Jan/Feb LOL Planning: Translator Malfunction

[rumham]

Interest pitch and planning space for a LOL taking place later this month (probably in a week's time) – a translator malfunction! Everyone is used to comfortably speaking their native languages freely in the Nexus and being understood, but if you ask me, you've all been coasting. Taking advantage of the system! Put in a little elbow grease and learn to understand your fellow (wo)man the Nexus way: by having the rug pulled out from under you!

The mini-LOL pitch involves the Nexus' language translator malfunctioning – and to keep it fun and difficult, also causes other translation tech and/or magic to fail as well.

Characters are free to speak any languages they already know to team up for comfort, or they might find themselves learning some new words in their friends' wild and crazy languages. This post serves not only as an interest check but also as a place to coordinate with each other: List which languages your characters know and figure out who else might understand them during this time. This kind of event lends itself to people of similar cultures coming together even when they might otherwise not want to interact.

As with all LOLs this is completely optional and non-permanent. Like the genderswap mirror event it will probably be free-form with no goal other than having fun until you're done.

Edit: Since this is a freeform kind of LOL, here's some general prompts you might consider if you want to participate but aren't sure of direction:
– Two characters with the same language but opposing personalities being forced to pair off and get to know each other.
– Frustration leads to charades, better learning each other's body languages, or maybe just a little silent peace between two friends for the first time. Find your zen, kids.
– People realizing how little they have in common with each other and trying to teach each other a few words in their native languages OR being reminded of the animosity between their people.
– Simply making an ass out of one's selves (Jims...)

Comments

[brother_alone]

Josh-o here speaks English and a smattering of standard Arabic since his maternal grandparents are Egyptian natives and speak it exclusively.

[gorogorogoro_chan]

Majima's really only fluent in Japanese. Beyond that, it's a few broken phrases in English, Korean, and Mandarin. He's gonna be screwed by this.

[sumarusfinest]

Katsuya's fluent in both Japanese and English! Whether he'll WANT to be a go between or not, he'll definitely be useful to Majima :D

[westfallcorndog]

Okay so now we need a character who's a weeb to speak the most embarrassing busted-ass Japanese at Majima.

[smartass_captain]

Probably my most challenging character for this kind of LOL.

Jim speaks 23rd century English which probably is about as similar to contemporary English as our language is to the 18th century. His pronunciation is probably a lot different and there's bound to be hundreds of loan words from other Federation planets as well as language drift between English and other major Earth languages as the planet became a more unified people in the century and a half since Earth was introduced to the galactic political field.

He also speaks fluent Andorian and is passable in Vulcan and Tellarite as these are the other founding species of the Federation and some language in all three xenolanguages is required of Starfleet Officers. He knows a smattering of phrases in a dozen other xenolanguages, too. Just enough to be a tourist or get into some serious trouble.

Edit: Thanks to two plus years dating an Imperial battlemage Jim is slowly learning how to read Cyrodiilic though he only knows how to speak a handfull of words and those probably aren't appropriate outside the bedroom considering how he learned them....

[boldygoing]

Shit now I'm wondering what the hell the linguistic drift would do to the grammar.

[juststeverogers]

Steve's really only fluent in English, but he's able to speak broken German as well.

[sweetcandygirl]

The highly intelligent Harley Quinn can speak:

English, Spanish, Porteguese, French, Japanese, German and Chinese.

She would be a good person to be an 'opposing personality' that someone would have to deal with, to be understood by others.

[westfallcorndog]

Harrowheart's secret is that he loves languages and takes learning them very seriously, even if he's never been good at grammar. He speaks:

Azerothian Common, German (21st Century), Draenei, and some functional phrases in Azerothian Dwarvish and Draenor Orcish. He can also howl like a wolf. Not a language so much as a talent he will readily show off.

[grantuseyes]

did someone say howling

[boldygoing]

So very much yes! Not sure whether how many of my kiddos will participate but definitely at least Jim.

Jim Kirk: fluent in English (23rd century dialect, as described by smartass_captain), Russian, Vulcan, and Andorian. Passable Biblical Hebrew (much better with written than spoken), knows enough of various other canon alien languages (Klingon, Tellarite, etc.) to get by. Smattering of other Earth languages, mostly commonly needed travel phrases rather than anything that would allow for long, complicated conversations.

Faris: Fluent in the K'da tongue (an offshoot of proto Indo-European) and Shontine (entirely alien language). Knows enough English to communicate with humans in his universe, whose dialect is also futuristic and has likely drifted from 21st century English.

Jake Sully: Native speaker of 21st century English, mostly fluent in Na'vi.

If there's a reason to bring them out of retirement, I can also provide Clark Kent (21st century English, Kryptonian, multiple other Earth languages) and Jack Harkness (51st century English, various alien tongues/trader speak, 20th century English). It's been a while since I've played them though, so I'm a bit rusty.

[red_room]

Russian you say.... ;)

[mudblood_andproud]

Since there is a disclaimer that Hermione's magic would fail... no translating spells for her.

Hermione speaks the Queen's English and Bulgarian. She can also speak a little Latin. In addition to the languages she can speak, Hermione can read Greek, Latin and runic.

Crookshanks understands all languages. He can only speak cat. ;)

[red_room]

As a spy, languages are Natasha's wheelhouse. She's passable in enough languages that I'm not going to mention them all here but here's the Big Ones she can use fluently without needing to brush up any.

English, Russian, French, German, Bosnian, Latin, Hungarian, Czech, Romanian, Italian, Dutch, Arabic, Turkish, American Sign Language, Mandarin, and Korean (emphasis on Northern phonology)

[plagueofdeception]

Ooooh boy. This is a can of worms.

Dr. White mainly speaks English, but it's 14th century English with a bunch of modern phrases thrown in. He claims the modern stuff was picked up in the Nexus, but if it looks like he suddenly forgot how to spell that's because written language was a work in progress back then.

That's not the issue here. Dr. White's problem is that he also knows Mandarin Chinese and a bit of Korean. That's kind of weird considering his claims about being from Dark Ages Europe, so he's seriously hoping he doesn't run into other Chinese speakers and have to explain himself.

At least he's fairly good at miming. Who knew working around a mask that didn't allow him to speak properly would help in the future?

[drehnifusbahi]

Vanyel's first language is Cyrodiilic, with Nordic as a second and at least a smattering of the other common languages of Tamriel (and Dovahzul). He's easily nerd enough to have studied other languages (most likely Earth ones, given most of his Nexus acquaintances come from there) in his time in the Nexus, but probably not to the point of fluency.

So he will be basically incomprehensible to everyone, and vice versa. Have fun with that!

(Alternately, we could assume a degree of similarity between say, Cyrodiilic and Latin, or Skyrim-ese and Norwegian. Still not super helpful, considering how few other people speak them, but not quite complete gibberish either.)

[smartass_captain]

Jim and Vanyel can totally pass basic broken notes to each other and try and wade through the language barriers hahha

[grantuseyes]

Micolash speaks in The Queen's English, knows Latin fluently, as well as a form of sign language! The last one there probably only has a passing similarity to ASL as we know it, though, so it's not ideal.

[ixis]

Ixis Naugus speaks Mobian which is apparently completely interchangeable with human/earth English, going on the questionable canon where shit like that would have been tested. He's also fluent in French (Mercian to him) and knows a few chunks of Japanese (Dragon Kingdom language to him) to get by conversationally.

He's not patient enough to play translator for long, though. >:U Or fumble through language barriers.

[not_the_question]

The Doctor is going to be the least fun because he knows over 5 billion languages without the TARDIS to help him. That said, he does NOT know sign language of any kind (It was replaced for semaphore, get a selection of flags!).

I'm considering handwaving that he doesn't know some 'typical languages' just to make it more fun. (IE: would he know 23rd Federation English? since that's from a different universe?) So if people have a preference for what he should/shouldn't know, I'm open to discussing that here.


Also, as a side-note: I'm still debating his canon point. While I needed to process some regeneration feels for myself, I'm not sure if that will be his canon point going forward, so if you have preferences for that too, I'm happy to hear them out.

[chiron_survivor]

Adia is fluent in both her native Leonisian and Caprican, the language of the colonies. Leonisian is functionally equivalent to French, and Caprican equivalent to English. HOWEVER, for the purposes of this LOL, I like the idea of her "English" sounding like Ancient Greek. She'll still be able to understand English, but good luck knowing what she's saying unless you've studied the classics. ;)

Caspar is fluent in all Colonial languages, as well as binary. :> He'll sound Greek, too, but he's quicker to pick up foreign languages.

[attackpatternbattista]

So to be completely fair, Delia speaks English fairly fluently, and is usually speaking it when she's in the Nexus.

That said, she's also fluent in the Orion trade language, and can speak passible Klingon.

[dembonyhips]

Fortyskey speaks:

Common, Orcish, Forsaken/Gutterspeak. Demonic. She can also cuss in Dwarven.

She can understand some words of:

Thalassian

And she recognizes (but does not speak, nor understand most of):

Gnomish.
Draconic
and a few others.

[westfallcorndog]

TEAM AZEROTH, HOOAH! Harrowheart taught Common to the Durants. This is such a perfect opportunity for them to finally meet The Forsaken.

[pathfromdarknesstogrey]

Dia will probably be sitting this LOL out, but for reference's sake:

She can speak fluently:
Galactic Basic
Most of Huttese

Dia can understand to some degree:
Droid Binary
A few others.

[bornstrong]

Iphigenia speaks...Mycenaean Greek. It looks like this, which should be fun for everyone to try to figure out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_B

She would probably understand some Ancient Egyptian, but beyond that, good luck with her!

:D :D :D

[westfallcorndog]

Woah! What a super cool-looking language! I love it!

[somepray]

Wendla is Deaf and uses sign language to communicate, but she's also from 19th-century Germany, so she can lip-read German pretty well.

Also, she's kind of used to not being understood, poor thing, so she'd be willing to help others/facilitate conversations.

[invisiblebonds]

WELL THIS IS A DELIGHT TO RETURN TO. As someone who was born bilingual, this sort of stuff always amuses me. So! For my three boys, we have-

Robin here... he's a little of a mess with his amnesia, so he'll be able to understand languages and be all WHY DO I KNOW THIS. So, he's able to speak his equivalent of English, while being able to somewhat understand French, Japanese, German and Russian.

Satoru is trilingual, capable of speaking Japanese, American English and Acadian French. ...The specifications are there based on how the Pokémon world works. XP

While Tatsuya is at his most comfortable communicating in Japanese, he's not bad at speaking English and is even better at writing in it.

[heirtothearcane]

Coming from the overachieving family that he's from, V can speak English, French, German, Ancient Greek and Latin. He's fluent in the first three, pretty good at Ancient Greek and weakest on his Latin. He can mostly just talk about magic in Latin.

And Azerothian Common, now that I think of it. He isn't fluent in common, but he can hold a conversation.

[juststeverogers]

He needs to hear Steve's ATROCIOUS German. He's trying SO HARD to talk with HH and...failing.