Viva Subtitles!

From the very first Hypergrid International Expo back in 2017, we have been using a unique system to allow our audience to follow the main points of the talks being given, even if they don't understand the spoken word. It's a Subtitle system using Group Chat. You join the inworld group for your language, and during the event, the group Chat will light up with paragraphs of text that reflect the things being said onstage. 

Loru Destiny - our first speaker at HIE 25

Making these subtitles ahead of time involves a series of steps - getting the speakers to submit the main points of their talk, editing these for length, and then translating them into different languages. Of course, AI can help with that to some extent, but it takes the eye of a native speaker to check that idiomatic expressions, the jargon of virtual worlds, grammar, syntax, and the context of the talk are all respected. This year's team of translators and subtitleists included Rosa Alekseev for the Portuguese, LadyKa 007 for the French, Tosha Tyran for German and Spanish, plus Lux Tergeste and Snowbody Cortes. Thirza Ember worked on the Italian translations, as well as the editing, formatting, of the subtitles, and organized the team. 

Subtitle Group joiners in the Expo Park.
During the conference, subtitles appear in Group Chat.

But what was the experience like from the point of view of these volunteers? Would they recommend it to others? Lux Tergeste has been helping with subtitles for at least three years now, and has often also helped with translating from Italian to English. 

HIE 2025 Spanish Session

 On Sunday April 6 the final session of this year's Hypergrid International Expo was all in Spanish - with voices from around the world - from Barcelona to Puerto Rico, and of course we also had the magnificent retelling of the Four Worlds of the Hopi people, who came into contact with the Conquistadores. 

AnaMari Maggi

The session was beautifully introduced by Ana Maggi,  who speaks Spanish, French and Italian, so is a little bit of a symbol for our multilanguage event. She first introduced Xirana Oximoxi, author and artist, from near Barcelona. Xirana has been exhibiting her art inworld for a long time, both in SL and in Opensim, on her region on Craft, called Karnac. Her talk then was all about inhabiting two realities and making art in both, it's a story of hard work and practical challenges to overcome, so it was both an autobiography and a bit of a how-to speech. Very interesting! Remember, all the sessions of HIE were filmed and streamed live on our HieExpo Youtube channel and you can see the Live session in our archive - in coming days, there will be all the individual talks on the same channel.

Sunday at HIE 2023: Spanish Session

 Crossing continents with our last session, we were delighted to have with us Victoria Logan, Nazirah Avro, and Tosha Tyran. This Spanish Session gave lovers of languages the chance to sample four different accents, and three different windows onto the world as seen through Spanish-speaker's eyes.

From pure virtual art, to a personal testimony, to a RL monument made into mesh, it was a whirlwind of emotions.

Xirana Oximoxi was the Moderator for this session. Xirana is a writer with an extraordinary talent also for illustrations. She has published several books for children, and also has this really beautiful and moving blog full of her art - please do not miss it. Xirana lives in Catalonia, while Victoria is in Argentina, and Nazirah in Venezuela. As you can imagine, getting everyone to the event on time, with so many time zones involves, was something of a challenge! But Xirana's calm and kind demeanor and her good sense of fun got us through the trickiest bits of the planning and execution of the event!  Virtual worlds pulling our global community together all on one stage!

Meet the Team: Kelso Uxlay

 Kelso Uxlay started to explore virtual worlds via Second Life thanks to his RL partner known inworld as Dabici Straulino. They share a grid that re-creates inworld the magnificent Canadian countryside, in all its changing seasons, the snowy winter, the colorful fall and the greenery of the spring - they show us both the cultural history and the landscapes they both love so much. Kelso speaks German, French and English, so he is the perfect choice for Director of Translations for the Hypergrid International Expo. 

Dabici & Kelso on CreaNovale

Kelso Uxlay: For a while, we had our own SL region. We subsequently moved to OSgrid where we had a region for a few years, until the big OSgrid crash of 2015 in which we lost most of your inventory. This sad event convinced us to start our own private grid CreaNovale in 2017. We work together as a team: Dabici focusses on landscape design and construction while Kelso put magics in the builds via scripting.

The event coming up in October is called Hypergrid International Expo. How important, in your opinion, is that word 'International' in this context?

Meet the HIE Team: Tosha Tyran

 The core organizers of HIE each have their own niche and special skills, and Tosha Tyran is no exception. Well known for her re-creation of famous monuments like the Taj Mahal and Angkor Wat, she defines herself as a "Virtual brick layer with a slight tendency towards gigantonomy". Tosha had been active in virtual worlds since 2005. She speaks three languages, in virtual since 2005, and was one of the first four members when Craft Grid was founded, back in 2010. 

This conference is the Hypergrid International Expo. What does the word 'International' have for you?

Tosha Tyran: I have long since stopped considering myself a citizen of a single nation. My aim is to act and be seen as an internationalist. Therefore this international event for me is great! It helps to overcome national borders and even languages. This conference gives all avatars - and of course the persons behind them -  great opportunity to jump a little higher and see the other side of ones borders. It widens the angle of sight and of mind.