost. This character is very down-to-Earth and not rattled at all, but rather it is the ghost's turn to be surprised when in a cynical (and frustration-driven) attempt to scare the maintenance man, he finds this gritty working class character responding to him with a fountain of Dutch profanity. I could insert a quick sort of dialogue venting some of the earlier Dutch statements but I want to make sure it falls short of resolution; the Dutch maintenance worker is simply not interested in the situation and saunters on in his duties, again leaving the ghost frustrated but too surprised to react on the spot.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. Again, any and all input is very welcome. Thanks!
