Introducing a new feature to this blog.
One of the beauties of an organisation such as the 大象传媒 is having a resource like the Pronunciation Research Unit. It is staffed by three full-time pronunciation linguists (from left, Martha Figueroa-Clark, Catherine Sangster and Lena Olausson), whose job is to provide advice on the pronunciation of any words in any language required by anybody in the 大象传媒. They research and maintain a database of pronunciations which have been researched and indexed over the course of the past 80 years. It now consists of around 200,000 entries.
In his book on language, Mother Tongue (1990), Bill Bryson says: "The problem [of pronouncing names correctly] is so extensive, and the possibility of gaffes so omnipresent, that the 大象传媒 employs an entire pronunciation unit, a small group of dedicated orthoepists (professional pronouncers) who spend their working lives getting to grips with these illogical pronunciations so that broadcasters don't have to do it on the air."
In fact the 大象传媒 has had a pronunciation advice service since its earliest days. Lord Reith set up an Advisory Committee on Spoken English in 1926, chaired by Robert Bridges, poet laureate of the day. Other board members included playwright George Bernard Shaw and phonetics professor Daniel Jones. The committee's original task was to advise announcers on words of doubtful pronunciation. The modern Pronunciation Research Unit provides an advisory service to the entire 大象传媒. One of its services for 大象传媒 News is to prepare a daily list of pronunciations of names, places and phrases which relate to the day's news.
The Unit's advice is based on the following policies:
• For placenames in English-speaking countries, a standardised version of the local pronunciation is recommended. The same is true for placenames in non-English-speaking countries, but if there is an established English form of a placename (e.g. Florence, Munich), then this is recommended rather than the local form (Firenze, Muenchen). For placenames which have sounds which would cause difficulties of production (for the speaker) or comprehension (for the listener), an anglicised form as close as possible to the native pronunciation is devised.
• For people's names, the pronunciation that the individual prefers is recommended. Family members, colleagues and agents are consulted.
• For words and phrases, recommendations are made based on the Unit staff's own language fluencies, a wide range of reference works, and consultation with native speakers. In the case of English words which can be pronounced in more than one way, the Unit can advise on which pronunciation is more traditional or usual.
From tomorrow, The Editors will be featuring a news-related pronunciation of the day, taken from the unit's daily list. Your queries and thoughts are, as ever, welcome.
- Alistair Burnett
- 17 Jul 06, 10:11 AM
The World Tonight has been covering the crisis in the Middle East, along with the rest of the media, in recent days. And as usual when we cover this story, we get a lot of audience comment on our coverage - a lot of it critical. Here are two examples from the past week:
• "Does the fact that the missiles fired by Palestinians into Israel are "primitive" (as you allege) make those acts more or less grave? Does the fact that Sderot is the home town of the Israeli defence minister make it more or less appropriate that Israel defend herself. Or are these bits of spin just part of the 大象传媒's stance against Israel?"
• "I felt your report in the World Tonight this evening on events in Israel, Palestine and Lebanon was completely unbalanced. Yes you had an Oxford based academic criticise Israeli policy but your interviewer did not challenge any representatives of the Israeli government in their interviews about violation of Geneva conventions and international law. Why do you not hold them to any account? If you can鈥檛 do a serious interview don鈥檛 give them airtime."
The curious thing is that they were both written to us in response to the same item (hear it here). There is an old adage in journalism that if you're getting complaints from both sides in a polarised debate such as that over the Middle East conflict, you must be doing something right. But in case you think we take a flippant attitude, we take complaints more seriously than this adage may suggest.
The 大象传媒 Governors recently commissioned an independent report into the 大象传媒's coverage of the Middle East which concluded there was no intentional bias, although we could give more context to events - which is why we are now telling listeners and viewers about the , as well as taking other measures to improve our coverage, such as appointing a West Bank correspondent.
But even before this report we have always spent a lot of time carefully considering how we cover this story and the language we use. Central to our journalistic ethos is our duty to report and analyse all sides to a story, so our audience can make sense of what is going on the world.
Alistair Burnett is editor of the World Tonight
Alistair Burnett is editor of the World Tonight
Among the audience response to the 大象传媒 in the past 24 hours were many people debating our reporting of the Middle East crisis (one person objected to the increased use of the headline-friendly phrase "Mid East"). Some people claimed we gave too much emphasis to the situation in Lebanon - there was an objection to an interview with a 12-year-old British schoolboy in Lebanon because his views "weren't valid". Others claimed we gave Israeli interviewees too easy a ride. We also received this e-mail:
"Hi! Well, I've been reading your and I think you give a very prejudice perception of ALL of them..."
Last word to this e-mailer:
Please can we have some cheerful news, the world can鈥檛 be all gloom. I read the 大象传媒 internet News most days, however I am getting to the stage of not bothering as all it does is make me unhappy. Surely you have a reporter somewhere in the world who can find something other than war, death and despondency.
The Independent: A columnist writes, "there was something discomforting to me - and, I suspect, to other journalists of my generation - about ". ()
The Guardian: 大象传媒 staff - including the director general and head of news - appear in the paper's annual list of the 100 most powerful people in UK media. ()
