Blakes7 November 2001

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65 participants
273 discussions

Language (was: Betrayal and episode 'Blake')
by Kai V Karmanheimo 26 Nov '01

26 Nov '01

Kathryn Andersen wrote: <<The difficulty with this, and indeed with trying to create any futuristic language use (such as Kai was complaining of the lack of in B7) is that most native English-speakers are completely unaware of (a) the non-translatability of puns and (b) the high level of idioms we use in our everyday speech. Idioms don't translate either.>> Idioms can travel from language to another through normal influence. For example, translations of English idioms are popping up in many languages right now. Some will take root and become normalised. Eventually they become part of that language. Still to expect exact words to sustain over millennia is a long shot. English-speaking peoples are now in a rather privileged position of living in a linguistically dominant cultures that are giving out the influences rather than digesting them. Almost self-contained, you could say. Still even in cultures which are more dependant on translations, too much domestication can create the blindness to cultural differences. The kind of translation that seeks to make the text as idiomatic in the target language as possible, may snuff out the flavour and unique subjectivity of the source language and culture. Pretty soon you may be thinking that your idioms and metaphors (and hence your way of thinking) are universal, because, heck, everyone else is using them, or else they wouldn't translate it like this, would they... I like books that collect proverbs from around the world, even in translated forms. It makes you realise that people don't refer to bygones with images of water under bridges or last years snows in places where there is no snow and few enough bridges. <<But I think expecting B7 to be linguistically aware is asking a bit much. If they can't get the science right, how on earth could one expect them to get the linguistics right? A lot more people in the SF world know science than know linguistics...>> Yes, it's a bit too much to ask. Mind you, I agree with you that Blake's 7 is no way the worst example of linguistic homogenisation. It is mainly following the established mores and mostly handles it pretty well. The establishment of a well-thought out and consistent universe was obviously not a priority, as it rarely is with television science fiction, rather just a suggestion of one sufficed. Then there is also the fact that television writing especially favours the kind of simple formulas that can be adapted from genre to another with relatively few modifications (the original Star Trek had a lot of this kind of episodes). Science fiction is often just in the setting, costumes and props. The one thing about the relationship of science and linguistics in science fiction is that too often when brilliant scientific speculation is thrown around it seems to happen in a vacuum. Somehow the idea that the everyday is also fundamentally altered by these things never seems to enter into it. It's almost a kind of Flintstones effect in reverse: everything is like the 1950s, only now it's wrapped in tinfoil rather than made out of stone. People are surrounded by technical marvels and yet they talk and act like they had just crawled out of a grass hut. You don't have to be a linguist to figure this things out, just have to stop and think about what you are doing every day. But again it's hard to go beyond the patterns and models you have in your head, that you have grown into. That's why I think there are few really successful depictions of alien civilisations that are truly non-human in thought and behaviour, rather than just appearance. Perhaps it's just that I tend to have more difficulty swallowing the idea of universal translator that can in five seconds turn any insectoid hissing into perfect Texan drawl than the idea of FTL drive. <<That jarred, because "parking meters" is such a late-20th-century concept that I find it hard to believe that a culture such as 28th-century Federated Earth is going to *have* such things as parking metres; we don't even know if private individuals are allowed to own their own vehicles, necessarily, and if they didn't then the concept of parking metres would be nonsensical. Of if everyone used air-cars, then maybe the concept of "parking" isn't the same. Do you see what I mean? That kind of thing bugged me much more than whether calling someone a "gook" sounds silly or not.>> I do. That's one of the things that break the illusion of realistic fictional universe. Most evidence would suggest against private ownership of motor vehicles, on Earth at least: free travel is clearly not on the Federation wish list and the whole reason for the domes seems to be to restrict and contain such a thing. Most Outer Worlds settlements seem to follow the pattern of concentration, minimising the need for individual persons to travel long distances. It may be different on non-Federation worlds and I believe the military has its share of ground vehicles, but somehow the idea of Vila observing how a Federation MP writes an assault tank driver a ticket for forgetting to put a coin in the metre after parking his vehicle by the headquarters doesn't really wash. Again a question of the writer being too caught up in contemporary ideas to think whether it went together with what we know about this fictional universe. Kai

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Re: Fwd: Re: [B7L] Crossovers
by J MacQueen 26 Nov '01

26 Nov '01

>From: Penny Dreadful <pennydreadful(a)powersurfr.com> >Damn straight. Which reminds me - I hear that Mr Croucher is about to reappear (or just has, I'm not sure which it is) on The Bill, as a Detective Inspector. Which is irritating for those of us in Australia, who won't see this for the best part of another year... Regards Jo _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp

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RE: [B7L] Crossovers
by Nicola Mody-Nikoloff 25 Nov '01

25 Nov '01

Betty Ragan wrote: > > jacquispeel(a)netscape.net wrote: > > > With books there are 'if you like "x" you might like > authors a, b, c' > > etc. What would people recommend for other B7 viewers? > > This is an interesting question, because it touches on something I've > been noticing recently: there seem to be an awful lot of very B7ish > shows out there these days. Consider... > > _Blake's 7... > > _Andromeda... > > _Farscape... > > _Lexx... > > But it all leaves me to wonder... Can this possibly be > coincidence? Is > B7 being consciously imitated? Can we consider all these shows to be > direct descendents of B7 in some way or another? Was B7 just ahead of > its time? Or what? I think B7 was ahead of its time. I love Farscape too, maybe for the same reasons (never thought about it before) - great characters, humour, plots, conflict. And they have really inventive aliens - no 'facial bump of the week' like is Star Trek. Lexx I didn't fancy and never watched. However, I have a question: What is Andromeda? Up till now I never heard of it; it sounds interesting. No one-eyed maniacs in it, are there? :-) Nico *** This e-mail is privileged and confidential. If you are not the intended recipient please delete the message and notify the sender. ***

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Re: [B7L] Re: familiar or formal
by Ellynne G. 25 Nov '01

25 Nov '01

On Sat, 24 Nov 2001 10:14:54 -0500 "Dana Shilling" <dshilling(a)worldnet.att.net> writes: > > I'm about halfway through a "Comedy of Errors" story, where Blake's > rebel contact, Rashel, thinks Blake is her husband, Reg Black the > used > spacecraft dealer (which makes perfect sense because he's one of the > clones) and Vila's clone has a romance with Rashel's sister, and a > gang > of thugs repossesses Blake's teleport bracelet because they think > it's > the expensive watch that Reg hasn't paid for. > Every time I want to be jealous that someone beat me to a great idea, I'm stopped by finding out they're doing a much better job with it than I ever would. This sounds great. You _were_ intending to let people read it when you were done, weren't you? (Pretty please? with sugar on top?) Ellynne ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/web/.

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Lyst member infected by virus
by Julia Jones 25 Nov '01

25 Nov '01

At least one Lyst member has been hit by the w32.badtrans.b@mm virus. See http://www.symantic.com for details, but the virus mails a copy of itself to addresses it finds in the victim's address book, using a header from an existing email to make it appear that the infected email is a reply to something you sent the victim. It also installs a Trojan that allows your keystrokes to be logged. I've had several copies of the virus over the last 12 hours, from more than one City member, and to both my FC and Lyst email addresses. <http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.badtrans.b@m m.html> -- Julia Jones "Science is not about building a body of known 'facts'. It is a method for asking awkward questions and subjecting them to a reality-check, thus avoiding the human tendency to believe whatever makes us feel good." - The Science of Discworld

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RE: Re: [B7L] Re: Betrayal and episode 'Blake'
by jacquispeel＠netscape.net 25 Nov '01

25 Nov '01

Harriet Monkhouse <hflysator(a)jarriere.demon.co.uk> wrote: >Kai wrote: >>Again we can say that what we are hearing is actually a translation in >>itself, and the language that the characters really speak is not English >>at all or is an eight hundred years older variant of English that bears as >>little resemblance to Modern English as Modern English does to the >>language of Beowulf. > >I think I'm most comfortable with that idea. >-- >Harriet > Language can/does date very easily - even in the era of recorded sound (to what extent have sound recordings stabilised (any) language? Was the invention of sound recordings more significant than that of cinema film?) Going back to my original point - to what extent is whether Avon uses familiar/formal 'you' (even implicitly) to Blake significant? Jacqui -- __________________________________________________________________ Your favorite stores, helpful shopping tools and great gift ideas. Experience the convenience of buying online with Shop@Netscape! http://shopnow.netscape.com/ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape Mail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com/

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Re: [B7L] to Neil - virus
by Sally Manton 25 Nov '01

25 Nov '01

Sorry to do this ... Neil, you appear to have the virus Julia mentioned, I got an email from you with all the symptoms this morning ... Sally _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp

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RE: Re: [B7L] Crossovers
by Nicola Mody-Nikoloff 25 Nov '01

25 Nov '01

Sally Manton wrote: > Nicola: > <Up till season 4 anyway, poor thing. Vila has the stuffing > knocked out of him > then. I can only recall 3 or 4 scenes where the poor guy can > even crack a smile.> > > And I can't see it getting much better for him in *any* > Season 5. Not with > this lot. (Actually, I know I'm one of those minorities of > approximately one > here, but I'm still firmly of the opinion that, if Blake > survived and had > anything - people/a base/a ship - to still call his own, Vila > would tell > fannish sentiment and the Scorpio crew to go to hell and want > to stay with > Fearless and now Extremely Fearsome Leader. *None* of them > have really any > call on his loyalties by that stage, and especially not My Darling. You're in a minority of two then. I've always thought Blake treated Vila very well - sure he got annoyed with him occasionally, but he never put him down; he even complimented him several times! They worked very well together when they were on missions. I think they had a lot of respect for each other. Vila did say he stayed because he liked Blake (and had nowhere else to go). And remember the smile (one of the very few in season 4) on Vila's face in 'Blake' when he says "You've found Blake!" Then the poor bastard sees Avon gun him down. I still hold to my opinion that Vila is a very tragic character despite his humour. And I've never subscribed to the belief that Vila and Avon were close, or that Vila would easily forgive Avon. They may have once enjoyed each others' wit and prowess at chess, but I would never have called them friends. Nico *** This e-mail is privileged and confidential. If you are not the intended recipient please delete the message and notify the sender. ***

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Re: Betrayal and episode 'Blake'
by Kai V Karmanheimo 25 Nov '01

25 Nov '01

Sally wrote: <<Kai wrote, among other good stuff: <<<with Vila one always gets the feeling he should sound more colloquial than <<he does.> << <<This is a problem with Vila in English as well :-) I've read a number of <<stories where he's written with a heavy and intrusive 'dialect', supposedly <<to emphasise his lower class, and always find it distracting.>> The dialect thing is one question I think I did ignore completely. Finnish does have a rich variety of distinct regional dialects, which can be written out fairly easily, but they are not socially coded in a way that many British English dialects still seem to be. Travis 2's accent played no role in my translation of "Star One". With Vila it seems to be more an attitude, rather than anything specifically tied to either vocabulary or pronunciation, that screams "informal" in my ear. I agree that a thick dialect would be just pandering to a contemporary stereotype. I wouldn't mind a more liberal use of dialects in the series, as long as they didn't go to feed the existing prejudices (where are those illiterate, ignorant beggars who speak perfect RP?) <<<It may also be the dialogue's tendency towards the kind of neutral sci-fi <<dialect, where temporal tell-tale signs like contemporary slang or <<pronounced regional accents are downplayed to homogenise the language and <<also to make it sound more "timeless".> << <<I also think any attempt to invent 'new' slang or word usages tend tto jar <<horribly (in Stardrive, for instance).>> I don't find the stabs at slang in "Stardrive" or elsewhere problematic, but I do find the question of slang use in speculative fiction in general very much so. Of course, language, just like technological or social details, changes over time and what seems absolutely utopian now, may well sound antiquated or worse, unintelligible half a century later (how about Avon telling Vila to "hide the oodle" in "Gambit" or Servalan telling Travis to "ice Blake and his havage"). Still the linguistic conservatism of the space opera genre particularly annoys me sometimes. Apart from the requisite technical gobbledygook (something that Blake's 7 mostly handles with dignity; no "abfurcating the endoligroinial coils in the taurofecal wanga-wangas" here), there is little linguistic invention, as if to confirm that despite the tinfoil clothes and Fairy bottle rockets we're still playing the old game of cowboys and Indians and this is the way that all people talk everywhere, now and in the future. Even antiquated jargon might sound better, simply because of its defamiliarising effect. Again we can say that what we are hearing is actually a translation in itself, and the language that the characters really speak is not English at all or is an eight hundred years older variant of English that bears as little resemblance to Modern English as Modern English does to the language of Beowulf. Yet you'd think that people who have grown up in completely different circumstances on planets with no mutual contact in centuries would not sound like they went to the same public school or referred to things that neither of their cultures probably has had in ages. Things can stay in the language long after the original concepts have disappeared or lost validity, but though lot of Western languages retain metaphors or expressions coined by nomadic tribes a couple of thousand years ago, it's a bit too conceited to expect all our petty little things that are currently in fashion to be around pestering the people after a couple of thousand more years (even if you are just using the future as an allegory for passions present or past). So yes, as easy as it is to get it wrong, I would like to see more linguistic innovation is science fiction, new slang, new colloquialisms, new expressions. I like Vila's "bubble in a black hole", Cally's "may you die alone and silent" (which I read as the most vulgar curse ever said in the series) or Bayban's "son of a slimecrawler". Far from original perhaps, but at least something that you could imagine has risen out of the characters' respective circumstances. Something that in its own little way enhances the illusion that these people actually are born out of, belong to and have to function within this make-believe world, instead of the impression that they have just walked in from a very late-20th century pub or detox clinic. Kai

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Re: Andromeda
by Steve Rogerson 25 Nov '01

25 Nov '01

Una McCormack wrote: > > Given our current 'Andromeda' chat, various people will be interested to > learn that Robert Hewitt Wolfe has been fired from the show, for putting in > too much story and not enough action. That is so depressing, just as season two was getting really good. They must think all TV viewers are idiots or something. But it doesn't all follow, I'm part way through watching season three of Charmed and it has run an arc for quite a few episodes on the Beltazoid/Cole thing. -- cheers Steve Rogerson http://homepages.poptel.org.uk/steve.rogerson Redemption 03, 21-23 February 2003, Ashford, Kent Celebrating 25 years of Blake's 7 and 10 years of Babylon 5 http://www.smof.com/redemption

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Blakes7 November 2001