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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (April 1, 1982)
-■ features staff photo by Sumancsh Agrawal They lived happily ever after Ann Bonnichsen from Orono, Maine, enjoys the her son Shield. They had come to visit Dr. Gentry pleasant breeze as she sits on the lawn outside the Steele of the Anthropology department. Academic Building and reads a monster story to Battalion/P; April 1,,%». Translating takes technical know-how United Press International NEW YORK — Language errors are an increasing business hazard in our shrinking world, says Patricia Besner, who runs a large international translation bureau. Some business translation mistakes arejust funny, she said. “Software” came out as “underwear” for some puzzled Indonesian computer custom ers and “hydraulic ram” emerged in Iranian as “wet sheep,” while Italian dentists were offered “barefoot drills” instead of touch-toe drills. “But errors in translating communications in high tech nology business aren’t one little bit funny,” Besner said. “Even a tiny error can ruin a job, lose a contract, cost millions of dollars or even human lives.” For that reason, she said, the business of translation has moved beyond the capabilities of the straight linguist to a re markable extent. The translator now increasingly has to be a mul tilingual engineer, scientist, accountant or legal expert. So, instead of just advertising how many languages her firm is expert in, Besner’s AllLanguage Services, Inc., lists 129 technical and professional fields in which it can provide expert translation on short notice in more than 25 languages. The bureau has 176 full-time and 200 part-time translators, up about 50 from 1975, she said. Its sales are about $15 million a year. Customers include many Fortune 500 companies. Besner started it all with $40,000 she borrowed from her family in 1957. She says she be came interested in languages as a result of collecting foreign postage stamps as a girl. Translation is a big business today, The New York Yellow Pages phone book has nearly 11 pages of listings for translation bureaus, some of them advertis ing as many as 60 languages, ‘Software” came out as “underwear” for some puzzled Indonesian computer customers and “hydraulic ram” emerged in Iranian as “wet sheep,” while Ita lian dentists were offered “barefoot drills” instead of touch-toe drills. others specializing in only a few of the more exotic tongues. Many provide oral interpreters to appear in courts and in other proceedings. Some do primarily iterary translations. Besner said Agnew Translat ing Services of YVoodland Hills, Calif., near Los Angeles, is perhaps nearest to All- Language in its operations. Speed often is critical in Bes ner’s field. Recently, AllLan guage had to turn out within a week a 398-page proposal for a client bidding to supply Mexico company has itsowntranj department but in order all thecheckingdoneand bid in on time, it a AllLanguage. But there is another im portant reason why ml translating must be botfel lutely accurate and com and instantly interpretii said. 'Most countries - world now are linked b anced scientific in format, lay services controlled b puters and this makes \k cent accurate translation perative,” she said. A paramount exampll the operation of internal airports. The lives of thou of people depend everym on absolutely accurate intt. ration by the persons who| ate the pushbutton cOntra of the computerized wo! airport offices and towers. The prepared manuals] struction and the daily p dures to be followed in dies, ports have to be in mamL ,, . „... guages and the translatot reported step-by-step interprets*. , e; f der t( ramming must guard a§ ernrnenl w any chance of a oul-up | tReaganw For example a s* giv f ai weather map, made upiB^ meteorologic data gather* 1 ’ seismic, geophone, radarl., „ , , other sophisticated means* "l >a be explainable clearly anf. euv " ed , stantaneousiy in manyf! 1165 ^ lo , guages-or there wouldJ ies f ™ m 1 j° r trouble 'hrougtar mb| world, Besner said. ■ _ United 1 SAN SALV, U.S.-bacl Teachers cannot teach, prof says United Press International PITMAN, N.J. — English professor Richard Mitchell says he is not surprised Johnny can not read, write and do arithme tic since education is no longer the product of American schools. • “There can’t be education in American schools,” the Cdass- boro State College professor said. “There can only be a lot of indoctrination — some training perhaps — but not education. A teacher’s training is designed to prevent it.” Mitchell, 52, a native of Scars- dale, N.Y., graduated from the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., earned a doc torate at Syracuse Unversity, and taught at Defiance College in Ohio before coming to Glass- boro 19 years ago. He believes the roots of the problem with the teaching in dustry go back to the late 19th century and the birth of educa tional psychology. Mitchell said teaching is not hard if you know your subject, but has been made to seem hard by educational bureaucrats in an industry that speaks and writes in jargon, awards itself degrees for research of little worth and refuses to evaluate itself on whether students learn any thing. For example, Mitchell said, educators are replacing deman ding academic subjects, like foreign languages and math, with citizenship education and consumer math in the belief that students cannot master the tougher subjects. He said those who hold to that theory can often be found at col leges catering to education ma jor whre students spend more time on education courses than on the disciplines they wall teach. “If you want teachers trained as government agents, then they are trained quite properly,” he said. The proof of the failure of the way teachers are trained — and, consequently, the way they teach — is in the students themselves, he said. 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