Language Professionals are one answer - Re: [luau] our economy

[Roderick Gammon, Ph.D. (AEG, Inc)]

Aloha-

Language services is one area where Hawaii has a good lead.  Note I recently
graduated from UH East Asian Languages (Chinese) and teach at KCC, so I'm
very biased on this issue.  But! A large and ethnically diverse population,
not horrible time zone placement, a bunch of respected campuses, and
broadband connections makes for interesting opportunities in language
services.  

Although no one in the media seems to care, UH and UH CC campuses are
extremely credible language training centers.  UH EALL recently got an NSEP
designation from the feds, only four or so universities got one.  There's
also a National Foreign Language Resource Center, prestigious too.  Maybe I
shouldn't admit it, but this is a big grudge- the news always has the latest
lab coat fantasy in the spotlight, but rarely mentions the small army of
language researchers that publish and work day in and day, for decades at
the top of the field. (When I started at UH, it was one of only a few in the
whole world offering a Ph.D. in Chinese).

There's definitely a lot of work going on in distance education.  Stop by
KCC Sat. 2/22 morning for Hawaii Association of Language Teachers and see
what's going on.  Or right now check out my own work at
http://www.asialanguage.com/ocelot/ (hosted by the very credible, local
OhanaNet that uses Open Source).  This summer there will be a conference
just on Chinese Language Materials!

Throw into that all the talent because of the intelligence market, and you
can see how how big it is.  In fact there was WorldPoint, once covered by
Wired, but now bust.  I myself proofread English documents written by
Chinese authors and it's all done via the wire.

The language service market is also open to Open Source.  Cash is tight,
we're generally educated professionals open to a merits-based argument, and
politically many in the academic segment just distrust large corps like
Microsoft.  

As for legislation- here's what language services (and tech consulting)
needs to take off- - ** exempt consulting from the GET ** Only two states in
the union tax consulting income such as tech support and translation.  Whip
out a slide rule, give yourself an extra $0.04 on each dollar and then
figure out the GET all the stuff you'd buy with that! (plus the hired
clerks, delivery people... you know the drill...)

Oy!
Rod G
______________________________________________________________
Roderick A. Gammon, Ph.D.
- Specializing in Chinese Languages and Language Technology