racoma.com.phJ. Angelo Racoma on technology, economics, writing, problogging, and getting things done

I’m looking for a person who can translate English to Mandarin. Online tools are cool, but they tend to spew out crappy translations. Human translations are still the best.

This is for the translation of several dozens of existing articles on a high-profile blog, and then a regular undertaking henceforth. Expected output is about 3 to 4 articles per day. We’ll have to discuss compensation privately.

I’ve already contacted people I know who can speak and write Mandarin, but while I await responses, perhaps some of you dear readers are interested in a full-time, work-from-home (or anywhere) position.

Do contact me if you’re interested.

Here’s another way by which Voice-over-Internet Protocol provider Skype is bridging the gap between countries and continents: Live Translation!

My thoughts posted over at ForeverGeek:

Simply put, not everyone else in the world can speak your language, nor is everyone always willing (nor readily able) to suddenly adapt overnight just to accommodate you. And I’d tend to think this is a mutual thing—you probably won’t think it’s convenient to learn Cantonese or Hmong at five minutes’ notice, would you? Nor would it be practical to start learning a foreign language just so you can converse with a friend for 30 minutes.

Skype probably realized that majority of its clients aren’t interested in chatting up the next-door neighbor or friends from the next city through its facilities—in most cases, local phone calls would be cheaper! VoIP users are likely those looking into savings from over-seas or long-distance calls.

It’s quite expensive, though, at $2.99 per minute. Hey, if you need any English-Tagalog translation, you might want to drop me a line. I’d probably be willing to do it for free, time permitting. Or for text translation, you can try Babelfish instead (Google Translate is cool, too, but it has a limited language set).