the linguist 51.5

TheLinguistCHARTEREDINSTITUTEOFLINGUISTS 51/5 OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2012

Into the Wild WestHow translators made Buffalo Bill world famous

All clear?Tips from the EU on how to write clearly

Designs for lifeWhy languages led Kevin McCloud to TV presenting

CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF THE LINGUIST: 1962-2012

grow� your qualifications��your career��your opportunities

IoL Educational Trust is now offering a Public Service Translation Unit. Choose your pathway: English Law, Scottish Law, Health or Local Government.Set at Level 7 on the National Qualifications Framework, the Unit can be taken as a stand-alonecertificate or to complement existing qualifications.Entry for the Unit is open to all.Registration for the January 2013 pilot session (out of English only) opens 1 August 2012.

For further information, or to register, contact us on 0207 940 3127 or email [email protected]

IoL Educational Trust

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Imagine you found language really tough. Imagine you found learning vocabulary, gender, agreement, grammar and all things language totally bewildering. Imagine you don’t think you can get good grades and decide to not learn it. Many children don’t.

Now imagine that you discover a new game that makes language fun. Imagine the game enables you to build thousands of grammatically correct sentences in under a minute. Imagine too that each time you play you effortlessly learn 15 to 30 words. Imagine the whole class loves it and you even have a thriving class competition. This is exactly what MFL teachers are reporting when they take KLOO into the classroom.

Visit www.kloogame.combuy from amazoncontact [email protected]

How would you feel if you found language tough?

KLOO was developed by an award winning games designer working with MFL teachers and language experts. In 2011 KLOO won 6 major awards. Enthusiastic children, learning fast, from £12.99. Take a look at KLOO.

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Members’ Day 2012Saturday 6 October4 Hamilton PlaceLondon W1J 7BQ

Fees: Members £45 Non-members £50 Students £20

Seminars:GCHQ guest speaker: "For your ears only: Language at GCHQ"Janet Fraser: "Drawing up a plan for Continuing Professional Development (CPD)"Marta Stelmaszak: "Using Social Media in the Languages Industry”Summer Mouallem: "Ethical Dilemmas for Interpreters"

Threlford Memorial Lecturer: The Baroness Garden of Frognal, a Liberal Democrat peer who is Government Spokesperson for: DCMS (Media, Olympics, Sport) BIS (Higher Education) and DfE (Education) in the House of Lords.

Book your place at www.iol.org.uk

Vol/51 No/5 2012 OCTOBER/NOVEMBER The Linguist 3

CONTENTS

News & editorialINSIDE PARLIAMENT . . . . . . 6Update on the recent activities of the APPG

Speak to the futureVALUING ALL OUR LANGUAGES . . . . . . . . . . . . 8Why multilingualism is key to the campaign

ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL . 9

PSI in focusGLOBAL INSIGHTS . . . . . . . 21Public service interpreting in America

SERVING THE PUBLIC . . . . 22What new research reveals about PSI needs

IN SEARCH OF JUSTICE . . . 24The case against current MoJ provision

FeaturesCLASSROOM WITHOUTWALLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7A new online resource for interpreter training

ON THE TRAIL OF BUFFALO BILL . . . . . . . . . . 10How translators made him a global celebrity

KEEP IT CLEAR . . . . . . . . . 12Top tips from the EU Clear Writing campaign

MAN OF WORDS . . . . . . . . 14Grand Designs’ Kevin McCloud speaks out

THE ALL-ROUND DUBBER . 16Why translators need a whole range of skills

LESSONS IN OPERA . . . . . . 18Why singers study up to five languages

The editor reserves the right to edit all material submitted. Views expressed in The Linguistare not necessarily the official views of the Chartered Institute of Linguists. All rights ofreproduction, translation and adaptation reserved for all countries.The Chartered Institute of Linguists, The Linguist, and officers accept no responsibility

collectively or individually for the service of agencies or persons advertised or announced in thepages of this journal. The good faith with which we publish offers no implied/implicit guarantee.

14

TheLinguist

Editor Miranda MooreEmail: [email protected] Sarah HeapsTel: +44 (0) 20 7940 3100; Email: [email protected]

Editorial BoardMs J Fraser MA DipTrans IoLET FCIL FHEA FITIMs A M Graham BA DipTrans IoLET AMIOEEMs S Heaps BA (ex officio)Mr D Luddy BADr G A Makin MA PhD DPSI MCILMr T Merz BAMr K Moffitt BSc DipTrans IoLET MCIL MITI Ms M Moore BA (ex officio)Prof J Munday BA MEd PhD PGCE DipTrans IoLET MCILMr A Peacock BA (ex officio)Ms K Stokes MA (Oxon) DipTrans IoLET MITI FCIL CL (Translator) (Chair)

The Chartered Institute of Linguists, Saxon House, 48 Southwark Street, London SE1 1UN; Web: www.iol.org.ukTel: +44 (0) 20 7940 3100; Email: [email protected]

Royal Patron HRH Prince Michael of Kent GCVO

PresidentDr N Bowen BSc MA PhD Dip TEFL RSA HonFCIL Vice-PresidentsProf T J Connell MA BPhil DLitt PGCE FCILMrs A Corsellis OBE BA HonFCILBaroness J Coussins MA HonFCILProf D Crystal OBE PhD FCSLT HonFCIL FRSAMr R Hardie MA FCA HonFCILDr J M Mitchell CBE MA DrPhil FCIL

Members of CouncilMr T Bell MA MPhil FCIL (Hon Treasurer)Mrs J Cambridge MA FCILMr M Cunningham BA MCILProf H Fulford BA MA PhD FCIL MBCS FHEADr M-M Gervais-le Garff MA Doct 3e Cycle FCILMs M J Lee MA DPSI MCILDr G A Makin MA PhD DPSI MCIL Mr K Moffitt BSc DipTrans IoLET MCIL MITI (Chair)Mrs C Pocock DipTrans IoLET FCIL (Vice-Chair)Mrs J A Ridgway BA FCIL MCMIMs K Stokes MA (Oxon) DipTrans IoLET MITI FCIL CL (Translator) Mr P Shipman BSc (Hons) MScCEng MIMechE MCIL

Senior Institute personnelMs H Maxwell-Hyslop MA (Joint Acting Chief Executive)Mr A Peacock BA (Director of Membership & Joint Acting Chief Executive)

IoL Educational TrustThe examinations are provided under the auspices ofthe IoL Educational Trust. Senior officers:Prof T J Connell MA BPhil DLitt PGCE FCIL (Chair)Dr N Bowen BSc MA PhD Dip TEFL RSA HonFCIL (Vice-Chair)Ms H Maxwell-Hyslop MA (Director of Examinations)

Printed by Hastings Printing Company, St Leonards-on-Sea.Published six times a year and distributed free of charge to allmembers. Annual subscription £41 post free. Overseassubscription £54 (airmail Europe), £58 (airmail rest of world).

ISSN 0268-5965This issue will be available online from 15 October at www.iol.org.uk/TheLinguist.html.

TheLinguistThe Linguist, formerly TheIncorporated Linguist, is theofficial journal of the CharteredInstitute of Linguists.

50 YEARS IN PRINT . . . . . . 20A look at The Linguist archives from the 1990s

ACCESS FOR AFRICA . . . . . 25How translation could relieve poverty

IN AFRICAN WORDS . . . . . 26Have African writers created a new ‘language’?

ReviewsBOOKS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Opinion & commentLETTERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

SOMALI: WRITING HISTORY . 31

Institute matters DIVISIONS & SOCIETIES . . . 32

COUNCIL NEWS . . . . . . . . . 34

ADMISSIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

FRONT COVER: MELTEDPLASTIC, ‘2010-08-09 - BUFFALO BILL, BUFFALO KILLSTATUE’ VIA FLICKR, CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY-NC-ND/2.0/DEED.EN

4 The Linguist OCTOBER/NOVEMBER www.iol.org.uk

NEWS & EDITORIAL

CHIEF EXECUTIVES’NOTES

As we write, theParalympics are underway and London seemsto be coping very wellwith the additionalvisitors. Although we arenear London Bridge, aGames travel ‘hotspot’,

we managed to keep Saxon House running, as usual, during August and wewould like to thank the staff for their flexibility, good humour and patience.

We would like to report some of our activities over the summer. Alan visitedthe Lincolnshire Society AGM in May with Karen Stokes (Translating Division),which was well attended; thanks are due to Candia Hillier for her generoushospitality. The CIOL was also represented at the LLAS ‘Language Futures 2012:Languages in Higher Education conference’ at the University of Edinburgh inJuly, by Daryl Lucas (IoLET) and Soheila Dayani (CIOL).

Three members of the IoLET attended a ceremony at the Empress StateBuilding, London, for the presentation of certificates to candidates from theMetropolitan Police who had passed units that comprise the new Certificate inBilingual Skills (CBS) Police qualification.

Hilary will be representing the CIOL and the IoLET on the Advisory Board of theEU project TransCert Trans-European Voluntary Certification for Translators. Thereis also CIOL and IoLET representation (Ann Corsellis and Hilary Maxwell-Hyslop)on the EU project ‘Building Mutual Trust 2’, which will provide audio-visual trainingmaterials for legal personnel working with interpreters and translators.

All arrangements are now in place for Members’ Day on Saturday 6 October.We have a broad range of seminars on offer and the customary ThrelfordMemorial Lecture (see page 32 for details). We very much hope that you areable to attend. Registration is available online at www.iol.org.uk. We also remindyou that the Language Show is being held at Olympia, 19-21 October. We willbe exhibiting as usual and organising a seminar on the Saturday.

Finally, you will have noted that nomination papers for elections to Councilwere sent out with the last copy of The Linguist. The deadline is 13 October.

Alan PeacockJoint Acting CEO

For Members’ Day on Saturday 6 October,we have a broad range of seminars on offer

Hilary Maxwell-HyslopJoint Acting CEO

EDITOR’SLETTER

Our decade-by-decadecelebration of The Linguist’s50th anniversarymay bring backmemories forlong-standing

members (p.20); the latest instalment, whichincludes my years as Assistant Editor (1999-2001), certainly leads me to reminisce. JeremyMunday mentions an article on Scrabble: itwas my job to photograph a multilingualScrabble board, get the film developed andscan the image. Digital cameras aside, whatpicture researcher today would resort toamateur photography? The ready availabilityof free and cheap pictures online enables usto offer more and better images for less.

Alfred Cudjoe’s look at how African writers‘mould’ English according to native idioms(p.26) also takes me back – this time to Ghana.He takes his examples from Ewe – a languagespoken in the eastern Volta Region – which Ihave yet to encounter in London, though I’vemet many Ga and Akan speaking Ghanaians.

For this issue, I visited the National OperaStudio to find out about the language classesdesigned for classical singers, as we continueour series on language and song (p.18). In anew column looking at how the press iscovering key languages issues, Teresa Tinsleylaments falling A-level figures and the MoJ’sdisastrous current interpreting arrangements(p.31). Keith Moffitt discusses the latterfurther in our three-article focus on publicservice interpreting (p.21).

Elsewhere, Kevin McCloud explains howhis love of language led him to a winningcombination of design and TV presenting(p.14), and we discover that early localiserswere central to Buffalo Bill’s success (p.10).

Miranda Moore


Thank God for the Catholic church – and Ispeak as an agnostic Anglican. Once again,they are helping to preserve the study of Latinin Western Europe, as they have for morethan a millennium. Pope Benedict is about toset up a new body, the Pontificia AcademiaLatinitatis, which will study and promote thelanguage in schools and churches.‘Mirabile dictu! The Pope saves Latin’, 1/9/12

What thepapers say…

The latest from the languages world

‘Trilingual nation’calls for WalesWelsh politicians have launched separatecampaigns to make Wales a ‘trilingualnation’. In the same week, both Plaid Cymruand the Welsh Conservatives announced thatthey want to ensure that young people inWales leave school with English, Welsh and athird language. At the National Eisteddfod inAugust, Plaid Cymru Leader Leanne Woodsaid the party was looking at ways to supportlanguage learning in primary schools andcalled for a Language Academy to beestablished to improve teaching. Also inAugust, the Conservative Welsh AssemblyMember Angela Burns pledged support forthe learning of a third language from the ageof 7, to give Wales a ‘competitive edge’.

NEWS & EDITORIAL

[Pussy Riot’s lyrics] have something significantto say, which the careless translationsslopping around the internet tend to obscure[…] There are some obscurities in the originallyrics, such as the reference to the missionarywho goes to school and gets paid, which Icouldn’t solve. The penultimate line in thepenultimate verse was another tricky one. Ittranslates literally as ‘the belt of the Virgincannot replace meetings’. I have guessedthat this belt is a sacred accessory, andtherefore a ritual object. The meetingreferred to I think must be a protest meeting.Hence my ‘Fight for rights, forget the rite’. ‘Pussy Riot’s Punk Prayer is Pure ProtestPoetry’, 20/8/12

Children in Cambridge are learning Polish inthe school holidays as part of a languageresearch programme. Run by CambridgeUniversity, the lessons will contribute to aninternational project to determine howchildren and adults learn languages.Researchers hope to find out if a person’smother tongue or age affects their ability tolearn a language. Polish was chosen as itwould be unfamiliar to most of the learners, aproject spokeswoman said.‘Cambridge University Polish Lessons TestLanguage Skill’, 18/8/12

Last chance toenter: EU comp This year’s European Commission competitionfor young translators, Juvenes Translatores,will take place on 27 November. Pupils fromall over the EU will translate a one-page textfrom one official EU language into another.The competition is open to pupils born in1995 and, to participate, schools need toregister at http://ec.europa.eu/translatores by 20 October. The prize for the UK’s bestyoung translator will be a three-day trip toBrussels, where they will receive an award ata ceremony for all the national winners, visitthe Commission’s translation headquarters,and meet the Commissioner for Education,Culture, Multilingualism and youth.

MPs’ languagesFigures released by the House of Commonshave revealed the extent of MPs’ languagelearning efforts since 2001, when fundingwas made available for them to ‘learn aforeign language or develop existing skills’.Of 650 MPs, just nine received tuition thisyear, with Spanish and Italian being the mostpopular. However, some MPs, including theHealth Secretary Jeremy Hunt, faced criticismfor studying the language of their partners;under the rules, language training funded bythe State must be ‘in accordance with [MPs’]parliamentary duties’.

Inclusive classesA project to teach languages to disadvantagedpeople has been extended in the UK thanksto a €168,000 grant from the EuropeanCommission’s Lifelong Learning programme.The VIVACE project has introduced languagesto recovering addicts, people with learningdisabilities and pre-school children in deprivedareas, among other vulnerable groups, in tenEU countries. This extra funding will enableNottingham Trent University, which leads theUK programme, and its EU partners toidentify new target groups and offer teachertraining on inclusive language education. For details, see www.vivaceproject.co.uk.

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‘Why German Matters to the UK’ was thetopic for discussion at the most recent All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) onModern Languages. Baroness Coussins,Chair of the APPG and a CIOL Vice-President,introduced the session’s speakers, includingStefano Weinberger of the GermanEmbassy; Karl Pfeiffer of the GoetheInstitute; Ute Paetzig, Director of UK-GermanConnection; and Andreas Hoeschen, Directorof the German Academic Exchange Service(DAAD). The panel discussed the variousobstacles facing the teaching of German inthe UK, as well as the many benefits andopportunities available to those who haveGerman language skills.

Stefano Weinberger opened the meetingby outlining the importance of increasingGerman language learning in the UK.‘Germany is the largest non-English-speaking foreign trading partner withEngland, and second largest globally afterthe USA,’ he said. ‘Germany is also thelargest foreign employer of British citizens.’Because of this, there are manyopportunities for UK employees withGerman language skills to find employment,not only in UK companies who trade withGermany, but also with German companiesoperating in the UK and Germany.

To highlight his point, Weinbergerdiscussed the success of the 2010 ‘ThinkGerman’ campaign, which has beenextended due to the UK government’srenewed interest in languages. The initiativeis a joint venture between the GermanEmbassy London, the Goethe InstituteLondon, DAAD and UK-GermanConnection, and aims to inspire people inthe UK to experience all things German via aseries of conferences, concerts and fairs.

Weinberger explained that more neededto be done to promote the learning of

German and its relevance to the UK, so thatBritish students embrace the language andtake advantage of related employmentopportunities. Because of the global natureof international trading, ‘nearly threequarters of employers in the UK valuelanguage skills as being important forconducting business; with German beingregarded as being 50 percent more valuablethan competing languages,’ he added.

The panel then discussed the decline instudent uptake of languages, identifying it asa problem for the UK economy because itlimits the country’s ability to trade andinteract with international companies. Thiswas reiterated in a promotional video titled‘Learn German’, presented by Karl Pfeiffer.The video collated opinions from a numberof employers in the UK, including E.on andBentley, both of which have offices in the UKand Germany.

The resounding message was that, introubled times, people with language skillshave a distinct advantage over thosewithout, with regards to employment. ‘Thefuture for these British students is verybright,’ said Pfeiffer. Bentley, for example, is

part of the Volkswagen group and requiresmany UK employees to speak regularly withcolleagues in Germany, so job applicantswith German language skills are much morelikely to be successful. Language skills alsoenable them to respond to differentinternational markets.

The ‘Learn German’ video placed aresponsibility on schools to make ‘theirstudents global citizens by providing accessto language and cultural learning’.Weinberger added that there is amisconception that German is a difficultlanguage to learn and, as a result, many‘were afraid of speaking German’ despitesupport and encouragement from peers andparents. The points raised in the videomatched this view but suggested that, ifGerman was introduced early in schools andteachers used innovative teaching methods,children would lap it up.

To respond to the issue of studentengagement, Ute Paetzig discussed theinnovative UK-German Connection initiative.This joint UK and German governmentproject is the newest ‘Think German’ partnerand aims ‘to bring young people fromGermany and the UK together so they canuse their language skills on related projectsin an international context’, she explained.The project’s activities include support forGerman speaking, language and cultureprogrammes; ambassadorial engagementnetworks and services; and grants for jointthematic learning.

To attend the APPG meeting on Tuesday23 October, email [email protected].


NEWS & EDITORIAL

Claire Pendleton on the recent activities of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Modern Languages

Inside parliament

Claire Pendleton is ContentManager, CfBT Education Trust.

TL

THINK GERMANUK-German Connection Youth Ambassadorsat their recent meeting in Berlin


FEATURES

With the advent of new communicationtechnologies, virtual learning environments(VLEs), online resources and social media,learning from screen has become the normfor the young people of today. Interpretertraining is taking the lead in making learningfrom screen an engaging and stimulatingsupplement to classroom learning.

Funded by the DGs Interpretation of theEuropean Commission and the EuropeanParliament, ORCIT (Online Resources forConference Interpreter Training) builds onthe National Network for Interpreting (NNI)1.It is intended for those who have decided oninterpreting as a future career and areundergoing training on a postgraduatecourse in the UK, Czech Republic, France,Germany, Greece, Lithuania or Spain (ourpartners in the project).

ORCIT’s objective is to develop and pilotan open, interactive, multimedia learningresource in conference interpreting skills,using a designated website (www.orcit.eu).More specifically, the project aims for thegradual development of conferenceinterpreting techniques, focusing on the fivemain skills that are necessary for successfultraining: listening and analytical skills;mastery of mother tongue and publicspeaking; consecutive interpreting withoutnotes and note-taking; early to advancedsimultaneous interpreting; and research skills.

Devised by a project team comprisingexperienced EU conference interpreter-trainers, the online guidance and tuition isgeared towards postgraduate trainers andtheir trainees. It includes interactive exercisesand moves from basic to advanced skills.ORCIT provides a coherent pedagogicalframework and an easy-to-follow e-template

format, which allows tutors and students todevelop and adapt material to their needs.The online interactive modules can befollowed from anywhere in the world and aredesigned in such a way that they can beadapted for use with any language.

This resource complements face-to-faceconference interpreting courses and followsthe standards set by renowned Europeanschools. ‘ORCIT materials are an excellentsupplement to in-class exercises anddiscussions. They help student interpreters

focus on specific tasks and skills, which canoften be difficult to do when they are calledupon to interpret in front of their peers in aclassroom,’ says Professor Barry Olsen of theMonterey Institute of International Studies.

Trainers can point their students to thewebsite when introducing new concepts, andstudents can consolidate classroom learningby consulting the website. It can be used inmany ways: to recap theory, to gain a differentperspective on materials; or to work throughrelevant exercises. In this way, ORCIT acts asa reference work; a kind of online interpretingmanual that can be consulted at leisure. ‘TheORCIT resource explains simply and clearly

some of the key areas of interpreting in auser-friendly, bookshelf format that is aswelcoming as it is easy to use,’ says AndyGillies, an interpreter trainer at ISIT, Paris.

‘Though the site is aimed at studentinterpreters, there is plenty of material thatnovice interpreters could usefully watch,’ headds. Initial figures and feedback on websiteuse have been encouraging – and it is notonly the original target audience that hasexpressed an interest. Interpreting is taking ona new role in emerging economies, leading toa growth in demand for high-level interpretertraining. People setting up new trainingcourses, or expanding provision to cover newskills and language combinations, can tap intoan open-source resource such as ORCIT, ascan individuals wishing to enhance their ownskills set. The pedagogical structure helpsguide those working in geographical areasthat lack training infrastructure and expertise.Organisations including the African Unionhave commissioned ORCIT trainers toenhance their in-house interpreter training.

Online resources allow trainers to pooltheir expertise to create a valuable trainingtool. In this way, a pedagogical ‘Best Practice’in interpreter training is made available toanyone with an internet connection, hopefullyforming a lasting legacy for future interpreters.

Notes1NNI is part of Routes into Languages. See Carsten, S & Howard, C, TL50,4.

Svetlana Carsten, Sophie Llewellyn Smith andMatthew Perret outline an online open resourcesproject for conference interpreter training

Classroom without walls

People setting up newtraining courses, orexpanding provision,can tap into a resourcesuch as ORCIT

Svetlana Carsten, SophieLlewellyn Smith and Matthew

Perret are part of the ORCIT projectteam at the University of Leeds.

TL


SPEAK TO THE FUTURE

Terry Lamb on the personal, social, cultural, economicand political benefits of multilingualism in the UK

It is often suggested that the UK suffersfrom a lack of linguistic expertise. However,the languages community has beenpointing out for many years that we enjoy

high levels of multilingualism. The 2012School Census reported that more than one million students in England now speak alanguage at home in addition to English. Even in 1999, The Independent was

describing London as ‘the multilingual capital of the world’ (29/3/99), and this wasfollowed with a report claiming that morethan 300 languages were spoken in Londonschools (Baker & Eversley, 2000). This is notrestricted to the capital. Other regional cities,and even small towns, are being enriched byincreasing levels of linguistic diversity.

Recent decades have seen shifts inattitudes towards such diversity. In the 1980s,school curricula were developed in manyschools to reflect diversity, with morelanguages being offered to more children. Inone North London secondary school I taughtin at the time, all children had tasters of notonly French and German but also Greek andTurkish, the most prevalent communitylanguages, before choosing their ‘specialist’language. Interestingly, not only those whoused the languages at home chose tocontinue to learn them, but also manymonolingual English speakers. When askedwhy, they said that they would be able to usethem every day so it was worthwhile. Most significantly, however, many went on

to learn a second foreign language,motivated by their exposure to real use oflanguages. For those who spoke thelanguages at home, the sense of pride inbeing an ‘expert’ could be seen on theirfaces, as their languages became recognisedschool subjects. Alongside this, language

Valuing all our languages

in many languages for which there had neverbeen a way of formally recognisingcompetence. The Our Languages projectrecognised the work of complementaryschools in maintaining our rich linguisticresources, thereby making an enormousvoluntary contribution to the nation. Thehighly regarded Diploma in Languages andInternational Communication, dropped by thecoalition government in 2010, just after it hadbeen validated by Ofqual, offered strategiesfor building on our languages expertise. TheWorld Languages Project, funded by the TDA(Training and Development Agency forSchools) but similarly cancelled by the newGovernment, was meant to develop aGovernment strategy for ensuring teachersupply in a wide range of languages.It is difficult for a linguist to understand

why we would not wish to capitalise on thisextraordinary linguistic wealth. Nevertheless,bilingualism (or plurilingualism, given thatmany of our citizens have several languagesin their repertoire) is not always considered tobe an asset. The Nuffield Report hadconcluded in 2000 that ‘the multilingualtalents of UK citizens are under-recognised,under-used and all too often viewed withsuspicion’ (Nuffield, 2000: 36). Despite the progress made in the first

decade of the millennium, such negativeattitudes persist. Government support hasbeen withdrawn, with ‘world languages’ beingredefined as French, German, Spanish andChinese. The introduction of the EnglishBaccalaureate, which only includes GCSEs,has led to a loss of support for AssetLanguages and the recent threat by theawarding body to withdraw accreditation for20 of the 25 languages offered. On a more sinister level, an article in

awareness lessons across the curriculumhelped to make languages exciting inthemselves, bring a wider range of languagesinto the classroom, and make all children,including those with English as their firstlanguage, more aware of their ownlanguages. Our multilingual Maths week wasa huge success!After a fallow period in the 1990s, the

Nuffield Report in 2000 and the NationalLanguages Strategy in 2002 launched adecade of exciting opportunities to valorise allof the languages that had become part of ourcountry’s makeup. In its Language Learningdocument that accompanied the NationalLanguages Strategy, the DCSF (Departmentfor Children, Schools and Families; now theDepartment for Education) stated: ‘We needto [...] recognise the contribution of languages– not just European languages, but all ourcommunity languages as well – to the culturaland linguistic richness of our society, topersonal fulfilment, commercial success,international trade and mutual understanding.’

Following this, the development of AssetLanguages introduced valuable accreditation

DIVERSITY: Bilingual children at an EastLondon primary school (above); andnewspapers on sale in Kensington (top right)

Regular updates on the campaign for languages


SPEAK TO THE FUTURE

While our focus is on gathering supportoutside the languages world, you will get anopportunity to catch up with representativesfrom Speak to the future (STF) at theLanguage Show at Olympia, 19-21 October.Bring ideas on what you can do for thecause, and we’ll share campaign progresswith you at stand 515. The campaign has been going strong in

social media. At the time of going to press,we’ve rallied almost 1,100 fans on Facebook,more than 700 on Twitter, and recruited morethan 400 members to our LinkedIn group.These are proving great channels for raisingawareness of issues, the latest being theplans, laid out by the awarding organisationOCR, to cut the Asset Languages assessmentscheme from 25 to only 5 languages (French,German, Italian, Mandarin and Spanish). Thisdecision, influenced by the government’s lackof support for a wider range of languages inthe English Baccalaureate, has far-reachingimplications, as the scheme currently offersaccreditation for Cantonese, Hindi, Somali,Swedish, Tamil and Yoruba, for which noGCSE examinations exist. The removal of Asset Languages

qualifications in so many languages will setback attempts to encourage the learning ofa broader range of world languages, whichbusiness leaders say is needed to developBritish exports to BRIC (Brazil, Russia, Indiaand China) and other high-growth countries.The planned cuts also represent a blow toethnic minority communities who wish to seetheir children achieve qualifications in theirheritage languages. STF has mobilised an online petition

urging OCR to reconsider its plans for AssetLanguages, and Government to reconsiderits policy towards this accreditation. If youbelieve that rewarding knowledge of a widerrange of languages is important for ourcommunities, society and economy, pleaseadd your name at www.tiny.cc/assetpetition.

The Express in April criticised funding forcomplementary schools to enable ‘immigrant’children ‘to learn their parents’ native tongue,even though many can barely speak English’,failing to recognise that much of the fundingfor such learning has been removed in recentyears, that most of the children are notimmigrants, and that the language is not onlytheir parents’ but also one of their own firstlanguages. Similarly, such comments revealan orientation towards ‘subtractive’ ratherthan ‘additive’ bilingualism, suggesting that alanguage has to be dropped in order tomake space for another one in a child’s brain. It is for this reason that the Speak to the

future campaign has as its first andunderpinning objective that every languageshould be valued as an asset, throughout allphases of education and throughout life. It isworking to encourage policy makers and thegeneral public to recognise that the manylanguages used in the homes of UK citizensare a valuable resource for social cohesion andeconomic success, as well as a personal right. There is an urgent need to challenge the

ignorance and prejudices that unnecessarilyand stubbornly inhibit the benefits not onlyto individuals, but also to the nation. We areengaging a broad range of support, fromparents, students, headteachers, academics,businesspeople and celebrities, who areprepared to support the campaign, to arguethe benefits, and to expose not only thelosses but also the threats to society of failureto recognise our linguistic capital. In a recent Economic and Social Research

On thecampaign trail

Dominic Luddy looksat recent developments

Council press release (www.esrc.ac.uk/news-and-events/press-releases/20633/language-diversity-will-make-london-a-true-global-player.aspx), Professor Dick Wiggins from theInstitute of Education was quoted as saying:‘Having speakers of all these languagesmeans we have connections across the globewith other speakers of these languages. Weare globally connected, which is an incrediblebenefit for international trade, particularly atthis time when the balance of globaleconomic power is changing and Europeaneconomies are in such crisis.’If you subscribe to the personal, social,

cultural, economic and political benefits ofmultilingualism, and wish to help thecampaign to see all of our languages valued, please sign up to Speak to the future.

FIND OUT MOREFor the latest about the campaign forlanguages or to get involved, visitwww.speaktothefuture.org. We’re alsoon Twitter @speak2future, Facebook(www.fb.com/speaktothefuture) andLinkedIn – search in ‘groups’ for‘Speak to the future’.

Terry Lamb is working groupleader of Objective 1 of the

Speak to the future campaign: ‘Everylanguage valued as an asset’.

TL

© IS

TOCKPH

OTO


FEATURES

Chris Dixon finds out how translation helped WilliamCody to become a household name throughout Europe

‘Je viens.’ ‘I am coming.’ The image on theposter is iconic and there was no need to saywho was coming. William F ‘Buffalo Bill’ Codywas the entertainment industry’s firstinternational celebrity, blazing a trail that wasto be followed by others with the advent ofthe global mass media in the decades afterhis death in 1917. The vehicle that broughthim international stardom was his Wild WestExhibition. In the late 1880s, early 1890s andfor more than four years between 1902 and1906, ‘Buffalo Bill’s Wild West’ delightedaudiences in England, Scotland, Wales and 15countries in continental Europe, igniting ‘WildWest Fever’ almost everywhere it went, byoffering what purported to be an authenticexperience of the American frontier, completewith real cowboys and ‘Indians’.The French poster is a simple, straight

translation from English, and yet we have norecord of the translator’s name, nor indeed dowe know the names of the numerousinterpreters and translators who enabledCody and company to overcome thelanguage barriers that they faced on thecontinent. Official employee records held atBuffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody,Wyoming, USA include only the names ofLakota interpreters who worked to ensureeffective communication with the troupe’snumerous native American performers throughthe more than 30 years that it operated. There are also French, German and Italian

programmes, which consist mainly of materialtranslated from English originals. Again, thetranslators are not identified. The author ofmost of the English language source materialfor these programmes was John M Burke, theGeneral Manager, who travelled in advance ofthe troupe. Although one newspaper account

On the trail of Buffalo Bill

evidence of the intercultural dialogue andexchange that was going on. There wereparodies by theatre companies in London,Paris and Barcelona; the magazine Punchadopted Wild West imagery to parody PrimeMinister Gladstone; the French press usedthe figure of Cody to ridicule GeneralGeorges Boulanger; and the Catalan satiricalmagazine La Tramontana lampoonedFrancesc Rius i Taulet, the recently deposedmayor of Barcelona, by caricaturing himbegging for a job at the company’s camp.For almost a century, much of this

information has been unknown in the UnitedStates to either scholars or the public atlarge. Historians whose work focuses on theAmerican West tend to be monoglot Englishspeakers, with a few notable exceptions whoknow French, due to their research on the furtrade and early exploration; Spanish, becausethey study former Spanish territories in theSouth West; or a native American languagebecause they have an interest in anindigenous culture. Similarly in Europe, themajority of students of American history orAmerican studies are likely to be studying theEnglish language and, although some keytexts have been translated from English into

suggests that he was an accomplished linguistwho could ‘discourse in ever so manylanguages’,1 that claim is not corroboratedby other evidence, and the quality of thetranslations is so high that it would be aremarkable feat if they were all the work ofthe same non-professional translator.We do, however, know that the ‘Wild West’

employed interpreters on its European toursbecause Charles Eldridge Griffin, whomanaged the exhibition’s side-show from1902 to 1906, left a memoire in which healludes to the difficulties that they had withtheir interpreters in the Austro-HungarianEmpire: ‘Some towns would be about equallydivided between four or five nationalities,and, although they all understood German,the official language, each would insist onbeing addressed in his native language.’2

The Austro-Hungarian Empire was also thesite of the ‘Wild West’s only significantlinguistic gaffe on record. When it visited themainly Italian-speaking city of Trieste, in 1906,the local newspaper, L’Indipendente,complained: ‘Buffalo Bill’s advance agentshave flooded this city with advertisingmaterials in Slovenian,’ before conceding, ‘forsomeone coming from America andremaining only a few days among us, we canforgive their ignorance of the linguisticconditions which obtain here and not beoverly critical.’3

Whatever the level of ignorance oflinguistic conditions in the places theyvisited, there can be no doubt that Cody andcompany generally overcame the barriers tocommunication, since almost everywherethey stopped, newspaper accounts in variouslanguages speak of the success of the show.The same press coverage also provides


FEATURES

digital images and transcriptions of originaldocuments in Catalan, French, German,Italian and Spanish being published togetherwith English translations.

European audiencesFor ‘Buffalo Bill’s Wild West’, Europe wasnever just one homogeneous setting, and itregularly modified its approach to publicityand the content of performances to suit thelocal audiences and conditions itencountered. The translation project ishighlighting some of these differences. It is well known that the year-long tour of

France in 1905 made considerable use of theidea of an entente cordiale with the UnitedStates in the show’s advance publicity, but theFrench programme for the tour reveals anumber of surprises. One of the articles that isunique to that programme, and not atranslation from the English, is a pro-Japanesepiece that touches on the Russo-JapaneseWar that was on-going – not something thatwould be expected at a time when Franceand Russia were themselves allies.Reviewing and translating the contemporary

press coverage from various countries alsocalls into question a number of popular mythsabout the ‘Wild West’. A story that is oftenrepeated about the 1889 tour of Germany, forexample, is that Annie Oakley, the leadingfemale sharp-shooter, shot the ash from theend of the recently crowned Kaiser Wilhelm II’scigarette – and that she subsequently wroteto him, after the outbreak of the First WorldWar, asking for a second shot. And yet theGerman press of the time made no mention

of any such incident. The five weeks that the‘Wild West’ spent in Barcelona in the winter of1889-1890 have generally been regarded byAmerican historians as the low point of itsEuropean tours, if not of the exhibition’s entireexistence, and yet the Catalan and Spanishnewspaper accounts of the time give noindication that the show was anything otherthan a success.In its first six months, codyarchive.org had

more than 4,000 visitors, including visits fromall over Europe, all 50 US states, and all sevencontinents. As ‘The Papers of William F Cody’project develops, an increasing number ofprimary sources will become available onlinein English translation as well as the originallanguages, and who knows what new insightsthey will bring to the field of Cody studies.What we can be certain of is that the processof translation and the work of translators arecentral to the project. They are playing a keyrole in developing a new understanding ofthe life and work of an illustrious figure in thehistory of the American West, who broughthis own unique vision of the United States’western expansion to Europe.

Notes1 New York Times, 7 April 19012 Griffin, C E, Four Years in Europe with BuffaloBill, Edited and introduced by Dixon, C, 2010,University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 114 3 L’Indipendente, 4 May 19064 Cody, W F, The Wild West in England, Editedand introduced by Christianson, F, 2012,University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, xi 5 Graham, K in Scotland on Sunday, 28/3/10

REMARKABLE: A cover from the ‘WildWest’s Tours of Great Britain (left) andthe French publicity poster (below, left)

the most widely spoken European languages,very little work has been done to makeprimary material in these languages availableto English-speaking audiences. Or rather,very little work has been done until now.In 2006, Dr Kurt Graham, who was Housel

Director of the McCracken Research Libraryat the Buffalo Bill Historical Center,established a project, ‘The Papers of William F Cody’, with a straightforward butambitious objective: to collect and publish,both in print and online, the entire corpus ofmaterials that document the personal andprofessional life of Cody in a way that wouldbe accessible to both specialist academicand general audiences. In Graham’s ownwords, ‘Cody is readily accepted as a popculture icon of his day but not always seen asa subject of serious scholarly study. […] Codydid not merely represent American culture –he defined it for generations of Europeans. Inso doing he gave it a definition thatresonates today.’4

Given the amount of time the ‘Wild West’spent in non-English-speaking countries, itwas clear that the project would include asubstantial translation element. Graham’ssolution was to form a partnership, in March2010, with the short-lived Centre forTranslation and Intercultural Studies (now partof the School of Humanities), at Glasgow’sStrathclyde University, in order to establish a‘frontier fortress’ from which ‘a little army ofpeople’ could retrace Cody’s steps inEurope.5 In September 2011, codyarchive.orgwas launched and the associated translationproject is now bearing its first fruits, with

Translating the presscoverage calls intoquestion a number ofpopular myths aboutthe Wild West

BUFFALOBILLHISTORICALCENTER, CODY, WYOMING, USA; MS6.6.A.3.10.1.01

SIGN LANGUAGEA wordy warning sign on the Isle of Wight uses 35 wordswhere ‘uneven surface’ would do


FEATURES

Translating with clarity is vital. David Monkcom, of the EU, offers advice on how to do even better Clarity is vital in daily life – whether it’s clearinformation for consumers, clear wording inlegal contracts or clear instructions on how tooperate machinery. It is also important forpublic authorities, who have a duty to explain their actions to the taxpayer in clear,everyday language.Nowhere is this truer than in today’s highly

complex European Union – and yetdocuments produced by the EuropeanCommission are notorious for being unclear.All too often they are verbose and riddledwith jargon and acronyms. They tend to bewritten in long, tortuous sentences with toomany verbal nouns and passive verbs. Tomake matters worse, most of them aredrafted in English by non-native speakers.This combination of factors makes manyCommission documents hard to read and apain to translate. To their credit, ourtranslators and editors (both in-house andfreelance) usually do a fantastic job at makingsilk purses out of sows’ ears. But theyshouldn’t have to.In 2010, the European Commission

launched an internal campaign to tackle thisproblem. Publicity events, a booklet, awebsite and a campaign song were all usedto raise staff awareness. Then in-house trainers(such as me) began holding workshops toteach the basic principles of clear writing.For a start, we stress that clear writing

requires clear thinking. What are you trying tosay and to whom? Have you structured yourmaterial in a logical sequence? Have youanswered the questions your readers willnaturally ask? (Readers usually want concreteinformation about who and what is involved,when and where things are happening, whythis is being done and how much it will cost).

Keep it clear

What this means, in everyday language, isthat EU citizens are free to live, work or studyin whichever EU country they choose. Andthat is probably all you need to say. Thisshorter version is only 15 words, which isgood. As a rule of thumb, your averagesentence length should be around 20 words,and no sentence should be longer than 30.Another useful technique for clearer writing

is to avoid verbal nouns, using verbs instead.For example, don’t say: There is a need for an intensification ofintervention and a reinforcement ofcooperation for the prevention of thepollution of the coastal waters of Europe as a consequence of the accidental spillage of oil.

Instead, simply say:Together, we must do more to protectEurope’s coasts from oil spills.When using verbs, prefer the active to the

passive voice. Instead of ‘A decision wastaken at Commission level’, say ‘TheCommission decided’. Where possible, avoidjargon and abbreviations. If you can’t avoidthem, explain them – especially in adocument written for non-specialists. Forexample, in a public information booklet,don’t say ‘Cohesion is promoted with ERDFsupport’. Instead, say ‘EU funding helpsreduce disparities between the differentregions of Europe’. If you really need tospecify which fund is involved, say theEuropean Regional Development Fund andperhaps put ‘ERDF’ in brackets afterwards.

We encourage authors to use headingsand sub-headings, and to divide their textinto short paragraphs. A summary orconclusion is very helpful too. In fact, it’s agood idea to start by writing the summary: itfocuses the mind on essentials and helps youto cut out anything unnecessary. Above all, we urge authors and translators

to keep it short and simple. Cut outunnecessary words. Keep sentences short. Asfar as possible, use everyday language. Here,for example, is a sentence that is too longand unnecessarily bureaucratic:One of the fundamental freedoms whichhave been established with a view tofacilitating the life of citizens of the EuropeanUnion is the freedom to choose to reside, towork or to engage in a course of study in aMember State other than the MemberState of origin of the citizen concerned.

CYN

DYSIMSPA

RR, ‘OILSLICKS?’, 5/6/09 VIAFL

ICKR, CC BY-SA

2.0


FEATURES

competences among European institutionsand Member States and that they beinformed of the concrete contribution ofthe European Union to improving theirdaily lives.

3 Referring to the measures introduced forthe purpose of combating drug trafficking,the President announced that these wouldbe reinforced.

4 The Commission, in collaboration with theother institutions of the Union, is constantlyreinforcing endeavours to simplify the oftencumbersome formalities to be completedby citizens wishing to take advantage of thefreedom of movement enshrined inEuropean law with a view to establishingtheir residence in another Member State.

5 ERDF assistance will be provided tofacilitate the scrapping of end-of-life vessels

Further confusion in Commissiondocuments is often caused by ‘false friends’ –English words that look similar to, say, Frenchwords that mean something different. ThusCommission staff often write ‘eventually’when they really mean ‘possibly’ (Frenchéventuellement). Or they say they will ‘assistat’ a meeting when, in fact, they will simplyattend it (French assister à). Here is a classicexample of this kind of franglais:Important investments in the domain ofresearch are foreseen in the budget project,which is in the course of elaboration.

You could re-write this in normal English as:Considerable investment in [the field of]research is planned in the draft budget,which is currently being drawn up’.

Or you could re-structure the sentence,building up to the important information:The draft budget, currently being prepared, includes plans for majorspending on research.Putting the interesting bit at the end gives

the sentence extra punch, and that too is auseful technique for clearer writing.Here are a few more examples of

Commissionese. Have a go at re-writingthese sentences in a clearer way, thencompare your version with my suggestion (inthe box, opposite).1 There is an incentivisation of farmerstowards the uptake of sustainable practiceswith a view to the safeguarding of theenvironment, the preservation of thecountryside and the production of food ofa high standard of quality and safety.

2 It is a matter of necessity that the citizens ofEurope be aware of the division of

The European Commission is encouragingand training its staff to write more clearlyvia a website, in-house magazine, onlineinteractive tutorial, annual clear writingawards, and hands-on training workshops.There are also publicly available resources inthe form of a ‘How to Write Clearly’booklet (downloadable fromhttp://ec.europa.eu/translation/writing/clear_writing/how_to_ write_ clearly_en.pdf) and the campaign song, Good News:Clarity’s a-coming!. The video (pictured)includes lyrics, so sing your heart out (seewww.youtube.com/watch?v=sxzU2UH9j_I).

Work through the examples in the articleand check your suggested re-writesagainst David Monkcom’s: 1 Farmers are being encouraged to usesustainable practices in order to safeguardthe environment, preserve the countrysideand produce safe, high-quality food.

2 People need to know who does what inEurope. They also need to be told what theEuropean Union is actually doing to improvetheir daily lives.

3 The President announced stronger measuresto combat drug trafficking. (The Presidentpromised to get tough on drug trafficking).

4 The European institutions are doing all they

can to make it easier for people to movehome from one EU country to another.

5 Financing from the European RegionalDevelopment Fund (ERDF) will be used tohelp shipping companies scrap and replacetheir old boats.

6 In 2010, the Ministry of Education drew up aFramework Plan for school reform. In mid-2011, the Cabinet revised the plan. On thisbasis, the stakeholders agreed a two-partReform Programme, which they willimplement in 2012-18.

7 To avoid [the risk of] bankruptcy, we couldconsider restructuring the business, but this isa very sensitive issue.

Spread the good news

and their replacement by maritimetransport enterprises.

6Mid-2011 saw the revision by the Cabinetof the Framework Plan for school reformdeveloped the previous year by theMinistry of Education, upon which basis atwo-part Reform Programme (2012-18) wassubsequently agreed by the stakeholdersto be implemented by them.

7 To avoid the perspective of an eventualbankruptcy, we could foresee arestructuration of the enterprise. However,this is a very sensible question.The techniques you have just been

practising can help make your translationcrystal clear, even when the originaldocument isn’t. Someone somewhere – aconsumer, a taxpayer, perhaps a machineoperator – will be very grateful.

SETTING AN EXAMPLE


FEATURES

How languages help TV presenterKevin McCloud gain a sense ofplace. By Jessica Moore

The Alicante episode of GrandDesigns Abroad is one theprogramme makers would prefer to bury under the proverbial patio.

Featured in a television series that – like itslong-running, UK-based counterpart – aimedto showcase imaginative, considered,progressive buildings, the Alicante home isshown to be inelegant and ill-conceived,constructed by trial and error rather than by design. In contrast, former triumphs for the Grand

Designs brand include a high-performing ecobungalow in Ipswich, a renovated castle inTuscany, and an earth-sheltered home inBrittany made almost entirely from recycledmaterials. The Alicante debacle offered noneof this. Filmed in 2003-04, it followed SouthAfrican couple Derek and Jennifer Ray asthey upped sticks from London to build whatthe series’ presenter, Kevin McCloud,described as ‘a merry-go-round plonked inthe landscape’. The Rays battled with all the usual

variables – weather, cost, builders – but they faced an additional stumbling block. ‘It’s very frustrating’, Jennifer Ray noted, ‘and the language problem is the mostfrustrating part’. Neither she nor her husbandspoke Spanish.Bizarre as it may seem to attempt such a

vast project without a good grasp of the locallanguage, it’s not uncommon. Grand DesignsAbroad is testament to that – and no one ismore frustrated by it than McCloud. ‘I thinkit’s very odd,’ he says. We’re at the epicGrand Designs Live exhibition in London’sDocklands – a nine-day celebration of allthings home, from cupcake cases to gardentrowels, bi-fold doors to solar panels. ‘You’reonly ever part of a community of ex-pats ifyou don’t make the effort to speak the locallanguage. It should be simple: if you cancommunicate with the local people, you’llenjoy being there more and you’ll find iteasier to get the things you need.’In Alicante, McCloud couldn’t help: he

speaks no more Spanish than the Rays. But in

Man of words

other episodes he has graciously stepped inas translator and interpreter. McCloud speaksFrench and Italian well, and is frequentlybroadcast doing so, as more linguistically-challenged Brits attempt to create theirdream home on foreign soil.In a remote area of central France,

Denise Daniel and Doug Ibbs sought torenovate a five-storey mansion withoutspeaking the language. The episode showsMcCloud discussing the development – amassive undertaking – with the Head Mason. He asks in French if the mason canforesee any particular problems. ‘La première difficulté est la langue’ comes theresponse. He’s proved right. As McCloudcomments, Daniel and Ibbs find themselves‘bamboozled’ by paperwork and bureaucracy, and paralysed when dealingwith tradesmen. In one scene, Ibbs turns to

McCloud and says ‘I’m going to need somehelp – how do you say “a disaster”?’ ‘Undésastre,’ McCloud mutters with what soundslike irritation.‘Every time I come here, I leave at the end

of the day exhausted by the shenanigans oflanguage and translation,’ McCloud confidesto the camera. ‘It really does illustrate howyou’ve got to get language under your belt. Idon’t know how [Ibbs and Daniel] are goingto get through this process – happily, calmly –unless they improve their French.’His belief in the joy and power of language

started at school. At Dunstable Grammar(now Manshead Upper School), McCloudgained a grounding in, and a flair for, Frenchand Italian. His parents weren’t linguists andhis upbringing was decidedly English, butafter finishing his A-levels, ‘I went to Italy bymyself for a few years,’ he tells me.

‘We don’t drill downenough. Languagegives you that abilityto understand place,as well as people’


FEATURES

The jigsaw pieces of McCloud’s life slottogether quite neatly. The love of languagetook him abroad, where he discovered newlandscapes, aesthetics and architecture. Thatled to a career as a lighting designer (hiswork can be seen in Harrods, EdinburghCastle and The Savoy) and, ultimately, to hisrole in Grand Designs, where he takes fulladvantage of all these skills. ‘I’m interested in communicating

complicated ideas in simple ways,’ McCloudsays. A good example is the ‘translation’required between the language of architectsand that of ordinary people. ‘One thing thatdoes fascinate me is that every discipline hasits own language. Doctors write codes toeach other in three-letter acronyms,undecipherable to you or me. Architects talkabout “extending the spatial geometry”.What they mean when they say that is “makeit bigger”. Every profession has its own chat,and when you learn that chat, you’re part ofthe club,’ he says. ‘The trouble is, thatdoesn’t do our viewers any favours.’‘I try to use analogy,’ he explains. ‘So

rather than say “there’s a continuousperforation of the fabric of the building”, it’smuch better to say “it’s got windows”.’ Youcan hear him doing this on Grand Designs.McCloud’s role is one of mentor, as well asnarrator, through the story of each building.The people in the stories rarely have muchexperience of construction or design. Theystruggle with the practicalities. And McCloud

is always there to make holes in the roofseem poetic, and camping out while theflooring is laid seem romantic. He believes that Grand Designs is partly

responsible for a shift in the language ofarchitects over the last ten years. ‘Architectshave started using the language of theirclients. They want to show that they’rehuman, that they get the poetic nature ofbuilding.’ And there it is – the truth ofMcCloud’s ‘plain English’, which isn’t plain atall but expansive, indulgent and evocative.It’s the chat of a man who loves words of alllanguages, as well as music and art. It’s lofty, and contrasts sharply with the

Alicante experience. ‘Stupido!’ the episoderecords Jennifer Ray shouting towards herSpanish builder before mumbling ‘At least Iknow “stupid” in Spanish’. She later says‘Thank god we don’t actually speak Spanishbecause we’ve just had this [mimes cuttingher throat] shown to us a few times [by the builders]. I think that is an internationallanguage for you’re gonna die if you don’t stop!’ Back in London, McCloud sighs.‘I think some people find learning languagesdifficult,’ he acknowledges. ‘I respect that. Ihear that. But languages do open somebeautiful doors’.

Kevin McCloud is the ambassador forGrand Designs Live at the NEC inBirmingham, 12-14 October. For moreinformation see www.granddesignslive.com.

BUILDING DREAMSKevin McCloud signs copiesof his ‘43 Principles of Home’

at Grand Designs Live

‘Nowadays, kids go round the world, don’tthey? A year out is spent visiting as manycountries as possible, isn’t it? I went to oneplace and I stayed there. I went to Tuscanyand I worked on a farm – and that was it. Ilived with the family. I had no contact withanybody British. I just went off the radar.That’s a good way to do it.’When McCloud returned to the UK, he

started a degree in French and Italian atCorpus Christi College, Cambridge – but hesoon fled back to Florence, where he sangopera and fell in love with architecture. Heflirted with the idea of joining Florence’smusic school, but eventually returned toCambridge to study history of architectureand design. ‘Languages, I find, are a passport to culture

– they’re a short route to understandingother people,’ he says. ‘That’s true of yourown first languages, as well as any additionalones. When I speak a language it’s because I

happen to really enjoy the nuance of thosesounds. It’s because I love being able toshare a joke, and I love being able to involvemyself culturally. I’ve got friends who areItalian and friends who are French – and theywouldn’t be friends unless I could speakthose languages.’This passion, he says, is ‘why I ended up

doing this job, really. I enjoy that contact with place. I enjoy seeing people make rootsin a place. I think we don’t drill downenough. We don’t stop and go slow enough– we move constantly. And language givesyou that ability to understand place, as wellas people.’

‘I went to Tuscany andworked on a farm. Ihad no contact withanybody British. I justwent off the radar’


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Dubbing professionals now have to do the translationwork and a whole lot more, says Frederic ChaumeDubbing is one of the oldest modes ofaudiovisual translation, dating back to thelate 1920s, when the new sound filmsneeded to be transferred to other languagesand countries. It is now more far-reaching andpopular than ever. Cartoons for youngchildren are dubbed all over the world; inRussia, dubbing is making its way in the once predominant voiceover landscape; and Turkish and South American soap operas are now dubbed in Greece and theMaghreb. Even countries that havehistorically resisted, such as Portugal,Denmark and Norway, are beginning to dubsome teen TV series and movies.Traditionally, translation for dubbing has

been reduced to a rough translation with aforeignising orientation, which is laterdomesticated by the dialogue writer (oradapter), dubbing director and voice talents,with the help of the dubbing assistant.However, all these tasks can be betterperformed by a single, well-preparedtranslator, who knows the source language

The all-round dubber

and therefore how far the translation can be manipulated. This also makes the process faster and cheaper, since thetranslator delivers a translation that meets thedemands of dialogue writing, is split intotakes, and contains all the dubbing symbolsto help dubbing actors in their performance.It is no wonder that, in many countries,translators have started to take on the fullgamut of tasks and are being paid for all ofthem, with a resulting rise in their standardsof living.

This type of service encourages a companyto use the same translator again, since s/hehas successfully provided a solution to all of itstranslation needs. This means that dubbingprofessionals increasingly have to be able to:1 Create a translation from the originalaudiovisual text (not the script, which canbe helpful but is not the source text).

2 Set a segmentation of the translation intotakes or loops, known as anelli in Italy andboucles in France – ie, portions of text, thelengths and layouts of which vary from onedubbing country to another.

3 Add dubbing symbols in the translation asprops to help dubbing actors imitate thescreen actors’ paralinguistic signs: pitch,tone, volume, sounds, primary voicequalities, etc.

4 Ensure lip-sync – ie, comply with isochrony(utterances and pauses must have thesame length in both the source and thetarget language), kinesic synchrony(translation has to be coherent with bodymovements) and lip-sync proper or

Translators areregarded as problemsolvers who will solveany linguistic problem,whatever the language

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Find out how many dubbing companiesare operating in your country, as well asin the countries where your language isspoken (although linguistic differencescan be a stumbling block to working inother countries). This information can befound by searching the internet usingthe keywords ‘sound synchronisation’,‘dubbing’, ‘post-synchronisation’, ‘soundediting’ and ‘sound mixing’ (and theircounterparts in other languages:doppiaggio, doublage, doblaje,doblatge, dobragem, synchronisation,etc). Some websites also provide listsof dubbing companies. Note thatdubbing is utilised mainly in Europe,the Americas, some Asian countries(China, Japan, Korea) and some NorthAfrican countries (especially for TVseries and cartoons). Translators can also work for foreign

companies that dub into their mothertongue. Although fiction films and TVseries are usually dubbed in the targetlanguage country, corporate videos,documentaries, commercials andcartoons can be dubbed abroad,especially in cities with a tradition ofdubbing into many languages, such asLos Angeles, Barcelona, Berlin,Hamburg, London, Madrid, Milan,Munich, Paris and Rome. Once you have a list of dubbing

companies, contact them by phone ormail to ask for an interview. Sending CVsby email is not advisable, as companiesreceive a constant flow of CVs by email.


FEATURES

work in teams, to liaise with other translatorsspecialising in other language combinationsor other translation fields (legal, scientific,administrative, technical, medical, tourism,literary etc). Clips may arrive without a script to

accompany the images, making thetranslator’s task much more difficult. Sincethese commissions are often much betterpaid, the income can be shared with atranslator who speaks the language of theoriginal dialogue as a native language.Reverse translations may also be called for, inwhich case the native speaker can again beinvited to help. Teamwork, then, is vital. In all these cases, translators must give

their professional best and pay particularattention to the translation brief, targetlanguage grammar, lexis and orthography,typographical usages, and false friends andcalques. It goes without saying thattranslations should be delivered by thedeadline, or earlier if possible.

New contextsRecently, dubbing has moved into other,complex audiovisual translation modes. Invideogames, dialogues are usually dubbed;some commercials are dubbed, even intraditional subtitling countries; andfandubbing is becoming popularinternationally. Dubbing is even used toteach foreign languages. In the new world ofà-la-carte services, audiences can now activelychoose their preferred audiovisual mode,product and platform, whenever they want.Most differences in practice do not affect

the fundamentals of dubbing. Professionalswho have acquired an insight into the specificchallenges of dubbing practice will be ableto apply this knowledge and skills in anycontext. For example, once professionalshave learnt what a ‘take’ is, they will be ableto segment the translation into takesaccording to local conventions, in line withthe client’s preferences or the translationbrief. What is important is to know what takesare, what lip-sync is, and what a translationfor dubbing should sound like. This can thenbe adapted to local layout or dubbingsymbol traditions.

Frederic Chaume’s Audiovisual Translation:Dubbing is out now through St Jerome.

phonetic synchrony (the translation has tobe adapted to the articulatory movementsof the on-screen characters). Especially inclose-ups, particular care needs to be takento ensure that the translation respects theopen vowels and bilabial and labio-dentalconsonants mouthed on screen.

5 Create a translation that sounds like spokenlanguage – ie, more natural than a writtentext which is spoken or performed. Professional translators are gradually being

trained in all these areas through Master’sdegrees and workshops. In some parts ofSpain and Brazil, all tasks are performed bythe translator, especially in translations forregional TV stations. In France, translators(auteurs) are also responsible for the détectionphase in the new virtual dubbing process. Inthe USA, in-house project managers performall these tasks and also the dubbing direction– although, in my view, the skills required bya director are quite different from thosetranslators generally possess.

TeamworkTranslators must be aware that they areregarded as service providers and problemsolvers – ie, people who will solve anylinguistic and translation problem posed bythe text, whatever the languages involved inthe original audiovisual text or even in thetarget text. In other words, they must learn to

Translators havestarted to take on thefull gamut of dubbingtasks and are beingpaid for all of them

DUB STEPSThe popular 2004 Brazilian telenovela (soapopera) ‘A Escrava Isaura’ was dubbed intoSpanish as ‘La Esclava Isaura’ (below); whileCbeebies’ art show ‘Mister Maker’ has beendubbed into several languages, includingTurkish, Spanish and Portuguese (top left)

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Miranda Moore visits the National Opera Studios to find out why singers are expected to study languages

When Gabriela Iştoc was asked to understudythe First Nymph in the 2011 production ofRusalka at Glyndebourne she couldn’t havebeen happier. The prestigious venue is a holygrail for trainee opera singers, and for the 28-year-old Romanian soprano, Dvořák’s lyricfairytale is ‘the most beautiful opera ever’.A year later, she was back at the annual

opera festival covering the title role ofanother Czech opera: Janáček’s The CunningLittle Vixen. It was a daunting prospect. 2012proved to be a record year for sales, with anaudience of up to 1,200 people a night. Butfor Iştoc, who was coming to the end of aone-year course at the National Opera Studio(NOS), the first hurdle was learning the part:60 minutes of complicated music, written inan unfamiliar language. She had just twomonths. ‘I was leaving the studios at 10pm,when the cleaner was leaving,’ she says. ‘Butyou have to take “no” from your mind.’When we meet, a few months later, at the

NOS in Wandsworth, South London, she isstruggling with another piece, this time inGerman. ‘It’s only four pages but it took mealready one week and I still don’t know thethird page,’ she says of Einer wird kommenfrom Franz Lehar’s Der Zarewitsch. ‘I’m soannoyed with myself. Once you know some ofthe language it makes such a huge difference.’Fellow NOS student, baritone AlexanderBaker, agrees that understanding the lyrics

masters of their musical craft, it seems animpossible task. (‘You can be a doctor in lesstime than you can be a singer,’ says Baker,who has been studying opera for eight years.) Nevertheless, a good command of Italian,

at the very least, is considered vital. ‘I wouldsay you can make it without speaking thelanguage, but history doesn’t tell us that’s theright way,’ says NOS Italian tutor MatteoDalle Fratte, who can’t think of a single operastar who hasn’t spoken Italian. When you learn that 13 of the 20 most-

performed operas are written in the language,including Puccini’s La Boheme and Verdi’s La Traviata, you begin to see why it’s soimportant. Of the other seven Top 20 operas,all but one (Bizet’s Carmen) are in German.Both Iştoc and Baker took Italian classes atNOS; both are now in Berlin learning German. It isn’t just about being able to memorise

the words; it’s about pronunciation andcommunication. Opera singers are stageactors, often performing dramas in languagesthat are unintelligible to much of the audience.They need to be able to communicate thenarrative and emotion not only in order todeliver a rounded musical performance but

‘exactly word-for-word helps memory-wise’.As singers, Iştoc and Baker are used to

language study, which is a standard part of allopera qualifications and specialised trainingprogrammes. At the Royal Opera House,Italian, French and German are taught asstandard, with options to learn the other twomajor opera languages – Russian and Czech –as well as Spanish. On the NOS course, whichBaker describes as ‘a finishing school foropera singers’, students have one-on-onecoaching in Italian, French and German, withcoaching in Russian and Czech as required.Conversational Italian is an essential part of theprogramme, with group conversation classesin the other four languages also on offer. Gaining a good grounding in all five

languages would be a huge challenge foranyone. When you consider the hours operasingers need to put in if they are to become

‘You can make itwithout speaking thelanguage, but historydoesn’t tell us that’sthe right way’

PLAYING THE PART: Alexander RobinBaker (right) and Alexander Sprague performa scene from Rossini’s ‘Il barbiere di Siviglia’in a production at the NOS in March

ADAMLEVY

Lessons in opera


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Following a similar principle, Englishspeakers are often encouraged to adopt aWelsh accent when singing to produce therolling ‘r’ and pure vowel sounds. It may be acoincidence that some of the UK’s best-known opera singers are Welsh, includingmezzo-soprano Katherine Jenkins, whostudied Italian, German, French and Russianat the Royal Academy of Music, and alsospeaks Welsh.Such are the differences between spoken

language and classically sung language thateven native Italian speakers may need dictionlessons in order to enunciate Italian operalyrics. Another major difference is that singershave to be able to carry their voices across anentire auditorium. ‘An opera singer has to belouder than the musicians in the orchestrapit,’ explains Dalle Fratte. ‘The airflow on theconsonants has to be very strong.’ This means there are differences between

teaching Italian to someone who wants tospeak it and teaching it for the purpose ofsinging opera. ‘The conversation classdoesn’t concentrate on the grammar andstructure. I let them feel the language,’ headds. ‘I do give them a bit of grammar, butit’s basically about building up the confidenceto use the language in a natural way.’ Thereare few materials that cater for this kind ofinstruction. ‘If you are talking about teachinglanguage for opera singers, there’s nothing,’says Dalle Fratte, who sourced his ownmaterials instead, among them a letterwritten by Puccini and the lyrics for La Traviata.

From singing to speakingIt is likely that opera singers will work abroadduring their career, or with foreign – often

Italian – directors. ‘It’s quite common,’ confirmsBaker, whose course-mate just got back froma job in Milan, where the conversation classesat the NOS proved to be very useful. So howwell can trainees speak the languages theyhave learnt in the name of opera? When Iştoc forgot an Italian lyric during a

performance, she was able to use a wordwith a similar meaning instead. ‘We’re alwaysso nervous about singing for the audience orpublic or jury, and sometimes the mindblocks,’ she explains. ‘It happened to me Ithink twice in my life – I forgot the word – butif you have the idea of the phrase you can putin another word that means pretty much thesame thing. If you know what you are saying,you find it so much easier to memorise theidea of the story, of what’s happening.’ When Baker went to Germany earlier this

year, he found that he was able talk to thelocals. He also discovered that his way ofspeaking, based largely on the language ofopera written more than a century ago,caused some amusement. ‘We’re taughtHochdeutsch – High German,’ he explains.‘You start using poetic German, poetic French,poetic Russian.’ Long compound words are alot less common in song, so he struggledwith the ‘huge long words’ used by Germans,as well as regional accents, including thestrong Bavarian accent adopted by his father,who is near-fluent in the language.With English, Italian, German and

Romanian in hand, Iştoc is well on the way toachieving the linguistic skills she needs. Butwith her love of Dvořák – and having missedout on Czech classes at NOS due to ascheduling clash – she is determined to studyCzech next.

COMMUNICATING EMOTIONGabriela Iştoc performs with RTE NationalSymphony orchestra of Ireland (right); andas Tatyana in Tchaikovsky’s ‘EugeneOnegin’ for an NOS production (below)

also so the audience can follow the story.‘Singers have to know what they mean –every word – even if it’s not the mothertongue of the audience. That is important sothat the audience at least get a gist of whatyou’re saying,’ explains Baker. It was when he started a Music degree at

Guildhall School of Music and Drama, aged18, that he realised how important languagelearning is for opera singers. ‘They were sokeen on making sure that you’re not justproducing noises,’ he says.

A shortcutApart from an obvious advantage when itcomes to memorising lyrics, I wondered whyit is so important for singers to actually speakthe language. Couldn’t they just use a goodtranslation? There are several bookscompiled with this in mind: Baker plucks awell-thumbed tome from the shelf. NicoCastel’s Complete Opera Libretti TranslationSeries runs to 17 volumes, with a word-for-word translation and diction guide printedalongside each original work. ‘It’s a shortcut –a cheat, really,’ says Baker. ‘The best way ofdoing it is to learn it yourself.’ Dalle Fratte goes further, pointing to

mistakes in the Italian volumes. He is nowworking on his own guide to phoneticpronunciation for opera singers, funded bythe Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Itis particularly important to get the Italianright, he says, because ‘Italian lets you findthe natural way to sing.’ The idea is that oncesingers can produce the pure vowel soundsof Italian – a language ’invented to sing notto speak’ – they can clearly enunciate theirvowels when singing other languages too.

ADAMLEVY

MIHAICUCU

The content of the journal remainedrelatively consistent during this period. Forinstance, TL31,1 contains features, regulars(bookshelf, news, views and reports, andletters), a professional development sectionand a special insert containing the AnnualReport, Auditor’s Report and AGM notice.One feature, ‘Letters from French Catalonia’by Peter Foulkes, ran for 20 instalments!Peter Newmark’s column, which had started in1989, continued as a regular throughout thedecade. Initially entitled ‘Paragraphs on

Translation’, it changed its name to ‘TranslationNow’ in issue TL38,3 (1999). It is described as‘highly appreciated and often provocative’(TL31,1) and generated a steady stream ofletters and comments, to which Peter wouldreply. Andrew Dalby was a regular contributorto the book reviews section. Developments within the Institute can be

seen by the pages devoted to the growingDiploma in Translation (first set in 1989),language NVQs, public service interpreting,continuing professional development, andthe reformulation of a code of conduct forprofessional linguists. Several translator andinterpreter rates surveys were conducted. In


FEATURES

Most chargedadditional costs forfaxing a translation or ‘for the use ofcomputer medium’

Jeremy Munday continues our journey intothe archives of The Linguist with a look at the 1990sThe period 1992-2001 was one of intenseactivity and expansion at the Institute, and thisis clearly reflected in the pages of TheLinguist. Edda Ostarhild wrote her first piece(‘From the Director’s Desk’, TL31,3) as the newDirector and Chief Executive in 1992,continuing in this role until she was succeededby Henry Pavlovich and his ‘Director’s Notes’in 1998. A two-day seminar was announcedto discuss the possibility of the Institute’sapplying for chartered status (TL37,6). In1999, Prince Michael of Kent was announcedas the Royal Patron (TL38,3). Perhaps the major event for the Institute

was the move across London from MangoldHouse, Highbury Grove, location of itsheadquarters since 1977, to the more spaciousSaxon House, south of the river in SouthwarkStreet. This took place in 1997 and EddaOstarhild was delighted to announce thepurchase of this ‘solid, brick-built, mid-Victorian former warehouse on seven floors ingood decorative order’ (TL36,1).

The Linguist continued to be published sixtimes a year and Jay Kettle-Williamsremained as editor until 1995. After hisdeparture, the Institute’s Publicity andMembership Secretary, Stephen Eden,stepped in for a year before Councilappointed Pat Treasure as Editor. One of thechanges then implemented was the settingup of an eight-strong editorial board.Another was the revamping of the cover froma dominant photographic image framed by agrey background, along with the tagline ‘TheLeading Journal for Linguists’ and (fromTL32,1), ‘Journal of the Institute of Linguists’.Based on the Institute’s logo, the new design(from TL36,5) saw a strikingly rich cover whichaltered colour each year.

50 years in print

1992 (TL32,3), the survey showed average UKtranslation rates for European languages intoEnglish to be £50-£60 per thousand words(c.£81-£98 in 2012 values), with an average£19 per hour (c.£31 in 2012) for proofreading.Forty percent of respondents offered adiscount to agencies. Most charged additionaltransmission costs for faxing the translation(whether they used a fax bureau or their ownmachine) or ‘for the use of computer medium’.The rapid development of new technology

and its transformation of the translator’sworkspace also feature prominently. Problemsare discussed, and tips passed on, in aregular IT column. Queries range from ‘howcan you count quickly and effortlessly thenumber of words in a text for translation?’ togetting started with the popular Word Perfectword-processing package and the merits ofMinitel (all TL31,1). Later on, articles describe how to produce

accents on the keyboard (TL32,3), how to buya PC (TL33,4), translation memory systems(TL37,2) and how to use the new pdf formatfor sending files with accented characters(TL38,6). I particularly like the item ‘defendingyour [floppy] disks from danger’ (TL33,2): ifnothing else works, the advice is ‘to take thedisk out of the drive and, holding it uprightbetween thumb and first finger, tap it gentlybut firmly – like cracking an egg – on yourdesk top’. New modes of communication,such as videoconferencing (TL33,4) andspeech recognition (TL37,6), begin to appear.Political change in the decade is seen in a

focus on the current and future languageneeds of Hong Kong, before and after thehandover in 1997, and the impact ofenlargement on language use within theEuropean Union. Several articles consider the


PSI IN FOCUS

growing possibility of English as a linguafranca (TL33,2; TL33,4; TL37,6), and anotherlooks at the increased mobility of studentsunder the Erasmus programme (TL40,2).The greater ease of travel is manifested in

a cover photo of the new Channel Tunnel raillink (TL33,2), while linguistic plurality is shownby a few articles published in French, Spanish,Italian and German. There is also frequentdiscussion about political support forlanguages such as Catalan, Welsh andBosnian, as well as a keen interest in non-European languages, including Maori, Malayand African languages. A lighter moment isafforded by an article on Scrabble in itsvarious language guises (TL40,1).A pervasive concern is the future of

languages in schools and universities, and thelack of language skills in British industry. Thefirst National Languages for Export campaignis featured in TL33,2, while the NuffieldReport on languages, published in 2000, isdiscussed in an article by Hilary Footitt, Chairof the University Council of ModernLanguages at the time (TL39,4). Twelve years on, with the later changes to

the secondary curriculum and the decline inthe numbers of language students atuniversity, it feels somewhat ironic to read ofNuffield as ‘a clarion call for a higher nationalprofile for languages, for the normalization oflanguage study in our national culture, andfor the importance of some national planningto achieve this’.

Professor Jeremy Munday,University of Leeds, is a

member of the TL Editorial Board.

TL

Is there a need for public serviceinterpreting (PSI) in the US? Yes, primarily in Spanish, but alsoVietnamese, Somali, Arabic, Hmong,Mandarin, Urdu and Punjabi.

Are there legal and professionalbest practice standards?There are State standards in legal andmedical interpreting. For the federal courtsand medical interpreting, there is nationalaccreditation and registration, with a codeof conduct and disciplinary procedures.

To what extent has trainingtowards those standards beenestablished?There are two nationally-recognisedassessments in medical interpreting. Thehours required at each level differs by state,ranging from eight to forty hours. There areno selection tests for any level of training,nor are there enough courses in the rightlanguages to meet the demand.

Are PSI qualifications from othercountries recognised?Not officially.

What has been achieved interms of training public servicepersonnel on how to work withPSIs and across cultures?Very little.

Is there a national PSI body? There is no specific PSI professionalorganisation. There is one professionalassociation for legal interpreters and two formedical interpreters, and the American

Translators Association (ATA) represents alltranslation and interpreting-related sectors.

Have there been developmentsin terms of securing workingstandards for PSIs?As public service interpreters become moreprofessional and as parties become moreaware of the need for public serviceinterpreters the pressure to lower rates hasbecome more intense.

What do you find are the mainobstacles to progress? Funding and a lack of commitment by theauthorities and public services.

What would you like to achievein the next five years?Greater recognition of professionallyqualified public service interpreters and,possibly, that only certified public serviceinterpreters be allowed to practice. Thiscould be achieved by educating end-users.

Cristina Helmerichs, ATA Director.

A look at the status quo for publicservice interpreters in America

Global insights

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PSI IN FOCUS

New research identifies the challenges for public servicelanguage professionals, making a pilot online communitymore timely than ever, says Anne Marie GrahamPublic service interpreting and translation(PSIT) forms a significant sector of the labourmarket for professional linguists. UK equalitylegislation ensures access to education,healthcare, immigration, social services andthe legal system, directly impacting on supplyof and demand for PSIT. Interpreters andtranslators provide essential language support,enabling individuals to access the full range ofavailable services, yet public service languageprovision has not had the same profile as itsconference interpreting counterpart.In September 2011, the Special Interest

Group for Translation and Interpreting in thePublic Services (SIGTIPS), established by theEuropean Commission’s DG Interpretation,published its report on PSIT. This reviewedthe context of PSIT across Europe andincluded a series of recommendations toenhance the status of the profession andfurther the development of training andprofessional standards. In response, Routesinto Languages – managed by LLAS (theCentre for Languages, Linguistics and AreaStudies at the University of Southampton) –commissioned a research project for PSITtraining and education in England. The remit of the research, defined by a

group of experts, was to create a picture ofPSIT training for spoken and sign languagesin Higher Education (HE) in England and thewider UK. The research would map currentprovision and explore the barriers facinginstitutions delivering training. Routes intoLanguages also piloted a virtual communityof practice dedicated to PSIT. The researchwas conducted with employers, professionalbodies, and tutors and trainers in HE andFurther Education, via telephone interviewsand an online survey tool. Working

Serving the public

service provision. Students also need to beprepared for new areas of work, such asvideoconferencing and telephone interpreting.The latter in particular requires specific training,such as how to work without visual cues. Domain specific knowledge is also essential.

It is not just a question of understanding theterminology and procedures used in thedomain in which the translator or interpreterworks. They also need to be able to create aglossary of terminology and concepts in theother language. Many aspects of the UK’spublic services do not have equivalents inother cultures, so interpreters and translatorshave to develop the skills needed to adaptconcepts into their other languages. Provision does vary in terms of delivery.

Taught postgraduate programmes are mostcommon in HE, but National VocationalQualifications for sign languages and distancelearning programmes for spoken languagesare also offered, so interpreting is taught andassessed using a range of methods. The overwhelming response from the

research was that the languages taught in HEdo not necessarily correspond to thoserequired by the labour market, creating amismatch between supply and demand.Distance learning courses and non-language-specific training programmes are increasinglyused to enable students from a wide range oflanguage pairs to work towards a qualification,without the need for a cohort with aparticular language. But some employers andacademics stressed that the need to developlanguage skills is essential for high-levelinterpreting, and that students need todevelop their first and second language skills.The Diploma in Public Service Interpreting

(DPSI) is still seen as the benchmark

interpreters and translators also responded.The project could not have been more

timely. No sooner had the research got underway than PSIT, in the form of legalinterpreting, became a major news story. TheMinistry of Justice Framework Agreementcame into force, tying all language serviceprovision for the Criminal Justice System to asingle supplier, and issues surroundingdelivery of the new contract made headlinesin newspapers, TV and radio. The importanceof using appropriately qualified legalinterpreters continues to be reiterated inpublic by a range of media sources.

Training gapsIn terms of interpreting, the majority ofrespondents believe that specific training iscritical for individuals going on to work inpublic service contexts, yet the researchshows that dedicated training is notwidespread. PSI requires specialist skills, suchas sight translation, that are not developedon conference interpreting programmes. Theconsensus is that training needs to betailored to the consecutive mode of word-for-word interpreting that is widely used in public


PSI IN FOCUS

contexts and not all research outputs arerelevant across national borders.There has been an increase of VLEs (virtual

learning environments) for teaching andlearning purposes, as well as specialisedmodules, including the development ofprofessional skills for freelance linguists.Collaborative activities have also grown, frominter-institutional collaboration to workingwith employers and practitioners to deliver apractical training programme. The Routesinto Languages project aimed to build on thisto create a virtual community of practice. A

repository of materials has been developed,with PSIT resources and materials for trainers,students and stakeholders. The pilot website (www.psit.org.uk)

contains resources related to PSIT in a rangeof languages, including sign languages.Resources range from domain-specificteaching materials to guidance for serviceusers on how to work with interpreters. It ishoped that interactive resources, such aswebinars for training and professionaldevelopment, will be incorporated.Respondents also suggested adding adirectory of interpreting and translation

research; a database of guest speakers andtrainers available to visit institutions; a calendarof regional workshops and networking events;and advice on how to increase collaborationwith other institutions and employers.The website aims to provide resources in a

range of domains. Interpreting resources areavailable for law, healthcare, (including thehighly specialist mental health area),education and social services. The virtualcommunity of practice is not a closed shop;Routes into Languages would like to see itcontinue to grow with the support of thecommunity. It is hoped that trainers andstakeholders will contribute their ownresources to help others deliver training tothe future generation of PSITs. There is a strong belief among the

research respondents that PSIT stakeholdersmust work together, via an online communityof practice and existing networks, to maintainthe arguments for continued professionalstandards in PSIT training provision.The project has shown that there is

overwhelming support for dedicated trainingprovision for PSITs, as they work in areas thatdemand very specific understanding andskills. The consensus is that conferenceinterpreting courses do not, and cannot,cover PSI topics in sufficient detail. While theneed for specific training provision is clear,the concern remains that it will be difficult toattract more students to the profession unlesspay rates increase. PSIT provision in HE, inthe medium term, may only be viable as anoptional module or pathway in otherinterpreting or translation courses.

The full findings of the research report areavailable at www.routesintolanguages.ac.uk.

qualification for interpreters. The number ofcentres registered to offer the qualification hasincreased, and employers and trainersrecognise its status as the longest establishedqualification, with some academic programmesusing DPSI assessment criteria (which are, inturn, mapped to the National OccupationalStandards in Interpreting) as an externalbenchmark. However, there are many who feelthat the qualification needs to be updated.Some in the sector are concerned that the

viability of provision is threatened by the samenews stories that raise the profession’s profile.Publicity around lower rates of pay may pose athreat to future numbers applying forpostgraduate training. Courses cost thousandsof pounds, and students need to feel confidentthat they can get a return on their investment.

Recent developmentsThe picture for public service translation ismore positive. Respondents felt that appliedtranslation courses provided students with arange of appropriate skills that would allowthem to work in any domain. However, someacademics lamented the limited access torealistic translation texts in public servicecontexts for study purposes. Often trainers will combine working part-

time as an interpreter or translator withteaching on a postgraduate programme. Thishas a benefit for students, because thesetutors are able to bring in current knowledgeof the labour market, but limits the amount oftime available for academic research. As aresult, there are still many areas of PSIT thatwould benefit from further investigation.European-wide research projects arebecoming increasingly common, using EUfunding, but they tend to focus on legal

PSIT stakeholdersmust work togethervia an onlinecommunity of practiceand existing networks

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SPECIAL SKILLSAn interpreter works with a doctorand a deaf patient (left); and in alegal setting ( far left)


PSI IN FOCUS

Chair of Council Keith Moffitt reports ondevelopments regarding the MoJ Framework Agreementand the recent submission to the Justice Select CommitteeMedia interest in the role of translators andinterpreters has rarely been as intense as sincethe roll-out, in February, of the new Ministry ofJustice interpreting contract with AppliedLanguage Solutions (ALS). Hardly a day hasgone by without a story in the media aboutfailures in court interpreting, with accounts ofinterpreters failing to arrive on time, unableto interpret to the required standard, notspeaking the appropriate language, or evenspeaking incomprehensible English.My predecessor as Chair of Council, Tony

Bell, set out our concerns about the likelyimpact of the new arrangements in TheLinguist at the turn of the year (TL50,6). Thatarticle certainly bears re-reading, and I take nosatisfaction in reporting that many of thoseconcerns have proved to be well-founded. Commenting on the significant reduction

in remuneration and allowances under thenew contract, Tony wrote: ‘It is evident thatthe reduction from current levels … will be amajor disincentive to the recruitment ofqualified linguists and, it has to be feared, amajor incentive for the provision of sub-standard or minimally qualified interpreterswilling to work for the reduced rates.’The spate of media stories seems to bear

out that this is exactly what has happened,with many public service interpreters choosingto ‘vote with their feet’. We are deeplyconcerned that this situation is seriouslythreatening the sustainability and developmentof public service interpreting and jeopardisingthe delivery of justice. The organisationsrepresenting translators and interpreters in theUK have often appeared to be fragmented,so it is good to be able to report that the keyorganisations for interpreters have beenmeeting regularly to address this situation.

In search of justice

be more open to such requests forconstructive dialogue.Scrutiny of the legal interpreting situation is

now intensifying. The Justice SelectCommittee has launched an inquiry intointerpreting and translation services since theALS contract was rolled out, and a highlycritical report on the contract, by the NationalAudit Office, has just been published.The Institute has submitted evidence to the

Select Committee, which will be published infull in due course. We have drawn attention tothe many years of painstaking work done bythe Institute and others in this field topromote high standards of public serviceinterpreting. Our submission stresses thatreasonable fees must be paid to attract andretain linguists with the skills and qualificationsneeded by the Criminal Justice System.We have challenged, once again, the

concept that a single, profit-makingcommercial body should have national controlover the fees and working arrangements ofprofessionals, without appropriate involvementof the relevant professional organisations. Inparticular we have criticised the failure torecognise the need for an independentregulator which can register interpreters whomeet appropriate and necessary criteria asregards qualifications, experience andcriminal record (CRB) checks, and canadminister disciplinary procedures, a rolewhich NRPSI was successfully playing beforethe introduction of the new arrangements,but in which NRPSI is now being undermined.I sincerely hope that this new level of

scrutiny, combined with new faces at theMinistry of Justice, will ultimately result in aresolution of the highly unsatisfactory situationcurrently prevailing in legal interpreting.

In recent months I have sat as an observer on the steering committee of theProfessional Interpreters for JusticeCampaign, alongside representatives from six other organisations representing publicservice interpreters, and the profession’sregulatory body, the National Register ofPublic Service Interpreters (NRPSI).In July, we jointly wrote to Minister of

Justice Crispin Blunt, more recently a casualtyof the Prime Minister’s autumn reshuffle,seeking a meeting to discuss how realsavings and improved efficiency could beachieved while upholding high standards ofjustice. This represented a major milestone,as it was the first time all the bodiesconcerned had made such a joint approach.No reply was ever received to our letter,

which came hot on the heels of an importantdebate in the House of Lords, during whichJustice Minister Lord McNally admitted thatthe estimated savings of £12 million in theMoJ contract’s first year, already revised downfrom the original estimate of £18 million,would ‘probably not be achieved’. I very much hope that Mr Blunt’s successor will

© ISTOCKPHOTO


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90 percent said it would enable people inAfrica to contribute to the political processand help prevent international, communal,ethnic or civil conflict.Astonishingly, more than half (63 percent) of

respondents said greater access to translatedmaterial could have prevented the loss of lifeof family or friends. In many cases, access tobasic information about how to remedyconditions – knowing the symptoms ofdehydration, for example – can prevent death. It is important to note that the majority of

respondents are highly educated and

therefore know from first-hand experience thatknowledge is power. As translators, they speakmultiple languages and the majority haveadvanced degrees. Yet they face challengesthat translators in most prosperous nationswould have difficulty fathoming. Someexplained that embargoes on their countryprevented them from obtaining jobs; othersthat receiving payments was impossible dueto unreliable money transfer services. Manyreported electricity cuts and disproportionatelyhigh internet costs. Another major hurdle wasexploitation, because most African countriesdon’t have professional translators’

associations, South Africa being an exception. However, respondents overwhelmingly

agreed that written information is the leastpreferable way for people in their countriesto receive information. The ideal form is acombination of spoken and written language,followed by spoken language alone. Thisshould not be surprising, given the levels ofliteracy and access to education in manyAfrican nations. Yet it suggests thattranslation may not be enough. In fact, translators voiced concern that, for

some of the languages in which they work,written forms are not widely used. In manycases, people read only in foreign languages.This has important implications. If someoneneeds information – for example, aboutrequesting a physical examination to prove arape case – should it be provided in writing,even though many people might not be ableto read it, or should it be provided in audioform? The best solution would be to offer itin both forms. It is, perhaps in part, for thisreason that the majority of people said theyworked as both translators and interpreters.The need for translation in Africa is

apparent from these findings, and the workbeing done by Translators Without Bordersgoes a long way to address these criticalbarriers of access to information. Translationcan help improve many aspects of life inAfrica, so please spread the word.

See translatorswithoutborders.org/node/4 for more information.

In the information age, we breezily refer toconcepts such as ‘free flow of information’and ‘open access to knowledge’ as if they area given. Yet, for huge populations in Africa,information is neither free nor easy to access.It has been said that until Africa prospers, theworld cannot prosper, but prosperity is notdefined by economic wellbeing alone. Arecent Common Sense Advisory report onthe need for translation in Africa reveals thattranslation could have a positive impact inareas as diverse as health, political inclusionand human rights. Africa is home to more than 2,000 of the

world’s 6,000-7,000 languages. In anymultilingual society or nation that deals withother countries, either for international tradeor humanitarian work, translation is a necessity.Without translation, people are deprived ofvital information that can allow them to makeimportant decisions, such as how to treat anailing relative, how to stand up for their legalrights, and whether to vote for one candidateor another. In short, a lack of translation cancontribute to a state of information povertythat has numerous effects on society.In May, Common Sense Advisory

conducted a study entitled ‘The Need forTranslation in Africa’ on behalf of TranslatorsWithout Borders. The report reveals thattranslation can boost economic developmentand contribute to better protection of humanrights in Africa. Of the 364 respondents from49 countries, around 95 percent said greateraccess to translated information would helpindividuals in Africa understand their legalrights; help protect human rights; have apositive impact on the collective health ofpeople in Africa; and help Africans in times of emergency or natural disasters. About

Astonishingly, morethan half said greateraccess to translatedmaterial could haveprevented loss of life

In Africa, translation matters in ways you may not haveconsidered. Nataly Kelly reports on new research

Access for Africa

Legal interpreter Nataly Kelly isChief Research Officer at

Common Sense Advisory.

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Linguistic experimentation is key to African writers’ abilityto express themselves in English, says Alfred B CudjoePostcolonial African writers tend to representtraditional African communities in aninnovative literary form that blends Africancultural practices with European ones. Ametropolitan language that appeals to bothAfricans and non-Africans is often adopted.The successful Nigerian writer Chinua Achebehas been lauded for having ‘borrowed theraw clay of English, pounded it, moulded andreshaped it into an admirable psyche of hispeople’.1 Using the language of Nigeria’sformer colonial masters as a vehicle, Achebeportrays the socio-cultural and sociolinguisticrealities of life in his traditional Ibo community. Paul Bandia described the practice as

‘outright linguistic experimentation based onliteral translations from [Ibo] oral narratives’.2 Inchapter one of his seminal 1958 novel ThingsFall Apart, Achebe himself says that ‘amongthe Ibo the art of conversation is regardedhighly, and proverbs are the palm-oil withwhich words are eaten’. It is significant to notehere the vital role that traditional discourseplays in African literature, and the writer’sreliance on proverbs and aphorisms to givethat literature indigenous African flavour.

Writing as translationThe production of postcolonial Africanliterature is a complex process. Writers arepresented with a dilemma: do they use theirindigenous languages, which may not havestable writing systems and offer them alimited audience; or do they use the powerfulmetropolitan language of their country,providing them with an internationalplatform. The latter is the preferred option,but it brings with it the difficulty ofsuccessfully expressing one’s culture andidentity in a foreign, hegemonic language.

To address this issue, writers often attemptto de-territorialise the colonial language inorder to eliminate its ‘implied hierarchy anddominance’.3 The process of re-territorialisingthe language within a postcolonial space –through indigenisation – subverts andneutralises the ‘colonial code’, and ultimatelyleads to the creation of a new code. Thiscode is distinct from the indigenous andEuropean languages that are its source, andsustains a postcolonial literature which is nolonger dependent on norms dictated bycolonial legacy. What is implied here is thatpostcolonial writing is a product of‘translation’ – ie, that since African writers are

inspired by the oral tradition of their people,they are practising a type of writing that takesthe form of translation from an unseen‘original text’. The use of proverbs to express social

norms and values in African communities is agood example. Proverbial expressions havebeen coined to describe social norms in away that enhances their value, especially inindigenous discourse. For example, one Eweproverb from West Africa advises people tobe cautious in dealing with those who canfrustrate them in crucial undertakings: ‘Whenyou know you have not finished crossing theriver, do not insult the crocodile.’

A creative actTranslation should be understood as ‘thelinguistic operation that consists in transportingmeaning from one language to another’,4

and, as such, as a creative activity in Africanliterature. According to Kwaku Gyasi, theprocess involves transportation, transmission,transposition and transformation wheneveran African writes in a European language. Translation in this sense becomes the

vehicle through which cultures of developingcountries travel to audiences in the West. Yetthis analysis implies that all texts that areabout non-Western cultures, written by non-Western writers in any Western language, areproducts of translation. Gyasi concludes thattranslation is the process through which‘African writers incorporate oral and traditionalliterary techniques such as proverbs,repetition, folktales, etc, into the foreignmedium.’ Thus, in their desire to representAfrican ideas, philosophy and imagery, apostcolonial Ewe author might use theproverb ‘If you raise your load to the knee

In African words

Do they use thepowerful metropolitanlanguage of theircountry, providing aninternational platform?


FEATURES

level, God will help you put it on your head,’rather than the conventional English saying,‘Heaven helps those who help themselves.’

The importance of namingNames play a crucial role in the production ofpostcolonial African literature. MariaTymoczko defines names as importantlinguistic markers that are loaded withinformation, and that are rich in semantic andsemiotic significance.5 Naming or onomasticpractices in African societies serve as a meansof defining an individual’s status, and oftenreflect social values. Names identify people interms of the situation of their birth, gender,age, kinship, social status, role and authority. Many Ewe names convey the importance

attached to the family and the responsibilitiesattributed to individual family members.These include Gbeve (‘two voices’, signifyingthat two voices do not bring up a child),Venornornyo (‘it is good to be two’, ie, to bemarried), and Ahianyevi (‘the product of loverelationship is a child’, meaning that arelationship between a man and a womanshould lead to child bearing).As in many West African communities, Ewe

children have a name at birth depending onthe day they are born. A boy born on Mondayis Kodzo; on Tuesday Kobla; a girl born onWednesday is Aku; on Thursday Yawa. Wheremore than one child in the family is born onthe same day of the week the suffixes ga(‘senior’) and vi (‘junior’) are used – for exampleKodzovi (‘born on Monday junior’). Whenthree boys are born in succession, the third iscalled Besa; in the case of girls, Mansa. Since names of African origin are

semantically loaded, they add to thecomplexity of cultural translation, as seen

in the Ghanaian poet Kofi Awoonor’s The Journey Beyond (1971):Kutsiami the benevolent boatman;when I come to the river shoreplease ferry me acrossI do not have on my cloth-endthe price of your stewardshipWithout knowledge of Ewe religious beliefs,

including the name Kutsiami, the poemcannot be fully understood. It is believed thatwhen someone dies their soul travels to thespiritual world and has to be ferried across a

river, where the boatman, the Kutsiami(‘Death’s linguist’), demands to be paid for hisservices. Therefore before people are buried,a coin is tied on their cloth-end. It is a customthat is strictly observed as part of the funeralrites, otherwise the ghost of the departed isreturned by the Kutsiami and comes back tohaunt the living. The translation of African names is a

daunting task, especially if they are culture-specific and can be understood better in theircultural contexts. Tymoczko describes namesin cultural texts as ‘the semiotic elements of atext that are the most problematic to translate,in part because their semiotic significance is so

often culturally specific and dependent oncultural paradigms’.6 Since African names,whether they are translated or reproduced,contribute to the hybrid nature of thelanguage of postcolonial literature, thetranslator has to make them understandableto the reader. In Awoonor’s poem, the nameKutsiami has been glossed (‘the benevolentboatman’) but for a reader who is not familiarwith Ewe beliefs, a footnote will be requiredto further explain the role of a Kutsiami.It emerges, therefore, that postcolonial

African writers are compelled, by the linguisticreality in which they find themselves, toadopt, for their artistic production, languagesthat are foreign to their culture. However, byusing innovative writing techniques they areable to express their indigenous experiencein hybrid languages capable of reaching aninternational audience.

Notes1 Michelman, F, 1976, ‘The West African Novel Since 1911’ in Yale French Studies, No. 53, Traditional and Contemporary AfricanLiterature, 29-442 Bandia, P, 2002, ‘African European-LanguageLiterature and Writing as Translation: Someethical issues’, paper presented at WorkshopConference III: The Art of Translation, organisedby Centre for Asian & African Literatures, 19-203 Ibid.4 Gyasi, K A, 1999, ‘Writing as Translation: Africanliterature and the challenges of translation’ inResearch in African Literatures Vol. 30, No. 2, 805 Tymoczko, M, 1999, Translation in aPostcolonial Context: Early Irish literature inEnglish translation, St Jerome Publishing,Manchester, 2246 Ibid.

African writers arepractising a type ofwriting that takes theform of translationfrom an unseen text

CULTURAL EXPRESSIONMany African writers are influenced byoral narratives: traditional storytellingis often through music and the spokenword (left). In Ghana and other Africancountries, short adages and sayings arewritten on vehicles ( far left)PR

EMASAGAR, ‘J

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The subtitle of this excellentbook is ‘How language shapesour lives and transforms theworld’, and the authors dedicateit ‘to translators and interpreterseverywhere. Because of you, theworld communicates.’ Despitethe prevalence of multilingualism,and English increasingly beingused as a global lingua franca,the intensive exchange ofinformation between speakers ofdifferent languages means thatthe need for translation hasnever been greater. (Like theauthors, I use ‘translation’ asshorthand for both translationand interpreting.)

Using examples from differentlanguages, different regions anddifferent spheres of life, Found inTranslation reveals ‘the biggestindustry that you never knewexisted’. Readers of The Linguistwill certainly know that it exists,but may be surprised to find justhow pervasive and indispensabletranslation is. The book coversmedicine, law, policing,literature, emergency relief,human rights, diplomacy,journalism, support forendangered languages andcultures, politics, religion, cuisine,fashion, opera, security, finance,broadcasting, business, assessingand countering terrorist threats,travel, advertising, sport, spaceexploration… The list is endless.The text includes extracts frominterviews with translators andinterpreters, which give insightsinto the challenges andpressures they face, but also the

satisfaction they derive from their work.

Throughout the book, thereare interesting examples of theeconomics of translation. Thecost of interpreting in theEuropean Parliament is popularlyimagined to be outrageous, butis only €2.3 per citizen per year,a rather modest ‘cost ofdemocracy’. For businesses,translation is a key tointernational markets. Forexample, Harley-Davidson’slong-standing commitment totranslating product informationhas been an important factor inthe international popularity of itsmotorbikes. Mistranslation,however, can be expensive. Amajor bank’s slogan ‘Assumenothing’ was translated in severalcountries as ‘Do nothing’,resulting in a US$10 millionrebranding scheme. In contrastto the significance of translationin bringing in cash forinternational business, anotherrecurring theme is the lowlyfinancial status of translators.There are also accounts of largetranslation projects that rely onvolunteers prepared to workfrom idealistic motivations, for nofinancial reward.

The book is written in anaccessible, entertaining style. Itwould be nice to think it will bewidely read and help to raisepublic awareness of theimportance of translation – and,who knows, to raise the financialstatus of translators!Jonathan Marks MCIL


REVIEWS

Cambridge University Press, 2011, 580 pp; ISBN 978-0521882156, Hardback, £90

Found inTranslationNataly Kelly & Jost Zetzsche

Perigree, 2012, 270 pp; ISBN 978-0399537974, Paperback,£11.99

In the face of a proffered‘handbook’ on a subject, areviewer’s natural first question iswho is the intended user? It mustbe for practitioners of thesubject, but who are thepractitioners of endangeredlanguages? The linguists whostudy them? The people whospeak them, or who don’t butwould like to? The bureaucrats,media executives or otherbusiness people who must makedecisions on what to provide forthem? Unfortunately, the editorsof this book give no account ofwhich group they take as itsprimary audience, so one mustinfer it from the contents.

What we find is a book in four parts: the first major section anatomises thephenomenon of languageendangerment in our time; thesecond considers the issues that arise in attempting todocument a language; the thirdis entitled ‘Responses’, ie, whatcommunities might seek to do toshore up their language againstendangerment. The fourthsection is shorter (at 82 pages)and entitled ‘Challenges’. Itconsiders theoretical, practicaland logistical barriers to takingeffective action. It would seemthat the book is intended to serveall the groups I have mentioned.

CIOL members, however, tendto be experts in multiplelanguages that are in no way

endangered, and few are likely to find this useful as a handbook.So let us ask, on behalf of theeducated cosmopolitan: will itserve their needs to know moreabout endangered languages?

The book is comprehensiveand often incisive, written by 27of the best-known and best-qualified English-competentscholars in the field. It welladdresses the multifarious issuesconcerning the failure of manylanguages in our day to betransmitted to the nextgeneration, the causes of this,and the possible counter-policies that could be adopted.Well-informed readers will finduseful references on almost every aspect.

However, the overall tone iscomparable to that of this reviewso far: it discusses issues in theabstract and argues cogently but without descriptions. Most of the chapters are short ofconcrete illustrations from actuallanguage situations, althoughwell supplied with references –inevitable if the territory is to becovered, and for readers eachwith their own endangeredlanguages in mind. This means itis less directly informative tothose looking for enlightenmentwith little prior knowledge. Forthem, the best choice would beNicholas Evans’ Dying Words(Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).Nicholas Ostler

The CambridgeHandbook ofEndangeredLanguages Eds Peter K Austin & Julia Sallabank

John Benjamins, 2012, xxv + 335 pp; ISBN 978-902722450-7, Hardback,€95; ISBN 978 9027224514, Paperback, €33; ISBN 978 9027273819, Ebook, €95


SECTION HEADERREVIEWS

This, a revised version of a bookoriginally published in 1995, is thework of translation historians from20 countries. Its purpose is tobring translators from the pastout of oblivion and to illustratethe roles they have played in theevolution of human thought. Thisis a vast field of study, and thebook offers a selective andthematic overview, with ninechapters covering the role oftranslators in the invention ofalphabets, the development ofnational languages, theemergence of national literatures,the dissemination of knowledge,the wielding of power, the spreadof religions, the transmission ofcultural values, the production ofdictionaries and, finally, ‘themaking of history’. Here, I can onlytouch on a few of these themes.

By translating key texts fromestablished languages, translatorshave influenced the developmentand codification of emergingnational languages and theiracceptance as fully-fledgedmediums of expression, often inthe context of emerging nationalidentity and often with the supportof ruling powers. Yet their workhas sometimes been regarded byecclesiastical or secular authoritiesas treacherous or subversive;William Tyndale, the first Englishtranslator of the Bible fromoriginal source texts, was accusedof heresy and burned at the stake.

Literary translators have beeninstrumental not only in inspiring

Across1. Vowels can vary by tone,pitch, purity and ______. (6) 4. Suit at cards, played by Frenchin fits of annoyance! (6) 9. A sensible thing to do duringa siesta. (7) 10. Latin for ‘by itself’, it is acomponent of the word‘ampersand’. (3,2) 11. One of two main branches ofthe Eskimo language family. (5) 12. Niente, nichto, tipota, niets. (7) 13. Describes Chinese, forexample, which never changeswords to show number orfunction. (11)18. In some Indo-Europeanlanguages this is a prefixindicating a past tense. (7)20. Born in 1779, his workclassified English vocabularyaccording to concepts. (5)22. ______ New High Germandefines the version of Germanbetween 1350-1860. (5)23. Opposite of omega? (7)24. Hindi for ‘peace’, described in The Waste Land as‘The peace which passethunderstanding’. (6)25. One name in a much-lovedtale by the brothers Grimm. (6)

Down1. And 8 down. ScarlettJohansson starred in thisthematic film. (4, 2,11) 2. The world’s smallest republic,with less than 9,500 Englishspeakers. (5)3. An Asian language with a well-developed honorific system. (7) 5. This is the first stage in amachine translation process. (5)6. A nation whose language wasonce known as Ruthenian. (7)7. This English borrowing fromDutch might ring a seasonal bell. (6) 8. See 1 down.14. Recognised nationallanguages of this country areIgbo, Yoruba and Hausa. (7)15. Bullfighting, the Spanish way. (7)16. These wheat dough ringscome from Yiddish. (6)17. Not using variation of pitchto denote difference in wordmeaning. (6)19. African nation known by itsnatives as Misr. (5)21. Sanskrit for ‘teachers’, theyare leaders of the Sikhcommunity. (5)

Answers, page 30.

individual writers but also ininitiating new literary movementsin the target culture. Scientifictranslators have contributed tothe advancement of science andthe democratisation ofknowledge, for example byincluding explanatory notes andguidelines for non-specialistscientific assistants, or byundertaking long journeys toseek out precious manuscripts to translate.

Religious authorities havesometimes encouraged andsometimes resisted translationbut, overall, translation hasplayed an essential role in thespread of religions. (Did youknow that there is even a projectto translate the Bible intoKlingon?) Translation hassometimes ensured the survivalof texts that have disappeared intheir original form; Chinesetranslations of many Buddhisttexts survive while the Sanskritoriginals have been lost.

The translator is, in Pushkin’swords, ‘the post-horse of humancivilization’, and this bookprovides a fascinating and wide-ranging account of thecontributions of translators andinterpreters through the ages.Some of them are well-knownfigures, while others – eveninterpreters whose work hascontributed to the making ofhistory – are anonymous and‘leave no legacy’.JM

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Crosswordpuzzle no.4

Translatorsthrough History Edited & Directed by Jean Delisle & Judith Woodsworth

English: not the one and onlyI share the gut feeling of Dr FotiosKaramitroglou (‘Letters’, TL51,4) that areduced number of languages in the world(and reduction in the role of many thatsurvive) is inevitable and not really somethingto deplore. I nevertheless find his deterministarguments (presumably stimulated by hisworking environment over the past decadein Athens University of Economics andBusiness) rather confused.Dr Karamitroglou clearly has not noticed

the contradiction between his statement thatglobalisation is optimally served by a free-market economy and the very beginning ofhis communication: ‘It is true that businessneeds the State…’ Presumably his mainpoint, however, is indicated by the one word in his letter that is capitalised: ‘Is thereANY factor of production that would not befacilitated were they to be carried out over a uniform… linguistic platform?’ While thereis a nub of valid thinking in this sentence, Dr Karamitroglou seems to have been letdown by struggling simultaneously with toomany linguistic corpora.Economists traditionally classify factors of

production as natural resources (or ‘land’),human working abilities (‘labour’), man-maderesources (‘capital’) and the human activity oforganising and risk-taking (‘entrepreneurship’or ‘enterprise’). As such, factors of productionare not activities that can be ‘facilitated’.If the real question is whether any

factor of production would not be ASSISTED by the existence and use of a

single language, there is enormous scope fordiscussion. The apparently inevitabletendency for languages to evolve and fornumerous groups to formulate their ownjargons or ‘codes’ probably makes such asituation an impossibility, but it is certainlyworthy of consideration. Moreover – and this may be Dr

Karamitroglou’s real point – there is no doubt that many, and probably most,economic activities would be assisted by theexistence of a single, uniform language. Nodoubt this is why a certain languagesometimes comes to be used as a linguafranca. I would suggest that this occursthrough innumerable instances of ‘arbitrage’:cases where costs could be reduced or aprofit made in some other way bytransferring something from one place toanother, from one time to another, orotherwise from one market to another.Returning to the factors of production,

there is no doubt that the owners andproviders of certain productive resources notonly would be, but are, disadvantaged bymoves towards fewer languages. As soon aswe cease regarding all labour as a singlefactor of production it is clear that translators(my current occupation!) would be deprivedof a livelihood if there were only a singlelanguage. The same might be said of alloccupations that involve expertise in one ormore ‘foreign’ languages – and thus of nearlyall members of the Chartered Institute. David Tash MCIL

I was extremely disappointed to read theletter from Dr Karamitroglou in a magazinewhich aims to encourage linguistic diversityand the recognition of translators andinterpreters, and all those who work with andcare about languages. He seems to wish toeliminate any language except English, so wewould be living in a depressing monolingual,monocultural world – all in the name of thefree market. The reason the world has not settled on a

single language is not due to economics, butbecause most people would not want todestroy a fundamental part of civilisation, abearer of thought, culture and society.Gerard Moore MCIL


OPINION & COMMENT

Email [email protected] with your views

Early lessonsfrom WalesTwo cheers to the English Secretary of Statefor Education for realising the worth oflearning a foreign language early and makinglanguage teaching compulsory in Englishschools from age 7 (TL51,4). It isdisappointing, however, that the article‘Making an Early Start’ conflates England withthe UK. Many UK citizens already experiencecompulsory foreign language teaching early –earlier, in fact, than Key Stage 2 (ages 7-11). Mother and toddler groups and nursery

(some in the voluntary sector) in many parts ofWales are available in Welsh, as are ScottishGaelic classes in Scotland. It is upon entry intoprimary school that the first foreign language –English – is introduced.I consider myself very fortunate, as I was

brought up and educated in three languages– Welsh, English and French – in West Sussexduring the early 1970s. I entered nurseryschool there as a monoglot Welsh boy. I wishthe new intake of English schoolchildrenevery success with their language learning,following the reforms due to commence in2014. But do be aware that this is not a newinitiative; such policies have met withcontinued success in other parts of the UK formany a long year before the EnglishGovernment (allegedly) saw the light andacknowledged the worth of learning foreignlanguages early.Siôn Rees Williams MCIL

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PRE-SCHOOL: Dechrau Disglair Cyf, a new Welsh-medium nursery inSt Clears, Carmarthenshire

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OPINION & COMMENT

Translation blunders at the Olympics, dogsand cats called to act as court interpreters,plummeting numbers at A-level: the threetop stories for languages in the last monthor so have all tended to reinforce theimpression that the British just can’t dolanguages. On the A-level figures formodern languages, The Telegraph (16/8/12)reported that numbers have now droppedso low that one exam board chief is callingfor ‘a Euro-style bail out’. Viv Groskop, inThe Independent, (17/8/12) noted that ‘thechallenge for language teaching is nowalmost too massive to contemplate’. Headteachers’ associations have called for effortson a par with the support for STEM(science, technology, engineering andmaths) subjects to bring languages backfrom the brink in Sixth Forms. The story about a mishandled Arabic

translation of ‘welcome to London’ forOlympic visitors to the Westfield shoppingcentre is hardly more inspiring. Thisconcerned the classic garbling of a simpletext that any number of local schoolchildren– Newham being the UK’s most multilingualborough – would have been able to spot.As it was, Britons’ inability to cope withforeign languages was held up to ridiculenot only in our own media but in US, SouthAfrican, Chinese and Middle Eastern press. The third dispiriting story was the

ongoing court interpreting fiasco resultingfrom the outsourcing of services to AppliedLanguage Solutions. ‘Justice Ministersunder Pressure to Reconsider ALS Contract’reports The Financial Times (10/8/12), withstories also in The Guardian, BelfastTelegraph and Channel 4 News, includingthe now apocryphal felines and caninesregistered on ALS’s books. At the same time, The Scottish Sun took

the opportunity of having a pop at ‘wastageof tax-payers money’ on translation servicesby the Scottish Prison Service. Quite right –convicts should be made to learn Englishbefore being allowed into prison!So is there any good news for

languages? Welsh Conservatives havelaunched a campaign to teach foreignlanguages in Welsh primary schools. AndTom Daley got an ‘A’ in his A-level Spanish!

Teresa Tinsley is Director of AlcantaraCommunications; www.alcantaracoms.com.

It was 40 years ago, in October 1972, thatthe decision to write the Somali languageusing the Roman script was made. Thedecision brought to an end the ‘alphabetwars’ over which script to use. In January1973, the first Somali language dailynewspaper, Xiddigta Oktoobar, waslaunched to replace the English and Italiannewspapers Dawn and Stella d’Ottobre. Somali became the official language for

administration, mass media and as a mediumof instruction. The former Somali LanguageCommission and its sub-committeesspearheaded efforts to translate andstandardise administration and mediavocabulary, and commissioned educationiststo translate primary and secondary schoolsubjects into Somali, paving the way for amass literacy campaign in 1974-1975. After 1972, Somali translators began to

translate books into Somali. Articlestranslated from foreign languagenewspapers, and translated stories serialisedin the now-defunct national daily, had helpedpeople to consolidate their reading skills andbecome acquainted with various genres ofimaginative literature and expository writing.Little research has been conducted on workstranslated into Somali so far. The second half of the 1970s saw the

translation of some classics from English andArabic into Somali. After a quiet period inthe 1980s, books began to be translatedinto Somali for school children in WesternEurope, North America and Australia, inresponse to the language needs of childrenin the diaspora, following the collapse of theSomali State in 1991. The first book translated into Somali after

1972 was George Orwell’s Animal Farm.Translated into Somali by Mohamed YusufArtan, it was printed in Cairo for limiteddistribution in Somalia and reprinted in Italyin 2011 for a wider readership. AhmedFarah Idaajaa’s translation of RobinsonCrusoe by Daniel Defoe was publishedunder Taxanaha Xiddigta, an imprint ofXiddigta Oktoobar, in 1980. In Somalia, the Somali language syllabus

exposes young readers to classics, with

curriculum specialists translating chaptersfrom Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels forprimary school textbooks. However, the mostwidely read and discussed book is DaleCarnegie’s How to Win Friends and InfluencePeople, translated by Abdirahman HusseinAbu Hamsa in the 1980s as Saaxiibbo kasbo:fanka la dhaqanka dadka (‘Earn Friends: Theart of getting along with people’). The bookwas a translation of a translation (fromEnglish into Arabic into Somali). Books are now beginning to be translated

from Somali into other languages. The lateSOAS professor, B W Andrzejewski,translated Farah Mohamed Jama Awl’s novelAqoondarro waa u nacab jacayl (‘Ignoranceis the Enemy of Love’) and Hassan SheikhMumin’s play Shabeelnaagood (‘Leopardamong Women’) into English. Although national institutions promoting

Somali language ceased to exist after theState collapse, the pace of translating booksfrom and into Somali has not been severelyaffected by the civil war, thanks to thedetermination of Somali languageresearchers and policies in favour of culturaldiversity in Western Europe, North Americaand Australia. Translation was not taught inthe former Somali National University, despiteSomali language being heavily dependent ontranslation. Let us hope this will be one ofthe topics Somali language researchersdiscuss on the 40th anniversary of the historicdecision to write the Somali language.

Somali: writing historyLiban Ahmad looks at written Somali’s past,present and future as it celebrates 40 years

MAKING MARKSSchool children in Mogadishu, 1980

FRANKKEILLORVIAFLICKR

TERESA TINSLEY

October

AGM & TALK Saturday 13 October Darwin College,Cambridge, 10amDiscussion on the MoJ’sFramework Agreementand AGM. For details, [email protected].

TRANSLATORS’WORKSHOP Saturday 27 October Frankfurt am MainFor details, email Gabriele Matthey [email protected].

November

CAMBRIDGESOCIETY TALKSaturday 10NovemberDarwin College,Cambridge, 11amFor details, [email protected].

AGM & ‘SCOTSLANGUAGE’Saturday 17NovemberQueens Hotel, Perth,1.45pm‘Dreich November smoort in haar’, a talk byDr Caroline Macafee. BestWestern Queens Hotel,Leonard Street, PH2 8HB.

NETWORKINGLUNCH Saturday 24NovemberWig & Mitre, Lincoln,midday-4pm To attend, call CandiaHillier on 01522 526695 by 17 November. SteepHill Room, Wig & Mitre,30 Steep Hill, LN2 1TL.

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INSTITUTE MATTERS

Joint event is a clear winner

MICHELLE HOMDEN OUTLINES A VERY SUCCESSFUL SEMINAR ON CLEAR WRITING

point for consideration by the committee…’ againstthe clear ‘The committee began by considering…’.Translators into English should not try to ape theclause-laden sentences permitted in other languages;long sentences are rarely a good style in English.Unusual vocabulary can seem strange, and if you use aword of more than three syllables, challenge yourself tofind something shorter.

Getting a headingDaphne Perry is an independent consultant on plainEnglish and a former lawyer. She belongs to ClarityInternational, a worldwide organisation advocatingplain language over legalese. Another fan of phrasalbrevity, she recommended sentences containing oneidea and expressed in 15-20 words. Generally, verbsshould be active not passive. Headings and bulletedlists add clarity to the appearance of a text.This was important in the final presentation: ‘Writing

for Web Users’ by Jonathan Stockwell of the DGT WebTranslation Unit. A web user can be anyone, anywhere,possibly reading from the tiny screen of a mobiledevice. They need even shorter sentences with moreheadings and subheadings; space and formatting are‘the punctuation of the web’.The overriding lesson was that clarity does not mean

simplicity. You can explain complicated ideas in a waythat your readers will understand. Organise your worklogically. Keep sentences short. Choose appropriatewords. Use formatting. The efficacious expedition oflexical lucidity is the object of my optative emotion. Orrather, I hope that’s clear.

DIVISIONS & SOCIETIES

Limpid scribery was the target learning deliverable toparaglossal facilitators in a mid-aestival real-spaceeducative experience. Or rather, linguists attended aseminar on clear writing in July. It was organised by theCIOL and ITI (Institute of Translation and Interpreting),and hosted by the European Commission in London.Four speakers gave advice on organising ideas,structuring sentences and choosing vocabulary.

Focus on readersDavid Monkcom of the EU DG Translation (DGT)Editing Unit gave a presentation called ‘You Too canWrite Clearly’ (see page 12 for his article on thesubject). He introduced the EU Clear Writingcampaign, which promotes clarity in all 23 officiallanguages, and offered advice on how to draft texts. Tohelp us decide the content and structure of a text, weshould ask: Who are our readers? What are theirinterests? What do they need to know? There shouldbe no unnecessary information or words, butexplanations should be included if readers need them,for example for technical terms or abbreviations.Revising texts thoroughly removes confusion.

Keep it short Martin Cutts of the Plain Language Commission gavean entertaining presentation. A former EU translator, he co-wrote the booklet ‘Clarifying EC Regulations’ withEmma Wagner, who was also present. She led theFight the Fog campaign for clarity in EU English. MartinCutts’ top tips included: • Be ‘more verby than nouny’• Regard long sentences as crimes against the reader • Avoid business or legal jargon, and archaic language. He offered the example of the complex ‘The starting

Would you like to use social media to promote yourbusiness, find out how to deal with ethical dilemmasin interpreting situations, learn how to plan yourcontinuing professional development effectively, orgain an insight into the role of linguists at GCHQ? Ifso, come to Members’ Day on Saturday 6 October, at4 Hamilton Place, London. You will also be able tohear the prestigious Threlford Memorial Lecture, thisyear given by Baroness Garden. For more informationor to register, email [email protected].

MEMBERS’ DAY

CLARITY: ITI Chief Executive Paul Wilson (left) andCIOL Chair of Council Keith Moffitt opened the event

The Interpreting Division AGM was held on 16 June atour regular venue, the Novotel London City South,and was attended by a very dynamic and motivatedgroup of members. The seminar title for the day was‘The Importance of Interpreting in Combating HumanTrafficking across Borders’ and the first session was ledby Meena Enawalla, Operations Manager of Childrenand Families Across Borders (CFAB), ably supportedby her colleague, Ruth Dunlop, an Inter-Country SocialWorker. Of particular interest was their overview of thetype of additional specialist training that interpretersmight need when working in this challenging field.CFAB is a unique UK-based charity that identifies

and protects children who have been separated fromfamily members as a consequence of trafficking,abduction, migration, divorce, conflict and asylum, aswell as other vulnerable individuals in often desperatecircumstances. As a national inter-country social workresource centre, it collaborates with NGOs, localauthorities and other Government departments, policeand social work professionals to make sure thatchildren whose circumstances cross internationalborders are protected, as guided by the UNConvention on the Rights of the Child. In terms of the interpreter’s role, Enawalla and Dunlop

addressed three key areas: the role of communication insocial work; the challenges in interpreting in the contextof safeguarding children; and advice for working withcomplex cross-border issues involving children andfamilies. They explained the legal background in termsof the Palermo protocol and, in a very interactivesession, dealt with questions and comments raised bythe audience. It was clear that CFAB and interpretersneed to work closely together to achieve an optimumoutcome. It was felt that a closer insight into what isrequired of and by interpreters when working in thisfield would be of great benefit to both parties. To thisend, it was agreed that the Divisional Committeewould contact the CIOL’s Training and MembershipServices with a view to possible joint training.The second session of the day was lead by Mariana

Petersel, President of GTR (Generatie Tanara Romania),a partner organisation of CFAB. Founded in 2001, GTRis a non-political, non-religious, not-for-profit NGO, withheadquarters in Timisoara, Romania. It has 31members of staff and 150 volunteers, with more than15 years’ experience in setting up human rightsprogrammes. These include projects for the preventionof human trafficking and the rehabilitation of its victims,

providing assistance to refugees in transit, and thereintegration of unaccompanied minors abroad. Thepositive outcomes highlight just how essential theseprojects are and, in 2011, the French Embassy inRomania gave Mariana Petersel a human rights awardfor her work on the voluntary repatriation of the Roma.Petersel outlined her day-to-day work and some of

the enormous political and logistical challenges theprojects face in trying to combat human trafficking andrehabilitate its victims, and in providing assistance forthe many refugees in transit through Romania.Professionally qualified interpreters are an essentialresource in that process but, unfortunately, they arenot always available. After in-depth discussion with theaudience, Petersel went on to sum up the crucial roleof the interpreter in her work: ‘The interpretation of aninterview with people who have been recognised asvictims of human trafficking or as illegal migrants willconsist of three people: the interviewer, the interpreterand the interviewee. As part of this process, the role ofthe interpreter is that of an impartial intermediarybetween the victim and the interviewer. In this context,the importance of the interpretation, as well as theperson who delivers it, must not be overlooked, as it isan essential element in the crucial first steps towardssuccessful reintegration.’Both sessions attracted many questions and lead to

much debate, which continued over an excellent buffetlunch and into the afternoon’s formal AGM session.

For the Chair’s Annual Report to the AGM; details of thenewly elected Management Committee; and theInterpreting Division’s events programme for 2012-2013,see www.iol.org.uk/membership /div_interpreting.asp.


INSTITUTE MATTERS

Working on the borderline

A SEMINAR ON HUMAN TRAFFICKING ENLIGHTENED ID MEMBERS AT THEIR AGM

March 2013

‘MARKETING FORTRANSLATORS’ Saturday 2 MarchWig & Mitre, midday-4pm Talk by Karen Stokes FCIL CL (Translator) and lunch.Venue details above.

CONTACT DETAILSJudith Ridgway,

[email protected].

[email protected] Stokes,

[email protected]

Leslie Ray,[email protected]

Gabriele Matthey,[email protected]

Francis Lee,[email protected]

Candia Hillier,[email protected]

Rannheid Sharma,[email protected]

Katrin Hiietam,[email protected]

Anne Withers,[email protected]

Martin Caine,[email protected]

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KEYDIVISIONSBusiness, Professions & Government: Education: Interpreting:Translating: SOCIETIESCambridge: German: Hong Kong: Lincolnshire: London: North West: Scottish: Spanish:

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INSTITUTE MATTERS

ADMISSIONS

StudentsMatt AdamsJo DurningAnna JedrusiakEwa NitonJoanna ParlakBarbara PavlikSylwia Szymanska-Zacharczuk

AssociatesFiras AllouziZena Al-UgailyEmmanuelle BrooksOlesya Dem’yanSteven Finn-ArceMelanie FrancisMohammed IlyasNicola de JesusHannah KitchenerNicole LawsonZuzana MaklakowskaJohn MatthewsPhilip MortonJames PerryEmily PhillipsSandra PraganaLesley RaynerAlejandra Weight

MembersAlice BaileyMohamed BasharatDuncan BeebyElena-Mina BelecciuFrancesca BerettaClaudia BlancoGrovasMonica Castedo-LopezCesar CastilloLosadaDan ChenSiu Fong ChengStephen ClarkeJudita-MiaDintinjanaThomas DyerXiang FeiJohn GarciaSarah GarwoodHélène GibbingsRam Parsad GurungIbrahem MohamedIbrahem

CONTRIBUTORSCOUNCILNEWSKeith Moffitt reportson the July meetingI recently emailed members and fellows of theInstitute, encouraging them to consider applyingfor election to Council, and I hope that this regularseries of articles is helpful in informing membersabout the work done by Council. The meeting on21 July was particularly well attended. We weredelighted to welcome our President Nick Bowenand four of our six Vice-Presidents, includingRichard Hardie, who was attending his first meetingof Council, and Ann Corsellis, previously a memberof Council for many years, who was attending herfirst meeting since her election as a Vice-President.Finance is one of our regular items, and the

meeting took a good look at the financial situationof the CIOL and its associated charity, the IoLEducational Trust. Another regular item is anupdate from our Joint Acting Chief Executives,Alan Peacock and Hilary Maxwell-Hyslop, whodiscuss their recent activities on page 4. High ontheir list of priorities in recent months has been theorganisation of Members’ Day on 6 October inLondon, at which the annual Threlford MemorialLecture will be given by Baroness Garden. We alsoheard that, despite the difficult economic situation,our membership is holding up well.My own report to Council touched on the very

successful first joint event with the Institute ofTranslation and Interpreting (ITI) and the EuropeanUnion, a seminar on Clear Writing, which I hadopened alongside ITI Chief Executive Paul Wilson. I also reported on the UK launch of the LanguageRich Europe project and its recent UK workshop,which had been attended by many key figures.Council was presented with an important interim

report from the Institute’s senior managers on ouraccommodation strategy, a subject to which we willreturn. We were also briefed on the preparatorywork being done on the review of individualChartered Linguist status, the next stage of whichwill be meetings of a formal review group on whichthe ITI and AIIC (the International Association ofConference Interpreters) will also be represented.A major item of discussion was once again the

outsourcing of interpreting services for theCriminal Justice System (for details, see page 24). The meeting concluded with reports from

Council’s various sub-committees, whose membersdo so much valuable work for the Institute.

Gwenydd JonesSuraj JoshiSarah KeenanAnton KovalJolanta KulinskaAudrey LaurMu LiuAlastair MacDonaldBenedetta MartiniKeanePatrick McManusMalgorzata MonteLindsay MunfordKaren NettoElizabeth NiklewskaPaul NormanMegan OnionsClaudia PortilloRuth RamseyKaren RueckertUgne SimanaviciuteAgata SzustakiewiczShazia TariqAnthony TripyearTeresa TrisolinoRomina Vucic-PranicPatrycja WachowskaSam WardChin Hang YeungAli Yildirim

UpgradesSonia HarderZhechko KoychevYasir Matloub

ReadmissionsNaglaa AhmedMustafaWilliam BarehamPhoebe ChingDoreen DaveyLara HigginsJing HuangNagi IdrisBen MacklinAlastair NaughtonSandrine PerkinsPenny PorterMing Jeung PunThongthanaThammavongsaBethan Thomas

Frederic ChaumeDr Frederic Chaume isProfessor of AudiovisualTranslation at UniversitatJaume I. He has worked asa translator for dubbing, filmand TV companies for 20 years. See p.16

Alfred B CudjoeDr Alfred Cudjoe is a writerand language professional.He has worked for theGhanaian government as atranslator and taught at theGhana Institute of Languages. See p.26

Chris DixonChristopher Dixon MCIL isAssociate Editor (EuropeanTours) of ‘The Papers ofWilliam F Cody’ project.He speaks ten languagesand is writing a book on English-Lakotainterpreters 1851-1891. See p.10

Anne Marie GrahamAnne Marie Graham isDirector of Arquerosbusiness and educationconsultancy and previouslyworked at CILT, the NationalCentre for Languages. She is a memberof the TL Editorial Board. See p.22

David Monkcom David Monkcom is aPublications Editor andSpeechwriter for theEuropean Commission. Aformer EU translator, he isactively involved in the Commission’sClear Writing campaign. See p.12

Jessica MooreFreelance journalist andeditor Jessica Moore is aformer Acting Editor of The Linguist. She hasworked for publications including TheGuardian and The Independent. See p.14

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