RED TAPE _ welcome to BNC (a brave new Catalonia)

Idiom Meaning - 

...............(adj) ............. amounts of ...............(adj) ............. paperwork, ...............(adj) ............. to complete and ...............(adv) ............. pointless in nature.

Life with RENFE - ffcc administration

T-10    zones

STEP 1:  

22/11/2014

Detall:

I am a foreign student from China, T. W., 

at 1st course at UAB -20 years old who bought this week a card 5 zones, the 17 November.I paid 285.50 eurosIt lasts till 21 February 2015. 

Today I learnt -to my surprise- that I need to go from zone 6 to zone 1,so I made a mistake and to my surpriseI got the wrong card.I really need the T-Jove 6 zones, which price is 305.50. 

my request is :there may be a way to help my budget expenses,as i can not buy another NEW card this term,very large money.can it be a quick answer and this week, please, Where could i go to exchange my 5-zone card for a 6-zone card paying the extra price of 20 euros and keeping the expiration date of 21 February? I use a friend mail to get the info, he would translate for me. 

Mr. Juan L. I. thank you in advance. 

you may answer in English please, so I can understand.

IDIOM:

 RED TAPE


excessive formality and



 routine required



 before official action



 can be taken.

STEP 2:

(automatic reply)

Dear Mr./Mrs./Ms. Your application 

has been received successfully.

 You can check the status by using the code: P4N7SC431-1 




Reception date: 22/11/2014 

Click on this address to see the information:

 CLICK HERE .



best regards,

STEP 3:

Reception date: 22/11/2014

Dear Sr .:

Let me tell you the general terms of use of rail regional services of Catalunya, authorized by the Minister for Territory and Sustainability, require that for any change or cancellation, the transport documents have not being used and must be within its validity period.

As a commercial attention and in an exceptional way, you are allowed to send it to the address below indicated, that is, the ticket which can not be used.

 We will send to your home a document "Authorization for delivery of the Entitled Transport", which can be redeemed at any service station ticket offices, on presentation of the NIE or passport, a ticket with identical characteristics to the current one and to the 6-zone one and valid for the period unused, upon payment of the difference in fares.

In order to provide you with the afore-mentioned document, it  shall include: 

• name, 
• NIE or passport number and 
• shipping address that document. 

Likewise it should reference the ID number of the person 

who dealt with this management.

Address Rodalies de Catalunya

Commercial Department - CQS

Barcelona Sants Estació

Plaça Països Catalans s.n.

08014 Barcelona

best regards,

XXXXX

xxx

Will Eisner. The art of life/streetwise

WILL EISNER was born William Erwin Eisner on March 6, 1917 in Brooklyn, New York. By the time of his death on January 3, 2005, Will Eisner was recognized internationally as one of the giants in the field of sequential art, a term he coined.

Will Eisner Street Struggle
all the words here


In a career that spanned nearly eight decades -- from the dawn of the comic book to the advent of digital comics - Will Eisner was truly the 'Orson Welles of comics' and the 'father of the Graphic Novel'. He broke new ground in the development of visual narrative and the language of comics and was the creator of The Spirit, John Law, and countless others.

In 1978, Will Eisner wrote "A Contract with God," the first modern Graphic Novel. This was followed by almost 20 additional graphic novels over the following 25 years.


Wizard magazine named Eisner "the most influential comic artist of all time." Michael Chabon's Pulitzer-prize winning novel "Kavalier and Clay" is based in good part on Eisner.

Translation: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow - 29 Translation(s) | dotSUB

Translation: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow - 29 Translation(s) | dotSUB

• In the beginning was the Tower of Babel.
• The usual story says it was man’s attempt to compete with the gods.
• But what those Babylonians really did
• was build the largest silo of translations in the known world.
• Yes, they were trying to reach the clouds.
• But the tower was so tall and heavy with the weight of translations
• that it collapsed on top of them.
• The translators escaped, and spread out all over the world.
• in search of more effective tools.
• For example, translators need good memories.
• The more they work, the greater the stock of translations others can learn from.
• The Rosetta Stone dates back to the 2nd century.
• With its three versions of the same underlying text,
• it’s one of the finest examples of a parallel corpus or translation memory.
• Give translators parallel data, and they can move the world.
• But they need proper training data.
• In 9th century Bagdad, for example,
• Arabic was a new target language for a huge job of translating scientific and medical content
• from Greek and Syriak.
• Caliph Al-Mamūn built the House of Wisdom to train a translator base,
• establish terminology, and control translation quality.
• The right skills flourish best with proper infrastructure and good tools.
• After millennia of laborious copying,
• moveable print technology was introduced in the 15th century.
• It killed off Latin, and created the first multilingual publishing industry.
• 500 years before, block-printing had been used in Asia
• to print the Chinese translation of the Buddhist Tripitaka.
• In Europe, Luther’s German translation of the Bible
• was one of the first great print runs in history.
• But the explosion of knowledge through printed translation
• started worrying 17th century Europeans.
• So many languages, but where’s the truth?
• John Wilkins, Leibniz and others tried to develop a single logical language,
• a shared interlingua for scientific communication.
• But back in the real world, the translation workload kept growing...
• Dominant languages like Latin, Chinese, or English tend to crush minority tongues.
• Smaller language communities constantly fight back, and language wars are a fact of life.
• In the late 19th century
• Zamenhof invented Esperanto, a mash up auxiliary language for peace and progress.
• A noble dream, but languages are rooted in locale.
• Translators are always the spearhead of local responses to globalizing ambitions.
• But they need better tools.
• The electronic computer arrived in the 1950s,
• not just a number cruncher but a symbol processor.
• It promised software solutions to almost every translation automation problem.
• Translators could finally use machines to do the heavy lifting.
• We now live in a new world of instant global communications.
• Translation is a daily necessity,
• and we can use innovative information technology to leverage language data.
• But first we must share, build and experiment together.
• TAUS is here to help build a new Babel in the cloud,
• to ensure that business and society communicate better
• and solve the language problems that confront us all.

Maps and predictions - 1984 vs BNW

A. Copy 5 pieces of info from the talk.

B. Then answer these four questions:

1. What's the message for such a short talk?
2. Is it only natural that the media focuses on certain regions and topics?
3. How on earth could news coverage ever become equaled out? 
4. Should there be quotas? 

C. Considering Catalan papers, are news always most 

     important there where they happen?

D. ROUNDING OFF: Future predictions:

Brave new World (1932)  Aldous Huxley

1984 (1948)  by G. Orwell

Changes -1882 Catalonia

SPAIN

By the  REV. WENTWORTH WEBSTER, -1882

CATALONIA.—

The ancient principality of Catalonia is now separated into four provinces. To the north of Lerida, and buried in the mountains, is the so-called republic of Andorra, which owes its practical independence to the singular fact of a double seigneurie. Both the Counts of Foix, in France, and the Prince-Bishops of Urgel, in Spain, were supreme Lords of Andorra. On paper its constitution is by no means so free as that of several other Pyrenean communities; but by skilfully playing off the jealousies and rivalries of its two lords, and preventing either from getting absolute power, this little state of twenty-eight miles by twenty has remained unsubdued, and unattached to either nationality. The chief trade of the republic may be said to be smuggling.Lerida, except in the valley of the Segre, is extremely mountainous, and like all the hill country of Catalonia is rich in minerals, especially in salt, near Solsona. The rest of its products are chiefly agricultural. The province is but thinly peopled; its chief town contains 20,000 inhabitants. Balaguer (5000), Solsona (2500), are the most populous of the remaining. With Gerona we enter the Mediterranean or Provençal region and climate, and come in contact not only with picturesque and glowing scenery, with a gorgeous variety of natural productions, but also with traditions and remains of the great works of all the races that have dominated this inland sea. From the Pyrenees to Carthagena the names of the chief towns recall classic reminiscences, and bring before us the struggles of ancient nations, contending on her soil for a far mightier empire than that of Spain. The province of Gerona contains Cape Creuz, the extreme north-easterly point of the peninsula, not far from the old Greek cities of Rosas and Emporium (Ampurias). Of its towns, Gerona, on the Ter, and Figueras have each 8000, but are surpassed by Olot, 10,000, around which town are grouped the most recently extinct volcanoes in Spain. Coal is found in San Juan de las Abadesas. Here the Spanish gravity is mingled with the fire and dash of the Provençals, and the inhabitants both of Gerona and Barcelona, are more Provençal than Spanish, in language, political character, and in commercial and industrial aptitudes. The natural productions, and the flora too, are almost identical with those of the more sheltered parts of Provence and of the Riviera. Palm trees are seen as common ornaments in gardens and public squares, oranges and olives flourish, the mulberry is cultivated and silkworms are reared, and all announces a warmer zone than any that we have hitherto traversed. Barcelona (250,000) the first industrial and commercial city of Spain, and the second in point of population, is also the capital of the most thickly inhabited province. The greater part of the trade and navigation of the whole Spanish sea-board from Catalonia to Cadiz, or even to Seville, is in the hands of its merchants. The cotton industry of Catalonia employed in 1870 a capital of 6,000,000l., and 104,000 workmen, distributed in 700 factories. The chief of the other manufacturing towns are Gracia (33,000), and St. Martin de Provensals (24,000). The annual commercial movement of Barcelona is estimated at about 11,000,000 l. sterling. The British imports, chiefly of coal and iron, amount to nearly 1,000,000l. sterling; but the exports are a mere trifle, 10,000l., most of the ships returning in ballast; while on the contrary, the exports of Tarragona, Palamos, Mataro, and Villamena, and the smaller ports amount to nearly 1,000,000l., chiefly in wine, and the imports are only half that amount. Irrigation is successfully carried on in the valley of the Llobregat. Tarragona (23,000) is rich in Roman remains, in the picturesque beauty of its site, in its Gothic architecture, in the mildness of its climate, and in the goodness of its wines; but it is surpassed both in wealth and population by the neighbouring manufacturing city of Reus (27,000), and also by Tortosa (24,000) on the Ebro, to which town all the river transport converges. The Ebro below Tortosa forms a sandy delta, and its channels are continually silting up. The canal of San Carlos, to connect Amposta with the sea by the port of Alfaques, has had but little success.

english 101 - From Blurred lines to word crimes - 'nuff said!

The grammar police have arrived.

“Weird Al” Yankovic is releasing a video from his new album “Mandatory Fun” every day this week, 

and his latest is“Word Crimes,” a hilarious parody of Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” that may as well have been called “Usage Nerds, Unite.”

In the text-heavy video, Yankovic will call you out for poor grammar, 

Order the text:

 “Everybody shut up"

A) “I hate these word crimes /

 like I could care less /

that means you do care / at least a little.”

B) “If you can’t write in the proper way /
If you don’t know how to conjugate /
Maybe you flunked that class /
And maybe now you thought ....

             that people mock you online,” 

C) “It’s a good time 2 lern some grammer? /
Now did I stammer? /
Work on that grammar. /
You should know when /
it’s less or it’s fewer /
like people who were /
never raised in a sewer.”

 D) "Say you’ve got an 'i t’ followed by apostrophe,
 then an ’s', now what does that mean?
You would not use this in this case.
As a possessive, it’s a contraction.
What’s a contraction?
Well, it’s a shortening of a word
or group of words
by omission of a sound or letter." 

E)  “I’ll try to educate you/ Gonna familiarize you/ With the nomenclature/ You’ll learn the definitions/ Of nouns and prepositions/ Literacy’s your mission”, 

F) “I hate these word crimes /
Like I could care less /
That means you do care, at least a little /
Don’t be a moron /
You better slow down /
And use the right pronoun /
Show the world you’re a no-clown,” 

G) “Your participle is dangling”

H) “No X in espresso”

I) "You should never/ 
write words using numbers/ 
Unless you’re seven/ 
Or your name is Prince.”

 J) “Never uses quotation marks for emphasis”

“Irony is not coincidence”

K ) “… you said/ you ‘literally couldn’t get out of bed.’/ 
That really makes me want to literally/ 
Smack a crowbar upside your stupid head!”

Watch “Word Crimes” at YOUTUBE.

Read More: 'Weird Al' Yankovic Debuts 'Blurred Lines' Parody 'Word Crimes' | http://theboombox.com/weird-al-yankovic-word-crimes-video/?trackback=tsmclip

Parody within parody?

It has already been recommended as good language teaching material. This indeed makes a lot of sense as the presentation of rules in the video resembles the negative approach to grammar teaching, a didactic technique focusing on grammar mistakes that has been around since the rise of normative grammars in the 18^th century. Slate’s Forrest Wickman already examined some of Yankovic’s rules of usage and how they compare to actual usage and showed that despite Yankovic’s proscriptions against such ‘mistakes’, some of these usages seem to be here to stay.

Forrest Wickman - a Slate staff writer. 


Fig. 9 Robert Granjon
&
http://blog.dictionary.com/ampersand/ 

Link love: language (60)

http://stancarey.wordpress.com/

Play time is up, now debate: Is It Time to Stop Teaching Kids Handwriting?

Is It Time to Stop Teaching Kids Handwriting?

Read more here: 

Can Finnish students read the above cursive writing? Probably not – and that’s primarily because the word is in English. Even if they could read English, though, Finnish kids will soon have difficulty comprehending this word, as Finland has declared that it will phase out handwriting lessons over the next two school years.

At  BBC: 

       Typing takes over as handwriting lessons end

Learning joined-up writing, often in fountain pen in the UK, is almost a rite of passage for primary school students.  

But Finland is moving into the digital age by ditching the ink in favour of keyboards, the Savon Sanomat newspaper reports.

Finnish students will no longer be taught handwriting at school,
with typing lessons taking its place, it's reported

TASK1. 

List four other ideas to support either option.

PROS:

• Computer literacy is an essential part of modern schooling
• limited classroom time
• who learn to type fast can communicate their thoughts
• there are other ways for students to develop dexterity and motor skills
•  
• 
  

CONS:

• learning cursive instills dexterity and motor skills
• more efficient way for people to write lengthier messages.
• it  comes at the cost of teaching handwriting
• it seems to favor tradition
•  
•  

TASK2. Time for debate: 

Inappropriately dubbed


 “end-of-an era  Crimes”