#I hope the translation was readable…

[bleedingichorhearts]

𝐁𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐝𝐲 𝐒𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐭

𝕬𝖚𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖗: So uh… how we doing today?

𝕿𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖊𝖉: @kit-williams,@egrets-not-regrets.

𝚃𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚜𝚕𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗:

Viață mică - Little Life (Romanian)

Viață - Life (Romanian)

𝕬𝖈𝖐𝖓𝖔𝖜𝖑𝖊𝖉𝖌𝖊: If you are under the age of 18. Shoo! Go away! Skedaddle! Why you reading this in the first place? Be 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞 for/of yourself.

TW // SMUT/NSFW, Language, Filth, Google Translation.

|°ᴛᴀɢ ʟɪꜱᴛ ᴀᴘᴘʟɪᴄᴀᴛɪᴏɴ°| |°ɪᴄʜᴏʀ’ꜱ ᴀᴏ3°| |°𝕄𝕒𝕤𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕃𝕚𝕤𝕥°|

Returning home, I threw my keys onto the counter and started to take off my coat and placed it over the leather couch. Swiping up some mail from the same counter.

I sighed and started to flip through it. Stopping for just a second to take off my shoes, using the counter as support. I wondered where Amadeus was as he usually greeted me at the door like usual. His mock helmet nuzzling against the top of my head, brightening up my day just a little bit brighter when he would greet me so sweetly.

Placing the mail off to the side. I started to take off my shirt next. Figuring if I was alone I could partly streak my own home for a moment and gather my clothing back when I was done taking my planned shower.

Throwing my shirt off to the side, near the leather couch. I made quick work of my pants, unbuttoning them and throwing my pants off to the side on the couch too when I wiggled them off.

Taking the mail from the counter again. I slowly made my way down the hallway and passed a spare living room that I had to do a double take at. My heart jumping in my chest at the split second dark flash I saw until I realized it was just Amadeus.

A very, very needy looking Amadeus.

My god, wasn’t he a sight to see.

The curtains were closed blocking most of the sunlight, but there was this streak of light coming through, creating a god-like glow on his pale naked skin. His most prominent scar going across his chest lining up with the angled sun streak. His lean body leaning back on the love sofa. He huffed, his chest rising up in down quickly. His c*ck twitching against his body, producing some prec*m off the tip. Was he…?

Maybe that shower can wait.

Amadeus tried taking multiple cold showers, but it simply wasn’t enough for his heated skin. He doesn't know really why he was so hot, so needy. It wasn’t like him to be so sexually high. He tried taking care of his sudden erection, c*ming once, twice, then thrice by his hand, but it pained him more than anything, like he was endlessly edging himself. It just wasn’t enough for him. He needed something more.

His eyes snapped open when the scent of his viață mică reached his nose. His mouth falling open to capture more of her scent while he leaned forward on the sofa. His c*ck pulsing at the sight of his viață mică half naked at his waist.

He watched with half lidded eyes as she placed her hands on his thighs, slowly running her fingers up and down them as she cooed at him. Flushing her chest up against his c*ck. The skin against skin contact making his body ignite even more. A strangled groan rumbling through his chest while he clutched the sides of the sofa, creating an indent in them with his nails.

Throne, this is what he needed. He needed his viață mică to take care of him and his aching c*ck. 

He felt like he was in paradise. The need was still strong, but it was pleasurable and it didn’t cause him much discomfort as it did with his hands.

He felt himself twitch, her hands taking the bottom of his length and slowly tracing his prec*m all the way up to his tip before her warm mouth opened up, cooing up at him before wrapping around him.

He nearly thrusted up into her mouth. Another groan falling from his lips, crushing the arm of the soft he gripped onto, by the Emperor.

Her tongue swirled around his tip. Then bobbed her head up and down. A sinful squelch sounding out. Her hands sliding up and down his V line and thighs. Throne, it was all too much, but it wasn’t enough at the same time. He needed more. He needed to be inside his viață mic��.

Bringing his hand forward, he gently took her by the throat after she popped off his c*ck for a breath. Surprising his little bonded as she jumped in his hold while he came forward and pressed his lips against her swollen lips. Tasting his needy self on her tongue.

Slowly, he urged his little bonded down to the animal skinned rug beneath them. His lips slowly working his way down her body. Listening to how her breath hitched and her heart beat pick up its pace. His fangs itching to mark her up, to draw blood from that soft flesh of hers. To taste the sweetness of her blood and c*nt.

“Ești prea dulce pentru mine, viață mică(You are too sweet for me, little life.)” He groaned, kissing the inside of her thigh. Suckling a little there while he watched her squirm beneath his touches; his affections. “Dându-te mie.(Giving yourself to me.)”

“I-I hope that means you're enjoying yourself.” She stammered beneath him as he hummed, moving her panties to the side and wrapped his arms around her thighs. His hands softly pressing against her soft stomach, keeping her in place while his tongue slithered out of his mouth, pulling his little viaţă close, a squeak leaving her shuddering body.

Twisting and thrusting his tongue. He listened to the many pretty little noises his little viață made. Her thighs coming in and closing around his head as he ignored how his c*ck was aching for release. He needed to feast, to taste the sweetness before he would stuff his c*ck right inside of her tight c*nt.

He kept the top of her body still on the ground as she cried out. The rest of legs locking around his head as he let her ride out her climax on face. Lapping up anything her delicious, throbbing core would give him.

“Throne, Aș putea să te mănânc toată ziua.(I could eat you all day.)” He mumbled, dragging his lips back up his viață mică body. His hands dragging up the sides of her body and arms. Tugging off her bra while he was at it.

“I hope… you are paying for that.” She huffed, his lips meeting hers once more. His c*ck twitching underneath him while he dragged his hands up her arms, pinning them up above her head.

“Îți dau tot ce vrei, mica mea viață.(I give you everything you want, my little life.)” He spoke, nuzzling his little bonded head before dragging his lips down her face. “Ți-aș da orice de-al meu(I would give you anything of mine.)”

“Ți-aș da viața mea( I would give you my life.)” He admitted, vowed. Kissing her cheek bone. “Ți-aș da sângele meu.(I would give you my blood.)” He kissed her shoulder. “Fiii și fiicele noastre.(Our sons and daughters.)” He purred, running his fangs over her throat, making her shiver beneath him. “Viitorul nostru.(Our future.)”

She gasped beneath him. The simple noise pleasing his ears. His fangs drawing blood from her while he inched himself closer and closer to her tight core. A moan rumbling out of his chest.

He rolled his hips slowly; deeply. The unholy squelch of their hips coming together and their gasps and huffs staining each other’s heated skin. Bodies desperately trying to get closer to one another with each thrust, with each beat of their heart’s.

Truly, his little viaţă was too sweet to him.

Amadeus groaned, nearing his own climax after making his mica viata c*m multiple times on his c*ck before he did. The moon resting between the curtains now.

His lips rose off her skin to stop drinking from his little weakened viaţă, but her hand slid from his own, dragging up his arm and wrapping up and around his head. Threading her fingers through his hair before gripping at it, urging him to drink more.

A deep moan came out of his lips. His c*ck pulsing inside of her as he couldn’t help, but drink some more of her blood. Her whimpering command clear to him.

He didn’t stop when he climaxed himself, his hips slowly grinding back into his little bonded. His head lifting up from her shoulder to lap at the deep mark he created, making sure there wasn’t an ounce of wasted blood on her precious skin.

Throne, he wasn’t finished with his viață mică yet. He still has a lot more to give to his mica viata. He could feel it.

Though, he doesn’t really know what got into him, wanting to breed his mica viata, but he wasn’t really complaining if it had her yearning for him while he drank her sweet blood from her and f*cked her.

Touching his own head against her own. He kept moving his hips into her coated walls. Licking her blood off of his lips as he enjoyed the little sounds she gave him.

[mimocrocodilelol]

Was inspired by the song below, I think it has major morgott vibe

[duncanor]

So, I dug up this old ass French interview of Nightow.

I tried to translate it the best I could so here ya go!

Source: https://www.manga-news.com/index.php/auteur/interview/NIGHTOW-Yasuhiro

[banqanas]

Yagi Yusei and Nakajima Sota from VBA5 training camp

From: Shuukan EXILE

TL note: I have no knowledge of technical music terms so they might be incorrect

[vanillamatchadove]

half-filipino misaki ^

[iamsake]

I tried translate this into English. I hope this make this readable... Sorry for posting twice.

[jaidenk-nox]

Elizabeth midford

Shitty 2AM rant on the Misogyny that Lizzy has faced since the very start but it's the perspective of someone who has witnessed the horrors of Misogyny in Spanish speaking fandom

I should mention that English is not my first language and I'm not very good with it either, so most of this was done with Google Translate and I tried to correct what I could, I hope it's at least readable

I've never seen enough people point out the fact that Elizabeth midford character also defies the "Girlboss" archetype, she is definitely physically strong and can protect herself, but she is A 15 YEAR OLD GIRL, who manages her emotions like someone her age would and also exhibits many neurodivergent traits. I have always been bothered by the way physical strength is misunderstood as a "girlboss" trait, the simplest example I can think of is Ran Mao, she possesses brutal and superhuman strength. but it doesn't make her a girlboss, in case anyone forgets Ran is a girl who barely reaches 18 years old and is exploited by an opium trader who also seems to be involved in human trafficking (implied in the manga). Is she really a girlboss? girlboss when her physical strength is more of a requirement to SURVIVE while working as an assassin and sometimes seductress (which u can tell she doesn't enjoy much)? Obviously Ranmao's social reality is very different as she is a woman of color from the underworld, unlike Elizabeth, who is a white woman from the nobility. However, her physical strength has always been a double-edged sword for herself. Lizzy longs to get married, like any other girl her age, she longs to be protected but says goodbye to it the moment Ociel returns.

I may seem a bit exaggerated, but the way your sociocultural background affects the way you perceive and treat a character has me slightly traumatized, I wish I could give proof of the horrible and degrading treatment that Lizzy has received from the Spanish-speaking fandom.

I am a trans boy of color who grew up watching my female relatives being encouraged to rip their hearts out of their chest from the moment they turned 8yo for the simple goal of caring for and protecting my cis male relatives. household chores, cooking for them, washing their clothes, taking accountability for their actions. Their freedom and childhood as little girls were taken away from them. but none of that was ever valued, I never saw anyone recognize it as sacrifice.

Elizabeth is not a woman of color, nor does she have those demands as a woman of nobility, but she SACRIFICED stuff to try to protect Ciel on her own way, I have seen many people underestimate her backstory in book of Atlantic because "High heeled shoes aren't reason to cry." Everything Lizzy has done for Ciel is devalued, all her suffering has been minimized. losing so many family members in such a short time, losing the boy you were raised to marry your entire life. People truly forget that lizzy is still just a child, that she has the right to mourn everything she lost that day. She had to mourn publicly as a noble girl,she probably heard that she would never be able to get married or would never achieve happiness, I've never seen any adult to stop and think about how heartbreaking and soul shattering that must have been as a 11yo

I have seen how EVERY thing Lizzy does is judged. how her behavior, personality and temperament are criticized. but other characters like Soma just get a pass while doing the same stuff, but this does not just stop at gender, but also at age. people HATE girls and afabs who act like children when they are literally CHILDREN.

How is it possible that Lizzy has faced such harsh judgment from the fandom when there are other characters like Maam red, Lau, Grell, Undertaker who are universally ADORED or atleast respected in the fandom.

I love u Elizabeth midford but ur character makes me violently ill omfg

[beowlet]

Hello I SAW THE OPEN REQUESTS AND I SCROLLED UP SO FAST!! I love your work sm, you really captured the essence of the characters + talking abt the love languages was a fun bonus too. Is it fine if I request the Housewardens (or some of them) with a reader who loves to send them letters?💌 But their handwriting is very unintelligible due to it being a chicken scratch/the most extra cursive you could ever see. Either way works, thank you!! ❤️

[Omg i love this]

HOUSEWARDENS WITH A S/O WHO LOVES TO SEND THEM LETTERS, BUT THEIR HANDWRITING IS HARD TO READ.

Headcanons

Cw: Uses of you instead of pronouns, fluff, GN!Reader, NOT proofread. Again.

R. Rosehearts

I feel like Riddle's hand writing is cursive too and wouldn't have too much trouble reading it even if it was a little extra so we'll go with chicken scratch handwriting for him.

He loves that you write letters for him, he really does. He always tries to send one of his own too! But he would love it more if he could actually understand what you were saying.

He can only make out two words, his name and "love". He always writes back in hopes of having understood the letter correctly. Because if he read something wrong and you pointed it out he will die of embarrassment.

HES TRYING

LEAVE HIM ALONE OKAY

He will slowly get used to it and become a [name] translator. He would be so proud too, he finally understands your handwriting and can ACTUALLY read your heartfelt letters.

He blushes and giggles like a highschool girl all the time.

Anytime anyone has trouble reading your hand writing they will go to him. Mostly Ace and Deuce after they ask for your notes.

Wishes your handwriting was a little bit more readable, but he's happy he got the hand of it now.

L. Kingscholar

Definetly knows how to read cursive but will pull a "wtf" face at all the extra shit you put because what is this. Is this even english anymore?? He can't tell if thats an "R" "M" or "N"?? What the fuck did you write?-

Look, he appericiates the letters. But try not to make him think hes having a stroke while reading it. Please. What is this? Why? Is there anyone in the world that can read curaive like this???

Will out right just text you.

Will feel bad after he finds out it was just a letter where you were talking about how much you loved him, expect him to buy you a buqoet of your favorite flowers soon.

He feels bad.

Will soon probably understand some of your letters and thank you in text form.

You thought he would write back? Oh honey no. This man is too lazy to get up on his ass and sit down on his desk to write. He might make Ruggie do it for him tho.

However if you were mad at him thats a different story. He might write a letter... along with a few more gifts... maybe...

Anything for you to forgive him.

A. Ashengrotto

Ik this man has so fucking extra cursive writing like how and why. Why do you need that many loops for one letter IT DOESNT LOOK PRETTY IT LOOKS CURSED AZUL.

I'm kidding it def looks pretty... so for Azul we're going with chicken scratch!

He would be so confused if he saw a letter just hanging around in his office, and it's a letter that he cant even read. He'll just be confused standing in his office trying to read it. Not even realising that you signed it, he was still trying to read the first word.

After a while he just gave up and called for Floyd, knowing his handwriting wasn't any better and assumed he could read it.

"Dear, Azul. I know I don't have to write a letter because I can literally just text you but I thought it would be fun to write a letter where I explained how much I lo-" "NO OKAY GIVE ME THAT BACK-"

Floyd is telling Jade so they can both bully Azul for being so stupid and not being able to read his own lover's hand writing.

He wants to know what it says so he can write back a letter... but he doesn't know anyone that would be able to read it without teasing him.

Spends a night trying to read it and writes back a letter.

Is about to sob when you send him another one, HE LOVES YOU BUT HE CAN'T READ YOUR LETTERS SPARE HIM PLEASE.

K. Al-asim

He would love the idea of sending eachother letters! He thinks its romantic and even if it's a little silly you write to eachother even though you could visit eachother any time of the day he doesn't care. It's cute. Very.

I don't think he can read cursive... he knows he has to learn but he's struggling. A lot.

I also don't think Kalim has very neat or very chaotic handwriting that nobody can read it but I think it can definetly get a little messy in his notebooks sometimes. So, cursive with extra stuff for Kalim!

He would explode with happines when he finds a love letter sitting on his desk with your name on it. He's over the moon.

As soon as he sees it he runs over, picks it up and opens it to read it. Only to be met with a page full of loops. A lot of them... an awful lot that Kalim thought you just scribbled the page for a momment.

First he's determined to read what you've wrote without asking for any help from Jamil!

Yeah that lasts like 15 minutes he goes to Jamil a little quicker than he would like to.

He tried! That's what matters... right?

Jamil spends about 15 minutes trying to read the first few sentences before FINALLY understanding the letters and reading it to Kalim. Kalim just sits there with a love-struck stupidly cute smile as he listens to Jamil readint the letter.

Is definetly writing back a reponse and making this a thing between you two.

Jamil has to suffer through your sappy letters as Kalim makes him read all of them.

Help my boy he isn't exactly happy.

V. Schoenheit

He can read really any handwriting perfectly no matter how extra or "awful" it is. But if it's just a page filled with random lines and so called letters mixed together I'm very sure he'll pull a "wtf" face :D Chicken scratch for Vil!!

He appericiates the thought! He really does! He's increidbly happy to recieve a letter from you! But why. Why does your handwriting have to be this way? Why like just why?

Do you need help? He can definetly give you writing lessons on how to improve your handwriting. He can pay for it if you think it would be embarrassing to do it with him, he can find online course-

He would think all of this but never mention any of it. He doesn't wanna break your heart.

But I think he'd def have a lot of fun trying to read your handwriting when he's bored. He would sit down and try to figure out what was written like it was some sort of puzzle and would just smile happily everytime he got a full sentence.

He would give you a kiss for every love letter he recieves <33

Would he write back? Not all the time but would write once in a while about how deep his feelings are for you.

M. Draconia

Homeboy here has been alive for a bit over a hundred years I think he's capable of reading many different types of handwriting. But imagine his shock when he finds a one he actually can't read.

Malleus is a little old compared to humans we all know that, this man has seen lots of different types of handwriting but he's definetly used to different types of and extra cursive handwritings. So we'll go for chicken scratch for him!

I feel like he'd be the first one to ever send a letter in your relationship honestly! When he recieves back a letter our fae boy is smiling happily as he excitedly opens the letter only to pause and... try to read whatever language that is.

Will go to Lilia. Like, immediately. He is definetly going to make fun of you after that. No way Lilia is letting something like that slide especially when Malleus came to him all confused.

Nobody can tell me Lilia isn't used to terrible handwritings and can just zoom through what seems like gibberish.

Malleus will listen as Lilia reads the letter for him and he can just feel himself falling deeper and deeper for you.

He wants to see you afterwards immediatelly. He is now clingy, wants hugs, kisses and every kind of physical affection you can give him.

So what if he teleported to your dorm and is currently towering over your bed? Give him the love he deserves!

[traceyc-uk]

I love your art and comics so much!!! You are like the queen of HL comics for me!!! ❤️❤️❤️ So much so you've been inspiring me to start making my own comics (it has been since high school since I made comics and let's not get into how long ago that was 😂).

I was wondering if you would be willing to share some of your comic making process, especially in the early stages? I had much of a process in pre-planning stages, but now I'm trying it to see if it will help with my storytelling.

I hope you have a great day!! ❤️❤️

Thank you! 😭 that’s so cool you’re making comics again! And bashful by your ask as I do it for lols and still figuring it out myself. I refer a LOT to a couple of my favourite comic artists too, which I think is noticeably incorporated in mine but I’ll try and show my workings best as I can

Think it’s already obvious I love drawing expressions, is usually my first starting point doodling idly what would become the key frames

Of course study your favourite artists! The ones I look to is Akira Himekawa - Zelda Twilight series and Adam Warren - Empowered (not for under 18s)

I dragged out some previous comic pages I think are appropriate examples of the initial paper scribbles, rough lines to final.

venomous valour is an example of messing up as I focused too much on the faces and the speech gets cluttered.

Crucio attempting to draw the eye where it needs the main focus.

A couple of pages from Shadow Mountain, the fight was drafted more to keep a consistent line of action and not let it get disoriented on the geography, personally I try and stick to the 180 rule. The arc here was more a happy accident but helps lead movement across the page

Dialogue I like the least, but this page the speech bubbles lead the page layout so it’s read in the correct order reading from left to right

Generally I try not get too fussy about the details and aim overall for readability:

- Clear silhouettes, in figures, framing and composition. I often check rough pages within drafts on my tiny phone screen, does the focus get drawn where it should

- Is there enough information on what is happening or about to happen, like an anticipation in a pose to lead into the next panel

-Show intentions without having to say it, ask myself if no dialogue is the intent still there? Using your lovely Serena and the Fifth-Year as an example

It shows when I get lazy and draw my panels like a film frame and I use principles more rooted in animation so I make blunders or newbie mistakes when translating into a comic format but it’s all in good fun. Anyway I hope this helps you in your process and look forward to seeing more of your comics too! 💕

Extra: the ineligible scrawls of the shadow mountain and ancient magic drafts

[emberizidaemelo]

And you should feel guilty and keep the truth til forever.

(I hope my translation is readable…TT)

[liridi]

Heyy, I'm starting to get interested in reading the Arthurian Legend/Story/Mith (?), and I was just wondering if you have any reccomendations on where to start with what books? I hope you have a nice day, Take care!

Oh thanks for the ask. I can only half answer this? I'm much better with my Greek myths. I've read a fair number of arthuriana texts but there are so many arthuriana blogs on here that faaar outmatch me with regards to the texts they've read.

I would personally start with Gawain and the Green Knight, I think it's a great entry point and one of the strongest texts in arthuriana. If you enjoy that one I think you're pretty much green lit to continue on.

Then it's a bit of a question what you want to do?

If you want an oversight of the "plot" of Arthuriana (ie. the rise and downfall of Camelot, from Arthur's conception to his death) you either want to start with the Vulgate Cycle (long but well written, the translation by Norris Lacy is recommended) or Le Morte D'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory (based on the Vulgate Cycle, it's shorter but still long, and worse written, but definitely the basis for later/modern arthuriana). These are inaccesible bricks of reading material, I'm still slogging through Le Morte, two years later. But they're pretty much the bedrocks at the bottom of our modern arthuriana "canon" (no such thing but you know what I mean) so :///

If you want more readable later adaptations that cemented our modern arthuriana "canon", you either want Alfred Lord Tennyson's Idylls of the King or The Once and Future King by TH White.

If you want to keep reading short stories set in the Arthuriana world I recommend by personal favorite, the Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle. I've also been highly recommended The Knight of the Cart by Chretien de Troyes, the introduction of Lancelot and his affair with Guinevere. Courtly love!!!

But here I defer to @queer-ragnelle they can definitely give you a better answer.

Good luck!

[a-memory-a-distant-echo]

it's time for the long-threatened post about how to get subtitles (including translated ones) for videos that don't have subtitles.

in my experience, the methods in this post can probably get you solidly 75% or more of the content of many videos (caveats inside). i've tested this on videos that are originally in chinese, english, french, german, hindi, japanese, korean, spanish, and honestly probably some languages that i'm forgetting. my experience is that it works adequately in all of them. not great, necessarily, but well enough that you can probably follow along.

this is a very long post because this is the overexplaining things website, and because i talk about several different ways to get the captions. this isn't actually difficult, though, or even especially time consuming—the worst of it is pushing a button and ignoring things for a while. actual hands-on work is probably five minutes tops, no matter how long the video is.

i've attempted to format this post understandably, and i hope it's useful to someone.

first up, some disclaimers.

this is just my experience with things, and your experience might be different. the tools used for (and available for) this kind of thing change all the time, and if you're reading this six months after i wrote it, your options might be different. this post is probably still a decent starting place.

background about my biases in this: i work in the creative industries. mostly i'm a fiction editor. i've also been a writer, a technical editor and writer, a transcriptionist, a copyeditor, and something i've seen called a 'translation facilitator' or 'rewrite editor', where something is translated fairly literally (by a person or a machine) and then a native speaker of the target language goes through and rewrites/restructures as needed to make the piece read more naturally in the target language. i've needed to get information out of business meetings that were conducted in a language i didn't speak, and have done a lot of work on things that were written in (or translated into) the writer's second or sixth language, but needed to be presented in natural english.

so to start, most importantly: machine translation is never going to be as good as a translation done by an actual human. human translators can reflect cultural context and nuanced meanings and the artistry of the work in a way that machines will never be able to emulate. that said, if machine translation is your only option, it's better than nothing. i also find it really useful for videos in languages where i have enough knowledge that i'm like, 75% sure that i'm mostly following, and just want something that i can glance at to confirm that.

creating subs like this relies heavily on voice-to-text, which—unfortunately—works a lot better in some situations than it does in others. you'll get the best, cleanest results from videos that have slow, clear speech in a 'neutral' accent, and only one person speaking at a time. (most scripted programs fall into this category, as do many vlogs and single-person interviews.) the results will get worse as voices speed up, overlap more, and vary in volume. that said, i've used this to get captions for cast concerts, reality shows, and variety shows, and the results are imperfect but solidly readable, especially if you have an idea of what's happening in the plot and/or can follow along even a little in the broadcast language.

this also works best when most of the video is in a single language, and you select that language first. the auto detect option sometimes works totally fine, but in my experience there's a nonzero chance that it'll at least occasionally start 'detecting' random other languages in correctly, or someone will say a few words in spanish or whatever, but the automatic detection engine will keep trying to translate from spanish for another three minutes, even tho everything's actually in korean. if there's any way to do so, select the primary language, even if it means that you miss a couple sentences that are in a different language.

two places where these techniques don't work, or don't work without a lot of manual effort on your part: translating words that appear on the screen (introductions, captions, little textual asides, etc), and music. if you're incredibly dedicated, you can do this and add it manually yourself, but honestly, i'm not usually this dedicated. getting captions for the words on the screen will involve either actually editing the video or adding manually translated content to the subs, which is annoying, and lyrics are...complicated. it's possible, and i'm happy to talk about it in another post if anyone is interested, but for the sake of this post, let's call it out of scope, ok? ok. bring up the lyrics on your phone and call it good enough.

places where these techniques are not great: names. it's bad with names. names are going to be mangled. resign yourself to it now. also, in languages that don't have strongly gendered speech, you're going to learn some real fun stuff about the way that the algorithms gender things. (spoiler: not actually fun.) bengali, chinese, and turkish are at least moderately well supported for voice-to-text, but you will get weird pronouns about it.

obligatory caveat about ai and voice-to-text functionality. as far as i'm aware, basically every voice-to-text function is ~ai powered~. i, a person who has spent twenty years working in the creative industries, have a lot of hate for generative ai, and i'm sure that many of you do, too. however, if voice-to-text (or machine translation software) that doesn't rely on it exists anymore, i'm not aware of it.

what we're doing here is the same as what douyin/tiktok/your phone's voice-to-text does, using the same sorts of technology. i mention this because if you look at the tools mentioned in this post, at least some of them will be like 'our great ai stuff lets you transcribe things accurately', and i want you to know why. chat gpt (etc) are basically glorified predictive text, right? so for questions, they're fucking useless, but for things like machine transcription and machine translation, those predictions make it more likely that you get the correct words for things that could have multiple translations, or for words that the software can only partially make out. it's what enables 'he has muscles' vs 'he has mussels', even though muscles and mussels are generally pronounced the same way. i am old enough to have used voice to text back when it was called dictation software, and must grudgingly admit that this is, in fact, much better.

ok! disclaimers over.

let's talk about getting videos

for the most part, this post will assume that you have a video file and nothing else. cobalt.tools is the easiest way i'm aware of to download videos from most sources, though there are other (more robust) options if you're happy to do it from the command line. i assume most people are not, and if you are, you probably don't need this guide anyhow.

i'm going to use 'youtube' as the default 'get a video from' place, but generally speaking, most of this works with basically any source that you can figure out how to download from—your bilibili downloads and torrents and whatever else will work the same way. i'm shorthanding things because this post is already so so long.

if the video you're using has any official (not autogenerated) subtitles that aren't burned in, grab that file, too, regardless of the language. starting from something that a human eye has looked over at some point is always going to give you better results. cobalt.tools doesn't pull subtitles, but plugging the video url into downsub or getsubs and then downloading the srt option is an easy way to get them for most places. (if you use downsub, it'll suggest that you download the full video with subtitles. that's a link to some other software, and i've never used it, so i'm not recommending it one way or the other. the srts are legit, tho.)

the subtitle downloaders also have auto translation options, and they're often (not always) no worse than anything else that we're going to do here—try them and see if they're good enough for your purposes. unfortunately, this only works for things that already have subtitles, which is…not that many things, honestly. so let's move on.

force-translating, lowest stress mode.

this first option is kind of a cheat, but who cares. youtube will auto-caption things in some languages (not you, chinese) assuming that the uploader has enabled it. as ever, the quality is kinda variable, and the likelihood that it's enabled at all seems to vary widely, but if it is, you're in for a much easier time of things, because you turn it on, select whatever language you want it translated to, and youtube…does its best, anyhow.

if you're a weird media hoarder like me and you want to download the autogenerated captions, the best tool that i've found for this is hyprscribr. plug in the video url, select 'download captions via caption grabber', then go to the .srt data tab, copy it out, and paste it into a text file. save this as [name of downloaded video].[language code].srt, and now you have captions! …that you need to translate, which is actually easy. if it's a short video, just grab the text, throw it in google translate (timestamps and all), and then paste the output into a new text file. so if you downloaded cooking.mp4, which is in french, you'll have three files: cooking.mp4, cooking.fr.srt, and cooking.en.srt. this one's done! it's easy! you're free!

but yeah, ok, most stuff isn't quite that easy, and auto-captioning has to be enabled, and it has some very obvious gaps in the langauges it supports. which is sort of weird, because my phone actually has pretty great multilingual support, even for things that youtube does not. which brings us to low-stress force translation option two.

use your phone

this seems a little obvious, but i've surprised several people with this information recently, so just in case. for this option, you don't even need to have downloaded the video—if it's a video you can play on your phone, the phone will almost definitely attempt real-time translation for you. i'm sure iphones have this ability, but i'm an android person, so can only provide directions for that: go into settings and search for (and enable) live translation. the phone will do its best to pick up what's being said and translate it on the fly for you, and if 'what's being said' is a random video on the internet, your phone isn't gonna ask questions. somewhat inexplicably, this works even if the video is muted. i do this a lot at like four a.m. when i'm too lazy to grab earbuds but don't want to wake up my wife.

this is the single least efficient way to force sub/translate things, in my opinion, but it's fast and easy, and really useful for those videos that are like a minute long and probably not that interesting, but like…what if it is, you know? sometimes i'll do this to decide if i'm going to bother more complicated ways of translating things.

similarly—and i feel silly even mentioning this, but that i didn't think of it for an embarrassingly long time—if you're watching something on a device with speakers, you can try just…opening the 'translate' app on your phone. they all accept voice input. like before, it'll translate whatever it picks up.

neither of these methods are especially useful for longer videos, and in my experience, the phone-translation option generally gives the least accurate translation, because in attempting to do things in real time, you lose some of the predicative ability that i was talking about earlier. (filling in the blank for 'he has [muscles/mussels]' is a lot harder if you don't know if the next sentence is about the gym or about dinner.)

one more lazy way

this is more work than the last few options, but often gives better results. with not much effort, you can feed a video playing on your computer directly into google translate. there's a youtube video by yosef k that explains it very quickly and clearly. this will probably give you better translation output than any of the on-the-fly phone things described above, but it won't give you something that you can use as actual subs—it just produces text output that you can read while you watch the video. again, though, really useful for things that you're not totally convinced you care about, or for things where there aren't a lot of visuals, or for stuff where you don't care about keeping your eyes glued to the screen.

but probably you want to watch stuff on the screen at the same time.

let's talk about capcut!

this is probably not a new one for most people, but using it like this is a little weird, so here we go. ahead of time: i'm doing this on an actual computer. i think you probably can do it on your phone, but i have no idea how, and honestly this is already a really long guide so i'm not going to figure it out right now. download capcut and put it on an actual computer. i'm sorry.

anyhow. open up capcut, click new project. import the file that you downloaded, and then drag it down to the editing area. go over to captions, auto captions, and select the spoken language. if you want bilingual captions, pick the language for that, as well, and the captions will be auto-translated into whatever the second language you choose is. (more notes on this later.)

if i remember right, this is the point at which you get told that you can't caption a video that's more than an hour long. however. you have video editing software, and it is open. split the video in two pieces and caption them separately. problem solved.

now the complicated part: saving these subs. (don't panic; it's not actually that complicated.) as everyone is probably aware, exporting captions is a premium feature, and i dunno about the rest of you, but i'm unemployed, so let's assume that's not gonna happen.

the good news is that since you've generated the captions, they're already saved to your computer, they're just kinda secret right now. there are a couple ways to dig them out, but the easiest i'm aware of is the biyaoyun srt generator. you'll have to select the draft file of your project, which is auto-saved once a minute or something. the website tells you where the file is saved by default on your computer. (i realised after writing this entire post that they also have a step-by-step tutorial on how to generate the subtitles, with pictures, so if you're feeling lost, you can check that out here.)

select the project file titled 'draft_content', then click generate. you want the file name to be the same as the video name, and again, i'd suggest srt format, because it seems to be more broadly compatible with media players. click 'save to local' and you now have a subtitle file!

translating your subtitles

you probably still need to translate the subtitles. there are plenty of auto-translation options out there. many of them are fee- or subscription-based, or allow a very limited number of characters, or are like 'we provide amazing free translations' and then in the fine print it says that they provide these translations through the magic of uhhhh google translate. so we're just going to skip to google translate, which has the bonus of being widely available and free.

for shorter video, or one that doesn't have a ton of spoken stuff, you can just copy/paste the contents of the .srt file into the translation software of your choice. the web version of google translate will do 5000 characters in one go, as will systran. that's the most generous allocation that i'm aware of, and will usually get you a couple minutes of video.

the timestamps eat up a ton of characters, though, so for anything longer than a couple minutes, it's easier to upload the whole thing, and google translate is the best for that, because it is, to my knowledge, the only service that allows you to do it. to upload the whole file, you need a .doc or .rtf file.

an .srt file is basically just a text file, so you can just open it in word (or gdocs or whatever), save it as a .doc, and then feed it through google translate. download the output, open it, and save it as an .srt.

you're done! you now have your video and a subtitle file in the language of your choice.

time for vibe, the last option in this post.

vibe is a transcription app (not a sex thing, even tho it sounds like one), and it will also auto-translate the transcribed words to english, if you want.

open vibe and select your file, then select the language. if you want it translated to english, hit advanced and toggle 'translate to english'. click translate and wait a while. after a few minutes (or longer, depending on how long the file is), you'll get the text. the save icon is a folder with a down arrow on it, and i understand why people are moving away from tiny floppy disks, but also: i hate it. anyhow, save the output, and now you have your subs file, which you can translate or edit or whatever, as desired.

vibe and capcom sometimes get very different results. vibe seems to be a little bit better at picking up overlapping speech, or speech when there are other noises happening; capcom seems to be better at getting all the worlds in a sentence. i feel like capcom maybe has a slightly better translation engine, of the two of them, but i usually end up just doing the translation separately. again, it can be worth trying both ways and seeing which gives better results.

special notes about dual/bilingual subs

first: i know that bilingual subs are controversial. if you think they're bad, you don't have to use them! just skip this section.

as with everything else, automatically generating gives mixed results. sometimes the translations are great, and sometimes they're not. i like having dual subs, but for stuff that Matters To Me, for whatever reason, i'll usually generate both just the original and a bilingual version, and then try some other translation methods on the original or parts thereof to see what works best.

not everything displays bilingual subs very well. plex and windows media player both work great, vlc and the default video handler on ubuntu only display whatever the first language is, etc. i'm guessing that if you want dual subbed stuff you already have a system for it.

i'll also point out that if you want dual subs and have gone a route other than capcom, you can create dual subs by pasting the translated version and the untranslated version into a single file. leave the timestamps as they are, delete the line numbers if there are any (sometimes they seem to cause problems when you have dual subs, and i haven't figured out why) and then literally just paste the whole sub file for the first language into a new file. then paste in the whole sub file for the second language. yes, as a single chunk, the whole thing, right under the first language's subs. save the file as [video name].[zh-en].srt (or whatever), and use it like any other sub file.

notes on translation, especially since we're talking about lengthy machine-translations of things.

i default to translation options that allow for translating in large chunks, mostly because i'm lazy. but since an .srt is, again, literally just a text file, they're easy to edit, and if you feel like some of the lines are weird or questionable or whatever, it's easy to change them if you can find a better translation.

so: some fast notes on machine translation options, because i don't know how much time most people spend thinking about this kind of stuff.

one sort of interesting thing to check out is the bing translator. it'll only do 1000 characters at once, but offers the rather interesting option of picking a level of formality. i can't always get it to work, mind, but it's useful especially for times when you're like 'this one line sounds weird'—sometimes the difference between what the translator feels is standard vs formal vs casual english will make a big difference.

very fast illustration of the difference in translations. the random video that i used to make sure i didn't miss any steps explaining things starts with '所以你第二季来'. here's how it got translated:

google: So you come to season 2

google's top alternative: So you come in the second season

bing's standard tone: So here you come for the second season

bing set to casual: So you're coming for the second season, huh?

reverso default guess: So you come in season two

reverso alternate guess: You'll be participating in season two

capcom: So you come in season two

yandex: So you come in the second season

systran: That's why you come in season two

deepl: That's why you're here in season two

vibe: So your second season is here

technically all conveying the same information, but the vibes are very different. sometimes one translator or another will give you a clearly superior translation, so if you feel like the results you're getting are kinda crap, try running a handful of lines through another option and see if it's better.

ok! this was an incredibly long post, and i've almost definitely explained something poorly. again, there are almost certainly better ways to do this, but these ways are free and mostly effective, and they work most of the time, and are better than nothing.

feel free to ask questions and i'll answer as best i can. (the answer to any questions about macs or iphones is 'i'm so sorry, i have no idea tho.' please do not ask those questions.)

[most-calm-revice-and-geats-fan]

Kamen Rider Den-O Novel Translation (Novel: Kamen Rider Den-O: The Demon Dog of Tokyo World Tower)

Happy Easter, everyone! ^w^

Just dropping that in since I got it done before Easter ended, in my timezone, but I got a third translation out: FINALLY! I got my hands on the Den-O novel!!! I actually skimmed through this one quicker than I thought!

Sorry if so much of this is confusing, or ye- The translation I used was in Chinese. Plus, this is another novel, like the W novel, there it's told via the protagonist's POV, that being Ryotaro's. Damn, was not expecting that from the Imagin, too- But overall, this is another novel with a sweet-ish ending!

If there's anything incorrect, anything needing corrected in any way (like misspelling), please let me know so I can fix it. Thanks a lot! Hope you enjoy reading!! (If it's readable at least)

yes we do have some wild shiz

Chapter 0: Hisui

Chapter 1: Feburary 10 2005

Chapter 2: Demon Dog of EightLiner

Chapter 3: The Man Who Knows the Future

Chapter 4: Fantasy Wine

Chapter 5: Contract Holder

Chapter 6: Second Imagin

Chapter 7: Interlude

Chapter 8: Jade

Chapter 9: Pastrami at Night

Chapter 10: September 15 2008

Chapter 11: April 23 2013, and its Future

I sadly couldn't find the Zeronos novel while translating Den-O's, but hopefully one day I'll find it! Glad I was finally able to do this!!! Sorry if things are still kinda mid-

[beclight]

Translating sc once site gets revamped??

hello hello kneeby if you read this, hoping you have a wonderful day!

iirc, you said that one of the many features implemented in the "soon" to come (you get what i mean-) site revamp would be a fully-readable, almost novel-like transcripted version of sparklecare.

i was wondering if this feature does get added, can we (the community) use it to create "fan translations" of sparklecare? and if enough people show interest in doing so and end up translating the whole comic, could it be possible that one day these translations get added into the site? (like in a different tab or smth)

Thanks in avance!!!!!

@sparklecarehospital fanboy moment- (i would translate it all by myself in my native language if prompted plsplssplsplspsls)

(ps; live love laugh we need more bec light content :sob:)/lh

[eleccy]

I translated the pages as well as I can, I'm not a japanese speaker either so I can't guarantee complete accuracy. But this took me a few hours so I hope it's at least a bit more readable 🙏

OMGG thank you so much for doing it! It looks great, a much better translation :)

I love Apollo's NOPE and just all of the character interactions haha!

Great work! <3

[paitei4234]

I wanted to help my parents and cook pizza for dinner myself. As a result, after a while, when everyone had already eaten, I almost threw up, and also my stomach was spinning a lot, BUT TODAY IS THE FIRST OF APRIL, HERE'S A JOKE:

What does the train say?

People are divided into two parts.

::We saved your son!

::Thank God, thank you so much!!

::Happy April Fools.

Your back is white.

The son comes to his mother and says:

::Mom, mom!! There's Dad hanging himself in the kitchen!

::What..?

::I'm kidding, he hanged himself in the bathroom.

(I HOPE THIS IS READABLE, SINCE I USED A TRANSLATOR)