Thursday, June 24, 2010
English, the new disesase?
Hav a look at the macmillan dictionary blog where I found the video above. There are very interesting articles on English variations, like South African English (very topical!)
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Police Interpreting
To get an idea of how a police interview is conducted and the language associated with it, you can visit this post about the Australian Police interview with Dr Mohammed Haneef. It has a link to the full transcript (be careful, it is a 17.10 MB file!)of the second interview . You can access smaller segments of the transcript within the post.
Practise interpreting the English into your Target Language.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Asylum Seekers and Refugees
While we are working on the topic of migration, we have come across asylum seekers and refugees. Read this article from the local paper that prompted our interest.
Check this very clear definitions of the different types of asylum seekers, refuges and more.
Check the Australian Immigration Fact Sheet on Refugees
There are several organisations in Sydney that help asylum seekers and refugees and have a volunteer program:
Asylum Seekers CentreThis is the video we were talking about in class of a former Afghan refugee, Riz Wakil, who got a a personal surfing lesson with Tony Abbott thanks to the bidding of the lobby group Get up:
Monday, June 7, 2010
TAFE Event Management Flash Mob Dance
Those clever folk at TAFE NSW - Sydney Institute used social media to build a team of students to flash mob/dance at Central station last week, it could easily go viral.
Ultimo TAFE events management students last week held a flash mob event at Central Station.
The event was a great success, with over 100 dancers making their move to help raise money for Westmead Medical Research Foundation & 'The Move Movement".
Some of the people involved were Urban Dance Centre and choreographer Nikki Britton. The YouTube clip was filmed by Randwick TAFE screen and media students, produced and edited by Janusz Dareck.
Tweet, retweet, blog or anything else; they deserve our enthusiastic support for this brilliant effort!
Take the opportunity to listen to this podcast with some Event Management students from Loftus TAFE who helped organise last year's Green Light for Green Skills conference held by the TAFE NSW Managers Association.
Survey
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Listening Practice
Interpreters need to hone up their listening skills. Many of you have learnt English from American teachers, so when confronted with dialogue spoken with an Australian accent you are finding it a bit difficult to follow.
Below I'm listing the Let's Talk podcasts that are more conversational or challenging, as opposed to very clear interviews. Remember to look at the worksheets to get more out of the listening.
- Coffee Break, TAFE teachers having a cuppa
- Stress, TAFE teachers coffee break conversation
- Sculpture by the Sea, some English accents here
- Event Management, young Australian TAFE Students
- Nikki, architecture student
- Unity, TAFE CGVE students and teachers
- Archie the Sheepman
- More real conversations by Mark White
- s.m.h. multimedia news
- abc radio Conversations with Richard Fidler
- AUSIT recordings
- Live from... interviews with members of the public