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"But after a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, American combat units appear to be just as dependent on external interpreters as they were going in." Back

by VLM 12y ago

"But after a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, American combat units appear to be just as dependent on external interpreters as they were going in." Back in '01, had a .mil security clearance in the 90s and was dumb enough to think I could learn Arabic as kind of a moonlighting job, that dotcom bubble wasn't looking so hot anymore, but, why bother, just like the first gulf war we'll be outta there in less than a year so I won't have enough time to learn Arabic. That being 14 years ago... An interesting startup idea would be shaking up existing translation services. It would be difficult and non-trivial. Ideal startup field!

pimlottc 12y ago
> An interesting startup idea would be shaking up existing translation services. It would be difficult and non-trivial. Ideal startup field! I'm not really sure what you mean by this. Many tech-oriented small companies and startups have already come and gone in the translation field. It is indeed difficult and non-trivial.
Sakes 12y ago
Here is one. If this is the company I was originally thinking about, they make their money by having their recently educated users translate documents from the learned language into their native dialect. https://www.duolingo.com/ https://www.duolingo.com/
- prawn 12y ago
  DuoLingo is great, but very easy to fall out of the process. I think gaining fluency in another language is a very practical and even romantic notion. There'd be millions of people willing to pay $x00 to gain fluency if it was low effort or smartly accelerated - I'd be one of them. But the consistent time and effort required for now is evidently too much. Hopefully someone thinks outside of the box and breaks open the game. Maybe AR where you're paired with a native speaker or even an avatar of one. Or an app that reads you word/phrase reminders throughout the day via headphones, so you are semi-immersed for 12 hours rather than dedicated for 30 minutes.

by VLM 12y ago

pimlottc 12y ago

> An interesting startup idea would be shaking up existing translation services. It would be difficult and non-trivial. Ideal startup field! I'm not really sure what you mean by this. Many tech-oriented small companies and startups have already come and gone in the translation field. It is indeed difficult and non-trivial.

Sakes 12y ago

Here is one. If this is the company I was originally thinking about, they make their money by having their recently educated users translate documents from the learned language into their native dialect. https://www.duolingo.com/ https://www.duolingo.com/

prawn 12y ago
DuoLingo is great, but very easy to fall out of the process. I think gaining fluency in another language is a very practical and even romantic notion. There'd be millions of people willing to pay $x00 to gain fluency if it was low effort or smartly accelerated - I'd be one of them. But the consistent time and effort required for now is evidently too much. Hopefully someone thinks outside of the box and breaks open the game. Maybe AR where you're paired with a native speaker or even an avatar of one. Or an app that reads you word/phrase reminders throughout the day via headphones, so you are semi-immersed for 12 hours rather than dedicated for 30 minutes.