Daylight musings

Who said you can’t cram more than 24 hours into one day? Last Saturday I travelled to England from home and had a whole 2 hours extra. Now if you’re wondering why, there’s a perfectly logical reason. Firstly, the UK runs 1 hour behind Central European Time; and secondly, the last full weekend of October marks the end of Summer Time when the clocks get put back.

At the end of August, people are already talking about the ‘nights drawing in’, but by November we’re in completely new territory. Suddenly it’s getting dark at 5 in the afternoon and there’s still a month and a half to go before sunset times even start to creep upwards again. Unless you decide to move south of the Equator, there’s not a lot you can do to beat the gloom. Just grin and bear it as best as you can until the earth’s axis starts titling in ‘our’ favour again.

Time zones and seasonal time shifts are strange phenomena. At this time of year, I can’t help feeling happy about living in the west of a time zone. You have to feel for the Poles who have to put up with sunset times of 3.15 p.m. in the depths of winter, whilst the Spanish might still be enjoying some rays of winter sunshine – however feeble – almost 3 hours later. And of course, the further north you go, the shorter the days become. I once had a fascination with looking at webcams in northern Norway in deepest December, but gave up because they were suicidally depressing – and I don’t even live there.

Daylight saving measures were first mooted in the late 19^th century and governments have been tinkering with them ever since. The map above shows the countries and states that currently implement daylight saving measures. They were actually brought in as a way of conserving energy in the summer months during the First World War, at first in Germany, and then the idea was quickly copied by other industrial powers in the northern hemisphere. The principle behind daylight saving measures is to make the best use of daylight in a way which benefits the majority of the population, taking into such factors of (road) safety and the needs of the economy. In the late 1960s, the UK government introduced British Standard Time, with clocks running on 'summer time' throughout the year, so in fact, the country was a full hour ahead of GMT. As I know from first-hand experience it meant going to school in the dark, but it was a lot lighter in the evenings. The experiment was abandoned in 1971 ostensibly on the grounds of road safety.

Even in a country as compact geographically as the UK, daylight lengths can vary considerably from the north to south. In winter, the Shetlands experience less than 6 hours of daylight around the solstice, whilst Cornwall in the far south-west has over 8. (Of course, the reverse is true in the summer, when there are 5 hours of darkness in the northernmost outpost of the British Isles.) Furthermore, there's almost an hour's difference in sunset times between the west and the east of the country. The variation in times and lengths of days means that there are advocates of change (or non-change) around the country. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) favours a return to British Standard Time, with summer time (GMT+1) all year round. Going one stop further, some business people argue for the adoption of Central European Time, where the UK would effectively join the same time zone as the rest of Europe. Outdoor workers and farmers in Scotland however, are loath to see any changes to the current system, reasoning that summer time throughout the year would mean sunrise times as late as 10 a.m. 

A report in the NRC Handelsblad at the weekend pointed out yet another complication caused by the time shift. Many scientists, like Till Roenneberg, professor of medical psychology at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich – the subject of the NRC article - have argued that our body clocks are naturally attuned to sunrise and sunset times. By not listening to our biological clocks we put our health at risk. When the clocks change in the autumn, the additional hour, as well as the longer nighttime hours, give our bodies time to adjust and recover our natural sleep patterns. In the spring however, the ‘loss’ of an hour can take as much as a month to recoup in terms of sleep. Other studies have revealed that both suicide rates and the incidence of heart attacks increase after summer time comes into effect in the spring.

Changing the clocks poses other intriguing problems as well. I've often wondered what train drivers do in the middle of the night when the clocks go back. Presumably they go more slowly, or maybe stop for a nap and a cup of tea. And do they get paid overtime for this ‘extra’ hour? Self-evidently the reverse applies in spring when – somehow – they have to make up time. One supposes that traffic is scarce at that time of night anyway, so they can put on a spurt.

So what did I manage to do with those two extra hours? Simple: I spent my time penning this time-related blog.                 

Translation tips

Source texts come in all shapes and sizes. They are not always well written and not always intended for translation in the first place. Translators will always do their best, but customers shouldn’t automatically assume that a badly formulated source text can somehow be conjured into a creative and captivating target text. Here are a few tips for customers when they consider having documents and texts translated into another language.   

Think International

If your source text is primarily targeted at a domestic readership, it will not have the same impact at an international level. Your text may need adapting to reflect the social, cultural and economic nuances of the foreign market. For example, is an English text aimed at British or American audience? Or is it intended for a wider readership which uses English as a second language?    

Clarity, brevity and style

Write clearly in your own language. Avoid long sentences. Ask yourself if all the information is relevant. What is the audience? Will it keep the reader’s attention and interest? Get a colleague to check your text for style, clarity, spelling, punctuation, etc. before you even submit it for translation. Finalise your source language text before committing it for translation. Remember, last-minute changes can be expensive.

To get maximum impact, tell the translator exactly what the translation is for. A speech will require different use of language than a product information sheet or news article. A good translator will always adapt the style.

The native-speaker principle

You may pride yourself on how well you can speak a foreign language. But speaking is not writing! Never overestimate your written command of a second language. Resist the temptation to do it yourself. False friends are snakes in the grass! Clumsy use of a foreign language will be a turn-off. If you do decide to do it yourself, always have your text checked carefully by a competent native-speaker, especially if the document is intended for publication.

Background information

Translators are resourceful, but remember, they may not always be familiar with your business culture and language. Provide the translator with as much reference material as possible (illustrations, internet links, wordlist, glossaries, list of abbreviations, previous translations, etc.) Use a single contact person who deals with the translator exclusively.

Plan ahead

A translation should never be an afterthought, but part of the production chain. It is not simply a mechanical conversion of words into another language. A translation requires time and effort, sometimes more than is initially anticipated. Allow enough time for questions and feedback before the translation can be finalised.  

Lay-out

Is your text intended for publication or print? Remember that the length of a translated text may vary in length to the original source text. This is an important aspect in situations where space may be restricted.

And, of course, last but not least …

By now, this should be abundantly clear but resist the urge at all costs to use Google Translate and other automatic machine translation tools!

Texting is good for you

Apart from the obvious hazards of keying in a message whilst crossing a busy street, it’s a generally accepted fact nowadays that texting is good for you.

With text and instant messaging having become increasingly popular over the last decade, an argument has been raging as to whether texting is a help or hindrance to linguistic development and whether it is bastardising the language. The doom-mongers claim that texting will leave us mentally stunted, that it is leading to serious issues arising in the classroom, and that it is wrecking the language. The result will be a general decline in literacy. Others however are far more optimistic, claiming that the popularity of instant messaging on our mobile phones means that more and more people are using the written medium to communicate with each other. Textisms - that is, abbreviations, phonetic spellings, emoticons, etc. - rather than signalling sloppy use of the language, are actually a sign that the author of the message has a good grounding in the use of written language.

The public debate in the UK was sparked off by an article written by journalist and broadcaster, John Humphrys, who hosts the BBC’s flagship morning news programme on Radio 4. In an article he wrote for the (ever-the-conservative) Daily Mail in 2007 he described the ‘onward march of texters’ as a ‘sinister and deeply troubling’ development, with the SMS ‘vandals … destroying’ the language. He expressed a fear that ‘our written language may end up as series of ridiculous emoticons and ever-changing abbreviations’. 

Baroness Greenfield, a distinguished scientist researching into brain physiology, has also spoken about the dangers of young people’s preoccupation with instant messaging and the use of social media. In another Daily Mail article, she quoted a study by an Australian professor, which stated that mobile phone use, and in particular, predictive text tools, made children more impulsive and reckless. The speedy exchanges, Greenfield said, ‘may be contributing to the decline in our attention spans and perhaps even towards the rise of attention deficit disorders’.

The vast majority of research in the last few years however, has been favourable towards texting and instant messaging. Various studies have pointed out the fact that abbreviations, or a need to economise on the use of written text, have always been part of the language. In that sense, a conventional text message (which is limited to 160 characters) is no different to other forms of writing where space is constricted, such as a telegram, a classified advertisement, a newspaper headline or shorthand.

David Crystal, very much the guru of the English language, points out that texts which use textisms are linguistically quite complex, with texters (read ‘young people’) putting more effort into texting than is actually necessary. The reason he believes is that people find it fun. He calls this the ‘ludic drive’ and compares it to creative art forms we find in the Japanese haiku or the Welsh englyn.

Clare Wood, a researcher at Coventry University, has also carried out research into the use of texting and reading and spelling development. Most forms of textisms, she contends, ‘are phonetic in nature and require a level of phonological skill to produce and decode them, or a combination of alphabetic knowledge’. Her empirical research showed that children who used a higher proportion of textisms in their messages, relative to the overall length of the message, tended to be better at spelling than children who use more conventional spellings in their messages.      

Studies in Canada have also backed up these findings. In a paper written by Connie Varnhagen from the University of Alberta and two associates, the researchers conclude that there are few relationships between new language and [lack of] spelling ability. The researchers prefer to view electronic communication as both a new, complementary language to conventional written language and a natural experiment in the development of written communication.

Hans Bennis is professor of language variation at the University of Amsterdam. In an article in Onze Taal, he points out that people from all strata of society are writing more than ever before. Step onto any bus or train today and you’ll see people busily typing into their mobile phones or tablets. He has invented the term Korterlands to describe an abbreviated form of the Dutch language. And it’s nothing new he argues: Korterlands contains traditional abbreviations (which are rife in Dutch), such d.w.z., i.v.m. and enz. and other forms which have been used widely in e.g. classified ads for decades. It is hardly surprising that people are creative in using language for such applications as text messaging, twitter and social networking because of the number of permitted characters. The use of Korterlands, he concludes, does not form a threat to the language ability of writers. Conversely, it is the result of a creative process which assumes a working knowledge of the written language.

One thing that all these studies have in common is a wish to see these developments being included on the language curriculum in schools. Crystal: There are an extraordinary number of ways in which people play with language – creating riddles, solving crosswords, playing Scrabble, inventing new words, etc. Professional writers do the same, providing catchy copy for advertising slogans, thinking up puns in newspaper headlines, and writing poems, novels and plays. Children quickly learn that one of the most enjoyable things you can do with language is to play with its sounds, words, grammar and spelling. That, of course, includes texting.

On a personal level, as a translator who works with language on a daily basis I enjoy the challenge of a text. If you’re struggling for space in an SMS message, foreign words can often provide a solution, that is, if the recipient knows how to decode the language in the first place, so of course, it doesn’t work for everyone. Here are a few examples: weer (NL=weather), ici (FR=here), e (IT=and), ieri (IT=yesterday), bis (GER=until), ex (LATIN=from).

 *Cartoon credit

Minority languages

Universities slash language studies: it’s the type of headline you’d be more likely to come across in a UK newspaper, but in fact these were the words ("Faculteiten schrappen talenstudies") that adorned the home news pages of de Volkskrant last week. The article reported that a large number of language courses at Dutch universities were to be disbanded over the coming years. The reasons are twofold: cuts in the education budget; and – perhaps more alarmingly – a drastic fall in the number of students enrolling for language degrees.

At least 15 courses would disappear in the short term, either scrapped completely, or subsumed into other more generalised degree courses, such as communication sciences, culture and media studies, and European studies. Government policy is for universities to offer courses with a broader (i.e. less specialised) base, the assumption being that this will lead to a decrease in drop-out rates amongst students. Funding will be conditional on a commitment to these broader based courses. In any case, because of the dwindling numbers, universities can hardly justify offering some of the more ‘offbeat’ languages.

For a country which prides itself in its linguistic adeptness and a historic standing as a major trading nation, this represents something of a reverse. The decision to stop Portuguese language studies at the University of Utrecht (the only one of its kind in North-west Europe) is not only representative of this malaise, but particularly disturbing not least in view of the fact that Portuguese is the sixth most widely spoken language in the world and what's more, the official language of Brazil, one of the great emerging economies of the 21^st century. The hosting of football’s World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games in 2016 will only increase Brazil’s profile on the world stage.

Perhaps an even more worrying development at a ‘local’ level over the past decades has been the acute lack of interest in German as a foreign language. Not only do the number of student enrolments point to an indifference in learning the language of its immediate neighbour and biggest trading partner, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence too. English is hugely popular amongst Dutch schoolchildren. It is seen as cool and sexy. German, on the other hand is looked up as stuffy and outmoded. It seems the more the Netherlands embraces the Anglo-Saxon culture in its schools and universities, the further it is turning its back on the 100 million German-speakers in its back yard and, in Germany, the largest and most robust European economy.

Even in the southernmost province, Limburg, where the local dialect and culture is bound up historically not with Holland, but the Rhineland, there is a widespread aversion to German. Furthermore its school-leavers flock to university towns like Delft, Leiden and Utrecht, rather than Aachen, a mere stone’s throw away, which has one of the biggest and liveliest student populations in Western Europe being home of the prestigious RWTH, Aachen’s technical university. Aachen has never attracted large numbers of Dutch students in the past anyway, but you would think that with a single European market and increasing cross-border cooperation in the form of Euregional development, careers advisers might give it more of a plug and interest would be on the rise, not on the decline. The Dutch student society at the RWTH, Alcunius, reports that there are a mere 150 Dutch students amongst an overall student population of 30,000!

Bi-lingual (Dutch-English) streams are sprouting up at schools throughout the province of Limburg (as well as the rest of the Netherlands). More and more Dutch universities are offering mainstream courses taght in English, Maastricht in particular. (You wonder how these establishments are quite going to find enough teachers proficient to teach English to (near-)native levels, but perhaps that is another question for the time being.)

Not only is there an over-emphasis - and over-reliance - on English as a world language in the Dutch economy, there has been an increasing anglicisation of its culture too. In addition, it is not just language studies that are facing a crisis. A broad spectrum of humanities subjects too have been undergoing a demise: in troubled times, their economic value is being increasingly called into question.

So how worried should we be? Is this just part of a wider trend in the globalised climate we live in, or will a return to economic prosperity herald a linguistic revival? Only time will tell.

Euromyths explained

In response to growing euroscepticism across the continent and what’s looking like a bumpy ride ahead for the eurozone, The Guardian and 5 other quality European newspapers (Le Monde, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, La Stampa and El Pais) recently joined forces in an initiative aimed at building up “a more nuanced picture of the EU and exploring what Europe does well and what not so well”. 

The project kicked off by analysing the benefits that the EU has brought to its 500 million inhabitants. The six newspapers in the Europa project were then asked to stereotype each other, and then asked cultural commentators in each country to assess how accurate they are. It makes interesting reading, not least because many of the stereotypes actually hold true.

Whilst neither of the two quality Dutch dailies (de Volkskrant and NRC Handelsblad) seem to be involved in the project, this week an interesting article relating to the issues in question appeared in de Volkskrant examining the myth and reality behind the UK’s perceived antagonism to Europe, in particular, European directives. A translation of the article, which was penned by de Volkskrant’s UK and Ireland correspondent, Patrick van IJzendoorn, is produced below:

Brussels explained for Brits: this would probably be the most apt title for the letters that are sent from time to time by European Union press officers to British newspapers. For years they have been trying to refute the euromyths that have a tendency to spread like wildfire through the islands. No! No! No! they regularly try to assure readers, Brussels does not plan to harmonise the size of condoms, to change place names, to remove the Queen from passports, or to fit black boxes in cars. And though The Guardian might like to portray things differently, Great Britain meets all the European criteria for being an island.

Sometimes breakdowns in communications are so damaging that a Euro Commissioner might have to step in and write the correspondence him or herself. Only last week for example, Michel Barnier, responsible for the internal market, wrote in The Daily Telegraph that the UK was perfectly within its rights to test doctors from other EU member states for their proficiency in English.

Since the case of a Nigerian-born German doctor, whose command of English was so poor it led to the death of a patient, hit the headlines four years ago, Brussels has been under fire [again]. Most Britons labour under the misapprehension that European legislation prohibits the country from implementing any kind of language test for doctors. A surprised Barnier responded however, that no such provisions are contained within the said directive.

Despite its obstructionist reputation, the UK has a tendency to regard such directives as set in stone. Last year, the UK-based arm of Bombardier lost an order to Siemens because British civil-servants, mindful of their renowned tradition for fair play, had observed the tendering guidelines [too] fastidiously. Moreover, by adding additional provisos to directives, British civil-servants can sometimes appear to be European than their continental counterparts. One classic example of ‘goldplating’ is a twelve-page directive on abattoirs. Whereas the French managed to summarise the directive into just seven pages, the British civil-service succeeded in increasing the scope of the directive to the proportions of a novella.

It is directives with respect to British hobbyhorses such as health & safety and equal rights that start to lead a life of their own once they are washed ashore at Dover. One such general directive, on safe working practices, was interpreted as banning sliding poles in fire-stations. When Brussels stipulates that every building has to have an entrance for disabled people, the British add the proviso that this must be the main entrance. Another directive about providing adequate information on public transport systems led South West Trains to take a decision to bombard passengers, even those in designated quiet carriages, with running announcements - all superfluous to requirements - for the whole of the journey.

Where does this overzealousness come from? In his book This Blessed Plot, journalist Hugo Young, suggested that it’s all part of a conspiracy theory. When, after several abortive attempts, the UK was finally admitted to Europe's top table of nations, key europhile mandarins, especially those at the Foreign Office, purportedly had a secret plan to introduce federalism through the back door. Whereas the French say ‘yes’ to directives from Brussels and then blatantly flout the rules, the British do exactly the opposite. They adhere to the directives so fanatically that a market-stall holder might be threatened with a prison sentence for selling fruit in pounds and ounces.

In this way, ‘Brussels’ becomes the perfect scapegoat. In order to combat euroscepticism and to give member states greater freedom, the European Commission has decided that directives need not be implemented in exaggerated fashion. Let this be the only directive that the British disregard outright.

Translation of article in de Volkskrant, Friday 27 January 2012

Word of the Year 2011

With the mince pies and sherry at the ready, there’s probably no better time to reflect on the year gone by. Since words are the tools of my trade, it's worth taking a look at some of the words that made it on to the scene over the last 12 months.

First of all, what’s the criteria for Word of the Year?  
Well, according to the Oxford Dictionaries website:

"The Word of the Year is a word or expression that we feel has attracted a great deal of interest in the year to date. It need not have been coined within the past twelve months and it does not have to be a word that will stick around for a good length of time. It may not currently be in our English dictionaries, and it may never be deemed common enough to be included. It simply has to be a word which we feel has been embraced by the general public this year and has lasting potential as a word of cultural significance."

So, what were their findings?

"Protest was a huge inspiration in this year’s Word of the Year contest, and our shortlist in the UK included Arab Spring, Occupy, and hacktivism. Phone hacking (hardly new to the English language but one which resurfaced in the wake of the News of the World phonehacking scandal) also came close to the top spot.

"Some more colourful contenders which were considered earlier in the selection process, but which didn’t quite cut the mustard, included: bunga bunga, as used in the context of former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s infamous parties, crowdfunding, defined as the practice of funding a project or venture by raising many small amounts of money from a large number of people, facepalm, a gesture in which the palm of one’s hand is brought to one’s face as an expression of dismay, exasperation, embarrassment, etc., and fracking, the forcing open of fissures in subterranean rocks by introducing liquid at a high pressure, especially to extract oil or gas."

Fighting off this stiff competition, the word (or words) that was deemed more appropriate than all the rest was squeezed middle. This term is defined as “the section of society regarded as particularly affected by inflation, wage freezes, and cuts in public spending during a time of economic difficulty, consisting principally of those people on low or middle incomes.” The phrase is attributed to the Labour leader of the opposition in the UK, Ed Miliband


There were other words too that popped up in the news. Economic phrases included bond yields, sovereign debt and haircuts. But does anyone know what they mean? We were also one step closer to knowing who Higgs Boson was with the elusive subatomic constituent known as the God Particle travelling between Switzerland and Italy at speeds unfathomable to the human mind.  

So, what about Dutch?
In the Netherlands, Tuigdorp was voted the Van Dale Woord van het Jaar 2011, an isolated location where habitual offenders are sent to and a term which has been attributed to none other than Mr Geert Wilders. In second place comes caviapolitie, or 'animal cops' who now form their own division within the police force. Number 3 is occupy: hardly surprising that there is some cross-over between languages here. Likewise, the youth word planking, a craze that involves posing for a photograph whilst lying facedown in a rigid planklike position. In sport, wordfeuden, from Wordfeud, a multiplayer word game for iPhone and Android devices, has been popularised, though I'm not entirely sure where the element of sport comes into it.


Are you, like me, one of those people who likes their creature comforts when travelling by train? Well, fear no more, in 2011 the NS came up with the idea of the plaszak. The national train operator dreamed up this receptacle so that passengers on toiletless trains could gain some relief should their trains ever get stuck in snow-drifts, or, as is more common in the Netherlands, suffer downed power lines.  


My own personal favourite?        
There's something about confined public spaces that gives certain types of people (teenagers usually) an urge to play tinny music to each other on their mobile phones. Well now someone's devised a word for this irritaing habit: it's called sodcasting.
If I had my way, I'd have these mobile devices chucked into a plaszak - after it's been used of course. 


What a cheerful note to end the year on. Happy New Year folks! 


Links:
Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2011

Charlie Brooker's guide to the buzzword of the year in The Guardian

American Word of the Year

Van Dale Woord van het Jaar 

Onze Taal Woord van het Jaar

Wort des Jahres (German)

Taalcultuur in Limburg

I usually flick through the local free weekly newspapers just to check I’m not missing anything important. Now and again however, there’s an article that catches my eye. On 16 October, for instance, an article on Limburg dialects appeared in the weekend freebie, Zondag, announcing the establishment of a new professorship, Taalcultuur in Limburg, at the University of Maastricht. Ever since my Dutch teacher (see previous blog entry) told me about the sjlips-kravatt line (the Benrather Linie), I’ve been interested in Limburg dialects. Plus I’m fascinated by the fact that although my son and I have always spoken English with each other, his mother-tongue is actually Limburgs. Below is my loosely translated English version of the article (written by Frank Benneker).  

Since October of this year the University of Maastricht has had a chair devoted to local dialects in the province called Taalcultuur in Limburg. The holder of this new position is Leonie Cornips and she will be responsible for research into the local dialects that are spoken in the region.

Although she grew up in the province, surprisingly Ms Cornips doesn’t speak the dialect. “I understand all the different variants, I just don’t speak one.” Cornips received a doctorate for her study of Dutch that was being used in Heerlen, which has been heavily influenced over the past century by outsiders moving there, and later she immersed herself in the dialect of the town. “Compared to the eastern and western parts of the country, there are differences in sentence structure. In Limburg you’ll hear sentences like ‘Ik schenk me een kop koffie in’ which sounds odd to other Dutch speakers and is often labelled as incorrect, even though such sentences are widely used in Limburg.”

The new chair is co-funded by the Dutch province of Limburg. Cornips will be researching the relationship between language and identity in Limburg. “The province has its own distinct identity, especially since Limburgers are keen to differentiate themselves from Hollanders. Even so, there are differences in identity within the province too, for example, between the north and south of Limburg and between rural and urban areas. The question remains: to be a real Limburger, is it necessary to speak Limburgs?”

As part of her research, Cornips will be investigating how children who are brought up in Dutch and Limburgs are influenced by the two. “A lot of studies have been done into children who are raised bilingually, say in Dutch and English, but of course these two languages are distinct. Part of my research is to find out how children’s command of Dutch is affected by the amount of dialect they speak. For example, recent studies have shown that the neuter definite article het is dying out in the highly urbanised west of the country, so nowadays kids there are starting to say de meisje instead of het meisje. Children who speak Limburgs are quicker to identify masculine, feminine and neuter genders because dialect differentiates between them, which can be more of a help when they start learning German or French.”

“I’ll also be carrying out anthropological studies to find out in what situations use of Limburgs prevails over Dutch as a spoken language. Class, it appears, plays no role at all in dialect use and it’s not unusual for management meetings to be held in Limburgs, where this would be unheard of in other parts of the Netherlands. How big a factor does regional identity play in this? This is one of the questions that I will be asking.”

One thing’s for sure: dialect is alive and kicking in Limburg. “A study in 2004 asked parents what ‘language’ they spoke to their children. The results showed that parents in Limburg more frequently spoke dialect with their kids than their counterparts in Friesland and Zeeland. And throughout the province, it’s common to hear children speaking dialect.” 

For more information:
Limburgish (Wikipedia article in English)
in Dutch:

Limburg dialects

Veldeke Limburg

Hoogleeraar Taalcultuur in Limburg (Veldeke article)