So write books in English?
What about German makes you want to write novels in German specifically?
What about German makes you want to write novels in German specifically?
Yes, there are notable exceptions like Vladimir Nabokov, but these are extremely rare and definitely not the rule.
If he can do that, other people can write passable novels in English. It's not like you're writing the greatest novels of all time in German.
I can provide examples[0] of non-native speakers that have written good novels in another tongue.
The trick to being a good writer is generally being a good reader. If you read enough, you can figure out how to have the turns of phrase and pacing and everything else that makes for compelling prose in any language. As far as I'm aware, there is nothing fundamental about the function of the human brain that would cause your statement to be in any way reasonable. Of course exophonic writers are not very common, it will always be easier to write a novel in your native tongue. But the idea that more difficult is close to the exceptionally difficult that you are espousing does not seem founded in reality. It's just not very common.
Linguistic diversity is an amazing beautiful incredible thing. There are things you can say in English that you can't say in German, and vice-versa, or Portuguese, or Swahili, or Mandarin, or Lojban.
You'll forgive me for speculating that you don't speak more than one language, or you would appreciate that.
100 Years of Solitude is an absolute masterpiece. It's very difficult to put a finger on exactly why, but all agree there is a tone to it and to the way he tells the story, which usually people call "magical realism". The way it's so inexorably connected to a South American place and time, it's gonna be a different thing if you read it in English (credit though to the translators who do this incredibly difficult job in a stunning manner). The musicality and mood of the speech, for lack of a better description, cannot be accurately rendered in English.
In short, it's more nuanced than "what's a sentence I can say in English that I can't say in German".
Likewise from German there's not a direct translation for Backpfeifengesicht, a 'face that is asking to be slapped', more literally 'face slap face'. Is there a more Englishy way to say Zeitgeist that captures the same meaning? You could replace it with "spirit of the time", but it feels a bit too general and clumsy. Is there a succinct English equivalent to Schadenfreude that isn't too long or clumsy?
I don't know about Backpfeifengesicht, but both zeitgeist and schadenfreude are English words now.
Conversely in English stain has to be distinguished in cotext from the words for shirt stains, wood stains (Holzbeize) and stained glass (Buntglas).
Perhaps a better word to demonstrate it is Gemütlichkeit. [1]
Zeitgeist and Schadenfreude are exactly words imported into English because no words in English came close to capturing these words' meanings. You'd have to say "pleasure derived from another's misfortune" every time.
[0] https://www.dict.cc/deutsch-englisch/Fleck.html
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gem%C3%BCtlichkeit#Similar_wor...
Many social constructs don't translate well. The word "freunde" is much, much stronger than "friends", for example. "We're all friends here" doesn't really work in German, at least not in the same situations. Similarly, English doesn't really have a term for "Wohnunggemeinschaft."
Puns often don't translate, which breaks translating many of the jokes in Shakespeare, for example. Going from German to English, the Rammstein song "Du has(s)t much" doesn't translate due to the puns, as does much of the writing by Yoko Tawada.
Gender ambiguous things don't always translate either. The gender neutral pronoun "they" translates to "sie" in German, which is the same as the pronoun "she" but with different verb conjugations. "Trans man" or "transwoman" are usually translated in German the same as "man" or "woman". Nuance on racial issues also doesn't always translate smoothly between the two languages.
I am sure there are many, many more.
But. I do not complain about being there not being enough demand for any of the languages I speak. Demand is demand, if there isn't great demand for German-language novels, it is not the end of the world.
The answer to the question "I want make a living writing novels, but I am writing them in German and there isn't enough demand for them to really sustain myself - what should I do?" is not "force Germans to start reading more books in German instead of English". It's "learn to write books in English".
Do you really find whining about the fact that native Germans prefer to read books in English over his/her mother tongue constructive?
I'm fluent in English, I write in English for a living, but I doubt I'd be able to write decent fiction in English.
"Just write novels in your second language, bro" comes off as extremely ignorant.
It was written by a non-native speaker in English. Thinking a non-native speaker can't write great English novels is the ignorant view, in my opinion. Is it difficult? Of course it is. But all writing is difficult.
Interesting.
Not to mention his years in Cambridge, UK.
TL;DR he probably spoke English better than most native speakers do nowadays.
> TL;DR he probably spoke English better than most native speakers do nowadays.
True, especially "internet English" which is abysmal.
2 thoughts:
1. Nabokov’s synesthesia was largely why..IMO..made his writing captivating. The first sentence of Lolita makes you gasp. It ‘hits’ you where you didn’t expect it and you like it.
The subject matter of Lolita was likely secondary to the synesthetic appeal of the language of Nabokov. It’s is a linguistic neural dissonance.
It reminds of Szechuan peppers in Hunan/Szechuan cuisine. The addition of which gives you a numbing tingling sensation to the inside of your mouth. It is called ‘mala’ in mandarin. It is also said to cause neurological dissonance especially when used with spicy foods.
Szechuan peppers themselves are not peppers but from the citrus family. They are often used with hot peppers..often mildly hot peppers but the numbing/tingling sensation makes the eater think that they are eating something super spicy ..far more spicier than it really is..and the body reacts with watering eyes and increased heartbeat and that endorphin rush associated with eating capsaicin.
It’s the same thing reading Nabokov. You expect to read a story and you are entirely bowled over by the sensory aspect of his language. Even though Lolita is his most popular work, he has written so much more. Pale Fire, Speak, Memory, Real life of Sebastian Knight..
2. My second thought is that authors who are non native English speakers/writers have remarkably rich vocabulary that is super descriptive. English is not a voluptuous language.
Others that come to mind are Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Neruda, Borges, Italo Cavalo, Umberto Eco, Marukami, Junichiro Tanizaki and the many Asian languages to English translations. Something lyrical in these languages is beautiful transmitted into English..a quality that English itself doesn’t seem to possess.
On a slightly different note: older languages like Sanskrit and the even earlier like epic of Gilgamesh relied on meter. As our speaking faculties expanded to accommodate more experiences and senses..and as we became more musical, language evolved too. It is the most beautiful evolution of the human state and we barely pay attention to language’s evolution.
I also think Germans shouldn’t be translating anything to English or anything from any other language to English. I don’t know German but I can often tell if any translation has had a translator remotely connected to the language. The language doesn’t lend itself to fluidity and nimbleness. Altho I have read some translations of Carl Jung’s Red Book from High German to English that intrigued and somewhat appealed to me. I don’t know if it was the translator or Jung’s language/words itself.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia
+
http://nabokovsecrethistory.com/news/nabokovs-synesthesia-an...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_synesthe... : List of people with synesthesia
I know and love all those authors, but have never heard of Junichiro Tanizaki. Where should I start with him?
I'm not suggesting rural German farmers should start authoring novels in English.
I'm suggesting that someone who A. already knows how to competently (I hope) write novels in one language and B. is fluent in a second language should perhaps consider blending the two if they are not finding enough demand for their chosen occupation in their native tongue.
I realize this analogy is a little bit strained, but this would be like me saying, as someone that has known Python for 10+ years, I should not attempt to compete with the JS programmers who have been doing JS for 10+ years because I've only been working with JS for about 2 years. But obviously I don't think that way and I don't behave that way, because I want to make a living in my chosen profession. So I follow the demand, and where my skills are in need of improvement, I improve them.
Just as a note, it is not common but it does happen.
Not to mention other forms of cultural production like songs (where adherence to grammatical norms is not as important as other forms of cultural manifestation).
Which one is the "least correct" one, "Hotline Bling" or "I Want it That Way"? One was written by a native speaker, the other isn't.
The OC obviously has a very solid grasp of English. If the comment had been written in German or broken English I would not have made the suggestion.
I can explain in a lot of details why my C++ code is broken or the intricacies of a compiler inner parts. But I don't have as many words to describe a fence, as I have in French. In French I know how a farmer will call the place they put animals in and I know the official word that is the "correct" terminology. And I know which is which. It is very hard to find good translations of the tone behind this.
That's a great learning experience, but being an author in one language while being fluent in another, does not mean you can easily write stories in both.
Umberto Eco heavily supervised some of the translations of his books and has written about that process. He's rather a special case, of course: his books are not the easiest to translate even with the author's help.
So please, do write more stuff in German.