facepalm

  • Proofreader, what proofreader?

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities

    Evidence that accuracy is not a priority at the Temple Way Ministry of Truth abounds every day in the online edition of the Bristol Post.

    Below is a screenshot of the most egregious example of a lack of quality control in what passes for today’s local news since the title’s takeover by the quality-unconscious Trinity Mirror plc.

    headline reads Barclays warns online banking service won't work intermittently for five months

    For those interested, the title’s sub-editors, the people that exercised quality control over what was actually published, were all made redundant many years ago. It is now up to the folk who write the copy to check it themselves.

    That being so, your correspondent does wonder whether standards of English language teaching have declined in the five and a half decades since he first entered full-time education, or whether the teaching he received was of an exceptional quality.

    If you have any thoughts about the quality of media reporting or language teaching, please feel free to comment below.

  • Mr Gove pays a visit

    Steve WoodsMedia, Oddities, Politics, Social Media

    Yesterday the BBC reported on the visit of DEFRA Minister Michael Gove (the man who, when Education Secretary, wanted all schools to be “above average”. Ed.) to the Antrim Show in the company of DUP MPs Paul Girvan and Ian Paisley.

    The DUP are of course the minority Conservative government’s new best friends, having bribed them with £1.5 bn. from the “magic money tree” (© Prime Minister Theresa May) to prop it up in crucial parliamentary votes.

    Whilst courting his party’s new best pals in the DUP, Gove managed at the same time to snub half of the Northern Irish electorate by pulling out of a meeting with Sinn Féin at the last minute.

    However, the BBC fails to make mention of the sterling groundwork done by DEFRA civil servants in communicating the pre-visit wisdom of the Minister to the local media. In this context we should be grateful to Belfast freelance journalist Amanda Ferguson for posting the following on her Twitter account.

    shot of Defra statement for Gove's Antrim visit mentioning Welsh lamb

    No, you didn’t misread the above. Gove mentioned Welsh lamb, a product with a protected food name, the implication of this being that he believes this fine product from west of Offa’s Dyke actually comes from even further west from over the Irish Sea.

    One has to wonder whether Mr Gove could find his backside with both hands with such a poor grasp of geography. It was evidently not a subject at which he excelled at Aberdeen’s independent Robert Gordon’s Academy, to which he won a scholarship.

    For your ‘umble scribe this is yet further proof that the government in Westminster and their sidekicks, the mandarins in Whitehall, care little for anywhere in the country outside the M25 and the metropolitan commuter belt and tend to view the devolved regions of the United Kingdom and the English regions too as little more than colonies of London and therefore ripe for exploitation and patronising treatment.

  • Ambiguity

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities, Tech

    Throughout my professional life, writing so that one’s meaning is clear and there is no room for misinterpretation has been of paramount importance.

    However, writing without ambiguity is a skill that’s evidently bypassed those who currently write the news headlines for Yahoo’s UK website…

    caption to news story reads bride-to-be shot dead by police in her pyjamas

    Enquiries are continuing as to how the cops came to be in the woman’s pyjamas in the first place. 😀

  • Post politics

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities, Politics

    The Bristol Post, the city’s newspaper of (warped) record, hasn’t had and doesn’t have a reputation for accuracy in reporting – a situation which has not improved since it and all the other Local World regional newspaper titles were taken over by Trinity Mirror.

    This is more than evident in the title’s reporting of politics today.

    The last (New) Labour government had a reputation for authoritarianism and what can best be described as “control-freakery“, so it is no surprise to see the Post assigning the comrades an authoritarian and control freak role amongst today’s headlines.

    text reads Labour Party This is where police mobile speed cameras will be in the Bristol area this week

    Mind how you go now! 😉

    Furthermore, for the sake of balance and impartiality, the Post also includes some news of the Conservatives, as per the following screenshot.

    text reads Conservative Party Shocking robbery, YoBike vandalism, van crashes into scaffolding and more - Bristol's top videos this week

    At this point, a small history lesson might be in order.

    The nickname of the Conservative and Unionist Party – to give them their full name – is the Tory Party.

    As a piece of English vocabulary, Tory has interesting origins. Etymologically, it’s derived from the Middle Irish word tóraidhe, which equates in modern Irish to tóraí and to tòraidh in modern Scottish Gaelic. It has the meaning of outlaw, robber or brigand, from the Irish word tóir, meaning “pursuit”, since outlaws were “pursued men”.

    It appears that since the term was coined, the Conservatives’ outlawry has expanded to encompass vandalism and careless driving. 😀

    If more classes of crime can be ascribed to the party, please mention them in the comments below.

    Update: as of this afternoon, one of these howlers has been corrected by the residents of the Temple Way Ministry of Truth. However, the Conservative Party are still responsible on the Post website for robbery and mayhem. 🙂

  • Google Translate fails again

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics, Tech

    James Casson headshotIn Hamilton, New Zealand, mayoral candidate James Casson’s bid to appeal to Maori voters went terribly wrong, NZ news site Stuff reports.

    Why?

    Mr. Casson used Google Translate to get his message across in te reo Maori.

    As a consequence, his election address dropped through the letterboxes of Maori voters made an impact for all the wrong reasons, with the unintelligible jumble of words and phrases being described by Waikato University language expert Tom Roa as “very, very, very poor“.

    Another Waikato University lecturer, Te Taka Keegan, who teaches computer science and worked on Google Translate remarked: “The gibberish that is written in the second part of this bio is barely recognisable as te reo Maori, it is disrespectful to the Maori language.”

    When queried, Mr. Casson said he was unaware of how his profile was translated, stating that he gave his English version to a “Maori woman” at his office to get it done.

    Stuff carried out its own test, copying Casson’s English language text into Google Translate and receiving in return “a word-for-word, error-ridden version of the official Hamilton City Council“, missing prepositions, articles and connecting words.

    According to Newshub, another New Zealand news site, a translation back into English of Mr. Casson’s botched Maori translation reads as follows:

    Work James 26 years inside New Zealand Police, before officer Charge of Northland, Hamilton community Police centre Flagstaff.

    Work overseas like a peace keeper in Bougainville, Papua new Guinea, Tonga, Solomon Islands, Timor to the United Nations.

    Return the good community, work the people work to safe. James worked for Police to build safe Hamilton for you.

    Straight ahead [the text then seems to be another Pacific language]. faitotonu mo e angatonu aia takitahi. KORE ki Mita Water, paying Rate for dinner Council/feast for councillors using a free Corporate Box at Stadium Waikato or by councillors.

    Free waka on some of the adds being used of Auckland.

    Working towards finishing vagrants in Auckland.

    Resources HCC maintenence, paddlers trying to hold into a beautiful looking Hamilton.

    The moral of this story is that if you want a decent translation, you’re still better of with a human being than machine translation and this is likely to be the case for many years to come.

  • Stare-struck hack?

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities

    Modern British society seems obsessed with celebrity culture: this is no more evident than in the mainstream media; and such is true of Bristol’s (news)paper of (warped) record, the Bristol Post.

    It would appear that no sooner does a Z-list non-entity have something to do with the city than the illiterati that constitute the current reporting staff of the Temple Way Ministry of Truth than they are lost for words – or for le mot juste at the very least.

    This is evident in a puff piece in today’s online edition featuring some nobody off some dire TV talent show, as per the obligatory screenshot below.

    sentence reads X Factor winner Alexandra Burke, who next week is staring Sister Act at the Bristol Hippodrome, has dropped three dresses sizes in less than six months

    So Bristol Post, is a nobody off the telly looking intently at a show at the Hippodrome or taking part in it? In the immortal words of Private Eye, I think we should be told.

  • Chronicle exclusive: the vanishing station

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities

    For local news Bath, Bristol’s near neighbour, is served by the Bath Chronicle. Like the Bristol Post, the Chronicle is part of the Local World group and shares its close neighbour’s reputation for (lack of) accuracy.

    Today’s Bath Chronicle carried an exclusive, but readers had to read the caption under the photograph accompanying the report to realise it.

    Bath Spa railway station used to look as shown in the photograph below.

    Bath Spa railway station
    Bath Spa railway station. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

    Close observation of today’s Bath Chronicle report, especially the photo caption, reveals there is no nowhere for InterCity 125s or any other passenger rolling stock to stop where Bath Spa station once stood.

    photo caption on Chronicle piece reads Bath Spa railway statio Trains to London Paddington and Bristol Temple Meads delayed or cancelled
    The site of Bath Spa railway station according to the Bath Chronicle

    For the life of me I cannot understand why the Chronicle ignored the disappearance of a major piece of transport infrastructure and had its piece concentrate on delays to train services between the West of England and London Paddington. 😉

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