Language Log

Google Translate has again provided innocent amusement to hundreds of thousands of netizens. But this time, the amusing transduction is not from Chinese to English, but rather from English to Hebrew. And the BBC, a well-known British comedy channel, provided an assist. Nathan Jeffay at The Guardian ("How BBC comedy Episodes inadvertently went viral in Israel") explains:

Everyone in Israel is talking about the British-American BBC comedy Episodes. Not that it is airing there, but the show has recently become famous for its disastrous use of freebie online translation.

In episode three, Merc Lapidus, one of the lead characters, attends the funeral of his father. The episode was shown in the UK several weeks ago and is airing in the US later this summer.The gravestone, as per Jewish tradition, is bilingual – the local vernacular, in this case English, along with Hebrew. But the entire Hebrew inscription is written backwards, starting with the last letter and working back to the first. The reason, of course, is that Hebrew runs in the opposite direction from English, from right to left. And it gets worse. If you go to the trouble of reading the text, you'll discover that the man commemorated, a certain Yuhudi Penzel, has been "pickled at great expense". This is what you get if you use Google Translate to render "dearly missed" into Hebrew. The blooper is now going viral in Israel.

There's a joke going around in mainland China about the best way to transcribe the name of the country in Chinese characters.  Each line is redolent of some social issue:

I spent much of the past couple of weeks back in my childhood city of Montreal. It was an eventful time. Thousands of student demonstrators marched past the restaurant where I was having dinner, banging on pots and pans. The partial remains of a dismembered Chinese student were found not far from where my brother now lives. And scores of shopkeepers in downtown Montreal greeted their customers like this: "Bonjour, Hi."

This last development was reported by the Office Québécois de la langue française—this is the body charged with overseeing Quebec's language laws, not-so-affectionately referred to by many English Canadians as the "language gestapo". In a study released on June 1, the OQLF noted that while compliance with signage laws have increased over the past two years, there were concerns about how customers were being greeted. Evidently, in downtown Montreal, unilingual French greetings are in decline, from 89% in 2010 to 74% in 2012. More shopkeepers are initiating an exchange in English only, up from 10% to 13%. And bilingual greetings—"bonjour/hi"—have risen quite sharply, up from 1% to 13%.

In the latest issue of The New Yorker, Jane Mayer has a profile of Bryan Fischer ("BULLY PULPIT: An evangelist talk-show host’s campaign to control the Republican Party", The New Yorker, 6/18/2012), which starts this way:

Tupelo, Mississippi, is best known as the birthplace of Elvis Presley, and his childhood home remains the town’s top attraction. Another local performer, however, has recently garnered national attention. For two hours every weekday, a broadcaster named Bryan Fischer hosts “Focal Point,” a popular Christian radio talk show. He is one of the country’s most vocal opponents of what he calls “the homosexual-rights movement.” As he puts it, “A rational culture that cares about its people will, in fact, discriminate against adultery, pedophilia, rape, bestiality, and, yes, homosexual behavior.” His goal is to make this view the official stance of the Republican Party.

Reader T.B. writes:

I don't think I've noticed discussion of this snowclone: "X is the last acceptable form of prejudice/discrimination".  I've come across it in reference to obesity…now linguistic bigotry and gingerism.

The fact that it's become a snowclone almost makes it an empty claim.  You can be sure that something else will soon pop up to replace X as the last acceptable form of prejudice…

Reader D.D. writes to ask about a use of the word "what" that he's noticed "on the part of young blacks of Caribbean descent here in NYC":

The word is sort of shrieked, or perhaps yelped, as if a very insistent question… and the final 't' is accentuated (Brit like)… But the meaning is something like "And how!" or "I'll say!" or "Fuckin' A!!"

I've noticed it outside of work this past week–by two strangers in public settings–but this most recent at-work example sticks in my mind:

Yesterday at work a twenty-something Jamaican-born NY'er went out to move his car, as per NYC parking regs. When he came back MUCH LATER someone asked him, "Was it hard to find parking?" His loud reply, "WHAT!!?" (and then he mumbled something about how hard it was…)

One month after it was created (on May 13) and a week before it will be closed to signatures (on June 19), the White House Open Access petition (which I pointed Language Log readers to on May 23) now has 26,768 signatures — 1,768 more than the 25,000 threshold! By my calculation, the average rate was over 1,190 signatures a day from the first to the 25,000th signature (by "David L" of Holmdel, NJ, who signed on June 3 — three weeks after the petition was created); after that, the rate dropped to just shy of 177 a day. No reason to slow down the pace now! If you agree with the petition, please sign it and/or pass it on to your agreeable friends — send a strong message to Washington that "[e]xpanding access would speed the research process and increase the return on our [public] investment in scientific research."

Today's xkcd:

Mouseover title: Although the Markov chain-style text model is still rudimentary; it recently gave me "Massachusetts Institute of America". Although I have to admit it sounds prestigious.

Mike Bresnahan, "Thunder's fourth-quarter fly-by beats Heat in NBA Finals opener", LA Times 6/12/2012:

Whatever that was in the first half certainly wasn't the Oklahoma City Thunder, the general awkwardness and sauteed defense looking fully unlike the cadre that zapped Dallas, the Lakers and San Antonio — keepers of 10 of the last 13 NBA championships — in consecutive playoff series.

I need some help here: what's going on with that "sauteed defense"? Sauteeing is not a sports metaphor that I'm familiar with, and it's not clear why being "browned while preserving its texture, moisture and flavor" evokes any particular style of basketball play.

Maybe it's because "Ingredients are usually cut into pieces or thinly sliced to facilitate fast cooking"? But web search for "thinly sliced defense" and "coarsely chopped defense" also come up empty.

If you don't hang out with millennial hipsters, you might not have noticed that the cool kids are listening to music on turntables playing old-fashioned vinyl records, with many of these records being newly released rather than rescued from thrift shops. And you might also have missed a fascinating case of peeve emergence: the "rule" that one of these objects is called a "vinyl", while (say) three of them should be called "three vinyl", never "three vinyls". According to this"rule", instead of "many of these records", I could have written "many of these vinyl", but not "many of these vinyls". This is an issue that some people feel very strongly about.

Thus Dave Segal, "What Is the Plural of Vinyl?", 12/28/2010:

This issue came to my attention twice yesterday: once on Twitter, where someone griped about people using the term "vinyls" to describe more than one record; the other instance occurred while perusing Sonic Boom's holiday zine, in which a clerk informed its readers that vinyl is indeed the plural term for vinyl (the same principle applies to fish, buffalo, and sperm).

I am guilty of occasionally using vinyls, but it's always deployed in a tongue-in-cheek manner. When you know the rules, you can break them—but only once every three months. It's in the manual. Trust me.

Daniel Cressey, "Fisheries science falls foul of privacy rules", Nature 6/6/2012:

A little-noticed tweak to one of the European Union’s many rules and regulations is leaving fisheries scientists struggling to access vital data. […]

At the heart of the problem is information from devices called Vessel Monitoring Systems, which are attached to many European fishing boats to record their position, direction and speed. From these data, the boats' fishing patterns can be reconstructed, allowing researchers to assess fishing activity and, for example, examine the environmental impact on specific areas.

In 2009 a new European Commission rule was brought in, restricting who could access what data within the EU. This rule took some time to filter through, says Hinz, but it is now becoming apparent that the very detailed fisheries data needed by some academics are no longer available. The bodies in charge of the data will only release information that has been aggregated over areas measuring about 5.5 kilometres to some academics, which is not detailed enough for many studies, Hinz says. […]

The commission adds that the body charged with overseeing the use of data and privacy within the EU, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), recently ruled that information from vessel monitoring systems is classed as personal data in some circumstances. This means that the information may be subject to data protection rules, making it more difficult to release it to scientists in a format in which individual boats may be identifiable.

The young man doing 24 accents of English in this video is in fact a remarkably talented dialect mimic.

If you go to the FAQ page for the Bridgeport and Port Jefferson Steamboat Company ferry service between Connecticut and Long Island and click on "How far in advance can I make a reservation?" you will see the following:

How far in advance can I make a reservation?

Reservations can be made up to 2 hours in advance of the departure (depending on availability).

What a disaster. They've managed to answer the wrong question!