Grrl Power #1101 – All the news that’s fit to… DUCK!
I know what you’re thinking. “Of Couscous it’s Delicious” is barely an acceptable pun in English, and the newscaster was speaking French, being translated into English via closed captioning, and who knows what language the actual food truck’s name was in, only it probably had to be in English, because the pun probably wouldn’t work in French, Arabic or Wolof, even though barely anyone in Senegal even speaks English, and how would you serve couscous heavy dishes out of a food truck? I looked up Senegalese cuisine, and it seems quite sauce heavy. Little pasta pellets and sauce isn’t really finger food. I guess paper picnic bowls would work as long as you ate it before the sauce seeped through. I don’t know. It sounds messy. Maybe slurping up spicy, piping hot, messy food before capillary action defeats paperware is part of the appeal?
I wonder about stuff like news programs in countries with a jillion languages. French is the official language there, so government forms and road signs are probably going to have French on them at a minimum, but only 20% of the population speaks the language. As was mentioned on previous pages, it’s mostly Wolof and Arabic that are spoken, and I’ve no idea of the literacy rates for each language. So is the news presented in French with Wolof and/or Arabic subtitles? Or do the channels do the news three times in a row, or are there live dubbed secondary audio channels or something?
The November Vote Incentive is up!
I went a little simpler with the art this time, which is to say I didn’t add like 9 passes of lighting and detail work. I wasn’t trying to chintz out on the time input or anything, I’d been browsing around ArtStation since I like torturing myself with all the amazing art there, and found a few people who do nice clean styles that are more Arcane (the League of Legends Netflix show) than Love, Death and Robots, and by LD&R I mean the ones that are like “Look at how realistic our skin textures are!” and not the ones that are more Pixar-y or just like 2D cell art or whatever.
Enjoy variant outfits and lack thereof over at Patreon.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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I wonder if you can buy Math’s ‘Mixed Martian Artist’ t-shirt…
First thing I noticed in the Vote Incentive picture is that Math is totally behind his base of support. He is about to fall onto his back. Pvt. Ng has her weight down her left leg as her right swings around, so she seems a little more stable.
Or, he’s going to use his front heel to nudge Ng’s right foot just a scooch upwards- so that she’s not actually on the ground any more, and the momentum of her kick, perfectly controllable before, is now a mid-air tumbling spin – which will give him just enough leverage to push himself back upright with his back foot.
Y’know, like you do.
Jackie Chan would like a word…
One of the Drunken Master movies?
Yeah, the pic links to a YT vid from Drunken Master… well, it’s Drunken Master in the US, but Drunken Master 2 in China because Drunken Master 1 was one of those non-modern times kung-fu theater flicks that never got imported here, but it’s still an amazing Jackie Chan movie.
Nah, it got imported here, I watched it back in the 90’s. Great movie, absolutely horrible dubbing.
The one Dave is referring to had an English name of Legend of Drunken Master, not just Drunken Master, right?
(Boy I hope those italics tags work properly.)
Also Hermes from Futurama. :)
https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.d2391f06d87aeea4f6dd9d3736002aab?rik=L9w5titjQtB8cw&pid=ImgRaw&r=0
You need to factor his momentum into the equation as well. With his body weight moving forward, his core will be moving into position above his feet, and assuming he has enough traction (knowing that he has incredible leg strength, if not super-grade) he could doubtless jump away at a diagonal with enough force to tumble midair and land on his feet. Right now his legs would still be absorbing some of his forward momentum, and his center of mass might have a sleight upward momentum, which would delay the time before gravity takes its toll.
Also, I totally expect Math to use his hands to… make convenient use of his opponent’s body. To get what he wants. Leverage. You know. I’m sure she wouldn’t want to leave him hanging.
First thing I noticed was that she’s on the ball of her foot, so she’s not going to have any power behind that kick. Second thing I noticed was the amazing energy trails around both of them and the way it painted the course of the battle in my mind. Beautiful narrative device!
Yeah, she’s just landed on her left foot, with her right foot still in motion, likely to continue into a spin behind her, possibly planting the right foot and raising the left, like one of them Capybara dance-moves
Same here
Not if you grab her left knee and pull while falling he’d control his fall and knock her off balance, follow up with a leg sweep and she’s laying next to him. Pissed off of course. Pulled that trick sparing a few times heh…
Considering how Anvils power works, that elbow drop should flatten him.
Now now, say it right.
Anvil From the Top Rope Dropping the most Electrifying Move in Sport’s Entertainment!!!
Here it comes, THE PEOPLE’S ELBOW!
The People’s Elbow was never from the Top Rope, Randy Savage’s Flying Elbow was
Anvil doing a flying elbow drop. Thank you Dave!
The people’s elbow. Or Jimmy stucka’s human fly flying elbow.
Sydney if the fight reaches the supplies closets while she’s still in there:
https://youtu.be/GHS_GQLgqtM
Whelp now my coffee is on my screen.
Thanks for the laugh
they got it all on UHF.
Always thought Food Truck food was meant to be messy, delicious but messy
You don’t expect fine china and cutlery from a food truck (unless you are in L.A., Holyweird in particular)
And the real hardcore festival hound.. brings. his. own. meal. kit.
Wooden bowl, wooden cup, medieval(ish) knife (“fork” optional), wooden spoon. Hang from belt, and/or carry in shepherd’s bag which you need anyway.
Properly treated with beeswax it rinses/wipes easy, ready for the next round..
Sometimes solutions to a “problem” *are* as old as time…
At certain times and regions a fork was seen as a witchcraft tool. Probably derived from a trident being the symbol of some pagan gods (Like Neptune).
So “optional” might be a bit of an understatement.
Mmmm. First time I hear the witchcraft thing, I had always read that it was considered extremely effeminate instead.
Also possible. Medieval Europe was far from culturally uniform.
That gives me suggestions of what to add to my kit. I’d not thought about a bowl.
Use the ol’ Noggen
Or better yet, somebody else’s noggin. Makes a good cup, too.
https://www.oglaf.com/skulls/
“SO THIRSTY!”
You want some toast for all that jelly?
… What? You don’t have jelly on toast, you have jelly with ice cream
They left you there, because you are not safe without your balls at full strength
Stop thinking this comic is all about you, Sydney!
As someone living in a country with a measly four languages, I can tell you we have tv stations specific to each language, and translations are mostly done via dubbing. Senegal might be entirely different, of course.
@dave just throw a polyglot reporter at it like this guy https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t0i_UqZIPow
It would be more likely to have someone capable of at least two languages in such regions anyways
Looks like Math’s training has paid off: he’s looking at Jabs’ face, not her bewbs :)
Indeed.
Though the NSFW version better have/both/ of them providing fan service …
He should be looking at her right fist and leg as they prepare to slug him.
Her right foot is going down, away from him (follow the motion trails)
Math is thinking three steps ahead (at least ;)) He already knows where her fist and foot are going.
All he needs to look for are the minute signals in her face to tell him when she is going to act ;)
One thing often done in countries with a significant variety of languages and low overlap is to use lots of pictures wherever possible. Like, packaged merchandise will put a lot more work into having a big, clear, obvious picture of the contents and spend less time on catch phrases or written claims about how awesome the thing is. So, like, a food truck might have a big mural of it’s menu, and/or happy people eating the food, painted all over it.
One of my college profs had a morbid/hilarious joke about this where Gerber baby food decided to move into a market like that while doing nowhere near enough research, and the locals were super weirded out by these jars of minced goop having pictures of a human baby on them instead of, like, carrots or peas or whatever.
“This… isn’t minced baby. There’s no way.”
“Well yeah, but are they trying to imply it is? Americans are weird.”
Etc etc
That reminds me of a car company that tried to sell the Nova brand in Mexico.
The company was thinking “Nova” like “Super-nova” meaning “new.”
The Mexican public thought “No-vas” as in “No-go!” so why would anyone want to buy a car with the name “No go!” as in, it won’t go anywhere.
Fortunately, they apparently got it straightened out. But at the time, it was very embarassing.
That’s an urban legend. The Chevrolet Nova sold just fine. The Venezuelan sales actually exceeded projections!
It’s basically on the same level as misunderstanding ‘carpet’ as a “car pet”: most Spanish-speakers will recognize ‘Nova’ as “Foreign word” readily enough to not parse it as ‘No Go”, even if they don’t know it as the English word for “estrella nueva” unless it was said weird, e.g. No Va.
“Nova” isn’t even a foreign word. It’s a perfectly good Spanish word, and means exactly the same thing as the English word “nova”. (Both languages got it from the same Latin source.)
But probably not resolved by rebranding it the Sìva.
Actually, if you look into this a bit, in Spanish, ‘no va’ does indeed translate to ‘no go’. But nova translates to nova. The Nova was actually already doing quite well in Mexico by most of the various dates I’ve heard given for that urban legend. It’s one of those cases where business schools have opted to go for a very easy to explain example that happens to be completely wrong, rather than going for much messier translation errors that actually happened.
To be clear, it’s my understanding that they do include a mention of a lot of the messier translation fails, but people tend to remember the Nova story better than they remember the Electrolux that doesn’t work very well (to be fair, their slogan *can* mean that in English as well, but some cultures are more open to having their slang inverted like that than others), the Rolls Royce Silver Feces, the pen that won’t leak in your pocket and impregnate you, Powergen Italia’s very literal domain name for their English speaking customers, and so forth.
I seem to recall hearing from someone that Pepsi did in fact use a slogan that *could* mean “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead”, but it was an awkward enough phrasing of that claim that it didn’t bomb quite as badly as legends claim. On the other hand, it didn’t really work well, and they did change it before very long.
Looking up urban legends about advertising translation fails, it looks like at least half are made up or overblown.
“I seem to recall hearing from someone that Pepsi did in fact use a slogan that *could* mean “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead”” That was Coca Cola. I remember that very well, I’m old enough, to be familiar with it.
“So is the news presented in French with Wolof and/or Arabic subtitles? Or do the channels do the news three times in a row, or are there live dubbed secondary audio channels or something?”
Or maybe instead of dubbing what one reporter says they could just have one reporter per language doing their own thing, each on a different news channel. ;-)
But honestly I don’t know what they actually do.
They probably do, but still have them translated
Multiple camera crews and mobile units drives up the cost a lot. I’d imagine it would be most efficient to film with the primary language and dub or reuse the field footage.
Maybe the name _wasn’t_ a pun originally, but the translation made it one by accident?
See also many, many examples in Asia… ;)
Or manuals from Asia… gods…
What even IS the pun? Yes, it sounds like a badly mangled French-to-English translation, but I see NO PUN.
Hmmmm… Is it , as in “Of course it’s delicious”?
Sounds pretty lame, actually. Hair salons like “Cutting edge” are doing better.
My side gig before the Pandemic was cleaning up machine translated ad copy and user manuals to American English. The big problem was grammar and Trademarks, especially trademarks not in the Latin alphabet. Many times I had to do a transliteration of a word not written in an alphabet the machine translator could use. I spent a lot of time on the phone at 0500 my time getting how the name of the product was pronounced and trying to put that in written English. The company I got work through went under during the pandemic and I haven’t been contacted about working for anybody else since 2020.
This is my headcanon. That might not even be what the food truck calls itself in English, but the multilingual reporter saw a chance to stretch for the joke?
stretching before vigorous punning is always a good idea.
Even if the pun is inappropriate, I appreciate it.
Countries with a ‘prestige’ language like that tend to just figure that the only people who matter are the ones who can speak it. After all, aren’t the others probably illiterate peasants anyway? And the language is often a foreign one, like French, so it’s viewed as racially neutral. E.g. in India a lot of people prefer English to Hindi because Hindi is a specifically North Indian language with a bunch of unsavoury connotations (though India does use a ton of other languages in public life).
Every tiny little language in somewhere like Senegal will have its own separatist newspaper and radio station, though! You can ban them, but it’s hard to actually stamp them out.
they can always use foil or plastic containers.
The Arabs, like a lot of cultures, eat sloppy food pinched between bits of flat bread. (Think Nan in an Indian restaurant.) I gather something like this happens in Sengal, too. Except they use split french baguettes?
That reporter’s nerves-of-steel are a superpower in its own right.
She is Suzie’s Senegalese cousin :)
The reporter? How about the cameraman taking the short in panel 6?
… teleobjective …
Not much different than any reporter that visits a war-torn country and an attack begins, granted the fight is of a super nature it’s still a massive fight with heavy weapons.
What is “What’s the skinny, vis-a-vis senegal” supposed to mean?
That’s Halo’s search string asking for info on Senegal, done in her usual idiosyncratic style.
“What’s the skinny” is American slang for “tell me the most essential information”.
“vis-a-vis” is Latin by way of French, literally “face-to-face”, but in context and more common usage meaning “relating to” or “about”.
“What’s the skinny?” = “What’s the latest news?”
“Via-a-vis” = “in regards to.”
= “What’s the latest news regarding Senegal?”
But… that takes ages to type!
Just go with “news of senegal” in your trusted search engine, and learn all about devastating floods; the all-time high in female legislative representation (44% quota in parliament right now?); the detaining of a journalist reporting on a politician’s rape scandal; a temporary Picasso exposition closing in Dakar; and Senegal going to host a major African music event in January 2023, as well as other big sports events.
‘News of Senegal’ gets you all sorts of … official news-channel stuff. ‘What’s the skinny’ can get you the opinions and observations of people who have been there and experienced it. Sydney wants more than news, she wants to get a feel for the place she’s currently in.
But what Sydney is watching is clearly news channel broadcast.
Lougle? Hot Tube Time Machine nod?
Lougle? Hot Tub Time Machine nod?
I feel that Sydney still has a lot to learn….!
Looks like Halo has already forgotten that she’s RECHARGING and not here to bein combat.
That’s so Halo.
She hates not being the center of attention
She hates *being* the center of attention, but she hates not being included, probably because not being included feels a lot like being forgotten. It’s actually a pretty realistic representation of the personality type.
She’s thinking super hero and wants to fight even when she’s weaken it’s a typical hero trope, fight until you’re dead or knocked out… not smart but it’s what you do! And yes she wants the attention too ;)
She does look like she remembered why she was in the Time Out Room in the last panel though
The Golden Boys? Man, they’re just asking for an asskicking….
And they’re not even gold,… or wearing gold. Maybe they hang out on d’or avenue?
So am I the only one who googled “what’s the skinny, vis-à-vis senegal?”
Not anymore. My top result was a JSTOR article about Islam in Senegalese literature.
I would not, could not ever do something as stupid as type “what’s the skinny, vis a vis” anything when i coul=d just search that thing + news.
No joke, that search line triggered me a bit.
I remember going to a movie here in Australia in Sydney’s ‘Chinatown’ which was spoken in Mandarin, had ‘traditional’ Chinese characters up one side of the screen (because most Chinese in Oz only speak Cantonese or English), Arabic (Malay) and English subtitles on 2 more sides
so I guess Sydney gets to keep the full 5 bucks now?
That was my exact thought on seeing the brawl. Two thumbs up!
You know, we are blessed to live in an area where we have an absurd quantity of reference pictures at our fingertips with just a… lougle… image search. To be honest, those here look more like Random Maghrebi City than like Dakar. Just do an image search for “Dakar streets”, you’ll see. Also try “Dakar city” and the French language equivalents “Dakar rues” and “Dakar ville” (avoid “Dakar” alone as you’ll get a lot of pictures of car racing in the desert, because of the Dakar rally that is now taking place in South America…); it’s quite a beautiful city with a nice variety of vistas.
Also you can expect the proportion of people who understand French to be quite higher in a big city, especially the capital city of the country, than the average. After all, that’s where you have all the political institutions, most of the company headquarters, as well as several important cultural institutions, so the proportion of educated population is higher there than in the countryside. It’s hard to get by in Dakar without at least rudimentary understanding of French since all the signs (street signs, shop signs, etc.) are in French only.
Serve…Heavy plastic drinking cups?
I know what you’re thinking. “Of Couscous it’s Delicious” is barely an acceptable pun in English,
Actually, what I was thinking is I wonder if one of the orbs managed a star trek level translation and manages to not only translate the language but the idioms and was even capable of translating to relatable puns. That would be cool in itself, but what if it went so far as being able to translate poetry into audience understandable text. It may be that it exceeds the capability of the bablefish and was capable of making vogon poetry enjoyable.
That level of translation is not actually possible, no matter what the person who tried to sell you the universal translator says. The relatable puns simply won’t exists most times.
What if the translator could find a way to translate it into a relatable Pun? There was a experiment done devades ago where they tried to translate “Out of Sight, Out of Mind,” from English to Russian then back to English. It came out as, “Blind, Crazy.” But what if it was able to translate to “Nichevio” and then back to Out of Sight, Out of Mind.” I’m talking about virtual god level gift of tongues translation. That could be a function of the orbs.
Could a god accomplish something impossible? No. By definition. If somehow your particular universe does allow an impossible thing to be accomplished; logic itself breaks and everything becomes simultaneously true and not true, (principle of explosion), and thus no meaningful statements can be made regarding anything.
Less abstractly: how would anything translate the **(((% of “&^#^#@”? A **(((% so thoroughly disconnected from human senses that no human has ever experienced anything it can even be related to, nor the type of relationship it would have with that if they had.
The classic “explain colour to a blind man” except the blind man doesn’t share any senses with you.
It’s such an unacceptable pun that if DaveB was not writing and drawing the webcomic there would surely be several ninja hit squads en route for that pun. :)
I am not surprised DaveB gets a pass. I’d like to introduce Peoples exhibit B. a baseball.
Only because I love the comic so much and having to battle the ninja hit squads would likely make the comic come out late.
Also Dave knows well to always expect ninjas.
Can someone in this discussion thread PLEASE explain how and where there is a pun?
I’m not kidding, what’s the pun????
Believe they’re referring to “of couscous” (made with said food) = “of course” (inevitably), but after that it all gets a bit grainy.
One of my friends married a Finn and lives just outside Helskini these days. She says the news has often been repeated in different languages there, Finnish, Swedish (because it used to be a colony of Sweden), and English.
*Helsinki
No, Hel is skinny, she has been on a diet for centuries (it’s how she manages to fit in that tiny ‘kini :P )
Ah, the infamous “Of Couscous it’s Delicious” food truck.
Reminds me of the “Jason Donervan” food truck that parks up round my way (which was visited by none other than Jason Donovan* himself earlier this year!).
*A famous Australian actor/singer who was also big in the UK.
Sad that Neighbours ended, but it was good to see the original cast return for the final episode (not sure why the dad didn’t, unless he was stuck in the US, coulda still done a video conference like some of the others did)
Can still remember the original episode, when they had a different actor playing Donovan’s role
Jim Robinson was killed off back in 1993, and Alan Dale reprised the role in 2018 as a “dream sequence.”
Jason’ own father, Terence, reprised his own role as the ghost of Doug Willis in the 2022 finale, and that was probably a stretch for Fremantle’s budget as it was.
Thank you, didn’t remember what happened to his character
Kinda thought the Grandmother made an appearance, during the big outdoor group shot with everyone mingling in the street, and fairly sure the actress died (or maybe it was just another character who looked like her)
The Lina Inverse scenario prediction has mostly come to pass, although this scale is less Lina and Naga or Lina and Amelia plan to bait and grab criminal syndicate and more Fairy Tale guild attempted a sting operation..Natsu and Lucy plan/
It’s definitely not Lina Inverse scenario. There is no crater. And I’m not even sure they have anyone capable of making one … of course, both Dabler (who seem to not be there) and Sydney COULD make one.
I think Dabler is upside down, legs in position of leaping backwards, near the Mystic crystal looking formation in the dust cloud to the side of the reporter. The Soul Reaver is likely in play.
No, fairly sure that is one of The Boys trying to punch someone, and whoever that is leaping away still has hyu-mon feet, doubt Dabbles would have kept her disguise up once shit came down
Not the orbs – her glasses are the Translator, IIRC, courtesy of Cora and Fracture Station.
“Of Couscous it’s Delicious” gets a B+ from the Senegalese Health Department and a C- from the Senegalese Pun Department.
Perkele from Finland. I have eaten pea soup from a paper bowl. It was thick paper.
When I see a pun like that I assume it’s an English equivalent, like how Goldstein “abridged” Morgenstern. So, not an actual couscous for trick, but a local cuisine with a punny name.
Halo, they’ve got it covered. You’re only in Senegal in the first place because you’re out of power. Stay in the closet.
I love the vote incentive, I think this is the first time we’ve seen Math since… he lost to Jabberwocky and Max told him to go stare at boobs until he got tired of them. Which is the funniest way anybody’s been put on a bus. Weirdly enough, I think they make a cute couple! But she needs to rename boobie-style to sage-grouse-style.
We’ve seen Math a couple times since then, but admittedly, not many. We’ve even seen him naked!
And thick soup, I imagine.
Pea soup usually is (it’s why the old London smog use to be called a ‘Pea Souper’, it was as thick as the soup, and smelt as bad)
Adding to the couscous-consuming conversation, I recommend to you the bread boule. I’ve had spaghetti and mini-meatballs out of one, well-sauced couscous should be fine.
“Délicieux à tous les couscous” would be a good french name for it ;)
Hahaha, I read the Breaking News alert as a ..”Super Market brawl”! :D hahaha
For those who missed it here’s the link to Math’s shirt’s graphics
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/mma.jpg
BTW : Props for the Hot Tub Time Machine reference.