On the road…again!!!
Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams
Chronicles of a Footloose Forester
By Dick Pellek
243 ways to know
Il n'est jamais trop tard pour apprendre
Nunca es demasiado tarde para aprender
Es ist nie zu spät zu lernen
Li pa janm twò ta pou aprann
ʻaʻole loa e lohi ke aʻo ʻana
non è mai troppo tardi per imparare
Nunca é tarde para aprender.
không bao giờ là quá muộn để học
Learning doesn’t stop the day you exit school with pomp and circumstance. The commencement ceremonies are meant to send you on your way with the message, “you go girl”, “yu da man” or “show us what you got, kid.”
Whether or not that you think the American educational system is failing us or stimulating us, it is you and you alone who has to stand up, make a stand, and stand in the spotlight of scrutiny. Whether AI is friend or foe, it is not intended to be personal and we have to decide how to use the various tools that have been developed. After all, an electronic microscope is a great tool if you know how to get the most out of it. Just peering through the lens doesn’t cut it. Putting a scalpel in your hands doesn’t make you a surgeon or handing you the keys to a Ferrari make you a race driver. We can all learn, if we try, and try again. And there are really good tools out there to help us along. Technology is steadily improving and so are the learning techniques at our disposal.
The Footloose Forester never became fluent in any foreign language, but he never gave up on the trying part. Getting along was always going to be a challenge in each and every one of the countries he visited, and he knew that the local language was a hurdle. When his mom told him to always do his best, that meant that he should try. Along the way, there was French, Spanish, German, Urdu, Creole, Vietnamese, Portuguese, and Bahasa Indonesia. Sometimes, the sessions were long and loaded with plenty of fractures, as they say; but giving up was never a choice.
OK, that takes us to today’s exercise in learning something that they didn’t teach in school. Google Translate now sports 243 languages in their data base, and it is easier than ever to go back and forth with the task view button in the WINDOWS operating system, to translate what you wish to say, in the language you want to say it in. Google Translate also has a voice option so that you can hear and practice those words.
Just in case you never got around to translating the staircase gambit of text at the top of this chronicle, they all say the same thing…it is never too late to learn. Of course, the Footloose Forester didn’t take the time to insert the other 235 languages in the Google Translate database.