While traveling abroad, American tourists spotted the following signs.
Athens, hotel: Visitors are expected to complain at the office between the hours of 9 and 11 am daily.
Yugoslavian hotel: The flattening of underwear with pleasure is the job of the chambermaid.
Japanese hotel: You are invited to take advantage of the women who are employed to clean the rooms.
Moscow hotel: You are welcome to visit the cemetery where famous Russian and Soviet composers, artists and writers are buried daily except Thursday.
Paris dress shop: Elegant dresses designed for street walking.
Rome laundry: Ladies, please leave your clothes here and spend the afternoon having a good time.
Norwegian lounge: Ladies are requested not to have children in the bar.
Acapulco hotel: We are pleased to announce that the manager has personally passed all the water served here.
Those signs were obviously created by inarticulate English speakers for the benefit of English speaking travellers.
They were somewhat helpful, but also hilariously inadequate.
Today, if you travel abroad and have a Smartphone. you won’t make any booboos and expose yourself to ridicule.
If you trek to Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Germany, or even Russia, and don’t speak le local lingo there is a very simple solution.
Use the Google Translate app (application) and you will be amazed by its capabilities.
I was.
Google Translate will automatically convert anything you say, while the conversation is happening.
You will ask your questions in English and Google will translate and pronounce everything instantaneously (with the proper accent) in the local language.
And it will also show the transcript of your conversation on the Smartphone’s screen.
Then your interlocutor can answer in his own language and it will automatically come out in your language.
I am in fairly constant contact with Russian people who don’t speak English.
My Russian being rather limited, this could be a big problem (Bolshoya probliema).
But have no fear, Google is here!
With Google Translate I have become a flawless Russian speaker, instantly understood by my Slavic friends.
It is also helpful may I add when communicating with my wife. It can help to clarify misunderstandings that could easily evolve into nuclear incidents.
By the way, the app is free and you would be foolish not to take advantage of it.
https://translate.google.com/?ie=UTF-8&hl=en&client=tw-ob#auto/ru/Goodbye%20my%20friends
До Свидания, мои друзья, Do zvidaniya moi druz’ya
In other words, goodbye my friends!
Alain
PS: Google plans to add more languages very soon.