Computer and electronic translations: how accurate are they?

November 24, 2013 / Posted in  Critical Thinking, Critical Writing, Education, Ethics, Intellectual Property rights, Interpretation, Investigation, Language, Perú, Research, Third World nations

Index

•     I. Introduction
•    II. Antithesis
•   III. Testing the thesis
•   IV. Investigation and research
•    V. Thesis
•   VI. Addressing the problem of Tradumatica
•  VII. Direction and focus
• VIII. Summary
•   IX. Recommendations
•    X. Bibliography
•   XI. Web links annotated
•  XII. End Notes

I.  Introduction

I was reading a student essay in the eighth cycle at a university in Perú where I have taught for several disappointing and discouraging years.  To my dismay, after having the son of an evangelical minister complain when I failed his paper that was 100% plagiarized, his lamentation equaling that of the other student. Both young people attempted to justify the theft of intellectual property by stating that he had been taught that in the local schools.  Their defense of their own theft I found to be true after visiting seven of them beginning with the male student’s school.

The teachers (a word that has lost all significance and meaning) at each of the schools confirmed the veracity of my students claim.  Each teacher, when speaking slowly and carefully (most teachers in Perú have difficulty with Spanish but speak a dialect known as Castellaño) by stating “everybody does it”. This had been brought to me the previous semester where I failed a female student in her eighth cycle before she could move on to write a bachelor thesis, with her mother verbally attacking the Academic Dean that plagiarism is part of the Perú culture, while her daughter made regular attacks on the office of the regional president demanding a high grade since she “paid the tuition” and was entitled to pass, disparaging my education as non-existent, pontificating that I had never published anything, and arguing against my academic fitness to teach in a private university that ranks in the 4000-level of academic excellence.

The teachers in Chiclayo who favored me with a few moments of their time before racing out the door, and some hoping on to a motorcycle to move as quickly as possible to their next school to teach English and hopefully feather together enough hours to buy the weeks food and pay utilities and other bills, noted  that they kept their jobs by “pushing (sic) out students to keep their jobs”.  More discouraging than that I discovered to my regret that many had found illustrations or short essays I had the good fortune to have published years ago (to which I still retain copyright ownership) and mass produced the most puerile pictures used to illustrate my texts for their students and themselves, with few knowing basic phonics and a smaller number having a modest command of grammar.

I had grown accustomed to see charts, diagrams, even texts I had written on the internet, but not in the quantity I became familiar with in Perú.  For this reason, this rampant disregard and theft of my intellectual property and assault on my own economic well-being (I cannot collect royalties from stolen goods) I have lost all interest in writing, investigating, research and submitting material for peer review and eventual publication as I could see no good in the strain and effort.  Being officially retired in the USA, I depend on my writing to allow me a semblance of life I knew in Iowa, Texas and Florida where I worked before moving to Perú.

Perú came as a surprise: the government spends less than 3% of its GDP on education, utilities are nearly non-existent (it is common for a family to have a utility bill of S/.14 to .40, while mine is seldom less than S/.230 as I have a refrigerator, a water heater–most Peruvians take cold showers–an electric oven, television, computer, printer, etc.) while paying government representatives (Congresistas who, like the USA Congress that elects exterminators of rodents, actors, and movie stars, include actresses, movie stars, volleyball players, etc, who win a seat and are paid their salary for life while the poor suffer, remain uneducated, and have little health care) who do little while in office, with some, such as Martha Chavez sit on the Perú Human Rights Commission yet were the loudest supporters of Alberto Fujimori and his assassin squad Las Colinas, while further fattening a bloated military and police force. Then, too, education in the USA has been dying for some time given the rape of public education in favor of supporting tuition vouchers for private education usually operating only for the profit or to indoctrinate children into the world of fantasies of political and religious groups.¹

The one thing I retained was critical thinking and a careful attention to scientific writing and analysis.  The world I knew (the USA) was no paradise, as it continues to have an increasing crime rate,² a rocketing rate of poverty³ while the middle class disappears⁴ into the burgeoning bungalow of poverty, as the major corporations pay no taxes being given incentives to expand but without expanding jobs and make up 53% of the population (the lower 47%, composed of the elderly, the working poor in dead-end jobs at minimum wage such as at McDonald’s where their take-home pay barely  pays or does not pay for basic rent), pay the least taxes but at the same time have the lowest income), yet are able to buy elections because of the ignorance of the US Supreme Court who ruled in favor of the super-rich in Citizens United v. FCE.⁵ has become a world of thievery and theft is so common that common criminals like Aaron Schwartz⁶ are hailed as heroes making copyrighted material “public to the masses” have gained momentum with the rise of Anonymous hackers (fortunately many, such as the guerrilla terrorist Jeremy Hammond⁷  are being sent to prison for a maximum of ten years, while I argue that hackers should be given longer sentences).  Furious at such a travesty of education that, not only in Perú where it is rampant in the worse schools and universities (especially the private schools and universities in the provinces) but elsewhere, while the world becomes poor for it.

 

II.  Antithesis

I wrote the student, a personable young woman who has never contributed one question for inquiry or discussion, never came to one class I was teaching in Academic Writing, never handed me a mandatory weekly revision of a ten page project (the first two pages being reserved for the title page, followed by six pages of content focused on a single researchable topic, followed by a bibliography of source material in at least two languages, and a final page of citations and appendix), did not defend her project (neither the nature nor the title was ever turned in as required on the syllabus) or take the final examination, thereby earning an non-recoverable grade of zero for the second parcial, out of three required for the course: “(your paper) … appears to have come off of a computer translator.  I am familiar with Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, and the majority of its users present incorrect translations, as with this passage⁸:

El procés de traducció en la societat del coneixement es desenvolupa mitjançant l’ús de l’ordinador i de les eines de traducció assistida per ordinador. De fet, les mateixes tecnologies han generat la necessitat de traduir una gran varietat de formats digitals que només es poden traduir amb l’ajuda d’eines i recursos informàtics específics. El domini d’aquestes eines, per exemple, resulta imprescindible en qualsevol àmbit de la traducció especialitzada (traducció cientificotècnica o jurídica, per exemple). En aquest context, el mercat laboral actual demana traductors familiaritzats amb l’ús d’eines de traducció assistida per ordinador i amb els nous formats digitals.

I informed the unqualified, lackadaisical, listless student who refuses to stir, read a book or article, and avoids the library (that, in fairness, is limited at best), is ill-prepared for anything even close to academic attainment but continues at the university because she does pay tuition, with bellowing preachifications inflamed by the local student conspiracy theorist who is clinically, certifiably psychopathic schizophrenic⁹ with a lengthy record of besieging the rector’s office¹⁰ when not sleeping on the couch in front of his office, that using Google (and other) computerized translators to rendered render a language into another was not only absurd by a disservice to genuine intellectual knowledge and a full understanding text worthy of being used in negotiation, international business and governmental work toward universal good and competency. What is worse with computerized and other e-format translations is that each present a childish collage of gibberish language maleficent of any value or importance.  In an attempt to prove my thesis, I sent the student in question a Google Translation ¹¹ rendering of the cited passage:

The trial by traducció in the coneixement societat is desenvolupa mitjançant ús l’i l’ordinator traducció eines them assistida per ordinator. Fet, we have generat tecnologies mateixes the necessitat of traduir a varietat of formats digitals that is pruned traduir nomes amb l’Ajuda d’eines i informàtics específics resources. The domini d’aquestes eines, per exemple, is essential in the traducció àmbit qualsevol especialitzada (traducció scientifictechnical or legal, per exemple). In aquest context, the current labor Mercat familiaritzats traductors demana amb l’ús assistida traducció d’eines per ordinator i amb els nous digitals formats.

 

This is a combination of English (not italicized and in blue), Spanish (italicized and black), Latin (purple), German (red), Catalan (a dialect in Spain is maroon), Portuguese (in turquoise), Italian (amber) and French (in green).  No one could possibly understand it.

 

III.  Testing the thesis

Exhausted from the reading, I recalled one of the best and most competently crafted refutations of this apostasy of language by one of the world’s leading linguists: Umberto Eco, the Italian Professor of Semiotics at Bologna University. Widely hailed for his insightful essays, including Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language,¹² The Limits of Interpretation,[13. Eco, Umberto (1994). The Limits of Interpretation. Indianapolis, IN, USA: Indiana University Press.]  Kant and the Platypus,¹³ Travels in Hyper-reality,¹⁴ The Search of the Perfect Language,¹⁵ Serendipities,¹⁶ and Six Walks in the Fictional Woods,¹⁷ Eco relates in his Mouse or Rat? Translation as Negotiation: “I accessed Babelfish, the automatic translation system provided by Alta Vista.¹⁸ I entered into this computer translator a series of English expressions and asked the system to translate them into Italian.  Then I asked Alta Vista to re-translate the Italian expressions back into English.  Only in the last case did I follow a more complicated path, that is: English-Italian-German-English.  Here are the results:¹⁹

1. The works of Shakespeare → Gli impianti di  Shakespeare → the plants of Shakespear.
2. Speaker of the chamber of deputies →Altoparlane dell’alloggiamento dei delegati → Loudspeaker of the lodging of the delegates.
3. Studies in the logic of Charles Sanders Peirce →Studi nellalogica delle sabbiatrici Peirce del Charles → Studies in the logic of the Charles of sanders paper grinding machines Peirce.

Eco is one of the most competent translators in the world, and has accepted lucrative commissions to render texts into various languages.  He became avidly concerned when one text was so implausible that he felt that it was necessary to requested a copy of an English text that an Italian publishing house was rendering into Italian to discern what was correct when reading that a team of young scientists who were commissioned to discover and determine the “secrets of atoms” and were, according to the Italian translator, initiating their work by performing corse di treni (it translates as train races).  Eco discovered that the English text had training courses that makes more sense given the mission and the fact that USA tax payers were paying for the work. So infuriated was Eco that “(a)s soon as I received the English original I saw that I was right, and I did my best to get the translator fired immediately.”²⁰

Eco possessed that power, coupled with reason, excellent articulation, and an accuracy of statement that few would fault him. In Perú, and elsewhere, unless the proof-translator had an international reputation for excellence, that would not happen, but the proof-translator would be ordered to be quiet and the bad-translators promoted to a teaching position.

Appraising my young student, rereading her plagiarism, and being told that her teacher (whom I have had the misfortune of knowing for many years, and met at Universidad Católica Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo (USAT) where is wife worked in the Library, and continue to be stupefied that he ever was granted a teaching position when his command of the English language is at best bargain basement in quality) was instructing her to use an electronic translator (she has, at best, marginal to submarginal skills in the field of translation). I feared frantically for the future of Perú.

 

IV.  Investigation and Research

Curious to see how other on-line translators handled the task of translation, I went next to On-line translator²¹ the new version of PROMPT’s electronic translator, and typed in: And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you.  Note the difference in Matthew 26:27 και λαβων το ποτηριον και ευχαριστησας εδωκεν αυτοις λεγων πιετε εξ αυτου παντες. It is not redacted from Mark but from 1 Corinthians 11:25 ωσαυτως και το ποτηριον μετα το δειπνησαι λεγων τουτο το ποτηριον η καινη διαθηκη εστιν εν τω εμω αιματι τουτο ποιειτε οσακις αν πινητε εις την εμην αναμνησιν as its source but not faithfully translated in the Matthew account. This has as its antecedent Exodus 24:8  וַיִּקַּ֤ח מֹשֶׁה֙ אֶת־הַדָּ֔ם וַיִּזְרֹ֖ק עַל־הָעָ֑ם וַיֹּ֗אמֶר הִנֵּ֤ה דַֽם־הַבְּרִית֙ אֲשֶׁ֨ר כָּרַ֤ת יְהוָה֙ עִמָּכֶ֔ם עַ֥ל כָּל־הַדְּבָרִ֖ים הָאֵֽלֶּה׃ that reflect a throwing²² of the blood, not passing a cup. None of the on-line translators could handle, much less improvise a translation from the ancient languages and thus negated the philological antecedents for words that have dramatically and dangerously changed to please prurient interests.

To verify the accuracy of the translations, I resent a modified Spanish translation. On-line sent back: Y cuando había tomado una taza y había dado gracias, se la dio, diciendo, “Bebida de ella, todos ustedes; then, following Eco’s example, returned the Spanish requesting an English translation, and read: And when it had taken a cup and had thanked, it gave it to itself, saying, “her Drink, all of you. Following that conflagatorial scintillation, I then requested the electronic translator to metamorphose the message from Spanish into Russian. The computer sent back the exotic elucidation: И когда он взял чашку и поблагодарил, он дал ее ему, говоря, “Напиток ее, Вы все, that was then transfigured into German: Und wenn er die Tasse genommen hat und hat gedankt, er hat sie ihm gegeben, sagend, “ihr Getränk, Sie aller. In an attempt to recapture the original English, I instructed the computer to return an English rendition.  It responded: And if he has taken the cup and has thanked, he has given them to him, saying, “her drink, you everybody.

I tried FreeTranslation ²³ next and put in the same original biblical line: And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. Typing in instructions to translate it into Portuguese, I read: E quando ele havia tomado um copo, e deu graças, partiu-o e deu-lho, dizendo: “Bebei dele todos vós. Requesting it translate the Portuguese into French, I was refreshed with: E poignée ele havia um tomado copoh, e deu graças, partiu-o e deu-lho, dizendo: “Bebei dele todos vós–that is actually Portuguese.  When I requested that the computer recognize the Portuguese and replace it with English, it came back with: And he was a poignée copoh taken, and gave thanks, broke it, and gave unto them, saying, “Drink ye all of it.  Asking for a German translation, the system brought up Microsoft Translator²⁴ that turned the phrase into: Nehmen und diese Tasse ist mein Blut zu trinken. It translates, according to the computer, as: Take and this cup my blood is to be drunk.  More complex sentences became jokes at best, with bread translated as meat (and even dead meat!), with Eco’s “training course” becoming, in machine-matched German as Larkers,  and in Russian as обучение курса that translates into English as training of a rate.

 

V.  Thesis

For teachers to use this absurd electronic / computer-translation method because it is “current” or the “wave of the future” is not only academic fraud but wastes students time and money.  They teachers must be fired, the governing body must step in and strip the universities and schools of their accreditation, and these pathetic programs stopped.

No machine translation can replace human translation. Electronic translations have zero value, are wrong not only marginally, but because of their programming based on separative cognitive factors lack all sense of conjectures and context reading. Mechanical translation is a significant sore on the heart of translation and a disservice to the user and to education in general.  What is even worse is that the departments/schools or divisions of languages that hire teachers to lecture on this barren carcass cannibalized by a crass lack of attention to quality have totally incompetent administrators and teachers who teach only by the hour and class and then move on to another school to piece together a basic living since few teachers are employed for full-time as it would require the school to pay a living wage.

It is time that the calloused carnivorous corrupt congresses feeding frenziedly from Washington DC to Lima, Perú on the sweat of the poor, the dwindling middle class, the laborers who work so that the idle rich can play realize what a waste of money and time this erstwhile exercise of pushing impervious, impracticable, impractical, inaccessible, transitory toys on to a public that needs better schools, roads, hospitals, homes, and honest representatives who truly represent the people and not their vested interests.  It is time that the bells and whistles of fantasy-land are silenced, that libraries filled with real books are built and teachers are paid a living wage that allows them to teach, not travel between temporary classes, and have sufficient resources to study more, investigate, research and write for the betterment of all people.   What occurs now with novel ideas that have been proven to be less capable than the challenged human mind to translate and understand needs, goals, interests, ideas, and reality.

Money that could be used to improve education within each nation is wasted on inessential military exercises and military chaplaincies that push pantheons of idiocy and promises of a final battle, while and national police who openly accept and/or demand bribes, purifies itself and increases the amount spent on education (at present, in Perú, the amount spent on education of the nation’s citizens’ education is under 3% GNP).  Perú and the USA could learn from the excellent example of Ecuador’s savant president Rafael Correa who closed fourteen failing degree mills masquerading as universities (known as “garage universities” with more than 38,000 students who remained illiterate) to enrich their founders.²⁵

Correa pushed for higher standards, rather than the lackluster and loose ineffective gifts of grades that were part of the past educational system and are common to this day in the nations surrounding Ecuador, to his credit. Among the most controversial points of the former economics professor.²⁶, Mr. Correa’s hailed proposal requires all teachers and university presidents to hold advanced degrees, create a new academic accrediting agency, and tighten government control over the university system through a revamped governing body, the National Council for Higher Education.²⁷ Correa scolded the Ecuadorian congress: “If we don’t change higher education, the country won’t move forward” as Ecuadorian graduates of these garage universities either could not get a job in their specialty or kept it but a few weeks. ²⁸

Ecuador has a total of 250 Ph.D.s from foreign universities. In South America, the Ph.D. is basically marginal, but in education it is next to worthless.  Most theses dissertations are scissors-and-paste plagiarisms. Correa is among the few national leaders in South America who understands that there can be no progress, no critical thinking, no advance for the people who are born there or move to its various nations unless education takes priority and true learning begins. Merely repeating messages mangled by time pulped in paper or presented in photocopies with no ascertainment as to their authenticity since few original printed copies exist since it is easier to purloin an illegal copy than to work for one of worth has no value in bringing backward nations to the foreground or enabling Third World nations to rival, and even surpass, First World nations. Correa, alone, is trying to bridge this divide, to expand learning from a solid foundation of facts forsaking mythologies and the mincing of mind-controlling minions of a past that has no true history, and move the people of Ecuador forward into a new age of enlightenment.

 

VI.  Addressing the problem of Tradumatica

There are several people who defend translator and electronic translators under the created word Tradumatica and argue that it is a science and a new way to master translation and accompanying linguistic arts. There is no such “science”.

Tradumatica is not a real word. Tradumatica is an artifical invention.  At best it is a combination of Spanish and English words interlocked, but those who attempt to use it, as shown above, incorporate into its fevered flesh German, French, Italian, Latin, and other languages as if attempting to recreate the legendary Tower of Babel: מגדל–purloined from the ancient Babylonian account of a people seeking to be a united group–not challenge any mythical god, declaring, let us a common home “whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”²⁹  This tale, as is the case with so many other ancient records, were twisted to define divine tyranny of a petty deity determined to destroy those that would think for themselves.³⁰ This account plays well with the Tradumaticans who would throw away all individual work in quest of a single entity that does not have power of and by itself to aid the world. It is the pedantic,  pathetic and useless institutions seeking an never ending of tuition money that invent courses that cannot self-sustain themselves and to feed the frenzy of those attempting to use it in order to make money for fractured founders seeking to garner ever increasing coinage in an effort to run for political office and further line their pockets with currency to buy that elected office as with Keiko Fujimori in Perú who hired former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani to restart her failing career, as it was with Mitt Romney in the USA who turned to the Koch Brothers who could afford to buy the national election, and taking succor from the great racist and religiously intolerant Billy Graham, whose website for decades decried Mormons as members of a perdition-bound cult.³¹

International firms, quality schools, and similar institutions hire real translators.  Real translators do not copy or use computers. Real translators have the mental ability to translate,  own serious quality dictionaries and are immersed in the culture of the language they are tasked to translate.  As Umberto Eco wrote in his sublime Mouse or Rat? “A translator must take into account rules that are not strictly linguistic but, broadly speaking, cultural.” ³²

Schools, university language centers and departments that foolishly and in ignorance offer courses in Tradumatics should be closed; their directors and faculties offering the courses expelled, and students be transferred to real translation courses where teachers actually known languages being translated as well as the indigenous language of the land. The problem is that the original sense of any document depends on its dating: when it was written, how it was written, by whom it was written, and what was its original context.  The best option is to understand, philologically, what the original word, phrase, sentence or paragraph meant and then find current words that best define it. This is best seen in the most simple of words that have spanned the passing of time; for example: vanity.  There exist numerous words that refer to vanity, but in different ways: ματαιοδοξία (mataiodoxía) meaning vainglory: pride or boastfulness over ones own achievements, ματαιότητα (mataióti̱ta) meaning uselessness, κενοδοξία (kenodoxía) meaning vaingloriousness: overestimating ones own ability, αυταρέσκεια (af̱taréskeia) meaning smugness or even consumed with the self, or the more contemporary ματαιοφροσύνη (mataiofrosýni̱) meaning personal vanity in and concerning oneself. Yet when we find this in the original Aramaic or Hebrew in the Book of Ecclesiastes (1:2: הֲבֵ֤ל is translated as meaninglessness)³³ and the Septuagint Greek is worse. In its day it referred to a smoke screen obscuring reality and thus wasting that which is real by seeking that which cannot be found, understood or had. Few bother with its antecedent (Psalm 39:5,6), and even fewer understand that the reference is to meaninglessness as philology is barely taught any more as it is not profitable at first glance–it is only later, when the value of words is realized, that philology is even considered that the concept of concern with oneself is drily understood.

 

VII.  Direction and focus

As I wrote to my student who failed the second parcial of Academic Writing–the would be budding scholar who took no pains to read what was required, did not visit the library or conference with me in my office (granted it is on the fifth floor, but I climb Jacob’s ladder (סולם יעקב) or more of a staircase. ³⁴ every day without muscles in my legs, and I survive without the help of angels³⁵ walking up the steps to commune with ultimate knowledge,³⁶ never handed in a single original paper nor completed the required five revisions and did not defend the paper or take the final: The problem is that such a drive for electronic translations misses the imperative that a person aware of the culture from which a translation comes to that environment it is translated into ignores popular acceptable idiomatic phrases and word construction. Furthermore, most of your paper is taken from http://www.ub.edu/filhis/culturele/nino.html. What is happening is that the world of education, especially in Third World nations, is running back into a new Dark Age that I am unwilling to be a part of, support, or work with in any capacity.  It is time, I tell myself, that I retire and let the stagnant and stale state rot, but being a teacher that is not within my psychological framework.

This is difficult as weak to corrupt universities offer degrees with little to no value, especially if they are private for-profit universities that offer degrees without a basic knowledge of what the degree is for, concerns or can be used to help others.  This is especially true of those that offer a Ph.D. in Education. In the USA and other First World nations, a Ph.D. in Education is research based and requires more course work in the first two years and usually is a four year degree requiring a thesis and is aimed at teaching courses in how learning takes place; it does not qualify to teach a specific discipline, such as English.

An Ed.D. requires course work similar to the Ph.D. but additionally greater specialization in a given area in the field of education and is aimed at administration, learning techniques but not usually teaching.  Neither is a teaching degree and neither qualifies the degree holder to teach a specific academic subject, especially in the areas of translation, interpretation, investigation or research, while both do qualify the degree holder to work with the writing and editing of a paper.  These rubrics are not followed in the provinces of Perú any more than they are in Somalia, Mali, or other Third World Nations.³⁷

 

VIII.  Publish or perish

Educators who earn the doctorate owe it to themselves, their academic community, the world of knowledge, and especially to their students to stay informed about all things: au courant, abreast, acquainted and apprized in their area of expertise, exuding enlightenment, erudition, expert familiarity with the scope of subject matter that is constantly being unveiled, discovered, and exposed, showing their personal involvement in their individual growth in excellence.  This is noticed when the academic savant investigates, researches, writes and publishes what is discovered that is new, innovative, important, not discovered nor discussed; it falls  under the famous phrase “publish or perish”.³⁸

No one is guaranteed a job because of any degree nor experience.  What counts is that the educator is constantly honing his or her understanding and is willing to submit to peers papers written on novel and important subjects.³⁹

The paramount reason to encourage all universities, schools, institutes and other learning centers to inaugurate and augment a publish or perish program is that it shows both the scholar, the head of that scholar’s unit, the university and its community, as well as the nation and the world that the professional educator is well-learned and a continuing contributing force within the academic community and the world of learning and understanding.  Peer review enables colleagues in the discipline to learn, to know if the paper submitted has value and their partner in the discipline has value, or is similar to the discredited University of Texas at Austin School of Sociology Mark Regnerus who falsified and understudied the group he ultimate wrote about that is rejected by all serious professional organizations, but is the backbone to most of the Third World nation’s war against minorities, as in Nigeria, Uganda and Russia where is hailed as a proto-savior.⁴⁰

By earning the respect of colleagues in the field, the published scholar actually wins not only favorable recognition among peers, but is enabled through that well-researched and documented piece an opportunity to advance in the chosen career field or to be considered for promotion to a senior administrative position. Academic publications are a measure on how efficient and complete the research is of the teacher or investigator, and how mature the individual professional is as a researcher.

Frequently the professional teacher needs funding for a research project, but to gain that funding, the professor, at any rank, may be required to publish a certain number of publications per year during his or her employment period. At the same time or after the probationary period, the source of funding for a research project may stipulate a requirement for a certain number of publications before being considered for a position with the school, university or granting institution, or for a grant itself or for future endowments.

The most important program or part within the reality of publish or perish is that it actually enables not only diligent and quality investigation and research, but it improves the writing skills of the professional. When the professional publishes his or her work, the individual is not only encouraged but expected to be able to write in a specific, structured language.  At the same time, the sage must be able to focus with consummate and absolute precision on the record that is to be offered to the peer review committee and then the academic world. With a program of publish or perish it is necessary to work through your material and data properly, identifying both the main findings that include the antethesis, antithesis, thesis as well as the small details of the research before attempting any synthesis and crowning the work is a superior summary and a solid foundation for recommendations.⁴¹

 

IX.  Summary

The Ed.D. is research oriented. The first Ed.D. was granted in 1921 by Harvard University with a  focus on learning and teaching.⁴²  The Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED) notes that the Ed.D. is a professional doctorate, and states that Ed.D. prepares students for the generation of new knowledge.⁴³ Doctorates in the field of education are frequently seen as “lite” programs of little worth and no true scholarship, but several groups are attempting to revise the doctoral program to make it more stringent and accountable by requiring better dissertations and more concentration of material and not just theory.⁴⁴

 

X.  Recommendations

What is necessary to correct these problems, especially in Latin America and the Third World, is to raise standards (not lower them).  Schools must require that teachers teach: that they know their subject matter–not just know how to formulate strategies or use methodologies–and never to teach pedagogy or strategies in a class that is not in the field of education.

Professors can be teachers or researchers.  The title professor is an academic indication of having the minimum required level of education and publications to support any specific rank: Instructor, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Professor, or the holder of an Endowed Chair.  All professors, including research professors must spend some time in a classroom so that the professor remains aware of the academic process, and is able to dispense knowledge of his or her research project to the advancement of learning.

To assure and ascertain quality of and within the faculty, all members of an academic community must publish-or-perish.  Not only as a demonstration of knowledge but to increase library holdings and opportunities to apply for and work with research grants.  This will not happen until the Third World nations congresses and other legislative bodies understand the need for quality in education, require full-time faculty (in Perú faculty teach one or two classes at one university, hop on their motorcycles to travel to a near-by university to teach one or two classes, and continue to repeat this educational insanity until they are able to piece together a basic living).  In Perú it is seldom that any full-time faculty member can be found at a single university.  This degrades the university as no university can survive, advance, or elevate its reputation with only adjunct or part-time faculty.  Quality universities have full-time research and teaching faculty.

Throughout the world the quality of the teacher must be upgraded.  Time must be set aside for the teacher to go to seminars, workshops and take additional courses in the teacher’s specialty.  No teacher should be hired who cannot prove the possession of an academic degree or significant work in a field that would complement a degree.

Faculty must be able to present academic credentials: not just a diploma, but transcripts, testimonials, and publications. Certificates cannot and must not be considered tantamount or equal to a degree. To add the initials of a certificate to the name of any faculty is fraudulent.  No certificate is equal to a degree and the certificate holder cannot be addressed with any title not earned, including the title of Professor.

Too many teachers in Latin America use a certificate as if it were equal to a degree.  This is especially true when certificates demonstrate only the reading of a book or the taking of an examination, as with the vulgar / common street English exercises including the FCE: First Certificate in English.⁴⁵ The problem with the FCE is that the textbook has numerous errors, including using conjunctions and gerunds to begin sentences, ignoring verbs and incorrect word order. Certificates of proficiency in a language are not that difficult to obtain, yet when attending any of the language group meetings, it was difficult to determine what was being said as pronunciation is more Spanglish than English, and phonics seldom discussed.

My FCE students at SENATI in Chiclayo included the Director of English–who seldom made an appearance in class, did not participate, and took no examinations.  He failed not only my course but when he sat for the FCE certificate, he failed that, too.  Another teachers at SENATI, a pompous Perú marine SEAL, demanded I sign off that he had passed the course he never attended, and when I asked why, he responded that the FCE would assure him of a greater salary.  The FCE for most students represents a passage to greater income–with no thought of helping students.  At SENATI and other institutions and academic centers I taught at, that was common, for Perú has adopted the Me First mindset of the USA, and a new breed of selfishness prevails: all that counts is immediate gratification, obtaining a parchment stating that a course or grade has been passed, and little else.  Those Peruanos who do go abroad to study, seldom return, and those that do return come back to Perú because of their lack of any genuine skill in the use of the English language that is basically forgotten, as with one young lady I taught privately in my home in Lima, who was an employee at Banco de Crédito del Peru (BCP;  a major bank), and now a Vice President who has basically lost all linguistic skill in English.

A similar case can be made against the CAE: the Certificate of Advanced English. The CAE is for conversational English and its texts and tests are geared to common street English current at the time the test is given.  Run-ons, deadwood and redundancies are common, and as with the textbooks for the FCE, there is a glorification (or some would consider it a tacit acceptance) of illegally downloading programs, music, and other material that is not only technically protected by international copyright laws, but is openly flaunted when stolen.  This does not create any understanding or acceptance of basic ethics, and students become poorer because of the theft of intellectual property.⁴⁶

In many nations people parade social networking groups such as ESL, TOEFL, and so forth as degrees and not as tests taken to measure language knowledge. Jobs are commonly offered or are awarded to those who can show the certificate but are seldom tested on to their actual fluency not only in pronunciation but in comprehensive knowledge of grammar, word choice, vocabulary, and so forth.  Like all teachers, those possessing an ESL, TOEFL or other document recognizing the alleged mastery of the English language must be tested regularly.  Being a native speaker does not always mean that the individual is competent.⁴⁷  There are numerous accounts how possessors of a certificate in English (or other foreign languages) are in many cases like Eliza Doolittle penned passionately by George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950. He was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics) in his widely popular play Pygmalion.  The play is centered around phonics and a professor of phonics (Henry Higgins) attempt to change a common street vendor of flowers into a Duchess. Shaw relaxed all rules of punctuation and sentence structure to elevate phonics to a pedestal that it alone could occupy to illustrate the bawdy way of nineteenth century English:⁴⁸ contractions have no apostrophes, common misspellings include the phonetic shew for show, and so forth.

Both the FCE and CAE are wretched excesses that flatter the bored, boring, and gate-climber.  English is as bad today in England’s publishing houses as it was in the days of George Bernard Shaw, the only person who has won both an Academy Award and a Nobel Prize, who wrote in his preface to Pygmalion:

The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it. They spell it so abominably that no man can teach himself what it sounds like. It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him. German and Spanish are accessible to foreigners: English is not accessible even to Englishmen.

To this end, while the play is a delightful farce, it is also a slice of real life that is wrapped around the sagging sinews of composition common among those who would pretend to be better than others, who seek out unjustified titles, who rant about superiority and lack even mediocrity, leading Shaw to poke fun at the ignoble ignorants with such bad spelling as theyre and shew, and so forth, with every teacher of English, or would-be teacher of English, required to read the entire work in its original edition.  Read such quaint lack of grammatically correct presentations as in Act one where Eliza Doolittle speaks as: THE FLOWER GIRL. Nah then, Freddy: look wh’ y’ gowin, deah. … Ow, eez ye-ooa san, is e? Wal, fewd dan y’ de-ooty bawmz a mather should, eed now bettern to spawl a pore gel’s flahrzn than ran awy atbaht pyin. Will ye-oo py me f’them? (Shaw, Introduction).

For the most part, save in a few universities, the faculty are known as profesor(a)s—a Spanish word of Teacher–that is common both in the for profit universities as well as in the national universities. Many of the universities that are Roman Catholic dominated use the title professor as a mark of academic achievement, with Associate Professors required to have at least some form of a document noting a degree higher than that of bachelor, while (full) Professors are expected to have an earned doctorate in their specialty and significant publications.  In Perú, teachers are licensed to teach and use the licensing as a degree, putting an Lic. before their name.

What is lacking is the rule of publish-or-perish. Unfortunately, those who recently pass an FCE or CAE examination demand to be called professor—a title not earned by a mere test. It is equally a fraud for a teacher to declare himself or herself to be a “Peruvian Professor” unless there is actually an endowed chair with the name Peruvian, or any other name, as in the case at Cambridge University, Cambridge, England, where the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics, founded in 1663 by Henry Lucas, M.P. for Cambridge, carries with it a financial prize plus the prestige of sitting where other great thinkers had sat (until recently this chair of learning was held by Stephen Hawking). I will address this pompous narcissistic portentous presumptuous pretentious, blowhard in a latter essay after I am able to decipher his original letter that he, obviously, composed on an electronic translator complete with errors in spelling, syntax, style, and grammar.

The greatest flaw in Third World nations is repetitive and unjustifiable grandstanding: a false patriotism that bodes ill for education as it is sycophantic fawning.  Teachers, it is commonly accepted, “think with their gut rather than with their head” and see any attempt to remove the veil from political or religious corruption, the low score on international assessment records, and so forth, as an attack on their nation and people.  Few profesor(a)s take time to investigate the failings of their particular university or think critically and realistically how the failing can be corrected and education raised to a higher level.

To elevate the degree of learning, to create subject matter experts requires not only teaching knowledge and skill but the ability to arouse interest in academic learning among student by offering assumed facts and then engaging the students to questioning the sustainability of the facts and to accept nothing and no one as infallible in any area, as all things must be investigated, researched, questioned and repeatedly reviewed.  Instead of repeating time-weathered ideas and conclusions, it is imperative that new ideas are brought to the front and that assumptions accepted over centuries be questioned.  Not everything is good or bad in any culture or nation, but all must be thoroughly investigated and competent research done.

If an academic shows good citation metrics, it is very likely that he or she has made a significant impact on the field.  The author, publisher, and subject are key criteria for quality work and promise for future research and publication endeavors.⁴⁹

Included in the Publish or Perish dicta are for academic papers quality is determined by more than just the literary style, but takes into account the total number of papers and total number of citations, average citations per paper, citations per author, papers per author, and citations per year, and an analysis of the number of authors per paper. When it comes to publication of books, the criteria is different because the author is working in a small field (therefore generating fewer citations in total); may be publishing in a language other than English, thereby restricting the citation field; publishing mainly books where the books count for more than a single article.

 

XI.  Bibliography

 

Amato, Paul R. (2012 Jul). “The well-being of children with gay and lesbian parents.” Social Science Research. Vol. 41 No. 4: 771-774. Doi. 10.1016/j.ssresearch 2012.04.007.

Anderson, Eric (2013 Jul-Sep). “The Need to Review Peer Review: The Regnerus Scandal as a Call to Action.” Journal of Gay & Lesbian Mental Health. Vol. 17, No. 3: 337-351.

Chasles, Jonathan L. (2010). Publish or Perish. (S.l.): Publishamerica.

Coolidge, Harold Jefferson & Lord, Robert Howard (1938). Archibald Cary Coolidge: Life and Letters. Boston, MA & New York, NY, USA: Houghton Mifflin Co.

Eco, Umberto (1999). Kant and the Platypus. London, UK: Secker & Warburg.

Eco, Umberto (1994). The Limits of Interpretation. Indianapolis, IN, USA: Indiana University Press.

Eco, Umberto (2003). Mouse or Rat? Translation as Negotiation.  London (England): Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Eco, Umberto (1995). The Search of the Perfect Language. Oxford, UK & Cambridge, MA, USA : Blackwell.

Eco, Umberto (1984).  Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language. London, UK: Macmillan.

Eco, Umberto (1998). Serendipities: Language and Lunacy. New York, NY, USA: Columbia University Press.

Eco, Umberto (1994). Six Walks in the Fictional Woods. Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard University Press.

Eco, Umberto (2005). 悠游小说林. 生活・讀書・新知三联书店, Beijing Shi, China: Sheng huo, du shu, xin zhi san lian shu dian.

Eco, Umberto (1986). Travels in Hyper-reality. San Diego, CA, USA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Eggebeen, David J. (2012 Jul). “What can we learn from studies of children raised by gay or lesbian parents?” Social Science Research. Vol. 41 No. 4: 775-778.

Glatthorn, Allan A. (2002). Publish or Perish—the Educator’s Imperative: Strategies for Writing Effectively for your Profession and your School. Thousand Oaks, CA, USA: Corwin Press.

Harzing, Anne-Will (2010). The Publish or Perish Book: Your Guide to Effective and Responsible Citation Analysis. Melbourne, Australia: Tarma Software Research Pty Ltd.

Hill, J. P. (1987). Publish or Perish. Soham Ely, Cambridgeshire, UK: P. Francis.

Ide, Arthur Frederick (2010). Language Learning: Theory & Research. Dallas, TX, USA: Monument Press.

Katz, Jennifer & Smith, Jonah (2012 Jun). “Youth with benefits: Sex before the ball and chain.” Sex Roles. Vol. 66 No. 11-12: 807-809.

Nelson, Jack K.; Coorough, Calleen (1994). “Content Analysis of the PhD Versus EdD Dissertation”. Journal of Experimental Education (Taylor & Francis, Ltd.) 62 (2): 158–168. doi:10.1080/00220973.1994.9943837.

Osborne, C. (2012 07 01). “Further comments on the papers by Marks and Regnerus.” Social Science Research Vol. 41, No. 4: 779-783.

Shaw, George Bernard (1912). Pygmalion. Waiheke Island: Floating Press.

Shulman, Lee S.; Golde, Chirs M.; Conklin Bueschel, Andrea; Garabedian, Kristen J. (2006). “Reclaiming education’s doctorates: A critique and a proposal”. Educational Researcher (American Educational Research Association) 35 (3): 28, 30.

 

 

XII.  Web links

 

http://arthuride.wordpress.com/2011/05/07/dropout-factories-blacks-and-latinos/ Those most at risk of leaving high school before graduating or learning subject matter are racial and sexual minorities: Latinos/Latinas, Black, and LGBTI. The voucher system was created by the Republican/Tea Party to indoctrinate conservative thinking and silence any critical thinking or independent thinking in favor of indoctrination.  On the voucher system, read: http://www.lakelandtimes.com/main.asp?SectionID=11&SubSectionID=11&ArticleID=13277

http://babelfish.altavista.com Alta Vista: Babelfish electronic translator.

http://www.bing.com/translator/. Bing electronic translator on the Internet.

http://chronicle.com/article/Ecuadorean-Presidents-Push/65798/. This article discusses education in Ecuador under its presidents, with a focus on the challenges facing Rafael Correa due to special interests who seek educational rubrics that will enrich their families but not the nation.

http://www.cpedinitiative.org/. Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED).

http://ezinearticles.com/?Alarming-Statistics-on-Rising-Crime-Rates—Why-is-Crime-So-Popular?&id=3183580.

http://www.freetranslation.com/. Free translator on the Internet.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff512385.aspx. Microsoft electronic translator does not translate context using Java Script.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/13/world/americas/ecuador-failing-universities-to-close.html?_r=0 This commentary reviews the “garage universities” and how they are similar to degree mills (where the degree is bought rather than earned) and the factors facing Rafael Correa in changing a corrupt educational system.

www.nova.edu/nursing/forms/comparison_table.pdf. Details difference between a Ph.D. and an Ed.D. in the field of education.

www.online-translator.com. Electronic translator created by PROMPT.

http://www.oyez.org/cases/2000-2009/2008/2008_08_205.

http://pagines.uab.cat/mastertradumatica/ Justification for electronic translations; little is of value and does not translate accurately as is void of any contextual references or programming idiomatic of local words.

http://www.phdontrack.net/share-and-publish/reasons-to-publish/ A succinct and serious look at reasons there must be a publish or perish program in any reputable institution of learning.

http://rense.com/general92/7000.htm. This link takes the reader to statistics and theories of why USA education is failing students and the nation.

http://www.teenink.com/opinion/all/article/10283/School-Vouchers-Will-Destroy-Public-Education/ reflects the thoughts of teenagers on vouchers.

http://www.ub.edu/filhis/culturele/nino.html. Justification for electronic translations; most of it is plagiarized.

 

End Notes

הֲבֵ֤ל

portentous, presumptuous, pretentious,