Children in East Timor Learning Finnish from Schoolbooks. Oh my!

Oh god, Alexander Von Humboldt is the Hairy Eyeball's doppelganger! And he is bearing gifts to his faithful guide Sacaweejja: a little offering of French perfume, which he snatched at the Duty Free Shop. In return, Sacaweeja will escort him to dinner at the Jardins tonight. Should she take him to Carlota or Veridiana after her interpreting assignment ends? All depends on who's paying. Sacaweeja is very very broke.

Update: in the end we landed on the amiable and cheap red-checkered tables of Jardin de Napoli for a pizza feast. The Hairy Eyeball was last sighted boarding A's car and purportedly heading towards a den of vice and iniquity only two blocks away. He was quite mad at Sacawejja for not driving him back to his 1156 dwellings on Cerqueira César. But Sacawejja trusts he was left in good hands and that his scalp remains intact, if not his neurons, which were at severe risk of imminent depletion last night.

English is a Strange Language. This cute little poem has just popped in the mail.

English is a strange language.
There is no egg in the eggplant
No ham in the hamburger
And neither pine nor apple in the pineapple.
English muffins were not invented in England
French fries were not invented in France.

We sometimes take English for granted
But if we examine its paradoxes we find that
Quicksand takes you down slowly
Boxing rings are square
And a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

If writers write, how come fingers don't fing.
If the plural of tooth is teeth
Shouldn't the plural of phone booth be phone beeth
If the teacher taught,
Why didn't the preacher praught.

If a vegetarian eats vegetables
What the heck does a humanitarian eat!?
Why do people recite at a play
Yet play at a recital?
Park on driveways and
Drive on parkways
How can the weather be as hot as hell on one day
And as cold as hell on another

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy
Of a language where a house can burn up as
It burns down
And in which you fill in a form
By filling it out
And a bell is only heard once it goes!

English was invented by people, not computers
And it reflects the creativity of the human race
(Which of course isn't a race at all)

That is why
When the stars are out they are visible
But when the lights are out they are invisible
And why it is that when I wind up my watch
It starts
But when I wind up this poem
It ends.

Linguablogging: Glossarized. It's my pleasure to inform you that the term linguablog has been included in the Samizdata blog glossary. And to beef up this entry a little, let's throw in an online English- Farsi dictionary a ham-ham glossary and this news about the important going-ons on the streets of Kangirsuk.

English as She is Spoke. This fabulous linguablogging item was shamelessly stolen from Prentiss. Here is the deal: "The original English as She is Spoke, considered the worst phrasebook ever written, has been reissued by McSweeney's, the English half is available online, and a comparison with Babelfish is out there as well."

And to think two Portuguese scholars committed this book and I had never heard about it.

Dar es Salaam in Delft Blue. "In the fall of 1998 I spent three months in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where I taught photography at a local institute.

During this period, I collided with the enormous differences between the Tanzanian and my own culture. These differenceunfortunately make it very difficult to achieve a mutual understanding and comprehension of each other. Nevertheless, I dare say that after the three months I understood that these cultural differences are not invincible.

With the support, the patience and the courage of several Tanzanians who guided me into their culture, I discovered we are all basically the same, regardless of colour or race.

Only the circumstances we live in -which largely determine us- differ enormously, reinforcing the impression we inhabit different worlds, not one.

As a result of this new understanding I asked a large group of people in my neighbourhood in Dar es Salaam to pose for the camera with a favourite object. I then asked them why they chose this specific object. A selection of these photographs is shown here.

via plep, always the good stuff

"The Cosmetic Spoon was made of ivory in a form of a nude elegant girl swimming with a lotus flower. Her wig is made of black ivory. The cosmetic box in the shape of the lotus - a sacred flower in Egypt - is painted in a soft pink colour. Above the knees on the swimmer's leg there is an engraving of the diminutive deity Bes who was the patron of women, dance and music."

The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts also displays this lovely Renoir. From Egypt to Russia to China in one entry: a great Chinese calligraphy site, complete with English translations.

Ignoring Foreign Customs can Kill a Business Deal. Mersurgeon General's Warning: Do Not Try This at Your Next Meeting. Head to BBC Languages for a nice little read on Working with the Japanese instead.

The after-lunch business meeting started nicely. The black suits from the New York public relations firm sat on one side. Across the table were the Japanese suits, prospective clients.

Then, during the long pauses for translation, one mind wandered. The lead New Yorker started toying with the lead Tokyoite's business card. Then, almost unconsciously, a convenient corner found its way to the New Yorker's mouth, where a lunch morsel was lodged between incisors.

"I wanted to die, I wanted to get out of that office, I wanted to get out of that building," recalled Peter McKillop, who works in Hong Kong for an American bank. "And he didn't stop. He carefully worked his way around. Upper and lower teeth." (Read more)

IBM gives Handhelds Multilingual Voice. "The computing giant plans to unveil its ViaVoice Translator software--capable of translating English to and from German, French, Italian and Spanish--for Pocket PC-based personal digital assistants." (Read more)

Related link: Think in English, E-mail it in French

Unsung Heroes: Opera Translators. "Translating words to fit music is a slippery, subtle and tricky business. The paramount consideration must be clarity. Clarity of meaning and clarity in the rendering of the words themselves, so that they are intelligible when sung. It isn’t possible to make English actually sound like German, French, Italian, Russian or Czech but it is important somehow to give a flavour of the original language because that flavour is directly reflected in the music to which the words were set. The sound of music sung in Italian is shaped by the preponderance of open vowel sounds, both within and at the ends of words. It is almost impossible to create the same effect in English, a language rich in consonants." (Read more)

The Verbs of Boro. "The verbs of Boro challenge me, not with déjà vu but with jamais vu", writes Mark Abley. The September issue of Harper's Magazine brings a fascinating list of these vessels of verbal meaning, compiled from the Brick essay, which the Mermaid transcribes verbatim.

anzray: to keep apart from an enemy or wicked company
mokhrob: to express anger by a sidelong glance
zum: to wear or put on clothing for the upper part of the body
egthu: to create a pinching sensation in the armpit
ur: to dig soil (as the swine do), to move curry (while cooking)
khonsay: to pick an object up with care, as it is rare or scarce
gobram: to shout in one's sleep
khanti: to be wounded without bleeding
khale: to feel partly bitter
onguboy: to love from the heart
onsay: to pretend to love
onsra: to love for the last time, to arouse the female oracle for the last time
gasgrom: to search for a thing below water by trampling
dasa: not to place a fishing instrument
goblo: to be fat (as a child or infant)
khar: to smell like urine or raw fish
asusu: to feel unknown and uneasy in a new place
gabkhron: to be afraid of witnessing an adventure
serrom: to examine by lightly pressing
khen: to hit one's heart
bunhan bunahan: to be about to speak, and about not to speak

My September 11 Nightmare. Osama Bin Laden decided to wipe out the Cristo Redentor while the Pope was perched up there saying mass. What a huge blow to the Rio de Janeiro landscape and to the Roman Catholic Church! Who could have foreseen that Osama would dismiss far more glamorous targets such as the Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower for that big old plaster amulet. The pilots who were going to hijack the planes were incredibly blond and good-looking, and they spoke perfect Oklahoma English.

I was a eight-year old little boy and I tried to reason with them by saying that Osama had picked a bad target, all they were going to hit was Japanese tourists with their digital cameras. I also insisted that that the rock was probably not going to crumble from the impact of the plane, and the international press doesn't care about Brazil anyway. They wouldn't get 24-7 coverage on CNN, except for the Popecide maybe.

A lot of chasing around in my apartment building followed. I was running up and down the fire escape, and eventually fell down from a balcony and broke my neck. The cuter hijacker took pity of the dying boy, the plans for mass destruction of the Pope mass were averted and the Cristo Redentor was saved.

Triple Kissing Debate Rages On. Hey John Burke, I swim in the waters of Piracicaba, Rio de Janeiro, São Sebastião, Brasília, Florianópolis and have been known to visit the dunes of Itaúnas and the arrabaldes of Osasco in the not too distant past. For scientific accuracy, I will be conferring with Isa Mara Lando, my correspondent from Copacabana to check on the carioca practices of triple kissing. That is if I can get her to stop sieving the National Geographic Channel feed for translation errors for a single minute. Here is the latest blunder she caught: ".....os micos-leão estao sendo cruzados com outros grupos para aumentar o seu POOL GÊNIO...".

I can also send the Hairy Eyeball on a ethnographic kissing expedition from Oiapoque to Chuí, if he drops his jealousy, finds his passport and promises to report his findings on the barbaric triple kissing custom.



Caption: Holy mother of linguablogging discredited at the end of the two-year ethnographic triple-kissing survey?

Machine Translation for the Mapuche. "Mapudungun, is a language spoken by several hundred thousand Mapuche Indians in Chile. The language is not in any immediate danger of extinction, but the Mapuche fear that over time Spanish, the national language, will take over and Mapudungun will fade away.

To prevent that, computer scientists from Carnegie Mellon University Language Technologies Institute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania are developing new machine translation tools with the Mapuche. Institute director Jamie Carbonell says the initiative, backed by a $5 million grant from the National Science Foundation, is important both for cultural and scientific reasons. "The minority language or the home language encodes much of the culture. So, you do not want your cultural belief, your cultural tradition [or] your heritage to die with the language. And it often does. If a language disappears the culture that is promulgated [through] that language usually disappears as well. And so we want to preserve it for cultural reasons." (Read more)

Siemen's Branding Gaffe. "Mel Brooks, who turned Nazi shtick into a Broadway hit with "The Producers," must be chortling over the current embarrassment of Siemens AG. The German electronics firm owns half of BSH Bosch Siemens, an appliance maker zinged this week for planning to use "Zyklon" as a product name in the U.S.

It was an innocent mistake: Zyklon means "cyclone" in German, and cyclone is a commonly used product name. But in the English-speaking world, "zyklon" is best known as for its association with Zyklon B, the name of the poison gas used to kill millions in the Nazi death camps. That's not quite the image Siemens wants to project." (Read more)

Chinese-art.com - highly recommended, as well as this musty old article on Bridging the Language Gap. Here's an excerpt:

The world is multilingual, and it’s going to stay that way. All international enterprises, and many domestic ones, have to address this challenge if they want to succeed. Much has been written on their spectacular failures. (My favourite: Coca-Cola’s “Coke Adds Life” slogan, as translated into Mandarin: “Coke Brings Back Your Dead Ancestors.”) There are several approaches to overcoming the language barrier. Listed in order of effectiveness:

The Apollo-Soyuz system requires each party to learn the other’s language, then use it exclusively. This is both the hardest and the most effective way to overcome language differences, because it fosters cultural insight. To work, no more than two languages must be involved, and both sides must make a heavy commitment to fluency in the other language; the Apollo-Soyuz mission itself failed linguistically because NASA budgeted only 300 hours for Russian lessons. As a result, English became the mission’s official language by default.

Done correctly, Apollo-Soyuz works remarkably well. West African and North American tribes have negotiated and maintained long-lasting treaties using variations of this system.

Robert Henderson also lists the Canadian system, auxiliary languages and machine translation as alternatives to the obvious: hiring a translator or interpreter.

Cuecas, Durex e outros Bichos. This glossary of differences between Continental Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese has been posted to my simultaneous interpreter's list. It's pretty interesting: on the first line the Brazilian usage is listed, followed by the Portuguese usage, and I'll also add my comments in [ ] so that the Portuguese-speaking impaired can get a sense of the fertile ground for semantic confusion.

Surprise. Checking my stats I discover this lovely picture of a grumpy Belgian in bad need of more coffee, but just look at the scribblings on the window. Enig in Brussels. In what language does Enig mean unique ? And how symmetrically this fits into the nomenclature of my previous Web incarnations. Elle s' appellait Une Femme...Tricky for you google ogglers, ha! I could tie this in with some memories of the time I spent in Brussels, land of the gauffre and french fries with mayo, but it was just so boring.

The only thing worth mentioning is my suspicion that Brussels is home to some of the fubugliest women in the whole planet. Riding the 71 bus early in the morning was very ego-boosting by way of comparison with all those bruacas, mapas do inferno e trubufus de penacho. That said, I am sure Quarsan's Zoe is the exception. And what about Belgian men? Well, I'm smitten with the Hungarian-German variety of late. My lips are sealed with superglue.


Time to fly, but before I go, a quick link back to Torillsin, who digged the Leningrad Cowboys. What's a sami jacket anyway? Can you wear it to do the Finnish tango?

Bembo's Zoo. This is the cuttest learn your ABCs cum typographic experiment I've ever seen. I'm sure the Mermaid Jr. is going to love it. And we need a little fun after a very rough night yesterday. I'll spare you the horrid details. Sometimes I envy Victorian women and their fainting couches, the handiest piece of furniture to help you cope with the rigors of femaleness. Please ship a full-sized version to Mermaid Sr., Oyster 676, Neptune Complex, Merlandia BR 76543.

The Corcovado Cowboy

Stuff for Sale at Roadside Convenience Store Near the Basílica Nossa Senhora de Aparecida.



Only in Brazil. really.

Don Quijote Translated into Spanglish. El filólogo Ilan Stavans afirma que su versión del clásico de Cervantes busca legitimar lo que considera una lengua en proceso de construcción. (Read more)

via francispisani.net

Can anyone please tell me where the Spanish linguablogs are?

Update: Languagehat has found the first chapter of Don Quijote in Spanglish for your mirth or wrath.
Now, who would muster up the courage to translate it into hackerese?

via il mestieri di scrivere

The Portuguese into Portuguese Booth. During a recent meeting of chiefs of State and government of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (Comunidade de Países de Língua Portuguesa - CPLP), in Brasília, the Portugal delegation required that the Brazilian Foreign Office hire interpreters to translate the meeting into "Brazilian". According to reports, the interpreters had a strenous time in the booth.

Se essa moda pega...

Rotten Eggs. "A translation error in an EU directive on Newcastle Disease has led to bankruptcy for a Danish egg producer, who lost 250.000 Danish kroner (33.800 euro) a day. More bankruptcies are expected, and pressure is being put on the food minister, reported Jyllands-Posten". (Read more)

via a blog with a name that keeps changing

The GNUist Shaman. Yesterday I had a great time interpreting for the saint of free software at the city mayor's office. There is nothing like interpreting for a man who believes in his vision. It's so contagious. The telecentros run by the Digital Inclusion Project use GNU/Linux. The Palácio das Indústrias was a spectacle on its own right, the ghosts just add to the charm.

Kodak Moments. We've been linked by top Brazilian blogger Cora so I decided to change this around, from words to images, as befitting a linguablog. In about 20 minutes or as soon as I am done with my packing, whatever happens first, I'm off to Pira. Hey, I might even get a chance to visit the 29th Salão Internacional de Humor de Piracicaba. And now, ladies and gents, the pictures:

boi-bumbá

the mermaid jr. making bubbles with tamires and mateus nas festas juninas do Sesc

says pretty ellinor to mermaid jr. 'which one of these antiques should we smash first?

mermaid jr pondering over the wonder of murano with mare (mermaid senior's second astral twin, the first being the infamous paula jones)

the prodigious mini-mozart mermaid from bananaland

the first time ever the mini-mermaid agreed to sit for a picture. those jaboticaba eyes are saying 'he's mine!'

The flim-flam has got to go. At last, a convincing answer to the year's most poignant conundrum: why, when the government is perceptibly less than perfect, are the Tories still so unpopular? Professor John McRae, of Nottingham University, supplied the answer in Monday's Times. The language its leader speaks, said the professor, is out of tune with the age. He uses such phrases as "nitty gritty" and "silly flim-flam". Indeed, he once described the issue of his own baldness as "peripheral flim-flam". (Read more)

How I learned Portuguese. I've been reading with enormous pleasure the said book by linguist, translator and eminent Hungarian culture mensch Paulo Rónai. Call it double happiness: I've found translations into English of three of his crônicas: How I Learned Portuguese, The Languages I Didn't Learn and Intimate Portrait of a Language. They are delectable must-reads. Tom Moore translated the pieces and they were posted in the blog he maintains with Laura Rónai, whom I believe is related to both Paulo Rónai and Cora Rónai.

Great stuff for the budding linguist, for Mark Griffith and for anyone with a love of languages.

Ghost Words. "Lexicographers are human, and as a result their dictionaries contain errors, not many to be sure, but lengthy lists of errors in Webster's New International Dictionary, Second and Third Editions (Web 2 and Web 3) have been presented in past issues of Word Ways. These errors consist for the most part of misspellings, words out of alphabetical order and missing cross-references or variants mentioned in definitions." (Read more)

Related link: A bit about words

Pronunciation Guide to Foreign Names. Puzzled about the correct pronunciation of abtruse-looking foreign names you find in the news? Then check out the VOA's Pronunciation Guide. About 3,000 entries with Real Audio samples. This is a good follow-up to this post to Sand in the Gears, all but forgotten and buried under the dunes of Blogadoria.

Language Articles.
Word is out on Scots dictionary
Timesaver for translators gets an Emmy
Immigrants holding on to native languages in Bay Area
Why BlackBerry is called that - Building brands using the right sounds
In a word, it's all in the translation (with a controversial explanation of how Lucifer, the Roman name for the planet Venus, come to be another name for the devil)
Finn sets record for long-distance phone toss in competition sponsored by a translation agency (!)
Boffins test universal translator

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Did the Welsh discover America? (you go Nic)

Ipanema Beach was so crowded I felt like Enigmatic Mermaid Canned Albacore Tuna but overhead the amazing bundafest towered the Dois Irmãos. And isn't it great to see Rio turned upside down for the appreciation of bloggeros. I'm dying to blog but I can't right now. Working on Monday after a weekend trip to Rio should be strictly forbidden. I need a detailed pictogram of a needle with all its parts. What a monumental bore not to be in Urca drinking a caipirinha and eating bolinhos de bacalhau. My only solace is finding this carioca photoblog.