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October 23, 2017
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| After she had her heart broken by her boyfriend, she lost her ability to speak. She could think of something to say, but words didn't come out from her mouth. It was kind of a stuttering but more serious, only sighs came out from her mouth. She went to several hospitals but no doctor could give her a suitable diagnosis. One of the doctors said that she would need a stronger impact than the shock of her recent heart-breaking to swing her emotional pendulum back. She had no idea whether the doctor was joking or not. A friend of hers said, "Maybe one day your new boyfriend will come and kiss you and you will start to talk like Sleeping Beauty." Another friend didn't say such a cruel joke, but was more worried about her difficulty to live. But it wasn't so difficult for her. For her work, she worked as a translator. She would receive the contents for translation by email and then translate them and send  them back. She could buy food and other daily things at supermarkets without saying anything. If the cashier asked her whether she needed a plastic bag or not, she could just nod. When she needed to ask somebody about something, she could just write it on a piece of paper, like, "Excuse me, but where is the bathroom?" and show it to the person. Even if the person would get a little bit upset, he/she would still tell her very kindly. Originally she was not talkative, so she even thought that it was convenient for her not to need to enter into conversations positively. For her families and friends, she would use her memo pad. After she got a smartphone, she used it. For example, her friend would say, "How about going to see a movie on Saturday?" She would text, "Why not? What movies are in the theaters now?" then send it. Her friend would read the text on her own smartphone, and the conversation would proceed like this. After a while, she downloaded an app which could read her texts aloud on her phone. In this first generation app, the reading voice was of two kinds, a man or a woman, and she used the latter. This allowed her to have a 'conversation' with someone who was close by. In the second generation, the voices became of six kinds, she chose the 'young woman'. In the third generation, she could change the voice tone and intonation, and the voice became more natural. One day when she was sitting in a coffee shop, a guy hit her table by accident and her coffee spilled. He apologized and offered to buy her another coffee. She texted, "You don't need to." The voice read. Then she texted, "I'm using this machine. I can't speak." Then the app voice read it. The guy was amazed that her texting was so fast, and the voice was very natural. It was the fourth generation. He asked her to allow him to sit and she did. They started to date. Every week, she and her boyfriend met and the talks were enjoyable. If they met in a coffee shop, it looked like just a regular couple who were making a conversation. Because in this fifth generation technology, the reading voice was following her typing smoothly like a simultaneous interpreter. They got married. Her app was now the tenth generation. It was elaborate and she couldn't say how different the voice was from her original one. She also didn't need to punch all of what she was going to say, the machine guessed what she wanted to say from the context of the sentence and her past sentences that she had punched. She thought that in this pace the machine would become the level that in the future she wouldn't need to type, just think. Several years had passed. One day, her 3 year old son was walking in front of her on the side of the road. When she looked back at him from looking at a bird on the tree, her son was walking towards a car whose driver didn't seem to notice her son, she shouted, "STOP!!!" Her son stopped just before the car hit him. She hugged him and after a while she realized that her voice had returned. Her husband and son heard her voice for the first time. Her app was removed soon afterwards. |
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*stutter :Ηΰι
*diagnosis :ff
*pendulum :Uθq
*simultaneous :―Μ
*context :Ά¬