#smart-speaker

[professorcalculusstanaccount]

I remember discussing Tintin casting choices with a friend from Germany and remarked how it was odd he often has an English accent in adaptations rather than a Belgian one, and my friend just replied "that's because Tintin gives incredibly strong English boy energy (derogatory)"

Here in the UK there's a lot of weird classism tied into accents. Today accent diversity and representation in broadcasting is actively pursued but in Tintin's time there certainly was a preferred accent to have.

imagine this exchange happens between pages 28-29 in The Crab with the Golden Claws

[nocek]

And this concludes the grand crossover event

(or does it?)

(it does but I was given a great idea for how to solve Gwen's problem :) )

the timeline of previous relevant comics:

[Jeff has a great fashion sense and Peter is the best hooker]

[Jeff is found and fucks are lost]

[bro landed up in the wrong universe and all he got out of it is a lousy bow]

[deadboyswalking]

People who write good fic when English isn't their first language are pretty amazing, you know? Expressing these complex emotions and really, deep character studies, in a language that isn't your native language is a difficult task. Does the dialogue always sound like a native speaker? Well, no, but a lot of native English speakers struggle badly with writing dialogue too. And anyway, there are some other interesting benefits to reading things written by native speakers of other languages. When they write in English, they still bring their cultural perspective and references from their first language into the fic. This gives a really unique view of characters and plotlines, like I always walk away with a new way of understanding the canon story that I hadn't thought of before.

[666writingcafe]

Preparation

Levi

Wow. Diavolo's just as bad as the rest of us, isn't he? I mean, literally jumping out of his office window to escape the Devildom and visit MC...that certainly wasn't on my bingo card for this year.

In any case, we do need to locate him. He's known to cause chaos whenever he's left unsupervised, and while I'd love to see a video of him go viral, I know Lucifer wouldn't, and I really don't want to sit through one of his lectures.

Thankfully, I have just the thing that might help.

"This is Crowe," I tell MC, putting the black cylinder in their hands.

"I didn't know you had a smart speaker," MC replies as they examine Crowe.

"I won him at an auction. Apparently he's a prototype. He's created by the Three-Legged Crow Group, the same company that sells D.D.D.'s. As long as someone has one of their phones, Crowe can track their location. All you have to do is ask."

"Sounds simple enough. Hopefully Diavolo has his phone on him." With that, MC asks Crowe to locate our missing prince.

"Lord Diavolo is located at The Drunk Hyena," it answers. "Would you like me to provide the address?"

"Yes." After hearing the address, MC appears shocked.

"Everything okay?" I ask them.

"I had no idea they had a location in the human world." I shrug, trying to hide my surprise. Clubbing doesn't really seem like MC's thing. Then again, Asmo is prone to dragging people to clubs, so who knows?

"The owners must have bought the building and created a portal. That sort of thing happens all the time." I pause. "Still doesn't explain why Diavolo would be there, though. It's the middle of the day."

"Perhaps it was the safest way for him to get here. People tend to not ask a lot of questions at clubs." That's true, I suppose. They're too caught up in whatever or whoever it is they're doing to notice anything outside their bubble.

At that moment, MC's phone rings.

"Good timing," they mutter as they pull it out and answer it. They tell the person on the other end that they're going to put them on speaker before positioning their phone so that it's between us.

"Who's in the room with you?" Oh shit. It's Diavolo.

"Just me," I reply. Diavolo breathes a sigh of relief.

"Thank goodness. I was afraid it might have been someone else. I've been meaning to talk to you about that anime you recommended to me a few months ago. It's really good."

During my quest to manage my social anxiety, I discovered that one of my online friends was actually none other than Diavolo himself, which was weird, because I "met" him on a pretty unknown online RPG, one that only the most devoted members of the gaming community knew about.

As it turns out, Diavolo's secretly a huge gaming nerd. I don't know how he finds the time, since his duties as prince require the majority of his attention, but somehow he's up-to-date on the latest news in the gaming world.

It was definitely awkward at first when I found out, but then I realized that Diavolo just wanted someone he could geek out with. It's not like Lucifer or Barbatos would; neither one of them are particularly interested in video games.

"Diavolo, what sort of trouble did you get yourself into?" MC asks before he has the opportunity to start rambling. I don't have to look at his face to know that he's blushing.

"Well, I may have gotten stuck."

"Are we talking tight space, or something cursed?"

"The latter." He sounds like someone who got caught stealing. "This place has a cursed karaoke room where you can't leave until you get a perfect score on the machine's vocal accuracy challenge."

"So, why haven't you participated?" Silence. "Diavolo, is this a ploy to get me to join you?" More silence. Then,

"Maaaybe." As Asmo would say, he's definitely down bad.

And somehow I'm fine with that. It's weird, I know, especially since I wouldn't have been fine before. I would have been tearing myself down as I holed myself up in my room, because there was no way I could compete with someone like Diavolo for someone's affection.

That's not the case now. I can't really explain why I feel calm; I just do.

"You know MC can't come by themselves, right?" I ask. "You know who would throw a fit if they did." Diavolo sighs.

"Yeah, I do. Doesn't make any sense to me, but whatever. He can feel how he wants." He pauses. "Ask the others if they want to tag along. We can at least make something fun out of the situation."

[awkward-teabag]

I have to wonder how many people celebrating AI translation also complain about "broken English" and how obvious it is something was Google translated from another language without a fluent English speaker involved to properly clean up the translation/grammar.

Because I bet it's a lot.

I know why execs are all for it—AI is the new buzzword and it lets them cut jobs thus "save" money and not have to worry about pesky labour laws when one employs humans—but everyone else?

There was some outcry when Crunchyroll fired many of their translators in favour of AI translation (with some people to "clean up the AI's work") but I can't help but think that was in part because it was Japanese-to-English and personally affected them. Same when Duolingo fired many of their translators in favour of LLM translation. Meanwhile companies are firing staff when it's English to another language and there's this idea that that's fine or not as big a deal because English is "easy" to translate and/or because people don't think of how it will impact people in non-English countries.

Also it doesn't affect native English speakers so it doesn't get much headway in the news cycle or online anyway because so much of the dominant media is from English-speaking countries and English-speakers dominate social media.

But different languages have different grammar structures that LLMs don't do, and I grew up on "jokes" about people speaking in "broken English" and mocking people who use the wrong word when it was clearly a literal translation but the meaning was obvious long before LLMs were a thing, too. In fact, the specific way a character spoke broken English has been a way to denote their native tongue for decades, usually in a racist way.

Then Google translate came out and "Google-translated English" became an insult for people and criticism of companies because it was clearly wonky to native speakers. Even now, LLMs—which are heavily trained on English compared to other languages—don't have a natural output so native English speakers can clock LLM-generated text if it's longer than a sentence or two.

But, for whatever reason, it's not seen as a problem when it goes the other way because fuck non-English readers or people who want to read in their native tongue I guess.

[artvitalex]

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[gamora-borealis]

well.

[warren-keplers-funk-band]

[offorestsongs]

sometimes being a non-native english speaker on the internet is just writing a fic and going "no no guys i know this is a bit bad but i'm such a good writer in my native language trust me guys i swear" the whole time except i have no way to prove it because it's not like anyone would you know, know my native language

[alltimefail-sims]

I was tagged by @bibliosims ty for tagging me, gorgeous!!! 🥰❤

3 Ships: I have so many but the first three that come to mind are:

- Boreo (Theo Decker x Boris Pavlikovsky, The Goldfinch)

- Bubbline (Marceline the Vampire Queen x Princess Bubblegum, Adventure Time)

- Byler (Mike Wheeler x Will Byers, Stranger Things)

Last Song: Two Slow Dancers - Mitski

Last Movie: Glass Onion (...for like the 100th time. I need to watch more movies lol)

Currently Craving: Really fudgy, decadent brownies 🤤 (with dark chocolate chunks and a little flaky salt on top!)

Favorite Color(s): Purple!

Relationship Status: Marrieeeeeeed

Last Thing Googled: "New Hulu murder series cruise ship Rahul Kohli" because I was telling my husband about this show and how interesting it looked (I kept getting ads for it) but I couldn't remember what it was called. Obviously the Rahul Kohli part was unnecessary to add but I'm obsessed with him so... naturally I threw it in there for good measure ig.

Current Obsession: This literally changes from day to day, but I'm kind of obsessed with crocheting (the idea of it because idk how to lmaoooo but I want to learn soon!!!!) and the Landgraab family dynamic! I've been specifically thinking about the fallout between Johnny and Nancy and why he got disowned. I quite literally have a fully fledged-out a story with dialogue and side characters all just like...in my mind...playing like a little tv show for me that I will probably never post, but that's all I've been fixated on for the last 48 hours!!! (Anyone else do this?)

tagging: Idk who has already done this so no pressure as always!! @mangosimoothie, @hauntedtrait, @wrixie, @cinamun, @yooniesim, @aorticsims, @thebramblewood ❤❤❤

[amberdagger]

listening to elliott smith this morning happy birthday <3

[thedeviljudges]

i just had the wildest call with the insurance ppl to get a new renter's policy.

dude's just chatting away, told me i speak so well and he's very happy to talk to a white person who's nice. we talked about journalism (cuz he had to ask what i do), and went in to how media tries to mimic ppl and we try to mimic them. told me he hopes his daughter turns out like me cuz i'm very well spoken.

it somehow got into not super politics but he was making jokes about he's very happy to know there's good people over in texas who aren't discriminatory toward women, minorities and cat ladies, lmaooooo.

i'm still laughing like WHAT was this interaction. 😂😂

[rambling-robot]

Day 3, my official job title is barista

Most of my coworkers speak English as a second language and my brain starts tweaking out with so much new information so like. I genuinely don’t know how many communication errors are me or them. I’m so sorry dudes. It’s probably mostly me, I either can’t hear or I can’t comprehend.

Someone asked for no-something in the drive-thru but I couldn’t understand them, so after asking “what” twice I just typed in “no hoagie” and my manager (in the kindest way) was like. Dude. Dude they said no jalapeños. What did you write. What is this.

[menelaiad]

helen being smart does not make menelaus stupid.

[angelxd-3303]

im so sorry, im italian and "che era caldo" means nothing 😭

It does? Sorry, I put the phrase into a translator and that's what it gave me. I'm not fluent in Italian by any means, so I appreciate you saying something! Sorry about that!

[trans-xianxian]

least favorite online trend is "post or article masquerading as a helpful or informative resource on a certain topic, but is chalked full of so many complicated words and subject specific phrases that anyone with an average vocabulary and/or someone who is not already well versed on the topic wouldn't be able to understand it, rendering the entire thing obsolete"