Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
Yay!
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2004 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
Some NYPD officers have little magic boxes, okay, special cell phones, that automatically connect them to call centers where the operators speak lots of languages. That way officers can communicate with who don't speak English, and get almost-simultaneous translation. Huzzah for technology and call centers and multilingual people leveraging their skills!