34Chapter 5 – Localization
This is about reading, descriptions, and the likes.
No matter how hard you try and whatever you do, as I writer, you cannot describe every bit of detail you want to capture. Then, as a reader, if the writer went that far, would you still want to follow on? Most of our rather-short-attention-spans would have killed us if we did. Writing only captures and will only capture the essence of what is required in portraying what the author wants to convey. And this brings us to localization, or perhaps personally, how you, as an individual, view the story in your eyes.
We are, after all, unique beings and have our own thoughts in our own particular ways, even if the differences between some are minor. Description to the reader is but an aid or guidance to how he/she should imagine the scenes of the story as they are unfold. We cannot instruct them in any way or even change their perspective forcefully. Did I reverse things? I thought writers had the commanding power and the say to things, yet in this sense, it's all up to the reader. We writers are in their hands as to how they would interpret our tale. Imagine travelling back in time and giving your medieval fantasy story for someone in that era to read – "oh, modern day drama for me, cool". From given the power to write to being striped powerless in explaining the true nature of the depths of our writing – that has got to hurt. I remember once writing something with my intentions, yet the feedback was completely away from that. It just shocked me.
Perhaps, the biggest example of localization is the dubbing and subbing industry. By that, I mean voice actors and others that translate scripts from one language to another so they can be understood by their own folks. A straight translation would be boring at best. Often there is the need to localize and add in specific sayings, themes and other interesting aspects from your area. Like, someone said, jokes from other countries might not be funny not because you do not understand the language, but because you do not understand the idioms and references behind the jokes.
If we speak of modern day drama, perhaps we immediately bring our minds to what the world is like around us, or more importantly our narrow perspective of the world that we currently see. The world, being full of anything means everyone will have a different approach and view of modernism. Strangely enough, even if you give the same piece of text that you thought had enough description to two totally different people, you could get totally different results. Luckily, there hopefully will not be things like dogs being cats and he's being she's.
Luckily, there is always a common ground. Some things are widely accepted by the public to be so. If not, the world would be in a state of confusion. Hence, the final line for writers is to write specifically to the locale you are aiming at – point out the details as much as possible, but only to the point that the reader can bare.
What makes a story unique? This has probably been a long boring question that has bothered people for the last century. Here is another view on it. We all borrow others to an extent (if not steal – it's called borrowing without the intention of returning). What makes a difference is that since there is no clear concrete on what the ideas we took were, we are simply taking our interpretation of the idea, twisting it a little, adding our own salts and pepper, and surely it tastes a little, if not a lot different. You could have even totally skewed from the writer's intentions. Tragedies are comedies, you know – that is, if you think it is funny.