The language of terror
From my Twitter feed earlier today.
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Another dodgy Bing translation
As this blog has pointed out previously, Microsoft’s Bing is not very good at translating (posts passim).
This view was further reinforced today, as shown in the screenshot below.
A more accurate translation of Mr Grote’s little rhyme is as follows:
Whoever grills a sausage for another
Has a sausage grilling device.
Read all about the sausage grilling robot.And Bing: do try and keep up! 🙂
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Bing: tin-eared translation
When it comes to machine translation online, Google Translate and Microsoft’s Bing Translator are serious rivals, not only for custom, but also for the awful quality of the translations they provide.
Social media platform Twitter has – for reasons best known to itself – decided to use Bing to provide translations of tweets in languages other than the user’s mother tongue.
However, it’s not very good, suffering as it does from an inability to deal with context.
Take the screenshot below from a tweet posted by your correspondent earlier this afternoon, who clicked on the Bing translation link out of curiosity.
Bing has managed to mangle my tweet, which contains a colloquial French expression (i.e. “du bidon“) into the incomprehensible “your reporting is Tin“, complete with capitalisation that was not in my original text. Bidon can indeed be a tin – or can or container – in French, but it also has the meaning of belly or stomach too. Furthermore, besides being a noun, bidon can also be used an an adjective, in which context it means phony or bogus.
Wordreference.com has a brief forum thread on the phrase “c’est du bidon“, which passing Bing Translation developers may like to read.
In the meantime, if any readers out there are contemplating saving money by using online translation tools instead of a human being, you may like to reconsider.
Readers interested in why I was retweeting something aimed at the Mail Online website may like to read Tim Fenton’s post debunking the Mail’s Bataclan torture rumours.
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Spelling IS important
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.
One question remains: would an actress/glamour model make a better replacement prime minister than an authoritarian home secretary?
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Red card for Auntie
With the notable exception of Test Match Special‘s cricket commentary on long wave, BBC sports commentators seem to be employed more for their ability to shout than proficiency in the English language, judging from the rare bits of sports commentary that get broadcast as part of Radio 4’s news bulletins.
This opinion received further support yesterday when the BBC Sport Twitter account sought the views of Aston Villa FC fans on news that the club at the bottom of the Premier League (that’s the English First Division in old money. Ed. 🙂 ) table would be playing in the Championship (the old Second Division. Ed.) next year, as per the following tweet, which has since been deleted:
Wait off the shoulders, Auntie? This blog is giving you a red card and you should now proceed from the field of play for an early bath and thence to your reserved place in Heterograph Corner! 🙂
Hat tip: OwlofMinera.
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France: 10 words whose spelling will change at the start of the school year
Since 1990 the spelling reform approved by the AcadĂ©mie Française has never really been pursued. “Oignon” without an “i“, the removal of some circumflex accents: at the start of the next academic year, teachers should finally implement this reform, TF1 reports. A total of 2,400 words are going to be changed; here are 10 examples.The word “nĂ©nuphar” will henceforth be able to be written as “nĂ©nufar“. The spelling reform of 6th December 1990 that was approved by the AcadĂ©mie Française is finally going to be applied at the start of the next school year by the publishers of school textbooks and thus by teachers.
One of the new features is that circumflex accents are going to disappear gradually. The verb “s’entraĂ®ner” will therefore be able to be spelt with a simple “i” and thus minus the circumflex accent. This part of the reform should make learning spelling easier for children.
Special National Education Official Bulletin no. 11 of 26 Novembre 2015 gives a reminder that the spelling reform to be applied to the schooling of a child is that of 1990. Spelling and grammar textbooks will therefore carry the wording “New spelling” from the start of the next academic year.
Another brain-teaser
Only 45% of French people were proficient in the rules of spelling in 2015. What will happen when students have to learn to spell the same word in two different ways? Teachers are already reticent about this question.
The change in French spelling has not been accepted by the world of work and business for 26 years. The 2,400 words involved in this reform could therefore be regarded as errors by prospective employers although the 2 spellings will be accepted.
10 words which will change at the start of the school year
Oignon to ognon (onion)
Nénuphar to nénufar (water lilly)
S’entraĂ®ner to s’entrainer (to train oneself)
Maîtresse to maitresse (mistress)
Coût to cout (cost)
Paraître to paraitre (to appear)
Week-end to weekend
Mille-pattes to millepattes (millipede)
Porte-monnaie to portemonnaie (purse)
Des après-midi to des après-midis (afternoons)Online opposition
However, The Guardian reports that the changes to French spelling have not met with universal approval. There have been complaints that the Socialist government is dumbing down the language of Molière.
On Twitter, opposition to the reform gave rise a #JeSuisCirconflexe campaign, along the lines of the #JeSuisCharlie hashtag in the wake of the atrocity at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo (posts passim).
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Worcester cannabis farm case adjourned for lack of interpreter
Polish is one of the most common foreign languages for which interpreters are required in UK courts, yet it seems that Capita Translation & Interpreting, which holds the contract for supplying interpreters in courts and tribunals, still seems to be experiencing difficulties in providing Polish interpreters, nearly four years after the incompetent outsourcing giant got its hands on the contract.Yesterday’s Worcester News reports that a case against 3 Polish nationals accused of producing 105 cannabis plants in Worcester had to be adjourned yesterday.
Marcin Pobiegly, Lukasz Kloch and Andrzey Ratowski appeared before magistrates in Worcester on Friday concerning a cannabis grow in the city’s Vauxhall Street.
However, the case had to be adjourned due lack of court time as magistrates waited in vain for a Polish interpreter to arrive.
It will now be heard on Monday, always providing that a Capita interpreter bothers to turn up.
Update 02/02/16: An interpreter did turn up on Monday and that day’s Worcester News states that the case has now been referred to Crown Court.
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Happy 15th birthday, Wikipedia
This week, Wikipedia reaches its fifteenth birthday. These days the free online encyclopaedia is the world’s seventh most popular website and now includes more than 38 million articles in 289 languages, all maintained by an army of volunteer editors and contributors.
Andy Mabbett, one of that army of editors and contributors, has been musing on Twitter as to how Wikipedia will react having reached this chronological milestone.
Over the last 15 years, although the project was originally initiated by Anglophone geeks, Wikipedia has been working to increase the diversity of its content and contributors through outreach programmes such as edit-a-thons at universities and museums and by trying to appoint more women administrators. However, there is still plenty of work to be done in this field.
The Wikipedia website and the open source Mediawiki software it runs on are managed by the Wikimedia Foundation charity, which is funded by donations, the vast majority of them from small donors.
To mark Wikipedia’s 15th birthday the Foundation has created an endowment fund that it hopes will raise $100 mn. over the next 10 years.
Happy birthday, Wikipedia – and may you enjoy many, many more.
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Email encryption talk in Bristol
As part of Alternative Bristol’s Breaking the Frame series of talks, an email encryption talk for beginners will be taking place at Hydra Books in Old Market Street, Bristol (map) from 7.30-9.30 p.m. on Friday 22nd January.
How public key encryption works According to the organisers, an ordinary e-mail is like a postcard without an envelope: anybody who can put their hands on it can read it. Unlike a postcard an email is copied (rather than moved) to many different computers on its travels. All of these computers’ owners we can’t possibly trust and know. This makes them feel uncomfortable and is not necessary with simple email
encryption.After this short (one hour!) workshop attendees will be able to email anyone else who makes it to the workshop without the email being intercepted by a third party.
Certain organisations (e.g. journalists, unions, activists, etc.) have a responsibility to transmit sensitive messages securely and currently do not always do this. Don’t think what does this one email say about me? (or its recipient), think rather when examined en masse over time (most emails are stored indefinitely these days) what does this reveal about the way you live?
It would save time if prospective attendees had Thunderbird set up and receiving your emails. If you have Ubuntu or another Linux distribution, it would help if you installed both Thunderbird and GPG before attending the talk. If you already use email encryption and want to help or share your key please come by too. No experience necessary, but if you have a laptop and USB stick please bring them with you.
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Rustic riposte
Only a couple of days after hearing of the creation of a giant statue of Mao Zedong (posts passim), reports have been received that the statue of the so-called Great Helmsman in Henan province has been destroyed.
Pictures such as the one below have been posted on Chinese social media.
The statue’s hands, legs and feet appear to have been hacked off and a black cloth draped over its head.
According to an unnamed local delivery driver, it was destroyed because it had occupied a farmer’s land.
This destruction brings to mind the traditional farmer’s challenge to trespassers: “Get off my land!” 🙂
Another reason for the destruction could be that Henan province was one of the regions worst hit by China’s great famine, a catastrophe that claimed tens of millions of lives that was caused by Mao’s disastrous “Great Leap Forward” – a bid for rapid industrialisation.
The official Chinese line is that the statue had not gone through the correct approval process before construction, according to The People’s Daily.