Anonymous
"TRANSLATE THINE ENEMY"

The Economist (May 20, 1989) suggested some recipes for the United States to counter the Japanese technological "threat": translate all Japanese technical journals at a cost of $80 million a year (however, this would take 1,000 translators and the United States does not have that many) or set up 10 automatic translation research programs: $10 million. "There are probably fewer than 1,000 American scientists who speak Japanese," writes the Economist. "Americans know little about research in Japanese laboratories. That is only partly because of secretiveness. It is also because Americans fail to make use of available information."
The laws of Saskatchewan that the province agreed to publish in both official languages following the Supreme Court decision in the Mercure case will be translated in New Brunswick. The legal translation service affiliated with the Université de Moncton will take over from the firm GigaText, which had agreed to develop a computerized translation system to meet Saskatchewan's requirements. The province, which had invested $4 million in the company, assumed control of it after allegations that its owner had misused government funds, according to Canadian Press. According to the Gazette, the federal government's Canadian Workplace Automation Research Centre (CWARC) had evaluated GigaText's translation software and concluded that it did not work.
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Reference: Language and Society, No. 28, Fall 1989, p. 38-39.