Author: paige laevy

When you enter the expansive SK Hynix campus in Icheon, which is located about 60 kilometers south of Seoul and is surrounded by low mountains and immaculately constructed rooms, you may notice something that would have seemed strange even two years ago. Mid-sentence, engineers are switching between Korean and English. In both scripts, team names appear on office displays. Additionally, some managers use English nicknames during executive meetings. It’s a minor detail, but in an organization with a deeply ingrained, hierarchical internal culture, it indicates a more significant change occurring beneath the surface. Employees in SK Hynix’s AI infrastructure team…

Between the gilded doors and the bag checks, there’s a moment when you realize something has changed. On a Friday night, you find yourself outside a synagogue in St. John’s Wood. The security is more stringent than you anticipated, with air-lock doors that resemble those found in banks rather than places of worship. A visitor from ten years ago might not recognize the location. It’s not because the structure has changed, but rather because of what it now needs to safeguard. Recently, the Liberal Jewish Synagogue started holding “trilingual Sabbath evening services” in Hebrew, English, and French. The addition of…

Some stadium moments don’t make the highlight reels. The family is trying to figure out parking at the ticket window while speaking mostly Spanish. The teenager is the one who takes out her phone and asks for a brief response regarding the time gates open. Minor League Baseball took note of those instances. Apparently, they made the decision to take action. More than 30 MiLB teams can now access a bilingual conversation platform thanks to the league’s recent partnership with Satisfi Labs, an AI-driven engagement company. It sounds like a press release at first glance. In actuality, it’s something more…

Right now, London’s stages are experiencing an almost paradoxical phenomenon. A more subdued and possibly fascinating tale is being told in French, Haitian Creole, and the kind of theatrical language that doesn’t always have a direct translation in a city where the West End continues to be one of the most commercially dominant and intensely competitive theater ecosystems in the world. Established in 2014 by the Institut für du Royaume-Uni, Cross Channel Theatre has spent the last ten years persuading British producers and audiences that modern French-language plays merit not just translation but a real stage. This seems nearly impossible…

Three-year-olds are sitting cross-legged in a circle in a classroom east of the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C., repeating Spanish phrases about fall foliage. “Llega el otoño tras el verano,” they respond, their enthusiasm genuine and their accents distinctly American. It’s a minor, nearly unremarkable scene. However, it’s more akin to a breakthrough when considering what has been happening—or rather, what hasn’t been happening—in Black neighborhoods across this nation. There are now more than 2,000 dual-language immersion programs in the US, up from about 260 in 2000. That is a remarkable increase, the kind of development that proponents of education…

If you were to stand at a Wendy’s drive-thru in central Florida on a humid Tuesday afternoon, you would likely notice the same things: the menu board glowing against a washed-out sky, the subtle scent of frying oil coming from the speaker, and someone getting a Frosty somewhere, whether or not the weather warrants it. The voice requesting your order may not be human, at least not immediately. It can now make inquiries in Spanish. Wendy’s declared that it is testing its FreshAI system’s Spanish-language capabilities in 28 of its Florida and Ohio restaurants. The mechanism is incredibly straightforward: when…

When a patient and a doctor are unable to communicate, a certain kind of silence descends upon the hospital room. Something heavier than the quiet of serenity or trust. Laura Martinez, PhD, is familiar with that quiet. Growing up in the mostly Mexican-American neighborhood of Boyle Heights, California, east of downtown Los Angeles, she went to doctor’s appointments with her parents and translated their symptoms, anxieties, and medical histories into English for doctors who never once asked if anyone in the room spoke Spanish. She never forgot that she worked as a professional interpreter when she was younger. Eventually, that…

When a passenger boards a London bus, appears agitated, speaks in a language other than English, and the driver reacts, you can see it if you pay attention. Not with a vacant expression. Not by shrugging. simply replies in a natural, almost casual manner, and the passenger clearly becomes more at ease. In this city, it occurs dozens of times a day, and hardly anyone records it. This is not promoted by Transport for London. No press release has been issued. No banner for the campaign. However, something subtly amazing is taking place somewhere between the more than 700 routes…

A Japanese-American author once talked about spending time with her mother while watching the Weather Channel together while a hurricane was spinning over the Gulf of Texas. The mother clicked her tongue softly as she watched the storm loop back to shore. “That is mean heart,” she remarked, “ne?” The English was not grammatically correct. However, it was a more poetic observation than the majority of native English speakers could have made. Nevertheless, this woman, who was able to sense the nature of a storm, had lived in America for decades, saying in the middle of sentences, “Not matter, I…

When a young child named Earlene Broussard Echeverria attended her first day of school in Vermilion Parish, Louisiana, in 1956, she didn’t understand anything. Not a single word. Earlene spoke only French, the same French her parents and grandparents had spoken, the French of Sunday Mass, the bayou, and the kitchen table. The teacher spoke English. She was not an immigrant from another country. This is where she was born. She still didn’t fit in. One of the most iconic and often overlooked tales of American assimilation is that picture of a young girl silenced in her own country. Based…