more context for 악어(acau)'s translation (troubles? future troubles?)!
@blockgamepirate mentioned pronouns in context of translation in a reblog and that got me thinking about a bunch of things lmao but mostly about 반말 (banmal).
악어 decided really early on into his experience with the translator to try to use banmal bc he felt like the translator was picking up on it better, and he probably thought this because of two things:
banmal is usually shorter than 존댓말 (jondaemal) which is the polite/default way of speaking. and when i say default i mean my parents sometimes use it to refer to each other. it's more than just politeness, it's also a certain amount of respect? with younger people (high school, college, maybeeee graduate student age) people tend to use banmal with friends. older people use banmal to talk to children, and children use banmal except when talking to older people. i think the easiest way of showing just how much shorter banmal is, is to use "안녕" (korean "hello") as an example. "안녕" (annyeong) is actually banmal! you absolutely wouldn't say this to someone you've just met - you would say "안녕하세요" (annyeonghaseyo) which is jondaemal. but do you see how the second is three syllables longer? there's more of a margin of error with three more syllable and that's why the machine translator doesn't work as well with jondaemal.
The most casual way of speaking banmal uses pronouns. korean doesn't have gendered pronouns really, and the pronouns it does have seem. rude? generally? children use pronouns a lot and adults use pronouns when speaking to children but otherwise.... if you're not friends (and young honestly have yet to find an midsized (40+) adult regularly use pronouns) calling someone "you" is like. an insult. it works (that is, it doesn't feel like an insult) in 악어's stream for me because it felt like he was speaking in a significantly simpler/slower register after a while? like the register you'd use for kids. but i did want to put it out there! because if you're trying to learn korean through 악어's stream, you're probably listening to him use banmal! and that's just something to be aware of.
more pronoun thoughts! in terms of gender - korean doesn't have gendered pronouns. the closest you get in third person is something like "that girl" so machine translate will almost never get it right. it will default to masculine (in my experience) or the first person ("i" "me") so that's something to keep in mind. honestly my dad often defaults to masculine third person pronouns because he forgets pronouns are gendered in english and that there's more than one of them lmaooo. korean does gender relationships A Lot (oppa is the one that most people will know - brother from female speaker to older male listener) but pronouns wise there's. no gender oop.
i just wanted to put this out there because as 악어 becomes more a part of the qsmp community, we'll probably slowly pick up on the more regular patterns of awkward machine translation from an east asian language to english, and more specifically from korean to english. and if it's confusing that's ok! assume good faith - 악어 from what i can tell isn't a streamer who'll use insults a lot or curse, and his normal way of speaking to his audience is very soothing/polite/jondaemal, so i hope that people keep watching him throughout this introduction period!
#i did notice the translation was translating him as referring to himself in sentences instead of the other person#ie if he asked 'do you have leather' it would come as 'i have leather' lol#so maybe this is why?
( tags from @/sculkcensor ! )
yup this is part of it! it's also a problem for machine translation that a Lot of korean questions are identical in words to the equivalent statement -
so with the leather thing it translates to "have leather" and if he said it in a pretty even inflection it Would have been a statement (i have leather). but he goes up in pitch for the last syllable and that's what makes it a question (do you have leather?). but i don't think machine translation cares about pitch from what i've seen...
