Open Source: how to jump on the bandwagon

Good morning and happy new year!

Today I was reading an article about Open Source and I have discovered an expression that I didn't know in English: jump on the bandwagon. For those who don't know the meaning, jump on the bandwagon means to play along or take advantage of something that is already working. In Spanish means subirse al carro. It has nothing to do with a real wagon.

As you can see, the translation may be literal: saltar o subirse al carro. However, in order to understand the meaning, it is necessary to know the connotation of the expression.

If you don't recognize some expression when you read it, my piece of advice is to read the complete phrase or paragraph. The context will help you to understand the meaning. In addition, you can go to a translator, dictionary or glossary to check it and learn something new.

I let you here the article about Open Source. It is very interesting and you can also improve your English. Just like me.

Regards!

Optical Reader app: translation of words

¡Hello!

Today I want to talk you about an app that I have discovered recently in my mobile phone: Optical Reader. This app allows you to capture text and scan QR codes through the viewfinder of the camera.

The reason to explain you how it works, it is because the app includes an option, in which you can activate dictionaries and choose the source language and the target language. If the app detects a word, it will translate it. In the next video you will see it clearly:

However, the app don't detect the sentences, the syntax or the combination of words, but every word separately. In the following video, I show you the fragment of a instructions manual in English, in which appears the term “power cord”, that it will be translated “cable de alimentación” in Spanish. For this example, I show you another option that the program offers: a screen capture of the text, in which all the words are detected and translated.

If we suppose that a person who don't understand English uses this app, he could think that, if we join the translation of both words, “power cord” means “cuerda de poder” (in English can be something like “power string”, literally). The word “cord” in Spanish has several meanings and this fact complicate the effectiveness. Maybe it will be easy to realize that in Spanish this translation is not correct, but if the language combination were different, maybe we don't knew what is the real meaning.

All this kind of apps can be very useful, but we must distinguish what is its real function. Optical Reader translates word, but don't make translations.