A

Translator | Aspiring Developer | Linguistics

[gothprincesse-deactivated202510]

[sonandheirofnothinginparticular]

[vintage-tigre]

[sonandheirofnothinginparticular]

[ohmovie]

I knew it. He's the One.

THE MATRIX (1999) dir. Lana Wachowski & Lilly Wachowski

[shelleythesoft]

The best trans movie.

[remanence-of-love]

[foreverjeans]

language learning is such a personal thing that there is no “right” or “wrong” way of doing it. it’s whatever works on bringing YOU closer to YOUR goal.

you want to watch tv shows but don’t really care for speaking with others? yay!! no speaking practice needed.

you want to learn quickly for an upcoming trip? yay! text book phrases and simple grammar.

you’re a beginner and it’s been 10 years? 2 weeks? 6 months? it doesn’t matter. as long as you are working towards bringing YOURSELF closer to what YOU want to achieve, you have succeeded: you are succeeding; you are doing great.

i find that so much demotivation comes from comparison and/or trying to follow other's advice too closely. if anki decks don't work for you, that's fine! if duolingo works well for you, then use it!

this language learning thing, it should be enjoyed. in the sea full of deceptive polyglot stories and videos on top of videos attempting to understand how to learn languages in "the fastest way possible" sometimes we should sit back and ask ourselves, "when is just learning things, enough"?

with that i hope you all continue working towards your dreams! whether you want to become a translator or just watch a few more movies in your target language, you can do it. i know you have it in you.

[an-spideog]

Hey, I saw your post about better resources for learning Gaeilge and I was wondering if you had any for Gàidhlig? I'm painfully aware that Duolingo is shit and I want something better I'm just, other side of the world and don't know where to start

I'm not super qualified in the realm of Scottish Gaelic so I'm just going to talk about the resources I've seen when dipping my toe in.

I would say that Scottish Gaelic actually has a lot better direct alternatives to Duo than Irish does - i.e. stuff that's high quality and accessible, for free online aimed at beginners.

Specifically the stuff on learngaelic.scot and speakgaelic.scot. There's a mix of different resources on there but as someone who already speaks Irish, something I found really useful was An Litir Bheag which is a series of recordings of little stories for learners with a transcription in Gaelic and a translation into English.

I think there's more foundational stuff on there too, SpeakGaelic is like a whole course I think, and on LearnGaelic there's the old course Speaking Our Language which I've heard good things about.

In terms of a textbook, I've used Learn Scottish Gaelic in 12 Weeks, the name is unrealistic lol, but the content is useful.

Oh also Gaelic with Jason on Youtube is good, he makes like comprehensible input style story videos about stuff, and also videos explaining grammar concepts.

If other people know of more resources feel free to add them.

[la-cosmonauta-extraterrestre]

Most of us who have learned another language end up with the attitude that it's best to read books in the original because some things just don't translate and in a real sense, you never really read a book if you read it in translation. While I generally agree with this attitude, at the same time I think it is unappreciative of the work that translators do.

Yes, there are a lot of bad translations out there, but there are also good translations. Good translation is a skill, and it's an incredible skill given what a good translator has to be able to do. They have to be fluent in not just two languages, but the nuances of two cultures. They have to be able to understand literature. They have to have writing skills on the level of the writer they are translating. If translating classical literature, they have to understand the historical context.

A good translator will include translator notes to try and explain the nuances that get lost in translation, cultural nuances, and historical context if it's classical literature. Yes, this means that they have to teach you a little bit of the language and culture of the original. Therefore, a good translator will give you an appreciation for a language that you hadn't had before.

[disease]

Frank Rosenblatt, often cited as the Father of Machine Learning, photographed in 1960 alongside his most-notable invention: the Mark I Perceptron machine — a hardware implementation for the perceptron algorithm, the earliest example of an artificial neural network, est. 1943.

[sunscreenstudies]

Iconic Things My Coding Professors Have Said (Part 7)

“we’ll be using a very heurisitc method today called ‘lets just try our best’”

“by using this model, you might come up with a solution that is sub-par but… hey, thats life”

“some people are cruel and use a blind man in their drawings to explain this graph, but i’m nice so i’ll use a blindfolded man instead”

“there was actually a very interesting study done not so long ago where scientists claimed that on days when more ice cream was purchased, more murders occured as well. now, i know what you’re thinking, i’d kill someone for limencello and ferrero rocher ice cream as well BUT in this case, that correlation was wrong and it was just scientists being dumb”

“now so, we’re all off next thursday, but i also have an extra days holiday on friday, so if you’re trying to email me then… yeah. good luck”

“this example illustrates why we cannot repeat this exercise on more complex DOM trees because their visual representation gets too big and inaccessible too quickly. In other words: we will not be using a more complex example in a potential exam exercise because the tree would quite simply, not fit on the exam paper”

“you know, there’s a little secret that we haven’t told you about before… please don’t hate us, but we are about to tell you about one of the best kept secrets in the Python universe and it would have made your homework SO much easier”

Prof: “does anyone know what mistake the dumb scientists made? i’ll give you a hint; correlation is not the same as causation, so what else do you think would increase the amount of ice cream bought and also increase the amount of murders committed?”   student: “being human”   prof: “… the correct answer is hot temperatures, but technically, you’re not wrong”

“then we’ll be looking a linear model, which is the most important part of this course. you can look at it as… the swiss army knife, if you will, of data models”

“we use the pearson correlation method which is the, uh… vanilla method”

“first of all, you can immediately see that the p-value for gender has changed. why? because i made it like that. why did i make it like that?  god only knows”

“we’ll be looking at the titanic dataset which is a really funny data- no, wait, i shouldn’t say that, it’s not a funny dataset, it’s a… nice dataset to- nope, it’s not nice either. entertaining? wait, no, people died. i’m not a pyschopath, i swear”

prof: “so here’s your blindfolded man on top of the curve of the graph"    student: “that’s quite a dangerous place for him to be"   prof: "very dangerous for him, yes, but machine learning is very dangerous… for you especially”

“so it was actually doctors who first created the earliest version of this algorithm by using a nearest neighbors set up. so instead of looking at a new patient and trying to come up with what’s wrong with them, they based their diagnosis on similar past cases. for example, if someone came in with blue hair and purple eyes and yellow skin and- wow. this is starting to sound more like a carneval than a hospital. i mean, both places are a joke, but still…”

“this is the way we solved this issue for a lot of people. it seems a bit hacky, but hey, as along as it works”

prof1: “that wasn’t too difficult”    prof2: “speak for yourself”    prof1: “i am. i don’t know what’s going on with you, but i want nothing to do with this”

“you need two predictors, or more. three way interactions can be… messy, but still possible, much like other three way activites that i could mention, but i won’t, because you’re still children”

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8

Part 9  | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14

[ohevoyev]

why are british people always so mad when people make jokes about their accents. sorry you say yewchube. it’s funny though innit

[bees-and-mice-and-frogs-and]

This is something I’ve been dying to talk about.

There’s something called culture. People (especially USAmericans) think of culture as cultural dress, cultural food, cultural music. These are culture, but they are only the very superficial aspects of it. Like the icing on your cake. Far more deep rooted is the more meaty bits of culture: the attitudes, the ideas, the taboos.

There’s a guy on tiktok who has done a series that shows this very well, of Germans Vs Irish. In one video the German offers the Irish person two kinds of tea, green or black. The Irish person keeps putting off the choice with things like “Oh sure whatever is easiest”, “Which have you more of?” and, “Ah sure I don’t want to cause a fuss” whereas the German just wants a straight answer. This is a cultural difference of politeness.

Here in the UK, accents mark your class very openly. They let everyone know where you’re from (though this has become less pronounced in the last 50 years,) and what your background is. A lot of people (especially northerners, but also a fair contingent of working class southerners) face discrimination on the basis of their accents.

Some of us (myself included) even change register (though I believe USAmericans call it code switching) in and out of our regional accent and a close approximation of RP. We learn to do it because it makes us seem more intelligent (even though it shouldn’t) and helps us be taken more seriously.

Thus, our country carries a lot of baggage when it comes to accents. Especially those of the working class who have had their accents made fun of, or have faced discrimination based on it.

So when someone outside the country (usually USAmericans) makes fun of our accents they’re stepping on a lot of cultural taboos and boundaries. Especially because the “It’s Chewsday, gonnae wot-ch sum yewchube innit” is a working class accent.

Now, that’s not to say we can’t take a joke, but this is the kind of joke you share with someone who you have been friends with for a while. My boyfriend often will pick up on the way I say certain words, in much the same fashion I pick up on his idiosyncrasies of speech (English isn’t his first language so he says stuff like close the lights, which is adorable.) If we aren’t predisposed to liking you, then the joke you’re trying to make is more like an insult.

The way I like to think of it is if you were in a pub, and made those sorts of jokes to someone. If they knew you, and they liked you, they’d probably laugh along. If they didn’t like you or know you, they would punch you in the jaw.

HOWEVER: I recognise this post as a joke. I don’t personally find these jokes offensive, but then no one really makes fun of me or considers me stupid because of my accent.

[badolmen]

Oh that actually makes a lot of sense! It’s like how it’s assumed in media that the southeastern Appalachian (‘hick’ or ‘redneck’) accent is audible shorthand for ‘this American character is stupid.’ That sentiment reinforces negative stereotypes about that region which has historically been home to a large working class population that has suffered from an underfunded education system and other systematic abuses. It is ultimately an underhanded joke, but not everyone from America (or even the region necessarily) considers it to be offensive despite its classist nature.

[mighty-meerkat]

yes, that’s basically it! it grinds my gears when certain Very Online Americans will quite rightly say that europeans have no right to mock the us’ lack of healthcare/gun control and working-class accents…but then turn around and act like working-class british accents and foods are hilarious and should be mocked ‘bc of colonialism and the bp oil spill’ as though all british people are directly responsible for the oil spill. and then some of them conveniently forget that there are in fact british people of colour - in the wake of brexit, a smug american blog defended saying that british people upset by the referendum were getting ‘karma’ for the british empire, even when british poc pointed out that they were the ones most likely to be negatively affected by brexit, by saying ‘obviously i don’t mean you’, to which said british poc responded ‘THEN WHY DID YOU SAY BRITISH PEOPLE’

[stormclouds-chainmail]

The hatred, by the privileged of England, towards Scotland and any Scottish accent was so pervasive that my mother wouldn’t let my brother and I develop a Scottish accent. She was born in Jamaica but her family moved to London when she was 11. She moved to Scotland when she was pregnant with me. Both my brother and I were born in Scotland and spent out entire childhood there. Mum was adamant that neither of us would have the local accent. It was “common” and “low class” and “would hinder us in the future”. She used to fine us half our pocket money if we used any Scottish slang or said anything in a Scottish accent. I got bullied at school for having a “posh English accent” but she thought my job prospects were more important than a modicum of happiness at school. My outsider status was doubled by that. I was brown and “English”.

Even now, after decades in Scotland, I still don’t sound Scottish. The English hear a slight lilt but that disappears as soon as I spend any time with them.

I feel alienated on two fronts now, skin colour and accent. And one of those was avoidable if it hadn’t been for the prejudice against against perceived lower class accents. Even in Jamaica Mum learnt to speak in an English accent like the white girls at her school. She could switch between the two. Jamaican with her parents, posh English everywhere else. Why couldn’t I have had that?

[amuseoffyre]

The fact that a lot of regional actors are expected to code-switch their accent patterns the a kind of neutral English accent in Britain shows how pervasive the classism is.

When Christopher Eccleston was cast as the Doctor in Doctor Who, people were surprised that he used his own northern accent, instead of performing with an accent like every Doctor before him. That was only 15-ish years ago.

Even now, this still happens - James McAvoy made a very vocal protest a couple of years back about a critic who complained about the use of Scots accents and only applauded the “plummy English” accent of one character in a play.

Regional and working class accents were used as joke accents for decades in British media. Look up old broadcasts and notice how many people only speak RP English (ie. the formal pronunciation that smacks of elocution lessons and enunciation). As media accessibility and productions expanded, there have been more regional accents showing up, but it’s still a big problem.

[sillyjimjam]

Putsimply when you mock “innit” you’re mocking poor people and often people of colour. Boris Johnson doesn’t say “innit bruv”.

[phoenix-ghost-town-deactivated2]

I would like to add that there was a study by the Worcester College that found that people talking with a Birmingham accent were twice as likely to be accused of a crime as people who speak RP. Accents carry huge baggage in Britain.

[official-linguistics-post]

official linguistics post

[sienyaa]

I like to say that we should study languages because languages are the only thing worth knowing even poorly... Solely in the world of languages is the amateur of value. Well-intentioned sentences full of mistakes can still build bridges between people.

- Kató Lomb, Polyglot, 2008

[its-tortle]

german words i wish existed in english

a messy and incomplete list

nachvollziehen (v.) -- to understand, but less empathetic. i.e. i see the steps that brought you to that conclusion, but i don't understand you.

doch (interj.) -- you're wrong and really it's the opposite of what you said. often said with a healthy dose of sass. i.e. "this isn't a good movie." "doch. (it is)"

frech (adj.) -- somewhere between naughty and sassy and silly. when you're being a bit of a brat, you're being frech.

dreist (adj.) -- audacious, but far more colloquial. when you have the goddamn audacity, you are dreist. i.e. to park that far over the line is dreist as hell

heimat (n.) -- home, but stronger. a home is wherever you have built a life, but heimat is where your roots are. heimat is where you feel pangs of nostalgia when you go to visit your family for christmas and see the shop at the corner.

weltschmerz (n.) -- literally 'world-pain'. the world sucks and sometimes you just sit and feel the pain of it all. that's weltschmerz.

existenzberechtigung (n.) -- the right to exist, often in a comedic context. i.e. pineapple on pizza has absolutely no existenzberechtigung.

fernweh (n.) -- literally 'far-ache'. the opposite of homesickness, the desire to go far away. i guess wanderlust is similar, but that is also a german word, and this is more painful and visceral

schweigen (v./n.) -- the act of not speaking. silence, but more deliberate. the palpable feeling that people are withholding their voice.

verschlimmbesserung (n.) -- when an update with the intention of making something better actually just made it worse. looking at you @staff

[strokeofserenity]

Margaret Atwood, “The Blind Assassin.”

[helenstudies]

People always ask me how I learn languages! Well, I sit down and study. Sometimes I stand up and study. And no, there are no shortcuts. You actually have to engage with a language for hours to learn it. Even people who learn how to speak languages by speaking have to go up to other people and talk at length. Also, knowing how to speak 20 phrases you've memorized is not speaking a language. That's what people selling phrasebooks and premium study plans on youtube wants you to believe. Sorry. It actually takes years for you to become good at a target language. You'll just have to find a way to make those years bearable. Sorry again.

[eibhlinniccolla]

If you’re learning a language, learn the International Phonetic Alphabet. Yes it’s not perfect, but it’s much better than “English-y” pronunciation guides, and works for every language.