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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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—-1
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Dinos