Daily Archives: Friday, November 1, 2013

  • Capita: still lost in translation?

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    The Ministry of Justice has released statistics for the use of language services in courts and tribunals for the second quarter of 2013 (PDF).

    If Capita Translation & Interpreting still has a 98% performance target for filling all requests for language services for courts and tribunals, then the fact it is only filled 92% of requests in the quarter under review – as stated by the report – means they are still failing to fulfil the terms of their contract with the MoJ.

    Furthermore, the report gives figures for “off-contract” language service bookings for the first time.

    “Off contract” bookings are requests for translation and interpretation [sic] services made outside the Capita TI contract. Bookings for the service are made directly by the courts and tribunals – that is, not through the language service booking portal.

    In Q2 2013 – the first quarter for which data is held centrally – a total of 2,929 off contract bookings were made by criminal courts, civil & family courts and tribunals. This accounted for just under 7% of all bookings made for languages services in that period.

    Just over half (51%) of these bookings were made by tribunals, with a further 48% made by criminal courts.

    This blog will be keeping a close eye on the figures for “off contract” bookings in future. Any increase over subsequent quarters will mean that Capita T&I are living up to their parent company’s well-deserved nickname: Crapita.

  • LibreOffice 4.1.3 released

    Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Open Standards, Tech

    the LibreOffice logoThe Document Foundation (TDF) blog announced earlier today that LibreOffice 4.1.3 has been released for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. This is the third minor release of the LibreOffice 4.1 family, which features a large number of improved interoperability features for proprietary and legacy file formats.

    According to TDF, the new release is another step forward in the process of improving the overall quality and stability of LibreOffice 4.1. Nevertheless, for enterprise adoptions, The Document Foundation suggests the use of LibreOffice 4.0.6, which is supported by certified professionals.

    The release of LibreOffice 4.1.3 is taking place just one day before the LibreOffice HackFest in Freiburg, Germany, where the community will gather at the ArTik to get started on EasyHacks under the mentoring of experienced LibreOffice developers such as Thorsten Behrens, Eilidh McAdam, Bjoern Michaelsen, Markus Mohrhard, Eike Rathke and Michael Stahl.

    LibreOffice 4.1.3 is available for immediate download. Change logs are available at the following links: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.1.3/RC1 (fixed in 4.1.3.1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.1.3/RC2 (fixed in 4.1.3.2).

  • Racist van: a load of tripe

    Steve WoodsMedia, Oddities, Politics

    Earlier this year I blogged about the Home Office’s so-called racist van (posts passim). Yesterday along with most of the national media the BBC reported that the Home Office had admitted that just 11 illegal immigrants had left the UK as a result of its ill-advised campaign.

    Although the Home Office’s efforts were ill-advised and less than successful, its use of mobile billboards has inspired their use by others like the Tripe Marketing Board, as the picture below – allegedly from Lancashire – shows.

    Tripe van