Mind all yourSie's and du's'Mind Your sie's and Du's' (TL50,6) was afascinating article (not to mention a greatheadline) and has inspired me to read moreof the articles cited. it also, though, helpedme to articulate something i've noticed onenglish-language translator forums. although the translator members workinto and out of French and german, mostposts are in english, and i've noticed veryheavy use of inclusivity markers and firstnames. i suspect that this not only reflectsgeneral collegiality but also functions as acompensatory mechanism for not having a t form in english to signal peer status andfor the fact that english cannot easily mark'you' for plurality. a scan of just a handful of posts revealsinclusivity being marked in formulations suchas 'good morning, all' and 'Hi everyone' and'What do you all think about.?'. Commentsand thanks, meanwhile, are very commonlypersonalised, as in 'thanks for your help,susan', 'Paul, that's very helpful' and 'thankyou, emily'. it seems that english forumusers, far from being smug about being ableto avoid the t/V pitfalls, are in fact subtlycreating an indirect way of marking t/V!Janet Fraser FCIL30 TheLinguistFEBRUARY/MARCH www.iol.org.ukOPINION & COMMENTEmail with your viewsa letter of mine relating to Rosetta stonelanguage courses was published in TheLinguista few years back and a version isavailable online (www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/B000077DCY). Despite afew inconsistencies, i found the modules tobe well-designed and a superb method ofacquiring a new language. Yet, i had onemajor criticism: localisation seems to betotally absent from the program-makers'vocabulary. the images used representamerican suburbia throughout, and while itmay appear reasonable to re-use them forWest european languages due to the closeproximity of cultures, they seem strangelyout of place when learning a language fromfurther afield. Language immersion should also immersethe learner in a foreign culture, and in thisrespect the courses fail abysmally. on oneoccasion a picture shows an open book andasks whether this is the beginning or the endof the book, missing entirely the fact thatbooks in arabic open from the other end.in this respect i found the productstrangely stuck in the past for a progressivemethod of language delivery. since then, ihave purchased and looked at otherlanguages, and i still believe that themethod is suitable for learning a languagefrom scratch up to about intermediate level. i do not find it sufficient, however, tobecome fully proficient beyond, let's say, a-level standard. the reason for this is thatas a learner you will only ever encounterbite-size snippets of the language, neverwhole paragraphs, articles, essays etc incontext. in that respect, Linguaphone tookthe learner much further, but it wasn't aseasy to work with as an entry-level module. i have one further comment: although youbuy Rosetta stone software at a rather inflatedprice, you don't ever own it. instead youpurchase a single-user licence which cannotbe transferred or sold. When i tried to sellsome of my disks on eBay, the companyintervened and cancelled the listing. My comments relate to version 2 ofRosetta stone language courses, but fromwhat i have seen of version 3, the culturalprejudice has not been fixed.Sahib Bleher MCILMore Rosettaelaine guy (TL50,6) was surprised to findthat the level of difficulty presented byMandarin a-level was much greater thanthat presented by the Russian, French andLatin a-levels she had taken previously. if a-levels in different languages are to represent similar levels of attainment, surelythis was only to be expected. as membersof the great indo-european family, herearlier a-levels share many features ofstructure and lexicon. to attain the samelevel of competence in a language asremote from this group as Mandarin, it willclearly be necessary to put in a great dealmore work. if, on the other hand, a-levels are to beawarded for equivalence of work input,then it must be accepted that an a-level inone language does not represent the samelevel of competence as an a-level inanother language.Perhaps a reader with more intimateunderstanding of the current a-level system would be able to explain thesituation to this former Further educationlanguage teacher, who years agodelightedly substituted the ioL exams fora-levels whenever it seemed to thestudents' advantage. David Leighton MCILAre all A-levels equal? © RoutesintoLanguages

Vol/51 No/1 2012FeBRuaRY/MaRCHTheLinguist31OPINION & COMMENTExceptional measures requiredas i am not a legal interpreter in the uk ihad no reason to concern myself with theMoJ expert rates implemented in october2011 until they were referred to in thegeneral transnet online forum just beforeChristmas. What appalling rates forinterpreters as compared to everybody else!among the around 100 expert qualificationslisted for criminal and civil cases, interpretersare the very bottom of each list, togetherwith the non-academic and semi-skilled jobsof process server (de facto a postman andfiling clerk), private detectives andphotographers. even a lip reader, which is askilled job, gets three times, and ahandwriting expert, which probably is not,four times the rate of an interpreter. these lists were published at the sametime as europe's largest employer oflinguists, the european union, stated that itcould no longer find native english speakertranslators and interpreters. against theobserved behaviour of supply and demandmarkets, scarce supply of qualifiedinterpreters and translators in the uk clearlydoes not raise prices. that is a mostexceptional situation, which requiresexceptional measures to counter it. i have to say that when the CioL createdyet another membership category, its fourth(excluding students), for its 6,000 members afew years ago i thought that this seemed abit of a sectarian, inward-looking exercise -no disrespect to any chartered linguists -andthat time and effort might have been betterspent on protecting the labels 'translator' and'interpreter', for instance by allowingeverybody who is a CioL member to callthemselves 'chartered'. this seems to haveworked well for my other chartered institute,the iCaeW, which has more than 130,000members, only two membership categoriesand all protected by that label 'chartered'. this streamlined approach, which upgradesand hence tries to protect each member fromthe moment they are 'in' also seems to workwell for other chartered institutes, eg the RiCswith its 150,000 members. if i read the tableof uk expert rates correctly, a secretary orunqualified accountant (general staff) in anaccountancy firm is charged out at morethan double the rate of a CioL member.as part of a wider 10-20 year policy to savethe profession in the uk, the CioL wouldprobably also have to spend more time onhighlighting, to the outside world, the realvalue added by employing or instructingCioL members, and to do this before googletranslate & co and the MoJ have sidelined itfor good. the market for translating andinterpreting is there and will grow. But onlythe CioL can create the demand in themarket for CioL members.Thomas Martini MCILLMAAWDEDALUMNUSEQUATORNZOTLSCECEZANNELATEENSILRKSTSAMEDAMNEEHYENAUPERGEXPOSEDTEENAGESOTETPASTECOLESLAWSRAROAATEQUALLYBOUNCERSNIIIRHASTETTINAWAREOFOSZGLLNFCrossword solutionLudwig Lazarus Zamenhof (LLZaMenHoFl-r) wasthe inventor of esperanto, probably the mostfamous artificial language. He first published hisscheme in 1887 under the pseudonym Doctoresperanto (DoCesPeRantor-l).Having read the article 'interpreting Justice?'(TL50,6) i wonder if readers might beinterested in the subject from the perspectiveof one dispensing justice: a magistrate in a citywhere more than 100 languages are spoken.the cost of running the courts is high yet it isnot uncommon before a case starts tooverhear questions like 'What kind of kurdishdoes he speak?'. in one case no one, includingthe defence solicitor, could determine whatlanguage the defendant was speaking. iadjourned another case until an interpreter ofMandarin could be brought from London.in court, i am at a loss to understand how asimple question can produce a lengthydiscussion between the defendant and theinterpreter, resulting eventually in the answer'Yes'. i am in doubt about the ability of manyinterpreters used and have never been giveninformation as to their qualifications.the Chairman of our Bench instructedassembled magistrates that it was our duty toensure that interpreters were interpretingcorrectly in our courts. When i asked 'How ami supposed to do that? i have no chanceunless the language is spanish', the Chairmanreplied, 'Well, just do your best'. How do youdispense justice under such circumstances?L A Hobsbaum JP ACILIs this justice?© istoCkPHoto