The Linguist

As a freelancer, I have sometimes found it hard to make choices about my professional development, to stay motivated and on-track with my goals, and trust that they will pay off. Agata McCrindle's simple but effective model of peer-to-peer mentoring offers a practical solution whereby two people support each other to shape their goals and hold themselves accountable (p.8). I'm sold! Someone who appears to have no trouble with self-motivation is music promoter Rachel Strassberger, who reveals how her skills in six languages have helped her get ahead in a male-dominated industry (p.18). From helping Black Eyed Peas to communicate with fans in multiple languages to localising all their content, it's a dream job for someone who loves music and languages in equal measure. Elsewhere, we consider some particularly challenging areas of language work: Gene Hsu improves our understanding of song translation (p.11); Aakanksha Chahar outlines effective approaches to dealing with idioms, focusing on Japanese-English (p.22); and Richard Vranch argues for descriptive translation in legal settings to avoid potentially dangerous misunderstandings (p.20). Conference season was as inspiring as ever; as Anna Ostrovsky remarks (p.28), there was a running theme around the threats, challenges and benefits of AI. I also picked up a strong thread around working together – whether to join forces against rogue employers, pool experiences to share with tech manufacturers, or make connections and brainstorm at the in-person events. If you weren't able to attend, you can catch up on pages 27-29. Miranda Moore 4 The Linguist Vol/63 No/2 ciol.org.uk/thelinguist NEWS & EDITORIAL CHIEF EXECUTIVE'S NOTES As we head into the Northern Hemisphere summer, many people will be thinking about holidays. In Europe and around the world, where so many languages jostle together, holidays are a golden opportunity to sample culture, spot linguistic differences and practise less familiar languages. The difference in experience between visiting a country where we are 'independent' thanks to our languages, versus the anxiety which goes with having no confidence in the language, can be all the difference in the world. And this is also true for children and young people. So many linguists have had the good fortune to have had a bilingual or multilingual upbringing. I remember interviewing Ger Graus for The Linguist a while ago, for example, and he described crossing one Dutch border to buy one thing and another border to buy something else at the best price for his grandfather. Languages were everywhere in his early life. But for people who aren't lucky enough to grow up with languages in their lives (as was the case for me) there are only really two routes to becoming a linguist: to fall in love with languages at school or to travel to or live in another country. School French certainly didn't push my buttons, but living in France did, changing my beliefs about whether I could 'do' languages and giving me the practical skills to live and work in French. So, more power to CIOL Vice-President Jean Coussins for securing a debate in the House of Lords on the issues now facing UK schools and universities when organising international study and visits. Quoting the UK Department for Education's curriculum guidance, "learning a foreign language is a liberation from insularity and provides an opening to other cultures", Baroness Coussins went on to say: "University students who have spent a year abroad are more likely to gain a first or 2:1 degree and are 23% less likely to be unemployed six months after graduation, compared to people who have not spent a year abroad as part of their course, whether they are linguists or not." Encounters with difference, international experiences and – best of all – living in other countries are transformational for developing the enthusiasm for learning, confidence and practical skills in languages, and in life. But there is one other way… I have been learning with Duolingo now for many years and have progressed to feeling independent in Italian. I am making headway in Japanese and making some early progress in Chinese. As Luis von Ahn, the founder of Duolingo, said in a recent interview: "Language learning is one of the very few things that people want to do outside of school. Not many people want to learn math outside of school. I wish more people did, but it's just not a thing, whereas language learning is something that people actually want to do… and that has actually been quite useful for us, because our users are of all ages." With all the hype around AI – and the fatigue and angst about the negative impact of digital technologies on us all – I hesitate to say something wholly positive about tech, but I do think the potential of digital language learning is one of the most exciting possibilities to help the next generation of linguists fall in love with languages. I hope you enjoy this issue. John Worne EDITOR'S LETTER Share your views: linguist.editor@ciol.org.uk

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