On May 25, 2014 at 11:41, Ernie Gilman said...
Not quite the same, but awkward.
Rogersound Labs had a midnight sale every year. When the place had only one showroom about 20 feet square, the line went around the block. When we had moved to a bigger place with three sound rooms (for which I built switching systems from scratch), it went around a longer block.
I was at one of these sales around 1:00 AM when someone asked me for help. There was a couple there, and he wanted to buy something. He spoke Spanish. I didn't. His wife was there; she spoke Spanish and German. And there was me; I did all right in German. But I learned right then that when ideas are translated between two languages, all subtleties of expression go right out the window. The three of us "talked" (made strange sounds inexplicable to those around us) for about five minutes and the guy actually bought something! I have no memory of what it was, just that it made me feel good that I had helped, and it made me feel good that it was over.
The closest I got to awkward on an installation was about two years ago when I was not expressing myself well and the guy picked up on it and guesses that I didn't really want to climb up on his roof and run a cable down under the apartment in that hell-hole neighborhood. I've never been afraid of critters but that place spooked me. For LA people, it was near La Cienega around 60th.
That woman may have been from Brazil. An older woman came into the store and she was extremely upset because she had no idea where to catch the bus, nor did she speak English. I heard a few words that sounded a bit like Spanish, but it wasn't the Spanish I learned in high school, along with a different language that sounded unfamiliar. She said 'rote', so I pointed to something that was red and she nodded, happily, which told me what I needed and I was able to give here the instructions she needed because I spoke a tiny bit of German, too.
