Is Glaswegian lost in translation?

Deals are said to have sunk when entrepreneurs from England or abroad were confronted with the patois synonymous with Rab C Nesbitt, the fictional string-vested Govan ne’erdowell. Jurga Zilinskiene, the Lithuanian boss of Today Translations, insists the move is no gimmick and there is a real need for staff capable of making “Weegie” understood from Vilnius to Vancouver. “We are aware that some of our foreign and UK clients can find the Glaswegian accent difficult to decipher,” states Zilinskiene in near perfect received pronunciation. “While it’s unusual for us to want someone to translate a dialect of English, there is a clear demand.” The experience of Zilinskiene’s clients is not new. As reported in The Sunday Times last week, newly published MI5 archive documents revealed that the thick Glaswegian accent of Mick McGahey, the former vice-president of the National Union of Mineworkers, proved indecipherable to the security service operatives who bugged his phone calls. Janey Godley, the award-winning comedian, is characteristically frank about the problems that come with speaking like an extra from River City rather than a BBC executive at White City. “I would love to say that people in my beautiful, cosmopolitan home city speak as clear as a bell but they don’t,” she says. “The accent is incredibly difficult, it’s very exclusive and not everybody gets it.”  “I quickly learned to speak clearly,” she says. “I am proud of where I came from and under no circumstance did I change my accent to hide that — I changed it so people in New York and New Zealand could understand me.” The comic, who performed to sell-out crowds and rave reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe, said Glaswegians routinely face the sorts of snide comments that would be considered unacceptable if they were directed against other groups in society. She recalls how the late writer Clement Freud sneeringly demanded a translator after she appeared alongside him on Radio 4. “When I go down to England I don’t do any gags for the first six or seven minutes. I just talk to the audience and I speak slowly and that usually helps them get attuned to it.” He believes the Glasgow dialect is unfairly maligned. “I don’t think Glaswegian is any more difficult to understand than other regional accents, like those in Liverpool or the east end of London,” he says. According to linguists, the genesis of the Glasgow dialect has much to do with the fact that the city has always been a cultural melting pot. James Scobbie, professor of speech science at Edinburgh’s Queen Margaret University, said Glaswegian remains one of the UK’s most distinctive accents. “All Scottish accents are very different from others in the English-speaking world. We have an ‘r’ that is pronounced, while other accents are ‘r’-less,” he says. The historical lack of social mobility in the city accounts for the accent’s resilience. Dr Jennifer Smith, a senior lecturer in Glasgow University’s English language department, says the city’s pockets of deprivation, which rank among the worst in Europe, have prevented the accent’s dillution. “We know that Glasgow is statistically poorer and there are a lot of deprived areas, so within those areas there is a lot of non-mobility,” she says. “In that situation, you get dialects passed down and down through the generations.” Smith believes greater television exposure could help Britain tune in, understand and even love Glaswegian. “The Newcastle dialect sounds very different from standard English, but people don’t seem to have as much of a problem as they do with the Glasgow dialect. There are quite a lot of Geordie accents in the media. The more exposure you have to different dialects, the more you pick up on them.” But the idea of employing translators to decipher Glaswegians’ diction has angered city fathers. Alex Mosson, the former Lord Provost who worked alongside Connolly on the Clyde shipyards, says: “It’s a lot of tripe. I travelled the world as Lord Provost and nobody failed to understand me.” Back in the Gallowgate a grandmother bristles at the suggestion that non-Glaswegians should need an interpreter. “It’s a pure brass neck, so it is,” she says. “We can un’erstaund every word o’ EastEnders and Friends nae borra at aw, but they cannae get the gist of whit we talk like. It’s oot a order.” Read full article here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article6879460.ece

Deals are said to have sunk when entrepreneurs from England or abroad were confronted with the patois synonymous with Rab C Nesbitt, the fictional string-vested Govan ne’erdowell.

Jurga Zilinskiene, the Lithuanian boss of Today Translations, insists the move is no gimmick and there is a real need for staff capable of making “Weegie” understood from Vilnius to Vancouver.

“We are aware that some of our foreign and UK clients can find the Glaswegian accent difficult to decipher,” states Zilinskiene in near perfect received pronunciation. “While it’s unusual for us to want someone to translate a dialect of English, there is a clear demand.”

The experience of Zilinskiene’s clients is not new. As reported in The Sunday Times last week, newly published MI5 archive documents revealed that the thick Glaswegian accent of Mick McGahey, the former vice-president of the National Union of Mineworkers, proved indecipherable to the security service operatives who bugged his phone calls.

Janey Godley, the award-winning comedian, is characteristically frank about the problems that come with speaking like an extra from River City rather than a BBC executive at White City. “I would love to say that people in my beautiful, cosmopolitan home city speak as clear as a bell but they don’t,” she says. “The accent is incredibly difficult, it’s very exclusive and not everybody gets it.”

 “I quickly learned to speak clearly,” she says. “I am proud of where I came from and under no circumstance did I change my accent to hide that — I changed it so people in New York and New Zealand could understand me.”

The comic, who performed to sell-out crowds and rave reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe, said Glaswegians routinely face the sorts of snide comments that would be considered unacceptable if they were directed against other groups in society. She recalls how the late writer Clement Freud sneeringly demanded a translator after she appeared alongside him on Radio 4.

“When I go down to England I don’t do any gags for the first six or seven minutes. I just talk to the audience and I speak slowly and that usually helps them get attuned to it.”

He believes the Glasgow dialect is unfairly maligned. “I don’t think Glaswegian is any more difficult to understand than other regional accents, like those in Liverpool or the east end of London,” he says.

According to linguists, the genesis of the Glasgow dialect has much to do with the fact that the city has always been a cultural melting pot.

James Scobbie, professor of speech science at Edinburgh’s Queen Margaret University, said Glaswegian remains one of the UK’s most distinctive accents. “All Scottish accents are very different from others in the English-speaking world. We have an ‘r’ that is pronounced, while other accents are ‘r’-less,” he says.

The historical lack of social mobility in the city accounts for the accent’s resilience. Dr Jennifer Smith, a senior lecturer in Glasgow University’s English language department, says the city’s pockets of deprivation, which rank among the worst in Europe, have prevented the accent’s dillution.

“We know that Glasgow is statistically poorer and there are a lot of deprived areas, so within those areas there is a lot of non-mobility,” she says. “In that situation, you get dialects passed down and down through the generations.”

Smith believes greater television exposure could help Britain tune in, understand and even love Glaswegian. “The Newcastle diale
ct sounds very different from standard English, but people don’t seem to have as much of a problem as they do with the Glasgow dialect. There are quite a lot of Geordie accents in the media. The more exposure you have to different dialects, the more you pick up on them.”

But the idea of employing translators to decipher Glaswegians’ diction has angered city fathers. Alex Mosson, the former Lord Provost who worked alongside Connolly on the Clyde shipyards, says: “It’s a lot of tripe. I travelled the world as Lord Provost and nobody failed to understand me.”

Back in the Gallowgate a grandmother bristles at the suggestion that non-Glaswegians should need an interpreter. “It’s a pure brass neck, so it is,” she says. “We can un’erstaund every word o’ EastEnders and Friends nae borra at aw, but they cannae get the gist of whit we talk like. It’s oot a order.”

Read full article here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article6879460.ece