FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Hand-held device translates airport commands to Spanish
Old Dec 17, 2007 | 1:58 pm
  #7  
alcathiax
15 Years on Site
 
Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 305
I was going through the TSA at DSM last year Dec 28 when I saw a guy with his family in tow who was ordered into secondary screening (because of SSSS). This guy was carrying a Mexican passport and barely had a rudimentary command of English. And the TSA agents were barking commands at him in English and he clearly could not understand what they were saying. After a while, the agents realized that he only understood Spanish and soon afterwards they were asking people in the vicinity who could translate.

I decided to wait to see if anyone there could understand Spanish. Unfortunately, no one could, so I approached the agents and started to do translate for them. After translating a few very private questions for him, I could tell that he was quite upset (and I don't blame him one bit for it). In the end just before we left the area, one agent approached me with a pen and an index card. On the index card, the agent wrote "We are the TSA". He asked me to write down the translation in Spanish, of which I kindly did.

I showed what I wrote to the Mexican guy and he laughed really hard at my "attempt".

I wrote on the card "El TSA Es Un Pendejada".

The agent was quite happy at my translation job!
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