The Google Translate plague

Image credit to Webster University

One of the most frustrating things you face when you teach English is seeing students plagiarise. The irony, however, is that plagiarism might be underestimated as a technique when considering what happens in some classrooms. But first, let's stop and ask, what is plagiarism? What do you need to be able to plagiarise? Some skills are surely involved. One skill that comes to mind is the ability to use a search engine as a tool for research on a given topic. As minor as it may sound, it's still considered a skill. A plagiariser is usually expected to use the search engine for its primary purpose: to search for information. What skills are required in this action of searching? I would say at least, the ability to select (hopefully critically) information from a specific source and not the other. The plagiariser chooses that specific piece of writing over the other to 'steal' because they can see that perhaps it is the most relevant to their topic or the closest to their linguistic abilities. Even though they are misused, those are still skills. In other words, regardless of the obvious fact that this is still considered an academic offence, there is nevertheless, a certain level of critical thinking in the process.

What is happening in many English classrooms in Oman is beyond horrific, though. And I mean horrific in the sense that not much critical thinking is involved in their plagiarism style. If many of them are going to abuse academic integrity anyway, then to my horror, I at least wish that they'd do it with some element of critical thinking. At least, I might be relieved to know that their researching ability is alright and that they can actually critically select what they want to 'steal'.

Yet unsurprisingly, whenever there is a writing task in an English class, I see uneasy faces. It's not difficult to understand where their frustration comes from, since many public schools graduates that are enrolled in higher education are much below standard in both English and study skills. They struggle, and that's understandable. Yet the big challenge in many Omani classrooms is to get the students to feel motivated enough to work hard and submit a genuine piece of work regardless of the kind and number of mistakes in it. What many of them fail to realise, is that they're in a classroom to actually learn and not just gain points in a competition to go on to the next level. It may sound uneasy for some, but if we don't accept that we have gaps that need to be filled or rather amended, our education system would keep running out of breath while trying to catch up with the better educational systems around the world. Hence, we will never be satisfied with the standard of public schools graduates.

I started my post with a rather strange appreciation of the skills needed to plagiarise. The reason is because a lot of students do not even bother about all skills mentioned. So if they don't use those skills and they don't produce their authentic work, then what do they do? They simply go to this tool which was created for great purposes, none of which I am sure is to help students cheat: www.translate.google.com . They simply paste their Arabic text in there and get a ready made piece of writing in English.

The messily-translated chunks of language submitted can be outrageous but hilarious at the same time. And I say it's messy because as a machine translator it translates things literally in terms of meaning and discards any grammatical rules of the second language most of the time; it simply follows the word order of the translated language. The effect, my respected readers, can be speechless, as you realise. One student for instance, typed all the Arabic he wanted to express and clicked to translate it into English. Apparently the student wanted to translate the word 'feather' (singular) to English. Note that the Arabic word for feather and badminton (the sport) is the same. The student ended up submitting something that is along the lines of 'the badminton of the bird'...which is interesting if you think about it; but maybe in a fictional text rather than non-fictional prose?

I pause and take a deep breath while I mentally try to convince myself that these mistakes are interesting according to the descriptivist views of linguistics (it's a survival mechanism). Can it get any worse? Until this plague ends and this will only happen once treated from its very roots, I'll keep scribbling with my red pen on students' work a big O and a slash that crosses between two small circles to signify: 0%.

Vanishing voices = vanishing knowledge

One of the notable efforts in bringing the world's attention to dying languages is National Geographic's Vanishing Voices Project. What linguists are trying to do in this project is to highlight what the world would be missing if those languages are gone; for language is not merely sounds that make sense to a certain community. Instead, they could carry deep knowledge that can unlock scientific secrets. Interesting questions similar to the ones raised in the Vanishing Voices article comes to ones mind when thinking about the consequences of losing languages at this rapid pace:

“Does each language have boxed up within it some irreplaceable beneficial knowledge? Are there aspects of cultures that won’t survive if they are translated into a dominant language? What unexpected insights are being lost to the world with the collapse of its linguistic variety?” (Rymer,NationalGeographic Magazine, July 2012).

Take the Jabbali language in the southern part of Oman for example. The wide plant vocabulary it carries only reflect its speakers wide knowledge of plants and their uses. If transferred wisely, this knowledge could prove useful in many ways. Plants were once part of the Jabbalis daily lifestyle; I'm not sure if this is still practised today but I do believe that the knowledge they've acquired from this contact remains to an extent and could be used before it 'vanishes'. Similarly, the speakers of Kamzari (also spelled 'Kumzari') in the northern part of Oman might have a lot to tell us about living by the sea.

This month's issue of National Geographic Magazine discusses three endangered languages; Tuvan, Aka, and Seri in Russia, India and Mexio, respectively. Tuvan was apparently saved from extinction and is no longer threatened. If this means anything, then it certainly means that efforts to save languages can be fruitful. Yet if nothing is done about 'vanishing voices' then I can't help but quote Harrison's last words in the following clip, “The transmission of knowledge [will be] disrupted”.

Kumar decides to sing in Arabic ...

During the last few decades, the discovery of oil in the Arabian Gulf paved the way for a booming economy since the 1970s. This economic boom resulted in a huge influx of immigrants from the Indian Subcontinent. Usually the main motivation for their immigration and leaving behind their families is to find a better living in these oil-rich states. There are around 17 million Asian immigrants in the GCC today working mainly in the labour force (Al-Jazeera, 2005).

Al-Jazeera produced an interesting documentary a few years ago (above) about this labour force and the possible future of the region. The word 'tsunami' in the title of the film suggests that it's meant to be a wake up call. The documentary suggests that one day it will be difficult to ignore the fact that the labour force is part of the GCC's society as they shape the demographics of the region and bring in their cultural and linguistic influences. While diversity adds to societies in general, in a place that has less readiness to accept all it's outcomes, it could cause major issues. The linguistic future of the region of course, is very important to consider as well because in the Arab World identity is often defined by language. However if any linguistic change is to take place then it is usually very slow and gradual. A shift from Arabic to pidgin in the GCC seems unlikely in the near future. Notice that the Indian-Qatari person in the documentary, who lived in Qatar for decades does not speak in pidgin. This is true for many others who have lived in the GCC long enough to affiliate with its culture. This suggests that Gulf pidgin is likely to be lost over time by its speakers as they acquire a more complex form of Arabic.

Labourers in the Gulf (from Alriyadh )

But what if speakers of pidgin began using it for more complex functions of language such as expressing through singing, would the society start accepting it more? Would it put an end to linguistic discrimination and gradually lead to a better linguistic understanding, or would they still insist that it's 'broken' Arabic? Perhaps if there is more input from pidgin, people might start thinking of it as a dialect one day. In my blog post about pidgins I mentioned Kumar, the Indian worker who wrote a poem in Gulf pidgin. If for a moment we take fictional Kumar to mean the collective Asian labour force in the GCC, then guess what? Kumar is no longer satisfied with his poetry talents, he's into singing now! Yes, Kumar decided to go further and sing a song in pidgin, which to many people it's still 'bad' Arabic.

Apparently there is a hit Indian song that has versions in different languages and one of them is Gulf pidgin. The theme of the song portrays Kumar as being treated unjustly by his sponsor. Indeed the song is to make a multilingual statement just like it was suggested by Gulf News. A statement in a language that is not native to him, means that a wider audience can understand the message he's trying to convey. And it could be an attempt to try and get his voice to the many sponsors in the GCC. Below is the song's video.

Having a song in Gulf pidgin means that the attitudes toward this language are likely to change. It could take long, but if Kumar gets more creative people will start to accept him eventually. Media is a powerful tool and this song portrays a labourer away from his 'typical' appearance but as a shiny-talented person who could qualify for Bollywood . This can change the way people perceive labourers and their language. When the poems were just written texts, it was up to the reader to come up with their own version of 'Kumar' and usually (I would imagine) it was a character that is stigmatised for its weak Arabic. If Kumar continues to perform in Gulf pidgin for generations then it could be a turning point in his life and certainly the life of Gulf pidgin; because as much as the labourers' language can be stigmatised, as much as Bollywood stars are marvelled at. Yes, Bollywood movies are very popular in this part of the world and Kumar knows it. Who knows what other talents he'd express in pidgin next?

When Arabic Marries Greek: Cypriot Maronite Arabic

A marriage between two languages that leads to the birth of a new language is fascinating. The product of such a contact usually leads to an interesting cultural hybrid which is a reminder of the similarity between people who were once upon a time 'different'. When cultures assimilate and blend beautifully they give humanity yet another evidence of the possibility of coexistence. What I mean by contact here is not the kind of contact that I discussed in my previous blog post about pidgins which is based on a hierarchical relationship between master and slave/servant. Here, I mean a less hierarchical relationship between members of both communities.

Unsurprisingly, Arabic came in contact with many languages across the world. This goes back to the time when Arabic was a lingua franca during the Islamic Golden Age. While sometimes the product of contact is a load of loanwords, it is less common to see the birth of a new language as a product of language contact. However, one of the peculiar cases of Arabic being in contact led to the birth of a new language. It appears that there is a dialect of Greek Arabic, called Cypriot Maronite Arabic (CMA), spoken by the Maronite community in Cyprus who migrated from Lebanon during the 1100s. Only about 1300 speakers of CMA remain today mostly in the village of Kormakiti.

Tsiapera (1964) refers to this language as a 'dialect' of Lebanese Arabic. I prefer to use the term 'language' instead, because while Arabic speakers might find some words intelligible, the large Greek vocabulary along with the Latin and Turkish influences, could make CMA unintelligible by many Arabic speakers. However, it's not so difficult to understand the gist of what is being said in CMA if one is familiar with Levantine Arabic. Tsiapera also discusses the structure of the language at different linguistic levels and it appears to be similar to Arabic in some areas but also very similar to Greek in many other areas.

My attention was brought to this language when I listened to the BBC's report on CMA and other endangered languages in the Middle East, here.

Like many minority languages spoken around the world, CMA made it to the UNESCO's endangered languages list. The UNESCO classifies it as one of the severely endangered languages in the world. Unfortunately, this means that a whole culture is in danger of extinction. Once again a language is endangered  because linguistic diversity isn't as practical today. In the case of CMA, the language is being dominated by Greek because it's the language of the wider community. The following video is the first part of a series of videos which show the efforts of young members of the Maronite community in Cyprus to re-nourish the vitality of the language of their parents which they have not had the chance to acquire.

I must say how fascinating it is to hear bits of Arabic spoken in a Lebanese fashion in what seems to the 'Arabic ear' at first glance as a chaotic attempt to speak Arabic! It's as though this linguistic orchestra stands as a witness of a historical assimilation of cultures and identities. A portray of a truly beautiful linguistic mosaic.