Join us as author Dirk Strasser argues against using subtitles in novels #HistoricalFantasy #Conquistadors #Inca #WritingLife

Conquist

by Dirk Strasser

Capitán Cristóbal de Varga’s drive for glory and gold in 1538 Peru leads him and his army of conquistadors into a New World that refuses to be conquered. He is a man torn by life-long obsessions and knows this is his last campaign.

What he doesn’t know is that his Incan allies led by the princess Sarpay have their own furtive plans to make sure he never finds the golden city of Vilcabamba. He also doesn’t know that Héctor Valiente, the freed African slave he appointed as his lieutenant, has found a portal that will lead them all into a world that will challenge his deepest beliefs.

And what he can’t possibly know is that this world will trap him in a war between two eternal enemies, leading him to question everything he has devoted his life to - his command, his Incan princess, his honor, his God.

In the end, he faces the ultimate dilemma: how is it possible to battle your own obsessions . . . to conquer yourself?

Why novels don’t need subtitles...

by Dirk Strasser

Illustration of ancient Japanese scene and samurai silhouettes.

The 2024 historical miniseries Shōgun features English, Japanese and Portuguese characters. In addition to those three languages, Dutch, Spanish, and Latin are also spoken at times. Interestingly, the only languages spoken onscreen are English and Japanese. The Portuguese, which have a significant role in the storyline, speak English, while the Japanese speak Japanese with English subtitles. The obvious question is why? Why don’t they all speak their own language with the appropriate subtitles for the audience? Or why don’t they all speak English?

The answer to this is worth exploring.

Shōgun (both the original historical novel and the current series) is based on real historical events and people. It’s essentially a story about the collision of two cultures, and cultures are intrinsically tied to their languages. John Blackthorne is the first Englishman to ever set foot on Japan. He can’t speak a word of Japanese and the Japanese characters can’t speak any English. This presents a whole lot of potential plot pitfalls. One way around it is for one or more of the characters to learn the other’s language, but that takes time and the urgency of the action can dissipate. Learning a new language as an adult is hard. And assuming you want to have a fairly sophisticated interchange between your characters, it would be a monumental task for anyone to get to that level without years of hard work and instruction.

The alternative solution the Shōgun filmmakers came up with was to have a third intermediary language, in this case Portuguese, that both could speak. This was both historically authentic, and it still allowed audiences to access the story seamlessly. But more than that, this use of an intermediary language and the various exchanges involving translation became crucial plot points.

Historical drama and historical novels both have the problem of needing to balance authenticity with accessibility, but screen drama and narrative fiction are different mediums, and the screenwriter and the novelist have different tools at their disposal when it comes to language. The major distinction is that novelists can’t use subtitles.

Much of the dramatic tension in Shōgun came from the fact that by reading the subtitles, the audience are aware of things that the characters were oblivious to. The subtitles became central to the plot rather than just being a mechanism for getting the viewers to understand what was happening. The character of Mariko acts as Blackthorne’s interpreter for much of the series, but we can see from the subtitles that she often protects him by moderating what he says with her translation, while at other times she omits details in her own self-interest.

When I was writing my historical fantasy novel Conquist and its screenplay in tandem, I became hyper aware of the differences in the ways I was able to treat languages. The main characters in Conquist are either Spanish or Incan, but since 1538 was quite some time after first contact, there was some understanding of each other’s languages.

Dealing with Spanish and the Incan language Quechua was relatively straightforward, but I had the extra complication of first contact with two fantasy races, the duende and the ñakaqs, each with their own languages. In an early draft I had the duende have the magical ability to instantly learn other languages and the ñakaqs able to learn languages quickly—but it just didn’t feel right. I knew it was a cop out. You can’t get away with it in a historical fantasy which depends on the authenticity of the setting and is grounded in a sense of reality despite its fantasy elements.

I couldn’t simply use a convenient plot device. I had to go back to the drawing board. In the end, I restructured the plot significantly so that Quechua became the intermediary language that crossed over with the others. This transformed the plot and deepened the world-building. The novel and the screenplay ended up being much better because I was forced to find a solution to how the characters could realistically communicate with each other.

As an example of the relative ease of writing subtitles in a screenplay, here’s a scene opening from Conquist:

INT. HUARCAY’S TENT - DAY

Huarcay and Sarpay sit on a nest of embroidered cushions surrounded by servants. Musicians play bone flutes and drums as a storm howls outside. They speak in Quechua, SUBTITLED:

SARPAY

You know these Spaniards are just

men under all that hair.

Huarcay sips a cup of tea raised to his mouth by a servant.

So, in this scene the two characters on screen are actually speaking Quechua with English subtitles. In the novel version they are speaking English and there is no comment about what language they are speaking. Context and convention indicate that they are speaking in their own language.

The filmed version would feel authentic, but how do you make the novel version provide a similar level of authenticity?

My feeling is when writing a historical novel, the representation of languages other than English needs to be unobtrusive. It shouldn’t interrupt the flow. The reader shouldn’t be pulled out of the story. However, I feel it’s best to try to achieve this while still giving a perception that the character isn’t speaking in English. How do you achieve the suspension of disbelief as far the actual language being spoken is concerned? My solution in Conquist, where most of the characters are Spanish, is to use some relevant Spanish words, usually ones that are similar enough in English that the reader can guess the meaning from the context, for example ‘entrada’ instead of ‘entrance’. I also have one of the characters swearing in Spanish, where it’s clear that he is swearing even if you don’t actually know what the word means. When a character isn’t speaking their first language, I also avoid contractions like “didn’t” and “wouldn’t”, using instead the more formal-sounding “did not” and “would not”.

I wanted Cristóbal’s diary entries to be in a totally different style to the rest of the book. My aim was to have the reader in two minds as to whether the diary had actually been found in the archives of a Peruvian museum. Based on a couple of reviews of Conquist I’ve read, I think I achieved that. Hopefully my approach strikes the right balance between authenticity and accessibility.

The key to verisimilitude in narrative fiction lies in the very nature of reading. Novels, of course, play out in your head, while films play out on an external screen. When prompted in the right way, the mind can achieve some quite striking effects. One of these helps you to convince yourself that characters are speaking in another language. Who needs subtitles when the magic of reading does it for you?

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Dirk Strasser

Dirk Strasser’s epic fantasy trilogy The Books of Ascension—Zenith, Equinox and Eclipse—was published in German and English, and his short stories have been translated into several European languages. The Doppelgänger Effect appeared in the World Fantasy Award-winning anthology Dreaming Down Under. He is the co-editor of Australia’s premier science-fiction and fantasy magazine, Aurealis.

Dirk was born in Germany but has lived most of his life in Australia. He has written a series of best-selling school textbooks, trekked the Inca trail to Machu Picchu and studied Renaissance history.

Conquist was first published as a short story in the anthology Dreaming Again (HarperCollins). The serialized version of Conquist was a finalist in the Aurealis Awards Best Fantasy Novel category. Dirk’s screenplay version of Conquist won the Wildsound Fantasy / Sci-Fi Festival Best Scene Reading Award and was a featured finalist in the Cinequest Film & Creativity Festival and the Creative World Awards.

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