colin said: One gripe I had, and something that might be
worth discussion was the phoenetic spelling of
dialect/heavily accented speech In Christopher Brookmyre's,
otherwise excellent story. I found it really interrupted the
flow. At what stage is it necessary/acceptable to render
speech like this? Is it not enough to tell us that the
characters have strong Scottish accents?
***************************************
i've wondered the same thing, colin. i don't know the answer.
i know for sure that mark twain's _tom sawyer_ and
_huckleberry finn_ would not be the same without the phonetic
rendering of the dialect.
one of the things i've noticed is that in a book written this
way, it becomes progressively easier to read it as you get
used to it. in a story, i imagine you don't ever have the
time to become accustomed to it. interrupting the flow of the
text must be considered a serious trade- off by a writer
looking for dialectic realism.
i once read a book written entirely phonetically, iain
banks's _feersum endjinn_. the first 20 pages or so were
difficult. the scary part was that by the end i was so
adjusted to it that i didn't even notice the phonetic
spelling.
and what about multi-language conversations? should the
non-english be translated? there's a hemingway short story
with almost all the dialogue in french. that's ridiculous.
there were spanish dialogue parts of _blood meridian_ that
went by me. i loved the book, but i'm not gonna be a
translator.
aside: i guess i got rabe's _the box_ coming! it cost me more
than i wanted to pay, but i shopped around for cheap and
ended up winning the bid on the one that bill crider noted.
thanks, bill!
miker
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