The promotion room consists of our team leader Bia, Lauren who works here, Anthony and Mette the two teachers, and then the DAs ( those of us who got scholarships and are doing promotions to work them off). The two other promoters that we are working with are Ana Paula from Brazil and Lily (English name) from Korea. They also happen to be our suite mates and the two people I am closest too here at IICD, despite the fact that they speak very little English. Although they are learning and quickly improving, Ana and I especially rely on Google Translate to have conversations. We have had much success with this method, sharing about ourselves and our lives, discussing what brought us here, etc.
Ana has also become my work out buddy and we attend Anthony's hard core aerobics classes together on Thursdays and Sundays (there is one on Tuesday too but I miss it because of clothes collection). Last night when we returned to the school, I was trying to ask Ana if she still wanted to come to the class tomorrow(today). She said yes and then asked me a question which I didn't quite understand. So, we whipped our computers and turned to good ol' google to help us. When she typed her question in Portuguese, the English translation popped up next to it, asking something about if I wanted to be calm today. I asked if what she meant was if I wanted to just relax today, pressed translate, and got the most unexpected reaction.
"NO, NO Andra!!" Ana yelled. I was completely taken aback and right away I knew Google translate had let us down. I still didn't know what I had just asked her but I was pretty sure that when I typed " do i just want to relax today? is that what you are asking?" that wasn't the same message that Ana received. We both started laughing, realizing that there had been a clear miscommunication and that whatever she thought I said to her wasn't what I meant.
Talita, another Brazilian who speaks pretty fluent English came into the room so Ana told her the message she received from me and boy did it change. Talita explained that Google had told Ana that I was asking if she wanted to come to bed with me. Not the message I intended.
We both laughed hysterically, and the rest of the people in the room joined us. I feel like we learned a valuable lesson: Although Google Translate helps in many situations, it cannot replace person to person to conversation, and that "direct" translations are not always so direct.
Thank goodness we all have a good sense of humor.
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