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

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 5 entries submitted in this pair during the submission phase. The winning entry was determined based on finals round voting by peers.

Competition in this pair is now closed.


Entries (5 total) Expand all entries

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Language variants:
Entry #26357 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Standard-Japan
Winner
Voting points1st2nd3rd
509 x44 x26 x1
Entry tagging:
  • 2 users entered 3 "like" tags
  • 1 user agreed with "likes" (1 total agree)
  • 1 user disagreed with "likes" (1 total disagree)
+1
シリコンバレーが再び活況を呈している
Good term selection
Akiko Maehama
-1
1
苦境と死の狭間にある
Good term selection
I would ne​ver have f​ound that ​phrase.
Dale_k (X)
19世紀終わりから20世紀の初めにかけてゆっくり経済が成長し、その後、爆発的な成長を遂げた
Good term selection
Akiko Maehama
Entry #26839 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Standard-Japan
Voting points1st2nd3rd
449 x42 x24 x1
Entry tagging:
  • 1 user entered 3 "like" tags
3Dプリンターはより複雑な造形を量産でき、じきに人体組織などの有機物に照準を合わせるだろう
Flows well
Akiko Maehama
取らぬ狸の皮算用
Good term selection
Akiko Maehama
その後に高度成長が訪れた
Good term selection
Akiko Maehama
Entry #27034 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
Voting points1st2nd3rd
344 x47 x24 x1
Entry tagging:
  • 1 user entered 2 "like" tags
  • 1 user agreed with "likes" (2 total agrees)
  • 1 user disagreed with "likes" (1 total disagree)
+1
シリコンバレーにブーム再来だ。
Flows well
Sueko Yabe
-1
+1
2
「危機的状況にある」
Flows well
Sueko Yabe
Entry #26282 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Standard-Japan
Voting points1st2nd3rd
142 x43 x20
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags
Entry #27059 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
Voting points1st2nd3rd
0000
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags