Thursday, January 07, 2016

DC ONLY GAINED MOCKERY FROM THOSE THEY SOUGHT TO APPEASE

In a recent Superman/Wonder Woman series annual, the editors and writers had no idea what exact languages are spoken by Pakistanis, even as they made Pakistan out to look like victims of non-Muslims:
In this year’s recently released issue of Superman & Wonder Woman Annual #2, the Man of Steel and the Queen of the Amazons struggle with uncertainty about their new romantic relationship, a rogue Olympian terrorizing Pakistan, and an editorial team that apparently doesn’t know that Pakistani people don’t speak “Pakistanian.”

Just before Wonder Woman shows up to do battle with Dichara, a thief who’s stolen weapons from Hephaestus, writer K. Perkins slips in an editor’s note explaining that two Pakistani mens’ dialogue has been translated.

Note that the language is described as non-descript “Pakistanian” rather than the grammatically correct “Pakistani” or, better yet, any one of the specific, actual languages spoken near the Shimshal village.
Well they're right that the names of the languages and dialects spoken there are not simply called "Pakistanian". Rather, it's languages like Urdu and Punjabi that usually are. Contrary to what one of the people the reporter spoke to said though, there's always a chance Marvel could've made the same mistakes.

With that having been noted, however, it's regrettable that what we have here sounds an awful lot like a story where a westerner's the villian, and Pakistan's made out to look like victims of such. If it weren't for that, I'd let the sloppy wording slide, but the politics the story reeks of only make me feel all the more discouraged from bothering. Besides, the whole premise of this Superman/WW series was little more than an obvious fanfic pairing from the very start, effectively eschewing creativity along with Lois Lane.

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