Grrl Power #1102 – Corruptus interruptus
Edit: Okay, I have to cop to it. I straight up forgot that Sydney’s glasses auto translate and give her subtitles. I have no excuse for that, but my in-world justification on this page is that there’s a half dozen people shouting over each other and the subtitles are racing by too fast for her to keep up with.
This is an odd page, admittedly. To save people from having to type stuff into google translate, the jist of the page is basically:
P2 / “Block the door!” / “Yeah, right behind you!”
P4 / “How can you do this? I attended your daughter’s wedding!” / “And she’s attending school in France! You think I can afford that on my salary?” / And then a bunch of guys yelling stop/hold it/etc.
P5 / “I hope my lazy son in law will finally step up and get a job!”
I’m not sure how well google translate would do with that stuff since it was all output from GT to begin with. It’s not nuanced French. I decided to write it in French, because as I lamented previously, there’s no automatic Wolof translation service I can find, so it came down to French or Arabic, and since they’re all cops and since French is the “official” language of Senegal, I went with that mostly, though some of the smaller speech bubbles are Arabic and Wolof.
I decided to have all the speech on the page be in another language is because that’s what Sydney would experience. There’s no way they’d all be speaking English if they weren’t talking to the famous American superheroes. Sydney knows “I watched a ton of anime and I know a bunch of J-Pop songs by heart” levels of Japanese, like… 50 words in Spanish, a surprising amount of sign language, and weirdly, Morse code. Also a ton of swear words in a lot of languages. But she has no chance in this environment.
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.
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He has the Chief hostage… then changes his mind and takes HIMSELF hostage?
Also, that’s very impressive for the Lighthook to disarm the gunman like that when his finger is on the trigger.
turn the gun away from the finger holding the trigger, duh. Although with the force required to do that it probably would have hurt his hand, you know since it’s holding the handle of the gun!
Generally suicide would be considered a greater harm than breaking bones in the hand.it would discourage him from trying it again immediately. if the 4 other people with guns mysteriously fail to subdue him.
You have underestimated the power of TWO HANDS!
You have underestimated how much pain a broken hand generates
Everybody has forgotten that the lighthook can generate tons of force. Literal tons.
Can confirm (unfortunately). But good luck proving it. It seems like nobody knows how to measure pain and compare. When a dentist asked how much pain I was in, and I said “between kidney stone and crushed hand” he said, “I meant on a scale of one to ten.”
One to ten? Dude, Pain doesn’t even have any standard units. WTF does one to ten even mean?
0 to 10 is the official scale for pain, it’s used since pain is different for everyone and one person’s blinding 10 is another’s teeth gritting 8. Don’t really make sense most of the time but it helps doctors pick which pain meds they need to give and figure out whether treatment is helping.
It’s still a stupid scale. I’ve had an infected eardrum rupture while waiting for treatment, and a dislocated ankle reduced by a doctor clamping down on broken bones, and every normal pain in my life is about “Oh, 0.5 maybe?” since.
This is why more people should be familiar with descriptive pain scales. Those quantify the pain you’re experiencing by how it affects your life, not by just arbitrarily attaching a number to it that you hope will tell the doctor you’re in incredible pain without making them think you’re an addict looking for painkillers. (source: have scoliosis bad enough my spine had to be fused and bolted back together.)
To piggy-back off of this comment, this is what I heard from a hospice nurse once:
1-3 You notice it if you’re not doing anything, but if you get involved in something, it fades to the background.
4-5 You can still do things pretty much normally, but you notice the pain even when you’re occupied.
6-8 The pain is interfering with normal activities.
9-10 FUUUCK! (Ok, she didn’t actually put it like this, but you get the idea.)
I think most people would prefer not to ever have a reason to be familiar with any kind of pain scale.
Brian Regan recommends saying ‘8’ if you’re ever in the emergency room.
Brian Regan recommends saying ‘8’ if you’re ever in the emergency room.
(Possibly duplicate post, but with corrected link to full sequence)
It still seems absurd to me. As usual, there’s an XKCD about that: https://xkcd.com/883/
And I kind of agree with it; if 10 is the worst possible pain imaginable, then I don’t think I’d want to live to experience a 3; I’d rather die.
Maybe someday we’ll have technology that can read our brain and actually calculate pain on an objective scale. That would be nice.
Hyperbole and a Half did a better version: https://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/02/boyfriend-doesnt-have-ebola-probably.html
It is a relativistic scale measurement.
Look for what’s called a “descriptive pain scale”, not the absolutely useless “series of faces” pain scale that’s regrettably common in doctor’s offices worldwide. Kaiser Permanente has one that’s readily discoverable through google search, and it quantifies the level of pain you’re in by how it’s affecting your life.
It means you’re dealing with a pencil-pusher, not a doctor. If he cannot translate that range, that’s on him.
Personally, my “10” got adjusted a bit when I had a kidney stone. I got a confirmation from a woman whose had both that kidney stones are worse than labor. A few years later, a crazy woman hit me with pepper spray. Scale got another adjustment. “Cannot hold a coherent thought for a full second”–now THAT’s a “10”.
But “worst imaginable”? That’s just stupid. I can take that pain (which was essentially limited to my face & eyes) & imagine it at every point in my body. I would be surprised if most can manage that.
I had kidney stones every 3-6 months from 1987 till 1004 when the offending kidney was found to have cancer. yeah I’d rate them at least an 8, had an attack while driving and managed to go another 5 miles give or take until I almost hit an on-coming car and gave up, luckily there was a mini-mart there and I had them call an ambulance, kidney had ruptured by then. The pain scale is more of a distraction than anything because most people call out a 10 any time they are hurt the nurses get mote attentive if you actually use the scale rather than shout out a 10. Pain tends to fade over time because you get used to it as well a 10 when it’s fresh, means it’s a 6-7 in a week, it’s what happened to me when I crushed 2 vertebra in my lower back, I’m at a 4 now after many years but it’s never gone away (nerve damage they tell me).
I feel like I wouldn’t ever say 10. Because if I’m in enough pain to describe as 10, I’m probably too busy screaming.
comparing people’s state to their “worst pain imaginable” inevitably trivializes the experience of people with really good imaginations.
I can confirm that, my left hand was crushed in a car accident, got it working though… mostly… lol
ok, while we are all debating the pain of a broken hand… what about the 4 other guys who want to subdue the patient. don’t they get a say in what happens next? they all still have guns last I checked.
Guys, I was quoting DBZ Abridged (Cell vs. Gohan).
I think the guy figured out that he’s not making it out alive in any case so at least he doesn’t need to go through with what he was presumably coerced to do
This would’ve been the perfect “all-in-one” comment if you’d also mentioned the missing translation from her alien tech glasses. 9 out of 10
The glasses can’t translate vocal words, only written, because, well, she doesn’t have a fucking WiFi implant in her ear!!
Didn’t they translate three different spoken languages as text when they arrived at Deus country?
Because she identified all three to her team and got funny looks.
Except they did translated spoken words pretty well back in Galtin…
It wasn’t that long ago that some ARC-SWAT members were witnessing a polyglot conversation and wondered what languages they were speaking, and Sydney casually listed them, so apparently the glasses *can* hear and recognize spoken language.
Sydney needs to ask Cora if there is a ‘subtitles’ mode somewhere in the technical specs for her tech specs.
Sydney has figured that out before all this, the glasses have an eye tracker so if she looks at a displayed spot of the lens it activates something, like when her “Woof” BF sent her those races nude pics to her LOL! Those hi-tech glasses have been a major help to her from the start, I just hope Cora gave her a few spares just in case.
But her glasses HAVE translated vocal words before. She even told her teammates what languages other people were saying in Deus’ country.
I think that she understands what they’re saying, but she doesn’t understand WHY the man has a gun to the Chief’s head.
Very likely. That would make sense.
Thats true! Good recall!
I’m going to gently leave this here – https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1019-rosetta-brain/
My guess would be, since it lacks audio receptors, she can only get that from people who are looking right at her (since it reads lips and expressions rather than translating auditory input). It does that super well (because alien technology), but it does require a clear line of sight which she lacks here.
Anything that can run an invisible shield that blocks light attacks preferentially, can create gasses, and can presumably understand her own intent, must be able to read vibrations in the air.
There’s no reason to presume such a big drawback on nth tech.
Yeah, but it’s the glasses providing the translation, which are not nth tech. Her orbs are not involved, though a universal translator might be a handy function for one of them.
I don’t think he was taking himself hostage so much as going “FML” and trying to take his life in shame.
The thing I hate about someone who decides to suicide that way is that, even though it’s not by their own hand, they’re effectively forcing someone else to do it for them. What kind of an insensitive slob doesn’t consider how someone else is going to have to deal with the fact that they were forced to kill.
People who point guns at other people?
Looks like he was being paid to kill the chief, but got caught in the act. If he dies, he doesn’t get paid, so he chose not to kill the chief and go out on his own terms? Or he has a weird superpower, maybe.
Or, he’s not that much of an arsehole: it’s one thing to pass on information, but another to kill the chief
Oh, yeah. He was getting paid to obstruct police work, and when caught first panicked and took a hostage, then decided to take his own life. Checks out.
Ever seen Blazing Saddles?
Don’t nobody move or I’ll kill the n—.
“He’s not bluffing! He’s just crazy enough to do it!”
Its cold tonight, let me warm myself by this blazing saddle. there were several here but some of burned out.
1 – He was caught being the spy for the criminals.
2 – He tried to get out of it by taking the chief hostage.
3 – Seeing that he had no hope of escaping, especially not if he murdered the chief (who apparently was his friend if they visit each other’s children’s weddings) he decided to commit suicide instead. Presumably to save his family from disgrace and financial ruin.
4 – Sydney decided she had seen enough brains splattered all over the place for the rest of her life, and grabbed the gun with her lighthook, forcing it away from the man’s head. And presumably breaking his wrist in the process.
This comic worked well.
That’s a rather dark turn I Didn’t see coming.
Id say it was a correct turn myself. might be a left turn.
if it’s correct, it can only be a right turn
three left turns make a right. so we might be on our way instead of arriving.
It was a counter-clockwise turn that made everything all right.
As an aside I miss my palmIII.
Does sydney’s upgrades that let her read alien language only do alien? It’s not an open ended translator?
Only written words, not spoken (she has no aural connection to her glasses)
They do, in fact, give her running subtitles.
Yep, like when it translated spoken chiktr, alar and xhosa back in galytn.
So the glasses have a mini-audio receiver? o_O
Implicitly.
Honestly, the glasses aren’t especially advanced, compared to extant Terran tech. Just next-gen Glass(tm) with some augmented reality functions added.
They have enough space-hardware in them to handle:
1) situationally adaptive HUD (that is only visible to the user)
2) near realtime language translation
3) space-email for nekkid furry boyfriend pics
4) personal weapon scanning
and probably a couple more tricks that I’m not remembering right now. Were I the author I would probably go with saying that the light emitters and sensors allow the lenses to act as miniaturized laser microphones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_microphone
1) Situationally adaptive HUD
It’s called Augmented Reality and is already a thing you can do with phones, although currently it is limited to commercial applications like being able to have pop-ups about cereal brands you look at in the store for various health information. But there’s no reason off-the-shelf hardware can do this, albeit with custom software. VR generally has to calibrate to where your eyes are looking anyway, this just puts a reticle where your eyes are sighting. For modern military versions, look at the helmet for the F35 pilots, which does almost exactly this, plus gives him a pass-through the plane’s body by using the cameras located on its exterior and also painting targets and giving a reticle where it is aiming.
2) near realtime language translation
They’re called Closed Captions. They’re extremely common.
3) Space-email
Given it’s got a microprocessor somewhere, it’s reasonable to assume it includes bluetooth connection to her phone that probably has an email account she can use. A bit miniaturized compare to off-the-shelf but not impossible with current tech. This assumes that her boyfriend is connecting to the terrestrial email network. If she’s got an FTL link, that would indeed be future-tech.
4) personal weapon scanning
Again, augmented reality, and already exists. Current tech works off of shape recognition. Would work better if it had camera modes that went outside the visible spectrum, which is not unreasonable.
Most of these features are available with our current tech, although some of it would be military-spec tech that hasn’t been released to the general public yet for all the bells and whistles depicted. The only thing that is explicitly not possible with our current tech is contacting a device outside Earth’s communication network, which can be solved by having HIM tap into the earth’s communication network rather than packing an FTL transmitter into a pair of glasses.
‘2) near realtime language translation
They’re called Closed Captions. They’re extremely common.’
only in videos. well and very special phones. I’d seriously consider getting a LAN line for them. because subtitles are much easier to understand….
I’m not sure how anything you have said relates to the OP’s comment expressing disbelief that the glasses could have an audio pickup built into them somehow.
I don’t see how that’s any more difficult to believe than the video capture, display, or computation power that’s been displayed.
Do her translator glasses not work for earth languages?
it’s established and demonstrated that they do.
one, there’s a wall between. in my experience even if they were using your vernacular of English it would be hard to understand what they are saying. then again I have normal hearing. its the rest of you…
I would suspect that the glasses are somehow not responding to the language. she may have turned it off because of the overwhelming wall of text she’d get otherwise. most non sentient gadgets struggle with focus and instead amplify/translate EVERYTHING within range. I would get headaches in large crowds because my aids did this. restaurants are even more fun. then you get dish clatter noises in addition to all the conversations around you. my new ball and chains are improvements but Its still a problem.
Not in the hallway when those two cops ran past
It translates written, not spoken, languages
But it is written, see? Comic book characters don’t speak, silly.
Dude, you’ve been repeatedly corrected on this one…
No, no, he’s technically correct. At no point in the comic has anyone ever actually said anything. It’s all been written in speech bubbles. [zany face emoji that I can’t punch in here because I’m on a PC and not a phone]
Check the times, the corrections came later
Except it translated spoken language using subtitles back in Galtyn.
Go for “Bon à rien de gendre” instead of “Gendre bon à rien” in panel 5 for a more natural speech. The “Arrêt” bubble in panel 4 should be “Arrête”, GT kinda failed on that one. Other french bubbles are ccorrect. Can’t speak for Woolf.
English present indicative looks the same as imperative, so GT will always fail here. I’ve found if I translate from German to French it works a lot better… but then I know German. :-)
French native speaker here born in Champigny sur Marne.
Thrid panel
The “vous” was artificial it’s a “tu” because if he was at his daughter’s wedding.
Tu is the correct usage with a friend or a former one in this case to accent reproof by recalling the closeness.
“Comment tu peux me trahir (ainsi)! J’étais au mariage de ta fille.”
ainsi is not necessary in everyday language
and for the answer the translation is
“And she’s attending school in France! You think I can afford that on my cop salary?”
It’s not about the price of school in France – university fee are about 200 euros per year *- but the difference of standard of living between France and Senegal.
In France median salary is about 2 000 Us$/month in Senegal median salary is about 100 Us$/month..
Fourth panel
Mon gendre bon a rien could be used in informal conversation even it’s not grammatically correct…
Bon à rien de gendre is the proper syntax
another way of saying the same thing is
“Mon gendre , ce bon a rien, va enfin devoir trouver un travail.”
Spoken french is more relax than written french
Fourth panel
arrête exact it’s the imperative, for an order arrête is more appropriate than arrêtez – mostly used in instruction manuals –
*Since 2019 it’s only if you’re french or from a country -like Senegal – with the France had an arrangement about scolarship.. But before it was unrestricted.
And she could had a scolarship based on income in France if she is here for longer than two years…
The relationship between France and Senegal is historically good but degraded by N.Sarkozy – former french president° and French All Rigth ( Marine le Pen , Eric Zemmour)
°Sentenced in France in 2021 to one years in prison for corruption and influence peddling, Unfortunatelynot in jail at home -wearing an electronic bracelet at home –
native french speaker here and i valid this comment
Weird, they did translate xhosa on page 1019
They do but ar overlay is not fast enough in this situation.
I think it’s more a matter of missing context. Right now it’s entirely possible that Sydney doesn’t know that there is a mole in the Police Department. It would be reasonable to sequester her because a) her powers are currently unreliable and therefore b) to preserve the ruse of sending the Shapeshifter Lioness out in Sydney’s place.
She may also be distracted by the actual happenings, and therefore not currently reading her glasses’ translation.
I’d say considering that panel aren’t really static, there’s people moving in them in theory she probably rounded the corner “after” of very near the end of the speach, and just saw an hostage situation and went “nah, don’t wanna see brain matter on the wall today”
Oh great, reload button finally worked!
remember, don’t reload out in the open.
Leon: fancy flip headshot
Le Français est vraiment correct, ça fait plaisir que ça soit bien utilisé pour une fois XD
For non-french-speakers :
The French is really on point, it’s nice to see it being used right for once XD
The translation is…accurate..but it’s a bit stiff for the situation. For a native speaker it’s an obvious machine translation. But don’t get me wrong it’s perfectly serviceable in a pinch, if you’ve got a lot more dialogue planned in french might want to seek out a native speaker for some touch-up/smoothing.
Consider that is possible that for some of these cops french is not the first language. French is the official language of Senegal, so probably if you want to works for the government (like, as a cop, for example) you have to speak it, but as Dave said only 20% of the population talk it, and many had to learn it to get the job, so they could not be 100% fluent.
Still, the vous/tu thing isn’t something that any speaker would do.
If English hadn’t lost “thee”, we’d use it for our close friends, while the boss and people we didn’t know were called “you”. same with tu(thee) and vous(you)
For the french translation of “Stop!”, the good word is “Arrête!”.
French reader here, just a little thing: “mon gendre bon à rien” -> “mon bon à rien de gendre”
It will be more fluid, more french ;)
Thanks for the opportunity to brush off my rusty and unused linguistics skills. High school French class FTW! :-D
Pardon my French…
Act first to avoid casualties; listen to the whining later. Excellent work.
So we missed the bit where the audience are all Dame Angela?
The french is good, you can rest easy.
Beau travail !
Would her glasses be translating for her at this point it is she out of range?
Not unless they wrote it down
P5 / “I hope my lazy son in law will finally step up and get a job!”
it would be more “it seems my son in law” than “I hope”
It’s “arrêtes”, not “Arrêt”. “Arrêt” is the infinitive (=not conjugated version)
You’d have thought that being French would kill the experience for me (and it kinda did), but actually reading the comic in French (+ the switch between other languages) felt already odd enough to convey Sydney’s disorientation.
The GT translation is actually quite good, with two exceptions:
– In panel 4 “Arrêt” makes no sense, you should keep “Stop”, or for example “Lâche-le” if you want something foreign.
– In panel 5 the words need to be rearranged, you’d better write “Il semblerait que mon bon à rien de gendre va devoir enfin trouver un travail”.
French reader here. Some corrections needed.
tutoiement probable :
‘je ne peux pas croire que tu me trahisse ainsi. J’étais au mariage de ta fille.’
If formal anyway :
Je ne peux pas croire que vous me trahissiez ainsi…
replace ‘arrêt’ with ‘halte’ or better : ‘stop’
And : ‘Il semble que mon bon à rien de gendre doive finalement trouver un travail.’
As a French person, here’s how I would translate these in English, and what I think they’d be like in spoken French (keeping in mind I’m not from Senegal, there may be regional variations):
P2: “Yes, let us go!” (“allons-y” is very polite, almost literary). I would say “j’arrive !” (lit. “I’m coming” and used in any situation of going somewhere with the meaning of being almost there, more or less truthfully) or “oui, go !” (literally using the English “go” is common and useful because it’s fast)
P4:
– “I can not believe that you should betray us so. I was at your daughter’s wedding!” (“Je ne peux pas” is very polite, “vous nous trahiriez” extremely so. That tense is hardly used when speaking. “Vous” is the polite “you”, which may be okay if they are not same-level colleagues but one is higher-ranked.) I would say it “J’arrive/Je n’arrive pas à croire que vous nous trahissez !” (I can’t/cannot believe you’re betraying us!) “tu” can replace “vous” if they know each other well and are hierarchically same, or if this guy’s over the other in the hierarchy. Which I think he is? They’re the captain and a “normal” copper, aren’t they?
– “And my daughter goes to school in France! You think I can afford that on a cop’s salary?” (“tu” is more informal, so to be used if he’s being impolite, or higher-ranked, or they know each other well). The translation is fine and sounds natural here. A bit bookish, maybe “tu crois” (literally “you believe”) is more common than “tu penses” but it works.
– Arrêt ! → “stop!” but as in, “come to a stop”, not as in “stop now”. It’s a noun here and it shouldn’t be. If he’s addressing both, or just the guy with a gun but politely, it should be “Arrêtez !” (or “Stop!”, really). “Halte !” could be used, but it’s getting a bit old-fashioned.
P5: “Looks like my good-for-nothing son-in-law is finally going to have to find a job!” If you were going for I hope my lazy son in law will finally step up and get a job!” as in the commentary, maybe it’d be “J’espère que mon fainéant de beau-fils va enfin se bouger et trouver un travail !” (bit of a tweak to fit the tone, “gendre” is correct but much classier)
Beautiful page, and frankly given how difficult French is I’m impressed it worked out so well – if it was you, hats off, and if it was Google translate, well, it got quite a lot better in the last few years.
As a fellow native french speaker I mostly agree on the guy above, I will add that:
1)”Arrêtez” is as he said, a polite way of speaking, and you can use “arrêtes” or “arrêtes-toi!” for a full sentence.
2)”Il semblerait que mon gendre bon à rien va enfin devoir trouver du travail.” while technically the sentence is correct, on spoken french, it’s not in the correct order. “Il semblerait que mon bon à rien de gendre va enfin devoir trouver du travail.” is better, and I agree, gendre is kind of old fashioned and “beau-fils” is more modern.
3) In the other hand, french in Françafrique (the old african colonies from french domination), is like the french from quebec, a mix between local language and old fashioned french, and is seen dismissively by most of the french from France, so making it to look like correct by France french standard is maybe not the right move. Maybe checking with local speaker or linguist would be better. Maybe you can contact @linguisticae on twitter, he’s a youtuber and linguistician focused on debunking false idea on the french language.
Just a couple things because it made me laugh a bit – one, I’m a girl, what kind of guy would be called Lysbeth? ^^”, and two, I am actually a linguist! But being a linguist and speaking many languages (or language variations, if we consider Senegal French, Québec French, European French etc. to be the same language essentially, which is debatable) are different things. Though I agree Linguisticæ is great I’m… not sure he’ll know Senegal French? Best to ask a local speaker really. Or Dabbler.
English used to have levels of politeness too. Used to be “thee” and “thou” (depending on whether subject or object) was the intimate, less polite form, and “you” was plural (making the modern “you all” redundant) and was more formal.
Somewhere along the line, “thee” and “thou” became the more formal forms and “you” became casual, and shortly thereafter they got dropped entirely. The loss of the polite and casual versions of the second person pronoun lead to English becoming the most egalitarian language in the world. Where one refers to subordinates and superiors with the same pronouns. This has also lead to hell for translating from English to any language with less egalitarian usage.
The registers of politeness in Japanese are absolutely insane, and frequently misunderstood by people who think they can speak Japanese but really cant. For example, you’ll often see foreign men using more feminine personal pronouns in Japanese (namely watashi) because it’s the polite personal pronouns and you can’t go wrong with default politeness. In fact, it’s generally how you refer to yourself to a superior in Japanese or in situations where you’re expected to be polite. However, there’s a number of other, more appropriate ones to use in every day language (if you’re male).
HOWEVER, the vocabulary and sentence structure taught to people learning Japanese as a second language is overly feminine, which would be very embarrassing if Japanese people weren’t so extremely forgiving and even appreciative that you’ve taken the time to learn the language at all.
But it goes deeper with Japanese. A lot of foreign female fans of anime will refer to themselves “atashi” in all circumstances, and this is highly inappropriate in the vast majority of circumstances it’s misused in. The first person pronoun “atashi” is a childish, lispy way of saying “watashi” and is only really appropriate if you’re either a child or if you’re a girl and the person you’re talking to is your boyfriend and you’re trying to be cute and demure and maybe jump his bones. Suffice to say it’s hilariously inappropriate personal pronoun a girl to use with a total stranger as often happens with western “otaku” when they seek out native speakers to practice with.
Then there’s also misunderstandings about honorifics. By honorifics, I mean things like -tan, -chan, -kun, -san, -sama, -sempai, and any others I may have forgotten because it’s been ages since I left Japan and have nobody to speak it with.
While it is true that female anime characters are often referred with with -chan and males with -san, there is a misconception that -san is masculine and -chan is feminine. Nobody speaks in Anime like you’d speak in the real world. It’s all over the top. The -chan honorific is generally used with people you are intimately close with, regardless of their or your gender, and it is considered rude in an overly forward manner (much like the above misuse of atashi) to refer to a ANYONE you don’t know and are very close with as -chan.
For example, “otosan” would be the polite way of addressing your father, while “oto-chan” would be a casual, and informal way, akin to how “daddy” is used by girls in English. It would probably be very eyebrow raising for a guy to refer to his father as “otochan” for the same reason it would be eyebrow raising for a guy in English to refer to his father as “daddy.” That said otochan would be very rare.
Likewise, a girl might refer to her boyfriend (let’s say his name is Akira) as “Akira-chan” or if she was being especially cute maybe “Aki-chan”, but even then only in a casual and informal setting. If they were going to school together, the would refer to him as Akira-san when speaking to teachers for example.
The -tan honorific suffix is mostly used for babies and mascots, but even then it’s pretty uncommon. Basically, -tan is a childish, lispy version of -chan, which in turn is a childish and lispy version of -san. Meanwhile, -san is used for people you don’t know, as well as colleagues, classmates, and people under you. Then -sama is used for superiors such as your boss, upperclass members, etc.
Revisiting the father example, “otosama” is a super formal and polite way to refer to your father. It’s generally only used only by extremely high class girls of exceptional upbringing… and gay guys.
To summarize… otochan = daddy, otosan = dad, otosama = father dearest.
I’m not even going to touch on the last honorific, as I’m not interested in being noticed.
I had a friend who was completely fluent in Spanish, and who taught English in Japan. Because her students all wanted to practice their English, she didn’t get to practice Japanese with them SO she practiced… elsewhere.
Later, someone told her, in an embarrassed tone… “Your Japanese is very good, but… you talk like a taxi driver.”
So she had the opposite issue going on. Perfect!
As a french reader, I propose some upgrades for the text in panel 4 & 5. In place of “Arrêt!” you can use “Arrêtes!” or just “Stop!”. On panel 5 “Il semblerait que mon gendre bon à rien …” sound better as “Il semblerait que mon bon à rien de gendre …”.
All in all, you’re understandable. Thanks for this awesome comic.
All that French speaking makes me wonder….
1.Should Anvil and Sydney go off on Asterix-type adventures
2.Maxima meets a lookalike cousin from Quebec now serving on the RCMP….
Yes.
Seconded, love the Asterix series.
The only person I know of that is that big in the RCMP has three heads and is very furry and a former guard dog to Hell. (See Spinnerette).
Fantastic series
Looking at the situation and making my first gut reaction to it.
The guns are pointed at multiple people, this isn’t one person securing one person with two more for backup. This is one person with a hostage and two guns pointed at them. Reaction, free hostage.
If I parse the TEXT though. We’re dealing with some amount of the police force being paid off by somebody. And Halo might be allowing the only non crooked cop there to be shot escaping… we shall see.
There’s another cop holding a shotgun pointed at the hostage taker off the right edge of panel 4. He’s the one saying “Waqaf!”
How do we know chief isn’t crooked?
We don’t, and good tradecraft would mean that, even if he was, neither would the hostage-taker.
That said, it seems odd to me that said hostage-taker would be ordered to do this. You don’t burn your assets like this, if you have the brains god gave a doorknob. Rather, you have the target killed out-of-the-way, so that your asset remain concealed & useful.
In any case, no, I doubt the chief is working for these bad guys, as he wouldn’t have let this plan go forward, if he were. Though I suppose he could be corrupt in other ways. Skimming off the budget, for example, or boosting from the evidence locker.
I am thinking that detectives or other police officers worked out who the Golden Boy’s mole was and he panicked when confronted.
That’s the most likely explanation for the scene… and the fact that he admitted to being bribed. Pretty much makes the case he’s the bad guy and the others are not.
Did Sydney get an upgrade (physical or ball) that allows her to translate spoken words?
The glasses she got from Corra do both written text, and provide running subtitles.
So, they have an audio-pickup?
Apparently yes, based on what was seen in Galytn.
Forgot about that
It’s very cool that DaveB went through the trouble of writing everything in French (shows real dedication), but just wondering why he did not just put it in English but with angle brackets on either side, and an asterisk with * translated from French at the bottom? Because if he wanted to do Wolof, he could have done the angle bracket method for that as well.
That’s usually how comics tend to do it where the reader can see what’s being said, although the reader sees that it’s in a language other than English.
DaveB seems to go back and forth as to whether he’s using actual different languages or the angle bracket method.
Like here, where he uses both actual Spanish AND the angle bracket method for Alar.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-745-como-llego-al-banco-de-sangre/
And you might think ‘well maybe he just uses angle brackets for alien language, since he does not want to have to go all Star Trek and come up with an entire new alien language? However, on the very page BEFORE that one, he uses angle brackets for Spanish.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-743-introducing-escorpia-and-shes-dead/
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-744-recycling/
So just wondering what the reasoning was for this choice. I’m assuming it was so that we, the readers, could be as ‘confused’ as Sydney was as to what exactly was going on? (although like he said we could just type it in Google Translate). But that’s just my guess.
The reason is that it’s through Sydney’s perspective and the commotion is commanding her attention far more than the translator in her glasses. In instances where it’s been translated, it’s been when the ficus of the page is in someone who understands.
The comic shifts who the focus is on, but we’re can only language the focusee understand
Thanks AutoCowrecked for mangling that last sentence.
I dont understand because she was able to get translations of bystanders speaking 3 separate languages, one of which is an relatively obscure (at least to westerners) human language (xhosa).
Unless the implication is French is not one of the languages in her glasses’ language database? Which would admitredly be hilarious. But I doubt it.
Oh wait never mind. I understand what you mean now that I re-read your post. :)
Fun fact: with the typical wage of a cop in Senegal you can afford to pay university in France (not comfortably and not a top shelf university but it’s possible).
Yes in France medium University fee – universities are in great majority state-owned (France is one sate) – is about
220 €/years or less than 230$us/year
Yes, but that only covers the uni fees, what about food and rent?
OK, so I’m guessing this guy is the spy the gang had in headquarters that let them know the Arch Swat members were looking for them. Nice collar,, Halo.
Oh dang, I love the voting incentive! Math looks so -dang- hot!
Uh, Sydney, use your head.
Reason they didn’t contact you is because your orbs apparently need to recharge.
Nightmare scenario at the cop shop. Everyone is listening to the reports regarding the Lions taking down the mobsters coming in on the radio. Suddenly Bob, who realizes that there are suddenly big problems with being the mob mole, jumps up and pulls a gun on the boss. The guy you were just drinking coffee with is now threatening the office. Not really a thing that you’ve trained for.
But it ought to be. There’s a reason for why you don’t go to condition white around other people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Park_Chung-hee
Thinking on it a bit more, I suppose that armed intruder and hostage situation training would apply. A bigger police department might even budget for that. In this case it is more the element of surprise in the form of a trusted individual making the attack that is difficult to train for. I think it would require an escalation from vigilance to outright paranoia. In the case of a dictator such paranoia might be warranted. Having worked in and supervised an environment where condition yellow/orange was the norm in terms of level of risk and required vigilance was the norm my experience is that even well trained people can become complacent.
@DaveB I found this one, https://lingojam.com/EnglishtoWolofTranslator
Hope it helps you in the future with comics!!
First, even knowing the translation “I don’t know what’s going on here” still works because she (and we) don’t know exactly WHAT he did.
Second, I imagine they’re probably NOT speaking perfect French; it’s probably some local dialect. Imagine a New Yorker going to deep Louisiana.
Third, can the tentacle stop/deflect a bullet?
They can exert about 15 to 16 tons of force, which I suspect is more than the amount necessary to resist the impact of the average bullet. Whether she can manipulate it fast enough to deliberately block a bullet is another matter entirely.
I do wonder if the informint could be trying to take his life to protect his family. if he is caught and arrested what stops the gang that paid him from going after his family to keep him for talking? but he dies and can’t spill any info, well no reason to go after his family as “don’t take” hostages
Nope no shooting yourself with the impressionable young woman in attendance
Why not just do the tried and true having a caption box saying *Translated from Senegal with the actual dialogue in between the to denote foreign languages being spoken. Its worked in comics for decades in Marvel and DC.
Everyone complaining about translation conventions and lack thereof, and not one has noticed that Sidney just manifested her lighthook on the other side of a physical barrier.
That’s a reflection in an indoor office window.
Umm, no, she manifested it in the hall, and had it move through the open door (pay attention to her hand, you can see it starts right there)
Allons-y!
I think that a better in universe explanation would either be that she forgot to turn the translator back on or that she forgot to recharge the glasses.
The chief’s single-button blazer turned into a two-button blazer in a later frame. The chief also got taller. Details, details.
One of my pet peeves in movies is when people speak English to each other for the audience (and I’m in that audience) even though they are definitely not native speakers, so I think a little GT French is good.
Yeah, because most people don’t like to read when they are at the movies, it can distract from the action, specially if there is a lot of speaking going on
It’s fine with your hentai at home, you can pause or rewind if you missed something, not so great in a crowded theatre