Donnez-moi le garcon Howdy, s'il voiis plait. Mais je n'ai pas de monnaie. Pouvez-vous me rendre sur 1,000,000 francs?

Whoops, wrong language. Hang on a minute, let's try this one:

Yo quiero comprar el muchacho Jowdy, por favor. Pero yo no tengo . . .

Wait, damn it, what planet is this? Oh, it's Detroit. Should have known . . . just a second.

Top of the morning to you madame, and if you don't mind being troubled, may I have the new issue of CREEM there on the left, the one with Barry Manilow on the cover.

Okay, so you've reaid this far, just to find out what the hell has happened to this column since last month. Not much, except that this column is being written on a pocket calculator.

As we go to press, two major electronics companies have debuted pocket calculators that speak French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, English, and Japanese.

They're as easy to use as the more familiar math calculators. There are 26 push-buttons, one for each letter in the alphabet. If you speak English, but want it to come out in Japanese, plug the "Japanese" cartridge into the calculator, type your message on the keyboard in English, 'and the display lights up with the message in Japanese.

Rather say, "How do I get out of your country?" in German? Take out the Japanese cartridge, insert the German cartridge, and type the message on the keyboard in English.

These language calculators are palm-sized, battery operated and, considering what they do, don't cost very much.

The Craig Translator ($199.95 plus $2.50 postage and handling from JS&A Products, One JS&A Plaza, Northbrook, IL 60062). The Craig Translator offers French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese language "capsules" at $24.95 each. To operate, plug the desired language "capsule" into the calculator and you're fluent. Each language memory capsulecontains about 1,500 words in that language. The Craig Translator is also programmed to teach you to speak the language with a variety of language lessons. More languages promised in the near future. i

The Lexicon LK-3000 ($225.00 plus $2.00 postage and handling from Camalier & Buckley Mail Order Inc., Castleton St., Pleasantville, NY 10570). The Lexicon offers Italian, German, French, Spanish, and Portuguese cartridges. Each cartridge cqsts $65.00, but you get one of your choice with the calculator. The calculator is described as "a hand-held language conversion computer" and measures 33/4" by 6" by IV4".

Ten years ago, the first clumsy pocket calculators and digital wrist watches were introduced as space-age status symbols. The digital watch did so-so against the traditional wrist watch (the ultimate failure of the digital wrist watch proves that all mechanics do not have to be replaced by electronics). The pocket calculator, on the other, hand, allowed millions of people to augment their mental powers with a computer. Armed with a pocket calculator, and an understanding of math theory (2 + 2 = 4), people developed what had been', up to that point in civilization, super-human powers possessed by a very few (E = MG2).

These language calculators are the second generation of the pocket calculator. Again, they offer superhuman power to those who care to develop a cybernetic relationship with their language memory capsules.

During the last couple of years, there has been a general lull in calculator developrhenf. After the rush of producing billions of calculators so people could be free to add and subtract with accuracy, it was almost as if the manufacturers were at a loss philosophically and creatively. They tried all sorts of things—the digital programmable clock/stopwatch/ alarm units were refined, digital calculator techniques were added to home video recorders —but none of it had energy. They began to get a little desperate—looking for the future in a bio-rhythm calculator, calculator pinball games, even.a calculator for $29.95 that threw the / Ching.,

With thelanguage calculator, they're back on the track. Once again they have duplicated a super-human power using a regular-human being and a computer. If everyone in the Tower of Babel had a language calculator^ the chaos would have been more interesting.

I have two friends, Don Atwell and Bob Gruen, who understand the basic rewire yourself tenets of current electronics: Don in the area of the acoustic illusions and digital future of sound; Gruen in the possibility of carrying the whole of hurhan history, space, and time in a pocket calculator in his back pdcket. I was over at GrueiVs house the afternoon after I found out about the language translator. I told him about it.

"I want one that talks," was Qruen's only . comment.

1 At the time, it struck me that Bob was being supercilious and possibly unholy about something that could illuminate our times (and Lord knows we need it). I mean, if technology stopped tomorrow, the language calculator would be all right as it is.

The language calculator must talk to provide its full potential in the cybernetic relationship. The super-power of the pocket math cqjculator is in keeping with what it represents as a totally human event—we write numbers down, when we deal with them, but we speak languages out loud. The math calculator performs the,essentia! functions we cannot (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division); the language calculator must speak in the languages we want to communicate in but cannot.

This is not an impossible demand on the electronics manufacturers. In fact,, it seems as if they may still be half asleep. There are talking math calculators on the market, including one for children that sells for $50.00.

At the moment, the language calculator's impact will be among traveling salesmen and others who must cope with foreign languages. (With this in mind, Jhe most impressive language calculator is the Craig Translator since it can translate between English and Japanese.) At,this mundane level (and mundane electronics are the electronics of the future) you can sit and have a' conversation with someone from the other side of the planet, find Out where the bathroom is located and when's lunch.

Of course something is going to be lost in the translation, but that will be worked out by the people who use the calculators.

So, it's not & bad start for second generation electronics. The price is still too steep ($200) to insure, that everybody who could use one has' one, but there's no doubt the cost will decrease, to the point where there'll be vending machines at airports with disposable $5. language calculators.

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I remember Lisa and I standing many years ago in a shop in Florence figuring out how much something cost with our pocket calculators when 1 noticed the salespeople staring at us like we were from northern Mars. Today, the language calculator will produce the same effect, no doubt, but once the translation has been made it's doubtful anyone will want to go back to using sign language.

Some suggestions: Everyone in the U.S. government should be equipped with one that speaks Russian and Chinese and be required to use it; a special language cartridge^ for British subjects entering America; a special language cartridge to be used when speaking to people from Canada; language translators for Latin, Greek, and Esperanto; special calculators to translate Martin Mull jokes.

1 don't think everyone is going to have a language calculator someday, unless we get invaded. But then I don't think everybody needs a television set. (1 don't, do you?) Then again, I thought everybody needed a'pocket calculator. So who knows? At least it's good to see that electronics are back trying to make life easier.