Remember reading all those Wired Magazine articles that portend that any day now we'll all be using universal translators nee Babel fish to speak Au Naturale with everyone from Shanghai to Tanzania? Well, the future is now, motherfuckers! Sony & the PSP have come to our rescue with the multi-faceted Talk-Man soft, for the PSP portable system--- (I know that's redundant but sue me...).

Unfortunately, they do it in seemingly the most offensive and ugly way imaginable. I was a little perplexed at this CM... You'll need Windows Media Player to view it--- the run down goes something like this...

Introducing Whitey, our protagonist, (antagonist?), after a brief introduction by the fellow sitting next to her that in this year they will mary, she bows and quips back her name in Japanese "Helena desu---"... Maybe she should follow it with yorokishu onegai shimasu?? I'll leave that up for you to decide.

Here is dad. This man is not pleased. Does this picture depict a man happy with this situation? Not likely, bucky. There are a lot of ways that you can translate his (unspoken) response, "taihen da..." (it's terrible)...

Maybe it's her stilted attempt at Japanese, hell at least she tried... Maybe it's her briefness at such a formal meeting, ---hell it's not THAT formal, she's not kneeling on a sabuton honorifically asking for his son's hand in marriage. Maybe (as my gf pondered), it's his unease at having to speak to someone who knows little Japanese, even though her fiance is right next to her to assist--- or more likely (also as my gf thought), that Whitey Whitestein herself isn't exactly his idea of an ideal mate for his son. Maybe it's because she's getting a little chub around the midsection?

Sony PSP to the rescue motherbitches--- What better way to say, "welcome to the family" than to shove an electronic device into someone's face that says it in a weird robot's voice for you. Hey, problem solved.

Look, I don't want to take this all too seriously, it's just a commercial but--- these types of conversations happen all of the time, people can get along and talk and sometimes someone translates all without the awkwardness of barely showing your disdain of having a real conversation by using a software device to do the talking for you. I'm not shocked out of my skin about the theme of the CM, but does Sony really think that people are going to bother to use the device in such a way, or even benefit from it, on either side of the conversation? Is it really a good social quality to piece together a stilted conversation using a futuristic speak and spell? Maybe at least that way, the girl will give up on ever understanding actual Japanese and just go her merry way back to whatever godless country she comes from.

For the curious: more Sony PSP CM in Windows Media format.

ps. Blogger spell-check suggests motorbike as a spelling correction for motherfucker? I hate to pump up the volume again, but what the fuck, hasn't the spell checker ever seen an R-Rated movie?