Lately there’s been some apprehension, among us foreign language teachers, about Rosetta Stone.  Some people I’ve spoken to openly worry that, some day, they’ll be replaced by computer software.

“Well,” I say to them, “Welcome to the world”.

But one way to deal with evolution is to evolve along with it and, bottom line, if you get to be very good at what you do, it will be difficult to replace you, no matter how many engineers and software designers they assign to the cause.

Let’s look at another field and another type of occupation, the TV studio cameraman (this term refers to women as well, I like genders and I don’t like neutering).  Cameramen are smart people; they have to zoom, pan, focus, read scopes and adjust light levels while taking chaotic directions by often-overcaffeinated TDs and directors.

But their particular assignment remained fairly constant; there wasn’t much variation to what they did day-to-day; and that makes them easy prey to the designers and engineers assigned to replace them with robotics.

But many of these cameramen did not become discouraged.  Unlike computers, humans can reprogram themselves by themselves.  And they did.  They became Steadycam operators, where everything was suddenly more complex and difficult.  Steadycam people are used in all types of production, including movies; it will be much harder to replace them with robots.

Which brings me back to Rosetta Stone; they base their teaching on a very simple premise: that all of us, as children, learned how to read and write our own native language by associating words with pictures.

And their software is loaded with words and pictures and you can see how the whole process really works, especially with beginner students.

But like the scope of the studio cameraman, their whole outreach is limited.  There just isn’t very much in the way of nuance, complexity and sophistication.  If you ask Rosetta to show you See Spot Run, she’ll show you See Spot Run.

But ask her why in certain languages and in certain cases, the subjunctive verb tense is preferable to the present and you will See Rosetta Run.  Like a deer in the headlights…..

As I see it, the next wave of foreign language instructors will be specialists, teachers who can fulfill a student’s need to zero in on a particular subject.  We will have Mandarin medical tutors,

French finance tutors and Arabic accounting tutors.

And if these people are good at what they do, no amount of Rosetta (or any other kind of software) will be able to replace them.

Of course, these establishments all still pay rent, utilities, and the various expenses associated with operating a business. Most of the best restaurants are also closed, and if you can find one that is open you get the impression that the waiters’ minds are still somewhere partying in Greece with their friends, or off at the Tuscan summer house that has been in the family for 3 generations while they serve food in a trance-like state.

Enter dichotomy number 1: Work vs. Bella Vita (beautiful life), or the old adage that Italians work to live, while we Americans live to work. Ferragosto, siesta and other old-world tenets are great on one hand – a kind of sociopolitical forced period of relaxation, a collective nap or vacation. To put it in perspective, Ferragosto is as sacred as a Sunday is in the US. The downside is that accomplishing simple tasks, such as finding lunch, or shopping, can become very difficult.

The other dichotomy that stood out was Service vs. Culture. While this seems a strange pairing, I assure you, for the most part customer service in Italy is completely contrary to the culture. I have heard anecdotes of why Americans “hated Italy” and usually it comes down to “a rude man” working at the information booth in the train station saying “Go away! No English.” I had a few experiences on my last trip that made me astutely aware of this phenomenon. Indeed the worst experiences are always, incredibly, with the very people hired to help foreigners. Let me give you the play by play of my experience:
1) to get a duty free refund you need to visit the customs office and get a stamp. Simple enough. I tried doing this in Spain and they very nicely told me I needed to accomplish this in Italy. (My final European departure city)
2) I find the customs office “Dogana Roma II Sezione Viaggiatori” at Fiumicino in Rome, no line, door open, so I walk in and am immediately yelled at in English “Read the sign! Stop! Read the sign!” a middle-aged woman was screaming at me as if I had mugged her. Another man in the office seems to tell her to calm down and she immediately tells him (in Italian) “no, exuse me, but why do we have a sign then if people don’t read it?”

3) I stop and read the multiple signs. Please note the photos below and imagine that this is your 1st step in boarding for a 24 hour trip.

1st sign at the Dogana

And here is another, just in case your weren’t confused yet.

dogana di roma sezione viaggiatori scritto malissimo

And then just in case you don’t speak English here are the other “signs” professionally translated for your convenience.

Dogana Fiumicino Disorganizato

After reading the signs I answered in Italian, “This isn’t worth the 30 Euros, thanks anyway!” and the other gentleman told me that all I had to do was go get a boarding pass and return. Upon my return I there were now two Korean women and the incredibly ticked-off customs worker waiting outside the door. I asked the other tourists what was happening and they explained that they were told to wait outside while the “floors dried.” When it was my turn to enter I made the mistake of trying to advise the “travelers division” of Italian customs on how to make it better for travelers.

I asked her if I could make a suggestion; her eyes widened. I said that she was obviously having trouble making people wait outside and that a simple sign in English saying “wait here” and another saying “get boarding pass first” would do the trick. She answered, “you want another sign?! In italy a yellow line means stay back! You want..” I left before getting yelled at too much. Of course, this experience left me angry and upset with the woman, the state employee, and by default Italy and Italian culture. I couldn’t help it. This was such a blatant example of how Italy doesn’t work. Government jobs, bad customer service, no recourse. She was happy hating her job and happy doing a disservice to people. She had found a way to make her position much more complicated and intense than just stamping a pice of paper. So that was one side of the dichotomy, the Service side specifically – so where does the culture part come in?

After getting on the plane and settling down for a long direct flight to LA, I was surprized to find a few bottles of open wine made available to the cabin about half way through the flight. As I poured myself my second cup of vino rosso I smiled and realized that Italian culture is about give and take. It isn’t America, and the open wine solidified that fact. From the airport to the plane I had experienced the yin and Yang of Italian culture. The love/hate relationship that anyone who knows Italy well experiences.

Vino su Alitalia

Her English isn’t great, and typically I associate a knowledge and understanding of culture with competency in  a langauge. I am expressing that she is very French: she approaches american culture with a sense of awe, amusement, and sometimes reproach.  I find it amusing to see Europeans’ reactions to American culture in real-time. At the Albertson’s in Los Feliz she stares at the pre-cut fruit section, the bags and trays and containers of neatly cut fruit and brightly colored smoothies. She remarks, “so much plastic no?” I simply laugh, feeling that our culture of excess is something that we cannot escape.

It reminds me of when I was “fresh of the boat” from living in Italy for 8 years and suddenly found myself confronted with Panda Express. I remember how quickly I went from a state of utter disgust to eating it daily at the UCLA food court.

This all brings me to the revelation that occurred on our trip to Venice that afternoon and the subsequent term that was coined. When European tourists visit the US for extended periods of time they often let their culinary guard down. They are not accustomed to what many americans, especially californians, practice; self-imposed moderation. Visitors from abroad succumb to our most aggressive ads, or largest portions and our most hydrogenated fats. Gaining, as it was identified that day, the “foreigner fifteen”

for more info check this link:

http://cocoperez.com/2010-05-18-gap-to-enter-italy

If you are like me and are an Xcel jockey, or at least feel like one, and need to frequently copy large swaths of cells without altering the references; here are the 4 easy steps.

1) highlight the area you want to copy
2) click Edit and select Replace
3) In the “Find What” field enter “=” and in the replace “#” or any another symbol that isnt in any of your formulas. Basically, this will stop the references from being references, i.e. =page2!l3 becomes #page2!L3 and you can move it around without excel automatically changing it.
4) copy and paste the formulas where you want them and then reverse the process – select the area, click Edit and select Replace, but this time enter “#” in the “Find What” and enter “=” in the replace. Voila!

Our Experience Working with an Online Casino Company

Strømmen does a lot more than teach languages privately, recently a funny thing happened that made me realize how technology has changed the way businesses operate and the need for the services that we provide. A few years back Strømmen began working for a company (which shall remain unnamed) that makes virtual slot machine software. We first started our working relationship with a fellow in Ohio that needed a few video games translated into Italian. Being my fortè I handled the text strings personally, learning a lot of Italian gambling terminology in the process. Based on our good work, we soon followed up with German, Norwegian and Swedish for the company’s entire game line-up. I found the idea of localizing these games very exciting; an unspoken collaboration that would make our client’s games more successful in smokey Norwegian cafes, swedish dive bars, and Italian game rooms.
Over the years we have continued to help the company both attract more clientele through professional email translation, and more users, through video-game translation. One day I received an email asking if I could do an in-person interpretation for a SKYPE teleconference. I was a little taken aback, because I believed this company to be based in Ohio and explained that I didn’t think the session to be feasible. I was surprised to find out that another employee of the company worked from home only a few blocks from my office in Los Angeles. This international software development team is spread across the globe working from home offices. The internet allows for an almost surreal amount of coincidence, our services being found through a new york web-posting by a client in Ohio, eventually leading me to an in-person meeting 5 minutes away. I guess the moral of this story is that the world is small, and the internet allows for more opportunities to for that to be realized.
One day, while trying to compose a complete invoice, I had a difficult time pulling up an address, and decided to use the email address, name, and phone number instead.