Tag Archives: Random

Be Insulted by a French Robot via Google Translate

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This robot thinks you're a jerk.

This robot thinks you’re a jerk.

I copied and pasted some text from a WIP novel into Google Translate to see how the text-to-speech would sound.

It sounded exactly as expected in English: a robotic female voice, with some robot pronunciation quirks. Midway through the reading, I accidentally switched to another language (causing Google to use a different language’s robot-voice to read the English text). Then, I heard an approximation of English being spoken in a foreign accent.

Maybe I’m just sleep-deprived and bored, but I thought it was pretty funny.

Give it a try. Go to Google Translate, select French on the left side, type “you are a jerk” and click on the speaker button to hear a female Parisian robot insult you in English (or just click this, the text input box, and the speaker button). See if you don’t at least laugh in your head.

Ah, what a tremendous waste of time.

YA Characters Free-for-all Battle

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YA Character BattleAlright, here’s the scenario: Twelve characters from several popular Young Adult novels (mostly the same ones I mentioned in my other post breaking down bestselling YA) are pitted against each other in a Hunger Games-like competition. Each series will be represented by two characters. Instead of the actual rules from The Hunger Games, let’s say the characters are just tossed into the arena with their usual gear and are told they have to fight each other; only one may survive.

Rather than write a fancy narrative, I’ll give a sports-analyst-like prediction.

*SPOILER WARNING* Minor spoilers may appear (so, I hope you’ve already read Mockingjay).

The Contestants

1. The Hunger Games: Katniss; Gale
2. Divergent: Tris; Four
3. Harry Potter: Professor Lupin; Cedric Diggory
4. Twilight: Bella; Edward
5. Legend: June; Day
6. The Outsiders: Ponyboy; Steve

Play-by-Play Predictions: Continue reading →