Re: CONLANG Digest - 20 Oct 2003 to 21 Oct 2003 (#2003-297)

On Wednesday, October 22, 2003, at 04:21  PM, Christopher Wright wrote:

> Paul Bennett palsalge
>> There was one among our number who was called upon to be a
>> professional linguist for a major motion picture (Blade II), but
>> there was a massive discrepancy between the two sides on the amount
>> of pay that would be fair, and the vampires in the film in question
>> ended up talking "subtitled gibberish" instead.
>
> How much was the conlanger asking? Tens of thousands of dollars?
>
> Since many languages are copylefted, they could have used any of
> those. They
> could have easily made a language themselves. A quality replacement
> product
> would have been cheap; thus, the price for a commissioned work would
> also be
> low.
This strikes me as a pretty drastic minimization of what we do. If
anyone could do it and get a "quality replacement product", then, like
tic-tac-toe, there wouldn't be much point to it, now would there?

As I recall, the conlanger in question (are we keeping his name secret
for a reason?) asked something like $3000.00 for his expertise, time
and trouble. He had used a standard consultant rate, and estimated how
many hours it would take him to produce a language which was
backwards-compatable with the original from the first movie and which
could translate the necessary dialogue. I thought it was a quite
reasonable figure, and that he had gone about it in a perfectly
professional manner. But apparently the studio felt as you did (that
any old slob could do it), and they turned him down.

Dirk
--
Dirk Elzinga
Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

"I believe that phonology is superior to music. It is more variable and
its pecuniary possibilities are far greater." - Erik Satie

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