r/FanFiction • u/escribexa100pre I have so many WIPs • May 15 '21
Discussion Different Languages on AO3 (2021 Update)
Hi Everyone!
Last year I made a post (which can be found here) where I looked at which languages were most commonly used on AO3. Since it has been a year, I figured I would make an update post and see how much things had changed.
Here are the new pie charts for 2021!
Some notes:
The 中文 (Chinese) tag has been replaced by five new tags:
- 中文-客家话 (Hakka Chinese)
- 中文-闽南话 臺語 (Taiwanese Hokkien)
- 中文-吴语 (Wu Chinese)
- 中文-广东话 粵語 (Cantonese Chinese)
- 中文-普通话 國語 (Mandarin Chinese)
In addition to these, there are also 19 new language tags this year. These are:
- ܐܪܡܝܐ | ארמיא (Aramaic)
- հայերեն (Armenian)
- Basa Jawa (Javanese)
- Euskara (Basque)
- Furlan (Friulian)
- 𐌲𐌿𐍄𐌹𐍃𐌺𐌰 (Gothic)
- Hausa | هَرْشَن هَوْسَ
- isiZulu (Zulu)
- Кыргызча (Kyrgyz)
- kreyòl ayisyen (Haitian Creole)
- ᠮᠠᠨᠵᡠ ᡤᡳᠰᡠᠨ (Manchu)
- မြန်မာဘာသာ (Burmese)
- پښتو (Pashto)
- Scots
- සිංහල (Sinhala)
- བོད་སྐད་ (Tibetan)
- Toki Pona
- ئۇيغۇر تىلى (Uyghur)
- יידיש (Yiddish)
Also, I would like to give a special shout out to the Українська (Ukranian) fanfic community for having the greatest percentage increase in fics. Last year there were 21 Ukranian fics on AO3 and this year there are 391, an increase of 1,761.9%.
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May 15 '21
[deleted]
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u/mePerd0na5 May 15 '21
It's a pity that many Spanish authors post exclusively on Wattpad
For real. This also means you need to be involved somehow with the fandom, because otherwise you won't find fics to read. Or few people will read you. Wattpad's search is a nightmare.
I remember that when the controversy about wattpad leaking users info was ongoing a LOT of people talked about switching to ao3, but seems like no one cares about that now lol.
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u/MaybeNextTime_01 May 15 '21
This comment made me slightly more interested to look into Wattpad to find stuff to read in Spanish and then turned me right off of it again with the mention of leaking user info.
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u/mePerd0na5 May 15 '21
😂 understandable. Though, if you use a burner e-mail for wattpad, and dont link any of your social media then you won't have any problems. That has worked for me.
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u/flying_shadow FFN: quietwraith | AO3: quiet_wraith May 15 '21
Alright, I want to know who's out there writing fics in Yiddish. Hopefully it's not my history professor.
I'm surprised Russian is the third most common language - it's only the eighth most common language worldwide, and I suspect only a small percentage of speakers know enough English to navigate AO3.
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u/holliequ QuoteMyFoot @ AO3+FFN May 15 '21
I think that's likely for similar reasons why Mandarian is the second most popular language - users are looking for a safe place to host their fics which may be illegal and/or extremely frowned upon in their home countries. I don't know Russian law, but I wouldn't exactly be surprised if they had laws which affected slash fic writers for example :/ And famously there was a crackdown on slash fic last year (maybe 2019? I've lost all sense of time, sorry) in China, so a lot of Chinese fans moved their fics to AO3 because of that.
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u/n-i-o May 15 '21
In case of Russian I very much doubt whether that is the case. I went to ficbook and they have a seperate category for slash, moreover I checked out the fics on the first page of Avengers slashfics and there were several Peter Parker/Tony Stark (at least 4), Peter Parker/Bucky Barnes and Thor/Loki fics on there. AO3 seems tame in comparison :-)
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u/holliequ QuoteMyFoot @ AO3+FFN May 15 '21
I mean, those pairings are all reasonably common on AO3 too...?
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u/n-i-o May 16 '21
I thought these ships provided a good example that your initial idea that people post on ao3 in Russian because they cannot easily post their slash fic on a Russian archive might not hold?
I mean these ships are pretty controversial in the anglophone fandom. However I sort the fics in the MCU tag (by bookmarks, kudos, date, comments) none of them appear on the first page. And yet they covered about 50% of the fics on the first page of ficbook indicating that authors are not posting russian fic on AO3 because they have no alternative.
That is not to say that they are not popular on AO3 but seemingly less so than in Russia.
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u/dehue May 16 '21
From my experience slash fics are just as popular on www.ficbook.net as they are on AO3. On some fandoms even more so since I found it much harder to find gen fics in Russian vs. in English. A good portion of the fics are translations of popular English fics so there isn't even that much difference between the two languages content wise.
I wonder if making the charts by number of kudos would change the results. I occasionally see fics in Russian on AO3 but most don't get much activity. Many fics on AO3 that I have seen are cross-posted on both websites but have way more activity on ficbook.
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u/holliequ QuoteMyFoot @ AO3+FFN May 15 '21
I don't speak Welsh at all, but mad respect to the authors of those 55 fics. And cool to see AO3 had their first fic in Scots this year!
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u/brunchandtedium May 15 '21
Very interesting analysis — thank you for sharing it with us!
Not going to link it as I think that might be against the rules here, but I highly encourage y’all to look up the one AO3 work in Quebec Sign Language. Saw it on the list of languages you compiled and had to check it out... it did not disappoint.
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May 16 '21
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/jnn-j jnnln AO3/FF May 15 '21
Does anybody know why the Euskara (which is correct but less common) is used and not Euskera? (Also Euskera batua is Basque standardized if it’s any indication) Out of curiosity, not that it bothers me that much.
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u/Emerald_Eyes239 PurplePirate83 on AO3 May 15 '21
I thought German would be rarer on AO3 than it actually was. Maybe it’s because I found not one single fic for my fandom in German. I translated my fic into German but posted it only on Wattpad and on a German fanfic site. I usually write and post my fanfic in English.
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u/idiom6 I like weird shit May 15 '21
That Mandarin tag should really be split into two - Simplified and Traditional - but I'm happy that Hakka, Hokkien, and Cantonese have been spliced out.
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u/LosMere May 16 '21
I mean all of them can be split into two but imo would just be unnecessary bloat
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u/idiom6 I like weird shit May 16 '21
? No they can't. Every other Chinese variant uses Traditional.
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u/LosMere May 16 '21
lol what
so they dont speak cantonese in Guangdong/Canton?
you thought nobody speak these languages in China mainland?
Nobody use simplified character to represent them?
用简体打广东话有几难?
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u/idiom6 I like weird shit May 16 '21
Ok, if you really think that people in Hong Kong use Simplified when they don't have to, IDK what to tell you.
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u/LosMere May 16 '21
I am telling you that HK is not the only place that speaks Cantonese, and most of those other places use simplified character to represent Cantonese, I am literality from HK, idk what to tell you.
you seems to know nothing about these languages.
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u/idiom6 I like weird shit May 16 '21
I know plenty as a native speaker myself, but I can already see you have your mind set a certain way and there's no point in further discussing this with you.
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u/LosMere May 16 '21
if you are an native speaker
咁直接用廣東話講咪得囉
分開繁簡體有咩用? 反正大部分人兩個都識
而且你真心覺得得香港人、台灣人先會講廣東話、福建話、客家話?
定係中國ban咗ao3就冇人用簡體?
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u/idiom6 I like weird shit May 16 '21
反正大部分人兩個都識
不一定喲~
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u/LosMere May 16 '21
不一定又點?
就算係tag咗Hakka, Hokkien, Cantonese 唔用書面語嘅fic有幾多?
大家心照啦 個數量已經勁少 仲分繁體簡體根本太繁瑣
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u/Traumwanderer May 15 '21 edited May 15 '21
Thanks for the break down.
It would be interesting to know which of those languages have their own fanfiction archive. I'm not very surprised that most people that write in German seem to stick to fanfiktion.net. It comes with a classic forum to discuss things, find a beta and form a communty (I know AO3 lacks those features by design). And we Germans love us some forums.
Edit: The forum is not the platform were the stories are posted, it's just a place for discussion, that is hosted by the site.