Have Vocal's Efforts to Keep Stories in English Gone Too Far?
Or Is It Just a Glitch?
I have been having a peculiar problem with publishing stories on Vocal the past two days: each story that I have tried to publish has been bounced to me with the message that it is not in English.
The first time that this happened was with the next installment of my drabble series, Elon the Alien. Now, we all know that Elon likes to give his companies and even his children weird names. So yes, I was annoyed that I got this message, but I figured it was probably because I had used the name of his artificial intelligence company (which I will not put here because I am not risking running into that problem again). So, I submitted a ticket to Vocal to appeal the rejection, and I am still waiting for their response. Again, annoying, but I am willing to wait. (I am so sorry to my readers who are used to my daily drabbles—it is coming, I promise!)
Then today I tried to submit a poem. I did not think that anything would hold it up because it was an ordinary poem with an author’s note at the end. Imagine my surprise—and annoyance—when it got bounced back to me with the message that it was rejected because it was not in English!
Now, I knew that I had no symbols or anything like that that could have possibly caused the holdup this time. It was literally a poem all in English. So, what could the problem be?
I thought about what the problem could be. There were only two things that the poem and the drabble had in common: they contained italics and I had pasted them directly from the notes app on my phone. The former did not make sense; that was something that I had done in the Vocal editor itself, so I doubted that it had caused a problem. The latter seemed unlikely also; after all, I had pasted most of the drabbles from my notes app as well as several poems, but it seemed like the most likely issue.
So, I decided on an experiment. I copied the poem into a Word doc on my computer, created a new story on Vocal, and copied the poem from the Word doc. Everything else—from the title to the image—was exactly the same as the story that I had done before. This time when I submitted it, though, the poem was accepted. Therefore, it seemed as though the issue had been that I had been copying and pasting the work from my notes.
Then I tried the same trick with my drabble. Lo and behold…it did not work. It seems as though the problem is still that company name, and here I am, waiting to see if and when Vocal will overturn that decision and let my drabble to be unleashed onto the world.
So, what is my point with regaling you with my Vocal woes? Just to spread the love? Well, yes, that’s part of it. But I also want to pose a question to you, my fellow Vocal creators: have Vocal’s attempts to keep stories in English gone too far? Or are they simply going about it the wrong way?
I know that they use AI to speed up the submission process. I should be grateful for that. After all, that’s how we are able to enjoy our work being posted within a matter of hours rather than a matter of days. I still cannot help wondering if it would be better if some things were handled by humans instead of machine, such as determining whether a story is in English. I know that it would take longer, but if it would prevent errors like these from occurring, wouldn’t it be worth it?
What do you think? Is Vocal just being too thorough? Or is it just a glitch in their system? Should they be using AI for this process, or is it better for humans to be at the helm? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!
About the Creator
Stephanie Hoogstad
With a BA in English and MSc in Creative Writing, writing is my life. I have edited and ghost written for years with some published stories and poems of my own.
Learn more about me: thewritersscrapbin.com
Support my writing: Patreon
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Comments (13)
Wooohooooo congratulations on your Leaderboard placement! 🎉💖🎊🎉💖🎊
Honestly, I don't know what to make of this... It's interesting they would send it back for "no reason". I doubt its them being too thorough though because they let people publish shit/ nonsense/ stolen work all the time... it's probably a bot they have that they use to monitor such things is malfunctioning, or something.... either way that's weird!! Ps Congrats on placing honourable mention on the leaderboard this week!!
I'm the same, I only know English and a couple bounced back to me, I think it was just a glitch because I've posted today and no problems, thankyou for sharing what we were all going through xx
Same thing has been happening with several poems of mine! Grateful to you for raising your voice about this - I figure it must be some kind of glitch.
I have to say I hate this, not just because it makes it more difficult for people to have errors cleared up, which sounds like a nightmare. I'm sorry. Because it is a ridiculous thing to do. Translations are a huge genre of poetry, and this would take them off the table since you can't include the original or your process if you are so inclined. And that is just poetry off the top of my head; there are so many other communities. What about health articles? There are non-English words there; the swamp must have legal words peppered throughout. I don't see the benefit; there are only losses.
Sorry to hear this is happening! I haven’t encountered it myself, the only times I’ve used non English words in stories were many months ago, before this became a thing I think. I wrote a fiction and a recipe in English with words or lines in Haitian kreyol, and both went through no problem at the time.
I’ve never had problems like this before except that one time years ago when I tried to publish a whole story in Russian for my Russian-language readers and it was rejected outright with the message that it was not in English. I wonder if italics was coded in such a way in your notes that Vocal AI saw it as foreign letters.
Ugh! I thought it was just me. It's only happened one time. I figured it was the Emoji in the title. I removed it, resubmitted and it was accepted. Then I used the 'quick edit' and put the emoji back. Not sure what new technique(s) they are using, but definitely a glitch.
I had this happen to me with my What You’ve Heard About Me Is Wrong essay. I got a bit upset because I thought I was being singled out and that my essay was rejected because it was too controversial. Then when I saw the reasoning was not in English - I thought how weak of Vocal to tell me that my essay, obviously in English, was not in English. So, I contacted them about it. Now, I find out that I was not being singled out and this has been happening to others. Boy, do I feel dumb!!! 🤪🤪🤪
This happened when I tried to enter a Challenge yesterday. I hope it's just a glitch. ⚡️
I've had two rejected this week. Worked out why, made changes, then once published, reverted to what I originally published. Hopefully they will resolve this, but it s not a major issue
I had a poem, song rejected this week several times. I just kept reposting until it was posted. I had spent over 24 hours working on the video and song. I was devastated because all of my work is in English. However, I had written some things in the beginning that had excerpts of another language. I suppose they would not be published today. I think it has gone too far. English if bit the only language in the world. My story was rejected last night. I kept reposting until it was accepted. I use AI as a tool. I thought it was the AI police forcing me to go back to 1950. 😂 Now I know I am not alone. It is devastating to work on my projects, pour my heart and soul into it, only to be rejected because it is not on English. ALL WERE IN ENGLISH. 2026 will be a mountain to climb because there will be so many restrictions by the government just to publish Roses are Red will be a rejection. They have gone too far.
It's not just you, Stephanie. Having a bizzare problem with this too. And thereafter the story isn't visible in the story feed as well.