How to use Punctuation

These slides are prepared with the help of "The Penguin Guide to Punctuation". They cover following basic topics related to punctuation use in English:

• Period
• Question Mark
• Exclamation Mark
• Comma
• Colon
• Semi Colon
• Abbreviations
• Capital Letters
• Quotation Marks

How to Write a Paragraph/ Essay

These slides were prepared as a lecture for MA English Literature (Distance Learning), Govt. College University, Faisalabad. The topics included are as follows:

• The process of writing
• Pre-writing (Mapping, Listing, Free writing)
• Paragraph and its structure (Topic sentence, concluding sentence, supporting details, examples and explanation)
• Types of paragraph: compare and contrast, opinion (argumentative), narrative, descriptive, problem solution
• Essay and its structure (Thesis statement, introduction, conclusion, body paragraphs)
• Types of essay: narrative, descriptive, argumentative, comparison contrast, problem solution.

Following books were mainly consulted though some internet sources were also tapped.

• Academic writing: A handbook for international students By Bailey S. 2011
• College writing from paragraph to essay  By Dorothy E. Zemach, Lisa A. Rumisek
• Real Writing with Readings Paragraphs and Essays for College, Work and Everyday Life By Susan Anker

Ad Free (Offline) English To Urdu Dictionary on Android

I am an Android user for above a year and one of most needed things on Android for me is a dictionary. I need English to English and English to Urdu dictionaries for my day to day work, to get meaning while reading or watching movie. There are very good dictionaries available for English and I am very much happy with Miriam Webster dictionary app. The problem for Urdu is frustrating though, because dictionaries are hellishly filled with ads and sometimes they won't even open if you are offline. I hate all of English to Urdu dictionary developers, most of them have got the data from other online sources (EnglishUrdudictionary.com, مقتدرہ قومی زبان) and now use that content for their unfair profit making. So seeking all this, I decided to do something, which was kind of simple. As I have already created a glossary file of about 92000 words, English to Urdu, I asked an internet friend Muhammad Saad to convert that to QuickDic format using linux based java tool. He did it and bingo, I use offline android dictionary now. And here it is for you people as well. Follow these steps to have a free offline English<>Urdu dictionary for your routine use on any Android device.
1. Install QuickDic from Play store.
2. Download English > Urdu dictionary file.
3. Unzip the file and get whatever is inside.
4. Connect your Android device to PC.
5. Find quickDic file folder in your device's SDcard, and put the file there.
6. Start QuickDic and it will automatically find new dictionaries in the folder.
7. Use and Enjoy! (And you can use the dictionary both ways English to Urdu, Urdu to English. Just use button on the left side of search box labelled EN).
And here is how the app and dictionary looks on my Nexus 7.

How to Improve Your English Pronunciation

Correct pronunciation is considered essential for language learners. It is true that 100% native like pronunciation is not possible for a non native speaker but one should try for maximum accuracy. A language is best learnt from its native speakers. So for the sake of good English pronunciation, the best sources are the native speakers of English. English has an advantage that a hell lot of supporting material is available, along with multimedia resources that can be used easily to make your English language abilities better.

The pronunciation and listening or in other words speaking and listening are interconnected. One cannot speak if s/he hasn’t listened. Listening is input for you, listening is the base on which the building of your speaking abilities is built. So good listening can not only improve your comprehension abilities but it ultimately helps you improve your pronunciation and speaking skills. If you are a good computer and internet user and spend your some time online, there are a lot of resources available online which can help you improve your pronunciation. Here I am going to discuss a few resources that I, being an English student and Language Teacher, found and got benefit from.

• Use free dictionary to get meaning and pronunciation of an English word. Click on speaker icon present next to the word.
• Use Google Translate to get English to Urdu (or your language) translation as well as pronunciation of English word.
• Listen to podcasts.
• Listen documentaries and other clips posted on Youtube.com. It will not give you pronunciation of specific word but your general listening and speaking will improve.
• Watch English movies. Torrentz.com is a good place to get pirated versions of English movies. Older movies (2 to 3 years old) usually have good quality as well as a subtitles file with them. This can help a lot initially to understand the words spoken by native speakers, and thus improve your pronunciation.
• There are not only movies available, but there are TV Series also available. A TV series is good as compared to movie in various ways, in my point of view. It has a long story, a TV series can last for several years, viewer can have better understanding of story, context and characters. A TV series is usually in Standard English (while movies sometimes get characters which do not speak in Standard Accent). So you may select a TV series of your own choice and get it downloaded, and watch an episode whenever you get time. You’ll feel that you’ve developed an interest, love the story and characters, and understand what the characters say. I love to watch Science Fiction series like Star Trek The Next Generation, Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Stargate SG1. And it has helped me a lot in improving the pronunciation as well as listening comprehension.
• Listen Audio Books. If you love to read books, then do not read but listen. There are audio books available for every popular novel or story of today, and  you can get them from torrentz.com. I love to listen fantasy stories like Wheel of Time, Harry Potter, Codex Alera. This not only gives you very good pronunciation and listening practice but also improves your expression and vocabulary.
• The traditional sources: use Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary or Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. The CDs can be purchased from market or installation files can be downloaded from torrent websites. OALD is my favourite for pronunciation of different Standard Englishes. Currently it provides British and American English pronunciation which can help a beginner to distinguish the pronunciation differences.
• Real communication has no alternate. If you happen to have a friend in North America, Australia, Canada or England and s/he speaks English. Do contact her/him and ask for voice call on Skype or Google Talk. A spontaneous interaction with native speakers will increase your listening and speaking abilities alike. And you may get a very close net friend as well.

So these were a few tips to improve pronunciation and listening skills. I would write a few tips for vocabulary improvement and other areas of language development in up coming posts. Stay tuned!

Multi/Bilingualism in Pakistani Punjab

The motive was to highlight the bilingual attitude of local Pakistani especially Punjabi Urban Speakers regarding three languages they use in daily life i.e. English, Urdu, Punjabi. I was pre-mature at that time, but the effort was done to create quality content. Of course it was an assignment.

Bilingualism

Bilingual or multilingual is a person who can speak two or more than two languages with equal or less equal proficiency. A society is called bilingual or multilingual if the people there speak more than one language.

            Bilingualism and multilingualism are referred to same thing mostly. Bilingualism may mean that the users of language are using more than two languages and multilingualism may also mean that the speakers are using two languages in the community or society.

            About half of the world's population is multi/bilingual. It is, in fact, very hard to find a monolingual community or society like Japan etc. While talking about sub continent in general and specially Pakistan we come to know that we are a multilingual community. We use Urdu as a language of communication between different domestic language speakers, thus Urdu working as a lingua franka, we use domestic languages at local level such as Punjabi, Hindko, Barahwi, Sindhi, Pashto, Balochi, Saraiki, Kashmiri etc and we use English also as a foreign language. People of Pakistan are bilingual/trilingual or generally multilingual.

            Bilingualism is believed to be a gradeable system so we can distinguish among its various kinds. Here it will be tried to discuss some concepts relating to multilingualism and then it will be tried to relate them to the local context of Pakistan specially Punjab. As the assignee is a Punjabi, Urdu and English speaker so the examples will be related to these languages mostly, although they will be almost valid for other domestic languages also.

           

            First distinction can be made in bilingualism is that the speaker have equal proficiency in both or all the languages he can speak or write. Such a bilingual is called a balanced bilingual or equilingual. This is not the absolute criteria, there may be some situations where a bilingual's abilities in a given language suffer due to pressure of situation etc. There may also be a situation of more receptive knowledge of once language and more active knowledge of another i.e. he may understand a language but may not speak it and he may speak and understand other language very well. There are also some situations in which bilingual is familiar with the spoken system of one language and written system of another.

            If we compare this kind of bilingualism distinction with our situation we can find certain similarities. Punjabi and Urdu are two languages which are believed  to be known by a person living in Punjab. A Punjabi speaking child learns Urdu along with Punjabi at almost same age. Exposure of both languages at the same time enables him to be proficient in both languages almost equally. But here we come to the point of above para. The difference of reading and writing system hinders here.  A Punjabi speaking child is not necessarily believed to learn writing Punjabi also. He writes in Urdu and it is considered sufficient for him/her. In particular situations where the learner optionally learns Punjabi at school enable him/her to read and write it otherwise it is seen that young speakers of Punjabi avoid reading or writing Punjabi and they feel it convenient to do it in Urdu. So their proficiency suffers here in Punjabi in writing and reading while in Urdu they are proficient in all fields reading, writing, speaking and listening.

            Second kind of distinction in bilingualism can be drawn by the acquisition of language. There are two main processes to learn a language. Acquisition and learning are two methods to learn languages, former is natural and primary while the later is artificial and secondary. A language acquired by a person interacting with his parents, sisters, brothers and friends etc at home will be the native language. Another language he learns at some institute by formal education will be called a foreign or a 2^nd or 3^rd language. Former bilingual will be called primary and later will be called secondary bilingual.

           

            In case of Urdu and Punjabi we are primary bilinguals. We learn these languages at home, from our surroundings in typical natural situations. While in case of Urdu and English or Punjabi and English we are secondary bilinguals because we learn former from home and later from an institute usually a school.

            A third kind of bilingualism distinction is socio-psychological distinction. The people may feel it additive having another language which enrich their ideas and knowledge. And they may feel it subtractive or loss of their language and culture by another languages (usually a dominant language). In our context this thing is applied to Urdu and English connection in both ways. People feel it additive to their knowledge, considering English as a language of latest knowledge and information and thus enriching their knowledge. People also feel it subtractive in a sense that English is acquiring the place of Urdu in our local life, its words are used and those of Urdu are ignored. So it can be a cause of loss of our culture and identity and there are people who are against its usage.

            A very useful way to describe the bilinguals is the domain specification. A domain is an empirically determined cluster of consisting a location, a set of role relationships and a set of topics. For each domain the bilingual has a pre-defined language to be used. We can see it in this table

Location	Role-relationships	Topics
Home	Mother, Father, Son, Daughter etc	Domestic, Personal etc
Neighborhood	Neighbour, Shop-keeper, street-cleaner	Weather, Shopping, social greetings
School	Teacher, student, principal	Social greetings, educational
Mosque and Religious Places	Imam, Muqtadee, Listener of Sermon etc	Sermons, Prayers, Social talks etc
Work	Boss, Subordinate, Peer	Professional Matters etc

           

            By comparing this theory with our practical use of language we can see what languages we use at each domain. Most likely we use Punjabi at home, talking with parents and other family members on different domestic and even non-domestic issues. With neighbours we also use Punjabi talking with them in different relations. At school the language changes to Urdu, when we talk to our teachers, co-teachers, principle or junior staff and peers etc. At mosque and religious gathering once again we use Urdu usually, sometimes local language is used for better interaction (specially in villages Punjabi is used). At work level or at higher education institutes our talks are a mixture of Urdu and English switching to English when talking in meetings and very formal sittings.

Code Mixing and Code Switching

            In a situation, community or a society where there are bilinguals and they interact with each other in more than one languages, due to the factor of language contact a situation arises which is called code mixing and code switching. This situation can lead towards the language interference in which a language is influenced by another language on the levels of semantics, grammar and phonology.

            A bilingual can talk to another bilingual in each language common between them. He can also use the words of one language into other, knowing that the listener  understands the other language as well. Such kind of mixing is called code mixing.

            Code mixing is also called conversational code switching. Code mixing takes place usually in spoken language as we are less conscious about our language and we have not much time to replace foreign words with native ones. We take it forgranted that other person is understanding us. Code mixing is not only the mixing of words but clauses are also included in it, a part of sentence from one language and other part from other language, and in similar syntactic structured languages such as English and Spanish the grammatical inflexions are also mixed.  It is very much related to domains and situations. At a very formal situation bilinguals can use a mixed code of formal and informal variety in their leisure time. The language in which education is received also influence the choice of words from another language and people tend to code mix who are high educated and specially in a foreign language. It is observed in many countries that teachers having degree from a foreign institute mix their code while delivering lecture.

            If we consider our situation we can find that domains related to education, media and profession are those where people use to mix the code. This code mixing is of two high level formal languages of the community i.e. Urdu and English. Teachers while talking in classroom use frequently the terms of the discipline from English. Media men and specially hosts at TV and radio etc mix the code frequently. They use a blend of Urdu with English and English with Urdu in talk shows and live programmes. An example of a female host from government tv channel PTV is quoted here.

اس وقت آپ کو لگ رہا ہوگا کہ میں بہت ہائپر ہورہی ہوں بڑی ایکسائٹڈ ہورہی ہوں ویسے تو میں ہر وقت ہورہی ہوتی ہوں  نہیں بھی ٹی وی کے سامنے ہوتی تو ہر وقت باتیں کررہی ہوتی ہوں لیکن ہمارے سٹوڈیوز میں بڑے سپیشل دو گیسٹس موجود ہیں انھیں میں سلیبریٹی کپل بھی کہوں  گی تو بالکل بھی غلط نہیں ہوگا۔

            She is mixing English noun, adjectives and verbs in Urdu frequently. We can see the plurals as well used as they are  in Urdu from English.

            Code switching is the umbrella term as compared to code mixing. It involves code mixing as well as the switching of language. Code switching is distinguished from code mixing as here people switch to other language for relatively large chunks of language.

            In our context, if we see, even in classrooms of heigher education levels, the teachers switch to and from the native to foreign language  during their lecture. Similarly media men, professionals also mix and switch their code highly while talking. Here is an example from Pakistani filmstar Javed Sheikh's interview. He is mixing the code and at the end totally shifts to English.

جن کو مجھ پہ کانفیڈنس ہے میرے لیے یہ بہت ضروری تھا کہ ان کا یہ کانفیڈنس برقرار رہے۔ اللہ تعالٰی کا کرم ہے کہ میں نے جو بھی کام کیا ہے “کھلے آسمان کے نیچے” میں   انشاءاللہ Every Pakistani will be proud of it

Borrowing

            Borrowing is very closely related to code mixing and switching. A single person using a foreign word is code mixing while lots of people doing this is called borrowing. Borrowing is to get a foreign language word into native language. In this process its pronunciation may be changed or it can be kept as in Urdu we use English word Policy as palicy. Borrowing can be at semantic level translating certain concepts from foreign to native language. It can be at syntactic level or morphological level to adopt certain language systems in native language.

            Borrowing has a very interesting problem. The meanings of words are changed some times from native meanings and word is used in local language in a different sense. An EFL teacher at Korea reports such problem on his blog. He says that people are using English words in Korean in different sense, these words are when spoken to native speakers of English in local meaning create problems of understanding. In Urdu we have some examples of change in meaning of a borrowed word. Committee is an English noun used in Urdu also as a noun but it is used as a verb also. کمیٹی ڈالنا is a verb which has totally different meanings as compared to the native meaning.

            Code mixing, switching and borrowing is also taking place in domestic languages but it is relatively rare as compared to Urdu. But we can find such examples while traveling in a local bus or standing at a stop.

            اینہوں کنٹرول چ کر

            This is utterance of an old man, who is using an English borrowed verb in Punjabi as a verb and applying the grammar of Punjabi very unconsciously.

            Inter language mixing of Urdu and domestic languages is also taking place. People in cities are tending to use Urdu words to purify  their domestic language. Specially in cities like Karachi it is reported that words of Urdu are frequently spoken in domestic languages like Pashto. The young Pakhtoons are marked by their Urdu-mixed Pushto when they visit Peshawar or the domestic areas of their parents. 

           

            Considering our language situations a diglossic community we can make a continuum of languages according to their formality level.

Bibliography

 Sociolinguistics by R.A. Hudson

 Sociolinguistics by Bernard Spolsky

 The Linguistics Encyclopedia edited by Kristen Malmkjer

 Introducing Language and Society by Peter Trudgill

 http://eflgeek.com/index.php/eflgeek/comments/time-to-clean-up-cunning-konglish/

Making Money Online in Pakistan

In this post I am not concerned with how they do things in other countries to make money online. I want to discuss a few trends of online money making in Pakistan. And most of them I would rather avoid to use personally (or simple words I don't much like them).

The first way of making money is the so-called online money making companies one can see in every city. I've never worked for them, but from the rumors and second third source opinions I've made a picture. They provide several kind of jobs e.g. Form Filling, Typing, Article Writing (wrote to build links for SEO, in other words creating meaningless junk to promote your website), Adsense Click. First two ones can be justified somehow, but they require a lot of time and effort for very little money. Article writing for SEO as I mentioned, its just creating junk to promote a website on internet. The intention is not to promote knowledge, but to create formula articles, so people do it very efficiently. The last one is that you make a website, place adds on it and ask your users to click on adds once or twice per day. The clicks yield money for your website and you in turn pay them in rupees. I hate this method of earning. This is unlawful.

People start websites. They are link building directories, article submission sites etc. That's a good idea to promote websites, because link building is a significant part of SEO. But frankly speaking, I always have a stingy and smelly feeling of these websites. They have nothing but links, and copy pasted introductions of websites. And upon all this junk you've placed the adds from Google. It reminds me of a trash yard which is fully decorated with multicolour banners as if it were a cricket stadium before a match. Forgive my imagination, I just wrote how do I feel about these so-called link building directories. And let me explain one thing, some of them are doing great job, the older ones actually. They are descent and have a simple, clean, elegant GUI to categories websites. My 'negative' feelings were evoked by a recent such 'creation', clearly in the wake of making money online, but with least experience. The site seemed to say I AM CREATED TO MAKE MONEY. I am not providing site link, you may find such site around you while walking on facebook, google+ etc, just keep your eyes open.

People start article submitting directories in hope to make money. As you can see the effort is from Pakistan, they try to target Pakistani writers/ bloggers to write articles for them. And again they place adds on it. They have no guidelines or rules, just write something and dump into the hell yard they've created to make money. Sometimes these 'directories' look like an empty showcase with just banners of adds and nothing to view upon. I hate such newly and inefficiently created money making machine sites which are created because there are 'other' out there making money same way. I know there are some good examples of article submitting directories, but my experience have been quite unpleasant with them. Sometime back google could be easily deceived by such formula articles and they appeared on first page. I do not feel good about such things since then. Although search engines have now got the ability to bypass such material and provide quality material. But me is me... me still feels taste of a bitter almond whenever comes across an article directory, and it worsens when a newly created article directory is seen from Pakistan screaming with its full strength of lungs CLICK HERE SUBMIT HERE WE SELL LINK BACKS WE SELL LINKS BACKS.

Hopefully you are not bored with my jealous talk, because I cannot create such things so I prefer to 'hate' them. :-D Well there is an other thing, and that's to start writing on technology, and keep on writing, citing everything that appears on internet, writing about anything and managing to create relevance out of anything irrelevant. I have an eye to recognize such 'formula' blogs which are solely created for money making. And I (sorry again) feel rather unsatisfied from such 'things'. I cannot write on technology alone (perhaps cannot write on anything consistently, built in fault ;-) ), I cannot start a blog which announces on first arrival that its made for money making (forgive me, perhaps its my perception that there is a difference between money making and non money making blog, but that's how I feel). For me, blogging is to write your own feelings, blog is personal expression and you can add a touch of technology, your own professional experiences and tales, thus making your blog more live. On this blog, I try to to the same. I do not (actually cannot) write solely on linguistics. Because there are lots of topics at a given time T (lets make it a bit mathematical), which keep on dancing in upper portion of my body in the number N. So I select from the total of T*N to write on my blog each day. ;-)

Ok, expressed my hatred for every professional who is trying to make money, what's next? Well there is nothing more. I just wanted to say that make money but don't label on your website that you are here to make money only. Make it a bit descent, or become a high level professional e.g. start writing a blog on Ubuntu or any other very specialised area. This way the content wouldn't be available readily on internet, you'll have to create e.g. tutorials, analyses. Simply mentioning news reports from primary sources is not a challenging thing, at least for me, to earn money (I've a subscription of top technology magazines online as well in my google reader, and I usually know what has happened today on internet because I happen to check it several times a day). My apologies if you think my words are inappropriate, that's what I thought about it and I wrote. Perhaps a very big reason of this, is my background, when it comes to writing I like to sit down, take a while to think on the topic, add my feelings to it, try to make it lively and then write it down. Its not just reporting something from a primary source. That's why I could not continue this formula blog. Even if I see it today, it was a good effort and if I had continued since then, it could have yielded me lots of dollars from Google. But I couldn't, there were other reasons obviously, time, interest etc but one of the reasons was that I couldn't simply report from other sources, I couldn't add content for the sake of content to make money.

So folks, make money but do not write for money making only, write for both i.e. your personal pleasure and expression of thought and money would be there as well. After all this is English, the elite language, you can make money even by coughing in English :-D.

Getting Money

A few years back it was a great achievement for me was to get a few hundred rupees. I can remember myself teaching a student a home tuition for Rs 400. I had to travel almost half an hour on cycle to reach there and had to provide 1 hour. Once that was a great achievement for me. Then the life changed a bit, I taught in academies, typical tuition academies of our cities. I worked as a computer assistant and so on. It was 2007, perhaps when I met Talmeez. Talmeez is a great person, he works as a translator and while on a visit to Faisalabad he especially came to meet me. We had a talk for a while, he wondered how extra smart I was :-) (rather he was concerned that I am so weak physically as compared to my age, but that's what I always have been so I didn't worry on his comments). He encouraged me to do something for my livelihood along with education. He gave me idea to work as a Translator from English to Urdu, and Punjabi. At first, as I always do, I didn't take the idea seriously. I was busy in my self created busyness, doing nothing but busy. Then after in a few months I started exploring options how to work as a translator, the websites, the marketing options, the companies. I created a CV of mine (really poor one at that time) and started sending it to job posters (which allowed of course direct contact). And in a few months I started getting jobs. And now I earn, not regularly, but whenever it is possible to grab a translation project, I have reasonable money in my hand which usually goes to my MSc, M Phil etc fees. But I am happy. Allah provides me with Rizq this way, and I am thankful to Him. And now in mid 2011 when I am going to leave private school job, I'll consider blogging, specially for linguistics, to be my part time profession along with translation.

Private Schools

I am a teacher by profession but this is unfortunate that I've to teach in a private school of my city. I as fascinated by the name of this school exactly 1 year back from now. I, as a fresh graduate, needed a job and was almost dancing with joy when I was offered "internship" at this school. We, a group of 5 students, joined them as internees at a handsome amount (Rs 9000 was considered by us as a handsome amount being a trainee at that time). But the charm vanished just after a few months. We were time and again refused for any increase in pay. The environment was helpful in training but the disgrace and a kind of humiliation, undue pressure exerted on the employees was unbearable. Now after one year, we are only two there. And I am also planning to leave this school to concentrate on M Phil Applied Linguistics plus work as a freelance translator.

I admit that I've learnt a lot from there. I was trained from a raw teacher to a professional, I learnt how to deal with parents, how to contain my anger while teaching, how to teach effectively, but still I do not feel comfortable there. There is an air of mistrust. The junior staff is burdened with extra work while seniors sit and relax. The organization is always suspicious that this person is going to run away. They do not want to pay, so there is no incentive for hard working. The old crows, the teachers who are working there for several years are the only things which can survive in that environment, new staff usually runs away after one year, as I am now planning to go away.

Perhaps same is the situation with every private organization. But I've learnt one thing that these private schools are money making factories. The teachers working there are labourers in colourful clothes. And the product the produce is half Pakistani half English O/A level graduates who feel it very hard to integrate with traditional educational system of Pakistan when they have to pass entry tests for MBBS or UET (engineering). They are the children of factory owners, and their Faisalabad lies around Canal Road, D Ground, Madina Town, Peoples Colony and other posh areas of the city.

Well, the post is diverting from the topic. My aim was to write about the atrocities of these private employers who are sucking blood from the veins of nation on the name of education.

How to Transcribe a Spoken Text for ICE

It was our second semester as MSc Applied Linguistics, when we were assigned to collect video/audio recordings from Internet or record our own, and then transcribe them. This project was a hell lot of difficult and some of my class fellows were so angry due to the difficulty level. The details were simple: You were assigned a topic e.g. Lectures, Speeches, TV News, Radio News; Record your specific genre or take it from Youtube.com; Listen and Transcribe it; and Tag it with appropriate tags.

Well the process is not difficult. The time which it takes to complete all this annoys people. Transcription is one of the most time consuming jobs of the world. Normally 1 minute of spoken recording can take upto 6 to 7 minutes for writing it. So you can see for 1 hour of spoken recording one will have to spend upto 7 hours of listening and typing it. This is not that simple, it is not just that you play it and start typing. You will always have to stop the recording again and again, sometimes it would be because your typing speed will not match with that of speaking speed of the speakers, other times you may not get the clear idea what the speaker is saying so you'll have to replay the audio to concentrate on it and get what the speaker is trying to say, still other times you'll have to stop and think how to write down uhmms, errrs, overlaps etc. The situation gets worst when it comes to Talk Shows, Telephonic or Live Conversations, Lectures, Question Answer Sessions. Remember the more the speakers, the more the distractions and more time consumption on transcription. We considered those people lucky ones who got Speeches, TV News, Radio News etc. Because all these genres are spoken by one person, and secondly they are usually scripted i.e. the spoken material is written in front of the speaker so s/he has to speak it out only. But in spontaneous talks like Talk Shows this is not the case. There are more speakers, there are overlappings i.e. two people start speaking at same time, there are errrrs, hmmmmmms and other unnecessary sounds which the speaker utter. But we cannot ignore these sounds. We can understand two people speaking at same time in spoken audio, but when it comes to transcription we have to devise a method to show that these particular sentences or words were uttered by both of the speakers at same time i.e. overlapping. Here we have to use Tags to show this phenomenon. Now either we can devise our own tags or we can use tags which are devised by someone else. Since as students we work for the completion of International Corpus of English i.e. ICE Pakistan Component, we have to use their devised method of Tagging. The tagging scheme is available here.

Now what should be done here? It is simple you'll have to go through all of this document. Because you are going to listen and transcribe your spoken recordings not me. So if you do not understand it, it wouldn't work. I can only provide an example by transcribing a few lines of a video from Youtube.

<$A> is by the federal government
<$B> Ok uhmm <}><->I've<=>I've jsut lit literally about half a minute Mr. Babar. Let me just ask you this question that is come uhm from Asif who is watching from Canada....

 I've just covered first 12 seconds of the above video and it took me 5 minutes to cover all the things, to WRITE DOWN what these people were performing as a routine speaking activity. The video starts with an unclear word. I had to replay it several times when I couldn't get exactly I put "is by" by my own guess and put tags around it. You can see in first line the tags , they show that the words were not intelligible. Of course I've consulted the ICE Manual (link provided above) for this tag. Even before this tag you can see the <$A> tag, which shows the first speaker. And this tag I have also got after going through the manual which says that every speaker's utterance should be started on a new line marked with speaker identity i.e. first speaker would be A, second would be B and so on. And you can see there involve two speakers in first 12 seconds and I've shown both separately with their utterances on new line with <$A>, <$B> tags. And then you may be able to see that the hostess says 'uhmm' after saying 'Ok', we cannot ignore it while transcribing. Because these hesitations and uhmms can be helpful in Discourse Analysis of this transcribed text. So I had to write this nonsense and apparently meaningless utterance. And then there is 'I've I've' with these weird looking tags <}><->I've<=>I've. They show actually repetition, and of course again I had to search in ICE Manual for tags of Repetition and I got these. So I pasted them and added the repeated words according to the example given there in the manual. And this way it goes on. You listen, you type it. When you see overlapping, repetition, hesitation, uhms you mark it, when you do not understand a spoken word you replay it, and in the mean time you consult the manual as well for every new phenomenon you encounter so you can record it properly. Now you may understand why it is very difficult to transcribe a text, and why it is necessary to TAG it. But as you practice you will be more faster and accurate, you'll consume less time.

Hopefully this small effort will help. Ask me in the comments of this post if you are still unable to get what I wanted to say, or if you want details of some specific area.

Oka: A variant form of Okay, O.K. prevailing in Punjabi Youth

When I first heard this phrase "oka fer" (okay then) I laughed for hours because it was too funny for me. I remembered it again after few minutes and again started laughing but after that I forgot the laughing. Now I use this word quite frequently with my close friends, class fellows and collegues.
O.K or Okay is a word used for affirmation in colloquial English. The history of this word tells that its usage was started from America, perhaps some American president wrote o.k. on a file and then it "officially" came into being. It is also used as a discourse marker along with right, etc. It is pronounced as:

• (RP) IPA: /ˌəʊˈkeɪ/
• (US) IPA: /ˌoʊˈkeɪ/

 /k/ in this word is as usual aspirated like /k^h/ by native English speakers of American and British origin.

As per the suggestion of Wikipedia, this word is used in colloquial English and adopted in several languages of the world. This word is also borrowed by local languages of Pakistan like Punjabi and the National Language (Urdu). In Urdu it is pronounced as "okay" same is the case with Punjabi. But there is a variation in Punjabi. As Punjabi is a more informal language and used among closed friends, at homes etc., an informal use of okay is prevailing in Punjabi youth specially young boys. They use it as fun, while saying "oka" they initially have a smile on their faces but after that they accept it as a form of okay and try to use this new word in their friends' company. It can be called a slang word because it is being used informally only by youngsters in their sittings but the change is underway. It is being used by young university girls also with their close male friends and collegues in informal situations. They are also using it more frequently within female to female interactions. Another variation "oki" among girls and "oku" among boys is used at rare occasions when motive is to create more fun and laughter.

Variation is underway which is the destiny of language. Continuing our discussion on variation I would like to document the variation in romanized variety of Urdu and Punjabi which is being used in text messages specially by youngsters and university students while messaging their peers and friends.

Should A Translator be a Native Speaker of Target Language?

This is the question my juniors were asking last day from me. They are actually having a course titled Translation Studies in their second semester of Masters in Applied Linguistics. And this was the assignment topic they got from Javed Sahab. I was moving to my class room when they surrounded me and asked Shakir bhai we need your help. And after knowing about the topic I tried to convince them why a translator should be a native speaker of the target language.
There may be other cases as well, like native speaker of source language but having good proficiency in target language. But my point of view was that in today's world, translation agencies and firms restrict recruitment of only those translators which are native speakers of the target language. I am a native speaker of Urdu and Punjabi and work as a freelance translator from last 3 years, so I know the rules of the business. Why they do so? What are the advantages of all this restriction? I tried to explain in the light of my personal experience. And below I'll try to summarize the points I discussed with them.

• Translation studies moved from a textual focus to contextual focus and now a days having a focus on culture and cultural meaning and information. If the translator is a native speaker of the target language it would be easy for him to understand his own context and to select appropriate structures while translating.
• Cultures have differences. While I am a native speaker I can work better to bridge these differences because I know my culture very well than any one else who may be proficient in my language but may not be equally aware of the culture.
• We have two kinds of knowledge of language: productive and receptive. I am a native speaker of Urdu and I have thousands of words for expressing my thoughts in Urdu, but at the same time I know English very well, but as compared to Urdu I do not have that such a wide range of words and vocabulary available to express my thoughts in English. There is a certain kind of hesitation. I personally prefer to translate from English to Urdu rather than Urdu to English (even the reverse is done by me several times, but again the preference is the first choice). So I have very good productive knowledge of Urdu but not of English. So I take help of dictionary to help me in understanding English and then I translate it to Urdu.
• Being a native speaker of Urdu, I have the communicative competence. Although the same I have for English as well but the knowledge of usage, idiomatic expressions, phrases etc which I have for Urdu, I cannot have for English because I am not a native speaker. So I would always have more than 1 choices available while translating from English to Urdu which would be less likely true in case of Urdu to English. And I would choose best word or expression according to context and formality level.
• One of the participants was disagreeing with me, she had the opinion that to understand the sense of the word we should be a native speaker of source language. While this may be helpful to understand the sense, again the point is the cultural knowledge, productive knowledge and usage conventions are the areas where a native speaker proves his superiority over a second or foreign language speaker.

Nothing is perfect in the world and so are the translations. We have to risk one thing for another. Meaning can never be conveyed 100%, there are always connotations, associations and hidden meaning which are left behind in the source language. But the goal of a translator is to get the maximum out of source language through the process of translation. This is the essence of translation.

Conflict

In Pakistan, mostly Linguistics is taught with respect to or in association with English literature studies. BZU Multan is the most biggest institute regarding Linguistics education in Pakistan. The students of BZU whether they are mastered in literature or language they have the basic knowledge of the other discipline. MSc Linguistics know the basics of literature and genres and, on the other hand, MA English Literature students have a basic knowledge of the major areas of Linguistics.

Linguistics at GCUF is trying to establish its roots. The Applied Linguistics Department was established in 2006 and after some time it was merged with Department of English. It was run under the head of English department of almost 4+ years. Here at GCUF, we have typical problems of management, favoritism and other such social evils of our society. People cannot see something progressing so linguistics students were suppressed in the department. Thus a dichotomy and tension was created among the two discipline's students. There is a fair state of hatred among them.

The department of applied linguistics is now a separate department but still we do not have equipment, managing staff and sufficient teaching staff. We share everything with department of English. The cream of university, the higher management is also in favor of English department. We need a language lab and today the controller examination of our university announced that department of English should re-submit the proposals etc so it may get the hosting of this language lab. I was wondering what is the need to have a language lab for an English Literature student.

I am not against the merger of these two departments. But the problem is what I mentioned above. The poeple are not ready to accept our existance in university. So we had to separate. Although it looks strange in Pakistani context that linguistics department is separate from english literature department. We should accept the existence of each other in every field of life instead of cutting the roots of each other.