There’s a light-hearted discussion going on over at Language Log about the Hokey Cokey, provoked by the Telegraph digging up the old story about its lyrics being anti-Catholic (a distorsion of “the Latin “hoc est enim corpus meum” or “this is my body” used by Catholic priests to accompany the transubstantiation during mass,” says the Telegraph). I think most people would feel intuitively that the idea is nonsense, simply because its associations with pub sing-songs and music hall suggest it must be more modern than that (not vey modern, though - it immediately conjures up images of the Black and White Minstrels in my mind).
A slightly curious thing about the Language Log thread is that the posters have mostly been considering the words of the song, rather than its musical characteristics or its dance movements. This is not surprising, they are linguists, after all, but it does show how easy it is for a particular mind set to get in the way of clear thought.
I’m not sure I entirely believe in what is being called “The Girl Effect,” but this is a mean Flash video:
You’ll find the original on Girleffect.org. The idea is that investing in education of, specifically, girls rather than boys is the best way to improve the economies of developing countries (and so make the world a better place all round).
I don’t doubt the underlying idea, I just can’t see that it would continue to work as effectively once it had got started. Some sort of limiting effect would come into play, surely? I mean, what happens when a large number of these girls decide they are entitled to a better deal and start dropping out or rioting? Just because they don’t doesn’t mean they won’t.
The video’s effectiveness, as so often, comes largely from its simplicity - entirely animated text. Cool.
Corinne McKay of Thoughts on Translation has touched a nerve with her post on “We just translate”…or do we?” Translators have two often contradictory goals: accuracy of translation, and quality of language. She gamely mentions failing two translation tests in a row for different agencies, one on the grounds that her translation was “too faithful to the original” (which wasn’t very well written, they wanted it improved upon), the other because it “sounded great in English, but it strayed too far from the original.”
This is a topic dear to the hearts of translators everywhere, I suspect: we’ve all been on the wrong end of a stinging “too literal” or “too free, too liberal,” and probably both (occasionally, you might even have received the same criticism for the same job, which is really galling). So how do you know what to aim for? Pragmatism says “give the customer what he wants,” which usually means “make it sound good,” but not always. In my comment on Corinne’s post, I mention a ding-dong I once had with an advertising agency bigwig who insisted on having a phrase translated into English with a double meaning it simply did not have in Spanish. What I didn’t include in my comment was my suspicion that the translation might have been for the agency’s English-speaking head office in New York or wherever, and was part of some control procedure - in other words, the bigwig didn’t want his bosses to know that the slogan had gone out on the Spanish media lacking that double meaning.
There doesn’t seem to be any objective criterion you can use in this regard, unfortunately. I do feel that we should not improve on the original and that this should not be expected of us, but we live in the real world. All too often, the bottom line is keeping the customer happy.
Incidentally, in the same thread I have come across the word “finesse” used as a verb in a way I have never seen before. The phrase is “finessing marketing copy,” meaning improving or refining it, (especially?) as part of the translation process. I can see it catching on.
A post on Talk Wordy to Me led me to an entertaining on-line etymology quiz which I recommend to language buffs. It is, as TW puts it, “freaking hard.” TW got 6 out of 10 right on two occasions before deciding enough was enough, and I am pleased to say that I got 7 out of 10 on my first and so far only attempt - I think it was something of a fluke,* and there’s no sense in pushing my luck. You’ll find the quiz at http://etymologic.com.
* Middle English floke, fluke, from Old English flōc; akin to Old English flōh chip, Old High German flah smooth, Greek plax flat surface, and probably to Old English flōr floor — more at floor. That’s the trouble with etymology, once you get going it’s hard to stop.
Found on Overheard Everywhere (I run the feed from Overheard in the Office on the Whittle It page, but I love them all, even if many of the entries sound more scripted than accidentally eavesdropped on):
The Best Apples Don’t Go Into Applesauce. Or Teaching
English teacher (about Don Pedro in Much Ado about Nothing: “Don” in Spanish means “wicked cool guy.”
Absence from the UK meant I had never seen Fry and Laurie until I caught a post on Jill Sommers’ blog, Musings from an Overworked Translator (here’s a hint, Jill - ease up). She posted the following language-related Fry and Laurie YouTube video which made me laugh out loud even though I don’t know who, if anyone, they are parodying.
Here’s another, with the slightly black depth of humour that comes with truth. For there really are people who complain about the word “gay” having been somehow sequestered, as if its captors were likely to demand a ransom for it, aren’t there?
Incidentally, I totally share Jill’s admiration for Blackadder-foil-turned-Super-House-Physician Hugh Laurie, in my case compounded by his enviable musical abilities, which make me suspect he’s a Jack-of-many-trades like myself. But much better at it.
Found on the web pages of Norman Fenton, a University of London researcher whose “Improving Your Technical Writing” I much recommend (and is by no means only applicable to technical writing - you can find it here). The guidlines are not to be taken as seriously:
Some Guidelines for Aspiring Writers
1. Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction.
4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
5. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They’re old hat).
6. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
7. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.
9. One should never generalise.
10. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
11. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
12. The passive voice is to be avoided.
13. Eliminate commas, that are not necessary.
14. Never use a big word when a diminutive one will suffice.
15. Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forward earthshaking ideas.
16. use the apostrophe in it’s proper place and omit it when its not needed.
17. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”
18. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
19. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
20. Proof-read carefully to see if you any words out.
Norman’s cv is here, if you’re looking for a professor of computing and expert in risk assessment and decision analysis with a great writing style and a sense of humour.
We are a triple-OS household these days. We have been for a couple of months now; first we added the Mac, when Sagrario started her web design course, and then Linux, when she gave me one of those cute little Asus notebooks for my birthday.
So what’s the big deal? If you believe the stuff that people say on the Net, particularly about Mac vs PC, they are complete opposites, like Laurel and Hardy, when not diametrically opposed, like communism and capitalism or the Force and its Dark Side. And as far as I can see, there just isn’t that kind of difference. True, the Mac is far more elegant and more enjoyable to watch films and so forth on, but there are reasons for that which have nothing to do with the OS as such - it is three or four years newer, the screen is enormous (Sagrario is a pro graphic designer, we couldn’t have her making do with a notebook), tons more memory, and so on. But the inner workings, the processes of installing a program, the kind of general maintenance you have to do on a regular basis (I call it the housekeeping), these things are not, as far as I can see, very much different on a Mac or on a PC.
Even Linux is much the same, at least at the outset. The Asus eeeeeeeee (there aren’t that many e’s, I just never remember if it’s three or four) comes with its own custom Linux set-up, with pretty well all you need to get by - the OpenOffice package, Firefox… Where it does become quite a lot more DIY is when you want to add software, which is not generally commercially available for Linux. This means you have to get the OpenSource version from somewhere and, even more radically, you need to use terminal access to the computer and install from the command line - this might frighten the young folks, but it’s easy-peasy if you have ever worked with DOS or other antediluvian operating systems.
So I just don’t feel myself pushed into any of the OS supporters’ groups and I especially don’t understand the denigration of the alternatives that seems to be entailed. Mac users are always running PCs down for their frequent crashes and general clumsiness, while PC users scoff at Mac users as image-obsessed and computer-disadvantaged. wimps I am prepared to believe that the Mac is less vulnerable to viruses and other malware than Windows, but have seen no evidence that that is intrinsic to the OS rather than due to the greater popularity of Windows. I don’t accept that the Mac is less versatile and that it is harder to get to grips with its inner workings - I simply haven’t found that. It may or may not be more stable, I just find it newer and more efficient, as is to be expected.
Linux does, of course, have the advantage of being Open Source, i.e. free, though for an extra 20-something euros, I could have had the Asus with Windows installed, hardly enough to make a difference. And I suspect that when the moment does come to upgrade the OS, that will not be all that big an advantage, if any - you have to find a Linux package that suits you, which may not be free either, and the installations I have looked at before have seemed time-consumingly complicated.
The state of play so far, then, is a three-way draw. Except for two things: the Mac is gorgeous, a beautiful 26″ iMac of breath-taking sexiness. It may be superficial of me, but it definitely adds something to the user experience (though I find I tend to stick to my homely old PC even when the Mac is free, which may say something about me).
And though this is not intrinsic to the OS but to the format of the computer, the Asus pulls women - they think it’s cute. Now, I’ve never had a sports car or a dog or a baby in a pushchair or any of the other appendages that traditionally make girls say “Aaaah (or wow!), isn’t he/it lovely/fabulous/sweet?” and stop and allow themselves to be chatted up. So it’s been a nice surprise that the Asus is an authentic babe magnet. I suspect that it won’t be in a few months, though, when they are a more common sight.
So this is the current score: iMac - 2; Asus - 2; PC - 1. Sorry, Microsoft.
The world has caught up with me. I used to be more or less singular, and now I am… What? Myriad? I have just found this out courtesy of the Elcano Institute, a Spanish thinktank, which has a working paper on the net on immigrants into Spain from the E11 (that’s the E12, the EU countries before the last, large-scale expansion, minus Spain itself). And its current conclusions are that while there are still pockets of traditional British or German immigration, in the Valencia region, the Costa del Sol, the Balearics, etc., North European immigrants, rich, at least compared to the more visible Rumanians, Moroccans and Ecuatorians, are no longer retirees but are workers, and are not looking for their place in the sun, so are just as likely to settle in Madrid or Barcelona as on the costas. And when I say workers, I mean professionals - managers, IT workers, consultants, journalists…
Damn.
Not that I want to be unique, particularly, but being unusual brings certain advantages. Not least is that it is easier to make a living: as a Spanish-English translator (only one of my occupations), I have a scarcity value in Spain I would not have if I lived in Britain. Or have had.
Socially, too, being unusual confers privileges. People are not entirely sure what to expect of you, and the lack of prejudgement that goes with that gives you a kind of freedom. And you are more interesting, your background is different, your sense of humour is more surprising.
Well that’s the end of that.
Not that this is entirely a surprise, indeed it was only to be expected. After all, if I have always thought, “Why on earth does anyone put up with English weather (or English politicians, food, pub closing times, etc.)?”, others were bound to come round to the same position. I have a vague feeling that if I had been paying attention, I would have noted an increasing number of Brits living in Madrid over the last five or six years, but I wasn’t, perhaps because I don’t have any real point of contact with them. So I am now in the same position as Spaniards who woke up one day and found their world full of Ecuatorians, Rumanians and Moroccans, except my Spain is full of Brits.
