# Dutch Dialects?



## Engeland

Hoi

I'm trying to translate a paragraph, and it features the sentence:

'Aye, bairn, when I was a young'in, I was like you.'

Obviously this draws a huge attention to the dialect of the speaker, and has a different effect than:

'Yes, when I was a child, I was like you.'

Is there any way to translate words like 'Aye' 'bairn' 'young'in' to an equivalent in Dutch, rather than 'ja' or 'kind'?

I can translate sentence #2, just would rather #1. 

Doei!
Sam


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## YellowOnline

My impression has always been that Gaelic influences - Scottish or Welsh - are commonly used to denote a dialect in English literature. There is no generic equivalent in Dutch. Surely in Belgian Dutch there are loads of dialects. Only restricting to those - the Dutch ones are almost extinct and mostly distinguish themselves in terms of pronunciation - still leaves three main regiolects (Flemish, Brabantian and Limbourgian) to choose from. Whichever you would choose would alienate the Dutch though, and in any case it would not be convincingly without a geographical context that allows for it. So as far as I am concerned, this is a no-no. I presume most people would be disturbed by such a forced translation, except if they're so-called "dialect deaf" - which has been argued for Americans (cf. this article in NRC from 1999), but seems to be also the case between the Dutch and the Belgian dialects; e.g. people from Amsterdam (NL) can hear someone being from Rotterdam (NL) but cannot distinguish between someone from Brussels (B) and Antwerp (B) and the other way round.

In a nutshell: I wouldn't try. Whatever you choose, it'll annoy a lot of people. Like me


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## Engeland

Ah, dankjewel, Yellow. Is there no other methods I could use to give off a different impression from that particular character in terms of the way he talks?


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## YellowOnline

Engeland said:


> Ah, dankjewel, Yellow. Is there no other methods I could use to give off a different impression from that particular character in terms of the way he talks?



A lot more information about the character is needed to allow for a realistic attempt. In the end, the reason you want to use a dialect in non-fiction is exactly for that: you try to pass information about the speaker indirectly. 

On a side note: I'm a big Terry Pratchett fan, and he uses a lot of (mock-)Scottish in  his Tiffany Aching books, so I took a look at how those (specifically, "The Wee Free Men", in Dutch "The Vrije Ortjes") are translated. I  needed some time to figure it out, but the translator chose to  translate into his own dialect, Zaans. A random fragment:




> _'Wat zai dat waifie?'
> __'Ze zai dasse wil dat die kat gunder ophoudt mit jonge pietjes kielemore.'
> __'Is dat al? Kreemes! Gien perblemo!'_



I just deleted a few paragraphs of obscenities that I originally wrote to describe what effect this has on me. Some things cannot be translated, except if using devices that destroy the beauty. A nice example is a poem from Heinrich Heine in German, a classic example for translation problems from a language with gender to a (meanwhile) genderless language. A love story between the spruce and the palm tree. Isn't that clear? No, it isn't in English. In German it would be between "der Fichtenbaum" and "die Palme" - aha, the first tree is male and the second female. The best they could come up with after 100 years, is to translate the first sentence as "A pine-tree, he standeth lonely": they added a "he" in there to force gender into the translation.


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## bibibiben

YellowOnline said:


> My impression has always been that Gaelic influences - Scottish or Welsh - are commonly used to denote a dialect in English literature. There is no generic equivalent in Dutch. Surely in Belgian Dutch there are loads of dialects. Only restricting to those - the Dutch ones are almost extinct and mostly distinguish themselves in terms of pronunciation [...]



Dutch dialects are almost extinct? They distinguish themselves mostly in terms of pronunciation? Well, most certainly not in the Netherlands.


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## YellowOnline

bibibiben said:


> Dutch dialects are almost extinct? They distinguish themselves mostly in terms of pronunciation? Well, most certainly not in the Netherlands.



In vergelijking met bijvoorbeeld Duits of Frans niet nee, maar in vergelijking met Vlaanderen is er nog weinig dialect en hoort men voornamelijk nog klankverschillen tussen de regio's. Dat is niet alleen mijn persoonlijke mening: ook de _Dialectatlas van het Nederlands_ wijst in die riching. Dixit de vakgroep Nederlands van de FUB:



> Ook met betrekking tot het *dialectgebruik* zijn er  duidelijke verschillen tussen het noorden en het zuiden. In Vlaanderen  staat het dialect nog tamelijk sterk: veel Vlamingen, ook de jongere  generatie, spreken naast een overkoepelend formeler 'Belgisch  Nederlands' en een informelere zogenaamde 'tussentaal' [...] OOK een plaatselijk  dialect. In Nederland daarentegen neemt het dialectgebruik over het  algemeen af, vooral in het westen van het land. In het zuiden,  bijvoorbeeld in Maastricht, speelt het dialect nog een belangrijkere rol  in het dagelijks leven.



De ondertitel van (de conclusie van) een debat georganiseerd door Taalunieversum enkele jaren geleden vat het misschien nog het beste samen: _In Vlaanderen spreken jongeren dialect, in Nederland jongerentaal. _

Enfin, dit is een discussie die ik graag voer, maar deze draad is misschien niet de plek.


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## bibibiben

Engeland said:


> Ah, dankjewel, Yellow. Is there no other methods I could use to give off a different impression from that particular character in terms of the way he talks?



YellowOnline doesn't seem to be willing to give it a try, but I disagree. In a fictional text, dialect and register variations are intended to evoke meaning. By ignoring dialect a translator robs the text of its meaning. As you're not a native speaker of Dutch, though, it's safer to stay away from texts containing dialect. It's very unlikely that you'll get the translation right.

If the writer's main aim is to convey rusticity, the translator can throw in some dialect words, but it's important not to overdo it, as it will distract or even annoy the reader. 

This is way too much:
Nou, mien jong, toen ik nog een jonkie war, war 'k krek iender.

This is more like it:
Nou jong, als kind was ik krek eender.

If Flemish readers are your audience, you'll most likely have to come up with a different translation, as I suppose their arsenal of typically rustic words will differ greatly.


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## bibibiben

YellowOnline said:


> In vergelijking met bijvoorbeeld Duits of Frans niet nee, maar in vergelijking met Vlaanderen is er nog weinig dialect en hoort men voornamelijk nog klankverschillen tussen de regio's. Dat is niet alleen mijn persoonlijke mening: ook de _Dialectatlas van het Nederlands_ wijst in die riching. Dixit de vakgroep Nederlands van de FUB:



De link is mij bekend, maar ik zie er niet bevestigd dat je in Nederland niet meer van dialecten kunt spreken. Eerder wordt het tegendeel beweerd.


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## YellowOnline

With some effort, this might be acceptable in the south (based on your original sentence that, funnily, contains the cognate "youngin"):
"Ja kind, wanneer dat ik jong was, was ik gelijk u."

... but it's probably as cringe-worthy for Dutch as "Nou jong, als kind was ik krek eender" is for me.


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## bibibiben

YellowOnline said:


> _In Vlaanderen spreken jongeren dialect, in Nederland jongerentaal._



Ha, wat een simplisme. Jongeren uit zeker acht Nederlandse provincies zullen daar loeihard tegen ingaan, als ze een beetje trots zijn op hun dialect. Alleen in de nieuw gevormde provincie Flevoland, delen van Utrecht, delen van Noord-Holland en delen van Zuid-Holland is er sprake van een Randstedelijk dialect met geringe variatie. Maar Nederland reduceren tot de Randstad, wat hinderlijk vaak gebeurt, dat is pas echt een no-no.


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## bibibiben

YellowOnline said:


> With some effort, this might be acceptable in the south (based on your original sentence that, funnily, contains the cognate "youngin"):
> "Ja kind, wanneer dat ik jong was, was ik gelijk u."
> 
> ... but it's probably as cringe-worthy for Dutch as "Nou jong, als kind was ik krek eender" is for me.



Not cringeworthy, but as it sounds rather Flemish to Dutch ears, the rustic feel has gone completely. A translation that works in Flanders could fall flat in the Netherlands. And the other way around, of course.


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## Engeland

Bedankt!

It's helpful to have a view of what seems good in both Nederland en België but I'll go with the one in Dutch since that is the type of Dutch I learn, not Flemish. 

~Sam c:


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## Stoggler

YellowOnline said:


> My impression has always been that Gaelic influences - Scottish or Welsh - are commonly used to denote a dialect in English literature.




The original quote in the OP ("'Aye, bairn, when I was a young'in, I was like you") is not Gaelic nor has any Gaelic, it's all Germanic. And Welsh is not Gaelic.

And that quote could be from the north of England as much as Scotland.

(sorry, was being a bit pedantic last night!)


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## Engeland

Stoggler said:


> The original quote in the OP ("'Aye, bairn, when I was a young'in, I was like you") is not Gaelic nor has any Gaelic, it's all Germanic. And Welsh is not Gaelic.
> 
> And that quote could be from the north of England as much as Scotland.
> 
> (sorry, was being a bit pedantic last night!)



Yeah, it was actually aimed to be more around the north of England rather than Scotland, but quite similar anyhow ;D


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