Oh, they're Hungarian. So I know a very tiny bit of Hungarian actually :)

@b_jonas you mean the IT books or the children books from Judit Szabó?

"G. Szabó" is her family name and "Judit" is her given name, despite what some stupid library catalogs would tell you.

Not that there's any way to guess that.

Ah, sorry if it's offensive to put the given name before the family name. French habit. I noticed that for all the authors you talked about the family name came first, so I guess that's how it's done in Hungary?

@Jenayah I've heard of that song but don't recall much of it. I'll listen to it because now I'm curious what lyrics it has.

@Jenayah Nah, it's a mixed bag. People are trying to imitate everything that comes from the west, even stupid things, especially America, and you can't entireliy blame them for that after the fall of the Iron Curtain really, so now if you read a Hungarian name somewhere then there's no way at all to guess whether it's family name first or family name last.

Americans dare to do that even for Japanese/Korean names, which I somehow find much more offensive than when anyone does it with Hungarian names.

Hungarian names actually work pretty much the same as continental european names, except for the part where the family name comes first, as in, the family name and given name has about the same significance as in continental europe, and this is because the habit of family names has a shared origin.

@b_jonas Hm, I guess I could've guessed the Judit one since it resembles the French Judith, but yeah otherwise it's a stretch, especially when the languages are very much apart, such as French and Hungarian

I don't know much about Japanese and Korean names, but I believe in their culture the names are used in very different ways, as in, the way people are addressed with possibly parts of their name in it doesn't even compare to anything in Europe.

@Jenayah You can guess that Szabó is the family name and Judit is the given name, but the G. part is genuinely hard, especially because some library catalogs show it as if it was part of the given name.

@b_jonas if I'm being honest, all my knowledge on that matter comes from reading mangas, so I'm not even authorizing myself to have an opinion on the subject until I do some more serious reading.

The part that gives it away is that her books and her name plaque on the meeting actually say "G. Szabó Judit", and that order weren't possible if G. was part of the given name.

( ^ doesn't mean mangas aren't serious, but the ones I read nowadays are mainly entertainment, because unfortunately, Liar Game has ended)

@Jenayah Well, I have to admit that it seems like Japanese are proactively tolerant about adjusting to other cultures, and sometimes they themselves use swapped names in a western context too.

@b_jonas well true that

@b_jonas the Japanese way of doing everything not to bother other people will never cease to amaze me.

I guess a good love song makes it easier to at least get through the general meaning than G. Szabó Judit's prose, if you don't speak Hungarian.

You mean the Omega song? I'll have to be completely honest and admit I know it from a video game trailer, actually:

(the game is excellent, by the way.)

Mind you, Chinese and Vietnamese names also have the family name first (I think it's the influence of Chinese culture on all four of these, directly or through Japanese in Korean's case), and I respect the Chinese and Vietnamese culture and work ethic and family ties, but it seems noticably different from Japanese or Korean culture even from the very little I know.

@Jenayah Is that a combat-oriented game with a love song in the trailer? Interesting.

I don't know that game.

@b_jonas Same, I know next to nothing about these, so I can't really speak.

@b_jonas Oh no, it's not a "war game" as we usually think of it, far, veeeery far from it.

@Jenayah I'm thinking more of survival horror.

But I can't really tell.

Let me google it.

The tagline is "In war, not everyone is a soldier"

Basically speaking, you manage a group of survivors in a civil war remnant of Sarajevo

At day, you manage the shelter, crafting stuff from basic components, taking care of it being heated properly, etc etc

At night, one of your survivors can go to scavenge outside, while another keeps guard and the third sleeps

(that's what most people go for, anyway)

"a war survival video game". that's like historical books about the horrors of war for civilians, right?

The thing is that yeah, you will be able to get an assault rifle, shotgun and stuff. But that's not the point. The point is to survive while keeping your humanity.

I don't read and wouldn't play those. They're scary. I'm better off happily not knowing what war is really like.

I mean you can just go on a killing spree, but you'll just end up with your survivors being depressed over the massacre of innocents. There's kind of this "karma" system which affects how your characters evolve and move on (or don't) at the end of the game.

I'll have to leave now, but thank you for helping me get distracted from that book.

@b_jonas Agreed, by saying the game was excellent I didn't mean it was fun.

And good talk in general.

@b_jonas Good night! Was very nice talking to you too :)

scifi.stackexchange.com/q/192165/4918 pointed me to Alex Shvartsman's sci-fi short stories, which seem very interesting and in the style I like, at least from the two I read so far. I'll try to read more. Thanks, tardigrade.

@b_jonas Haven't read what you're talking about, but if you like the "bot/non-ai thingy comes awake", I shall recommend Wake by Robert J Sawyer (the Frameshift guy!), about a World Wide Web consciousness becoming sentient through the implant of a blind girl. Very entertaining read!

(the English cover looks awful, though)

@Jenayah What's this about? The transcript is a bit difficult to follow.

@Mithrandir Ever heard of English translations for those Hungarian authors? Google doesn't seem to return much, but maybe there's some indie guy who did

Thought of you since you're into literature etc

But tell me if I'm "my computer doesn't work, fix it"-ing you ^^'

You kinda are :D

Sorry, not my domain of expertise.

Ok no problem then, sorry!