Black Panther

[RockSP]

so, i finally read the first issue, and here is my take.

i liked it, but a couple things bothered me.

1) the first fight the tribal one. too much modern slang. really poor writing in that sense, very poor. everything else was fine.

Plenty of people have complained about this and I just don't get it. They aren't speaking english. It's a translation.

 

[newnoiseimage]

Plenty of people have complained about this and I just don't get it. They aren't speaking english. It's a translation.

so other languages had todays slang words in the 17th or 18th century.

that totally clears things up.

 

[RockSP]

so other languages had todays slang words in the 17th or 18th century.

that totally clears things up.

Translation. Whatever slang they had has been replaced with the slang Hudlin chose to use...not that hard to understand at all...

 

[newnoiseimage]

its not hard to understand, just hard to make sense of. it doesnt fit. lets have thor return using complete street slang, and justify it by calling it a translation.

 

[RockSP]

Don't see the connection. And when you take into account that Thor's speech pattern was never accurate to begin with...

 

[Unthinkable]

its not hard to understand, just hard to make sense of. it doesnt fit. lets have thor return using complete street slang, and justify it by calling it a translation.

Also, I thought Klaw was narrating, though I could be wrong..

 

[newnoiseimage]

it wasnt a narration, it was a speech bubble.

i dont know about you, but i feel if a fan has to create an explanation for something in a comic/movie/book then it obviously an error.

 

[SHAFT Agent]

Posted by Reginald Hudson on Comicon:

I promised I wasn't going to be the guy who jumps on line to answer every negative comment about the book and I'm not.

But this complaint about modern language needs to be addressed. It's called transliteration, it's properly translating someone's words so they sound like what the person really said. If you've watched a foriegn film and heard the people in the theatre who speak the language laugh while you are stuck with subtitles that don't convey the humor, you know the difference between when a film translation captures the spirit of colloqualisms, and when they don't.

When my first film debuted in Italy, I worked with an American who spoke Italian and an Italian who spoke English to translate black American slang into phrases that would play locally. It was worth the effort.

I know there are readers that are so used to any native characters (African, American Indians, etc.) speak in stilted language ("Him Panther - Big Chief these parts!"), that you can't imagine that those people don't actually speak that way.

Furthermore, certain terms and concepts, like cool and funk (to name two) are African-derived words. Read FLASH OF THE SPIRIT by professor Robert Farris Thompson (of Yale University) for more information.

 

[fifthfiend]

Posted by Reginald Hudson on Comicon:

Thank you.

 

[RockSP]

Like I said, I just didn't get the complaints in the first place. It's the 5th century. The reader should know they aren't speaking english. It's almost like some readers couldn't accept that fact unless the usual brackets were put around the dialogue...

 

[DBM]

I know there are readers that are so used to any native characters (African, American Indians, etc.) speak in stilted language ("Him Panther - Big Chief these parts!"), that you can't imagine that those people don't actually speak that way.

This just proves to me that he doesn't get it.

Transliteration is fine for contemporary works. I use different slang when I speak Spanish than when I do English because the meanings don't carry across. But this is modern slang in modern times.

By putting modern slang into the mouths of historic people you draw the reader out of the moment. The key to any good story is to draw the read into the story by using dialogue and setting. You want the reader to feel that the story is real and they are observing it. By having ancient Africans use modern slang, he basically yelled "HEY THIS IS NOT REAL," and violently yanked readers away from the fantasy of the story.

There's no need to go the other extreme either and make the language stilted. All he needed to do was use real sentences and real definitions. If he wanted to get the meaning of "We'll kick your butts" across, he could have said, "We will defeat you."

Someone is likely to counter that saying it my way wouldn't sound as "natural." That's the exact point. These are people who lived hundreds of years ago or live in totally different countries, who had totally different sentence structure and colloquialisms. By having their speech sound “unnatural” to us, but not in modern slang, it reinforces the alien nature of these people. They are different from us therefore they should sound different than us.

And that draws the reader further into the fantasy of the story.


My personally belief, and it could be entirely untrue, is that Hudlin doesn’t get the idea of fantasy/adventure writing. Everything else, that I know of, that he’s wrote dealt with more modern, real world settings. The rules for that type of story don’t apply the same to comics.

 

[newnoiseimage]

i like keeping periods accurate.

shakespeare doesnt work as well with elizabethan dress, but modern language.

if you like it great! but to others, whom i believe are in the right, it is erroneous and out of place.

 

[RockSP]

i like keeping periods accurate.

shakespeare doesnt work as well with elizabethan dress, but modern language.

if you like it great! but to others, whom i believe are in the right, it is erroneous and out of place.

It's not about right or wrong, imo. Just wasn't bothered by it. I knew they weren't speaking english.

 

[Manwithoutpeer]

Translation. Whatever slang they had has been replaced with the slang Hudlin chose to use...not that hard to understand at all...

Exactly...no explanation needed IMO.

 

[newnoiseimage]

Exactly...no explanation needed IMO.

good for you, take a stand.

 

[Red Mask]

i like keeping periods accurate.

shakespeare doesnt work as well with elizabethan dress, but modern language.

if you like it great! but to others, whom i believe are in the right, it is erroneous and out of place.

That's the reason why I didn't bother watching the modern take of "Romeo and Juliet", starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Looked ridiculous.

 

[fifthfiend]

That's the reason why I didn't bother watching the modern take of "Romeo and Juliet", starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Looked ridiculous.

Ironically, the DiCaprio/Lurhman version featured modern dress, yet was entirely faithful to the original Shakespearian diction.

 

[Manwithoutpeer]

good for you, take a stand.

thanks dude, you are a cool guy.

 

[DBM]

thanks dude, you are a cool guy.

Just so ya know. I'm pretty sure he was being sarcastic. That's what he does.

 

[newnoiseimage]

Just so ya know. I'm pretty sure he was being sarcastic. That's what he does.

how dare you judge me!

 

[Varient]

 

[DBM]

how dare you judge me!

I'm right though, aren't I?

 

[newnoiseimage]

I'm right though, aren't I?

that is 100% besides the point.

 

[DBM]

that is 100% besides the point.

I'm pretty sure that it's 100% exactly my point.

 

[Manwithoutpeer]

That makes me a saaaaad panda....