Following on from that news, I’m using my public service remit to point out that from July 1st this year, you’ll need to carry a disposable single-use breathalyser in your car (or on your motorbike, or indeed any motorised vehicle other than a moped) if you’re travelling in France.

The purpose of the law, not surprisingly, is to reduce alcohol-related road deaths; the logic being that motorists will always be in a position to test themselves if they’re not certain of their own fitness to drive after drinking.

Although the new law technically comes into force on July 1st this year, the police won’t actually start fining “offenders” until November 1st – presumably they’ll just give them a rap on the knuckles instead in the meantime. Even after November, the fine will only be €11 – at least initially – so I suppose some may consider non-compliance to be worth the risk. (If you do get stopped in France, remember you didn’t read that here).

You should also note that because the legal blood alcohol limit in France is LOWER than it is in the UK (it’s 50mg per litre, as opposed to 80mg over here), packing a unit that’s been produced for the British market isn’t going to work – you really need to get a French-approved device displaying the NF logo (see below – it’s the French equivalent of British Standard) on it.

Norme Française (NF) logo

No doubt you’ll be reminded about this new requirement anyway the next time you head down to a Channel port or the Eurotunnel, but at that point, trapped in the captive market of the ferry queue, you’ll almost certainly be invited to spend anything up to a tenner for the necessary hardware to achieve compliance. So why not save some money and buy the kit now? As a rough guide, the breathalysers generally sell for about one euro each in France, but good luck finding them for anything like that price in the UK.

My suggestion is that you avoid buying online because of the added postage, but instead consider popping down to your local retail park-based supplier of motoring accessories (British readers: you know who I mean), buying an NF-approved twin-pack for a fiver and splitting it – the law only strictly requires you to carry one, after all – with a friend. If you think you’ll need more than one unit, they should be easy to obtain absolutely everywhere in France itself at much lower prices once you get there.

Thinking it through practically, if you actually are planning to drink a little before driving in France and therefore foresee a real need to use the breathalyser to test yourself, it would make sense to carry at least three of them. If you only pack one, you’ll be in compliance with the law right up to the moment when you actually test yourself; at which point, even if the reading says you’re good to go, the law says you can’t because you’re no longer carrying a usable breathalyser (because you just used it, right?). If you carry two, then after testing yourself you’ll be left with just one, which means you’ll then need to make it an urgent priority to buy another one to prevent running out if you have to perform another emergency self-test soon afterwards… are you still following this? Oh, do keep up, Bond…

Lastly, to complete our Gallic legal/automotive roundup, don’t forget that French law already compels you to carry a warning triangle and fluorescent vest in your car. Phew!

Some of the developments shown in what we consider to be science fiction are quite clearly preposterous and might more properly belong in the realm of fantasy. To the best of scientific knowledge, it is never going to be possible to gad about the universe at FTL speeds, battling galactic despots using the “Force”, although there is some speculation that things like wormholes or ‘warp’ drives might just possibly allow us to cheat Einstein’s ultimate speed limit.

Of course, there are devices from science fiction that have become reality: the hypospray, detailed in a 1947 radio series[1], found its real world equivalent in the jet injector (patented in 1960 before Star Trek popularised the concept in 1966); a 1911 novel[2] by Hugo Gernsback anticipated radar, getting close to describing the actual mechanism 23 years before the first radar system was demonstrated; additionally, H.G. Wells described an atomic bomb and uranium fallout in 1914.

Then there are the innovations that may possibly become a reality or at least approximated, and one of these is the universal translator. Language issues are integral to science fiction wherein humans encounter weird and wonderful life forms and have to speak with them. Actually learning the language is, naturally, far too dull and humdrum, especially when you are trying to entertain the masses on wireless, cathode ray or widescreen LCD.

And so, science fiction series and films make use of various conventions to prevent the audience losing interest during alien-speak. In some science fiction, as in fact in some more mundane drama, everyone speaks English (or the target audience’s language) for the audience’s benefit, often with a dodgy accent to show that they are actually speaking a foreign tongue, and it’s simply accepted.

Elsewhere, the Doctor’s Tardis[3] makes it possible for the Doctor’s travelling companions to understand all aliens, the Babel fish is one of the galactic Hitch-Hiker’s most essential items[4] (given the absurdity of the Babel fish, I was amazed to see the low budget 2009 Princess of Mars film[5] use a similarly creature-based translation system with apparently serious intent) and, of course, the universal translator accompanies the crew of the Starship Enterprise on all of their missions.

In the real world the universal translator is, if at all possible, a long way from being reality. Machine translation and voice recognition are both far from the slick implementation seen in Star Trek. Yet, there are devices which approximate the effect. The U.S. army has been using something called a Phraselator since 2001. This is preloaded with a number of set phrases (current versions have up to about 100,000) and allows one-way speech-to-speech translation, alright for issuing instructions in pre-conceived situations, but not so good for conversation.

In the written word, machine translation has come on by leaps and bounds, thanks largely to MT software using immense translation memory style corpuses, but you still can’t point a machine translation tool at a previously unseen sentence and expect a reasonably good, natural outcome, and Google Translate and its fellows can still not be relied on for anything more than gist extraction.

For the moment, I am happy to report that the concept of machine translation replacing the expert human translator or interpreter is still just Science Fiction.

[2] Ralph 124C 41+ – Hugo Gernsback.

[3] Doctor Who – A British television series featuring a time-travelling humanoid alien. Don’t get me started on how almost all film and TV aliens seem to be at least vaguely humanoid!

[4] The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Radio series, book series, television series and film, initially created by Douglas Adams

[5] Based on a novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, who had his protagonist spend several weeks or months learning the local language.

Visa estimate that international visitors to the UK will spend around £709 million pounds over the Olympic Games period – double the equivalent figures for Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004, and more than seven times greater than the total for Beijing 2008. So exactly what are we planning to offer these visitors in return on the linguistic front? Here’s a brief selection:-

• Shakespeare’s Globe is hosting a multilingual season presenting every single Shakespeare play, each in a different language by a different international theatre company. Dominic Dromgoole, the Globe Theatre’s Artistic Director, explains: “It has long been recognised that Shakespeare, as well as a great playwright, has become an international language, and has proved one of the most life-affirming and barrier transcending ways that people can speak to one another. His plays have been translated into every major living language and there is a long tradition of Shakespeare performances around the world in people’s own vernacular.”
• The NewsBiscuit website is claiming that LOCOG will be offering free language lessons to every homeless person in London, along with flash cards with translations of useful phrases such as, “Any spare change?”, and that Cockney rhyming slang is to be granted the status of official Olympic Games language alongside English and French. We’re fairly confident they’re being satirical… or are they? Having just spotted another of the site’s headlines, “Usain Bolt aiming to break ’100m immigration queue’ record” (apparently he’s aiming to go sub- 2hrs 13 mins), maybe there’s more truth in all this than we first thought.
• Fruit-flavoured computer company Apple has already decided to prepare for the influx of foreign journalists and tourists this summer by equipping its London stores with replacement international keyboards for MacBooks. It is also reportedly considering whether to go the whole hog and actually stock new MacBooks with American, Asian and other international keyboards.
• The Times Educational Supplement produced a very helpful round-up last week of Olympic-themed multilingual resources on the internet for language learners. If you’re learning French, German or Spanish, you’re likely to find plenty of interesting material here.
• If you’re planning to visit the UK during the Olympics but are worried about the possibility of making a social faux pas, you might be interested in this useful guide from the International Business Times. Among the nuggets of wisdom therein: it’s rude to talk about money in Britain because “nobody has any money”, and the average man in the street’s attitude to hosting the Games can be understood if you “(…) think of the English as the homeowner during a particularly rowdy house party. We have organised it poorly and we are worried about how much it is all going to cost.”

Lastly, if you’re an owner of an Apple iOS device with an interest in flying the flag of multilingual international harmony in Olympic year, then it’s my pleasure to introduce you to a pair of apps produced for just that purpose by the team here at Robertson Languages. Robertsons Phrasebook offers you over 400 phrases in eight different languages to cover a wide range of day-to-day situations, while its sister Robertsons Name It app lets you practise your foreign vocabulary through the medium of fun games. Bargains, the pair of them, at a mere 69p each. Click the links above or the icons in the bottom-right corner of any page on our site to find out more.

Accreditation by British Council Business English UK Group

Short-listed for Re:locate magazine award for Excellence in Employee & Family Support

About Robertson Languages

You may have heard of Dr Daniel Ubani, a German speaking doctor who gave his elderly patient a fatal overdose on his first and only shift in the UK. It was announced last week that the British government is trying to sidestep EU law so that they might introduce stringent language testing for doctors from the EU who want to work in the UK. Meanwhile, the Uruguayan Luis Suarez was banned for 8 matches after calling French right back Patrice Evra the Spanish word ‘negro’ in a 2011 Premier League match. This deeply offended Evra and Suarez’s language was subsequently deemed racist by a disciplinary panel. However, Suarez maintained that his language was perfectly innocent and fellow Uruguayans were quick to support Suarez and testify to the word’s neutral usage in his home country. The Liverpool striker even claimed afterwards that his wife calls him ‘negro’ as a term of endearment.

Both examples illustrate the potential pitfalls of language as it has become easier to work outside your native country. It might be legal to work anywhere within the EU as a doctor, but is your grasp of the language good enough to ensure you keep your vow to ‘do no harm’? You may be gifted enough to play football thousands of miles from home, but does your ignorance of language and culture mean you’ll be a liability to your football club as soon as you open your mouth? Language and cultural differences have their dangers, which is why proper language and cultural training is so important.

1. Make the box bigger, or better, imagine there is no box
2. Question what hasn’t been asked
3. Make new connections
4. Relate the unrelated
5. Connect emotions with thoughts, actions, values and beliefs
6. Appreciate restlessness as a signal for a chance to do something differently
7. Increase satisfaction, meet yours and people’s needs in new ways
8. Question the status quo
9. Create more desirable futures
10. Let the past be a guide post, not a hitching post
11. Be open to experiment
12. Adopt a ‘let’s learn from our mistakes’ attitude
13. Realize that the first idea is a rough draft, open to refinement
14. Keep your sense of humour
15. Give yourself new experiences
16. Learn something new
17. Find out what troubles confuses others, then find new ways to ease their pain

We try to do all these things at Robertson Languages, and what better way is there to put them in action than by using another language?

On 3rd January 2012, the French Code de la route (and specifically Article R413-15 thereof, if you want chapter and verse) was changed with immediate effect to prohibit drivers from “owning or carrying [or using] machines, devices or products intended, or purporting, to detect the presence or disturb the operation of devices, instruments and systems for the detection of offences against road transport law or regulations or evading the detection of said offences” (my own rough translation: I am not a lawyer, so don’t rely on the above wording, and certainly don’t sue me if you do rely on it!).

This may not at first sound like big news to our British readers: after all, you aren’t allowed devices which attempt to detect or jam speed camera radar transmissions here either. What makes the new French law so radically different, however, is that it specifically prohibits “radar warning devices”, including devices which use a database of GPS locations of individual speed cameras. Such devices are still perfectly legal in Britain, and in fact in every European country – except France.

Note that the new law isn’t a blanket ban on satnavs, and it isn’t a total ban on all speed camera alert systems either. It’s still legal to use so-called “driving aids”, which give you only a general idea of so-called “danger zones” in which speed cameras may or may not operate, OR in which there may be other hazards such as railway crossings or accident blackspots. Garmin and TomTom (and many other manufacturers) are in the process of releasing new software which modifies many existing devices to comply with French law, so your device may or may not currently contravene French regulations, depending on whether you’ve updated it recently. If you’re planning to visit France, you’ll need to check carefully to find out whether or not your device falls foul of the law, and update to the latest software version if you can. Even if corrective updates aren’t available for your specific model, you can probably still comply with the law in the last resort by finding a way of deleting all French speed camera data manually from your unit. However, you may not need to take such drastic action – at least one manufacturer is currently advising its customers that they can comply with French law by temporarily disabling – as opposed to permanently removing – the French safety camera database while on French soil.

Needless to say, there is much discussion over the details of this new law, and not least whether it is actually enforceable. To secure a conviction, the police would presumably need to prove that your specific device was actually capable of reporting French speed camera data at the time of the alleged offence. They can’t just rely on keeping a list of potentially illegal devices, because (as I noted above) pretty much any satnav can – and indeed should – be modified from its factory state to comply with French regulations… so the only way a traffic cop could tell for sure whether you’d committed an offence would be by examining the software on your individual unit. And according to French lawyer Eric de Caumont – who specialises in defending motorists against speeding offences – the police would need to obtain a court order before they could do that: there’s nothing in law preventing you from owning the basic device itself, provided it doesn’t contain the offending speed camera data.

However, if you want to play it safe, here’s the bottom line: if you’re taking your satnav to France, make sure it complies with the new French law. If you aren’t sure whether it does or not, don’t take your satnav to France with you, whether you plan to use it or not. In the worst case – that is, you get caught in possession of such a unit, and the French police can prove it contains a usable database of speed camera locations – they theoretically have the right to confiscate the detector itself (along with your car if the device in question is fitted to it at the time) and you could get a €1,500 fine and six points on your licence into the bargain.

Want more information? Here are links to the relevant Garmin, TomTom and Navman pages to get you started…

If you spend any time listening to Mourinho talk, or watch the way he sets his teams up to play, it’s not difficult to see why he’s been so successful. He is a painstaking perfectionist, confident to the point of arrogance about his own abilities and his team’s, fiercely competitive and a ruthless football tactician.

But when asked this week, by Italian journalists, to explain how to build a ‘winning group’ he answered, “the [most] important thing is to communicate with them in their own language: Spanish in Spain, English in England, you cannot use another language. I also think it is good to know different languages for private conversations with the players. When you are in private with them, being able to communicate with them in their own language is really important in order to build a different kind of relationship”. Fluent in Portuguese, English, Italian, Spanish and Catalan, Mourinho’s big break came when he worked as a translator for Bobby Robson at Barcelona. In fact, he earned himself the derogatory nickname Tradutor (Translator) in the early stages of his managerial career at Porto.

So when Mourinho speaks about the importance of languages, we need to listen. And for Mourinho, language is huge. He teaches us about the importance of communicating with groups in a language everyone will understand – and he shows us the value of communicating with individuals in their mother tongue in order to build relationships. This has obvious knock-on effects both for our employees and for the markets we’re seeking to target. Do we want to build ‘winning groups’ within our companies? Then we would be wise to ensure we can communicate to the entire group. Do we want to “build a different kind of relationship” with potential customers from abroad? Then we would do well to communicate with them in their own language, even if they can speak some English.

Not only are we accredited to British Council with its demanding assessment criteria, we have also been admitted to the Business English UK Group. This is a select group of only 30 members in the whole of the UK, all of whom are accredited by British Council but also rigorously inspected against a further, even more demanding set of training quality standards, to show that their premises, trainers, homestay providers, staff, courses, administration and customer care are genuinely of the highest quality available to corporate clients anywhere.

Short-listed for Re:locate magazine award for Excellence in Employee & Family Support

We have just been short-listed for one of the relocation industry’s prestigious awards. The final winners will be announced at a dinner in May, but meanwhile we hope that our being short-listed in the category Employee & Family Support will reassure our many clients in the relocation sector that you can rely on our knowledge and experience of your industry to provide excellent, reliable and effective language and cultural support to your clients, assignees and their families.