language | Steve Woods

The value of understanding

23/01/2019 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

It seems we live in a society that knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

On Monday Kent Online reported that Kent County Council is expecting to spend £1.5 million more than the central government funding it has received to support unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) who left the care system during the current local authority financial year.

The county has received a total of £6.9 million from the Home Office and Department for Education to help more than 900 young people who have entered the UK unaccompanied, but is looking at costs of £8.4 million.

According to council officers, part of the problem is apparently “a shortage of translators [sic] living in the area.”

However, one reason for the higher costs can be laid firmly at the government’s door. The government has decided to extend support for all care leavers up to the age of 25 years; it was previously 21.

Legal costs and the immigration application process are also factors that have resulted in higher costs.

Kent’s Director for children’s integrated services, Sarah Hammond, seems to understand the value of interpreters. She is reported as saying the following:

It’s absolutely critical both for the young people and social workers that there is no window of doubt what the young person is saying. For that reason, we have to use trained and certified interpreters.

The validity of the assessment work we do would fall away if we were not able to demonstrate we had the right quality and accreditation of a translation body – and that comes with significant costs.

The reality is the majority of interpreters are coming from outside of the county, so we are incurring travel costs as well as their professional fees.

The very words Kent Online quoted Sarah Hammond as saying shows that she at least recognises the value of understanding. Young refugee people leaving care might not always have had much opportunity to become fluent enough in English to deal with whole panoply of officialdom and bureaucracy one has to deal with once past the age of majority in the UK; and one way to ensure both parties achieve full comprehension is by using qualified linguists.

The consequences of using unqualified interpreters has been amply illustrated down the years by the Ministry of Justice’s disastrous outsourcing of police and court language services, which is still continuing, as shown by this example from the north east of England.

Ms Hammond’s comments are in marked contrast to the reaction of the sole councillor quoted, Conservative Rosalind Banks, who remarked: “I suspect if the translation costs were made known to the average resident of Kent, they might turn around and say I’m sure this could be done a lot cheaper“.

Cheaper, councillor? We linguists are skilled professionals, in case you hadn’t noticed.

Needless to say, the councillor’s ignorant, penny-pinching sentiments are reflected in the comments below the piece, the majority of which are xenophobic, if not bordering on the racist.
Shopping in Wales: what’s afoot?

15/01/2019 Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Social Media

A Twitter user from Swansea has today discovered a strange physical benefit of being able to speak Welsh in Wales, namely the ability to walk to the shops quicker than Anglophones!

That, of course leaves one question unanswered, i.e are bilingual Welsh and English speakers blessed with dual speed perambulation? 😉

Next time folks, remember to proof the copy for consistency and accuracy!
Currywurst reaches 70

14/01/2019 Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities

Although I graduated over 4 decades ago, I still look back with fondness on the days of my modern languages degree.

One of the absolute requirements for the award of the degree was a compulsory period of residence in countries where the languages being studied were used.

In my instance this involved 5 months’ residency in both Perpignan (France) and Saarbrücken (Germany).

While in Germany, I became acquainted with what would now be called German street food, including the currywurst.

Currywurst typically consists of a bratwurst cut into slices and seasoned with curry ketchup, a sauce based on spiced ketchup or tomato paste, itself topped with curry powder, or a ready-made ketchup seasoned with curry and other spices.

It’s often served with chips.

The currywurst reaches the grand of age of 70 this year.

Here’s its history in brief.

Herta Heuwer had been running a snack stall in Berlin’s Charlottenburg district since summer 1949. There wasn’t much happening on 4th September, so she had time to experiment. She mixed freshly chopped paprika, paprika powder, tomato purée and spices together. The she poured the whole lot over a fried, chopped sausage. The currywurst had been invented.

Herta Heuwer subsequently gave her business the address of “The world’s 1st currywurst cookshop” and had the word trade mark “Chillup” (a contraction of chilli and ketchup) registered for her sauce.

You can’t eat a proper original currywurst any more, because Herta Heuwer took the recipe to the grave with her in 1999. In 2003 a memorial plaque was put up at the former site of her snack bar. According to the German Currywurst Museum in Berlin over 800 million currywurst are consumed every year in Germany.

To mark this culinary anniversary the Berlin State Mint has issued a commemorative coin.

This commemorative coin is the sixth of a series of anniversary issues which the city mint started in 2004 and is limited to a production run of 2,500.
Terminology still a mystery to Auntie

14/01/2019 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Social Media

The BBC has long boasted of the quality of its English.

However, its reputation fort linguistic excellence has started to look very tarnished in recent years. One particular area of concern is the BBC’s failure to use the correct terminology when referring to those who work with languages (posts passim).

Since I first wrote about this seven years ago, very little seems to have changed, as shown today by a news story posted today by a reporter with BBC Newcastle concerning the quality of language services provided to the police and courts by ITL North East Ltd. of Gateshead.

It starts off on the wrong foot, with the headline proclaiming: “Translators were ‘not qualified’ for police interview work“.

Translators don’t do interview work, said my mind, unless they’re working from transcripts!

The first paragraph, however, manages to get the terminology correct:

Unqualified police interpreters have cost the public thousands of pounds by causing court delays and in one instance the collapse of a case, the BBC has learned*.

The error in the headline in repeated further down the piece, as follows:

In addition to Northumbria Police, it provided translators for interviews with the Durham and Cleveland forces.

As regards the quality of the interpreters provided the piece details several cases where unqualified interpreters had caused trials to collapse and unnecessary expenditure to be incurred. For instance, one so-called interpreter couldn’t explain the police caution in full to a suspect.

In another instance, an “interpreter” who had just been in the country for 3 months before being recruited. She freely admitted not being able to understand everything a police officer said in an interview with a suspect.

Since the evidence of poor quality work came to light, Northumbria Police requested a full audit of the qualifications held by all interpreters registered with ITL North East Ltd.

The BBC should follow Northumbria Police’s example and audit the liguistic abilities of their reporters.

For those reporters who still don’t understand the difference between translators and interprwters, I would refer them once again to my handy illustrated guide from 2013 (posts passim).

* = As regards the phrase “the BBC has learnt…”, it has been pointed on social media out that this story was first broken the satirical magazine Private Eye over a year ago. Do keep up Auntie!
Desperately seeking Vivian

10/01/2019 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Oddities

One of the more interesting aspects of running a website is dealing with stuff that the ordinary visitor doesn’t see, both the bad (spam comments posted by bots) and the good.

As regards the latter, read on.

For instance, over Christmas I was contacted by a gentleman who’d attended Avonvale Road School (posts passim) in the 1960s as a primary pupil and wrote to me to see if I could update him on its fate.

Unfortunately, I had to tell him that the buildings he knew had been demolished to make way for the modern school that now occupies the site.

Earlier this week I was contacted via this site by Louise Allum, sister of the late Viv, who was on our BA Modern Languages course in Wolverhampton.

Louise read my write-up of the last reunion* (posts passim).

Louise was wondering if any of her fellow students from the course had any photos from their student days featuring her, which they would be willing to share in some form as she has no pictures of her from that era.

If any of my former BAML colleagues happen to read this and can help out, please get in touch and I’ll put you in contact with Louise.

* = In the course of trying to help out Louise, I got hold of a fellow alumnus and received the news that the next reunion is in the early planning stages.
Morrisons – bottom of the class in Welsh

21/06/2018 Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Social Media

It’s always good to see Welsh being promoted in Wales.

However, it does help if one uses a professional translator and native Welsh speaker before committing any money to doing works on the ground.

This has clearly not been done by supermarket chain Morrisons with the car park markings shown below at its supermarket car park in Caernarfon.

Picture courtesy of Richard Jones (@lluniarich)

The error was brought to the attention of non-Welsh speakers by Twitter user Rhysew, who tweeted

C’mon @Morrisons, sort this out! Your Welsh translates as “Arse record” Correct it as DIM MYNEDIAD.

This is not the first time Anglophone companies have treated Welsh – a far older language than English – with the respect it deserves.

Most recently, there was comedy train operating company First Great Western, which will have no Welsh language announcements on its services between South Wales and London (even though it manages to embrace both Welsh and English train announcements at Newport station. Ed.)

Last year there was also Santander, which seems to have problems with Welsh customers expecting transactions in the vernacular despite having a clear Welsh language policy.

In the meantime, would any Welsh-speaking reader care to ask Morrisons if the “arse record” will be available on vinyl. 😉
Post exclusive: fire brigade incident at non-existent tower block

03/06/2018 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities

One thing is certain about life in Bristol: it’s quite unlike living anywhere else and can sometimes be well beyond the borders of the surreal.

This feeling is enhanced by reading the Bristol Post, city’s newspaper of (warped) record.

Just skimming casually through the Post website, readers may easily miss some real exclusives, such as this fire brigade incident reported yesterday by Heather Pickstock, who is alleged to be the paper’s North Somerset reporter.

As shown in the screenshot above, Ms Pickstock informs readers as follows in this fine piece of creative writing:

Crews from Southmead, Temple, Kingswood, Hicks Gate, Bedminster and Pill were called at 9.46pm yesterday to reports of smoke billowing from the sixth floor of a high rise block a Littlecroft House, Pip Street, Eastville.

There’s just one thing wrong with the above sentence: it’s completely incorrect; there’s no Pip Street in Eastville and no high rise block called Littlecroft House either.

A research technique known to ordinary mortals, but not to Ms Pickstock, affectionately known as “5 minutes’ Googling” reveals there’s a a council tower block called Little Cross House in Phipps Street, Southville, a good four miles across the city from Eastville.

The Bristol area can breathe a sigh of relief that Ms Pickstock does not work as a call handler on the 999 emergency switchboard. 😉
Fell is foul

02/06/2018 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

Many of the phrases in common use in English have 2 sources: either the Bible (both the authorised King James version and earlier translations, such as those of Wycliffe and Tyndale. Ed.) and the pen of William Shakespeare.

Indeed, some lovers of the English language actually refer to it euphemistically as “the language of Shakespeare” when someone ignorant commits an indignity with it.

Today’s online edition of the Bristol Post/Live, the city’s newspaper of (warped) record has not difficulty in mangling some of the Bard of Avon’s actual words.

The misquoting of the Bard occurs in a promotional piece advertising a supermarket chain’s substantial breakfast. The piece itself was a cut and paste job lifted from the Post’s Trinity Mirror stablemate, the Manchester Evening News, which itself lifted the item from the Metro, a publication so downmarket its owners the Daily Mail have to give it away.

However, neither the MEN nor the Metro saw fit to misquote Shakespeare; that was a solo effort by the Temple Way Ministry of Truth.

The offending sentence is in the final passage shown in the above screenshot, i.e.:

The breakfast contains your entire daily allowance in one foul swoop, but it’s described as the perfect meal for those with a big appetite.

The actual words penned by Shakespeare are not “one foul swoop” but “one fell swoop” and occur in Macbeth, Act 4, scene 3, when Macduff hears that his family have been killed. Macduff remarks:

All my pretty ones?
Did you say all?—O hell-kite!—All?
What, all my pretty chickens, and their dam,
At one fell swoop?

“One fowl swoop” is occurs frequently as a variation to the misquotation.

Whether Shakespeare actually invented the phrase himself or was the first to write it down is a matter of debate. Even so, Macbeth was written in 1605, so even the Bard’s the phrase dates back over four centuries.

The adjective “fell” is archaic, meaning evil or cruel, so it’s unsurprising that it’s misquoted. Moreover, in its context tends to occur in literary works such as J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic “Lord of the Rings” (e.g. fell beasts).
Driverless vehicle turns to theft

26/05/2018 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities

This blog has previously documented the carnage on the highways caused by driverless vehicles (posts passim).

The Bristol Post, the city’s newspaper of warped record, has now discovered that driverless vehicles are not only responsible for so-called “accidents“, but have now turned to theft – or attempted theft – as well.

If there’s one crumb of comfort to be gained from the above report, it is that our brave boys and girls in blue would have had no trouble spotting the offending vehicle with those American “license plates“. 😉
Left in the lurch, not lost in translation

26/05/2018 Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

During the United Kingdom’s involvement in Afghanistan, British forces were supported by some 3,000 civilian interpreters. These Afghan interpreters were often exposed to extremely dangerous situations.

An Afghan interpreter in action for a British officer

In its report Lost in Translation? Afghan Interpreters and Other Locally Employed Civilians, the House of Commons Defence Select Committee has now found that Government’s scheme to safeguard Afghan interpreters threatened with reprisals for working with the British Army “has dismally failed to give any meaningful assurance of protection” from the Taliban.

The committee’s report also calls for a more sympathetic approach to Afghan personnel seeking relocation to the UK after serving in front-line roles.

Earlier this month, Sajid Javid, a man who does Home Secretary impressions, bowed to pressure over 150 interpreters seeking indefinite leave to remain in the UK under the Relocation Scheme, including waiving a £2,389 application fee.

No such concessions have been made for many others who have made it to the UK or who are still in Afghanistan where they are targeted by the Taliban or Isis.

Besides the Relocation Scheme, the government also initiated the so-called Intimidation Scheme; this had the aim of relocating interpreters within Afghanistan if they faced threats from the Taliban or Islamic State, only offering them a place in the UK as a last resort.

However, not a single Afghan has been relocated as part of the intimidation scheme, which the Select Committee describes as an “utter failure”. It goes on to say that the scheme is perceived as unfair and miserly and that will continue until it “offers a genuine prospect that, when individuals face serious and verifiable threats to their lives, as a result of having helped UK armed forces, they will be allowed to come to the UK”.

Amongst its recommendations, the committee has called for a more sympathetic approach and looser application of the Intimidation Scheme.

Select Committee chairman Dr Julian Lewis said: “This is not only a matter of honour. How we treat our former interpreters and local employees, many of whom served with great bravery, will send a message to the people we would want to employ in future campaigns.”

Many members of the armed forces who served in Afghanistan go further than the Select Committee and believe that the UK has a debt of honour to resettle all former civilian interpreters in the UK and that their former colleagues are been caught up in the racist Home Office’s crackdown on immigration.

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