Social Media

  • What’s Portuguese for “I can’t interpret?”

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics, Social Media

    On Friday Linguist Lounge’s Facebook page carried a disturbing report on the abysmal quality of interpreters – or more specifically one interpreter – used by Capita Translation & interpreting. It is reproduced in its full horror below.

    We’ve received a report that today Capita sent an unqualified Portuguese interpreter to a court in England. The linguist is reported to have summarised court proceedings, using English terms for unknown words such as “guardian”, “placement”, “local authority”. The judge was said to have been made aware of this after the hearing, however, the defendant was left stressed and anxious, without any understanding of what was going on inside the court room.

    When is the Ministry of Justice going to terminate its failing contract with Crapita? Will that have to wait until a change of government next year?

    In the meantime Crapita will continue to be rewarded for poor service and public money will continue to be wasted.

  • Talking rubbish

    Steve WoodsBristol, Oddities, Politics, Social Media

    One perennial problem in the Easton district of Bristol where I live is fly-tipping, the illegal dumping of waste.

    trade and other waste dumped by communal bin for household waste in Stapleton Road, Easton
    Disgraceful! Trade & other waste dumped by communal bin for household waste in Stapleton Road, Easton

    Some areas – such as Stapleton Road (see above picture) – have persistent problems and last night I gave a short presentation at the latest Easton & Lawrence Hill Neighbourhood Forum meeting to try and encourage other residents and those who work in the area to get involved and make Easton a tidier place.

    I’m pleased to say I received whole-hearted support from local councillor Marg Hickman, who is equally concerned about the amount of litter on the streets (are fly-tipping and littering related; does one attract the other? Ed.).

    Flytipping can be reported online using the council’s dedicated report form. Some people use Twitter to do so too, whilst for those with a smartphone various third party applications are available, such as My Council.

    If anyone does draw attention to fly-tipping or litter on Twitter, you might like to add the hashtag #tidybs5. If you live elsewhere in Bristol you might like to adapt the #tidybs* hashtag, replacing the asterisk with the first figure of your postcode.

    Yesterday I did learn prior to the Neighbourhood Forum meeting that persistence pays off: via an email from the city council I learnt that several traders on Stapleton Road are or have been served with fixed penalty notices for fly-tipping by enforcement officers. It’s a start, but I get the impression that fly-tipping will be as hard to eradicate as a Hammer horror film vampire.

    Bristol will be European Green Capital in 2015. Unless it sorts out fly-tipping and other environmental problems in Easton and the city’s other less prosperous areas (like the plague of flies, dust and other industrial pollution in Avonmouth. Ed.), the accolade should be amended to read European Greenwash Capital.

  • Dorchester Crown Court: Crapita found in breach

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics, Social Media, Tech

    Earlier today barrister Charles MacLean Cochand tweeted the following from Dorchester Crown Court:

    It is understood that the replacement Portuguese interpreter booked via Crapita is travelling to Dorchester from Nottingham, a round trip of over 400 miles. This interpreter is due to arrive at 2.00 pm, according to Mr Cochand.

  • Shredder poll: UKIP wins

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics, Social Media

    All election materials delivered to my home are recycled and those containing my personal detailed are shredded before recycling.

    Each election I keep a tally of the number of communications received from each candidate or party, which has acquired the name of the shredder poll over the years.

    Today the UK votes in elections for the European Parliament (posts passim). In addition, one-third of the council wards in Bristol are also up for election, although my ward of Lawrence Hill isn’t one of them.

    Click here for a full list of candidates for the European Parliament elections (PDF).

    The lack of a council election in my ward could account for the low level of election leaflets received in the run-up to the poll: a mere 6.

    The graphic below shows the results of the shredder poll.

    bar chart showing shredder poll results

    Well done UKIP! Perhaps this win will go some way to make up for your misguided #WhyImVotingUkip Twitter campaign.

  • Crapita and the MoJ: still wasting public money

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics, Social Media

    Crapita’s mismanagement of the courts and tribunals interpreting contract for the Ministry of Justice may not be getting as much publicity now as previously (posts passim), but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t stopped wasting public money, as the tweet below from yesterday reveals.

    As Leisha doesn’t mention the type of court involved, there’s no certainty how many thousands of pounds this laxity has cost, but once again justice is being delayed, contrary to one of the few clauses of Magna Carta still in legal effect (posts passim).

    One might even think that the one organisation that should be concerned about this – the Ministry of Justice – seems to be less concerned with justice and more with covering up its own and Crapita’s serial incompetence.

  • The importance of the space bar and proofreading

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Social Media

    The Wig and Pen public house in Truro, Cornwall had some unexpected publicity earlier this week when a badly temporary temporary sign was snapped by an amused regular before being hurriedly removed by embarrassed staff, according to yesterday’s Western Daily Press.

    By the time the sign came down, its fame had spread round the world by social media; and it’s easy to see why.

    sign saying The Wig & Penis Is Open For Business

    However, according to the Western Daily Press article, the sign itself was not the only linguistic clanger involved in the episode:

    But a remember [sic] of staff named Georgie-Tim later took to Twitter to say: “Well, it got you’re attention!

  • Crash course in language

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Social Media

    Have you ever noticed the language used when road traffic incidents are reported?

    As a typical example, look at this story from Wednesday’s Bristol Post.

    The headline reads:

    Man taken to hospital after his car collided with road sign in Avonmouth

    The first sentence outlines how the incident occurred:

    A man in his 40s had to be removed on a spinal board after his car collided with a road sign in Avonmouth.

    Note how the car’s occupant – presumably its driver – plays a passive role; the car apparently collided with a road sign of its own volition without any human intervention. One would almost think that cars and other motor vehicles are so capricious and flighty that conscious action by human beings is imperative to stop the public highway becoming a large linear scrapyard in next to no time and remaining such permanently.

    Perhaps a more accurate headline would have been Man taken to hospital after driving into road sign.

    Similar examples of this use of English can be found in any local paper in the country.

    However, such language is not confined to the print media. An similar example from inside the BBC in Bristol was posted on Twitter this morning (screenshot below).

    tweet screenshot

    Note the absence of any human involvement in the incident: a horse was killed by a fast car. Was it an unoccupied, autonomous vehicle? A more accurate rendition would be that a horse was killed by a fast driver.

    Then there’s the way large swathes of the media report collisions using the noun accident to describe them. In the vast majority of cases, there’s nothing accidental about them. According to RoSPA, 95% of all road ‘accidents’ involve some human error, whilst a human is solely to blame in 76% of road ‘accidents’.

    According to the Collins English Dictionary, accident has the following definitions:

    an unforeseen event or one without an apparent cause
    anything that occurs unintentionally or by chance; chance; fortune
    a misfortune or mishap, esp one causing injury or death

    It would seem that the third definition is the one relied upon by the media. Interestingly, the British police stopped using the term Road Traffic Accident (RTA) some years ago; the police now refer to a Road Traffic Incident (RTI) instead.

    Perhaps the media should follow the example of the police if they wish to retain their alleged reputation for truth and accuracy.

  • My Valentine

    Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Social Media, Tech

    It’s February 14th, St Valentine’s Day, a busy day for florists, restaurateurs and people selling greetings cards.

    I love Free Software heartI’m declaring my love here online: I love free software.

    If you are unaware what free software is – and it has far more to do than merely being gratis (think free as in speech, rather than free as in beer. Ed.) – look at the Free Software Foundation’s free software definition.

    From the Debian GNU/Linux operating system to the Gimp graphics package and the LibreOffice productivity suite, I couldn’t do without it.

    If you love free software too, show your passion too in one of the following ways:

    • Writing an e-mail or letter to contributors expressing how much you like what they are doing.
    • Sharing your feelings about free software on social networks and microblogs using the hashtag #ilovefs. Or you can write a blog post about your favourite piece of free software.
    • Buying your favourite contributor a drink. Or buy someone else a drink and while enjoying it, tell her/him about your favourite free software program.
    • Giving a contributor a hug (ask for permission first). You might be amazed how many free software developers live in your area!
    • Helping the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) collecting quotes for its testimonials of people who love free software. Ask developers, artists, politicians, or other users to send their quotes to FSFE.
    • Taking a picture of yourself showing your feelings for free software and posting it online.
    • Donating to free software initiatives or the FSFE to express your gratitude. They depend on your contribution to continue their work.
    • Finally you can help spread the love by sharing the campaign banners by e-mail, (micro)blog or by social media (please use the hashtag #ilovefs for this).

  • Chinese internet suffers major breakdown

    Steve WoodsPolitics, Social Media, Tech

    keyboard showing Chinese flag on enter keyAt the start of the week, China suffered a major internet outage for several hours, Le Monde Informatique reported yesterday. Experts are wondering about the cause; was it hacking (to use the verb ‘to hack’ in its Daily Mail sense. Ed.) or a technical problem with the country’s censorship mechanisms?

    Last Tuesday more than two-thirds of Chinese websites were inaccessible and millions of users were deprived of internet access for some 8 hours, according to Qihoo 360, a Chinese security software supplier best known for supplying anti-virus products. Security experts are wondering about the origin of this outage. Some believe it was hacking whilst others think there was a fault with the country’s so-called ‘Great Firewall’ censorship system.

    After the outage, Chinese authorities conducted a preliminary inquiry which focussed on hacking. The Chinese CERT team is continuing its inquiry. giving priority to the hacking theory, Chinese specialists believe that they hijacked a root DNS server in China to reroute all the traffic. The Greatfire.org website, which analyses Chinese online censorship, disputes this diversion, stating that Google’s DNS servers were affected.

    A poorly blocked traffic hijack?

    However, Greatfire.org also showed that some of the user traffic had been redirected to an IP address in the United States and more specifically to the Dynamic Internet Technology site which has links to the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which is heavily repressed in China. Greatfire.org believes the origin of the breakdown was due to a technical problem with the ‘Great Firewall’.

    China regularly blocks sites whose content is critical of its government, including Facebook, Twitter and the New York Times. By wanting to block the Dynamic Internet Technology site, the Chinese authorities would have inadvertently rerouted the whole nation’s traffic, according to Greatfire.org.

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