Steve Woods | Steve Woods

Chinese interpreter jailed for helping people cheat driving theory test

16/07/2013 Steve WoodsLanguage

West Midlands Police has announced that a Chinese interpreter has been jailed for helping driving test candidates cheat on theory exams in a scam that’s believed to have netted him up to £100,000.

Interpreter Peter Hui was approved by the Driving Standards Agency (DSA) to guide foreign applicants through the exam and provide a Mandarin voice-over for its multiple choice questions and answer options.

However, a joint West Midlands Police and DSA investigation revealed Hui had helped more than 200 candidates pass by agreeing a cheat’s code, which involved him saying “shi” – Mandarin for “yes” – before reading out the answer he believed was correct.

DSA officials became suspicious of the increased number of prospective drivers choosing to be represented by the 55-year-old interpreter as his client list expanded rapidly towards the end of 2011 and into 2012.

They appointed their own Mandarin language expert to assess audio recordings taken from 27 of his translations and found he repeatedly used the “shi” prompt to steer candidates to the right answer.

Hui was arrested at the Birmingham test centre on 21st August 2012 and, faced with the evidence, admitted conspiring to defraud the DSA.

On Monday 15th July 15 Hui was sentenced at Birmingham Crown Court to 12 months in prison.

Police finance investigators will look to recover cash and assets Hui is believed to have gained illegally.

This is believed to be the first time an interpreter has been jailed for such a fraud.

Two candidates who admitted paying Hui to help them cheat also admitted a charge of conspiracy to commit fraud and were ordered to carry out 80 hours of unpaid work and pay £100 costs.

Theory test candidates that cannot speak or read English can ask for a ‘voice-over’ in one of 21 different languages provided by the DSA-approved interpreters.

Furthermore, on 10th July officers from West Midlands Police’s ECU arrested an Urdu interpreter suspected of helping bus and lorry drivers cheat on theory tests. He was bailed till a date in September pending detailed enquiries.
Advertising’s acceptable face

15/07/2013 Steve WoodsLanguage, Linux, Media, Oddities, Open Source, Tech

KDE is one of the 2 major providers of GUIs and applications for Linux systems (some KDE applications are also now available for Windows too! Ed.).

It’s currently holding the KDE Akademy 2013, a free, non-commercial event organised by the KDE community, in Bilbao in the Basque Country of Northern Spain from 13th to 19th July.

The local public transport company has also picked up on this event and is advertising it on its ticket machines; and in 3 languages too!.

Free software advertising – Bilbao

Would London Underground or the UK’s train operating companies do likewise?

I’ve written before of my dislike of advertising (posts passim), but advertising for community-based projects – even if those communities are scattered throughout the world – is something for which I’ll make an exception.
France: Twitter hands over anti-Semitic tweets data

13/07/2013 Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics, Social Media, Tech

Micro-blogging site Twitter is complying with a recent judicial decision to hand over identification data for anti-Semitic and racist tweets, reports Le Monde Informatique.

In October last year, there was outrage after numerous anti-Semitic comments were posted on Twitter using the hashtags #UnBonJuif (a good Jew) and #UnJuifMort (a dead Jew). When alerted to the tweets, Twitter immediately removed them. The UEJF (French Jewish Students Union) and four other human rights and anti-racist organisations appealed to the courts to force Twitter to hand over personal details of users who had posted the tweets so they could be prosecuted under French laws against publishing racist and discriminatory hate speech.

In June 2013 the Court of Appeal in Paris dismissed a plea by Twitter and confirmed the social media site’s obligation to pass on the details of the authors of racist or anti-Semitic tweets to five human rights associations concerned.

Twitter announced yesterday that it had handed over the “data likely to enable the identification of certain authors” of anti-Semitic tweets. Twitter also regard this move as settling the dispute with the UEJF, which had directly criticised the social network and its CEO, Dick Costolo, requesting €38.5 million in damages. The parties to the dispute are now going to work together to fight racism. Twitter added that this included “taking measures to improve the accessibility of the reporting procedure of illegal tweets”.
FSFE: storing your data at Microsoft is negligent

12/07/2013 Steve WoodsPolitics, Tech
In an article published yesterday, The Guardian describes how Microsoft is actively cooperating with the USA’s NSA. According to the article, Microsoft is providing the NSA with broad access to the communications of anyone using the company’s services, as follows:
- Microsoft gives the NSA access to encrypted mails on Hotmail, Live.com and Outlook.com, as well as web chat messages;
- Microsoft provides the NSA with easy access to its SkyDrive storage service, which currently has 250 million users worldwide;
- Microsoft makes it possible for the NSA to monitor audio and video calls on the Skype service which it acquired in 2011.
“This makes it clear that trusting Microsoft with your critical company data is downright negligent,” says Karsten Gerloff, President of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE). “In both the public and the private sector, those responsible for security and data protection urgently need to take action to protect their organisations, customers and clients.”

While it is difficult or impossible to entirely escape surveillance, there are ways to minimise the risk that sensitive data, such as confidential product data or patient records, is intercepted by a third party. Free Software solutions for groupware, office products and operating systems are fully auditable and often data security a priority. End-to-end encryption with free software such as
GnuPG and off-the-record messaging (OTR) protects data in transit. Products providing secure audio, video and chat communications, such as Jitsi, go a long way towards replacing Skype.

“We advise companies and all other organisations that wish to protect their data to use free software solutions, to store data in-house wherever possible and to cooperate only with providers whom they trust to protect their customers’ data,” says Gerloff. “Such providers will often use strong encryption, and minimise the amount of data they store. Using smaller providers instead of global IT companies makes it somewhat less likely that customers’ data will be caught in the NSA’s dragnet.”
Recommended: AdBlock Edge

12/07/2013 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Tech

When it comes to advertising, I agree with George Orwell who wrote the following in Keep the Aspidistra Flying in 1936:

Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill-bucket.

However, virtually every news site on the web is infested with advertising ranging from the restrained to the impossibly annoying (you know the ones – distracting Flash animations. Ed.).

It was with a great sense of relief that I greeted the arrival of browser plug-ins that blocked advertisements. For years I used Adblock Plus, which is available for Firefox, Chromium/Chrome, Opera and is currently being developed for Internet Explorer. However, I was disappointed that Adblock Plus still allowed some ‘acceptable advertising’ and there was no way of turning off that particular setting.

Needless to say, I was most gratified to discover Adblock Edge, which is a fork of the Adblock Plus version 2.1.2 extension for blocking advertisements on the web.

Adblock Edge was primarily branched off from Adblock Plus 2.1.2 source code package “http://adblockplus.org/downloads/adblockplus-2.1.2-source.tgz” created by Wladimir Palant.

Adblock Edge provides the same features as Adblock Plus 2.X and higher but without “acceptable ads” feature.

Try it with your browser today!
Inadequate interpreter supplied, case adjourned

11/07/2013 Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

Yesterday’s Wales Online carried a report of a court case at Cardiff Magistrates Court involving public order offences by Tamil protesters on 20th June connected with a protest at the city’s Swalec Stadium against the presence of the Sri Lankan cricket team on British soil.

Hidden in the report was yet more evidence of the failing interpreting contract between the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and Capita Translation & Interpreting (posts passim), in this instance, the provision of an incomprehensible interpreter.

An eighth man admitted throwing a stone at a passing car outside the stadium, while a ninth man accused of common assault was unable to submit a plea because he could not understand the Tamil interpreter provided by the court – his case was adjourned until July 23.

How can the MoJ continue to claim that the contract is working well when courts around the country experience delay, disruption and additional expense?

If any reader has evidence of court delays for whatever reason (e.g. Capita not providing an interpreter, G4S failing to produce defendant for hearing, etc., they can be reported at https://courtdelays.wordpress.com/.
Bristol Post Balls 3 – everyday sexism

11/07/2013 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Social Media

The Bristol Post’s gaffes are not restricted to its website and dead tree version.

Yesterday its Twitter feed yielded the following bit of everyday sexism (and no apology when challenged. Ed.).

Gromit-a-Like: women need not apply
Little bird, big name

10/07/2013 Steve WoodsBristol, Language

The other afternoon I was having a rare afternoon pint in the shady garden of The Volunteer Tavern in St Judes when mine host Peter Gibbs asked me a question along the lines of: “What are these small brown birds I keep seeing in the garden?”

I told him that I’d frequently seen (and heard; as the RSPB remarks, “For such a small bird it has a remarkably loud voice.” Ed.) wrens in the garden.

The Eurasian Wren (Troglodytes troglodytes) Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

The wren is Britain’s smallest bird, measuring 9.5-10 cm, and used to feature on the back of Britain’s smallest coin – the pre-decimal farthing, which ceased to be legal tender after 31st December 1960.

George VI farthing. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Despite its small size, the wren has a big binomial name: Troglodytes troglodytes.

The wren is found across the UK in a wide range of habitats – woodland, farmland, heathland, moorland and islands and is a regular visitor to gardens, including pub gardens in central Bristol. 🙂

In European folklore, the wren is named the King of the Birds. According to a fable attributed to Aesop by Plutarch, when the eagle and the wren strove to fly the highest (presumably for the title of King of the Birds. Ed.), the wren initially rested on the eagle’s back and then when the eagle tired, the wren took off from his back, soared above him and so won the accolade.
Bristol Post Balls 2

10/07/2013 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities

Below is a screenshot of the story in today’s Bristol Post reporting on Professor Peter Higgs – one of the team that postulated the existence of the particle named after him back in the 1960s – being granted the freedom of the city of Bristol.

Headline quality control in action. Click on image for full size version.

Professor Higgs is a former pupil of Bristol’s Cotham Grammar School.

For a local media report of the event that has a proper headline, I recommend Bristol 24/7’s offering.

Bristol & Avon Family History Society has some interest background information on the history of the Freedom of Bristol and Burgesses, as Freemen (and they were men in medieval times. Ed.) were originally known.
Court ‘interpreters’ being sent to Fire Service College

09/07/2013 Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

Reposted from RPSI Linguist Lounge, with added links.

Anonymous writes:

You might be aware that Capita acquired the Fire Service College, the award-winning leader in fire and emergency response training, for £10 million. The Fire Service College, located in Moreton in Marsh – Gloucestershire, gets clients from all over the world, including: the UK, Europe, Middle East and Asia.

Some of their delegates can’t speak in English, so therefore Capita has tried improving their Fire Service College by bringing their very own, cheap, ‘Interpreters’ to assist the delegates.

So now, as you can see, the court ‘Interpreters’ which work for Capita are now being sent to the Fire Service College, to interpret for the delegates who are being trained for emergency response; I just hope they can interpret accurately.

Anyway, Capita called me up and offered me a 3 month interpretation project at the Fire Service College before it was actually official that Capita had acquired the College. I gave it a go, but I didn’t really like it because it was actually quite hard compared to Court Interpreting but it actually looked like Capita hired their best interpreters which have been on the NRPSI.

However, Capita had told me that I had to arrive the night prior to the day I interpret for the delegates. So, it becomes clear that Capita don’t trust its interpreters and know that they are unreliable.

Now let’s get to the interesting part, the rates. The normal day is 8:30 to 17:30 with a 1 hour lunch at about 12:00, so for the day (8 hours of full interpreting) you just get paid a flat fee of £140. That’s the amount of 7 hours interpreting in a court. But what was different was that they paid me door-to-door travel time and of course millage [sic].

Therefore, Capita pay you less, for harder work.

But on the other hand, Capita do give you free accommodation (which is on-site but not nice at all), they also give you free food; including breakfast, lunch and dinner. Also, there is a bar, gym, swimming pool and some small shops.

It does look quite appealing, doesn’t it? But it does mean leaving your family for 5 days in the week and giving you only 2 days (Saturday and Sunday) to go back home and spend it with your loved ones.

If any of you, Interpreters, have been to the Fire Service College, please leave a comment.

Many thanks.

Posts navigation