Interesting reads for today March 22, 2010
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Business practices, Random musings, Translation.trackback
Fabio, a German-Portuguese translator based in Bonn, Germany (well, Rheinbach), published a great little review of MemoQ with screenshots on his blog this morning. If you are curious about MemoQ you might want to check it out.
I was aghast to read that students in the Manalapan-Englishtown, New Jersey elementary schools will learn Spanish from a computer next year instead of being instructed by a foreign language professional to save money. This is not a good trend at all. I can’t imagine school administrators trying to outsource teaching mathematics from a computer or videotape. Why do they think this will be a good idea? Teachers are there to answer questions and make sure students are pronouncing things properly. No computer will be able to do that!
And finally, Price for Profit and Sanity is a good article about the “good, fast cheap – pick two” mantra. As the author explains, small business owners should quote services using ‘good, fast or cheap’ matrix. In our case, every customer wants a “high quality” translation “to be completed in a very short time (because they failed to plan ahead) for very little money (because they failed to establish adequate budgets).” In reality we can only reasonably offer two out three. It is a very interesting article.
Musings from an overworked translator 
“I was aghast to read that students in the Manalapan-Englishtown, New Jersey elementary schools will learn Spanish from a computer next year instead of being instructed by a foreign language professional to save money.”
On the contrary, I think it’s an excellent idea. The average American’s poor language skills will deteriorate further, thus preventing future competitors from flooding the translation market. [/tongue in cheek]