Media | Steve Woods

Linguists still missing court appointments

16/12/2013 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

Despite the bluster of senior civil servants and ministers at the Ministry of Justice, the courts and tribunals interpreting contract with Capita is still causing delays and extra expense to the public purse (posts passim).

The latest evidence of this comes from today’s Grantham Chronicle, which reports as follows:

The case against a Lithuanian national had to be adjourned because there was no translator [sic] available in court.

Algirdas Gerbenis, of Railway Terrace, Grantham, is accused of drink driving on St Catherine’s Road in the town and failing to stop after an accident on October 10.

The case was adjourned to December 16.

Mr Gerbenis was granted unconditional bail.

As the Grantham Chronicle is apparently having some difficulty telling translators and interpreters apart, I suggest the paper makes my illustrated guide to translators and interpreters compulsory reading for its journalists. 🙂

Hat tip: RPSI Linguist Lounge.
Bristol Post Balls: the return of the greengrocer

16/12/2013 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

The Bristol Post is no stranger to the greengrocer’s (or superfluous) apostrophe (posts passim).

There’s a fine example in the headline for a photo gallery in today’s online edition.

Santa’s 2013 what, Bristol Post?

The mandatory screenshot is included above as the occupants of the Temple Way Ministry of Truth may have realised or been alerted to their mistake (I’m sure they wait use your daily review of the paper’s contents as a proofreading tool. Ed.) by the time you read this.
Norway’s National Library digitising its collection

15/12/2013 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Open Data, Open Standards, Tech

The National Library of Norway has announced it is digitising its entire collection. The Norwegian Legal Deposit Act requires that all published content in all media – i.e. paper, microforms, photographs, combined documents, electronic documents and the radio and television recordings from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation – be deposited with the National Library of Norway.

The Library’s collection is also being expanded through purchases and gifts. The digital collection contains material dating from the Middle Ages up to the current day.

Digital deposit

In parallel with digitising analogue material, the National Library of Norway is working to expand the scope of publications covered by legal digital deposit legislation. The Library wishes to receive the digital source of the publication and thus the collection’s digital content.

The digitising programme started in 2006 and it is estimated that it will take 20–30 years for the Library’s entire collection to be digitised.

A Dickens engraving being digitised. Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Furthermore, The Atlantic reports that people accessing the Library’s digital collection from a Norwegian IP address will be able to access all 20th-century works – even those still under copyright. Non-copyrighted works of any age will be available for download.

Hat tip: Mike Ellis
Lookalikes

11/12/2013 Steve WoodsMedia, Oddities, Politics

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of Private Eye (posts passim).

Amongst their many admirable features is a long-running lookalikes photo comparison on its letters pages.

The picture below has taken its inspiration from the Eye and features 2 lots of villains, the East End’s Kray twins and the Eton Posh Boys gang.

The Kray twins (left), Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer (right)

I’ll leave you to decide which are the nastier set of criminals. 🙂
Oldham Evening Chronicle apologises to interpreters

06/12/2013 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

RPSI Linguist Lounge reports that on 2nd December, the Oldham Evening Chronicle published an apology to NRPSI interpreters on Page 2 of that day’s edition.

The apology is reproduced below.

It would appear that since publication of the original article, journalists at the Chronicle have learned the actual meaning of the word ‘cartel’.

Oldham is the home town of Gavin Wheeldon, the founder of Advanced Language Solutions (ALS) which was subsequently sold to Capita and renamed Capita Translation & Interpreting. The latter is currently presiding over the fiasco commonly known as the Ministry of Justice framework agreement for courts and tribunals interpreting (posts passim).
The Eye looks at court interpreting

01/12/2013 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

The Ministry of Justice’s latest quarterly statistical bulletin on the use of language services in courts and tribunals (PDF), which was covered by this blog two weeks ago (posts passim), has also caught the attention of the latest issue of Private Eye.

Describing it as “the shoddy foreign language interpreter service provided by Crapita“, The Eye’s piece notes there’s a greater than one in ten chance of trouble when a court makes a booking for an interpreter via the MoJ’s contract with Capita, with the piece reaching the conclusion why bother with the contract at all?

Quite.

Below is a scan on The Eye’s article.
Bristol Post Balls – tall tales

01/12/2013 Steve WoodsBristol, Media

Bristol’s tallest building according to the Post
Yesterday the Bristol Post published a story of a wrecking spree that took place at the Castlemead building in central Bristol.

Castlemead was completed in 1981. The building has a roof height of 80 metres (262 feet) and consists of 18 floors. Written by an unidentified journalist, the Bristol Post article confidently describes it in its first paragraph as “Bristol’s tallest building”.

But is it?

No.

Most definitely not.

Bristol’s actual tallest building
As this blog has pointed out before (posts passim), that accolade is held by a much older building – St Mary Redcliffe, parts of which date to the 12th century.

The spire of St Mary Redcliffe, is 89 metres (292 feet) high. Its height makes it the third tallest English church spire in England. The spire itself was struck by lightning in 1446 and truncated (something which can be clearly seen in the illustration of the church on Millerd’s 17th century plan of Bristol. Ed.), in which condition it remained for some 400 years before being rebuilt to its present height in 1872.

So, Bristol Post hacks, think carefully – and do the all-important background research and fact checking – before in future describing any modern edifice as Bristol’s tallest. 🙂
Bristol Post Balls – ungulate identification

24/11/2013 Steve WoodsMedia, Oddities

Horses and cattle are both ungulates, i.e. both use the tips of their toes to support their whole body weight whilst moving. Both cows and horses have hooves.

A horse is an odd-toed ungulate with a long hairy mane and tale, whilst a cow is an even-toed ungulate. They’re easy to identify, unless you’re a city-based employee of the Bristol Post.

Yesterday the Post published a tragic story of more than 100 horses having to be put down after being rescued from appalling conditions in Bridgend in the Vale of Glamorgan.

However, the picture used to illustrate the report features animals that look more bovine than equine, as revealed by the screenshot below.

Frisians or Dobbins?

Just because both beef and horsemeat taste equally good on the plate doesn’t means they are interchangeable in the field, Bristol Post. Try saddling up a cow and entering a steeplechase! 🙂
Bristol Post Balls – bedding expenses

11/11/2013 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

I knew having children was expensive, but never realised cots – those small-sized beds for babies – could cost so much until I read this article in today’s Bristol Post about an expensive night out which sadly ended up in that local Palais de Justice also known as Bristol Crown Court.

Bristol Crown Court

Apparently, the night out resulted in a huge bill for bedding, according to the relevant sentence in the article.

The court was told Collins had to stump up £8,500 towards legal cots.
Bristol Post Balls – beefing about faggots

06/11/2013 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

Today the Bristol Post has been occupied with faggots. It all started when Facebook, that bastion of free speech, banned the use of the word faggot as offensive. Apparently they’ve never heard of this traditional item of English cuisine over the pond, where faggot is a term of abuse for homosexuals.

As a result, Mr Brain’s – a producer of culinary products resembling faggots that started life in the Bristol area – has started a campaign to fight against Facebook’s ban, which is duly being reported by the Post.

In addition, the Post also informed its readers what faggots are. Any similarity between the Post’s article and the introduction to Wikipedia’s faggots article is presumably purely coincidental.

However, the Post hasn’t finished with faggots yet; it also tells its by now slavering readers how to make faggots. After having stated that faggots are made from pork, the Post drops a real clanger on this report, illustrating it with a photograph of a butcher (so far, so good. Ed.) posing with a joint of beef (D’oh! Ed.), as evidenced by the screenshot below.

Digital deposit

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