Ze hebben niets dat jouw hart ooit zal vangen*

Your full name on Google. A curse that could haunt you forever. I know what I'm talking about.

When anyone looks up "Aline Lapeire" on the popular search engine, they find a lot of sites that actually concern me. There are not many Aline Lapeire's in this world, or so it seems. People are redirected to my Facebook, a review about a cellphone I once wrote, a Wikipedia page of an author with whom I wrote a book and much more. But the internet can also reveal more embarrassing sites about your person. In my case: dozens of pages with translated song texts.

My site of shame is nedtlyrics.nl, a Dutch site on which you can post translated lyrics. I discovered this site when I was 15 years old and thought it was great! It was very enjoyable to look up lyrics, translate them from English to Dutch and put them on the internet for anyone to see. I admit, vain definitely played a part in it. Soon, I told my English teacher about the project and she was so enthusiastic that some of my translations were even published in the school magazine. I really expanded my vocabulary during that period, because I had to look up a lot of words in the dictionary. After a while, most lyrics I liked were translated already and I lost interest in the site.

That could have been the end of story, but alas. A few months ago, a new friend of mine opened an msn conversation with a very awkwardly built sentence. At first, I didn't realise what he was talking about. But after a few quotes, the penny dropped. Apparently some people like to google their friends to discover long forgotten secrets of the past.

So I went back to the lyrics I had translated and felt quite silly. My interpretation of the lyrics had been very literal and it looked as if I'd just run the text through Babelfish. If in "Downtown train" by Tom Waits, something captures one's heart, in my version the heart was actually imprisoned. When Shirley Manson of Garbage 'hangs upon every word', well, in my translation there in fact is the danger of falling.

Now, I know that some lyrics, most lyrics, are not meant to be translated. Some English expressions just can't be put into Dutch, neither the other way around. Translating songs was a good exercise, but in the future, I'd rather work with less poetic language and blush whenever someone brings up my past hobbies.

*They have nothing that will ever capture your heart (Tom Waits)

Marie, a friend abroad?

In the previous lecture and lab of Language & Technology, we have got to know about the website Friendsabroad.com. This site enables you to meet people from abroad, to learn and to teach languages.
At first, this seemed as a true enlighment. But I soon realised that Friendsabroad is not as innovative as I thought at first glance. Memories of my childhood sprung to mind. And in this childhood, we had a phenomenon, called "penpals". Through several media, one could reach penpals from all over the world. You could find advertisements in newspapers, join penpal societies or search a pal on the internet. So even when the internet took its first baby steps, it enabled long distance communication for everyone.
During a few months, I had a penpal myself. Her name was Marie and she lived in France. In those days we were limited to simple e-mail traffic, but still I believe I learned quite a lot. Marie was not interested in learning Dutch (Who is, right?), so we corresponded in French and she corrected my mistakes.
I wonder how it would have been if I had met Marie with Friendsabroad. I could have spoken to her, could have chatted with her, could have seen pictures of her. I think Friendsabroad does offer more ground for actual friendship than the classic penpal system. But then again, I wouldn't have met Marie, because she didn't want to learn Dutch...

Nails: to clip

It's funny how you sometimes master words of the vocabulary, while you have no idea where you picked them up.

Two days ago, I was talking to my roommates Léanne (from Switzerland) and Hermien (from Belgium). Léanne was explaining that she needed "a tool for her nails... something to...". I helped her: "A nail clipper, to clip your nails with.". She looked at me, increduously, and thought I had invented a word. But I insisted that the expression I used was a correct one. Then she asked me how I could possibly have picked up the word "nail clipper". And that's where I couldn't answer her anymore.

I started to think about how I learned that word. There's no question that I have ever learned it at school. In secondary school, we did not learn lists of vocabulary. We had to study words, extracted from articles in magazines. And I am fairly sure those texts never had anything to do with nail clippers. In university, I have learned lists of vocabulary. But these words covered areas such as the legal jargon. But is the legal vocabulary more important than the word "nail clipper"?

I concluded that I must have familiarized myself with this word while watching lighthearted series and films. Wouldn't it be better to introduce these materials in the educational system then?

Irish VS The Queen

Language Learning in Limerick. I have been thinking about it before I left for the green island. As an Erasmus student, I hoped to learn a great deal of English while residing in Ireland. But as a student of English literature, I must say I was a bit worried about the Irish accent.

For two years know, at my home University in Ghent, I have been studying "British English". Not the common man's English, rather the Queen's English. The socalled RP. I have always cherished this posh pronunciation, even though I know a waiter in London would frown if I addressed him in my somewhat haughty University speak.
The Irish accent... let's just say it is miles (or kilometres, if you please) away from what I know. I do want to learn the peculiar pronunciation and vocabulary. After all, an Erasmus student should bring some of the Irish culture back home. But still, I hope that after my stay here I will be able to switch from "Irish" to RP and back. If only for the sake of my pronunciation classes in Ghent!