Tieng Viet lovers club

[jackbl]

A Tay or not a Tay?
=================================
Dear readers,

How did you celebrate National Day? Did you follow any of our guides to make the day more special?

September 2 in 1945 marks the beginning of a new era in Vietnam as President Ho Chi Minh read the Declaration of Independence at Ba Dinh Square in capital Hanoi. September 2 in 1969 marks the end of a great life by the President when he passed away after years struggling for the country’s liberty. And September 2 in 1975 marks the birth of Tuoi Tre Newspaper, without which we would not be here today talking to you about history.

After 36 years, Tuoi Tre has not been only well-known among locals but also foreigners who come to live in Vietnam. We’re always happy to listen to your frank opinions and constructive criticisms, from which we will make our newspaper better quality. Send your thoughts about us to [email protected] and we will put them up on this column. Don’t worry about privacy, you can use an alias or remain anonymous. It is your message to us that counts the most.

Acting as a bridge between locals and foreigners in Vietnam, TuoiTre News always hopes to make each side understand more about the other’s culture through our news and stories Starting last week, we have been discussing about a foreigner trying to adapt to a new country he or she lives.

American teacher and writer CG Fewston wrote us to give more tips on how he adapted to new life here. Besides learning local language and culture, Fewston also seeks more Vietnamese friends:

“My Vietnamese students have always been eager to have me join them for coffee or for karaoke or to chat on the internet. By seeking out locals rather than existing in a foreign bubble of nostalgia, I have learned to understand and respect Vietnam much more every day,” wrote Fewston.

Having lived in Vietnam for three years and a half and learned the language, Michael is supposed to get along with new life here. However, he finds it frustrated to be treated as an outsider by locals.

“[…]As a foreigner, I find it hard to integrate into Vietnamese society and be treated like a local however long I have lived here. Vietnamese cling to some stereotypes about foreigners. I cannot become a Vietnamese but I do not want to be looked at differently every time I walk on the street,” shared Michael.

He even wanted to wear a T-shirt saying ‘Please do not call me foreigner’ on the street. Crazy as his idea may sound, we understand that Michael loves the country and wants to be a part of it despite his different appearance.

Michael’s story is related to an issue of integration, which has sparked various opinions from our readers.

M.Nguyen, a Vietnamese who has lived in US for 30 years shared that she has never been considered American:

“The U.S. never considers me "American", even though I voted and paid more taxes than some/most of them. […] No one who is Asian in the U.S. will ever be considered an "American" even if they're born there. It's a fact.”

Other readers remarked about the word Tay, that it merely means ‘foreigner’ rather than any negative nuance or discrimination. C.Blank, who has lived in Vietnam for more than 10 years said he’s got used to being called foreigner:

“I am married to Vietnamese, speak fluent Vietnamese, own my house and car in Vietnam and work to earn my living in Vietnam. Yet, I am still and always will be a foreigner. […] Perhaps, it will take a few more years for you to get used to the stares but try and zone it out for your own good. You may also consider setting down roots and really integrating yourself, you will know this has truly happened when you are able to think like the locals, thus understand and accept why you and people like me are still foreigners living in Vietnam.”

In fact, expats in Japan also experience the same issue as they have been called gaijin, which means a foreigner and an outsider. In high-context societies like Japan or Vietnam where people define themselves as a part of their family, of their work team, of the society, it is really not nice to be called an outsider, someone who doesn’t belong to where they live. The word gaijin has become so sensitive and sometimes offensive to foreigners that it has been avoided on national televisions.

Other readers, what do you think? Is calling foreigners ‘tay’ or ‘tay ba lo’ politically incorrect? And if your looks are different from the locals, is it already decided that you will never be welcomed into their group?

Alright, we guess it’s enough of deep talks today. We’ll leave you some time to think about it, but do not forget to enjoy the rest of your holiday.

See you next time!

[jackbl]

Vietnamese translation service market heating up
================================================== =======
VietNamNet Bridge – The phrase “dich may” (translating with machine) cannot be found in the Vietnamese dictionary yet. However, the machine translation market has been heating up in the digital era.

A group of scientists intended to celebrate the 66th Vietnamese National Day September 2, in a special way: debuting the machine translation market. This is the group of computer programmers, born in 1982-1987, who wrote a special software piece – Bocohan. Dr Nguyen Ai Viet, the head of the group, called the software Bocohan to make the day the product was completed – December 30. On the same day in 1408, Vietnam won in the glorious fight against the Ming Dynasty’s army.

Part 1: Demand increasingly high

A student of the Hanoi Medical University said that she has to look for the reliable translators who can help translate medical professional documents from English to Vietnamese. Every member in her class has been assigned to translate a page of a book. And when all of them finish translating, the lecturer will have a book which updates all the latest healthcare achievements of the world.

However, translating healthcare documents proves to be a difficult task for many people, including students. Therefore, the medical students may pay up to 10 dollars per page to translators. However, it is very difficult to find reliable service providers.

In general, it is very costly to translate documents from English for special purposes (ESP). One would have to pay 20-30 dollars per page for translating legal documents. The translation of World Bank’s legal documents can be paid up to 60 dollars per page.

Therefore, though the translation market in Vietnam remains a fledgling, the total turnover from translation service in 2010 was still high at no less than 30-40 million dollars, according to Dr Nguyen Ai Viet, Director of the Information Technology Institute under the Hanoi National University.

Non-machine translators can’t get contracts

A question has been raised regarding who can obtain lucrative translation contracts. Viet said that the biggest piece of the cake, estimated to be worth 40-50 million dollars in 2011, falls into the hand of foreign translation companies. Why?

One may thing that foreign companies are more advantageous than domestic ones because they have more qualified translators. However, experts have affirmed that the biggest advantage that helps foreign companies inferior to domestic ones is the support of translation machines or translation software pieces.

Dr Dao Hong Thu, a well known linguist, said that the pretax profit of the global machine translation market of big translation companies alone was 13 billion dollars in 2010, while the figure is expected to be double this year.

In the digital era, translators not only use their heads in the translation work. Nowadays, most international translation companies only recruit the translators who can use the translation software pieces. Translation machines prove to be the efficient supporters who help translators increase their translation speed by 3-4 times.

“The number of translators who can use translation software account for no less than 83 percent of the total professional translators worldwide,” Dr Viet said.

Meanwhile, the non-machine translation market in Vietnam has been steadily growing with increasingly high turnover. Phuong Nam Company, for example, translates eight books a year and earns the profits of no less than 10 billion dong. However, the turnover from manual translation market proves to be too small if compared with that of the machine translation market.

The Vietnamese translation market is believed to be worth no less than 200-300 million dollars a year. However, foreign translation companies have jumped into the market for the last many years, who have obtained big contracts with big organizations and economic groups such as Samsung, Toyota, Panasonic, WB. Technique or legal documents of the institutions have never been assigned to Vietnamese groups of translators, because the groups cannot meet the requirements in quality and deliveries.

In other countries, the pay is made based on the numbers of words, while in Vietnam, the pay is calculated based on the number of pages. The Ministry of Finance is now paying 45,000 dong per page for the translation from English to Vietnamese, and 50,000 dong per page from Vietnamese to English. For the last many years, a lot of government agencies and institutions cannot find good service providers because of the overly low pay they offer.

Source: Tien phong

[VietnamLover]

Originally Posted by KangTuo

moi ngay doi voi em dieu co 1 niem vui moi.

uoc gi moi ngay em deu co anh ben canh em

anh la con duong co nhieu cay xanh va anh sang

Each day for me to have 1 new joy.

Wish one day I have you next to me.

You are the path with many trees and light.

[jackbl]

So fierce !!!!

Boy beaten to death for stealing fruits
============================================
Police in Thanh Hoa central province are investigating into the death of 15-year-old Van Dinh Hung, who was allegedly beaten to death by local resident(s) on September 4 after being found stealing guava fruits from a garden.

His family said Hung and four of his friends living in Bac Son Ward in Sam Son District came to the river for a swim. Police suspect they swam across the other riverbank to break into a garden located in Chau Chinh hamlet in Quang Chau commune to steal fruits from a guava garden.

However, local residents caught their act and chased after them. They beat and thrust Hung down into the river, police said. He died on the way to hospital.

Eyewitnesses said Hung suffered bruises on eyes, lips, legs, hands, and noses.

Police identified Nguyen Van Duong, 46, as the culprit.

An autopsy showed Hung sustained severe injuries on the temples and suffered a dent on the head.

[jackbl]

Be careful with moon cakes!
==================================
VietNamNet Bridge – Chinese traders can satisfy any demand for stuffing of moon cakes from Vietnamese producers. They can supply all kinds of stuffing of dozens of tons within 1-2 days.


Moon cake market starts early, quality is out of control

The moon cake market for this year’s mid-autumn festival has made an earlier start over last year, with higher prices due to rising input costs and soaring prices of food, rice and cooking gas, according to Tuoi Tre.

Many well-known bakeries including Kinh Do, Dong Khanh, Bibica and Thanh Long have started production for the moon festival since mid-July, two months ahead of the festival.

Most of the moon cake makers said prices this year would be 15 to 30 percent higher than last year since input cost soared.

“Flour, sugar and salted duck egg prices rose by 40 percent, 60 percent and 77 percent respectively,” Thanh Long Moon Cake Company said. Kinh Do, Bibica and Dong Khanh all announced price hikes of between 10 and 20 percent over last year, standing around VND65,000-120,000 (US$3-6) a cake.

However, prices could actually be higher as the producers have reduced the cake’s weight. A 210-g moon cake with ham, for instance, is sold at VND72,000 each, while consumers had to spend only VND66,000 for a 300-g cake of the same kind last year.

Many price hikes in essentials including rice, pork and cooking gas. Rice prices increased by 10 percent over last week, why grain prices of this year’s summer-autumn crop surged by 54 percent over last year.

The director of a Tien Giang-based rice exporter attributed the price increase to the 15-percent hike in the rice exporting contracts of the domestic rice firms. Meanwhile, prices of pork, beef and poultry meat have also surged by up to 40 percent as of August. The 12-percent increase of feed prices and the 30-percent hike in maintenance cost have sent food prices skyrocket, many producers said.

For their parts, cooking gas suppliers Saigon Petro, Petrolimex Saigon have announced a retail price increase of VND8,000 per cylinder early this week, after two reductions in the last two months. The move was made after global contract price has surged by $25 per ton.

These moon cake makers have offered many kinds of high-class moon cakes, which are priced from dozens to hundreds of US dollars/box. However, it is difficult to know whether the quality of these products is high-class or not.

Producers claim that high-class moon cakes are made from valuable materials of excellent quality, such as shark fin, bird net, abalone, etc. but the quality and the weight of moon cakes are not tightly controlled.

Most kinds of high-class moon cakes are accompanied with foreign wine or sophisticated boxes. It means that the quality of these moon cakes doesn’t depend on the cakes, but the wine or the cake box.

Before the mid-autumn festival 2007, Vu Khac Tuyen in HCM City paid nearly $800 for 36 moon cakes boxes branded Ming Dynasty of Khai Duc Company. Tuyen presented these moon cakes to his clients. However, ten days later, he got feedback that the cakes were moldy. The producer had to compensate Tuyen. Similar cases happened for many kinds of high-class moon cakes of famous brands.

The Food Hygiene Agency under the Health Ministry has launched an inspection of mooncake quality in 18 provinces and cities. However, in each province, inspectors will only test 10-40 samples of moon cakes.

Han Tu Do, Hanoi’s health inspector, said that the expiry date for sticky rice cakes is from 7 to 30 days and up to 2 months for pies. “If moon cakes are not spoiled after that date, consumers should report to competent agencies,” Do said.


Uncertified moon cake filling from China

Chinese traders offer Vietnamese moon cake producers hundreds of samples of stuffing of moon cakes. Moon-cake filling is produced in Pingxiang and transported into Vietnam through the border.

Stuffing is packed in 20kg boxes. The prices vary, depending on the quality. A Chinese trader explained that cheap stuffing is produced by private enterprises, without being certificated for quality. More expensive stuffing is produced by modern machine by big producers and it is tested for quality.

According to this trader, to prepare stuffing of moon cakes for the Vietnamese market, Chinese traders purchased materials from Vietnam many months ago. A large volume of stuffing was produced several months ago.

At this moment, stuffing of moon cakes is priced from 350 to 600 Chinese yuan per 20 kilos ($2.5-4.5/kg), if the goods are delivered at the border market. The price is 30 Chinese yuan more if the goods is delivered in Dong Dang town, in Lang Son province.

It is very simple to purchase stuffing of moon cakes from China. Vietnamese producers only need to contact and pay deposit to an intermediate in Lang Son. Stuffing will be legally or illegally transported into Vietnam by porters.

Vy Cong Tuong, vice chief of the Lang Son Customs Bureau, said that by early August 2011, four Vietnamese enterprises imported over 20 tons of powder and nearly 30 tons of stuffing of moon cakes from China. Some kinds of stuffing has an expiry date of up to six months.

Colonel Luong Minh Thao, vice head of the Police Agency on Environmental Crime Prevention, said that stuffing of moon cakes imported illegally into Vietnam may reach hundreds of tons.

The Hanoi environmental police recently seized two tons of Chinese-made moon cake fillings without clear origins and 50,000 salted duck eggs, another moon cake ingredient, which lacked invoices, labels, or food safety certificates from a house in Thuy Khe Street, Hanoi. The house is the address of a well-known moon cake maker.

PV

[yeehaa]

Yeehaa joining in the fun

[jackbl]

I wonder are they investigation or waiting for someone to hand them big ang bao to close the case

Police are investigating
===================================

If you read much English-language Vietnamese news online, you'll often read this conclusion and chuckle silently: "Police are investigating."


These are crime stories and you may imagine to yourself that police are investigating, how they're looking for clues (cue CSI: Saigon), and at what point they conclude their investigation conclusively. (There are far fewer followups in the papers.)

Police are investigating all sorts of claims.

Seriously, every quote from the police: "we are investigating". Here is a bunch of random samples from recent news articles at TuoiTre News:

- Justice official overspeeds, threatens traffic police. Police are investigating.

- A decomposing male body was found under a manhole inside the Thao Nguyen Xanh Restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City’s Binh Chanh District last Saturday when neighbors smelled a bad odor. Preliminary investigations found that the victim could be robbed and killed. Police are investigating.

- Headless body of young girl found on Saigon River. The body is decomposing. Police are investigating.

- At 7am Wednesday, a bus overturned while traveling on the National Highway 1A through Thanh Hoa province’s Tinh Gia district, injuring 30 passengers. The bus was traveling on the North-South route when it met two children walking in the opposite direction. Police are investigating.

- Mother killed, son injured on way to take exam: The mother who was said to be taking her son on motorbike to school to take a college entrance examination was hit by a trailer tractor coming from a different lane. Police are investigating.

- Four houses were destroyed in a morning fire in Ho Chi Minh City’s Tan Phu district today, leaving many people homeless... However, police said no one was killed or injured. Police are investigating.

- A truck driver who admitted to nodding off at the wheel crashed into a motorcycle on National Highway 1A in the northern province of Ha Tinh early this morning, killing an old man and severely injuring his grandson. Preliminary investigations found that Khu Hoang Long, the driver, hit some traffic cones before hitting the motorbike coming in the opposite lane. Police are investigating.

- Chemical explosion kills one at Deawoo Vietnam: Authorities said the victim could have been smoking when he opened the tank and a cigarette end could have fallen into the liquid. Smoking is banned at the site. Police are investigating.

- Kien Giang family committed suicide by fire: A couple and their 3-year-old daughter in the southern province of Kien Giang were killed in what might have been a suicide by fire early Saturday morning. Police are investigating.

- Finnish couple jumped to death in HCMC. Police are investigating.

- 39 motorbikes burnt to bones after truck fire... Police are investigating.

- A woman’s body without a head and two arms was found Friday noon at an isolated land lot in the northern city of Hai Phong. She was totally naked except for a pair of underpants. Curiosity seekers flocked to the scene, causing a huge traffic jam in the area. Police are investigating.

I feel that on top of investigating things the police should also work on preventing traffic deaths from large vehicles, apparent mass suicides, fire hazards, and bodies from going headless.

*Tomo Huynh is a Vietnamese- Japanese working in IT field

[jackbl]

Referees are swaying Vietnam’s football, say senior coaches
================================================== =======

VietNamNet Bridge – Nguyen Thanh Vinh, coach of Hoa Phat Hanoi FC, said that referees are mafia who are swaying Vietnam’s football. Le Thuy Hai, one of the most famous coaches in Vietnam, agreed with Vinh.

They both said that there are only several referees of good qualification. The remaining referees are all unqualified. Vinh and Hai’s comments fit the actual situation.

Referees showed serious mistakes in all 26 rounds of the V-League or the First Division 2011. Below are the most serious mistakes of referees:

In the 7th round of V-League at the Stadium of Vinh City, referee Ngo Quoc Hung gave the host Song Lam Nghe An (SLNA) a free penalty, though the ball did not touch the hand of halfback John Wole of Thanh Hoa FC. Finally, SLNA was the winner with three goals.

In the 12th round, Navibank Saigon’s captain Tai Em was pulled to the ground by a midfielder of the rival team in the penalty area, but referee Nguyen Van Quyet neglected it.

In the 18th round, also at the Stadium of Vinh City, referee Vo Minh Tri gave a free penalty to Hoang Anh Gia Lai, though midfielder Huy Hoang of the host team – SLNA – did not touch the ball at all.

In the 23rd round, referee Tran Cong Trong treated Hoa Phat Hanoi FC unfairly, resulting in the team’s 1-2 lose. After this game, Hoa Phat Hanoi FC stated that it wanted to leave V-League.

In the 24th round, referee Nguyen Van Quyet did not allow Binh Duong to have a penalty, though Hai Phong FC’s fault was clear. As a result, Binh Duong lost 0-1 at its home stadium.

Because of the referees’ mistakes, the results of the above matches and the fate of some FCs were directly influenced. It is said that these mistakes did not come from referees’ qualifications, but because they were bribed.

Bui Nhu Duc, member of the National Referee Council, said that wage of referees is too low. “Taxi fares from the Noi Bai airport to stadiums in the city’s hub is VND350,000, but referees are paid only VND90,000. If referees did not love their job, they would have not been referees. The pay for referees and supervisors at young football tournaments is too low. Can we be confident to fight bribery?”

Duc said that not only referees but others involved in the V-League or First Division can be “shot” by “bullets covered by money”.

In Duc’s opinion, there are enough referees and their qualifications are good, but the matter is how to urge them to give their whole mind to their job, to become professional referees.

Senior coach Le Thuy Hai, said that it is unnecessary to use referees based on their hometowns and questioned whether referees who made serious mistakes should be dismissed?

The National Referee Council has recently dismissed three referees named Tran Cong Trong, Nguyen Van Quyet and Do Quoc Hoai from the V-League and First Division tournament 2012. Trong and Quyet were accused to make unfair decisions which are unacceptable, while Hoai was said to have unhealthy lifestyle.

Coach Le Thanh Vinh, who severely criticized referee Trong Cong Trong, said: “My speech is proven to be right but it is needed to make clear mistakes of referee Trong and others. Do you believe the team of referees will be clean, with sense of justice if we dismiss three referees?”

The National Referee Coach has nominated five referees for the Golden Whistle 2011 title, including: Vu Bao Linh, Phung Dinh Dung, Nguyen Trong Thu, Vo Quang Vinh and Nguyen Phi Long. The winner will be announced on September 8.

TA

[jackbl]

F..k you, pay the road bribes
======================================
Some traffic policemen in Thanh Hoa Province blatantly demanded interest-borne bribes from truck drivers found violating road rules. And when the cops are not happy, they can resort to threatening, swearing and beating.

Traffic violations normally include overloading, speeding, driving on wrong lanes, and so on.

Tuoi Tre undercover reporters accompanied an overloaded truck carrying timber from Dak Lak to Hanoi.

At 8 pm on July 31 on National Highway 1A in Tinh Gia District, we stopped at a check point where police car 36B-1237 was being parked.

An officer, who was later identified as Nguyen Van Doi, asked truck driver Tinh “What kind of wood are you carrying?” “Jackfruit wood,” Tinh replied and handed his driver’s license and other papers, in which a VND200,000 (US$9.6) banknote was inserted, to an officer named Hai.

After inspecting the truck with a torch, officer Doi told officer Hai, “Not Jackfruit, but a kind of precious wood”. Hai then told the truck driver “You gave just VND200,000. It must be VND5 million ($240).”

When driver Tinh said he could not afford VND5 million, Hai replied “If you do not agree to the rate, I will have a higher rate for you.”

Driver Tinh lamented he has already paid a lot of money by showing officer Hai a report issued by a forestry management station in which he was fined VND20 million.

However, Hai insisted on the “road-buying fee” -- a slang for the word “bribe” -- and threatened that he would refer the truck to the Forestry Management Sub-Department for punishment.

Pay bribes in installments, with interests

As Tinh brought only VND1.1 million, he begged Hai to have him pay the bribe in installments and that he would give his driver’s license and the truck papers to Hai as security.

Officer Hai agreed but officer Doi added, “I you owe us money, you must pay us a daily interest of VND500,000 [in addition to the principal]” and handed him a sheet of paper. Doi then told the driver to write “I owe you” and sign on it.

At 9: 30 pm at another check point in the province, Tinh slipped a VND100,000 banknote to an officer who was not wearing a name tag and was standing next to patrol car No. 36B-1256.

Upon seeing the money, this officer immediately announced “How can you pay just VND100,000 for all of your truck of wood?”

Tinh explained he had paid VND5 million in the first check point. When the officer expressed disbelief, Tinh informed that officer Hai had told him not to pay much at this check point.

Immediately, the unnamed official telephoned Hai to complain something and then reluctantly received VND100,000 and let us go.

After unloading in Dong Anh District, Hanoi, Tinh called Hai, informing he would meet him to pay VND5 million and get back the papers, but Hai told Tinh to meet Doi, as he was not on duty that day.

After receiving bribe, policeman assaults driver

At 9 pm on August 1, we returned to Thanh Hoa Province and when we met Doi, Tinh asked him to reduce the ‘fee’ as VND5.5 million [including one-day interest] is too high.

But Doi refused.

After Tinh paid him the money, he asked Doi to return the “I owe you” piece of paper but Doi objected, saying he would tear up the note himself. Angry, Tinh shouted out loud “Why could you charge as much as VND500,000 as interest per day?”

At that time, Doi swore “F..k you! I will smash up your face. What a dog!”, and rushed to Tinh to beat him on the head and back.

A group of traffic policemen nearby did not intervene. Tinh eventually managed to escape.

In several trips afterwards, Tuoi Tre reporters found the same situation in Thanh Hoa Province.

On August 3, also in Ha Trung check point, an officer, without wearing a name badge, refused to receive VND50,000 and told the driver, “No need to say much. Pay enough and go. If not, stay here”.

On August 11, in Tinh Gia District, our truck carrying chieu lieu (terminalia) wood without documents was stopped by a group of policemen, one of whom - Nguyen Nhu Sang - asked the driver to pay VND12 million.

Pay or I’ll slap you

The driver begged for a lower fee but Sang indifferently announced “Pay that money or I will slap you in the face”. The driver had to pay the money to Sang.

On August 12, Tuoi Tre journalists found another truck driver giving VND200,000 to Tran Nhat Quynh, an officer at the Hau Loc District check point. This driver explained he had already paid VND1.3 million at the previous check point.

The officer then received the money but threatened, “If I meet you next time at the inner check point and you do not pay me that much, I will show you what’s what.”

A similar situation was seen in other central provinces like Quang Binh and Thua-Thien-Hue.

Not only drivers carrying wood, but those transporting fruits had to pay the bribes.

On July 29, at a check point in Tung Lam Commune, Tinh Gia District, Thanh Hoa Province, an officer without an ID badge collected VND100,000 from every driver of fruit trucks that passed by.

[jackbl]

Originally Posted by jackbl

Vietnamese translation service market heating up

Part 2: The machine translation market springs up in Vietnam
================================================== =======
VietNamNet Bridge – A lot of professional translators and interpreters swear not to use translation machines, because they believe that the grey matter in translators’ heads is considered the most important thing in the job. However, they may change their mind in the near future.

The Vietnamese translation market is believed to be worth no less than 200-300 million dollars a year. However, the biggest pieces of the cake, according to analysts, have fallen into the hands of foreign companies.

In principle, domestic companies and freelance translators can expect to find clients from state agencies or organizations. However, it is always difficult for the organizations to find good translators because of the low fees they offer.

After many years of keeping the same translation rates at 45,000-50,000 dong per page, the Ministry of Finance has decided to raise the rates to 70,000 dong and 90,000 dong for English-Vietnamese and Vietnamese-English translation, respectively. Besides, it is also offering different rates which are well higher – 140,000 dong per page for English-Vietnamese, and 150,000 dong for Vietnamese-English.

These rates prove to be closer to the market prices at 7 dollars and 10 dollars per page. Dr Viet said he cannot understand why there exist such different rates.

A lot of professional translators and interpreters swear not to use translation machines, because they believe that the grey matter in translators’ heads is considered the most important thing in the job. Meanwhile, people also do not believe in translation machines.

However, it is now the time for Vietnamese people to get enlightened, as the importance of machine translation has been recognized for the last half a century in the world.

Dr Viet, who heads a big information technology center belonging to one of the biggest universities in Vietnam, has been joining forces with his team to write a translation software piece, hoping to create the most reliable translation machine in Vietnam.

“Our software piece is altogether different from Google in both the procedure and quality,” Viet said confidently.

“No one can understand the Vietnamese language better than Vietnamese people,” Viet said. “Therefore, information technology is just a tool to create the software piece. The quality of machine translation is decided by the quality of the language support software,” he continued.

The National Translation & Interpretation Center under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has ordered the English-Vietnamese translation machine with the group of scientists headed by Dr Viet. The translation machine has been built up with the total cost of 100,000 dollars.

In fact, the English-Vietnamese translation machine of Google is just priced at less than 10 million dong, but it cannot provide the things Vietnamese people need.

Viet said that with the “effective weapon” – the translation machine – he feels confident in any competition with other rivals. The machine allows translators to increase the translation speed by three times, while ensuring the high quality of services.

Dr Viet has revealed that he has accepted a job of translating for the Ministry of Information and Communication at the very competitive rates of 100,000-150,000 dong per page. It did not take Viet much exertion with the job, because Viet has the excellent translation machine.

The scientist has invested 600,000 dollars to design the two-way (English-Vietnamese and Vietnamese-English) translation support system. The system made debut in 2009 which has been upgraded regularly.

Viet is cherishing a plan to organize a machine translation trade fair to talk about the machine translation market in Vietnam. The special market has been scheduled to open in September, when Vietnam celebrates the 66th anniversary of the National Day.

However, Viet admitted that people still keep indifferent to translation machines. A project on creating a translation machine which can give support in translating six main languages in the world has been put forward, which may cost 1.5 million dollars, has not been welcomed.

Source: Tien phong

[KangTuo]

last few days, i suppose to be in thailand and to call or sms a vb here in silllypore but i was actually enjoying in vn. i recieve few sms from this vb but i don't know some words from this sms

"moi ngay dc ox dt nt wen roi bg ko co ox roi bx cam thay trong trai lam. ox ko them dy nt hoi gio nay bx dang o dau lam gi. bx nho ox phat khung luon roi ne."

today i just came back, i called and found out she is playing billard with 2 customer/friends. I told her if the customer never give money, she should go home starightaway (angrily) as she told me before that whoever bring her out must give money. The guys give her $100 and she took taxi back.

kt: tai sao bx di choi ma kg di lam? ox buon bx vi bx bit hnay ox di ve ma con di choi. ng ta co cho tien kg?
vb: hnay la bx ru ngta di choi nen ko lay tien.
kt: bg di xin tien roi di ve nha. di lam kg di lam ma di choi hoai. ox buon bx
vb: ox dung nhu vay dc ko? bx biet loi roi ma
kt: nt hoai. bg xin tien di ve chua?
vb: bx nho ox.. ox ve roi keu bx lam gi bx cung lam het. ngta cho $100.
vb: hwa bx lai uong bia say roi wa ben joo chiat online 1minh, ko thay ox len mang bx ngoi trong internet khoc, ox dau co bt may chuyen do, ox chi bt trach bx di choi voi ngta thoi

later she get in taxi, we exchange few sms

vb: hnay bx ko trang diem, ng chay taxi noi bx giong ng hoa, ko giong ng vietnam.
kt: ban ox noi bx giong "xiao la jiao (chilli padi) ".. "ut nho" vi bx o cho lam danh nhau
bv: Sax, bx dau co hung du dau ma dat ten xiao la jiao.

any bro to help the highlighted words?

[jackbl]

Bro, u just came back, too tired to check dictionary but can stay awake till 5am to post here????

[ilovedoggie]

how to say:

your place is very noisy. i cannot hear you properly.

thanks.

[KangTuo]

Originally Posted by ilovedoggie

how to say:

your place is very noisy. i cannot hear you properly.

thanks.

hopes it not too late to translate...

cho lam em om som wa. a kg dc nghe j het.
your work place very noisy/loud. i cannot hear a thing

[KangTuo]

Originally Posted by jackbl

Bro, u just came back, too tired to check dictionary but can stay awake till 5am to post here????

you know my my stored how many sms from this vb or not. need to clear up daily to free memory space. sms deleted from my phone. now i will check dictionary. don't scold leh