Re: Non-English Proofers

["Wayne J. Douglass" <wayned -at- VERITY -dot- COM>]

At 02:42 PM 3/1/97 -0600, Dan Wise wrote:

>The methodology used by the (I think Sri Lankan) contractor was to have
>typists who could not read English type two simultaneous copies of the
>material.  Obviously the typists were keying by rote.  Then they
>electronically "bumped" the copies.  Theory was that when there was no
>match, there was an error in one of the copies.  Both copies were checked
>for typos, again by rote.
>
I have heard of this approach in the context of converting documents that
were not in electronic form. The non-English spin is new to me, however.

The assertion is that scanning a paper document (and proofing it) produces
an error rate that is actually higher than having the material keyed in
again (and proofing it). Statistically it makes sense, but it doesn't seem
to have worked out in this case. It would be interesting to know if
English-speaking typists produce better results.

Maybe this is a variation of the idea that an infinite number of monkeys
banging on an infinite number of keyboards will eventually produce _Hamlet_?

--Wayne Douglass

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