Maria Blogs

Tyler was watching some cartoon with his newest pal when he suddenly screamed “sig-ger na mami!”

Huh?

Sig-ger jan! And then, sih-ge.

Oh.

He meant “sige” (pronounced as “see-geh”), a Filipino expression which can have a wide array of meaning. Sige can mean okay, or as an expression of frustration, like when he kept throwing his cars up in the air and laugh as it crashes hard on the tiled kitchen floor and I’d be exclaiming, “Sige! Throw it one more time and mommy’s not going to fix it when the wheel brakes (for the nth time)! Grrr“

Another time, Tyler came running to me and said what sounded like “lao zhu”.

“Mami, lao zhu! lao zhu!“

Erm?

There was some chinese thing on dvd and a voiceover while a mouse was running across the screen.

Whew.

So now, I’m like, wait till he starts becoming interested in German. Sigh.

Would that we can easily learn languages like toddler do with ease.

Have you ever thought about that? I mean, here we are, bloggers, the world is closing in on us, it’s getting smaller by the minute with the internet breaking down every kind of barrier there is at the rate of a sneeze, it would be pretty cool to have all kinds of business cards for all kinds of people at SWSX, one for Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Ukrainians and whoever else you can think of.

Language tutoring and translation services are becoming more popular even here in the Philippines, what with the amount of Koreans choosing to study here. The other day, my sister suggested I look for a freelance language tutoring position as Koreans are always on the lookout  for English tutoring.

Translia, a company said to have one of the largest professional translator networks have hit upon the idea of business card translation. Just goes to show there is a market for this industry, going as far as translating business cards. And why not, even though we learn and choose English as a standard for doing business with most everyone from other countries, sometimes, what we want to say will come across clearly and precise when translated with correct nuance in their native tongue. Companies like Translia provides collaborative work from its pool of professional translators to arrive at the best translation possible.

Meanwhile, I have to act as my son’s personal translator as he continue to master the English and Filipino languages and engage my family in conversation to which they turn to me from time to time with that “huh” expression. Thirty percent of the time, my mom and sisters don’t understand what he says but he’s so adorable when he launches in his long sentence monologues complete with animated gestures that they want to hear more of the same gibberish!