Up the apples, she’s got a lovely pair of bacons – what do East Londoners mean?

Cockney rhyming slang is jam-packed with references to fruit, vegetables and other kinds of foods. This East London working-class slang, structured around a simple rhyming system, was the East Londoner’s language code which prevented bosses, the police and other authority figures from understanding what was being said.

Some of the most popular food-related cockney rhyming phrases include “apples and pears,” “bacon and eggs” and “custard and jelly.” Below, we’ve compiled a fairly extensive list of food rhymes and their East London meaning…

cockney_slang

Classic London Cockney Rhyming Slang Typography Print By Rebbie

apples and pears

The phrase “apples and pears” rhymes with “stairs” and so is commonly used to refer to anything which might be going on above. You might say to someone, looking for an item they’ve lost, “It might be up the apples,” meaning it might be upstairs and therefore worth checking.

bacon and eggs

Bacon and eggs rhymes with legs and is used when you want to compliment a woman. You might say, “You’ve got a lovely pair of bacons,” meaning that she has a really good looking pair of legs.

custard and jelly

“Shall we watch a bit of custard?” might be a question someone would ask if they wanted to watch the television, as custard and jelly refers directly to the telly (television).

loaf of bread

If you’re ever told to, “use your loaf,” in the East End of London, it’s because you’re being told to “use your head” or to think/act smarter. “Head” rhymes with “bread,” and so the phrase is shortened from “use your loaf of bread (head)” to “use your loaf!”

mince pies

When a guy from the East End of London wants to chat up a lovely lady that he sets his eyes on, he might say, “You’ve got lovely mincies.” “Mince pies”, rhymes with “eyes” and… the conclusion to be drawn from the rest is quite clear.

peas in the pot

When you walk into a room and someone says, “It’s a bit peasy in here,” they mean that it’s a bit hot. “Peas in the pot” rhymes with “hot,” hence the use of the phrase, “peasy.”

plates of meat

“Plates of meat” rhymes with “feet.” You might hear someone say, “Be careful of me (my) plates,” if they’re frightened that someone else is about to stand on their feet.

potatoes in the mould

A shortened version of “potatoes” in the East End of London is the word “taters.” The phrase “potatoes (taters) in the mould” rhymes with “cold” and is used when someone is feeling a little nippy. You might hear someone say, “It’s a bit taters in here.”

rabbit and pork

If you happen to be spending a lot of time with someone who talks and talks and talks and never seems to want to just be quiet, you might want to say, “Wow! You can really rabbit, can’t you!” The phrase “rabbit and pork” rhymes with “talk” and is used to talk about the big chatterboxes in our lives.

tea leaf

“He’s a little tea leaf,” is used to accuse someone of being a “thief.”

As is made evident from the examples above, the parts of the rhymes which don’t actually match the sound of the word they are referring to is the word that is normally used in Cockney Rhyming Slang. For instance, in “bacon and eggs”, “eggs” rhymes with “legs”, but “bacon” is the part of the phrase which is used when you want to tell a woman she has a lovely pair of “bacons” (legs).

By opting for the section of the rhyme which doesn’t actually rhyme, the secret meaning of the phrase was kept even more of a secret amongst the working classes of East London. Secrecy to Cockney Rhymers means everything.

 

Upcoming translation events in April

April will be an interesting and busy month for translators. Below you will find plenty of conferences, webinars, workshops and events taking place all over the world!

 1

Marcom translation process – challenges and solutions, The Localization Institute, webinar.

2

Translation Technology Showcase, TAUS, webinar.

Including Localization in Your Change Management Process, The Localization Institute, webinar.

3

ATISA 2014. American Translation and Interpreting Studies Association, New York, New York USA.

Language at the core: Mega Trends in Globalization, Women in Localization, Mountain View, California USA

3-4

Public Service Interpreting and Translation, FITISPos-UAH, Madrid, Spain

3-5

American Translation & Interpreting Studies Assn (ATISA). 7th Biennial ATISA Conference: Where Theory and Practice Meet. New York, NY. Saint Paul, MN. USA.

5

Carolina Association of Translators & Interpreters (CATI). 2014 CATI Annual Conference.
Spartanburg, SC, USA.

Delaware Valley Translators Association (DVTA). Spring Seminar: Success in the 21st Century. Radnor, PA, USA.

7

TERMINOLOGÍA TÉCNICA DEL PERITAJE CALIGRÁFICO. PARTE 1. Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina.

ESPECIALIZACIÓN EN DOBLAJE DE MEDIOS AUDIOVISUALES. MÓDULO 1. Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina.

ESPECIALIZACIÓN EN DOBLAJE DE MEDIOS AUDIOVISUALES. TODOS LOS MÓDULOS. Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina.

ESPECIALIZACIÓN EN TRADUCCIÓN DE MEDIOS AUDIOVISUALES. DOBLAJE + SUBTITULADO OPCIÓN MATUTINA. Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina.

ESPECIALIZACIÓN EN TRADUCCIÓN DE MEDIOS AUDIOVISUALES. DOBLAJE + SUBTITULADO OPCIÓN VESPERTINA. Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina.

8

Atril Déjà Vu X3 – Try it, love it (online event)

LA CORRECCIÓN DE ESTILO: CLAVES PARA UNA REDACCIÓN CLARA Y PRECISA. Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina.

9

ENVIRONMENTAL TRANSLATION. Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina.

10-11

TAUS Executive Forum, TAUS, Tokyo, Japan

How to Become the Ultimate Salesperson, Common Sense Advisory, Inc., Barcelona, Spain

13-16

Fifth Annual Translation Conference, Translation and Interpreting Institute, Hamad bin Khalifa University, Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing, Doha, Qatar.

14

CURSO DE ESPECIALIZACIÓN: MEDICINA INTEGRAL PARA TRADUCTORES. MÓDULO 1: QUÍMICA BIOLÓGICA. Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina.

CURSO DE ESPECIALIZACIÓN: MEDICINA INTEGRAL PARA TRADUCTORES. PRIMER AÑO: TODOS LOS MÓDULOS. Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina.

15

Recruitment Overview, The Localization Institute, webinar

16

Medical Translation 101: Understanding Medical Terminology, Alexandria Project, the Translation Knowledge Hub, webinar.

17

Localization at Startups, The International Multilingual Computing User Group (IMUG), Los Altos, California, USA.

22

International Conference on Language, Literature and Translation, Faculty of Foreign Languages-University of Jordan, APETAU, Voices in Asia​, Amman, Jordan.

24-25

TNW Conference 2014, The Next Web, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

24-26

ELIA Networking Days Riga, ELIA (European Language Industry Association), Riga, Latvia.

25

TCeurope Colloquium, Conseil des Rédacteurs Techniques, Aix-en-Provence, France

25-26

V Congreso Internacional Esletra, Esletra, TREMÉDICA , New York City, New York USA.

25-27

2014 Annual CTA Conference, Colorado Translators Association, Boulder, Colorado USA

26-30

EACL-2014, European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Gothenburg, Sweden.

28

TESAUROS Y CORPUS EN LÍNEA, HERRAMIENTAS PARA LA TRADUCCIÓN INVERSA. Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina.

29

Automated Metrics, TAUS, webinar.

30

Developing an In-Country Review Process That Works, The Localization Institute, webinar.

INTERPRETANDO EN CEREMONIAS CIVILES. Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina.

“Agarrate Catalina”: What does it mean and where does it come from?

“Agarrate, Catalina,” is another widely-used, Argentine lunfardo expression, probably dating back to the 1940s and the story of a young circus artist called, Catalina.

 The legend describes the young Catalina as one of the youngest members of a family of trapeze artists in a circus which used to frequent the Porteño neighborhoods of Buenos Aires during the 1940s. As legend would have it, Catalina lost her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother all to fatal trapeze accidents when she was very young. Despite her family’s tragic history, Catalina continued to work in the same field, following the family tradition as a trapeze artist in the neighborhood of San Telmo.

Owing to the tragic events of her family’s history, whenever she stepped out in front of the public to perform, she was met with taunt after taunt to the tune of, “Agarrate bien, Catalina,” which in English literally translates to “Hold on tight, Catalina.” As time went on, the phrase used by many Argentines today, was gradually shortened to, “Agarrate, Catalina.”

The phrase is used in Argentina today to give warning to someone who’s about to launch themselves into a situation which probably won’t be easy and might not even turn out well in the end. The phrase is used as a warning to those who are attempting to follow a dangerous path, which will probably lead them into real troubles. The idea is to send a signal for that person to be alert and ready for the difficult times which await them ahead.

Sadly, as the story goes, Catalina also died during one of her circus functions when she was only 25 years old. Ironically, however, she didn’t die from a trapeze accident. She was, as legend would have us believe, hit directly in the chest by the cannonball man as he was propelled from the cannon and into the arena of the central tent.

If “Agarrate, Catalina” didn’t originate from the story of Catalina and her trapeze-artist family, it may have originated from the pre-race behavior of a popular jockey named, Leguizamo. Leguizamo used to ride above a female horse called, Catalina. Supposedly, before every race, he would mount Catalina and then just before the gunshot was fired, he would lean forward and whisper in his horse’s ear, “Agarrate, Catalina,” hoping that this would help him focus his horse and to win the race.

Photo: Exequiela Goldini

Beyond the mere lunfardo use of the phrase, “Agarrate Catalina” is now known, within a number of countries across the world, as the title of the Uruguayan Murga group of the same name. “Agarrate Catalina” was formed in April 2001 and has since that time continued relentlessly to sing and perform in many different countries, sharing its Uruguayan expressions and traditions with as many different cultures and audiences as possible.

The artistic director, Yamandú Cardozo and his brother, Tabaré Cardozo, have been in charge of the artistic direction of “Agarrate Catalina” since the very beginning. Their work is also deeply set in a range of social ideas and commentaries which pertain to the needs and concerns of Latin American communities in general. These ideas have included The Community, Common People, Civilization and The Journey.

Is knowing just two languages enough?

In the 21st century, thanks to the economic and business-related effects of globalization, knowing how to speak, read, listen and write in just two languages is simply not enough. It’s not enough to guarantee success for recent graduates who are applying for a job or for professionals who are looking to climb further up the industry ladder.

Statistics

The most widely-spoken languages across the world to date are Chinese, Spanish and English. It’s interesting to note that, even though English is by far considered to be one of the most important languages to learn for travel, business and professional development reasons, there are more Chinese and Spanish speakers in the world than English speakers. 1.2 billion people in the world speak Chinese, 329 million speak Spanish and only 328 million speak English.

With statistics like these, it would seem that investing in English, Spanish and Chinese would be a worthwhile activity for most people, particularly those who are interested in travel or international business opportunities. However, a much deeper analysis of this data is required before jumping to such a simple conclusion.

The basic fact that 1.2 billion people in the world speak Chinese doesn’t necessarily mean that all professionals looking to improve their employability are going to benefit from learning Chinese. There’s also little reason to assume that all travel fanatics will benefit from learning Chinese. Emigration figures across the globe continue to rise, but again, not all emigrants will need to invest in Chinese lessons in order to integrate comfortably into their new places of residence.

Professions and industries which look for multi-linguists

Aside from language statistics, it’s important to take a closer look at particular professions and industries. It’s fairly obvious that professionals working in the travel and tourism industry would benefit from learning more than two languages, but there’s a huge range of other professions which, thanks to globalization and growing international business opportunities, place heavy emphasis on multilingual skills when interviewing potential employees.

Finance, law, sales, marketing, engineering, health, construction and technical careers are just some of the industries in which knowledge of at least three languages is fast becoming a prerequisite for most positions. The World Cup 2014 and Olympics 2016 in Brazil have brought about a huge increase in the demand for Portuguese speakers in the construction industry and in other commercial sectors which are directly involved in the development of both global sporting events. This goes to show that context and world events has just as much to do with which languages are in demand or “in vogue” as the number of people who speak that language worldwide.

Languages which are becoming useful thanks to recently developing markets

Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, Italian and German have been popular languages to learn for a number of decades, but recent developments throughout the first decade of the 21st century have contributed to a developing interest in other languages which haven’t been under the language-learning spotlight until now.

Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and Russian are four of those languages. The expansion of the Internet and the growing impact of globalization have contributed to the development of unknown markets in countries including Japan and Russia. Global business ideas and projects in these countries are beginning to develop at a steady pace and the need for language specialists who can negotiate with business executives in these countries is becoming more and more important by the day.

The Internet and immigration

The Internet is one of the main reasons why knowing just two languages is no longer enough, particularly when it comes to business and international relations. In 2000, the Internet was dominated by English language speakers.

20 million internet users spoke Spanish, 34 million spoke Chinese and 187 million spoke English. 11 years later in 2011, things had changed incredibly. 164 million internet users spoke Spanish, 509 million spoke Chinese and 565 million spoke English. English is no longer such a dominating force in the global market and this is starting to generate significant repercussions in the language prerequisites set forth by employers of international companies for prospective employees.

However, it’s important to again reiterate at this point that context is essential when deciding in which languages one should be investing his or her dedication and money. Chinese might be fast catching up to English on the Internet and Russia might be one of the fastest developing unknown markets across the globe, but if you live and work in the U.S., the bilingual combination of Spanish and English is probably still the most important language combination for you to become fluent in.

Every year, between 700 thousand and one million people legally migrate to the U.S. and more than 50% of these immigrants come from Spanish-speaking countries. Anything from doing business, to making friends, to studying or to marketing to consumers in the U.S. is becoming more and more essential in both English and Spanish.

The facts

Regardless of which languages we should be learning, one single fact is strikingly clear: knowing just two languages in the 21st century is fast becoming redundant. Globalization, immigration and advances in technology are forcing us down the multilingual path, whether we are prepared for it or not.

Crowdsourcing translation – a positive step for the deaf and hard of hearing

Amara is a large source of non-profit, crowdsourcing translations. The platform was launched by the creators of YouTube to translate as much video content on the web as possible, into as many languages as possible, as quickly as possible and as cheaply as possible.

What are the positive aspects of crowdsourcing translations?

More and more people worldwide choose to watch documentaries, films, TV series and other kinds of video content via the Internet instead of on television or via cable. The difficulty lies in not always being able to understand the languages spoken in online videos or in not being able to hear the content of the videos if you happen to be deaf or hard of hearing. Amara is a platform which hopes to eradicate these issues through crowdsourcing translation and so far it has proven itself to be very, very successful.

On average, Amara can translate and upload captions onto any film in 22 different languages within 24 hours. This effectively means that, in an incredibly short space of time, the content of that film can be watched across the globe and be made accessible to the deaf community or the hard of hearing. The most astonishing factor of Amara’s success is that the people who translate are volunteers – they’re people from the online community who simply sign-up to the platform and start translating in languages that they speak.

What are the possible problems faced by crowdsourcing translation platforms?

One of the biggest feats involved in the management of video content online, however, is the sheer volume involved. Translating online videos into 22 languages in the space of 24 hours is an impossible task for any ordinary translation company to take on, particularly when taking into consideration that all translators in translating companies are paid for their work. Amara recruits translators from all over the world for free, simply by reaching out to a community of online video-content enthusiasts who are only too happy to help when it comes to making internet content available to all.

One of the main issues with platforms like Amara is whether or not they are sustainable. If the Amara community begins to dwindle and volunteer translators stop translating at any point, the system will fail. In addition, there are lots of measures which have to be put in place in order to check the quality of the community translations and these measures require time, manpower and monetary investment. Amara’s philosophy is, without a doubt, a positive step forward for globalization and for the deaf/hard of hearing community, but the maintenance of the platform might prove to be unmanageable in the years to come.

What do qualified translators have to say?

Most translation companies and freelance translators who hold high-quality translation certificates show little support for platforms like Amara for obvious reasons. The idea that “anyone” can produce trusted, quality translations through crowdsourcing undermines the skills, qualifications and experience of professional, paid translators. It would appear that few people would argue with this point.

Crowdsourcing translations are no real match for the quality of paid translations by translation experts, but the translation of online video-content is such an overwhelming huge task that in some cases online users would argue that some kind of translation is better than no translation at all. Amara gives the deaf and hard of hearing community access to more online video-content from all over the world than ever before. The positives of this fact are indisputable.

Innovative student slang software helps UK teachers to monitor online bullying

Jonathan Valentine, the founder of Impero, is one of the brains behind a new kind of software program which is being used in schools to monitor the behavior of students who might be self-harming, engaging in under-age sexual activity and bullying via online media.

Language develops fast and there’s nothing which develops at such a pace, particularly amongst young people, than slang. UK teachers have, for a long time, found it difficult to keep up with the continuously renovating trends of modern slang which students incorporate into their daily lives as a means of communicating with each other, both online and offline.

slang-software

 

Why has Impero developed this slang decoder software?

The fear of many teachers, and other organizations which work to support young people in a number of ways, is that bullying and self-harm can go unnoticed when adults don’t understand the common slang terms being used by young people to communicate.

The idea behind the software program developed by Impero and so far used in 1400 schools located throughout the UK, is to help teachers and other supervising adults breakdown the coded language that young people use, to keep up-to-date with popular slang and to keep track of young people who are affected by bullying behavior or who show signs of wanting to self-harm.

How was the slang dictionary put together?

The dictionary has been organized into nine separate sections. Each section focuses on a particular issue and lists popular, modern terms used by young people when referring to sexual activity (or “sexting” – sexual activity via text message), suicide, body image, self-harm, adult content, eating disorders, bullying, racism and homophobia.

Impero took help and expert advice from a number of different sources when compiling the dictionary and programming the software. Students from Laurence Jackson School in Cleveland played a major role in the development process, particularly in helping to generate the content of the dictionary itself. However, certain organizations, including the Anti-Bullying Alliance and an eating disorder charity, called B-eat, also helped Impero generate this new software by sharing information about popular modern language trends used by the young people that they come into contact with on a daily basis.

How does the slang dictionary software work?

Impero’s software can be used by schools to automatically scan online conversations and online student activity to check for disguised bullying language or coded language used by young people to indicate that they have suicidal thoughts / desires to self-harm.

Whenever the software picks up signs of abuse or bullying in the modern slang that students are using, it records that information in the automatically generated reports that teachers can choose to download. The dictionary helps teachers to understand modern slang terms, such as “gnoc” (get naked on camera) or “dirl” (die in real life).

When teachers hear phrases in the corridors or read written words that they cannot decipher, they can also use the program as a modern slang dictionary and search for the meaning of these phrases to check whether or not they should be worried about the activity of students under their care.

What might need tweaking?

Even though the software is being used by 1400 schools across the UK and even though it has also been used successfully to track threatening gang culture behavior in the US, there are some areas of the program which still need to be refined. For example, the language used by young people is going to continue to develop. This means the dictionary will need to be kept up-to-date, which is not only time-consuming but requires lots of constant research into young people’s vernacular.

It’s also important to stipulate that slang differs across the country. This means that regional differences need to be taken into account and, at present, the software is pretty standard. The option to add words to the dictionary exists and this is a positive aspect of the program, but the difficulties of using the program on a regular basis are already clear.

Upcoming Translation Events in March

March will definitely be an interesting and busy month for translators. Below you will find plenty of conferences, webinars, workshops and events taking place all over the world!

1

NEUROLOGY WORKSHOP FOR MEDICAL INTERPRETERS: CONCEPTS, COMMON CONDITIONS AND TREATMENTS. Upper Midwest Translators & Interpreters Assn (UMTIA). Saint Paul, MN. USA.

2

Including Localization in Your Change Management Process, The Localization Institute, webinar.

3-20

Free Webinars from ProZ.

4

Northern California Translators Association (NCTA) Chapter Webinar. Translation Techniques for Crafting Natural English from Japanese.

5

Translation Technology Showcase, TAUS, webinar.

So Your Company Needs to Localize – Now What?!, The Localization Institute, webinar.

6

NUTS & BOLTS: HOW TO WRITE AN EFFECTIVE CV (2151). Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina.

7

INSERCIÓN LABORAL: CONSEJOS Y ERRORES MÁS COMUNES. Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina.

7-27

SDL Trados Training & Certification – Proz. Webinars

8-9

International Shakespeare: Translation, Adaptation, and Performance, UMass Translation Center, Amherst, Massachusetts USA

10

American Translators Association. ATA 55th Annual Conference. Chicago, IL. USA.

MARRIAGE: TILL DEATH DO US PART? MÓDULO 1. Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina.

TALLER INTENSIVO DE CORRECCIÓN EN ESPAÑOL. NIVEL AVANZADO. Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina.

11

Introduction to CAT tools and translation memories, Alexandria Project, the Translation Knowledge Hub, webinar.

TALLER INTENSIVO DE TRADUCCIÓN PARA SUBTITULADO DE MEDIOS AUDIOVISUALES. Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina.

12

FORMACIÓN DEL TRADUCTOR CORRECTOR EN LENGUA ESPAÑOLA. MÓDULO I. OPCIÓN MATUTINA. Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina.

FORMACIÓN DEL TRADUCTOR CORRECTOR EN LENGUA ESPAÑOLA. MÓDULO I. OPCIÓN VESPERTINA. Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina.

13

TALLER: CARACTERÍSTICAS DEL LENGUAJE JURÍDICO APLICADO A LA TRADUCCIÓN. Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina.

14

Translation Risk Management, The Localization Institute, webinar.

Working with CAT tools and translation memories, Alexandria Project, the Translation Knowledge Hub, webinar

14-15

Yale Conference on Baltic and Scandinavian Studies, The Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies, The Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study, New Haven, Connecticut USA.

17

SDL TRADOS 2007 NIVEL INICIAL. Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina.

DIVORCE: SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO? Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina.

18

Game Localization Summit at GDC, IGDA Game Localization SIG, San Francisco, California USA.

19

Integrating Localization and Content Development Processes, The Localization Institute, webinar

20

American Translators Association. ATA Continuing Education Webinar. Time Management for Freelancers: How to Get Things Done!

23-26

InterpretAmerica and the Globalization and Localization Association (GALA). “think! Interpreting” Conference.
Istanbul, Turkey.

GALA 2014, Globalization and Localization Association (GALA), Istanbul, Turkey.

24

Training: Build your own Machine Translation system, CrossLang Training Centre, Ghent, Belgium

24-28

Société Française des Traducteurs (SFT). Medical English Seminar. Lyon, France.

25

TALLER DE SOCIEDADES (DIRECTA E INVERSA). Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina

26

CONCURSOS Y QUIEBRAS EN BRASIL, DIFERENCIAS Y SEMEJANZAS CON EL RÉGIMEN JURÍDICO ARGENTINO. Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina

27

The Covergence Era: Translation As A Utility, The Content Wrangler, TAUS, webinar.

28-29

Mid-America Chapter of ATA (MICATA). MICATA Symposium Keeping Current—The Next Steps In Your Translating & Interpreting Career. Overland Park, KS. USA.

The Translation and Localization Conference, Localize.pl, TexteM, KOMTE, Warsaw, Poland.

28-30

2014 MICATA Symposium, Mid-America Chapter of the American Translators Association, Overland Park, Kansas. USA.

The auditory brain was designed to hear music, not speech

Charles Limb, an otolaryngological surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, has reason to believe that the human auditory system was meant for greater things than understanding language and speech. For Limb, language is nothing but “a happy byproduct” of our true aural capacity.

Were we meant for more than just speech?

Language, for many scientists, is what makes us human. It’s what separates us from the animal kingdom and what allows us to master heightened forms of communication and interaction.

Despite the centuries of research which support this theory, Limb believes that the human ability to process more complicated acoustic systems, such as those that we find in music, might mean that the human brain was actually designed to listen to music – an aural activity which he considers to be far more refined than that of processing speech/language.

The human capacity to learn a musical instrument, respond to music and use music as a means of communication, are all reflective of the incredibly refined cerebral system that we have at our disposal. Communicating via speech and language is not nearly half as difficult for our complex brains to achieve when compared with the nuances of musical communication.

What do improvised jazz and language have in common?

In improvised jazz, the musicians communicate just like a group of people do when taking part in a conversation. You can hear statements, responses, questions, chatter which overlaps other chatter and general moods which are then disrupted by unexpected tangents, which take everything off into a new direction.

Jazz improvisations, “take root in the brain as a language,” Limb says, just like conversations we have through ordinary speech. The difference perhaps is that it takes a lot longer for the musician to get to the point where he or she is comfortable enough with the language of jazz to be able to improvise and “converse” through music with the same ease and confidence that he or she would do through ordinary speech.

What’s clear from Limb’s studies is that the language of jazz, just like speech, is based on a series of syntactic rules that all musicians subconsciously abide by. The music of jazz might be “heard” and “understood” without the need for semantic sense, but the syntax of language in jazz is most definitely in place. This is why Limb believes that humans utilize the same areas of the brain when listening to and playing music as they do when using speech to communicate with each other.

Indeed, with improvised jazz (with any music) the idea is to find beauty in the sounds shared. Jazz improvisations demand that the musicians find beauty in the sounds they create, but the meaning of the sounds isn’t important. When we communicate through languages, the semantic quality of what we say is just as important as the syntax. In music, the only thing the ear searches for is beauty. Our aural sense when tuned into to music is much more refined, much more sensual and natural than it is when we use it to communicate through speech.

In a sense, listening to music is the fine arts experience of human aural activity. Language communication is nothing short of cheap, fast-food for the ear.

Beethoven – a final thought

Taking Limb’s investigations to the next level, a quick look at Beethoven is particularly worthwhile. If Beethoven continued to write music long after he went completely deaf, perhaps our capacity to feel and process music is in fact the true purpose of our auricular abilities.

Beethoven couldn’t hear what people said to him, he became deaf to language but never to music. His capacity to “hear” and create music continued to function.

Machine translation far from replacing human translators

Machine translation has been around for over 20 years now, with new software, programs and web applications being developed at an impressive rate. One of the main reasons for this relates to the importance of the Internet in our daily lives and its subsequent effect: globalization.

However, despite the continued efforts and creative ideas of the developers of machine translation, human translation still remains the predominant force within the translation industry. Human translation is, without a doubt, globally considered to offer the best service in terms of quality for one basic reason: accuracy.

human-translation-vs-machine-translation

Human translation will never be redundant

Machine translation might be quicker, might offer short fixes to immediate problems, it might be useful for translations of basic content needs (like the kind of information likely to be found in a Facebook or Twitter post, or the kind of information found in online forums), but machine translation will never beat human translation when it comes to accurate translations which take context, culture, local community knowledge and the nuances of language (such as metaphors, puns and humor) into account.

This is why, unlike a number of industries worldwide, the translation industry continues to grow year on year and professionals continue to train to become qualified translation experts. Fear of redundancy in the translation industry is very, very low.

What’s happening in the translation industry? What’s its growth like? What are the real figures we should be looking at?

The translation industry is not affected by recessions like most other private industries. The demand for translations is simply too high and this demand is a global one. The most “in-demand” job in the translation industry is for military translators and, according to research conducted by the Common Sense Advisory, the top 100 companies operating in the market generate anything from US$427 million to US$4 million on an annual basis.

Another report, undertaken by IbisWorld, reveals that translation services will most probably reach US$37 billion by 2018, with the United States being the largest market in the world, closely followed by Europe and then Asia. Both government sectors and private companies contribute to the demand for high quality translation across the globe. In fact, the United States Bureau of Statistics predicts the industry to grow by an incredible 42% by the time we get to 2020.

The Internet, globalization and rising industries

The incredible demand for translation expertise on a global scale is a positive sign for both machine and human translations sectors. As the Internet continues to provoke a surge in globalization, there will be more companies, organizations and individuals in need of both quick, concise translations, and detailed, quality translations; those which can only be completed by human translators who have a deep understanding of both the language, the culture and the context of the translation task that they have in front of them.

IBISWorld believes that the translation industry has gone way beyond the growth phrase and is now in the mature phase of its business cycle. By 2018, IBISWorld predicts the translation services will have increased at a rate of 4.7% per annum. The prediction for the global GDP growth for the same period is set to reach a mere 2.1% in comparison. Human translators are going to be needed to cope with such expansions. There’s little doubt that what they can offer in terms of accuracy and contextual knowledge will ever be beaten by a machine, search engine or software program, not matter how good it happens to be.

On a final note, for those translators working on translations for the medical and pharmaceutical industry, the prospects are even greater, particularly in the Asia-Pacific market. Translation services in this area of the industry and in this part of the world are expected to experience an increase of over 14% in the next four years.

Machines might be fast, but the translation industry is going to need plenty of human manpower to deal with the growing demands of globalization in the coming years too. There’s nothing which can beat that human touch.

What are the Top Language Industry Trends of 2014?

Advances in technology, in particular mobile technology, combined with the constant growth in social media communication, are the two driving forces behind the expected demand for professional language and translation services in 2014.

language-trendsImage courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

According to Renato Beninatto, the CMO of Moravia, we will see “major growth in the [language] industry this year.” Beninatto predicts that the expansion of mobile technology and social communications will generate a much higher “demand for localized language solutions.”

The National Council for Languages and International Studies has said that public and private-sector language-related initiatives are now a billion dollar enterprise in the US. In 2013, the industry generated $25 billion in the US alone.

The incredible growth recorded in the industry last year has been attributed to the large number of US companies working diligently to expand and strengthen their global presence. Mobile technology and social media communications have made international business opportunities so accessible that most companies worldwide, large and small, recognize the importance of investing in translation and other language services in order to open their doors to foreign markets.

Strangely enough, however, at the same time as investing $25 billion in language-related initiatives in 2013, the US continues to suffer from a lack of language-related subject interest in the classroom. The US Council on Foreign Relations believes that “foreign language education is on the decline,” and that it has been in serious decline for a number of years. This means that a lot of the language-related jobs needed for US brands to expand their businesses on a global level is outsourced to language experts in other countries.

In short, there are three main language-related trends that we should be ready for in 2014. 78% of CMOs believe that custom content is the future of marketing, reports Social Media Today. If companies want to continue globalizing their businesses throughout 2014, the most important tool that they will have at their disposal is that of content marketing programs. Companies which excel in 2014 will be those companies which invest both time and money in finding ways of connecting with different languages and cultures via mobile technology and social media communications.

Every day, more and more people are turning to mobile devices and smartphones as their primary source of information. Users access information from all over the world and they’re interested in what foreign companies have to offer/share. The demand for localized translations is likely to soar throughout 2014 and this will include translation services which dub multimedia content too.

On a final note, the impressive growth of cloud computing throughout 2013 improved the tracking precision of online user behavior. The detailed access to the demographics of a mass online audience that cloud computing has given us means that companies can now invest even more time and money in the generation of personalized online content for local communities and dialects. A surge in “local” translations is likely to further strengthen the economic position of the language industry as we progress throughout the next months.

The future seems to be very, very bright.