Media

  • Grauniad corrects itself

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media

    Along with the majority of the press, those writing for The Guardian occasionally confuse the written and spoken word when two languages are involved; somehow the British media have great difficulty telling translators and interpreters apart (posts passim).

    Yesterday The Guardian acknowledged its errors by publishing the following correction and clarification.

    One article (Merkel backs May’s decision not to trigger Brexit until next year, 21 July, page 6) referred to the chancellor “speaking in German with an official translator”, and another (No free trade without open borders, Hollande tells May, 22 July, page 1) referred to the president “speaking in French with an official translator”. While Collins dictionary says “translator” can mean “a person or machine that translates speech or writing”, our style guide advises using “interpreter” for people who work with the spoken word, and “translator” for those who work with the written word.

    Well done Grauniad; I’m glad your style guide acknowledges the correct use of terminology.

    Hat tip: Yelena McCafferty

  • Defendant declines to appear without interpreter

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

    An Albanian man charged with two counts of murder has refused to appear in court until an Albanian interpreter is present so he can understand the proceedings, today’s East Anglian Daily Times reports.

    A man appearing on the charge sheet as Ali Qazimaj was due to appear before magistrates in Ipswich this morning in connection with the murder of elderly couple Peter and Sylvia Stuart of Mill Lane, Weybread, Suffolk.

    In the defendant’s absence, his solicitor Stephen Harris expressed his frustration with Capita which is alleged to provide courts with interpreters. Mr Harris also informed the bench that his client’s name was Vital Dapi, not Ali Qazimaj.

    Magistrates referred the case to Ipswich Crown Court for a hearing this afternoon.

    Ipswich Crown Court
    Ipswich Crown Court. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

    The defendant was subsequently brought before the Crown Court this afternoon and the case was adjourned until 19th August for a plea and trial preparation hearing.

  • Anglesey newcomers urged to learn Welsh

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

    New residents on the island of Anglesey who are not Welsh speakers could be targeted with welcome packs from the local council urging them to learn to speak Welsh, the Daily Post reports today.

    Welsh flag

    The Post continues by stating that councillors on the Isle of Anglesey County Council (Welsh: Cyngor Sir Ynys Môn) will next week discuss a report on the authority’s new Welsh language strategy which aims to increase the percentage of islanders using Welsh in their daily lives.

    This is in part to counter a decline in the percentage of Welsh speakers revealed by census statistics. In the 2011 census, 57% of Anglesey residents were Welsh speakers, compared with 80% in the 1950s. In 2001, the figure was over 60%, whilst back at the start of the 20th century, the 1901 census recorded that nearly 91% of Anglesey’s population spoke Welsh.

    According to the Daily Post, the lowest percentage of Welsh speakers is found in the popular seaside village of Rhosneigr with a mere 36%.

    One of the major challenges facing the Welsh language is the new nuclear plant at Wylfa, which is likely to bring thousands of non-Welsh-speaking contractors to the island during the construction phase.

  • Blunders at the speed of light

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities, Tech

    There was good news this week for Bristol businesses with a yearning for high speed internet connectivity.

    The Bristol Post reported on the deployment of ultra-fast 1 Gbps internet in the city.

    While journalists at the Temple Way Ministry of Truth are quite competent at their main task of churnalism, such as copying and pasting the words of wisdom given in press releases by men in suits – as in the article in question – standards slip dramatically and the absence of sub-editors and the associated lack of quality control are patently obvious when Post staff try simplifying complicated technical concepts, as shown by the following sentence.

    sentence reads These glass cables deliver an internet connection at the speed of light which is highly reliable and efficient

    Shall we just examine the above sentence in detail? There’s plenty wrong with it both technically and grammatically, which schoolchildren sitting their SATs examinations at ages 10 or 11 years would be embarrassed to get wrong.

    Firstly, those glass cables. The proper designation is “optical fibre cable“; and as is well known the correct use of terminology is important. An optical fibre cable is a cable containing one or more optical fibres that are used to carry light, whilst an optical fibre itself is a flexible, transparent fibre made by drawing glass (silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. So an optical fibre cable can be made of either glass or plastic, i.e. not solely glass.

    Data from an internet connection is transmitted as light down an optical fibre cable. Light travels at the speed of light. However, it is the method for providing the internet connection which is “highly reliable and efficient, not the speed of light. The subordinate clause, i.e. “which is highly reliable and efficient is misplaced and should at any rate have been preceded by a comma.

    Finally, there’s that speed of light; it’s so reliable and efficient that its precise value is 299,792,458 metres per second (approximately 3.00×108 m/s). It is commonly denoted as c, as in Einstein’s famous mass–energy equivalence formula. Furthermore, c is the maximum speed at which all matter – and hence information – in the universe can travel.

    In the slightly better old days when the Post still employed proper sub-editors, any decent holder of that position would have taken that sentence to bits and re-written it roughly as follows:-

    “These fibre optic cables deliver an internet connection reliably and efficiently at the speed of light.”

    Or alternatively:

    “These fibre optic cables deliver a reliable, efficient internet connection at the speed of light.”

    Unfortunately, local newspapers and their online analogues nowadays seem to have forgotten that quality matters and with quality comes a reputation and with the latter, authority.

  • Spelling IS important

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities, Politics, Social Media

    As someone who’s worked with language for the best part of four decades, your correspondent recognises the importance of correct spelling.

    One area where this matters more is people’s names, something which the fourth estate doesn’t always manage correctly; for instance, a couple of years ago in a piece in the Bristol Post in which I was quoted my surname mysteriously changed from Woods to Wood halfway through.

    However, it’s not just journalists who get proper names wrong. Here’s a fine blunder from former Labour leader Ed Miliband on Twitter.

    tweet in which Miliband confuses home secretary with porn star

    One question remains: would an actress/glamour model make a better replacement prime minister than an authoritarian home secretary?

  • Postballs – Boxer dies when asked by Bristol’s Mayor

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

    Like many, I was saddened to hear of the death of Muhammad Ali. As a young lad growing up in the 1960s and keen on sport of all kinds, he was a large presence on the TV sports programmes and the newspaper sports pages.

    His achievements in the ring and his stand against conscription and the Vietnam War helped reinforce his reputation: he really did end up as “the greatest“.

    However, news emerges via the Bristol Post that Ali’s death may not be all it seems: Muhammad’s demise could have been at the behest of Marvin Rees, Bristol’s newly elected mayor.

    first paragraph reads The Big Screen Bristol in Millennium Square will show the memorial service of Muhammad Ali who died last week at the personal request of the city's mayor Marvin Rees

    However, as per usual, it is merely a case of the endemic bad use of English, appalling grammar and ambiguity by the Post’s semi-literate hacks.

    In contrast, Ali was renowned for his eloquence and use of the English language, something which the current crop of Post journalists will never, ever emulate.

  • Bristol Post balls – man concealed by sound

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities

    One of the joys of the illiteracy of the Bristol Post – the city’s newspaper of warped record – is the unintentional humour the manifestations of that lack of skill inspire.

    Such an instance occurred yesterday when the Post reported, with a local angle of course, on the reopening of the inquest into the victims of the Birmingham pub bombing by the IRA on 21st November 1974.

    One of the survivors – Frank Thomas – now happens to live in Bristol and the Post’s reported duly managed to get rumble and rubble confused, as shown in the following screenshot of the article’s first paragraph.

    text in image reads For 20 minutes Frank Thomas lay hidden under rumble while emergency services struggled to rescue bodies from a Birmingham pub

    Should any passing Post hack wish to avoid future confusion, the definitions of rumble and rubble are helpfully transcribed below from Cambridge Dictionaries Online.

    Rumble (n.) – a low continuous sound.

    Rubble (n.) the piles of broken stone and bricks, etc. that are left when a building falls down or is destroyed.

  • Windows 10 update interrupts weather forecast

    Steve WoodsMedia, Oddities, Tech

    Microsoft has a reputation for forcing unwanted updates and upgrades on users.

    Its actions reached a new nadir when it made Windows 10 a recommended update for users of earlier versions – 7 and 8.* – of its operating system.

    Since this occurred there have been numerous reports of the new operating system installing itself without either user consent or much warning.

    One of the most public of these attempted upgrades happened 2 days ago live on air at TV station KCCI of Des Moines, Iowa, as per the following screenshot.

    screenshot of Windows 10 update interrupting live TV weather forecast

    That’s right! With impeccable bad timing, Windows 10 update barged unannounced into Metinka Slater’s heavy rain and thunderstorms update. However, the TV meteorologist managed deal professionally with the unwelcome intrusion into her work and switch quickly to an alternative video source to continue her broadcast, as shown by the following video.

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