Subject: Ooh, I love a good semantics debate!
Author:
Posted on: 2012-04-04 18:24:00 UTC
There's an argument that any fanfiction written by a fangirl is a Fangirl Fanfiction, and therefore subject to translation by the FFT. Since that's entirely beside the point, though, you could always have them try it in desperation and see what happens just for the heck of it. *g*
Hmm, you might be on to something, there.
You're right; I think we do disagree on definitions of concrit. For me, concrit is only possible when I can make a suggestion that would improve the story as written. In other words, at the moment of my writing the concrit, the author must actually have the power to make her story more readable. In this case, I would argue that she does not.
If I took your example and told the author to learn and follow the rules of the language in which she's trying to write, could she do anything to apply that suggestion to this story in the next, say, two weeks or so? Not really. She would need a few more years of English classes and much more practice writing stories at home before even attempting to publish something online in English. And even if she were to do so, the delay and development in her own writing would mean that Attempt #2 would be a completely different story from Attempt #1. The other option, posting the fic in her own language, would have a different story ID, a different syntactical structure...again, it would be a different story altogether. (I'm in favor of the latter.)
Concrit, in my opinion, has to do with addressing the contents and merit of a story, not questioning whether it belongs in this section of fanfiction.net in the first place. I would apply the same line of thought to, say, an RPF that showed up on the Pit, or a piece of original fiction "inspired" by Pirates of the Caribbean, however well written it was. With this fic, my trying to give constructive criticism would go something like this: "Your first sentence is wrong, and here's why. Your second sentence is wrong, and here's why. Your third sentence...is this even a sentence?!" Not helpful to either us or the author, since she wouldn't know how to make an improvement.
If no one ever points out that nobody can understand their story like this, or that Google Translate is not a reliable or acceptable alternative to actual learning, how should they know?
...Common sense? :P
I can, of course, review her story, asking her to remove the fic or post it in her own language. I can also point out the pitfalls of using a translator. To me, though, that's not constructive criticism; it's just housework for the fandom and fanfiction.net.
Hope that makes sense!
~Araeph