Linkfest [4]

A collection of language-related things that caught my attention in the last month or so (IRL'd!):

• The Triumph of English: John Adams, predicted in 1780 that “English will be the most respectable language in the world and the most universally read and spoken in the next century, if not before the end of this one.”

• The Supreme Court ruled on the difference between a translator and an interpreter. (The full decision.)

• Linguistics + cultural anthropology + web design = Websites from High-Context Cultures and Low-Context Cultures. A very cool read!

• Why QA sucks (specifically in game dev, but applies to all QA): Many QA professionals talk about "getting out" and moving to the production or design path. Don't you want good QA folks to keep doing QA? Shouldn't they enjoy and want to stay in their jobs? Isn't there something wrong with this picture?  Via Jayme (@aunicorninspace)

• Lovely tiny sculpture of a city made using letterpress type. 

• The Noun Project (@NounProject) consistently makes me happy. “sharing, celebrating and enhancing the world’s visual language” -- Here's my favorite tag so far: MAGIC.

• Incredible Don’t Fear Web Typography video is totally worth your time.

• “It’s about a person who is a robot, a very colorful robot. He’s pretty fancy for a robot.” (A Clockwork Orange) – A six-year-old guesses what classic novels are about based on their covers.

• What the Phonics?
 An interactive installation set that helps people learn street name pronunciations in Copenhagen.

• The Mind is a Metaphor
 is a vast collection of metaphors of the mind. Baffingly robust.

May you be enabled, by reading them frequently, to transfuse into your own breast that holy flame which inspired the writer! (1773)— Mulso [later Chapone], Hester (1727-1801)

Finally, I found this shirt. Somebody please buy it for me.

Localizing pictograms

The fifth in my series about prepping your documents for translation has gone up on KJInternational.com.

• Prepping your document for translation: Localizing Pictograms

I actually didn't write this but edited and adapted an article that my coworker Anna wrote. Why reinvent the wheel, right?

I found this report, "Symbol Usage In Health Care Settings for People with Limited English Proficiency" -- and was reminded of the Pioneer Plaque. Invented by Carl Sagan and Frank Drake, the plaque is basically a note to extraterrestrials that we're on the level; that is, "Please don't kill us, we're ramen."

The difference between ramen and varelse is not in the creature judged, but in the creature judging. When we declare an alien species to be ramen, it does not mean that they have passed a threshold of moral maturity. It means that we have.
—Demosthenes, Letter to the Framlings 

Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead

Comic Language

My friend Brian sent me a link to this short comic about a nerdy, grammar-loving dragon. Made me giggle and then feel sad because sometimes I feel like that dragon.

I've been reading a few comics lately. I just finished Marvel: 1602, written by Neil Gaiman. Right now I'm in the middle of The Life of Captain Marvel. I just talked X-Men for the better part of an hour with my friend Joey. I've got comics on the brain.

Sexy.

(Tangent: I Googled the word "KTANG" (one of the sounds that Rick Jones's arm bands make when struck together to call Captain Marvel from the Negative Zone) hoping that I would find a cool picture to post here, but I ended up seeing a lot of Avatar: The Last Airbender fanart by people who 'ship Kitara/Aang. This is my favorite. And then I read the article "Use and Misuse of Power in Avatar: The Last Airbender." And then I commented on it.

So anyway, comics --)
Comics are usually a combination of both words and images, but is one of those two things more important? After all, there are comics that don't have words, and there are books that don't have pictures. When I read a comic, I usually zoom through it, mostly reading the words, only stopping to look when something is particularly eye-catching or essential so that I understand the story. Then, I go back at read it again, absorbing the art and how it interacts with the words on the page. I always read a comic twice. And that second time through, I'm always surprised by how much of the art I've already absorbed.

To be short, the answer is no. The images and the words work together. If you haven't read Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud, you should. It's a semiotics course, an art course and a design course all in one. Oh, and a comic book. #meta, y'all. Here's McCloud's explanation of how close the abstracted art of comics and the direct language of comics really are:

Language Log curates a tag for linguistically-aware comics.

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Also, here's a great quote from Leonardo DiVinci that I stole of off a great post about children's picture books:

And you who wish to represent by words the form of man and all the aspects of his membrification, relinquish that idea. For the more minutely you describe the more you will confine the mind of the reader, and the more you will keep him from the knowledge of the thing described. And so it is necessary to draw and to describe.