Language LOL: Translator Malfunction

[rumham]

You know what's cool? Chatting with your pals. Reading the Internet. Navigating the roads because you can understand the Gods-damned street signs. You know what's not cool? Not being able to do any of that. By that metric, one might describe today in the Nexus decidedly uncool.

It's utterly without warning that the multiversal hub goes from automatic to manual translation. Shop signs, radio and television broadcasts, conversations on the streets between vendors and friends and businesspeople are suddenly a jarring cacophony of dissonant languages. Then there's the silence. Then there's the shouting. Turns out people get pissed off when nobody understands them!

Momentary chaos dies down as the average people of the Nexus come to grips with their new situation. Shopkeepers wait outside their stores and stands with expectant expressions, impatiently waiting for the translator to pull itself together and start working again.

Except...

It sort of doesn't.

No, it super doesn't.

Citizens of the Nexus, it would appear you're going to have to adjust...

((The temporary LANGUAGE LOL is now underway! It's freeform fun until you're done and participation is completely optional. Don't feel like this event should stop you from making threads which are unaffected by the LOL in the mean time. If you want your Language LOL'd character to interact with a non-LOL thread, please ask the OP if they want to play that dynamic first. For the OOC and organization post, GO HERE. ))

Comments

[drehnifusbahi]

Vanyel's brows rise a little at that - but then, maybe he shouldn't be surprised. Given where and with whom Jim's bound to have spent most of his time in Tamriel, the bits of Cyrodillic he's most likely to have picked up are army cant and-

There's a moment where the figurative lightbulb all but visibly goes off over Vanyel's head. But because he can be a gentleman when it suits him, all he writes is

So we write, then. Any ideas what caused this?

[smartass_captain]

It broke my

Jim stares down at the notebook with his eyebrows furrowed. Jim doesn't have a large enough grasp of Vanyel's language to even describe his universal translator. He scratches out what he's written and tries again.

Whatever did this, it hurt my all words thing. A thing that lets me understand. Progress.

Dammit, 'technology' doesn't translate either. Jim's looking super frustrated now.

A built thing. Made by man. Not magic.

[drehnifusbahi]

He cocks his head as he reade over all that, puzzling it out in his head. He has an idea what Jim is getting at, he thinks, but the English word or words for it is beyond his slim vocabulary, so he offers

Lingua machina. Language machine, if either of those words is among the smattering of Cyrodillic that Jim knows.

I don't think magic did this. Not the kind I know. Tamriel-magic- And now it's his turn to frown down at the paper, trying to figure out how to get across a fairly complex concept in the most basic wording. It works -with- machines, he finally writes. It doesn't break them.

[smartass_captain]

YES.

Jim circles the phrase Vanyel has written and nods emphatically. "Lingua Machina. Yehs. Isgud wardspeek. Aye havuh won." Points to his right ear and mimes something breaking. "Nexusthing browk it."

In his eagerness to explain Jim's forgotten that Vanyel won't understand him right away and began talking animatedly while he gestures. It takes him a moment to remember the notebook again.

Might not be Tamriel-magic. Since this happened in the Nexus. Often only lasts a short time though, right? Should fix eventually.

[drehnifusbahi]

No, he doesn't really understand - but the gestures give him at least some idea what Jim is getting at. Thank the Eight for small favors, truly.

He nods as he reads what Jim wrote, though thinking back on the Nexus' usual brand of chaos does make him sigh a little, lips twisting wryly.

Yes, he agrees. The switched bodies was... three days, if that. Children-again only one.