Spanish English notta house repair

[Thomas]

A family just bought the next door house. They speak no English at all, I speak no Spanish at all. What resources can I grab to communicate both ways? The guy is there fixing up the place, major work everyday with many days to go. I want to say little things. "Do you need a tool?" Do you need my hose? Can I help? My name is Tom, what's yours? I have looked at some books on Amazon that might help but I will not understand the response. Right now the comms are a wave hello.

[Dean Hoffman]

There are voice or verbal translator/translation devices available. Amazon's best seller was about $130.

[Ed P]

Never used it, but there are apps for phones that translate. They look easy when shown being used on TV

[rbowman]

Be aware there are many flavors of Spanish. You'll be okay with the basics but vocabulary, idioms, and pronunciation vary between Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Columbia for example.

The academic version is usually Castilian or 'Spanish Spanish' which is as useful as Parisian French in Quebec.

[invalid unparseable]

Google Play has voice translate apps for Android phones. I have not used any of them. You can figure them out:

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This Microsoft Translator for Android phones has raving reviews and 4.7 stars:

Microsoft Translator Microsoft Corporation

4.7 star 707K reviews 50M+ Downloads

About this app

Microsoft Translator is a free, personal translation app for more than

70 languages, to translate text, voice, conversations, camera photos and screenshots. You can also download languages for offline translation for free to use when you travel. • Text translation into over 70 languages*, for online and offline use • Camera translation to translate text within photos and screenshots

[invalid unparseable]

I have just downloaded it onto my phone and tried it.

When it started, it presented me with a choice of a few modes. I chose the microphone icon. It defaults to "English -> Spanish". I said "Hello" to my phone. My phone spoke Spanish immediately through the speaker (I assume it was saying "Hello" in Spanish).

[rbowman]

Hopefully the Spanlish they produce isn't too embarrassing.

[Thomas]

Thanks for this. I'll give it a shot.

[Scott Lurndal]

My niece speaks excellent Castilian spanish and has no problem communicating with north, central and south americans.

[invalid unparseable]

After playing around with the app on my phone, I found out that after you press the mic icon to start the app, you can further choose "AUTO" and it will voice-translate both ways automatically.

[T]

I tried google translate and printing it out to show the guys in a Mexican Supermarket that had wonderful produce. They could not figure it out.

[invalid unparseable]

Illiterate people cannot read. Do you know that?

[T]

They were not illiterate. We got a hold of a bilingual person who laughed at the translation. Then she told the guys what I really wanted (dried Chimayo peppers).

I adored that store. Such very nice folks worked there. Unfortunately, the store got bought up by another store that closed and combined the two stores. I have not been back since.

[invalid unparseable]

That is true about accents. When a US friend of mine worked a few years in a plant in the Netherlands he said he got along a lot better when he visited France when he said, Je suis un Américain. Apparently they like us better than the English we could be mistaken for.

[Fishrrman]

They probably won't be interested in talking to you, anyway. They're almost certainly illegals, and will prefer to associate with other espanols...

[rbowman]

We sold some software to Puerto Rico and used Google translate for the labeling. They are probably still laughing at the gringos.*

• I think 'gringo' is Mexican slang, not Puerto Rican.

Many years earlier the company I was working for sold hydraulic units to the USSR and my wife offered to translate the various labels and information plates. Another disaster. She did not speak Machine Shop Russian.

[rbowman]

Then she is better than the Columbian woman we had working for us. She sat in on a meeting with some Puerto Ricans to translate and lost the thread when it got hot and heavy. The best she could do was to say they were really pissed at each other.

[T]

Means "green pants". It refers to our soldiers uniform pants.

[Wade Garrett]

If they move here, they need to learn to speak our language, not be catered to. That's what my great-grandparents did when they arrived at Ellis Island at the end of the 19th century.

We have a flag, we have a language, we have a culture. Fall in...or get out.