Date: Friday 27 January 2012
Time: 13.30-17.00 (doors open 13.00)
Location: Park Plaza Hotel, Utrecht (just a short walk from the Central Rail Station)
Price: Free for SENSE members, non-members €10
Organizers: Lee Ann Weeks & Martine Croll
*All places for this event are now taken.
List of attendees (accessible to members only)
Interested in the topic? Please complete just 5 questions (under Usage Polls, 6th poll) for Ingrid Tieken's presentation!
http://bridgingtheunbridgeable.com/
For sworn translators: this event has been designated as a PE activity worth 3 PE points (A-D) as defined in the Wet bëedigde tolken en vertalers. Sign the attendance list with your Wbtv number and this will be submitted to Bureau BTV.
This year's topic Varieties of English: How prescriptive should we be? is set to make for heated debate.
The majority of SENSE members provide professional language services for clients with English as a second language. The needs and expectations of such clients presumably differ from those of clients with English as a first language.
The afternoon will open with the knowledgeable insights and takes of the following panel members on how prescriptive we should be:
Dr. Joy Burrough-Boenisch, Dr. Andy Baxter, Dr. Mike Hannay, Oliver Radtke, Dr. Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade.
The panel members will be tackling questions such as:
- Should we be prescriptive or pragmatic?
- What shapes our attitude?
- What determines our actions?
- And what's wrong with prescriptivism, John Honey and the split infinitive?
Next it will be the turn of the floor to voice its take on Varieties of English.
Wind down after all has been said with a drink - compliments of SENSE - and get to chat with fellow SENSE members.
Panel Members’ Biographies
Andy Baxter
Co-owner of Baxter Communications (Hilversum), a writing and editing company, with a team of six writers from the UK, US and the Netherlands. Their clients include Philips, DSM, Accenture and AkzoNobel. Andy came to Holland in 1975 to teach Old and Middle English and historical linguistics at Utrecht University, which he did until the early 1990s, when he left academe and founded Baxter Communications with his wife, Astrid. He joined SENSE in 1992. Andy and Astrid have co-authored several books, including Handboek Zakelijk Engels (Sdu, 2nd ed., 2011). For several years, Andy also ran a website and e-zine called Language Tips for Dutch people interested in the English language and Anglo-American culture. His PhD thesis was on the implications of language change for linguistic theory, particularly with respect to pronunciation. http://baxtercommunications.nl/
Joy Burrough-Boenisch
Originally a geographer, Joy learnt to edit in Sabah (Malaysia) and Australia. She has worked as an in-house and freelance copyeditor. Apart from a recent short interlude in Oxfordshire, she has lived in the Netherlands since 1976. She works as an authors’ editor and translator for Dutch academics and scientists; she also teaches scientific English to biomedical PhD students. Her interest in second language interference and non-native English led her to help found SENSE and to do PhD research in applied linguistics. Joy has written numerous articles for fellow editors and translators, and the popular book Righting English that’s gone Dutch. http://www.linkedin.com/in/joyburroughboenisch
Mike Hannay
Professor of English language and head of the Department of Language and Communication at VU University Amsterdam. He is specialized in the relationship between sentence and text: how can you organize the information in a sentence so that you improve the coherence of the text? He is particularly interested in differences between English and Dutch. He has co-written and edited a range of textbooks and dictionaries for the Dutch and German-speaking markets, including as editor-in-chief the Van Dale English handwoordenboeken (Van Dale 1998), Zakenbrieven in zeven talen (Van Dale, 2003), Effective writing in English (Coutinho, 2009) and Writing in English: a guide for advanced learners (Francke, 2011). He is a member of the Nationaal Kwaliteitsinstituut tolken en vertalen, a committee of the Bureau BTV which advises on codes of practice, testing, and professional training for sworn translators and interpreters in the framework of new legislation. http://www.let.vu.nl/en/about-the-faculty/academic-staff/staff-listed-alphabetically/staff-e-k/prof-dr-m-hannay/index.asp
Oliver Radtke
Ph.D. candidate working on the theme of Chinglish, a rather peculiar yet creative mix of the Chinese and English language. He was awarded an MA in Modern Chinese Studies from Heidelberg University (Germany) and Shanghai International Studies University (China). His thesis dealt with the socio-political relevance of the Chinese blogosphere. Oliver Radtke has since then published three books entitled Welcome To Presence: Abenteuer Alltag in China, Chinglish: Found in Translation (2007) and Chinglish: Speaking in Tongues (2009). He is the founder-moderator of www.chinglish.de, the online museum for all things Chinglish. And Oliver has recently been appointed Head of the China Programme at the Robert Bosch Foundation in Stuttgart. http://www.bosch-stiftung.de/content/language2/html/index.asp
Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade
Professor of English Historical Sociolinguistics at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics. She recently published The Bishop’s Grammar: Robert Lowth and the Rise of Prescriptivism (OUP, 2011), and received a large NWO grant in June 2011 to set up a project called “Bridging the Unbridgeable: Linguists, Prescriptivists and the General Public”. The project aims to bridge the gap between the three main players in the field of prescriptivism: linguists, prescriptivists (as writers of usage guides as well as educationists) and those who depend upon such manuals, the general user. Contact with people for the “workfloor” – English native (and non-native) speaking writers and editors – will provide invaluable input for our research, in all kinds of ways. http://www.hum.leiden.edu/lucl/organisation/members/tiekenim.html