Osugi Sakae

I just learned about Translation Party from this article on BBspot, so I went over to try it out.

Translation Party is an interesting idea and pretty cool to play with. The idea is to translate an English sentence into Japanese, take the resulting Japanese sentence and translate it back into English, and repeat this until the results “reach equilibrium”. Equilibrium is when the English in and English out match. It doesn’t have to be the original English, just any E1 -> J -> E2 where E1 and E2 are the same.

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Who, outside of your immediate family, has had the biggest influence on your success in life? It is probably your teachers and coaches.

Peers, of course, also have a huge influence on young people, but not in an organized or necessarily positive way. Good teachers work hard to positively influence their students while equipping them with the knowledge and skills they will need to succeed in life.

Teaching and education are long-term investments; yet teacher incentives, when they exist at all, are usually short-term and often actually just the lack of a punishment — like loss of funding or cancelled programs. All stick, no carrot.

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