Your2ndPlace

More language problems this week in the wonderful world of Second Life. I have a new Spanish tenant, introduced to me by another Spanish tenant, neither speak English well and my Spanish from school has utterly failed me, so has altavista babelfish.

Where's Peter Stindberg when you need him!

An hour it took me the other day to discover she was suggesting that she thought she had some prims buried under her land. This was after we'd eventually found a translator. Top tip, "traduzca" means translate.

Now the best thing about Second Life in terms of understanding foreign languages is that it's a visual world, so there are things everyone can understand. This is why on Sunday when I was having awful trouble understanding the new resident and the calvary arrived, we all gave up, someone handed out Onigokko and we all understood how to use that animation!

I was also shown her pose balls, which she explained to me in Spanish were "For those moments", although I've forgotten the Spanish phrase now (I seriously need to write these down). I was also told "Good eh?" which was true!

She kept saying "Joder" a lot, which babelfish wouldn't translate, and now I know why! F*ck! OMG she said that a lot! See, Second Life really is educational!

Prins = prims.... I think.

Tierra = land

:(:( = I haven't got a bloody clue what you're saying and you don't understand me.

However, if all else fails, animations, pose balls and gestures work an absolute treat! I've also noticed that my Spanish tenants are extremely enthusiastic about their partying and their community spirit. I noticed this with my French tenants too when I had a couple, there were always people at their homes getting ready to go off and do something together. I don't notice this so much with my English speaking tenants, maybe it's because English speaking tenants don't have so much trouble being understood?

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