angelikaschmidt http://angelikaschmidt.posterous.com Most recent posts at angelikaschmidt posterous.com Fri, 11 Jan 2013 09:47:00 -0800 Work and how it changes http://angelikaschmidt.posterous.com/work-and-how-it-changes http://angelikaschmidt.posterous.com/work-and-how-it-changes

Work

 

The past:

1)      I have worked in my holidays for two to four weeks a couple of times. The purpose of this was to earn some extra money because I am still a student. When my grandparents were my age they already had a job because they had to earn their livings. My grandmother on my father’s side already had two children so she stayed at home with them and my grandfather went to work. They also just had survived a World War so they needed to work in order to earn some money with which they could by some food, clothes and so on.

2)      I’m not sure whether this really answers the question but I think, fifty years ago, people still remembered the war and the years that followed and they just wanted to earn enough money and social harmony. They were happy when they had a job and they would do the same work until they retired. Today this is different. People still want to earn as much money as possible but they want to have a job where they get satisfied. Moreover, you don’t work for one company anymore but if you don’t like your work anymore you just search for something new to do. Yet another thing is that you are required to do further training every now and then if you want to keep your job.

3)      Fifty years ago, people worked in about the same professions as today. The difference is that there were more craftsmen than today and people didn’t have so many possibilities to study.

4)      I think today there are fewer jobs in the primary sector than fifty years ago because many workers have been replaced by machines. Today most people work in any kind of offices.

 

Globalisation and the future:

5)      Globalisation has affected the world of work in many ways. Most Western European and American companies, for example, now produce their goods in Eastern Europe, Asian or African countries because this is much cheaper. Due to technology, I can send an e-mail around the world and the addressee can read it in the next moment. That has made everything faster and it requires more flexibility of anyone who is working.

6)      I think that the work of translators/interpreters will be even more influenced by technology than today. Translators, for example, might be replaced by translation machines which do the translator’s work and they only have to proofread the finished text.

 

Technology and the future:

7)      One of the things Andrew McAfee mentioned is that it always needed a translator or interpreter to translate something from one language to another one. Now there are automatic translation services which are for free and can even be used on a Smartphone. These programmes are not perfect yet but in a couple of years they will and then people might think twice whether to pay someone to translate their texts or to just use one of these programmes.

He also says that when it comes to digital technology, we are standing at the beginning of a very big revolution and nobody can say what is yet to come. Considering this, I think that technology will affect both our work and our private lives in many different ways. I also think that translators and interpreters will not be able to work without any kind of devices that may help them to do their work better. In fact, this is already the case but as Mr. McAfee said, we don’t know what the future holds for us.

 

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