Some of you have new names now

May 7, 2022 3:38 PM

I've installed a language learning extension in my browser called Toucan which changes an assortment of words on whatever page you're looking at into your target learning language -- in my case French -- with the idea that you will learn that vocabulary in the context of your primary language. But what's currently cracking me up is that when I open a page on Metafilter: communauté weblog, it often chooses to translate bits and pieces of peoples usernames.

The first one I saw was Blue Jello Elfe, which seems more old-timey curiousity shoppe than French, tbh. So far, other new Mefites I have noticed include:
the corpse in la bibliothèque
grim réfrigérateur
Pape Guilty
Winnie Le Proust
EXISTENZ EST INTERROMPU
Fille Cuisinière
lumineux and shiny
Les Sous-Vêtements Monster

I have nothing more consequential to add here, this just makes me giggle and I thought you all might be amused, too.

posted by jacquilynne to MetaFilter-Related at 3:38 PM (46 comments total)

These are great. “Fille Cuisinière” took me a while; I assume it is this user?
posted by mbrubeck at 3:47 PM on May 7, 2022 [5 favorites]

Oui!
posted by jacquilynne at 4:20 PM on May 7, 2022

hee hee hee
posted by a humble nudibranch at 4:36 PM on May 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

C'est moi!
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:48 PM on May 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

Ooooh do me do me!
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:01 PM on May 7, 2022

Seriously though is there a list of usernames somewhere? Wanna see more!
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:09 PM on May 7, 2022

Hey that's me!!
posted by cooker girl at 6:35 PM on May 7, 2022 [5 favorites]

A good way to find lists of usernames, tiny frying pan: Check highly favorited comments in the infodumpster. In some cases upwards of 1000 usernames will be found.
posted by cgc373 at 6:36 PM on May 7, 2022

Canard Gris!
posted by Gray Duck at 7:05 PM on May 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

Who am i?
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:17 PM on May 7, 2022

That is great - thanks for sharing with the rest of us :)
posted by Sparky Buttons at 7:22 PM on May 7, 2022

If mine says Qulbutoké, that extension is spectacular.
posted by Wobbuffet at 8:16 PM on May 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

Sadly, it doesn't translate all words or anything consistently, so I can't make it do anyone in particular. It *really* likes the corpse in la bibliotheque, though -- that one gets translated pretty much every time it appears on a page. Sometimes it also translates corpse to corps.

Since then, I've also noticed Lyn Jamais, which I like very much, and Your Enfance Pet Rock.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:23 PM on May 7, 2022 [4 favorites]

I am very intrigued by this idea. Thanks!

But, either the linux firefox integration is broken, or I'm too tired and or dumb to figure out how to make it work, or it's conflicting with other plugins. Highlighting text and clicking on a flag that is not English. . . doesn't seem to do anything at all. Am I missing something? It sure sounds fun.)
posted by eotvos at 9:54 PM on May 7, 2022

For some reason it seems to be working in wikipedia and elsewhere, but not here. (Which I don't understand, but isn't really a problem that needs to be solved.)

I'd forgotten about it, even though I was talking about it here minutes ago, and I was surprised to learn that Dick Van Dyke got his big start in Chance of Una Vida and Sala de Exposiciones. I spent more time than I am proud to admit considering whether Dick Van Dyke might actually have been originally a Spanish speaking actor. The answer is no. This is quite fun.
posted by eotvos at 10:10 PM on May 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

I'm sure mine won't work with the translator, so here you go: Je suis Kim suis-je!
posted by iamkimiam at 5:41 AM on May 8, 2022 [4 favorites]

Who am i?

If only I had un pinguino...

(I am using Toucan in Italian)
posted by niicholas at 7:59 AM on May 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

vin la chansong; hey I'm a winning chainsaw! ooh that will be my stealth username.
posted by winesong at 8:17 AM on May 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

going to need to get a sockpuppet account

Les Sous-Vêtements Monster hahahahahhahahahahhahahahaaaaa!!!
posted by supermedusa at 9:45 AM on May 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

L'ardeur de Cambry (google translate apparently knows from post-apocalyptic English puns)
posted by The Ardship of Cambry at 12:58 PM on May 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

Cher MetaFilter:

Hon hon hon.

Cordialement,
M. Mauvais Exemple
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 1:12 PM on May 8, 2022 [8 favorites]

Je suis tarte aux pingouins, apparemment.
posted by penguin pie at 3:17 PM on May 8, 2022 [7 favorites]

OK and now you've got me translating my username into every language on Google translate

pikkewynpastei
byrek me pinguin
torta de pinguim
pinqvin pastası
paii Penguin
ፔንግዊን አምባሻ
bánh chim cánh cụt
etc...
posted by penguin pie at 3:21 PM on May 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

This thing is really fun. I keep forgetting about it and then being surprised. The translation of only a single word, rather than whole phrases, is jarring in a good way. This morning reading twitter, I was really confused by "Residential schools were partially funded by los estudiantes' own treaty dinero," which both seemed *plausible* as a thing someone could say about Spanish-speaking places and also incredibly weird choice of wording. [Edit: I also now realize the distinction is a lot more obviously visible when not also running the dark reader plugin. I think I actually like it better when it's not obvious.]
posted by eotvos at 6:56 AM on May 9, 2022 [2 favorites]

OK and now you've got me translating my username into every language on Google translate

This is so fascinatingly amusing.

French: solide comme un roc
Hungarian: szikla szilárd
Welsh: graig yn gyson
Samoan: papa mautu
Yoruba: rọọkì duro
Irish: carraig seasta
Ukranian: скеля стійка (skelya stiyka)
Haitian Creole: wòch fiks
German: felsenfest

These are all going in the sock puppet name bank. Rọọkì Duro! Skelya Stiyka! Felsenfest! Papa Mautu!!
posted by Rock Steady at 7:19 AM on May 9, 2022 [3 favorites]

I sometimes regret using a name as my name here, rather than something more interesting. (It's not my name, but it is *a* name.) A cursory search tells me that if you interpret my username as a unit (which it is, in addition to being a name) in Mandarin, which I don't speak at all, it translates to "source." That seems. . . not wrong, but also far too general to possibly be true. In Japan, it seems it's just the Katakana transliteration of the Hungarian word, similar to most languages in which it exists. Oh well. I need to figure out how to make this plugin work on metafilter, 'cause this is fun.
posted by eotvos at 8:11 AM on May 9, 2022

Rock Steady: Rọọkì Duro! Skelya Stiyka! Felsenfest! Papa Mautu!!

And also Rotsvast.
posted by Too-Ticky at 10:32 AM on May 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

Rock Steady, your name in Italian is solido come una roccia! Last word pronounced at the end like focaccia (rocha).
posted by ellieBOA at 11:04 AM on May 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

'box' in Romanian is 'cutie,' while 'box' in Polish is 'skrzynka.'

Something to keep in mind, maybe, when planning travel in Eastern Europe.
posted by box at 11:39 AM on May 9, 2022

Hon hon hon!
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:10 PM on May 9, 2022 [2 favorites]

Now I want it in English to see if I’m “new-person” or “news-nobody”
posted by nouvelle-personne at 7:32 AM on May 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

Rock Steady I think(?) you’d be Constant comme une pierre (Constant like a stone) or comme un rocher (like a boulder). I only have high school French so I might be wrong? But I think Solide is a noun, like “milk solids” not an adjective, and roc is more like the material than the individual piece of rock so it would be a bit off, akin to saying “solid item like a granite”. (But then again my name is news-nobody and I can’t conjugate verbs so I may very well be wrong.)

May I suggest Pierre Régulier or Pierre Constant
posted by nouvelle-personne at 7:40 AM on May 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

Apparently I'm Potchat, which is probably going to be the name of my podcast so I dig it
posted by Jarcat at 2:29 PM on May 10, 2022 [2 favorites]

I still can't make the plugin work here for some reason. But, jarcat would likely be tarrogato in word-by-word translated LA Spanish, which is fun to say. (gato del tarro is probably what a human would actually say, but less fun.)
posted by eotvos at 2:55 PM on May 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

A few new ones:
Licorne chaser
See you demain
taquito level de soleil
Well I jamais
Ender's ami
une boîte and a stick and a string and a bear

Some pages it won't translate usernames at all, but it seems to like the favourites pages.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:11 PM on May 10, 2022 [2 favorites]

oh MAN i wish Dutch was an option
posted by lazaruslong at 6:56 AM on May 11, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'm le démon qui vit dans l'air in Canada and made with real sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup
posted by The demon that lives in the air at 3:28 PM on May 11, 2022 [2 favorites]

I remain delighted by just how often I get tripped up by this. Someone liked a tweet of mine and I clicked on it. . . and was absolutely befuddled by what the hell I could possibly have been talking about. (I was making a joke about a badly chosen acronym by making another badly chosen acronym, in english. It really doesn't work in two languages.)

When the universal translator is on the blink, life gets more interesting.
posted by eotvos at 2:00 PM on May 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'm "cygne orange" in French, but I don't know what Jacq's translator would do with it.
posted by orange swan at 5:50 PM on May 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

It's flabdablet! let, let!
posted by flabdablet at 8:37 PM on May 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

Je suis tarte aux pingouins, apparemment.

Toucan prefers "manchot pie". And yet, it also offers " If only I had un pingouin" on the same page. So it's not consistently translating the word penguin.
posted by jacquilynne at 5:54 AM on May 13, 2022

bonjour, je m'appelle un humble nudibranche
posted by a humble nudibranch at 10:16 PM on May 13, 2022

TIL that manchot means South Pole penguin, and pingouin means North Pole penguin ... and also that North Pole penguins aren't penguins at all!

This language learning extension is way better than the old-school way I learned French (la souris est en dessous de la table)

Bisous,
- gangliondebase
posted by basalganglia at 4:07 AM on May 15, 2022 [2 favorites]

I got completely blindsided by this again. Why the hell is this dude in Ireland talking about masking in a pub using random Spanish words? I really love how often this is startling. Maybe that says something about my memory.
posted by eotvos at 12:40 PM on May 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

I don't mean to keep harping on it, but this trips me up at least four times a week now and makes me laugh more often than most other things. "Nunca know. Jingle cone pasties might be the hot #indigifad el próximo verano." (I wonder if it's changing to be more phrase-based?) Praise Eris!
posted by eotvos at 2:23 PM on May 31, 2022

Here's a new one: twitter machine-translation of a very slangy, regional Spanish text I didn't entirely understand. . . and five English words in the translation are translated back into Spanish at random. Thanks, jacquilynne. This fills me with delight at least four times a week.
posted by eotvos at 1:24 PM on June 7, 2022