Glossary or no? The immaculate novel

The glossary in Sacred Games doesn’t bother me one bit. If I ever get around to reading it I’ll find that tres useful. Translation isn’t just for white people, you know. :)

It’s cheesy. On blogs you can hover for definition. Footnotes would be better. No italics.

Also, unequal treatment. They don’t translate French or Italian or German for the reader. And I don’t speak French.

They should–I actually get annoyed when they don’t (and was annoyed just the other day when some pretentious professor didn’t do that in something I was reading). Make those Europeans work a bit harder to earn their royalties–fine by me. ;)

I think that footnotes would break the flow. I agree no italics. And providing glossary online with URL in the book somewhere is also fine with me. But in general I think that educating people to broaden their horizons is never bad per se, it’s all about how it’s done.

Why break flow? It’s more in context. Even better would be definitions printed in the width between lines.

I’m totally pro-accessibility, but anti-cheese. Ultrabrown does it with a subtle gray underline. Hover for tip with definition.

Ebooks rock for this.

Well, footnotes would be even more annoying than a glossary for people who already know the words’ meaning–rather than creating a separate resource for people who need it, the entire work is thereby catering to the people who do. It’d be different if it were nonfiction and everything were footnoted anyway, but in fiction it would be jarring.

How is looking up ‘chutiya’ any different from looking up ‘deipnosophist’? Why not trust the reader?

The point is it adds frippery to the work. Violates its purity and integrity. Like getting an iPod with an envelope of coupons and special offers and bad software and other random crap.

I see your point, though definitely not the analogy. But assuming that’s true in degrees, wouldn’t footnotes do that more than a glossary?

One might argue in favor of a glossary if the words to be looked up would be harder to find in widely available sources. I actually find it very cumbersome to look up Hindi and Punjabi words when I’m trying to do so. And A. is often emailing/IMing me to ask re: Hindi definitions, which he probably wouldn’t do if he could easily look them up.

Yup. An online glossary is a nice compromise.

By the way, try Googling “<Hindi word> English”. That sometimes works.