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| "You're umbday in any language" |
In ye good olde days, a college degree came with a foreign language requirement in addition to demonstrated facility with the finer points of English.
Holders of college degrees could reliably be counted on to read something in Italian, German or French and put it in a presentable form in their own language. In addition to knowing how to type, the skill supplements the work, say, of a financial blogger, unless your name is Mish, who has a degree in civil engineering.
On August 21 he's trying to plumb the depths of stories about the European Central Bank, noting here:
Every day I get links from Spain, Italy, Germany, and Australia. The first three frequently cause problems. Translation from German is particularly difficult.
For example, a Google-translated headline on Welt Online reads ECB chief demonstrates German banker. ...
With the help of Bran from Spain, Andrea from Italy, and "EM" from Germany I can frequently provide much better translations of foreign articles than I could otherwise.
Then three days later he complains here in a lengthy diatribe that colleges today turn out too many useless degrees:
Yet colleges churn out thousands of graduates, year after year, with perfectly useless degrees.
Clearly his own degree has failed him, not in the least because, even after all that, he still doesn't recognize it.
