Articles tagged "education"
The Wanderer Returns
Posted by Jody in Doc Byrne’s Translation Miscellany on January 18th, 2010
All it takes is a sabre and dodgy hair to turn an academic into something a bit more heroic and dashing (via maskworld.com)
Last week we had our annual graduation ceremony here in Sheffield where we get to see our students off, wish them well and wear ridiculous robes inspired by medieval priests. I’m almost ashamed to say it but I love the pomp and pageantry of a good graduation ceremony: the robes, the processions, the trumpets. Okay so in England I have to sit – I mean stand – through the English national anthem, something that doesn’t really sit right with an Irish person but I’m a guest in their country so I’ll respect their ways. As long as they don’t expect me to sing it. My mother once told me of various Irish patriots who, when required to take an oath of allegiance to the Crown in order to take up their seats as MPs in the British parliament, would cross their fingers so that they could avoid any crises of conscience or general feelings of dirtiness afterwards. Childish? Perhaps, but the rebel in me likes it.
I also like the peacock-like strutting and suspicious sideways glances you get from some academics as they eye up your robes, trying to figure out where you got your PhD and whether your robes are nicer than theirs. Big-headed as it is, I know my DCU robes were nicer than most of the other doctoral robes there although one colleague invariably greets me as d’Artagnan when he sees me. I suppose the fact that I’ve been experimenting with a musketeer-style beard doesn’t help matters. The only robes I have seen that could be regarded as nicer or at least as nice as DCU robes are the Sorbonne (think medieval judge with an octagonal hat) and possibly Berkeley (think P-Diddy in black and purple velour). Cambridge’s robes wouldn’t look out of place in an old-fashioned vampire film but I’m not sure whether that’s a good or a bad thing.
But what struck me about this graduation was the number of people who didn’t turn up to collect their parchment at the ceremony. I’ve noticed this more so in England than in Ireland and it has become much more noticeable of late. In some departments, I noticed that around a third of the graduands were conferred in absentia. Even more baffling was the number of PhDs who didn’t bother turning up. I know that, particularly in the case of overseas students, the expense of travelling across the world to collect a piece of paper which would cost a fiver to post is prohibitive, but people based at least within a two-hour flight of Sheffield could turn up, surely.
Although it seems nearly everyone has a degree or two these days, I still think getting a degree is something to be proud of and it’s definitely something to celebrate. I wonder whether a person who doesn’t recognise this really appreciates the opportunity afforded them and whether they really appreciate the value of university study. It’s not just about the bit of paper that lets you put BA, MA or MSc after your name so that you can get a pay-rise. It’s about doing something worthwhile, something that challenges you and ultimately something that, win, lose or draw, improves you in some way.
Even though education sometimes seems to be all about the money these days, an education is still a privilege, one that not everyone gets. Deep down, I find it hard not to think of people who couldn’t be bothered turning up (as opposed to those who genuinely can’t make it) as being ever so slightly disrespectful.
Another thing that struck me about graduations here in Sheffield is that the speeches made by the chancellor, or whoever happens to be representing him at a particular ceremony, are always nice, safe and uncontroversial. He talks about the university and how great it is, the value of an education, the tremendous achievement and hard work put in by students. Ceremonies always finish off with a set-piece where graduates are asked to stand up, turn around and applaud their friends and families in the audience to thank them for their support. Nothing wrong with that at all you say but my in own alma mater, under two different presidents – Danny O’Hare and Ferdinand von Prondzynski – graduation speeches usually contain political commentary and, where appropriate, criticism of government policy as it affects education or employment.
During his tenure it seemed that pretty much every one of Ferdinand von Prondzynski’s graduation speeches was reported in the Irish press. Some people might think that this is an abuse of power and that a graduation ceremony should be a happy time and that nobody should rock the boat, but having heard and read several of these speeches, I think it’s highly appropriate. I like the idea of the head of a university addressing the next generation of professionals, leaders, parents, politicians, tax payers etc. one last time and sending them on their way with the embers of a fire in their bellies which will hopefully preserve the spirit of questioning, challenging and thinking which a university education tries to instill in students. Instead of bland congratulations and not-so-subtle hints at donations when they make their fortunes, students are made to realise that the end of their studies doesn’t mark the end of thinking. Then again, maybe I just like trouble-makers who rock the boat.
Oh, and before you ask, I don’t have any pictures of me in my robes!
Counteracting government language policy
Posted by Jody in Doc Byrne’s Translation Miscellany on December 1st, 2009
Inexplicable and ill-advised changes in the English education system and National Curriculum as a result of the Education Act (2002) have meant that fewer and fewer school students are learning languages at GSCE level and beyond. Where once languages were a compulsory part of the curriculum at second level, they are now an optional subject. Given that learning languages isn’t always the easiest thing in the world and given the pressure on students to achieve top grades, it’s not really surprising that there has been a fall-off in the numbers of students picking up a “hard” subject like a language. This situation hasn’t been helped by bleating from British industry who decry the lack of literacy and numeracy skills among school leavers while forgetting to recognise the importance of language. Now if you compare this to Ireland where a recent article said that one third of Irish employers wanted Chinese taught in schools, you can see the different attitudes to core skills. The fact is that speaking a foreign language is vital in this day and age and literacy shouldn’t simply be restricted to our own mother tongue.
This, of course, has had a knock-on effect on university admissions. With fewer people leaving school with languages and possibly being conditioned into thinking that they are too hard to learn, university courses are seeing fewer applications, particularly in certain languages. In the case of translation, I’ve heard people talk about a shortage of qualified translators, particularly with “difficult” languages like German or Dutch.
There seems to be a strange mindset which sees some people think that speaking English is enough to get you by, but the thought that languages could be an optional part of the curriculum is both blinkered and worrying. Britain, which has been known to assert that it’s rightful place is at the heart of Europe and the wider international community really should know better.
Thankfully, various organisations are doing their bit to try and counteract the worrying decline in students studying languages. Channel 4 recently relaunched their “Try Life in Another Language” ad campaign on television. Featuring a series of slick music videos with catchy foreign language songs, the campaign aims to relate languages to various areas of life that actually matter to people: music, fashion, careers, sport, travel, celebrity. None of your woolly intercultural awareness, world peace and language for language’s sake here. Okay so it might be a little patronising but it’s certainly something that catches the attention and paints languages in a useful and positive light. They even mention some of the festivals in France, Germany and Spain that you can go to. I’d like to think that they got the idea for this from me but they probably didn’t. Still, it’s good to see languages being promoted, nonetheless.
Time to throw away your dictionaries?
Posted by Jody in Doc Byrne’s Translation Miscellany on October 16th, 2009
One of the great myths of technical translation is that it is all about specialised terminology. It isn’t that surprising really because it is one of the first things that strikes most people when they look at a technical text. But is it really such a problem? Peter Newmark once said that terminology accounts for a mere 5-10% of a typical technical text. I recently spoke to a senior translator from the World Intellectual Property Organization who said that their analyses of patent abstracts showed a 50% terminology content but I would say that, given the specialised and highly specific function of these texts, this is probably the exception rather than the rule.
A more practical use for dictionaries?
But anyway, assuming that Newmark’s estimate is true and even taking into account the myriad types of texts where the proportion of terminology may vary slightly, you have to ask the question: So what? What’s the big deal with terminology?
Traditionally in translation circles researchers have only been interested in terminology but unless you’re actually a terminologist, to reduce technical translation down to the level of a purely terminological issue is downright blinkered and misses the point completely. This approach also had the rather unfortunate effect of supporting Friedrich Schleiermacher’s horrible claim way back in 1813 that technical translation is a mechanical activity that anyone with a grasp of two languages can do. I know that as a philosopher it was his job to spout all kinds of insane nonsense on everything from the meaning of life to how many sheets of toilet paper you should use for a number 2, but I’d still like to bludgeon him about the head with a couple of soggy dictionaries for saying that. Oh, if I only had a time machine…
If you ask any experienced technical translator they’ll tell you that, more often than not, it’s not individual terms that cause most problems, but the way those terms fit into sentences that cause the problems. To tell the truth, depending on the subject area and the language pair you are working with, specialised terminology is sometimes (though not always) the easiest part of a text to translate. In other words it’s the things in a text that aren’t terminology-related that pose the greatest challenges; it’s not the cargo but the ship that needs attention. Things like register, style, set phrases, references to laws or sometimes whether certain information is appropriate for the target audience or whether the way in which information is sequenced in instructions, for example, makes sense. Sometimes you just don’t know what it is the original author is trying to say. That’s what causes us problems and that’s what we should be concerned about instead of getting undergarments in a bunch about specialised terminology. It doesn’t matter how good our cargo of precious specialised terms is, if we’re going to load them onto a leaky old rust bucket which will probably sink before it leaves the harbour, we’re wasting our time. This isn’t to say that getting specialised terminology right is not important. It simply means that we need to put it in perspective; we shouldn’t devote too much time to it and risk neglecting other areas which are equally or even more important.
There are, however, two real issues at play here. The first is the tendency of people to become fixated on the specialised terminology in a text – perfectly understandable to a certain extent, particularly in the case of trainee translators or if you are less familiar with the subject area. When training to become a translator it is sometimes easy to become obsessed with finding the best specialised dictionaries because those specialised terms are so damn scary.
This leads on to the second point which is where should people go to find terminology. Accepted wisdom would tell us to look in a dictionary but many people would disagree for the simple fact that dictionaries, like computers, become obsolete the second they are made. With technology, for example, evolving so quickly new terms are emerging while others fall out of use and even with the latest production methods, traditional dictionaries cannot be manufactured quickly enoughto stay completely up-to-date . The result is that dictionaries will contain words which are never used while omitting new terms which are used frequently. What’s more, you can never be really sure which of the possible words suggested by a dictionary is the right one. In the absence of detailed contextual information, using a dictionary can sometimes be a lottery and I often have a sinking feeling after using one. My students sometimes look at me in disbelief when I tell them to forget about dictionaries, that they are just a last resort – finding reliable parallel texts which contain the terms is always more useful because you get the translation as well as the collocation and other stylistic information to boot. Soon enough though, most people realise on their own that their efforts are best spent on finding parallel texts instead of searching for the ultimate specialised dictionary.
The devil is a great language teacher
Posted by Jody in Doc Byrne’s Translation Miscellany on October 9th, 2009
Technically I was learning Spanish here with my band Mortuum
I was toying with calling this post “The devil made me do it” or “Heavy metal made me what I am” but I was a little concerned about the kind of people that would attract to the site. Anyway, what I’m trying to get across is that in this day and age of global English and what many people regard as cultural homogenisation, heavy metal is one of the few remaining bastions where it’s actually okay not to be a “world citizen” speaking (and singing) in some clichéd mid-Atlantic variety of English.
This might sound like some pathetic exercise in jingoistic fist-waving at all things global but it’s really not. Spend more than a few minutes looking through the Myspace pages of various metal bands and you’ll notice something strangely curious. Lots of them are singing in their own languages. Even the people who speak languages that aren’t considered to be “beautiful” in the traditional sense. It doesn’t make sense. It shouldn’t make sense, but for some strange reason it does.
A few months ago I discovered a band called Equilibrium who hail from Bavaria in Germany. They’re really good in the battle/folk metal genre but their vocal style means that unless you’re really used to this kind of music, they could be singing in any language. But in their press release they mention the fact that they have established a huge fanbase “despite the fact that they sing in German”. This seems to acknowledge the perception that in order to succeed, you need to sing in English. Thankfully, this seems to be changing primarily as a result of the folk metal movement where bands take pride in their cultural heritage and combine it with metal music.
One of the very first bands I can remember to brush aside the “rules” of heavy metal was a thrash metal band called Sepultura from Brazil. I’ll admit they’ve never been one of my favourite bands, mainly because they have a truly annoying vocalist, but they have had some rare moments of inspiration. Ratamahatta from their Roots album is one such moment and it is a mix of indigenous Brazilian rhythms combined with stripped down metal guitars and a whole dose of Brazilian Portuguese lyrics. Like most people at the time, I had never heard anything like this before: it was dark and exotic, sinister and a little bit hypnotic and I was absolutely blown away. The video was in stop-motion and with it’s voodoo, zombies and jungles it just served to add to the whole awe of the experience. It will probably be one of the best examples of national pride expressed in metal and it certainly made me realise that there’s a lot more to Brazilian music than samba and the Bossa nova and there’s more to Brazil than the carnival in Rio. It wasn’t long after that album though that fatherhood and various internal squabbles put Sepultura on a lengthy hiatus but at least they went out on top. [Although other bands like England's Skyclad were probably the first to fuse folk-influenced music with metal, Sepultura showed it could be done with mass appeal and without being cheesy]
Sepultura -- Ratamahatta
(Language: Brazilian Portuguese; Genre: Thrash)Some of the lyrics:
Biboca, Garagem, Favela
Fubanga, Maloca, Bocada
Maloca, Bocada, Fubanga
Favela, Garagem, Biboca, Porra !!!
Ze Do Caixao, Zumbi, Lampiao
Ratamahatta !!! …
Some of the best bands sing in their own language despite the commercial pressures to sing in English to satisfy the demands of the UK and US markets -- both notorious for their lower than average foreign language skills. But while singing in English can kick-start a band’s career -- it can have quite the opposite effect and can be quite be fatal for a band’s success. Look at Rammstein from Germany. The main reason I started listening to them was because they spoke German and heavy metal always sounds good in German. I was one of the few kids on the dancefloor who could sing along with the songs and I liked that a lot. But their brand of metal, a kind of operatic industrial hardcore, worked incredibly well in German. And so they got more and more popular, and more and more people I know started learning a bit of German. I know it definitely helped to motivate me and it made learning the language a lot more fun.
Rammstein Video
Then what happened? The fools started throwing in the odd English line here and there. Now more and more of their songs have English; some are even more English than German and in my opinion they have completely lost what made them unique. Now they’re no different to any other generic, middle-of-the-road rock band that plays to hordes of mopey-looking emo kids with dodgy hairstyles and too much eyeliner (and that’s just the boys!). The decision to start pandering to what they thought non-German speaking audiences wanted was seen by a lot of people as selling out and Rammstein have started to lose a lot of their shine .
But bizarrely enough a hybrid approach hasn’t affected bands like Korpiklaani who have many bilingual songs. It’s possible that they started out with varying degrees of bilingual-ness and so can’t be accused of suddenly changing their philosophy. Perhaps it is possible to combine more than one language but like, treason, it’s simply a matter of dates.
Some languages lend themselves really well to contemporary music, although many only really work well for particular genres. Think of French: perfect for love songs and folk music but terrible for rap (but then rap sounds pretty rubbish in most languages). And now, thanks to bands like Orakle, it turns out that French works for black metal too. Some languages like German are obvious choices for metal but there are surprises -- Finnish for example, has a particularly epic feel to it and Spanish can muster up a level of menace and intimidation that few others can. I’ll let you make up your mind about Master’s Hammer from the Czech Republic, Lithuania’s Obtest and Latvia’s Skyforger who all sing in their native languages.
People have tried to copy foreign music styles and transpose them into other languages. There’s a particularly dodgy band called Mortiis (don’t even bother looking them up, it’s really not worth it) who have emulated the sound and style of Rammstein really well except they sing in English (despite being Norwegian) but it still doesn’t work. Sometimes you need the va va voom of a foreign language.
On the other side of the coin are those bands who don’t sing in their native tongue but still manage to somehow avoid the acultural blandness of their peers and remain firmly rooted in their own culture. They actually succeed in bringing people into their cultural circle. Bands like Amorphis who base almost all of their lyrics on the Finnish epic poem the Kalevala but sing in English are a prime example. They have the accessibility that monolingual English speakers crave but still “get their message out there”. (Their lyrics are pretty corny in all honesty but you’ve got to give them credit all the same!).
Ireland too has a proud tradition in this particular approach. Possibly because, shamefully, not enough of us speak Irish well enough to be able to write or understand the lyrics (myself included) or possibly because Irish is one of those languages that doesn’t lend itself to metal but the vast majority of celtic metal bands like Cruachan or Waylander sing in English but about themes from Irish folklore and mythology. But unlike bands such as Amorphis they incorporate lots of influences from traditional Irish music and culture, which in my mind, makes up for the lack of Gaeilge. I do know of one metal band from Cork called Corr Mhóna who do sing in Irish but alas, I think they’re something of a rarity. You can listen to some of their work here.
For me, one of the biggest aids for learning languages was listening to foreign bands -- Brujeria and Radikal Hardcore in Spanish and Rammstein, Die ärtze and Die Fantastischen Vier in German. I know a few people who have learned languages simply to find out what their favourite bands were singing about. I even know of Irish people who have learned how to speak Irish in order to play folk-based metal; sometimes even just to research the lyrics. For those of you not in the know, Irish children begin learning Irish in primary school and continue right through secondary school. Unfortunately for most of us, our competence rarely extends beyond “where are the toilets?”, “my name is…”, “what’s your name?” and “how are you? ” so this is some achievement.
What better way to practice your Spanish pronunciation than singing in Spanish about satanic Mexican drug dealers (this is me by the way!)
I would even go so far as to say that I am where I am today in part because of foreign heavy metal. It made languages even more relevant to me because it wasn’t just about getting a job it was about having fun too. Listening to German and Spanish metal bands helped me through those dark days when all I seemed to do was practice grammar exercises and nothing seemed to be sticking and I wondered if I’d ever make it as a translator. I even learned a bit of French so I could go to a festival. Metal has also helped me from an intercultural point of view. No matter where you are in the world, a Metallica t-shirt is always a Metallica t-shirt. You can be in the middle of a small village in the middle of nowhere, see someone in a Napalm Death and know that you have something in common and could probably have several beers and laughs.
But in all seriousness, given the fact that so many multilingual hairy rockers are wandering around because of metal shouldn’t more attention be paid to promoting music, not just metal but all types of music? Shouldn’t the EU, for example, promote and subsidise bands that sing in their own language. Not only will it make for much better music but it will undoubtedly provide another means of promoting its aim of multilingualism throughout the continent.
A Quick Crash Course in Non-English Language Metal
There are so many bands to choose from that the problem is deciding who to pick and which languages to represent. Some bands are far too extreme to include, whether because of their music, their vocal style or their subject matter so that helped to narrow the field somewhat. But there are still hundreds of songs. In the end I decided to pick stuff I like a lot so what you have here is a very short introduction which is very tailored towards my own musical tastes. All I’ll say is if you don’t have eardrums of leather and haven’t listened to much metal, turn the volume down a little bit but definitely give each song a proper listen.
Equilibrium -- Blut im Auge
(Language: German; Genre: Battle Metal)
From the lyrics:
Was ich sah auf meiner Reise,
Scheint zu wahr es zu erzähln,
Drum versuch ich auf meine Weise,
Euch mit mir dort hinzunehmn.Wie ich einst auf dunklen Pfaden,
Weit von hier in Nordens Land,
Sah was mir den Atem raubte,
Was ich bis da nicht gekannt.Blut Im Auge
Auf wunde Knie
So sank ich nieder
So fand ich sie
Korpiklaani -- Keep on Galloping
(Language: Finnish; Genre: Folk Metal/Huppa)
From the lyrics:
Lennä, laukkaa heposeni,
lennä, laukkaa hallavaharja,
kiiä halki kangasmaitten,
murjo poikki pientareitten,
kanna minnuu maailmalla,
kulettele kuskiasi,
näytä kaikki nähtävyyet,
uuet maat ja uuet paikat.Mikäs täss’ on matkatessa,
mikäs täss’ on elellessä,
kaikkee saam mie matkav’ varrelt’,
kaikkee mitä tarvittenki.
Paljon nähty maailmalla,
paljon vielä nähtävätä,
monta maita minun mennä,
Kuulla noita tarinoita.
Finntroll -- Trollhammaren
(Language: Swedish, one of Finland’s official languages; Genre: Metal/Folk Metal)
From the lyrics:
Trollhammaren sveper igen!
Hugga ned, broder igen!
Hör det sista ropet -
Trollhammaren är här!Trollhammaren!
Han är inte en människa.
Inte bräcklig och svag som dig.
Du ska vara maktlös.
Inga ögon ser din änd.Trollhammaren!
Sedan mörkret övertog.
Räds den frostens kalla fingrar.
Som griper tag och förlever.
Under kommande vinternatt.
Brujeria -- La Migra
(Language: Mexican Spanish; Genre: Death/Grindcore)
From the lyrics:
Siguen al brujo, te llevo por gratis
Trae to abuela, to tio, el lelo
Pinches polleros, viven pa’ feria
Te cobran to sueldo y largan to abuela
La pinche migra te esta esperando
Te devuelven despues de una paliza
La migra haya to abuela en el desierto
La mandaron a Tijuana pegada con palos
El brujo tiene contrabando bien bueno
Numeros de seguro y cartas verdes
Arkona -Pokrovi Nebesnogo Startsa
(Language: Russian; Genre: Death/Pagan Metal)
ArkonaA
Weathering the storm in university
Posted by Jody in Doc Byrne’s Translation Miscellany on October 1st, 2009
The new academic year is well and truly underway in pretty much every university everywhere and for most of us, academics and students alike, it’s a very hectic and, in some ways, exciting time as we meet our new students eager (hopefully) to learn new skills, put the finishing touches and generally come to grips with the new timetable and the bizarre room allocations which see us trekking to the most far flung outposts of the campus.
There are easier ways of weathering the storm
This year, however, I’ve noticed that we have a lot more students than we had last year and it’s gotten me wondering why. Last year, I don’t think anyone was surprised at the lower numbers because it came in the midst of the hysteria about the global recession and nobody was certain about anything. In such a climate, you can understand the reluctance of people to commit to the expense of higher education. Why would you leave a job to go back to university when there’s a chance you might not find another one for a while.
But while this explains what happened last year, it doesn’t explain this year. Now, we’ve all come to terms with the recession and most of the feelings of shock, horror and panic have gone, giving way instead to a grim acceptance that the economy will be in tatters for years to come and employment prospects are going to be quite dismal unless you do something beef up your arsenal with some new qualifications.
Are people realising that the best place to sit out a recession is in university? After all, providing you have the money set aside or can get a big enough loan, going back to university full-time means you have at least one full year where you don’t have to worry about whether you’re going to be made redundant. From my own experience here in Sheffield (which is purely speculative and by no means conclusive) this seems to be borne out in part by the make-up of students. We are seeing fewer international students but a lot more European students, particularly UK students. This would seem to suggest that the scarcity of money is causing people to reconsider the expensive business of foreign study; international students pay much higher fees than UK or EU students. But it does suggest that UK students are doing the sensible thing during a recession and waiting it out in the relative calm of university. I’d also wager that the same thing is happening in many other countries. By the time they’re ready to go back to the real world, they’ve survived another year of doom and gloom with their sanity relatively intact and they’ve acquired some new skills which will give them the chance to either change career direction or rejoin the workplace with a competitive advantage. It’s really not a bad idea at all!
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