Linguistic doom-mongers frequently lament the demise of the English language, complaining that standards are just not what they used to be, that kids these days simply don’t have a grasp of how to use language correctly, lack creativity, etc., etc. Human nature appears to have a natural tendency to assume that things gradually get worse, rather than better, but I don’t actually subscribe to that theory, especially where language is concerned. Language evolves, and trying to pin it down and prevent it from evolving is in my opinion a regressive, not to mention futile, gesture.

True enough, there are many examples of poor grammar and spelling around, enough for many eagle-eyed writers to write entire books about them. I enjoy spotting these mistakes and chuckling about them as much as the next person; I am a massive fan of Lynne Truss and have read and re-read her books like old friends, and I applaud anyone who heightens awareness of language and grammar amongst the general public. As Truss demonstrates in the title of her book Eats, Shoots and Leaves, a wrongly placed comma can completely mislead a reader. This is amusing for native speakers, but a major comprehension problem for a non-native reader of English, and it is of course something translators must always be careful to avoid.

However, there is a difference between the language we use in official publications and translations, and the language we use to communicate via instant, informal methods such as text messages, social networking sites and emails. Think about it: in speaking on the phone to friends and relatives, only the proudest people would claim to be able to hold conversations free from mistakes in word order, use of the possessive, tense etc., every single time they pick up the phone.  We must all accept that we are human, that instant communication methods require us to think on our feet; our brains simply don’t have time to focus on the message of what we’re saying and the grammar within it. We have moved far beyond the era of telegrams and communicating solely by posted letter and we have adapted accordingly, as humans are so adept at doing.

Whilst in spoken language we have recourse to intonation, volume and tone, to ensure the clarity of our message in place of grammar, you might argue that is what we’re attempting to do in emails and text messages as well. We use emoticons, capital letters, italics, amongst other tools, to try to express what it is we’re saying when we don’t have a lot of time in which to do it. I happen to think that this is not a bad thing; we are unable to claw back much time these days, we’re all terribly busy, that’s a given, so we are adapting to that with time-saving methods.

My favourite linguist, David Crystal, recently wrote a fascinating article for The Guardian on text speak, in which he argues that it actually represents a highly creative use of an evolving language. Moreover, he makes the important point that writers such as Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Walter Scott, DH Lawrence all used ‘deviant’ spelling in their novels, so it’s not something entirely new. A bit of trivia for you: ‘cos’ was first entered into the Oxford English Dictionary in 1828, and ‘wot’ in 1829.

Doom-mongers will be horrified to learn that there is now even a ‘text laureate’, but perhaps surprised that last year’s winner was in fact in her late 60s.

I’ve had a Blackberry for about 6 months now and it has changed my life. No joke. It has changed my life, but in ways that have been surprising. The amazing ease of viewing emails which appear instantaneously on its screen like text messages is notoriously mesmerizing and hard to ignore, but has allowed me real time-savings. Also, the line between my work and my life outside work has become blurred, since I am able to see any new emails I receive at just about any moment I choose, whether that moment is when I’m watching TV and there’s an ad break, when it’s late and I can’t be bothered to get up and switch on my PC, or best of all, whilst I’m in a queue or waiting for a train.

This may all sound like a horrific scenario for some people who delight at shutting down their email service when they log off their computers every evening, content that this will mean nobody will be able to ‘get them’.  But for those of us who show Generation Y tendencies towards non-stop communication and to having annoying short attention spans this is simply neat way of using ‘dead time’ effectively. Having got used to texting from a relatively young age, the impatient young upstarts that make up Generation Y are used to being contactable at most times and via multiple mediums. They are adept at organizing their time effectively in order to get the most out of their days; not content to just stand and wait like a lemon for another delayed train, or waste time on endless emails when they’re back in the office and have so many other things they need to do. They use ‘dead time’ as an opportunity to check their emails for anything that they could respond to now, rather than later.

Many people will also see Blackberries as inducing obsessive, addicted behaviour in their owners. But their owners/users can always, always choose when to use them; Blackberries can be set so that you don’t receive an irritating beep on receipt of a new email (and you therefore have to actually look at the thing to know about it), plus you can use filters to select the types of messages you DON’T want to receive when you’re out of the office.  Moreover, remember that you can turn them off.  Repeat after me “you - can - turn - them - off - you - have - the - power”.

More than that though, it’s about the user prioritizing their lives, and knowing when and when isn’t a good time to be engaging in a little cheeky email checking. A conversation with a loved one in which they are telling you something vitally important or highly personal is probably a good example of non-good time.

Penelope Trunk discussed self-discipline and Blackberries the other day. Actually, in doing so she called into question the idea of of work-life balance. This is a very interesting, and probably 100% accurate, view of 21st century careers. Speaking as a freelancer, ‘work-life balance’ is nothing but a myth. I don’t mean that to sound negative, far from it. Although the intersection between work and ‘life’ has become blurred, I see it more as being that my career is synced in with my life. My non-work life is busy and full too, but I don’t think of it as entirely separate to my career. There is a point in every day and weekend when I ignore my Blackberry altogether or turn it off; we all need a little down time. However, my career is inextricably part of my life, and vice versa. I don’t see how it could work any other way, and I don’t want it to. Rather than running my life, my Blackberry helps me control and manage the two intertwining strands of life and work as if they were one and allows me to maximize my time in order to spend it doing the things I love, rather than spending vital time at my desk checking emails.

Following the recent shocking news that the University of Bradford has had to shut down its postgraduate course in Translating and Interpreting course due to lack of funding, this first link is to a petition to the Prime Minister entitled ‘Save language provision in higher education, particularly Interpreting and Translating’. Click here to add your name to the list of people who feel strongly about this. You have until 18th December 2008 to do it (so no excuses).

The wording of the the petition is as follows: ‘If the government really wants to promote language learning, it not only needs to encourage more pupils to take languages at GCSE, but also to support language departments at a higher level. Allowing these departments to close will be detrimental to the government’s long-term language objectives’.

A bit of background information: following the Government decision a few years ago to remove languages from the list of compulsory subjects at GCSE, the number of students choosing to study a language at GCSE, A-level and consequently, degree-level in the UK is said to have plummeted. In my opinion, that Government decision was a huge mistake. The value of studying another language and the insight that gives you into other cultures cannot be underestimated.  It is also a grave concern in terms of the future of professions such as translating and interpreting.

And finally…the second link I found on the Naked Translations blog and it made me giggle. It is an excerpt from the ITV program ‘Headcases’ showing French President Nicolas Sarkozy (he’s getting to be a recurring topic of my posts here).  Laugh away, but don’t forget about the petition!

I’m delighted to report (somewhat belatedly) that earlier this year successfully passed the ITI membership exam and can now call myself a Qualified Member (MITI) of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (I’m already a full member of the Chartered Institute of Linguists). Woop woop (does air punches at her desk)!

Before I get too excited though (complacency is a dangerous trap to fall into, after all), it’s important to take stock of what this ‘qualification’ really means, and what it doesn’t. Whilst MITI status is not a qualification as such, in the same way an MA in Translation is, it’s probably the most widely-recognized mark of experience and expertise across the British translation industry. The criteria for the route I took are:

• At least 3 years’ translation experience (usually expressed in number of words)
• A pass in the ITI membership exam, which includes a text of the examiners’ choice (you only get to select the general subject area, so when you do receive the test document it’s a nice - read terrifying - surprise ). The exam also requires you to write a ‘linguistic commentary’ about the translation.

It’s a tough process to get through, as it should be, but MITI status should not be a badge that says a translator is definitely a wondrous human being and is 100% certain to be the best translator in the world ever. To quote a saying (sort of), you’re only as good as your last translation. Incidentally, it doesn’t mean that Associate members of the ITI aren’t just as good. They might even be better in some cases, and just haven’t chosen to upgrade to MITI membership (oh, it costs twice as much as Associate membership, too).

I always seen a lot of debate both offline and in the blogosphere about translation qualifications, and which is the ‘best’ one to get. In general, whilst of course qualifications are no substitute for real, practical experience, I am wholly in favour of more ‘letters after your name’ if they have a clear professional purpose. I will come back to the topic of translation qualifications, and plan to provide a brief overview of MAs vs. the DipTrans.

In the mean time, take a look at There’s Something About Translation for more details of the requirements for MITI status, and information on the Chartered Institute of Linguists’ new Chartered Linguist qualification.  I am also considering applying for Chartered Linguist status at some point in the future, so there’ll probably be more on this later. Watch this space.

Interestingly, a slightly different viewpoint is expressed on Brazen Careerist today. A platform for debate…

Here’s why: ????????Thoughts on Language and Translation.

Since leaving my office job two months ago my working life has seen many changes. Far from being the ‘easy life’ working from home, I’ve found myself busier, more stressed, and more productive than ever before. In the early stages of freelancing there’s a lot for me to learn, and what a steep learning curve it is! Not only am I handling the huge responsibility that comes with being your own boss and running your own affairs, but I am working in the world of business for basically the first time in my life (I’ve worked in companies for short bursts in the past, but the main bulk of my work experience is in the public sector). I think this transition may be one of the most challenging of all, and I hadn’t anticipated quite how difficult I would find this.

The other challenge I’m facing at the moment is how to juggle my two jobs. My mind is literally awash with a mix of my English students’ grammar problems and my own translation deadlines. I currently teach English every afternoon, and on one day of the week I’m more or less out of the office all day teaching. I’m glad to have a bit of financial security at this stage, but the extra work is clearly compromising my availability as a freelance translator, and to be honest is a little more than I’d like to be away from my little home office. As such I plan to reduce my teaching time substantially by the summer. I read this post by Susan Johnston last month, and really identified with it. She is coming from the perspective of a full-time copywriter who writes in the evenings, so the issues are slightly different, but she some excellent suggestions which could be useful for anyone who faces the challenge of having commitments to one job whilst striving to maintain a professional image in another.

So, you may ask, is all the extra stress worth it? The simple answer is, most definitely, yes. To be honest, I just haven’t looked back. Now, I’m not someone who believes that hard work is the route to happiness, but there is definitely something to be said for being in a job which stretches you and provides clear career goals.

I’ve decided to spend much of this week (when I’m not teaching) taking stock, and catching up with myself. Now that I’m my own boss, I have a lot of paperwork and accounts to get in order…

Last weekend I attended an event at International Pen’s ‘Free the Word’ festival at the Southbank Centre. This was the first of what I hope will become an annual event, celebrating literature in translation and literature published in languages other than English.

In the UK the literature market is dominated by English-language books, and only 2% of the books on our bookshops’ shelves are translations from another language. As a result, we are missing out on wider cultural insights beyond our own, and our view of the world is in ‘mono’ when it could be in ’stereo’. In turn, literary translation is not normally given as much esteem as it deserves, and from what I know this is usually expressed through low rates of pay for literary translators. Faced with this predicament, many experienced and skillful translators stay away from this area of work and in consequence the resulting translated novels suffer. We’ve all read books in translation which we found less satisfying than books originally written in English, and I firmly believe that this sad situation should change.

The event I attended was an interview between Icelandic author Sjón, who you may know for his musical collaborations with Bjork, but who recently won the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize (about equivalent to the Booker prize, so no small-fry) for his novel ‘The blue fox’ (Skugga-Baldur in Icelandic), and his translator Victoria Cribb. The book is unique in many ways, and Sjón’s writing style provides an incredibly insightful perspective on the world, a perspective perhaps only possible from a country such as Iceland.

I found the event uplifting and encouraging, from a translator’s point of view. I was in awe of Victoria Cribb as a translator and of the symbiotic relationship between her and Sjón, who seemed to have an astute appreciation of the role of translators, and of the importance of translation as a whole. In fact, one of his final comments was ‘translation is the greatest human project of our time’.

Amen Sjón. Keep up the good work, Pen!

In line with my occasional series on linguistic gaffes, I was intrigued by an article published in The Telegraph on Monday about the translation into Galician of the famous book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon. As the article mentions, the book “won the Whitbread Book of the Year in 2003 and has been translated into more than 40 languages”. It is a personal favourite of mine, and I’m thrilled that it is now so widely read that it’s even being translated into Galician.

I was surprised to read, however, that the translator was fired for ‘changing the sex of several of the book’s characters’, including Toby the rat, to female. Her translation was deemed ‘feminist-biased’ by the publishers, who she is now taking to court. Hers did seem like a *curious* (geddit?) translation technique, but perhaps the case isn’t quite as black and white as it first appears. There’s been a lot of discussion about the case on translators’ forums, and the consensus seems to be that the translator herself should not necessarily be to blame, that it’s simply a confusion over the lack of neutral gender in Spanish grammar. Perhaps others would disagree….?

By way of example, the word ‘rat’ in Spanish is actually a feminine noun (’la rata’) so it would just have been plain incorrect to use the masculine gender, and quite tricky to inform the reader that ‘Toby’ was in fact male, when presumably a Galician readership would not be familiar with the name ‘Toby’ .

The crux of the issue is whether the translator was sufficiently faithful to the original text, which is after all the primary concern of all translators, but I think it would be nice to see a translator get some good press for a change!

I can hardly fail to have noticed the visit by Nicolas Sarkozy to London this week. Oh what a visit it was! It was initially unclear what the purpose of this visit was, it seemed like a bit of a love-in and an excuse for yet another flashy trip abroad for ‘Sarko’. It eventually culminated in a charm offensive by Sarkozy calling for an ‘entente fraternelle’; a closer working relationship between the UK and France than previously enjoyed under the ‘entente cordialle’.

It is debatable whether ‘Sarko’ had really intended the focus of his visit to be his new wife, Carla Bruni, but as far as our papers, particularly the tabloids, were concerned she was the main attraction. ‘Part Grace Kelly, part Jackie Kennedy, part Princess Diana’, the charmante Carla Bruni gracefully stepped into our green and pleasant land in her little black pumps and we found ourselves collectively seduced by her, rather than by the French President himself, as was perhaps intended.

Or was it?

Amanda Platell writing for Daily Mail praised Bruni’s choice of outfit and contrasted it to Camilla’s less than stylish look, which she jokingly referred to as ‘road-kill’. By the way, how many times in her life is that poor woman going to be compared to another, more conventionally beautiful woman? Nobody’d blame her for having a bit of an inferiority complex. But on this occasion the comparison was especially poignant in light of the French President’s apparent wish for his wife to be the ‘new Diana’. And so it was: The International Herald Tribune ran the headline ‘The New Diana? In Britain, Carla steals the show’ on Thursday.

However this bizarre Sarkozy’s aspiration may be, our reaction to this particular attractive woman dressed beautifully in designer clothing was much the same as it was for Diana; we can’t get enough. But how was our reaction seen in France? ‘Londres craque pour Carla’ (roughly translated as: ‘London goes nuts for Carla’) was the headline in Le Monde on Saturday. However, on the whole my brief scan of the French press today found few articles similar to our gushing praise of Mme. Sarkozy. Our excitement was acknowledged, but rather disdainfully, since the couple are not viewed quite so fondly in France; their whirlwind romance is seen by many as a distraction from the proper business of politics. The Nouvel Obs discussed Gordon Brown and Sarkozy’s plans to ‘change the world’ at length, with only a passing reference to Carla, mentioning that ‘the UK won’t be forgetting [the President's] wife Carla in a hurry’, that she was ‘watched constantly’.

Indeed, the French press seem to be concentrating more on the content and implications of Sarkozy’s speech and exchanges with Gordon Brown. I’m guessing that Sarkozy’s recent poor showing in French polls has been focussing French minds a little more, and on substance over style. Having enjoyed the luxuries of the royal palace, far from the scrutinies of his own press, I imagine it may be a rather bumpy return to earth on his return to France.

It has seemed to me recently that the translation industry in the U.S might be rather more developed than in the UK, particularly if I go by the number of translation blogs which originate from the U.S. I must say I am slightly surprised by this; forming part of the continent of Europe you would expect us to be a lot more ‘translation-aware’. However, perhaps it is also true that the U.S. has been lagging behind slightly in its recognition of foreign literature, and consequently missing out on the rich cultural interaction such literature affords.

Courtesy of Inttranews, this morning I read this article with enthusiasm. It was posted on U.S. newszine for St. Louis (yes, this is a local newspaper - how many local newspapers in the UK discuss translation?!) about a ‘growing interest’ in translated literature. The article informs us that the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has a new Centre for Translation Studies, and armiger banditgeld gewinnewww casino on net,casino on net,www casino on net deonline casino slotscasino bonus ohne einzahlungfrench rouletteroulette downloadencasino online forumslot machine online spielenkostenloses spiel onlinegolden palace online casinocasino roulette gamescasino games freewareglucksspiel onlinecasino games 2007casino automaten spielecasino games pro 2007spielanleitung crapscpayscom2 online casinoeve online rig slotskasino gamescasino online playonline baccaratinternet gewinnspielepoker spielen depoker regeln blattpoker regeln straighttexas holdem gamespoker gratis kostenloshohe auszahlungonline poker play moneykostenlose online spiele pokereuro poker bonusonline 7 card stud spieledraw poker onlinetexas holdem pc gameholdem poker flash gametexas holdem h?ndepoker lan gamepoker spielanleitung texas holdemcasino poker regelnparty poker sign up codehigh stakes pokertexas holdem poker spielregelnholdem poker gamepoker gamespoker texas holdem no limitgratis 7 card stud spielenpoker regeln kartenpoker spielregeln,kartenspiel poker spielregeln,party poker spielregeln that the University’s publisher, Dalkey Archive Press, is publishing an increasing number of books written by foreign writers. Let’s hope this is the start of wider recognition for non-English writers; after all, for me translation is about sharing information across linguistic and cultural barriers, and no work should go unnoticed simply because it has not been translated.

For more information on this go to:

http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/

http://www.englishpen.org/

Happy reading!