Social Media | Steve Woods

Statement by leaders of Fair Payment Campaign for HO interpreters

22/12/2015 Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics, Social Media

The leaders of the Fair Payment Campaign for Home Office Interpreters have issued the statement below in response to the Home Office’s plan to cut their pay with effect from 1st January 2016 (posts passim). The statement originally appeared on Linguist Lounge.

The Fair Payment Campaign for Home Office Interpreters resulted from a notice they received in November 2015 in relation to a reduction in rates due to take place on all bookings undertaken on behalf of the Home Office, including UK Visas & Immigration, Border Force, Immigration Enforcement and HM Passport Office and any other bookings made through Interpreter Operations Unit, from 1st January 2016 onwards.

Professional qualified Home Office interpreters are standing up against the proposed cuts to our already meagre fees which have been unchanged in at least 13 years. While cuts are being proposed, we contend that we have in fact been subsidising the Home Office over the years by the lack of increase in our fees.

Many interpreters and their supporters have already written to the Home Office Central Interpreters’ Unit expressing their dismay and opposition to these cuts in rates which were already much eroded through inflation, and mean that it will no longer be feasible for them to continue working in this field.

This will result in a diminishing pool of qualified, experienced and vetted interpreters for the Home Office, detrimental both to them but especially so to the great number of vulnerable people who depend on reliable interpreting services to put their cases across since they are unable to do so themselves. Their lives may be at stake. The right to a fair hearing is enshrined in international human rights law.

As a result of our letters and petition, campaign leaders have been invited to meet with CIU senior managers on Monday 21st December 2015. We shall keep colleagues updated as to the outcome of that meeting.

We shall be listening to what they say, re-iterating the contents of our petition letter and also making a point to stand firm on those points.

We have it on good authority that the strength and unity of our campaign stands us in good stead: our unity is our strength.

We shall capitalise on this fact and we must not forget the fiasco with the Ministry of Justice outsourcing of Court Interpreting Services to a private agency in 2012, which resulted in many qualified interpreters declining to continue working in that sector and consequently the lowering of standards and quality of services, causing the delay and collapse of many court cases, as can be verified by the extensive media coverage about this matter which can be found on this Linguist Lounge.

We have collected hundreds of signatures and many interpreters are still contacting us to join the Campaign.

We have the support of non-Home Office interpreters, translators and non-linguists. Some of these supporters have also written to CIU about their dismay, disappointment and disgust at what is being proposed.

The Fair Payment Campaign for Home Office Interpreters also has a social media presence on both Twitter and Facebook.
Spelling or sleeping?

05/12/2015 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Social Media

There was a great clanger in a tweet this morning from Bristol’s Western Daily Press, the sister publication of the Bristol Post (and joint occupier with it of Bristol’s Temple Way Ministry of Truth. Ed.) and likewise subject to many of the latter’s failings with the English language.

Here’s an image of the tweet in question.

The morals of this tale are clear: if you run a tawdry TV talent show orthography is as dangerous as shut-eye if housebreakers are around; if you run the social media account of a mediocre regional paper, learn to proof-read before posting online*! 🙂

* The spelling error in the tweet originally appeared in the article itself, but has since been corrected.
Tidy BS5 exclusive: Hell will freeze over before BCC tackles fly-tipping

24/11/2015 Steve WoodsBristol, Social Media

Yesterday, feeling frustrated with Bristol City Council’s ineptitude at tackling fly-tipping and litter in the city’s Easton and Lawrence Hill wards, despite 18 months’ vigorous campaigning by local residents and ward councillors, I decided to take advantage of Twitter’s poll facility.

The results of the poll are shown below.

That’s right! 90% of respondents believe Hell will freeze over before the local authority gets a grip on fly-tipping.

If anyone spots Satan shopping for ice skates in Broadmead, the Galleries, Cabot Circus, Cribb’s Causeway or any other retail centre in the Bristol area, please provide details using the comments form below. 🙂
A world without Linux – episode 3: no social connections

09/11/2015 Steve WoodsLinux, Media, Open Source, Social Media, Tech

Although you may not realise it, Linux is the world’s largest collaborative project in the history of computing. It runs most of the world’s technology infrastructure and is supported by more developers and companies than any other operating system. In addition, it’s ubiquitous; it can be found in your phone, car and office. Besides that, it also powers the internet, the cloud, stock exchanges, supercomputers, embedded devices and more.

The latest episode of the series tries to show us how hard it is to have social connections is a universe without Linux.

Three more episodes of this Linux Foundation series are planned, with the final video featuring Linux kernel creator Linus Torvalds himself, according to Softpedia.
Translator tampered with meeting minutes

25/10/2015 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities, Social Media

It’s been an open secret for many years that FIFA – the international governing body for football – has been as reliable as a nine pound note.

Following the departure from its HQ building by disgraced president Sepp Blatter, further details of malpractice in FIFA’s governance are now coming to light.

Yesterday’s Daily Mail reported some of this fall-out under the headline “FIFA translator: I was told several times to doctor records of ExCo meetings“.

According to the Mail, FIFA are investigating claims that a junior member of staff was told to falsify official records of FIFA’s meetings of its Executive Committee (ExCo) between 2001 and 2010.

Former FIFA employee Scott Burnett first worked as a translator and then as an assistant to FIFA Secretary General Jerome Valcke, who like Blatter, is currently suspended.

Mr Burnett dropped his bombshell via 3 tweets, as follows.

Tweet no. 1:

I wrote the minutes of FIFA ExCo meetings from 2001 to 2010. During that period, I was instructed several times to misrepresent discussions.

Tweet no. 2:

The instructions to misrepresent meetings came from the President’s office among others.

Tweet no. 3:

I did not share this information before because I was concerned about the repercussions and I did not know who to trust within FIFA circles.

We linguists – irrespective of whether we work as translators or interpreters or both – deal regularly with privileged and confidential information. This is why I rarely discuss the content of my work in public. As such, I have great sympathy for Mr Burnett since being told to falsify records must clearly have conflicted with that inbuilt sense of integrity which all linguists need to do their jobs.

Mr Burnett is no longer employed by FIFA and currently volunteers to support grassroots football.
Chronological capers

25/10/2015 Steve WoodsOddities, Social Media

At 2.00 a.m. this morning British Summer Time (BST) came to an end, the clocks were turned back one hour and the UK reverted to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and evenings that get dark earlier.

This for me marks the gloomiest time of year – at least until we’re over the winter solstice and the day of least daylight!

However, the changing of the clocks is a major job for some. For instance, for the curators of the Palace of Westminster’s Great Clock (which bongs Big Ben. Ed.), the process involves careful precision and split-second timing. As well as re-setting the time, it gives them an opportunity to make close inspection of the clock mechanism as part of a rolling maintenance programme. The process is described in detail on the UK Parliament website.

On a lighter note, the Stonehenge Twitter account decided to have some fun with the change, as shown by the following screenshot.
Community pick litter in Barton Hill

27/09/2015 Steve WoodsBristol, Politics, Social Media

There have been some unkind words on social media that all Tidy BS5 campaigners do is moan about the cleanliness of Bristol’s Easton and Lawrence Hill wards on social media.

Yesterday those words were once again proved to be a lie (posts passim).

A photo call break during the pick. Picture courtesy of Up Our Street.

In brilliant sunshine a dozen or so volunteers turned up in Barton Hill Urban Park to clear away litter and rubbish. Those volunteers included local residents who saw what was going on and joined in. Others of all ages from those in primary school to pensioners expressed their support.

Bags for collecting the litter were kindly provided by Keep Bristol Tidy, the accumulated litter removed over the weekend by Bristol City Council, whilst the event itself was co-ordinated by Up Our Street.

Amongst those volunteers were local ward councillors Marg Hickman and Afzal Shah, both of whom have been invaluable supporters of the Tidy BS5 campaign.

Barton Hill Urban Park is just in Lawrence Hill ward, with its boundary abutting the dividing line with Easton ward.

The next community litter pick to be organised locally will be held on Saturday, 7th November between 11.00 am and 1.00 pm, with the assembly point being the car park of Masala Bazaar, 382-386, Stapleton Road, Easton, BS5 6NQ (map).
Greenwash Capital news: streets of Bristol to get filthier

01/09/2015 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Politics, Social Media

In a move that will put yet another black mark against they city’s undeserved year as European Green Capital, the streets of Bristol are set to get even filthier than they are already.

Today’s Bristol Post reports that the number of street cleaners in Bristol has been cut by nearly a fifth since Bristol City Council took waste management and street cleansing back in-house last month from contractors Kier Group, those well-known supporters of former worker blacklisting outfit The Consulting Association.

Fly-tipping on Pennywell Road, Easton

According to the Post, the council-run Bristol Waste Company (BWC) has notified “30 to 40” agency workers at the Hartcliffe depot that they would no longer be required as of yesterday (Monday). This will cut their numbers by about one-fifth. These workers deal with street cleaning and collecting fly-tipping.

In addition, the Hartcliffe staff claim they have not been consulted on the cuts and accused the council of trying to save money at the expense of cleanliness (Bristol City Council has a long and proud tradition of avoiding and/or messing up consultation. Ed.).

Furthermore, the Hartcliffe depot staff also claim they been provided with inadequate equipment to do the job. One anonymous worker is quoted by the Post as saying:

Some of the guys haven’t been given clean gloves or protective gear, and many are still working with Kier equipment. The protective clothing is not adequate, and we have to deal with needles and dog poo and stuff.

If there are insufficient staff available at BWC for the job in hand, perhaps Bristol City Council could reassign staff from elsewhere: ideal candidates for redployment and kitting out with a fluorescent uniform, safety gloves, boots and a broom would be those working in the local authority’s overstaffed press and PR department.

In other Greenwash Capital news, it would appear that Bristol Mayor George Ferguson couldn’t really care less about the city’s cleanliness according to the tweet below from Kerry McCarthy MP.

Synonyms for unimpressed include apathetic, disinterested, unconcerned, undisturbed, untroubled and unmoved.

If Kerry’s report of her meeting with the Mayor is accurate, that is a most disturbing development in the person whose supposed job is to take care the best interests of the city and its welfare.
Can’t tell Norwegian from English? It must be Bing Translator

31/08/2015 Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Social Media, Tech

According to Wikipedia, Bing Translator “is a user facing translation portal provided by Microsoft as part of its Bing services to translate texts or entire web pages into different languages.”

Or it would be if only it could actually recognise languages accurately.

Twitter uses Bing Translator as an interface ostensibly to help users with languages they do not know.

However, Bing Translator still has some way to go before it recognises languages accurately, as shown by the following screenshot.

Whilst it is understandable that online machine translation tools can occasionally get confused between closely related members of the same language family (Google Translate has been known to confuse Norwegian and Danish. Ed.), this is the first time I can recall such a back end helper being a real tool and getting muddled over languages as distinct from one another as English and Norwegian.

Perhaps any passing Microsoft developers would care to explain this anomaly in the comments below.
Microsoft sits in homophone corner

16/06/2015 Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Social Media, Tech

This blog has discussed homophones before (posts passim). Homophone corner is a space to which people who cannot distinguish their homophones are banished to consider the errors of their ways – rather like the corner of the classroom to which misbehaving children were exiled during my primary school days.

It now appears as though the curse of the homophone is spreading to the giants of the technology world, as shown by the following tweet from Nix Tran Stories.

I’ve used Microsoft Word/Office since the days of Windows 3.1 and its spelling and grammar checking tools have in my opinion never been particularly good: I’ve always run rings around them; and now it appears that the spellchecker has been coded by an illiterate.

I suppose the least I could do is pat the leader of the MS Office team on the shoulder and mouth the platitude “their, there, they’re!“. 😉

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