#its also especially obvious for the eng speakers that its an issue both of the general world problem of eng as a lingua franca

[atthebell]

honestly even as someone who is, at this point, still monolingual [i do rlly need to do more than just duolingo for spanish but. motivation issues 👍 i have a bunch of pdfs of spanish language books saved i’ll get to them] it annoys me that english is always the default. like my general love for Language aside what even is the point of having the translator if it barely gets used. its main use at this point seems to be to translate stuff for chat or for the non-native english speakers to better understand the english ccs because convos Always Default To English

like i get that the translator isn’t always the most accurate but it seems like it’d be so much more comfortable to just use it and then correct anything that it fucks up, whether in a common language between everyone or just repeating yourself a bit clearer if it was just the translator mishearing. even if it can make convos a little slower sometimes. like does that all make sense

sorry it's been several days but in fairness i think it was 4am when i got this ask

but yeah i think that it's impressive how much more comfortable the mono english speakers have gotten with hearing other languages and using the translator, i just wish it was more common. and when people DO use it it's really neat and really brings forward kind of the point of the server. like i always think about that moment during the 4halo conflict where forever got so frustrated at being misunderstood that he decided to just speak in portuguese so that bad would get a direct (if imperfect) translation of what he was saying, because he felt like having to speak in english wasn't getting his point across. and how during the elections that was something everyone who speaks english as a second/non-native language talked about-- that they cannot fully express their points to everyone during the debates or even across languages because they're all speaking english. and for that, the logistics wouldn't have worked anyways, but that doesn't mean it doesn't demonstrate that the expectation that everyone else just speak english is a faulty one, and one that fucks over everyone else at times.

idk i totally get that because everyone else does speak english, it's just easier, especially in time-sensitive or high-impact moments, to just speak english, but i think using the translator more and more creators learning things in one another's languages and just using context and everything is what it means to exist in a multilingual space, which is something i think a lot of people (especially monolingual eng speakers) should get more accustomed to.