Mandarin Mashup May 11, 2012
- IMG_8156a~當年的香煙廣告板
kkfung20462046 has added a photo to the pool:
志士達道德記士多
Back to Jing’an (thoughts)
When I first moved to Shanghai, I lived in the Jing’an Temple area, behind the Portman Ritz Carlton Hotel on Nanjing Road. It was a cool place to start out my Shanghai experience, and I enjoyed my time there (even if there weren’t many good eating options nearby). I discovered the joys of Shanghai morning walks to work there, and the whole “familiar strangers” thing was interesting. Later, though, I moved to the Zhongshan Park area, where I’ve been living for about 7 years now.
photo by Neil Noland
Well, now that the AllSet Learning office has established its new office in the Jing’an Temple area, I’m spending a lot more time here, and really liking it. I can’t realistically walk to work every day anymore, but this area sure is nice to wander around in. I’ve also got new neighbors now, and it’s good to be able to more frequently see friends that live in this area. (If you live/work in the Jing’an Temple area and want to meet up and do lunch or something, get in touch!)
The move has been keeping me busy (and away from this blog), together with hiring new employees. Building my own team of passionate staff has been a really great experience, though. They say that when you start a new business, it never turns out how you expected, and while my business plan is going more or less as planned, the aspects that turn out to be the most challenging and rewarding have been surprising. Hiring, training, and building long-term relationships with Chinese staff have definitely been at the top of both the “challenging” and “rewarding” lists.
In 2007 I wrote two posts about “how I learned Chinese”: Part 1 and Part 2. I always intended to write a part 3, because I definitely feel that I’m still learning Chinese very actively after all this time, but have not yet written it because it was never clear in my mind what the next stage was, where it began, and where it ended (or will end).
It’s now clear to me that “Part 3″ was grad school in China plus work at ChinesePod, and “Part 4,” a huge new challenge, is starting and running a business in Chinese. A kind commenter, after reading through this blog’s whole 10 year archive, has recently reminded me that I’ve written very few personal articles on Sinosplice lately, and that it sort of feels like something is missing now. Well, I’m planning on writing some thoughts on these experiences soon; and hopefully my readers will find them interesting or helpful in some way.
In the meantime, friends in Jing’an should hit me up… (and I’ll be getting caught up on my email soon!)
St. Johns River swimmer speaks at Mandarin Museum and Historical Society event
St. Johns River swimmer speaks at Mandarin Museum and Historical Society event
Open-water distance swimmer Jim Alabiso speaks at the Mandarin Museum and Historical Society's Third Thursday Lecture Series at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, May 17, at the Mandarin Community Club at 12447 Mandarin Road.
Alabiso will speak about his planned 12-mile swim of the St. Johns River, starting at 6:30 a.m. Saturday, June 9 at Walter Jones Historical Park at 11964 Mandarin Road, and ending at noon at the Riverside Arts Market under the Fuller Warren Bridge. His arival will coincide with an Up the River day at RAM, with guest speakers and live music.
The 56-year-old Jacksonville man swam 3.5 miles across the St. Johns River last year, from Fleming Island to Walter Jones park, to draw attention to the river as a valuable and sometimes under-used resource in the community. The June 9 swim is also aimed at promoting awareness and conservation efforts, with the support of the St. Johns Riverkeeper, Riverside Arts Market and the YMCA, as well as other local businesses.
For more information on the Mandarin Museum and Historical Society, its historical sites or this program, call it at (904) 268-0784 or visit its website at www.mandarinmuseum.net.
New Translation Services Bridge Language Barriers - The Ledger
LOS ANGELES | A Chinese customer visited a Culver City, Calif., branch of Wells Fargo Bank recently to ask about several transactions on his checking account that didn't make sense to him.
But he spoke only Mandarin, and no one in the bank could interpret.
As the economy becomes more globalized, it's the type of problem that businesses and their customers face every day. As a result, companies that offer interpreters over the phone are in great demand by retailers, hospitals, banks, restaurants and other merchants.
Wells Fargo branch manager Maged Nashid described what happened when the Mandarin speaker showed up.
'We had a hard time communicating with him,' he recalled. 'I took the customer to my desk, gave him some water and called the 800 number for assistance.'
The toll-free number connected the bank to Language Line Services, a Monterey, Calif., interpreting service that employs more than 6,000 interpreters to translate over the phone for banks, police departments, hospitals and others. The company, which has contracts with its clients, charges by the minute.
Language Line, with annual revenue of $300 million, was founded 30 years ago and is set up to interpret 170 languages. It hopes to hire 2,000 additional translators in the coming year.
In a three-way phone call with a Mandarin interpreter on the line, Nashid was able to explain the account transactions to the customer. 'At the end of the day,' he said, 'the client was extremely happy.'
The demand for such language services has been surging in the last few years, partly because of growth in immigration to the United States in the past few decades but also because of a recent boom in international business transactions with people in such countries as China, Japan, India and South Korea.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 2,600 translation and interpreting companies make up what is estimated to be a $3 billion industry.
The number of U.S. residents who speak a language other than English at home has more than doubled in the past three decades, a pace more than four times as fast as the nation's population growth, according to a new census report analyzing language data from 1980 to 2007.
During that period, the percentage of speakers of non-English languages grew 140 percent while the nation's overall population grew 34 percent.
Moreover, the amount of foreign investments made in the U.S. tripled from 2000 to 2010, and more than 5 percent of the nation's workers are employed by firms majority-owned by foreign entities, according to the Commerce Department.
As a result, businesses that offer translating and interpreting services are expanding to meet the exploding demand.
'For every transaction out there, 1 out of 10 will be in another language,' said Louis F. Provenzano, president and chief executive of Language Line, which is one of the world's largest interpreting firms and is owned by Boston private equity firm Abry Partners. Many of the interpreters work at Language Line's Monterey, Calif., headquarters, but others work from home, providing interpreting services over the phone.
Language Line said some of the workers it plans to hire will also help staff a new service that the company hopes to debut this summer. In cooperation with a large cellphone service provider that Language Line says does not want to be identified yet, its customers will be able to push a button and instantly talk to an interpreter. The service will charge a per-minute rate that will vary depending on the language.
Competitors say they, too, are seeing an increase in business. Dina Spevack, president and founder of American Language Services in Los Angeles, said her company recently hired two staffers to help coordinate the work of more than 2,000 interpreters and translators.
'We are so slamming busy it's unbelievable,' she said.
ProTranslating, a Florida company that has offered translating and interpreting services since 1973, is expanding its in-house staff nearly 20 percent this year, general manager Natalia Sturla said.
'More and more commerce is being conducted on a global scale,' she said. 'Consumers, whether in China or the U.S. or Mexico, want to have access to the same products and the same companies.'
Besides the explosion of international transactions, interpreting companies have also seen demand surge with other economic trends, such as the increase in home foreclosures.
Language Line's Provenzano said his company recently had to shift more interpreters to handle bank calls. 'We still do a lot of foreclosures,' he said. 'For our interpreters, it is quite emotional work.'
And, he said, then there are the routine calls from police agencies and hospitals to help emergency workers communicate with non-English speakers.
Torrance (Calif.) Memorial Medical Center recently added 400 dual-handset phones, putting them next to nearly every hospital bed.
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