A Globalization Object Lesson
“I have a puzzle for you.” It was the tenth day of winter break. Mom and Dad weren’t the only ones who could hardly wait for school to start again. The third grader and first grader both came right over. I handed them an envelope that had arrived in the mail. “I need to know who this is from and what it says.”
The disappointment was visible. The third grader can’t remember when she couldn’t read. The first grader is very proud of her literacy. This wasn’t a puzzle at all. Before they tore into the envelope, I asked them to take a closer look. The address, though obviously ours, wasn’t written in a format that was familiar to them. The street name was listed before the street number. The last line read “USA - STOW - OH - 44224.” That’s not how we write addresses. And why did it have three stamps? I smiled. There were more surprises inside.
“Dad!! This isn’t in English.”
“I know.” Now they were interested.
“Where did it come from? What does it say?”
“That’s the puzzle.” They pored over the letter.
“I think it’s from Luxembourg,” the third grader finally reported. “But it also says ‘Letzebuerg’ over here. Is that a place?”
“Who wrote the letter?”
“I think it’s Josée and Fernand.” It was a pretty good guess, because their names were at the top of the paper. I helped by explaining that their last name is on the next line. But they had no idea what the letter said.
“Do you want a hint?” They readily agreed. “The same letter is repeated three times in three different languages.” Josée and Fernand had gone out of their way to ensure they were understood. None of the three were English, though, so the girls were lost. “Are there any words that look like words you know?” Maybe they could get the gist of the letter from context.
The first grader chimed in. “an! in! die! hat! man!” Okay, that wasn’t what I meant. Sure, those are words she recognized, but they mean different things in German.
The third grader helped out. “There’s ‘courage.’ And ‘adresse’ is kind of like ‘address.’ ‘Animaux’ looks like ‘animal.’ There’s also ‘mentionnée,’ which includes the word ‘mention.’”
Now we were getting somewhere. “Can you figure out what it says?” Admittedly, it’s hard to construct a meaningful paragraph with so few clues. So we went online for help.
There are probably better translation tools out there, but I usually use Babelfish, mostly out of habit. I explained that computers can try to translate sentences from one language to another. They usually don’t do a very good job, but they help enough so you can figure out what the text is saying. We started with the quote at the beginning. I did the typing to save time.
«On ne peut atteindre de nouveaux rivages, que si l’on a le courage de quitter les anciens !»
“What language do you think that is?” They guessed French, especially after I read it aloud. So we translated from French to English:
One cannot reach new shores, only if there is courage to leave the old ones
Close enough. The kids figured out that it says something about leaving old shores in order to reach new ones. You can’t finish the journey unless you’re not afraid to start it. Are they on a boat? This has something to do with going somewhere.
We repeated the exercise with more of the letter, and eventually reached the realization that Josée and Fernand have moved to a new home in Rollingergrund. We checked Google maps, and found that this is northwest of the city of Luxembourg. It’s about 10 miles from where we used to live. We used the satellite imagery to look at their street. We then tried to get driving directions to their house, but Google Maps discourages driving across oceans.
How far away is that? We zoomed out until we could see North America. The first grader quickly found northern Ohio.
Wow! That’s really far away!”
It’s unlikely that the children will ever meet the Spielmanns. I do think they would like each other. Josée and Emily are both very kindhearted artists. But even if they never interact, our children have a connection to real people living on the other side of the planet. My kids don’t know anyone who doesn’t speak English as their primary language. Not only do Josée and Fernand not speak English every day, it’s not even in their top three choices of languages to use.
So how does this apply to 21st Century Skills? It’s certainly increasing their global awareness, and expanding their horizons beyond the English-speaking, America-centric world they live in. They were collaborating to solve a problem, and using technology both as a tool to answer questions and as a resource to find information. Not bad for a vacation day.
Josée and Fernand: Félicitations sur votre nouvelle maison, et meilleurs voeux à l’avenir.
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