Speaker 2
right, now it's time for rants and raves. John, what do have for us today? Do you have a rant or do you have a rave? I have a rave. This
Speaker 3
is something that I can't really share because I couldn't find it on YouTube. This is a video that my wife shared with me on WeChat and I don't know maybe I can share it. But it's a Chinese video channel on WeChat called AI Xiaolawdi. And he's showing a conversation between chat GPT in Chinese and the Baidu AI called Wenxin 'ian, or Ernie in English. And the chat GPT is a male Chinese voice the Ernie is a female Chinese voice and they're having a conversation about some Chinese social issues and it really highlights the difference between the two approaches to AI super fascinating. It's quite difficult but it's really cool. AI is in the headlines all over the place, I know, but it's fun to see this particular development here in China. Wow. Yeah, so they have two phones. The one talking is the input to the other one, and they're just going back and forth. I don't know if you've seen that kind of thing before,
Speaker 2
but... AI is going to have an endless conversation.
Speaker 3
Okay, so Jared, rant or rave?
Speaker 2
All right, I've got a rave. I think this is pretty cool. There's this video that's going around on Chinese social media, and it's made its way over here across the sea here to the States as well. It's a video of Taylor Swift speaking in Chinese in an interview, and her Chinese is like amazing. It's like like native level Well, it's it's a deepfake video which is pretty amazing. I mean it has her out there and she's saying something like oh I've been to all these places like Italy France and Japan and she's talking about the songs that didn't get into her last album and If you look at it, I mean her mouth the words just perfectly. It's really good, but it's all AI produced and what they did is they took like a video of her interview she had I think on Jimmy Fallon the Tonight Show and they Translated it and the AI Regenerated and made her mouth match. Yeah, they cloned
Speaker 3
her voice too. So it actually sounds like her voice. Yeah, I have seen this It's really cool. Yeah,
Speaker 2
it's amazing. It's amazing. But then man, there's a lot of stuff out there this right now and it's amazing what we're gonna be seen in the future. I remember it reminds me of like you know when I was a kid watching those old kung fu movies that were like dubbed terribly and you know the the voice over doesn't really match anything close to what their mouths are doing.
Speaker 3
Yeah, and now AI can achieve the same effect from a native natural speaker. You could be speaking English and then AI could make it look like you're dubbed and even though you're speaking English.
Speaker 2
Oh, okay. Yeah, so you're like you you want to make me look like a bad kung -fu movie, right? AI
Speaker 3
is gonna prank you down the road Jared. It's coming for you. I'm
Speaker 1
Martina. I am from Switzerland originally. That's
Speaker 1
My journey first took me to Africa, then the Middle East. I studied Swahili when I was then Arabic. I was going to a university in Egypt and working in the Middle East for the Reuters News Agency and jumped on the train east in 2012 to work for China's CCTV and then returned to Europe in 2017. Now work as freelance European business correspondent for Xinhua and I speak 9 languages including Chinese.
Speaker 2
When it comes to using language to connect, Martina is one of the best examples I've ever met. This interview first aired in January of 2022, but I hope you enjoy hearing her story just as much as did. Stay with us. Martina,
Speaker 4
you got to answer then the big question for us. Why did you start learning Chinese?
Speaker 1
I love languages. And after having lived in Switzerland Switzerland until the age of 22, we learned of course all the national languages, which includes German and French and Italian and some even the fourth national language, Romand. My first job in Tijul was actually as a spy.
Speaker 2
A spy? For who?
Speaker 1
For the Swiss government, can you imagine? They also have a spy agency as an Arabic language translator. And I passed all the tests, written and oral Arabic, but I failed the psychology test because they found out that I'm too extra worried that I can't really, maybe keep secrets, but I really like communication and languages and going out there. So I started, you know, learning already at college and at university, those kind of more exotic languages like Arabic and like Swahili and so on. But I found Chinese was always a mystery they said that it was the most difficult language to learn, even more difficult than Arabic, which has 28 letters in the alphabet and you have to read and write from right to left, of course. So I really wanted to decipher and decode the Chinese language and after having spent years in the Middle East, I found it was time to really uncover some of the secrets and really challenge myself again. And so working for CGTN, the China Global Television Network in Beijing, with Chinese colleagues, with Chinese cameramen was of course a jump into the cold water after the Middle East and all the news and reporting in Arabic. How does
Speaker 4
one make the jump to that? I mean, you were spending time in the Middle East. But I mean, how did you make that jump and say like, I'm going to China, you land a job working with a Chinese state broadcaster for nonetheless. And I assume at that time, did you speak Chinese? Had you started learning
Speaker 1
.S. my camera set up, with my cables and everything. And so we got into a conversation in English and he was like, oh, there are also law -wise, there are also foreigners in China working for CCTV. And I always wanted to be on the wild side. I always wanted to do something special, be a pioneer, do something that nobody else has done. And I've always been a rebel back home as well. My parents had a pretty rough time, I would say, sometimes. And so he gave me the phone number landline back then to the CCTV headquarters in Beijing. I called up one day and then we had a phone interview for 15 minutes with the program producer there of global business. And three months later I landed in Beijing and I was just really blessed and lucky to witness the economic development from inside of a state -owned news agency.
Speaker 4
Well, what was this like? Because frankly, in my experience in China, there's not a lot of foreigners who have worked for Chinese companies. And then you take it a step further, not just working for a Chinese company, but a state -owned company. And this is your first foray into China. So what was this like? I can't imagine it was a big cultural adjustment and the language barrier. So how did you navigate that? How did you begin to approach this? It
Speaker 1
was definitely a culture shock. And it took me four to five months until I actually could settle down and settle in as well into the new culture, Of course, absolutely different from the Arabic hospitality and welcoming with open arms. So I needed to build trust. Trust was really the magic stick for me and I knew that I had to be patient. I knew that as a Swiss I'm very open -minded, I'm multicultural, but speaking so many languages and having had my first job in the US as a spy, I guess some people were also a bit cautious and suspicious, right? And then I just put in a lot of effort to study Chinese with the cameraman, starting not with pinyin, but really with the writing of Chinese. And that helped, of to learn, make very fast progress. I spent maybe two, three hours a day at home. Whenever I couldn't understand something that the cameraman wrote to me on mobile text messages, then I just looked it up on Pleco, of course, the very famous app that everybody, I guess, is using out there. And going on assignments across China, traveling with them from Pakistan to Sri Lanka to South Korea, Mongolia to all the countries was really helping in terms of this cultural awareness, understanding, and also the cognitive empathy that we talk about so much. Really being able to feel or try to understand how different people function, and not just in China, but all around the globe. So
Speaker 4
it sounds like you just had an immersion, really. What were some of those things that you were doing specifically? I mean, it sounds like you had a lot of little activities and stuff, but what do you think was maybe most helpful to you in actually like, hey, your Chinese is starting to get traction and really start to progress?
Speaker 1
Really being a reporter there on the ground, going out there, going to Chinese press conferences, or for example Wang Xianling back then the richest man in China, the founder of One Dark Group, spending a lot of time with my Chinese I didn't really have a lot of foreign friends as well. Then going on these reporting trips, right, all around China was definitely very, very useful. And I always, always tried to build different boxes in my brain, because I speak quite a number of languages. So you have your German box, you have your Arabic, you have your Swahili, and I still practice them on a very, very regular basis. Like every morning when I clean or when I wash, I listen to BBC Arabic radio. You know, in a couple of hours from now after our talk we have Swahili classes here at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. So I just try to practice everything, but really it goes down to a few basic facts and common denominators which are you have to be a chameleon, you have to adapt and adopt, change your colors according to the environment, and be open -minded and make a lot of friends. Can
Speaker 4
you think of any times or experiences where you felt like you're Chinese, like you really had a breakthrough, or a time where you failed, you were like, hey, now I can actually do something with my Chinese.
Speaker 1
It took me actually until I got out of China to really settle and understand how the language works and really make progress as well. Right now I'm studying here in London at the LSE. They have a fantastic program. Of course, also using apps every day like the Chairman Bao, like reading all the newspapers that I've mentioned. And the real important thing is to keep at it 15 minutes, 30 minutes a day, whenever you're waiting so many times on the tube or waiting for the double -decker bus here in London or in Zurich on the tram, you know. You have so much time when you think about it. So just using every opportunity. So
Speaker 4
is that why you feel like you've made a little more progress after leaving China?
Speaker 1
Yes, you need to be able to take a step out sometimes and get this distance to really reflect on the language and realize how the structure, how the vocabulary and everything works. The same thing with Arabic as well. Like I take Arabic classes every Sunday morning at 9am with my teacher in Sinai, the capital of Yemen, and you have to have this regularity and discipline is a magic word.
Speaker 4
Yeah, it sounds like it. It sounds like you have really driven and focused on doing this.
