Grrl Power #707 – A fickle modesty
Sydney is entirely too fit on this page. I got distracted trying to do a decent looking back, but she’s supposed to really be a bit more nerd soft, and like ~15 lbs overweight.
This page has one of those sci-fi show situations that we’re all supposed to politely ignore when it comes up, and it’s the selective universal translator. It happens all the time. Worf says qapla’, and the UT doesn’t change it to “success”? Well, fine, it’s an easy argument that Worf is in fact a native English speaker, so the UT isn’t watching for it, but are we supposed to believe that every Klingon captain and crew member they meet also speaks English, or that there’s some translation going on? If that’s the case, why does the UT translate everything they say, except qapla’?
Presumably Frix doesn’t natively speak modern English, so he’s using a universal translator, but then “human” and “flurbleblox” and “zipoo” all mean things in his native language. So why isn’t it translating them? When Frix says “human,” Sydney should hear “nose cheese” or whatever human means in his native language.
The solution is kind of built into the science behind a really good UT. You can’t just do a word for word translation of what’s being said. Language has context. Any good UT would have to have a massively sophisticated VI that is constantly monitoring for context. When an English speaker uses the word “you,” context determines if the “you” is singular or plural, but many languages have separate words for a singular “you” and a plural “you.” (Actually English does as well, but only if you count “y’all.”) This is a big part of the reason that translating text from one language to another then back again can result in a bunch of crazy results. Meaning is lost. A really good UT would not only have to have comprehensive dictionaries of all languages involved, including slang, but also be able to tag words and sentences with context metadata that wouldn’t be lost even if something was translated through 29 different languages.
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Anyone else stumbled over the ‘horrifying new armaments’ comment that Frix made?
Seems like the captain (Cora) the weapons officer (of course) and maybe the pilot (unstoppable melee brute) have a thing for overpowered ‘responses’. The XO is bit in the air, but Frix seems to be the ‘gentle’ soul in the group. (Matches his being the medic.)
Some have speculated about a upcoming fight with one of the ‘squidwards/kaiju’ later on; I wonder if they/one is following Cora’s ship. I can see a fight coming up where the horrific armaments are appearing just as they approach earth.
Cora: ‘Damn, the new weapons barely make a dent in that thing! What can we do now?’
Sydney: ‘We are the only thing between that and my home planet! What do we do?’
Cora: ‘I don’t know…’
Sydney: ‘Frix, where is the nearest airlock?’
Frix: ‘What? Why?’
Sydney: ‘Throw me out.’
Frix: ‘…’
Sydney: ‘My home planet has nothing that can take that on! Throw me out of the nearest airlock; I’ve dealt with them before!’
Frix: ‘… So that the cute girl I shared a bath with… And she had a Weapon of Ultimate Destruction with her all that time?!’
Cora: ‘Um, yes?’
Frix: ‘Just give me a moment to quietly freak out here…’
OK, never use an angle bracket in a HTML comment…. there should be a ‘a space battle later’ between the black and orange text…
Gaze ye not upon the buttocks of the orb carrier, though they be clad, lest ye be struck down by the mighty PPO.
mmmm…. what a way to go…
Given the option I would prefer ‘Death by Snu Snu’.
With all of this talk about Sydney’s butt, I can’t keep a certain quote out of my head lately:
“Cling tenaciously to my buttocks, kids.”
~Powdered Toast Man
Although in this case, it’s eyes that are clinging tenaciously…
Cora: ” no prob you were the one who fixed her face cut.” :)
Fris: “Why would that make a difference?” (puzzled)
Cora: “Those squiddie? They were the ones who cut it.”
Frix: “Wha – but she has super soft skin!”
Cora: “You sly Woof, I thought you usually preferred to keep the details to yourself! …but I don’t see the relevance?”
Frix: “Er… not that, I mean… I had to dial the stitch pressure on her sutures all the way down to keep from doing more damage, but all the squiddies did to her before was scratch her skin?!”
Cora: “…she kinda lives life at the extreme ends of the spectrum, doesn’t she?”
A lot of girls who are “carrying a few extra pounds”(not really true, but hey… they think so) don’t show it when looking at their back or looking at them from the back.
And I like the view.
Well, Syd has been being subjected to military training and all sorts of crazy physical events. So, maybe she’s toned up a slight bit, and might have lost some of the ‘extra’ pounds. She really hasn’t be “Sitting still” for most of the comic. So it might be helping her overall health.
When I joined the Army, I just barely managed the entry-acceptance 10 pushups, having been a slothful nerd in my adolescence. In Basic (two months!), I ate like a horse but still lost ~30 pounds, because of the exercise regime. In the process, got fit enough to pass the exit 150-point PT test (again just barely), and it was a struggle for me to keep up to the 180-point standard during my four years of active duty, but I managed.
I remember one incidence of poor translation in WWII causing a possible change in history.
(It may be part urban legend, but still makes a good story)
In January 1943 FDR secretly flew to North Africa to meet with Churchill to discuss the plans for the war in Europe. A German spy caught wind of the meeting and sent an urgent message back to Berlin asking for a special raid to take out the foreign leaders in Casablanca. Unfortunately, the message was translated literally to say the location of the meeting was in the ‘White House’. German high command basically said “How are you expecting us to attack the White House? That is thousands of miles away in America.”
It’s highly likely to be entirely urban legend. Casablanca is not that easy to mistake for Casa Blanca, which is likely not how a Spanish source would title the White House. And if the Germans knew much of the location of either leader, they would know the difference between Morocco and DC.
However, the tactical situation seems to mean Germany would not have tried anything even if they did know. Casablanca was a good sized burg, not on the London scale, but the Nazi had to know Churchill’s location within a Casablanca-sized area on a frequent basis, but they don’t seem to have tried to bomb him, quite possibly because he was likely to be within range of a good bomb shelter. Casablanca was also crawling with Allied troops and planes, which only a very large raid would have gotten thru, and at serious costs. So they would have suffered seriously for a shot at people who might have been at any of dozens of scattered locations. So even an accurate report would have been ignored.
Actually yeah, the White House is “la Casa Blanca” in spanish :D
That’s a word-for-word translation of “White House” in Spanish, but I seem to misremember that there’s a more idiomatic phrase specifically for the “House of the President of the United States” but I can’t remember what it is.
“Casa Blanca” will suffice, but it’s not what a Spanish speaker would call it.
This seems less unlikely than might be guessed, because of some very specific limitations that affected German communications in WWII.
First, all their available channels of text communication (meaning, telegram or ciphertext) were monocased. So there’d be no distinction between “Casablanca” and “casablanca” or “CasaBlanca”, etc.
Second, in cipher communications they did not use space characters. So there’d be no distinction between “Casablanca and “Casa Blanca.”
So, I dunno whether this happened, but it’s more plausible than your inner Snopes might immediately conclude.
“I have never seen so many sentries armed with such terrifying weapons. The rifle is almost forgotten here. There are machine guns and Tommy guns and sawn-off shot-guns and all sorts of weapons of that kind. Every time you go in and out of the circle you are in danger all the time of being shot.”
Harold McMillan, British dipl;omat, on the Casablanca Conference
And that was after you got through the entire U.S. Third Infantry Division!
Interesting and highly pertinent pieces of information.
Just a rumor.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/casablanca/
Was always under the standing that Casablanca was under German occupation
Does that mean Bogie lied to me? o_O
No, because the movie Casablanca was set before the Allied forces took back Northern Africa (as referenced in the comment about the meeting being near the sight of Allied landings in the area in the linked article) and the meeting happened after.
Okay, so wasn’t about the Germans being in Casablanca, just missed the memo on them getting kicked out :P
Thank you by the way
“Cap’n, are you telling me she was sitting in the bath with ultra powerful schizto tech death rays ready to hand and I was caught checking out her bobbed tail?” Dramatic pause, “I’m a gonna need a few ticks to myself in ma room if you don’t need me.” Under breath. “Under the bed with my woogie.”
Honestly? One of my headcanons? Is that Klingon is specifically designed to NOT translate large portions of it. Why?
Because the Klingons requested it. Because they’re really big on “Klingon cannot be translated!”
And the best way to piss off the Crab-heads? Translate everything, to show how silly their language truly is, full of flowery and pretty words :P
It loses a lot in translation, especially Hamlet.
If I wanted to pull an April Fools joke on Klingons I would rig the universal translator to auto-translate Qapla! into “Have a nice day”. (as long as they didn’t know it was me)
For someone with sydney’s Body type, the shock of a new life style is more than enough to cause her to shed weight. Especially with the constant strain of military life. For as long as it’s been, most of her extra visible weight would have become concentrated in her lower abdomen rather than her back. Also, military training has a huge focus on strengthening the back and legs.
Warm water. vs sudden weather change equals interesting effects on the front. interesting for anyone but her that is. I’d think anyway. Been in enough cabin trips with heated pools where the males and females went topless in the case of the women, nude in the case of the men. because we were told that us males being nude was why they’d let us see them topless
However coming out of the heated area was a different issue
“Do not taunt Happy Fun Sydney”.
There is an unusual effect in panel 5. One that I have hesitated to mention, simply because the art is so good throughout this scene. Not to mention Sydney’s cuteness.
However it has struck me every time I do a re-read, and even at different resolutions. Namely that Sydney seems to have an elongated pointy nose, in that panel. This is purely due to the way her nose aligns with her eye, but it does give a very unfortunate Pinocchio cast to her face.
Wouldn’t have noticed if you hadn’t pointed it out :P
You have to sniff out these details.
She’s supposed to be carrying a few extra pounds?? Since when? She’s as hyperactive as they get, can’t sit still for longer than it takes to eat a spicy noodle dish, and has always looked a little, well, SCRAWNY, not to put too fine a point on it! And she looks perfect here, to me, anyway. So quit griping about how you drew her, she’s fine.
15 lbs overweight at the start of the saga? That’s not gonna last long in 1-2 weeks of constant “near death experience” and intensive crash course training. I’ve lost 5-10 lbs in a single sci fi convention weekend with a balky elevator. Running through a secret underground lair and ending up playing hide and seek for a few hours against a kaiju with death rays has to be worth a few lbs. alone.
-Also-
Sidny; Pegasister confirmed! ;)
We knew she was a Pegasister from her cell phone ringtone at the bank.
Haven’t read 4 pages of comments, so apologies if this has been said, but:
“You” is technically the formal/plural pronoun in English, like “vous” is in French or “Sie” in German. The second person informal singular is “thou.” When English simplified down to only one second person pronoun, we lost our equivalent to “tu” or “du.”
Thoughts
1) What if “qapla” became part of the Standard language of the Federation? Or what if someone added “qapla” to the Standard database so that It is not translated as “everyone” who speaks Standard learned the meaning of the word? Every living language changes over time; therefore, the question could be “How does Standard change?”
2) Don’t forget the thee’s and thou’s of Shakespearean English. When translating to English, older versions can be used in order to add clarity to the translation.
Well, it would be more correct to say technically English has a singular for “you”. “You” is the plural for “thee”. “Thy” is the singular for “your”, and “thine” is singular for “yours”.
ie, ‘Thee and thine’, would be ‘you and yours’.
Depends on how psi/context sensitive the translators are. If it’s able to pickup “The word for X in my language is Y” or if it just says it as “The word for X in my language is X”. If it’s able to distinguish that this/these words are “intended” not to be translated for example.
being subjected to PT that makes you barf up all your caffeine and take batman’s name in vein tend to tone you the hell up in a hurry. It is completely logical for her to be nerd-skinny but nicely toned as drawn
Also, I love and have zero problem believing that Syd has rainbow dash panties.
Oh my god. I have the same underwear as Sydney. This is the greatest thing ever!
Me too! Rainbow Dash Boyshorts Underwear club! (I wanted to get the fluttershy pair, but they were sold out)
Sydney is drawn incredibly nicely here, exactly what I’d expect from a police cadet having already seen some shit, and with her hyperactivity.
Cute as HELL, actually.
Jeez, I spoke too soon. DaveB, maybe it’s you who doesn’t know when to shut the fuck up and let a scene fade out and in to the next. No, let’s just assfuck each boxcar of story with the next on the rail! Fuck rhythm and pacing, and absolutely fuck climax because we don’t know how to delineate story arcs enough to make any climax at all much less make a climax that’s fucking satisfying~!
Whatever. After this binge you’re going on the shelf with Girl Genius, which I might pick up again in half a decade and flip through a dozen pages and say, “Too busy. Too full of itself. Equally teasy and prudy. I bequeath this to my preschool descendants. They won’t get it, but that’s still better than getting rode hard and hung up wet.”
Read through most of four pages of comments to check. Am I the only one who got the West Wing reference in this page?
Such a good boy, must protect.
As noted previously, English does have variations of you that are specifically plural, but they tend to be specific to a local dialect. Y’all (a contraction of you-all) is mostly a USA version as far as I’m aware, and various (mostly Northern) parts of Britain have variations on yous (with pronunciation dependent on context, not necessarily the same as use). Those two have fairly clear derivations within English, but it would not at all surprise me to learn that other dialects in areas where English was not so dominant (South Africa, India, Quebec, etc.?) have their own versions borrowed across from the other local language(s).
i mean we already have translators that can do that, modern google translate is actually pretty good at translating stuff and while its not perfect (yet) it can definetly translate context and meaning, it has actually gotten really good and that is with our level of technology good knows what an alien species must have
Huh. I own those same panties.