The Tainan City Government wants to use “secret diners” to provide feedback on service at English-friendly eateries in the city this summer, the Tainan Office of English as the Second Official Language (OEASOL) said yesterday.
Under the program to be launched next month, 100 foreign nationals living in Taiwan would be given NT$2,000 each to fund their meals at Tainan restaurants and then report back to the city government with their impressions and suggestions, OEASOL Director Lee Hsien-wei (李賢衛) said.
The feedback should cover the restaurants’ bilingual language service, menus and brochures, Lee said.
Registration for the program is to open next month, with the assessments to be conducted from next month through the end of August, OEASOL Deputy Director Sabrina Tien (田玲瑚) said.
Building on a previous initiative to help the city’s businesses foster English-friendly environments, OEASOL is shifting its focus to help with marketing efforts, Lee said.
This includes helping distribute restaurants’ bilingual coupons and vouchers to foreign students in Tainan to promote local food, he said.
The three-year-old OEASOL has been striving to “provide English resources to both foreigners and citizens, and to establish an environment that is friendly to both English speakers and English learners,” the office says on its Web site.
With OEASOL’s efforts, Tainan now has more than 500 English-friendly shops, and the office also helps correct inaccurate or confusing translations in shops and restaurants, Lee said.
As an example of the problems encountered on English-language menus, an American who attended college in the city said that one eatery translated its chicken nuggets as “McDonald’s best friend,” while another translated the name for a vegetable dish as “I can’t find it on Google, but it is delicious.”
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to