‘Hot. Cool. Yours.’ Another #Sochiproblem

Like many people, I was a little disappointed to learn that the slogan for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games is ‘Hot. Cool. Yours.’

Historically, Olympic slogans have always been a little cheesy (Beijing’s ‘One world, one dream’ was spectacularly so). But as an old colleague pointed out, Sochi's is more reminiscent of a Nando’s promotion than one of the biggest events on the sporting calendar.

So what lies behind these three words that are now plastered all over Sochi’s Olympic venues, and our TV screens? This old media release explains how the slogan was conceived:

“The slogan is made up of two parts: one dynamic (changeable) and one constant. It is intended to reflect the national character of Russia and the values of the Sochi 2014 brand, as well as Sochi 2014’s progressive and innovative approach to the organization and staging of the Games.”

(At least Russia is progressive in some respects then.) The release goes on to break down each component – just in case you aren’t sure what they mean by ‘hot’, ‘cool’, and ‘yours’. But the best part is this:

“The dot after each word draws a parallel with high technologies (.ru) and the emblem of the Winter Games in Sochi.” 

Erm, okay. Another indication of how progressive the host country is then.

In the organising committee’s defence, coming up with an Olympic Games slogan is an extremely tough nut to crack. Nothing is subject to more intense scrutiny than the Olympics and Paralympics – as media coverage in the run-up to Sochi 2014 has (rightly) shown.

But I think this slogan is symptomatic of a wider, global problem – one that I’ve come across many times in my experiences of translation.

All too often, non-native speakers think you can simply string together a few English words to make a great slogan. Buzz words like ‘your’ and ‘yours’ are used a lot to make something sound personal, but come off sounding a little forced and creepy.

And this has been going on for some time. A 2004 study by Hanover University revealed that the words most used in German advertising were: wir (meaning ‘we’), Sie (‘you’), mehr (‘more’), Leben (‘life’) and the English word ‘your’. I’d bet that ‘your’ has moved up a few places since then too.

I’ve no doubt that, to the average Russian, the slogan ‘Hot. Cool. Yours’ sounds pretty, well, cool. But sadly, to us native speakers it just sounds pretty, well, rubbish.

Railspeak urgently needs an update

If, like me, you were trying to get somewhere in the UK by train this Christmas, no doubt getting there was a nightmare. Of course, nobody could help the bad weather (although it does seem we Brits suffer from amnesia when it comes to our country’s erratic climate).

But what did strike me – as it often does – was the complete inability of rail operators to communicate what was happening in clear, comprehensible English.

I quickly learned that Twitter was the best way to keep up with First Great Western services (or so I thought – turns out they’re actually quite selective when it comes to which vital updates they choose to share). But even the stuff they did put out in the Twittersphere seemed like a foreign language:

“The disruption between Eastleigh/Southampton Central and Havant have been cleared. Residual delays expected.”

Never mind the incorrect verb agreement – don’t you just hate residual delays? They hang around like a bad smell, reminding you that you’re going to be late for everything. And what about this:

“Owing to signalling problems between London Paddington and Reading some lines are blocked. Updates to follow.”

The phrase “owing to” leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I mean, who even says that? “Owing to the fact we have no sausages, it’s bacon butties for tea”? The sole purpose of this phrase is to absolve FGW of any blame. Funny though – those pesky signalling problems are always gate crashing rail passengers’ parties, usually after a night of engineering works. And “some lines” isn’t really useful information. I don’t remember any updates following either.

Of course, none of this nonsense is new. But how nice would it be if rail operators put a little more thought into making their communications more transparent this year? Understanding how you’re going to get from A to B shouldn’t be as mind boggling as doing a Rubik’s cube.

If you’d like to read more, check out this 2011 Guardian article on railspeak, which quite rightly compares it to Orwell’s Newspeak in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Bidialectalism

I learned something interesting from The Jonathan Ross Show the other day, or at least indirectly through one of the guests – Gillian Anderson of X-Files fame. She's American. So I was a bit confused that she sounded more British than me (my West Country twang always lets me down). 

A quick Google search reliably informed me that she’s “bidialectal”, dahling. Yes, this word really does exist! Or at least it does Stateside…I couldn’t find a definition in the Oxford Dictionary online, but Merriam Webster came up trumps:

BIDIALECTALISM: facility in using two dialects of the same language (also: the teaching of Standard English to pupils who normally use a nonstandard dialect).

It seems most bidialectal celebrities, Gillian Anderson included, moved from one English-speaking country to another at a young age, and adopted their new (now perfect) accent in an attempt to fit in.

Perhaps the most bizarre example of a bidialectal actor is John Barrowman, who was born in Glasgow to Scottish parents but grew up in Illinois. Here’s a compilation of clips showing how he can quite naturally flit between the two (it’s interesting but I suggest you only watch the first few minutes – whoever put this film together is clearly a massive John Barrowman fan).

 

Do you shop at Leedle?

A friend recently asked how I pronounce the name of the German store Lidl. My initial response was, “Liddle, of course”. But then I remembered that in Germany they say “Leedle” – so that’s what I use when I’m over there.

This threw up the question of whether we English speakers should pronounce foreign words exactly as they’re spoken in their native language. For me, the answer’s no – not necessarily.

After all, surely the main purpose of pronunciation is to make both speaking and comprehension as easy as possible, whichever language we're talking in?

Just take the automotive brand Volkswagen. On the off chance a non-German speaker manages to pronounce this the German way – so pholks-va-gen (apologies to linguistics buffs for my poor phonetic spelling) – would you understand them immediately? Possibly not.

Fact is, people are generally quite lazy and don’t want to have to go out of their way to pronounce or understand a word. And this isn't just an English thing. In the UK we pronounce IKEA, Sweden’s greatest export, as i-keeya. In Germany it’s ee-keeya. But my friend Kira, a native Swedish speaker, tells me this:

“We would say ee-ke-a, no ‘y’ sound, with the ‘k’ sounding like the french ‘que’ and the ‘a’ like the german ‘a’.”

So neither English nor German speakers pronounce it the 'right' way. But I don’t think it really matters. The main thing is that we make ourselves easily understood (it's about good old audience centricity again). And if altering the way we pronounce a word helps us to do that, all the better.

But let’s please not start changing the way we write things because of the way we pronounce them – “I should of paid more attention in school” just isn’t right or cool.