austraLasia 753
EAST ASIA-OCEANIA: A NEW CAT AND MOUSE GAME
A linguist's view of things
Julian Fox sdb
ROME: 12th November -- It helps to turn things upside down or at least look at them from the other side (one of the reasons why Gary Larson's 'Farside' cartoons have been so successful). Our Salesian Region happens to represent that part of the world which contains most of the world's 6,000 languages and one language spoken by more people than any other on the planet (not English). Sensibly, of course, the Congregation has chosen a 'lingua franca', English, for communication around the region. But in case you think this article is heading to be just one more nail in the coffin of local languages, read on! The Lingustic Community (that community of students of language, not necessarily polyglots) has a point of view to balance one of the unfortunate consequences of Globalisation, the hegemony of English. Bill Gates, BTW, would have us write 'globalization' with a 'z'. My first instinctive reaction to his kind of hegemony is to use 's'.
I became acutely aware of the issue once again when a friend, in all good faith, subscribed me to the Thai Salesian Bulletin. I don't read Thai, so what should I do, panic? Put it in the bin? Of course not. I appreciate the thought, in the first place, and for the enterprising reader there are some ways around the problem, depending where that reader is presently located. For me, at the moment, the solution is easy - ask a local Thai speaking Salesian for help. But there are other solutions, hence CAT and MOUSE. They are, of course, computer terms: Computer Assisted Technology and, well, we all know what a mouse is.
This is not an item on technology, however, more one on attitude and frame of mind. So what is the linguist's response to globalisation? It is called localisation, and is an important industrial contribution of applied linguistics. Localisation is a synthesis between globalisation and local habits, customs - and of course its central feature is language. Local languages must be appreciated and supported wherever possible. Time Magazine makes an interesting comment - by 2005, it suggests, more than three quarters of the world's online exchange and online business will be conducted by people who do not live in the USA/UK and who do not speak English as a first language. You do not have to be Einstein to guess which language is likely to be the first language.
For Salesians I suggest that 'localisation' is not a mere throw-away subject for debate. It has important consequences. The first consequence obviously has to be one of ongoing appreciation for all languages spoken by all confreres. That goes almost without saying. Most of the last five years for me have been spent in a community with a majority of Samoan first language speakers, living in a wider community with Fijian as the first language, English as the lingua franca, and Hindi if you want to have any influence at all on half the population. That is an interesting balancing act but not an unusual one for the majority of readers of 'austraLasia'. The second consequence is for Salesians to be alert to 'localisation' tools, ways of getting what you need out of a language you do not know and have no time or need to learn. These tools exist and they do not have to be expensive. Some of them exist online. I can get what I want or need out of the list of pages presently indicated in the Salesian Web Portal on its home page - 'China Links' - without spending a Eurocent, despite the fact that they are written in Chinese.
And the third consequence is a wider one. Just what are we really doing about linguistic resource management on the wider scene? Salesian documents, like documents anywhere else in the world from multinational organisation, have two lingustic features which could easily escape our notice: the proliferation of documents introduces doubles (repetitions of words and phrases and whole segments, even whole documents), inconsistencies (terms often translated in variant ways) and 'noise' (hardly necessary stuff). All three can be handled, for any language, but especially in the Congregation's lingua francas, by CAT and MOUSE. This is something we have not systematically managed in the past, though I have great admiration for the Congregation's translators who are systematic and careful in their own domains.
There are dictionaries and glossaries. They all help, but the linguistic community has gone much further in its ways of helping, even with these. Do you ever find yourself having to do a quick translation (say, into English) of a sentence or paragraph in Italian for a communtiy meeting, conference or some in-house publication? If you tackled the same item a second time would the translation differ? It might, even of by only a word or two or word position. Did you know that you can download quite cheaply, even for nothing in one instance, an MSWord add-on that will make a bilingual glossary for you as you work. That simply means that the next translation will be the same, not different, if you call on it.
The ideas above may spark off healthy discussion. In the meantime, if you want real news, then please send me some!
Julian Fox sdb
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'austraLasia' is an email news service for
the Salesian Family of Asia-Pacific.
'austraLasia' is an email news service for
the Salesian Family of Asia-Pacific.
