From: YourName@YourISP.com   
      
   In article <1br3a572ba.fsf@pfeifferfamily.net>, Joe Pfeiffer   
    wrote:   
   >   
   > I had the interesting experience a few months ago of selling a truck to   
   > a young Mexican couple (I live roughly 50 miles from the Mexican border)   
   > whose English was only slightly better than than my Spanish (which is   
   > nonexistent).  Most of our conversation was conducted by the woman and   
   > me talking into her cell phone, and looking at translations on the   
   > screen.  From what I could see, it worked reasonably well.   
   >   
   > All the same, I was sufficiently unsure of how well they understood my   
   > descriptions of what I knew to be wrong with the truck (the problems   
   > started with "blown head gasket") that I went to a friend of mine, whose   
   > father translated the descriptions for them to read before I sold the   
   > truck to them.   
      
   Assuming they can even understand your accent well enough, most   
   automated translations are semi-passable for normal, simple,   
   conversations, but they do get a bit hopeless when it comes to   
   technical terms. They can also often have issues with sound-alike words   
   such as "two", "too", and "to".   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)