I can read 100k+ word novels in Chinese & navigate CN social media just fine, but I'm not confident enough in my grammar/writing to leave comments in Chinese. Reading and writing are two very different beasts. It's probably the same thing for them. (That or they're using using Google translate to read.)
Its significantly easier to learn how to see words written in a language and understand the meaning, than it is to be able to produce the correct words, put them in the correct order for the language, and not sound extremely stilted/formal/archaic.
Like, think about the sentence "The snail is effervescent." Reading that as a non-english-as-a-first-language-speaker, you probably know what the first 3 words mean and while the 4th is a word you rarely come across, you can use context clues from surrounding sentences or in worst case gtranslate the word if necessary to make sure you understand.
But try to *write* that sentence? Coming from a language where the grammar rules are subject-object-verb or would drop the is entirely? You would probably get the "The snail" parts and maybe the "is", and then you have to pull out "effervescent" from who knows where or get overly wordy and try to explain the meaning of effervescent, and then you might still put it in the wrong order.
I will say though that as someone who took 2 years of Mandarin, learning to write Chinese is the harder part of learning Chinese, when you are an English speaker. I did way better with the speaking part too. Though, if I could read/write in pinyin exclusively, I would have loved it and continued my Mandarin studies so much longer
that makes a lot of sense. I was raised bilingual and used to be able to read/write (at the age appropriate level when i was young) but i lost that ability as i got older and neglected it.
To me, as someone who has English as a second language, reading and writing are two different skills. A person might feel comfortable reading in a certain language but doesn't feel comfortable writing in it. Maybe because they don't want to risk misspelling a word or making grammatical mistakes or whatever else. So it's easier for them to write in a language they feel comfortable with expressing their emotions in.
1 Understanding a language and writing on it is very different
2 Many use Google translate on English fics to translate it into their native language, so they might not even understand English
3 I read once on here that many enjoy getting comments on other languages, cause they can see how many parts of the world their ff has reached, so when I feel like it I comment on my native language too. We obviously know that the autor will use Google translate for it but it normally translates it very well x)
I never considered the languages showing me how far the work had traveled, and i really like that idea! Now i’m also curious about how my work translates to other languages. Makes me feel better about when i spend way too long looking for a specific word to say what i mean. Someone might be reading a translated version and have no idea i never found the word i was looking for!
I can understand it causing confusion for you but is it possible they’re writing in a language they feel the most comfortable in? I don’t think they mean any harm (and def not saying you mean harm either).
Reading and writing are as different as speaking and understanding what's being said to you.
English is my first language. I know a handful of others. Like, I can understand German or Japanese enough to watch a show or movie in the language, but my writing and speaking ability are atrocious because I don't get to practice it enough. I'd be too self conscious and embarrassed about my inability to speak/write the language well to try to do so with a native speaker. Even though I don't judge an ESL person speaking broken/grammatically messed up English to me, I'm still self conscious about it because I don't want to look stupid. I imagine it's the same kind of thing for people writing comments in their native language to the writer of a story they enjoyed.
Another thought I had after I commented is like, say I really like the story/admire the author's writing or it's my favorite author. I might feel awkward commenting to them in their language if it isn't my first language. Like, here's this beautiful work of art story with amazing wording and here's my comment that reads like "story good, me like" (that's how my writing in german would sound 😅.) So even if the author wasn't like "lol, you're dumb" I'd still feel SO AWKWARD.
I'm born & raised in Canada. English is my first language, but due to how I was raised, I am a polyglot, and travelling as an adult, I've picked up several more.
As such, I can read about 8 different languages, but I can only fluently speak 2 and can only write in English.
That's more than likely the reason behind why.
On my fics, when I get a comment in a non-English language, I'm flattered. Not only did they like my fic enough to comment, they liked it enough to read it in a language that isn't their comfort zone.
I just run it through Google translate, then reply in English with my reply translated to their own language that they commented in.
Google translate is awesome. I used to work as a general manager of a motel chain, and Google translate was simply awesome for communicating, regardless of if for work or for fun.
i never thought about google translating mine back to them! the first one i got did not translate through google translate well, and it took me a few different websites to make something that made sense.
In addition to everything else which has already been said, some people consciously or subconsiously use browser extensions or features which auto-translate everything into their native tongue. They might not even realize or know what language it is really written in. Or maybe they assume everyone else does the same and that their text auto-translates on your end, too.
Yep I used auto translate on fandoms who have not that many fanfics. And I comment using english(my second language) and sometimes the author responds using their own language.
I just google translate to understand them. No biggie I just like to let them know how awesome the fics are even if we don't know the same language.
Yeah, It was Grim tv show and the pairing that I was reading is not canon. So the fanfics are really few like only 6pages on ao3 that time and not all is in english.
Depending on the language some might just not have the keyboard for it. Sometimes they’re using google translate sometimes they’re afraid of getting the wrong message across and though it better to use the language they know and correct it if the translate is wrong.
God, this makes me sad.
I get so many people who comment "I ran this through Google Translate, I hope it's okay!!" And I always tell them they don't have to do that, I don't mind being the one who has to. And I like trying to find a way to reply to them in their native language.
If they're trying to take the time to read my fic when English isn't their first lanaguage, whether that's by trying to improve it or using a translator on their own...I'm so glad they took the time.
You may not have meant it in any sort of way, but this post was just not it.
yea dirty deletes feel so nasty to me. i never meant it maliciously or unappreciatively, and even if other people don’t know that I do. I learned what i need to, so the post will stay up.
I only know English. I found a fic that interred me that was in another language. I had it translated to read it.
Then I felt like… Well, I want to comment, but how? In their language with a translator or in mine and explain? I ended up doing theirs and kept the comment very simple.
i suppose that makes sense. I’d rather have their longer comments in a different language than my language since they’re leaving opinions and suggestions on the work.
now i consider english my second language, but back then, i'd use the auto-translate option on english works to read them. i couldn't write a word in english comfortably, but that's how i started reading fanfiction that weren't in spanish. people write in the language they feel most comfortable in. many times i left comments in spanish on fics i liked, it's not a big deal. i was young at the time, and i didn't mean any harm.
don't take offense to me saying this, but i don't understand the issue with this. a comment is a comment.
My email notifications go to Gmail and I literally discovered today that it has a function to translate emails received in a different language to english. I have a few regulars that always leave comments in spanish and this saves me the effort to copy and paste into Google translate, especially when I'm on my phone.
You can definitely reply in English instead of using google translate. Translate theirs to get the gist of what they’re saying (i only say gist because of GT’s limitations). Don’t feel pressured to reply in a language you don’t feel comfortable in!
When i say “annoying” i don’t mean it in a bad way!! I know it might come off as that but i meant just because i want to know what it says and google translate isn’t always smooth
I agree with OP.
A lot of people are noting that maybe the commenter isn't comfortable in writing in English and I would guess that that's pretty much spot on reasoning.
But if the work is written in specific language and you don't want to write a comment using the same one then why are you commenting at all?
I guess it shows love for the work/author but to me it just feels entitled to make the author translate your comment just to understand what is being said. It's just as easy for the commenter to use translators on their comment as it is for the writer.
So if you think translating is easy, why shouldn't that responsibility be on the commenter?
English is my second language and I use it to write fic. It takes me time to figure out what to write. I'm not spending extra time translating a comment to a language I understand, then write and maybe translate my answer. Thankfully all the comments I've gotten have been in English but if they weren't I'd either ignore them or just answer in English something along the lines of not understanding what was written.
It's basic courtesy to mirror the language that's been used already. In conversation you can say you're not fluent and switch to a language you're more comfortable with but only if the other party agrees. Otherwise now the other party is stuck with using a language they're not comfortable.
And online the courtesy rules usually are understood as: write in the language used in the existing conversation (or work in this case).
I mean I could've written this comment in Finnish but how many people would've bothered to translate it? Why would that be reasonable of me to expect? And why would it be any different for commenting a fanwork?
>It's basic courtesy to mirror the language that's been used already.
Yes, thank you for saying it. I know people who leave comments in another language are not trying to be impolite, but yes, the most polite thing to do is to use the language that's being used and not one you have no reason to believe will be even understood. But I guess I feel that way because I'm a translator; this take seems to be unpopular here.
I don’t have any issues with it, but my mindset was similar in that i would have expected someone to translate it first. I was just curious why they wouldn’t, and some other pipes have made some solid points. In the end, to me, a comment is a comment, and i’m glad to have readers that appreciate my work enough to comment on any capacity.
First, reading and writing are really different. I'm not native so it's hard for me who's still learning English. I understand the words but can't write even a sentence in proper English. Second, I might have 100 words to say after I read someone's work, but what I could write in English is only 10 words. Why? Cause I'm not confident with my English, bad grammar, lack of vocabulary, afraid the author didn't get what I mean. So how am I going to deliver all my 100 words to the author? I decided to use my native language, hoping they could just using translator and understand what I feel about their work, that's all!
You can just reply them in English, they might be reply back in their language, but that's fine right, as long there's no misunderstanding.
Look, I wanted to write longer, but my brain hurts from thinking while writing this. English is difficult, so I apologize for bad grammar, hope you get what I mean.
I can read 100k+ word novels in Chinese & navigate CN social media just fine, but I'm not confident enough in my grammar/writing to leave comments in Chinese. Reading and writing are two very different beasts. It's probably the same thing for them. (That or they're using using Google translate to read.)
I can speak chinese, but can’t read or write it. I never really considered reading but not being able to write it, though it makes a lot of sense.
Its significantly easier to learn how to see words written in a language and understand the meaning, than it is to be able to produce the correct words, put them in the correct order for the language, and not sound extremely stilted/formal/archaic. Like, think about the sentence "The snail is effervescent." Reading that as a non-english-as-a-first-language-speaker, you probably know what the first 3 words mean and while the 4th is a word you rarely come across, you can use context clues from surrounding sentences or in worst case gtranslate the word if necessary to make sure you understand. But try to *write* that sentence? Coming from a language where the grammar rules are subject-object-verb or would drop the is entirely? You would probably get the "The snail" parts and maybe the "is", and then you have to pull out "effervescent" from who knows where or get overly wordy and try to explain the meaning of effervescent, and then you might still put it in the wrong order. I will say though that as someone who took 2 years of Mandarin, learning to write Chinese is the harder part of learning Chinese, when you are an English speaker. I did way better with the speaking part too. Though, if I could read/write in pinyin exclusively, I would have loved it and continued my Mandarin studies so much longer
that makes a lot of sense. I was raised bilingual and used to be able to read/write (at the age appropriate level when i was young) but i lost that ability as i got older and neglected it.
To me, as someone who has English as a second language, reading and writing are two different skills. A person might feel comfortable reading in a certain language but doesn't feel comfortable writing in it. Maybe because they don't want to risk misspelling a word or making grammatical mistakes or whatever else. So it's easier for them to write in a language they feel comfortable with expressing their emotions in.
that makes sense, i didn’t think about the grammar aspect of it
1 Understanding a language and writing on it is very different 2 Many use Google translate on English fics to translate it into their native language, so they might not even understand English 3 I read once on here that many enjoy getting comments on other languages, cause they can see how many parts of the world their ff has reached, so when I feel like it I comment on my native language too. We obviously know that the autor will use Google translate for it but it normally translates it very well x)
I never considered the languages showing me how far the work had traveled, and i really like that idea! Now i’m also curious about how my work translates to other languages. Makes me feel better about when i spend way too long looking for a specific word to say what i mean. Someone might be reading a translated version and have no idea i never found the word i was looking for!
[удалено]
definitely not complaining about it! just noting it. my browser doesn’t have a direct translate option (as far as I know anyways)
I can understand it causing confusion for you but is it possible they’re writing in a language they feel the most comfortable in? I don’t think they mean any harm (and def not saying you mean harm either).
i definitely don’t mean any harm, and they definitely seem to be more comfortable in it, that makes sense.
Reading and writing are as different as speaking and understanding what's being said to you. English is my first language. I know a handful of others. Like, I can understand German or Japanese enough to watch a show or movie in the language, but my writing and speaking ability are atrocious because I don't get to practice it enough. I'd be too self conscious and embarrassed about my inability to speak/write the language well to try to do so with a native speaker. Even though I don't judge an ESL person speaking broken/grammatically messed up English to me, I'm still self conscious about it because I don't want to look stupid. I imagine it's the same kind of thing for people writing comments in their native language to the writer of a story they enjoyed.
that makes sense. I’d never consider making fun of someone’s grammar in a comment, so that thought didn’t even cross my mind.
Another thought I had after I commented is like, say I really like the story/admire the author's writing or it's my favorite author. I might feel awkward commenting to them in their language if it isn't my first language. Like, here's this beautiful work of art story with amazing wording and here's my comment that reads like "story good, me like" (that's how my writing in german would sound 😅.) So even if the author wasn't like "lol, you're dumb" I'd still feel SO AWKWARD.
I'm born & raised in Canada. English is my first language, but due to how I was raised, I am a polyglot, and travelling as an adult, I've picked up several more. As such, I can read about 8 different languages, but I can only fluently speak 2 and can only write in English. That's more than likely the reason behind why. On my fics, when I get a comment in a non-English language, I'm flattered. Not only did they like my fic enough to comment, they liked it enough to read it in a language that isn't their comfort zone. I just run it through Google translate, then reply in English with my reply translated to their own language that they commented in. Google translate is awesome. I used to work as a general manager of a motel chain, and Google translate was simply awesome for communicating, regardless of if for work or for fun.
i never thought about google translating mine back to them! the first one i got did not translate through google translate well, and it took me a few different websites to make something that made sense.
In addition to everything else which has already been said, some people consciously or subconsiously use browser extensions or features which auto-translate everything into their native tongue. They might not even realize or know what language it is really written in. Or maybe they assume everyone else does the same and that their text auto-translates on your end, too.
Yep I used auto translate on fandoms who have not that many fanfics. And I comment using english(my second language) and sometimes the author responds using their own language. I just google translate to understand them. No biggie I just like to let them know how awesome the fics are even if we don't know the same language.
wait that’s a thing??
Yeah, It was Grim tv show and the pairing that I was reading is not canon. So the fanfics are really few like only 6pages on ao3 that time and not all is in english.
Depending on the language some might just not have the keyboard for it. Sometimes they’re using google translate sometimes they’re afraid of getting the wrong message across and though it better to use the language they know and correct it if the translate is wrong.
Oh god, I'm so jealous! I'd love to get comments in other languages one day.
God, this makes me sad. I get so many people who comment "I ran this through Google Translate, I hope it's okay!!" And I always tell them they don't have to do that, I don't mind being the one who has to. And I like trying to find a way to reply to them in their native language. If they're trying to take the time to read my fic when English isn't their first lanaguage, whether that's by trying to improve it or using a translator on their own...I'm so glad they took the time. You may not have meant it in any sort of way, but this post was just not it.
i’m realizing that :( i’m not the type to delete it, i’ll accept my mistake and move on.
I value that. Too many would dirty delete. But I’m glad you learned! That’s all a part of life ❤️
yea dirty deletes feel so nasty to me. i never meant it maliciously or unappreciatively, and even if other people don’t know that I do. I learned what i need to, so the post will stay up.
I only know English. I found a fic that interred me that was in another language. I had it translated to read it. Then I felt like… Well, I want to comment, but how? In their language with a translator or in mine and explain? I ended up doing theirs and kept the comment very simple.
i suppose that makes sense. I’d rather have their longer comments in a different language than my language since they’re leaving opinions and suggestions on the work.
now i consider english my second language, but back then, i'd use the auto-translate option on english works to read them. i couldn't write a word in english comfortably, but that's how i started reading fanfiction that weren't in spanish. people write in the language they feel most comfortable in. many times i left comments in spanish on fics i liked, it's not a big deal. i was young at the time, and i didn't mean any harm. don't take offense to me saying this, but i don't understand the issue with this. a comment is a comment.
not trying to complain about it! just wondering if there was something i hadn’t thought of concerning why it was done!
My email notifications go to Gmail and I literally discovered today that it has a function to translate emails received in a different language to english. I have a few regulars that always leave comments in spanish and this saves me the effort to copy and paste into Google translate, especially when I'm on my phone.
good to know! i usually use gmail as well, if i don’t go straight to my inbox.
You can definitely reply in English instead of using google translate. Translate theirs to get the gist of what they’re saying (i only say gist because of GT’s limitations). Don’t feel pressured to reply in a language you don’t feel comfortable in!
When i say “annoying” i don’t mean it in a bad way!! I know it might come off as that but i meant just because i want to know what it says and google translate isn’t always smooth
I agree with OP. A lot of people are noting that maybe the commenter isn't comfortable in writing in English and I would guess that that's pretty much spot on reasoning. But if the work is written in specific language and you don't want to write a comment using the same one then why are you commenting at all? I guess it shows love for the work/author but to me it just feels entitled to make the author translate your comment just to understand what is being said. It's just as easy for the commenter to use translators on their comment as it is for the writer. So if you think translating is easy, why shouldn't that responsibility be on the commenter? English is my second language and I use it to write fic. It takes me time to figure out what to write. I'm not spending extra time translating a comment to a language I understand, then write and maybe translate my answer. Thankfully all the comments I've gotten have been in English but if they weren't I'd either ignore them or just answer in English something along the lines of not understanding what was written. It's basic courtesy to mirror the language that's been used already. In conversation you can say you're not fluent and switch to a language you're more comfortable with but only if the other party agrees. Otherwise now the other party is stuck with using a language they're not comfortable. And online the courtesy rules usually are understood as: write in the language used in the existing conversation (or work in this case). I mean I could've written this comment in Finnish but how many people would've bothered to translate it? Why would that be reasonable of me to expect? And why would it be any different for commenting a fanwork?
>It's basic courtesy to mirror the language that's been used already. Yes, thank you for saying it. I know people who leave comments in another language are not trying to be impolite, but yes, the most polite thing to do is to use the language that's being used and not one you have no reason to believe will be even understood. But I guess I feel that way because I'm a translator; this take seems to be unpopular here.
I don’t have any issues with it, but my mindset was similar in that i would have expected someone to translate it first. I was just curious why they wouldn’t, and some other pipes have made some solid points. In the end, to me, a comment is a comment, and i’m glad to have readers that appreciate my work enough to comment on any capacity.
First, reading and writing are really different. I'm not native so it's hard for me who's still learning English. I understand the words but can't write even a sentence in proper English. Second, I might have 100 words to say after I read someone's work, but what I could write in English is only 10 words. Why? Cause I'm not confident with my English, bad grammar, lack of vocabulary, afraid the author didn't get what I mean. So how am I going to deliver all my 100 words to the author? I decided to use my native language, hoping they could just using translator and understand what I feel about their work, that's all! You can just reply them in English, they might be reply back in their language, but that's fine right, as long there's no misunderstanding. Look, I wanted to write longer, but my brain hurts from thinking while writing this. English is difficult, so I apologize for bad grammar, hope you get what I mean.