CHARTEREDINSTITUTEOFLINGUISTS 59/6 DECEMBER 2020/JANUARY 2021

The Linguist
Greek is
the word
Bestselling novelist Victoria
Hislop reveals how her
passion for Greek began

Food for
thought
The tool getting learners
out of the classroom
and into the kitchen

Clause for
concern
How to identify and
avoid inappropriate
NDA restrictions
 CONTENTS

The Linguist The Linguist, formerly

The Incorporated
Linguist, is the official
journal of the Chartered
Institute of Linguists

20 10

Reviews
IMAGES © SHUTTERSTOCK

BOOKS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

LISTEN AND LEARN . . . . . . 26

News & editorial
VACCINE LABELLING ‘ROW’ . 5
IN THE MEDIA . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Round-up of the news coverage this autumn
Features
LEARNING FROM
LOCKDOWN . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Teachers outline what worked best for virtual
learning after lessons were forced online
FROM GEEK TO GREEK . . . . 8 RECIPE FOR SUCCESS . . . . 20 A LIFE WITH LANGUAGES . 32
Bestselling novelist Victoria Hislop on why her
ambitions in life are all about learning Greek
TO SIGN OR
NOT TO SIGN? . . . . . . . . . . 10
How to avoid problematic non-disclosure
agreements and spot any worrying clauses
CIOL members share their favourite podcasts
PICK OF THE
CONFERENCE . . . . . . . . . . 12
Speakers for the CIOL Conference 2021 Opinion & comment
offer insights into their fascinating work
ALL WORK AND PLAY . . . . 28
SHAPING THE WORLD . . . . 14 Can a hobby support your specialism?
Insights from a project asking how the
language we use forms the world around us LETTERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
THE BIG IDEA . . . . . . . . . . . 17 EN FAMILLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
How to create a Language Revolution How parenting skills enhance your career skills
BIG 2020 QUIZ . . . . . . . . . . 18
How well do you remember recent events? Institute matters
The app teaching languages through cooking A fascinating journey written in Ewe
AN EAR FOR EDITING . . . . 22 BEYOND GERMANY . . . . . . 33
Improve your writing with a musical approach How the German Language Society is growing
EMBASSY INSIGHTS . . . . . . 24 MEET OUR MEMBERS . . . . . 34
Q&A with the Swedish Ambassador to the UK Why Jo Durning is studying law in her 60s

7th Floor, 167 Fleet Street, London EC4A 2EA; info@ciol.org.uk; +44 (0) 20 7940 3100; www.ciol.org.uk
Editor M Moore linguist.editor@ciol.org.uk
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Editorial Board
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Chair J Guardamagna BA MCIL CL (Translator) IAPTI APARU
D Butler BA (Hons) (ex officio)
C Fairfoull BA MA ACIL MCIPD AIRP The Linguist is online at tl.ciol.org.uk; Subscribe at www.ciol.org.uk/subscriptions
M Moore BA (ex officio) Apply to become a CIOL member at www.ciol.org.uk/membership
J Oppedisano BA MA DPSI MCIL
E Pavlopoulos LLB MAEd PGCE
K Trotman BA MA DipTrans MCIL The editor reserves the right to edit all material submitted. Views expressed in The Linguist are not necessarily
J Worne (ex officio) the official views of the Chartered Institute of Linguists. All rights of reproduction, translation and adaptation
A Zafar BA CIOL Student Affiliate reserved for all countries. CIOL, The Linguist and officers accept no responsibility collectively or individually for
For a list of Council and committee members, the service of agencies or persons advertised or announced in the pages of this journal. The good faith with
see www.ciol.org.uk/council which we publish offers no implied/implicit guarantee.

@Linguist_CIOL DECEMBER/JANUARY The Linguist 3

 NEWS & EDITORIAL

CHIEF EXECUTIVE’S EDITOR’S

NOTES LETTER
In the first few weeks of getting to know the Chartered Institute When I lived in
of Linguists I’ve been constantly delighted by the shared values, Ghana for a
sense of purpose and the optimistic vision of the organisation – year, helping at
despite all the challenges due to Covid-19. I’ve been talking to a hospital, I
people about what CIOL means to us all, and how we might did not attempt
want to develop in the future. Here are some early thoughts: to learn the
Community. CIOL exists, above all, to serve and support the language of the
community of linguists, especially those experienced language region. I could
professionals for whom extensive knowledge of one or more foreign languages is a prerequisite not even pronounce its name (Ewe) or that
for their work. Our ambition is to make a meaningful contribution towards a world which values of the town (Kpando). When I spoke to
every language, every culture and every linguist. This is because we believe that knowledge of novelist Victoria Hislop for our feature
languages and intercultural competence benefits societies economically, culturally, socially and interview (p.8) she told me she felt much the
internationally. Everything we do should be to support the community of linguists – but it might same way when she first encountered Greek
also be nice to invite more people of all ages who take an interest in matters linguistic. We at a similarly young age, though she went
must keep our focus on linguists, but I would also like to reach more language lovers over time. on to develop a passion for the language.
Innovation. Long a CIOL core value, innovation and continuous improvement in our products, Listening to shows in the other language
services and their delivery are particularly important in the face of the pandemic. Digital supports her learning, and our podcast
technologies are advancing everywhere and changing the routes to linguistic excellence. Our feature may help readers with that (p.26). I’m
platforms, member services, networking, events, CPD, awards, assessments and qualifications, pleased that our new CEO, John Worne, has
social media and publications – including the amazing resource which is The Linguist – offer real shared his favourite podcast, and offered to
potential to innovate. It would be great to build the reach and ease-of-use of what CIOL offers write more for The Linguist in future. For
linguists; and enable wider appreciation of what we offer those who aspire to work in languages. readers who rarely listen to podcasts this
Online. From my British Council days, I know that face-to-face communication is the ‘gold (along with our Big Idea podcaster; p.17)
standard’ for intercultural understanding, but the pandemic has accelerated trends in remote may be a good way to get started. Our
working and digital service delivery. Changes planned to take years have happened in final issue of the year is great for suggesting
weeks – and the imperative to enable remote working, and online learning, assessment and activities to do beyond these pages, and I’ve
events, has never been more pressing. Digital delivery can be more efficient, and is a huge also added to my viewing/reading list from
opportunity for CIOL given our purpose, community, content, skills and services, but we need the new releases covered by our quiz (p.18).
to give ourselves permission to test, learn, improve and accept some missteps along the way. The issue reflects on more serious matters
Leadership for languages. With humility, and guided by positive intent, we are charged with too. Sue Leschen considers how linguists
being an authoritative and respected voice promoting the learning and use of languages might respond to unreasonable clauses in
both in the UK and internationally. There is a natural place for us to provide informed advice non-disclosure agreements (p.10), following
to a wide range of bodies engaged in the formulation of strategy and policy affecting concerns that employment agreements may
languages. Our Royal Charter gives us the responsibility specifically: “To provide facilities for be being repurposed with no thought to
the interchange with other societies and associations performing similar work or with how the freelance interpreting market works.
Departments of State, universities and institutions engaged in similar work of views and ideas I am very happy to be able to feature Ewe
on questions relating to the work theory or practice of a linguist and to collect data and serve in ‘A Life With Languages’ (p.33), thanks to
as a bureau of information on such and allied subjects.” member Harold Assou-Dodji. It is the first
Commissioning, collating, surveying, generating ‘thought leadership’ and influencing public time a contributor has had to seek advice on
policy are part of our mission. We have made significant contributions already this year and our translating into his mother tongue, showing
community gives us the credentials, confidence and ambition to do more. These are early ideas the often immense challenge of translating a
and, like languages themselves, they will evolve and adapt. But Community, Innovation, Online European language into an African language.
and Leadership for languages seem like good things for CIOL to stand for right now.

Miranda Moore

John Worne Twitter @MooreEdits

4 The Linguist Vol/59 No/6 2020 thelinguist.uberflip.com


The latest from the languages world
© SHUTTERSTOCK
Vaccine labelling ‘row’
Consumer rights groups in the EU are
insisting that health information for a future
Covid-19 vaccine be printed in all 24 official
European languages. The move comes as
drug companies asked the EU to suspend the
rules for packaging, labelling and instructions
in order to speed up delivery of the vaccine.
Vaccines Europe, which represents large
pharmaceutical companies including Sanofi,
GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca, wants the
EU to pick just one language to use on
inoculation materials for all 27 member states.
“We need an early agreement from EU
authorities on the language to be used on
the packs and labels for Covid-19 vaccines,”
Amazon’s Swedish blunder
Amazon has been criticised for using
machine translation to list products in
Swedish on its new Swedish website.
Customers pointed to a series of
embarrassing errors, with ‘Nintendo Switch’
appearing as ‘Nintendo Circuit Breaker’, a
set of Russian military figurines labelled as
‘Russian toddlers’, and a cat T-shirt described
using a rude word for ‘vagina’.
One user wrote: “Golf clapping for
everyone at Amazon involved in the genius
decision of doing garbage machine
translation for 95+% of the site from a
@Linguist_CIOL
said a spokesperson for the group. EU officials
have suggested they may allow materials to
be printed in a limited selection of languages,
with other language versions available online.
However, Monique Goyens, Director of
the European Consumer Organisation
(BEUC), argued: “Speed is important. But
speed should not be at the expense of safety
and certainly not be an excuse for cutting
consumer protection measures.” Suggesting
that some users may not have access to the
internet, she continued: “It is important that
consumers have information available in their
language and on paper about possible side
effects of vaccines.”
language that most people in Sweden can
understand.” In addition to translation issues,
the site used the Argentinian flag as a
country marker instead of the Swedish flag.
A spokesperson for Amazon said: “We
want to thank everyone for highlighting these
issues and helping us make the changes and
improve Amazon.se.” While confirming their
commitment to “constantly improving the
customer experience”, they asked consumers
to report any issues, implying that they
would rely on user feedback to make any
necessary amendments.
DECEMBER/JANUARY
NEWS & EDITORIAL
What the
papers say…
‘¡Arriba, Arriba!: Why the most exciting
shows on the small screen are Spanish’,
4/11/20
Its comically butchered English title, Money
Heist, seemed to confirm its status as a one-
and-done viewing experience, as easily
enjoyed as it would be forgotten. And did I
mention it’s not in English?… So it was
against the odds that Money Heist became
hugely successful – not successful for a
foreign-language series but successful full
stop. The crime drama became Netflix’s
most-watched series overall in countries
including France and Italy.
‘From Voicing Nazi Video Game Characters
to Talking Cats, We Chat with Synthesis
Localisation Studio’, 25/9/20
In Dishonored II for the main character, Corvo,
we used the German voice for Bruce Willis. He
is probably one of the most prominent voices
actors. We found out that his daughter is also
a voice actor and she got the role of Emily, the
in-game daughter of Corvo. This was really
appreciated by the fans who loved to find out
that they were really father and daughter and
that that was unique to the German version.
‘Investigation into US Professor Sparks
Debate Over Chinese Word’, 10/9/20
Footage of his lecture, which has now gone
viral, shows Prof Patton saying: “In China, the
common pause word is ‘that, that, that’. So in
China, it might be na-ge, na-ge, na-ge.”
Enunciated, na-ge sounds like the N-word,
which led several of the professor’s students
to complain to the university… What began
as an accusation against the professor of
using discriminatory language has morphed,
in China, into accusations of discrimination
against the Chinese language.
The Linguist 5
 NEWS & EDITORIAL

Covid-19 app In the media

unsupported
Hundreds of thousands of people have been
unable to access the British government’s
Covid-19 contact-tracing app because it only
supports 12 languages. Users whose phones
are set to languages such as German, Italian
and Portuguese have not been able to use it.
Faced with a black screen, some reported
deleting the app because they assumed it
wasn’t working.
Although the app is available in English,
Welsh and widely spoken languages such as
Polish, Bengali and Arabic, some of the most
PHILIP HARDING-ESCH
As the new academic year began in the UK,
and the pandemic continued, there was a
focus on policy issues. In England, the
government turned the screw on funding
for modern foreign languages (MFL) post-
Covid in a series of announcements.
Schools Week reported that bursaries for
trainee MFL teachers are being reduced
from £26,000 to just £10,000, while the
flagship DfE Scholarship is being scrapped
altogether, along with “early careers”
payments. This prompted concerns in the
TES that the MFL recruitment and retention

common languages spoken in the UK are not
supported, including French and Tamil.
Concerns were raised that visitors would be
unlikely to change their phones’ language
© SHUTTERSTOCK
crisis will get worse: “Although applications
to ITE [initial teaching education] have
increased because of the pandemic, the
effect could be short-lived and underlying

Learning
settings while staying in England and Wales. problems are likely to remain.”
On the plus side, the paper also

French press
reported that government-sponsored
private school teacher training partnerships

complain to EU
French journalists have complained to the
European Union about the institutions’
increasingly monolingual media
communications. Members of the Association
of European Journalists described the lack of
press releases in any working language other
appeared to be very successful, allaying
fears that they would disproportionately
benefit independent schools.
Meanwhile, the National Association of
Language Advisers published a report What worked best as
based on interviews with more than 500
language professionals, saying that asks what techniques
language GCSEs are biased against poor
pupils, students in care and those with

than English as a “repeated practice, now
almost systematic”. They stressed that this
gives an unfair “competitive advantage to
the English-speaking press, which does not
need to translate and can simply copy and
paste extracts”. Legally, EU communications
must be written in several EU languages.
L
special needs. As the TES noted, this is
because questions require responses
based on personal experiences which
these groups are less likely to have.
This is backed up by an OECD report,
quoted in The Telegraph: “among 79
countries, the UK ranked in the bottom four
in hours dedicated to perfecting second
ockdown caused us all to adapt the
way we work. Worldwide, teachers
stepped up to the challenge of
delivering lessons remotely. For languages
teachers, who distil a cocktail of cognitive
skills into an engaging format for pupils to
absorb, practise and produce in front of
them daily, this challenge was arguably

Mask translator
A face mask that translates speech in eight
languages is in the final stages of production.
The C-Face device is designed to be worn
over a face mask and does not itself offer
protection from Covid-19, but it does enable
people to talk at a safe distance of up to
10 metres apart. Made by Japanese
developers Donut Robotics, it will be released
in February, covering languages including
Japanese, Korean, English and French.
language skills in secondary schools”.
Although Scotland did the worst of all four
UK nations, The National celebrated the
success of its ‘1+2’ languages policy. The
National Centre for Languages stated
“languages as a whole enjoy a higher
percentage uptake than biology or physics”
in Highers over the last seven years. As
ever, language policy is a long game!
Philip Harding-Esch is a freelance languages
project manager and consultant.
greater than it was for most.
How did they teach? What worked best?
What did teachers learn that they have taken
back into the classroom? We sought to
answer these questions through a survey of
languages teachers. The vast majority of
the 105 respondents teach at UK
secondary schools, with 9% at primary and
10% at schools outside the UK. We hope
the data is a representative sample to
inform best practice going forward.
So what did languages teaching and
learning look like during lockdown? The

6 The Linguist Vol/59 No/6 2020 thelinguist.uberflip.com


from lockdown
lessons went online? Eleni Pavlopoulos
s teachers have taken into the classroom
cross-section of teachers surveyed indicated
that most lessons were delivered by setting
work for pupils to complete independently,
without online teacher support, but nearly all
had used an interactive classroom with a live
streaming option, such as Microsoft Teams,
at some point.
The consensus was that blended/hybrid
learning (a combination of live online lessons
and independent work) enabled learners to
make the most progress. Live teaching
enabled modelling, pace-setting, reassurance
and formative assessment, while independent
practice was helpful in consolidating learning.
Surprisingly, the greatest barrier to learning
was not IT-related, but rather pupils’ waning
motivation over the lengthy period of school
closure. Ever resilient, teachers developed a
variety of strategies to maintain engagement
in addition to praise and positivity. Customised
online materials to reference the interests and
@Linguist_CIOL
aspirations of individual pupils were prepared;
virtual projects, escape games and trips were
designed. Despite innovative self-recording
solutions (e.g. role-play on ChatterPix), the
majority of teachers felt that the least
progress was made in speaking.
Nearly half of participants reported that their
school’s Languages Department collaborated
more than usual in planning and/or sharing
resources during lockdown. Interactive online
activities which teachers designed were seen
as the most effective form of remote learning:
pupils contributed written answers on shared
documents or via a chat function, receiving
instant teacher/peer feedback.
Pupils successfully collaborated on web-
based research and presented their findings to
the class in the target language. To support
independent work, knowledge organisers,
listening pyramids, teachers’ own slide decks
and ready-made lessons from Oak Academy
DECEMBER/JANUARY
FEATURES
and Education Perfect were uploaded. Free
apps, such as Duolingo, were also popular.
And what have teachers taken back into
the classroom? Teachers have reported
increased efficiency and impact in four areas:
• Virtual classrooms. Showbie, Google and
Microsoft are now used more widely to
upload resources (saving paper and
ensuring pupils can catch up on missed
lessons and revise). The ability to set, track
and mark tasks/homework electronically
was welcomed.
• Quizzing. Bespoke quizzes can be created
easily on Google/Microsoft Forms. Pre-
loaded self-marking apps, such as Quizlet
and Memrise, will now be used more often.
• Audio tools for speaking and verbal
feedback. A welcome change to staring at
a screen, these are efficient because we
speak seven times faster than we write.
User-friendly apps, such as Flipgrid and
Qwiqr, can be used by pupils to record
target-language speaking, and by teachers
for giving feedback. Indeed, video and
audio are among the most effective media
for delivering feedback.1
• Real-time internet research. Pupils search
for relevant, authentic resources (e.g. train
schedules, restaurant menus, newspaper
articles) and share them with questions for
the class or with a summary.
As in many sectors, the pandemic
accelerated innovation in languages
teaching. At the same time, moving online
underlined the value of connecting in person
when teaching languages. The power of
body language to communicate and physical
presence to motivate, as well as the ability to
assess progress accurately, are diluted in a
virtual environment. We will take our learning
from lockdown back into the classroom with
us and continue to innovate and adapt, but if
truth be told, it’s great to be back!
Notes
1 Hattie, J and Timperley, H (2007) ‘The Power
of Feedback’. In Review of Educational
Research, 77:1, 81-112
TL Eleni Pavlopoulos teaches German
and French at a London secondary
school where she is also Head of Careers.
She is on The Linguist’s Editorial Board.
The Linguist 7
FEATURES

From geek to Greek

Novelist Victoria Hislop tells Miranda Moore about being a language
‘nerd’ and why she considers learning Greek to be her life’s work

V
ictoria Hislop’s love of Greece runs
through her eight novels – every one
of them set in the country. So much so
that she was awarded honorary Greek
citizenship in July for promoting the nation’s
history and traditions. Though I knew of her
reputation as a dedicated hellenophile, I was
less aware of her passion for languages when
we spoke in October. I discovered a bestselling
novelist who describes her life’s work as the
study of Greek – who grew up speaking French
with the English girl next door and still plays
make-believe with her grown-up son (the actor
Will Hislop) to teach him Greek. (“He could get
a book if he wanted to, but this is a fun thing.”)
How her love of Greece began has been
well-documented: as a 17-year-old with little
experience of trips abroad, she was taken to
Greece by her recently divorced mother Mary,
and instantly fell in love with the place.
Coming from a fairly “typical” family in Kent,
who holidayed on the South Coast and were
not particularly interested in languages, it was
all very exotic. Though she returned to Greece
often as she embarked on adult life, she didn’t
have much of a connection with Greek until
much later. “At the time, the language
seemed so completely alien because of the
alphabet. A privately educated person might
have had fun transliterating, but I hadn’t done
Ancient Greek at school. I didn’t think there
was any possibility of speaking it.”
This is slightly surprising when you consider
Hislop’s early aptitude for languages. She
choose to speak not just French with her
friend, Angela, on the walk to school, but also
German and Spanish when their grammar
school introduced those languages. “It sounds
so funny now but we absolutely did this, and

thelinguist.uberflip.com

we walked to school and back every day for
a decade,” she says. One of them was
always top of the class in languages. “We
were competitive in a nice, friendly way,
because we egged each other on.”
A “ghastly” French exchange aged 11 (“I
was far too young”) almost put her off going
to France. She describes the environment as
“very alien”. “I was in France, with smells of
garlic, which I’d never even tasted. I’m talking
1971. Spaghetti only came out of tins in those
days! Culturally, we weren’t European in any
way in Britain.” But the experience did not
affect her enjoyment of the language, which
she spoke with her Parisian step-father. “I
absolutely loved speaking French. For many
years, I had in-house French conversation
and I really grabbed that opportunity.”
She went on to study English at Oxford,
where she met her husband, Private Eye
Editor Ian Hislop. After a career in publishing
and public relations she became a journalist,
writing her first novel, The Island, in her 40s.
Inspired by a trip to the former leper colony
on Spinalonga, the book was an immediate
bestseller and has since been translated
into more than 30 languages. The sequel,
One August Night, published in October,
explores the tragic events that follow the
colony’s closure.
In 2010, The Island was made into a
successful TV series in Greece. Hislop was
heavily involved in the production, and even
had a walk-on part, along with Ian. She sees
a correlation between acting and language
learning: “Language to me is a lot about
being prepared to act, because you have to
act – in verbal terms – to start with. You’re
acting being French or Spanish or Greek.”
With Will, they pretend he is a Greek man,
and he is learning the language in this way.
Both children speak French and Emily
“thinks, lives, breathes Spanish”.
In a sense, writing fiction is also a form of
mimicry, reflecting how people speak, react
to situations and understand events. Hislop’s
novels have always been meticulously
researched, even before she was able to
understand the language, but she admits: “I
don’t think you can get beyond a certain point
of understanding a country or the people, or
the way they live or communicate, unless you
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can speak the language.” There were two
“very specific” events that began her journey
with Greek. The first came after The Island
was translated into the language. It was an
instant hit and a nationwide book tour
followed. “At the first presentation I had an
interpreter and I couldn’t stand it because
everything I said took twice as long in Greek.
It seemed to take hours,” she says.
“It’s hard to explain – I was kind of angry
because I felt foolish, like a three-year-old
who’s being patronised. It was a great
incentive.” She returned to London and
began intensive 1-to-1 lessons. “My teacher
asked ‘What’s your motivation?’ I said ‘In
three months’ time I want to be able to
conduct an interview about my work.’ So he
kind of swallowed and we got on with it.”
“You have to act – in
verbal terms – to start
with. You’re acting
being French or
Spanish or Greek”
Soon after, she was introduced to Manoli,
an elderly Cretan man who had survived
leprosy. Her desire to connect with him
became another powerful motivation. “We
had a real connection and I dreamt of being
able to communicate with him directly,” she
says. “There was always a time limit because
he was 82, he had problems with his lungs. I
knew I didn’t have 10 years. If you’ve got a
real target with language learning that helps.”
With its many declensions and cases, and
the different alphabet, Greek is not an ‘easy’
language for English speakers. But it’s not all
the hard climb, says Hislop. “You kind of go
up a steep slope and then suddenly you
think ‘Wow, I can understand people’, and
then there’s the next steep hill and you’re on
a plateau where you can have a conversation
with somebody.”
The current challenge is writing in Greek,
as she decided to write the first draft of a
DECEMBER/JANUARY
FEATURES
new children’s version of The Island in the
language. It felt right because “my
vocabulary is probably like an eight-year-old’s
and that’s the audience for the book,” she
says. Due for publication next year, the book
will include some new, younger characters.
Though Hislop will probably never write an
adult novel in Greek, knowledge of the
language does inform the way she writes. “I’m
not writing as though an English person were
speaking, because the Greeks do express
themselves differently. I don’t know whether
that comes across to the English reader, and
it’s not every time a character speaks, but I
hope sometimes I get it,” she says.
“I don’t think there’s any such thing as
direct translation because people do express
themselves differently in other languages,
and words tend to have different nuances. I
explore that as much as I can when I’m
writing my novels.” Instinctively Hislop feels
that she, too, expresses herself differently in
the other language. In French, she doesn’t
speak ‘in translation’, and she is getting to
that point in Greek too (which she speaks
with a French accent).
When it comes to the translation of her
books, her knowledge of European languages
gives her an interesting insight. Occasionally
a fan who has read her work in another
language asks her about something that she
doesn’t remember writing. “I can go and
check that the translator hasn’t changed
anything, and sometimes they have. It is
probably quite annoying for them,” she adds.
Despite selling millions of copies around the
world, Hislop doesn’t consider herself to have
many ambitions – except with Greek. “That’s
where I can make big improvements. It’s still
a very exciting learning curve.” A generous
conversationalist, she asks about my linguistic
experiences as the interview comes to an end,
and seems genuinely interested when I talk
about learning Spanish in Mexico. Excited by
the many options for TV viewing in Spanish,
she recommends a few telenovelas, trying to
remember the ones Emily has most enjoyed.
Her parting words to me? “Languages:
they’re the most exciting thing that your
brain can undertake, I reckon.”
Victoria Hislop’s latest novel, One August
Night, is published by Headline Books.
The Linguist 9
 FEATURES
© SHUTTERSTOCK
TO SIGN OR NOT TO SIGN?
Are Non-Disclosure Agreements always a bad sign, asks Sue Leschen
N
on-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs)
are variously known as confidentiality,
disclosure, proprietary information
and secrecy agreements – or even as
‘gentlemen’s agreements’. They are legal
contracts between at least two parties to
protect confidential information which one or
more of them wish to restrict further access to
by third parties. They usually protect
information comprising personal information,
trade secrets and private business information.
NDAs are commonly used by employers
to prevent employees from disclosing
confidential information to their competitors.
However, freelancers are increasingly being
asked by language service providers (LSPs) to
sign them in the spirit of what sometimes
looks and feels like a quasi-employment
relationship. Is this yet another blurring of
employment/self-employment boundaries in
addition to less serious ones, such as requests
for our availability details over public holidays?
Many NDAs contain non-competition
clauses (also known as non-compete restrictive
covenants), which are a classic example of this
sort of attempt to control an employment
10 The Linguist Vol/59 No/6 2020
relationship. Their purpose is to restrict an
employee from entering into any sort of
competition against their former employer
once the employment has ended, for example
by working for the ‘opposition’. As far as
freelancers are concerned, such clauses may
be a fetter on our freedom and flexibility to
work with (not for) others. The stranglehold
will be even more acute where we have
succeeded in carving niches in specific sectors.
TYPES OF AGREEMENT
The three main classifications of NDA are
unilateral (one-way); mutual (two-way); and
multilateral. The majority are unilateral and
these are the ones that clients are most likely
to ask freelancers to sign. They involve two
parties and apply where only one party
anticipates disclosure. Mutual agreements are
used where both parties want to protect their
information, while multilateral agreements
involve three or more parties. The party who
intends to share information is known as the
disclosing party (typically the client in this case)
and the party receiving the information (e.g.
the freelancer) is known as the receiving party.
NDAs can be valid for various periods but
terms of between one and ten years are
common in Europe. Five-year terms are more
common in the USA. Some are (worryingly)
vague as to duration and may be expressed
to last “indefinitely” or “as long as possible”,
or to expire “at the end of the assignment”.
Questions we should be asking ourselves
are do we want to be tied to NDAs which
may never end, and if an NDA expires at the
end of an assignment, when does that
assignment actually end – upon delivery or
after payment? We also need to be vigilant
when an NDA ends but some of the
confidentiality obligations continue, perhaps
for life. This situation would be relevant
where the material in question is particularly
sensitive for political or other reasons, such as
company buy-outs.
Freelancers should be wary about agreeing
to be tied up for long periods. Before we do
so, we would be well advised to discuss the
implications with our professional indemnity
insurers, because such agreements could
negatively affect our chance of gaining work
with other clients in our chosen sectors.
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EARLY TERMINATION
How easy is it to get out of an NDA before
the expiry date? We may wish to exit an NDA
early because the information concerned is
now in the public domain or because the NDA
undermines our future working practices. An
example would be a clause preventing an
interpreter from working with any other
organisation or individual linked to wind farms
in France where this is their specialist area, or
restricting a translator from working with
companies with subsidiaries in Malta when
that country provides the bulk of their work.
It may be possible to take advantage of an
early termination clause (if there is one), such
as “Either party can terminate the NDA at
any time by providing written notice of their
intention to terminate to the other party.” Of
course, the other party has to agree. This may
occur where the relationship with this client is
unlikely to continue, perhaps because they will
not be able to offer us this sort of work again.
NDAs are legally enforceable contracts, so if
they are breached the non-defaulting party
may be able to sue for breach of contract and
Project managers
are unaware of issues
like this, often
because they haven’t
read their own NDAs
damages (financial compensation), and/or
apply for a court order to prevent any further
disclosure. But why might we want to disclose
confidential information? We may want to
share it with a proofreader or subcontractor
translator. If so, we should first seek the client’s
permission, and the third party should sign an
NDA, whether with us or through the client.
So can confidential information be disclosed
without such penalties being invoked? Yes,
where the court orders disclosure or, more
commonly, where the information is already in
the public domain. Also where the receiving
party already knew about the information via
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a source that is not a party to the contract,
for example through working for multiple
clients in the same subject area – which is, of
course, what many of us do.
With regard to non-compete clauses, many
corporate clients place assignments across a
range of LSPs at any given time. This increases
the possibility that we will come across the
same confidential information over and over,
without necessarily knowing the identity of
the end client. Thus it is almost impossible for
us not to breach clauses of this nature.
CHECKING THE ‘SMALL PRINT’
Prior to signing an NDA, freelancers should
check the provisions in the disputes clause as
to how any disputes are to be dealt with – in
particular, which country has jurisdiction: ours
or the client’s? This is important, as legal
systems can differ widely and it is possible that
your professional indemnity insurance (PII) may
only cover work carried out for the source
language country. If the policy holder is based
in the UK, work carried out in the USA, for
example, will often incur a higher PII premium.
NDAs can run to 20 pages or more, so if
you are unable to unpick every single line of
every single page, you should at least:
• Pay attention to clauses which define what is
considered to be ‘confidential information’ –
e.g. definitions of ‘financial information’,
‘software materials’ and so on. For example
the disclosing party should be very clear if
‘financial information’ includes details just
about their bank accounts or also about
staff wages. Equally, it is important to know
whether or not ‘software materials’ include
materials owned by any subsidiaries.
• Clarify any permitted disclosure and
exclude liability for breach due to a party
already known to be working in the
relevant subject area, e.g. where the client
is aware of the translator’s reputation as an
expert in this particular field.
• Restrict use of the information other than
for the use stipulated in the NDA.
• Require the receiving party to ensure
compliance by their subcontractors and
proofreaders (and clarify how this should
be done).
• Require the receiving party to use their
“best efforts” to protect the information
DECEMBER/JANUARY
FEATURES
“in the same way” as they protect their
own information (and clarify how this
should be done).
• Clarify the type (and amount if relevant) of
any penalty for breach, e.g. a fine of €1,000.
SEEKING LEGAL ADVICE
Where can you get advice if you find yourself
on the receiving end of an NDA you don’t
like the look of? The obvious first port of call
is your lawyer, who may or may not be au fait
with NDAs as they relate to language
professionals, but who will no doubt charge a
hefty fee. A better source may be your PII
legal department – ask if you’re covered in the
event of a dispute with a client whose NDA
requires you to destroy all of their ‘materials’
upon delivery. This would involve destroying
any evidence that could vindicate you if your
work was ever called into question. It is worth
outlining such concerns to clients, and better
still asking your PII to put their advice in
writing so you can share it with the client.
In my experience, many project managers
are unaware of the issues – often because
they haven’t read their own NDAs and have
never thought through the implications of a
destruction of materials clause! In addition,
seek help from experienced colleagues
and/or mentors, and make use of your
professional organisation’s free legal advice.*
Where there appear to be only one or two
dodgy-looking clauses in an otherwise
seemingly innocuous NDA, why not ask the
client to delete them? Alternatively you could
provide your own draft NDA, or at least
suggest amendments to the offending clauses.
The bottom line is that you and your client
are business partners, and in the event of a
dispute reaching court, any unreasonable
clauses may be struck out. Where the entire
NDA is causing you ‘to sign or not to sign?’
anxiety and/or the client is unwilling to make
amendments, this is definitely a bad sign.
* CIOL members can access a free legal
helpline by logging in to CIOL Advantage:
ciol.org.uk/benefits/ciol-advantage. A team of
legal advisors can discuss legal queries and
offer straightforward legal advice to help find
practical solutions to implement yourself.
Should you decide to pay for a lawyer, they
can put you in touch with a specialist team.
The Linguist 11
 FEATURES
Pick of the conference
Speakers for the CIOL Conference 2021 consider everything
from media work in global crises to linguistic validation
Following the success of CIOL’s Conference
in March 2020, just before the first national
lockdown, we had hoped that we could run
our 2021 event as normal. Unfortunately, this
has not been the case. But this has given us
the exciting opportunity to move the
conference fully online for 2021.
Holding the conference in this way allows
us to share with you the knowledge and
guidance of your fellow professionals while
giving those who would not normally be able
to attend in person, especially international
members and non-members, the chance to
take part. We will be using a platform that not
only allows speakers to be seen presenting
but also enables delegates to ask questions,
and to take part in polls and quizzes.
We know that one of the biggest reasons
to attend any conference is the opportunity
to network and meet up with colleagues and
friends. We are planning to bring delegates a
flavour of this by including an option to attend
multiple online small-group discussions on
both days. The experience may not be quite
the same as at previous events, however we
are sure that, with the wide range of talks and
presentations, it will support the profession as
ever. If successful, we will in the future be able
to offer delegates the choice of attending in
person or online, bringing together a global
community of professional linguists.
At the CIOL Conference 2021, Valérie
Harkness FCIL CL will speak about the
creation of language community schools,
Karl McLaughlin will speak about media
translation and Carina Balbo MCIL will
speak about diversification in the language
profession. See www.ciol.org.uk/events
12 The Linguist Vol/59 No/6 2020
The price of reassurance
Karl McLaughlin on translating press releases in emergency situations
In countries that rely heavily on tourism, a
less obvious consequence of health-related
emergencies and other crisis situations is the
need for translation of press releases issued
by the authorities. Governments are under
pressure not just to keep the public fully
informed of developments but – equally
crucially – to offer constant reassurance to
holidaymakers and expat residents, and limit
the potential damage to the tourist industry
caused by bad-news cancellations.
The task of the translator is unenviable, not
only because they work under the time
pressure of super-fast turnarounds, but also
because their exact words are likely to be
repeated verbatim in the international media.
The use of terms such as ‘lockdown’ (for
Covid-19) or ‘evacuations’ (in the case of forest
fires) needs to be considered very carefully if
the actual measures adopted fall even only
slightly short of such concepts. While the
translator may think the terms are perfectly
acceptable as appropriate equivalents, the
government press office may well dispute their
use and insist on more nuanced terminology.
An added complication with such media
work is that all-too-familiar question of
payment. You are asked to be available round
the clock, or at least for an approximate
window, for daily press updates. Invariably,
however, these windows move or releases are
revised/amended after you have submitted
your translation and thus need to be redone.
Initial discussions on the price of full availability
lead to bemused reactions along the lines of
“But we are only asking you to translate a
few documents: it is not a whole day’s work.”
You explain that you cannot accept other
(potentially better paid) assignments during
the crisis if you are expected to be checking
emails constantly and translating newly
arrived texts within minutes to ensure the
English versions are received in time for the
required foreign media coverage.
“Other translators are available” is a typical
form of leverage, with no understanding that
somebody who offers 24/7 availability and
only charges for the actual words translated
(potentially zero if no release arrives on a given
day) may not be the ideal choice. No one
would expect a plumber asked to be on
standby all day for a week to charge just for
the 10 minutes they spent fixing a leak!
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When opportunity knocks…
How Carina Balbo put self-doubt aside and entered the field of linguistic validation
Tuesday 19 June 2012. I will never forget that
day. Usually after a job interview you hope
with every ounce of your being to get the
position. But this time I did not feel so
desperate. Instead, I had an inner feeling of
‘what will be, will be’. I checked my emails
and saw one from a company with a special
interest in patient-reported and clinical
assessments for cross-cultural use. They were
looking for a local project manager for
linguistic validation projects into English – an
activity that “would consist of coordinating
projects in UK, including supervising
translation work, recruiting translators and, for
some projects, a small sample of patients or
healthy subjects, and performing interviews.”
As I read, my eyes widened. It felt that, after
years of trying, I was finally getting recognition.
I doubted myself, but opted to take Richard
Branson’s advice: “If somebody offers you an
amazing opportunity but you are not sure
you can do it, say yes – then learn how to do
it later!” This is how I entered the world of
linguistic validation (LV) eight years ago – a
service still offered by My Language Hub, the
company I co-founded with my husband,
Hugh Ottewell (pictured with me).
But what is LV? It is a common process
used in the medical and pharmaceutical
industry. Have you ever been given a medical
questionnaire to fill in at the doctor’s? Well,
we work with these patient questionnaires (or
‘instruments’). Sometimes, they are designed
and written in US English or translated into US
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English from another language. Many need
to be used in the UK to give an accurate
diagnosis or to prescribe the right medicine,
so they have to be adapted to UK English.
This is carried out by a native speaker.
Once the adaptation phase is finished, we
need to ‘test’ the questionnaire among the
population to ensure it makes sense to them.
We need to select the participants carefully:
they must be UK English native speakers from
all walks of life and usually they should have
the relevant condition. The lower their level
of education, the better, to be certain the text
is written in plain English. This stage is called
cognitive debriefing. Sometimes, we need to
contact clinicians to ensure the adaptation is
accurate from a terminological standpoint.
Diversification is always fun, and we always
learn new things, particularly within a medical
sector that is constantly changing. Although
we don’t ask respondents about their
condition, some do talk about it, which is eye-
opening. What makes the work enjoyable also
makes it challenging. Recruiting respondents
is not easy. Barriers include GDPR and
people wanting to guard their privacy. It is
also tricky to recruit clinicians. The rates need
to be tempting enough to entice doctors to
give up their time to do linguistic revision.
This experience has taught me that even if
we doubt ourselves, when an opportunity
knocks we have to take it. It can be the start
of a new adventure that you can add to your
portfolio of language services.
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FEATURES
Magic in class
Valérie Harkness celebrates the teachers
Some time ago, I had the good fortune to
support Sergio, a Spanish teacher and
magician who sometimes uses magic tricks
in the classroom. Within the context of a
sharp decline in GCSE language entries, it
would be tempting to suggest that all
language teachers should be magicians.
My perspective is that they already are.
The teachers I know are gifted linguists,
able to teach two or three foreign
languages and communicate their passion
in the most original ways. Some run trips
abroad and/or work experience projects.
Others bring music or sport to language
teaching. Others still run fun quizzes and
competitions. Many a Sunday is spent
marking, producing activities which simulate
real-life situations, and seeking the most
appropriate and up-to-date resources.
But that’s not all. Language teachers are
also skilled jugglers. Apart from seeking to
motivate all pupils to study languages and
persevere in their learning journey, they
adapt rapidly to changes in exam
specifications and policies while making
sure targets are met. Not all teachers are
trained magicians, but what they do is
close to magic. They need professional
development and support from schools,
parents and policy makers. But perhaps
the first thing we should do to help is to
stand by them as they perform wonders.
The Linguist 13
 FEATURES
Shaping the world
How does language form the world around us and what is
the impact of the pandemic on this, asks Catherine Boyle
I
n Language Acts and Worldmaking, we argue that
language empowers us by enabling us to construct our
personal, local, transnational and spiritual identities
(www.languageacts.org). Language also constrains us,
through the ideological force of the history of these
identities. It is this complexity that we understand as
worldmaking: we shape the world around us through
the language we use and are shaped by the languages
around us. If one language can give us a sense of place
and belonging, learning another helps us move across
time and place, encounter other ways of being, other
histories and realities. For us, language is a material and
historical force that opens us to the world that surrounds
us; it is this belief that informs the work we do.
The project consists of six strands of research that
cover literary and cultural history, linguistics, translation,
performance, digital humanities and pedagogy. These
14 The Linguist Vol/59 No/6 2020
© THIERRY BAL
strands are linked by a shared interest in exploring and THOUGHT-
understanding the movement of people and language PROVOKING
across time and space. Performance by
We foreground the ways in which learning a language Caroline Bergvall in
means recognising how the cultures embedded in it are Tilbury, 2016 – part of
shaped by encounters with other cultures and languages. her Ragadawn project,
This is the force of language learning, and Language which was given a
Acts and Worldmaking advocates for the potential of the grant by Language
discipline of Modern Languages to open pathways Acts and Worldmaking
between worlds past and present. From the start, our
goals have been imbued with a political consciousness,
which has been strengthened throughout the project.
The beginning was 2014, when we started to develop
our ideas in response to the Arts and Humanities Research
Council’s Open World Research Initiative (OWRI), which
called on projects that would have a transformative effect
on Modern Languages in the UK.1 We took the call as a
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provocation and an opportunity: it would be the place
from which we could break down barriers between
academic research and teaching in universities by
collaborating with broad sectors of society, including
education, faith groups, commerce and the third sector.
Our team of academics, teacher-researchers,
postdoctoral researchers and PhD student researchers is
drawn from King’s College London, Queen Mary
University of London, the Open University and the
University of Westminster, as well as modern language
centres. The project started formally in July 2016, a fateful
date that would inform all our thinking, as the outcome
of the EU referendum shaped our engagement with the
world. The funded period ended in June 2020, in the
midst of a global pandemic that sees us rethinking the
nature of the dynamic between the local and the global.
Community building
Building a community has been central to the ways in
which we conduct our research. In its broadest sense, we
understand this as building the capacity for creative and
critical thinking. We structured our work to engage with
the widest possible community of language learners,
educators and researchers.
At the heart of this endeavour is our Small Grants
Scheme, awarding funding of £500-£1,500 through
annual competitions dedicated, above all, to promoting
integration and inclusion. We attract projects from
people who would normally have little access to funding,
or who work in areas where access to formal language
teaching and university is limited.
The Small Grants Scheme has become a particularly
exciting part of Language Acts and Worldmaking.
Through it we have expanded our research community
and brought our research into the public sphere. This
has included community work with the Domestic
Abuse Research Network (DARNet), led by Dr Olumide
Adisa at the University of Suffolk, for an event working
with migrant and refugee women; collaborations with
prominent artists such as Caroline Bergvall and her
Ragadawn project; writers and translators supporting
residencies at Cove Park; and schools like Queen
Katharine Academy in Peterborough celebrating their
multicultural community.
We have been introduced to innovative, consistently
thought-provoking work, which helps us to meet our core
objectives while offering welcome challenges. These
challenges – e.g. enhancing inclusion and diversity in
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FEATURES
language teaching and learning, and identifying emerging
research fields and new communities of study – help us
articulate our own position in the field. It is this community
of researchers that will be the force behind changes to
how we approach language learning and research.
Worldmaking in the time of Covid
If the EU referendum meant that we started the project in
a complex environment of closing borders, the pandemic
meant that we came to the end of the funded part of
our work in an environment of the extreme closing of
borders, where we were part of a global experience but
increasingly isolated from one another.
In April, King’s College offered ‘Rapid Response to
Covid-19’ funding to projects with an emphasis on
science and medicine. We proposed that language has a
crucial role to play in understanding how Covid-19 is
being lived, and used the principles of Language Acts
and Worldmaking – that language is a material and
historic force – to make a call for a deep and textured
understanding of the pandemic. Our thesis is that we
narrate everything; we construct the world around us by
telling its stories; these set a crisis in context, relate it to
our historical experience, help us to understand it in the
context of our local communities, and contrast those
stories to dominant narratives.
In Worldmaking in the Time of Covid-19, we have
engaged in a process of digitally mining sources from
European languages, Arabic, Cantonese, Hebrew,
Japanese, Mandarin, Korean and Russian. We work with
student linguists, who used digital tools such as Lexis ONLINE
Nexis to collect the data through which we are comparing INFLUENCE
and analysing how the pandemic has been narrated. How does our (often
How do words relating to war, conflict and invasion monolingual) digital
travel across the world? What new languages emerge experience shape our
around the experience of quarantine and lockdown, perception of the
around our ideas of normality, of morality, of the future? world around us?
At its most simple, these are words that describe
behaviour, e.g. Covidiota (Portuguese) or ‘covidiot’; a
combination of two diseases, e.g. Covidengue (Spanish);
the digital experience, e.g. On-nomi (Japanese) for a
digital happy hour; the ways in which we prepare for
lockdown, e.g. Hamsterkäufe (German) for people
hoarding goods; or the symptoms, e.g. ‘Dracula cough’.
There are many more, and we have gathered them in
© SHUTTERSTOCK
our online resources section. This has been an excellent
opportunity to develop students as co-researchers, giving
them insight into constructing and seeing through a 
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 FEATURES
 research project, and communicating their findings in
writing and through podcasts, which we will share soon.
They were introduced to digital humanities
methodologies that open up languages research by
providing the means to gather information around the
use of the terms ‘coronavirus’ and ‘Covid-19’. They used
their language skills to broaden the searches of key
words and were trained in Voyant Tools to engage in a
practical distance-reading approach to identify large-
scale trends. In this way, we have begun to see how the
movement of the virus across the globe has meant the
emergence of languages that locate narrations in
relation to geopolitical interests, to histories of empire
and to a complex questioning of the idea of the global.
Disrupting digital monolingualism
Also in the context of the pandemic, we have had to
consider how we engage with our co-researchers and
practitioners. Our Digital Mediations strand led the way
with a two-day online workshop, ‘Disrupting Digital
Monolingualism’, which explored the challenges of
multilingualism in digital practice. There is a recognised
bias towards firstly English and then European languages.
The workshop brought together leading researchers,
educators, digital practitioners, language-focused
professionals, policy makers and other interested
parties to address the challenges of multilingualism
in digital spaces and to propose new models and
solutions. The goal was to combine theory and practice
to explore a key question: how do languages,
translation, and translingual and transcultural dynamics
disrupt the predominantly monolingual, and particularly
16 The Linguist Vol/59 No/6 2020
IMAGES © SHUTTERSTOCK
anglophone, model on which digital culture and
technology are based?
The event involved various synchronous and
asynchronous interventions. The synchronous component
was attended by 300 users from all over the world, and
about 230 watched it on YouTube relay. The
asynchronous component invited 41 researchers from
16 countries to address multilingual challenges for
knowledge infrastructures, transcultural approaches to
digital study, artificial intelligence, machine learning,
neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) in language worlds,
and the challenges in working with multilingual data. We COVID SLANG
expect the workshop to contribute to new partnerships Language around the
focused on multilingualism and geo-cultural diversity. pandemic includes the
These questions of monolingualism and multilingualism, German Hamsterkäufe
and the approach of combining research and practice, for people hoarding
are shared across all the research strands. The study of goods (top) and
language in its worldmaking force informs our conceptual ‘covidiot’ for those
understanding of the ways that languages act in the behaving without due
world. This in turn informs our practice and our activism care, such as by
in creating communities of co-researchers who promise wearing a face mask
the transformative impact with which we were tasked by incorrectly (above)
the Open World Research Initiative. We will continue our
work in the series of books we are launching in 2021 with
Hachette UK/John Murray Learning, and as part of the
Arts and Humanities Research Institute at King’s College,
as the Centre for Language Acts and Worldmaking.
Note
1 For information about the four funded projects see
https://ahrc.ukri.org/research/fundedthemesand
programmes/themes/owri
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The big idea
Cate Hamilton on making a career out of promoting
languages: from Babel Babies to the Language Revolution
Q How did Babel Babies begin?
A I’m a French and English teacher and
when I had my first baby 10 years ago, I
started a multilingual singing group for
families with young children. The Babel
Babies approach is musical and multisensory.
It was my little language revolution.
Q What is your languages background?
A I studied English and modern languages at
Oxford, worked in events management and
marketing, and then realised I wanted to teach.
Q You’ve just taken Babel Babies online…
A Yes, it’s a platform with three levels of
subscription providing an introduction to
linguists for the under-10s. The 40-week
course looks at 10 languages, including
Italian, Arabic and French. The focus is on
teaching how to learn languages and
supporting parents through the process.
Q What inspired the Language Revolution
podcast and accompanying blog?
A In schools students are reluctant to study
languages but with Babel Babies I could see
that young children are really good at learning
languages, and their parents regret not taking
languages more seriously at school. There was
a case for educating the adults as well as the
children. So the Language Revolution is my
attempt to get people talking about
languages, and raising awareness about how
we learn them, in a free accessible forum.
Q How did you learn how to do a podcast?
A I knew a bit about making films and there’s
a YouTube video for everything nowadays. I
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booked recording studios and edited with
Garage Band. The biggest learning curve has
been how to be a presenter – David Crystal
was very helpful with that. In lockdown I had
to work out how to do it online; I asked other
podcasters for advice and most use Zoom.
Q How did you learn business skills?
A I’ve done several short courses. There’s a
brilliant network of women business owners in
Cheltenham, so I went to every learning event.
Q Who do you work with?
A I have an accountant and a payroll team.
I’m doing a Master’s so a freelancer is taking
over the social media and marketing. I’ve got
a web designer and copywriter for the Babel
Babies website. We also have Multilingualism
Ambassadors, who are supporters and ensure
our information is fact-checked and verified. I
did the Language Revolution website myself,
and worked with a brand development expert
on the branding across the two platforms to
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FEATURES
BRAND NEW: A child engages with Babel
Babies materials; and (inset) Cate Hamilton
bring them together. For the Multilingualism
is Normal anthology I worked with 60
contributors. Thomas Bak and I have been
using the multilingualisnormal hashtag for a
while as an awareness-raising campaign.
Q Why did you opt to be a limited company?
A There are benefits in terms of protecting
your personal assets. Babel Babies used to
have 10 employees; when you have a payroll
it’s much simpler to have a limited company.
Q What are your plans for the future?
A I want to offer training to teachers in
multilingualism and language acquisition.
I hope to fund the pilot project through a
PhD, but I need to complete my MSc first.
I’m also researching songs as an intervention
for learning languages.
babelbabies.com | thelanguagerevolution.co.uk
The Linguist 17
 BIG 2020 QUIZ
It’s been a hard year, but what have been the key moments for languages?
POLITICAL MANOEUVRES
1 What was described as a “historic
advancement” as Stormont (the
Northern Ireland Assembly)
reopened after three years?
2 What did Leicester
City Councillor Ratilal
Govind partially blame
for the local Covid-19
outbreak in July?
3 What did French
Canadians call
“disrespectful” and
“dangerous”, especially
during a pandemic, as
they held Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau to account?
4 How many European Union
interpreters had their contracts
terminated in response to the
pandemic in June and July?
5 What did French journalists
complain to the EU about in
a letter dated 23 September?
HIGH TECH
1 Explain the hashtag
#whereistheinterpreter
2 What welcome update did
Google Translate introduce?
3 What update for Amazon
Alexa did Countdown’s
Susie Dent work on?
4 Why was the Wikipedia contributor
AmaryllisGardner, an American teenager,
accused of “cultural vandalism”?
5 What did researchers dub the software they
created to decode mooing after discovering
that cattle can communicate with each other
about things like food and the weather?
18 The Linguist Vol/59 No/6 2020
SPORTING TIMES
1 Who was told by refugee Rasheed:
“There is a saying in Balochi language,
that if you give me a glass of
water, I owe you my entire
life. In fact you did more”?
2 What translation
‘error’ was blamed for
Athletic’s loss to Real
Madrid in a key La Liga
match with four games
left to play?
3 What did Everton
Manager Carlo Ancelotti
order staff to do so they
could adapt to life in the
Premier League?
4 In what context was Uruguay
striker Luis Suárez (pictured)
accused of cheating?
5 Why was striker Cristiano Ronaldo
blasted as “ignorant” and “lacking
respect” for Juventus teammates?
APT APPS
1 What is the Interpreters’ Lives
Matter campaign, which launched on
Twitter @InterpretersM in September?
2 Which discontinued translation app
unwittingly shared the data of some of
its users over a six-month period?
3 What can a high-tech glove, invented by
UCLA bioengineers, do by connecting with
a smartphone app?
4 What does the Cardmedic app do?
5 Why did WhatsApp add a sticker pack that
includes these stickers?
ON THE PAGE
1 How did Dutch > English translator Michele
Hutchison gain international attention?
2 Which newspaper received complaints after
regular columnist Zoe Williams said learning
Welsh was “existentially pointless”?
3 Why was the publication of the first
dictionary of the Indigenous Australian
language Umpithamu bittersweet?
4 Which tennis star spoke about
her relationship with
languages in the
book How Languages
Changed My Life?
5 Why was Mohammed
Hanif’s A Case of
Exploding Mangoes
‘seized’ by Pakistani
officials 11 years after
it was first published?
BACK TO SCHOOL
1 What change to the 2021 language GCSEs
in England and Wales (in response to school
closures this year) caused consternation?
2 What was significant about the Open
© SHUTTERSTOCK; LUIS SUAREZ IN 2014, L.F. SALAS VIA FLICKR. IMAGE ISOLATED (CC BY 2.0)
University’s ‘Welsh for beginners’ class
during lockdown?
3 A-levels in languages not usually taught in
schools in England and Wales fell by more
than 40%, but by how much did Gujarati
(the worst hit language) decline?
4 How many more girls than boys achieve a
pass in a language GCSE, according to the
report ‘Boys Studying Modern Foreign
Languages at GCSE in Schools in England’?
5 What All-Party Parliamentary Group did the
Labour MP Taiwo Owatemi establish due
to concerns about the impact of Brexit on
70,000 students in the UK every year?
thelinguist.uberflip.com
 FEATURES

1 2
WHO’S WHO?
Can you identify the people above and the
language-related reason they have been in
the news?
EMBARRASSING BLUNDERS
1 What retailer was accused of using
“garbage machine translation” after
labelling a cat T-shirt with a vulgar word
due to the double meaning of ‘pussy’?
2 Why did Sky apologise to the fans and
players of Rangers (pictured) and Celtic
football clubs following an incident
dubbed Translate-gate?
3 How did Facebook get into trouble with
the Chinese President Xi Jinping?
4 Why did an Australian mining company
JOHNSON (CC BY 2.0); ‘BTS FOR LG ELECTRONICS IN 2018’, ©LG ELECTRONICS (CC BY 2.0); ‘SAMUEL L JACKSON ON JUNE 26, 2019’,
3 4
WATCH WORDS
1 Why were there special updates to the
OED in April and July?
2 Why was a US professor sacked after using
the Chinese word na-ge (那个) in a lecture?
3 How did the world learn the Chinese word
jiayóu (加油; lit. ‘add oil’) in January?
4 Why was a family barred from putting
In ár gcroíthe go deo (meaning ‘in our
hearts forever’) on a gravestone in Coventry
(a decision that was later overturned)?
5 Funding was cancelled for the translation of
US census forms into which languages?
NEWSWORTHY
1 Released in the UK in February, what is the
film Les Traducteurs about?
2 What percentage of adults in the UK
5
WHO SAID (AND WHY)?
1 “Can you imagine Christmas at Sandringham
is like: ‘I’m sorry your majesty, but I only
drink yang yank yong ying ming milk’.”
2 “When, in my books, Italian succumbs and
takes on dialectal cadences, it’s a sign that,
in the language as well, past and present
are getting anxiously, painfully confused.”
3 “I’ve wasted the entire morning insulting the
mothers and rhetorical paucity of Spanish
fascists and Francoists on Twitter. But I have
learned that ‘smell your balls’ is actually a
compliment. So it’s a bit of a break-even.”
4 “[I] told them that I would only accept a
translation with no cut of any sort. They
basically wanted to cut almost all parts
referring to contemporary China, and in
particular to inequality and opacity in China.”

change its name from Adani to a Latin attempted to learn a language during the 5 “It would be kinda like The Matrix – you
‘GLASGOW RANGERS VS HEARTS, IBROX STADIUM, 23/7/11’, ALEX CHAPMAN (CC BY-SA 3.0); ‘BONG JOON-HO 2017’, DICK THOMAS

word meaning ‘crooked’, ‘mercenary’ first lockdown? want to speak a different language, no
© GLENN FRANCIS, WWW.PACIFICPRODIGITAL.COM; ‘MISHAL HUSAIN; REPORTER FOR THE BBC’, WILLSTAR 7/5/10 (CC BY-SA 3.0)

or ‘assassin’?
5 Why did Fox News anchor Sean Hannity
change the subtitle for his book Live
Free or Die: America (and the world)
after it was published by Threshold
Editions in August?
3 Why was rapper Jay Park allegedly slapped problem, just download the program.”
by UFC featherweight Brian Ortega? Answers on page 29.
4 In which language did Prince William
congratulate Alex Duguid as the TV
interpreter was awarded an MBE?
5 Why was a ‘Happy Brexit Day’ note
reported to the police after it was pinned
up in a Norwich block of flats?

WHAT LINKS…
1 Canadian Brewery Hell’s Basement
and Huruhuru leather shop in
New Zealand?
2 Artists Black Eyed Peas and
Minor Science?
3 Pando, Miss Rona and
happy hypoxia?
4 Changes to education policy
in India and Mongolia?
5 BLM, Megxit and TikTokers?

@Linguist_CIOL
 FEATURES
Recipe for success
Why learning a language while you cook is so effective, and
how online tool Linguacuisine can help. By Paul Seedhouse
A
significant challenge for nations
worldwide is how to improve the
foreign language proficiency of their
workforce and students. The question is: how
can we engage people with language
learning? By helping learners to acquire a
language while they cook, the Linguacuisine
project1 tackles the challenges of bringing the
foreign culture to life and motivating people
to study languages. It also addresses the
age-old problem of classroom language
learning – namely that students practise using
the language in classrooms, rather than using
it to carry out real-world actions.
At Newcastle University,2 linguists and
computing scientists have been working
together for 10 years to determine what
language learning might look like if we took,
as our starting point, what young people are
interested in: digital technology, overseas
travel, global cuisine and cooking, and
hands-on experiences. My colleagues Phil
Heslop and Ahmed Kharrufa and I used
these as the design basis for our solution.
Cooking is a universal physical activity
which has considerable resonance with both
culture and language. Such is its appeal that
countless TV programmes are devoted to it.
It involves all five senses, you can work with
friends and you get to eat the end product.
There are intimate connections between
language, cuisine and culture. If you think of
your favourite festival in your own country,
certain food and language will be associated
with it, which will give a window into the
culture. Many adults are motivated to study
languages through an interest in foreign
cuisine and culture, and this project taps
into that.
20 The Linguist Vol/59 No/6 2020
Using the service is simple: click ‘try it online
now’ on the website to browse recipes in 14
languages, including Chinese, German, Greek,
Quechua and Turkish. Choose a recipe and
your smartphone or tablet will speak to you
in the foreign language, talking you through
all of the cooking stages. There are photos
and audio files of all of the ingredients and
equipment you need, and video clips
explaining the cooking processes. If you can’t
understand, just press a button to get a photo,
audio file, text or video showing you what to
do. Users can access different levels of help
to support their language learning. It is best
to work in pairs to help each other and
practise speaking in the foreign language.
Pedagogical concerns
Linguacuisine is an adaptation of Task-Based
Language Learning and Teaching (TBLT), a
well-known and well-researched approach to
language learning in which students learn
while completing a task. When determining
our pedagogical approach, TBLT had major
advantages. There was a natural match with
the chosen activity of cooking, which could
be easily conceptualised as a task. TBLT has
well-developed procedures and principles for
task design. These blend well with Human-
Computer Interaction (HCI) design principles,
which also use an iterative development cycle.
TBLT has so far predominantly been based
on tasks to be undertaken within the
classroom that simulate real-world tasks.
There have been few attempts to employ the
methodology in naturalistic settings outside
the classroom, but this project takes TBLT
principles out of the classroom and into the
kitchen. Given the emphasis of the authentic
task within TBLT, we have used the kitchen
environment as a learning context. The act of
cooking a meal is an authentic task with a
clear goal and a motivating end product.
The cooking task was designed according
to Rod Ellis’s criterial features of TBLT.3 Firstly,
we designed it to encourage learners to focus
on meaning rather than purely on language –
that is, they use the language to complete a
culinary task rather than focusing primarily on
the language itself. Secondly, learners must
employ all four language skills in a holistic
manner to achieve the task. Typically, pairs of
learners listen to the audio/video, write down
information, read the text instructions and
discuss the task with each other.
Thirdly, the task is situated in an authentic
real-world context: the kitchen. The task is
goal-oriented, involving the production of a
dish. Fourthly, cooking tasks are carried out
in pairs, which sometimes generates
interaction in the foreign language. Finally,
learners can measure their own success by
non-linguistic goal completion, through
cooking and consumption of the food.
We adopted the cyclical TBLT framework
put forward by Ellis, which divides activity
related to the completion of a task into three
thelinguist.uberflip.com

phases: pre-task, during-task and post-task.
The pre-task in Linguacuisine involves
gathering the equipment and ingredients,
and learning them as vocabulary items. The
during-task involves carrying out the cooking,
making use of a wide range of support from
the app, the kitchen context and pair work.
The post-task involves evaluating the food by
eating it, as well as evaluating and reflecting
on what has been learnt in terms of language.
Our research showed that the method is
successful for learning vocabulary.4 We tested
50 learners of English on 16 words. The mean
of 8.51 in the pre-intervention test rose to
12.24 in the post-intervention test, showing a
significant gain. We found that people learn
foreign words better when they are physically
touching food and cooking utensils, and using
them to prepare food, compared to looking
at photos of the objects.5 When you are
cooking, you involve all of your senses in the
learning experience – touch, smell and taste,
as well as hearing and seeing – delivering a
vivid, kinesic language-learning experience.
Project origins
So how did Linguacuisine come about?
Twelve years ago, my colleagues and I in the
language school were looking at technology
produced by our counterparts in Computing
Science. We tried out the Ambient Kitchen,
designed to assist people with early-stage
dementia with their cooking. Digital sensors
detect the ingredients in the kitchen, find an
internet recipe which uses them and assist
@Linguist_CIOL
users in following it, detecting their activity
and giving feedback. This can help a person
to continue cooking for themselves at home
rather than going into care.
We immediately saw that the concept could
be adapted to language learning: a) to
maximise the links between language, culture
and cuisine; b) to take the sound principles
developed in task-based learning out of the
classroom and into the kitchen; and c) to give
learners a motivating and enjoyable physical
task with a tasty product. The first generations
of technology used digital sensors to detect
actions, and the third generation is an app.
Sustainable future
Linguacuisine’s recipe builder software
enables people to add cuisine from their
native countries in their own languages, so
that people all over the world can learn from
them. A video tutorial takes you through the
process, which can be done in your own
kitchen with a tablet or smartphone. The
software can be used by teachers to input
their own recipes so that their students can
learn specific language points. The ‘extras’
facility allows uploads of additional cultural or
language teaching materials. There is even an
annual competition (LinguaChef) for the best
language-learning recipe, with a £200 prize.
The infrastructure has been set up so that
any number of new recipes can be added in
any language, dialect, region or country. Our
long-term aim is to build a bank of language-
learning recipes from as many languages,
DECEMBER/JANUARY
FEATURES
IN THE KITCHEN
Students model how Linguacuisine works
cultures and cuisines as possible, promoting
cross-cultural understanding and
communication. Linguacuisine has been used
by more than 9,000 people in 83 countries,
and been selected by HundrED as “one of
the world’s most inspiring innovations in
bilingual education”.
In terms of future directions, the same
technological and TBLT principles can be
applied to cultural activities other than cooking
to promote language learning. Therefore, in
early 2021 we will be releasing the new app
ENACT (enacteuropa.com) for creating and
using cultural tasks for language learning,
such as dancing, embroidery and origami.
Notes
1 The Linguacuisine project (linguacuisine.com)
was financed by a €324,000 Erasmus+ grant
in 2016-18
2 With partner organisations the Hellenic Open
University, Workers Educational Association,
University of Modena and Reggio-Emilia, and
Action Foundation
3 Ellis, R (2003) Task-based Language Learning
and Teaching, Oxford, Oxford University Press
4 Seedhouse, P (2017) Task-based Language
Learning in a Real-World Digital Environment: The
European digital kitchen, London, Bloomsbury
5 Park, J and Seedhouse, P (2017) ‘Sight and
Touch in Vocabulary Learning: The Korean digital
kitchen’. In Ibid.
The Linguist 21
 FEATURES
An ear for editing
With a series of thought-provoking examples, Oliver Lawrence offers
his tips on how to write musically in order to engage an audience
“I’ve noticed I’m more engaged when an
author chooses words that – if spoken – are
pleasing to hear.”
“While most readers won’t be able to define
the elements of good rhythm, they’ll notice
if the words just don’t sing.”
“When you listen to a speaker, you hear
words, to be sure, but you also hear tones…
Gather your sentences by ear, and reimagine
them in your writing… If you think deep
enough, you think musically.”
Musical writing is more engaging, more
appealing, more memorable writing. Authors
Jack Hamann and Suzannah Windsor Freeman
point out as much above, before the poet
Robert Frost notes how we might start to
make it happen. As linguists – as writing
professionals – it’s our job to tune in to
these elements and orchestrate them to
elegant effect.
I set the scene for what ‘sound’ writing
entails at the CIOL Conference earlier this year
– about strings of stresses, sentence length
patterns and individual sounds that echo the
meaning they impart. This article is the next
step: a discussion of ten real examples of
how we can achieve this in practice. Walk this
way, then, for some musical editing.
Started to campaign. Taken out of context,
this short phrase looks perfectly reasonable
on the surface. But we can improve it. What
about ‘Began to campaign’? It might seem a
trivial change, but listen: the final ‘n’s alliterate,
and the syllable rhythm feels more agreeable,
22 The Linguist Vol/59 No/6 2020
as we avoid the three ‘t’s in stuttering
succession. My conclusion? It’s better to
cut the stutter.
Where does the punchline go in a joke?
This also seems quite nice, and it even offers
a spot of assonance with the repeated /ō/ in
‘go’ and ‘joke’. But what if we turn the
sentence around? With ‘When you tell a joke,
where’s the punchline?’, the key element hits
home because it’s placed at the end. And it’s
arguably more natural to put theme before
rheme. The moral? Finish with impact.
She appeared poised in an inimitable
silhouette. Go through that again and listen
carefully to how it all sounds. Did you trip
over that ‘in an inim-’ sequence? Me too.
Instead, how about ‘She appeared in a
silhouette of consummate poise’? As you can
hear, it pays to read it out loud.
Kerbrapp 666: an exciting, decidedly
contemporary incarnation of freedom. So
begins a puff piece about a (fictional) high-
end speedboat. But does the expression
‘decidedly contemporary’ feel a bit ponderous
next to ‘exciting’ – and not exactly exciting
either? Edit it to ‘Kerbrapp 666: freedom
incarnate, in stirring contemporary style’ and
both the flow and the meaning are working
harder to provide some vital pulse-quickening
oomph. That’s the benefit of binning the bulk.
Power and performance. The unmistakable
thrill of our soul. The phrasing is a little odd
here, and that’s probably because it was
written by a non-native speaker. But the
worst problem comes out in the sound: say
the last two words aloud (with the stress on
‘our’, pronounced as a monophthong) and
the horrific homophonic cacophony emerges.
‘The unmistakable kick that thrills the soul’ is
a step forward at least. In short, we should
listen out for double entendres.
Having suppliers that were forthcoming
was a really important part of the project:
taking part in meetings on more than one
occasion, putting forward solutions,
monitoring progress, etc. One way to firm
up this limp-sounding effort is to use the
dramatic pause of the colon for more
emphatic effect: ‘The engagement of our
suppliers was vital: they contributed to
meetings, proposed solutions and helped
us monitor progress.’ This revision also slims
down the overlong first element in the list
of three. (Lists generally sound better when
the first element is shorter.) The lesson?
Attune to the flow.
At the Kerbrapp 777 stern is the
submersible hatch, the innovative and highly
appreciated system used to move the garage
door and swimming platform, offering guests
all the comfort of a spacious beach club and
allowing the crew to easily manage a tender
measuring up to 5 metres long. Bloated and
flaccid? Let’s give it some pep by snipping it
up to draw attention to the key point: ‘The
Kerbrapp 777 vaunts a much-lauded feature
at the stern: the submersible hatch. This
ingenious system opens the garage door out
to form a swim platform with all the comfort of
a spacious beach club while the crew handle
thelinguist.uberflip.com

your 5-metre
tender with ease.’
We gain a less
tedious synonym for the
un-innovative ‘innovative’
and conclude the whole thing
on an emphatic stress that exudes
the very feeling the marketer is trying
to create. But the key was breaking the
sentence with a bang.
The Grand Hotel is the habitat for the
countless stories of the thousands of guests
passing through its doors. Here we have a
breath of alliteration, with ‘habitat’ echoing
‘Hotel’, but is ‘habitat’ the right collocation
for ‘stories’? Wouldn’t it be more natural to
say that stories play out on a stage, especially
as the establishment is bigging itself up as a
great setting for beautiful people to be seen
in? So let’s rephrase: ‘The Grand Hotel is the
© SHUTTERSTOCK
stage for the countless stories of the
thousands of guests who pass through its
doors.” This eases the rhythm by replacing
@Linguist_CIOL
two adjacent stresses ‘guests pass-’ with
the more flowing ‘guests who pass’. But
perhaps more importantly, it provides a new
matching pair of sounds (stage/stories) to
exploit the effect of alliteration.
Every Zugatti supercar is the outcome of
the cutting-edge R&D, technology and
construction for maximum stylistic effect and a
quality, highly functional, extremely efficient,
beautifully engineered result. This is another
one that would benefit from a break, not least
to improve the rhythm of the concluding list.
When there are more than three elements, it
can all become a bit of a litany, so let’s reorder
the four as two pairs: ‘Each Zugatti supercar is
the fruit of elite R&D, cutting-edge technology
and masterly construction skill. And the results
are there for all to see, in the superb quality
and excellent amenity, the optimum efficiency
and supreme stylistic effect, all engineered
with total precision.’ My advice: split that list.
I find books that have been written for
small children somewhat tedious, and Alice
tends to pick up on this fact. Some of them
are bland, predictable or stilted, among
other defects. The amusing poetry of Shel
Silverstein, however, surprises. Offbeat plots
take turns that can only be described as
unexpected. Intelligent wording bursts with
personality and sonorous quality. Cuddled in
my lap, Alice senses the enthusiasm in my
voice and senses delight as she listens.
‘Sidewalk’ enthrals Alice because Silverstein
enthrals me. I’ll leave you to contrast this
paragraph (and all the mistakes I poked into
DECEMBER/JANUARY
FEATURES
it) with Jack Hamann’s sharp, rhythmical
original: “Baby books bore me, and Alice can
tell. Too stilted. Too bland. Too predictable.
By contrast, Shel Silverstein’s poems surprise
and amuse. Sly storylines duck down
unexpected alleys. Clever phrases squeal and
sing. Cuddled in my lap, Alice senses
enthusiasm, hears delight. ‘Sidewalk’ enthrals
Alice because Silverstein enthrals me.” In
sum, we have several individual techniques at
our disposal, but we obtain the best effect
when we put them together.
It’s always useful to discuss concrete
examples, and I hope this list provides food
for thought. As an exercise, why not re-edit
those phrases and sentences yourself to
enhance their rhythmical effect and the
soundscape they create? Then nourish your
mind with some well-chosen reading. Treat
yourself to some masterly examples of fine
writing that have gone down in history, like
the one I conclude with here: the resounding
‘I Have a Dream’ speech by the Reverend
Martin Luther King, which certainly needs no
editing or commentary from me:
“When we allow freedom to ring – when
we let it ring from every city and every
hamlet, from every state and every city, we
will be able to speed up that day when all of
God’s children, black men and white men,
Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics,
will be able to join hands and sing in the
words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at
last, Free at last, Great God a-mighty, We
are free at last.’”
The Linguist 23
 FEATURES
Embassy insights
HE Torbjörn Sohlström, the Swedish Ambassador to the UK, talks
to Romana Sustar about promoting his culture and language
Q How does the embassy promote Swedish
culture and language in the UK?
A Britain and Sweden have a long relationship
of exchanging culture and sharing history.
Every year, the Embassy supports projects
that bring Swedes and Brits together around
art and culture. There are also several relevant
organisations, such as the Anglo-Swedish
Society. Grants can be awarded through the
Anglo-Swedish Literary Foundation, set up
by the writer George Bernard Shaw with
funds from his Nobel Prize. Much of the
exchange, however, takes place without the
involvement of the Embassy, through music
and films and the thousands of family links
that unite our countries.
Q What is unique about Swedish?
A Swedish is a Nordic language, spoken in
Sweden and in parts of Finland by a little
over 10 million people. It is close enough to
Norwegian and Danish to allow people to
understand each other reasonably well.
One easy way to experience Swedish is to
visit an Ikea store. The various furniture models
often carry names taken from the Swedish
language. If you become an expert, you can
read Swedish books that are well known in
24 The Linguist Vol/59 No/6 2020
FACT FILE: SWEDEN
The largest country in Northern Europe,
Sweden has low population density
with 10.3 million citizens. Most of the
people live in 1.5% of the territory and
66% of the country is covered by forest.
It ranks very highly in terms of quality
of life, equality, education and health;
recycles 99% of its waste; and has 52%
renewable energy. A cat called Kitty
lives at the embassy in London.
the UK – such as children’s books by Astrid
Lindgren about Pippi Longstocking – or watch
films and TV series such as Wallander or The
Bridge in their Swedish original versions.
Q What is SELTA?
A The Swedish-English Literary Translators’
Association, which promotes Swedish-
language literature while also representing
literary translators of Swedish. SELTA works
with publishers and relevant cultural and
literary organisations in Britain, Sweden and
Finland. The main goals are to promote the
publication of Swedish and Finland-Swedish
CUTTING EDGE
A fashion exhibition at the embassy in October
(main); and (inset) Torbjörn Sohlström
literature in English, and to represent the
interests of those involved in the translation
of Swedish literature into English.
Q What is your favourite Swedish word?
A Gryning och skymning (‘dawn and dusk’).
Q What is the meaning of Fika?
A Fika means to have a break with a cup of
coffee and a kanelbullar (cinnamon bun). It’s
part of our social life. It allows us to get to
know each other better, and in a business
environment it enables employees to meet
with executives in a more relaxed setting.
Torbjörn Sohlström started his UK post in
2016. He studied journalism, working at
Dagens Nyheter newspaper and for national
TV news before joining the Foreign Service.
Twitter: @sohlstromt or @swedeninuk
Council member Romana Sustar MCIL CL
is a multilingual digital marketing
manager, language tutor and reporter.
Twitter @RomanaSustar
thelinguist.uberflip.com
 SECTION REVIEWS
HEADER

Language
This is an unusual work, if only for the sheer for mining, logging and farming. In contrast,
range of languages that have been studied in New Guinea (just under 290,000 sq km) is

Dispersal,
the remotest parts of the world: it covers home to over 1,000 languages, many of which
South East Asia, Oceania, Africa and South have survived despite cultural disruption

Diversification
America (with particular reference to the associated with factors such as colonisation,
Amazon). Enormous efforts must have gone slavery and the spread of Western diseases.

and Contact
into collecting data and following up on the
various hypotheses that have emerged with
regard to the way in which languages can
spread with movements of population. These
Mily Crevels and Pieter Muysken (eds) can then diversify, though it is interesting to
see the ways in which some languages seem
Oxford to have had more influence than others.
Linguistics, 2020 Contact is not always easy, though the
360 pp; ISBN sheer range of languages to be found even
978-0198723813 in relatively limited areas is quite remarkable.
Hardback Of the 700 or so languages thought to have
£75 been spoken in the Amazon basin (an area of
2 million sq km) when the Portuguese arrived,
fewer than half have survived, and many of
those are under threat as land is taken over
This is a highly specialised area and to fulfil
the promise of the book’s subtitle – ‘a global
perspective’ – a variety of teams have been
brought together from universities across the
world. They present carefully researched
material with a whole range of charts and
maps. It is perhaps unfortunate for the less
specialised reader that they go into topics
such as genetic phynologies and partible
paternities, but the first section of the book
covers general approaches to the subject,
including key concepts relating to language
diversity and contact. That makes for very
interesting and informed reading.
Professor Tim Connell HonFCIL

How Dead
syntax. The last part alone comprises a their brevity: cēterīs paribus (‘other things
forensic analysis of person, number, tense, being equal’); fiat lux (‘let there be light’).

Languages
mood and voice. A close reading of an extract English, in contrast, no longer has the
from a canonical text follows (e.g. The Iliad, inflected forms of its Old and Middle variants.

Work
Coulter H George
OUP, 2020
240 pp; ISBN
978-0198852827
Hardback
£20
Do the Greeks have a word for it? Whatever it
may be, the answer is yes, according to the
author of this erudite and scholarly work.
A classicist, linguist and professor at the
University of Virginia, he claims that Ancient
Greek – via its highly inflected grammar, epic
tales, Socratic inquiry, Olympic spirit and
more – presents the reader with unique
insights. His task is to convince the ‘Greekless’!
For each language under scrutiny, he
reviews the phonology, morphology and
Annals, Beowulf ). Its script, transliteration,
word-by-word translation and final version
are worked through painstakingly. Similar
forms and meanings traced across linguistic
boundaries are highlighted as “points of
contact” between languages: ‘kin’, ‘loud’
and ‘ode’ have Ancient Greek origins.
The numerals one to ten are usually the
best conserved words in a language; the
pronunciation may change, but the spelling
rarely does. Kinship words behave similarly.
Indo-European family resemblances are clear:
pitar (Sanskrit), patēr (Greek), pater (Latin),
‘father’ (English), Vater (German). The changes
in initial and middle consonants are accounted
for by Grimm’s Law. The reason for greater
flexibility in word order is made clear. More
opaque, from an anglophone perspective, is
tracing the complete meaning of a word with
a stem that has six or eight case endings.
When the Romans needed new words to
talk about mathematics, philosophy and
theology, they looked to Sicily and other
Greek outposts. These words passed into
other European languages via monasticism
and the vernacular tongues. Latin phrases
carry a heavy semantic load and impress with
Instead, we use word order, pronouns,
prepositions and auxiliary verbs. The
subjunctive is now expressed in part by
modality (e.g. ‘must’, ‘should’, ‘will’).
Indo-European inflections occur in
predictable patterns, but phonological change
can disrupt them. New verbs are regular by
default (e.g. vacuum+ed) while old words
display established forms (e.g. ‘man’/’men’).
This is because “language users don’t create
irregularity spontaneously; but they are
certainly happy to retain it.” Change occurs at
different rates. ‘Summer has come’ was sumer
is icumen in Middle English, closely related to
the modern German sommer ist gekommen.
Other languages covered here are Old Irish
(“arguably the most difficult… almost willfully
so”), Welsh (“quite straight forward by
comparison”) and Hebrew, not Indo-European
but included because of biblical scholarship
and its influence on ancient languages.
A couple of minor criticisms: the sections
on phonological change would benefit from
diagrams and more widely understood script.
And ‘dead’ languages? ‘Ancient’ would be
better. Now, I’m off to find my Latin primer!
Graham Elliott MCIL

@Linguist_CIOL DECEMBER/JANUARY The Linguist 25

 REVIEWS
cÉwvtáàá
Listen and learn
Inspiration, intrigue, advice – whatever you’re looking for in a podcast,
The Allusionist
Anam Zafar Student Member, Editorial Board
The Allusionist is the
podcast for language
nerds. When it began, it
primarily focused on
exploring English lexicon,
etymology, idioms, slang
and more. Over time,
Helen Zaltzman’s “adventures in language”
have evolved to embrace languages from all
around the world (including fictional ones), as
well as language-related subjects such as
translation, audio description and accents.
With different experts for each episode,
topics range from the whimsical (one answers
the question ‘Why do we all sound like idiots
when we talk to babies?’) to the topical
(another discusses the language used by the
press to talk about migration), and everything
in between. New episodes of 20-60 minutes
come out roughly every fortnight. So whatever
mood you’re in, you are sure to find an
episode as silly, serious, long or short as you
like. Zaltzman’s comedic flair means that even
the nerdiest episodes are entertaining and
digestible. I find myself chuckling along
frequently to her witty comments and
unashamed zeal for all things word-related.
theallusionist.org
26 The Linguist Vol/59 No/6 2020
El Hilo
Fiona Baillie Student Affiliate, Scottish
Society Committee
I am a bit late to the game
when it comes to podcasts
– I find the choice quite
overwhelming. My
language combination is
English-Spanish, and
lockdown gave me the nudge to find a
Spanish-language podcast. I am drawn to
Latin American stories because that’s where I
learned the language.
Produced by Radio Ambulante Studios, it
is a free podcast lasting 30 minutes. With a
new release every Friday, the team of
international journalists cover interesting
stories and events from Latin America,
delving into politics, science, economics and
the natural world. Some of the accents are
quite strong, so it is suitable for intermediate,
advanced or fluent Spanish speakers who
want to learn more about Latin America.
Recent episodes include ‘Bolivia después
de Evo’, ‘Confinados con 1.800 vecinos’ and
‘El huracán lo llevamos dentro’. El hilo is a
great way to learn about global issues, people
and events that aren’t necessarily on the
radar of UK-based news outlets.
elhilo.audio/episodios
Lexicon Valley
David Stockings Career Affiliate
Have you ever wondered
whether linguistics could
be livened up using
snippets of show tunes,
cartoons and vintage
adverts? Neither had until I
started listening to Lexicon
Valley, a podcast hosted by John McWhorter,
Associate Professor of English and
Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
In its own words, the podcast is “about
language” and covers a huge range of
topics, from linguistic history (‘Why Is “Ph”
Pronounced That Way?’) to sociolinguistics
(‘From Uptalk to Vocal Fry, Women are Prolific
Language Innovators’) and the grammar of
both English and other languages (‘Chinese
Has No Grammar, Right? Wrong!’).
I won’t need to convince you that these
are things worth learning about in and of
themselves, but the tone in which the
information is delivered – academically
rigorous yet refreshingly light, and occasionally
downright irreverent – is what makes this
podcast one of my favourites. The topics are
eclectic but fascinating and the style whimsical
but insightful. I thoroughly recommend it.
slate.com/podcasts/lexicon-valley
thelinguist.uberflip.com

CIOL staff, volunteers and members have it covered
Lingthusiasm
Panayiota Vatikioti MCIL
From the linguists
Gretchen McCulloch and
Lauren Gawne, this is one
of my favourite podcasts.
Gretchen focuses on the
language of the internet
and is the author of
bestseller Because Internet: Understanding
the new rules of language. Lauren’s interest is
how people speak and she runs the generalist
linguistics website Superlinguo.
With a new 30-minute episode every
month, they have released 50 podcasts since
launching Lingthusiasm three years ago.
Subjects include language learning, translation
and constructed languages (e.g. Esperanto).
One standout episode is ‘How Languages
Influence each Other’, exploring African
languages through an interview with Hannah
Gibson, who reveals unusual details (did you
know that Swahili has 16 grammatical
genders?). I also loved the one about the
way people integrate emojis with words.
The hosts explore various interesting topics.
Their style is direct, fun, friendly, enthusiastic
and passionate – as if you are having coffee
with friends and talking about language!
lingthusiasm.com
@Linguist_CIOL
A Way
Philosophy Bites With Words
John Worne, CEO
In my favourite podcast,
David Edmonds and Nigel
Warburton interview top
philosophers on a wide
range of topics. Since
launching the podcast in
2007, they have written
and produced an enormous range of
endlessly fascinating content, including two
very successful books based on the series.
As well as discussing ethics and aesthetics,
Philosophy Bites covers language, psychology
and the philosophy of mind, with some great
episodes for lovers of language and linguistics.
Three of these which set me thinking were
Guy Longworth on J L Austin and Ordinary
Language, which argues that when it comes to
language, context is everything; Barry Smith
on Wittgenstein’s Conception of Philosophy,
which covers the argument that language is
necessarily shared; and Joshua D Greene on
the Construction of Thought, exploring areas
in the left temporal cortex and suggesting
they may be a subject-object-verb ‘structure’
in the brain. Language is what makes us
human; Philosophy Bites explores that and
more with precision and erudition – a joy!
philosophybites.com
DECEMBER/JANUARY
REVIEWS
Alexandra Man, CIOLQ Development Officer
A Way with Words is a
really funny podcast
focusing on languages. The
two co-hosts – American
writer and radio presenter
Martha Barnette and
American lexicographer
Grant Barrett – discuss all things related to
languages with callers from across the world.
From complex questions about grammar,
literature and linguistics to entertaining ones
concerning slang, dialects, expressions, jokes
and riddles, the podcast is a fun way to relax.
In one episode the discussion centred on
whether the term ‘bloody’ is offensive. It was
amusing to stop and think about the
connotations of this word, which is so
popular in Britain.
Accessible to all generations, the podcast
is especially useful to those who are studying
English as a foreign language and want to
learn all kinds of linguistic titbits. I’ve always
wondered why we say what we say, and how
certain expressions came into English.
Barnette and Barrett give answers to such
questions and enable listeners to discover
new things. It’s a must for language lovers!
www.waywordradio.org
The Linguist 27
 OPINION & COMMENT
All work and play
How a hobby can illustrate commitment to and expertise
in your specialist field – this time looking at photography
KARINE LEROUX
During a crisis, a hobby can do more than
help with mental wellbeing: if it matches one
of your specialisms, it could be harnessed as
a marketing tool to make you stand out. As
a translator specialising in art, I use my
photography to show art clients that, beyond
a genuine interest in visual arts, I am also very
active in their field. By mentioning some of
your activities on LinkedIn and other social
media platforms, you demonstrate that your
expertise goes beyond terminology, and that
contributes to gaining clients’ trust.
There are various ways you can portray
yourself as being active in your clients’ area
of work. As art is my main specialism, my
website must display pictures. Being a
photographer means copyright isn’t an issue,
but producing photos that were relevant to
my work and didn’t clash with my green logo
was a challenge. I decided on a street art
theme to reflect my place of residence:
Bristol, a major UK art hub and a city well-
known as a street art Mecca (Banksy, Upfest).
This geographical link lets clients know that I
am in a good place to keep abreast of the
arts and be part of the art community.
After updating my website with close-up
shots of a piece of graffiti (based on a yoga
28 The Linguist Vol/59 No/6 2020
photo shoot I had done previously; pictured),
I wrote a short blog post about the website’s
new look and shared it on LinkedIn. This
prompted some of my contacts to look at
my website, and their ‘likes’ and comments
on LinkedIn meant that my post was
automatically showing in their contacts’ feeds.
A hobby can offer less direct, but no less
pertinent, ways of gaining exposure for your
business. In June, the online newspaper Bristol
24/7 published my ‘Rainbow City’ project, a
series of abstract compositions of brightly
coloured houses around Bristol. Even if the
primary focus of an article is on your hobby, a
little information about you makes the piece
more interesting and relatable; this is where
you can refer to your profession and include
contact information. The article mentioned
that I was a translator and gave my website. I
cross-posted on my translation blog to
illustrate my hands-on experience and
present myself as a translator who shares her
clients’ passion for visual arts. On LinkedIn,
this generated ‘likes’ and congratulations
from art clients and contacts.
Business opportunities may also come your
way while engaging with your hobby. During
lockdown, I entered a few photography
competitions. Most are open to international
artists, so their websites are translated into
English, sometimes to poor standards. In one
case, I contacted a competition organiser in
© KARINE LEROUX
France to offer my translation services; they
are keeping my details on file for the future.
Joining a membership organisation related
to your hobby shows commitment to and
knowledge of your field. I mention my Royal
Photographic Society (RPS) membership in my
marketing communications, and am keen to
apply for one of their distinctions, so LRPS
may follow MCIL and CL after my name.
Regularly updating your contacts on your
activities is advisable too. About twice a year,
I email existing and potential clients about my
latest translation projects and a little peripheral
news. This summer, I mentioned that some
of my photos had been selected for group
exhibitions abroad. As I work with art
galleries and exhibition catalogue publishers,
this piqued my clients’ interest, and some
contacts asked for more information and links
to my photographic work. Such exchanges
strengthen my business profile with potential
clients and my relations with existing ones.
Don’t be shy about citing your main
activities to direct clients. It is a chance to get
in touch and an excellent way to ensure they
keep you in mind as the best person for the
job next time they need a linguist.
TL Karine Leroux MCIL CL is the
founder of Linguistic Alchemy.
thelinguist.uberflip.com
 OPINION & COMMENT

QUIZ ANSWERS (Questions, page 18)

Political manoeuvres. 1 Proposals
for better Irish-language provision;
2 A failure to translate Covid
advice; 3 English-only labels on
disinfectant; 4 3,200; 5 The EU’s
increasing use of English, giving
Crossword no.27
teaching swear words in 15 Solution page 31
languages; 4 Reporter Mishal
Husain recorded a health message
in Urdu (BBC colleagues covered 1 2 3 4 5
other Asian languages); 5 Britain’s
Got Talent runners-up Sign Along 6 7

the anglophone press a With Us promoted sign language. 8 9

“competitive advantage”.
High tech. 1 Called for UK Covid
briefings to have BSL (British Sign
Language) interpreting; 2 An AI
model to weed out bias; 3 Adding
UK regional words; 4 He wrote
half of Wikipedia’s Scots entries
but doesn’t speak the language;
5 Google Translate for Cows.
Sporting times. 1 Gary Lineker
after housing Rasheed; 2 Different
rules in Spanish and English
allegedly meant Real Madrid
Embarrassing blunders. 1 Amazon
Sweden; 2 An error in the English
subtitles had Rangers star Alfredo
10 11
Morelos accusing Celtic fans of
racism; 3 It translated his name as 12
‘Mr Sh*thole’; 4 They thought
13 14 15
Bravus meant ‘brave’; 5 It used
Latin words but didn’t make sense.
Watch words. 1 To add new
16 17
words linked to the pandemic; 2 It
sounds like an English racial slur; 18
3 As Wuhan locked down, people
shouted it from apartments; 4 In 19 20 21

was awarded a penalty but not
Athletic; 3 Improve their English;
4 A language exam required for
Italian citizenship; 5 For not
learning Italian after two years.
Apt apps. 1 Call for “interpreters
left behind in Afghanistan” to be
given asylum in the UK; 2 Google
Translator Toolkit; 3 Translate
American Sign Language; 4 Help
healthcare staff speak with Covid-
19 patients; 5 To aid talk about
the pandemic in a “funny,
educational and universal” way.
On the page. 1 She won the
International Booker with author
Marieke Lucas Rijneveld; 2 The
Guardian; 3 The last speakers died
before it was finished; 4 Martina
Navratilova; 5 They were reacting
to the new Urdu translation and
confiscated only the Urdu copies.
Back to school. 1 Speaking will no
longer be part of the grade; 2 It
became their most popular course
for students in Wales; 3 96%;
4 More than double; 5 Erasmus+.
Who’s who? 1 Bong Joon-ho
directed Parasite, the first foreign-
language film to win ‘Best Picture’
at the Oscars; 2 K-pop band BTS
hosted Korean lessons during
lockdown; 3 Samuel L Jackson
encouraged Americans to vote by
case the phrase, written only in
Irish, was seen as political; 5 All
native languages except Navajo.
Newsworthy. 1 How Dan Brown’s
Inferno was translated; 2 10%
according to a British Council
survey; 3 For interpreting insults
directed at Ortega from Korean;
4 BSL; 5 Hate speech: it said
people speaking other languages
“infected this once great island”.
What links… 1 Both found out
they had used the Māori word for
‘pubic hair’ (huruhuru); 2 Released
albums inspired by bilingualism;
3 Covid slang; 4 A change to the
language of instruction: Mandarin
will be used for certain subjects in
Mongolia; Indian primaries will no
longer use English; 5 Words
added to the Collins Dictionary.
Who said (and why)? 1 Piers
Morgan after Peter Phillips (the
Queen’s grandson) appeared in a
TV advert for state milk in China;
2 Novelist Elena Ferrante in a rare
interview; 3 David Simon, creator
of The Wire, after assuming olé tus
cojones (‘you’ve got balls’) was an
insult; 4 Thomas Piketty when told
to cut 10 pages from his Capital
and Ideology; 5 Elon Musk when
asked what his Neuralink
technology will do in five years.
22
Across
1 Bird, and subject of a poem
by Edgar Allan Poe. (5)
4 Language of South East Asia
which uses an abugida writing
system. (4)
8 The ancient language of
Etruria. (8)
9 A now discredited name for
the Sami language of
Scandinavia. (4)
10 The French imposed a Latin
alphabet on this language in
1910. (10)
13 The native word for Flemish
Dutch. (6)
15 Language closely related to
Czech and Polish. (6)
16 The first language of a
Carioca. (10)
19 Piece of furniture taken from
Arabic via Turkish. (4)
20 Place called Al-Nasira in
Arabic. (8)
22 A neologism meaning ‘aware
of social issues’. (4)
23 A greeting, or an expression
of surprise? (5)
23
Down
2 Passively? The opposite. (8)
3 The French are moved by this
flightless bird. (3)
4 Instrument enabling you to
see far. (9)
5 European mountain range,
possibly derived from the Latin
for ‘white’. (4)
6 A religious painting, or a
pictogram on a computer. (4)
7 Latin soul. (6)
11 To change into gas or
steam. (9)
12 Relating to mum and/or
dad. (8)
14 Demonstrations. (3-3)
17 City and strip of territory of
the Palestinians. (4)
18 A neologism describing a
modern-day anxiety. (4)
21 Regret in the French
street. (3)

@Linguist_CIOL DECEMBER/JANUARY The Linguist 29

 OPINION & COMMENT
Email linguist.editor@ciol.org.uk with your views
Concerns for Mongolian
As mentioned in ‘What the Papers Say…’
(TL59,5), policy changes in China limiting the
use of Mongolian language and script in daily
life are causing grave concern to Mongolian
communities worldwide, as well as to scholars
of the language and culture. Written from
top to bottom and left to right, the classical
script dates back to the 13th century, and
has been used to record Mongolia’s
indigenous history and literature for centuries.
The traditional script provides a shared link
to the past that connects all forms of modern
spoken and written Mongolian. In 2013, it
was included in the Unesco list of Intangible
Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent
Safeguarding, underlining its international
importance. The need to protect the script is
also recognised in projects such as the Atlas
of Endangered Alphabets.
The Cyrillic alphabet was adopted under
the former People’s Republic of Mongolia,
and is still the official script in democratic
Mongolia today. However, in recent years the
traditional script has been taught in schools
from grade 6 and its informal use has been
encouraged by the Mongolian government,
which has plans to adopt the traditional script
for official use alongside Cyrillic from 2025.
Since the establishment of the People’s
Republic of China (PRC), Chinese and
Mongolian have both been official languages
in the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region.
Mongolian language has been taught and
Mongolian-language textbooks have been
30 The Linguist Vol/59 No/6 2020
used in local schools. Thus ethnic Mongolian
students have completed school and
university education as fully bilingual.
More recently, the Chinese government has
increasingly undermined this level of linguistic
diversity. Just before Inner Mongolian schools
re-opened in August, the government
announced an education policy which would
significantly reduce the use of Mongolian
language and script in the teaching of key
subjects, with Mongolian-language textbooks
phased out over two years. Furthermore,
students would learn Chinese from textbooks
printed only in Mandarin. This has provoked
profound concern among parents and pupils.
The move has serious implications.
According to Professor Li Narangoa of the
Australian National University, if this policy is
implemented, “there will hardly be anyone
writing and publishing books in Mongolian in
the near future and that would be the end of
both the Mongolian language and script”.
Literacy in the traditional script ensures the
survival of Mongolian culture as a living entity
that can be handed from generation to
generation. Without it, the language could
be relegated to the past, accessible only to
scholars. For many Mongols this would
fundamentally undermine their cultural
identity. Mongolian language and culture are
part of the world’s heritage. They deserve
proper respect and protection. It is the duty
of the international community to say so.
Enkhee Namsrai MCIL CL
Please view the
below message
Are you also being driven mad by the ever
increasing use of ‘below’ as an adjective? It is
actually an adverb, sometimes a preposition.
So ‘the below information’ is grammatically
and gratingly incorrect in UK English – and not
infrequently seen in CIOL communications. So,
come on guys, as members of the Chartered
Institute of Linguists, let’s get it right. Banish
the ‘below message’ and use either ‘the
following message’ or ‘the message below’.
Christine Pocock FCIL
The vowel trap
I was reminded of a translator’s
embarrassment by Victoria Bentata Azaz’s
amusing letter (TL59,4). In my days as a
military interpreter/translator and a defence
attaché, I once had to visit the Interior
Minister of a former Soviet Republic to tell
him what assistance the UK was prepared to
give him in restructuring his forces.
The minister, a very stern individual with a
reputation for heavy-handedness, had already
made it clear he wanted lethal weaponry; this
was against our rules. I started by telling him
that his request for weapons had been
rejected. Well, that is what I thought I said. In
fact, I fell into the vowel trap and used the
Russian word for ‘manure’ (удобрение/
udobreniye) instead of ‘approval’ (одобрение/
odobreniye): “We cannot give manure to
your request…” He looked very startled.
Christopher Langton ACIL
Parent’s view
‘En famille’ (TL59,5) on freelancing and
parenting struck a chord, as I have been doing
the same for 14 years since having twins. My
professional life as a translator adapted around
them. I have found this to be a common
experience among freelancing friends and
clients. With the latter, snippets on the fun and
frustrations of parenting are exchanged while
the work files go back and forth. Great article,
Debbie, many thanks for sharing it with us.
Ceri Marshall MCIL CL
thelinguist.uberflip.com
 OPINION & COMMENT

Of libraries
and languages
Britain is known as the home of excellent
public libraries which are all free. Ever since
their growth in the 19th century, they have

En famille
developed to suit all ages and requirements.
My own library, in Cheltenham, has a brilliant

IMAGES © SHUTTERSTOCK
foreign language section, offering books,
usually fiction, in some eight languages,
including Hindi and Urdu. I regularly take out
books in French, Spanish and Italian, as I can
read these easily, and sometimes in Polish and
German, where I need to use a dictionary.
When I first saw this selection I was
Why parenting skills are transferable skills
delighted that speakers of foreign languages
were catered for, but then I learned that the
books were intended for native speakers of the project manager trusts you, which means
the languages offered. I realised that many of you can work once the kids are in bed.
the books were translations of British and Then there’s the ability to focus while
American authors. The aim was to introduce DEBBIE GARRICK everything around you is crumbling. I’ve had
foreign visitors to English-language writers. Nothing in life can prepare you for being a to learn to tune out the distractions of kids
I was disappointed until I saw that books by parent. It takes time to figure out what works arguing, a messy kitchen, the baby sleeping
native speakers were key texts and very good for you and your child. The good news is that on me, and just get on with the job. I can
indeed. I read, in Spanish, several books by the skills you learn in parenting equip you also work anywhere while waiting for my kids.
Juan José Millás, the incisive El Pais columnist, well for freelance business. Let’s start with Another very useful skill is motivation. As the
and Isabel Allende. Every so often, the books, keeping your cool in a crisis. If there’s one main carer in my household, the whole family’s
which are supplied by an organisation called quality all children share, it’s that they are mood feeds off mine. Motivating everyone to
Bright Books, are refreshed so I know there unpredictable. Your youngest rips her toenail get up and out of the house in the morning is
will always be something new to read. off when you’re already late for school? No a never-ending challenge. Being a freelancer
If any readers do not have this facility at problem. You learn to cope, get everyone means being extremely self-motivated, and if
their local library, they should request it. where they need to be and take control – you can motivate a whole family, motivating
Librarians are some of the unsung heroes of perfect for managing a deadline crisis, yourself becomes a breath of fresh air. When
our time and are always willing to help. calming a stressed-out client or learning to it comes to making people happy, no one is
Maurice Varney FCIL think outside the box. as hard to please as your offspring, so use
Next there’s time management. Scheduling those people-pleasing skills to get project
activities, appointments, play dates, haircuts managers and clients in your corner.
Crossword solution and a host of activities for your family makes My kids have taught me a great deal.
Puzzle page 29 you a brilliant organiser. You know exactly They’ve turned me into a multitasking
O L L E H E K W O how much you can fit into your day and what machine – which only occasionally drops the
23 22
A U A S T M you need to juggle to make it happen. ball. They’ve introduced me to a whole new
H T E R A Z A N A F O S When it comes to soft skills for business, vocabulary – from baby items to the latest
21 20 19
N A I R F your kids are the world’s best trainers. You TikTok trends – so keeping up with language
18
E S E U G U T O R P learn 20 ways of phrasing every request, and developments, fashion and popular culture
17 16
R P I P Y how to manage a situation to get different requires almost no effort. Most of all, they’ve
K A V O L S A M S A L V personalities on board without anyone taught me that I’m blessed to have a job I
15 14 13
P C U V E feeling overly put out. This is a great exercise love and can fit around family life. It’s often
12
E S A M E N T E I V in knowing your target market and writing to manic but I wouldn’t change it for the world.
11 10
S E I O I their needs. You practise the art of negotiation
P P
L
A L
E
9
N
A
A C
I
S U
M
R T
C
E
8
daily (two more bites of broccoli; yes you do
need to wear your wellies), so why not try it
TL Debbie Garrick MCIL is a French/
Spanish > English translator and
7 6
I A H T N E V A R out with your clients? A close-of-play deadline copywriter; garricktranslations.com
can easily be switched to 9am the next day if
5 4 3 2 1

@Linguist_CIOL DECEMBER/JANUARY The Linguist 31

 INSTITUTE MATTERS
A life with languages
In his native Ewe, Harold Assou-Dodji discusses his trilingual upbringing in Ghana, and
the lack of recognition and professional support when working in an African language
A
s a native Ewe, my
childhood education was
split between English-
speaking Ghana and French-
speaking Togo. Trilingualism was
therefore part of my family’s
linguistic identity. But when I
joined the University of Ghana as a
biological science student, I never
considered that my career would
be in the language and bilingual
communication services sector.
In high school I had developed
some interest in language and
culture, and the link between
language and thought. The
inspiration to become a bilingual
32 The Linguist Vol/59 No/6 2020
A
be Eʋevi dzidzi ene la, nye
sukudede le ɖevime ma
ɖe dukɔ eve siwo nye
Togo kple Ghana la dome. Le esia
ta la, gbe etɔ̃ dodo nye nyeƒomea
ƒe gbegblɔdzeside. Ke esi mege
ɖe Legon yunivɛsitia me abe
dzɔdzɔmeŋutinunyasrɔl̃ a ene la,
nyemebui kpɔ be mava zu dɔwɔla
le gbegbɔgblɔ kple ame siwo zaã
gbe eve la dome o.
Esime menɔ sekendrisuku dem
la, nyemelɔã ŋu le gbegblɔgblɔ
kple dekɔnu kpakple kadodo si le
gbegblɔgblɔ kple susuɖeɖe dome
la gbɔ o. Ke nusi de dzo lã me
nam be mazu Franse kple Iŋlisigbe
gɔmeɖelae nye esime woda akɔ
nam meva zu yunivɛsiti la ƒe
Franse Habɔbɔa ƒe nunɔla.
Nublanuitɔe la, esi mebia mɔ be
maɖɔli nye nusɔsrɔ̃ ayi ɖe
Susuŋutinunya kple Fransegbesɔsrɔ̃
me la, womeda asi ɖe edzi o.
Le nye ƒe ɖeka ƒe subɔbɔ na
professional (French and English)
came when I was elected president
of the university’s French Club.
Sadly, my request to change course
to a BSc in Psychology and French
was denied.
Following national service, I
worked as an English teacher and
head of department at a prestigious
school in Accra, with additional
responsibility to teach French. Over
the next 12 years, in both French-
and English-speaking West Africa,
I worked in corporate organisations
requiring strong technical writing
and bilingual communication skills.
Regular requests for translation and
dukɔa vɔ megbe la, mewɔ dɔ
abe Iŋlisigbefiala kple dɔnunɔla
ene le suku gã aɖe si le Gɛ dua
me la me, kpe ɖe
Fransegbefiafia ŋuti. Le ƒe 12
siwo kplɔ esia ɖo me la, mewɔ dɔ
le asitsadɔwɔƒe gã aɖe siwo hiã
gbe eve sese deto la me le
Afrika-Ɣedzeƒe dukɔ siwo doa
Fransegbe kple Iŋlisigbe la me.
Nyagɔmeɖeɖe ƒe hiahiã siwo
vana edziedzi kple gbegɔmeɖedɔ
siwo mewɔna le takpekpe veviwo
me lae meva zu ɖokuisidɔwɔla.
Nyagɔmeɖeɖe tso/yi ɖe
Eʋegbe me (si hã wodona le
Gana, Tɔgo, Bene, kple Nigeria
ƒe Ɣedzeƒe-Anyiehe du aɖewo
me) ya va emegbe. Ebola dɔlélé
dranyi la na mɔnukpɔkpɔ geɖem
be maɖe kɔdzi dodokpɔ
biabiawo gɔme ɖe Afrika
gbegbɔgblɔwo me. Kuxi siwo ku
ɖe nyawo gɔmeɖeɖe ɖe Afrika
gbegbɔgblɔwo abe Eʋegbe ene
conference interpreting jobs led
me into private practice.
Translation from/into Ewe
(spoken in Ghana, Togo, Benin,
and parts of southwest Nigeria)
came later. The Ebola pandemic
created opportunities for the
translation of clinical trial
questionnaires into African
languages. The challenges of
translating into African languages
like Ewe seem insurmountable in
terms of the gap between
Western and African cultures,
with a lack of vocabulary for
concepts and terminologies in
both social and applied sciences.
me ŋu la nye nukpekeame aɖe
ƒomevi ɖe vovototo si le yevuawo
ƒe dekɔnu kple Afrika dekɔnuwo
dome la ta, kpe ɖe nyawo ƒe
anyimanɔmanɔ na susu kple
nyatiwo le hadome nunya kple
dzɔdzɔmeŋutinunya me la ŋu.
Kuxi bubuwoe nye
nyagɔmeɖedɔwo ƒe asì ɖeka dzi
manɔmanɔ; dɔnalawo kple
dɔwɔhatiwo ƒe ame makpɔmakpɔ
ɖe naneke me kple tutuɖo
maxɔmaxɔ edziedzi. Akpa si ŋu
ko fetu le lae nye dzidzeme kple
dzidzɔ ƒe seselelãme si vana
nenye be dɔwɔha gãwo kple
gbeta dɔwɔhawo abe Xexeme
Dukɔwo Katã Ƒe Habɔbɔ ene tsɔ
dɔ nam be mawɔ le Anyigbe
Sahara Afrika nutowo me.
Le nye vovoɣiwo la, mekpɔa
dzɔdzɔmeŋutinunya-nyakpakpa
ƒe vidiowo eye mexlẽa agbalẽ
siwo ku ɖe Afrika nunya goglo
kple susu ƒe gbe la ŋu.
Other difficulties include a lack
of standardisation in pricing for
interpreting and translation
contracts; lack of recognition by
clients and some colleagues; and
lack of continuous professional
development. The rewarding
part is the feeling of satisfaction
and accomplishment when
contracted by big corporate and
international organisations, such
as the UN, to cover meetings in
Sub-Saharan Africa.
In my leisure time, I watch
science-fiction films and read
books on African philosophy and
the language of thought.
thelinguist.uberflip.com

Beyond Germany
How the newly invigorated German Language Society
brought its event online. By its Chair Romana Sustar
T
he German Language Society
(GLS) is the continuation of the
German Society, founded in 1986.
The team that successfully led the society
for decades said farewell in September
2019. With the pandemic hitting soon
after, the new team had to embrace
new ways of continuing the society. In
many ways, digital life worked in our
favour due to our locations in London,
Cambridge, Frankfurt and Wismar.
We became the German Language
Society in order to broaden our reach
and make everybody feel welcome, with
the aim of connecting all German-
speaking countries and expanding our
network. To enable every CIOL member
to learn about German-speaking nations
we decided to create one event a month,
alternating in German and English.
Addressing current concerns, our
online series ‘Migration hat viele
Gesichter’ (‘Migration has Many Faces’)
also reflects a long history of migration in
German-speaking countries. We started
in July with the 1974 film Angst essen
Seele auf (‘Fear Eats the Soul’; pictured).
It tells the story of a widow working as a
cleaner and a younger mechanic from
Morocco, who lives in a room with five
other Arabs. We compared this to the
situation in Germany today.
It is so important to learn from our
colleagues and for the next event Walter
Chromik shared his experiences before
the fall of the Berlin Wall. At our third
@Linguist_CIOL
event, the speaker was VVDÜ President
Natascha Dalügge-Momme, who has
gained an understanding of the need
for migration and integration while
interpreting the often terrifying stories
of refugees in court. Our fourth event,
‘Hope is Illegal’, focused on the story of
a Nigerian migrant in Austria.
Moving to an online delivery was not
without its challenges, and we are
grateful to the Midlands Network team,
who provided very useful information.
The CIOL communications team also
offered generous support in regard to
social media and marketing campaigns.
We will end the year with a festive
event in December, where our guest will
be the real German Santa Claus! After
the problems of 2020, we will focus on
the positives next year with our ‘Sag es
positiv! #21’ series, covering education
and professional life with speakers from
cultural societies, embassies and more.
My wish is to expand the society and
make it accessible to all, regardless of
how well they speak German. The idea
is to promote our passion for languages.
We believe that everybody has a fantastic
story to share, and we encourage
members to send us suggestions and
become an active part of the society.
For details email GLS@ciol.org.uk.
Follow the society on Facebook
CIOLgermanlanguagesociety and
Twitter @CIOL_GLS. For CIOL networks
visit ciol.org.uk/networks-events.
DECEMBER/JANUARY
INSTITUTE MATTERS
COUNCIL
NEWS
Judith Gabler reports
on the November meeting
with new CEO John Worne
Welcome to our new CEO,
John Worne! We are delighted
that after our rigorous
recruitment process with many
high calibre candidates, John’s
background and expertise
were the perfect fit for CIOL.
John’s début at the November Council meeting
gave an early promise of pace and vision.
An important exercise is to recalibrate all our
policies annually. Despite the restrictions and
ongoing uncertainty of the pandemic, our staff
team are to be credited with enormous resilience
by going over and beyond to ensure that we are
fully compliant with statutory legislation.
Financial stability remains challenging, but not
impossible, and this is our top priority. Since
becoming Chair I have frequently accentuated that
we need to be an agile, evolving and responsive
organisation in order to meet challenges head-on
and define our roadmap in line with our ambition.
This work is underway. Council has endorsed
the plan to weld stronger synergies between
membership, training and qualifications in order
to create a leaner and harmonised ‘One CIOL’.
We are investing in technology to transition our
qualifications to online delivery; drive smarter
services; and equip our members and the language
profession with cutting-edge knowledge. We are
averaging 250+ live attendees at our training
webinars. At around 90% so far, our retention
rate has already exceeded last year’s position.
Council received annual reports from our three
divisions, which are all doing splendid work to
enable us to stay relevant and in demand. We are
determined that as the pre-eminent body for
language practitioners we will put ourselves at
the heart of the profession as convener and
facilitator. Our online Resources & Public Policy
page, as well as our Policy & Position Statements,
are regularly updated to reflect this.
These are just a few highlights from November.
I hope wherever you are you are keeping well
and staying safe.
The Linguist 33
 INSTITUTE MATTERS
Meet our members
JO DURNING CONSIDERS A VERY VARIED CAREER – AND WHY
IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO GAIN A NEW SPECIALISATION
Tell us a bit about your career…
At university, I took French as a subsidiary
subject, and I later had opportunities to
improve my French during a career in the
UK civil service. Explaining UK social policy
to the French at a time when Margaret
Thatcher was the Prime Minister was a
challenge! I later spent five years as a public
policy consultant. After that work dried up
in 2010, I decided to take the Diploma in
Translation (DipTrans). I now work as a
translator, specialising in business, legal
translation and social science.
In what one situation have you been
most pleased to be a CIOL member?
I teach the DipTrans preparation course at
the University of Westminster and I got the
job through networking at Members’ Day.
I love teaching translation. I am constantly
challenged by the students and learn
from them. It’s a really good form of CPD.
I was initially attracted to CIOL by the
opportunities for CPD and the need to
build a professional network.
What aspects of your current work do
you find most challenging?
In many ways the challenges are similar to
those in my earlier career: getting to grips
quickly with new material, learning new
vocabulary, working to tight deadlines.
Recently I have edited several articles for
social science journals written in English
34 The Linguist Vol/59 No/6 2020
by native French speakers. They are
expressing complex concepts so it’s an
intellectual challenge, and my insight not
just into the French language but also
French ways of thinking really enables
me to help. What I love most is that my
work is all about words, and getting them
exactly right.
If you could talk to your teenage self,
what advice would you give?
It would be something about the
relationship between language and ways
of thinking, and the value of different
approaches. I remember a French opposite
number in Paris saying to me, “You Brits
are always so pragmatic!” It wasn’t a
compliment, and I realised that the (equally
stereotyped) French approach – starting
from an intellectual framework and
principles – can sometimes be a better way
to address a difficult issue.
What are your plans for the future?
A key message I took from the CIOL
Conference in March was the importance of
specialisation. During the eerie quiet of
lockdown, I decided to act on that message
so I have just started a course in
International Business Law and hope to get
an LLM degree in 2022. I will be nearly 70
by the time I graduate. I hope it will
reinforce my position at the top end of the
profession for at least a decade to come!
CONTRIBUTORS
Catherine Boyle
Catherine Boyle is Professor of
Latin American Cultural Studies
and Director of the Centre for
Language Acts and Worldmaking
at King’s College London. She is
Principal Investigator of the Out of the Wings
project looking at Spanish and Spanish American
Theatres in Translation. Her research interests
include Spanish American literary, cultural and
theatre studies; translation and cultural
transmission; and gender studies. See p.14
Oliver Lawrence
Oliver Lawrence FCIL CL turns
Italian marketing texts and
copywriting briefs into incisive
English, specialising in tourism,
leisure and luxury. A mentor
and ITI Assessor, he created the online
course ‘Clear Writing, Clear Benefits’ for
eCPD/CIOL. His interests include poetry,
cake and gin, although not necessarily in
that order. www.incisiveenglish.pro; Twitter
@oliverlawrence1. See p.22
Sue Leschen
A member of Council, Sue Leschen
FCIL CL is a lawyer-linguist; the
Director of Avocate
(www.avocate.co.uk), a niche-
market legal and commercial
French interpreting and translation company;
and an independent business mentor
and trainer of language professionals. She also
mentors CIOL DPSI English Law candidates, as
well as teaching legal English to language
professionals and lawyers. She can be contacted
at se.leschen@ntlworld.com. See p.10
Paul Seedhouse
Paul Seedhouse is Professor of
Educational and Applied Linguistics
and Director of ilab:learn at
Newcastle University. Working with
colleagues Phil Heslop and Ahmed
Kharrufa, in Computing Science over 10 years,
he has had three grants to build kitchens which
use digital technology to teach users languages
and cuisines simultaneously. The French Digital
Kitchen project won the European Language
Label Prize in 2012. See p.20
thelinguist.uberflip.com
 Become a Cambridge examiner
We are welcoming Assessment Specialists who wish to become examiners across the
range of languages offered within the Cambridge curriculum. These include Marathi,
Telugu, Urdu, Tamil, Sinhala, Hindi, Panjabi, Bengali and Gujarati.
As a Cambridge examiner you will gain an insight into the teaching and assessment of
Cambridge qualifications. We offer training and support with freelance opportunities
which fit around your existing commitments.
For more details, visit asrecruit.cambridgeassessment.org.uk

The Freelance
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A 2-day workshop to help you make your business thrive
21 & 22 Jan 2021 with Sue Leschen FCIL Chartered Linguist

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This workshop covers:
• Business plans • Marketing
• Terms and conditions • Professional conduct
• Non-disclosure agreements …. and more.

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Cost: £300 for CIOL members and £350 for non-members
One-day tickets also available

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CIOL CONFERENCE 2021
Connecting the world of languages online

12 & 13 March 2021

Join us from wherever you are in the world as we
live-stream our conference sessions directly to you
in the comfort and safety of your own home.

Conference sessions are delivered by experts in

their fields and cover translation, interpreting,
education, business and much more.

There will also be small online networking groups

so you can meet your friends and colleagues.

Early-bird tickets now on sale

View the full programme at

ciol.org.uk/ciol-online-conference-2021
and reserve your place.
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