it must be bunnies

Back before the 2023 Hugo Nominations were conducted, I noted that the Chengdu Worldcon Hugo committee had inserted a worrying clause indicating that local government officials could invalidate nominations for breaching the norms and standards of China. I suspected this would result in arbitrarily applied censorship to control the ballot. I am sad and unsurprised to discover I was correct.

The 2023 Hugo Nomination vote data has been published (https://www.thehugoawards.org/2024/01/2023-nominating-and-final-ballot-statistics-published/), and includes notation where nominations were excluded from the ballot. Those with normal reasons, such as being in the wrong category or not being published in 2022 are identified with their reasons for exclusion. This time there are a number of nominations that are merely marked at "Not eligible".

Here is the list of those nominations, that would otherwise have been placed on the final 2023 Hugo Award Ballot.

Babel - R.F. Kuang - Best Novel: Very likely excluded for referencing student revolution, and the use of language and translation as coercive tools of oppression. Color the World - Congyun "Mu Ming" Hu - Best Novellette : A story about perception of, aid of, and discrimination against disability. Congyun Hu has left China and now lives in New York. Fogong Temple Padoga - Hai Ya - Best Story : Either there is something in the original Chinese that was not translated, there's a taboo subject that elides my reading, or this otherwise innocent looking near future tale of cultural building restoration was written by the wrong person. The Art of Ghost of Tsushima: Dark Horse and Sucker Punch Games - Best Related Work : The video game Ghost of Tsushima was subject to directed social exclusion for it's depiction of the Mongol invasion of Japan. Sandman, Amazon Studios: Best Dramatic Presentation (Long and Short) - A diverse and divergent cast, includes subject matter and social issues that are currently taboo in China. Paul Weimer - Fan Writer: Publicly Critical of holding a Worldcon in China. Xiran Jay Zhao - Astounding Award: Qualifying work "Iron Widow" is reimagined story of Chinese Empress Wu during a fantasy/mechanical alien invasion.

now important context here: in German, die (pronounced 'dee') is just a feminine article, it literally means "the".

but if an ad gets placed in the middle of an English video and doesn't use a single explicitly German word for most of the ad, even a native speaker is gonna think "they want me to die how?" it keeps getting funnier.

I mean, holy shit

My boy Boromir? Spent FOUR MONTHS in the wilderness! Alone! No roads! High floods! His horse died! I’m amazed he showed up to Imladris wearing clothes, let alone with a decent haircut. I’m fully convinced that he left Gondor looking like Richard Sharpe being presented to the Prince Regent in 1813

*electric guitar riff*

And then rocked up to Imladris a hundred ten days later like

A few months later

All hail the High Warden of Gondor.

WHAT THE SHOW WANTS ME TO THINK IS HAPPENING HERE: Jin Guangyao, criminal and political mastermind, is aware that Lan Wangji and this Mo Xuanyu impersonator are investigating Nie Mingjue’s murder. In light of the news from Yi City (which he would have heard from both Su Minshan and Jin Ling) and Lan Xichen’s uncharacteristic lack of communication, he is extremely concerned that a metaphorical noose is tightening around him.

WHAT I BELIEVE TO BE HAPPENING HERE: Jin Guangyao, event planner extraordinaire, cannot fucking beLIEVE that er-ge didn’t tell him that his brother and his brother’s suspicious boyfriend were coming to the Cultivation Conference. It is THE formal occasional of the year, its RSVP date passed weeks ago, everything was arranged PERFECTLY, and now he’s got to somehow come up with two extra place settings, redo the ENTIRE METICULOUSLY-DESIGNED SEATING CHART to accommodate them in a way that befits Hanguang-jun’s rank yet also downplays the presence of the guy he publicly expelled for harassing his wife (whom he needs to track down and warn ASAP because she’s going to be even less thrilled than he is!) yet ALSO puts both of them far away from Jiang Cheng (who seems to have beef with them and seems more stressed than usual), and all of this has to be accomplished WITHIN THE NEXT TWENTY MINUTES AS GUESTS ARE ACTIVELY TRICKLING INTO JINLINTAI.

vs

The real reason Seiji wears socks to bed is because his soul Knew he'd end up with a dumb boyfriend who pulls up the covers smh

25 July 1938                                              20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

Dear Sirs,

Thank you for your letter. … I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject - which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.

Your enquiry is doubtless made in order to comply with the laws of your own country, but that this should be held to apply to the subjects of another state would be improper, even if it had (as it has not) any bearings whatsoever on the merits of my work or its suitability for publication, of which you appear to have satisfied yourselves without reference to my Abstammung.

I trust you will find this reply satisfactory, and remain yours faithfully

J.R.R. Tolkien.

(Letter 30)

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the first time I went in there I pointed at one of those extra-skinny baguettes and said “a flute, please” feeling pretty sure of myself, and the baker said “… that’s a ficelle” (you idiot) (was implied) “a flute is twice as large as a baguette.”

That’s insane, first of all, a flute is a skinny instrument. Call your fat baguette a bassoon, lady—I made some timid remark about how it would make more sense for a flute to be a skinny bread and the baker said, “In Paris it is. I thought you were from the South?”

oh, that hurt

I guess I’m from the part of the South that’s so close to Italy the bread’s waist size matters less than whether it’s got olives in it, but I left the bakery having an existential crisis over whether living in Paris had made me forget my roots

the Least Intimidating Bakery just had normal baguettes vs. seedy baguettes vs. horny baguettes (easy mode, some have seeds, some have horns), while the new bakery has breads that are only different on a molecular level—there’s a good old loaf and then another, identical loaf called a bastard? google told me a bastard is “halfway between a baguette and a bread” but denouncing them like “those are not regulation-sized bastards” would get me banned from the bakery for life

on my 2nd visit (while I stood in line discreetly googling baguette terminology) there was an English tourist who asked for a baguette while pointing at what was either a rustique or a sesame and I felt a bit worried for them, but the baker just clarified “this one?” to waive any responsibility if they found out later it wasn’t a classic baguette, then handed them the bread without educating them in a judgmental tone and I felt envious

I know it’s because she thinks the English are beyond saving but still it made me want to come back with a fake moustache and an English accent so I wouldn’t be expected to play bakery on expert mode just because I’m French. I asked for a pastry this time and the baker asked “no bread with that?” which felt cruel, like she wanted me to sprinkle myself with ashes and admit out loud that my level of bread proficiency isn’t as advanced as I once believed it was

The third time I went, I had lost all self-confidence and I hesitantly pointed at a bread and said “I’d like this, uh—what is it called?” and the baker looked at me in disbelief and said “That’s a baguette.”

God.

for the record, if that stupid bread had been flanked by a skinny bread (ficelle) and a fat one (flute) then yeah of course I would have known to call it a baguette, but in the absence of reference points I now felt lost and scared of being called a Parisian again

Backing up. It's October 2009, and my Dothraki is chosen as the official version for HBO's Game of Thrones. Absolutely the job of a lifetime. Conlangers were never hired to create languages for big budget productions, and language was central to A Song of Ice and Fire. The fact that this was on HBO guaranteed that it was going to be huge, and now I was going to get to be on the set of a TV show, work with actors, go to Hollywood parties, and create a language that would be as popular as Klingon.

June 2011, only one of those four things had happened, and of all things, it was going to a Hollywood party—the season 1 premiere event for Game of Thrones. It was very cool! None of the cast attended, but it was cool! But as for the rest, the idea that I would ever actually talk to any of the actors or be on the actual set was, apparently, laughable. And as for Dothraki, it had a very loyal following of about 6 or 7 people, all of whom I came to know personally. Dothraki was discussed in the press, sure, but nobody was going to learn it; there were never going to be any Dothraki conventions. It wasn't the next Klingon.

June 2012, and by this point I'd gotten used to seeing my work on screen—and by that I mean I'd gotten used to seeing it performed…so-so. Every so often it was really good, but for the most part, I got used to hearing jumbled consonants, dropped syllables, missed words… I've always been a perfectionist, so this was difficult, but I didn't have much choice. I had absolutely no control over it. I never got to work with any of the actors, so all they had were my recordings, and a series of dialect coaches who had absolutely no idea what they were doing with my stuff. (And, as I would learn later, just because an actor nails 9 out of 10 takes doesn't mean the editor won't like the one take they screwed up. Sometimes that's the take that makes it to the screen.) Basically, if someone has an English line on a TV show that goes "It looks like the mechanism got screwed up somehow", and what they say is "It locks like a manism got scroot up someho", they're going to reshoot the scene until the actor says it right. If that happens with a conlang, no one will notice or care. This was now my life.

July 2012, I get the opportunity to create High Valyrian (yay!), and then a "dialect" of High Valyrian to be spoken in Slaver's Bay. Knowing the history from GRRM's books, I knew this "dialect" was actually a full daughter language with lexical/phonological material from an extinct language (Ghiscari) that I wasn't being asked to create, so I was going to have to create two languages at once, and at least have an idea for a third one—and, in fact, there was going to be a lot of dialogue in this new daughter language. Consequently my focus was split. I can honestly barely remember creating Astapori Valyrian, because I wanted to be sure that High Valyrian was right (I knew book fans didn't care about Dothraki, but did care about HV). Despite the lack of attention, I did realize that Astapori Valyrian had a cool sound and a great flow (it really does!). I wish I'd had more time to appreciate creating it as a daughter language (I wish High Valyrian had been as complete as Dothraki was at that point), but I was pleased with the result. I was curious to see how the actors would handle it.

April 21, 2013. I am absolutely over the moon. I'd just for the first time saw a scene that I loved in the books because, for once, I predicted what was going to happen (as a reader, I'm sitting here thinking, "How do you trade your entire army to someone and not wonder if they're going to use it on you after they get it?!"), and it actually plays better in the show than the books, and it all hinges on a language I created. I still get chills watching that scene: Episode 304, Daenerys revealing she speaks Valyrian. To this day that's still the best thing I've done. The same issues I mentioned above were present, as always (watching thinking, "Did she say mebatas instead of memēbātās…?"), but they're minor. The scene is outstanding. I realized that whatever was going to happen after this, I would always have this scene. That was a good night.

April 28, 2013. After last week's episode, I wasn't really waiting for anything. In episode 305 there's only one scene with any conlang work in it—nothing really major. Introducing Grey Worm, characterization, etc. Everything in this episode is about what's going on in Westeros. At this point I'd heard a fair amount of Astapori Valyrian in Slaver's Bay. It was good! Definitely good enough. Did the trick. The prosody wasn't quite what I did with it, but it was good. I was somewhat interested in this introduction in 305. Grey Worm only speaks Astapori Valyrian at this point, so this actor wouldn't have had had any other speaking lines, and aside from one short line and saying his name at the beginning, his next line is a huuuuuge speech, comparatively speaking. I was curious to see how he would do.

Critters and gentlefolk, that night I witnessed a miracle.

NEVER had I heard ANYONE speak one of my languages better than me until that night.

Every word, every syllable, EVERY SOUND OF EVERY CLAUSE Jacob "You Heard My Name" Anderson uttered was ABSOLUTELY FLAWLESS.

I was stunned. My mouth literally hung open—probably for the rest of the damn episode, at which point I went back and watched that scene—again, and again, and again.

And so you don't have to go searching, this is Grey Worm's line (not the first two short ones—the big one [note: j is [ʒ], except in Daenery's High Valyrian name, where it's [dʒ], dh is [ð], q is [q], r is [ɾ] and y is [y], in IPA]):

“Torgo Nudho” hokas bezy. Sa me broji beri. Ji broji ez bezo sene stas qimbroto. Kuny iles ji broji meles esko mazedhas derari va buzdar. Y Torgo Nudho sa ji broji ez bezy eji tovi Daenerys Jelmazmo ji teptas ji derve.

That was my translation of this English line:

“Grey Worm” gives this one pride. It is a lucky name. The name this one was born with was cursed. That was the name he had when he was taken as a slave. But Grey Worm is the name this one had the day Daenerys Stormborn set him free.

That is a LOOOOOOOOOONG ass line. And go watch that scene. There is nothing on the screen but his face. It's a closeup the entire time. Any slight deviation would be visible as well as audible. Take a look:

This...KING just casually dropped the greatest performance I have ever witnessed on screen at a time when I had already given up on ever seeing a truly great conlang performance on screen.

And then he proceeded to do it again and again and again and again and again for the rest of the entire show. I don't think it's a coincidence that the very last conlang line of Game of Thrones is his. They knew how much I loved him—I told them. I told anyone who would listen and twelve people who wouldn't, along with their next of kin. He didn't take my language and make it his own—no, no. He is graciously allowing me to claim that I created his native tongue—the one he's been speaking since birth. THAT'S how good he is.

So yeah, accent work? In English? I guess I'm not surprised he's pretty good at that. Something like that to this…adonis, this living, breathing Master Class™ in perfection is like yawning to an ordinary human. Jacob Anderson can walk into my house in the dead of night, take anything out of my refrigerator, and then leave the door to the fridge and the house open when he leaves. He has earned no less.

To sum up: