Panamas flawed $1 million tourism gateway

Panama’s flawed $1 million tourism “gateway”
PAYMENTS of over $70,00 for translation services by Panama’s Tourism Authority (ATP) as part of a more than $1 million no-bid contract have produce a flawed website.

The company Pensanómica SA, owned by former government operatives, was paid $41,276 [2013] $30.450 [2012] for translation services for the site visitpanama.com.

La Prensa reports that the site shows translation errors and some sections do not even have language changes.

The weather section in English, for example, has at least 12 errors or omissions in the text, including drafting failures, incorrect word usage, and even a word that does not exist in English.
The transportation sections have no written documents and simply appear white.
Place names are translated literally with Cerro Azul and Cerro Jefe, appearing as Blue Hill and Chief Hill Hill respectively. "Imagine a tourist asking a Panama resident how to get to Chief Hill," said one reader.
If the surfer enters "events", in English, he gets to a section in which columns, , appear in Spanish eg., the categories: dining, national fairs and festivals, sports, culture, concerts, and conferences and conventions.
This part has not been translated into Portuguese and French.
When the visitor reaching the website, that according to ATP administrator Solomon Shamah, is a tourism gateway to the country, and clicks on Where to Go. there are several sites, but no mention of the capital’s main attraction: the Panama Canal.
In the area related to virtual tours, readers complained of poor quality pictures and “it takes a magnifying glass to read the text.” The same happened on other pages.
"There are no apparent links to other web sites of interest to visitors, for example, the Panama Canal Authority, museums, the Chamber of Commerce or Tourism The links are only incomplete summaries produced by the authors of the website,” said a reader.
The only museum mentioned is the Biodiversity Museum, not yet open.
Adolfo Fabrega, Pensanómica SA president, told La Prensathat they have six translators and the the work involved a team of 18 people, and there was a site for journalists and other media.

When Fabrega and Tourism Authority manager Salomon Shamah, talked about visitpanama.com it was stated that the company also hired people to generate content, and there were staff translators "To avoid the disadvantages of machine translation,"
Shamah, told the National Asssembly, that the tourism sector "is not about designing a website but the positioning of Panama abroad through online channels."
In 2012, Shamah awarded a direct contract to Pensanómica for $715,920, which included the payment of $ 447,000 related to the web and social networks and another $ 268,000 for the transfer of foreign journalists to Panama.
In 2013 he issued a further contract for $882 998, distributed as follows: $600 000 for the digital and social networking site, and another $282,000 for bringing international media.