Instantly Bilingual

"The Power of Technology: A Story of Language, Connection, and Empowerment"

The cleaning day

Once a month we get our house professionally cleaned.   Preparing for the cleaning day is a chore in itself!  Organizing things properly, throwing away cardboard boxes, move books from dining table to shelves, making sure kids closets are not filled with clothes on the floor etc.   And then wait for the cleaning crew to come and do their magic.   3 to 4 hours later we are proud to be in a house that feels new!  

Agency hassle

The cleaning crew is typically supplied by an agency.  It is a pain to call and schedule cleaning with these agencies due to multiple issues: ever changing prices, language barriers, the time-slot doesn't match our need etc. etc. 

That day the agency had scheduled the cleaning crew to arrive at our house around 10 AM.   I get a call around 9:50 AM from the agency asking for my credit card info on the phone so that they can charge before cleaning.   It was  a bit busy at work and I did not want to share my credit card info over the phone, hence I declined this ask.   The agency said they can't do cleaning without upfront payment and I said "Okay, I will find somebody else".   There we end our conversation. 

Now what?

A few minutes later, my husband calls from home (he works from home) saying the cleaning crew is already there.   But the agency called and told them not to clean the house.   I told my husband that I had  a tussle with the agency and that I had an altercation with the agency and they cancelled the cleaning.   But if the crew is willing to do the work, we can pay them in cash. 

How to tell them this?  

Now, there was big barrier to communicate this to the crew - the language barrier.   They spoke only Spanish, but we didn't know much Spanish.   We spoke English, they didn't know much English either.   I could hear over the phone my husband calling our daughter for help with Spanish - a 10th grader, staying at home that day since she was sick.   Anyway, since I was at work I didn't have much time to think about this further.  So we hung up the call. 

Technology powering the communication

My husband tried communicating to the cleaning crew in broken Spanish and English words, but soon figured out it was not working.  That is when the magic happened.   He turned to google translate for help.   He typed 'do you want to work?' in English and used the text to speech in Spanish.   Google spoke on behalf of him in Spanish and a lady in the crew happily responded that they were willing.   From that point onwards I heard they had some good conversation and the best thing of all, the cleaning crew learned to use the technology to talk back in English.   They used google translate in their smartphones to type the questions in Spanish and Google talked to my husband in English.

A win-win situation

The cleaning was done and it was now the time to pay.  My husband asked them how much we should pay them.  They didn't want to give a number, but wanted him to tell them number.   During this discussion he figured out they were getting only $12 per hour where as we were paying the agency above $30 an hour per person.    Finally he paid $25 per hour per person, saving us some money in the transaction, at the same time paying the crew double of what they were getting earlier. 

And above all the cleaning crew now knows how to talk to anyone in English!   That's the power of technology!