Misused: Bilingual Bonus

"Any Easter Egg" includes any Easter Egg that is, Hidden Content. In this case, the content is hidden in an untranslated foreign language. Trying to separate out whether the information is plot sensitive or not is a short route to madness.

edited 25th Oct '13 6:47:12 PM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

I asked because the definition of Easter Egg ("They're secrets, intended to tickle the fancy of those who discover them") seems to specifically exclude stuff like plot-relevant info. If that's incorrect, then never mind.

Hidden content. It can't be something that the audience must know in order to make sense, but from the description of the Iron Man example, it's something that they'd find out later anyway. It's bonus material for the people who are bilingual in that they get a hint earlier than the full reveal. It's an Bilingual Bonus Easter Egg.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

The description of Easter Egg doesn't explicitly exclude plot-relevant material, although it may be unlikely for plot-relevant material to be an Easter Egg.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

So I still don't think that the "Meaningful Name in a foreign language" option needs to be tied to the option to open the trope up to all uses of an untranslated foreign language in works.

Any objections to me tweaking/adding to the options to reflect that?

Yes, I do object. They've already gotten votes - if someone voted "A", we shouldn't suddenly change the options so that the vote says "B" instead.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Isn't that what the ability to change your vote is for? I mean, if there's a good reason for those two options to be connected, I'm willing to hear it, but it seems to be "unfair" that a perfectly viable option could fail because it was connected to a much less popular option for no reason that I can tell.

Not everyone checks a crowner they have voted on obsessively for anyone who edits the meaning of their votes. If you don't like any of the crowner options, you ought to add one yourself.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

No, you don't substantially change an option once it's been voted on. I'll add a a new option. But this is also why you want the proposed definitions hashed out before the crowner is made, and why you don't TBD a redefinition.

edited 26th Oct '13 6:25:50 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

"Actually, it's about hidden information in a foreign language where the context indicates a certain amount of fourth wall breaking. That's pretty different from either the laconic or everything that came before the last sentence of the description. For example, it would specifically exclude the part in the Iron Man film where knowledge of a foreign language hints at a future major plot point, because in-context, it makes perfect sense."

Well, I would agree that the definition should not be dependent on 4th wall breaking, so that should be tweaked or removed. To me, the Iron Man example is a perfect illustration of this trope. See also The Pianist, which has two examples: knowing du and Sie in German tells you something about Hosenfeld right off the bat, and knowing the German word spielmann allows you to know what the hell Hosenfeld is talking about when he says "that's a good name for a pianist". Those are the kinds of things this trope should be about: hidden information in a foreign language that is plot relevant, or relevant for characterization, or an Easter Egg.

Bilingual Easter Egg, how's that for a name? It seems like tweaking the definition and culling examples that amount to little more than "talking in a foreign language" would fix the misuse.

For one thing, we haven't established that it will need to be renamed if we tweak the definition; the name was contributing to the current level of misuse because it sounds substantially wider than the current definition. If we broaden the definition, we don't need to change the name.

And we do have a naming convention of using "bonus" for "information that's in the work, but you'll only get it if you meet <this> criteria (e.g.: you're adult or a parent (Parental Bonus), smart (Genius Bonus), you pause the recording (Freeze-Frame Bonus), you live in a particular country or area (Regional Bonus), you watch or read the work more than once (Rewatch Bonus), you pre-order the work, rather than waiting for its actual release (Pre-Order Bonus), you play the game in multi-player mode (Socialization Bonus), or you buy the work in physical form (Print Bonus). I think that's all of them.)

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

It's a Loaded Trope Word, so to speak.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Yep. And I've added it to that page. Thanks for pointing that out, Septimus.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Oh, I support keeping the old name, just throwing an idea out there.

which is why I'm supportive of the most inclusive options possible. Bilingual Bonus can be used in Getting Crap Past the Radar, but that falls under "character demonstrates their bi-or-multi-lingual abilities". The context usually makes it clear they're cursing, but "damn" and "goat-favouring lollipop" aren't treated equally.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I don't agree that a bilingual character is a trope.

Suddenly Bilingual is.

I didn't say a bilingual character is a trope. I said that demonstrating the ability is a trope. A bonus content for characters who are also familiar with the language. Series.Firefly has everyone bilingual. That isn't a trope. What they're saying in Chinese is bonus content, but otherwise would be removed based on the exclusion of "X speaks Chinese".

The Easter Egg idea specifically excluding the bilingual characters would remove Series.Firefly as an example.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

On that subject, we have Omniglot for extreme examples (character speaks crazy number of languages), and Cunning Linguist, which I'm not completely clear on the definition of.

Upvoted the Easter Egg option. A couple great examples of that definition from Stargate SG-1:

• The show occasionally has Russian military characters appear and speak unsubtitled (and usually not particularly well pronounced) Russian or Ukrainian. If you don't speak the language it just sounds normal, but if you do speak it you discover that the showrunners have been using the fourth wall for target practice.
• The episode "The Scourge" had a Suddenly Bilingual/Bilingual Backfire moment with Cam Mitchell after Daniel and the Chinese representative from the IOA poke fun at him in unsubtitled Mandarin.

—> Cam: Yeah, that's very funny. (in Mandarin) Screw you!

Don't know if this change anything, but the first SG example overlaps with Reality Has No Subtitles.

edited 26th Oct '13 12:36:31 PM by m8e

I think that's "foreign language is not subtitled when it should be" but I doubt that an example section is useful because straight examples are everywhere.

edited 26th Oct '13 12:38:45 PM by mikurufan

That example would get cut from Bilingual Bonus if the exclude option passes.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I don't think it would get cut. Bilingual Bonus would need to apply because you'd need to know Mandarin to know that he said "Screw you!".

That's been my point. It is excluded on the basis that he's being bilingual.

I wish to include the evidence of him speaking the foreign language.

edited 26th Oct '13 2:27:21 PM by crazysamaritan

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

As long as what he's saying is untranslated and adds information, it would count. What wouldn't count is occurrences where it's translated by another character or subtitled, or it doesn't add information beyond "this character speaks more than one language, isn't that special?"

The main criteria would be "is untranslated, and adds information that someone who doesn't speak the language won't get from the scene." If it meets that criteria it would count. I'm not sure how you would even meet that criteria without having a bilingual character

edited 26th Oct '13 3:39:38 PM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

"Evidence of speaking a foreign language" isn't this trope, I don't think, and isn't really tropable at all. But I think that example would qualify on the grounds that you have to understand Mandarin to know that he insulted the others.