Foreign languages are not my thing. I really wish that they were. It would make things so much easier! My accents are horrible and apparently I have an inability to distinguish a difference between similar sounds.
I have a very rudimentary grasp of Spanish. I do a much better job of reading it than I do speaking it, but even then I really only comprehend about 50 percent of what I read. When I speak, I spend way to much time trying to think of the verb I want to use and even more time trying to conjugate it. Add in tenses and the whole situation can get very pathetic really quickly.
When we were in Macau, I taught English for a little while. I would often ask the students to tell me the Chinese words for things we were talking about. For example the word "dog." They would tell me, and I would repeat it. Usually incorrectly, because apparently there is a whole tonal system that I was unaware of with high tones and low tones.
We lived in a set of apartment buildings called "Nova City," however, none of the taxi drivers knew it by this name. We asked our doorman what the building was called in Chinese and he said, (and I am just spelling this the way it sounded) "Ho teng toe way." If we said this to a taxi driver, sometimes it got us home. Usually we had to repeat it and eventually they would get it. But they would always repeat it back to us differently depending on the driver. "HO teng tow way," or "ho TENG tow we." Sometimes just "Ho Teng."
Keep in mind, this was back in 2008 and the first iPhone had only just been introduced 6 months earlier. Smart phones were not all that common yet. Nowadays there is an app for everything! A useful one here is iSpeech(Chinese) or Translator (Chinese and multiple other languages.) It works with either typing or speech. It's very helpful, but it takes a lot of time to use and apparently it is not always all that correct.
I think that it is probably very accurate if you are typing in what you want to say. The other day, we went to the bank because we needed to set up online banking. While we waited our turn for the teller, Matt typed this into the translator.
When we got to the window he asked if she spoke English and she replied, "Little bit." He handed her his iPhone. It looked like this:
I am assuming this translation is correct because she looked at it and nodded, and got some forms for Matt to fill out. The forms were completely in Chinese, and she told him in English what to write and where. (name, address, etc.)
Then the whole process got even more complicated because there was this little machine type thing that you need to connect to your computer when you do a wire transfer. Then she took us over to this computer that looked a lot like an ATM on the other side of the bank to help him set up his password.
Luckily there was button to change the language on the screen to English so Matt was able to understand more easily. There came a point, however, when the girl had difficulty expressing what she wanted to say and it seemed very important that she get this out. She was saying things like, "don't" and "no one" but she was having trouble stringing the words together. She seemed really frustrated so Matt pulled out his iPhone again and handed it to her with the translator app open. You just have to press the yellow arrows in the middle and it switches the translator so it translates Chinese into English. You have to press the microphone so that you can speak Chinese into the iPhone and it should then translate into English that we can read.
So she took the phone and spoke into it and we could see it loading the translation and then she looked at it and she shook her head. Matt could see that something had been translated but she said, "No. It's not right." So she erased it and she spoke into it again. Again, we could see the translation loading but she read it and shook her head and rolled her eyes. Matt said, "Let me see what it says, maybe I can figure it out." She shook her head no and said again, "No, it's not right!" Then she closed out the app and handed back the phone and said, "Don't tell your password to anyone?" (It was really more of question to see if that sentence made sense to us.) We nodded that we understood and repeated, "We won't tell the password to anyone."
She seemed satisfied that we understood and eventually sent us on our way. We thanked her profusely for trying so hard. We really appreciated it. She looked exhausted!
Anyway, we were walking home and Matt said, "I really don't know why she wouldn't let me see it. It was clearly working! There was something written there." Then he thought about it and said, "I wonder if it's still there." So he opened the app and started laughing. This is what we saw:
Maybe "password" and "mother" sound the same in Chinese to the iPhone. Either way, we spent the rest of the day laughing about that. I may just have to attempt to learn a little Mandarin!
I have a very rudimentary grasp of Spanish. I do a much better job of reading it than I do speaking it, but even then I really only comprehend about 50 percent of what I read. When I speak, I spend way to much time trying to think of the verb I want to use and even more time trying to conjugate it. Add in tenses and the whole situation can get very pathetic really quickly.
When we were in Macau, I taught English for a little while. I would often ask the students to tell me the Chinese words for things we were talking about. For example the word "dog." They would tell me, and I would repeat it. Usually incorrectly, because apparently there is a whole tonal system that I was unaware of with high tones and low tones.
We lived in a set of apartment buildings called "Nova City," however, none of the taxi drivers knew it by this name. We asked our doorman what the building was called in Chinese and he said, (and I am just spelling this the way it sounded) "Ho teng toe way." If we said this to a taxi driver, sometimes it got us home. Usually we had to repeat it and eventually they would get it. But they would always repeat it back to us differently depending on the driver. "HO teng tow way," or "ho TENG tow we." Sometimes just "Ho Teng."
Keep in mind, this was back in 2008 and the first iPhone had only just been introduced 6 months earlier. Smart phones were not all that common yet. Nowadays there is an app for everything! A useful one here is iSpeech(Chinese) or Translator (Chinese and multiple other languages.) It works with either typing or speech. It's very helpful, but it takes a lot of time to use and apparently it is not always all that correct.
I think that it is probably very accurate if you are typing in what you want to say. The other day, we went to the bank because we needed to set up online banking. While we waited our turn for the teller, Matt typed this into the translator.
When we got to the window he asked if she spoke English and she replied, "Little bit." He handed her his iPhone. It looked like this:
Then the whole process got even more complicated because there was this little machine type thing that you need to connect to your computer when you do a wire transfer. Then she took us over to this computer that looked a lot like an ATM on the other side of the bank to help him set up his password.
Luckily there was button to change the language on the screen to English so Matt was able to understand more easily. There came a point, however, when the girl had difficulty expressing what she wanted to say and it seemed very important that she get this out. She was saying things like, "don't" and "no one" but she was having trouble stringing the words together. She seemed really frustrated so Matt pulled out his iPhone again and handed it to her with the translator app open. You just have to press the yellow arrows in the middle and it switches the translator so it translates Chinese into English. You have to press the microphone so that you can speak Chinese into the iPhone and it should then translate into English that we can read.
So she took the phone and spoke into it and we could see it loading the translation and then she looked at it and she shook her head. Matt could see that something had been translated but she said, "No. It's not right." So she erased it and she spoke into it again. Again, we could see the translation loading but she read it and shook her head and rolled her eyes. Matt said, "Let me see what it says, maybe I can figure it out." She shook her head no and said again, "No, it's not right!" Then she closed out the app and handed back the phone and said, "Don't tell your password to anyone?" (It was really more of question to see if that sentence made sense to us.) We nodded that we understood and repeated, "We won't tell the password to anyone."
She seemed satisfied that we understood and eventually sent us on our way. We thanked her profusely for trying so hard. We really appreciated it. She looked exhausted!
Anyway, we were walking home and Matt said, "I really don't know why she wouldn't let me see it. It was clearly working! There was something written there." Then he thought about it and said, "I wonder if it's still there." So he opened the app and started laughing. This is what we saw:
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