What is a Jägermonster and
Jägerspeak?
A Jägermonster is one part fierce, monster solider and one part
comedy relief in Phil and Kaja Foglio's masterpiece entitled Girl
Genius. They speak with a funny accent that might be east
European. You could also blame it on their mouths being full of sharp
teeth.
How do you pronounce Jägermonster?
In the Girl Genius Radio Theatre episodes, it was pronounced like
"yay-ger." The Studio Foglio gang wrote them and they should
know.
Okay, so what's Girl Genius?
Girl Genius is a story of "adventure, romance, and mad
science." It has also been described as "steampunk" and "gaslamp
fantasy." The star is Agatha Heterodyne, unknowing inheritor of her
father and uncle's heroic legacy. She lives in a Europe with roughly
Victorian technology. The world is ruled by mad scientists called
sparks. Agatha happens to be a spark as well, although she's only
recently discovered this. The whole thing started as a comic book,
but can now be read
online as a webcomic with new pages posted every Monday,
Wednesday, and Friday.
Phil Foglio? Didn't he used to draw "What's New?"
in the back of Dragon/Duelist magazine?
Yes, the very same. You might also know him from his work on
Stanley and His Monster, Angel and the Ape, Buck
Godot, or XXXenophile.
Why do this if there's already something like this
on the World Wide Web?
You refer to Santiago's
Jägerizer. Well, first, because I didn't do enough research
to discover it before starting on my own. Second, while Santiago's
program is great, you have to be online to use it. (You can download
a version that will work on Unix from his site, but that won't work
for the average Web surfer.) Now I have absolutely nothing against
CGI scripts like his. Heck, you'll find one in
the parent site of the Translator. But mine uses JavaScript, so
once you load the page, you can disconnect from the Internet but leave
your browser up and it will keep working. You can even save it to
your own computer.
So did you just convert Santiago's CGI/shell script
to JavaScript?
Not at all. In fact, I didn't even discover his site until after I'd
gotten a preliminary version of mine done. I have neither looked at
his code nor tried to match his output. I came up with my script, as
I'm sure he did, simply by noting the patterns in Jägerspeak from
the Girl Genius comic. However we came up with slightly
different algorithms. Try pasting the sample text from my translator
into his. Note that there are differences.
Okay, how can I save it to my computer?
First, let me give the legalese. You may only save a copy for
personal use. You cannot redistribute it. (That means no posting it
on your own web site.) Nor can you attempt to sell the service of
translating text. (I don't think there's much of a customer base
there anyway.)
For Internet Explorer (IE) or Firefox (Fx) under Windows:
But I don't trust JavaScript!
Well, then go use Santiago's Jägerizer. But trust me when I say
I have no interest in messing up your computer or trying to obtain
personal information. And if I did, I probably wouldn't put my name
at the bottom of the page.