#just more English. Norwegian. Swedish. Spanish. and one day Icelandic.

[always-a-slut-4-ghouls]

What you guys would be seeing if tumblr posted all my drafts tbh:

“Day three of my brother shouting at us because he saw something on the news over Christmas break”

But also

“If German is closer to English than English is to Norwegian then why is Norwegian so much easier to learn 🤨 things the government doesn’t want you to know about”

[lenskij]

The StoryGraph's Translation Challenge 2021 - a reflection

Today I just finished this 10 prompt reading challenge! I had so much fun doing it, especially since I’ve for years wanted to expand my reading beyond the same old and familiar I’ve been reading until now, but I didn’t come around to actually do it until I came across The StoryGraph's Translation Challenge 2021.

The rules are: pick a book for each prompt that has been translated from a language that isn’t English. For myself, I added another rule - it can’t be translated from any language I speak, either. I also wanted to find an individual book for each prompt - if there was a book that would fit in two prompts, I counted it for only one of them and chose another for the other.

I wanted to share my little translation journey with everyone here, hence this post. The prompts, what book I chose for each, and my thoughts on them are below the cut!

Also: I’m always on the lookout for non-English books! Bonus points if they’re from outside of Europe ^w^ Hit me up with your recommendations!

1. A translated fantasy or sci-fi novel

Stanisław Lem: Солярис (Solaris) Translated from Polish to Russian by Д. Брускин

This book has been living on my sister’s bookshelf for years, and while I was visiting her I read it. It didn’t impress me in any way, it felt like any regular old sci-fi, although a bit creepy (and just a lil dash of sexism).

2. A book written by a Black woman in translation

Marie NDiaye: La Cheffe (La Cheffe) Translated from French to Swedish by Maria Björkman

This is a lovely novel, even if it focused on French food - and the detailed descriptions reminded me that French food is overrated. I loved the character la Cheffe, it was highly enjoyable to read about her relationship to people and her profession, and the narrator had sweet heart eyes that shined through the text.

3. A translated book originally published before 1950

Choderlos de Laclos: Farliga förbindelser (Les Liaisons dangereuses) Translated from French to Swedish by Arvid Enckell.

This prompt was the easiest to fulfill, and I had several choices for it. I've spoken about this book elsewhere on this here blog - it's morbidly fascinating to read about terrible, terrible people.

4. A translated non-fiction book

Romaric Godin: Klasskriget i Frankrike (La guerre sociale en France) Translated from French to Swedish by Johan Wollin

For this prompt, I went to a local bookstore and asked the seller for help. She had to dig around for a while before she found something that wasn't originally written in English - like she pointed out, most academics choose to write in English, even if they're not native speakers.

I picked this one because I've seen snapshots of the yellow wests in the news, but I know barely any of the context. Although the book is short, it's a pretty detailed overview of recent French economic history, with an emphasis on explaining why and how French neo-liberalism ended up looking like it is today (and why French neo-liberalism is different from the neo-liberalism in the rest od Europe). This tickled my inner economics nerd.

5. A translated novel 500 pages or longer

Isabel Allende: Andarnas hus (La Casa de los Espíritus) Translated from Spanish to Swedish by Lena Anér Melin

Another book that has been sitting on my sister's shelf! I absolutely loved it - a family saga, in a time of social change. Look, my favourite part about any book is when the characters feel like humans, even if they're not relatable, I can still understand them.

6. A book translated from Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish or Icelandic

Vigdis Hjorth: Arv och miljö (Arv og miljø) Translated from Norwegian to Swedish by Ninni Holmqvist

In my case, it meant a book translated from either Danish, Norwegian or Icelandic (I do have to pepper in the fact that I'm a polyglot, after all). It's my sister who recommended it to me, and she was right when she said this was good! I loved the three separate timelines, the prose, and the family drama.

7. A translated book by a South American author

María Sonia Cristoff: Håll mig utanför (Inclúyanme afuera) Mariana Enríquez: Det vi förlorade i elden (Las cosas que perdimos en el fuego)Translated from Spanish to Swedish by Hanna Axén

What? Two books?? Yes, when I searched the library catalogue it spit out these two - because they have the same translator - and since they both seemed interesting I checked both of them out.

Unfortunately, these are the two books of this challenge that I liked the least. The first one didn't have a premise that worked with me - the main character chose to listen more than she spoke for a year as an experiment, and as an introvert, to whom this is how I've always lived my life, it was hard for me to understand what the big deal was.

The second was just my personal taste - these short stories had bloody ghosts, and ended abruptly without quite resolving the story - that creepiness just doesn't vibe with me.

8. A translated book by a Chinese author

Eileen Chang: Ett halvt liv av kärlek (Banshengyuan) Translated from Chinese to Swedish by Anna Gustafsson Chen

After quite a slow start I suddenly was drawn into this book. It's such a lovely read on when life doesn't always work out the way you want, and you still do your best to be happy. It felt very real, without being a 'happily ever after', or it's opposite of endless tears - that sweet middle ground spot.

9. A book translated from Arabic

Rajaa Alsanea: Flickorna från Riyadh (Banāt al-Riyāḍ) Translated from Arabic to Swedish by Tetz Rooke

I found this when messing around with the "similar books"-algorithm on Storygraph (I've just finished Unmarriageable, and liked it a so much I wanted to find something similar). When this one popped out I noticed the Arabic author name, and checked it out from the library. I've actually never read any book set in the Middle East, and I loved seeing a glimpse of life there (naturally, this isn't a comprehensive illustration - the main characters were all from well-off families). The most interesting thing was how the characters adjusted their behaviour as they travelled between Europe and Saudi Arabia - the social rules are different depending on where you are (and if you meet a fellow Saudi in London, your day is ruined - because suddenly you have to behave in accordance to Saudi rules).

10. A book translated from a language spoken in India

Vivek Shanbhag: Ghachar ghochar (Ghāchar ghōchar) Translated from Kannada to English by Srinath Perur; translated to Swedish by Peter Samuelsson

At first I was cranky about that this is a translation of a translation - but in the acknowledgements I read that it was the author's request that the book is to be translated from English. I assume it's because the English translator already has made the inevitable tradeoffs between language and form, which the author approved, and so the Swedish translator wouldn't have to make the decisions all over again.

This was a short book, just over a hundred pages. It barely had any plot, but it didn't need any - the description of the family members' relationship to each other was juicy enough.

In conclusion

This challenge was a great opportunity for me to also try genres I never would have tried otherwise - I was limited to what my library had, and especially for the smaller languages, it's a limited choice. I've been talking about this translation challenge to everyone I know because I've had so much fun! And the best part is - it's only ten prompts. That means I wouldn't need to scram to finish it in time, even while also reading the regular same old books I do still want to read. While I'm waiting for the 2022 challenge, I'll be doing another round for these prompts - I've already checked out a short story collection originally written in Tamil, and a nonfiction about Syrian resistance originally written in Arabic :)

[95jezzica]

Some Nordic HCs 01

- Norway is actually the oldest of the Viking trio, but let's Denmark claim the title because he honestly couldn’t care less about being the oldest.

- Their parents were Scandia and North, but Norway is the only one old enough to really remember them, since they died not long after Denmark and Sweden had “popped into existence”.  (I want to note that I hc the Sami people to have their own representations, but they’re not related to the Nordics, and are for another post. It wouldn’t feel right to make them related, considering our history.) 

- Denmark and Sweden are twins. Sweden just had the unfortunate luck to be born after midnight, and thus has his birthday the day after Denmark. (A reference to how Den’s national day is on the 5th of June, while Sweden’s is on the 6th). Yes, Denmark holds it high above Sweden’s head that Sweden is the youngest of the Viking Trio. x) 

- Denmark is 203cm (6′7) tall, Sweden 218cm (7′2) and Norway is the “short” one of the Viking Trio at 180cm (5′9). 

- Because of this many nations who hadn’t seen Norway outside of paintings or photos were surprised by how tall Norway actually was the first time they met him, since he was only short compared to his giants of siblings. 

- Iceland is the youngest of the Nordics and stands at 173cm / 5′6.

- Finland is the shortest at 170cm/ 5′5, but also the strongest of the group when it comes to physical strength. (Probably mental strength too, tbh). 

- Both Denmark and Sweden are smart individuals, but would never pass the Wisdom check. Sweden is just better at hiding it since he's so naturally quiet, and since he's usually able to blame all his stupid shit on Denmark. x’D 

- Denmark finds it hilarious that most of the non-Nordics still don’t know at least half of the stupid shit he gets into is actually Sweden’s fault. x) 

- For many years Norway was the one who made sure Denmark and Sweden didn’t get themselves killed. Nowadays he still does, but at least he has help from Finland and Iceland now. x) 

- Iceland loves his older siblings and Finland very much, but by god does he wish he wasn’t the only normal one. (Spoiler alert: He isn’t one either.) xD

- Norway and Finland are best friends. Fight me. 

- Sweden’s eyesight is complete and utter shit, but he doesn’t realize he needs stronger glasses since they DO help a little compared to being without them. With that said, even with his current glasses his eyesight is absolutely terrible and in modern age Sweden would likely count as legally blind. 

- Because of this Sweden can’t SEE magical creatures, but he can hear and feel them. Sweden also has magic, but prefers not to use it since he’s not as good at controlling it like Norway is. 

- Long before the Viking era Sweden once found a bear cub, mistook it for a puppy, and then adopted it. Needlessly to say Mama Bear wasn’t too happy about it, and Sweden has since then been permanently banned from adopting any animal without the input from one of the other Nordics. (Not that it really stops him). x’)

- Norway loves his mountains and to this day still have a cabin hidden away amongst them. The other Nordics are the only ones to know where this cabin is hidden. 

- Norway, Sweden and Finland also share a secret cabin around Finland’s side of the Thee-Country Cairn. (The name of the place/point where Norway’s, Sweden’s and Finland’s borders meet each other). This is the cabin usually used for the Nordic meetings and/or vacations together. 

- One time Iceland accidentally said ‘Dadmark’ instead of ‘Denmark’. No, he still hasn’t been able to live it down, and Denmark cried tears of happiness when it happened. x) 

- Both Norway and Sweden are autistic, while Denmark has ADHD. 

- Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Iceland are considered cousins to the main-Germanics. (Prussia, Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Liechtenstein).  

- Everyone except for Finland know about Sweden’s quite frankly obvious romantic feelings for Finland. The only reason why the rest of the Nordics haven’t intervened yet is because they’re unsure if Finland returns Sweden’s romantic feelings or not. 

- (The part of me which ships SuFin wants to say Finland returns Sweden’s romantic feelings, but it took a longer time for Finland to realize his feelings were romantic or if he even wanted a romantic relationship to begin with. If you’re not a SuFin-shipper you can just ignore this part though). 

- Iceland sometimes feels insecure about how different he is compared to the other Nordics, but he takes comfort in that his language is the one who today is the closest related to old (west) Norse. 

- The Nordics know a lot of languages. Those include: . The main Nordic languages. (Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic and Finnish).  . Old Norse (West, East & old Gutnish). . Greenlandic (Kalaallisut, Tunumiit, Inuktum).  . Faroese. . Meänkieli. . The Sami languages. (North, South, Lule, Ume, Pite, East - etc).  . German. (The old trading language back in the days).  . French. (Was the Royal/Court language).  . Jiddish/Yiddish.  . Hebrew. . Russian. (More so Finland than the rest).  . English.  . Spanish, Italian, Mandarin and Greek. (School-level). 

Bonus:  - Sealand is also fluent in Scottish Gaelic, Irish Gaelic, Irish and Welsh.  - As an internet nation Ladonia pretty much knows all languages which exists written on the internet or within an audio file- but he counts Swedish, Ladonska and Latin (yes, this is true) as his native languages. 

- Sweden is Ladonia’s and Sealand’s Pappa (Swedish for papa/dad), while Finland goes by Isä (Finnish for dad). 

- Sealand originally had a hard time learning Swedish and Finnish, since they’re so different to English, but with time and hard work eventually managed to master them both before tackling the rest of the Nordic languages.  

- Sealand rotates between staying with England and Sweden, and they were once forced to use “Divorced Parents” as a cover when some nosy humans got a little too close with their investigations. Denmark thought it was hilarious. x’D

- Iceland pretends to be a bit grumpy/annoyed about it, but secretly loves it when he is sometimes asked if he can baby-sit Sealand and Ladonia. (Partly because he’s finally not the youngest and gets to be in charge). x) 

. 

[ The End ]. 

(For now?)

[seacollectsrivers]

@patrickian and i think also @whenwinterfell tagged me <3 (and also @railroad-charmer whose recent own post of this reminded me i had this in my drafts heh)

Nickname: None! Both bc i'm not gonna tell u but also like 1) we don't reeeaaallly do nicknames here and 2) both Bo and my birthname are too short for shortened versions. But ig Sea? No one has called me Sea yet but it's there!

Zodiac: Pisces. Moon? Sun? idk. i'm a March kid.

Height: 1.68m babeyyy

Last movie I saw: Rewatch of Dogma! Still good. Can deffo see their comedic influences from Good Omens and Douglas Adams. Since I drafted this my latest film was a first watch of Donnie Darko. I really liked it!!

Last thing I googled: The cast of Pride 2014, bc i forgot George MacKay's name and a dude in a youth party debate i was watching looked like an off brand version of him lol

Favourite Musician: Right now? Dizraeli

Song stuck in my head: Soldiers by Delara

Other blogs: Nada

Blogs following: 184

Amount of sleep: fuck if i know, my rhythm is whack atm

Lucky number: 9! also my favourite number. i love 9.

What am I wearing: a brown t-shirt that says "Fred, Kjærleik, og Resirkulering", a pair of woolen black shorts, and a black hoodie with my Folkehøyskole name & logo on.

Dream job: I do not know lmaoooo i don't really have long term dreams these days. Just vibing i guess. I do want a job, i just don't have a dream job.

Dream trip: I'm gonna copy Patrick and say New Zealand! Also wanna do another summer train trip but focus more on eastern Europe. And ofc go back to Ireland to visit friends, but that WILL happen, not really a dream. Just a plan!

Favourite food: Anything ovenbaked and cheesy. OOh and i genuinely love reindeer uh.... skav? For anyone who can read this: steike reinsdyrskav og løk og hvitløk, tilsette rømme, salt & pepper, kanskje timian hvis du har, føkkings MWAH fantastisk elsker det.

Play an instrument: I played the saxophone in a school band for 8+ years! reckon i still could, yeah. I still have my notes, just not a sax.

Languages: English and Norwegian. Passing knowledge of Danish and Swedish, can kind of read Icelandic given enough time, know very basic Spanish and Irish.

Favourite Songs: Right now?? Fuck uuuh.... I Freak Out by Dizraeli i guess.

Random fact: I used to collect elephant things. Little statues, keychains, whatever. Recently found a portion of them in my dad's basement, but they had been colonized by some kind of insect :(

Describe yourself as aesthetic things: Good, long, warm hugs, cool & dry winter mornings in the sun, lazy evenings doing nothing on a couch, pints at an old grubby pub while people watching, old heavy scrangly trams in cerulean blue, ticket stubs from 2005 when they cost 15kr, museum exhibitions meant for kids.

[juni-ravenhall]

What languages do you know? I've been learning German for a while and it's fulfilling being able to hold a conversation haha

i know german too :D and great job getting to that level!!

- native swedish - fluent english (mostly learnt by immersion in games n fandom etc) - german from school + got good at it by immersion (reading manga etc) so im theoretically rly good at it but i barely use it anymore so its more like i understand a lot but dont rly speak it, i went to germany a bunch of times - japanese from self-study + school + immersion (im not super advanced but i got around just fine in japan for a year using only japanese so im somewhere like low-intermediate idk) - i understand a lot of norwegian and danish from the swedish similarities + i spent time reading books in norwegian listening to music in danish etc aka immersion again - a little bit of icelandic bc i lived in iceland ~2 years and studied it some in classes + immersion (and its also similar to swe/nor/dan) - i know some esperanto (i can get around in basic convo) bc my abusive ex was into it and pushed me into it, in japan we spent time meeting up with esperantists so i got a lot of immersion again - im currently very slowly learning hebrew bc of gf and bc its my fav lang (alongside dutch)

i also randomly studied for a bit more langs, and i can understand some simple things in romance langs like anything of latin french spanish italian etc. i understand some words of finnish since most my family is from the very north of sweden and finnish is rly present there (we went to the north a lot). i understand a decent amount of dutch bc its similar to other langs i know + its my fav language (alongside hebrew) so i like listening to it. etc... just a lot of bits and pieces. i know linguistics related stuff in general like i was interested in grammar and etymology and all that

the reason this list is so long is bc language was always something i was interested in since childhood lol, i at one point considered becoming a linguistics professor but i suck at school so i couldnt do that. these days i barely study langs anymore and dont do much with it, but i hope to get more or less fluent in hebrew eventually

[maticide666]

my eurovision top 39 songs (finally)

anyway i finally got my top 39 completed. under a read more because it can get kinda long with the commentary i added klfdja;sflk (and by that i mean VERY long, maybe a wall of text if i have a lot to say about the song.)

none of this takes rehearsals into account.

basically, 39-37 i don't like, 36-35 are meh, 34-25 are decent, 24-18 are good, 17-12 i enjoy listening to a lot, 11-4 i love, and I would pay for votes for top 3 if i could.

39. Azerbaijan - Efendi - Mata Hari - Honestly, I kinda want to like this song. The instrumentation is nice, especially with the Azeri instruments. Efendi's vocals are ok during the verses. However, her vocals during the MA-MA-MA-MATA HARI part makes this song utterly unlistenable for me. It is just so distracting and ear-grating. Not great for my sensitive ears. And that is without taking anything else into account.

38. Estonia - Uku Suviste - The Lucky One - For some reason reminds me of a boring modern country song. Bland af. At least the melody of the chorus is nice.

37. Cyprus - Elena Tsagrinou - El Diablo - Discount Lady Gaga at the best points of this song. Feels like three songs at once. Also, the lyrics seem like they just went all "What Spanish-sounding words sound spicy? Taco? Tamale? Mamacita?" As a Spanish speaker and as someone of Mexican descent who enjoys those foods, this annoys the living shit out of me. At least I can make El Diablo/Fallen Angel memes out of this. (Honestly, I don't mind the gratuitous Spanish with the words El Diablo.) Also, this song got real old real quick.

36. Slovenia - Ana Soklič - Amen - The gospel vibe is nice, but there is just too much Christianity in it for me to enjoy this song. Sorry, Ana.

35. Moldova - Natalia Gordienko - Sugar - Sounds like a sugary version of Siren Song by MARUV. Kinda boring, but enjoyable in the right circumstances.

34. Georgia - Tornike Kipiani - You - Good to listen to when mind feels blank. At first I kinda liked this song, but nowadays this song has lost its charm. This won't sound out of place alongside boring 70s slow classic rock songs.

33. Austria - Vincent Bueno - Amen - Not something I would listen to regularly, but still nice. For me, easily the biggest downgrade from 2020.

32. Greece - Stefania - Last Dance - Pleasant to listen to, not much else.

31. Portugal - The Black Mamba - Love Is On My Side - Good song, but not my cup of tea. Unfortunately, some great songs have to be near the bottom of my ranking.

30. Germany - Jendrik - I Don't Feel Hate - A fun song to listen to. The novelty wears off after a while. The feel good vibes and ukulele are nice.

29. Israel - Eden Alene - Set Me Free - the song release version was bland and boring, but the revamp. Now THAT is good stuff. The song doesn't seem so empty anymore. I miss the key change from the original, though.

28. Spain - Blas Cantó - Voy A Quedarme - A very emotional and beautiful song from Spain. Again, not usually my cup of tea. However, the melody somehow gives me a nostalgic vibe.

27. North Macedonia - Vasil - Here I Stand - DAMN Vasil has a lovely voice. Nice that he's showing it off here. Too slow of a song for me to enjoy regularly, though.

26. Albania - Anxhela Peristeri - Karma - I don't have much to say other than this song is nice.

25. Bulgaria - VICTORIA - Growing Up Is Getting Old - Pleasant to listen to, but depending on my mood I think this is a beautiful song but not my cup of tea or a complete snoozefest.

24. Serbia - Hurricane - Loco Loco - Fun song, but it feels like something is lacking, and I can't quite put my finger on it.

23. San Marino - Senhit - Adrenalina - Once the initial hype from Flo Rida being on the song died down, this became another typical Eurovision bop.

22. Sweden - Tusse - Voices - At first I thought the song was completely unremarkable and couldn't understand how this won Melodifestivalen. Nowadays it's a nice song to chill to. I gotta respect a perfect televote score from the national final.

21. Ireland - Lesley Roy - MAPS - nice.

20. Croatia - Albina - Tick Tock - Grew on me slightly. Shoutout for including a verse in Croatian.

19. Switzerland - Gjon's Tears - Tout l'Univers - Another grower for me. Doesn't hit as hard as his song from last year, but I dig it.

18. France - Barbara Pravi - Voilà - Lovely chanson right here. I wish it didn't take forever to pick up, though. I was about to completely give up on this song in the middle of my first listen. I'm glad I didn't.

17. Belgium - Hooverphonic - The Wrong Place - Classy. Not much else to say.

16. Ukraine - Go-A - Shum - I'd definitely go rave to this song. I kept finding this song hard to rank due to the white voice. I couldn't decide if I absolutely adored it or if I found it grating. Maybe I just wasn't feeling well when I first thought about it.

15. Lithuania - The Roop - Discoteque - Lots of fun, doesn't have the charm that On Fire had last year. I would dance to this song.

14. Poland - RAFAŁ - The Ride - I actually kinda like this song???? Even with Rafal's vocals??? I know he has political controversies, but I can't help but think this song is nice. A better, less controversial singer would benefit this song, though. I'm not counting the revamp just yet since it was released too recently.

13. Latvia - Samanta Tīna - The Moon Is Rising - This song gives me nostalgic mid to late 2000s hip hop vibes. The guitars in this song are lovely.

12. Romania - ROXEN - Amnesia - Definitely something that can put me in a trance if I'm in the right mood.

11. Czechia - Benny Cristo - omaga - Nice, catchy, I would dance to this.

10. Malta - Destiny - Je Me Casse - Damn, Destiny has a lovely voice! And the song itself is wonderful. I'm not a fan of the amount of Swedish talent being used instead of Maltese talent, but I really do enjoy listening to this.

9. Denmark - Fyr og Flamme - Øve Os På Hinanden - another really fun song! This really grew on me. Nowadays if I want to listen to a Eurovision song, this is one of the first songs I think of.

8. The Netherlands - Jeangu Macrooy - Birth of a New Age - I can vibe with this. You can hear the passion in this song. I wish I could let my body do the talking right now, but y'all can't see that with just a tumblr text post.

7. Russia - Manizha - Russian Woman - I was NOT expecting this to come out of Russia when it won the national final. I wasn't expecting to like this either. The message is great, the instrumental is great, everything about this is brilliant.

6. United Kingdom - James Newman - Embers - A funky song. I LOVE James's voice. Massive upgrade from last year in my opinion. I'm a sucker for brass in an upbeat song. Unfortunately, I have had the staging kinda spoiled and I am VERY skeptical about this coming out of bottom five. I'm done with the BBC.

5. Australia - Montaigne - Technicolour - There is a Lot happening in this song and I am all in for it. I'm kinda terrible at parsing lyrics, but it's a non-issue when I can follow Montaigne's voice and forget about the lyrics. Ironically enough, it's Montaigne's voice that also worries me this Eurovision season - mostly whether she was able to pull off her live on tape performance off.

4. Iceland - Daði og Gagnamagnið - 10 Years - I didn't think Daði could pull it off against this year, but he did it. I like this just a little more than Think About Things, which was my favorite song last year. I'm still a little gutted that this pandemic robbed him of a probable victory, but I've made peace with it. I still need to learn the dance moves, though.

3. Italy - Måneskin - Zitti E Buoni - FUCK YEAH A KICKASS ROCK SONG IN EUROVISION! This song gave me massive rock en español vibes on my fist listen, and honestly this is something I would bang my head to if I had the same body I did when I was 15.

2. Norway - TIX - Fallen Angel - I was not expecting to like this song much, let alone becoming THIS obsessed with TIX. In fact, he wasn't even on my radar for winning MGP. I listened to Ut Av Mørket for the first time and thought something like 'this is boring af, but at least it's in Norwegian'. And then he changed it to English, which I wasn't a fan of at first. And then one day the lyrics clicked - especially with my own struggles with mental illness. To this day this is one of only two Eurovision songs to actually make me cry. Even now he still isn't my MGP winner (that honor goes to JORN), but he has definitely won my heart.

1. Finland - Blind Channel - Dark Side - To say that this song kicks ass would be an understatement for me. This song has just the right mix of rock, pop, and even metal. Ever since I found out that this song would be in the national final, I knew that it would be my favorite this whole Eurovision season regardless of who won UMK. Yes, my jaw dropped when I saw the lead Blind Channel had in UMK. I literally cancelled my plans to watch the MGP final live because of these guys. I am not disappointed. Even Måneskin couldn't bring these guys down in my ranking. And while the lyrics might be a bit iffy, they did get me through rough times. I hope these guys are able to bring rock music back like they want to. But for now, I will give them my (useless tbh) douze points.

[meneatyoghurt]

I keep seeing stuff about Western audiences and dubbing foreign films but...I don’t think dubbing is a huge thing in the UK? Someone correct me if I’m wrong. For one thing, subtitling I assume is cheaper. But also dubbing is often just awful.

We have plenty of foreign TV (a whole collection of it called Walter Presents on Channel 4 and lots of it on BBC too) and films in other languages can do pretty well too. E.G. a quick look at the BBC streaming service shows there’s currently a Japanese film available, a Korean film, an Italian detective series, a French thriller series and an Icelandic series, all subbed. Channel 4 has Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Spanish, Dutch, Flemish, French, Croatian, Japanese, Portuguese, German and more. I saw a trailer for Parasite at the cinema the other day - it was subtitled. And, as far as I’m aware, subtitles are the norm in plenty of other European countries. I’ve watched English films in other countries in the cinema and they’re subbed, not dubbed. A lot of people feel films/TV are ruined by being dubbed.

Is this America’s fault? Do they dub everything? Is “America” being used as a synonym for “the West” again?

(Although I have to say, for people who struggle with subtitles, I think it’s rather unfair to be too harsh and dismiss everyone as lazy. I know some dyslexic people struggle to keep up with subtitles, for example. Having said that, I hate dubbing. It’s weird.)

[vikingqueer]

22 Questions

@taliskermortem tagged me in this and I love talking about myself so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

RULES: simply answer the following 22 q’s and then tag 22 (or however many) people you’d love to get to know more!

Name/Nickname: Amalie. I don’t really have one consistent nickname, but if you genuinely can’t say my name (something along the lines of /a'mæːljə/, but I’m not super proficient in IPA), Am is fine (and coincidentally also the name I give baristas in other countries).

Zodiac sign: Aries sun, Sagittarius moon, Taurus Rising (I don’t actually know what any of this means, but people on here seem to love listing all three)

Height: 167cm, which is somewhere along the lines of 5′6.

Hogwarts House: Gryffindor

Last thing I googled: “sommertid”, because the birth chart calculator told me to not take summertime into account.

Favourite musician/s: MIKA, hands down. Other musicians I like are dodie, Claudia Boleyn, Ben Platt, Oh Land, Stromae, Tom Rosenthal, and Panic! At The Disco. Lately I’ve also been getting into Hozier. My guilty pleasures are Thomas Holm and Johnny Deluxe.

Last song I listened to: Clean Eyes – SYML

Song stuck in my head: Selvmord På Dansegulvet – Thomas Holm (because this fucking made me think about him. And now we’re at it I might as well mention that this is where my blog title is form)

Followers: Idk, I think it’s like 420 or something (ayyyy nice)

Following: 669 (ayy kinda nice and also 3 too many). That’s just what happens when you have many and varied interests.

Amount of sleep: I go for 8-9 hours every night, but since I’m in my gap year and only work part time, it’s usually anywhere between 5 and 12 hours.

Lucky number: 9

What I’m wearing: Underwear and a grey t-shirt with a neon flamingo on it.

Dream Job: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ that’s why I’m gonna be taking a gap year more. I’m currently considering studying linguistics or forest and nature management (cand. silv.) which are two very different things.

Dream Trip: Lately I’ve been feeling really horny for Italy, but idk what that’s about. This summer I’m going to Prague, which I’m really excited for! I do however also really want to go to Iceland or the Faroese Islands and I would also like to spend an extended period (read: not just a few days) in Sweden or Norway or Finland (why are literally all the Nordic countries cooler than Denmark). I’d love to go to Greenland some time, but it’s not at the top of my list. I’m also thinking India would be a cool country to visit, as well as Cuba. There are so many places I want to go, idk what to fucking tell you. Top of my list is Prague currently, because I’ve been wanting to go back there the past 5? 6? years and it’s finally happening!

Favourite food: Oh that’s a hard one, I love food. My go to foods if I want something that resembles a dish and is easy are fried or scrambled eggs or grilled cheese.

Instruments: I play the violin (technically, I haven’t played much the past few years), as well as some piano, a bit of ukulele and a tiny bit of guitar. Once upon a time I managed to get decent at recorder (which is an awful instrument thank you very much), but I’ve forgotten most of it.

Languages: My native language is Danish and I speak English fluently. I’m decent at reading and writing Spanish, but not so much speaking and listening. I’m trying pretty hard to learn German but it’s weird because I kind of already understand a lot of German due to it being close to Danish, but I struggle to string together sentences. And then there’s obviously the mutual intelligibility privilege that comes with Swedish and Norwegian.

Favourite song/s: That’s a tie between Origin Of Love and Les Baisers Perdus, both by MIKA.

Random fact: I only learned to roll my r’s a year and a half into learning Spanish.

Aesthetic: Oh that’s a tough one. @riceandquinoah once made this for me and I think it’s pretty on point:

I also have this tag with 4 posts in it only.

I tag @riceandquinoah @thegrooound @boxclown @videogayqueen @norawithasideoffries @touring-is-never-boring @cevulusvoluptatemcapit @softeliot @nessauepa @valtersvn @badwolfboy42 @languagemoose @feminist-goddess @scandiblr @osariemenissodonewiththisshit and anyone else who might want to do it, fuck I don’t know 22 people.

If you see this and want to do it, please DO IT and tag me, I love getting to know people!

And lastly, if you see this and are confused as to who I am, you might know me from one of my sideblogs, @bievamohn or @vikinglanguage.

[productiveborg]

IOS Apps for Productivity

Hello everyone! 

Recently I have been trying to maximize my productivity by deleting distracting apps off of my phone, and replacing these with more “productive apps”. Here is a list and review of some of the apps I have used over the past week. 

Drops 

Drops is a fun, minimalist way to practice and learn new vocabulary for your target language. Here is a list of the languages they offer: Arabic, Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin), Danish, Dutch, English (American and British), Esperanto, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese (Brazilian and European), Russian, Spanish (Castilian and Latin American), Swedish, Tagalog, Turkish and Vietnamese. They have a really nice variety of languages and you can choose between basic and intermediate when you start out. The goal of Drops is to get you to practice for 5 minutes a day (which they time for you as you're practicing!). You can choose a "path" (enthusiast, traveler, business, student, romantic) to further customize the experience. One downside to drops is that you cannot customize what vocabulary words you want to work on, which can be frustrating for someone who knows a lot of the words they start you out on. Overall I give drops 8/10

Overcast

Overcast is an app that gives you access to many different kinds of podcasts. They separate them into different categories and let you download the podcast episodes individually. I am personally using it to listen to TED Radio Hour and This Won't Hurt a Bit, along with other random episodes of podcasts that I find interesting. They have a great variety, breaking down podcasts into the following categories: Most recommended, Society & Culture, Technology, Comedy, Business, Science & Medicine, Arts, News & Politics, TV & Film, Education, Music, Sports & Recreation, Games & Hobbies, Gimlet, Radiotopia, Slate, Earwolf, Relay FM, The Incomparable, Mamixum Fun, and 5BY5. You can pretty much find anything that you could be interested, and the app is simple and user friendly. Overall I give drops 10/10 

Peak 

Peak is a fun brain training app that is simple to use (my favorite thing in an app). It essentially curates a "workout" for you that changes with level. Everyone will have a different experience and opinion of this app, depending on what goals you are trying to reach. I wanted to replace the 5+ mindless games on my phone with something a little more beneficial and productive, so I downloaded Peak. Try it out and see if it helps you remember a few more things throughout the day. Overall I give Peak 9/10  

Plant Nanny

Plant Nanny is a water tracking app that I have been using for years. It is a cute and simple way to track your water, and you get to see a cute little animated plant grow (or die) depending on your water intake! It customizes your water intake by weight and level of activity, and it gives you a count of how many glasses you'll need per day. The one downside is it leaves red notifications (my biggest pet peeve) in the home-screen counting down your water, unless you turn them off. I really think this is a great app for any person that wants to monitor their water intake, or even just feel a little bit more productive and healthy. There are many different plant options (though you start with two at the beginning) and pot options. This is just a really fun and cute app. Overall I give Plant Nanny 10/10

Duolingo 

Duolingo has been the app I use the most over the past three months of 2018. This is the perfect app for someone wanting to pursue a language, whether it be casually or working up to fluency. Before I decided on Spanish I explored a few other languages, and every course is curated well and is fun to complete. The languages offered are the following: Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Dutch, Swedish, Irish, Turkish, Norwegian, Danish, Polish, Korean, Hebrew, Greek, Vietnamese, Chinese, Esperanto, Ukrainian, Welsh, Hungarian, Romanian, Swahili, High Valyrian (yes, seriously), Czech, Klingon (I may or may not be learning this). This doesn't include the multiple languages that are "hatching" (in progress) including Hindi, Indonesian, and Arabic. Duolingo has everything broken down in to lessons which include saying the words into the mic. listening and typing what you hear, translating sentences, matching vocabulary, having conversations with bots, and reading comprehension. You can choose to not have ads for 9.99/month but the apps features are free to the public. Seriously consider checking it out even if you want to learn just a few words in a random language like Klingon. Overall I give Duolingo 10/10

Actions & Timepage by Moleskine 

While these are two separate apps, they work hand in hand and are made by the same company. I am all more minimalist apps (as you can tell), but especially when it comes to to-do lists and calendars. The apps sync so that you can assign items on your to-do list for a specific day, and Timepage syncs to different calendars on your phone so that everything is in one place. You get a 7 day free trial and then pay around $8/month to use the apps. I love the simplicity and the ability to not only assign to do tasks to a specific day, but also lists that are color coded to your liking. The custom color choices are lovely and the app setups are modern and appealing. Everyone will have a different feeling towards this app, depending on what you are looking for in a planner/to-do list. Overall I give Actions & Timepage 9/10

IOS Utilities 

Simple, free, and they come on your phone already! If your looking to start organizing yourself and get a good system going before jumping in to more complicated apps, I highly recommend utilizing what is already on your phone. Notes + Reminders can be used for to-do lists, goals, brainstorming, doodling, etc. Your iPhone calendar is pretty customizable and simple to use. Before testing out other apps, especially if you're just starting out with using a system of organization, use what you already have at your disposal. You don't need a fancy app to be productive and organized.

[cromulentbookreview]

Definitely Not Chocolate Wine

Because life in late 19th century Paris was basically just Another Period but real.

To my fellow non-French speakers out there: vin de coca does NOT mean “chocolate wine.” It really doesn’t.

And by that, I mean: Sensational, sequel to Spectacle by Jodie Lynn Zdrok!

Paris! June, 1889! The same year as The Gilded Wolves! The year of the Exposition Universelle! It’s almost time for the 100th anniversary of the Storming of the Bastille! The Eiffel Tower makes it’s grand debut! Vincent Van Gogh paints The Starry Night! The Wall Street Journal is established! Seattle, in spite of the incessant rain, somehow manages to catch fire! Bustles are slowly on their way out, but weighty ornaments added to dresses is super in! Ribbons! Flounces! Lace! Bows! All that, plus corsets laced far tighter than they should be and no air conditioning! Sounds great! 

Anyway: it’s been two years since the events of Spectacle, and our heroine Nathalie is now 18. Things are going pretty great: she no longer has to hide her identity writing her morgue column for Le Petit Journal, she has a steady boyfriend in her fellow insightful, Jules, and she’s even found a workaround for the memory loss caused by her visions: she keeps extremely detailed journals, keeping a record of everything she does in case she forgets later. With the support of her family and friends, Nathalie might just be able to pull of this whole “insightful who witnesses the deaths of murder victims from the perspective of the killer for some reason then reports those visions to the police but suffers memory loss as a side-effect” gig work. 

Just so long as she ignores all the lingering looks she gives to her friend, the morgue’s police liaison Christophe. And her lingering guilt over the death of her friend Agnès at the hands of the Dark Artist serial killer. And her institutionalized aunt’s deteriorating mental health.

But besides all of that, Nathalie’s life is going pretty well. She’s 18 at the height of Belle Époque, routinely attending the Exposition Universelle with her boyfriend and her best friends. Life is good!

Until Nathalie and her friends stumble upon a severed head among the sculptures of the Galerie Rapp. Then, to make things worse, a spectator jostles the pillar on which the head is sitting, knocking it over. The head falls and, without thinking, Nathalie puts out her hands to catch it.

Much more than una catastrofia con una pelota de beisbol.

Anyway, this causes Nathalie to have a vision, and, faster than you can say “cocaine wine,” the whole of Paris is gripped by the both the spectacle (first book title drop!) of the Exposition, and the rampage of a new serial killer who dumps his victims on Exposition grounds. The killer is soon dubbed Le Rasoir by the press, as they behead their victims with a guillotine. 

Fun fact: the last time France used the guillotine to execute someone was in 1977. That seems far too recent to me, but, I mean, I guess it works...?

So far as sequels go, Sensational gives us more of Nathalie’s story without being bogged down with exposition and questions. We get to jump into the action right away, but there are plenty of callbacks in case you may have forgotten a detail or two from Spectacle. My favorite part, of both Spectacle and Sensational is all the detail we get about what life is like in 19th century Paris. Paris is a fascinating place in general, but Paris during the late 1880s, early 1890s? During the era of the Third French Republic, Belle Époque and the birth of Cabaret? If time machines were a thing, I would definitely go and party in late 19th century Paris - hang around Montmantre, get wasted at Le Chat Noir...

Speaking of which: one of the things I will freely admit is that I don’t speak French. Like, at all. I know a few words here and there, but Deutsch ist immer noch eine wunderschöne Sprache. So, in Spectacle there’s a scene where Nathalie is hanging out with her friends Simone and Louis along with her boyfriend, Jules, at Simone’s apartment. Simone has managed to get her hands on a bottle of vin de coca. Now, for some reason, I immediately thought “oooh, chocolate wine!” 

Yeah, vin de coca is not chocolate wine. That much became obvious as the scene progressed, and I felt like a total moron. 

Vin de coca is wine with cocaine in it. 

Because in the 19th century, that was just fine. I mean, just watch The Knick if you want to see just how much late-19th and early-20th century medicine relied on cocaine. (Seriously, watch The Knick - I’m still pissed that show got cancelled). 

Still, whenever I see the word “coca” I think chocolate. Because chocolate is great. Even though I know a “pain au chocolat” literally translates to “chocolate bread” and coca refers to any of the four plants in the family Erythroxylaceae, but mostly Erythroxylum coca, which is where cocaine comes from. It’s where the “coca” in “coca cola” comes from. Seriously, how did I miss that?

Speaking of pain au chocolat: fun fact, the Japanese word for bread, pan (パン) is a word they lifted from the Portuguese after the Portuguese went to Japan in the 16th century. Pan means bread in Spanish, in Portuguese it’s Pão (I guess the Japanese had a hard time with the tilde and went with the Spanish version instead) and it’s barely a step away from the French word Pain and the Italian Pane.

Meanwhile, in Germany, we say Brot because the Romance languages are insane and we want nothing to do with them. Hurray for the Germanics! In Dutch, it’s brood, in Danish it’s brød, in Swedish it’s bröd, Norwegian? Brød (you’d think it’d be the Swedes to copy the Danes since they’re literally right next to each other but...nope). Icelandic? Brauð. English = bread! And in Afrikaans, Dutch’s weird, long-distance cousin? Brood. Yiddish? ברויט (broyt). Even the Welsh went with “bara” for bread. 

And in Finland, bread is called leipä, because Finnish is it’s own special brand of insanity. Same with Hungarian (kenyér = bread).

Damn, I’m kind of hungry. Maybe I should go and get some bread. Mmm. Gluten.

Anyway, my point being before I got off onto a bread tangent, the word “coca” instead of “cacao” or “chocolat” should’ve been a pretty big clue that what Nathalie and her friends were enjoying was NOT chocolate wine. Also the fact that they started to get really high while drinking it should’ve been a tip-off. 

Also, there’s a scene in season 1 of The Terror where the Goodest Sir, Harry D.S. Goodsir, offers the increasingly frantic Mr. Collins wine of coca as a treatment for his lead-poisoning-and-ice-diving-vision-induced crazies. Wine of coca is mostly, wait for it: 

How that would’ve helped a man going absolutely insane, I have no idea. I mean, wouldn’t cocaine wine make him more agitated? I don’t know, don’t ask me how 19th century medicine worked. Frankly, it’s a miracle anyone lived past the age of thirty back in those days. 

This whole tangent was an excuse for me to include some glorious gifs of the world’s Goodest Sir and King of all the Sideburns, Goodsir:

Watch season 1 of The Terror. Seriously, it’s amazing. How have you not watched it yet? Also, watch season 2 while you’re at it, both will hit you right in the feels but in different ways.

Anyway - the whole time I was reading Sensational, I was laboring under the delusion that this series would be a trilogy - I kept looking everywhere for the setup for book three, and finished the book fully believing that there would be another book.

Then I learned that this series was to be a duology. Not a trilogy. And that Sensational was to be the end of the story. Honestly? I was disappointed. I kind of wish I had looked that up going in, rather than blithely assuming that all YA serieses end up trilogies (or quartets. Or just, you know, never end at all). 

So while this book does give our characters a nice ending, there are still so many unanswered questions that could very well be answered by a third book. We never did find out what exactly caused Nathalie two-days worth of memory loss that made up the cliffhanger at the end of the first book. Like, what about all the other people who were affected by Dr. Henard’s magical mystery blood transfusions? How many people out there who, like Nathalie, inherited powers from their parents who took part in the experiment? Acgh, there’s just so much out there that can’t be covered in two books! Bah. That and I just need more YA mysteries set in late 19th century Paris. More, I says!

RECOMMENDED FOR: Fans of YA Historical Fantasy Fiction, 19th century Paris, murder mysteries, and badass girl journalist protagonists.

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR: Anyone familiar with the term hemolysis, anyone thinking that this was going to be a three-book thing, Lillian and Beatrice Bellacourt.

RATING: 4/5

RELEASE DATE: February 11, 2020.

TERROR RATING:

KNICK RATING:

ANOTHER PERIOD RATING: 

PARIS RATING:

ANTICIPATION LEVEL FOR THIRD BOOK THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN: Makalu.

[always-a-slut-4-ghouls]

I JUST learned that Duolingo is firing its human translators, FROM TUMBLR and I’m so fucking pissed. For all the reasons that affect the employees, but on a more personal level, I was using it to get started on two or three languages I’ve been planning to learn for YEARS and I had been pretty hopeful about it because my cousins family uses it and it’s free, but now I have to look for and consider a replacement for it and all of them cost money to use! The whole reason I was using an app was because it was not only more convenient, but also free. I could learn the basics without hunting for the best classes to take that would be worth the money and work with me because it was FREE! I could start learning the language FOR FREE before moving on to any paid classes! Now every alternative I find is like 12$ or has a million in app purchases and I don’t even know what works! I just want to learn how to read and maybe write. Aside from Spanish which I was going to, eventually, try to re-learn for more practical everyday use. It being of practical use in my area though it’s quite a bit easier to find in-person classes locally, even if I wanted to brush up on it before taking classes again. The main thing I was using Duolingo for was more personal and I had finally found a way to learn, at least the basics, without worrying about paying and if I was getting my money’s worth and if a subscription would be too much and if something came up would I have to cancel, ect.

I just wanted to learn Norwegian and Swedish so I could read old stuff about my family. I knew I would have to take more classes afterwards because I doubt Duolingo would cover the language during different time periods. English has changed so much in the last century, the last couple decades! Norwegian must have too… and Swedish as well. I didn’t know I would get so emotional about this but my eyes are watering. I thought I was going to start getting closer to reading those old postcards! I would like to be able to read more than that and it would be cool to one day speak those languages, but even just one small goal is enough to make me cry now. It’s not even like we don’t know what it says! Someone in my family found someone to translate it! But I wanted to be able to read it myself.

I know that the app doesn’t teach Icelandic either, but I thought I’d start with the easier two. My grandparents have a bunch of stuff about learning Icelandic anyway.

A huge chunk of the text I wrote for this post got deleted, but I am just really upset about all this and I’m crying about a postcard.

[playhub]

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Cobb, Jackson R. - Search and Rescue.

Jackson Rebel Cobb. Born in 1991. Search and Rescue.  Born in Chapel Hill, NC.  Grew up outside of Chapel Hill, and spent his youth hunting and fishing in the Blue Ridge Mtns.  In high school he began training in Search and Rescue after a younger cousin was lost for two days in the wilderness.  He has an AS in Criminal Justice and a BS in Environmental Studies.  He volunteered as Search and Rescue all the way through college.  Jack, as he prefers to be called, is tall with blonde hair and blue eyes.

Jack worked as a Forest Ranger in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, leading up many of their Search and Rescue Operations.  He'd been in DC for a conference when the Helicarriers fell, and immediately ran to the Potomac to start pulling people out of the river, making sure others were nearby to start CPR or do basic first aid and then diving in again to pull more survivors out.  He worked at it until nightfall, then rested while manning a coffee station for divers looking for any survivors trapped in air pockets in the wreckage.  

He caught Ethel's eye, and she got his name and contact info, ostensibly to thank him.  After the dust had settled, she called him up to offer him a job with SI/SHIELD as it was shaking out.  Jack thanked her, and told her he really wasn't much for a lot of people.  Then she explained the job.

The job she offered him involves traveling to various of SHIELD's safe houses and making sure they're stocked, functional and uncompromised, as well as acting as Search and Rescue, and checking up on one or another of Tony's properties.  Ethel has authorized Jack to train in all varieties of S&R, including snow, coastal, high seas and mountain terrain.  He was one of the crew sent to retrieve Tony from Siberia.  

Jack is anti-Accords, but believes in doing his job.  To the best of his knowledge, his job is making sure that SHIELD safe houses in the wildernesses of the world are not compromised or being used by anyone inappropriate.  Ethel has told him that he has wide latitude in his definition of inappropriate and compromised.  He has, in fact, come across Cap and the others hiding out in "forgotten" SHIELD properties, and has left piles of supplies in front of the door, vanishing into the wilderness before they could spot him, thanks to his knowledge of codes and camera placement.  

He found during Mountain and Winter SAR training that he rather likes cross-country skiing and snow-shoe-ing.  He is an excellent shot, and has on one occasion. stopped to help Hawkeye dress a deer Hawkeye had killed.  He declined Hawkeye's invitation to go back to the safe house with him, stating plausible deniability.  "I can't tell them who I saw if I didn't see anyone."  

He has a huge crush on Cap, and would prefer not to actually have to talk to him, if he can avoid it.  He's pretty sure he'd just be scarlet and stammering the entire time.  

Jack speaks English, but is learning enough Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Laplander to get by, as well as a little Spanish and French.   He travels with a large Caucasian Shepherd he's trained as an SAR dog named Scout.

[realtorfox43]

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We need to be honest about that the PDF OCR program doesn't only have advantages. First of all, it can't recognize text one hundred percent correctly. Hence, its Optical Recognition Technology can only recognize text from images and graphics at a RR (recognizable rate). This rate largely depends on the PDF text fonts and background among other things. Note that PDF OCR is only capable of identifying text from PDF files and that it sees images and graphics as text as well. This is why you are likely to receive some unknown characters that you can remove in your Text Editor. So, get your OCR program today and turn your PDF files into electronic files you can easily edit.

PDF OCR Review: Convert Any PDF Document into Editable Text PDF OCR How-to Article: How to Convert Scanned PDF to Text

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OCR is abbreviation of Optical Character Recognition, which is the electronic translation of images to editable text.

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Contents

What is Capture2Text?

Capture2Text enables users to quickly OCR a portion of the screen using a keyboard shortcut. The resulting text will be saved to the clipboard by default.

Conceptual illustration:

Capture2Text is free and licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

Download

The latest version can be found on the Capture2Text download page hosted by SourceForge.

System Requirements

Supported operating systems:

Windows 7

Windows 8/8.1

Windows 10

Note: Windows XP support has been dropped as of Capture2Text v4.0.

How to Launch Capture2Text (no installation required)

Unzip the contents of the zip file.

Double-click on Capture2Text.exe. You should see the Capture2Text icon on the bottom-right of your screen (though it might be hidden in which case you will have to click on the 'Show hidden icons' arrow).

Installing Additional OCR Languages

By default Capture2Text comes packaged with the following languages: English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Spanish.

Follow these steps if you would like to install additional OCR languages:

Download the appropriate OCR language dictionary.

Open the '.zip' file you just downloaded with 7-Zip or similar decompression software.

Drag all files contained within the zip file to the tessdata folder:

Restart Capture2Text.

The following OCR languages are supported:

Afrikaans (afr) Greek (ell) Odiya (ori) Albanian (sqi) Gujarati (guj) Panjabi (pan) Amharic (amh) Haitian (hat) Persian (fas) Ancient Greek (grc) Hebrew (heb) Polish (pol) Arabic (ara) Hindi (hin) Portuguese (por)Assamese (asm) Hungarian (hun) Pushto (pus) Azerbaijani (aze) Icelandic (isl) Romanian (ron) Basque (eus) Indic (inc) Russian (rus) Belarusian (bel) Indonesian (ind) Sanskrit (san) Bengali (ben) Inuktitut (iku) Serbian (srp) Bosnian (bos) Irish (gle) Sinhala (sin) Bulgarian (bul) Italian (ita) Slovak (slk) Burmese (mya) Japanese (jpn) Slovenian (slv) Catalan (cat) Javanese (jav) Spanish (spa) Cebuano (ceb) Kannada (kan) Swahili (swa) Central Khmer (khm) Kazakh (kaz) Swedish (swe) Cherokee (chr) Kirghiz (kir) Syriac (syr) Chinese - Simplified (chi_sim) Korean (kor) Tagalog (tgl) Chinese - Traditional (chi_tra)Kurukh (kru) Tajik (tgk) Croatian (hrv) Lao (lao) Tamil (tam) Czech (ces) Latin (lat) Telugu (tel) Danish (dan) Latvian (lav) Thai (tha) Dutch (nld) Lithuanian (lit) Tibetan (bod) Dzongkha (dzo) Macedonian (mkd) Tigrinya (tir) English (eng) Malay (msa) Turkish (tur) Esperanto (epo) Malayalam (mal) Uighur (uig) Estonian (est) Maltese (mlt) Ukrainian (ukr) Finnish (fin) Marathi (mar) Urdu (urd) Frankish (frk) Math/Equations (equ) Uzbek (uzb) French (fra) Middle English (1100-1500) (enm)Vietnamese (vie)Galician (glg) Middle French (1400-1600) (frm) Welsh (cym) Georgian (kat) Nepali (nep) Yiddish (yid) German (deu) Norwegian (nor)

How to Perform a Standard OCR Capture

Follow these steps to perform a standard OCR capture using the capture box:

Position your mouse pointer at the top-left corner of the text that you want to OCR.

Press the OCR hotkey (Windows Key + Q) to begin an OCR capture.

Move your mouse to resize the blue capture box over the text that you want to OCR. You may hold down the right mouse button and drag to move the entire capture box.

Press the OCR hotkey again (or left-click or press ENTER) to complete the OCR capture. The OCR'd text will be placed in the clipboard and a popup showing the captured text will appear (the popup may be disabled in the settings).

As with all OCR captures, you must manually select the language that you would like to OCR from the settings.

To change the OCR language, right-click the Capture2Text tray icon, select the OCR Language option and then select the desired language.

To quickly switch between 3 languages, use the OCR language quick access keys: Windows Key + 1, Windows Key + 2, and Windows Key + 3. The quick access languages may be specified in the settings.

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When Chinese or Japanese is selected, you should specify the text direction (vertical/horizontal/auto) using the text direction hotkey: Windows Key + O. If auto is selected, horizontal will be used when the capture width is more than twice the height, otherwise vertical will be used. The text direction also affects how furigana is stripped from Japanese text.

(For Japanese) Capture2Text will attempt to automatically strip out furigana.

How to Perform a Text Line OCR Capture

Capture2Text can automatically capture the line of text that is closest to the mouse pointer.

Follow these steps to perform a Text Line OCR Capture:

Position your mouse pointer on or near the line of text to capture.

Press the Text Line OCR Capture hotkey (Windows Key + E).

Capture2Text will outline the captured text and save the OCR result to the clipboard.

Example:

How to Perform a Forward Text Line OCR Capture

Capture2Text can automatically capture the line of text starting at the character that is closest to the mouse pointer and working forward.

Follow these steps to perform a Forward Text Line OCR Capture:

Position your mouse pointer on or near the character to start at.

Press the Forward Text Line OCR Capture hotkey (Windows Key + W).

Capture2Text will outline the captured text and save the OCR result to the clipboard.

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Example:

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How to Perform a Bubble OCR Capture

Capture2Text can automatically capture text contained within a comic book speech/thought bubble as long as the bubble is completely enclosed.

Follow these steps to perform a Bubble OCR Capture:

Position your mouse pointer in the empty part of the bubble (not on the text).

Press the bubble OCR Capture hotkey (Windows Key + S).

Capture2Text will outline the captured text and save the OCR result to the clipboard.

Example:

How to Specify the Active OCR Language

To specify the active OCR language, right-click the tray icon, click on OCR Language, and select an OCR languages from the list:

Translation

To enable the translation feature, start by opening the settings dialog (right-click tray icon and select 'Settings...'), and clicking on the Translate tab.

Check the 'Append translation to clipboard' checkbox to append the translated text to the clipboard using the provided separator.Check the 'Show translation in popup window' checkbox to display the translated text along side the OCR text in the popup window. For example:.

Each installed OCR language may be translated to a different language.

Note 1: Some OCR languages do not have translation support. Unsupported languages will not be displayed.

Note 2: The translation feature requires Internet access.

Settings

Right-click the Capture2Text tray icon in the bottom-right of your screen and then select the 'Settings...' option to bring up the Settings dialog. You may hover over many of the option labels to display a helpful tooltip explaining the option.

The Hotkeys tab allows you to specify which key and modifiers to use for each hotkey. To disable a hotkey, select '<Unmapped>' from the drop-down list.

Current OCR language: Specify the active OCR language to use. You may also specify the active OCR language in the tray icon menu.

Quick-Access Languages: The languages to use for each of the quick-access language hotkeys.

Whitelist: Inform the OCR engine that the captured text will only contain the provided characters.

Blacklist: Inform the OCR engine that the captured text will never contain the provided characters.

Text Orientation: The orientation of the text that will be captured. This option is only used when Chinese or Japanese is set as the active OCR language. If Auto is selected, horizontal will be used when the capture width is more than twice the height, otherwise vertical will be used. The text direction also affects how furigana is stripped from Japanese text. You may also specify the text orientation in the tray icon menu or with the Text Orientation hotkey.

Tesseract Config File: An advanced feature that allows you to specify a Tesseract config file.

Trim Capture: During OCR preprocessing, trim captured image to foreground pixels and add a thin border. OCR accuracy will be more consistent and may even be improved.

Deskew Capture: During OCR preprocessing, attempt to compensate for slanted text found in an OCR capture.

Contains options for configuring the automatic captures. Hover over the option labels for more information.

Allows you to specify the colors of the OCR Capture Box. The transparency can be changed by adjusting the 'Alpha channel' value in the color selection dialog.

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Allows you to specify the preview position, color, and font. You may disable the preview by unchecking the 'Show Preview Box' checkbox.

Save to clipboard: Save the captured OCR text to the clipboard.

Show popup window: Show the captured OCR text in a popup window:

Keep line breaks: Check this option if you don't want carriage returns and line feeds to be stripped from the captured text.

Logging: Allows you to save all captures to the specified file in the specified format. The following tokens may be used in the format: $(capture), $(translation), $(timestamp), $(linebreak), $(tab). The default format is: '$(capture)$(linebreak)'.

Call Executable: An advanced feature that allows you call an executable after OCR is complete. The following tokens may be used: $(capture), $(translation), $(timestamp). Example:

Allows you to perform text replacements. Supports regular expressions. The text on the left will be replaced with the text on the right. Different replacements may be specified for each OCR language.

See the translation section.

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This page allow you to enable the text-to-speech feature, set the volume, and select the options (voice, rate, pitch) to use for each OCR langauge.

Enable Text-to-speech: Enable text-to-speech when text is captured.

When this option is checked and the voice is not set to '<Disabled>', the 'Say' button will appear in the popup dialog:

Volume: Master volume of the text-to-speech feature. Applies to all languages.

OCR Language: Specify speech options for the selected OCR language.

Rate: Rate of text-to-speech voice.

Pitch: Pitch of text-to-speech voice.

Voice: Voice to use for the text-to-speech feature. Set to '<Disabled>' to disable the text-to-speech feature for just the selected OCR language.

Preview: Preview the current rate, pitch, and voice.

Command Line Options

Troubleshooting & FAQ

I'm getting a message about a missing DLL file when I double-click Capture2Text.exe.

Solution: Install the Visual Studio 2015 redistributable.

Capture2Text doesn't work at all. What can I do?

Possible solutions:

Make sure that you have unzipped Capture2Text. Search Google if you do not know how to unzip a file.

Make sure that your Anti-virus software is not blocking Capture2Text. Refer to the documentation that was bundled with your Anti-virus software.

Make sure that you have downloaded the latest version from SourceForge.

Restart your computer.

Ask one of your grandchildren to help you :)

I found a bug!

Great! Create a ticket and describe the bug.

I want to make a suggestion.

Great! Create a ticket and describe your suggestion.

Capture2Text is outputting garbage characters.

Solution: Specify the correct OCR language.

The language that I'm interested in doesn't appear in the OCR language menu.

Read Installing Additional OCR Languages.

I don't see the Capture2Text tray icon.

Click the 'Show hidden icons' button (it looks like a triangle or a ^ character).

I've clicked on the Capture2Text tray icon but it doesn't do anything.

Right-click it instead.

Capture2Text isn't working on my Mac.

Capture2Text is a Windows-only software. If you have a technical background, feel free to port it (but don't ask me to help).

Where is the uninstaller?

There isn't one. Capture2Text doesn't have an installer either. To remove Capture2Text from your computer, simply delete the Capture2Text directory.

Where is the settings .ini file located?

Type '%appdata%Capture2Text' into Windows Explorer.

You may delete it to restore default settings.

How do I make Capture2Text portable?

Call Capture2Text.exe using the --portable option. You may want to create a shortcut for this. Setting this option will make Capture2Text store the .ini settings file in same directory as Capture2Text.exe (as opposed to '%appdata%Capture2Text' which is the normal location).

Where is the source code located?

The source code is located on SourceForge.

Related Tools for Japanese Language Learners

JGlossator (Windows)

Automatically lookup Japanese words that you have OCR'd with Capture2Text. Supports de-inflected expressions, readings, audio pronunciation, example sentences, pitch accent, word frequency, kanji information, and grammar analysis. Supports both EDICT and EPWING dictionaries.

OCR Manga Reader (Android)

Free and open source Manga reader android app that allows you to quickly OCR and lookup Japanese words in real-time. There are no ads and no mysterious network permissions. Supports both EDICT and EPWING dictionaries.

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USA Today & Other Top Media Do It

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Listen To Just A Few Samples Of English Language Voices You Get Access To

Your browser does not support the audio element.

Sandra (neural)

Your browser does not support the audio element.

Ben (neural)

Your browser does not support the audio element.

Elsa (neural)

Your browser does not support the audio element.

Ken (neural)

Your browser does not support the audio element.

Karen (neural)

Your browser does not support the audio element.

Tara (neural)

Your browser does not support the audio element.

Mark (neural)

Your browser does not support the audio element.

Mike (newscaster)

Your browser does not support the audio element.

Sue (neural)

Your browser does not support the audio element.

Janine (newscaster)

Your browser does not support the audio element.

Sonya (neural)

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Now I’m sure you’re wondering how great those voices sound, so let’s jump right in and hear some of them.

You Will Get Access To All Below Voices

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What People Are Saying About NewscasterVocalizer

Comments from before official release

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A:English (US), Chinese, Mandarin, Danish, Dutch, English (Australian), English (British), English (Indian), English (Welsh), French, French (Canadian), German, Hindi, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Portuguese (European), Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Spanish (Latin American), Spanish (Mexican), Swedish, Turkish, Welsh

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Langogo AI-Powered Translator

A new kid on the block, the Langogo AI-powered pocket translator will be launching on the Indiegogo crowd-funding website. Langogo wants to be your ultimate travel companion, providing fast and accurate AI-powered translation and global Internet access with hotspot capabilities. Here’s a heads up on the Langogo.

Another translator? It seems like a tough sell. But Langogo thinks they have a good value proposition, at least with frequent travellers finding themselves needing to converse in foreign languages they don’t speak. Still, you might want to know, why wouldn’t you just use a smartphone?

It turns out that Langogo does have a few key selling points. Its AI-powered translation engine claims to offer accurate and natural-sounding translations in over 60 languages. It can automatically detect and translate between two selected languages, without having to switch the direction of translation back-and-forth. This is very convenient for conducting conversations naturally.

Not ready at this time, but Langogo will have conversational AI to help you with trip advice, navigation, weather, and exchange rates, among others. This is expected to arrive at end-September, too late for this review.

The physical Langogo device resembles a smartphone, with dimensions of about 121 x 54 x 12 mm. The front face has a touchscreen LCD with a diagonal size just under 3.5 inches. The display glass covers a lot more than just the LCD portion, with a semi-circle extension at the top and bottom to give the device a more aesthetic appeal.

Touch input on the Langogo’s screen isn’t great. I found the touch sensitivity was a bit cranky, and the position calibration was also a little off. Thankfully you don’t really have to use the touch UI much.

You’ll find the volume rocker and power-wake switch on the left side of the Langogo device. The right side has a SIM tray and a function button that activates the translation feature. You just need to hold that button while speaking, no need to fuss around with the touch display.

At the bottom, you’ll find a USB Type-C connector. It’s used to charge the Langogo device, or you can connect a wired USB Type-C headphones. Sorry, no 3.5 mm audio jack here.

There’s some sort of sound chamber at the top, but it doesn’t seem like where sound is emitted from. Instead, audio comes out from two speaker grills at the back of the device, one each near the top and bottom. Audio is sufficiently loud and clear, nicely suited for spoken words.

The Langogo has a dual-microphone array and a noise cancellation chip. Speaking to the device works quite effectively at arm’s length away, no need to bring the device to your face. This is very important, because you’ll typically be using the Langogo to translate conversations between two persons, so you’d expect to hold the device between the two of them.

Language translation works very fast and reasonably accurately. For my testing, I mainly translated between English and Chinese. I also tested a little of Japanese. The Langogo easily translates in less than a second, as claimed. It’s faster than using Google Translate.

The speed is important if you expect to use Langogo in real-life conversations. You don’t want to wait awkwardly each time after uttering a sentence or two before hearing the translated output. Imagine how it would be if you’re trying to buy something, and even bargain, at the local market.

The text-to-speech output is surprisingly natural sounding. Again, this can be particularly helpful when you’re trying to converse with a stranger. You don’t want a device that is hard to understand in these circumstances.

The Langogo’s display shows both the text of the language it heard, as well as the text it is translated to. You can read off the screen to make sure the Langogo heard you correctly, or that you heard the Langogo correctly.

Langogo handles over 60 languages, including English, Chinese, Malay, Thai, Tamil, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Catalan, Danish, German, Spanish, Finnish, French, Italian, Norwegian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Swedish.

The translation does require Internet connectivity. Here’s the next big feature of the Langogo. It has its own cellular connectivity, with cloud-SIM technology built right into it. You don’t need another SIM card for Langogo, and it doesn’t need to tether to your smartphone. On the contrary, Langogo can serve as a Wi-Fi hotspot for up to six devices, which means your smartphone can wirelessly tether to it.

The Langogo’s cloud-SIM connects to 4G networks in 74 countries, including:

Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chili, Columbia, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Italy, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan, Laos, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Macao, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Montenegro, Netherlands, New Zealand Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Porto Rico, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, South Africa Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Tajikistan, Taiwan, Turkey, UAE, United Kingdom, Ukraine, United States, and Vietnam.

Data plans can be bought directly on the Langogo device itself. Right now there isn’t a way to purchase data plans through a web browser on your smartphone or PC. Data plan rates are probably not as attractive as what you may get with local prepaid SIM, but the selling point here, I suppose, is convenience. Here are some examples of the rates:

USA 300 MB / 1 day: US$5.20

Japan 300 MB / 1 day: US$4.20

Singapore 300 MB / 1 day: US$4.20

Thailand 300 MB / 1 day: US$2.60

17 Asia-Pacific Countries 4096 MB / 8 days: US$27.80

There are plenty more, including numerous one-country/multi-day plans as well as multi-country/multi-day plans. You can use the data for both Langogo’s own translation and future AI assistant consumption, as well as for Wi-Fi hotspot use.

You may remember the SIM tray I mentioned earlier. You can use your own SIM card with the Langogo too, if that’s what you prefer. The Langogo device supports multiple cellular network standards, including a variety of 2G, 3G, and 4G networks.

The Langogo is shipped with a SIM-eject tool, USB Type-C charging cable, and a lanyard.

I can’t say about the AI assistant since it isn’t ready right now, but already as it is, the Langogo is a handy travel companion whenever you head to some part of the world where you don’t speak the local language. The built-in cloud-SIM and Wi-Fi hotspot features are nice extra conveniences.

There are no doubt many free smartphone apps, but I think an important selling point about the Langogo is how it can translate very quickly and read out in a natural-sounding voice. It is as if you had a personal human translator by your side.

Langogo will be launched on the Indiegogo crowd-funding site on 10 September 2018. I’ll update the link when the campaign goes live. The starting price is US$139 for the Super Early Bird perk, so if you are interested in the Langogo device, make sure to lock in your pledge early!

Conclusion

The Langogo is a handy travel companion providing fast, natural-sounding, conversational translation between over 60 languages, with Internet connectivity and Wi-Fi hotspot support in 74 countries.

Pros:

Fast, real-time, translation

Hears spoken language over ambient noise

Natural-sounding text-to-speech

Internet in 74 countries

Cons:

Touchscreen response is not good