Prose Style Concern

[MSadiq]

This is one situation where English doesn't really cut the mustard. In Swedish you'd say "nära döding" to mean a nearly corpse, although I would translate the sentence in keeping with the style and rythm of the prose to read "mannen föll liggandes till sitt yttersta". It's very difficult to get the style across in English...

I tried to communicate an Arabic phrase here, and the best way I thought of was "almost-corpse." It sounds a bit weird because it's more common for compounds like these to be a noun-noun compound, but this is an adverb-noun compound, and adverbs, usually, don't modify nouns.

That depends on what you mean by lace and how you're using the word. I would be aiming to use lace in the context lace cloth in any translation into Swedish, because that way I could use the word "spetsduk" to get both the violence and the image of the pattern of arrows across to the reader. So something along the lines of "ryggen en spetsduk av pilar". Note that this works because "spets" is also the Swedish word for a sharp point (as in arrowhead).

This is just a mistake on my part. I'm pretty sure my thought process was that lace can mean خرم when translated into Arabic, which means to prick, too, but, even though lacing includes the action or pricking, you're not leaving the needle in. So, I back-translated to prick and pin in my mind as to lace, which fits the scene of him look like an urchin, as if laced did mean to prick, you'd also imagine him as a pin cushion. So this is just first language interference.

I read that as a complex metaphor where the hatred in the eyes is such that the people doing the staring really want to hurt the man they're staring at. Not only are they staring daggers, they're so keen to hurt the man that they're lusting for blood with the desperation of a thirsty man in the desert. It works for me. But then I read it as a form of kennning and I've heard similar things in the Swedish folk tales my grandmother told me.

That's my exact intentions. I'm glad you got it exactly. Extended metaphors are common in Arabic. You'd use synecdoche, like referring to the people as eyes, as that's the most active part of the scene, then continue to personify them as eyes and attribute the people's actions and intentions to them through attributing them to the eyes.

Yes, I like the prose too. I like the rythm it has, it comes across as something you're tell an audience aloud.

As I said above, none of the paragraphs are part of the same text, except for the first two, which I should've made clearer than just adding double spacing between them
My idea for this paragraph is that a master/teacher figure is trying to inspire his protegee to have more confidence in himself, so the master adopts exaggerated walk and gestures. Chest drumming and beating is something you see in Arabic poetry and some times in real life, too. So when you have these actions paired with a backward strut while throwing his weight around, you can imagine how unbalanced his walk must be, but when you describe it as a gait, which is a deliberate walk, intended pace and manner, and add the context of pride to it, you can imagine him being balanced even in this exaggerated pose, which fits pride; he's not asking him to be arrogant. Just having pride himself.

 

[xena]

Your instinct is right. You don't need to sand your voice down to Standard English. What you’re doing reads like English carrying Arabic rhythm.

 

[MSadiq]

Your instinct is right. You don't need to sand your voice down to Standard English. What you’re doing reads like English carrying Arabic rhythm.

I wouldn't want to, but my concern was how much can I lean into it without becoming too much to comprehend on a cultural level, like with the necklace line, and how much sentence structure would distract the reader from what's actually being said.

E.g., this line from a book's blurb: "Spurred on by his steadfast honor and loyalty, Cyan departs on a dangerous quest to rescue the real queen from her tower prison," really distracted me because as an native Arabic speaker, I'd expected it to be: "Cyan departs on a dangerous quest to rescue the real queen from her tower prison, spurred on by his steadfast honor and loyalty." In English it's motive/cause then effect, where in Arabic it's effect then motive/cause. This is not a concrete rule, but with long sentences such as this one, it jumps out.

"Still, they did not dare approach a hand span closer; his presence required trepidation and demanded reverence." Effect then cause.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

I wouldn't be able to pick your first language from your use of English, but it does have notes of "second language" in there... but that isn't bad in fantasy prose. It could lend a certain strength, in fact.

There is one main thing that would tempt me to put this down in line one... almost-corpse. Sorry, but it doens't work for me and is a red flag for a larger text. Mind you, I am noted for being picky about what books I will spend time with, and chuck them aside far quicker than I will buy one. And to be blunt, the first line is critical.

I don't have time to go into details, but your writing is a strange combination of strengths and weaknesses—for my taste, plus a few nits I would have to pick: girl's not girls, surrounded reads better to me, and there are some comma issues. I don't like clamored for an individual, but that could just be me. The motionless as a mountain line just throws me. If I didn't stop reading at almost-corpse, this sentence would do it.

Refine your genuine voice, and I think you could be onto something.

I´m planning, God willing, insha'Allah, to write a fantasy series, but my major concern is my prose style; my first language isn't English. It's Arabic, but, I'd say, I'm quite competent, but my style doesn't conform to English's usual preferences. Still, I'm writing fiction, so there should be some wiggle room.

While I haven't written anything outside of a short story, which was, in a way, a "formalization" of a local folktale, I came up with some prose that doesn't take place in anywhere to test my style. Because I naturally write, well, like an Arab would, I leaned more into it, so it would not come out as an English-Arabic blob with misaligned features.

I'd appreciate your feedback very much. Is it too weird? Repetitive? Hard to follow? Does it have "redundancy"?


The man’s almost-corpse dropped with the heaviness of a boulder onto the torrid, scarlet, desert sand, back laced with arrows; from afar, his visage seemed of a giant urchin. Enemies, five hundred strong surrounding him, like a necklace on a girls neck. Still, they did not dare approach a hand span closer; his presence required trepidation and demanded reverence.

“Saddlebags swollen with silver and gold,” a man clamored, breaking the noiselessness, “for whoever sunders his head.”


He was motionless as a mountain, as if the world around him had turned black, a canvas inked to absolute pitchiness, punctuated with blobs of white malign. Eyes shooting him stares of daggers, parched—lusting to spurt from his flesh springs of delicious red.


“Pride, that’s what you lack,” Qais said, walking backwards as he faced Baqir with swagger in his gait, throwing his weight left and right in strut and making wide swings with his fists and drumming them on his chest.

 

[MSadiq]

Mind you, I am noted for being picky about what books I will spend time with, and chuck them aside far quicker than I will buy one. And to be blunt, the first line is critical.

I'm pretty much the same. It'd not stop me from finishing a book for just that, if it's interesting enough, but I'd just be ranting to myself about it.

but your writing is a strange combination of strengths and weaknesses

I get what you mean on a syntactic level. Like using thing of the thing, which comes more naturally to me because, in Arabic, it'd be possessed then possessor. There's also that, in long English sentences, it's usually more preferable that the motive/cause comes before the effect. Whereas here: "Still, they did not dare approach a hand span closer; his presence required trepidation and demanded reverence," I wrote the effect then the cause, which sounds a lot more natural to me.

Your comma issues is part of another Arabic preference for extended metaphors and sentences, where you, basically, exhaust an idea in a single sentence instead of chopping it up. Unless you mean by comma issues inserting sentence fragments that break up clauses. That's also my trying at approximating Arabic syntax without breaking grammar rules.

The motionless as a mountain line just throws me

I don't like it either. I was trying to replicate a sentence in Arabic without having to use an adverb or a independent clause followed by a dependent clause structure. But it sounds kinda weird both in English and if were to translate it into Arabic.

Thanks for your feedback. I'll try and keep in mind, insha'Allah, what you mentioned. I really want to gauge how much I can lean into Arabic before it breaks down into the reader trying to solve a riddle rather than read.

 

[Karlin]

I can't help but think of Joseph Conrad, one of the really great English language writers. His native language was Polish. I've read a bit of Classic Chinese literature, and I am sure that some stylistic elements creep into my writing. Not in sentence structure, though, partly because I read those Chinese books in translaton.

 

[MSadiq]

It really depends on the translator. In formal education, at least my education, there's an emphasis on domestication, avoiding almost any hint of the original text, and that's why I got many points deducted, as my instinct is to preserve as much of the source language as possible. This is why I loath the Hobbit's translation. It's an insult to Tolkien's original in every way possible.

Not saying that domestication is by any means easy; it takes a lot of work and editing because there's no way to separate your mother tongue from yourself, so you're bound to use structures that feel more natural to you. Though, this becomes less of a problem with experience.