Lost in Translation

My experineces regarding the use of new language.

German

1) Last month, I was in the terminal in Frankfurt airport. The airplane was late for 2 hours, so the airline  gave the passengers snacks and drinks. The airline also brought a big shelve of magazines. I heard, “Alles muss raus,” so I though they meant, “everything must go.” I went to take a lot of magazines, but then I realized that they meant, “everyone get out.” The ground workers were clearing the passengers to move out from the gate area. The ground workers wanted to check tickets of each passenger before the passengers can move into the gate area.

At first, I thought that they mean, “everything must go,” because they put out snacks, drinks and magazines. I remembered that when a store is closed, a sign written “alles muss raus”  is put in front of the store to advertise goods.

2) The word “Sie”  in German has many meanings. “Sie,” when starting a sentence,  could mean “they”, “you,” or “she.” I was speaking to one teacher telling her about my friends, and the teacher talked to me and used the word “Sie.” My German was very weak back then. I was not sure what the exact meaning that she meant. If I could catch the form of the verb used, I might be able to determine the exact meaning, so I asked back something like, “You mean Sie (you) or Sie (they). 

English

1) When I was a kid, I saw a westener come toward me and asked me if I can speak English. At that time, I just came out from the English course. I answered him, “yes.” However, after that I did not understand what he said. It’s quite funny. I should have said, “no.”

SAP BW/SEM online course

Last semester of my master study, I had taken the SAP online course from U. of Duisburg-Essen called, “Introduction to SAP BW/SEM (Einführung in SAP BW/SEM)” focussing on SAP BW and SEM modules.  This course is no longer offered anymore, but there is a new course called, “Introduction to SAP BI (Einführung in SAP BI)” focussing solely on SAP BW.

 

 The cost of the course is 450 EUR. It was a lot of money for me. I think that it would be more expensive If I am not a student. Anyway, I could experience and learn the SAP while I was a student. 

About about my experience taking this course, I liked the course. Students are required to complete exercises even though there are solution or answers to the exercises. I have an opportunity to learn the basic of  BW (Business Warehouse) and SEM (Strategic Enterprise Management) modules. There are scripts which contain the theory part and the practical part mixed together used by students to study at their own pace. 

The course is German. I moved slowly at the beginning due to my weakness in German. I spent sometimes opening a dictionary and translating text. It paid off well later. I spent less time opening a dictionary and translating text later.

For BW module, I have known the data warehouse concept before from my bachelor, so it helps me to quickly understand the theory part including data cube and star schema (kind of a design of tables in a data warehouse). The theory part is partially based on or similar to the “Data Warehousing mit dem SAP Business Information Warehouse“ theory script from Technical University of Munich (Technische Universität München). For the practical part, it was quite frustrating in the beginning to learn about various terms used in SAP BW including transfer structure, communication structure, data source, info source, data object, update rule, transfer rule, etc. Anyway, I was glad that I could overcome it and finish the course. You may read the “SAP BW Grundlagen (p. 29)” slides in German which is useful for explaning terms used in SAP BW.