Delivery after 8 months

Guys it's finished

Here's me handing it in at 6.30 am on Thursday:

It had to be handed in digitally

Next projects:

learning LaTeX
improving German

Also, I've been accepted here.

Television and the promotion of national identity: Our Friends in the North on RTÉ

Kevin McAleer, promotion picture for Our Friends in the North. Source

Last year I took a class "Broadcasting and the language of identity". It was a bit of a weird class, in which we talked about national identity, subcultures, music, TV and radio but without very much theory or feedback. However, I had fun writing the final essay for it. It is about the Ulster Scots Broadcasting Fund and specifically about one show funded through it, Our Friends in the North. This is a show presented by comedian Kevin McAleer, from Co. Tyrone, who visits and interviews people who see themselves as Ulster-Scots, to get to know and understand the language, culture and history. In the article I try to pick apart how the programme promotes national identity in a way that makes it palatable to the public.

Click here for the article

Some terms I learnt in Luxemburg in November 2013

Leaflet to encourage students of the Noord-Wes-Universiteit in Potchefstroom, SA to learn to speak Tswana.

 FRONTALIERS: people who travel into Luxemburg every day to work there. About 40% of Luxemburg's workforce exists of frontaliers, which has a considerable impact on the language situation.

TRANSLANGUAGING: educational technique invented in Wales, whereby students receive information (the "input") in one language and have to process it (create an "output") in another, for instance reading a text in Welsh and analysing it in English.

Great Service from the Customar Service

From the collection "Intimacy Under the Wires" by Sivan Askayo, taken from Ignant.de

I have compared the first page of the translation to Ulster Scots of the "Customer Service Standards2007-2008" of the Department for Employment and Learning (DEL) to the original (English) version. From my analysis it is clear that this translation does not follow the "strategy for Ullans" which Kirk has recorded after reading the DARD “Hannlin Rede 2010-2011”. This strategy consists of the following steps:

·     Avoid French- or Latin-derived vocabulary

·     Avoid abstractions lexically and at every other level

·     Avoid mass nouns

·     Maximise dynamic actions or activities

·     Use lexical obsolence

·     Use dialectisms, including any Ulsterisms

·     Maximise synonyms or alternatives

·     Maximise use of alternative syntax

·     Maximise respellings (use eye dialect)

(Kirk 2013: 295)

In the DEL “Customar Service Staunarts” French- and Latin-derived vocabulary is not avoided, as the title already shows. Within the excerpt we find among others: depairtment, qualitie, pairticular, access and formats.

The “Hannlin Rede” explicitly sets out the vision (spaesicht) of the DARD, while the “Customar Service Staunarts” talk about specific rules and measures for the treatment of DEL customers. The “Hannlin Rede” is therefore on the whole a level of abstraction higher than the “Staunarts”, which is reflected in the language use by fewer abstract references or mass nouns. This makes it a bit hard to compare, but overall it seems like abstraction is not avoided in the DEL translation. The abstraction employment is translated to employ. Employ is only listed as a verb ("to make use of") in the Dictionary of the Scots Language (DSL), indicating it may be a recent coinage, possibly modeled on the French emploi. It bears the same degree of abstraction as employment. The abstract terms service and commitment  have been left untranslated.

The translation cannot be said to maximise dynamic actions or activities. Some changes are more and others less dynamic. Expect ("the standards of service that you can expect from us") has been replaced with leukan tae get. Expect in this sentence implies "regard as likely to happen", which is a passive thing to do. Leukan tae get implies much more activity and it is also a change of tone towards the more colloquial. At the other hand tells you about has been replaced with gies you wittins anent, which is more formal and more abstract. Because "giving information" is more abstract than "telling about" it is also less dynamic.

Alternative words and synonyms have not been maximised in this excerpt; such words as business, programs and customar could have been replaced, but have not. One could even ask if it is always justified to leave the original word; for instance for customar the only result in the DSL is "An official having charge of the customs; a customs officer." However if a word with the meaning of the English customer did not yet exist in Ulster-Scots, it seems fair enough to borrow that meaning into the language as it is less obfuscatory than the periphrasis tha yins we'r fennin/dalin wi (DARD 2010: 1).

There are some notable syntax changes. In two instances superlatives are created through adding -maist as a suffix. This is not mentioned in Robinson's grammar guide (1997), however it is mentioned in an online Scots language course: "In words of two or more syllables the comparative is formed by prefixing mair, and the superlative is formed by suffixing maist." (Eagle 2001: Adjectives). 

In some subordinate clauses the finite verb is left out: An us no aible for tae dae it, we will gie an expoun. Verbless subordinate clauses are indeed a common feature of Scots, although  Robinson (1997: 111) suggests they are normally used to express surprise or indignation, which is not the case here.

There is one instance of a verbal concord in the excerpt: Some airts o our business haes customers staunarts relate to aefauld programs. There is also one instance of the form bes of the verb 'to be': We will mak sicar our facilities bes redd up, bien an open. Robinson (1997: 149) indicates that the verb form bes can be used to indicate a "'habitual' or ongoing condition". This means that its use here is appropriate.

Alternative spellings are used, but not maximised; a lot of words are left the same as in the English version. Where respellings are used they are consistent and usually they have precedents in Scots or Ulster Scots literature. Examples are prent/prentit, appyntment (precedent: appeynt, DSL), Inglis. Depairtment is cited in the DSL with several precedents starting in 1985, suggesting that it is an innovation from the current wave of language revival. Caars is a logical, if slightly confusing, adaption of caa which is a precedented way of spelling the cognate of "call" in Ulster Scots, seen for instance in Philip Robinson's poetry. The spelling -fu for the suffix as in helpfu is widely used in Ulster Scots, respelled to reflect distinct pronunciation (See for instance "mournful" in Fenton 2006: 250). Some alternative spellings that have been used in other Ulster Scots texts have note; for instance for is used here, whereas the Hannlin Rede uses fur and service is used whereas the Euraip Chairtèr fur Kintra-pairt ur Unnèr-Docht Leids uses sarvice (DFP 2005: 16).

So, what strategy does the DEL document use? The text can be seen in the context of Jean Ure's explanation of how new registers are developed (see chapter 2). As said, to develop new registers either contemporary registers may be drawn upon and extended; where forms from an earlier period are preserved these provide patterns that may be activated to suit new needs; and other languages may provide models on which new registers can be based. The DEL text employs a mix of these to create a new register in Ulster Scots. Colloquial Ulster Scots (caars, meenit, leukan tae get, helpfu) is mixed with medieval Scots conventions (qualitie, prent/prentit, Inglis, verbal concord), thus extending contemporary Ulster Scots registers and reactivating forms from an earlier period. The English-language original text is translated word for word and phrase for phrase into Ulster Scots, meaning that the conventions of the model register are maintained in the new register in Ulster Scots. The result is clearly Ulster Scots, yet it does not come off as de-intellectualised but rather as suitably formal for the text's purpose. Within the confines of the genre – Civil Service Ulster Scots – this is the best kind of translation one could have hoped for.

The Language Revival Efforts of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development

 The Department's promotional image on their Rural Development page.

Now that we have a solid impression of Ulster-Scots poetry, it is time to move on to an analysis of a wholly different genre that has popped up in the last few decades: Civil Service Scots, or official translations from English-language government documents to Ulster-Scots.

1(a) Why was this text created?

The question of why official documents are translated into Ulster-Scots is an interesting one. Especially if the translations contain unprecendented spelling and neologisms that may make the text quite hard to understand to actual Ulster-Scots speakers, the translations appear as unnecessary money waste at best and actually harmful to the development of the language at worst. Gavin Falconer (2004: 68-70) argues that the "minor revolution in official translation" that is underway in Northern Ireland is a result of parity of esteem and human rights discourse gone wrong. He writes:

 "Some of the commissions received by us have been instigated by a single individual's decision to make an issue out of the fact that a document has been translated into one language without any equivalent translation into the other - a precarious basis both for a business and for language revival. Some of our lengthiest translations have been commissioned on the off-chance of such a complaint arising without any intention of publication."

It is not clear that this is the common treatment of translations of all government departments. The DARD states in their 2011 document Language Policy for Irish and Ulster Scots that translations will routinely and pro-actively be done of material if it is intended for wide usage; if it is of particular relevance to Irish and Ulster-Scots speakers, or if it will contribute to safeguarding and promoting the language. Information leaflets do not necessarily need to be printed in all languages, but should be made readily available digitally "when required". Furthermore "when requested", translations of other documents will be considered, "subject to cost and value for money considerations".

Rural cottage in Co. Tyrone, on filmlocations.co.uk

In a later article Falconer (2005: 57) suggests six criteria for what makes a good translation into Ulster Scots:

• Will readers be able to access the information in the text by drawing on a familiarity with traditional Ulster-Scots literature? 
• Since so many users, even of full Ulster Scots, are literate only in English, will readers be able to access the information in the text drawing on a familiarity with the ortographic practices of that language? 
• Is the spelling of the text logical and consistent?
• Is all the information in the English text given in the Scots translation?
• Are the translations used for individual terms consistent, including across different translations, or are they being coined on an ad hoc basis?
• Would a back translation into English produce something close to the original, in a comparable register and without excessive paraphrase?

Is Ulster Scots a dying language?

Nursery rhyme art project by children from the Mall-ard's Kindergarten

Ulster Scots is in intensive contact with English and, to a lesser extent, Irish. Most Ulster Scots speakers are fluent in English and use it frequently both actively (e.g. in school, making it their language of literacy) and passively (e.g. on TV and in newspapers.) English is the more sizable, more dominant and overall more prestigious language. Based on these facts the situation of Ulster Scots makes it very likely that the language is degenerating rapidly, and makes gradual language death a very plausible outcome. We can therefore expect to find loss of registers and associated language forms; loss of lexicon, phonology, morphology and syntactic patterns, and replacement of lost aspects with English equivalents.
It is quite difficult to investigate exactly how and when the language contact with English has influenced the lexicon and structure of Ulster Scots, because few documents survive that were written in Scots in Ulster. This is because English was in the process of becoming the language of literacy already by the time the plantation began.

As shown by Montgomery and Gregg (1997: 584-8), Scots writing conventions gave way to English conventions in Ulster, as they did in Scotland, in the second half of the 16th century and the first half of the 17th. At the end of this period distinctive Scots writing conventions such as quhilk or thir and grammatical features such as the indefinite article ane and the northern verbal concord had all but disappeared.That they had disappeared from writing does not necessarily mean that they had disappeared from speech as well; for instance, the geographical distribution of Scottish settlements during the Ulster plantation is almost exactly the same as the boundaries of Ulster Scots speaking areas found by Robert Gregg in the 1970s and 1980s (Montgomery and Gregg 1997: 578), indicating that the language in fact continued to be spoken by much of the population.

The way that speech has changed is even harder to establish for the plantation period, if not impossible, because there are no spoken records available and we do not know whether surviving texts are a good representation of pronunciation. About speech change in modern Scots we know more. Caroline Macafee (2003: 55) has interviewed urban Glaswegian Scots speakers, which, although not directly relevant to the situation in Ulster, has resulted in a useful overview of the processes of speech change. She focuses on lexicon and finds that indeed, distinctive lexicon is disappearing. While older generations do still have passive knowledge of distinctively Scots words, they do not use them themselves but instead opt for English counterparts and English cognate forms, meaning their children no longer have even passive knowledge of the Scots terms. Scots words lose their full range of meaning, instead becoming specialised to particular senses; some of them are preserved only in compound forms or nursery rhymes.