It is common knowledge that NRC has a fairly extensive translation system, and anyone from different parts of the world is capable of communicating in a neutral tongue without needing to know another language. But sometimes… that translation magic has its hiccups, its little holes in a system as rigorous as an academy full of potentially powerful mages.
If that translation system happens to fail, nothing like a dictionary from the library to solve that communication problem.
Now, when the translation of a language from another world gets corrupted… well, that’s when things start getting complicated.
See notes at the end for translations
What is more annoying? Having to study the history of a world you don’t know from scratch just to pass an exam and avoid remedial homework, or having someone dictating dates at you every single second, stopping you from thinking?
Well, for your bad luck, Riddle is doing the second one.
Every second was a different date, God only knows about what. It was like listening to a record keep spinning, completely unaware that its listener had already turned off their brain and understood absolutely nothing it was transmitting.
You don’t hold it against him, not at all… but having him vomit dates and information you still don’t understand at you so you can learn properly, and not just memorize things, is a little… heavy.
You didn’t slam the book shut… but it was a pretty strong close.
“Aishhh, all fy mhen ddim cymryd mwy, stopiwch siarad os gwelwch yn dda”
Uh… and you also went silent. Your comment had been way too direct and harsh.
You’re scared to turn your head and see if Riddle is the same color as his hair, or maybe even stronger, some naturally impossible shade of red.
But nope. Riddle is standing there with his mouth open, because he simply heard foreign words, soft and lilting.
Sounds that his brain, packed full of rules and information, cannot process. The translation magic flickered like a candle flame and disappeared with the smoke, making it impossible for him to understand you at all.
“…what did you just say?”
You have been saved from an immense scolding, but don’t rest on your laurels. It may not happen again.
Judging by the way you avoided looking him in the eye and scratched your cheek, Riddle couldn’t fully believe you. But… he had no way to prove it.
After that, Riddle becomes completely obsessed with your mother tongue, to the point of going not only to NRC’s library, but also to the public library in Foothill Town, trying to find any language that resembles yours.
Over time, even a little shyly, he starts asking you to speak more in your language, purposely removing the translation magic.
The privacy, you teaching him part of your world, sharing your culture and country with him, becomes a new form of intimacy for Riddle.
“Mae’r lleuad yn hardd heno, on’d yw hi? Fel ti”
Riddle may not understand a single word, but all it takes is looking into your eyes and leaning into the sound of your voice for his cheeks to turn pink, just like the roses in the maze.
Listening to you speak for hours without stopping becomes the best moment of his day. Learning your mother tongue is much better than any class he has taken in his life.
Leona may think understanding animal language is a complete waste of time. He may even simply rely on translation magic and never study a new language at all.
…unless it is convenient for him, or he needs to have certain political knowledge.
Even so, Leona doesn’t pay much attention to the different languages of the world.
But yours… oh, that is a separate topic.
“Joder tío! Qué manga de energúmenos que son algunos aquí. Es para darles un coñazo a ver si por fin espabilan!”
Leona’s eyes shot open, his ears twitching in every possible direction, his body tensing involuntarily as he sat up from where he had been taking a nap under his tree in the botanical garden.
“Are you trying to talk, or are you insulting me?”
“Bueno, estaba desahogando mi frustración, pero no iba dirigida a ti. Un poco engreído, ¿no crees?”
“Whatever you’re doing, better stop”
You stared at him, unable to decide whether to smack him on the head with the book or directly in the face.
“Oh, shit… was I speaking Spanish?”
He won’t say it openly, but the way you pronounce the r makes his ears flatten slightly against his head, as if he were hearing a lullaby from when he was a cub.
For his nap times, he now requires your presence, demanding that you speak to him in that new and strange language, the one with those seductive tones.
He falls asleep in seconds, a record time.
But that only happens 10% of the time, when he is truly tired or had a bad day.
The other 90%, he is more interested in listening to you talk than actually falling asleep. The sound of your voice in your mother tongue is like a summer breeze across the open savanna.
Sometimes, when you aren’t present, Leona tries to replicate your pronunciation, but the r’s are too complicated, and what comes out of his mouth is more of a growl mixed with a cough than an actual letter.
But he doesn’t give up, and he keeps trying.
His reason? Provoking you into an argument so that, when the translation magic fails again, you let out a “deja de joder ya, macho! Qué insoportable!”
The bastard smiled for more than ten minutes, pleased that he had finally gotten to hear you insult him.
After weeks, he learns two simple words: ven aquí. And he uses them with a very annoying arrogance, always curling a finger toward you, forcing you to sit down and let him use your thighs as a pillow.
He never thought that a gap in knowledge about a language from another world would become his greatest weakness.
Azul has always been known for knowing every detail about his clients and possible victims, whether for work reasons or for future negotiations with new souls seeking his kindness.
For that reason… didn’t you think it would be wise to warn him that your mother tongue is not one he knows?
Imagine his face when he hears you speak in a language completely strange and foreign to his bank of information.
“Posso avere un caffè? No… meglio un frullato, fa troppo caldo ultimamente. Con molto ghiaccio, per favore”
Azul dropped the pen he was using to write his next contract.
Not even Jade, who was taking your order, knew what you were saying.
“Eh? Shrimpy was talking funny,” Floyd said, exchanging a glance with his twin, sensing something juicy in the air.
Do not let the twins exploit this information. You are going to end up in a bad position.
“Could you repeat that, Prefect?” Azul approached the bar where you were sitting, his eyes completely focused on yours.
Ah, what a shame. He wanted to hear you speak in that strange language again.
A language unknown not only to the surface, but also to the deep sea, belonging only to you.
You are full of surprises, aren’t you?
Would you be willing to teach him a few phrases? For reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with future contracts, or taking advantage of clients he wants to scam help.
Obviously, it is to have the advantage.
As I said, information is Azul’s currency, and you are sitting on a vault full of coins that he is desperate to open.
You also have to get something out of it, maybe a percentage of his new earnings, or access to the VIP room from time to time, to clear your head, or being present during those negotiations.
The first words, “thank you,” “you’re welcome,” “good morning,” are a great starting point for Azul, something to make his day-to-day life easier, more humble.
Although… his pronunciation is terrible: the r escapes him, the cadence is too stiff, and the z is a tongue-twister.
He writes down everything you teach him in a private notebook, extremely private, locked away in his own room. Each day, the notebook becomes thicker and thicker, almost to the point of bursting.
Sometimes you catch him counting in Italian while doing inventory at the Mostro. “Uno, due, tre…”
Every time he wants a private conversation, or wants to complain about some client, he no longer needs to take you to a separate room. Simply speaking in your mother tongue is enough to drive everyone around you insane.
Obviously, he is going to use this new language every time he wants to show off in front of his poor clients seeking help with their contracts, with you as his partner in crime.
The translation magic could not have chosen a better moment to have a small malfunction than in the middle of a ride on his flying carpet.
Many feet up in the air… hold on tight, because I have a feeling Kalim is going to get startled just a little bit.
Looking at the sunset falling over the dunes of Scarabia, the slight movement of the carpet beneath you…
“Sieh mal, Kalim, der Himmel brennt. Es ist wunderschön!”
Kalim stops looking forward and turns to look at you, with his mouth open, shamelessly… without realizing that you are both going into a nosedive.
Okay, okay, no problem, Kalim is lifting the carpet now, stop screaming.
After that greaaat scare, Kalim keeps the carpet straight and fixes his gaze back on you, only on you, again, not caring at all about what is on the horizon.
“Are you speaking in code? Is it some kind of riddle?!”
“Oh… sorry… I think you heard me speaking German”
Oh God, it is like being at the entrance ceremony all over again.
Thank the heavens, thank the Seven, that this translation magic exists, otherwise navigating this world would have been fifty thousand times more complicated.
The first thing Kalim wants you to teach him is the word “friend” — “Freund”
Between froind, froynd, and a thousand more variations, his pronunciation is atrocious. You don’t blame him; German is hard to learn, even in your own world.
He wants you to teach him new words every day. You write them in the margins of his notes, in his notebooks; one time he asked you to write on a napkin in the middle of one of his huge banquets because he wanted to learn how to say “to celebrate”
Jamil scolds him when he sees him so focused on this new language instead of the three subjects he is starting to struggle with.
But Kalim isn’t learning just any new language, he is learning your language, and that inspires him even more.
He has even written words on the palms of his hands and pointed at each food with its corresponding word.
The most chaotic moment of his learning comes during a huge party in his dorm, after many songs, endless dances, and way too much food. He takes your hands and announces at the top of his lungs, “Ich liebe dich!”
His comment echoes through the whole lounge, and even though all his residents stare at him, not understanding what mystical words their housewarden has just pronounced… your cheeks are completely red.
“Kalim… do you know what that means?”
“Of course, you taught me! ‘You’re my favorite person.’”
That is not what it means!!
Let’s keep in mind that during a skincare routine, people usually don’t talk. They simply let themselves be carried by the vibe and the relaxing feeling of being cared for and attended to.
Until a damp sponge started tickling your cheek.
Your little laugh was the only sound in the middle of the Pomefiore common room; not even the sponge made another sound when Vil froze against your skin.
Vil raised one beautifully shaped eyebrow, but… said nothing. Maybe your laughter had made your tongue trip.
But when he applies the cold serum and you complain, “Холодно!” that is when he can no longer deny it.
What was coming out of your mouth sounded nothing like anything he had ever heard in his life.
“Darling… what was that?”
“…I said it’s cold.” His narrowed gaze is so imposing that you thought he was about to give you a lecture over an hour long on which chemical components and temperatures were most appropriate for your skin.
“Would you like to rephrase that?”
“эста…” Vil sets the bottle down on the table, slowly, far too slowly, without taking his eyes off yours.
Cold sweat down your back.
“I cannot understand your words, darling”
Ah… there it is. The massive mistake… and it wasn’t even like you did it on purpose.
From then on, Vil is always evaluating you, as if someone had handed him a new script, noticing the small moments when the magic fails for a second and your accent becomes more noticeable.
Sharp and calculating… but always wanting to hear you speak in that unknown language that fascinates him so much.
Every time you do your nightly routine, he asks you to speak Russian, supposedly because it helps him relax.
It is a lie; he analyzes every syllable, keeping a small mental archive so he can replicate it in private. Most of the time he doesn’t manage it, no matter how hard he tries again and again and again… his tongue still trips over those unknown shapes.
He gets frustrated, but at the same time, he admires you. “Your world is full of surprises.”
Even so, he practices and practices, until his accent is almost perfect. And one night, before you return to Ramshackle, he takes your hand and whispers in your ear:
How terrible it is to teach the words but not the full meaning, because now you are too stunned to respond.
“Did I pronounce it wrong?”
No… on the contrary… it was perfect.
The best moment to let out your inner rage is in the middle of a raid, farming like crazy, or in this case like two crazy people, inside an MMO dungeon where you keep dying thanks to a stupid, cheap boss mechanic.
And especially when you are on a voice call with Idia, who is laughing at your very unfortunate deaths.
…the microphone left the chat after catching your frustrated shout.
On the other side of the screen, you can practically see the loading circle inside Idia’s mind.
“This is unfair and you’re not helping, you bastard, laughing at my misery.”
“Okay, okay, okay, insult me all you want for your terrible gameplay performance, but… what the hell was that? Was it a melody or a… threat at the same time?”
Oh… looks like there was a translation error.
“That was Chinese.” Your character respawns on screen, and you completely forget that the magic stopped working, focusing again on the enemy on the screen.
Your character may be killing enemies left and right, looting treasures in search of weapons with double stats… but Idia’s character stays completely still for a long while.
You hear the frantic clicking of his keyboard through your headphones, completely unaware that Idia is no longer interested in the game… he probably has three search windows open on each of his monitors.
“I can’t find anything!!” His shout is so absurdly loud that you jolt in your chair, missing a jump and falling straight into the void.
You glare at the screen with pure contempt.
“No database recognizes the phonemes, or the syllable structure, nothing! It’s like the language doesn’t exist!”
“STOP… stop doing that! The translator plugin is collapsing! It’s throwing error codes I’ve never even seen before!”
Despite his protests, he is completely captivated. The fact that it cannot be found, cannot be translated, cannot be hacked, downloaded, or deciphered… it is like you brought a ghost into his digital kingdom.
In the following days, Idia does what he knows best… coding.
He asks you to draw every character, to explain the logographic structure, EVERYTHING! Absolutely everything so he can put it into a new keyboard.
A custom keyboard not only for him, but also for you.
Ortho catches him practicing tones at three in the morning, staring at the audio waveforms of voice notes, trying to match your pitch perfectly.
The microphone overloads when Idia’s scream echoes through the whole room after realizing his little brother had been watching him from the darkness.
One night, after a particularly difficult day, he sends you a message.
His status goes from online to offline at the speed of light.
There are very few things capable of catching Malleus Draconia’s attention as much as something he truly does not know.
Ancient languages? He knows them. Fae dialects? He probably speaks them better than the ones who invented them.
But yours… yours was a problem apart.
The night was far too still over Diasomnia. You were sitting beside Malleus, looking up, talking about nothing and everything at the same time; about your world, about the small things you missed pure and heavy melancholy.
And without thinking, feeling far too comfortable, you murmured to the stars:
“Gaua ederra da, baina zure begiek izarrak baino gehiago distiratzen dute”
Malleus went completely still. His green eyes slowly turned toward you, shining beneath the moon with that ancient intensity that always reminds you that, no matter how much of a school uniform he wears, that man has nothing normal about him.
“Child… what tongue is that?”
Ah. Shit. The translation magic decided to die at the most sentimental moment possible.
“I think… I spoke Basque,” you admitted, scratching your cheek and looking anywhere except into his eyes. “It’s from my world.”
“Basque,” Malleus repeated, and the most ironic part was that he pronounced it perfectly, as if there were no complexity at all to that new language.
“I have heard the tongues of humans, fae, and beasts,” he said calmly. “But never one like that.”
He sounded as if he himself wanted to protect your mother tongue, the same way he protects the ancient languages of his fae culture.
That same mother tongue, the one you think is so insignificant to a creature as eternal and imposing as Malleus, is as precious to him as the first time you said his name out loud. And he was not going to allow you to underestimate it as if it were just anything.
“Your eyes do not say the same,” because to him, it was not just anything. To him, your language was not a rarity or a fun little trick. It was a piece of your world, a small door toward the place you came from and perhaps still did not know how to return to.
Why does this man need to be so observant exactly when it would be much more convenient for you if he were clueless?
Over time, Malleus starts asking you for words. First simple things: night, star, rain, home. “Etxea,” you teach him once.
“Etxea,” he repeats, perfect on the first try.
…Of course. As if being crown prince, ancestral dragon, and walking climate threat were not enough, he also had to have good pronunciation.
“It would be discourteous to mispronounce a word that belongs to your home.”
He also learns “ikusi arte.” And, dangerously, he also learns: “Nire ondoan… ez zaude bakarrik”
You go completely still, because you had taught him that phrase once without thinking too much about it, and he had kept it as if it were something precious.
Because Malleus was going to keep every word that came from you, as precious as the gold a dragon guards in its treasure hoard.
Notes:
“Aishhh, all fy mhen ddim cymryd mwy, stopiwch siarad os gwelwch yn dda” = “Aishhh, my head can't take anymore, please stop talking”
“Mae’r lleuad yn hardd heno, on’d yw hi? Fel ti” = "The moon is beautiful tonight, isn't it? Like you"
“Joder tío! Qué manga de energúmenos que son algunos aquí. Es para darles un coñazo a ver si por fin espabilan!” = "Damn, man! What a bunch of idiots some of these people are. They deserve a good thrashing to finally wake them up!"
“Bueno, estaba desahogando mi frustración, pero no iba dirigida a ti. Un poco engreído, no crees?” =“Well, I was venting my frustration, but it wasn’t aimed at you. A little full of yourself, don’t you think?”
“deja de joder ya, macho! Qué insoportable!” = "Stop messing around, man! You're unbearable!"
"Ven aquí"= "c'mere"
“Posso avere un caffè? No… meglio un frullato, fa troppo caldo ultimamente. Con molto ghiaccio, per favore” = “Can I have a coffee? No… I’d rather have a smoothie, it’s been too hot lately. With lots of ice, please”
“Sieh mal, Kalim, der Himmel brennt. Es ist wunderschön!” = “Look, Kalim, the sky is on fire. It’s beautiful”
“Ich liebe dich!” = “I love you!”
“Вил, это щекотно” = “Vil, that tickles”
“Холодно!” = “it's cold!”
“Ты красивая” = “You are beautiful”
“你这个混蛋！这不公平！” = "You bastard! This isn't fair!"
“废话！这可是来自我的世界啊！” = “Well, duh! It’s from my world”
晚… 安… ? = Goodnight…?
晚安，Idia。做个好梦。 = Goodnight, Idia. Sweet dreams.
“Gaua ederra da, baina zure begiek izarrak baino gehiago distiratzen dute” = "The night is beautiful, but your eyes shine brighter than the stars"
“Etxea” = "Home"
“ikusi arte” = "see you later"
“Nire ondoan… ez zaude bakarrik” = “By my side… you are not alone”
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