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Sal: 'S not FAIR Ah get to sing an' YOU DON'T. Stupid ukulele boyfriend an' his stupid ukulele. Ah should stab out my OWN throat.
Marcie: My voice, stolen.
Marcie: Do not steal from me YOUR voice ALSO.
73 thoughts on “Stolen”
Doctor_Who
“Stupid nice boyfriend an’ his music. Stupid best friend an’ her thoughtfulness. Stupid me having a good voice, Ah thought these cigarettes were supposed to make me all raspy an’ shit.”
Wack'd
after five years of nicotobacco it’s kind of a miracle that’s not happened yet
Freemage
Nah, my mom was our church soloist for decades; during much of that time, she smoked in the off-season, and then just didn’t smoke during the period from Advent through Easter. Give it another five years to really affect her singing voice, and even then, she’s might just end up sounding like a 40s lounge singer.
Anonymous
It’s indeed poignant how the cigarette droops in the last panel. If she’s ever going to (try to) quit, this could be a meaningful turning point!
Prince Mech
ouch
IntangibleMatter
If you let the last three panels continue on, Sal slowly turns into a raisin.
Wack'd
she likes your funny words, magic man
Doctor_Who
Raisins can still sing, I’ve seen footage.
Qube
truly, california is a godless place
Kimi
It still has to outcompete Florida.
clif
Raisins need love too.
Freemage
Kimi: Florida isn’t godless, per se. It just has… different gods. Older gods, one might say. Elder gods, even.
Jorb
I misread ‘raisin’ as ‘radish’ and was fascinated by the implications.
Brooke
The LOL I LOL’d
jeffepp
Becky and Marcie could form a club.
Steamweed
Pretty sure if they offered an ASL learning meetup, they’d get a dozen or more.
Needfuldoer
Beatrice would be there!
Needfuldoer
Maybe Nash, too!
(Couldn’t edit, got the error page when I posted.)
Amós Batista
Sal: “That’s it. Ah I’ll become a rock star”
The Queer Agenda [frog memes]
The obvious solution: stop wallowing, get Marcie an instrument to serve as her musical voice, start a band together.
Dot
I’m of two minds when it comes to the decision to directly translate Marcie’s ASL. On the one hand, I think it’s an interesting creative choice, which emphasizes that ASL is its own language, with its own sentence structure and grammatical rules. On the other, I can see the perspective that a more adaptive translation more in line with how other languages are translated in the context of the comic medium might be better to capture the full meaning of the character’s words. Ultimately, I’m neither deaf nor mute, and I can’t sign myself. I would love to know more about what disability activists would consider best practice in this kind of scenario.
Dark_T_Zeratul
My gut says that other Subject-Verb-Object languages (such as Japanese) don’t get translated into English this way, so doing so for ASL doesn’t feel right.
But I’m also not a user of ASL, and am unsure how those who do use it would feel.
Daibhid C
I don’t have a strong opinion either way (although I do like the insight I’m getting into how ASL works), but I do feel like there’s a case for different languages getting different approaches, rather than “If we do it this way, we have to always do it this way.”
For instance, I think that, in general, you should try and match the level of formality of the text you’re translating, possibly matching dialects to the closest equivalent. But I also think that when you translate Scots (which naturally skews towards informal and working class for historical reasons) into English, it should be the most ultra-correct BBC English imaginable, because it’s funnier that way. (“A’m thinkin as ye micht be richt there, Jimmy.” = “I believe you could be correct on this point, James.”)
June Gloom
I *am* a user of ASL and I would have preferred a proper translation into English. ASL is actually based on French (there’s also a lot of overlap in vocabulary) and we don’t translate French this way.
It’s not a *huge* deal, I just wish Willis hadn’t gone this route.
Carms
As a language learner I like it! I think more translations should show the gears like this! Because I’d enjoy that, other considerations be damned!
Levi the Ox
I also think the “direct” translation is interesting, and as a reader it is contributing to the weight of this exchange because the communication is happening differently. And my brain appreciates the combination of concepts being delivered in the same order as the motions communicate them.
Fish
I am hearing, and use ASL when I go mute due to overstimulation. I really like the direct translation – it feels to me like it might represent how these two hearing girls might be understanding the conversation. It also communicates more of the texture of the language. As a language, it can communicate so quickly compared to English, in part because of the interaction between grammar and use of space and facial expressions to carry additional information.
I suppose I’d also note – Marcie’s grammar/accent here is more consistent with someone who is hearing (which, she is! She’s also communicating to someone hearing). Her eyebrows indicate that she’s probably asking a longform question in the third panel (the second panel I’m seeing as more furrowed than raised, so I’m assuming that’s not a yes/no question) , but the context suggests that she isn’t asking any questions at all. I make the same mistake all the time.
Tan
I don’t know if it’s the right presentation for every instance of sign language in the comic going forward forever, but I am firmly of the opinion that it’s the right presentation for *this* sequence of strips.
Yumi
I think with spoken/written languages, there are also some options that aren’t quite the same as with sign languages. If a character said something in Spanish, the whole sentence could appear in Spanish, and then the creator could include a part where it’s translated– or not include that part on the page. The language of the character would still appear intact.
In comic format, it would at least take *a lot longer*–maybe still making it more confusing in doing so, idk– to fully represent sign language being used in a way where a sentence could be understood by people who know the language. So I think by keeping the order in the translation, it includes more aspects of ASL that wouldn’t be presented otherwise.
Leorale
Personally I love it, as somebody who is slowly learning ASL.
_
And it would be cool if my other subject-first language was directly translated to preserve its word-order, too.
_
Do we have any Deaf or HH people here who could weigh in, tho?
Doopyboop
I’m not deaf or HH but I grew up with a mother who was HH and fluent in ASL. I like the more direct translation mainly for being educational because not everybody knows how ASL works in a sentence. I’ve seen and heard people who get confused about ASL, wondering how certain hand signs convey a message they may think is too long/complicated. For example, my mom taught me name-signs which is a sign that is used to communicate someone’s name without needing to spell it out. A girl in my neighborhood had a deaf mother and her mother’s name sign for her was to sign the letter C and sign it on her own chest (over her heart) because her daughter’s name started with a C. So if you were familiar with her and she made that sign, those who knew her could easily go “oh she’s looking for her daughter/asking a question about her daughter”. I actually got curious and looked back at this strip( https://www.dumbingofage.com/comic/alphabet/ ), you can see that Marcie’s name-sign is the sign for M while Sal’s is the sign for S but signed against Marcie’s chest the way my neighbor did her daughter’s name sign.
Li
Given that Willis used to write Marcie’s dialogue the other way, I am kind of inclined to assume there’s a reason for the change.
.
I tried to google, but got pretty bogged down by different conversations — closed captions versus ASL interpreter in the corner for accessibility, for example, and whether or not there’s much community interest in the advancement of a written form of ASL (as well as what that might look like — glyphs trying to capture nuances like “how the body is positioned during this sign”, “speed of hand movement”, etc. I didn’t find much at all about whether there’s a preference for translating ASL in a highly “localized” way or not.
.
(Using “localized” here in an effort to capture the specific question. A translation of a culturally-specific joke, for example, might be very literal and not make much sense to the target of the translation, whereas a localization of the same joke might completely change what’s being said in an effort to make sure it’s funny for the target of the translation — and if we did per-country localizations more often, you’d get a very different joke for England than for America, and maybe even different jokes per region, with infinite time and money.)
Steamweed
Stupid sexy ukulele.
(the boyfriend’s okay too)
Reltzik
Eh, New Danny is kinda cool and casual. Next to him, the ukulele is too high-strung.
Bill Erak
NOW KISS
Paradoxius
I like that there’s (I think) ASL syntax in Marcie’s speech bubbles—good linguistic detail!
Melissa in Missouri
Is this the start of learning what happened to her voice?
Wack'd
no, this is
kotarisu
We saw several flashbacks to young Sal/Marcie long ago, the specific part about her injury was the strip named “Injury” 8/31/2018
DashWallkick
We already know what happened – Leiland did.
Icalasari
Aww, I’m tearing up now D:
anon
woo supportive friends. tho if anything i’m surprised the smoking wouldn’t affect her throat (nothing wrong with raspier singers but still)
Li
Babies ;;
Zamperla
Yeeeeup. The problem is, it doesn’t make it right that it happened to her. It don’t make it so it happened to you, instead.
But, the way things always work for Sal is if something bad happened because of her, it’s because she’s ‘bad’. She can know her parents treated her the way they did because of race, and its still in there.
anon
clearly the solution is to stab out her moms throat 8D (for legal reasons this is a joke)
Thag Simmons
Very happy to have Marcie back
Dave
Y’know, I can’t remember if it’s ever come up, but does Marcie wear red lenses because of a retinal disorder, such as cone rod dystrophy or achromatopsia?
darkoneko
ouch.
Rimwalker55
I love this thought. Not just because it’s a strong emotional moment between Marcie and Sal, but it kinda calls to the wonderful “being the voice of the silenced” morality.
Also kudos to Danny who Sal is crediting for helping get her voice back. Good on yer!
Pocky
Finally, a reason to quit smokin fr
Aura
Lots of feels in this one :( damn you willis (laudatory)
GUIGUI
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/fc/76/bb/fc76bb8f21ac8618474a35ab335fec58.jpg
SillyGoose
This comic has a knack for making me sad-happy, or happy-sad, a lot.
English speakers, help me out here please. The comic is bittersweet, but what’s a good word for how it makes me feel?
Laura
Verklempt?
Poignant?
Melancholy?
Wistful?
Bemused?
Nonplussed?
Acutely delicious agony?
Bittersweet describes the mood as well as the comic.
transamus
“bemused” and “nonplussed” are closer to “confused” than what goose is describing, I feel.
SillyGoose
Thanks for this gift of words
🤗
Rimwalker55
Wistful may be the best word.
SillyGoose
Wistful and melancholy do work!
Verklempt doesn’t quite match but I like collecting new words :)
Rimwalker55
While I love the ASL parsing and find it very expressive in this strip, an impertinent back section of my mind wants to keep thinking of Star Wars.
Yoda: “My voice, stolen it was “.
Icewolf
I’m so glad it wasn’t just me.
(Also, awesome user pic!)
sirenensang
i made that same face-crumple poor Sal did here.
Taffy
All I want for Christmas is for Marcie to get a bright blue electric guitar.
xis
i love how marcie truly sees and loves sal :’) wish sal didn’t feel so conflicted about this. it’s crazy how sometimes we feel so strongly about stuff that hurt other people when they don’t feel too strongly about. that anymore
Rosicrucian
Somewhere Danny just gets a warm fuzzy feeling because Sal called him her boyfriend.
Acher4
Preach Marcie!!! <3
Icewolf
Hee, if Sal keeps going with choir, soon basic vocal hygiene is going to compel her to quit smoking, which makes me all kinds of happy. 😁
BYM!
Wonder if Sal is actually thinking about the cig in her mouth here…
The Wotch
Can someone remind me what happened to Marcie that caused her ‘voice to be stolen’? I know I should know this, but I’m having a hard time remembering.
Taffy
Some worthless little white boy who’d never been told “no” in his life took a rock, fucked up her throat permanent-style, and never suffered a single consequence.
The Wotch
Thanks, I appreciate the clarification.
Falcon
For someone who can’t speak, Marcie sure knows the words to use. Good on her.
rows
Sal you don’t have to feel guilty for existing TT
Thisguy