Brussels urges universities to offer translation courses
The European Commission yesterday (12 October) launched a new drive to
encourage more universities to offer courses for aspiring translators
amid fears of a succession crisis in the EU institutions' languages
department..
The 'European Masters in Translation' (EMT) network of universities
will be expanded to help the European Union to respond "to a growing
shortage of properly qualified translators in the job market," the
Commission announced.
At present, the EMT network comprises 34 members, but the Commission
says nearly 250 universities and other higher education institutions
offer translation courses at present.
"In many countries, anyone can claim to be a translator without any
guarantee of professional competence. The long-term aim of the EMT
project to raise the standard of translator training," said Androulla
Vassiliou, EU commissioner for education, multilingualism, training and
youth.
To carry the EMT label, a university must have its course assessed by translation experts drawn from the existing network.
EMT courses offer students training on how to run a business as well as
translation, and over other aspects of the language industry including
interpretation, subtitling, dubbing and how to adapt translations to
local needs.
"A course carrying the EMT label is recognised as being one of the best in the field," Commissioner Vassiliou said.
The Commission, while stressing its supporting role behind EU member
states, says it regards respect for linguistic diversity as a core value
of the European Union.
It adopted a new strategy on multilingualism in September 2008 and
provides €50m a year to support language activities and projects via its
Lifelong Learning Programme. Lack of language skills
A 2007 study
had found that of nearly 2,000 businesses, 11% had lost contracts –
often worth millions of euros – as a result of lack of language skills.
Indeed, the Commission announced yesterday that "demand for translation services across the world is soaring".
The EU executive predicts that the Union's languages industry is set to
increase its turnover by 10% annually and will be worth up to €20
billion by 2015.
Many staff in the EU institutions' languages departments are
approaching retirement but they are not being replaced at the same rate.
Moreover, the EU's requirements are so stringent that only 30% of those
applying are successful, helping to fuel the present crisis.
Concerns over an upcoming lack of Italian interpreters led the EU
institutions to launch a campaign last month in Rome to encourage young
Italian speakers to consider working for the European Union (EurActiv 24/09/10).
Similar campaigns have been launched over the last 18 months to recruit
qualified French, English, German, Italian and Dutch speakers to work
for their services (EurActiv 25/09/09; EurActiv 18/02/09).
The annual conference of the EMT network is currently taking place in Brussels (11-13 October).
The Swedish economics blog Flute Thoughts has posted this map of 2011 employment by region in Europe: [I first saw this as a cross-post in Zerohedge].
This map calls attention to the differences between the “core” and
“periphery”. On a country-by-country basis, usually the “core” is seen
as France and Germany, maybe a few others such as the Netherlands and
Austria. However, as Flute points out, northern Italy looks more like
Germany than like southern Italy, and France looks somewhat
“peripheral.” In general, if you speak some Germanic language (e.g.
German, Dutch, English, or a Norse tongue) you are more likely to have a
job. Greece and Spain are employment disaster zones, along with parts
of Eastern Europe and the Baltics. It seems like the non-eurozone
regions (e.g. UK, Norway, Czech Republic) are faring relatively well. As we have described here and here,
adoption of the euro has been disastrous for the peripheral countries.
Before then, they had available the safety valve of currency
devaluation to manage imports and exports. The propect of devaluation
also tempered the willingness of foreign creditors to buy the bonds of
these countries. When these peripheral countries had control of their
own currencies, it was difficult to refuse the demands of workers for
ever-increasing wages, since the workers knew that more money could
always be printed, and indeed was expected to be printed. One philosophical driver behind the euro was that it would impose
greater financial discipline on the Mediterranean countries. The
expectation was that they would restrain wage hikes and public
employment and boost productivity; in short, start acting more like
Germans. This expectation was not fulfilled. The availability of euro credit
at the low interest rates traditionally associated with the German mark
led to a binge of government borrowing and spending in Greece, and
private borrowing and homebuilding in Spain and Ireland. Also, at the
time of conversion to the euro, the Greek drachma was probably valued
too highly, which gave the Greeks too-high starting wages, so they
bought a lot of BMWs. Now, at last, financial austerity is being
imposed on the Greeks. However, it seems unlikely that Greece will ever
be able to repay its external debts; many young, talented Greeks with no
hope of employment at home are simply leaving the country, further
tarnishing the prospects for a Greek recovery. Meanwhile, the Germans acted like Germans, continously improving
productivity and keeping labor costs under control. As a result, their
labor cost of production is something like 30% lower than e.g. in Spain
or Italy, even though Germans do not work longer hours. So the euro
experiment has been great for Germany: using the euro rather than their
own mark has kept their currency relatively weak, which has aided their
export-oriented economy. Hence, jobs. There are some factors that are unique to specific countries. In
Ireland, for instance, neither the goverment nor business nor workers
were profligate. Ireland suffered a housing boom and bust similar to the
U.S. in 2008, which the threatened the solvency of Irish and other
European banks. Rightly or wrongly, instead of just letting the banks go
bust, the Irish government decided that the Irish taxpayer would
backstop the banks, so the Irish goverment had to borrow billions of
euros. For the last two or three years, it has continually seemed like the
eurozone was about to implode, but the Europeans have done an amazing
job kicking the can down the road. In the past two years we have
been treated to a long series of press conferences between German and
French leaders Merkel and Sarkozy, and more recently, strident
announcements from the European Central Bank’s Mario Draghi, which keep
perking up sagging markets. What the markets crave is some form of euro
printing by the ECB, in the form of unlimited purchase of (say) Greek
or Spanish bonds by the ECB. Direct purchase of the bonds of a member
state is forbidden to the ECB, but as far as I can tell the ECB has
found effective ways to indirectly fund the shaky countries to date. To
be continued…
The tube is an engineering
marvel: 150 years in the making, with 253 miles of passageway snaking
under the capital, carrying millions of people every day. It's crowded,
uncomfortable and expensive - but it defined London. And it's ours. Time
Out champions one of the true wonders of the Western World, and
pioneers who built it
It
was, on the face of it, a stupid idea. Running trains, and steam trains
at that, in tunnels underneath the London streets. In 1862, the Times
described it as an ‘insult to common sense’ and it was probably right.
But the London Underground turned out to be one of the great engineering
feats of modern times, the world’s only steam-driven underground
railway and the first electrified underground railway. A socially
egalitarian and liberating phenomenon, it helped drive London’s rapid
expansion and got people to work on time, while providing the city with a
bold new identity through impeccable branding that incorporated iconic
typography, cartography and architecture.
It’s fair to say that the
Underground remains unloved by Londoners, and it would take a more
dishonest contrarian than I to defend the grime, the delays, the heat,
the way it’s so busy and unreliable and the fact that, year after year,
we are asked to pay more for a service that doesn’t seem to be getting
any better, cleaner, quicker or cooler. But that’s a fault of management
and decades of underinvestment, not of a system that remains something
Londoners should treasure as remarkable, groundbreaking and emphatically
ours.
The
story began with Charles Pearson, the first in a succession of
underground visionaries. It was he who first proposed the notion of
‘trains in drains’ in 1845, when the railway was a relatively new
invention (the first steam passenger service only opened in 1830).
Pearson, instrumental in the removal of the anti-Catholic inscription on
the foot of the Monument, was a progressive and a pioneer – his
persistence helped persuade the House of Commons to approve a bill in
1853 to build a subterranean railway between Paddington and Farringdon.
The
reason such a hare-brained, experimental scheme received approval was
one of necessity. London roads were suffering from terrible overcrowding
and the mainline railways all stopped on the fringes of the West End
and City thanks to a Royal Commission of 1846 that declared central
London a no-go area for railway companies. A method of linking the
mainline stations of Paddington, Euston and King’s Cross was needed, and
Pearson’s plan fitted the bill. He helped raise the finance from
private investors and the City of London, and excavation began in 1860,
with a shallow trench dug beneath Euston Road and then covered over.
Thousands of poor residents were displaced in the process.
The
Metropolitan Line opened for business on January 10 1863, clocking
30,000 passengers on the first day. A celebratory banquet had been held
the previous day at Farringdon. Pearson was not among the guests, having
passed away the previous year. Another absentee was Prime Minister Lord
Palmerston, who was approaching his 80th birthday, and said he wanted
to spend as much time above ground as he possibly could (he died two
years later).
The
Metropolitan was a success, with 11.8 million passengers (the
population of London was about 3.2 million) braving the foul,
smoke-filled conditions in its first year. The Metropolitan’s owners
claimed the ‘invigorating’ atmosphere ‘provided a sort of health resort
for people who suffered from asthma’, but they also allowed drivers to
grow beards in a futile bid to filter out the worst of the fumes. A
civil servant who had spent time in Sudan said the smell reminded him of
a ‘crocodile’s breath’. One attempt to improve conditions saw smoking
banned, until an MP objected and insisted that all railways provided a
smoking carriage. Smoking was not banned again on the trains until 1985,
and at stations until after the King’s Cross fire of 1987, itself the
culmination of 30 years of neglect.
Among those to benefit most
from the new railway were the lowest-paid workers, who were entitled to
use a special, cheap pre-6am train. Social journalist Henry Mayhew
interviewed some such passengers in 1865, first explaining that ‘this
subterranean method of locomotion had always struck us as being the most
thoroughly Cockney element of all within the wide range of Cocaigne’.
The labourers he spoke to all voiced their enthusiasm for a service that
allowed poorer Londoners to live further out, sparing them a six-mile
walk to work and allowing their families to live in two rooms rather
than one. As the Metropolitan expanded westwards, it opened up new areas
for Londoners to move to, and the overcrowded city d slowly started to
expand – one of the reasons that London still has such a relatively low
population density. When Hammersmith received its first station in 1864
it was still a village ‘best known for spinach and strawberries’, writes
Christian Wolmar in his definitive ‘The Subterranean Railway’ (2004),
but it soon became a major interchange. This pattern was repeated
throughout the Underground’s history. When the Northern Line hit Morden
in 1926, it was a village of 1,000 inhabitants; five years later, its
population was 12,600.
The success of the Metropolitan led to
the building of the District Line along the Victoria Embankment, and
then the creation of a Circle Line to link the two. Unfortunately, the
two east-west lines were run by rivals, James Forbes and Edward Watkin,
whose perpetual bickering meant the Circle took twenty years to
complete. When it was finished in 1884, Watkins’ Met operated trains
that ran clockwise, while Forbes’ District controlled those in the other
direction; such was the antagonism between the two, the companies
refused to sell tickets for their rival line, meaning a passenger might
end up paying for 20 stops rather than seven. When the Circle was
finally electrified in 1905 the companies used different systems which
proved incompatible, resulting in a further three-month delay. Because
the Underground was built haphazardly by private investment and with no
central planning, there were many such inconsistencies. Some
destinations had more than one station, built by competing interests,
which explains why there is such a poor interchange at Hammersmith
between the Hammersmith & City and District Lines, and why Oxford
Circus has two different surface stations on either side of Argyll
Street. This is also why there are so many ghost stations on the network
– about 40 – built without adequate knowledge of whether they were
actually needed.
The
completion of the Circle Line marked the last of the sub-surface lines,
built by the simple, cut-and-cover method. Advances in tunnelling and
the use of electrified rails now allowed for the building of deep-level
lines that gave birth to the phrase ‘tube’ and allowed London’s network
to really connect the dots beneath the capital. The first was the
cramped City & South London line from City to the Elephant &
Castle, later incorporated into the Northern Line, which was opened in
1890 by the future king Edward VII. This was followed by the Waterloo
& City, Central, Bakerloo, Piccadilly and Charing Cross, Euston and
Hampstead (now the Charing Cross branch of the Northern), all before
1907.
This splurge of lines occurred within a narrow window of
opportunity after the invention of suitable tunnelling technology and
before the appearance of the motorised bus. It was aided by gullible
investors (who never quite received the returns they were promised),
public demand and London’s favourable geological conditions – the
capital’s clay being an ideal substance through which to tunnel.
The
last four of these lines were built by American financier Charles Tyson
Yerkes, who also controlled the District and was the first person to
attempt to realise a unified vision of London’s chaotic underground
network. A property speculator with a questionable reputation (he served
time in prison in Philadelphia for embezzlement) Yerkes put together
numerous complex financial schemes to get his lines built, often using
capital from the States, but never got the chance to cash in on his
success, dying in 1905.
Yerkes
left an extraordinary legacy. While lines such as City & South
London never proved popular with the public – something that had much to
do with the fact that the trains, or ‘padded cells’, were built without
windows because the manufacturers figured there was nothing to see down
there – his Central Line was a hit. This was largely because, like the
Metropolitan half a century before, it served major transport routes,
relieving strain on crowded streets above. There were drawbacks – the
line followed the road pattern because the tunnellers didn’t want to pay
compensation to surface landowners, so there were unnecessary kinks –
but the Central Line was a groundbreaking service, attracting 100,000
passengers daily. For a start, it only had one class of travel, and one
price, hence the nickname the d d Twopenny Tube. It also had some
innovative engineering aspects (each station was built atop a slight
incline, meaning trains naturally slowed when entering stations and sped
up when leaving, while the flat face of the train pushing air in front
of it provided much-need ventilation) and carriages were considerably
plusher than on the City & South London. Yerkes’ desire for a
unified service also led to the introduction of what can be seen as the
first attempt at branding on the tube – the Leslie Green-designed
distinctive dried-blood-coloured tiles of the surface stations –
something pursued by the man who followed.
Frank Pick began
working for Yerkes’ Underground Electric Railway Limited (UERL), which
owned all the underground lines other than the Metropolitan and the
Waterloo & City, in 1906. Over the next 30 years, in partnership
with Lord Ashfield, general manager of UERL and future chairman of
London Transport, he helped make the tube the ‘most famous and respected
transport system in the world’. Historian Nikolaus Pevsner believes
Pick’s accomplishments to be greater still: in 1942 he described him as
‘the greatest patron of the arts whom this century has so far produced
in England and indeed the ideal patron of our age’. He is certainly one
of the few transport gurus to have met Stalin, Hitler and Churchill.
Pick’s
reputation was based on his eye for design. He introduced the roundel,
borrowed from the London General Omnibus Company, but made famous by the
tube; he asked calligrapher Edward Johnston to design the tube’s unique
font; commissioned beautiful posters by Man Ray, Graham Sutherland and
Edward Nash; introduced each line’s distinctive patterned seat-covers or
moquettes; appointed architect Charles Holden to design modernist
stations, most famously at Arnos Grove; and in 1931 he paid Harry Beck
five guineas to come up with a new kind of map that would simplify the
most complicated transport system in the world. All the while, the tube
continued to spread east, west, north and even – occasionally – south,
and was by 1934 carrying 410 million passengers a year. Pick can be said
to be as responsible for the image London projects around the world as
Christopher Wren, George Gilbert Scott or Norman Foster. Even today,
Transport for London is well aware of the value of the brand, and
jealously guards icons such as the roundel and Beck’s map from even the
most loving of imitators.
Pick’s
definition of the tube did not end there. In tandem with Lord Ashfield,
he also arranged the integration of London’s various transport systems
in 1933 under the umbrella London Transport, ensuring that an
underground network that had hitherto been privately funded and
unprofitable became publicly supported, thanks in part to Leader of
London County Council (and Peter Mandelson’s grandfather) Herbert
Morrison.
Finance has always been the failing of the tube,
largely because, as Wolmar astutely points out, the early railwaymen
‘were building a fantastic resource for Londoners whose value could
never be adequately reflected through the fare box which was their only
source of income’. This was as true in the days of private entrepreneur
and public ownership as it is with today’s uncomfortable mish-mash, the
great experiment of the Public Private Partnership. All too briefly
London Transport papered over this failing through a combination of
Ashfield and Pick’s acumen and the fact that, following the depression,
there was greater confidence in public ownership, and more skill in the
manner with which it was executed. But this was soon diluted with the
World War II (in which the tube played its own valuable role), after
which, rebuilding the country took precedence.
Which,
more or less, is where we are today. The tube has acquired only two new
lines since Yerkes’ frenzy: the Victoria, which took 20 years from
planning to opening in 1968, and the Jubilee, hewn in part from the
Bakerloo Line and extended magnificently in 2000. Years of
under-investment have taken their toll, and the system looks haggard and
worn. Recent years have seen some improvement, but the cost to users
has soared. Even the ongoing improvements leave the system, temporarily
at least, worse off – with stations closed for months and entire lines
closed weekend after weekend, reinforcing the public’s lack of sympathy
for this ancient marvel.
So it’s no wonder that we look upon the
city’s mighty works and despair. But perhaps we should, every now and
then at least, reflect on what the city would be like if the tube had
never existed, be thankful for the visionaries of the past, and hopeful
that their legacy will once more receive the attention and adulation it
deserves
¿Hasta cuánto puedo ganar sin tener problemas con Hacienda?
Al
realizar una actividad por cuenta propia, es obligatorio declarar todos
los ingresos y darse de alta como autónomo en la Seguridad Social y
Hacienda
Por PABLO PICO RADA
9 de diciembre de 2012
- Imagen: a.tobias -
Ante la necesidad de conseguir nuevas fuentes de ingresos, se ha producido un gran auge de pequeños negocios que, por norma general, generan unos beneficios reducidos.
De forma paralela, se ha extendido la errónea creencia de que existe un
límite legal que puede percibirse sin necesidad de declarar o darse de
alta en la Seguridad Social o la Agencia Estatal de Administración
Tributaria (AEAT). Tal y como dicta la normativa sobre el Régimen
Especial de la Seguridad Social, siempre que se realice una
actividad empresarial o profesional por cuenta propia es obligatorio
estar incluido en el régimen especial de trabajadores autónomos,
con independencia del tiempo que se prolongue el empleo o de la
remuneración. Ahora bien, es habitual considerar, tras distintas
sentencias judiciales, que cuando se generen unos ingresos inferiores al
Salario Mínimo Interprofesional (SMI) en el año natural (8.979,60 euros anuales), no es necesario proceder al alta como autónomo. A continuación se responden a las principales
cuestiones en torno al IRPF, el IVA y las altas en la Seguridad Social
de los pequeños trabajadores por cuenta propia.
1. ¿Es obligatorio darse de alta? ¿Qué dice la ley?
Resulta obligatorio darse de alta siempre y, en especial, cuando
esta actividad sea la única fuente de ingresos y se realice de manera
habitual en el tiempo. Sin embargo, muchas personas que generan
u obtienen unos beneficios escasos por unos trabajos o servicios extra,
se plantean hasta qué punto es conveniente darse de alta.
Existe la errónea creencia de que hay un límite legal que puede percibirse sin necesidad de declarar
En numerosas ocasiones, los costes son elevados en comparación con el dinero que se ingresa,
pues entre los gastos de la cuota de autónomos (la mínima son 254,21
euros mensuales) y los impuestos correspondientes, puede no resultar
rentable. Ahora bien, la ley es tajante:
Existe obligatoriedad. En el capítulo II del Régimen
Especial de la Seguridad Social de los trabajadores por cuenta propia o
autónomos, se indica que, siempre que se realice una actividad por
cuenta propia, es obligatorio estar incluido en el régimen especial de
trabajadores autónomos, con independencia de la duración del trabajo y
de la remuneración.
Pero, ¿qué se entiende por trabajador autónomo o por cuenta propia? Según la normativa del Régimen Especial de la Seguridad Social, se entiende como trabajador por cuenta propia o autónomo aquel que realiza de forma habitual, personal y directa
una actividad económica a título lucrativo, sin sujeción por ella a
contrato de trabajo y aunque utilice el servicio remunerado de otras
personas, sea o no titular de empresa individual o familiar.
Concepto de habitualidad. Es un aspecto fundamental
para saber si es necesario darse de alta o no. La discusión e
interpretación de dicha normativa, por su falta de especificación,
genera diversas controversias y ha dado pie a distantes sentencias
judiciales. Si se trata de una actividad que no es habitual,
como trabajos eventuales que complementan la actividad económica
principal, la jurisprudencia se ha decantado por la no necesidad de
darse de alta.
El Salario Mínimo Interprofesional como regla. El
principal aspecto que la jurisprudencia ha tenido en cuenta para valorar
la obligatoriedad del alta, así como base o indicador de habitualidad,
ha sido el nivel de ingresos en comparación con el SMI (641,40 euros al
mes). Al no alcanzar el Salario mínimo en el año natural, las
sentencias se han mostrado favorables a la no obligación de darse de
alta en el Régimen Especial de Trabajadores Autónomos (RETA).
Pero debe tenerse en cuenta que alegar esto implica un procedimiento
judicial, con un coste importante, y ciertos riesgos pese a las
sentencias favorables previas, ya que la ley sigue sin aludir a ninguna
cantidad mínima y exige la obligatoriedad del alta.
¿Sería posible entonces no pagar impuestos? Aunque el trabajador se encuentre en una situación que le permita no pagar la cotización de autónomo, tendrá que hacer frente al pago de impuestos.
Si factura a una empresa, es probable que esta le retenga el IRPF. Si
trabaja por cuenta propia, tendrá que hacer una declaración trimestral y
pagar el importe que corresponda. Además, si la actividad económica
lleva IVA, hay que facturarlo y pagarlo a Hacienda al final del trimestre.
2. ¿Es obligatorio presentar la Declaración de la Renta por esos ingresos?
Rendimientos íntegros del trabajo, con el límite de 22.000 euros anuales.
Rendimientos íntegros del capital mobiliario y ganancias patrimoniales sometidos a retención o ingreso a cuenta, con el tope conjunto de 1.600 euros al año.
Rentas inmobiliarias imputadas en virtud del artículo 85 de esta Ley,
rendimientos íntegros del capital mobiliario no sujetos a retención
derivados de Letras del Tesoro y subvenciones para la adquisición de
viviendas de protección oficial o de precio tasado, con el límite conjunto de 1.000 euros anuales.
En ningún caso tendrán que declarar los contribuyentes que obtengan solo
rendimientos íntegros del trabajo, de capital o de actividades
económicas, así como ganancias patrimoniales, con el tope conjunto de 1.000 euros al año y pérdidas patrimoniales de cuantía inferior a 500 euros.
3. ¿Es posible emitir facturas sin estar dado de alta?
Es obligatorio darse de alta. Si un trabajador por
cuenta propia no tiene regularizada su situación y la de sus ingresos,
es decir, estar de alta en la Seguridad Social como autónomo y en
Hacienda, no podrá emitir ninguna factura. Solo podrá
facturar si se da de alta en el Impuesto de Actividades Económicas (IAE)
en Hacienda, mediante un trámite gratuito, rellenando el modelo 037 o
036. Aunque siempre con las matizaciones y excepciones comentadas en el
punto 1.
¿Es necesario darse de alta por emitir una sola factura?
Cuando se lleva a cabo una venta de un producto o servicio de un valor
económico relativamente alto, que en cualquier caso superaría el SMI
mensual, no sería posible emitir una única factura.
La solución para legalizar dicha venta entre particulares sin darse de
alta pasa por hacer efectivo el pago del Impuesto de Transmisiones
Patrimoniales. Además, el vendedor deberá contabilizar esta
operación como una ganancia patrimonial en la declaración anual del
Impuesto sobre la Renta de las Personas Físicas (IRPF), que se calcula restando al precio final de venta, el importe de adquisición inicial.
Actividades exentas de IVA. En el momento de facturar, conviene recordar que existen ciertas actividades exentas de IVA, como las clases particulares, prestadas por personas físicas sobre materias incluidas en los planes de estudio de cualquier nivel educativo. O los servicios profesionales,
incluidos aquellos cuya contraprestación consista en derechos de autor,
prestados por artistas plásticos, escritores, colaboradores literarios,
gráficos y fotográficos de periódicos y revistas, compositores
musicales, autores de obras teatrales y de argumento, adaptación, guion y
diálogos de las obras audiovisuales, traductores y adaptadores. Así, si
un trabajador autónomo factura de forma directa a un medio de
comunicación, no tendrá que abonar el IVA. En cambio, si factura a una
empresa intermediaria estará sujeto al pago del IVA.
Toxic Translation: A Twelve-Step Program for Self-Injuring Translators
1. Admit that you are powerless over translation agencies. 2. Make a searching and fearless inventory of the times you have
found yourself saying “I might as well take this job for $0.0000000006
per word; if I don’t, someone else will!” or “A client who pays
regularly at 8,275 days is still better than one who doesn’t pay at
all!” or “Agencies are a business like any other; it’s only natural that
they try to make as much money as possible.” Acknowledge that the justification of unjustifiable behavior is an addiction and that your life as a translator has become unmanageable. 3. Prepare to receive a truth of the universe in nine words: Translation rates are dropping because translators accept low rates.
If you want rates to stop descending, you must take your finger off the
elevator button. Immediately. There is no methadone for people who are
willing to translate for half what the average busboy makes, so the only
way to combat this addiction is cold-turkey. Make amends by explaining
clearly, each time you respond to an insulting offer, refuse a low-wage
job, or decline an invitation to lower your rates why
you are doing so. I know Miss Manners says we’re not supposed to tell
crass, rude people that they’re crass and rude, but she’d make an
exception if she were a translator: Low-payers are the abyssopelagic
feeders of the sea of translation. Do not hesitate to send them back to
filter the ooze whence they came. 4. If you are truly living on Kibbles ‘n Bits, cannot pay the rent,
or are slipping your child thinly diluted Elmer’s glue because it’s
cheaper than milk, you have an excellent excuse to accept offensive
working conditions and insulting wages. Temporarily.
While you look for a job that pays you a living wage and doesn’t screw
your colleagues who depend on translation for their livelihood.
Otherwise, you don’t have an excuse. Not everything in life is black and
white, but this is. Meanwhile, if you are not truly in need, stop using
that pretext to justify your participation in the destruction of the
profession. It might happen to any of us to find the wolf at the door,
but he isn’t at everyone’s door all the time. Don’t use the real misery of others to disguise the fact that you couldn’t locate your self-respect with a Sherpa guide and GPS. 5. Conversely, if your parents are still paying your rent and buying
your groceries, your husband is the CEO of Halliburton or the President
of Mediaset, or you’re a trust-fund baby who just “loves languages,” do
some good for the profession and your immortal soul and start
translating for free. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of worthy
non-profit organizations who could use your help. In the meantime, some
of us are trying to earn a living here. Your “pin-money” rates are killing translators who depend on translation as their sole source of income.
6. Accept the fact that your degree from Acme School of Language
Mediation or The Flinghurst Academy of Translationology is substantially
worthless. Translation is learned in the field, not in the classroom.
If you are nonetheless a recent graduate of such a program, here is
what to do until you’re truly prepared to command professional rates:
apprentice yourself to a translator you trust, donate translations to a
worthy cause in order to build your curriculum (see No. 5, above), spend
your free time doing practice translations for your personal training,
improve your ability to write in your native language, read—a lot—in
both your languages. DO NOT: offer
cut-rate translations or beg clients to let you work “for practically
nothing” because you “love translating.” Why not? For the same reason
that there’s a sign at the zoo that says “Don’t Feed The Monkeys.”
Because, if you do, they get fat and lazy and never learn that
professional, well qualified bananas are not handed around for free. 7. Stop allowing clients to dictate your fees and working conditions. Do you really need me to trot the analogy out for you one more time? Do you? Really? Fine. Here it is: You
sit down to eat in a restaurant. After consulting the menu, you call
the owner over to your table. “This steak is overpriced,” you say. “I’ll
pay half, and I want you to throw in a bottle of wine with that. If you
don’t get everything on my table within ten minutes, though, the deal’s
off.” What happens in a restaurant is that they toss you out on
your stern. What happens in translation is that you say, “Oh, yes, Mr.
Client, thank you, Mr. Client, may I please have another, Mr. Client.”
Three words: Knock. It. Off. 8. Stop using the internet until you learn how. The “freedictionary”
is not a professional resource and Wordreference.com and Yahoo! Answers
are not forums where you can consult with reliable and knowledgeable
colleagues. About half the answers on ProZ.com’s KudoZ boards are wrong.
Wiki is often worth the paper it’s printed on. Google is not your
friend. Go search for the phrase “their is” or “its a question” and see
how many hits you get (2,160,000 and 50,500,000, respectively). Then we
can talk about how internet searches can be so helpful in confirming correct usage. (Gosh! Translation turns out to be tougher than you thought, huh?) 9. If a client doesn’t pay you on time (or doesn’t pay you at all),
stop working for that client. Agencies, publishers, and clients who fail
to pay as promised are like men who hit their wives. They will do it
again. The only question is: Are you going to be standing there when the blow comes? (Quiz:
“They didn’t mean to do it”; “They’re just going through a difficult
period”; and “If I leave, who knows if I’ll ever find another one” are
phrases commonly used by [a] abused wives; [b] self-injuring
translators; [c] both.) 10. Translation is not the ‘Ndrangheta. No one will send you to sleep
with the fishes if you fail to maintain a lifelong pledge of omertà.
Tell your colleagues when clients don’t pay, when they make unreasonable
demands, when they revise without telling you, when they insist that
you lower your rates, when they forget to put your name on the
translation, when they change the agreed-upon conditions after you’ve
already started, when they refuse to pay for urgent or after-hours work,
when they demand unwarranted discounts. Accepting these conditions silently doesn’t make you a Wise Guy; it makes you an accomplice. 11. Stand up for your native language. Take pride in seeing it used
eloquently, fluently, and well. Take offense when it is abused and
disrespected. Don’t believe the hype about globalism, world languages,
and all the rest. Stop caving in to the absurd and unverified claim that
non-native translation is just as valid as native translation or that
the people who read translations in their second language “don’t care”
if they’re well written or not. Your ability to deploy your native language with sophistication, flexibility, and skill is your most important selling point. You
may never succeed in convincing everyone of the importance of this
issue, but consider this: many people also find it acceptable to drink
wine that comes in boxes, watch Fox News, or buy Lady Gaga CDs. If
you’re a language professional, you’re supposed to be above things like
that.
12. If there’s anything worse than translators who complain all the
time, it’s translators who complain about translators who complain all
the time. Let’s suppose you make lots of money, your clients are
respectful of your time and your expertise, and everyone pays you
promptly. If so, let’s call that what it is: Enormous luck. What it is not
is a license to lecture everyone on how they should just stop whinging
and get back to work. The fact that translators complain is a good
thing; it indicates self-esteem and an instinct for self-preservation,
as distinct from your sense of superiority and every-man-for-himself
smugness. If you have nothing to
say that helps moves the profession forward (and not just your personal
little slice of it), at least have the decency to get out of the way of
people who are trying to make things better (including for you,
buckaroo).
El esfuerzo de los traductores logra que se materialicen viejas
reivindicaciones, pero sus nombres vuelven a desaparecer de las
cubiertas y de muchas menciones
Los traductores literarios españoles han pasado, en medio siglo, del
“traducir en España es llorar” al “traducir en España es una profesión”.
Lo dice Francisco Uriz (Zaragoza, 1932), que después de medio siglo en
el oficio (traduciendo del sueco, sobre todo poesía, y a veces las
frases que la Academia Sueca emite para dar a conocer su estimación de
los Nobel literarios), acaba de recibir del Ministerio de Cultura el
Premio Nacional a la Obra de un Traductor. Su colega, Luz Gómez (Madrid, 1967), también ha sido premiada, en su
caso con el Premio Nacional a la Mejor Traducción (ambos dotados con
20.000 euros), por haber puesto en castellano En presencia de laausencia,
del árabe Mahmud Darwix (Pre-Textos), a quien lleva traduciendo 15
años. Ella cree que, en el campo de esas reivindicaciones de los
traductores españoles, “quedan batallas por ganar”. Según Gómez, “el traductor literario no deja de ser una molestia
imprescindible, y como tal no se sabe qué hacer con él”. Drástica: “Lo
ideal sería”, dice, “que no existiera: es una carga, molesta pagarle,
molesta reconocerle”. En los años ochenta, por la insistencia de Esther Benítez, un mito en
la traducción moderna, y de Javier Marías, ambos traductores, los
editores se tomaron en serio esa reivindicación y desde entonces el
traductor ha solido tener su lugar a la sombra (o a la luz) del autor.
Pero Luz percibe que, “tras una época de reconocimiento tipográfico, su
nombre ha empezado a desaparecer de las cubiertas de los libros, para
que las cubiertas queden más limpias, dicen”. “España posee una de las leyes de Propiedad Intelectual mejores y más
avanzadas de Europa. Con lo cual, no debería haber cuestiones
pendientes”, dice María Teresa Gallego Urrutia, la presidenta de ACE, la
organización que agrupa a los traductores españoles. “Pero hete aquí”,
añade, “que buena parte de las editoriales de este país —no todas, ni
mucho menos, pero sí bastantes— incumplen la ley sistemáticamente (de
aquí la frase que suele repetir Miguel Sáenz: ‘España es un estado de
derecho atemperado por el estricto incumplimiento de la ley’). Por ello a
veces los contratos de traducción, o sea de cesión de derechos para la
explotación de la traducción durante un número determinado de años, son
claramente ilegales (vulneran la letra de la ley) y, otras, no llegan a
ser ilegales pero son abusivos (vulneran el espíritu de la ley)”. Ya no lloran, dice Uriz. Pero tendrían motivos. Continúa la
presidenta de los traductores: “A veces las editoriales no admiten
negociación alguna” sobre anticipos y porcentajes en derechos. Y,
además, se producen impagos “o retrasos abusivos” por parte de algunas
editoriales, “no de todas, ni mucho menos”. Pero hay razones para decir que los tiempos han avanzado para mejor.
Dice Elisabeth Falomir (Valencia, 1988, traductora del francés): “Hay
que batallar duro para que se hagan contratos de traducción dignos. ¡Y
que se cumplan!”. Juan Sebastián Cárdenas (colombiano en Madrid,
traductor del inglés, también es narrador) tiene claro su lugar en el
mundo: “En términos estrictos, los traductores no somos distintos de un
encofrador o del tipo que hace alicatado. Está bien que se valore
nuestro trabajo, que es tremendamente complicado y a veces tan ingrato.
Pero básicamente somos trabajadores de la industria cultural. Somos
obreros. Y esa consciencia de obreros viene con una lista de derechos
que todavía estamos en proceso de garantizar plenamente”. En ese plano, Cárdenas apunta a la cabeza: “En nuestros tiempos, el
peor enemigo del traductor —siempre que no hablemos de un tipo mediocre y
chapucero, siempre y cuando hablemos de un buen traductor— es el
colegueo y la informalidad con la que muchos editores entablan las
relaciones laborales. A lo largo de estos 10 años de experiencia me he
topado con un puñado de listos, grandes y pequeños, dispuestos a timar a
quien fuera”. Pero él tiene la suerte, dice, de trabajar con gente
magnífica “como Enrique Redel (Impedimenta) o Diego Moreno (Nórdica)”. A Uriz le pregunto por sus traducciones más preciadas. Va por épocas.
“Cuando traducía con Artur Lundkvist literatura latinoamericana al
sueco, me identifiqué sobre todo con César Vallejo, Pablo Neruda, Jaime
Gil de Biedma y Blas de Otero… al español, me sentí hermanado con el
finlandés Claes Andersson, el sueco Gunnar Ekelöf y ahora con el danés
Henrik Nordbrandt, el finlandés Pentti Saarikoski. ¡Y no olvido a Tomas
Tranströmer!”. Pero hay un poema del que no se puede olvidar: Sobre la guerra de Vietnam,
de Goran Sonnevi, “que influyó en mí de una manera decisiva, tanto que
me dio la pista para tratar en un poemario mi indignación por la
barbarie norteamericana en Vietnam”. Un traductor es un bicho raro, dice Luz Gómez. “Yo traduzco poesía
pero escribo y enseño sobre islam e islamismo. Traduzco a partir de un
proyecto que propongo a un editor y discutimos. Es el caso también de un
buen número de poetas traductores o narradores traductores. Si no fuera
por ciertos editores, siempre dispuestos a abrir el panorama, sería
misión imposible”. A ella la llevó a traducir el gusto por la poesía
árabe contemporánea, “en concreto la obra de Mahmud Darwix”, tarea que
le ha proporcionado este premio. Le pregunté a Cárdenas, autor también, qué se siente dándole voz a
autores con los que no se experimenta identificación. Responde:
“Siguiendo muy de cerca las reflexiones de Walter Benjamin sobre la
traducción, creo que la mayor dificultad técnica del trabajo
radica en la obligación de trasladar los efectos sensoriales que produce
la lengua original a un texto determinado. La traducción crea efectos
inesperados en la lengua de recepción, y por tanto, en la percepción, en
el cuerpo del lector. Y ese trabajo de mediación pasa, en el sentido
más literal, por el cuerpo del traductor. Podemos imaginárnoslo como una
especie de máquina o antena, que recibe señales y las transforma en
otra cosa”. Elisabeth Falomir: “He traducido voces narrativas casi
siempre masculinas y creo haber conseguido amoldarme a distintos
registros. Intento hacerme invisible, que no se me oiga: traducir es
convertirse en ninja, dejarse atravesar por el texto y entregarlo sin
dejar mucha huella, mimetizarse”. Gallego Urrutia, que acaba de publicar su traducción de Orígenes y Los desorientados, de Amin Maalouf (Alianza), dice qué le dejan los autores: “Una embriaguez…”. Lo explicó en un artículo en ElTrujamán,
la revista de traducción del Instituto Cervantes: “De repente, esas
pocas palabras, esas pocas frases, breves pero fundamentales y eternas,
son mías. Las poseo y me poseen”. El orgullo del traductor literario, dice, “reside en su capacidad y
su talento para enfrentarse a la traducción de cuantos escritores les
encomienden las editoriales. Su versatilidad es su grandeza”. Por eso su
exigencia de buen trato es una reivindicación que parece inacabable.
Uriz lo explica: “Siempre hay que seguir reclamando un pago por página
que lleve nuestros honorarios al nivel de lo que cobra la señora de la
limpieza”. Ya no lloran… tanto; quieren ser invisibles y son ecos necesarios de
los autores extranjeros. Quieren volver a las cubiertas y quieren que su
salario compense el esfuerzo de ser imprescindibles.
Madrid 29 de octubre de 2012 – Access Info Europe tendrá que
pagar 3.000 euros por preguntar cuáles son las medidas que España está
implementando para luchar contra la corrupción. Según la sentencia del
Tribunal Supremo que cierra el caso que comenzó en 2007, no tenemos
derecho a solicitar esa información. El principal argumento del Tribunal Supremo es que la información
solicitada por Access Info Europe sobre el cumplimiento de España con
las obligaciones impuestas por la Convención de las Naciones Unidas
contra la Corrupción es en realidad una forma de pedir explicaciones al
gobierno y no una solicitud de información en sí. El Tribunal no se
pronuncia sobre la alegación principal, que es la violación del derecho
de acceso a la información, reconocido internacionalmente como un
derecho fundamental. “El problema es que la Administración no llega a contestar a Access
Info Europe, lo que obliga a la organización a acudir a la vía judicial,
una vía lenta y costosa para todos pero especialmente las ONG, para
poder seguir con su trabajo”, comentaba Enrique Jaramillo, abogado
defensor de Access Info Europe en este caso. “El Tribunal Supremo reconoce que la Administración incumple con su
obligación de contestar, escudándose en la figura del silencio
administrativo, y condena en costas a quien reclama amparo judicial con
una sentencia que ni siquiera entra en el fondo del asunto”, explica
Jaramillo, y añade que “el riesgo de tener que pagar costas es un
desincentivo enorme para el ciudadano y hace menos probable que alguien
decida impugnar judicialmente la falta de respuesta a una solicitud de
información.” Según los estudios y monitoreos que Access Info ha desarrollado desde
2006 en España, el nivel de silencio administrativo en la solicitudes
de acceso a la información a instituciones españolas es de media de un
50%. España, en el marco de sus obligaciones como país firmante de
la Convención de Naciones Unidas Contra la Corrupción (UNCAC), debe
completar cada dos años un formulario de autoevaluación en el que
detalla qué está haciendo para implementar las medidas para luchar
contra la corrupción. Esta información en España no es pública. “Esta situación es bastante sorprendente, especialmente para un país
que está diciendo a la comunidad internacional que está haciendo esfuerzos por mejorar la transparencia, en concreto para luchar
contra la corrupción” comentaba Helen Darbishire, directora ejecutiva de
Access Info Europe. “Access Info Europe ya ha presentado un recurso ante el Tribunal
Constitucional y recurrirá esta decisión ante el Tribunal Europeo de
Derechos Humanos”, añadía Darbishire. Un estudio internacional, “Cuenten lo que han hecho”, publicado en
2011, halló que países como Argentina, Armenia, Chile, Colombia, o Reino
Unido entregaban al público la información sobre la implementación de
medidas anticorrupción que Access Info Europe intentaba conseguir en
2007 para poder participar en el debate público sobre la lucha contra
corrupción en España. España sigue siendo el único país de Europa con
más de un millón de habitantes que no cuenta con una ley de acceso a la
información pública. Esta situación también coloca a España en la lista
de incumplidores de la UNCAC que recoge en su artículo 13 la necesidad
de “garantizar el acceso eficaz del público a la información”. “Es una situación que roza lo ridículo y que además de seguir sumando
derrotas a la transparencia en España, perjudica aun más la imagen y la
reputación de las instituciones públicas españolas, ya bastante
menoscabada por la crisis”, comentaba Victoria Anderica, coordinadora de
campañas de Access Info Europe.
Desgraciadamente la oportunidad de asomarnos a las aguas revueltas del Támesis no se presenta tan a menudo que a uno le gustaría. Sin embargo, este fin de semana hemos tomad parte del incisante pasear de la gente en Soho, de los trajes de Savile Row, de las ventanas de China town con sus patos asados y del aroma a raíles viejos característico del Tube. Una cuidad tan grande y a la vez tan llena de pequeños rincones encondidos a la vista de los turistas; como la tienda de objetos perdidos en Baker St. que muestra en su escaparate los objetos perdidos en el Tube desde los días de su inauguración. (Top hats, old records and ancient mobile phones).
Después de un verano con temperaturas que amenazan la evaporación instantánea del agua de las fuentes se agradece la frescura de los vientos de la capital y la atmósfera cosmopolita pero a la vez rancia de las calles colindates a Tottenham Court Road.
En definitiva, un descanso para el oído que se había acostumbrado a oir solo un idioma, y un toque de estimulación a los lóbulos cerebrales que de vez en cuando hay que alimentar.
“Anglo-Saxon” is the term applied to the English-speaking
inhabitants of Britain from around the middle of the fifth century
until the time of the Norman Conquest, when the Anglo-Saxon line of
English kings came to an end.
According to the Venerable Bede, whose Historia Ecclesiastica
Gentis Anglorum [Ecclesiastical History of the English People],
completed in the year 731, is the most important source for the
early history of England, the Anglo-Saxons arrived in the island of
Britain during the reign of Martian, who in 449 became co-emperor of
the Roman Empire with Valentinian III and ruled for seven years.
Before that time, Britain had been inhabited by speakers of Celtic
languages: the Scots and Picts in the north, and in the south
various groups which had been united under Roman rule since their
conquest by the emperor Claudius in A.D. 43. By the beginning of the
fifth century the Roman Empire was under increasing pressure from
advancing barbarians, and the Roman garrisons in Britain were being
depleted as troops were withdrawn to face threats closer to home. In
A.D. 410, the same year in which the Visigoths entered and sacked
Rome, the last of the Roman troops were withdrawn and the Britons
had to defend themselves. Facing hostile Picts and Scots in the
north and Germanic raiders in the east, the Britons decided to hire
one enemy to fight the other: they engaged Germanic mercenaries to
fight the Picts and Scots.
It was during the reign of Martian that the newly-hired mercenaries
arrived. These were from three Germanic nations situated near the
northern coasts of Europe: the Angles, the Saxons and the
Jutes. According to Bede, the mercenaries succeeded quickly in
defeating the Picts and Scots and then sent word to their homes of
the fertility of the island and the cowardice of the Britons. They
soon found a pretext to break with their employers, made an alliance
with the Picts, and began to conquer the territory that would
eventually be known as England—a slow-moving conquest that would
take more than a century.
It has been many years since Bede’s narrative was accepted
uncritically, but recent research has introduced especially
significant complications into his traditional account of the
origins of the Anglo-Saxons. Genetic research generally suggests
that neither the Anglo-Saxon invasion nor any other brought about a
wholesale replacement of the British population, which has remained
surprisingly stable for thousands of years: presumably the
landholding and ruling classes were widely replaced while the
greatest proportion of the population remained and eventually
adopted Germanic ethnicity—a process that has parallels on the
continent. Yet in some areas it may well be that some, at least, of
the older British landholding class survived by intermarrying with
the invaders. The occurrence of Celtic names among early West Saxon
kings points to the possibility, and genetic research appears to
bear it out, especially for the south. It increasingly appears that
the “Anglo-Saxon invasion” is as much the invasion of an ethnicity
as that of a population.
Though Bede’s account cannot be accepted without reservation, his
story nevertheless gives us essential information about how the
Anglo-Saxons looked at themselves: they considered themselves a
warrior people, and they were proud to have been conquerors of the
territory they inhabited. Indeed, the warrior ethic that pervades
Anglo-Saxon culture is among the first things that students notice
on approaching the field.
But Europe had no shortage of warrior cultures in the last half of
the first millennium. What makes Anglo-Saxon England especially
worthy of study is the remarkable literature that flourished
there. The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms converted to Christianity in the
late sixth and early seventh centuries, and by the late seventh and
early eighth centuries had already produced two major authors:
Aldhelm, who composed his most important work, De Virginitate
[On Virginity], twice, in prose and in verse; and the Venerable
Bede, whose vast output includes biblical commentaries, homilies,
textbooks on orthography, meter, rhetoric, nature and time, and of
course the Historia Ecclesiastica, mentioned above. A small
army of authors, Bede’s contemporaries and successors, produced
saints’ lives and a variety of other works in prose and verse,
largely on Christian themes.
These seventh- and eighth-century authors wrote in Latin, as did a
great many Anglo-Saxon authors of later periods. But the
Anglo-Saxons also created an extensive body of vernacular literature
at a time when relatively little was being written in most of the
other languages of western Europe. In addition to such well-known
classic poems as Beowulf, The Dream of the Rood,
The Wanderer, The Seafarer and The Battle of
Maldon, they left us the translations associated with King
Alfred’s educational program, a large body of devotional works by
such writers as Ælfric and Wulfstan, biblical translations and
adaptations, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and other historical
writings, law codes, handbooks of medicine and magic, and much
more. While most of the manuscripts that preserve vernacular works
date from the late ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries, the
Anglo-Saxons were producing written work in their own language by
the early seventh century, and many scholars believe that
Beowulf and several other important poems date from the
eighth century. Thus we are in possession of five centuries of
Anglo-Saxon vernacular literature.
To learn more about the Anglo-Saxons, consult the Further Reading
section of this book and choose from the works listed there: they
will give you access to a wealth of knowledge from a variety of
disciplines. This book will give you another kind of access,
equipping you with the skills you need to encounter the Anglo-Saxons
in their own language.
1.2. Where did their language come from?
Bede tells us that the Anglo-Saxons came from Germania.
Presumably he was using that term as the Romans had used it, to refer
to a vast and ill-defined territory east of the Rhine and north of the
Danube, extending as far east as the Vistula in present-day Poland and
as far north as present-day Sweden and Norway. This territory was
nothing like a nation, but rather was inhabited by numerous tribes
which were closely related culturally and
linguistically.[1]
The languages spoken by the inhabitants of Germania were a
branch of the Indo-European
family of
languages, which linguists believe developed from a single language
spoken some five thousand years ago in an area that has never been
identified—perhaps, some say, the Caucasus. From this ancient
language come most of the language groups of present-day Europe and
some important languages of South Asia: the Celtic languages (such as
Irish, Welsh and Scottish Gaelic), the Italic languages (such as
French, Italian, Spanish and Romanian, descended from dialects of
Latin), the Germanic languages,
the Slavic languages (such as Russian and Polish), the
Baltic languages (Lithuanian and Latvian), the Indo-Iranian languages
(such as Persian and Hindi), and individual languages that do not
belong to these groups: Albanian, Greek, and Armenian. The biblical
Hittites spoke an Indo-European language, or a language closely related to
the Indo-European family, and a number of other extinct languages (some of
them poorly attested) were probably or certainly Indo-European: Phrygian,
Lycian, Thracian, Illyrian, Macedonian, Tocharian and others. The Germanic branch of the Indo-European family is usually divided
into three groups:
North Germanic,
that is, the Scandinavian languages, Swedish,
Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic and Faroese;
East Germanic,
that is, Gothic, now extinct but preserved in a
fragmentary biblical translation from the fourth century;
West Germanic,
which includes High German, English, Dutch,
Flemish and Frisian.
Within the West Germanic group, the High German dialects (which
include Modern German) form a subgroup distinct from English and the
other languages, which together are called “Low German” because they
were originally spoken in the low country near the North
Sea.[2] Surely the language spoken by the Germanic peoples who migrated to
Britain was precisely the same as that spoken by the people they left
behind on the continent. But between the time of the migration and the
appearance of the earliest written records in the first years of the
eighth century, the language of the Anglo-Saxons came to differ from
that of the people they had left behind. We call this distinct
language Old English to
emphasize its continuity with Modern English, which is
directly descended from it.
1.3. What was Old English like?
We often hear people delivering opinions about different languages:
French is “romantic,” Italian “musical.”
For the student of language, such impressionistic
judgments are not very useful. Rather, to describe
a language we need to explain how it goes about doing the work that
all languages must do; and it is helpful to compare it with other
languages—especially members of the language groups it belongs
to.
Languages may be compared in a number of ways. Every language has its
own repertory of sounds, as known by all students who have had to
struggle to learn to pronounce a foreign language. Every language also
has its own rules for accentuating words and its own patterns of
intonation—the rising and falling pitch of our voices as we
speak. Every language has its own vocabulary, of course, though when
we’re lucky we find a good bit of overlap between the vocabulary of
our native language and that of the language we’re learning. And every
language has its own way of signalling how words function in
utterances—of expressing who performed an action, what the
action was, when it took place, whether it is now finished or still
going on, what or who was acted upon, for whose benefit the action was
performed, and so on. The following sections attempt to hit the high points, showing what
makes Old English an Indo-European language, a Germanic language, a
West Germanic and a Low German language; and also how Old and Modern English
are related.
The Indo-European languages do certain things in much the same way. For
example, they share some basic vocabulary. Consider these words for
‘father’:
Old English
fæder
Latin
pater
Greek
patḗr
Sanskrit
pitá
You can easily see the resemblance among the Latin, Greek and Sanskrit
words. You may begin to understand why the Old English word looks
different from the others when you compare these words for ‘foot’:
Old English
fōt
Latin
pedem
Greek
póda
Sanskrit
pdam
If you suspect that Latin p will always correspond to
Old English f, you are right, more or less.
For now, it’s enough for you to recognize that the
Indo-European languages do share a good bit of vocabulary, though the
changes that all languages go through often bring it about that the
same word looks quite different in different
languages.[3]
All of the Indo-European languages handle the job of signalling the
functions of words in similar ways. For example, all add
endings to
words. The plural form of the noun meaning ‘foot’ was
pódes in Greek, pedēs in Latin, and
pádas in
Sanskrit—and English feet once ended with -s
as well, though that ending had already disappeared by the Old English
period. Most Indo-European languages signal the function of a noun in a
sentence or clause by inflecting[4] it for
case (though some languages no
longer do, and the only remaining trace of the case system in
Modern English nouns is the possessive ’s). And most
also classify their nouns by gender—masculine, feminine or
neuter (though some have reduced the number of genders to two).> Indo-European languages have ways to inflect words other than by adding
endings. In the verb system, for example, words could be inflected by
changing their root vowels, and this
ancient system of “gradation” persists even now
in such Modern English verbs as swim (past-tense
swam, past participle swum). Words could
also be inflected by shifting the stress from one syllable to another,
but only indirect traces of this system remain in Old and Modern English.
1.3.2. The Germanic languages
Perhaps the most important development that distinguishes the
Germanic languages from others in the Indo-European family is the one
that produced the difference, illustrated above, between the
p of Latin pater and the f of Old English
fæder. This change, called “Grimm’s Law”
after Jacob Grimm, the great linguist and folklorist,
affected all of the consonants called
“stops”—that is, those consonants produced by
momentarily stopping the breath and then releasing it (for example,
[p], [b], [t], [d]):[5]
Unvoiced stops
([p], [t], [k]) became unvoiced spirants
([f], [θ], [x]), so that Old English
fæder corresponds to Latin pater, Old English
þrēo ‘three’ to Latin tres, and Old English
habban ‘have’ to Latin capere ‘take’.
Voiced stops
([b],[6]
[d], [g]) became unvoiced stops ([p], [t], [k]), so that Old English
dēop ‘deep’ corresponds to Lithuanian dubùs,
twā ‘two’ corresponds to Latin duo and
Old English æcer ‘field’ to Latin ager.
Voiced aspirated stops[7]
([bʰ], [dʰ],
[gʰ]) became voiced
stops ([b] [d], [g]) or spirants ([β],
[ð], [ɣ]), so
that Old English
brōðor corresponds to Sanskrit
bhrátar-
and Latin frater, Old English duru ‘door’ to Latin
fores and Greek thúra, and Old English
ġiest ‘stranger’ to Latin hostis ‘enemy’ and Old
Slavic gosti ‘guest’.
Almost as important as these changes in the Indo-European consonant
system was a change in the way words were stressed. You read in
§ 1.3.1 that the
Indo-European language sometimes stressed one form of a word on one
syllable and another form on another syllable. For example, in Greek
the nominative singular of the word for ‘giant’ was
gígās while the genitive plural was
gigóntōn. But in Germanic, some time after the
operation of Grimm’s Law, stress shifted to the first syllable. Even
prefixes were stressed, except the prefixes of verbs and the one that
came to Old English as ġe- (these were probably perceived as
separate words rather than prefixes). The fact that words in
Germanic were almost always stressed on the first syllable had many
consequences, not least of which is that it made Old English much easier
than ancient Greek for modern students to pronounce.
Along with these sound changes came a radical simplification of the
inflectional system of the Germanic languages.
For example, while linguists believe that the original Indo-European
language had eight cases, the Germanic languages have four, and
sometimes traces of a fifth. And while students of Latin and Greek
must learn a quite complex verb system, the Germanic verb had just
two tenses, present and past. Germanic did introduce
one or two complications of its own, but in general its inflectional
system is much simpler than those of the more ancient Indo-European
languages, and the Germanic languages were beginning to rely on a
relatively fixed ordering of sentence elements to do some of the work
that inflections formerly had done.
1.3.3. West Germanic and Low German
The West Germanic languages differ from North and East Germanic in a
number of features which are not very striking in themselves, but
quite numerous. For example, the consonant [z] became
[r] in North and West Germanic. So while Gothic has
hazjan ‘to praise’, Old English has herian.
In West Germanic, this [r] disappeared at the ends of
unstressed syllables, with the result that entire inflectional endings
were lost. For example, the nominative singular of the word for
‘day’ is dagr in Old Icelandic and dags in Gothic
(where the final [z] was unvoiced to [s]), but
dæġ in Old English, dag in Old Saxon, and
tac in Old High German.
Low German is defined in part by something that did not
happen to it. This non-event is the “High German consonant
shift,” which altered the sounds of the High German dialects as
radically as Grimm’s Law had altered the sounds of
Germanic. Students of Modern German will
recognize the effects of the High German consonant
shift in such pairs as English eat and German essen,
English sleep and German schlafen, English
make and German machen, English daughter
and German Tochter, English death and German
Tod, English thing and German Ding. Another
important difference between High German and Low German is that the
Low German languages did not distinguish person in plural verbs. For
example, in Old High German one would say wir
nemumēs ‘we take’, ir nemet ‘you (plural) take’,
sie nemant ‘they take’, but in
Old English one said wē nimað ‘we
take’, ġē nimað ‘you (plural) take’, hīe
nimað ‘they take’, using the same verb form for the first, second
and third persons. The most significant differences between Old English (with Old Frisian)
and the other Low German languages have to do with
their treatment of vowels.
Old English and Old Frisian both changed the vowel that in other
Germanic languages is represented as a, pronouncing it with
the tongue farther forward
in the mouth: so Old English has dæg ‘day’ and Old
Frisian dei, but Old Saxon (the language spoken by the Saxons
who didn’t migrate to Britain) has dag, Old High German
tac, Gothic dags, and Old Icelandic dagr.
Also, in both Old English and Old Frisian, the pronunciation of a
number of vowels was changed (for example, [o] to [e])
when [i] or [j] followed in the next syllable.
This development, called i-mutation, has implications for Old English
grammar and so is important for students to understand. Old English dramatically reduced the number of
vowels that could appear in inflectional endings. In the earliest
texts, any vowel except y could appear in an inflectional
ending: a, e, i, o, u,
æ. But by the time of King Alfred i and
æ could no longer appear, and o and u
were variant spellings of more or less the same sound; so in effect
only three vowels could appear in inflectional endings: a,
e and o/u. This development of course reduced the
number of distinct endings that could be added to Old English words. In
fact, a number of changes took place in unaccented syllables, all
tending to eliminate distinctions between endings and simplify the
inflectional system.
1.3.4. Old and Modern English
The foregoing sections have given a somewhat technical, if rather
sketchy, picture of how Old English is like and unlike the languages it
is related to. Modern English is also “related” to Old English,
though in a different way; for Old and Modern English are really different
stages in the development of a single language. The changes that
turned Old English into Middle English and Middle English into Modern English took
place gradually, over the centuries, and there never was a time when
people perceived their language as having broken radically with the
language spoken a generation before. It is worth mentioning in this
connection that the terms “Old English,” “Middle
English” and “Modern English” are themselves modern:
speakers of these languages all would have said, if asked, that the
language they spoke was English.
There is no point, on the other hand, in playing down the differences
between Old and Modern English, for they are obvious at a glance. The
rules for spelling Old English were different from the rules for
spelling Modern English, and that accounts for some of the difference.
But there are more substantial changes as well. The three vowels that
appeared in the inflectional endings of Old English words were reduced
to one in Middle English, and then most inflectional endings
disappeared entirely. Most case distinctions were lost; so were most
of the endings added to verbs, even while the verb system became more
complex, adding such features as a future tense, a perfect, and a
pluperfect. While the number of endings was reduced, the order of
elements within clauses and sentences became more fixed, so that (for
example) it came to sound archaic and awkward to place an object
before the verb, as Old English had frequently done. The vocabulary of Old English was of course Germanic, more closely
related to the vocabulary of such languages as Dutch and German than
to French or Latin. The Viking age, which culminated in the reign of
the Danish king Cnut in England, introduced a great many Danish words
into English—but these were Germanic words as well. The
conquest of England by a French-speaking people in the year 1066
eventually brought about immense changes in the vocabulary of English.
During the Middle English period (and especially in the years 1250-1400)
English borrowed some ten thousand words from French, and at the same
time it was friendly to borrowings from Latin, Dutch and Flemish. Now
relatively few Modern English words come from Old English; but the words
that do survive are some of the most common in the language, including
almost all the “grammar words” (articles, pronouns,
prepositions) and a great many words for everyday concepts.
For example, the words in this paragraph that come to us from
Old English (or are derived from Old English words) include those in table
1.1.
Table 1.1. Some Modern English words from Old English
about
by
from
now
these
almost
come
great
of
this
all
Danish
in
old
thousand
and
do
into
or
time
are
England
it
some
to
as
English
king
speaking
was
at
everyday
many
such
were
borrowings
for
middle
ten
which
brought
French
more
than
word
but
friendly
most
the
year
1.4. Old English dialects
The language spoken by the Anglo-Saxons at the time of
their migration to Britain was probably more or less uniform. Over
time, however, Old English developed into four major dialects:
Northumbrian, spoken north of the river Humber; Mercian, spoken in the
midlands; Kentish, spoken in Kent (in the far southeastern part of the
island); and West Saxon, spoken in the southwest.
All of these dialects have direct descendants in modern
England, and American regional dialects also have their roots in the
dialects of Old English. “Standard” Modern English (if there
is such a thing), or at least Modern English spelling, owes most to
the Mercian dialect, since that was the dialect of London.
Most Old English literature is not in the Mercian
dialect, however, but in West-Saxon, for from the time of King Alfred
(reigned 871-899) until the Conquest Wessex dominated the rest of
Anglo-Saxon England politically and culturally. Nearly all Old English
poetry is in West Saxon, though it often contains spellings and
vocabulary more typical of Mercian and Northumbrian—a fact that has
led some scholars to speculate that much of the poetry was first
composed in Mercian or Northumbian and later “translated”
into West Saxon. Whatever the truth of the matter, West Saxon was the
dominant language during the period in which most of our surviving
literature was recorded. It is therefore the dialect that this book
will teach you.
