{"id":300,"date":"2025-08-28T12:53:03","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T12:53:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wickedsister.evit.com.au\/index.php\/2025\/08\/28\/dollar-signs-languages-and-chatbots\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T12:53:03","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T12:53:03","slug":"dollar-signs-languages-and-chatbots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wickedsister.evit.com.au\/index.php\/2025\/08\/28\/dollar-signs-languages-and-chatbots\/","title":{"rendered":"Dollar Signs, Languages and Chatbots"},"content":{"rendered":"

What’s an MS’er to do?<\/h4>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

One cool thing about August is that it is when I get the tiny bit of royalties from one of my two books.<\/p>\n

(If you happen to be thinking \u201cbooks? What books?\u201d then please see the sidebar on this screen and click on the Books tab above. If you even minimally like what you see, please consider a purchase so that when I say, \u201cthe tiny bit of royalties\u201d I will be able to drop the word \u2018tiny\u2019 from that line.)<\/p>\n

This year my publisher switched from good old American checks (cheques?) to an international money exchange website. That is how I got my royalty payment in February.<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

But this month, when I pulled the company up and tried to log in, everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING was written in a language so foreign to me I couldn\u2019t even attempt to figure out what it was or what I needed to do.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not an American snob; I appreciate that there are other languages in the world besides English and Spanish, as there should be. But what to do when I couldn\u2019t even access the basics of a website I had used before.<\/p>\n

I found a place where it looked like my email should go and I typed it in, assuming the next box would ask for a password, which I did have. But no, up came instructions which were completely gibberish to me.<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

If the language was Portuguese, I probably could have figured it out. If not, I had lots of people I could turn to too. But it definitely wasn\u2019t Portuguese.<\/p>\n

My favorite sister-in-law, (ok, my only sister-in-law but who cares, she rocks,) is from Thailand and would be happy to help but I was pretty sure it wasn\u2019t Thai.<\/p>\n

I have friends from Colombia- notice the fourth letter is an o not a u- very important, and a friend from Laos, but I was pretty sure it wasn\u2019t either of those languages.<\/p>\n

I have a nephew who spends a lot of time in Australia, but I didn\u2019t think this website was in Australian.<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Is there an official language of Australia? If there is, this wasn\u2019t it. My nephew has a cool accent, but this website wasn\u2019t in an accent.<\/p>\n

It was in an entirely different word language.<\/p>\n

My boyfriend has ancestors from Holland, but I think the only thing he knows about the Netherlands language is the Hollandian way to pronounce his last name, which no one in his family EVER does unless they are asked about it. <\/p>\n

So, no such luck with people I could turn to for some insight into how to access my reader\u2019s money.<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

There seemed to be a box for a chat with a chatbot and so I clicked it, wrote my problem out in English and lo and behold, the bot answered me in English. However, it was not speaking my language. <\/p>\n

It started to get all techy with me and suggested I download a translator program for my laptop.<\/p>\n

I am loathe to download anything new to my laptop as it always ends up in complications Peter must walk me through fixing and then we both get stressed with my tech phobia problems.<\/p>\n

(I swear, any issues we have come from the Tech\/Common Sense Things to Do List I am known to throw at him. Luckily, he is very patient..)<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

This stress was for money and so I asked the nice bot how to do the download. It walked me through, and I did it, all by myself and my payment program bot.<\/p>\n

Now what?<\/p>\n

I asked the bot what to do next and he said to copy and paste the text I was trying to read into the translator. <\/p>\n

Which text? <\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t even know what part I should try to translate. Can you translate an entire website?\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Chatbot was no longer interested and left me on my own.<\/p>\n

Artificial intelligence indeed.<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

I turned to my publisher for help. He is also a foreigner. He is from Texas. But he had no clue either- when he sent me my royalties the website was in English.<\/p>\n

I checked with fellow authors from my publisher and though they were having their own problems with this website, their problems were problems enough but problems in English.<\/p>\n

Now my MS <\/strong>stress levels, and frustration were ramping up.<\/p>\n

And I felt stupid.<\/p>\n

Seems like the more the world claims to make things better and easier to use, I feel more clueless and dumber.<\/p>\n

Is this a multiple sclerosis<\/strong> thing?<\/p>\n

Who knows?<\/p>\n

But the thinking got fuzzy, the head got achy, and my grouchy vibes got much, much grouchier. And it seemed like a lot of work for 5 bucks.<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Ok- it was a little more than $5, but not much.<\/p>\n

I took to Google<\/strong> again and was able to find an English way to contact the company directly. An hour later a company human emailed me back and I prayed he could help.<\/p>\n

And he did help, six back and forth emails later. And the answer was so simple!! <\/p>\n

On the home page of the website there was a word highlighted in gray. \u2018Deutsch\u2019 which actually means Dutch in Dutch which turns out is what people in the Netherlands speak. When you hit the gray tab, you get a whole host of languages to pick from. Literally any language you want, including Australian.<\/p>\n

I scrolled down, found English and voila, I could read the website.<\/p>\n

(For the record, I could not tell you what language \u2018voila\u2019 comes from, but I know what it means, the answer to my enraging, vexing issue.)<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

I was finally able to access my royalty payment, and it WAS $5. $5 for each overwhelming hour, allowing for the crying and cursing of course, it took me and my laptop to figure out how to resolve this language dilemma.<\/p>\n

I guess for some reason, when I logged on, my laptop decided to change the website to Deutsch, just for me. If it had said Dutch, I might have thought to click on that and got my royalties in a much easier process. But I didn\u2019t know Deutsch was how Dutch people spelled Dutch.<\/p>\n

But, really, did it have to be so hard? Did the chatbot who is supposed to be so super smart really not know that hitting the gray tab that said Deutsch was all I had to do?<\/p>\n

Aren\u2019t chatbots made from artificial intelligence and thus supposed to be, well, intelligent?<\/p>\n

Was my frustration born of my own lacking intellect, or the result of my MS <\/strong>cognitively challenged brain, or completely normal?<\/p>\n

What\u2019s normal for the average brain in this artificially intelligent universe we find ourselves in and how is one supposed to figure it all out?<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

I may never know and thus, this is where my tech depression likes to hang out. Throw multiple sclerosis<\/strong> into the mix and what should be a simple task can become a tear-filled all-day, rage inducing nightmare.<\/p>\n

Was it worth it?<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t really matter.<\/p>\n

Like living in this AI, techy world, I had no choice.<\/p>\n

$5 is still $5.<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

FYI For the record, I do know that people in Australia speak English, just with an Australian accent.<\/p>\n

It was just more fun for me to write the blog this way. <\/p>\n

And how do I know this despite my nephew telling me so?<\/p>\n

I know this the same way all of you do.<\/p>\n

I watched Crocodile Dundee<\/strong> when I was a kid.<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Source: yvonnedesousa.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What’s an MS’er to do? One cool thing about August is that it is when I get the tiny bit of royalties from one of my two books. (If you happen to be thinking \u201cbooks? What books?\u201d then please see the sidebar on this screen and click on the Books tab above. If you even…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":301,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[11,15,9,8,13,14,12,10],"class_list":["post-300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-multiple-sclerosis-research","tag-brain-repair","tag-marburg-type-ms","tag-ms","tag-multiple-sclerosis","tag-myelin","tag-neuroregeneration","tag-oligodendrocyte","tag-remyelination"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wickedsister.evit.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wickedsister.evit.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wickedsister.evit.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wickedsister.evit.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wickedsister.evit.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wickedsister.evit.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wickedsister.evit.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wickedsister.evit.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wickedsister.evit.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}