Well looky here – just a scant two months between posts this time.  I think that’s a good sign.  Today I’d like to talk about a little thing called the SAP option on our remote.  This has now been around for a while, and I’m so used to seeing programs put a little SAP icon at the top of the show that I don’t even notice it anymore.  Up until less than a year ago, though, I’d never pushed the button or tried to make whatever I’m watching turn into Spanish.

Our kids spent their first two years hearing Spanish about as much as English, thanks to their nanny who was at our house five days a week and (per our request) speaking almost exclusively in her native tongue.  Once the kids started school and she was no longer coming over regularly, we wanted them to keep their comprehension levels up.  They actually knew a good amount of Spanish by then, counting just as high as in English, and opting to say some Spanish words over their English counterparts (like estrella and más).  My lovely wife started looking into what it would cost to add a Spanish-language kids’ network to our cable, but I decided to try out the SAP button first.

Lo and behold, the episodes of “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse” we had on our DVR magically turned into Spanish with just a few clicks of the remote.  In seconds, we could hear a high pitched voice saying, “Ha ha!  Hola, Pluto!”  The kids watched as if it were no different than the English version, and we were pleased with this no-extra-cost way of keeping Spanish in their lives.

There are only two downsides for me.  The first is about my disappearing (or almost completely disappeared) understanding of spoken Spanish.  Back when it was one of my majors in college, I was getting the vast majority of what native speakers were saying, though I always had to strain a little since it was so damn fast.  A short time later, and I found I was getting a good amount – maybe even most – of what was being said, which still made me feel good about my language skills.  But now…well, there are entire sentences that go by uncomprehended, and that bothers me.  Part of it is the speed, another part is the vocabulary (some I lost and some I never knew), and yet another part is simply because of Donald Fucking Duck.  I have trouble enough understanding one word that guy says in English, but in Spanish?  Forget it – I’m batting about .100 when he opens his bill para hablar.

The second downside is about what happens when I or someone else forgets to change it back from SAP.  “Uh, it stays in Spanish?” you might be asking.  Yeah, that would make total sense, but noooooo.  Here’s what kills me about it: many programs do absolutely nothing differently when SAP is on; they remain in their normal English and lead me into a false sense of security.  But then I turn on the Lakers and hear…some unidentifiable Asian language.  I’m pretty sure that it isn’t Japanese, but that’s all I got: play-by-play in a language that is neither English nor Spanish, usually after watching something in English but forgetting that the “turn it into Spanish button” was pushed.

But wait, there’s more!  Let’s say I go to my list of recorded shows and start watching an episode of “Shark Tank.”  I fast forward through the beginning and start watching as the first person enters “the tank.”  If I forget that SAP is on, guess what I hear.  I don’t know what your guess was, but no.  I hear this: “A woman in a burgundy dress walks down the corridor.”  If it’s an episode of “The Office,” I hear: “Dwight walks over to Jim’s desk and kneels down next to him.”  Yes, for some reason, the “turn it into Spanish button” doubles – in just some cases, mind you – as a “tell blind people what they’re not seeing button.”

Here’s the one glaring problem with me being confused about this: SAP isn’t actually a “turn it into Spanish button,” as I’ve just come to learn.  Growing up in Southern California, I’m conditioned to think of Spanish as the automatic second language.  I’ve heard the option said in Spanish (ese ah pey) almost as much as English, in fact, and the letters of SAP are close enough to the beginning of “Spanish” that I never thought twice about it.  However, the always-right Wikipedia says that it actually stands for “Second Audio Program,” while acknowledging that some people think the S is for “Spanish.”  So I guess it makes sense that different programs would have different secondary audio feeds, but…I still don’t understand why they’re not all Spanish.  Look, I want blind people to enjoy “The Office” (though I doubt anyone actually enjoys that show anymore), but aren’t there more Spanish speakers out there that NBC should be going after?  I guess it turns into a numbers game, and hiring Spanish voice talent is much more expensive than one person describing the sights.  Fine, I’ll accept that, even if I think it’s short-sighted (pardon the pun).  But the Lakers…really?  I guarantee there are Spanish announcers doing the game on some radio station, so why not pipe that in instead of a probably-not-Japanese Asian language? I don’t get it.

And now to poke a hole in my own hole-poking: I just looked again at the SAP option on my TV, and actually quite clear.  I have two options to choose from: English and Español.  And yes, the latter is the one with Asian play-by-play and Blindspeak.  Oh well, at least it has the desired effect on our kids’ show…incluyendo eso pinche pato.