Oh, 'word' to the power of ten. I stumbled across this just the other day in Ludlum's Bourne Identity, which IS a damn good novel. Two pages in, a couple of French people speak, well, French, except there was at least two errors in that simple ten-word sentence. I almost put the book down.
I'm not sure Modesitt cares - as you say, she writes brain-popcorn - but that a writer like Ludlum can't find a French-speaking editor to correct half a dozen sentences just boggles the mind. If it were Swahili or Bahasa or Azeri, I'd understand having problems finding a translator, but French...?
Besides, I'm pretty sure it's a rule in novelization that if your main character (who's POV this is) doesn't understand the language, then the text shoulnd't be in French or Italian or whatever, it should be 'and the big man with a knife spoke in a language that didn't understand' or some such. And if he DOES understand the language, '"I'll have your guts!" shouted the big man with a knife, his native French so slurred with drink that could barely
( ... )
Yeeees, definitely. Especially with the communcations means of today, it's not that bloody hard to find out how to write a quite in latin/french/japanese or any other language.
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I'm not sure Modesitt cares - as you say, she writes brain-popcorn - but that a writer like Ludlum can't find a French-speaking editor to correct half a dozen sentences just boggles the mind. If it were Swahili or Bahasa or Azeri, I'd understand having problems finding a translator, but French...?
Besides, I'm pretty sure it's a rule in novelization that if your main character (who's POV this is) doesn't understand the language, then the text shoulnd't be in French or Italian or whatever, it should be 'and the big man with a knife spoke in a language that didn't understand' or some such. And if he DOES understand the language, '"I'll have your guts!" shouted the big man with a knife, his native French so slurred with drink that could barely ( ... )
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