The Linguist is a languages magazine for professional linguists, translators, interpreters, language professionals, language teachers, trainers, students and academics with articles on translation, interpreting, business, government, technology
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encouraged young children to learn words while actively engaging with the content: "learning through play, learning in context". Content was extensively tested with children to gauge their engagement and learning both during and after interacting with the show, so she knew the format was effective. Our job was to advise on the visuals to accompany the language; translate the target language (for accurate on-screen text); provide example audio files (to guide the voice actors); attend recording sessions (to assist the voice actors in their pronunciation and intonation); and test for quality assurance (ensuring all was properly in place and playing as it should). Therese Comfort was the lead primary language adviser at CILT and her first task was to finalise the scripts. "The most important priority for me was to ensure that the activities and language were at the right level for the audience this programme was written for; and that the very limited language used was accurate." The challenges for a language learning specialist in this context include the fact that you are advising without seeing the final product – the animation and filming happen towards the end. Working at a distance (by email, phone and Skype) can be challenging, especially when dealing with audiovisual. Some of the most important work involved making the script for a minutes-long show meaningful, and building in real progression. Therese says this does not necessarily mean more vocabulary: "I see it more as 'what is it that children do with that vocabulary?'." Nicole was happy to take much of this on 18 The Linguist Vol/56 No/2 2017 www.ciol.org.uk FEATURES board: "The consultants actually became an integral part of the creative process of ensuring this educational content was properly integrated into the overall narrative." Story constraints Helen Groothues, in my team at CILT, provided consultancy on another BBC show, Telling Tales, a series of traditional stories with audio in different languages. Aimed at upper primary children, the expected level was much higher than for The Lingo Show, as most primary schools were now teaching languages in the curriculum. This presented a new challenge: "From a pedagogical point of view, you want to hear new language repeated over and over again," she says, "whereas from a storytelling point of view, that can easily get boring and feel very 'educational'. In trying to simplify language, you put constraints on the storytelling process." Nicole has more recently produced the educational game-based app series Pacca Alpaca with its multilingual travelling alpaca protagonist. Based on the key developmental stages of the Early Years Foundation Stage, Philip Harding-Esch reveals the challenging work of script consultancy for multilingual shows and apps Y our mission – should you choose to accept it – is to voice a character for a major BBC children's television production. The catch is, you have to do it in 10 languages. Could you do it? Marc Silk did – he was the voice of Lingo on the BBC's The Lingo Show. Aimed at four- to six-year-olds, the series follows Lingo the ladybird as he visits a series of bug friends, each speaking a different language. Even for Marc, one of Britain's leading voice actors, who has voiced characters in Star Wars, Danger Mouse and Bob the Builder, this was a challenge. He recalls: "Online resources would often give different pronunciation results for the same word or phrase. We needed to be confident we were getting it right!" Nicole Seymour, the producer, decided to buy in language consultancy from CILT, the National Centre for Languages, where I was working at the time. Launched as a flash animation website in 2011 and commissioned as a TV series in 2012, The Lingo Show was one of the first of a new breed of language education media aimed specifically at young children. Nicole remembers her inspiration: "I was struck by the fact that there were no TV programmes or games that featured content about different languages reflecting the diversity in the UK." She successfully pitched the concept to the Controller of the BBC's pre-school channel CBeebies, satisfying the BBC's public service remit of supporting diversity and education. Nicole came to CILT with highly developed plans – the concepts and scripts were largely written – for a show which expertly On script Continuity was a challenge: sometimes a storyline would change, with a domino effect