Tag Archive for world

Emma | May 30, 2012
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UK language education policy remains rudderless, as EU institutions adapt

Politecnico di Milano

Politecnico di Milano

One of Italy’s leading universities Politecnico di Milano has announced that from the academic year 2014-15 most courses will be taught in English rather than Italian, predicting that in the coming decade, most other Italian universities will follow suit. One of the reasons the university has proposed the change is to make Politecnico di Milano graduates more employable, as well as attract a higher calibre of international student.

I have always been acutely aware of the poor record the UK education system has in giving students the tools or the desire to learn and maintain an effective second language – particularly in the important FIGS languages, but this story highlighted again for me how far the UK education system lags behind its European counterparts in thought and flexibility to adapt. While Politecnico di Milano is looking to raise the bar for its students, by pushing them on to use another language in all courses, the UK education system is losing thousands of students studying modern languages at a chronic rate each year.

It is a policy that will only see the UK become further isolated from Europe in business and culture over the coming years.

Working in the language services industry I know many people who use English as a second language, and apart from the distinct accents (and sometimes not even that) you would never know that this was the case.

So I asked one of my Italian friends what the recent announcement from Politecnico di Milano meant to her. “My personal opinion is definitely favourable to this, considering the embarrassing situation of English fluency in the Italian Universities, so it could be a first step to start with and finally reach the level of other European countries in the use of English.”

It would seem her opinions are more widely shared than you would expect. In a recent survey held by Italian news site Ilsole24ore.com,  44% of people were in favour of the changes. Granted this is still the marginal minority but I would expect people to be sceptical in the early stages.

With the current economic situation this is a smart move by the University; giving students a much better chance of gaining a job upon graduation. Could a similar move in UK institutions provide our student population with more opportunities?

In December 2002 the government produced the report,  ‘Languages for all: Languages for life – A strategy for England’ [1], which outlined the then Labour government’s commitment to transform the capabilities of UK students in modern languages over the next 10 years. Yet the failure of this strategy has been stark. Since 1998, the number of pupils sitting a language GCSE has plummeted from 444,700 to only 273,000 in 2010[2].

In the meantime, there have been lots of grand proclamations, but little in the way of definite direction. On the 22nd March 2012 The Lords EU Committee called on the government to make language courses compulsory in primary and secondary schools across the UK, in an effort to improve the flexibility of students to work in the EU. The committee’s Chairman, Baroness Young of Hornsey, said:

“There’s no question that the EU can continue to play a significant role in helping Member States modernise their higher education systems [...]

“The Erasmus programme, in particular, is an excellent scheme, which rightly enjoys a strong reputation across Europe and which helps to deliver the kind of well-rounded graduates we want to see entering the job market. However, the UK’s participation has been historically low compared to other large Member States. Making language learning compulsory in both primary and secondary school would be one way of increasing the UK’s participation in addition to taking steps to ensure a more diverse range of participants.

“The Government must place higher education at the heart of their growth agenda in order to maintain and contribute to the economic and social wealth of the UK and Europe as a whole.”[3]

However none of the supporting literature states if or when the UK government intend to increase participation in the proposed Erasmus programme.  A cohesive policy remains beyond the Government’s grasp, and with current economic constraints, I fear that we will be looking back on these most recent select committee reports in 2022 having not developed a strategy or solution.

[1] https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/DfESLanguagesStrategy.pdf

[2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-15135560

[3] http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/lords-select/eu-social-policy-and-consumer-affairs-sub-committee-g/news/higher-education-report/

Category: Languages | Tags: , ,
Lori Thicke | September 5, 2011
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Translators without Borders and the Horn of Africa crisis

Translators without borders logo

Lori Thicke is the founder of Translators without Borders, the US-based charity that assists in translating more than two million words, each year, for NGOs such as Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders), Médecins du Monde, Action Against Hunger, Oxfam US and Handicap International.

There has been an overwhelming response from the public regarding the recent drought crisis in the Horn of Africa with the British public alone donating over £42 million. However, my charity organization, Translators without Borders, is warning that lack of access to knowledge in local languages is significantly hampering the administration of medical aid and making it more likely that crises like this one will continue to happen.

It is estimated that there are around 10 million people in the Horn of Africa (Source: UN World Food Programme) desperately in need of medical supplies and food. Funds are needed, but what isn’t on the radar of this crisis is that translation is critical for aid workers in the region to be able to communicate with the people they are helping.

People in situations like this often can’t understand instructions and other important information because they don’t speak English. Aid workers must provide on the spot interpreting, regardless of their language skills. This lessens the effectiveness of relief efforts. Also, by denying people full access to information in areas like health, technology and agricultural best practices, the lack of translation also keeps people from benefiting from global knowledge, which makes them more vulnerable to crises.

Translation is often a forgotten element of humanitarian work, yet it is essential for communication, whether between Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and their international staff, or between the staff and the people they are caring for. Translators without Borders is working with NGOs and ministries of health in the Horn of Africa to help combat this very problem. The first language we are concentrating on is Swahili, the Lingua Franca of Africa that is spoken by around 100 million people in this hard-hit region.

The odds are greatly stacked against Africa, which accounts for around 25% of the world’s disease burden, yet only has 3% of the world’s medical resources. To make matters worse a significant amount of the information that comes with the supplies available is written for the Western world. Situations such as the drought affecting Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia bring these issues into acute focus.

In light of the crisis, our main aim is to bridge the knowledge gap for locals using volunteer translators; if we can contribute to a better informed generation, prevent mothers from dying during childbirth and help people to help themselves, this will alleviate problems in the future.

Translators without Borders helps NGOs in two ways. By calling on our volunteers to carry out the translations necessary for their humanitarian interventions, organisations such as Oxfam can use funds in other areas. Typically operations such as the Horn of Africa would need around $3 million to translate texts into various languages so they can be understood by international staff as well as the local people they are helping, not to mention by the donors who are funding these operations. Our goal is to eliminate as much as we can of these costs because every dollar saved is another dollar that can be spent caring for people in the field.

Translation into local languages is more important than ever as technology today is giving us the means of delivering information into the hands of those who need it most. For the first time in history more Africans have access to a cellphone than have access to shoes or clean water. Vast stores of knowledge can finally reach nearly everyone on this planet. Translation is the final keystone to the bridge we need to build to unlock that knowledge so it can do some good.

Translators without Borders is appealing to the international community for help, either through providing translation skills or by donating money to support our work. Please visit http://translatorswithoutborders.com/ for further information. In addition, we welcome enquiries from NGOs who need translation support.

 

Category: Languages, Translation | Tags: , , , ,
Matthew Connaughton | June 4, 2010
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How many languages are spoken at the World Cup?

Many people often ask “how many languages are there in the world?”, and while the answer is far from simple (see Richard Loyer’s blog), I’ve been looking at how many languages will be spoken at this year’s World Cup.

Recently I watched the live coverage of Real Madrid unveiling this week’s Manager, Jose Mourinho, who conducted the press conference in Spanish, English and Italian (having recently left Inter Milan, Senór Mourinho also had to answer questions from the attending Italian press) – flitting between the three languages with relative (enviable) ease – despite none being his native language.

"Who wants a quote? Pick a language, any language..."

"A quote? Pick a language, any language!"

As the press conference got underway, my girlfriend, who speaks fluent Spanish, explained to me how difficult it can be going back to dealing with a language you might not have spoken for a few years, as Mourinho was doing – which was also perhaps why the English TV interpreter was “making things up”. Her words, not mine.

Furthermore, she added that conducting a press conference between any language pair from three is a truly impressive feat.

I nonchalantly pointed out that Mourinho had, for years, been an interpreter at Barcelona for the late, great Sir Bobby Robson and subsequently “fell into” football management from there – so this should be no problem for him. As a Manchester United fan, I wasn’t giving him any undue credit and, as it turns out, I was of course very wrong not to do so here.

This got me thinking about what it must be like for the players and referees dealing with multiple languages at the World Cup, and how media networks decide which languages to cater for (commentary-wise) in countries where multiple languages – and dialects – are spoken.

There’s also the dilemma for non-English native speakers in the UK trying to understand World Cup TV coverage from Adrian Chiles, or worse, Chris Waddle (who always gets on TV during the World Cup and still struggles with the word “penalty”, despite England always losing on penalties and whose penalty kick in Italia ’90 is, presumably, still in orbit). Sorry, I digress…

Chris waddle after his Italia '90 World Cup "pelanty" miss against West Germany

Chris Waddle after his World Cup Italia '90 "pelantee" miss against West Germany

Now, while I carefully navigate this article well clear of  any “football is one language” clichés, it turns out that while people from every country on earth will no doubt be tuning into the World Cup, there are quite a few languages and dialects spoken by the footballing nations of South Africa 2010.  Over 70 of them in fact (as far as I can find).

In South Africa alone for example, there are 13 main native languages in addition to English. They are: Afrikaans, Ndebele, Northern Sotho, Sotho, Swazi, Tswana, Tsonga, Venda, Xhosa, Zulu, Sepedi, Tshivenda and Xitsonga. All of which we can cater for at Applied Language Solutions, may I add.

So, it seems there are countless ways to say “…and England have lost on penalties, again” –   I just hope that nobody has to say it this time. Especially Chris Waddle.

Do you live in a multi-lingual country? If so, are there usually language restrictions on World Cup coverage where you are?

Leave a comment and let us know.

Category: Cultures, Languages | Tags: , , ,
RichardLoyer | January 11, 2010
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Exactly How Many Languages Are There in the World?

One of the challenges we face as a language solutions provider is covering demand for the languages that our clients request on a daily basis.  So how many languages are there in the World and how do we go about providing translation and interpreting in all of them….?

The invaluable Ethnologue quotes 6909 living languages, that’s one language for every 862,000 people on Earth.   Let’s look at some more figures from Ethnologue’s database.

Europe, with ¼ of the World’s population has only 234 languages spoken on a daily basis.

Although English does well as the World’s business language-at least for the time being- it is only 3rd in the league table of native speakers of a first language, with 328M, only 1m behind Spanish but a long way from the 845M Mandarin speakers.

94% of languages are spoken by only 6% of the World’s population, which tells us that there are hundreds of languages with just a few thousand [or hundred] speakers.

Many of these languages would be classified by some as dialects i.e. languages that have evolved from but are still quite closely related to another.  This definition, of course, falls down very rapidly as most Western European languages can trace their roots to Latin but would not normally be described as dialects.  Some of the African and Caribbean Patois are still seen as dialects, as was Ulster-Scots until fairly recently when it was recognised as a language. http://www.ulsterscotsagency.com/

The most famous phrase “a language is a dialect with an army and a navy” is wrongly attributed to Yiddish scholar Max Weinreich, who was probably quoting an anonymous teacher from New York, but it is a neat way to make the definition.

So how many of these languages are regularly translated by Applied Language?  Well, it’s a lot but not quite 6909…….we reckon that about 200 languages are translated regularly by our global offices into documents, websites, brochures and anything else you can imagine.  The range of languages required by our interpreting team is rather smaller at about 100.

The difference is no mystery; companies that translate their promotional material may be selling into every part of the globe and therefore their need is very broad whilst a hospital in Manchester, for example, will only have to deal with the resident non-native speakers and unwell tourists that come through its doors.  Although the interpreting requirement is significant, it rarely exceeds 100 different languages.

Some of the most difficult requests are for languages that unfortunately don’t exist; enquiries for “Indian” or “Eastern European” do pop up occasionally.  Similarly, “African” or “South American” can have us scratching our heads.

As a final thought for those of you currently learning another language you might be slightly discouraged by a report from Swarthmore College linguist K. David Harrison who predicts that 90% of the World’s languages will be extinct by 2050.  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4387421/

This might make finding translators a little easier, but would surely make our World a rather less interesting place?

Category: Languages, Translation | Tags: