Author Habits That Annoy You

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Woman's intuition?

When Lucy Maud Montgomery's short stories (originally published in magazines) were anthologized after her death, they were helpfully divided into themed collections: marriage (At the Altar), supernatural (Among the Shadows), orphans (Akin to Anne), time passed (After Many Days), achievements (Against the Odds), epistolary or about letters (Across the Miles), seaside (Along the Shore).

 

[David cgc]

Martha Wells attempted to overcome this by inventing her own pronoun in Murderbot. This for the most part worked, but I found the made up pronoun kept taking me out of the story. It ended up being a distraction even though it overcome the problem mentioned above.

I don’t remember any neopronouns in Murderbot. SecUnit goes by it/its, and mostly uses “I,” since it narrates in the first person (thought, double-checking, I see the Japanese translation uses a neopronoun referencing SecUnit). Ann Leckie’s later Radch have several third, fourth, and fifth genders with neopronouns to go with them.

 

[Christopher]

(thought, double-checking, I see the Japanese translation uses a neopronoun referencing SecUnit).

Hmm, I wonder why. Japanese has different first-person pronouns for different genders, ages, levels of formality, etc., e.g. boku for young males, ore as a more "masculine" usage, atashi for women, etc. But the basic form watashi is essentially gender-neutral, if rather formal (or watakushi if one is really formal). So I don't see why they'd need to coin a different pronoun. What do they use?

 

[bdub76]

I don’t remember any neopronouns in Murderbot. SecUnit goes by it/its, and mostly uses “I,” since it narrates in the first person (thought, double-checking, I see the Japanese translation uses a neopronoun referencing SecUnit). Ann Leckie’s later Radch have several third, fourth, and fifth genders with neopronouns to go with them.

It shows up in Artificial Conditions.

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Now, I typically read 2-3 books at a time, so when I bounce around books, this was a bit jarring as I kept trying to remember who was being referred to.

According to my search, it only shows up in Chapter 4 & 5. 12x for Te. 17x for Ter.

 

[David cgc]

Hmm, I wonder why. Japanese has different first-person pronouns for different genders, ages, levels of formality, etc., e.g. boku for young males, ore as a more "masculine" usage, atashi for women, etc. But the basic form watashi is essentially gender-neutral, if rather formal (or watakushi if one is really formal). So I don't see why they'd need to coin a different pronoun. What do they use?

From this Reddit post, SecUnit uses a first-person neopronoun which may be standard for cyborgs like itself, or of its own devising, same as it calling itself "MurderBot:"

"In the Japanese translation of the books, Murderbot uses the genderless neopronoun 弊機 (heiki), which means through its characters "both “bad/evil robot” and “this second-rate, humble company machine"." It's also a homophone for 兵器 (heiki), meaning "weapon."​

​

"The Japanese translator is Naoya Nakahara, and her translation of the first four Murderbot novellas won a translation award in Japan in 2021.​

​

"ETA: apparently the TV series Japanese translation is also using the "heiki" pronoun for Murderbot!"​

 

[Christopher]

From this Reddit post, SecUnit uses a first-person neopronoun which may be standard for cyborgs like itself, or of its own devising, same as it calling itself "MurderBot:"

"In the Japanese translation of the books, Murderbot uses the genderless neopronoun 弊機 (heiki), which means through its characters "both “bad/evil robot” and “this second-rate, humble company machine"." It's also a homophone for 兵器 (heiki), meaning "weapon."​

​

"The Japanese translator is Naoya Nakahara, and her translation of the first four Murderbot novellas won a translation award in Japan in 2021.​

​

"ETA: apparently the TV series Japanese translation is also using the "heiki" pronoun for Murderbot!"​

Hmm. I suppose they could also have followed the precedent of the android character Setsuna/Gavan Bushido in the recent tokusatsu series Space Sheriff Gavan Infinity, who referred to himself as soregashi, which means "someone" or "a certain unspecified person/object" and is also an archaic first-person pronoun that was used by samurai.

How do they translate "Murderbot?" Or do they just transliterate it as "Maadaabotto" or thereabouts? Modern Japanese does use a ton of English loanwords, especially for fictional character names.