media | Steve Woods

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.
Bristol Post balls – rescued from the rescue services?

01/12/2015 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities

There seem to be times when confusion is rife in the Bristol Post’s headquarters on Temple Way. This was exemplified yesterday by the headline in this report, of which a screenshot follows, just in case Post hacks realise a mistake has been made.

In spite of the headline, Post reporter Emma Flanagan fails to explain in her article why anyone would need rescuing from the fire brigade after a night out.

Furthermore, there is no explanation either for the logic behind Bristol’s City Docks having their own fire brigade.

Perhaps kind readers could help her out and provide plausible reasons in the comments below. 🙂
The importance of accurate writing (and reporting)

24/11/2015 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities

From Southampton’s Southern Daily Echo.

No comment necessary.

Hat tip: Bristol Radical History Group.
Trusty Tahr brought down by cat

16/11/2015 Steve WoodsLinux, Media, Oddities, Open Source, Tech

Linux distribution bug reports are not a place one expects to find stuff to make one smile: they’re normally places where the faults and failings of software are described in normally boring detail.

However, today proved an exception to the rule, courtesy of one filed a short while ago for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, codenamed “Trusty Tahr“, which has just come to prominence.

14.04, locked screen to go to lunch, upon return from lunch cat was sitting on keyboard, login screen was frozen & unresponsive.

To replicate: In unity hit ctrl-alt-l, place keyboard on chair. Sit on keyboard.

Resolution: Switched to virtual terminal, restarted lightdm, lost all open windows in X session.

What should have happened: lightdm not becoming unresponsive.

Ubuntu fans are now trying to reproduce this bug, including some who want to try and reproduce it with other pets, as per the latest comment on the bug report page reproduced below.

will it also work with a small dog, please some one with a small size dogs test it!

LightDM is the display manager running in Ubuntu. According to the Ubuntu Wiki, it starts the X servers, user sessions and greeter (login screen).

What’s a tahr? Wikipedia informs us that tahrs form a family of three species of large Asian ungulates related to the wild goat. The three species are the Himalayan tahr, Nilgiri tahr and Arabian tahr.

Finally, there are millions of pictures of cats and kittens all over the internet. Indeed, there’s even a Firefox add-on called Kitten Block that steps in whenever the user who has it installed attempts to access the right-wing Daily Mail and Daily Express websites. However, there are far fewer pictures of tahrs. Let’s remedy that with a fine picture of a male Himalayan tahr courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Hat tip: Softpedia
Bridge left on shelf too long?

12/11/2015 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

Hardly a day goes by when the hacks at the Bristol Post exhibit the poor quality of written English so prevalent in the media nowadays; and today is no exception.

Writing about a closure of the A4174 Avon Ring Road and clearly out of his usual field of politics, reporter Ian Onions drops a real clanger which would doubtless have been picked up if the paper still employed proper, old-fashioned, omniscient sub-editors.

Having a shelf life – that’s another first for a bridge!

Shelf life is defined by Wikipedia as follows:

Shelf life is the length of time that a commodity may be stored without becoming unfit for use, consumption, or sale. In other words, it might refer to whether a commodity should no longer be on a pantry shelf (unfit for use), or just no longer on a supermarket shelf (unfit for sale, but not yet unfit for use). It applies to cosmetics, foods, medical devices, explosives, beverages, pharmaceutical drugs, chemicals, and many other perishable items. In some regions, an advisory best before, mandatory use by, or freshness date is required on packaged perishable foods.

No sign of a bridge in that list of products, unless it’s covered by “perishable items“. 🙂

The term for which Mr Onions was grasping was clearly “service life“, whose definition is once again supplied succinctly by Wikipedia.

A product’s service life is its expected lifetime, or the acceptable period of use in service. It is the time that any manufactured item can be expected to be ‘serviceable’ or supported by its manufacturer.

However, since the reports headline tried to create uncertainty about the length of any road, I reckon the Post’s objective was more concerned with whipping up emotions amongst its predominantly car-obsessed readership than with accuracy in use of the written word.
Turnip tops = clitoris; Google Translate strikes again!

04/11/2015 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities, Tech

Today’s Guardian reports that organisers of the “Feira do grelo” food festival in As Pontes in Galicia were shocked when their event celebrating the culinary delights of turnips tops, a traditional staple turned out to be celebrating a rude part of the female anatomy.

To quote The Guardian’s piece:

But for the past few months, the small town was marketing a very different kind of festival after it used Google Translate to put the Galician word grelo into Castilian Spanish, ending up with it inviting people to take part in a “clitoris festival”.

And quoting yet again:

It meant the town’s “Feria [sic] do grelo” or rapini festival – held every February with tastings and awards for the best grelos – became “Feria clítoris” in Spanish.

Clitoris? Yes, according to Google Translate!
Furthermore, The Independent adds that the error was not discovered until Castilian-speaking rapini fans visited the site to read about the upcoming festival and found themselves reading about a local clitoris festival instead of the benefits of the local vegetable.

The humorous consequences were fully reported in The Local.

The Castilian Spanish version of the town council’s website’s content about the festival included such howlers as “The clitoris is one of the typical products of Galician cuisine,” and “Since 1981, the festival has made the clitoris one of the star products of the local gastronomy.”

The reason for this embarrassing howler is that Google Translate mistakes the Galician grelo for the Portuguese word grelo – which is both the word for the vegetable as well archaic slang for clitoris.

“It’s a very serious error on the part of Google and we are thinking about making an official complaint for Google to properly recognise the Galician language so this kind of thing doesn’t happen again,” said town hall spokeswoman Montserrat Garcia.

Along with Spanish, Galician is an official language in Spain’s north-western region of Galicia, where over 2.4 million people speak the regional tongue.

Hat tip: ashleyrpz.
Leaping salmon

26/10/2015 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities

Wikipedia informs us that the Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) is found in the northern Atlantic Ocean and in rivers that flow into the north Atlantic.

The salmon’s journey through life from fresh to salt water and back to fresh is not just an aquatic journey, but a terminological one too, as shall be shown.

The salmon spend their early life in fresh water, when the immature salmon are known firstly as alevin, then as fry and finally as parr, this final stage being when the juvenile salmon prepare to migrate to salt water.

When the parr develop into smolt, they begin their trip to the ocean; this occurs mainly between March and June. The length of time that young salmon take before journeying from sweet to salt water can vary between one year and eight years.

Once large enough, Atlantic salmon change into the grilse phase, when they become ready to breed and return to the same freshwater tributary from which they departed as smolts. It is believed that the salmon’s navigation for this journey involves a combination of magnetoception and the fish’s sense of smell as it nears its destination.

This return from salt to fresh water occurs from September to November, the time of the salmon run. After spawning most Atlantic salmon die and the salmon life cycle starts over again.

Many obstacles – some natural, some artificial – face salmon as they migrate upstream to their spawning grounds. One of these is formed by Shrewsbury Weir on the River Severn, the UK’s longest river.

This year jettybox.com was on hand to record the salmon run over the weir; and do so in slow motion, which adds a poignant beauty to this annual spectacle.
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.
How long can you frown?

19/10/2015 Steve WoodsBristol, Media, Politics

Up Our Street has produced a film in conjunction with Bristol’s Telling Tales Films about being an active citizen.

Most active citizens become active after frowning and tut-tutting about problems in their communities, but there’s only so much scowling and muttering that can be done: action ultimately needs to be taken; and that starts with a smile. These East Bristol residents tell you how.

Up Our Street has also produced an active citizenship toolkit. To get one please give them a ring on 0117 954 2834.
Spiritual leader moonlights as police officer

14/10/2015 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities

Reading the captions on photographs in the local press can be a real education.

For instance, thanks to those dedicated people who write captions for articles on the Bristol Post website, I now know what a branch of discount retailer Lidl looks like, although I shall have to travel to Paignton to see the real thing.

However, far greater secrets can be revealed by photo captions. An article in yesterday’s Bristol Post revealed that, unknown to the rest of the world, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, is actually a police officer in Avon & Somerset Constabulary, as shown by the following screenshot.

His Holiness must have found some body-altering drugs during his recent visit to the Glastonbury Festival! 😉

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