 Hello everybody. Thank you very much for coming along to this postgraduate taste today. So what I and my colleagues are going to do today is give you a little bit of a snapshot, a bit of a taste of the kind of research that we do in linguistics and in translation here at SIAS and my colleagues are going to tell you about a very exciting research project that many of us are involved with. And before that, first I and then Gloria are going to give you just a few very quick details about how you can be a part of our research culture here. In linguistics and translation. So let me share my screen. And that is what I want to share. Has that worked or have I shared the wrong thing? Let me try again. Let me try again. This is what we want. That looks better. Okay. Perfect. Oh yes, I, like I said, my name is Chris Lucas and I'm one of the conveners of our linguistics programs here at SIAS. And what research do we in the Department of Linguistics do here at SIAS? Well, a very broad range of research and these, what I've listed here are some of the areas of linguistics that different members of staff are involved with. And I've kind of ordered them for you there from most theoretical and least applied with semantics and syntax at the top, all the way down to the most applied subjects where we're really interested in the intersection between the study of language and society. And we're all in the department involved with doing research in one or more of these areas. I personally am most interested in the stuff, the bottom half of the top half. So historical linguistics and language contact, that sort of thing. So I'm kind of someone who's in the middle. And what you're going to be hearing about from my colleagues today is this exciting project which is right down at the most applied end. So what can you do if you want to, if you like what you hear today, and you want a piece of the action? Well, you can do an MA in linguistics, and you've got two major options. You can either do a one year full time MA in just linguistics, or you can do the same degree combined with intensive study of a language. And that is then two years full time. And both of those you can also do part time over a longer period. And with the MA in linguistics, you have an optional pathway in language documentation and description. And you can see full details of what those two, the structures of those two degrees on on our web pages. Now, if you are interested in combining the study of linguistics with the study of the language, these are the languages that we currently offer for combination with linguistics. So Arabic, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Southeast Asian languages currently could do either Indonesian or Vietnamese, Swahili and Turkish. And here is a list of the modules we currently offer. So as you see, there's quite a few more theoretical modules and even more more applied modules and theoretical modules cover. Oh, thank you, Nana. You left out Hindi. That was very bad. So you can also do Hindi. Yep. So the theoretical modules cover all of the most, all of the major areas of structural linguistics, the study of sound, the study of meaning, the study of how words are built, the study of how words combine, plus historical linguistics and looking at a global view of the world's languages that's linguistic typology. And then on the applied side we have methods, modules, modules about documenting languages, modules about sociolinguistics, supporting languages, planning languages, and some translation modules are also open to students doing MA linguistics, rather than MA translation, because obviously there's there's a lot of crossover there. And finally, of course, everyone does a dissertation in linguistics, which you submit about 11 months after you start your module if you do your program, if you do, if you do it full time in one year. So that was my lightning fast introduction. Like I said, I'm Chris Lucas. That's my email address. I convene with my two colleagues, Julia and Jan. Please do write to us with any questions you might have. We'd be delighted to hear from you. And that is everything I wanted to say. So I will hand over now to Gloria. Thanks. I meant to unmute myself, but press the wrong button. Anyway, right, so I'm taking a slightly different approach, just by introducing the structure of the program and how I just designed considering the changing road of translators in the 21st century. And by the way, my name is Gloria Lee. I am the co convener of the MA translator translation program with Nana. So, if you have visited our web page, you will notice that our program aims to enhance our students' methodological practical skills in translation, preparing for the professional market. And we also provide students an intellectual perspective on the discipline of translation studies, just in case they want to pursue a research degree. But what actually makes a good translator in the 21st century. So, well, translation students only fit for translating texts or they can engage with other exciting jobs that would hire cross cultural communication skills. So, traditionally people think that, you know, any bilinguals can be a translator or interpreter. But without cultural knowledge, you cannot really produce a meaningful message that people will listen. And sometimes it's simply because that they are not aware that you're actually speaking to them. A translator needs to be sensitive to cultural differences to make their communication effective and efficient. This is especially the case in the digital age when technology is developed to facilitate machine translation or computer aided translation. And some, I got students asking me, you know, whether human translators will be replaced one day by computers, you know. Well, it's true that translators these days, they need to acquire a certain degree of IT literacy, especially software tools that help manage terminology and compile translation memories which we have courses on that modules on that. But I think what is more important is to identify the part of communication that cannot be replaced by machine because after all we're interacting with human beings. So that's why it's also important to understand other channels that generate meaning apart from the verbal languages so we're talking about the multimodal dimensions. So in courses in modules like as a titling that we aim to explore other channels that generate meaning apart from the verbal languages such as visual images, acoustic components like music and sound. In our web page and you'll find details of all these modules addressing very important aspects of translations in its broader sense. Just like Chris just said, our students also need to work on a dissertation to apply such knowledge in practice. They can choose to work on a translation project if they're interested in specific types of translation, like a literary translation if you want to translate the play. If you want to translate short stories and novels, and it can also be a audio visual text, so you can subtitle a video clip or films, or even websites, you know. Another option would be a research based project focusing on a selected topic. These students are required to reflect on the translation practice and think about how decisions are being made in different cross cultural communicative situations. So now you will understand why our graduates can find jobs in areas other than translation agencies, language services, language service providers. By the time they complete the program they would have attained an interlingual and intercultural communication skills. And they would also be able to articulate such practice to people around them, helping to create a translation space which in a word of Michael Cronin, a translation scholar that facilitates dialogue across difference. So that's my presentation. Thank you for listening. Please visit our website at MA translation and also the Center for translation studies. And if you have any questions, feel free to contact me by email. Thank you very much. And is it my turn. Very good. We had we have this complicated schedule which I reached ahead and I can't remember but let me just see whether I can get my slides up I think I can very good. Yes. So, and against the background of the of the of the program outlines but we wanted to do now and use the rest of the time to talk a little bit about some of the research we're doing and Chris already hinted at that. Yes, I'm going to introduce a project and then both again and not able to talk about specific outcomes of that and results from it. But it's a project which we are keen on because it's a it's a collaborative one which brings lots of us in in the school of languages and cultures and linguistics together, actually across so as together. Yes, it sits in the applied element and that's what we're talking about but just looking at Chris's introduction actually there's a lot of really interesting stuff also on the more formal stuff so because it generates texts in these different languages and you can see already the language is recover have a little slide about that just now. And we haven't really even touched these texts there's so much so much potential and possibility, you know I work on African language sorry my name is lots Martin I'm part of the department. So I work on African languages and we have we have Somali text we have so he takes recordings, which would really lend themselves to more formal analysis as well because you know they're often there's multi lingual is as language mixing links to the language and so lots of potential but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about culture translation and interpreting of COVID-19 risks among London's ethnic ethnic communities. And the project overseen and organized orchestration by Nana who's going to talk about later. And then you can see there's a bunch of us were involved in the project as well. And it's funded by by the arts and she managed research council so by by government funding. So I'm trying to know go to my next slide and I do that now. And this is a bit of COVID-19 context and you can see, I won't go into detail this is mainly UK it's party England, England focused, but we've been through two years really of COVID-19 starting from March 2020 with the first if things go as envisioned, and we will end covered restrictions on the on the first of April coming and in between there was lots of activities including lockdowns and coming out of lockdowns. And, but it was really it was it was it was, you know, a very, very severe health crisis, which took lots of casualties so this is a graphic summary of the COVID-19 in the UK context. And this is the number of infections you can see that it spikes then January 21, and then goes up again in January 2022 that's when Omicron hits. And so the infection rates are really, really high so covered is I mean they've gone down since but it's still with us and it is something which is important to conceptualize to think about to talk about both in the UK context and in the global context which is, you know, for us, in many ways it's a source perspective to look a bit more widely. This is this is a better graphics if you like this is the graphic presentation of the deaths resulting from COVID-19, and that has gone down quite a bit so even though the infection rate has spiked the, the death rates and the severity of the of the of the pandemic that has gone down but even then of course there is still quite you can see it goes still goes up. At the beginning of this year. So this is roughly where we are in the UK this is an international snapshot that's from the World Health Organization just shows the infection rate and as you know, they are they are really severe this is a world global crisis with global effects on on human well being on human health and on human lives. It's by countries you can see the UK is there in fifth position I think, but that's of course it doesn't take into account the size of the population but this is really just to show that it's that it's global and the effects are strong. And the other thing people have noticed going back to the UK context is that, and that it looks like that members of minority ethnic communities are more affected by COVID-19 than others so the chart is produced here. This is the, the death rate of different ethnic communities in the in England so nothing in England and compared to the white group, and you can see that the more green you have the more the more the effects. So it's either double the rate or three times the rate, and then the different shades of green adjusting for things like geography, but people live to socio economic status and health status, but even if you do this adjusting. You still find that the effects are disproportionate you hire on ethnic community communities. And then people have asked him what what could be the reason for that and that it may to do with occupation and jobs with higher COVID-19 with the customer facing jobs. It might be the financial impact of the pandemic, the living in more urban or maybe deprived areas, living in multi generation households so less space for isolation, less likely maybe to have access to private garden. And the effects of the pandemic and mentally health that's that's a really important issue. But what we are focusing on is also questions of language and communication so this is where our project then comes in. And we're focusing on London and in London it's particularly important because London London ethnic complexities higher maybe than the rest of the UK as you can see this is 2011 census data and we don't have the new one yet. But you can see that about 60% of London population in 2011 were white, whereas that means 40% are non but and that's a much higher proportion than the rest of the country of the UK, which sits at 13%. So it makes sense to look in London. And so London Community Languages and COVID-19 our project is UK I fund the government funded it's a source based project where we look at London's more than 300 languages focused on 17 source languages, because because speakers of community languages are disproportionately affected and one reason maybe to do with information. Because London's multilingual communities translate and interpret COVID-19 information from different sources to inform the understanding of the pandemic. So I won't go that in too much detail, but the project investigates information about COVID-19 in London Community Languages we look at information flow, government information informal information both from the UK, and from other places people have links to. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods so we did online surveys, but also lots of ethnographic and text or research interviews and focus group and we have, as we say, as I said 17 languages there's the list of languages including Arabic Bengali, Hindi as none I mentioned earlier, but also Korean, Swahili, Swahili, Seletti and Yoruba. So these are these are these are all prominent if you like source languages. And briefly on the results we have quantitative results about 700 respondents and have answered our questionnaire and to two answers I have a which are interesting is one is about three quarters of our respondents says. They get information from COVID-19 from outside the UK from other countries or communities out at the UK so this is a really high proportion of our constituency that is people drawn both UK information and information in other language from other parts of the world. And the other question was do you think you have you have sufficient information about COVID-19, and that fairly solid 8% said straightforwardly no, and a quarter of respondents says we they're not sure whether we have information, 67% said yes yes we have so information we do play a role here and I briefly before I hand over get kicked out. I give you a snapshot of the quality of the qualitative results sorry that should be qualitative so this is from our focus groups. So key issues and discourses about COVID-19 in London's diversity news community include questions of trust that was really is very strong signature measures we got you know who who do you trust which person, which body which information, which language. There's a difference between official and informal discourses that's quite important government information NHS information versus social media. What's up groups chat groups you have, you know, tick tock Instagram information spreading through their social media, I said it just now is really important. But also actually word to mouth and just your own personal private networks even just just like face to face communication and differences in government policies that's quite remarkable. I think the way policy as it was very different from Japanese policy was very different from the Indian policy, and that had an effect written about the spoken language and we haven't looked at signed language but that would come into that as well. So that that makes makes makes a difference. Then the question of authority who has authority in the specific communities. Is it your local GP is it community leaders as religious leaders is it elected leaders, or is it is it you know, councils and governments even. There we got different responses but everybody, all our sponsors sort of touched on that. And then of course the question English versus non English sources that's in some sense at the heart of our project, and and we've picked that up quite quite strongly as well in the in the qualitative research we did. And I think I'm done and I can stop sharing my screen. And then we can move on to first again I think and then to Nana to hone and a little bit more on the results we have discovered. Thank you. Thank you very much roots. Let me start by sharing my screen. My name is, you know, and I work at Department of linguistics. I want to talk about a more specific topic. That is, what can we linguists do in commit 19 era, and to what extent what we have learned can help us achieve a better understanding of the pandemic. We have listed quite some books that have been accumulating in sense that they all contribute to our understanding of COVID-19, and some of them are specifically related to the analysis of language, and because our perception of COVID comes from many types of discourse around us, and in many languages. I happen to belong to a sub project related to this mega project that looks has just some introduced. And because I work on one strength that is on Chinese discourse, and the Chinese community in London. We, as we perceived a time difference between the time when COVID broke out in mainland China, and also in East Asian countries, and the time when COVID finally reached London. So we thought it was interesting and necessary for us to start to study the narratives in Chinese and back in the home country. And we found it useful because I'm of the finding that people here in London. The Chinese people are more or less related to each other in a virtual community, which is backed up by the influence of Chinese language and discourse. So, I worked on Chinese language, and I collected data in trying to answer these sets of questions. For example, how has the pandemic discourse being phrased and propagated in different places and languages. So in my case, obviously I'm interested in study of Chinese. And also to what extent the discourse related to COVID-19 frame unconsciously the community ideology and provides the thesis or entities for decisions and measures in the pandemic era. And what can we do, especially as linguists. Chris has given us many branches of linguistics that we work on and teach at Sours, but then this is a new kind of topic, because it relates to many aspects of language that cannot be easily summarized in terms of one branch of linguistics. But as Chris said that this belongs to a very applied aspect. So, I have been trying to see to what extent we can handle this kind of data from a quantitative point of view. That is, suppose that we want to understand the discourse in China over there. And there are conspicuous and also hidden aspects related to the discourse. We could have collected 30 articles belonging to different times and study their distribution the content and characteristics. But this is the older kind of study, as I believe. Suppose now that we have all the data in hand, and we have very powerful software to deal with all the data. And this is something that we've been doing. We want to collect data and study COVID 19 discourse in Chinese from a longitudinal point of view. We aim at exhaustiveness. So, I have been devoting myself to the collection of all the COVID related articles that have been published in one certain newspaper in China. So, that is quite a lot because up to now I've got about more than 10,000 pages of data. And that starts from the very beginning of COVID 19 that is the January of 2020. And now I have been made busy again because COVID has again hit China on a message scale. So what can we do about it? Suppose we have all the data and I have acquired a very powerful and almost free software that's called Mini Word Cloud that is specially dedicated to the processing of Chinese data but can also be used to analyze data in English. So, what we usually do when dealing with, for example, electronic text analysis, we need to do word segmentation. And this is important for Chinese because the words are not automatically segmented or you see our characters. And then we need to do parts of speech tagging and we need to add in some special COVID related glossary that is probably not in the original dictionary of the software. Then we'll be able to measure word frequency. We'll be able to identify keywords because some of the words are common but we don't really treat them as keywords for our purpose, which is COVID 19 discourse. Then we can study concordance that is how words relate to others in the text, collocation and how words will match, find their companies in other grammatical environments. And how words prefer to relate to some other words in meaning, which we call semantic preference. And then in a more imperceptible way, to what extent the paragraph conveys some special senses that are probably not obviously denoted by the words contained in there. That is what we call semantic prosody analysis. But finally, one interesting aim of our study is to try to extract metadata from the discourse. To what extent all this discourse tells us about the ideology of the language users of a particular language and how we review that because we can study all these the previous aspects in able to establish a set of propositions about the discourse. And to what extent they change over time as COVID 19 proceeds in that community. So I'll briefly give you some findings. I skipped over some pages, but let me give you some visualized findings. So for example, we look at one month's data, we can work out here in colored graphs on the number of verbs nouns and other words with due nature that is both verb and noun and adjectives and others. And what are some keywords related to this distribution. And this gives us, for example, the this picture relates to August last year, then the keyword is no longer on COVID 19, the most conspicuous key one. It becomes something like injection in Chinese. And that is related to a word called vaccination. And if we want to study further, then we can study the link among these words, right, ways we can produce several different kinds of models to review the link. And the number of words are given in another way here. But if we really want to study the distribution in each sentence in each segment of discourse, we can do it right here. I give you an example of the injection, the word injection here. And to the right hand side, we have the other clustered words that are related to this verb. So I can pick up another word from the right hand side and throw it in. What we can get is what this is an example where injection is related to vaccination, and it's related to another word called virus. And to what extent these three words appear together in sentences that we can identify in all this range of discourse, and that can review quite a lot about how discourse has been phrased in this language. Very quickly, I want to say that this provides a model of discourse that makes it possible for us to carry on longitudinal research over discourse in Chinese. We can get to know many interesting aspects of COVID related discourse in Chinese, as I've listed on the right hand side, but this is only one part of the project because we can then move on to study other kinds of discourse like more private discourse in social media, and we can make comparisons. So, very quickly, I have given a summary of one of the streams in this project that I've been carrying, but my colleagues are also doing very interesting topic studies in other languages. So, in fact, there is not just one approach in linguistics or in humanities that can help us get a better understanding of the discourse. There are many different approaches, and many of them have been carried out at our department and at our School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Jan. I think it's my turn. I try to share my slides. Can you see it? Can you see my slide? Great. Thank you. So, there you go. Hi, everybody. Thank you very much for joining our open day today. My name is Nana Sato-Rosberg. I happen to be the head of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, sorry, Department of Languages. No, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics. So, I'm a little bit nervous today. And I would like to thank Chris, Lutz, Gloria and Yang for great presentations. And I'm teaching transition studies here, so us together with Gloria. So, I would like to talk a bit about how our COVID-19 projects relate to transition studies. For example, as Lutz already informed you, about 300 languages are spoken in London. And if you look at governmental health information website, for example, this kind of page, you will find about 10, 11 translations in other languages. But considering that 300 languages are spoken, 10, 11 languages are not enough. And many people have trouble getting enough information around COVID-19. So, as Lutz already presented, we conducted online survey and our results show like this. So, many people think that there is a language barrier. The cultural upbringing reflects the application and adherence to procedures and then operationally measures. And so many people feel that it's not only about language, but there is a cultural barrier. So, for example, if I explain about COVID-19, and my cultural background is East Asia. So, if I explain this to Lutz, Lutz will interpret, understand differently, because Lutz and I don't share those cultural backgrounds 100%. And Lutz will translate that information differently. So, I thought that I explained the correct information to Lutz because of the cultural background we share, and then the first language we speak is different. Actually, the information I provided to Lutz will be translated differently. And then maybe he will not behave as much as I expected him to behave away. So, maybe he will not wear a mask, but I will wear a mask. For example, it's just example. Lutz wears a mask, please don't misunderstand. And many of people answered our question. They are saying that I don't think people are understanding the information. This is exactly coming from what I explained now. That is a confusion of information. But this way, because actually it is English information provided by the government. Not all English speakers understood well enough. And if those information were translated into other languages that do not share culture much, it doesn't work so well. And there is a problem here on how to translate. And the final one also we've had a lot of opinion like this. I think educating community leaders would help in this regard. So, as Lutz already pointed out, a community leader could be GB or religious leader or so on. Another important point here is that these community leader probably can provide those information in the right manner so that community members can understand those COVID-19 information correctly. This is the point which is implied this answer. So, next slide. Go. So, to become a translator. That means that you translate from some texts written in, for example, English into let's say Chinese or Arabic or Japanese. It's not good enough as Gloria already pointed out. That means you will be a specialist of cultural communication. Because if you don't understand those cultural difference, actually, even if you know those two languages, you actually cannot translate or mediate those two cultures. Well, so that means that if you are becoming a real translator, that means that you will be a specialist of cultural communication or you become a cultural mediator. So, with that understanding culture, it is not possible to master language and you cannot be quality. You cannot do quality translation. I'm going to come back to this point later. For example, the narrative of why you have to wear a mask is different in, for example, East Asia and then in the US, for example. And that is a kind of interesting kind of saying about masks. So, to protect yourself from COVID-19, you wearing a mask, or to protect others, you wearing a mask. Why is it both? Think about it. Think about it. It's very important for you to think about it because master program is for you to think about it and find the answer. We teachers cannot give you answer. Right. How do you translate wearing the masks? Why do you have to wear a mask? Or maybe you don't have to wear a mask. But why do you think that way? So why wearing a mask? I think during COVID-19 pandemic, many countries created the regulation that you have to wear a mask. But I think, especially early time of COVID-19, many countries or people who live in many countries, except East Asia, they felt, why should I wear a mask? What's the point of wearing a mask? And I found a very interesting article from BBC. This was published like a day, two days ago. I don't remember. But anyway, recently, and there is an article which was written by a Singaporean and he precisely stated this. Step outside your door with a face mask in Hong Kong, Seoul or Tokyo, and you may well get this approving look. I can show you how people will look at you if you don't have a mask even now in Tokyo. Something like this. Okay. You will be treated as if you are criminal. It's unfortunately the truth. Am I right? Young and glorious. I'm not exaggerating. Exactly. Yes. Social pressure is really, really, really high there. So if you don't have a mask, you'll be treated as like a criminal. So you will wear a mask. And actually, I think this kind of understanding is shared by Hong Kongese and then Korean as well. So actually making trouble to others is considered as bad habit. So think about other people rather than yourself. So I have been educated by my parents, school teachers, everybody, that if you have a mask, if you wear a mask, you can protect other people to be infected by you. So I shouldn't spread those vibes to other people to protect other people have a mask. Right. This comes fast. So always perspective is not myself. But how I have to see the world is, I have to see from other perspectives. Okay, this is how kind of a Japanese language. It's more than the structure. And I don't speak Chinese, so I cannot speak for Chinese, but as a culture, this is shared. And as a language actually structured in Japanese language, so we often omit subject or second persona, so that the subject like I is not so important in the Japanese language and Japanese culture. So if you don't wear a mask in Japan or Hong Kong or so people interpret or translate it is a meaning that you are not a considerable person. So there is a discontext and imagine if you have to translate some text, which refers to mask written in Japanese or Chinese, they have to translate it into English. So actually, philosophy behind or culture behind is very different, I believe. And how would you translate this context or philosophy behind, because if you translate just word or sentence, actually your audience will not get what you really want to write or what you really want to translate. And one, actually, to translate something is a very, very tough, difficult thing to do. That's why you need to study at the master level, especially place like a source, because it's very monitoring and a much culture. Depending on what kind of culture habit you are used to do this might lead you to behave in a different way. That's why we are researching on 17 language communities in London. Because as I already explained, even if I get the same information, actually, how we understand that information is very different. So as a result, how we behave based on those information will be different. When you translate, for example, English COVID rules into another language, you need to understand this. Otherwise, your translation will not work for your reader target audience. That's how translation studies people call because it's not about really word or language. It's about culture and the philosophy behind. So as a translator, you have to understand at least two languages and two cultures and philosophies very well. By learning translation series, I think already Gloria pointed out, translation series, cultural translation, and a practical translation, you will learn all these crucial elements at source. Because we offer not only languages, but linguistics, a translation studies, modules, and also philosophy and history, so on. So hopefully, you can master not only languages, but also cultural and philosophical aspects. So these are the people who presented today and if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you. Right. Imagine, could I ask you to facilitate Q&A, please? Any questions are welcome. Someone's just saying thank you for your hard work. But I just wondered whether you had any tips for anybody applying to the department. Could you please repeat the question? I'm sorry. Sure. So there's no questions at the moment, but I just wondered if you had any kind of tips for applying? Oh, tips for applying for our programs. Great. Maybe Chris, Jan, Gloria. Is it for linguistics or translation? Anyway, maybe Chris. I mean, frankly, the number one tip is work as hard as you can in your VA and get a good result. And then we will welcome you with open arms. Of course, in addition to that is, you know, in your application materials show us, give us evidence for your interest in linguistics or translation. What questions have you been considering? What linguistic or translation related questions have you been considering? What have you read? What interests did you most about what you've read? These kinds of things show us that you have a serious and genuine interest in the subject you're applying for. Gloria, do you want to add? I think we have a question asking whether they can do an MA in translation as a part-time student. Yes, you can. For a part-time student, I think you need to spend two years working. Yeah, or three years. Yeah, all three years. Yeah. They're asking whether the classes that they must attend in person. This particular year is, yeah, this year is still online, but next year will probably be in-person classes, right? Okay, that's okay. Imagining will facilitate the questions. Sorry, can I just brief you on the full-time? I think it's an interesting discussion. It might be useful to take it actually outside of here because it partly depends on the flexibility of your employer, I think, because whether it's in-person meetings or online meetings, the schedule might be the same set. The moment we have lots of pre-recorded lectures, which you can watch whenever, so that's perfectly compatible with holding a full-time job. There are also seminars, which are, mine are Tuesday at 11 and Tuesday at 1. And if you have a full-time job, that's out and you can't, you know, you have to come to these seminars. So I think it depends how much leeway your employer has and then, you know, which part of them is it, two years or three years, but it will involve, I think, at least one day where you would have to be able not to work or at least work around the schedule. But I'm happy or any of us are happy to discuss your particular case in more detail. And so full linguistics and intensive language, can we apply if we don't have a basis in that language? Yes, the answer is yes, you can be a beginner. But also you can be more advanced. We cater to most levels for most of the languages. And can they go on summer abroad? For every language, I don't know, but for most, for most certainly, yeah, yeah. I know best about Arabic and there we have a summer abroad in Jordan. Level of language are we expected to have for an MA translation? In my case, it's Japanese. Sorry, could you repeat the first part? What level of language are we expected to have for an MA translation? In my case, it's Japanese. Japanese. Thank you very much for your question. So if you plan to translate from English into Japanese, you need to have JLPT2. And if it's opposite from Japanese into English and then JLPT3. But if you have any further questions, please just email me. Thank you. Great. And then we have another question. Do you cover translation techniques like bilateral interpreting and I'm not quite sure about the pronunciation of that because I'm not a linguist, sorry. I think the audience is asking about interpreting, different forms of interpreting. I think we only have one course on interpreting that is between Chinese and English. So yeah, it's not really facilitated for other language pair. Another one. So I'm very interested in the pathway language documentation and description. I would like to know if fieldwork is severely affected because of COVID. I can speak to that. And the answer is yes. Very, very sad. From March 2020 for a year or two years, it was really difficult. We have lots of, like we have researchers like postdocs who really are struggling. Our PhD students, we all ask them now to have a plan B to think what happens if I can't travel, what can I do. But now it's better. So I have a small document, a description project if you like, in southern Kenya. I went out with the team in February and the first five and we're going again out in April and I was supposed to in the summer of 2020. So it was really, you know, hit badly. So we are now replanning and reconstituting putting the project back together to make sure that it happens. So I think, you know, at the moment it looks much better than a year or two years ago. But also for the masters of course you don't have to do fieldwork. So I think the students are slightly sheltered from that because I mean you can but if it's a full time program it's very intensive, and there's no expectation that you have original data. So it's been in that sense you're fine but I if things go to continue the way they are going now I think it will be less of a problem going forward. Thank you. I have a couple of questions. So I've accepted my offer to study MA linguistics. I have a BA in Arabic and Persian. Do you have staff specialized in Arabic dialects more precisely North African that could guide with my dissertation. Yeah, I've got good news for you Alexandra that I, Arabic, the linguistics of Arabic dollars is this is exactly what I specialize in. I've got a lot of work on Maltese which from a linguistic point of view is is North African Arabic so yeah sounds great. I would love to love to work with you on that. I saw you had another question. No, it wasn't you or someone else so I'll let I'll let him do that. Yeah. Chris, sorry to disturb you. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I sure. I don't want to speak for Asia but she's mainly she works on Berber, which is a different North African language. Not sure she actually speaks Arabic. But I don't, I definitely have, she mainly works on Berber. But yeah, obviously she has a lot of expertise in that area as well. Yeah. Yes. Sorry. No, no, no, no problem. So we've got one second last question from Rainie. Is it possible if I apply for MA translation but both English and other languages and not my first language? Yes. Yes. Great. That was easy. And one last question from Phyllis. Can I transfer from MA linguistics to MA linguistics and intensive languages if I already received an offer of MA linguistics? Yes. That's no problem at all. I mean, it's, it's no bad thing if you do it before you come, but even if you wanted to do it in the first week you were here, that would also be possible. But it's probably better to do it. Get in touch with admissions beforehand and get it all sorted before you come. Great. Just one last question that's coming. I was also wondering for students to choose the pathway, LDD, are their dissertations should be closely related to LDD, even if they do not have original data? Yes. Yes, I think so. So, and LDD, it's, it's quite broad. So it goes back to what Chris says earlier, there's, there's a fieldwork, a description, structural element, but there's also a strong applied social linguistic component. So in LDD people can also work on language revitalization, language policy frameworks, or indeed if you're on the structural side, it might be, it might be secondary data from the literature. There's a lot of archives and danger of language archives now, which essentially a data depository so you can work with those data, or maybe have a small empirical project in London, we've seen London's linguistic complexity. So that that might possible or indeed a small fieldwork project but it would be small just because at least the full time version of the program is very, very tight. But the dissertations should link to LDD in different ways, but it doesn't have to include original data. I think that's about the right position. Thanks so much. I think that's all the questions. Thanks so much to everyone who attended and all our panelists today. And I just stopped recording and yeah. Thanks so much for coming and have a good day. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you everybody. Thank you.