social media | Steve Woods

Red card for Auntie

17/04/2016 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Social Media

With the notable exception of Test Match Special‘s cricket commentary on long wave, BBC sports commentators seem to be employed more for their ability to shout than proficiency in the English language, judging from the rare bits of sports commentary that get broadcast as part of Radio 4’s news bulletins.

This opinion received further support yesterday when the BBC Sport Twitter account sought the views of Aston Villa FC fans on news that the club at the bottom of the Premier League (that’s the English First Division in old money. Ed. 🙂 ) table would be playing in the Championship (the old Second Division. Ed.) next year, as per the following tweet, which has since been deleted:

Wait off the shoulders, Auntie? This blog is giving you a red card and you should now proceed from the field of play for an early bath and thence to your reserved place in Heterograph Corner! 🙂

Hat tip: OwlofMinera.
France: 10 words whose spelling will change at the start of the school year

06/02/2016 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

Since 1990 the spelling reform approved by the Académie Française has never really been pursued. “Oignon” without an “i“, the removal of some circumflex accents: at the start of the next academic year, teachers should finally implement this reform, TF1 reports. A total of 2,400 words are going to be changed; here are 10 examples.

The word “nénuphar” will henceforth be able to be written as “nénufar“. The spelling reform of 6th December 1990 that was approved by the Académie Française is finally going to be applied at the start of the next school year by the publishers of school textbooks and thus by teachers.

One of the new features is that circumflex accents are going to disappear gradually. The verb “s’entraîner” will therefore be able to be spelt with a simple “i” and thus minus the circumflex accent. This part of the reform should make learning spelling easier for children.

Special National Education Official Bulletin no. 11 of 26 Novembre 2015 gives a reminder that the spelling reform to be applied to the schooling of a child is that of 1990. Spelling and grammar textbooks will therefore carry the wording “New spelling” from the start of the next academic year.

Another brain-teaser

Only 45% of French people were proficient in the rules of spelling in 2015. What will happen when students have to learn to spell the same word in two different ways? Teachers are already reticent about this question.

The change in French spelling has not been accepted by the world of work and business for 26 years. The 2,400 words involved in this reform could therefore be regarded as errors by prospective employers although the 2 spellings will be accepted.

10 words which will change at the start of the school year

Oignon to ognon (onion)
Nénuphar to nénufar (water lilly)
S’entraîner to s’entrainer (to train oneself)
Maîtresse to maitresse (mistress)
Coût to cout (cost)
Paraître to paraitre (to appear)
Week-end to weekend
Mille-pattes to millepattes (millipede)
Porte-monnaie to portemonnaie (purse)
Des après-midi to des après-midis (afternoons)

Online opposition

However, The Guardian reports that the changes to French spelling have not met with universal approval. There have been complaints that the Socialist government is dumbing down the language of Molière.

On Twitter, opposition to the reform gave rise a #JeSuisCirconflexe campaign, along the lines of the #JeSuisCharlie hashtag in the wake of the atrocity at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo (posts passim).
Worcester cannabis farm case adjourned for lack of interpreter

30/01/2016 Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

Polish is one of the most common foreign languages for which interpreters are required in UK courts, yet it seems that Capita Translation & Interpreting, which holds the contract for supplying interpreters in courts and tribunals, still seems to be experiencing difficulties in providing Polish interpreters, nearly four years after the incompetent outsourcing giant got its hands on the contract.

Yesterday’s Worcester News reports that a case against 3 Polish nationals accused of producing 105 cannabis plants in Worcester had to be adjourned yesterday.

Marcin Pobiegly, Lukasz Kloch and Andrzey Ratowski appeared before magistrates in Worcester on Friday concerning a cannabis grow in the city’s Vauxhall Street.

However, the case had to be adjourned due lack of court time as magistrates waited in vain for a Polish interpreter to arrive.

It will now be heard on Monday, always providing that a Capita interpreter bothers to turn up.

Update 02/02/16: An interpreter did turn up on Monday and that day’s Worcester News states that the case has now been referred to Crown Court.
Happy 15th birthday, Wikipedia

15/01/2016 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Social Media, Tech

This week, Wikipedia reaches its fifteenth birthday.

These days the free online encyclopaedia is the world’s seventh most popular website and now includes more than 38 million articles in 289 languages, all maintained by an army of volunteer editors and contributors.

Andy Mabbett, one of that army of editors and contributors, has been musing on Twitter as to how Wikipedia will react having reached this chronological milestone.

Over the last 15 years, although the project was originally initiated by Anglophone geeks, Wikipedia has been working to increase the diversity of its content and contributors through outreach programmes such as edit-a-thons at universities and museums and by trying to appoint more women administrators. However, there is still plenty of work to be done in this field.

The Wikipedia website and the open source Mediawiki software it runs on are managed by the Wikimedia Foundation charity, which is funded by donations, the vast majority of them from small donors.

To mark Wikipedia’s 15th birthday the Foundation has created an endowment fund that it hopes will raise $100 mn. over the next 10 years.

Happy birthday, Wikipedia – and may you enjoy many, many more.

Reposted from Bristol Wireless.
Email encryption talk in Bristol

11/01/2016 Steve WoodsBristol, Open Source, Social Media, Tech

As part of Alternative Bristol’s Breaking the Frame series of talks, an email encryption talk for beginners will be taking place at Hydra Books in Old Market Street, Bristol (map) from 7.30-9.30 p.m. on Friday 22nd January.

How public key encryption works

According to the organisers, an ordinary e-mail is like a postcard without an envelope: anybody who can put their hands on it can read it. Unlike a postcard an email is copied (rather than moved) to many different computers on its travels. All of these computers’ owners we can’t possibly trust and know. This makes them feel uncomfortable and is not necessary with simple email
encryption.

After this short (one hour!) workshop attendees will be able to email anyone else who makes it to the workshop without the email being intercepted by a third party.

Certain organisations (e.g. journalists, unions, activists, etc.) have a responsibility to transmit sensitive messages securely and currently do not always do this. Don’t think what does this one email say about me? (or its recipient), think rather when examined en masse over time (most emails are stored indefinitely these days) what does this reveal about the way you live?

It would save time if prospective attendees had Thunderbird set up and receiving your emails. If you have Ubuntu or another Linux distribution, it would help if you installed both Thunderbird and GPG before attending the talk. If you already use email encryption and want to help or share your key please come by too. No experience necessary, but if you have a laptop and USB stick please bring them with you.

More details available via Facebook.

Reposted from Bristol Wireless.
Rustic riposte

09/01/2016 Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Social Media

Only a couple of days after hearing of the creation of a giant statue of Mao Zedong (posts passim), reports have been received that the statue of the so-called Great Helmsman in Henan province has been destroyed.

Pictures such as the one below have been posted on Chinese social media.

The statue’s hands, legs and feet appear to have been hacked off and a black cloth draped over its head.

According to an unnamed local delivery driver, it was destroyed because it had occupied a farmer’s land.

This destruction brings to mind the traditional farmer’s challenge to trespassers: “Get off my land!” 🙂

Another reason for the destruction could be that Henan province was one of the regions worst hit by China’s great famine, a catastrophe that claimed tens of millions of lives that was caused by Mao’s disastrous “Great Leap Forward” – a bid for rapid industrialisation.

The official Chinese line is that the statue had not gone through the correct approval process before construction, according to The People’s Daily.
Statement by leaders of Fair Payment Campaign for HO interpreters

22/12/2015 Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics, Social Media

The leaders of the Fair Payment Campaign for Home Office Interpreters have issued the statement below in response to the Home Office’s plan to cut their pay with effect from 1st January 2016 (posts passim). The statement originally appeared on Linguist Lounge.

The Fair Payment Campaign for Home Office Interpreters resulted from a notice they received in November 2015 in relation to a reduction in rates due to take place on all bookings undertaken on behalf of the Home Office, including UK Visas & Immigration, Border Force, Immigration Enforcement and HM Passport Office and any other bookings made through Interpreter Operations Unit, from 1st January 2016 onwards.

Professional qualified Home Office interpreters are standing up against the proposed cuts to our already meagre fees which have been unchanged in at least 13 years. While cuts are being proposed, we contend that we have in fact been subsidising the Home Office over the years by the lack of increase in our fees.

Many interpreters and their supporters have already written to the Home Office Central Interpreters’ Unit expressing their dismay and opposition to these cuts in rates which were already much eroded through inflation, and mean that it will no longer be feasible for them to continue working in this field.

This will result in a diminishing pool of qualified, experienced and vetted interpreters for the Home Office, detrimental both to them but especially so to the great number of vulnerable people who depend on reliable interpreting services to put their cases across since they are unable to do so themselves. Their lives may be at stake. The right to a fair hearing is enshrined in international human rights law.

As a result of our letters and petition, campaign leaders have been invited to meet with CIU senior managers on Monday 21st December 2015. We shall keep colleagues updated as to the outcome of that meeting.

We shall be listening to what they say, re-iterating the contents of our petition letter and also making a point to stand firm on those points.

We have it on good authority that the strength and unity of our campaign stands us in good stead: our unity is our strength.

We shall capitalise on this fact and we must not forget the fiasco with the Ministry of Justice outsourcing of Court Interpreting Services to a private agency in 2012, which resulted in many qualified interpreters declining to continue working in that sector and consequently the lowering of standards and quality of services, causing the delay and collapse of many court cases, as can be verified by the extensive media coverage about this matter which can be found on this Linguist Lounge.

We have collected hundreds of signatures and many interpreters are still contacting us to join the Campaign.

We have the support of non-Home Office interpreters, translators and non-linguists. Some of these supporters have also written to CIU about their dismay, disappointment and disgust at what is being proposed.

The Fair Payment Campaign for Home Office Interpreters also has a social media presence on both Twitter and Facebook.
Spelling or sleeping?

05/12/2015 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Social Media

There was a great clanger in a tweet this morning from Bristol’s Western Daily Press, the sister publication of the Bristol Post (and joint occupier with it of Bristol’s Temple Way Ministry of Truth. Ed.) and likewise subject to many of the latter’s failings with the English language.

Here’s an image of the tweet in question.

The morals of this tale are clear: if you run a tawdry TV talent show orthography is as dangerous as shut-eye if housebreakers are around; if you run the social media account of a mediocre regional paper, learn to proof-read before posting online*! 🙂

* The spelling error in the tweet originally appeared in the article itself, but has since been corrected.
A world without Linux – episode 3: no social connections

09/11/2015 Steve WoodsLinux, Media, Open Source, Social Media, Tech

Although you may not realise it, Linux is the world’s largest collaborative project in the history of computing. It runs most of the world’s technology infrastructure and is supported by more developers and companies than any other operating system. In addition, it’s ubiquitous; it can be found in your phone, car and office. Besides that, it also powers the internet, the cloud, stock exchanges, supercomputers, embedded devices and more.

The latest episode of the series tries to show us how hard it is to have social connections is a universe without Linux.

Three more episodes of this Linux Foundation series are planned, with the final video featuring Linux kernel creator Linus Torvalds himself, according to Softpedia.
Translator tampered with meeting minutes

25/10/2015 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities, Social Media

It’s been an open secret for many years that FIFA – the international governing body for football – has been as reliable as a nine pound note.

Following the departure from its HQ building by disgraced president Sepp Blatter, further details of malpractice in FIFA’s governance are now coming to light.

Yesterday’s Daily Mail reported some of this fall-out under the headline “FIFA translator: I was told several times to doctor records of ExCo meetings“.

According to the Mail, FIFA are investigating claims that a junior member of staff was told to falsify official records of FIFA’s meetings of its Executive Committee (ExCo) between 2001 and 2010.

Former FIFA employee Scott Burnett first worked as a translator and then as an assistant to FIFA Secretary General Jerome Valcke, who like Blatter, is currently suspended.

Mr Burnett dropped his bombshell via 3 tweets, as follows.

Tweet no. 1:

I wrote the minutes of FIFA ExCo meetings from 2001 to 2010. During that period, I was instructed several times to misrepresent discussions.

Tweet no. 2:

The instructions to misrepresent meetings came from the President’s office among others.

Tweet no. 3:

I did not share this information before because I was concerned about the repercussions and I did not know who to trust within FIFA circles.

We linguists – irrespective of whether we work as translators or interpreters or both – deal regularly with privileged and confidential information. This is why I rarely discuss the content of my work in public. As such, I have great sympathy for Mr Burnett since being told to falsify records must clearly have conflicted with that inbuilt sense of integrity which all linguists need to do their jobs.

Mr Burnett is no longer employed by FIFA and currently volunteers to support grassroots football.

Another brain-teaser

10 words which will change at the start of the school year

Online opposition

Posts navigation