If you’ve used Google Translate, it may have been for something like buying some butter and cheese in a foreign country or perhaps asking where the nearest bathroom or food outlet may be.
Picture yourself as a paramedic in the back of an ambulance with a heavily pregnant woman speaking (probably yelling and swearing) in Swahili at you. Aside from maintaining a calm tone of voice and learning to mime really quickly, what would you do?
This was exactly the scene that Irish Paramedics Gerry McCann and Shane Mulcahy were faced with recently, but the quick thinking Paramedic fired up Google translate and managed, albeit slowly, to communicate reasonably effectively with the soon-to-be mother.
The woman expressed a need to push; a matter of minutes later a healthy baby girl was born at 6:23am on February the 2nd.
This is a truly outstanding outcome for the Paramedics, the mother and the Google Translate service to be able to interface and break down such a heavy communication barrier in a truly high pressure situation.
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Is this a new push service from Google?