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/425024
30 The Linguist DECEMBER 2014/JANUARY 2015 www.ciol.org.uk OPINION & COMMENT It was truly inspiring to read The Guardian's profile of Siegfried Ramler, an Austrian Jew who found asylum from the Nazis in London and later acted as interpreter in the Nuremberg trials. I was also uplifted by Paddy Ashdown's little article asserting that languages are 'the stuff of life' and 'the more you can speak of other people's languages, the more you can be part of their lives and enrich your own' – although he modestly admitted that he had 'forgotten six languages'. Other positive stories were that Britain's new EU Commissioner, Lord Hill, had made his debut in Brussels by speaking in French, and that Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, had wowed audiences in China by giving a 30-minute interview in Mandarin. Less impressive was the carping criticism of his accent, described variously as sounding like 'someone was stepping on his face' and having a 'mouthful of marbles'. In the main, we Brits are tolerant of other people's attempts to speak English, but it doesn't encourage our own language- learning efforts to expect such a high level of perfection when English speakers try to communicate in foreign languages. Another kind of linguistic intolerance was on display in The Daily Mail, which reported that Ukip and the GMB union had both condemned the security company G4S for seeking a 'Polish and English-speaking cleaner', so they could talk with other workers. The GMB was also pursuing a case in Northern Ireland, where a job applicant was claiming he had been discriminated against for not speaking Portuguese. The Mail said this raised questions about 'how common it is for low-skilled workers to be required to speak a foreign language'. However the Mail did run a beautifully illustrated piece about how different languages articulate human emotions and functions, such as pain (aiii in Portuguese), kissing (boh in Chinese) and snoring (gu gu in Japanese). Teresa Tinsley is Director of Alcantara Communications; www.alcantaracoms.com TERESA TINSLEY Shared office: not a new concept I am reading your article about coworking with interest. However, I question the assertion that 'coworking, as a concept, only really emerged in 2002… in Vienna' (TL53,5). Back in the early 1990s, before I had decided to become a translator and take the DipTrans, I was casting round for possible ways of becoming self-employed and attended several Manchester City Council-run entrepreneurship seminars at a converted mill in the Angel Meadow area of Manchester. The rest of the building, outside the lecture room, was being used by many small business start-ups that shared office space and facilities. Admittedly its main purpose was to help these start-ups, rather than promote coworking itself, but a rose by any other name…? I think that, at the very least, these ventures can be called the direct ancestors and progenitors of the concept. Manchester (and Rochdale) has a long history of political, social, industrial and commercial innovation, so it is not surprising that it was at the forefront of new ways of working back then. Margaret Ball MCIL Email linguist.editor@ciol.org.uk 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Across 1 Aschenputtel (German). (10) 8 Rifle attachments, named after a town in the SW corner of France. (8) 9 Many of us rent one in France in the summer. (4) 10 Spanish-speaking nation of Central America. (6) 12 _________ parentis. (2,4) 13 See 14 across. Clues in italics indicate foreign language titles of well- known films. 14/13 Guerra das Estrelas (Portuguese). (4,4) 17 They are counted in Alf Laylah wa Laylah. (6) 20 A calligraphy used in Arabic, and with variations in Urdu and Persian (5) 21 Les Dents de la Mer (French). (4) 22 Il Mondo dei Giacotolli (Italian). (3,5) 24 Character from 22 across, known in 4 down as 'Kartofelnaya Golova'. (6,4) Down 2 Artificial language constructed in 1907 to improve upon Esperanto. (3) 3 La Jungla de Cristal (Spanish). (3,4) 4 Country with one official language, but 27 recognised regional languages. (6) 5 Permits under law. (9) 6 Nahuatl was the language of this empire. (5) 7 The epitome of Mexican procrastination. (6) 11 Greek feeling or sensitivity. (9) 15 Shrinks away from in horror. (6) 16 From Greek for 'in sourdough', it's vital for digestion. (6) 18 Taken from Latin, it's the final stage of an insect's development. (5) 19 Bantu language, national language of Lesotho. (5) 23 Common name for the fox in Scotland and northern England. (3) Crossword no.10 Answers, page 33