Top 100 Language Blogs 2010:

http://en.bab.la/news/top-100-language-blogs-2010

So thanks to all who voted for me!  

I am very much looking forward to reading the other blogs on the list, and as soon as I get a moment I will do so.  

You may wonder how I got the news if I was Out of Range.  I was in Castlebay on the little island of Barra, having survived a week of winter camping, involving pouring rain, wind, fog and almost freezing temperatures, as we headed south from Lewis, through Harris, Uist, and Benbecula, to Barra in the south.  

In Castlebay we were basking in the luxury of having a room in a warm and welcoming Bed and Breakfast and felt that we had returned to civilization after the adventure of the wilds.  But unfortunately my iPhone was Out of Range, or at least it gave me a “No Service” message. However, in Castlebay there was not just the delights of a visit by boat to the magnificent Kismul Castle, but also a visit to the local hotel which allowed me to use their WiFi connection, which enabled my iPhone to download the email from Lexiophiles.  

My phone itself (without any help from the friendly hotel) came back to life with a little thudding sound as I travelled in a bus across the island, just as we came near to the airport on the beach at Traigh Mhor.  Then, as I read the text message,  I realized I had missed a personal phone call of a lifetime from New York, because of being out of range on this very beautiful Gaelic-speaking island, which I should call Barraidh.  

As I watched the plane take off across the silver sand, flying over the turquoise water, I meditated on the contrasts between the Hebrides and New York, and the distances that can separate us from those who we most love even in these oh so connected times.

ETYM

In the sixteenth century Edmund Spenser wrote:

“For so brave beasts she loveth best to see 
In the wilde forrest raunging fresh and free.”

Fresh and free in our tent roamed a very large black beetle.  Maybe it came in to get out of the cold, as the temperature on Benbecula was way Out of Range!

Vote the Top 100 Language Technology Blogs 2010

Last year there were lots of interesting blogs in the different categories, so well worth a look.

There is lots of interest in this article on the web, but most of it just links to or quotes the article.  As I was browsing these links I came across one that referred to a Chinese website called Blingblingtronics.

Wikipedia has an article on the word Bling-bling, which it says refers to flashy or elaborate jewelry etc. that may be “carried, worn or installed”.  It says that “in linguistic terms, bling is an ideophone  intended to evoke the “sound” of light hitting silver, platinum, or diamonds”.

The Urban Dictionary gives some colorful definitions of  ”Bling bling“, which is seen as either a noun or a verb.  As a verb it can be “ the act of sporting jewelry of a highly extravagant gaudy nature”.  It is often associated with hip-hop artists and ghetto culture.

ETYM

Blingtronics = Bling plus (elec) tronics.

Electric bling, as in flash electronic jewelry.

The way in which this term came into existence is described in the Wikipedia item on Series of Tubes.  

I came across the term because I discovered that a site called TubeTrove was linking to my blog in its English language section.  I thought the name TubeTrove was rather clever, as it reminded me of Treasure Trove,  and I looked at the description of the site, which describes it as ”A collection of good content from the intertubes.”  (Moreover, my blog is placed next to an item on “Scott Thornbury on grammar”, which for me is to have truly arrived, as I think he is the most interesting writer on grammar that I have ever read.)

Having put Intertubes into Google I discovered that I had been missing lots of tech buzz around this word, and in fact it prompted my rather weary memory cells to recall something about the notorious “The Internet is a Series of Tubes” speech from an American Senator.

Wordnik,  which “is projected to be the largest online dictionary ever”, gives Intertubes its due place, with some fantastic examples of  usage.  Wordnik was “launched by Erin McKean, former editor in chief of the New Oxford American Dictionary”. We are told it  ”is a refuge for linguistic underdogs and etymological rejects alike.”  It looks to me like a site for word lovers to keep watching.

ETYM

Internet – a worldwide network of interlinked computers.

Tube – a tube is like a pipe, and the term pipe can mean a connection to the internet, with a bigger pipe referring to higher bandwidth and consequently greater speed.

Tube – I seem to remember that we used to call television “the tube”.

YouTube – a video sharing website.  A good way of putting yourself on the Intertubes.

“Data exhaust” is sometimes called “digital exhaust“.

The Double-Tonged Dictionary is a “lexicon of fringe English”.  It covers the term Data exhaust, giving it the Gloss: “the incidental statistics and information that accumulate when people interact with a system, process, or event, such as when tracking visitor interaction on a web site.”

Reading the Economist article left me feeling exhausted by the Big Brother type way in which so much of what we do nowadays is recorded and aggregated into statistics for the use of marketing men or goverments or whoever has access to our data.  

When I was browsing recently in a book shop I came across a book about “digital memory” and about the fact that the internet never forgets.  It is called “Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age” by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger.  The Times Higher Education Supplement reviews it and says “his case against digital memory is humanist. He worries that it will not only change the way we organise society, but it will damage our identities.”

I worry also that the data exhaust that we leave behind us may not disperse and be forgotten, to be replaced by fresh air or a blank sheet, but may lurk around, reappearing from day to day, or from year to year, long after we ourselves have forgotten the original event.

ETYM

Exaust is waste gas left behind as you speed along in your car.  

Data exhaust is the trail you leave, showing where you have been, on the internet.

Many tablets use multi-touch technology,  which allow the user to interact with the device using their fingers.  I have an iPhone, which I love, and one of its amazing features is that I can tap it to zoom in and pinch it to zoom out.  This is a “gesture user interface” or a “multi-touch user interface“.  

Apple’s iPad, which uses much of the same technology, is a tablet computer placed “somewhere between a laptop and a smartphone”. (The New York Times)

The Economist thinks that “the iPad and other tablets could shake up the computing scene” by for instance competing with netbooks, cheap mini-laptops.  See “Steve Jobs and the tablet of hope“.

Some people think that the Apple Tablet will take over as the leader in the eReader and digital publishing industry, competing with Amazon’s Kindle and other devices.  See Mashable’s ”Why Apple’s Tablet will eat Kindle’s lunch”.

Soon we may all be reading on our tablets, and I don’t just mean the ten commandments!  I, for one, would love to borrow my neighbour’s iPad.  But remember:  Thou shalt not covet …

See also:

Slates

Touch-walls

ETYM

A small flat piece of stone or metal.

God’s Ten Commandments given to Moses, and recorded in the Book of Exodus, were inscribed on Tablets of Stone.  

See Wikipedia: Tablets of Stone

“Now the tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets.”  Net Bible

“To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.”

This is the Oxford Word of the Year 2009 and it features on the OUP Blog.  There is a discussion from readers about why the word is “unfriend” rather than “defriend”.  I made a small contribution.  It is still active, so you can go on too and comment if you want!

The OUP Blog item also covers other new technology words – hashtag, intexticated, netbook, paywall and sexting.

I have never actually “unfriended” (16,000 hits in Google) anyone in Facebook, but I have told some (by email) that I won’t be their Facebook friend, just their email friend.  The whole use of the word “friend” (by a piece of software) I find rather unpleasant.  It keeps asking me if I want to be friends with particular people, that I may well be friends with in the sense of well disposed towards them, but I may not want to exchange electronic messages with them.  

Maybe the whole new concept of “electronic friend” needs a few more prefixes to express the full range of new “relationships”.  We could have “unfriend”, “defriend”, “refriend”, “upfriend”, “downfriend” etc.  Suggestions requested!

ETYM

I will leave this up to the Oxford lexicographers!

L ocalizatio N (The middle part has 10 letters)

The adaptation of software for specific localities by translation etc.

The three sisters of the brave new Global Information Management (GIM):

L10N – Localization

I18N – Internationalization

G11N – Globalization

A good place to start is the “Localization, Localization” blog (Loc Loc for short), which already boasts 10,000 clicks.

For the difference between Language Localization and translation, and also the relationship of the three acronymic processes in bringing texts to a global online market place see Wikipedia.

Also, according to Wikipedia these three are all examples of Numeronyms (number-based words).

LISA – the Localization Industry Standards Association

I have had a small bit-part in this mammoth industry recently. I have been translating from Spanish to English using a piece of software called Trados (to be precise SDL/Trados Synergy Freelance 2007).

Using this Software I can either link it up to Word or work directly in Tag Editor and produce Trados bilingual files, which contain both the source and target text in the same file. I can also either be sent or produce my own TM (Translation Memory) files, which contain source and target language data. As such my translation is more easily slotted into the localization process of getting my text to where it needs to go next, whether that be a proofreader or directly up onto a multilingual website. Using Tag Editor I can deal with e.g. HTML files, along with all their tags, much more easily than if I had to translate the text within a normal text editor. It can be quite exciting to see a translation you have done first thing in the morning up on a website, along with many other language versions, later in the day.

ETYM

I believe that there is a current fashion for Numbers Within Words, and I think it is due to the prevalence of texting which, at least with the early mobile phones, made it difficult to write many letters.

But this fashion is also prevalent on the web and with web-related technology.

Eg W3C – World Wide Web Consortium

I, along with many other parents, learnt the texting “language” in order to communicate with teenagers.

Eg 2moz- tomorrow

gr8 – great

The great linguist David Crystal has written very interestingly on mobile phone text messages, or Texting, in his book called “txtng:the gr8 db8″.

Obviously L10N, I18N and G11N are much easier to type than their longhand equivalents.

However, I doubt that that is the whole story. I think there is something playful, and something of the in-group aspect often found in private language or the slang of a small group. To be in the know you have to know!

Anyone ever heard of C11G? I just made it up and it starts with Crowd. I think it’ll be a bit like GIGO – Garbage In Garbage Out. Hopefully so!

Smart Grid

In its article entitled Wiser Wires the Economist (Oct 8th 2009) writes about Smart Grids:

“Information technology can make electricity grids less wasteful and much greener.”

Such a grid will, hopefully in the future, be responsive to both the supply of electricity available at any one moment and to consumer demand.  Ideally real-time interaction will be possible, so allowing a consumer to decide at any moment whether to use a particular piece of electronic equipment.

The terminology around this innovative technology includes “demand response“, “smart meters“, “advanced metering infrastructure” (AMI), “home area network” (HAN), “dynamic pricing” etc.

Wikipedia  draws attention to the importance of smart grid companies in the “cleantech” market.

ETYM

It is smart, i.e. it is clever.  

Smart – often used for a gadget with computer “intelligence” built in.

Smart card

A card with a computer chip in it, giving it “intelligence”.

Smart phone (or smartphone)

An advanced mobile phone with many of the characteristics of a personal computer.  

See: Wikipedia

I thought it must be a joke, as I haven’t updated my blog for over a year! (Been busy with other things – translating mostly.)  However, it appears to be true, and I have been nominated in the ‘Language Technology’ category.

If you want to vote for me here is where to go:

top 100 language blog 2009 competition

Maybe this will be the stimulus for getting back to the blogging! 

Whoever nominated me – please tell me.  

It’s nice to know there are readers out there!