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
Issue link: https://thelinguist.uberflip.com/i/1172840
@Linguist_CIOL 'We Need Languages Graduates to Steer Us Through our Post-Brexit Troubled Waters', 31/7/19 If Brexit and the debate over the Irish backstop have taught us anything, it is that we need subject specialists with language skills – lawyers, economists, geographers, engineers, and business graduates with the language skills to understand, negotiate, and argue the details… We need inspiring syllabuses, first- hand experience of the culture, student ambassadors in schools to change mindsets, good teaching and fair assessment. What the papers say… 'How Do We Measure Language Fluency?', 4/8/19 [Mayor] Buttigieg is clearly fascinated by languages, willing to learn, and is brave enough to practice [sic] with native speakers on television – qualities that would have made him the star of my classroom. But – like so many of my ex-students who expected to go from 'beginner' to 'native' proficiency in two months – Buttigieg may have underestimated what it means to 'speak' a language… Can someone consider themselves a Spanish speaker if they're conversational but often can't understand native speakers because they 'talk too fast'? If they use only two verb tenses and every sentence contains mistakes? 'The Importance of Being Earnest in Translation', 19/6/19 [We ask] what happens to cultural artefacts during the translation process, such as when Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest is translated into French, and when that French text is subsequently used as the source of the Italian translation, what happens to culturally specific words like 'cucumber sandwiches', 'Tories', or even 'Earnest'. The latest from the languages world End of the decline? An increase in the number of modern foreign language (MFL) GCSEs in England and Wales has been met with cautious optimism by stakeholders. Spanish entries increased by 7.5%, with a 3.2% boost for French, which is still the most popular language of study. However, a mixed picture emerged as German fell by 3.9% and analysts warned that language education remains at risk. Speaking as the results were announced, British Council NEWS & EDITORIAL Google has added 60 languages to its Translate app, which enables users to translate information such as menus via the camera on their phone. The tech giant has also integrated its neural machine translation (NMT) system, used by the web version of Translate since 2016, to improve the quality of translations on the app, which has been a source of frustration for users. The updated app also makes the appearance of text on screen smoother and can automatically detect what language a text is written in. Bringing the number of supported languages to 88, the additions include Arabic, Greek, Thai and Xhosa. OCTOBER/NOVEMBER The Linguist 5 The UK Policing Minister has been drawn into a row over the supply of an unqualified interpreter to Yorkshire and Humber Police. In April, Capita TI sent a Czech interpreter to interpret between English and Slovak at a police station in Bradford. Responding to a complaint over the matter, the agency reportedly said the linguist was able to work in Slovak because it is "linguistically linked" to Czech. The National Register of Public Service Interpreters (NRPSI) wrote to Kit Malthouse MP and representative bodies in August to argue that conflating languages in this way is "inappropriate" and "poses a public risk". Schools Advisor, Vicky Gough, said: "It's encouraging that GCSE numbers are picking up, but this has to be seen as a slight recovery from a huge drop over more than a decade." She expressed hope that there would be a "knock-on improvement" on A level entries, but this has yet to emerge as it was revealed that A level numbers declined again this year. French fell by 3.4%, making Spanish the most popular A level MFL following a 4.2% rise. Google betters its Translate app Language policy a 'public risk' © SHUTTERSTOCK