Sunday, May 30, 2010

An Opinion Recently Expressed

From The Montgomery (Alabam) Advetiser

Vanzetta McPherson: Whose English?

May 13, 2010


For several years now, Amy Gillett has written and published a book and compact disc set titled "Speak English Like An American." It is designed to teach idioms and vernacular phrases that make American English unique and indigenous to the United States. Presumably, its desired outcome fits quite nicely into the national language agenda espoused by politicians like Colorado Republican Tom Tancredo.

Gillett's title is catchy and perhaps well-intentioned, but regrettably, in today's America, too many of its natural-born citizens don't really speak English. Instead, they speak a home-grown, inconsistent version of the Mother Tongue. The idioms of Gillett's focus are not the problem. American speakers and writers today simply ignore the rules of grammar, punctuation, capitalization and syntax. And American listeners -- a declining number of whom know better -- simply let them.

The issue summons us to examine trends in education, technology and politics.

At some distant moment in the past, educators decided that the rudiments of grammar should consume less classroom time. That decision was apparently one of the battles in the successful war on rote memory. Reciting rules, mastering the parts of speech, diagramming sentences and writing extemporaneous compositions became almost extinct. So did the endless elementary school exercises in identifying homonyms, antonyms and synonyms. The saddest death of all was the routine spelling bee -- the ones that were unrelated to national competition and grand prizes.

Young adults who bypassed these exercises now have difficulty completing job applications, writing the essay required for college admission, writing routine memoranda at work and spelling words correctly in any of these undertakings.

Then came the social and artistic movements that may as well have been designed to impose an enduring taint upon our beloved language. Heavy metal and hip-hop artists deliberately altered word meanings, changed spellings (boyz, lite, becuz) and assaulted grammar in the name of "keeping it real." Language was a casualty of the "me generation," a somewhat tacit movement that resurrected Narcissus and made personal considerations the measure of propriety.

To this linguistically toxic pudding was added the otherwise life-enhancing effect of technology. Although we can now send and receive messages instantly and do so almost anywhere, the messages we now send sometimes bear little resemblance to English. E-mails and texts reflect individualized, and therefore inconsistent, shorthand, and they conveniently conceal the sender's inability to write the same message in standard English.

After all of these developments, it is intriguing at best and hypocritical at worst that politicians now demand that recent immigrants speak English and denounce bilingual publications by government and business. First, immigrants might well ask "whose English?"

Depending upon whether they walk the aisles of Wal-Mart, listen to a morning radio talk show, observe a session of the Legislature, watch a typical situation comedy on television, or read any set of online comments to newspaper columns or magazine articles, immigrants trying to learn English will hear and see vastly different versions of a so-called common language and will likely be exposed to every possible breach of its rules. We should not wonder that they become as inept as we are in expressing themselves.

Second, at least the immigrants who learn English become bilingual. Since bilingualism is obviously a value in American education, given the century-old presence of French, German and Spanish in our high school curricula, we should strive to learn another language with as much fervor as we entreat immigrants to learn English. But anti-immigrant politicians are blind to the usefulness of learning Spanish, the language of 40 million other American voters -- a language that will likely be spoken by the majority of Americans in 40 years and the language spoken by the first European settlers in North America (remember Ponce de Leon?).

If we're serious about helping immigrants learn English, we should improve our own English. We hear many proposals for modifying elementary and high school curricula to help students learn more effectively, prepare them better for higher education and make them more marketable as employees upon graduation. Yet few seem to focus on language mastery. It wouldn't hurt to re-examine and improve the pedagogical processes and tools used to help students master the one skill that informs all the others.

If we agree that hours of just pitching, catching, free-throws, lay-ups, tackling and blocking ultimately improves the entire game, can't we agree that hours of practice in subject-verb agreement, spelling and punctuation ultimately improves overall communication?

If not, we may remain more proficient in the games we play for fun and profit than we are in the language we use to connect with each other.

To this linguistically toxic pudding was added the otherwise life-enhancing effect of technology. Although we can now send and receive messages instantly and do so almost anywhere, the messages we now send sometimes bear little resemblance to English. E-mails and texts reflect individualized, and therefore inconsistent, shorthand, and they conveniently conceal the sender's inability to write the same message in standard English.

After all of these developments, it is intriguing at best and hypocritical at worst that politicians now demand that recent immigrants speak English and denounce bilingual publications by government and business. First, immigrants might well ask "whose English?"

Depending upon whether they walk the aisles of Wal-Mart, listen to a morning radio talk show, observe a session of the Legislature, watch a typical situation comedy on television, or read any set of online comments to newspaper columns or magazine articles, immigrants trying to learn English will hear and see vastly different versions of a so-called common language and will likely be exposed to every possible breach of its rules. We should not wonder that they become as inept as we are in expressing themselves.

Second, at least the immigrants who learn English become bilingual. Since bilingualism is obviously a value in American education, given the century-old presence of French, German and Spanish in our high school curricula, we should strive to learn another language with as much fervor as we entreat immigrants to learn English. But anti-immigrant politicians are blind to the usefulness of learning Spanish, the language of 40 million other American voters -- a language that will likely be spoken by the majority of Americans in 40 years and the language spoken by the first European settlers in North America (remember Ponce de Leon?).

If we're serious about helping immigrants learn English, we should improve our own English. We hear many proposals for modifying elementary and high school curricula to help students learn more effectively, prepare them better for higher education and make them more marketable as employees upon graduation. Yet few seem to focus on language mastery. It wouldn't hurt to re-examine and improve the pedagogical processes and tools used to help students master the one skill that informs all the others.

If we agree that hours of just pitching, catching, free-throws, lay-ups, tackling and blocking ultimately improves the entire game, can't we agree that hours of practice in subject-verb agreement, spelling and punctuation ultimately improves overall communication?

If not, we may remain more proficient in the games we play for fun and profit than we are in the language we use to connect with each other.


Vanzetta Penn McPherson is a retired U.S. magistrate judge for the Middle District of Alabama.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Bulletins And Web Sites

A change of pace today. The following have been culled from real church bulletins and church web sites. Thank the Lord for typos and best intentions. Would an Elder of a church willfully engage in typomania? I'll never tell...

Enjoy.

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The Fasting & Prayer Conference includes meals.

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The sermon this morning: ‘Jesus Walks on the Water.’ The sermon tonight: ‘Searching for Jesus.’

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Ladies, don’t forget the rummage sale… It’s a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house. Bring your husbands.

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Remember in prayer the many who are sick of our community. Smile at someone who is hard to love. Say ‘Hell’ to someone who doesn’t care much about you.

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Miss Charlene Mason sang ‘I will not pass this way again,’ giving obvious pleasure to the congregation..

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For those of you who have children and don’t know it, we have a nursery downstairs.

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Next Thursday there will be tryouts for the choir. They need all the help they can get.

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Irving Benson and Jessie Carter were married on October 24 in the church. So ends a friendship that began in their school days.

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*A bean supper will be held on Tuesday evening in the church hall. Music will follow.

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At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be ‘What Is Hell?’ Come early and listen to our choir practice.

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Eight new choir robes are currently needed due to the addition of several new members and to the deterioration of some older ones.

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Scouts are saving aluminum cans, bottles and other items to be recycled. Proceeds will be used to cripple children.

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Please place your donation in the envelope along with the deceased person you want remembered.

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The church will host an evening of fine dining, super entertainment and gracious hostility.

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Potluck supper Sunday at 5:00 PM – prayer and medication to follow.

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The ladies of the Church have cast off clothing of every kind. They may be seen in the basement on Friday afternoon.

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This evening at 7 PM there will be a hymn singing in the park across from the Church Bring a blanket and come prepared to sin.

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*Ladies Bible Study will be held Thursday morning at 10 AM. All ladies are invited to lunch in the Fellowship Hall after the B S. is done.

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The pastor would appreciate it if the ladies of the Congregation would lend him their electric girdles for the pancake breakfast next Sunday.

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Low Self Esteem Support Group will meet Thursday at 7 PM.. Please use the back door.

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*The eighth-graders will be presenting Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the Church basement Friday at 7 PM. The congregation is invited to attend this tragedy.

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Weight Watchers will meet at 7 PM at the First Presbyterian Church. Please use large double door at the side entrance.

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*The Church Elder unveiled the church’s new campaign slogan last Sunday: ‘I Upped My Pledge – Up Yours.'

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Don't Die In Parliament, It's The Law

By Gary Cleland (Gary Cleland is a former national newspaper journalist who reported for The Daily Telegraph and has written for The Sunday Times, The Sun and the Daily Mirror.)

Published: 4:11PM BST 12 Apr 2008


A ban on people dying in the Houses of Parliament has been named the most absurd legislation in Britain.

* The ten most ridiculous British and international laws

In a public vote, the second strangest law was one making it an act of treason to place a postage stamp bearing the monarch's head upside down on an envelope.


A bizarre Liverpudlian bye-law that apparently banned women from going topless in public unless they worked in a tropical fish store came third.

However, the city has denied such a rule existed, saying it was an urban myth.

A spokesman for Liverpool City Council said: "It's something that has been heard of before and does crop up from time to time, but it is absurd.

"It is a myth and totally made up. It has no basis in fact."

But others are real - the reason people are banned from dying in parliament is that it is a Royal palace.

Nigel Cawthorne, author of "The Strange Laws of Old England", said: "Anyone who dies there is technically entitled to a state funeral.

"If they see you looking a bit sick they carry you out quickly."

He added: "You can see the sense in the 1279 law banning people from wearing armour to Parliament. It is not supposed to be a violent place."

At number seven on the list is a law, the Royal Prerogative 1324, that decrees that any whale or sturgeon found on the British coast belongs to the monarch.

The law is very much still in place, as fisherman Robert Davies found out in 2004 when he was investigated by police in Plymouth.

He had faxed the Royal Household to tell them he had caught a sturgeon, and was told to keep it, but did not realise it was still illegal to try and sell it.

Eventually no charges were brought.

Other laws on the list include Oliver Cromwell's decree from around 1644 to combat gluttony by banning people from eating mince pies on Christmas Day and the revelation that, according to an old London bye-law, a pregnant woman can relieve herself anywhere she wants - including in a policeman's helmet.

Not everyone is happy about that. There is currently a petition on the Downing Street website calling on Gordon Brown to take that right away from pregnant women, calling it "an insult to male police officers".

The survey, carried out by television channel UKTV Gold, also asked people to comment on some of the more absurd international laws.

Top of that list was a local bye-law from Ohio in the US, that banned residents from getting a fish drunk.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Down For The Count

One day, while searching around on Google, I discovered that a self-referencing sentence is a sentence that describes itself. For example, "This sentence has five words," or "This sentence contains nine syllables." Very interesting.

However, as with most 'stuff' like this, there were folks who would not leave well-enough alone. As a result we find out that - "In this sentence the word 'and' occurs twice, the word 'eight' occurs twice, the word 'four' occurs twice, the word 'fourteen' occurs four times, the word 'in' occurs twice, the word 'occurs' occurs fourteen times, the word 'sentence' occurs twice, the word 'seven' occurs twice, the word 'the' occurs fourteen times, the word 'this' occurs twice, the word 'times' occurs seven times, the word 'twice' occurs eight times, and the word 'word' occurs fourteen times."

Going a little further round the bend we find that an autogram is a self-referencing sentence that describes its letter content. Here are some autograms:

"This sentence contains only three a's, three c's, two d's, twenty-five e's, nine f's, four g's, eight h's, twelve i's, three l's, fifteen n's, nine o's, eight r's, twenty-four s's, eighteen t's, five u's, four v's, six w's, two x's, and four y's."

"This sentence employs two a's, two c's, two d's, twenty-eight e's, five f's, three g's, eight h's, eleven i's, three l's, two m's, thirteen n's, nine o's, two p's, five r's, twenty-five s's, twenty-three t's, six v's, ten w's, two x's, five y's, and one z."

and

"This sentence employs two a's, two c's, two d's, twenty-six e's, four f's, two g's, seven h's, nine i's, three l's, two m's, thirteen n's, ten o's, two p's, six r's, twenty-eight s's, twenty-three t's, two u's, five v's, eleven w's, three x's, and five y's."

Of course, someone had to take even this a few more steps down the path - "This sentence contains one hundred and ninety-seven letters: four a's, one b, three c's, five d's, thirty-four e's, seven f's, one g, six h's, twelve i's, three l's, twenty-six n's, ten o's, ten r's, twenty-nine s's, nineteen t's, six u's, seven v's, four w's, four x's, five y's, and one z."

The final stop on this wild ride comes with this gem -

"Only the fool would take trouble to verify that his sentence was composed of ten a's, three b's, four c's, four d's, forty-six e's, sixteen f's, four g's, thirteen h's, fifteen i's, two k's, nine l's, four m's, twenty-five n's, twenty-four o's, five p's, sixteen r's, forty-one s's, thirty-seven t's, ten u's, eight v's, eight w's, four x's, eleven y's, twenty-seven commas, twenty-three apostrophes, seven hyphens and, last but not least, a single !"

Monday, May 17, 2010

That Is A Good Question!

Questions that come at 2:00AM.

Got answers?


If you had amnesia and then were cured, would you remember that you forgot?

Why do we press harder on remote control buttons when we know the battery is dead?

Why do overlook and oversee mean opposite things?

Ever wonder what the speed of lightning would be if it didn't zigzag?

When your pet bird sees you reading the newspaper, does he wonder why you're just sitting there, staring at carpeting?

If you have 24 odds and ends on a table, and 23 fall off, what do you have left, an odd or an end?

Why is there always one in every crowd? If you took all the ones in every crowd and put them in another crowd, will there be one in that crowd?

How do you know when it is time to tune your bagpipes?

What would happen if there were no hypothetical questions?

Did George Washington just flash a dollar bill for his ID?

Does anyone live on a one-way dead-end street?

If our knees bent the other way, what would a chair look like?

Why are builders afraid to have a 13th floor but book publishers aren't afraid to have a Chapter 11?

Why isn't phonetic spelled the way it sounds?

Why doesn't glue stick to the inside of the bottle?

When you open a new bag of cotton balls, are you supposed to throw the top one away?

Friday, May 14, 2010

An Error In The OED!? THUD!

For 99 Years, Oxford English Dictionary Got It Wrong

Aussie prof finds 99-year-old error in Oxford English Dictionary

By Lindsay Goldwert
Daily News Writer

Tuesday, May 11th 2010, 10:57 AM

To err is human but the Oxford English Dictionary is thought to be Divine.

Until a 99-year-old error was discovered.

Dr. Stephen Hughes, from the University of Technology in Brisbane, noticed a mistake under the definition for “siphon” in the famed dictionary while researching an article, according to London’s Daily Telegraph.

The dictionary states that atmospheric pressure makes siphons work.

This is not true, says Hughes.

"It is gravity that moves the fluid in a siphon, with the water in the longer downward arm pulling the water up the shorter arm," he said.

Hughes told the Telegraph he was stunned upon finding the mistake, which had been added in 1911 and been there ever since.

Hughes alerted the OED's revision team, who responded saying that they would rectify the mistake in the next edition.

An OED spokesman said the definition was written in 1911 by "editors who were not scientists."

Hughes now plans to check sources in other languages which may have taken their definition of “siphon” or “siphons” from the OED.

"We would all have an issue if the dictionary defined a koala as a species of bear, or a rose as a tulip," he said.


AOL News (May 11) -- The Oxford English Dictionary got it wrong, and it took 99 years before anyone noticed.

Siphons don't work, it turns out, because of atmospheric pressure, as the OED has been saying since 1911. It's all down to that law Isaac Newton figured out when an apple hit his head: g-r-a-v-i-t-y.

Siphons work by drawing fluids from a higher location to a lower one, not always an easy thing to do, as anyone who's tried to empty a car's gas tank would confirm.

"It is gravity that moves the fluid in a siphon," said Stephen Hughes, a physics lecturer at the University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia.

So he was stunned when he noticed the OED had made a mistake, telling The Daily Telegraph of London, "We would all have an issue if the dictionary defined a koala as a species of bear, or a rose as a tulip."

Hughes said he discovered the error when he visited a huge siphon that transfers enormous amounts of water from a river system to a depleted lake in South Australia.

Hoping to use the project as part of an education paper, he researched the word and found "that almost every dictionary contained the same misconception" about atmospheric pressure being what pushed liquids through a siphon

He then wrote to the OED, whose research team said it would correct the mistake in its next edition, the Telegraph reported.

A spokesman for the dictionary told the newspaper that the definition was written "by editors who were not scientists."

And when is a koala bear not a bear? When it's a marsupial.

Even the OED gets that one right. Q.E.D.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Revisiting Anon

From time to time I have used the quotes of our old friend Anon. Each of these quotes is so much deeper than they first appear. Come on! Get lost in thought for a bit. Actually...

"The reason most people get lost in thought is that they are strangers there."

Here for your thought and pleasure are some more.

"I heard someone tried the monkeys-on-typewriters bit trying for the plays of W. Shakespeare, but all they got was the collected works of Francis Bacon."

"Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are good is like expecting the bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian."

"In order to keep a true perspective of one’s importance, everyone should have a dog that will worship him and a cat that will ignore him."

"I have an existential map; it has ‘you are here’ written all over it."

"I would like to be able to admire a man’s opinions as I would his dog - without being expected to take it home with me."

"It’s easier to seek forgiveness than ask for permission."

"They say time is the fire in which we burn."

"Laws change more slowly than custom, and though dangerous when they fall behind the times are more dangerous still when they presume to anticipate custom."



And some more that can be attributed...

"Wit is educated insolence."
- Aristotle

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

"If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

"A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government."
- Edward Abbey

"The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them."
- Albert Einstein

"In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock."
- Orson Welles

And finally...

"Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so."
- Bertrand Russell

Sunday, May 9, 2010

The Wit & Wisdom of People with a 'W'

Various quotes found while rummaging through Google...

Some you may know but not know who said it and some you may never have attributed to the one who actually said it.

In any case - enjoy! And think!



Horace Walpole

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he isn't. A sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.

Life is a comedy for those who think... and a tragedy for those who feel.

Nine-tenths of the people were created so you would want to be with the other tenth.

The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well.


Daniel Webster

Falsehoods not only disagree with truths, but usually quarrel among themselves.

Keep cool; anger is not an argument.

Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint.

There is nothing so powerful as truth, and often nothing so strange.


H.G. Wells

After people have repeated a phrase a great number of times, they begin to realize it has meaning and may even be true.

Beauty is in the heart of the beholder.

History is a race between education and catastrophe.

You have learned something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.


Simon Wiesenthal

For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing.

Violence is like a weed - it does not die even in the greatest drought.


Elie Wiesel

Not to transmit an experience is to betray it.

The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.


John Wooden

It's what you learn after you know it all that counts.

Never mistake activity for achievement.

Friday, May 7, 2010

Why I Love British Humour

Postman: Is this letter for you? The name is smudged.
Man: No, it can't be for me, my name is Smith.

#####

Old Lady: Do you always play by ear?
Street Musician: Yes, lady, 'ere or 'ereabouts.

#####

Two little old ladies were walking through the park one Sunday afternoon. The band was playing a catchy sounding tune, and one of the old ladies said, "I wonder what the name of that tune is". The other one noticed a sign posted near the bandstand and said, "It looks like they post the names of their selections. I'll go down and see". A while later she came back and told her companion, "It's the Refrain from Spitting".

#####

A man was walking down the street and he met a small boy. The man asked what was his name.

The boy replied, 'six and seven-eighths.'

The man asked him why his parents had given him such a strange name, and he replied, 'they just picked it out of a hat.'

#####

Railway Porter (cheerfully) - Miss the train, sir?
Passenger - No, I didn't like the look of it, so I chased it out of the station.

#####

A policeman walked over to a parked car and asked the driver if the car was licensed. 'Of course it is,' replied the driver.

'Great, I'll have a pint then.'

#####

I think we're in for a bad spell of wether.

#####

Teacher: Where was Magna Carta signed?
Pupil: At the bottom.

#####

MAN ON PHONE: "How long does it take to fly to Hong Kong?"
TRAVEL AGENT: "Just a minute, sir. . ."
MAN ON PHONE: "Thanks very much".

#####

A couple of hikers were tramping through the countryside and had lost their way, so by the time they arrived at the "George and Dragon", the village pub where they'd arranged to stay the night, the doors were locked and the owners had gone to bed. They knocked timidly on the front door.

A head appeared at an upstairs window and shouted, 'Go away. Don't you know what time it is? We're closed,' and the the window slammed shut.

Undeterred, the hikers knocked again. 'What is it now?' demanded the head.

'Could we speak to George this time please?' asked on the the hikers.

#####

Two men went into a pub, ordered two beers, took some sandwiches out of their packs and started to eat them. "You can't eat your own sandwiches in here," complained the pub-owner. The two men stopped, looked at each other and then swapped their sandwiches.

#####

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson were having a rest in their hotel room when suddenly a tree walked in.

"Elm entry, my Dear Watson," said Holmes.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Unemployed? Looking For A Job?

From The Wall Street Journal - April 30, 2010

Icelandic Translators Enjoy Their Moment in the Sun


Masters of the Unpronounceable Shine; No Word for CDO? Make It Up



By CHARLES FORELLE

Vantar þýðendur úr íslensku á ensku—næg vinna!

If you know what that means, then Iceland has a job for you.

Iceland's banking system has collapsed, its economy is in turmoil and its volcano has blotted the sky with ash.

As a result, things have never looked better for the small cadre of Icelandic translators who render the North Germanic tongue of 320,000 island-dwellers into something the rest of the world can understand.

The remnants of Iceland's three major banks conduct creditors' meetings in Icelandic. Many of the creditors are foreign. Interpreters are needed.

Among the assignments: bankruptcy cases, criminal probes, fraud suits and, earlier this month, a 2,000-plus-page report on the banking mess—solid gold for a translator—produced by a "truth committee" of the Alþingi (that's parliament).

"A big uptick for me," says Daniel Teague, an American translator who has lived in Reykjavík for decades.

"I don't think I ever did bankruptcy before," says Keneva Kunz, a Canadian-born translator working in Iceland for more than 20 years. "In the last year and a half, I don't think I've done anything else."

Business erupted last fall when Iceland rushed its application to the European Union. The Icelandic currency had sunk with the banks, and the island's leaders were suddenly anxious to ditch their króna for the euro.
Vantar þýðendur úr íslensku á ensku—næg vinna!

Translation: "Translators wanted from Icelandic to English -- plenty of work!"

The EU application might have been devised by a sadistic college dean. It included 2,500 questions. (Chapter 24, question 69: "What is done in the field of crime prevention? How is this linked to the threat assessment model and identified priorities?") Government officials answered them in Icelandic. Then the translators took over. The responses ran 8,870 pages.

A decade ago, Iceland didn't have much of a banking sector to speak of. A privatization campaign changed that. Add a bit of Viking derring-do, and soon the banks were wheeling and dealing in Britain, the U.S. and Asia. Eventually, assets of the three big banks reached 10 times Iceland's annual economic output.

The trend was great for practically everyone. Translators, too. The banks produced lush reports, which needed to be put in English for foreign investors.

Jón Skaptason did a lot of that. After the banks collapsed in 2008, his translating gigs waned. But there was a bright side. "Many of the freelancers who formerly worked for the banks are now busy working for the people who are suing the banks," he says.

Icelandic students learn English in school, and a visitor to Reykjavík will find coffee-bar cashiers, hotel attendants and fishermen who speak like the British Queen. But Icelanders are fiercely proud of their language, which has changed little in 800 years. They've resisted the Anglicization of officialdom. Everything is done in Icelandic.

To jobless Americans looking to break in: Good luck picking up Icelandic. There are three genders, four cases and a bewildering rubric of declensions. Not to mention two letters absent from the Latin alphabet.

Even the best translators need special skills—especially in areas like finance. Icelanders may have imported their banking fervor, but they made up local words to reference the sector. Like skuldavafningur. (That's a collateralized debt obligation, to Americans.) Occasionally several people made up words. That explains why some Icelanders call a CDO a skuldabréfavafningur.

Translator Páll Hermannsson prefers the crisper-sounding skuldavafningur for CDO. Literally, he says, it means "debt wrap."

After the financial collapse, each bank got a skilanefnd and a slitastjórn. "Meaning what?" asked the Anglophones who lent gobs of money to the now-defunct banks. No one could agree. A few finance specialists huddled with the central bank's translator and came up with English definitions: "resolution committee" and "winding-up board."

Messier still were the many ways Iceland bailed out its underwater homeowners. They might have gotten greiðsluaðlögun (payment mitigation), or greiðslujöfnun (payment smoothing), or skuldaaðlögun (debt adjustment), or skuldalækkun (debt reduction), or niðurfelling skulda (cancellation of debt). The list goes on.

"The debt is not a problem," says Ms. Kunz. "But what to call it is."

Native English speakers fluent in Icelandic command a premium. There aren't many. It is an axiom of translation that the work is best done from a foreign language into one's mother tongue.

"For many years, I told people [learning Icelandic] was the most difficult thing I did, bar none," says Mr. Teague, who was a New York lawyer before moving to Iceland in 1979.

He fell into translation in the 1980s. Þorgeir Þorgeirson, an Icelandic film director and intellectual, had been convicted of defaming civil servants and fined 10,000 Icelandic krónur (then about $250). His crime was writing two newspaper articles about police brutality. (He called the cops "wild beasts in uniform.") Mr. Þorgeirson wanted to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, which works in English and French. He needed a translator.

"His English was a little patchy," Mr. Teague recalls. Mr. Þorgeirson won. And the judges gave him 218,160 krónur for translation costs. Mr. Teague had a career.

Gauti Kristmannsson, an associate professor of translation at the University of Iceland, trains the next generation. Fifty students take his two-year masters' program. He's expanding next fall, to meet the expected demand from the EU. If Iceland gets in, he says, the bloc will need 100 translators to shuttle between Icelandic and the 23 current official languages.

To Mr. Kristmannsson, the world is lost without translation.

"Why do people struggle with this Eyjafjallajökull?" he asked, on the topic of the misbehaving volcano.

He patiently coached foreign journalists on its pronunciation, which requires a flutter of staccato gurgles and alveolar gymnastics beyond the ken of ordinary Anglophones.

"They should have translated it!" he said. It means "island mountains glacier."

Monday, May 3, 2010

Copyright Explained

© The Department of Redundancy Department Copyright Department Copyright, 1999



When you write copy you have the right to copyright the copy you write. You can write good and copyright but copyright doesn't mean copy good - it might not be right good copy, right?

Now, writers of religious services write rite, and thus have the right to copyright the rite they write.

Conservatives write right copy, and have the right to copyright the right copy they write. A right wing cleric might write right rite, and have the right to copyright the right rite he has the right to write. His editor has the job of making the right rite copy right before the copyright would be right. Then it might be copy good copyright.

Should Thom Wright decide to write, then Wright might write right rite, which Wright has a right to copyright. Copying that rite would copy Wright's right rite, and thus violate copyright, so Wright would have the legal right to right the wrong. Right?

Legals write writs which is a right or not write writs right but all writs, copied or not, are writs that are copyright. Judges make writers write writs right.

Advertisers write copy which is copyright the copy writer's company, not the right of the writer to copyright. But the copy written is copyrighted as written, right?

Wrongfully copying a right writ, a right rite or copy is not right.



Copyright 1991 Shelley Herman S.P.E.B.S.Q.S.A., Whittier Chapter.
Adapted and Appended by Scott Simmerman. If you wish to copy or write
this as copy, please be certain to copy right the copyright.