unappealing consonant sequence of the week

[cimorene]

So I was translating this Teen Wolf RPF (Hoechlin/O'Brien obvs) from Spanish for waxjism's benefit on Friday night, because it really wasn't fair the way I was rhapsodizing about how it made me squirm in delight but she couldn't read it. (To be clear, I didn't squirm in delight because of its literary genius - it was really good and adorable and in a literary sense, slightly lyrical and beautifully paced and sizzling with US- and Emotional T, but those things alone aren't enough to prompt squirming - but because it kept hitting my fic kinks and, perhaps more importantly, I was pretty much dying to read some RPS about those dudes already when I found it.) (I did get permission from the author, so I will eventually post the result. No sense in wasting 4 or 5 hours' work.)

But the thing is that the dictionary I was having to rely way too much on translated farfullar as "gabble" first (followed by splutter, stammer, jabber, etc), and so that unfortunately stuck in my head, and - have you noticed that 'gabble' is possibly the world's least sexy verb? Or not quite, but at least one of the least sexy dialogue tags I can think of. It might be because of similarity to 'gobble' or just a simple matter of phonetics, but it sounds kind of ridiculous and embarrassing, and it kept coming up in these long twisty complex sentences, because her characterization of Dylan is quite Stilesy, and... yeah. Brain-cringe, every single time.

And also, who actually says 'gabble', anyway? Surely it shouldn't have been the first translation.

Comments

[twistedchick]

My dictionary translates farfullar as 'to mumble'. Does that help?

[cimorene]

Heh, that was in the list too, but I am fairly confident it wasn't the intended sense. But the main problem is that the dictionary's poor choice created an unfortunate word association so now every time I read it I think 'gabble', which is off-putting as well as distracting...

[twistedchick]

My mental references for 'gabble' are the sounds of wild turkeys, and the sounds of political campaigns (which are not unlike turkey sounds.)

[cimorene]

Hahaha, sad but true! Yeah... turkeys and gobbling of food, which also brings an unappealing image...

[norah]

Oooh, do you often read Spanish fic? I've been looking for some that's sort of low-level vocab, anything you'd recommend? Also, do you know of any in-browser dictionaries for english - to-spanish translation?

[cimorene]

Not often. I just read the headers when they show up in my AO3 browsing, and I then I read them if I really, REALLY want to, so usually when I'm in a stage of pairing-driven desperation. I've maybe read four this year or so? And no, sadly, as much as I rely on the dictionary (a lot) I just keep it open in another tab. It hadn't even occurred to me to look for one! I will see if I can find one for Opera now.

I guess... I feel like my vocabulary is quite shrunken from disuse, but even if I have to stop and look up 5-6 words per paragraph sometimes, it's not enough to prevent me from understanding and enjoying it - just to slow me down. I guess because Spanish grammar is comprehensible, and the subject matter of fandom is such that I could basically follow along without a dictionary (albeit not without some lasting confusion). That said, I definitely don't recommend the ones I've been reading this week! Probably because the writers are Castilian, they have sprinkled the text with a small handful of totally unfamiliar expressions, some that I can't even disentangle with the dictionary, and I end up having to Google and sometimes I just have to guess.