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Surprise Arabic Graffiti Stuns Homeland
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This might be one of the most creative uses of language ever seen.
The award-winning series Homeland, often criticized for its portrayals of Arabs and Muslims, got a taste of its own medicine. In a recent episode, the star of the series walked past a wall in a Syrian refugee camp where Arabic words were sprayed: Homeland is racist.
Among other graffiti shown was this: "This show does not represent the views of the artists."
The story of how three Arab artists pulled off this feat is fascinating. They told The Washington Post that they were asked to paint graffiti so they wrote what they did to help counter "inaccurate, undifferentiated and highly biased depiction of Arabs, Pakistanis, and Afghans... It's very important for us to address the idea that this kind of stereotyping is very dangerous because it helps form people's perceptions of an entire region, a huge region, which in turn affects foreign policy."
And the response of Homeland's co-creator, Alex Gansa? "We wish we'd caught these images before they made it to air. However, as 'Homeland' always strives to be subversive in its own right and a stimulus for conversation, we can't help but admire this act of artistic sabotage."
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New Research Sheds Light on Simultaneous Interpreting
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It seems perhaps you can't efficiently enhance working memory in interpreter training. Yet strong language proficiency in your second language affects your working memory span.
That at least is a conclusion in a recent study. Whether we are all born with a certain degree of strong or weak working memory isn't clear, but if this research paper is accurate, perhaps we might want to be training interpreters to work on their language proficiency in their weaker language rather than on their memory skills...
Thought provoking and informative!
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