New blog for Island Voices

I’ve decided to set up a separate blog to channel communications on the Guthan nan Eilean/Island Voices project. Given the size of the project and the desire and potential for comments and suggestions to come in from far and wide, as well as nearer to hand, it seems sensible for the project to have its own interactive platform.

Gaelic-English Simultaneous Interpreting: a one-off insight

I was at the Cothrom AGM last week, and found myself in the “Interpreter’s booth” at the back of the boardroom whispering English into a microphone for the benefit of those in attendance who had no Gaelic. There were a few folk around the room equipped with discreet headsets they’d picked up as they came in the door.

Anyway, I survived – and a couple of folk were kind enough to say that I made some kind of sense of it – but it’s not something I’ll be volunteering to do again in a hurry. There was some fairly routine, if unscripted, procedural stuff – agreeing minutes etc. But the main challenge lay in two speeches – one quite brief, the other less so. Mercifully, both speakers gave me copies of what they were going to say before they started – otherwise I definitely would have drowned.

In the event, neither speaker stuck strictly to their scripts, so for me it wasn’t “simply” a question of reading/interpreting from the page in front of me. One speaker had supplied me with their Gaelic text, while the other had gone a stage further and already translated their speech into English. Perhaps counter-intuitively I found the latter more difficult – even though it was the shorter speech. The fact that neither speaker stuck exactly to their script meant that I had to keep an ear open for what they were saying while I was whispering away into the mike. I found it easier to locate where the speaker was on the page in front of me when the written text was the original Gaelic, rather than the translated English. I guess that’s because I had an extra processing stage to go through with the latter – “re-translating” back into Gaelic to match text with what the speaker was saying at the time. Complicated stuff. And I was definitely ready for the refreshments when it was all over.

Anyway, after the event – duh – I did some googling on simultaneous interpreting and simultaneous translating. I found this link offered interesting insights, including concise tips for speakers as well as interpreters from folk who do this for a living. Not that I’m planning on making more direct use of them any time soon. Once was interesting, but quite enough. Definitely a job for professionals whenever possible.

But hats off to Cothrom for running their meeting in Gaelic. Now that the technology is more readily available it’s good to hear the language re-entering the public domain in community meetings like this.

One Minute Gaelic: Podcasting revisited – again…

Welcome to any visitors from the Radio Lingua site – www.radiolingua.com – for whom I have recently recorded the One Minute Gaelic series with Mark Pentleton. I’ve just been checking out some of the other links on that site – there are some serious and stylish bloggers and podcasters out there. Take a look at this, for example, from José Picardo. My blog here is rather more introverted, and a lot less “easy on the eye”. But anyone interested in what might go on in the murkier recesses of a Hebridean language teacher’s head is more than welcome to rummage around.

In the meantime, this latest brush with the world of podcasting requires me to reflect again on the potential this medium offers. (See my previous post on this topic here.) I look forward to seeing the comments on One Minute Gaelic as they come in to Radio Lingua. Numbers will be one interesting question, but also the notion that learning “on the move” is what the new generation of learners is into. I don’t recall my teenage daughter emphasising the educational benefits of getting an iPod… Is this an unlooked for upside?

Island Voices in Highland Libraries

The whole of the first series of Guthan nan Eilean / Island Voices has now been included in Highland Libraries’ bilingual Am Baile site: www.ambaile.org.uk. You can get to it as a video collection through English or Gaelic. Many thanks to Maggie Johnstone, the Am Baile Administrator for organising that. Setting up a fully bilingual site must be no small undertaking, and setting up a bilingual platform for a bilingual collection can only be more complicated still, especially when the two halves of the collection almost exactly mirror each other, but not quite… One or two teething problems there, but nothing drastic, and the transcripts will also be posted up in due course. The videos have been compressed quite a bit – which means loss of some visual quality – but, for quick YouTube-style access this is probably an easier platform to navigate than the original POOLS site.

Projects Officer

Funding has been confirmed to develop the Island Voices/Guthan nan Eilean series into a resource bank more than three times its current size, along the lines intimated in a previous post – http://gordonwellsuist.wordpress.com/2008/05/09/. Sitting alongside that work I also have a smaller development role for Kent Andersen’s POOLS-T initiative – www.languages.dk – a successor to the original POOLS project which kicked off all this materials development and training work. It’s a good combination of development work largely in an established though still innovative framework with a little bit of computer wizardry thrown in – not that I’ll be producing the magic (Kent’s department alongside Caoimhín O Donnaile), just helping to direct its application for language learning.

This all adds up to a full-time commitment now to the Lifelong Learning Department at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig as Projects Officer. 2009 looks like it’s going to be busy. As always, anyone with questions, comments, or suggestions to make on either or both of the above projects – or ideas on how they might combine – is welcome to get in touch.

Publications Update

This has been a big year for various publications in which I’ve played a part, and they’re a curious mix of audio and video as well as text-based productions (with a bit of music thrown in). They include:

1. “Teach Yourself Gaelic Conversation”, co-written with Strathclyde University’s Boyd Robertson. Part of the famous Hodder and Stoughton “Teach Yourself” series it’s a 3CD package plus booklet. Available in “all good bookshops” and also online, eg from the Gaelic Books Council, Comhairle nan Leabraichean at www.gaelicbooks.org.

2. The 2-disc DVD/CDRom package of “Guthan nan Eilean/Island Voices” has finally been produced, consisting of all the videos and transcripts/translations already available online at http://www.languages.dk/archive/video_data/Scottish_Island_Voices.pdf, but with much better quality reproduction than you get with .wmv files. The package will be available for sale after the October launch. (Earlier in the year I also produced some online extension exercises for learners of English based on these materials. These can be found at http://www.languages.dk/materials.html#Scottish_Island_Voices.)

3. I had an editing role in the 2 audio CDs that go with the latest reprint of Pàdruig Moireasdan’s collection of songs and stories “Thugam agus Bhuam” – also available at www.gaelicbooks.org. I had the pleasure and privilege of recording a pleasant chat with Lachie Morrison while he sang through some of his favourite songs from his father’s collection, which makes an interesting addition to the text of the book itself, alongside a recording of the actual recital of one of the stories.

4. Lastly, and perhaps even further removed from the usual language learning focus, the beginning of the year saw the release of Bi Beò’s first CD “Beò an dùil”, in which I played a supporting instrumental and vocal role. James McLetchie and Kevin De Las Casas together composed an album’s worth of new Gaelic songs, including lyrics and translations – more detail at www.myspace.com/bhibeo.

It’s been a while since I had a hand in any kind of publication – and now four come along in a row. That’s worse than the proverbial number 19 bus!

More videos: suggestions welcome!

Funding applications, some already successful and others ongoing, mean that a start can be made on a second series of videos to complement those already done – http://www.languages.dk/archive/video_data/Scottish_Island_Voices.pdf.

There will probably be a broad (though not exclusive) “environmental” theme in the second series. Appeals in the local press and other local contacts have generated interest, and suggested topics so far include the following:

Croftwork
Peatcutting
Children’s Parliament/youthwork
Fishing
Fishfarming
Tourism and Hospitality/visitor centres
Environmental sustainability/research
Marine environment
Boat building
Outdoor leisure activities (surfing etc)

Right now we’re having beautiful weather, and I’ve already got some nice pictures. The plan is to follow the same format of the original series: short scripted “plain language” documentary introductions, together with authentic speech “talking head” interviews. Anyone reading this, particularly if they’re at some distance from here, is welcome to get in touch with further suggestions or comments.

Musing on musico-linguistic linkage

This blog is broadly meant to provide some sort of reflective hinterland for my language work, but a recent spurt of recording and performing with the band in which I sometimes play has prompted me to think again about the links between language and music. It’s perhaps a bit of a diversion, but music has long been held to have a particular salience in relation to Gaelic language and culture, so it shouldn’t be irrelevant.

A Google search under “musico-linguistics” unearthed this article -http://facta.junis.ni.ac.yu/lal/lal2005/lal2005-10.pdf - by Mihailo Antovic, which provides a summary of research trends and developments in this area in the past 30 to 40 years. To “summarise the summary” a number of folk have taken an interest in using a linguistic model of analysis as a template for investigating music. At a theoretical level there has been some progress in aligning language and music analysis in a broader cognitive science context. Neurological investigation has also identified areas of overlap.

Though I haven’t studied the field it makes sense to me that features common to both language and music, such as rhythm, stress, and contrastive pitch should have some common genesis. I can probably take or leave (though preferably leave…) the intricacies of the latest advances in Optimality Theory, but I am interested in how we learn both language and music, and whether/how progress in one can support progress in the other.

I suppose my questions and concerns from what I’ve read and/or thought about so far are twofold.

Firstly, if such a thing as a “Universal Grammar” of both language and music is conceivable, then on the music side of things it needs to be inclusive enough to embrace not just the Western classical tradition, which appears to have been the focus of early study in this field (for example by Bernstein), but all other strands of musical tradition across the world – perhaps begging the question of what we mean by the term “music”.

Secondly, again in relation to music, a unifying model must surely describe “musical competence” as it applies to the population at large, not just to individual perfomers and/or composers. If, by analogy with language, music is to be viewed as a natural feature of human behaviour which we all share to some degree or other, then a focus on the output of exceptional exponents risks missing the general point – probably by some distance. Particularly in relation to my own “applied” interest in music learning/teaching – and how that relates to language learning/teaching – it strikes me that Music Therapy approaches in particular, which explore/develop the musical in us all, may have something to offer.

The above are two pretty fundamental concerns at a theoretical/conceptual, maybe “rarefied”, level. In terms of practical application my general interest would be in how music activity and acquisition may influence/assist language activity and acquisition, and perhaps vice versa. And, given my location, I would take a particular, though not exclusive, interest in this field in relation to Gaelic maintenance and transfer. I guess that narrows the focus somewhat. To be continued?

Meanwhile, back to the band… www.myspace.com/bhibeo

Podcast postscript

I had a premature Grumpy Old Man moment on the subject of podcasting on the POOLS blog some time back: Podcast Shmodcast. Premature as, firstly, I’m (still) not that old, and secondly, here I am doing one myself now: Podcast: Gordon Wells – Scottish Island Voices for National University of Ireland, Galway, talking about Island Voices with a view to finding partners for expansion/development. The terminological debate interests me no more now than it did before, but it’s a matter of some speculation as to whether the piece itself will stimulate more or a different reaction than a written piece would have. A sign of the multimedia times, when the spoken word finds/reasserts its place alongside the written?

European Award for Languages: a perspective on “community languages”

So, the news is out, and now the prize has finally been collected - www.gordonwells.co.uk/pages/news_archive7.html. The occasion was formal without being grandiose, and a useful opportunity to meet other people doing interesting things in the language teaching field. The speeches were generally kept brief – which didn’t necessarily exclude the chance to make some challenging points. Lots of people are exercised by the shrinking take-up of languages in UK schools.

Heartening for me was the high profile given to various Community Language initiatives – with prizes also going to a primary Tamil project, and a teacher training course taking in Arabic, Mandarin, Punjabi, and Urdu. Those of us living in an Anglophone world may consider ourselves lucky to have instant access to a language with the all-pervasive and international reach of English, but there’s a less welcome flipside to that coin. For starters, in a world in which everyone speaks English where’s the advantage in speaking ONLY English? Yet “English only” is probably what most “native” English speakers speak. I’m afraid the Anglophone world generally has a pretty monolingual notion of what language competence entails. It’s when you engage with the other language communities in the UK - for example Gaelic or Hindi/Urdu/Punjabi in my own experience – that you begin to appreciate the wider communicative horizons that bilingualism naturally offers.

Integral to bilingual competence is the exercise of extended choice. Every bilingual has a choice of linguistic codes on which to draw, and code-switching and code-mixing  are perfectly natural and productive responses to that choice. That there are pockets of working bilingualism still existing in the wider monolingual Anglophone environment means that there are alternative and liberating models of language competence close at hand. To the extent that wider society is open-minded enough to acknowledge, accept, and learn from this happy situation then there remain grounds for hope that native English language skills can become a springboard to an extended language competence, rather than a recipe for complacency and a needlessly restricted communicative range. “Aye, dream on”, some might say. It’s certainly a big ask and I wouldn’t want to underestimate the scale of the task, but recognising through awards like this the potential contribution that community languages have to make is probably a useful first step.