“Sayonara! Arrivederci! Au revoir! Verabschiedung! I bid you adieu! Goodbye! How many more of these do I know?” a TTS clip of Gilbert Gottfried hints to a player that in order to invoke an event in a video game, the player must say “goodbye”. However, it doesn’t work. Why? The other co-op player is playing the game in a different language. A puzzle so obvious, yet here they are – stuck in a room trying to progress, confused. This is a sad post, not necessarily from the emotionally depressed state. “I’m not sad, I’m just disappointed.”

Where I live, the primary assumed first language is assumed-English. Let’s be honest, it’s typically bad English too – even myself, a native speaker will readily admit that. Even so, literacy is at an all time low. With technology, I often feel stuck between two different ends of a language barrier: Those who are too young (and ignorant) to realize they have no fundamental understanding of the subject, and those who are to old to know modern terminology and the advances that have been made. The idea is there, both however are structured completely differently. What an “archive” means to me in a technological context, means something else depending on who you ask. Therefore, the word is no longer in my vocabulary. Essentially, I end up having to “dumb myself down” to the point where I’m losing the ability to speak clearly. Suddenly, I can’t explain anything unless I’m using a visual aid and pointing to buttons and symbols. It could be anything. Explaining a tool tip, and what this translates to, and its primary function. Breadcrumbs. Libraries, lists, query, export, file extensions.

With technology, it’s always been this way. I’ve learned enough to speak and translate no problem. Truly I am the link between help desk and end user. However, I’m not going to inject myself into a situation where two or more people are annoyed or upset because they are tech illiterate. They’re upset and not willing to learn… but there are situations today regarding language that I have readily injected myself into. These situations make me more frustrated than any printer could make your average office-goer could. The language barrier. Yes that’s right, either racial or cultural discrimination over spoken language.

Now, I’ve had this post suspended for a bit to really take a moment and let myself simmer in this realization. Some people I’ve worked with across at least two jobs in the past two years have consistently made zero effort to understand what their fellow human is attempting to communicate to them. I thought, maybe this is a simple fear or anxiety. In person, you don’t want to make yourself look stupid I guess. I’m not sure – the point is, I’ve never been afraid to try to understand. Especially Spanish, which I sincerely regret not spending more time learning. One of my new years resolution (upon properly budgeting my life to even see if living in this country is survivable) will be to seek out Spanish lessons I think. I know enough Spanish to understand, but not necessarily reply. I know I get laughed at sometimes when I try to reply because of my accent, but I try anyway. It does make a native Spanish speaker smile 99% of time.

One of my first efforts in a front facing retail environment involving a language barrier was at GameStop. A mother and her children approach, I am alone, and she asks if I speak Spanish. I say I understand a little. I’m able to gather that she’s looking for a controller. I ask if its for “Nintendo” or “Playstation” and so forth. I get the single word “Nintendo” reply. I point to the selection of Wii remotes (the console on the market at that time) behind me, and ask what color she’d like. “Azul.” I ring her up and she thanks me, in Spanish. I say “you’re welcome” in English – to shy to attempt the “de nada” reply I confidently know.

Other jobs throughout my years I would encounter several cultures and languages. Yiddish, Hebrew, Chinese, Hindi, Urdu, Russian, Polish, Korean, and of course Japanese (which arguably is my strongest second language due to watching Anime). I worked with India Airlines for a little over a year, and spoke with attendants and pilots regularly. I came to know their names, and I came to understand their accents. The area I live in now is densely populated with Indians, Koreans, Spanish, and Russians at the moment. I’ve always been “blessed” to have this culture exposure imo. My neighbor growing up and friend today is Chinese, and his mother still speaks partial Mandarin with me even though I truly cannot understand it anymore. My point is – I’m hearing these languages regularly enough and processing them. So, when the names are written in English – I can read them, I can pronounce them. When someone with an accent speaks to me, I can understand them.

Circling back to now – I’m painfully aware of “how bad things are” right now. Or, maybe it was always this way. I’m not sure. It’s frustrating. It’s so annoying to sit there and have two people squint their eyes at a person in public with an accent trying to communicate asking for help. Like, we have more than just our words. We have our hands. Do I know sign language? No, but I understand the deaf guy making a gesture of smoking and pointing to the pack of cigarettes he wants. He understands me when I make the symbol of a rectangle with my pointer and thumbs, asking for an ID. The most insulting part of these *in person* experiences is that we do have translation apps available. In fact, the majority of Russian customers would come in and use them. Some how I would be the one patient enough to help them. Sad.

What we’re “dealing with now” is massive layoffs, AI over the phone, and outsourced help desk teams. Now, we have to know the password to get to a human. Now, that human, inevitably, will not be a native English speaker. Now, someone may immediately read this and jump to racism, stereotyping, what have you. I’d like to firmly establish that I have no problem with this, and I both read and pronounce foreign names with a much higher degree of accuracy than your average American. I’m very confident. I’m very patient… and, I recognize when “Lindsay” is not “Lindsay”, when “Katie” is not “Katie”, and when “Jim” is not “Jim”. Since my childhood I have known that a Wei Lee changes their name to Katie Lee because your average American does not understand that Wei is a first name and Lee is the last name, and confuses the two. For the past decade or more, I’ve known that “Sathvika” chooses “Lindsay” because the average American cannot pronounce it. So it goes.

A primary function of my job has always been “strong communication skills”, particularly – phone etiquette. Again, I must state that I am extremely confident in myself when using the phone to speak to another human being. Lately, the work place has been inundated with support calls due to a change in merchant services (you know, who we use to charge a credit card with). Being a for profit mainline also subjects myself and co-workers to scammers and those who claim to be working for the company. You may see where this is going.

A claims company contacted the business access to verify employment the other day. This is a very common thing, actually. It’s a simple request, usually verifiable by the company name and the person on the phones ability to clearly state the employees name. Fine. Apparently, someone from this company was forwarded to the front office without clarity on the nature of the call, and then hung up on. When the company called back some minutes later, my co-worker picked up the phone. She struggles. A lot. I don’t think I’ve ever heard her pronounce a last name correctly, in any attempt. Sometimes, she will just slam the phone down and ask “can anyone speak with this person I can’t understand what they’re saying”. Verbatim. So, this day in particular, she asked me directly if I wanted to try (usually a manager gets ahead of me). I pick up the phone, thank the caller for holding, and ask how I can help them. They introduce themselves as Samantha, state the company they are from and their business. Which, yes, was to verify an employee. The woman on the phone had a heavy Indian accent. To be sure I understood, I repeated the information back to Samantha on the phone. The name of her company, and that she was looking to verify employment of X name. I told her to hold a moment, and transferred the call to the appropriate superior. Prepared to prep them on the nature of the call, they reply: “Oh I hung up on them earlier I couldn’t understand what they were saying”.

I was stunned for a moment, but sadly I was not surprised. I repeated the nature of the call, the name of the caller, and the name of the employee they were calling about. I said that I could understand her. I asked if she’d like me to take a message. A quick “no, no” response, my superior seemed to realize I knew the call was serious and I patch the caller through, and so it goes. Some moments later, this superior comes to the back office to explain that she thought the first call was bogus. I guess the individual that had called in before spoke less English? I can’t say. I have their word that, the individual was whispering to someone else, and couldn’t either understand what was being asked of them, or could not repeat the name of the company they were working for. My superior thanked me and said she didn’t want to give out information like that. I said of course I understand.

It devolved slightly, but I didn’t let it get that far. My superior mentioned they were tired of the scams and that “it seems it’s getting worse, it’s concerning that these people hire people that don’t speak English”. I just echoed my former reply. “I understand, it’s not easy. Hope I can help.”

This practice has actually been going on for years. Indian phone representatives teach English to one another, which leads to some mannerisms (those who watch Kitboga can attest to E&E). The first caller was being shadowed, and coached. It has to be so hard honestly. I digress. If you haven’t heard on some underground news-blocks, it is actually, becoming more and more commonplace. Not from the scammer-side, but yes from the helpdesk side. Just google it. “Actually Indians”. Yep, “AI”. Layoffs? Increased production? All thanks to AI.

I’m more than happy to embrace this, in fact, I always have embraced the culture and language differences. Isn’t it wonderful how different we all are, I think. Each culture has beauty in it’s own way, looking at the bright side… I can still hope that the human knows I am grateful that they are human, and I respect that they are human, and that we can speak to one another.

I am particularly grateful for Gorillaz music pushing these language barriers further and further. Directly responsible for putting Kali Uchis and Bad Bunny on my radar. I now know about Trueno. Bad Bunny’s recent monolgue on SNL about the backlash after he was announced to be the first male Latin American artist to headline the halftime show send a wonderful message. “If you don’t understand what I just said, you have four months to learn”.

I want to learn. I NEED to learn, I need to speak. At work I always here “these people, these people, these people, ugh, sigh, they don’t get it” and sometimes even an accent gets MOCKED. The gall. It makes me so sad and angry. When asked if I speak Spanish, I always say”uno momento, se habla un poquito español”. Then I try to find someone that can. That’s usually the best I can do now. I imagine they laugh or have trouble understanding me – I have a terrible accent.

So please TRY to understand!!! Not everyone is playing dumb with you. They’re just trying to understand, like you.