Grrl Power #681 – Babelfishing
This is one of my favorite pages in a while, as if features Sydney at peak Sydney. You have to forgive her for forgetting to lead with English, but she got excited about breaking out her vast repertoire of fictional alien greetings.
As a first contact protocol, shotgunning a bunch of different languages probably isn’t the best strategy. Especially if, like Sydney, you only know a handful of words from each one. Sydney is properly fluent in Klingon though, and while Qapla’ isn’t actually a Klingon greeting, I thought it would be easier for you guys to recognize than the actual word, which seems to be “nuqneH.” I vaguely recall hearing that in an episode or two, but if there’s a single word that means “Yo, what up, Klingon here.”, it’s Qapla’.
This particular page features a pair of cameos. One of them shouldn’t be too hard to figure out. The other one is preeeety obscure, I think. I’ll probably blab about it one someone guesses it, cause it’s from something cool I saw when I was a kid. Weirdly, and I didn’t know this until a few years ago, but it was my first exposure to the Cthulhu mythos. That’s all the hints you get. :)
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Clever! Still, the True Sight orb might help here….
Not sure how True Sight would help here, but my money is on the unknown orb being a translator.
Joe Guy was implying that being called the “Telepresence/Truesight” orb doesn’t mean it’s limited to light-based perception and may also afford tele-capabilities on a variety of things including linguistics.
Same principle is why the “Flight” orb can do more than let one fly.
Or just reading the sign?
You’d be surprised, when you expect something very strongly or have very strong pre conceived notions,, you can miss some pretty obvious signs
Her normal sight orbs ight help as well. As in her eyes.
Her eyes noticing that the sign right behind them is in English (well, l33t speak english, but english).
Nah, not ‘l33t-sp3ak’, more ‘pidgin-English’: spelt the way it sounds
Is that Esperanto in panel 6?
Nope, it is Hungarian! It says “my hover boat is full of eels”.
I didn’t know Sydney smoked
‘My hovercraft is full of eels’ is a line from the Monty Python sketch, ‘Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook’.
The one I was in very quickly ended up full of wild rice – note that hovercraft do not turn per-se.
They do if you perform a hand-anchor-turn.
What a shame. I thought it might be a friendly flip of the bird to Harry Harrison…
While Harry Harrison frequently uses the phrase to indicate a gibberish translation, I suspect the Monty Python use is first. It dates from 1970.
Wasn’t Esperanto supposed to be like the Global Trade Language? That way, instead of learning dozens of different languages, to do International Business one would only need to learn two: their native language and Esperanto (obviously doesn’t mean they couldn’t learn more if they wanted to… )
Also love the wall sign.
So what if English is the universal common? What if it isn’t the fact that they speak English but the fact that we speak English because our culture was contaminated by outside forces?
It isn’t, there’s a “Universal Translator” spell in place. However, as Klingon is the only one of those languages Sydney actually speaks, the only word they understood was “Success!”, and the rest remained gibberish
You’re not wrong at all. English has so many imports from other languages it’s hardly its own self anyway.
One of my favorite quotes about the English language is “English isn’t a language at all, it’s three languages standing on top of each other wearing a trench coat.”
“English doesn’t borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over and goes through their pockets for loose grammar.” :D
http://www.pegasuspublishing.com/English-Doesnt-Borrow-from-Other-Languages-Shirt-p-26671.html
Since Pegasus doesn’t bother to credit anyone, I’ll just mention that although the line is often attributed to Terry Pratchett, it actually originates with a Canadian book reviewer and first reader named James Davis Nicoll. In its original form (1990), it was phrased as “The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”
It’s more like going through their pockets for loose VOCABULARY. The grammar rules are pretty set.
Didn’t know there even were ‘Grammar Rules’ for English…
Why doesn’t she try asking the Nud Gurlz?
Hmm….. Were any of those in Jaffa? I wanna say “Tek mal tek” is, but it’s been a looooooooong time.
Yes that is supposed to be the Goa’uld greeting, though Sydney got it slightly wrong. Correct greeting would be tek ma tek: “Friends, well met” or tek mal tiak which is a greetings towards someone highly respected. Or she could’ve gone for tel ma te, which is a greetings between lovers.
And if they did speak any of those languages, Sydney would still be out of luck
Except Klingon. :)
Except, that’s a fictitious language :P
Doesn’t mean you can’t have a conversation in it. She would just be glad it didn’t turn out to be Quenya, that’s a toungetwister.
Quenya isn’t a tonguetwister at all if you speak languages that have similar vowel/consonant formation. I don’t find it hard at all, it’s actually easy and really pleasant to pronounce! :)
You’re assuming it was invented rather than bartered for from an actual alien race.
Technically it’s not a fictitious language, since Gene Roddenberry had actually hired a linguist to come up with the complete language.
So it’s therefore a real language, with syntax and an entire dictionary and everything. :)
And like Alan said, it’d be easier, if you knew aliens existed, to buy a phrase book from them and pass it off as your original work, because honestly who would ever know, right?
Ooooh I didnt even read alan’s post, but I like it!
Klingon isnt a made-up language for Star Trek. The linguist Gene Roddenberry contracted was actually an alien and just used his own language! BRILLIANT!
You win the internet this day, Alan!
The basic Klingon was created by James Doohan, and later linguist Marc Okrand was commissioned by Leonard Nimoy to write a full-blown Klingon language after Okrand had added to it for STII:WOK and Nimoy was working on STIII:TSFS
Con langs are real, constructed languages, but they are generally still fictitious. In the case of Klingon, it has a fictitious history and etymology and so on.
As counter examples, Esperanto and American Sign Language are not “fictitious”, since they have no pretensions of being other than a useful constructed language.
Deaf person here. While I don’t speak ASL but the local Signed Language of my country of residence, I do know that ASL is NOT a constructed language. It grew from French Sign Language because some Deaf teacher went from Paris in France to the USA in the 18th century and created a seed of Deaf awareness from which ASL emerged as a natural language.
Yup. And it is a point of shame that said teacher first went to England, to try and get help to learn British Sign Language, but was turned away. Which is why ASL uses one hand (in addition to facial expressions and body language) rather than the two that BSL uses.
*wags tail in CSL sign for ‘sighs’*
Why is that a point of shame? I’d say it makes it somewhat more useful, if you can speak it with one arm occupied/missing/inert
The shame was from England turning them away
Yup.
Yup, and also pictionary(game) methods, as well as anything else that works. I learned most of the basics of ASL at work when we hired a new programmer. found that a lot of sign is improvisation, also that ASL is not even globally the same. eg you have local language variants such as en, jp, Spanish, etc.
As a programmer you also get a lot of technical words that have no ‘special sign’ for them so you improvise.
It’s why I suggested Sydney also try pictionary rules :)
I will paraphrase quote from movie Firefox: “Think Alien” – (Think Russian) – Clint Eastwood
That’s because ASL is specifically “American Sign Language”
I assume you mean synthetic as in “it was consciously created”, but a synthetic language already exists to mean a language in which a lot of information is given through a single word (a high morpheme-to-word ratio). Usually inflectional languages because they may allow to cram gender, case, animate or not, number, and a lot of things you want onto a single noun.
I tried to make it in answer to the person who said “synthetic” but it’s the second try and this time it answered to someone else (the first time it just put the comment out there for nobody to see).
SIGN
sorry
..or IS it?
Synthetic, not fictitious.
Klingon is a real language. Lots of people speak it. So is Quenya. So is Esperanto.
They aren’t naturally-evolved languages, but they aren’t fake.
It. Was. A. JOKE!!
Just because a bunch of sweaty fat virgin nerds (and the odd female) believe it to spoken by a real alien species, doesn’t stop it from being fictitious, just like the languages found in LotR
And again, just because some linguistic came up with it doesn’t make it a legitimate language butt reinforces the fictitious nature of the language!!
Guesticus, you’re assuming that in order for a language to be real it has to evolve naturally… Textbook definition of language is basically a system of words/gestures/symbols with rules for combining them to transmit information reliably. Nothing about how we arrived at those rules, symbols, etcetera.
No, it’s a fictitious language because the species who speaks it is fictitious (unless you can prove categorically that Klingon’s are, or will be, real)
Lazarus above admitted it was created for a fantasy show. Tolkien was also a linguist, and created several languages, they are still fictitious
Well Guesticus, I think the problem here lies in the definition of fictitious.
You mean fictitious as in belonging or having its origins in fiction.
The people you are arguing with mean fictitious as in “doesn’t exist”.
While Klingons don’t exist the Klingon language does exist.
Yeah, that’s basically what meant: it may be a real language (for nerds), butt the people it belongs to doesn’t exist, just like Tolkien’s Elvish
Oh come on Dave!!!
She’s in the Space Mall and hasn’t figured out there’s a translator field in effect?
And she doesn’t START with English? !?
Maybe it takes a few minutes to kick in…as the text in the signs
becoming legible suggests.
I think the more likely reason is that Sydney’s meds have started to kick OUT.
Once she notices that she can read the previously unintelligible
signs, using the CommOrb’s Truesight will show that it’s an
illusion.
Making the CommOrb act as a de-translator!
So, this mean Sydney did not clear customs? Wonder how she will handle a few units in Fracture Prison Block H
Deus and Vale just walked in.
There’s no security checkpoint
THAT WE CAN SEE!!!
It might be that when security isn’t needed it isn’t there.
When it IS needed, it’s absolute.
They used a portal to enter directly, deliberately bypassing security (because SmugD never uses the front door, and is always doing something illegal)
Deus & Vale seemed to appear at a door with several signs.
That’s an official entryway.
The door opened for them implying that they were allowed in.
Unless you could read what the signs said, they mean nothing
Same with the fact the door opened: how many people lock doors inside what is supposed to be a secure facility, if they attempted to exit normally, they may find doors that are, at the least, guarded or watched over
I mean Dabbler is still learning english so it’s a reasonable assumption, still it’s always worth trying if someone knows english.
I wonder if there’s some aliens that only speak french?
Her actual study of English probably consists of learning all the synonyms and euphemisms for sex and the body parts involved.
Yes, the Coneheads
Scaroth, last of the Jagaroth! I’d know that sweet, white disco suit anywhere. “City of Death” – probably one of the most beloved classic Doctor Who episodes. Douglas Adams, a cameo by John Cleese, actual Paris location filming… it has everything.
Thought he looked familiar, but couldn’t place where I’d seen him before ’til I read your post. Thanks for the reminder. :)
But why does his pocket square appear and disappear while he is just standing there? Some sort of alien Mouchoir de Poche creature?
They are standing in front of the sex club. It might be ‘Is that a handkerchief in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”
Scaroth’s pocket handkerchief is hidden on the side views by his massive lapels. It was the ’70s, you know.
[#6]:
“I Am Not A Number! I Am A Free Man!”
( … I’ve not thought about that TV-series in quite a long time!)
“Answer the Question!”
Classic song \m/
I was planning to identify him, with the same extra information, if nobody else got it. Of course, City of Death is remarkably similar to Dirk Gentlys Holistic Detective Agency, aside from the Doctor Who specific elements and that Dirk Gently was always just a book (I know there was a series but it took elements from both books to assemble a new story rather than translate directly)
“David Agnew”, credited writer of “City of Death” was and is, a BBC pseudonym for work by staff writers and editors (who cannot be credited under their conditions of employment).
Dr Who staff script team, at the time, included a certain Douglas Adams – who made a number of contributions to DrvWho at various times.
Douglas Adams was a member of the Dr Who writing team for some time. City of Death is actually credited to a BBC pseudonym for work by staff writers, who can’t be identified under the conditions of employment.
<3
I really love this webcomic.
That’s what I thought, but wasn’t the original Scaroth green-skinned? Also, the other guy(gal?Whatever?) looks like a one-eyed Cousin It…
If we are talking all DrWho characters, I would tag the one on the right as a mini-Krull from key of time episodes. it was green and one-eyed.
Dunno about the Cthulhu mythos, but the being on the right (of most of the panels) reminded me of one of the aliens-of-the-week that turned up on Space: 1999.
At least she speaks TV fluently, Wreckgar would have been proud! XD
Professor Peabody, after his last lecture? From Night Gallery?
Good call.
Bringer of Wonder? https://extraterrestrialsexuality.wordpress.com/2010/07/03/the-book-of-aliens/ (Link is SFW, despite the domain name.)
Hah! Wow, that does look similar, but that’s not the guy I was thinking of.
it’s a shoggoth, handmaidens to Cthulhu himself.
Was this the seaweed girl from One Punch Man?
That’s what I thought when looking at it as well.
nope, he/she/it had two eyes.
Na-Nu Na-Nu – Mork from Ork
Bah-weep-Graaaaagnah wheep ni ni bong – The Transformers universal Greeting
Klaatu barada nikto – The Day the Earth Stood Still
Qapla’ – Klingon
Tonk’peh – Vulcan
Achuta – Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic
M’atchhomaroon – ???
Tek mal tiak – Goa’uld
Aiya – Quenya
Kaltxi – Na’vi of Pandora
Fraeslis – Parseltongue
…. and here I thought Sydney saw a tentacle monster and decided to try some necronomicon-speak.
I thought “Klaatu barada nikto” was from Army of Darkness? The spell that was suppose to allow Ash to remove the Necronomicon safely, IF he had said it correctly, lol.
Day the Earth Stood Still is decades older then Ashe.
That’s a lie. Ashe is eternal, therefore nothing is older than Ashe from Housewares.
It’s a TDtESS reference in Army of Darkness.
Nerds often quote each other as perfectly presented by Dave
“Klaatu barada n*coughcough*” would be the accurate quote from AoD.
Or “Klaatu barada necktie?”
Well at least you kinda mostly said it. The intent was there. Sure you might not have said every single syllable exactly but…. what harm could that do?
Reminds me of a line from Myth 2: Soulblighter (a computer game). In one mission you are playing as the leader of a group of barbarians, and you are supposed to awaken an ancient sorcerer to help fight the enemy.
I think you can guess that you are supposed to say “Klaatu barada nikto”… And you might also guess that the barbarian is going to say it wrong and either it won’t work, or something will go horribly wrong. But you’d only be half right:
Barbarian: “Um… Clambake baraka naktoo?”
Sorceror (waking up): “Close enough. Let’s get out of here.”
I think Achuta was first used in Return of the Jedi.
Empire Strikes Back.
Specifically, the scene on Cloud City where C3PO encounters his rude silver counterpart.
“M’atchhomaroon” should be “M’athchomaroon,” which is a Dothraki greeting from A Song of Ice and Fire and its adaptation, Game of Thrones.
You calling Math a Maroon? o_O
I love the Douglas Adams ref… Babelfishing, nice one Dave.
This page actually makes me feel a bit bad for her. Normally she would be logical enough not to try springing bogus languages on people, but she is too stressed think straight.
The fact that the sign in the background is in poor but legible English should have clued her in to the fact that if she just spoke normally people might catch on or at least be able to point her to someone who could help.
To be fair she has had a stupendously stressful day.
It’s actually written in Unifon, which is an alphabet that’s been suggested as a phonetic replacement for english. Basically each letter is its own unique sound. I thought it was appropriate to put on the station here since I first learned about it while reading Dirty Pair comics by Adam Warren.
Phonetic writing is a pretty good idea. A lot of written English makes no sense without the accents.
Yea, you really need to know whether you are reading a Scouser’s words or a Brummy’s.
Not sure what Phoenicians sounded like mind. Probably something vaguely like Arabic?
Bojler eladó!
(Props for including the diacritics, by the way.)
Poor Sydney,my best bet is that she’ll have a slight run in with Deus and Vale….
Sydney, the fact that one of them was wearing a three-piece suit with a pocket square…. a very particular fashion which even on Earth was only practiced for a quick eye-blink of humanity’s history…. probably means that he/she/it has at least some familiarity with Earth culture and, perhaps, Earth languages.
…. oh, and the phoenetic “nud gurlz” IN LATIN CHARACTERS behind him is probably a good clue that a LOT of people in this neck of the woods speak English
…. I expect this realization will either come as she’s trying to fall asleep, or seconds after she learns they speak English before she falls asleep. Either way, much facepalming will ensue.
I’m sure English isn’t a primary language for anyone, but that lots of sapients in this part of the galaxy speak it. I suspect the 2 she was babbling at are just having a mutual laugh at yet another clueless, wide-eyed Earthling visiting the Fracture for the first time.
Perhaps the guy in the suit actually just returned from Earth themselves and hasn’t even changed out of his human outfits yet.
Speaking of Adams; or rather Addams: the other one makes me think of Cousin It (it’s probably the hat; you never see It’s eye or eyes and he’s made of hair rather han tentacles).
I’m thinking Cousin It as well. No clue for the other guy though.
I thought of Cousin It as well, given he was known to wear a hat on the TV show. But we never actually see Cousin It’s eyes, and we can assume Cousin It has two eyes because he did wear sunglasses in one episode. So ultimately I doubt we are seeing Cousin It here.
It figures that she would try everything but her natural language the one that works.
Would those two be the last of the Jageroth from Dr Who and Sigmund from Sigmund and the Sea Monsters? Nice cameos.
That seems a lot more plausible than what I assumed (that they were Crud Puppy and Has… a certain Elder God, as It appeared in User Friendly.
That sounds right on both counts to me. I couldn’t place the Jageroth until I saw you bring it up, but that would fit the Cthulhu Mythos, which I hadn’t considered until now either- prior/primordial race that helped create life on Earth by pure accident. Oh an living in 6 different periods of time after said accident. If I’m thinking of the right Dr Who antagonist.
And now I’m wondering if that’s one of the outfits he Jageroth (can’t remember what human name he used in modern France) wore in the show.
They probably have Universal Translators which don’t work with fictional languages
My original script had them picking up “something about eels”, referring to the last thing she said to them, but there wasn’t room on the page.
wait wait wait – what about the talking heads you’ve often done underneath the stinger? that would be a perfect place ?!
Wow. Are we going to see Morticia and Zoe next?
I guess the one eyed squid uses Prosthetic hands as they are more versatile?
The one in the white suit is a villain from on old Dr. Who episode in the ’70s. Back then the episode special effects budgets could run into the TENS of pounds.
Prop Guy: “Let’s see, we need an alien for this episode. We have a white suit from wardrobe. Here’s an old Halloween mask. That ought to do it.”
Actor: “What about the hands? Do you at least have some lizard gloves or something?”
Prop Guy: “Gloves? Do you think we’re made of money mate?”
Maybe he has prosthetic whole body? Cookie for the reference!
My native language is European Portuguese (Brazilian Portuguese is more… nice) and everybody thinks is just like Spanish and then I speak it. And then everybody looks at me like I was speaking some ancient, dark language capable of summoning demons.
I would have gone with sometan menu selek lanun khun or Wanrag umgi bar or Wattock!
Does she not hear people speaking around her?
It’s not a perfect match, but it reminds me of the aliens in The Green Slime (1968)
lol…the building behind them is a sex establishment of some sort…
Live Nude Girls
Artificial Nude Girls …
She should walk right into that building and have herself a permanent mental scarring! I’m sure there’d be alien tentacle action (and Dabbler) in there! XD
Sydney has been in the shower with Dabbler. After that, an alien strip club is not going to impress.
yeah, about the only way you’d top that is seeing Dabbler in her original Quadra-boobed form.
Only Dabbler can top Dabber. ;)
I disagree. Sydney could easily top it, if she went up on stage.
I’d disagree. Anyone can ‘top’ Dabbler when she’s in the mood for it – although some may be subject to the Memory Mallet in the morning.
You always start with “Hello, do you understand me?” in your native language before rattling off fictitious ones (and no Sydney, ‘Nerd’ is a not your native language, neither is ‘Geek’)
The white suit alien is Scaroth from the Doctor Who Serial “City of Death” with the 4th Doctor, Tom Baker. Originally broadcast in 1979.
So when she finally finds and asks a local cop, can we expect a nice Brooklyn accent?
Or a British one
Spacecop: “What’s all this, then?”
Halo: “It’s a fair cop. Yah got me, Guv’nah!”
Just hope it’s not an Irish one (again)
The station’s universal translator has no idea what to do with a fictional language.
The one on the right could be Cyäegha or Othuyeg.
Addendum;
Most likely Othuyeg, since he/she/it featured in a movie called The Crawling Eye, otherwise known as The Tollenberg Terror.
Dammit.
*Trollenberg
Good guesses there. Wouldn’t be surprised if they were inspiration for that guy.
Well, somebody guessed it on facebook. I actually remember that show, but I was too young to appreciate it. Instead, I just didn’t get it and was kind of weirded out.
Seemed obvious at first blush that aliens wouldn’t speak an Earth language, then I looked behind them and realized that the sign was in broken English.
You know the problem with babelfishing is all the wax. It all ends up tasting like that cheese with the red skin.
Stills sounds better than surströmming.
I like that cheese except it can be a bit too salty.
Bad dog. Get that babelfish out of your mouth! I’ll give you a treat if you do?
Syd.. you forgot the Energon chip with the Universal greeting. Seriously, how could you forget the most important part?
and the hand guestures
The Universal Greeting has accompanying hand signals. The variants of these for five-digit species were demonstrated kindly by Wreck-Gar, who interpreted Lugnut raising his fist to deliver one of his famous punches as an invitation to perform the Universal Greeting, and reciprocated accordingly.
Stage 1: Raise the left hand, palm outward to the person being addressed. Keep the thumb tucked to the side of the palm, pointing upward. Clench the index and pinky fingers as if making a fist and extend the middle and ring fingers vertically. The gesture should be made at the same time as speaking the “graaaaagnah” part of the verbal Universal Greeting.
Stage 2: Extend the index, ring and pinky fingers. Curl the middle finger and thumb towards the palm of the hand so that they touch at right-angles, with the side of the thumb’s tip pressed against the nail of the middle finger. This should be done in time with the verbalization “wheep”.
Stage 3: Clench the index, middle and ring fingers. Extend the thumb and pinky fingers so that the gesture resembles a horizontally-flipped ‘L’. Shake the hand sideways twice, in time to the syllables of “ni ni”
Stage 4: As the final “bong” is spoken, open your hand out so that all digits are extended and slightly splayed, as if to make a hand-print in clay. Pause momentarily and then press the thus-opened hand against that of the person you are addressing, who themselves should have a likewise open palm.
Thank you for the rest of the break down. I always thought the energon chip was the most important part. I honestly never noticed the hand gestures.
*gestures with tail, in universal greeting*
I would translate, but humans tend to misunderstand an invitation for butt sniffing.