By Maëlle Alquezar

According to a study led by Swedish and American researchers, foetuses start learning language in their mother’s womb.

Researchers revealed that foetuses listen to how their mothers communicate during the last 10 weeks of pregnancy. Once they are born, they can demonstrate what they overheard. This study consisted of playing different random vowel sounds to 40 baby boys and girls. These vowels are unique to both English and Swedish, including the English “e” sound from “sweet”. The strength of their sucking on a comforter/dummy connected to a computer allowed the researchers to measure their responses. It appeared that the babies sucked hardest when listening to a foreign vowel which shows that babies are able to distinguish between different languages. This study indicates that babies can recognise, remember and learn the sounds before they are even born.

However, researchers warn parents about exposing their unborn child to new sounds such as foreign language audio courses, as foetuses spend most of their time in a sleep state. Providing extra stimulation could have consequences on that developing sleep-wake cycle and on the baby’s ability to hear.

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By Maëlle Alquezar

German President Joachim Gauck’s proposal to make English the EU’s official language is not only aimed to encourage the UK to stay, but also to reduce costs linked to translation.

According to the Germany’s President, such a law would encourage multilingualism as well as reinforcing the European community . However, this proposal also aimed to cut translation costs. Indeed, translation in the EU’s headquarters appears to be complicated and is said to be expensive. While all 23 official languages are accepted as working languages in the EU, day-to-day work in the European Commission is based around its three working languages: English, French and German. With the EU’s expansion, the number of translators has significantly increased from 200-300 to 2,000-3,000 people. It is reckoned that £257 million is spent each year in translation with 1.76 million pages of work being produced.

What would be the implications of such a policy?

First of all, not all the EU’s member states would welcome English as an official language. While northern and eastern countries might accept it, southern member states might be outraged. But above all, imposing English as the official language would be profoundly undemocratic according to Diego Marani – an Italian novelist who is in charge of promoting multilingualism at the European Commission. Marani states that the total cost of EU translation work would only be equivalent to the cost of two coffees for each person a year, which is a cheap price to pay for democracy .

But even if EU translation work were expensive, it is the only fair way to implement policies. After all, the EU is said to be in favour of linguistic diversity and making English the official language would be breaking its prior commitments.

What about you? What do you think about English becoming official language of the EU?

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By Maëlle Alquezar

French cinema has managed to break all previous records in the UK. French-made or French language films have experienced a 157% increase in terms of attendance in 2012 compared to 2011, which was the most successful year for the French box office for the past decade.

According to the cinema organisation Unifrance, in charge of promoting French movies abroad, 8 million tickets were sold in Britain last year. The French film industry represented 4.6% of the British market. The Oscar-winning film The Artist was not the only key to this success. Other films such as The Untouchables, Amour or even Rust and Bone did very well and formed a part of the French cinema industry’s successful line-up.

London still ranks first in terms of the number of people who watch foreign-language movies. According to Charlotte Saluard, the Director of Programming at Cine Lumiere in London, 70% of her cinema’s audience is British. Moreover, new cities such as Manchester, Glasgow or Liverpool are seeing more and more people come to their cinemas to watch French films.

2012 was considered a special year for French cinema in Britain. But what does this mean for 2013? Luckily for UK cinema goers, more and more French film distributors will be exporting their films, in the hope of receiving the same level of success.

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By Emma Clarke

Dante’s Lucifer

Dan Brown’s novel ‘Inferno’ was released on 14 May 2013. It tells the story of a professor cracking codes in Florence that are connected to the famous Italian poet Dante Alighieri’s classic poem ‘Inferno’. In order to prevent any spoilers reaching an international audience, the translations of the novel were released on the same day. This seemingly courteous gesture meant that the 11 translators were forced to work for nearly 2 months in an underground bunker. Releasing all of the books on the same day is likely to result in higher sales of the book. However, surely it would be easier to translate Dan Brown’s novel, rather than the one on which it is based: Dante’s ‘Inferno’.

But what about the original poem?

Dante’s literature forms a large part of Italian history. Indeed, it has been claimed that Dante is the greatest poet who ever lived. The fact that Dante chose to write in the Tuscan dialect rather than Latin, helped to form the Italian language with which we are familiar today. As with Dan Brown, this was more of a financial decision than a linguistic one: more people would be willing to read the book in the Tuscan dialect as opposed to Latin!

Apart from the pressure of staying true to a text with so much cultural significance, Dante’s ‘Inferno’ is written in terza rima, a rhyme scheme which is very difficult to translate into English.

How easy is it to translate other poems?

Dante Alighieri

All poetry presents certain challenges for translators. Should you be more faithful to the rhythm or the vocabulary? Our In-house German Translator Silke Luehrmann states, “Poetry translation may be an extreme case, but it highlights many of the challenges inherent in any form of translation. For example, translation and other language-related services are generally charged and paid on a per-word basis – yet translating two words can sometimes take far longer than ten pages.”

Burton Raffel dedicated an entire book to the subject: ‘The Art of Translating Poetry’. It points out that the unique nature of languages presents challenges for any translator, but especially one of poetry. All languages have different: sounds, literary history, and syntactical structures.

To end on a positive note, most translators welcome the opportunity to translate poetry. Translation is often an art, and what better way to express your linguistic prowess than through the medium of poetry?

Do you have experience in translating poetry? Or perhaps even Dante? 

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