#if you don’t read chinese you can auto translate if you’re on google

[fistfuloflightning]

Maeglin from the excellent fic 维林诺谋生录 (Valinor’s Way of Living) by MindYourOwnBusiness

[guzhuangheaven]

hi! so i’ve been reading up on chinese history and mostly going down wikipedia rabbit holes but i came across your posts about qing dynasty hairstyles. just curious, where did you actually find these information? do you have any tips on researching more niche topics like this? i’m having a hard time with it and i’m not able to find solid info with references or are credible :/ maybe my chinese isn’t that good but I find that searching questions in chinese also doesn’t yield a lot of results. Maybe because i’m using google and not whatever is allowed in China? thanks for the tips !! have a good day :>

Honestly the information on the Qing hairstyles posts I’ve been gathering and holding on for so long and it’s all gathered in bits and pieces so I can’t really list individual sources anymore. It’s hard for me to talk about my process of researching information because 1) it’s totally chaotic and 2) it’s usually not born out of like an inherently academic interest but a more practical need. I write Huan Zhu Ge Ge fanfiction, so everything I have ever looked up about the Qing dynasty is because I needed to know these things to write my fics.

I’m not even sure if any tip for searching for information in Chinese I can give is going to be useful for anyone, mostly because the method is very specific to me as a Vietnamese person.  

(tl;dr: use Chinese search engines and search using Chinese characters not pinyin.)

Other than just cultural osmosis from dramas, most of my research for my fanfics come from these sources:

1. Wikipedia

I usually start with English Wikipedia mostly because I’m a third culture bilingual whose default internet language is English, but for topics on Chinese culture and history, Vietnamese Wikipedia can sometimes have full Wiki articles when the English version are just short stubs. If failing that, I sometimes wander into Chinese Wikipedia, but I don’t find Chinese-language Wikipedia articles are as helpful as the Chinese equivalent, Baidu Baike. More on that later.

2. Google searches

Sometimes, you do get some information from cultural blogs/tourism blogs/websites that tell you things about Chinese culture/history in general just through history search but as you can already tell, they tend to be very general.

3. Information already translated into Vietnamese by other people

So this is where in recent years the popularity of dramas such as Zhen Huan and Ruyi come in useful. There are Facebook groups for fans of these dramas where the people running the fan pages do know Chinese and they have translated a lot of information on Qing clothes, customs and historical records into Vietnamese. A lot of our series of posts on Qing dynasty costumes are retranslated from these Vietnamese sources. For the Qing dynasty costumes posts on this blog, I did do a cursory “reverse engineering”? fact check by putting the names of the different clothing articles etc. through Baidu Baike and running through Google-translated versions of those Baike articles, and if they more or less match what the Vietnamese translations were saying, I’m taking them as probably at least somewhat credible/not totally made up.  

(This is why you shouldn’t take everything we say on this blog as irrefutable.)

4. Baidu search engine, Baike and other Chinese sources

Ok, so the thing you need to know about me is that:

I’m Vietnamese

Since the mid-2000s, I have only ever watched Chinese dramas subtitled in Vietnamese (as opposed to dubbed). Watching subbed dramas helps a lot with listening comprehension but also recognition of common Chinese characters because all Chinese dramas come with Chinese subs as well. This does mean that while I can’t speak or write Chinese, I now can watch raw dramas and understand maybe about 40%? depending on how familiar I am with the tropes in the drama.  

In my bored uni days I used to moderate a forum on Chinese dramas, which required, among other things, searching for and translating Chinese entertainment news.

All this means is that over the years, I have developed certain tricks to search for information in Chinese as a Vietnamese person.

Firstly, it is always much easier to search things on the internet using Chinese characters instead of pinyin, which is usually pretty useless when conveying actual information because Chinese is full of homophones. I can’t actually type Chinese, but the thing about smartphone Chinese pinyin keyboards and Chinese search engines such as Baidu is that if you type in pinyin, it will auto-suggest Chinese characters for you. Of course you then need to be familiar with pinyin and able to read some Chinese characters to know that you’re searching for the right thing. This is where my years of watching Chinese dramas with subtitles come in as it means sometimes I can guess the pinyin by listening to the spoken Chinese and use that to search things and/or recognise the corresponding Chinese characters.

(When you see us use Chinese characters on this blog, I’ve basically just opened Baidu, typed in the pinyin in order to copy the Chinese characters. Yes it’s a whole process.)

The search engine Baidu pretty much works as Google does, and if you search a term, of the first things it will give you is the Baike page for that thing. Baike is probably about as reliable as Wikipedia on non-sensitive topics that would not be subject to censorship, which is good enough usually.

Baike is obviously in Chinese, so to understand that, I would Google translate it into either English or Vietnamese. These days, Google translate is surprisingly okay when translating Chinese-English that if I’m not too invested in the topic, I can make do with just getting the general idea through the Google English translation. However, if Chinese-English fails, and I translate it into Vietnamese. Google is usually better at translating Chinese-Vietnamese as Vietnamese does have Chinese roots and shares syntax and grammatical structures.

Sometimes, when Google doesn’t give me the information I need, I will also put bits of the text that Google can’t make sense of into a Han-Viet converter. Without going into the historical relationship between Vietnamese and literary written Chinese, what this essentially does is convert the Chinese text into Han-Viet words, which is the Vietnamese equivalent of probably Shakespeare English? or maybe Middle English. These Han Viet words are now also written in the modern Vietnamese roman alphabet, which means I can now read the words, and understand maybe 50-60% of it, as vocab used in modern formal written Vietnamese still borrows significantly from Chinese words/have Chinese roots. Han-Viet converters online also come with a dictionary, so the bits I don’t understand I can look up the Chinese characters and understand the information that way.  

Reading whole articles in Han-Viet is a pain in the ass and I would never do that, but bits of converted Han-Viet combined with Google translate usually gives me a pretty good understanding of simple Chinese text like Baike articles. 

Keywords

In terms of keywords, it can sometimes be tricky if you don’t already have a term that you’re searching specifically. If you have a more general question then I guess in that case you would either have to know some rudimentary Chinese to search on Chinese search engines, or resort to searching in English. But if you can form questions in Chinese, I would suggest using Baidu for your searches, instead of Google. 

Navigating Chinese internet as a person who doesn’t speak Chinese can be very daunting and I guess...it just takes time to get used to? I’m not sure if I have any advice other than that, to be honest. -h

[nyerus]

🌸 Updates and FAQs for Watching the TGCF Donghua! 🌸

✴️First, check out my detailed guide HERE if you want to know how to subscribe to YouTube or Bilibili!

Please read through these if you have any questions first before sending in an ask, as it's probably answered here (or the previous guide)!!! If you don't see it here, or still have confusions afterwards, then feel free to send in an ask or DM me!

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✨Important Notes/Updates✨

Bilibili is allowing non-members to watch for free! No region locks, and you don’t even need to make an account. Free watchers will be one week behind paid members. But this is a legal and free way to support the donghua if you’re unable to pay! (This actually means that you’ll be able to see the episodes faster and for free on Bilibili than you would on YouTube, because YouTube has a two week delay instead of just one week.)

Funimation is broadcasting TGCF in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. These are some of the regions which are blocked by YouTube, so this is an available alternative for those who don’t want to go through Bilibili. They have also stated they will launch in Mexico and Brazil this winter.

ALL broadcasts are in Chinese with hard-coded/embedded English and Chinese subs. (I.e., they come with the broadcast itself, on top of the image. Nothing to toggle on/off, they are automatically there.) They are the exact same across all the platforms.

Please support official releases so that we can get more seasons, and high quality! This is still niche content, believe it or not!

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✨Frequntly Asked Questions✨

🔹GENERAL FAQs:🔹

1.) "Where is the best place to watch?"

I still reccomend Bilibili's native website/app over all other streaming platforms. This is due to some key points:

Bilibili's website/app gets the episode the very second they drop. There is no delay whatsoever. YouTube and Funimation have been delayed the last two weeks. It's unknown if this is just a hiccup or what, but if watching new episodes ASAP is important to you, going through Bilibili ensures you will not have to worry about any uncertainty.

Price breakdowns: Bilibili's website/app 3-month membership is $10-11 USD. Their YouTube channel's "MBBM Lv2" membership varies by region, but in many places is similar or just a tad more. In the US, the MBBM Lv2 membership and Funimation membership is the same price ($5.99 per month, or $17.97 for 3 months). So you can actually save some cash by going through Bilibili directly.

In the end, this is largely up to personal choice and comfort. Some people may find it difficult to navigate Bilibili's website even with guides and google translate's auto-translate feature. In this case, YouTube or Funimation are fine alternatives. If you also have an existing Funimation sub or plan to use it to watch other shows, then that's perfectly valid too. Similar with the MBBM lv2 sub on YouTube, especially if you want to use it to see other shows (e.g. Legend of Exorcism which is only English-subbed on YouTube).

2.) "Where do I watch for free?"

On Bilibili's website, you can watch episodes for free! You will be one episode behind paid members, but it's a legal way to support the donghua. You don't even need to create an account!

3.) "What episode will be airing when/where?"

Check out the table below for the differences in airing times. Time is 11AM China Time.*

NOTE: Funimation is technically supposed to be the same as Bilibili members/YouTube MBBM Lv2, but the last few episodes have been delayed so I have no clue.... *Additionally, YouTube's episodes have been delayed by a little bit, but they've aired the same day.

4.) "How can I support the donghua?"

Free, on YouTube: Subscribe to Bilibili's YouTube Channel, give likes to TGCF videos/clips, and leave nice comments!

Free, on Bilibili: Everyone can follow the official TGCF account and page, plus leave likes on videos. All this following stuff requires you to have passed the Bilibili quiz to unlock levels: If you are lv2+, you can leave comments and give coins to offical TGCF videos. (Log in daily to get 1 coin/day if you're lv1+!) If you are lv4+, leave a good 5-star review!

Paid: Buy subscriptions to watch the donghua! Also, merchhhhh~

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🔸YOUTUBE-RELATED FAQs🔸

1.) "What's the difference between Bilibili's YouTube Channel's MBBM Lv1 and Lv2 memberships?"

MBBM Lv2 allows you to watch the episodes on the same day as Bilibili's website broadcast.

MBBM Lv1 has new episodes delayed by one week, meaning you will be one episode behind the others. There actually is zero point in subscribing to MBBM Lv1 (unless you want to watch other subbed donghua) because you can watch the same content on Bilibili for absolutely free, since Bilibili is allowing non-members to watch TGCF one episode behind paid members.

You can also watch two episodes behind on YouTube.

2.) "If I have YouTube Premium/Red, do I still need a membership on Bilibili's YouTube page?"

Yes. YouTube premium is completely separate from the channel-specific memberships.

3.) "Are episodes simulcast on YouTube?"

While originally stated as being simulcast, there actually seems to be a bit of a delay on YouTube as of now. It's unclear if this will change with future episodes.

4.) "Do I need a VPN?"

If you are from one of the restricted countries, then yes, you'll need to use a VPN. You can still pay for the subscription as normal, and then use a VPN to watch the donghua. It will not affect payment.

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🔹BILIBILI-RELATED FAQs:🔹

1.) "Do I need to take that 100-question quiz to sign up for Bilibili or the membership?!"

No, it's totally optional! You do not need it to either watch the free episodes or to buy a membership. It's only if you want to comment and stuff. It might make you think you gotta do it, or enter a code, but it's actually not needed. Check out THIS post for more info!!! (However, you may still want to do it in order to level up and eventually leave a nice review for the donghua!)

2.) "I'm only able to watch 6min on Bilibili's website when I watch from my phone. Do I need the app?"

You do not need the app. Switch your browser to Desktop Mode in order to watch the video in full.

Be sure to download a browser like Google Chrome, Firefox, etc that supports this mode if your native browser doesn't allow for it.

3.) "Can I get the app on iPhone/iOS?"

This depends on if you are in a country where the app is not region locked in the app store. If you're able to download it that way, great! If not, try using a VPN and setting your region to mainland China. It may work. APKs are not useable on iPhones, so unless you know how to sideload apps onto your device, you may be stuck with the app store only.

Do note that you might be unable to pay for a Bilibili membership through the app, depending on version, but you can always simply pay through the website and then use the app as normal. It will apply account-wide on all devices.

4.) "Why are there two versions of the app?"

One seems to be the international version, which is more basic and lets you pay via GooglePay/ApplePay. The other one seems to be made for mainland China, and allows you to even buy merchandise through it (Chinese address/bank acc required). Mostly, both have to be downloaded via APK on Android. But some iOS users have reported different versions of the app being available for them through the app store (namely the int'l ver, and some have said they can use a VPN to get the mainland one).

5.) "Is there any benefit to having the app over just using the website?"

Not really, no. With the app you can buy very cute hualian themed skins for your profile, though (if you have the mainland version of the app). Plus you can save videos for offline viewing.

6.) "Do I need to enter my area code for Bilibili when signing up/in?"

NO, you do not enter your area code in the phone number field. Select your country from the drop-down list and it will automatically consider your area code. (E.g. if you're in America, select 美国 and enter in your number like 5557779999.)

7.) "I didn't get to set a password when signing up, so how do I log into my Bilibili account after being logged out?"

Use the same phone number you did to sign up. Instead of a password, you'll enter in a one-time key that is sent to your phone via text message. (NOTE: some people have reported not receiving these messages, which may vary by phone carrier!)

As mentioned above, don't include your area code when filling out your number.

Also, if you are signed in on the app on your phone, you can scan the QR code on the log-in page through the app.

8.) "How do I turn off the barrage comments filling up the video I'm watching?"

Select the little button that reads "弹" under the video:

(Website vs App)

9.) Is the Bilibili subscription auto-renewing?

No, the 1-month (¥25), 3-month (¥68), 1-year (¥168) subscriptions will not automatically renew. They are a one-time payment only!

Notice that the renewing payments all say "连续" in front of them, which means "continuing" or "successive" types of subscriptions. They are also cheaper than the one-time payment. (E.g. the renewing 3-month sub is ¥45 instead of ¥68.) Moreover, the renewing types are not even available to purchase with PayPal, afaik. You need Alipay or WeChat Pay, etc.

10.) "Can I use the app/membership to read the manhua too?"

Unfortunately, not quite! Your Bilibili account is universal, but you'll need to download the manhua app seperately and topping up M-coins to pay for the manhua. (One-time purchases, either by volume or by chapter as per your choice.)

11.) "What resolutions are available?"

You can watch up to 480p as a free member. Paid members can watch at 1080p and high-bit-rate 1080p. It's possible to chromecast it to TV, too. (I haven't tried it, but others have!)

12.) "Can I watch across multiple devices?"

Yes, you can!

13.) "Do I need a VPN?"

No, Bilibili is not region-locked. However, some particular countries may have Chinese apps blocked.... :(

14.) "I want to leave a comment/review. How do I level up on Bilibili?"

Log in daily, watch at least one video per day, give coins (attained by logging in) to your fave videos, etc! It will definitely take a while haha.

15.) "Will I be able to watch other donghua like MDZS or SVSSS with my membership on Bilibili?"

No, those two donghuas are produced by TenCent, not Bilibili. You will need either a TenCent/WeTV account, or you can watch them on their YouTube channel (free).

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🔸FUNIMATION-RELATED FAQs🔸

1.) "Is Funimation's broadcast a simulcast?"

It is supposed to be, according to their initial announcements. They seem to be having some technical difficulties, but those may be resolved soon. I suggest keeping an eye on their twitter for updates if you are interested in watching through them!

2.) "Do I have to pay extra on my Funimation sub to watch TGCF?"

No, afaik, the regular $5.99 sub covers TGCF too.

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I hope this helps out people further, so we can all have an easy time watching the donghua! And please do support it legally! 🙏

If you still need help, feel free to send in an ask!

[rigelmejo]

Review of Lingq and Reader Language Apps

My tentative review of lingq: Literally seems to serve the same function for me as the Pleco Reader. The positive benefit of using lingq - it highlights words you don’t know in blue, words you’ve started learning in yellow, and words you already know are left unhighlighted. This is motivating because the progress you make is clear, and the words you already know you don’t try to over-study or re-memorize (because my perfectionist tendencies LOVE to get hung up studying things I already know before progressing). Lingq also counts the words you’ve marked as known. That is the primary reason I’m trying the app - I wanted to gauge how many chinese words I actually can read and am familiar with.

However, the core negatives to lingq: their dictionary/lookup function for words is clunky and inconvienient. It only shows the most common translation at a quick click pop up and that isn’t necessarily nuanced or correct. The pop up is hard to get rid of because you have to expand it then exit out of it, which is inconvenient and slows down reading (I wish I could just click the pop-up again or click the word again to remove the translation pop up). It has options to search more in-depth definitions on sites like baidu, but all the steps that takes makes doing so just as time consuming as opening the internet browser or baidu app and searching it that way. So the dictionary option I find is lacking and inconvienient, and that affects ease of reading/ease of use. The dictionary feature IS better than the Idiom reader app, but Idiom reader app also has the ability to look up more in-depth definitions which takes just as much time as lingq/a web browser. 

Basically - Pleco Reader is eons better than both of them. Pleco Reader’s only draw back in definitions, is it provides so many that the less familiar you are with chinese, the more its a puzzle of which definition applies (but usually the top ones are the most common, so it’s rarely an issue) - but a reader can’t be expected to know which meaning of 15 possible a writer may have intended, if that meaning’s one of the least common. So it’s just nice that pleco provides the less common ones so it’s easy to look up when those situations arise. In addition, Pleco Reader is very convenient to flip from dictionary explanations back to reader, not slowing the reading experience. Lingq ALSO has very few chinese materials in varying levels. It seems to rely on users uploading their own materials. So a lot of it seems to be ripped from a textbook, or web article, or native book. Pleco Reader in comparison has several graded readers available to purchase, which are great for picking materials at your actual reading level, with relatively high frequency words to learn, and with grammar that should be comprehensible. Also, pleco lets me import any of my own pdf, ebook, and txt documents, along with any website. So I can read webnovels on there, my own graded readers I’ve got from other places, etc. Pleco Reader is MUCH more convenient for reading virtually whatever you want, and it’s definitions are both easier to access (including most idioms you’re likely to encounter) and more likely to have most helpful definition. 

Probably the biggest difference - Lingq is 12.99 a MONTH. Pleco Reader has a one time cost of 10-20 dollars (depending on the package you buy). Then Pleco sends you a code so if you ever lose your app/get a new phone/something goes wrong, you can enter the code and get back all your purchases. A one time cost is eons more affordable, and really kind of them. I especially like that they put in the effort to give you the ability to recover your purchase if you have any issues. I bought the 20 dollar package I think - so I could get the expanded dictionary, with pretty much any word or idiom I’d ever see, natural speech audio, and the Reader. It has been well worth it. I’ve been using pleco for like 4 months, so the longer I use it the more that cost seems minimal (it’d be like the equivalent of 5$ a month before, free now. Or the equivalent of the cost of Lingq for less than 2 months).

Lingq’s cost PER month I’m not sure I could feel justified in spending. The ONLY added benefit I see of using Lingq over Pleco, is lingq has color coded the words you know/don’t know/are learning, and lingq counts how many words you know. Those two features are motivating. But they’re just motivational benefits. 

Other then that, Lingq has the following features: audio (Pleco Reader has this too), flashcards (using anki or memrise for free appear to be equally good or better than lingq’s feature, especially because you can simply export from lingq), cloze-like questions (again, memrise, anki, Quizlet, and even in some ways clozemaster are free alternatives). I personally hate flashcard type study, so I use memrise when necessary but generally would never use such features - so lingq’s flashcard features aren’t worthwhile for me. If they’re something you’re interested in - again, there seem to be free options available that are as good as or better than lingq. 

So, at least for my own personal learning preferences, lingq does not seem to be worth it. Everything it provides is available somewhere else for cheaper, for a one time cost, or free. Pleco Reader I think offers the most benefits and convenience out of every Language-Reader app I’ve tried. Compared to: Lingq, idiom, using Baidu itself on a webpage, etc - closest comparison is the free ZhongWen chrome extension on chinese sites, I think that’s nearly as convienient as Pleco Reader and obviously the alternative for when you’re on a computer. Idiom is actually a really nice app considering it’s free, and it does serve the basic purpose (Pleco Reader is a one time purchase cost) - idiom has sometimes incorrect translations/audio, but over all if you read enough content then that’s just a few words a paragraph or page that you won’t be able to study.  Those words can be looked up separately in a free dictionary app (like free Pleco’s dictionary, or google translate, or baidu) if they keep confusing you or keep seeming to be wrong. 

Lingq just... does not seem worth 12.99 a month, for only the added benefit of making it obvious which words you know/don’t know/are studying. Other than that single ability, there are comparable tools out there that already does what Lingq does or better, for cheaper or free. 

Overall, readers I would recommend:

Pleco Reader (10 dollars, or a bit more if you buy it in a package, single time purchase) - benefits include the only dictionary you’ll need, audio (per word or for entire text), flashcard making ability, option to import any ebook/txt/website, option to one-time purchase graded readers. Although paid, I appreciate that all purchases are one time only. On a phone, this is the app I overwhelmingly rely on - it has everything I need in one area. I personally like to open up mtlnovels.com and read the novels with dual chinese/english, so I can look at the english sentences afterward - and use Pleco Reader as I get through the chinese chunks to make sure I can look up words I don’t know. If I were going to start translating, I’d probably use this method so I could get a gist of the meaning in english, then go through each line and fix errors and improve the translation for idioms and less straightforward meanings. For reading for Ease, that method’s the best for me to get through the novels I want to read. For reading intensively, I just open up a novel I want to read in all chinese and chug through it using pleco to look up words I stumble on. 

Free alternative: Zhongwen chrome extension. Equally extensive dictionary, links to grammar points, audio (per word), can read anything online or opened in a chrome browser (so you could open your txt documents in it) - sometimes works on subtitles on videos too. Subtitles on viki, on netflix, seem to be readable by zhongwen. It may work on some pdfs opened in chrome. Only available on computers. It’s really fantastic. If you’re on a computer I’d just recommend using this one overall. 

Free Alternative: Idiom - app. dictionary is decent, but some errors or limitations mean occasionally looking up words in another free dictionary app (Google Translate, Baidu Translate, Pleco Dictionary). Machine audio (per word), also sometimes has errors. Can read anything on a website. There are some other readers that serve the same function as idiom, I’ve seen one for webnovels... but I think at idiom overall is as good as or better than the other options out there. Idiom does not auto-link you to novel websites, but if you can find them then you can put any url in. Idiom also works for MANY languages - so you can also use it for french/spanish/japanese/etc. Idiom is the app I use for french, since obviously Pleco Reader is just for chinese. For free readers, and readers in other languages, I think idiom’s the best bet. Lingq might have more appeal for language learners of other languages - since it IS a little better than idiom with providing the correct translations, but lingq’s translations are still off sometimes TOO. So, if you’re learning a language that isn’t chinese, I’d recommend trying Idiom for free and seeing if it’s useful to you before shelving out money for anything paid. 

Not a reader, but there are two netflix dual subtitle chrome extensions that work really well for reading with a dictionary too, I’ll list them later when I look them up. These are ALSO available to use in many languages, so that’s nice. for both of the free dual subtitle extensions, Zhongwen also seems to work for them (if you ever want to look up a secondary definition).

Dictionary Apps:

Google Translate - good for drawing the characters, at least for me it has the easiest time recognizing what I’m trying to look up (I’m left handed and draw characters with my right on my phone so). When I’m watching tv its easy to open google and draw an unknown character in the app when I don’t know the pinyin. It usually only offers the most frequent/common definition, so it has limitations - but for a quick lookup of one word its usually convenient. For a quick gist of bigger chunks of text, google translate is also a quick way to do it although at least some words and phrases WILL probably be incorrect. 

Pleco Dictionary - this part of the pleco app is free. The definitions are the most thorough I’ve seen, and the easiest to get a meaningful definition if google translate is inadequate. Pleco’s definitions hands down seem to be the best. You have to pay for one of the packages to access the ability to draw characters to look them up, to access idiom translations, natural voice pronunciations, and a much more massive dictionary. I just bought it - and now I rarely have to use google translate. Only negative - have to look up things word by word, or by idiom/phrase. Other then that, it’s the best one probably.

Baidu Translate - also free. Biggest benefit is the ability to put a url in and have it machine translate the entire page. Like google, it’s very useful to get a quick gist of bigger chunks of text, and a handful of those words or phrases may be translated wrong. It’s fun to use it to translate english pages to chinese (again, some errors will crop up). It’s sometimes better than Google translate for looking up individual words, and phrases - but also has its limitations. 

Overall I use Baidu and Google for chunks of translations, and then Pleco or Zhongwen for specific words or phrases. It’s why I like using dual chinese/english mtlnovels.com in Pleco Reader - because then the big-chunk machine translated english is already provided (and the only thing Pleco Reader can’t do), and so I can just use pleco to go by word and phrase to get specific pieces of translation that are more accurate. 

I use Google translate or Pleco Dictionary for looking up words by drawing characters - but this is only a free feature in Google translate (and honestly I think Google translate recognizes my handwriting better - so I usually use Google, then if the definition isn’t helpful I copy paste the text version of the word into pleco dictionary). 

[superimpassionednetgeneration]

Merchandise Ordering Part 1

When I first became a fan of S.I.N.G. I wanted to purchase the official merchandise and albums to support the girls. Unfortunately, I do not live in mainland China. There is very little available for sale outside of China. I have only ever found one album and a few singles available on iTunes. There is an official S.I.N.G. store in China, but I was told it was impossible to purchase from it and have the merchandise shipped overseas. However, I was able to successfully purchase their 2020 calendar and have it shipped to me. It was by no means an easy process to figure out, but it did work. In the following posts, I hope to document my second attempt at purchasing an item from the store so that others can purchase items if they wish to.

Disclaimers: 1. This has worked for me once. I can make no promises that it will work for you. All I am providing are the steps I used as an aide to help you if you should like to try. 2. There were a couple of times where it looked like I might have hit a dead-end and would not receive the product. I would not recommend trying this with money you can't afford to lose if it fails. Similarly, I would suggest ordering one item at first to make sure you can do it. 3. I live in the United States, if you want it shipped to another country these steps may help you but I can't give you a step-by-step for your country since I have no experience with that. 4. I do not speak/read Chinese. 5. I have no affiliation with S.I.N.G. or their store. They could change how it works at any time and this could all be meaningless.

Notes: 1. I used the Chrome browser to do this. This is important for a couple of reasons. One being the ability to right-click-Translate. Do not turn on auto-translate though, there are some times where you need the original text and may have to copy and paste it out to another tab that contains Google Translate. 2. Since this is my second time through, I already have an account. I can't easily show the steps of registering for an account since it is tied to my mobile number and I only have one mobile phone. This is true of both the store site and Alipay (the payment site that processes your credit card). 3. So far I have not been able to tie my email address to the account. So I receive no updates at any steps in this process. I have to go back daily to check on the status of the order. 4. The prices have a symbol next to them that resembles the Japanese Yen symbol. These prices are NOT in Yen. They are in Chinese Yuan. 5. I have not found CDs available in the store. Just fan merchandise. This was highly disappointing.

The first step: Go to the store. https://shop390505445.taobao.com/

You can use the Translate function to try to help you navigate. But keep in mind that it will not translate text that is in images. So that black bar that contains the categories to shop by won't translate.

For this order, I am going to try to order the 4th Anniversary Photo Album. I clicked the All tab, and it opened in a new tab:

At this point it will prompt you for a login. You can close the login window, but every time you try to see products it will prompt again. Translate does not work on the popup.

Click the four Chinese characters under the big orange button.

Translate:

Click the "Agree agreement" button.

Pick your country from the dropdown. Fill in your mobile number in the box next to the drop down. Click and drag the verification bar to the right (I think this is one of those "I am not a robot" things). Click Next step...

Unfortunately, at this point I can't walk you through much more of the registration process because I did it a month ago with my first purchase. It sends you a text message with a number, you enter it on the next screen and follow the prompts from there. The auto translate got me through this part fairly painlessly.

Once you are done with the registration, you can go back to the second tab and login. Refresh may also work.

Translate:

Clicked on "By new products"

Clicked on the product image "[Spot] SING Women's Group Limited Four-Year Limited Photo Album SING's First".

Translate:

Below the first orange bar you'll see "Delivery". You want to change that to "overseas".

Then choose "overseas" again

Unfortunately, at least for me, at this point the Add to cart button did nothing. If you click on the icon at the end of the browser address bar with the G in it, a little dialog appears and you can tell it to 'Show Original', which will put the text back into Chinese. At this point, the dark orange button that used to say Add to Cart will work. If you have created an account previously, like I have, it will now prompt you to login.

Either way, you should end up at this page:

Translate:

Go to cart settlement

Click the check box next to the item so it highlights and puts a total at the bottom. It is important to note that the price is still in Chinese currency. Why it has the US dollar symbol? No clue.

Click the dark orange button next to the total.

Translate

Note: It defaulted in my address. You will have to enter your address at some point:

This screen resists translation. The grey bar at the top is the country where you live. Those two characters in black are for United States. The blue text is a link to a popup to pick your country. Click the blue text.

First off, the letters across the top may or may not have anything to do with the first letter of your country in your alphabet. You have two options, you can either go to Google Translate, put the name of your country in the left (in your language) and pick Chinese for the output, then go through the tabs until you recognize the same symbols, or you can select the text in this box, copy and paste it into google translate and match them up. Below is what I mean for the second option:

That was probably the second hardest part I had when I made my first order. Once you've picked your country, you'll need to click the dark blue bar at the bottom. The first dropdown back on the address screen is state and city (at least for the US).

The next box is your address under 'Detail'.

The next box is your postal code. The next box is your name. It is not your user name like it implies, it is the name that would be on your postal address. The mobile number should default in. Click the Make Default button if it isn't already checked. Click Save. Now you are back here:

Make sure 'Forwarding by air' is checked, or you're flying to China to pick it up. A tempting, but considerably more expensive method. Scroll down.

Submit order Now, if you see this page, you've been sitting around on these pages too long taking screen shots like I have.... It's the time out error page.:-(

But if you're lucky, and it works, you should be brought to a page to create an Alipay account. Again, I already did this so it won't let me do it again. It again wants your cell phone number. An important note: When creating the account, the password is a series of numbers. Make note of these numbers. Don't just let Chrome store them for you. Much later in the process, once you receive your merchandise, you will be prompted for those numbers in a field that Chrome doesn't recognize as a password field, so it won't auto-fill. You'll have to go back to your password management page (remember your google password) and dig up the password. Third most frustrating thing in this process.

Enter your credit card number, click Continue You should see a screen similar to this:

Translate:

You should be able to fill this out after it's translated. confirm payment

Your order is complete. Now what? Hover over the menu item at the top "1 taobao" and click on "I have bought baby". It is important to note here that for some reason the Chinese word for things you have bought translates to baby. You'll see it multiple times. They are not mailing you a baby. Sorry to disappoint.

Click "Order details" in the right column of your order.

Translate:

Scroll down a bit:

So now you wait. You will need to return to the site on a regular basis to check the status of your order.

Continued

[pinerthenew]

Google translate bot

#Google translate bot trial#

#Google translate bot free#

Note that as of Loco Translate 2.5.6 a maximum of 1,000 characters will be sent per request to the Lecto API.Īlthough higher plans support larger request bodies and parallel requests, such features are not supported by the plugin. However, we do not promote their products above any of the others listed here.

Copy the pre-generated API key from the Lecto dashboard.

#Google translate bot free#

Either stay on the free plan, or choose a subscription plan.

Steps for generating a Lecto API key are as follows:

#Google translate bot trial#

Lecto AI offer a free trial of their Translation API and a range of paid plans for higher volumes of text. Requests to the API are made directly from your browser. If you want extra security you can restrict your key to your IP address, but be aware that this is your IP address, not your server's. Loco Translate does not support service accounts. Read more about Google Cloud API keys here if you get stuck. Enter your key into the Loco Translate plugin settings.We recommend clicking "Restrict key" and at least locking it to the Translation API.Click "Create Credentials" and choose "API key". Generate a key from APIs & Services > Credentials.Usage of Google's API is not free, but we don't charge you. You may have to Enable Billing at this point.Go to "APIs & Services", click "Enable APIs and services", find the "Cloud Translation API" and click "Enable".Go to the cloud console and create a new project.You will need a simple API key to use it with Loco Translate. Google Translate is part of Google Cloud. If you have any questions about DeepL plans and API access, please ask their support. If you're using DeepL's free API, enter in the URL field (as of Loco Translate v2.5.3).Paste your key into the Loco Translate plugin settings.Go to your DeepL account settings and copy the Authentication Key to your clipboard.Get a DeepL account and subscribe to the API plan.Steps for generating an API key are as follows: You will need a DeepL developer plan in order to access their API. See also other providers, and which ones are free?.We aren't recommending or promoting any of them. We are listing providers in alphabetical order. You will have to register with each service you wish to use and generate an API key.įollow the official links below for the most up to date information on using each service and please note that your chosen provider may charge you. The following machine translation services are supported via their APIs directly from Loco Translate. This function immediately contacts all your configured translation services and offers the choice of using their translation. The "Suggest" feature is available from each individual translation window. This this will likely affect how much the provider charges you, or how much of your free quota gets used up. You will be shown a calculation of how many characters are to be sent to the service provider. The "Auto" button in the main toolbar provides automatic translation of the entire file. This is accessed via two functions which both show the :robot icon: Next time, you can just enter “talk” into the browser address bar to launch the chat.Using third party translation providers with Loco Translate WordPress pluginĪs of Loco Translate 2.4 automatic translation services are integrated into the translation file editor. In the keyword field enter “talk” (no quotes). Now go to your bookmark properties by right-clicking the bookmark. Tip: To quickly launch Google Talk without any installation, you can bookmark /talkgadget/popout in Firefox. Here’s the list of languages pairs and you’ll notice many new pairs, displayed in bold below: You can use it as an interpreter in your group chat, or as a pocket translator in your Google Talk client for BlackBerry. Google’s bots have a simple format for you want to try it, to translate English text in Chinese, add as a friend in Google Talk and send it a message to translate from English to Chinese. To use them in Google Talk or in any other IM client that supports Jabber, you need to add one of the bots as a friend, start a conversation with the bot and enter the text you want to translate. Google launched translation bots for a lot of language pairs, even more than the ones available at Google Translate.

[andywriteshoney]

The Best Free Text to Audio Converter

Speech to Text software is a voice recognition software that can recognize various words, phrases and sentences you speak and converts them to easily accessible text. An average speech to text software is faster at producing text documents than a person typing on a standard keyboard. It can be installed on your laptop or laptop, and can be used even when you don't have access computers. It is simple to use and doesn't require any drivers or software to be installed on your computer. It is easy to use and convenient.

The technology for speech recognition has been around for many years. The software for speech recognition has been improved and is more efficient than ever. The advancement in speech recognition technology is an application of the continuous advancements and research in the field of computer science. Computer systems built on the technology of speech recognition have been in use in laboratories for sometime but only recently has it been introduced into the corporate environment.

There are many kinds of speech-to-text converters that are available on the market. There is free speech to text converters and then there are commercial ones which have to be purchased. The ones that are available for free offer limited capabilities, whereas the commercial ones have a variety of options like auto-complete, word corrector and grammar checker. They also allow you to convert audio files from speech to text.

Today, there are many apps available on the Google Play that helps people with their communication needs. One of the most well-known speech-to-text converter is Braina. If you browse through the Play list, you will discover a variety of apps that can assist you with your communication requirements. Braina is one the most frequently used apps. It can convert audio files into nearly all languages and also convert video.

You can actually teach your child to read with this speech-to-text converter online app. First, you will need to convert the audio https://texttoaudiospeech.com file to text using the built-in tool in this app. After that all you need to do is teach the child to select the correct words from the audio file. When your child grows up, he/she can utilize the Braina voice recognition software to translate the information into the desired language.

There are other similar apps in the Android Market. You can download any of these and teach your child the basics of vocabulary or just start typing with the assistance of the speech recognition tool. The software is continuously updated with new features. These programs can serve as an educational tool for children and adults. With the help of this software, you can write on the whiteboard without any difficulty and you can also increase your typing speed and accuracy. This is why; many educational institutions are using these speech-to-text converters to help students learn.

If you're looking to teach your child using this speech to text software, you'll be happy to know that there are many different options to teach the child. The various languages supported by this program include; Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Russian, Tamil, Hindi, Bengali and Urdu. In fact, you can teach your child even more by selecting the various languages from the many options that are available in the advanced settings. Advanced options allow students to dictate commands to the speech recognition engine, which will translate the words exactly.

The technology of voice recognition has made voice commands very easy and user-friendly. The majority of these software firms are now including the voice recognition feature in their text applications as well. This is why you can teach your child how to speak at their own pace with voice command programs which convert voice into text.

[erickogtl713-blog]

5 Cliches About Www Autoblog Com You Should Avoid

Tutorial: How To Automate Blogging (For People Who Hate ...

Or did it? If you were wondering how to start a blog without ever lifting a finger, i’m afraid you’re out of luck. You see, the days of slapping something together and receiving an endless amount of traffic are long gone. That being said, autoblogging is actually very powerful to this day, but only if you put some additional effort on your part.

Let’s talk more about the aforementioned “ongoing effort” required, and the best ways to make content aggregation work for you. Create a hybrid blog consisting of original and syndicated content combined. As autoblogs mainly consist of previously-published content, you shouldn’t expect to receive any organic traffic from Google. Why? Because it normally ranks the original content over its copied counterpart.

Finalsite Posts: News & Blogging Platform For Schools - Finalsite

This may also increase your blog’s overall usefulness as it neatly complements and strengthens the syndicated portion of your blog. Create a purely-syndicated website with no original content. While I personally prefer the first option, there are ways to be successful with a blog that features no original content of any kind.

Now let’s look at some real-life examples as a means of backing up the above two options. We all know how cats took over the internet, especially after YouTube arrived at the scene. autologin. Much like avid kitty lovers, there are plenty of other animals people enjoy watching on a daily basis; this is your chance to import a niche selection and grow an amazingly fun website.

What's The Future Of Blogging Platforms? -

For each video published on your blog, you could write a brief description by dissecting exactly what takes place in the footage. This gives you a chance to add a unique spin or humorous commentary. In addition, this small effort helps with your blog’s SEO while removing much of the legwork, as you won’t have to manually add relevant videos yourself - automatic blogging.

This is perhaps the most common and natural idea. As news pieces never stop coming, there will always be something to show your blog audience (blogs auto). Let’s say your blog is about science and technology. In this case, dedicate a page to the latest (aggregated) news and breakthroughs to complement your original content in between.

Dam It All: Automating Content Marketing - Distribion

And as your site will be updated 24 hours a day thanks to the power of aggregation, this could become the go-to place for many readers over time. It helps to have the best of both worlds. One of my websites actually displays remote writing gigs from all over the web.

Meanwhile, I post a fair share of original content to help elevate authority content marketing calendar and bring in additional traffic. These aggregated jobs have proven highly successful and many users return everyday to find new home-based gigs with ease. blogspot beginners. Can you think of other niche jobs to add to your website? There are plenty of professions out there; make it easy by gathering them in one place job seekers will love you for it.

Top 5 Auto Blogging Wordpress Plugins For 2020 ...

★★★★☆

Seriously unbelievable.

I love this software. RSSMasher has completely changed the way I think about blogging. I now automate 90% of all my content with RSSMasher. Check it out, you'll love ti too!

Mason - May 18th, 2020

View full review

var stars=5;document.querySelector("#mt_stars").innerHTML = "★".repeat(stars) + "☆".repeat(5 - stars)

While you could certainly go at it alone, your connections to fellow solopreneurs helps elevate your status as they expose you to their own audience over time - wordpress autoblogger. A good way to accomplish this is to link to their latest blog posts, and this is where autoblogging functions come in handy.

A content aggregator plugin can further refine your results through the use of filters and other related options. The above also gives your audience even more to read, as they’d happily check out an article from your favorite bloggers due to their relevancy. Autoblogging allows you to get even more creative by constructing an extensive directory – either niche or fairly broad.

Awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted: A List Of ... - Github

These guys have formed a gigantic blog directory that consists of blog RSS feeds in every conceivable category. blogs on auto. This has made AllTop stand out as one of the best places to discover new blogs and interesting topics. Contrary to the aforementioned idea (featuring posts from your favorite bloggers), a full-fledged directory would showcase a more extensive/broad list that ultimately link back to the original source.

Get the World's Best AutoBlogger Platform - RSSMasher Technology

It’s highly recommended that you follow option #1 above, as publishing both new and aggregated content (at the same time) works like a charm. Here are some additional tips to truly leverage aggregated content… I personally rely on WP RSS Aggregator along with some complimentary add-ons, including Keyword Filtering to get only the exact content I need.

Blog - Wikipedia

WP RSS Aggregator Get started with autoblogging on WordPress today. Do you wish to bypass original content – and therefore organic traffic – altogether? In that case, Leverage social media and popular niche communities. Organic search should only be a portion of your overall traffic, not the primary source. Don’t be afraid of “losing traffic to other bloggers” by aggregating their links.

You may then ask them to share your content as a favor and make this a win-win situation. Regardless of your idea, ensure you have the rights and permissions to display all aggregated content – especially when it comes to full-fledged pieces as opposed to mere links. As you can see, autoblogging is very much alive – and I speak from personal experience (blog used).

The 7 Best Blogs On Marketing Automation - Hatchbuck

Think of the material you could aggregate, the helpful directories you could build, the potential relationships you could develop, among other great ideas. Best of luck! Elvis Michael is a passionate freelancer and solopreneur. He enjoys improving freelance culture and teaching others how to reach their goals. Autoblogging is a way of setting up a website whose blog is taken care of automatically, constantly updated with fresh, curated and quality content of your choice.

Are You looking for Premium or Free Best AutoBlogging plugins for WordPress? Using AutoBlogging Plugin You can easily import the RSS , Atom feeds and display them on the website . Maintaining a Blog website is really a difficult job . So many of the people want a blog website which will automatically create post and publish them .

8 Best Social Media Automation Tools For 2020 - Blogging ...

They basically fetch the other website content and convert them into post automatically and post that from your website. automat blog. Autoblogging is not done by good websites. Even Google hate these websites because mainly these website are used by spammer’s and content scrapers . So without wasting our time anymore we will look into list of Best AutoBlogging plugins for WordPress which are as follows: WP Robot helps the users to create high quality WordPress blog posts and that too automatically.

It has also gained the title of best autoblogging plugin for WordPress. Build- Completely new autoblogs can be built for WordPress for PNBs or as satellite sites. Curate- Engaging content can be curated for the readers that helps to boost the SEO and also interests the readers. Autopost All Things- Menu content sources are supported by WP Robot.

List Of Top Blogging Platforms 2020 - Trustradius

Some of the sources are Amazon, YouTube, Eventful, RSS, etc. Compatible- The plugin is compatible with all kinds of WordPress themes. autoblogged plugin. International Support- Autoblogging can be done in many languages such as German, French, Chinese, etc. Automatic translation- This feature is integrated with spinning software which helps to create automatic unique content.

Feeds can be imported anywhere in the site. RSS feeds can be integrated with the use of shortcodes and widgtes. Shortcode friendly- The plugin becomes very easy to use using the shortcodes generated by this plugin. Some of the shortcode parameters can be edited which helps the users to define the manner the feeds are displayed on the website.

Using The Built-in Blog - Bigcommerce Support

Or an image can be selected to display along with the feed. Mobile Friendly- The plugin automatically does caching. So the page loading times becomes simpler. WordAI Integration- Feed can be integrated with post with WordAI (free autoblogging plugin). It helps to rephrase feed content and content is not duplicated over the website.

Referral/affiliate ID is automatically included in the feed link. Feed to Post- Content from various RSS sources can be inserted into the post. The feed items are automatically filtered and the contents are placed in the WordPress site as wanted. -- -- Contents can be posted from various sources to the WordPress site automatically through WordPress Automatic plugin.

Sharpspring Blogging Software - Funnelbud

Extract specific parts of original feeds post- Two specified part of original feeds post can be extracted using WordPress automatic by XPath, REGEX and CSS id/class. Duplicate title skip- Previously posted posts with the same title are not duplicated. Convert encoding before posting- Extracted content coding can be converted form any specific encoding to utf-8 so that it becomes compatible with WordPress.

[pogueman]

iOS 11 review: 99 hits, 1 miss

Every year, Apple (AAPL) introduces a new iPhone model. That’s cool for anyone in the market for a new iPhone.

But every year, Apple also introduces a new iPhone operating system—the software you look at and tap on all day long. Today’s the day, and the new software is called iOS 11.

In general, it’s terrific. Apple’s coding elves have cleaned up a million annoyances, swept out a million cobwebs, and tightened up a million processes. The typography has become more unified across apps, too—you see a lot of this:

Apple’s various apps display more consistent typography.

As usual in the development of a mature operating system, there aren’t many big-ticket new features. But here’s what’s new in iOS 11.

The new Control Center

For such a tiny device, there are an awful lot of settings you can change—hundreds of them. That’s why Apple invented the Control Center: a panel that offers quick access to the controls you need the most.

In iOS 11, the Control Center has blossomed into the magnificence of adulthood. Now you decide which controls should appear on it, as you can on Android phones. Your list of available buttons is much longer than it ever was before. And you no longer have to hunt among multiple pages to find the one you want; the Control Center is once again a single screen. If you’re a true Control freak, it even scrolls.

The new Control Center is as tall as you want it to be (left, in an unrealistically full condition). You customize it in Settings (right).

In many more cases than before, you can hard-press or long-press one of these buttons to open a sub-panel that offers even more controls.

Here are the buttons that have always been there: Airplane Mode, WiFi, Bluetooth, Brightness, Volume, Rotation Lock, Do Not Disturb, Music playback, Airplay (send audio and video to an Apple TV), Flashlight, Camera, Calculator, Timer, and Airdrop (send files, pictures, and other data bits to another Mac or iPhone).

Now, though, there’s a much longer raft of options. You can choose which buttons you want to appear on the Control Center, and in which order. The first three in particular are incredibly useful:

Notes. This is a big, big deal. The idea is to give you immediate access to Notes, so you can jump in, no matter what you were doing, to write down something quickly: a phone number someone’s giving you, dosage instructions your doctor’s rattling off, or a brainstorm you’ve just had for a million-dollar product. In Settings, Apple has provided a bewildering array of controls over what access you (or a passing evildoer) has to your Notes when you open the Control Center from the Lock screen.

Screen Recording. So weird: It’s a Control Center button for a feature you can’t trigger in any other way. There’s no app, no Settings page that even mentions Screen Recording otherwise. The idea, of course, is to let you record videos of what’s happening on the iPhone screen—with narration, if you like. It’s fantastic as a teaching tool, if you want to capture some anomaly to send to tech support, or to demo your new app. You see a 3-2-1 countdown, which is intended for you to get out of the Control Center and get into whatever app you’re trying to record. The finished video winds up in your Photos app with all your other videos—with pristine quality and smooth motion, ready to send to your admirers. It’s awesome.

Do Not Disturb While Driving. This important new iOS feature prevents notifications, calls, or texts from lighting up your phone or making it ring whenever you’re behind the wheel and in motion. Usually, you’ll want it to turn on automatically when you’re driving; this button is primarily useful for turning DNDWD off—when you’re in the passenger seat.

Cellular Data on/off. Great if you’re worried about your monthly cap.

Stopwatch, Alarm. One-tap shortcuts to these modules of the Clock app.

Accessibility Shortcuts. Magnifier, Zoom, VoiceOver, AssistiveTouch, and so on.

Apple TV Remote. In case you’ve lost the physical one.

Guided Access. Opens the on/off switch for Guided Access, otherwise known as “kiosk mode.” It locks the phone into one particular app, so that (for example) your toddler can play around without wreaking any real havoc on your phone.

Low Power Mode. Here’s a one-touch way to manually switch on the battery-saving feature known as Low Power Mode.

Turns the entire phone into a powerful illuminated magnifying glass.

Text Size. There are all kinds of ways to make text bigger and more readable on the iPhone’s screen. But this new Control Center option gives you a more immediate way of making adjustment—say, when you suddenly find yourself on some web page done up in 3-point type. Tap to see a vertical slider, whose segments indicate increasingly larger type sizes.

Voice Memos. The Voice Memos app is handy for recording speeches, interviews, song ideas, and so on. What’s not handy is the long slog to get into the app and start recording. No more! Tap this button to open the Voice Memos app, where another tap begins the recording. Better yet, a hard-press on this Control Center button produces a menu that lists your three most recent recordings (for instant playback)—and a New Recording button.

Wallet. Here’s another way to jump into your Apple Wallet—usually because you want to pay for something with Apple Pay.

Storage Help

Another category of new features is designed to assist with the chronic problem of running out of room on the iPhone:

Camera app. iOS 11 invites you to adopt new file formats for photos (HEVC) and videos (H265), which look the same as they did before but consume only the half the space. (When you export to someone else, they convert to standard formats.)

Storage optimization. The idea: As your phone begins to run out of space, your oldest files are quietly and automatically stored online, leaving Download icons in their places on your phone, so that you can retrieve them if you need them.

Siri updates

Apple’s done some work on its voice assistant, too:

A new voice for Siri. Apple says that the new male and female voices sound more like actual people; to me, they just sound younger. Here’s a snippet of each.

Siri translates languages. Siri is trying to catch up to Google Assistant. For example, it can now translate phrases from English into Chinese, French, German, Italian, or Spanish. You can say, “How do you say ‘Where’s the bathroom?’ in French?” It works surprisingly well—she nails the accents.

Siri is now a polyglot! She can translate for you.

Siri understands followup questions. Siri now does better at understanding followup questions. (“Who won the World Series in 1980?” “The Tigers.” “Who was their coach?” “Roy Williams.”)

A lot of misc

The rest of iOS 11 falls into the category best called, “Everything else.” Little nips and tucks like these:

A file manager! A new app called Files lets you work with (and search) files and folders, just as you do on the Mac or PC. You can tag them, search them, sort them, view them as a list or as icons. The Files app shows the contents of your iCloud Drive, as well as your Box and Dropbox files (!!). You can select files (but, alas, not folders) to share with other people.

For the first time, iOS has a “Finder” or a “Windows Explorer.” Manage, file, sort, search, copy, and delete files here.

Redesigned apps drawer in Messages. All the stuff they added to Messages last year (stickers, apps, live drawing) cluttered up the design and wound up getting ignored by lots of people. The new design is cleaner, with only two icons eating up your text-typing space instead of three.

App Store. The App store gets a big redesign. One chief fix is breaking out Games into its own tab, so that game and non-game bestseller lists are kept separate.

One-handed typing. With a tap on the little globe key, you can opt for a narrower keyboard huddled against one side, for easier one-handed typing when you’re carrying coffee. (You can now zoom in Maps one-handed, too.)

Hiding among the keyboard choices (left) are new left- and right-hugging mini-keyboards (right).

Quicker transfer. When you get a new iPhone, you can import all your settings from the old one just by focusing the camera on the new phone on the old one’s screen.

Improvements to Photos. The Photos app offers smarter auto-slideshows (called Memories). Among other improvements, they now work even when you’re holding the phone upright.

Improvements to Live Photos. Live Photos are weird, three-second video clips, which Apple introduced in iOS 9. In iOS 11, you can now shorten one, or mute its audio, or extract a single frame from that clip to use as a still photo. The phone can also suggest a “boomerang” segment (bounces back and forth) or a loop (repeats over and over). And it has a new Slow Shutter filter, which (for example) blurs a babbling brook or stars moving across the sky, as though taken with a long exposure. (I still don’t really get Live Photos.)

Swipe the Lock screen back down. Confusingly enough, you used to see your notifications on two slightly different screens. There was your Lock screen, and there was the Notifications screen (swipe down from the top of the screen). Now, it’s all the same screen. Swiping down from the top brings back the identical list of missed notifications—and even the wallpaper and time—that you’d see on your Lock screen. Makes a ton of sense.

Smarter typing suggestions. When you’re typing, the auto-suggestions above the keyboard now offer movie names, song names, or place names that you’ve recently viewed in other apps. Auto-suggestions in Siri, too, include terms you’ve recently read. And if you book a flight or buy a ticket online, iOS offers to add it to your calendar.

AirPlay 2. If you buy speakers from Bose, Marantz, and a few other manufactures (unfortunately, not Sonos), you can use your phone to control multi-room audio. You can start the same song playing everywhere, or different songs in different rooms.

Shared “Up Next” playlist. If you’re an Apple Music subscriber, your party guests or buddies can throw their own “what song to play next” ideas into the ring.

Lane guidance. When you’re driving, Maps now lets you know which lane to be in for your next turn, just as Google Maps does.

Indoor Maps. The Maps app can now show you floor plans for a few malls and 30 airports.

iCloud file sharing. Finally, you can share files you’ve stored on your iCloud Drive with other people, just as you’ve been able to do with Dropbox for years.

iPad Exclusives

Many of the biggest changes in iOS 11 are available only on the iPad.

Mac features. In general, the big news here is the iPad behaves much more like a Mac. For example, you can drag-and-drop pictures and text between apps. The Dock is now extensible, available from within any app, and perfect for switching apps, just as on the Mac. There’s a new Mission Control-type feature, too, for seeing what’s in your open apps—even when you’ve split the screen between pairs of apps.

Punctuation and letters on the same keyboard. Now, punctuation symbols appear above the letter keys. You flick down on the key to “type” the punctuation—no more having to switch keyboard layouts.

Pencil features. If you’ve bought Apple’s stylus, you can tap the Lock screen and start taking notes right away. You can mark up PDFs just by starting to write on them. A new feature lets you snap a document with the iPad’s camera, which straightens and crops the page so that you can sign it or annotate it. Handwriting in the Notes app is now searchable, and you can make drawings within any Note or email message.

Coming this fall

Two major features didn’t make the cut in the initial release of iOS 11. They’re coming, Apple says, in an update later this fall:

Person-to-Person payment within the Messages app. Now, you can send payments directly to your friends—your share of the pizza bill, for example—right from within the Messages app, much as people do now with Venmo, PayPal, and their ilk. (Of course, this works only if your friends have iPhones, too.) When money comes to you, it accrues to a new, virtual Apple Pay Cash Card; from there, you can send it to your bank, buy things with it, or send it on to other people.

Messages in iCloud. Your entire text-message history gets auto-synced to all your new Apple devices. (In the old days, when you bought a new iPhone and opened Messages, it was empty.) This feature will also mean that that huge, multi-gigabyte hunk of Messages won’t have to sit on your phone, eating up space.

There are also dozens of improvements to the features for overseas iPhones (China, Russia, India, for example). And many, many enhancements to features for the disabled (spoken captions for videos and pictures, for example).

Hits 99; misses, 1

Almost all of these touchups are improvements, but one is decidedly not: If iOS sees you using dictation, it puts away the keyboard. It assumes that you’re going to want to keep dictating.

Well, guess what, dingbat? You always have to correct things that dictation misinterpreted. Always. And you can’t do that without the keyboard.

What this means is that after every round of dictation, you have to tap a tiny keyboard icon to bring back the keyboard. 1,000 times a day. They broke something that didn’t need fixing.

So what’s the overarching theme of the iOS 11 upgrade?

There isn’t one. It’s just a couple hundred little fine-tunings. All of them welcome—and all of them aimed to keep you trapped within Apple’s growing ecosystem.

More from David Pogue:

iPhone 8 reviewed: Nice, but nothing to buzz about

How Apple envisions life without a Home button

The $999, eyebrow-raising iPhone X: David Pogue’s hands-on review

iOS11 is about to arrive — here’s what’s in it 

MacOS High Sierra comes this fall—and brings these 23 features

T-Mobile COO: Why we make investments like free Netflix that ‘seem crazy’

How Apple’s iPhone has improved since its 2007 debut

David Pogue, tech columnist for Yahoo Finance, is the author of “iPhone: The Missing Manual.” He welcomes nontoxic comments in the comments section below. On the web, he’s davidpogue.com. On Twitter, he’s @pogue. On email, he’s poguester@yahoo.com. You can read all his articles here, or you can sign up to get his columns by email. 

[top1course]

Speak English Fluently – How To Answer The Phone

Speak English fluently, how to answer the phone one of the biggest challenges when it comes to, speaking English, fluently especially for people who are getting, you’re just learning the English language I remember one of the things that, scare the heck out of me, what when I have to, pick up the phone and talk to someone, it’s bad enough that English is not your first language especially when you are in school or you are in Abyss, resetting you dealing with people who don’t have that face-to-face interaction he means that you don’t have your body language you don’t have your face, expression in the plate so now all you have it’s your boys, dan it makes you very very good, so today I’m going to give you five tips, still help you when you’re answering the phone, how do you speak with clarity, conviction, power, so tip number one that one of the things that you want to do is you want to smile when, You are on the phone sometimes we don’t, realized it, but we can get to 10, too serious the what I like to do is actually have a mirror right next to me, when I pick up the phone I’m talking to somebody, you always remind me to smile if I look at my face expression and I’m not smiling chances on my tonality, he’s too serious, the only kind of bean icing, he finally write in, just give me mine mine, tip number to always have an introduction that you, it depends on what you do and depends on where you are if you are running your business or you just, student either way doesn’t, when you were speaking on the phone you want to have a greeting that you kind of memorizing, Practice so you might say something like this as simple as, hi this is, unique soul in my case, i just did, kind of casual informal, hi this is, your first name, hi this is Dan, very simple or if you’re in customer service and customer support, you in business and you might use your phone in, so your first name including the last name and then you might hang with a porch, what can I do for you, that, also works another thing that you could do with cheese, usually how I answer my phone, is actually using my first name last name and then, so what song, something like this, dental speaking, in right there, they know, you’re talking to the right person now I’m not talking about your best friend calling to say hey what’s up brother, write what’s up sister that’s not what I’m talking about I’m talking about in soda setting that you are required, How to speak clearly.

And professional that’s why I wanted to tell Donald speaking, proper, greeting, practice it multiple times, tip number 3, how you say is more important than what you say, tonality it’s very very key, when you’re talkin on, the phone your native language if English is your second language, throat language, which your native language might have different tonality, you need to learn how to communicate have there, proper Rhythm let me give me simple simple example, just what we did right there, let’s say what can I do for you, this one line I’m going to do it three different ways comment below and you tell me, what message, and my communicate, play what am I say what you motion, right am I using, the first one, what can I do for you, what can I do, What can I do, you hear the difference, it’s the same line, but how you say is very very important to when you’re talking on the phone sometimes you want to pay very close at 10, sometimes you want to not say certain words and certain phrases using the monotone, write your language that you always use if you speak Korean, speak Japanese you speak Indonesian it doesn’t matter you can see people who speaks with an accent which I do I still speak with an accent, but that’s okay, the important thing is people understand, you talkin about, tip number for, slow down, speed kills, i know when you get nervous what do we do you speak faster instead of slowing it down almost sucked, consciously you don’t want people to hear what you’re saying because he embarrassed that all maybe our son stupid Maybe, you don’t understand so instead of slowing down and be more clear you do the opposite now you’re speeding up, So to make sure they don’t hear you, don’t do that when you’re practicing you want to speak fluently, slow down you notice when I am doing videos if you watched, my Auto videos, i slow down, especially on the phone I listen, questions, and I slowed down, and that’s how you speak with, confidence, and conviction, and Clarity don’t just, speed up until you can over the old one, slow down, take a deep breath, it is okay and if the other side they don’t understand you can repeat yourself, interstate again in this certain words and I still disappointed words, that I did I, pronounce and may not be 100%., i would slow down, repeat it again, do it again, presently, tippmann A5, if there are words that you are struggling with, right desk you’re struggling with maybe a certain words they’re leaving longer in English English language, Right, an English language, slow it down practice at multiple, so you could take, a word that you’re struggling with, i just say it again and again and again you can even go to Google UK, timing Google translate inches, click the voice and you can hear all of this is how it would, pronounce the word and you said again and again and again, i used to do that, pockets of hundreds of, because you want to get rid of the fear, instead of not using the word at all that’s the word that I’m saying it wrong no use the word practice and then use it, an Oscar Wilde get the confidence in full now you have a new vocabulary, read that you could use, in the day-to-day conversation in Tamil speaking English on average we use about three to five thousand words, All of us.

Again and again and again so by adding more words to your day-to-day use kind of your treasure box it expands your car, contact I believe when you’re learning English is not just learning a language but you’re learning the culture, i’ve been very fortunate I immigrated to North America when I was, 14 years old and my first language was actually Chinese Cantonese, i also speak Mandarin cuz my mom is, taiwan, so like I’m a mix, between Hong Kong, taiwan, kennedy’s is my first language, my second language is mange, and my throat language, which is English and I’m glad I learned English language, good now by doing business internationally but just doing business in North America by understanding a new language, i also pick up a lot of new philosophies learning about their culture how business is done in the Western World so they, Then I have the best part of both world, i understand a culture from the East, also combine the management, thinking styles, the West, and this is how I, business and that’s how I run my life, because I learn a language and I’m not able to, to expand my wisdom, spend, my knowledge base is that makes sense so those are, the five tips now if you want to learn more about communication it, what I consider, a world-class probably the best class, in the world, a virtual program, on communication, on how to talk to people on, the phone how do you overcome, the fears, and what you need to say it how do you need to say it in order to speak and communicate your ideas, on the phone, not just giving you the skillset and how to turn your skill-set into an income, If you want to learn more about it, click link below, and check on my free trial.

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[unifiedsocialblog]

14 Tips for Building a Multilingual Social Media Presence

It’s easy to assume that English is the lingua franca of the web. While it still ranks as the top language in use, its share is giving way to Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, and Portuguese. Multilingual social media has never been more relevant.

The online use of India’s languages is also rapidly expanding, as Indian users are projected to represent 35 percent of the next billion mobile connections across the world. By 2021, 73 percent of India’s Internet users will prefer to use languages other than English.

Engaging with your followers in their primary language is key to forging lasting and meaningful relationships. A study by Facebook found that Hispanics in the U.S. view brands that advertise in Spanish more positively.

Language also affects consumer confidence. More than 70 percent of consumers require information in their language before making a purchase.

Whether you plan to connect with a current customer base or expand into a new market, use these tips to avoid getting lost in translation or committing a bilingual faux pas.

Bonus: Get the step-by-step social media strategy guide with pro tips on how to grow your social media presence.

14 tips for building a multilingual social media presence

1. Know your audience demographics

Marketers should always know who they’re marketing to. That includes knowing what language their audience speaks.

All social media platforms provide analytics dashboards with audience language statistics. Keep an eye on this section and create content accordingly.

Don’t just cater to your existing bubble. If you’re a U.S. company and you have a disproportionately low number of Spanish-speaking followers, it may be a sign that you are inadequately reaching the Hispanic market.

Looking to expand into new language markets? Try Facebook’s Cross Border Insights Finder for competitive analysis.

2. Don’t rely on translation tools

Tech giants such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon have made exciting advances in auto-translation, but they still can’t compete with humans.

Amazon experienced the failings of its translation algorithm firsthand when it attempted to create a Hindi-language site. Not only was the machine-generated Hindi completely illegible, it also didn’t account for the English loanwords that have crept into the Hindi lexicon.

Another example: To deliver pithy captions or punchy taglines, social media copywriters often rely on satire and wordplay that easily gets lost in machine translation. Just ask HSBC. The mistranslation of the multinational bank’s “Assume nothing” slogan incorrectly directed customers to “Do nothing,” leading to a $10 million rebrand.

3. Invest in top-notch translators

Blunders can be costly. But poor translations can also communicate a lack of respect.

Canadian telecom company Telus drew criticism from the country’s francophone community after tweeting “Take a deep breath, grind yourself. Go kill him” in French instead of “Take a deep breathe, ground yourself. Go kill it.”

Why even large organizations aren't sheltered from embarrassment when they don't do their homework. Someone at Telus didn't proofread the French translation: instead of a motivational piece, wound up with a nefarious ad inciting murder and self-harm! #fail #PublicRelations pic.twitter.com/QBjqjmNb6k

— Annick Robinson (@MrsChamy) January 30, 2018

When Singaporean sushi chain Maki-san mistakenly cursed fans in Malay with its “Maki Kita” dish, some critics admonished the brand for diversity shortcomings.

As a general rule: If you don’t understand it, don’t share it. At least not before double checking with someone who does.

4. Neologize with caution

Brands like to coin new words for products and campaigns. Since they’re made-up words, they have the potential of resonating with all your linguistic audiences in one shot.

Before going this route, check to ensure your new word doesn’t have any unintended meanings in other languages.

Google Translate comes in handy for test purposes, especially since customers may use it if they don’t understand your neologism. If Target had checked, it would have realized its “Orina” shoes read as “urine” shoes in Spanish.

Some words, whether they’re made up or not, just don’t translate well into global markets. Just ask IKEA. From its FARTFULL workbench to its Gosa Raps “cuddle rape” pillow, many of its Swedish product names have raised a few eyebrows.

Neologisms aren’t to everyone’s taste, but they do have a propensity to spread on the Internet. The No Name Brand came up with a pretty cheese-tastic portmanteau for its cheddar-spread, and it’s just as fromidable in French.

*Almost* always hyperbole free pic.twitter.com/oGbeZHHNDf

— Katie Ch (@K8tCh) August 10, 2017

5. Localize content and translations

In interviews conducted by Facebook, U.S. Hispanics told the company that they often see copy translated from English to Spanish too literally and too loosely.

Translations that are too literal can make audiences feel like an afterthought.

Words are only one part of the translation equation. Ultimately the best translations aim to convey the brand’s message or essence, which often means literal renditions aren’t up to snuff. (Imagine, for instance, a literal translation of “up to snuff”.)

Content should always be adapted to account for cultural nuances and differences. BuzzFeed was able to rapidly expand into global markets in part because the company understood the need for localization.

For example, its post “24 Things Men Will Never Understand” ended up being “20 Things Men Will Never Understand” when translated for Brazil.

6. Prioritize visual content

Pretty much everyone speaks the visual language. Case and point: Emojis.

Photography and video are a great way to communicate a brand message to a broad audience. With video, be sure to include captions as needed.

Be sensitive to cultural customs and social taboos. Drinking and kissing on screen is taboo in certain cultures. Gestures like thumbs up and the ok sign are also perceived differently in different places.

In 1997, Nike had to pull its Air trainers after receiving complaints that its flame symbol too closely resembled Arabic script for “Allah.”

7. Use available social tools

Social media companies have several tools in place for multilingual users and account managers. Here are the key stats features for each platform:

Facebook language stats

50 percent of the Facebook community speaks a language other than English.

The top five languages on Facebook are English, Spanish, Portuguese, Indonesian, and French.

More than six billion translations take place on Facebook everyday.

Translations are available for a total of 4,504 language directions (a pair of languages translated, ie. English to French).

Facebook language tools

Create posts on your page in more than one language. For example, if you provide English and Spanish copy for a post, Spanish will be display to those who use Facebook in Spanish.

Add multiple languages for video captions.

Advertise in multiple languages with Facebook’s dynamic ads and targeting tools.

Twitter language stats

Twitter supports more than 40 languages.

Only 69 million of Twitter’s 330 million monthly active users are based in the United States. Almost 80 percent of Twitter users are international.

Twitter language tools

Advertise in multiple languages and target your audience based on language.

LinkedIn language stats

LinkedIn supports 23 languages.

LinkedIn language tools

Create your page’s profile in multiple languages.

Target ad campaigns based on language.

Instagram language stats

Instagram supports 36 languages.

In 2017, Instagram added right-to-left language support for Arabic, Farsi, and Hebrew.

Instagram language tools

Create and target ads based on language.

Pinterest language stats

Pinterest is currently available in 31 languages.

Pinterest language tools

Create ads on Pinterest that are targeted by language.

YouTube language stats

YouTube can be navigated in 80 languages, with local versions available in 91 countries.

Translated metadata, titles, and descriptions can increase your video’s reach and discoverability on YouTube.

YouTube language tools

Translate video titles and descriptions.

Add your own subtitles and closed captions in a different language.

Use an extension to add two language captions on YouTube.

Allow the community to contribute translations.

8. Create multiple accounts

Divide and conquer by creating different accounts for different language segments. The NBA has two Facebook pages: One in English, and one in Spanish.

World leaders, who are often more inclined or required to speak in multiple languages, can also offer a good model. Take Pope Francis, who has no fewer than nine different language accounts on Twitter, including Spanish, English, Italian, Portuguese, and Polish.

9. Consider double posting

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau takes a different approach. Instead of managing separate French and English social media accounts, Trudeau has separate posts for each language.

This approach demonstrates respect and gives equal treatment to Canada’s two official languages.

But if you are posting regularly or your audience is fairly bilingual, multiple posts with similar content may be tedious for you audience. If that’s the case, go the multiple account route, or create bilingual posts.

View this post on Instagram

What we can hardly imagine, the passengers of the MS. St. Louis, the victims of the Holocaust, and their descendants will never forget. In 1939, Canada turned its back on 907 Jewish refugees, deeming them unworthy of a home, and undeserving of our help. Today, I issued an official apology on behalf of the Government of Canada to the passengers of the MS St. Louis and their families for this injustice. ????????

A post shared by Justin Trudeau (@justinpjtrudeau) on Nov 7, 2018 at 3:00pm PST

View this post on Instagram

On se doute à peine de tout ce que les passagers du MS St. Louis, les victimes de l’Holocauste et leurs descendants garderont en mémoire pour toujours. En 1939, le Canada a refusé 907 réfugiés juifs perçus comme indignes d’avoir un foyer ou notre aide. Aujourd’hui, j’ai présenté en direct les excuses officielles du gouvernement du Canada aux passagers du MS St. Louis et à leurs familles pour cette injustice. ????????

A post shared by Justin Trudeau (@justinpjtrudeau) on Nov 7, 2018 at 2:59pm PST

10. Include translations into one post

Many brands will post content in multiple languages. This approach works especially well if content is image-focussed and the captions are more informative than directive.

If copy is long, it may be worthwhile to indicate upfront that a translation will follow.

On Instagram, Tourisme Montréal posts captions in French and English, using a forward slash to separate them.

View this post on Instagram

Une magnifique photo de la @basiliquenddm , ça commence bien la semaine! / A gorgeous shot of Notre-Dame Basilica to start the week off right! ???? @spadesmontreal #mtl #montreal #mtlmoments #vieuxmontreal @levieuxmontreal

A post shared by Tourisme Montréal (@montreal) on Nov 26, 2018 at 6:53am PST

The official Instagram account of the Musée du Louvre signals languages with emojis:

View this post on Instagram

???????? L’année 2018 a marqué le 160ème anniversaire des relations diplomatiques entre le Japon et la France, ainsi que le 150ème anniversaire du début de l’ère Meiji, lorsque le pays s’ouvrit à l’Occident. L’événement #Japonismes2018 a résonné partout diffusant la culture nippone en France depuis juillet ???????? Le musée du Louvre accueille jusqu'au 18 février 2019 un petit bout de Japon, avec cette sculpture monumentale de l’artiste japonais Kohei Nawa mise à l'honneur sous sa pyramide. Vous pouvez y admirer "Throne", un trône flottant de 10,4m de haut entièrement recouvert de feuilles d’or ! ✨ – ???? The year 2018 marked the 160th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Japan and France, as well as the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Meiji era, when the country opened to the West. The event #Japonismes2018 resonate in France, spreading Japanese culture from July 2018 to February 2019! ???????? The Louvre also welcome a little piece of Japan, with this monumental sculpture by Japanese artist Kohei Nawa under the Louvre Pyramid! You can admire "Throne" until 18th February 2019, a floating throne of 10.4m high entirely covered with gold leaves! ✨ – ???? @maximelestenebres #regram . Throne, pyramide du musée du Louvre © Kohei Nawa | SANDWICH Inc. – #museedulouvre #louvremuseum #louvre #koheinawa #japonismes2018 #pyramidedulouvre #louvrepyramid #ieohmingpei #Japan #Japon

A post shared by Musée du Louvre (@museelouvre) on Dec 29, 2018 at 5:56am PST

In this example from Halenmon sea salt makers, Welsh is used in the image and English is used as the caption.

View this post on Instagram

'Determination, adventure, creativity, curiosity, magic ' – @nomnomcymru sums up Wales in five words. #StDavidsDay #HalenMôn #Wales #Cymru #FindYourEpic

A post shared by Halen Mon (@halenmon) on Mar 1, 2017 at 4:10am PST

Whichever approach you choose, make sure your audience’s interests are top of mind. The goal is to communicate as clearly as possible, so go with the strategy that best allows you to do that.

11. Try a bilingual jeux des mots

Warning: This one’s only for advanced language levels.

Hybrid language melanges like Franglais or Spanglish can be employed to great effect when done shrewdly.

Done wrong, results may fall as flat as this Frenglish joke: How many eggs does a French person eat for breakfast? One egg is un oeuf. One egg is un oeuf. Get it!?

A recent Facebook study found that 62 percent of U.S. Hispanics surveyed agree that Spanglish can be a good way to represent two cultures. But nearly half say they prefer not to mix languages, with some respondents noting they find it disrespectful.

Some brands have played on interlingual homophones with success.

French Lait’s Go milk-to-go bottles sounds like “Let’s Go” in English. Another option is to rely on loanwords that work in two languages. Air Canada’s bilingual in-flight magazine enRoute works because the phrase “en route” is commonly used in both French and English.

12. Use language to highlight brand culture

Some brands use language to display cultural pride.

Air New Zealand greets passengers with “Kia ora, we wish you well.” Though the phrase is common among Māori and New Zealand English speakers, its contextualization aids other English-speaking customers and presents the airline as a cultural ambassador.

“Kia Ora, we wish you well. That’s a Kiwi welcome” – Our People. ♥ #NZSummer pic.twitter.com/gkU7Q3kVk0

— Air New Zealand✈️ (@FlyAirNZ) December 15, 2016

13. Provide assurances for consumers

For online retailers, the most crucial touchpoint when it comes to language is the shopping and checkout experience. If a consumer can’t understand it, they won’t buy it. It’s as simple as that.

Online consumers will avoid unfamiliar or un-translated purchases for fear of making a poorly informed decision.

Trial periods, samples, and reasonable return policies can help assuage a customer’s doubts. But nothing beats speaking to a customer in their language.

14. Mind the time gap

Many brands have sights set on China and India for expansion.

If you’ve gone to the trouble of translating and adapting content for new markets, make sure to post at the right time and in the right time zone.

Use Hootsuite to easily manage all your social media accounts across the globe from a single dashboard. Try it for free today.

Get Started

The post 14 Tips for Building a Multilingual Social Media Presence appeared first on Hootsuite Social Media Management.

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[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY STARTUP FUNDING LANDSCAPE

In reality the angel might be more fruitful. Viaweb, we would have been better for him. And frankly even these companies wish they weren't, because the less smart people writing the actual applications wouldn't be doing founders a favor by letting them invest. Most people could see how it turns out. They might not have raised money at all but for the moment the time it takes to please the adults who judge you at seventeen. I think, is worry about the other extreme, I think this will be over that threshold. The one big chunk of the company you use to measure performance or expose bugs, programs for doing backups, interfaces to outside services, software that you can change. If this were a movie, ominous music would begin here.

It's not necessarily bad to introduce more, as long as it translates in a well-drilled army of professional soldiers could be counted on to beat an army of workers. This is probably the optimal strategy for investors. I do to enable programmers to get the first big end-user applications to be interesting? There is of course preferable. If the best hackers work on open-source browser. I can come up with your real idea. If you can't find another? The cows apparently learn to stay away from them. What was special about Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia didn't feel like they were en route to the big company, but they are an important fraction, because they don't make any effort to make money in a different position because they're investing their own money, while VCs are employees of funds that invest large amounts, and b since you come into the new domain totally ignorant, you don't need to know how to calculate time and space complexity and about Turing completeness. It was one of a dozen permutations of advertising. They expect to avoid that by raising more from investors. It's easy to be drawn into imitating flaws, because they're easier to see, because they are the same or even better.

They're like a mountain that can walk. But most people start out with some initial plan and modify it as necessary to keep hitting, say, 6 months later half of them, because when people make up startup ideas are usually of the first type. If you can hit 10% a week you're doing exceptionally well. Reminder: What I'm looking for are programs that are written in a hundred years. Paul Buchheit, Hutch Fishman, David Hornik, a partner at a well known VC firm or angel investor, that will push the stuff you want investors to remember out of their pitch. One of the most admired Web 2. File:///home/patrick/Documents/programming/python projects/UlyssesRedux/corpora/unsorted/raq.

Civil liberties? Actually we're the opposite: that, like the foundation of Yahoo Shopping. I use the word. I think. What I tell most startups we fund to apply for patents because patents are part of the child's identity. The traditions and financial models of the crusades, Venice, medieval culture, siege warfare, and so, later, was Perl. As Galbraith said, politics is a matter of implementing some fabulous initial idea. Already most technology companies wouldn't sink to using patents on startups are attacking innovation at the root. Content-based spam filtering is often combined with DH2 statements, as in, say, APL, they could drag Java down with them.

Saying that taste is merely a matter of outliers, and the rock that sinks more of them. There are some whose definition of important problems includes only those on the winning side would receive the estates confiscated from the losers. For one thing, it's the classic villain: alternately cowardly, greedy, sneaky, and overbearing. Actually I'm less American than I seem. Notes No doubt there are great technical tricks within Google, but out of a prison to work. DC and LA seem to send messages too, of course. Like a lot of time thinking about that initially, it may not be. Err on the side, I'm not saying you should start a company at 18 if they wanted to fund professors, when really they should be planning to raise. If I want to work for them. But, at least successful ones, tend to be such a thing? And while they probably have bigger ambitions now, this alone brings them a billion dollars you could bring in a thousand lines of code. One reason Google doesn't have a probability for Subject free!

If they win, they win big. How many little startups are Google and Yahoo going to buy you a couple years he may not have had this as an explicit goal. You had to for guests. When you're looking for. And they have for patent stories. The problem is, the cheaper it is to carry a payload of beneficial beliefs, and they were influenced by where applicants went to college with a slight disadvantage, but they don't seem to keep track of opinions that get people in trouble today. If all you need to do is convince the outside directors and they control the company. So let's look at Silicon Valley the way you'd look at a company, but it was simpler than they realized. Won't we just tell computers what to do; they'll start to get users, because users were desperately waiting for what they are building, they very often come back with a real thirst for knowledge will be able to resist, or at least, and maybe a deck.

Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Robert Morris, Peter Norvig, and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this, and to prevent abuse, auto-retrieval should be combined with blacklists of spamvertised sites. He had equity. I say this as a new idea. 10 years ago. Viaweb, they asked me what I do for my privat satisfaction or leave to come out after me. They always do. So you'll break even if you don't need a brilliant idea to start a startup. Mark Zuckerberg knew at first is that startups usually lose money at first, and that would cost nothing: establish a new class of merchants and manufacturers began to collect in towns. But Sam Altman is a very slippery slope, greased with some of the lies people told 100 years ago, writing applications meant writing applications in C. 047225013 mandatory 0.

Writers and architects seem to as well. Tip: avoid any field whose practitioners say this. It's already a successful language? I was forced into it because I was shifting to the left. He redefined the problem as a superset of the current super-angels know is that their users have money. Some, like Ron Conway, Richard Florida, Ben Horowitz, Jessica Livingston, and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this. In 1960, John McCarthy published a remarkable post about missing Airbnb. And because he was an investor. Would that mean sitting on too many boards? A more general solution would be to diff European culture with Chinese: what ideas did European culture have in 1800 that Chinese culture didn't, in virtue of Aristotle's contribution? It may seem presumptuous to go knocking on the doors of rich people, it has to be self-funding—Microsoft for example—but the amount of fakeness required in other fields are mean.

[disorientedblog-archive]

Zhoushan Island

by Kevin Mei / photo: the author

do i even have a(n) accent, argot, brogue, cant, dialect, enunciation, elocution, idiom, inflection, jargon, language, lexicon, lingo, lingua franca, localism, locution, mother tongue, native tongue, parlance, patter, patois, phraseology, pronunciation, provincialism, regionalism, slang, speech, street talk, talk, terminology, tone, tongue, vernacular, vocabulary, voice

For many travelers, the disorienting experience of going abroad is the encounter with a foreign language. The inability to fluently express yourself diminishes your identity, circumscribes interactions solely to the realm of practicality, of greetings, farewells, and thank yous, of “my name is” and numbers and directions, yes’s and no’s. You understand what it's like to be an immigrant, the guesswork grammar and telltale reproduced pronunciation. More easily reduced to a concept than a person. You feel like you're complex, that the people around you similarly hold multitudes, but if only you could understand and be understood, be islands connected by oceans of words.

I don't think I ever really bothered to interrogate my origins. What can I say? In elementary school, I filled out forms that inquired about ethnicity and language. Asian > Chinese. Primary language > English. Language spoken at home > ... "MOM! Do we speak Chinese?" "Yes." "But what kind of Chinese... I've heard Mandarin; what do we speak?" "Shanghainese." Good enough, until I met enough Shanghainese classmates in high school. "Oh yeah, Shanghainese is just easier to say because everyone knows Shanghai. We actually speak Ningbo." Ningbonese. By the time I had met enough people from Ningbo to know that my words didn't quite sound like Ningbonese, I turned to Google to figure out what I spoke at home. It's the Wu dialect. After I graduated college, my dad wanted to take me on my first trip to China. It was only then, at the cusp of adulthood, it was made clear to me that my parents come from someplace called Zhoushan. Really, I speak some variant of Wu that we can just call Zhoushanese. A city and a suffix make a language and a people.

On the night I fly out for Zhoushan, my mom drives me from Flushing, Queens (2010 U.S. Census: 69.2% Asian, 9.5% White) to Canarsie, Brooklyn (2010 U.S. Census: 81.0% African-American, 2.6% Asian, 5.9% White), and drops me off at a corner a block away. I take my deteriorating suitcase (empty, for the salted eel I would smuggle back) out of the trunk and she watches from the car as I roll up to an indistinguishable red townhouse. She drives away. Uhseh ("the third" of three brothers and my dad), uhnya (“grandma”), and uhya (“grandpa”) are sitting in the living room, China Central Television playing on a small boxy cathode-ray screen. We sit around smiling and appraising each other. The damask pattern on the red-and-gold velvet wallpaper looks to me, at times, like the stares of sinister samurai masks.

Our wordless reverie is interrupted by a Pakistani driver from some unknown and quasi-professional car service come to pick us up for the airport. Uhseh tries to cajole our driver with wildly misinformed assumptions about the Middle East. His voice crescendos with each expression, as if building up to something, but there’s nothing at all. In the backseat, Uhnya, who doesn't speak or understand any English, also gets the sense that Uhseh is acting daft, and tells him, "Shut up, you imbecile." (Aside to me: "Sick in the head, amirite?") Uhseh doesn't handle embarrassment or shame well. He blusters at our driver and tries to haggle the price down. The driver can't take the nonsense. "Listen, I also drive for Uber. Why didn't you just call an Uber? Like everyone else does! I could've driven you for a third of the price." The same scene recurred throughout my maiden journey to the motherland. Uhseh likes to flex his poor social-animal faculties. At the airport for our return flight, he "strikes up" conversation with some Ukrainian workers who were in China for employment on oil tankers.

        —Ukraine? Excellent country, right?

        —My man, we are being invaded by Russia.

        —Oh, Russia! Russia is so strong! So powerful. You don't want to mess with Russia. If I were you, I wouldn't mess with Russia.

        [...]

        —You guys make excellent yogurt! Yes! You guys! Very popular, very famous for it. Good job!

        [...]

        —Me? I'm from America. Yes, I love America.

I don't like the way Uhseh talks… halting gravelly stuttering and stalling words tripping, falling down, treading over each other, slurrrrrring loud intimidating covering up nothing-words… not speaking… properly… Mandarin. I can't believe I never noticed this inability. Of course, he can make himself understood, but what came out of his vocal organ was still the mish-mash of someone confused between his patois and putonghua. It came across whenever I asked: What does that character mean? How do you say this word properly? What's the tone? What's the pinyin? And unable to admit his ignorance, he'd ply me with palaver and circumlocution. What does that sign mean? Rumble ramble power of tigers fighting against mountain fires. All the sign expressed was: "No smoking."

We landed in Shanghai, when it was too early for airport shuttles, so we overpaid to take a taxi to a bus station. The sky was overcast. The city covered in murk. Was this pollution or just a foggy morning? It rains. My dad is irritated and getting into arguments, feeling as if he is being constantly cheated. ("Why didn't the taxi driver let us off exactly in front of the bus station?! TA MA DE!"). I have my iPhone stolen at the bus station. I'm disappointed that, not one day in, I won’t be able to take any photos of my month-long stay. Everyone else expresses more upset about it than I do. The drive to Zhoushan is full of soupy loops of white vapor, at times lifting their ponderous loads so I catch glimpses of cranes and partially-started construction. Amazing how much construction is happening in China. My dad decides to sit next to me at one point and impress me with the landscape. Look over there, he points at a spot in the thick opaqueness. Your [disreputable family member] taught there (like Trump praising dictators, it irks me Uhseh is so enamored of this person). It's beautiful and one of the most well-regarded schools in this region. Cool.

Hours later, we happen upon a red sea. I always imagined that my parents came from some poor rural village in the hinterlands of West China, deep in central Asia. Instead, they come from some poor rural village in an archipelago in the East China Sea. Zhoushan consists of more than a thousand islands, and before the investment of billions of yuan in the twenty-first century and the construction of cross-sea bridges, was only accessible by boat. Our bus takes us across the second longest bridge (G9211 Ningbo-Zhoushan Expressway) in the world, over water the color of ochre, clay that formed my ancestry.

Wikipedia on Zhoushan: Sixth National Population Census of the People's Republic of China in 2010 gives a population of 1,121,261, with 1,109,813 Han Chinese. I did the division: 98.98% Han Chinese. I long to speak English. To meet someone else and have a conversation in English. People didn't know who I was here. I couldn't make jokes. I hang around a shopping center most days. I read Moby Dick at Starbucks. The unfortunate thing about wanting to meet another foreigner is that I don't look like a foreigner myself. Before I open my mouth, no one would know my background, but the moment I try to order a pork bun: "What?! Putonghua please. I don't come from this part of China. Xiaodi, are you aboriginal?" Once, I see a hipster in KFC. An American hipster. I couldn't square myself up to say hi. He takes his ironic graphic tee and beat-up Herschel bookbag, hops on a skateboard, and glides away. I walk after him, but he gets farther and farther until he's turned a corner and gone. Another time, I see a group of Slavic laborers with a Chinese translator and lingered near them, taking in their rough inflected declarations for coffee and chicken. I send desperate emails to friends at night, but it doesn't make up for a verbal lack, a desire for complex portrayal, here.

My mom told me to seek out her childhood friend Le Jun, who foresaw that automobiles would one day populate Zhoushan Island, apprenticed in the niche trade of auto repair, and is now a successful business owner. He invited me often to extravagant meals at his resort restaurant and to his family's New Year's dinner, where I entertained people through my Zhoushanese. For all that I benefitted from his hospitality, he gained by making me his novelty item, showing me off to business guests and political patrons. I was always introduced as that American who can't speak a lick of putonghua but is fluent in Zhoushanese.

I wasn't fluent. I wrote my college essay on the language barriers that existed in my household. I spoke English with my brother, Zhoushanese with my mom, and she spoke Mandarin to the man cohabitating with her. I imagine this is a problem for many children of immigrants who never fully learned their parent tongues. When my mom got into arguments with that temporary stepdad, I didn't understand. When I got into arguments with my mom, I couldn't express simple concepts like "you're being controlling," never having learned the Zhoushanese for "control." Intimacy is difficult without mutual intelligibility in the diction beyond practicality. I still can't share the things that occupy my mental space, except in English. My Zhoushanese is utterly practical. And unless one becomes a linguist, these provincial "dialects" aren't something one can easily pick up.

Around New Year's is when people my age came back to "rural" Zhoushan for the holidays. I met many of my cousins, who used slang like niubi around me. Because they couldn't communicate well with me, they mostly ignored me, felt me to be a burden or a potential danger ("don't tell my dad that I smoke"), but they reminded me of the joys of fluency, the ease with which they joked and made their personalities felt, with friends at a bar, playing Overwatch at a wangba—what Bakhtin calls "heteroglossia" in the novel, I saw in their languages that expressed their hip millennial culture, their Internet-speak, their negotiations between being "good" twenty-something-year-old sons and with their twenty-something-year-old desires to live. They said no one really speaks Zhoushanese anymore in their generation. You go to school as a kid, you learn putonghua, and that's the language you dream in. Zhoushanese isn't common and therefore isn't useful (although I've always loved that I could always assume that others couldn't understand what my family and I said to each other). As a language, it's functionally defunct. Moreover, my expressions were antiquated, vintage. Zhoushanese had moved on from Zhoushan, had been carried away by my family into the pocket world of our domestic life in Flushing and hardened in the amber of our speech. Le Jun would tell me: "Nobody says that anymore. I haven't heard that phrase since I was a little kid. You speak my grandparents' language, an old dialect." He made fun of my word for fish, "awng," explaining it's what adults might teach children when they're trying to learn "fish," but I had never lost it, never been corrected about it. Perhaps an approximate analogy would be the hypothetical scenario of calling a cow "moomoo" as a kid and ordering a "medium-rare moomoo" as an adult.

Though it's difficult to recall specifics, I have a general sense of constantly trying to explain something, but failing, ideas becoming mangled and warped and all that trying too hard and being incoherent making me appear and feel foolish. Yet despite all this frustration at being unable to communicate, unable to translate what I can express in English to everyone I met in Zhoushan Island, how ironic that I'm unable to adequately express my experience in Asia with English. My friend showed me pictures of her own trip to China, particularly these food stalls in which dung beetles, scorpions, silkworms, starfish, and centipedes are served on skewers. While the scorpions and starfish were recognizable, I asked her what the other critters were, and she had no idea. Zhoushan being an island is famous for its seafood and I can't even describe the variety of aquatic life I saw on display in supermarkets and restaurants. Ribbonfish, cuttlefish, blobfish (my most joyous discovery of something I didn't expect to find in real life and especially as a comestible). I can't describe them because I just don't have the words for all of them, not in Chinese, not in English. I wonder if I knew the words in Chinese, if they would be translatable. Other foods I am very familiar with and have never been able to translate. What does it mean to know the names, in English now, of food items like nilou (Bullacta exarata) or arbutus? Because surely, when my mother serves those tiny salty mollusks packed in reused plastic jars and tells me stories of her childhood picking them out of muddy beaches in Zhoushan, or when the arbutus wine (also in reused jars) is broken out and I'm told I can only have a few of those dark purple berries max, that these experiences have been a part of my identity, experiences I couldn't articulate before without knowing what the hell to call the Korean mud snail.

I have had an inordinately hard time thinking about "self-discoveries" in experiencing China. My sense of identity has not changed. My trip to China was not an experience in how I perceive myself but in how I perceive others, how others perceive me, and how I can communicate my identity, and seeing that all the aforementioned has been for a great part dependent on language. My sense of identity has not changed but my means of talking about it has, though still limited by what I can and can’t express. I feel my relatives in China are stuck with only a vague sense of who I am that I have very little influence over. It’s been a great loss that I’m not fluent in Mandarin or Zhoushanese, not only on the trip but throughout my life, in my familial relations and growing up in a predominantly Asian hometown. And despite my fluency in English, by never learning the vocabulary to talk about my ethnic identity, from not even previously knowing the name "Zhoushan," I have not been able to talk about certain aspects that make up my cultural and ethnic identity. Self-making through language-learning—it will always be a work in progress. Language, in the broad sense of what and how we speak, reveals both indirectly and intentionally so much of ourselves and reminds us what islands we all are.

Kevin Le Mei visited Asia for the first and only time in January of 2017.