[Rhodes22-list] "need help" thanks

[Peter Thorn]

Stan,

Having just returned from sailing around Long Island, I am just now getting
up to speed with e-mail.  I completely agree with those who suggest you need
much more than a translation program.

80% of our workers are Hispanic and most do not speak English well.
However, they fill our need for reliable, trainable and motivated workers
and do most of the "real work" in my construction business.

We've had great success using a bilingual foreman.  If you can locate and
recruit a skilled tradesman with leadership qualities who also speaks
Spanish, I suspect he will seriously improve your quality of life at work
and be worth whatever you must pay him.  Our foreman earns triple the rate
of non-English speaking workers, but he is worth it.  The overall team
productivity is what matters most to me.

Does the local community college have ESL (English as a Second Language)
Programs?  One of our workers attends such a program in Durham and has gone
from zero knowledge of English to level 5 (converses and understands easily)
in less than two years.  We encourage employees to attend ESL courses by
advancing the pay rate of those who speak it well (I want to keep them more)
and by allowing a flexible work schedule for employees to attend ESL
classes.  Perhaps you could recruit a foreman from the local ESL class?

My experience with Hispanic workers is that they are worth the effort to
accommodate language problems because they are more reliable, family
oriented, and just plain happy to have a job.  If you can overcome the
language barriers I think you will be very happy with Hispanic workers.

Best regards,

PT









----- Original Message ----- 
From: "stan" <stan at rhodes22.com>
To: "The Rhodes 22 mail list" <rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org>
Cc: <s at rhodes22.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 08, 2004 7:42 AM
Subject: [Rhodes22-list] "need help" thanks


you can't say I did not know where to go for help with our translation
problem:

Thanks to Michael, Eric, Doug Mistler, Doug Gardner (for being the most
positive), Fred, Mark (who knew I would love his revelation that the current
administration uses these programs for their foreign policy discussions.
However, in defense of the Korean translation, for the test input he used
something I wrote which I had not written in English so no wonder it came
out in Greek), Gil, Herb, Steve and all the others.

The suggested free programs do not allow printing their results (on my
machine) - does this mean I have to buy a program or a computer or a
translator.  I interviewed one translator and she said she could not do
Greek, and that all the others were Greek to her.

stan/gbi
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