After a late night dinner at Milan’s canal district, we were in a hurry to get back to our hotel. Two of us on an official trip had to catch an early morning flight back to India, while the other two were taking off for an extended vacation within Italy.
We hailed a cab, got in and yelled out the name of the place we were headed to. We then began our chatter, which was a mix of English and Hindi.
Our cabbie, a pleasantly plump middle-aged man, ears glued to the football commentary on radio, suddenly pulled out his phone, put it in front of his mouth and shouted something in Italian. Thinking that he was discussing the game with a pal, we continued our chatter till we saw him flash his smartphone at us: “Where are you from?” it read on the screen in English. “India”, we said, amused with the app.
Another shout into his phone in Italian and the next question popped up: “Do you like Italy?” In chorus we said: “We love it.” A string of questions and answers followed, and we were soon comfortably communicating with him through the voice recognition app till our short and sweet journey ended.
For Henso, the friendly cabbie who drives tourists from across the world around, not knowing a word of English is no longer a problem – thanks to the app.
This brings us to India, which has 22 official languages and where visitors from the Southern or North-Eastern regions have great a difficulty in getting themselves understood in North India, and vice-versa. If only such a voice-translation app is developed, at least for some key languages, it can do wonders — for travel, tourism, transport as well as for the career growth of drivers and guides. Also, the chances of a cab or tourist bus driver not proficient in English getting a good job will become brighter, say, with a five-star hotel or travel agency.
While there already are quite a few voice recognition apps, an indigenous one can help people cross the language barriers, which are really quite high within India. Once can then just shout into the phone in Tamil, Hindi, Bangla, Assamese, Manipuri and so on, wait for the question to pop up on the smartphone, and carry on with the journey, just as our friend Henso did!
(The writer was in Milan at the invitation of Alstom)