Translation Tech

Santa Fe speaks Spanish. 

It's an American city populated with lots of people like me who came from elsewhere, speaking only English, but of course Spanish is its soul. And from what I understand, it's an archaic form, morphed into its own dialect over centuries of isolation from Spain or Mexico or any other Spanish speaking population.

I don't know about that. I had years of school Spanish and literary Spanish and some college Spanish. I don't speak it now and can't tell what the dialect -- antique or modern or hybrid -- really is. I know words and phrases but not accents or usage.


I do know the northern New Mexico word for car is "carro", not the more widely used "coche". Huh.

At Albertson's when I check out my groceries, the cashiers always start with hola Señora, and seamlessly switch to English when I reply. 

There has never been a problem communicating with tradesmen here. The irrigation guy, as well as our painter, and the roofer and the handymen we've hired, all speak a little English, at least well enough to quote prices and point at work to be done (although Jeronimo always -- always, every visit -- asks where is your husband, needing the Hispano male's assurance that although he's dealing with "la patrona" and although I write the checks, there is a man about the house, somewhere. It's cultural. I always ask Jim to come out and shake his hand. Es bueno. I get it.)

So work gets done in cross-cultural communication and fractured Spanglish, mine and theirs.


But . . . our newly hired cleaning ladies do not speak or understand any English whatsoever and I have had to dust off my school Spanish. 

I remember a lot, but I forgot a lot. Google Translate helps me figure out how to say no es necesario cambiar o limpiar los sabanos (don't change or wash the bed linens) but I have to look that up in advance to say to them when they arrive.

What is really cool is that Apple now has live translation on their AirPods and when you are wearing them, you can hear in your ears, live, the English translation of what someone in front of you speaking Spanish is saying. 

Whut? For real?


That is a game changer. That is remarkable.

It does require a later updated iPhone version than I have, though. It won't work with my iPhone version.

For it to go both ways, Brenda and Zulema, the cleaning ladies, would also have to be wearing similar AirPods so they could hear instructions I say in English translated immediately into Spanish.

But that day is coming, or may be here. They both have more advanced iPhones than I have. 


What a world we live in, when simultaneous translation can happen in your ears just like that and I am living to see it happen. Artificial Intelligence is scary, but some advances in technology are utterly gobsmacking amazingly useful. And available here, now, not in some future imagined universe. What a world.

¡Qué mundo!


Comments

Post a Comment