Davos jargon: A crime against the English language?

The annual World Economic Forum takes place amid freezing temperatures in snowy Davos, but inside the myriad meeting rooms and conference halls, there's more than a little hot air.

Some of this is generated by a form of English unique to this gathering, which can be mystifying - even to the seasoned WEF watcher.

To help, we've compiled a short list of bewildering terms and phrases overheard or read at Davos, and attempted to decipher them, with limited success.

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Benchmarking

Brings to mind a bulging, sweaty weightlifter attempting to beat their personal best.

According to Bain, benchmarking is when "managers compare the performance of their products or processes externally with those of competitors and best-in-class companies, and internally with other operations that perform similar activities in their own firms".

So that's all clear then.

Circularity

To quote the inimitable Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride: "You keep using that word; I don't think it means what you think it means."

According to the dictionary, circularity does mean: "the fact of an argument or a theory using an idea or a statement to prove something which is then used to prove the idea or statement at the beginning".

Circularity does not mean: a measure of the process by which a product is reused in a "circular" economy.

Cyber realities

Is this virtual reality? Is it the reality of the digital world in which we live? Is it a reality experienced by cyborgs? Beats me. Probably best elucidated by sci-fi novelist Philip K Dick.

Deep dive

If you're not talking about Tom Daley, avoid.

Flashpoints

A place, event, or time at which violence or hostility flares up. Not the point at which all Davos traffic is diverted down side roads by people in high-vis jackets waving glow sticks, apparently.

Implementation mode

"Defined as to what extent a system is coupled to organisational objectives during the implementation process. An implementation mode which decouples performance indicators (PIs) from organisational objectives seems to further implementation success."

You can thank A Johnsen's 1999 work, Implementation Mode and Local Government Performance Measurement: A Norwegian Experience, for that.

Influencers

People who influence. How they differ from Thought Leaders is anyone's guess.

Interplay

Definitely not the same as interaction. Or indeed Linkage, see below.

Linkage

A word, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, which sadly does not pronounce on literary taste.

Material improbabilities

This comes from Marsh & McLennan's new report. The following paragraph should clear things up:

"Producing an inventory of material emerging risks requires both divergent and convergent thinking: on the one hand, thoughtful research and wide-ranging consultation; on the other, an effective mechanism for triaging issues and aligning on top concerns."

Multifaceted metrics

Look, you'll know one when you meet one.

Multi-stakeholder platform/principle

A "crucial mechanism". For instance, actively involving a "wide range of stakeholders - from civil society, to academia, business, and more - in order to ensure that all members of society benefit from intellectual property", according to the World Intellectual Property Organization.

Negative feedback loop

Like, this article? On a serious note, this describes the cascading effect that one sector of the economy failing can have on other sectors or countries.

See more at: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-42791874

The greatest mistranslations ever

After Google Translate’s latest update, BBC Culture finds history’s biggest language mistakes – including a US president stating ‘I desire the Poles carnally’.

Google Translate’s latest update – turning the app into a real-time interpreter – has been heralded as bringing us closer to ‘a world where language is no longer a barrier’. Despite glitches, it offers a glimpse of a future in which there are no linguistic misunderstandings – especially ones that change the course of history. BBC Culture looks back at the greatest mistranslations of the past, with a 19th-Century astronomer finding signs of intelligent life on Mars and a US president expressing sexual desire for an entire nation.

Life on Mars

When Italian astronomer Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli began mapping Mars in 1877, he inadvertently sparked an entire science-fiction oeuvre. The director of Milan’s Brera Observatory dubbed dark and light areas on the planet’s surface ‘seas’ and ‘continents’ – labelling what he thought were channels with the Italian word ‘canali’. Unfortunately, his peers translated that as ‘canals’, launching a theory that they had been created by intelligent lifeforms on Mars.

Convinced that the canals were real, US astronomer Percival Lowell mapped hundreds of them between 1894 and 1895. Over the following two decades he published three books on Mars with illustrations showing what he thought were artificial structures built to carry water by a brilliant race of engineers. One writer influenced by Lowell’s theories published his own book about intelligent Martians. In The War of the Worlds, which first appeared in serialised form in 1897, H G Wells described an invasion of Earth by deadly Martians and spawned a sci-fi subgenre. A Princess of Mars, a novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs published in 1911, also features a dying Martian civilisation, using Schiaparelli’s names for features on the planet.

While the water-carrying artificial trenches were a product of language and a feverish imagination, astronomers now agree that there aren’t any channels on the surface of Mars. According to Nasa, “The network of crisscrossing lines covering the surface of Mars was only a product of the human tendency to see patterns, even when patterns do not exist. When looking at a faint group of dark smudges, the eye tends to connect them with straight lines.”

Pole position

Jimmy Carter knew how to get an audience to pay attention. In a speech given during the US President’s 1977 visit to Poland, he appeared to express sexual desire for the then-Communist country. Or that’s what his interpreter said, anyway. It turned out Carter had said he wanted to learn about the Polish people’s ‘desires for the future’.

Earning a place in history, his interpreter also turned “I left the United States this morning” into “I left the United States, never to return”;according to Time magazine, even the innocent statement that Carter was happy to be in Poland became the claim that “he was happy to grasp at Poland's private parts”.

Unsurprisingly, the President used a different interpreter when he gave a toast at a state banquet later in the same trip – but his woes didn’t end there. After delivering his first line, Carter paused, to be met with silence. After another line, he was again followed by silence. The new interpreter, who couldn’t understand the President’s English, had decided his best policy was to keep quiet. By the time Carter’s trip ended, he had become the punchline for many a Polish joke.

Keep digging

Google Translate might not have been able to prevent one error that turned down the temperature by several degrees during the Cold War. In 1956, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev was interpreted as saying “We will bury you” to Western ambassadors at a reception at the Polish embassy in Moscow. The phrase was plastered across magazine covers and newspaper headlines, further cooling relations between the Soviet Union and the West.

Yet when set in context, Khruschev’s words were closer to meaning “Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will dig you in”. He was stating that Communism would outlast capitalism, which would destroy itself from within, referring to a passage in Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto that argued “What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers.” While not the most calming phrase he could have uttered, it was not the sabre-rattling threat that inflamed anti-Communists and raised the spectre of a nuclear attack in the minds of Americans.

Khruschev himself clarified his statement – although not for several years. “I once said ‘We will bury you’, and I got into trouble with it,” he said during a 1963 speech in Yugoslavia. “Of course we will not bury you with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you.”

Diplomatic immunity

Mistranslations during negotiations have often proven contentious. Confusion over the French word ‘demander’, meaning ‘to ask’, inflamed talks between Paris and Washington in 1830. After a secretary translated a message sent to the White House that began “le gouvernement français demande” as “the French government demands”, the US President took issue with what he perceived as a set of demands. Once the error was corrected, negotiations continued.

Some authorities have been accused of exploiting differences in language for their own ends. The Treaty of Waitangi, a written agreement between the British Crown and the Māori people in New Zealand, was signed by 500 tribal chiefs in 1840. Yet conflicting emphases in the English and Māori versions have led to disputes, with a poster claiming ‘The Treaty is a fraud’ featuring in the Māori protest movement.

Taking the long view

More of a misunderstanding than a mistranslation, one often-repeated phrase might have been reinforced by racial stereotypes. During Richard Nixon’s visit to China in 1972, Chinese premier Zhou Enlai famously said it was ‘too early to tell’ when evaluating the effects of the French Revolution. He was praised for his sage words, seen as reflecting Chinese philosophy; yet he was actually referring to the May 1968 events in France.

According to retired US diplomat Charles W Freeman Jr – Nixon’s interpreter during the historic trip – the misconstrued comment was “one of those convenient misunderstandings that never gets corrected.”Freeman said: “I cannot explain the confusion about Zhou’s comment except in terms of the extent to which it conveniently bolstered a stereotype (as usual with all stereotypes, partly perceptive) about Chinese statesmen as far-sighted individuals who think in longer terms than their Western counterparts.

“It was what people wanted to hear and believe, so it took hold.”

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http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150202-the-greatest-mistranslations-ever?fb_ref=Default

Why some English words are controversial in China

Continue reading the main story

In today's Chinese publications, English abbreviations and acronyms also pop up frequently without any Chinese translations: GDP, WTO, Wifi, CEO, MBA, VIP and the air pollutant term PM2.5 are among the most popular.

This phenomenon, termed "zero translation", has sparked a fierce debate, with the Chinese Communist Party's official newspaper People's Daily the latest to join the fray.

"Why is zero translation so prevalent?" screams the headline in a recent commentary piece, citing as a bad example the text below, which considers the merits of an open source platform.

"采用了基于OpenEdX开源平台，开发了HTML5视频播放器，不再依赖国外课程播放首选的YouTube，解决了国内用户无法访问国外edX平台问题。"

"Why do we have translations for Nokia and Motorola, but not for iPhone or iPad?" ask the authors.

What irritates them is the fact that these foreign terms are found not only in newspapers and online, but in serious science journals as well.

They claim that such practices damage the integrity and harmony of the Chinese language, dilute the richness of the Chinese culture and hamper comprehension. "How many people can understand these words?" they ask.

To put this in context - the Chinese language has over the years absorbed many foreign terms, especially English words. Early adoptions include 雷达 (leida) for "radar", 坦克 (tanke) for "tank", and 巧克力 (qiaokeli) for "chocolate".

Coca-Cola, whose Chinese rendition 可口可乐 (kekou kele) literally means "tasty and jolly", conveys a sense of euphoria that it is often held up as the best brand translation.

Unlike the "bad example text", these words and many others have been given Chinese characters so they blend into the Chinese language.

The problem now, the commentators claim, is that English words are used directly along with Chinese, without any translations. And there are many reasons why.

More and more Chinese people speak English and they like to switch between Chinese and English in conversation or when they write. The internet has helped spread English, especially in the fields of innovation and technology, while popular US and British films and TV dramas have also played a part.

The three authors of the People's Daily piece also cite worship of Western culture and technology, the scarcity of good translators and laziness as possible causes.

This is not the first time that attempts to purify the Chinese language have sparked national debate.

US basketball is very popular in China and "NBA" was used on TV for many years before the authorities decided to ban it in 2010, in favour of the Chinese rendition 美职篮 (mei zhi lan), which literally means American professional basketball instead.

This proved very controversial. In 2012, the Modern Chinese Dictionary, long considered the authority in language use, included NBA and more than 200 other foreign words in its new edition, and NBA made its way back on TV.

Around 100 scholars then signed an open letter to the national publication authorities, accusing the dictionary editors of violating Chinese laws and regulations. They argued that including such English terms and abbreviations in the Chinese dictionary would do long-term damage to the language.

Not everybody agreed. The official Xinhua news agency carried a piece by Zhang Kuixing wondering how the use of some English vocabulary in a dictionary could be against the law if the language was legal in China.

The author argued that a dictionary should reflect usage; and since terms such as NBA were already in common use, inclusion in the dictionary simply reflected reality.

Others said the ultimate aim of language was communication, and a language should not shut out foreign words. A dictionary, they argued, should provide references of language use and help readers.

Fast forward to 2014 - and linguistic use has become heavily politicised again, with People's Daily blaming "a lack of pride and confidence in one's own culture and language, which leads to blindly worshipping anything Western".

The idea would be for all foreign words to have proper Chinese translations: experts would be able to submit their translations for public consultation and trial use before they became official. People would even vote for their favourite translations.

There has been a sharp reaction on Chinese social media. Some have posted long-winded Chinese passages to show how inconvenient it would be to dispense with the English usage.

Others have questioned the point in learning foreign languages if they are not put to good use.

There has even been a suggestion that the title of Chinese state television, CCTV, should be banned. It is, after all, an English abbreviation.

This looks like the start of a long battle.

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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-27216910