Is research more like a vase or a bouncing ball? Vases are pretty. They are wonderfully ornamental and can even inspire poetry. What they do not do, however, is leave a mark. They look good and are to be admired but that’s it. Vase-style research is similar. It is admirable, excellent and might even inspire […]
Category: Research
Chances to Join LINCS
For over two years, LifeinLINCS has brought you news, views and discussion from the Department of Languages and Intercultural Studies. Now, we would like to offer you two chances to join us. The first is our new advertisement for PhD scholarships. If you would love to study child language brokering, quality in Public Service Interpreting, […]
How Open is Research?
Back in May last year, I wrote the following words in a column in the ITI Bulletin, “Researchers could discover a way to double efficiency, win new clients and increase translators’ status but, unless those at the sharp end of the profession take an interest, none of this would ever filter down to practice.” Since […]
Irish in a multilingual world
In my previous post, I mentioned that new speakers of Irish are bringing the language into new contexts. While some speakers still try to model their Irish on what was traditionally spoken in the Gaeltacht, many others deliberately move away from this model. They break the rules of grammar and adopt hybridized forms of language. […]
An Irish of the future
A few weeks back I uploaded some information on the upcoming round of WorkGroup Meetings as part of the COST EU Action on “New Speakers in a Multilingual Europe“. The meetings which will be held at Heriot-Watt between 6-7 March 2014. The project involves researchers from some 17 European countries. In the project we are interested in finding […]
New Speakers in a Multilingual Europe
The recent resignation of the Irish-language commissioner in Ireland, Seán Ó Cuirreáin, featured strongly in the Irish media just before Christmas. Irish is the official language of the Republic of Ireland. It is one of the only minority languages in Europe and perhaps in the world to have this level of official status. However, despite this apparent protection […]
Sign language brokering experiences in the Deaf community
Many people will have seen the video of the cute young girl Claire Koch singing Christmas carols and simultaneously signing the songs in American Sign Language for her deaf parents that went viral in December 2013. The general response was the feel good factor – how amazing, considerate and talented this little girl is. Children like […]
BSL Highlights
As the year draws to a close, here are 10 highlights from the work of the British Sign Language team at Heriot-Watt University. We have grown significantly during 2013. New additions to the family include Professor Jemina Napier, plus Clare Canton, Yvonne Waddell and Stacey Webb. This means we now have six PhD students working […]
Machine Translation will not take your job, honest!
It’s a common theme. In [5, 10, 20] years, machine translation (MT) will be so good that there will be no human translators left. And, indeed, there are some trends that make this idea look tempting. The move towards statistical machine translation has allowed machines to learn from the texts they are given, allowing them […]
Claudia Angelelli Joins LINCS
I first met Claudia V. Angelelli a couple of days before the launch of the EIRSS last June. She was very enthusiastic about the research summer school and super-efficient. In the space of 30 minutes, she managed to have a chat and catch up with EIRSS coordinator Raquel de Pedro, help us set up the […]