Applied Languages

For the past six months, policemen in Khajuraho have been getting lessons on foreign languages to help visitors from abroad. So the next time a foreign tourist asks for help, they can confidently rattle off a “Bonjour” or an “Hola”!

“Being an international tourist destination, Khajuraho attracts a large number of foreigners every day. But due to language problems, they have to face many difficulties,” Anil Mishra, the Chhatarpur Additional Superintendent of Police, said.

Khajuraho, a Unesco World Heritage Site, is a village in Chhatarpur district in Madhya Pradesh, some 380 km from Bhopal. It is famous for its erotic sculptures which were built by the Chandela rulers between the 9th and 12th century.

Hundreds of foreign tourists visit the village every day and sometimes they face tough situations because of their inability of communicate in the local dialect. “For the last six months we have started a multilingual training camp for our staff. We have roped in language experts, authorised and identified tourist guides to teach English, Spanish, French, Italian and other international languages,” Mr. Mishra said.

The police initiative to have their personnel interact with foreign tourists in their own language will not only boost tourism but also improve the image of the police, officials said. After finishing their routine work, police personnel are asked to gather in a makeshift classroom at the Khajuraho police station. Authorised tourist guides and language experts have been roped in to help hone the skill of policemen in languages such as English, Spanish, French and Italian.

Surya Bhan Singh, a Sub-Inspector, said: “Khajuraho is an international tourist destination, and the knowledge of English and foreign languages like Japanese is proving a great help to foreign tourists. We are learning these languages properly and the results are interesting. Tourists are very satisfied with our efforts.”

English language expert A.H. Siddiki said: “Knowledge of foreign languages is very essential in Khajuraho. Earlier tourists had to face many problems. They usually avoid going to the police station for any help because of the language barrier. Now the situation is improving because of this initiative.”

Read more: The Hindu

Government spending plans seem to result in a surplus of acronyms. For decades, generations of American history classes have wrestled with memorizing the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Tennessee Valley Authority and Works Progress Administration, later renamed the Work Projects Administration, and dozens of other acronym agencies created under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR.

The problem is, in this era of big government spending accompanied by promises of transparency, outbreaks of acronyms can be variously confusing, awkward and accidentally self-mocking. Take, for example, the RAT Board, which in more official circles is known as the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, charged with sniffing out waste, fraud and abuse in the $787 billion plan. The Leaking Underground Storage Tank trust, an unsexy environmental cleanup fund that existed before the stimulus package, has now been unofficially rebranded LUST Recovery.

Some of Washington’s new acronyms can’t easily be explained without the use of other acronyms. The ARPA-E, an energy research program, was described by the House Committee on Science and Technology in a press release: “ARPA-E will apply the DARPA research model to energy technology development.”

Some government departments have described their stimulus plans almost entirely in acronyms, such as the Department of Commerce, which listed its recovery act appropriations in a weekly report as: “NIST CRF, NIST STRS, NIST Health IT, NOAA PAC, NOAA ORF, NTIA DTACBP, NTIA BTOP, EDA EDAP, EDA S&E, Census PCP.”

Asked to comment, Parita Shah, a spokeswoman for the department, said: “We are already providing the public with an unprecedented level of information about their tax dollars at work under the Recovery Act and are continuously working to strengthen that direct communication with the American people.”

Campaigners for government transparency laugh like everybody else at bureaucratic jargon, but they also say overuse of acronyms points to a problem. “Acronyms undermine transparency — unless they are already well known in common use, like the FBI or CIA,” said Jerry Ellig, a senior research fellow on government performance at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, a free-market-oriented think tank. “Citizens are entitled to know what results their government produces for them. Reports filled with insider-speak, such as acronyms and highly technical terms, convey this information to the public less effectively,” he said.

Some acronyms are better than others, said Thom Haller, a writing consultant who advises Washington departments and associations on how to use what he calls “plain language” in their communications. Acronyms that can be pronounced as words are easier to remember and can sometimes be an effective way of “branding” a program, he said, adding that complex acronyms which can only be pronounced by their individual letters are much more difficult to recall.

Read more: The Wall Street Journal

Beggars in India are preparing for next year’s Commonwealth Games – by learning new languages. While the city authorities are busy preparing for the Games, thousands of homeless in the Indian capital New Delhi are hoping for better business from foreign tourists if they learn their native tongue.

And although English is spoken in the majority of Commonwealth countries, New Delhi’s brainy beggars are teaching themselves other languages such as French and Spanish. Savitri, a street performer said: “There will be thousands of foreign tourists when the games are going on. That is why some beggar families are teaching young child beggars to beg in foreign languages.”

Savitri’s family of 25 people, including 15 children, belong to a tribe from the eastern state of Chhattisgarh. Together they perform acrobatics and tight-rope tricks to earn money on New Delhi’s streets. Her daughter Kusum, 10, is also an acrobat. “We say: ’Please sir. Give me 10 rupees. Anything…’,” she said.

Vijay Babli, who claimed to be the leader of more than 1,200 families inhabiting a place called Lal Quarter in the city, said “classes” preparing young children to target the tourists expected during the Games have already begun. Many child beggars who have never been to school can now speak English, French and Spanish due to the classes they hold, Mr Babli told the Indian paper the New Indian Express.

Raju Sansi, who claims to be a “tutor” at the night school in Lal Quarter, said: “Students are taught how to say phrases like ’I am an orphan’, ’I have not eaten for days’, ’I am ill and have no money for medicine, please help me in the name of God’.” One of them, at the Jantar Mantar astronomical observatory in New Delhi, said the trend to ask foreign tourists for money in their own language added a “personal touch” to begging.

From a few thousand in the capital during the early 1990s, Delhi University’s School of Social Studies estimates the beggar population will touch 100,000 next year.

Read more: The Sun

Language skills are a requirement in 26.64% of skilled employment vacancies, with English being the most demanded language by companies in the UK. English is required in 75% of job vacancies that require languages, followed by French, with 6.84%, and German, with 6.55%, according to Infoempleo.

Increased worker mobility, globalization of companies and high migration are the factors that have contributed to the gradual increase in demand for language in job vacancies, according to the Infoempleo report. In relation to this trend, the president of Infoempleo.com, María Benjumea, appreciates that language skill is “an essential part of any professional profile, it is a key differentiator, adds value to the worker and can be key when a company decides to choose between one candidate or another.”

Italian and Portuguese continue being less valued than Enmglish, French and German. They show a decline that leaves them each with a stronghold of less than 0.5% in job vacancies that require languages.

In relation to the requirement for regional languages in job vacancies, the Infoempleo report points out the Basque Country and Catalonia in Spain as the regions that value local languages skills the most, with 28.8% and 13.2% respectively.

Read More: Finanzas, Infoempleo

Indiana University has signed an open-ended agreement to provide language and culture training to the Indiana National Guard.

IU President Michael McRobbie and Indiana’s Adjutant General, Maj. Gen. R. Martin Umbarger, signed a document on Tuesday that cemented the institutions’ 3-year-old partnership. The contract gives IU and the Indiana National Guard flexibility if the Guard needs different language trainers, said IU spokesman Larry MacIntyre.

Currently, faculty and staff from IU teach Pashto and Dari at Camp Atterbury in Edinburgh, Ind. Both languages are spoken in Afghanistan. IU will also teach culture and regional laws.  The agreement makes it easier for the Indiana National Guard to contract IU’s expertise in language and culture.

Camp Atterbury is where civilians and members of the military prepare for deployment to Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. McRobbie thinks the agreement will help support national defence as well as the state economy, as Camp Atterbury receives outgoing military. The agreement is supported by a $2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense.

The war in Afghanistan is not going to be won on the battlefield, but through thinking, said IU’s director of community relations Kirk White. He also said there is academic freedom in which faculty members would not have to participate in any agreement to which they morally object.

Read more: Indiana Daily Student