KUSHINIKIZA! Google Translate SAVES BABY in Irish roadside birth

Quick-thinking Irish paramedics turned to Google Translate to communicate with a pregnant woman who spoke Swahili, allowing her to safely give birth. The Cork ambulance drivers were transporting a pregnant Congolese woman to a maternity hospital last week when she went into labour. Gerry McCann and Shane Mulcahy were forced to …

[Irongut]

Swahili support must be a lot better than their Italian or German then or she'd have given birth through her ass! I often find Google's translation is the opposite of what the original language meant. And, their German translation is so bad most of the time the words are still in German sentence structure so you have to rearrange them yourself.

Any time I see Google promoting Translate I wonder how they have the balls to advertise that crap.

[Anonymous Coward]

Knowing a fairly large number of people from the Congo I doubt she only spoke a little French. It is likely that she spoke French with an accent but she would have understood. My French isn't great and sometimes I have to ask them to repeat what they've said and vice versa but communication has never been a problem.

Quite a large number of babies have been delivered without a common language so this seems to me to be a bit of advertising really.

[Adolph Clickbait]

The Corkman?

How appropriate!

[Extra spicey vindaloo]

Hovercraft yako ni kamili ya Eles , tafadhali kuwa kusukuma Eles nje sasa!

[TitterYeNot]

Several months earlier...

Ungependa kurudi nafasi yangu bouncy bouncy?

[Anonymous C0ward]

Chuchu My kulipuka na furaha!

[Hollerith 1]

I hope they stick with 'Brigid'

It would be a very fitting memory of the land of the child's birth. And a great story for her to tell.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you think...

...that when asked to pull over the Cork man had a sinking feeling?

[SolidSquid]

Re: Do you think...

Don't be silly, the Cork man would be far you buoyant for that!

[Arthur the cat]

Bloody lucky they had a signal

Usually, whenever I absolutely need directions, or to look up a phone number or something, there's no signal and finding one involves sprinting up the nearest hill or climbing a flagpole and standing on one leg, waving the phone in one hand and sacrificing a chicken with the other, at which point the gods of telephony give me one bar for 3.8 seconds before they start giggling and take it away again.

[Captain DaFt]

Re: Bloody lucky they had a signal

"waving the phone in one hand and sacrificing a chicken with the other, at which point the gods of telephony give me one bar for 3.8 seconds before they start giggling and take it away again."

Obviously, you displeased the Gods by choking the chicken improperly.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't help thinking that she would still have given birth without the smartphone. Even without the paramedics to help her. Women have been doing it for a least a million years.

[ratfox]

Careful

On one hand, every single one of my ancestors going back billions of years has managed to figure it out. On the other hand, that's the mother of all sampling biases.

http://xkcd.com/674/

[John Bailey]

"I can't help thinking that she would still have given birth without the smartphone. Even without the paramedics to help her. Women have been doing it for a least a million years."

Indeed they have. And at one time, I believe it was even the most common cause of death in women.

They don't always just pop out with no fuss.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes - my son was born on our bathroom floor while I was on the phone saying we weren't coming in to the hospital as planned and could someone come out to us, but he was a quick easy birth. We didn't need the ambulance that arrived soon afterwards, but some births do.

[joeW]

They got lucky

I can tell you, mobile reception on Cork roadsides is usually pretty dire.

Good thinking on their part though, h'on the lads!

[jonathanb]

I had some fun with Google Translate yesterday. In the middle of a list of countries, it had "Fruit salad". Macedonia is the Italian word for fruit salad, as well as being the name of a country to the north of Greece.

[Dr Patrick J R Harkin]

So....

Trained ambulance crew needed Google translate support to assist a woman to do something she could have done without any help whatsoever.

Or perhaps a few rounds of Charades should form part of all paramedic training?

[JaffaMan]

Google translate once helped me out massively when my dad got taken ill in Majorca (brain tumour). None of the doctors/nurses spoke much in the way of English. I spoke even less Spanish. Google translate (on the hospital's free and very good wifi) did the trick. Even down to "MRI scan" which is virtually the same in Spanish so I don't know why they couldn't understand me - perhaps my Yorkshire accent.

Oh and the nurse was an absolute stunning cute little brunette!

[JenniSchalk]

This is so amazing JaffaMan. I'm a documentary researcher and I'd love to ask you more questions if you're open to it. How can we connect via email? I don't want to break any message board rules. Thx!

[JenniSchalk]

Jaffa! Email me at jenni(dot)schalk(at)gmaill(dot)com

(I re-read the rules & it didn't seem agains TOS)