So I plucked my iPhone from my pocket, tapped the icon for the Google Translate app while travelling through Hong Kong, China, typed in “Where can I buy a boat ticket?” and hit Go. Chinese characters appeared, and the guy at the station nodded. I toggled to the Chinese keyboard, handed the phone to him, and watched as he tapped in Roman letters that magically became Chinese characters, and then a full-fledged English sentence: “You want to buy a ticket on board.”
Heading up the Yangtze on $50 a day was intimidating. In China, English speakers are rare at $20-a-night hotels, $2-a-plate restaurants and ferry ports. Signs and menus are indecipherable. And Mandarin is a tonal language – inflection is essential to meaning — so pronouncing sentences from phrasebooks is often impossible.
I’ve been watching Google’s translation tools improve over the years, but this trip would be a true test: could it really aid the trauma of arriving in a country where the average American is instantly regarded illiterate?
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