Main Madeleine Discussion Thread

I thought I would create a post that was a sticky so that discussion can be held here with regards to the disappearance of Madeleine.  We have been discussing forensics on the following thread.

http://onmyfrontporch.wordpress.com/2011/01/23/misinformation-and-the-problems-it-causes/

FAO Ze_Mole

I have just been informed that you are trying to tie me in with the Madeleine Foundation.

I am not a member, never have been and never will be.

If you think your tweet

Britain’s Got Talent Interpreted

Before I had even walked through the door, it had became apparent from a quick look at the weekend TV Guide in the  paper I had read on the train that the coming TV week would be overwhelmed by Britain’s Got Talent. I’m not sure which dominated at that moment; pleasure at the feeling that I could have some easy evenings watching undemanding shows or saddened by the fact that my normal TV routine would be disrupted.

I had spent some evenings recently with friends watching avidly (as a whole nation was doing around us) a reality show which revolves around the theme of dance but with a wider brief than our own dance shows which don’t appeal to me at all. Dansez pentru Tine is great fun and though I had enjoyed the spectacle, I had hoped to return to something a little more stimulating. Judge for yourself.

However like a large number of the UK population I was drawn by the publicity to the first live semi-final of BGT. The fact I had missed much of the audition build up to the live shows meant that I wasn’t sure of the quality of the acts this year and I found myself being pleasantly entertained by an interesting selection of performers.

I have to acknowledge that the real talent on the show last night seemed to lie with the youth rather than the more mature entertainers. The dogs seemed to dance better than their owner and the Entertainator certainly did not entertain me as well as the young lads (pianist and singer) whose careers may well lie in music.  I was impressed too by the opening dance, the martial arts girls and the ‘trick cyclist’ as I would have called him in my own youth.

But as an oldie now I found myself singing along with Ted (the 92 year old) to “Pack up your troubles” as I was unpacking my case.  Little did I expect to be jolted at that moment into thinking about the question of translation and interpretation.

The early part of the judges discussion at the end of Ted and Grace’s act brought me back to earth with a bump. Remember Ted is profoundly deaf and his grand-daughter Grace was interpreting for him.

 

David Hasselhoff  “Ted, Ted, Ted.  Grace, tell Ted he was very good.“

Grace  “Hoff said that you were very good.”

David Hasselhoff  “Yeah, you did a very good job tonight, Ted.  Yes, I thought very heart warming, very entertaining.  I think I would like to see a little more Ted and a little less Grace. I’m sorry. I’m sorry but I think that if you’re going to get to the next round I think Ted is the star. Michael…”

Michael McIntyre   “Yeah, notice that Grace hasn’t told him that.  He’s still actually waiting to hear the news that he should go solo.”

Ted  “I can’t understand him.”

Grace  “It doesn’t matter.”

David Hasselhoff  “Don’t tell him.”

Michael McIntyre  “No she won’t. Absolutely refusing.  Er, OK. Erm I have to say, Ted and Grace, it was nice to see you. And Grace just to counteract what Hoff said, I did think that your voice was much stronger. I didn’t feel that way coming in but I thought it was much stronger tonight than it was in audition. Erm, and you know, Ted, as ever I love to watch you perform, erm and I think, did you do your own choreography tonight coming on with the six hot chicks?”

Grace  “Did you do your own choreography?”

Ted  “Yes I think it will be better when I grow up because I’m only 92 you know.”

For someone like me who has a strong interest in the subject of translation and interpretation this was a fine example of the problems involved both for the professional and the amateur doing the job.

All kinds of problems are evident. The most obvious is that it would be almost impossible for Grace to tell Ted exactly what was being said by the fast talking speakers due to the fact that she wasn’t trained to listen to a conversation and repeat/interpret it (even in the same language) simultaneously.  Try it sometime. Even when she did relate the choreography question to Ted it was severely abbreviated.

She was of course having to interpret under pressure in front of an expectant audience with time constraints. Her own adrenalin would have been pumping having just been involved in a potentially life-changing experience.  Even the noise from the audience would have been very confusing for an amateur in those circumstances. Simply responding coherently to the judges on their own behalf is difficult for some performers never mind trying to interpret for a profoundly deaf man at your side.

But beyond that there was the problem of her own decision as to what to tell Ted. Should she repeat David’s suggestion?  She chose not to. Was she right or wrong? Who can tell? It was a decision she made on the spur of the moment. Her own anger at David being, as she might perceive it, rude to her after she felt she had performed well? A desire not to upset or embarrass her grandfather?

Whatever the reason it was clear that at that moment, the interpretation did not fulfil its role of informing him of the comment that David had made. And the humour of Michael’s remark about the hot chicks also passed Ted by because Grace abbreviated the question.  In fact much of the information and the tone of the message were both lost on poor old Ted.

How is this relevant to the translations which have been done in relation to the Madeleine McCann case? Well the McCann case is certainly more technical (especially in relation to legal, medical and forensic detail but there are nonetheless striking similarities.

Like Grace who was interpreting for Ted because she really wanted him to understand and be able to take in more fully what was going on, I believe that the vast majority (if not all) the translators who have helped us, in the McCann case, to understand more fully the events, the interviews, the articles and the overall complexities of the case have been motivated by a real desire to get the information out there as comprehensively, as quickly and as accurately as they possibly could.

Like Grace, though, they have not always succeeded perfectly. That is not necessarily their fault.  There are many reasons why translation/interpretation can fail do deliver the perfect result. These include the following evident in the Grace and Ted interlude above but also relevant to any form of translation/interpretation whether verbal or written:

• Pressure of time.
• The need to obliterate personal opinions/emotions when translating/interpreting.
• Lack of understanding of the problems inherent in translation.
• An unwillingness to embarrass others or even yourself.
• Not having the technical ability/training which allows you to perform the task effectively
• External sources of noise and confusion.

When we talk of translation from a foreign language as in the McCann case there are further potential hazards including:

• The translator (amateur in particular) is unlikely to have as wide a vocabulary in the second language as his first.
• The translator/interpreter’s lack of understanding of technical language/terms.
• The inherent difficulty of translating cultural metaphors/idioms unless you have been immersed in that culture.
• The legibility of the original document being translated.
• The quality of the audio being translated or transcribed.

Incidentally the question of accuracy in translation is not just a McCann case issue or an issue related to the fact that amateurs are at work.  Here is just one example from the wider world of professionals at each other’s throats over the subject.  Nor is it a new problem.

“The clash of civilizations rages in some surprising places, and one of them is the large room in the FBI’s Washington, D.C., Field Office that houses a unit known as CI-19. In one set of cubicles sit the foreign-born Muslims; across a partition is everyone else. They have the same vital job: to translate supersecret wiretaps of suspected terrorists and spies. But the 150 or so members of CI-19 (for Counterintelligence) segregate themselves by ethnicity and religion. Some of the U.S.-born translators have accused their Middle Eastern-born counterparts of making disparaging or unpatriotic remarks, or of making “mistranslations”–failing to translate comments that might reflect poorly on their fellow Muslims, such as references to sexual deviancy. The tensions erupt in arguments and angry finger-pointing from time to time. “It’s a good thing the translators are not allowed to carry guns,” says Sibel Edmonds, a Farsi translator who formerly worked in the unit.”

Lost in Translation – Daniel Klaidman and Michael Isikoff (NEWSWEEK)

http://www.newsweek.com/2003/10/26/lost-in-translation.html

For those interested in a more scholarly discussion of the problems of translation in a technical I would strongly recommend pages 2 and 3 of the following short article where Lars Johan Materstvedt discusses the issues and challenges of translating scientific papers. His points are applicable also to the challenges in the McCann case translations.

http://www.eapcnet.org/download/forEuthanasia/EJPC13.5Materstvedt%28E%29.pdf

This is just the first in a series of articles which will discuss further the problems of translation with  particular reference to the McCann case.

Crossing the Line

Crossing the line

Last night on twitter, @veniviedivici also known as Champers, Laffin Assasin threatened to post my medical records on twitter.

LESLEY PERMAN-KERR: WRITING A BOOK CAN HELP THE MCCANN’S TAKE CONTROL

LESLEY PERMAN-KERR: WRITING A BOOK CAN HELP THE MCCANN’S TAKE CONTROL
Friday April 1,2011
By Lesley Perman-Kerr

THE constant gnawing pain of a lost child is something so destructive that one can only stand in awe of parents who find ways to survive a situation seemingly without end, waiting for some glimmer of hope.

They are always under a cloud of self-recrimination and intrusive thoughts of what might have been and what could be, if only…

MADELEINE: FAMILY WARN KIDNAPPERS

MADELEINE: FAMILY WARN KIDNAPPERS
Friday April 1,2011
By Tracey Kandohla

THE mother of Madeleine McCann is using the book she has written to send a plea to her daughter’s kidnappers: “Please, let her come home.”

Kate McCann’s anguished account of her living nightmare since Madeleine was snatched nearly four years ago is set to be this year’s publishing sensation when it goes on sale next month.

Children’s Commissioner recommends new research on children’s and young people’s views of child protection to Munro

Children’s Commissioner recommends new research on children’s and young people’s views of child protection to Munro (PDF)
31 March 2011

The Office of the Children’s Commissioner (OCC) today (31 March) released a report in which children and young people talk about their experience of the child protection system. The research commissioned from the University of East Anglia has been provided to Professor Eileen Munro as further evidence for her major review of child protection.

Key recommendations for government are:

Media, Crime and Ideology

Media, Crime and Ideology

If u ever wondered y the media report on certain crimes but not others- have a read of this- Child Victims as Symbols http://bit.ly/eVsSAE—
Mark Williams-Thomas (@mwilliamsthomas) March 31, 2011

Carter Ruck – If only….

I have just been seen this link over yonder.  My god it reminded me of this photo.  Talk about pro-active

In the red corner we have…

So there is to be a challenge between Jayelles of PFA and Tony Bennett of the Madeleine Foundation.  But in true Bennett style he’s already dictating the terms and conditions.  Why does that not surprise me?

Well I can’t be bothered to copy and paste his diatribe but have screenshot  it and posted it here.

They Know Where YOU are!

An article in the New York Times caught my eye this evening.  Even if you don’t read the whole article you really should scroll down and follow the link to the intereactive map showing just how much detail is held about EVERY ONE OF US WITH A MOBILE PHONE!

It’s Tracking Your Every Move and You May Not Even Know

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/business/media/26privacy.html?_r=3&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1301331851-rKhSmkTgu/rkvxwU9KtVTQ

By NOAM COHEN Published: March 26, 2011

A favorite pastime of Internet users is to share their location: services like Google Latitude can inform friends when you are nearby; another, Foursquare, has turned reporting these updates into a game.

But as a German Green party politician, Malte Spitz, recently learned, we are already continually being tracked whether we volunteer to be or not. Cellphone companies do not typically divulge how much information they collect, so Mr. Spitz went to court to find out exactly what his cellphone company, Deutsche Telekom, knew about his whereabouts.

The results were astounding. In a six-month period — from Aug 31, 2009, to Feb. 28, 2010, Deutsche Telekom had recorded and saved his longitude and latitude coordinates more than 35,000 times. It traced him from a train on the way to Erlangen at the start through to that last night, when he was home in Berlin.

Mr. Spitz has provided a rare glimpse — an unprecedented one, privacy experts say — of what is being collected as we walk around with our phones. Unlike many online services and Web sites that must send “cookies” to a user’s computer to try to link its traffic to a specific person, cellphone companies simply have to sit back and hit “record.”

More General Musings on Logic

Here are a few examples of logical fallacies.

Most dogs in the UK are mongrels.

My cousin has just bought a dog.

My cousin therefore bought a mongrel.

While it is perfectly possible, indeed quite probable, that my cousin (who is not know for her splashing of the cash) bought a mongrel it does not follow logically and could be erroneous.

I know that Jimmy usually wears expensive white jeans and travels home by this route.

I just saw a chap getting off the top of the escalator wearing white jeans.

I just saw Jimmy.

Again, perfectly possible, but other people do live in London and wear expensive white jeans.

KATE MCCANN’S EMOTIONAL BATTLE TO FINISH MADELEINE TRIBUTE

KATE MCCANN’S EMOTIONAL BATTLE TO FINISH MADELEINE TRIBUTE
Monday March 28,2011
By Tracey Kandohla and David Pilditch

Madeleine McCann went missing at the age of three in May 2007, during a family holiday in Portugal

HEARTBROKEN Kate McCann has been overwhelmed with emotion writing a book about her daughter Madeleine’s disappearance, friends revealed last night.

Kate is now close to finishing the deeply-personal account of her nightmare, which she hopes will raise millions of pounds for the dwindling fund set up to find her daughter.

HEADLINES TODAY FORUM

The Headlines Today forum is available and open for discussion of the Madeleine McCann Case and other subjects.

It is clear that the subject of the Madeleine McCann case can be very volatile at times.

Questions can be asked, doubts raised, ideas explored but no direct allegations of any kind, nastiness about the individuals involved in the case, nastiness about other forum members, goading, obscenity or inflammatory comments will be permitted.

Such posts will be removed at the earliest opportunity and the posters banned.

If your aim is to be nasty to others then simply don’t bother posting.

http://headlines-today-forum.co.uk/

Kate McCann to release book on Madeleine’s disappearance

Kate McCann to release book on Madeleine’s disappearance
Updated: 25-Mar-2011
By DAISY SAMPSON daisy.sampson@theresidentgroup.com

Readers will now be able to hear two sides of the story surrounding the disappearance of Madeleine McCann as her mother, Kate McCann, is due to release a book detailing the case from the McCann family’s point of view on May 12 while the former police inspector in the case Gonçalo Amaral, has been granted permission to resell his controversial book Maddie – A Verdade da Mentira (Maddie – The Truth of the Lie).

Bennettian Logic (not taught on recognised Philosophy Courses)

An article promoted by Anthony Bennett (Zampos) on twitter recently.  It is very long but I will concentrate on one small section for the purposes of this look at Bennettian logic.  Indented sections are taken from the second section of Bennett’s article.

——————-

——————-

The article is riddled with examples of erroroneous logic and flawed conclusions which I have decided amount to a whole new subject area in the field of philosopy. Here are just two.  You can play the game of spotting more should you wish.

Sniffer Dogs ‘Can Hinder Police Work’

Sniffer Dogs ‘Can Hinder Police Work’
8:57am UK, Thursday March 24, 2011
Gerard Tubb, Sky News correspondent

Police sniffer dogs used to find missing people and dead bodies “urgently” need better training and monitoring, according to an official report.

Sniffer dog Eddie was relieved of his police duties after complicating investigations

The Government’s National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) said specialist victim recovery dogs are not trained to approved standards, with no way of gauging their competence.

KATE MCCANN: I WANT TO GIVE AN ACCOUNT OF THE TRUTH ON MADELEINE

KATE MCCANN: I WANT TO GIVE AN ACCOUNT OF THE TRUTH ON MADELEINE
Friday March 11 2011 by Padraic Flanagan

THE true story of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance is set to be revealed in an explosive new book billed as the publishing ­sensation of the year.

Four years on, Kate McCann’s emotional first-person account of her daughter’s abduction from a Portuguese holiday apartment will give a huge boost to the depleted fund to find her.

GIFT FROM KYLIE MINOGUE BOOSTS FUNDS TO CARRY ON HUNT

GIFT FROM KYLIE MINOGUE BOOSTS FUNDS TO CARRY ON HUNT
Friday March 11,2011
By Padraic Flanagan

KYLIE Minogue has given a huge boost to the parents of Madeleine McCann by raising funds to help the search for their missing daughter.

The singer pledged her support for the youngster’s family by donating a designer handbag for their “Bags of Hope” auction.

Kate and Gerry had asked people to donate bags for three fund-raisers in Leicester, Liverpool, and Glasgow.

Santa Justa Station, Seville – Madeleine McCann Posters

While mooching around on Twitter about an hour ago, I spotted among the nastiness on the #McCann tag one interesting little post.

There was a reference to proof that Madeleine McCann posters had been seen in public buildings in Spain.

I followed the link and found the article was from February of this year but was principally about the lack of assistance which had been afforded to a mother searching for her missing son since April, 2006.

And most of the world missed it!

On Friday last a major forum for public discussion was closed on the Internet and I bet few of you even noticed.

It happened at 17.30 on Friday afternoon.  Deliberate?  Of course.

Guardian Unlimited talkboards closure

After a period of review, it is with great regret that we have to say goodbye to the Guardian Unlimited talkboards. We are unable to continue to support this separate platform.

Community is a vital part of our service at guardian.co.uk and we hope to be able to introduce forums on that platform in the coming months.

It’s been more than a decade — you all practically invented social networking. Thank you for all your contributions.

That was it.  The board was closed.  No archive.  No chance to contact people.  Nothing.

With a statement proclaiming how important community is, yet an action that proclaims the opposite, it is very clear where the majority opinion lay.  The overwhelming agreement on a subsequent blog set up by the Guardian was that the paper had every right to do what they did; (their space, their staff, their name etc.) but the way in which it was done showed little or no interest in the needs and views and history of the community which they had allowed to develop under their wing over the last twelve years.  The members were cast adrift with little if any thought from the owners and management of the newspaper.

During the weekend an email circulated expressing the view that more information would be available on Monday (yesterday).

Monday came and a blog page was opened, clearly pointed to on the main page of the Guardian site, allowing the members of GUT to congregate and suggest future venues for discussion.