Subtitle Implants

You want to talk about good ideas?

You want to talk about brilliance?

Let's first talk about the inspiration for my excellent idea. Then I will share the idea.

INSPIRATION
I went to a beautiful wedding today in Azusa. Everything was near-perfect--the weather, the trees, the food. However, I had one problem: the language barrier.

The entire wedding was in Spanish. All the jokes? Spanish. The really moving, dramatic parts? Spanish. I asked my friend to translate the wedding for me. She is Korean, and has a degree in Spanish. At several points, I asked, "What did they just say?"

"I don't know," she'd say.

At the end of the ceremony, the priest said something, and I recognized the words 'photos' and 'por favor.' My friend volunteered the following: "I believe he just said that the wedding party is going to take some pictures, and thanks for coming." Hmmm...I have a degree in creative writing, and I somehow picked that up in the two words I understood.

IDEA
Americans enjoy foreign films, but don't like to learn new languages. I believe a device could be implanted in your retina so that when a foreign person speaks, you'll see the translation right below them. And if multiple people are speaking at once, word bubbles will appear so it'll be like you're reading a comic book. This idea is so brilliant. I am so original.

Another use would be like in Annie Hall. You could have these implants translate the subtext of every conversation. After a bad date, you could REALLY tell how bad it went. You'd see that "Yeah, hey, let's do this again sometime," really means, "I hope you try to eat some shards of glass." And the translation for, "Listen, I don't think we have a lot in common, so I don't think it's wise that we see each other anymore," would appear as, "I want you so bad."

Brilliant.