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21st translation contest: "The tides of tech" » English to Swahili

Competition in this pair is now closed, and the winning entry has been announced.

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Source text in English

Boom times are back in Silicon Valley. Office parks along Highway 101 are once again adorned with the insignia of hopeful start-ups. Rents are soaring, as is the demand for fancy vacation homes in resort towns like Lake Tahoe, a sign of fortunes being amassed. The Bay Area was the birthplace of the semiconductor industry and the computer and internet companies that have grown up in its wake. Its wizards provided many of the marvels that make the world feel futuristic, from touch-screen phones to the instantaneous searching of great libraries to the power to pilot a drone thousands of miles away. The revival in its business activity since 2010 suggests progress is motoring on.

So it may come as a surprise that some in Silicon Valley think the place is stagnant, and that the rate of innovation has been slackening for decades. Peter Thiel, a founder of PayPal, and the first outside investor in Facebook, says that innovation in America is “somewhere between dire straits and dead”. Engineers in all sorts of areas share similar feelings of disappointment. And a small but growing group of economists reckon the economic impact of the innovations of today may pale in comparison with those of the past.

[ … ]

Across the board, innovations fueled by cheap processing power are taking off. Computers are beginning to understand natural language. People are controlling video games through body movement alone—a technology that may soon find application in much of the business world. Three-dimensional printing is capable of churning out an increasingly complex array of objects, and may soon move on to human tissues and other organic material.

An innovation pessimist could dismiss this as “jam tomorrow”. But the idea that technology-led growth must either continue unabated or steadily decline, rather than ebbing and flowing, is at odds with history. Chad Syverson of the University of Chicago points out that productivity growth during the age of electrification was lumpy. Growth was slow during a period of important electrical innovations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; then it surged.

The winning entry has been announced in this pair.

There were 10 entries submitted in this pair during the submission phase, 7 of which were selected by peers to advance to the finals round. The winning entry was determined based on finals round voting by peers.

Competition in this pair is now closed.


Entries (10 total; 7 finalists) Expand all entries

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Language variants:
Entry #26470 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Kenyan
Winner
Voting points1st2nd3rd
5613 x42 x20
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry3.273.42 (12 ratings)3.11 (9 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • 7 users entered 7 "like" tags
  • 6 users agreed with "likes" (6 total agrees)
  • 2 users disagreed with "likes" (2 total disagrees)
-2
+4
3
Nyakati za mavuno zimewadia huko Silicon Valley
Good term selection
Edward Kireti
Eneo hilo la ghuba
Flows well
Eneo hilo ​la ghuba
Eunice Kinyua
mustakabali
Good term selection
Wafula Opilo
+1
1
viwambo vya mguso
Good term selection
Kevin Juma
+1
droni
Other
Good langu​age assimi​lation or ​terminolog​y selectio​n for a wo​rd that pr​eviously d​id not exi​st
Ngunga Tepani
kimedorora
Good term selection
Nice rendi​tion of ''​slackening​'' indicat​ing slowin​g down of ​innovation​.
Aziz Ramndani
ahadi zisizotimilika
Flows well
Exact mean​ing. Very ​good
George Kihanda
Entry #25916 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
Finalist
Voting points1st2nd3rd
4910 x43 x23 x1
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry3.784.00 (11 ratings)3.56 (9 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • 1 user entered 2 "like" tags
  • 4 users agreed with "likes" (5 total agrees)
+4
1
Nyakati za ustawi wa haraka zimerejea
Flows well
Kevin Juma
+1
1
Ghuba
Good term selection
Kevin Juma
Entry #26254 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Tanzanian
Finalist
Voting points1st2nd3rd
183 x42 x22 x1
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry3.574.00 (7 ratings)3.14 (7 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags
Entry #25829 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Tanzanian
Finalist
Voting points1st2nd3rd
151 x45 x21 x1
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry3.703.89 (9 ratings)3.50 (8 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • 3 users entered 3 "like" tags
  • 1 user disagreed with "likes" (2 total disagrees)
-1
1
mlindimo
Flows well
nice one
Kendi Kimathi
-1
1
nakshi
Good term selection
Grace Njenga
kifahari
Good term selection
Wafula Opilo
Entry #26872 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Kenyan
Finalist
Voting points1st2nd3rd
61 x402 x1
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry2.942.88 (8 ratings)3.00 (7 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags
Entry #25793 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Kenyan
Finalist
Voting points1st2nd3rd
41 x400
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry1.942.20 (5 ratings)1.67 (3 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags
Entry #26261 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
Suleiman Dubow (X)
Suleiman Dubow (X)
Kenya
Finalist
Voting points1st2nd3rd
0000
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry2.252.50 (6 ratings)2.00 (4 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags


Non-finalist entries

The following entries were not selected by peers to advance to finals-round voting.

Entry #25945 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry1.912.14 (7 ratings)1.67 (6 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags
Entry #25820 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Tanzanian
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry1.901.80 (5 ratings)2.00 (5 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags
Entry #26888 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry1.882.50 (4 ratings)1.25 (4 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags