flower_of_justice | Entries tagged with book: ancillary justice

Yet more on pronouns in translation! The thing that's pulled out in this review that I particularly enjoy is in fact who uses tu and who uses vous when, and how that changes over the course of the book.

kaberett

This time on decisions made by the French translator (not, as

vassraptor notes, a Presger translator).

eta here's a later part of the thread, in which Ann Leckie has opinions :-)

kaberett

skygiants, book reviewer extraordinaire, is hosting a great discussion on Sword vs Justice.

rmc28

I am (fairly slowly) working my way through the audible.co.uk version of Ancillary Justice which is read by the actor Adjoa Anjoh. I am impressed both with her delivery of different accents for different characters, but also the selection of accents. To this British ~~reader~~ listener, those accents are very well chosen to bring out the colonial and class themes of the book.

Breq-as-narrator and Breq/Justice of Toren One Esk as speaker, are RP English. Polite, formal, establishment, but not aristocratic.
Awn has a mild Yorkshire accent, not as strong as Sean Bean as Sharpe, but reminiscent.
Skaaiat has a very upper-class slightly nasal English accent.
The Orsian characters, especially the high priest, have an African accent. (and here I am, ignorant child of a colonising nation, unable to tell by ear if it is Kenyan, Nigerian, Ghanaian or other country; just "African")
The Tanmind characters have Afrikaans accents, which is fairly pointed given the Orsian accents.
The Nilters have USian accents, that go well with the "Frontier Western" feeling of Nilt.
Strigan has a German accent, playing into the fussy-German-doctor stereotype. edit but also lends some uncomfortable historical resonance to her discussion with Breq about genocide and refusing to follow orders.

The interesting choice is Anaander Mianaai, whose accent to my ears is rather closer to Breq's than Skaaiat's, at least in the body that visits Ors, though rather flatter, less pitch-variable. Which given the other similarities between the two characters is, well, interesting.

(I haven't got enough through the book to meet any other Mianaai bodies and their voices, so maybe I'll come back with more thoughts then.)

So yes, I don't know who chose those accents, whether it was Anjoh or an editor, but I'm impressed by the understanding it shows.

kaberett

Which means the entire AJ short story has been published! Part 1 and Part 2.

Discussion in the comments? YES I THINK SO.

nanila

p. 88, paperback version:
Without feelings insignificant decisions become excruciating attempts to compare endless arrays of inconsequential things. It's just easier to handle those with emotions.

I paused in my reading to savour these statements for quite some time. It was such a wonderful antidote to the commonly espoused belief that emotions always cloud objective judgment, that "being emotional" precludes the ability to apply logic and rational thought. It makes sense. And, if I dare say so, it feels right. I find that an examination of my emotions enhances and clarifies my judgment rather than obscuring it.

As an aside, it has taken me ages to read this book, but not for the usual full-time-job-and-a-kid reason, which has cut down severely on my long-form reading. Instead, it's because it kept giving me these moments when I want to sit and think over a scene and enjoy their pleasurable effects on my brain.

What are some lines that gave you pause? What did they inspire in you?

kaberett

... I'm hosting a discussion of the politics of pronouns in the Imperial Radch over at my journal; it's sprawled to include speculation regarding Anaander Mianaai's origins and the Byzantine empire, among other topics! I would love for you to join in. :-)