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 […]
News
Do "new speakers" of English in the UK face exclusion?
Just before Christmas the UK government announced that migrants will only be able to claim benefits if they pass a series of tough new tests. One of these includes a check on their fluency in English. These tests are now to be done without the assistance of a translator or interpreter. There are also talks of […]
New Speakers in a Multilingual Europe: 1st Round of Workgroup Meetings
EUROPEAN COOPERATION IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY COST Action IS1306: New Speakers in a Multilingual Europe: Opportunities and Challenges 1st Round of Workgroup Meetings Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, 6-7 March 2014 OPEN CALL YOU ARE INVITED TO the 1st Round of Working Group Meetings of the “New Speakers” network which will take place in Edinburgh in […]
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 […]
Professor Graham Turner: 10 lessons from the tale of the ‘fake’ interpreter | The Limping Chicken
It’s rare that LifeinLINCS points you to another blog but whenone of our contributors posts an incredible post on a leading website, well, we just can’t resist! If you have seen the furore over the fake interpreter at Nelson Mandela’s funeral, you will want to read this! Professor Graham Turner: 10 lessons from the tale […]
Working Together
Following on from our previous set of posts on the work LINCS does on, for and with D/deaf communities, in this video, lecturer Gary Quinn signs about his work on the Science Signs project.
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 […]