Mothertongue Blog

Facebook’s crowd-sourced translation app has helped the company translate Facebook into over 100 different languages quickly and cheaply. However, the company (and many of its users) just discovered one of the downsides of crowd-sourcing- vulnerability to online pranksters.

The problem was discovered on July 28th, when Spanish and Turkish-speaking Facebook users logged on to find their pages filled with profanity in both English and Spanish. For example, according to this article on The Register, the Turkish version of Facebook’s IM error message, which is supposed to read “Your message could not be sent because the recipient is offline,” was changed to say:  “Your message could not be sent because of your tiny penis.” That’s pretty much the only example that’s even printable.

Why did Facebook suddenly start cursing at its users?  Facebook’s translation app depends on users to vote for the most accurate translations for each piece of text. That works great, as long as the people are voting are honestly trying to be helpful. Unfortunately for Facebook, members of a Turkish online forum called Inci Sözlük worked together to create the profane “translations” and vote them up. This vulnerability is inherent in any sort of crowd-sourcing unless precautions are taken. For example, when young Canadian pop star Justin Bieber tried to “crowd-source” a stop on his world tour, his contest was hijacked by the internet pranksters at 4chan, who promptly voted to send him to North Korea.

Rik Ferguson, a security consultant at Trend Micro, told the Register that this prank should serve  as “teachable moment,” both for Facebook and for other companies that use crowd-sourcing:

“Perhaps it is fortunate that the hole has been exposed through a prank in the first instance and not something more nefarious. Any online service, whether it’s translation or reputation services, which solicits user generated content would be well advised to quality check that content before going live with it.”

Posted by Caroline Mikolajczyk in Machine Translation, Translation Errors on 5 August 2010

BP, one of the largest global oil companies and darling of shareholders around the world has fallen from grace and, somewhere on the way down, it became British Petroleum again. Barack Obama pointed out the company’s provenance to make the oil spill in the Mexican golf less of a US problem (ultimately his problem) and more of a foreign company problem.

The reason why BP is not British anymore is that it is truly global. Similarly, when Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation grew beyond their native shores, they felt HSBC was more likely to attract customers than ‘Honkers and Shankers’ as they were endearingly known in Hong Kong.

In a similar vein, how many people would go on a booze cruise to France on a Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company ferry? (Although P&O does sound OK).

And how long will it take KFC to be disassociated with Kentucky?

It seems that starting off local works up to a point but when brands get global, they have to lose their local roots.

Guy from London, UK.

The World Cup has captivated the attention of millions of people all over the world this last month, and the finals are coming up in little more than a week.

Reason enough to take a look at the different countries’ reactions to their national team’s defeat. Do the French despair the same way as the English when watching their team lose? And what about the Spanish? Or the Dutch? This article by Tom de Castella (BBC News Magazine) sums up these different reactions nicely…

“Hysterical, deluded and thoroughly English”

England has exited the football World Cup and once again failed to live up to expectations. But why do the English fool themselves, again and again, into believing they can win, and might they actually enjoy it?

After a humiliating 4-1 defeat to Germany, England has once again entered an unofficial period of national mourning. It’s something the country goes through after every World Cup or European Championship exit – from euphoric anticipation to shock and despair in the space of 90 minutes.

Harry Eyres, writer of the Financial Times’s Slow Lane column, believes the passion has taken on a desperate, obsessive quality: “Too much seems to hang on it. We appear needy as a nation. There’s an extraordinarily neurotic fear and excessive expectation about watching England. I don’t think we’re in touch with reality.”

The world is entranced by the beautiful game every four years. But not everyone seems to invest as much importance in their national side.

On holiday in Spain during the 2002 World Cup, Eyres remembers pulling into a bar in Andalucia to catch the end of the Spanish team’s quarter final with South Korea. The talented Spanish side went on to lose but there was no vitriol, Eyres recalls: “It was amazing how lightly they took it. This was a working class, blue collar bar. Can you imagine a pub full of builders in England when the team get knocked out – it would be a tragedy. My impression is that in Spain it just doesn’t matter so much.”

Writer Simon Kuper sees a similar imbalance of expectation when England is compared with France, where he lives. If the English did badly in this competition, the French – finalists in the last World Cup – did even worse, getting knocked out in the first round.

But in France, says Kuper, author of Why England Lose, no-one thought the home side would actually win. What enraged the French public was not poor displays on the pitch but the mutinous behaviour of the team’s arrogant stars.

“Unlike the English the French are able to switch off the team when they’re angry with it. People are disgusted. But they don’t go into the anguish of looking at the country as a whole. They just say the team are horrible people.”

Not only do the English never learn. They appear to thrive on the masochism of outlandish hope followed by tragic defeat, he argues.

“I think people enjoy the ritual. Every four years it happens and takes you back to previous tournaments. It’s a communal moment, people sharing the pain with each other at the bus stop. It’s that thing about big World Cup games that end in tragedy – usually on penalties, ideally to Germany.”

But that ritual comes at a price, says Kuper, who sees a crucial difference between the attitude of the English side and that of his native Holland.

“When a Dutch player scores he’s happy but when an England player does it’s all clenched jaw, relief and anger. It’s very stressful for the England players. It’s like with children at school, when they know the expectations are too high and they can’t meet them.”

But if England is deceiving itself about its ability, who or what is guilty of inflating expectations unrealistically high?

“The papers set the agenda. And today we have feeding frenzies. Savage as it sounds the Madeleine McCann story sold papers and previously there was Princess Diana. The World Cup is another first class example of a feeding frenzy that electrifies the newspapers.”

What this frenzy is really about is fear of national decline, says the writer and broadcaster Toby Young: “In a sense it’s people’s anxiety about Britain’s waning influence on the international stage. It expresses itself in their anxiety about how England will fare in the World Cup.”

And that’s why beating Germany has become so important. It’s the ability of the German team to punch above its weight in football terms. And that seems to us to reflect their ability to punch above their weight economically.”

For the full article, click here.

South Africa 2010 - The World Cup

Powered by the Internet and the global media, English has evolved into the world’s language.

The alumni of the vast people’s University of China are typical of the post – Mao Zedong generation. Every Friday evening several hundred gather informally under the pine trees of a little square in Beijing’s Haidian district, in the so-called English Corner, to hold “English conversation.” Chatting together in groups, they discuss football, movies, and celebrities like Victoria Beckham and Paris Hilton in awkward but enthusiastic English. They also like to recite simple slogans such as Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign catchphrases – “Yes, we can” and “Change we can believe in.”

This scene, repeated on campuses across China, demonstrates the dominant aspiration of many contemporary, educated Chinese teenagers: to participate in the global community of English-speaking nations. Indeed, China offers the most dramatic example of a near-global hunger for English that has brought the language to a point of no return as a lingua franca. More vivid and universal than ever, English is now used, in some form, by approximately 4 billion people on earth – perhaps two thirds of the planet – including 400 million native English speakers. As a mother tongue, only Chinese is more prevalent, with 1.8 billion native speakers – 350 million of whom also speak some kind of English.

Contagious, adaptable, populist, and subversive, the English language has become as much a part of the global consciousness as the combustion engine. And as English gains momentum as a second language all around the world, it is morphing into a new and simplified version of itself – one that responds to the 24/7 demands of a global economy and culture with a stripped-down vocabulary of words like “airplane,” “chat room,” “taxi,” and “cell phone.” Having neatly made the transition from the Queen’s English to the more democratic American version, it is now becoming a worldwide power, a populist tool increasingly known as Globish.

For the full article, click here

Extract taken from article by Robert McCrum

English vs. Glob-ish

Samuel Johnson – a great Englishman, of whom we should all be proud – famously observed that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. If that’s the case, then there’s nothing like the World Cup to turn the English into a nation of scoundrels.

But it’s a queasy, insecure kind of patriotism, based not on a sense of superiority but on insecurity – a sense that “fings ain’t what they used to be”. Brussels and the creeping forces of globalization may slowly be taking our country from us, but they can never take our football team! And so hope gives experience its quadrennial kicking, and we all convince ourselves that this time, more than any other time, love really has got the world in motion and football is coming home. And as the crosses of St George start to flutter from cars and bedroom windows up and down the land, German skincare brands, Danish lager brewers and American confectioners all try to scramble aboard the Eng-er-land bandwagon – which of course these days has an Italian charioteer at the reins.

Once more unto the big-screen TV, dear friends …

James from London, UK

Nowadays in the UK, it seems like there are more and more people who are famous simply for being famous. Kerry Katona, “socialite” Paris Hilton and self-proclaimed “model and business woman” Jordan – what have these “celebrities” done to deserve their colossal level of fame? As far as I’m aware, they can’t sing (well, Kerry Katona might have tried during her time with the girl group Atomic Kitten but I’m not sure that counts!), can’t act, haven’t designed anything revolutionary, aren’t sporting heroes, have never won a Nobel Prize for literature (Jordan may have a couple of chic-lit books to her name, which, by her own admission, were written by a ghost writer as she didn’t have time to do them herself!) or done anything else worthy of noting. So why is it that that every time I walk into the newsagents, I find these Z-list celebs on the front pages of the women’s weeklies and tabloids?

And what about people who are famous simply for dating someone famous, like Coleen Rooney and Alex Gerrard, who are given column inches simply for being the wives of professional footballers (WAGs, as they are affectionately referred to in the media)? Why, despite having no previous presenting experience, was Coleen Rooney given her own TV show, and why is it that both of these women have their own magazine columns, where they advise us on the latest fashion trends, despite neither of them having a background in fashion design. Many highly qualified journalists slog away for years without ever being privileged enough to get their own column in a national magazine, yet these WAGs are handed these jobs on a plate.

So what’s this all about? Well, it seems that, although we may hate to admit it, we as a nation can’t get enough of these pseudo-celebrities! If no-one watched their TV programmes, they would soon be dropped – but we do! Maybe it’s because we want to distract ourselves from our humdrum everyday lives and get an insight into how the other half really live? And while we may look down our noses at WAGs for living off their partners’ wealth, and scoff at IT girls like Paris Hilton and Tamara Parker-whatever-her-name is, if it came down to it, how many of us would be willing to give up our jobs and switch places with them if we got the chance? More than would like to admit, I bet!

The most worrying thing is that, with the WAG lifestyle being glamorized on TV and in the newspapers, rather than aspiring to be a surgeon or a policewoman when they grow up, many young girls nowadays say that they would like to be a become a footballer’s wife or “a celebrity” (as if this were some sort of career choice!)? But with the recent revelations about the indiscretions of shamed ex-England captain John Terry and his Chelsea teammate Ashley Cole, it seems like the life of a famous WAG may not be quite as glamorous as it sounds …

Louise from London, UK

On Wednesday 24 February, Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party, compared Herman Van Rompuy, President of the European Council, to a damp rag. He also said the former Belgian prime minister was a “low-grade bank clerk” and that he came from a “non-country”.

Now I could talk about how insulting this is to Belgium – a great country well known for its delicious chocolate, tasty beer and rich culture. Or mention that the whole affair was arguably just one big publicity stunt by Farage to raise his public profile. But what I really want to talk about is how the “damp rag” remark apparently posed quite a problem for the interpreters present at the meeting!

While it’s true that verbal abuse is a common feature of British politics, it’s actually very rare in the EU chamber, where debate is muted partly due to a pro-European consensus but also because it is conducted in 23 languages through interpreters and headphones.

Apparently when Farage made his quip, some of the linguists were stumped as to what to say, with many of them hesitating before thinking of an appropriate solution. Meanwhile, all the non-English speakers had to sit and wait patiently for the barrage of insults to be translated! Wouldn’t it be fascinating to know what they came up with?!

Amy from London, UK

Source | BBC + Reuters

Gone has the age when we would wait for the morning paper to find out what’s been going on in the world. Today is a time when we want to know what is happening as soon as it’s happened – and not a second later, thank you very much.

Twitter is a prime example of this craze. It makes people feel somehow special and ahead of the game to be the first to find out that a famous celeb has died, fallen over … sneezed even. It’s an adrenaline rush that’s not easily relinquished.

The success of social networks such as Twitter, however, depends heavily on more and more people being absolutely convinced that immediate communication is of the utmost importance.

Personally, I find this trend pretty exhausting. It would be nice, for example, to see people paying as much attention to their own immediate surroundings (neighbourhoods, families, and so on) as they do to the goings on in the wider world. Perhaps one day they will. For the moment however, the site’s popularity shows no signs of slowing down …

Inspiration for this piece was taken from an interesting article by Simon Dumenco (Advertising Age) which can be found here:

http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=140871

Amy from London, UK