Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-24894325-20160528204037/@comment-24894325-20160530231143

Now, regarding the kind of ambiguities in spelling that arise. Let's leave Kram/Kran aside for a moment. I know I'm supposed to be able to tell them apart. But I can't, I'm sorry, and happy to concede to those who can. That's not the worst case.

I mentioned that minor characters often do not make it to the credited cast. There is, however, a different reason for not including a character in the cast: misdirection. BF (like BBC before them) do not want plot twists to be revealed already in the cast announcements. Yes, in many times such reveals mean an appearance of a well known character whose spelling is known. But not always. In Technophobia no aliens made it into the credited cast, not even Lobo, the leader of the invading force. Clearly, crediting Chook Sibtain with the minor role of Brian rather than Lobo, who is the main enemy in the story, was done on purpose, to make listeners think that this is a story about technology gone mad, not about an alien invasion. Another case of a misdirection is not mentioning the name Varaxil in The Witch from the Well. The listener is not supposed to know about the aliens too early. So their name would not be in any public production materials other than scripts.

However, characters' names are in a better shape still. At least, many are bound to be mentioned in the cast. There is no such obligation for locations, planets, species, or objects. At the risk of repeating myself, Aldriss is the planet of the Technomancers, the main location of Legion of the Lost, hardly an unimportant detail. My initial guess at spelling was "Olldris", as funny as it may sound now (wait, it sounds the same---it looks funny). That's not even in the same place alphabetically.

The letter combinations producing exactly the same sound are numerous and varied: f vs. ph, k vs. ck, v vs. ph, almost any consonant can be doubled, ea vs. ee, c vs. s, t vs. dt in German names, silent e can be added at the end of words. Think of it this way: there are scores of Stevens and scores of Stephens already. Would it not impede the search further to have additional redirects from Steven ... to Stephen ... and back?

Then there are cases where speech is distorted on purpose. According to BFX, I was not the only one who could not understand a single word of Galileo Galilei's stone record to the Doctor in Doom Coalition 1. In less severe cases, strong Briggsification can really add mystery to the simplest words that might as well be important for the story.

Further, there are foreign words that we should know but don't (at least not all of us). When the Doctor mentions Filippo Bruno, an educated person or an Italian is supposed to know it's one l and two p's. What if I'm neither and do not know I should search under Giordano Bruno. When the Doctor mentions Sisi, every Austrian would spell her correctly (you can hardly walk 500 feet in the centre of Vienna without seeing her portrait). But we're not all Austrians. And for several years she's been spelled Cissy. Even an Austrian would not easily guess it's the same person without listening to the audio. Just to be sure, I'm not saying people were wrong in guessing a spelling or creating these pages. I thank them for their bravery: I myself am too afraid to be wrong. I am saying that asking for advice on spelling is useful in all kinds of situations, sometimes related more to our collective real-world knowledge than any production materials. It is impossible to expect everyone to know correct German, and French, and Italian, and Spanish spellings. But I am sure that we have at least one expert in each of these languages.

What seems to be lacking currently is an efficient mechanism for addressing these questions to an appropriate party. There is the Ref Desk, true. But it's not dedicated to spelling questions. And I'm not sure how many people check it out regularly. Say, I hear a phrase "Svetyj Pyotr" in Minuet in Hell and suspect it's Polish. It's not completely unimportant to the plot as it appeals to St. Peter in order to fight demons. What are the chances that there is a Polish speaker regularly checking Ref Desk. And what if it's actually Czech? On the other hand, if I have, say, basic German proficiency and know that there is a place where this proficiency could come to a good use, I would be checking it regularly.

And if no one came up with an answer within a month, again, it makes no sense to wait longer.

To be continued...