DEA Hiring Ebonics Translators

7 September 2010

Two weeks ago various news outlets reported that the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is hiring a number of translators ("linguists" in government parlance) for Ebonics (African-American Vernacular English or AAVE), so they can better understand recorded conversations of African-American drug dealers.

Professor of linguistics John McWhorter wades into the discussion in this September 6 interview on NPR. McWhorter is absolutely correct in what he says about AAVE being a dialect of English that is intrinsically no better or worse than standard American English. But he, like many of the commentators, miss the point that people who are skilled in the dialect are probably not what the DEA needs.

While McWhorter is right to point out the subtle differences in meaning that different grammatical constructions can convey, these are not the impediment to understanding that is facing the DEA. The dialectal differences between AAVE and standard English are not all that great. The problem is that drug dealers talk in a rapidly changing cant and employ codes to disguise what they’re speaking about. Cryptographers and ex-drug dealers who know the argot of the drug corner are what’s needed.

Here is a sample of what the translators would more likely be faced with. This example, from opening scene of episode 7, season 1 of the television show The Wire, is fictional, but it gets the point across that the problem in comprehension is not dialect, but slang and code. In the scene, a group of detectives are listening to a recording of a wiretapped drug conversation. Two of the detectives, Carver and Freamon, are black. The others are white. Note that it is (very) white Pryzbylewski, who in the show is continually seen working on puzzles, who is most adept at deciphering the coded messages:

Wire Voice: Low man scrapped yo. He all the way down. But we going to start fresh on the latest tomorrow, down from up North.

Herc: No problem.

Pryzbylewski: No problem?

Herc: Yeah, yo’s talkin’ about some guy named Lohman, who’s down with the strep, like he’s sick.

McNulty: And the last part?

Herc: And the last part is something about how he’s gonna to start up a Fashion Lady or some shit.

Carver: Fashion Lady?

Herc: I’m fluent in the Perkins Homes and Latrobe Towers dialects, but I haven’t quite mastered the Franklin Terrace.

Pryzbylewski: He’s saying they’re sold out in the low rises so tomorrow they’re gonna start fresh with a new package.

McNulty: That’s what you hear?

Freamon: Listen again.

Wire: Low man scrapped, yo.

Freamon: Low man, meaning the low-rise pit.

Wire: He all the way down.

Freamon: Is down to scraps on the last package.

Wire: But we going to start fresh on the latest tomorrow, down from up North.

Freamon: Tomorrow, he’ll start fresh on the latest package.

Carver: Damn, how you all hear it so good?

Pryzbylewski: “Gold Coast slave ship bound for cotton fields sold in a market down in New Orleans.”

Herc: What the fuck is that?

Pryzbylewski: Rolling Stones. First two lines to “Brown Sugar.” I bet you’ve heard that song five hundred times, but you never knew, right? I used to put my head to the stereo speaker and play that record over and over.

Carver: That explains a lot, actually.

Wire: So, wait on black, yo?

Carver: What’s white on black?

Herc: Wait on black, right? Even I heard that shit.

Pryzbylewski: Black’s code for Stinkum. We picked that up once we got on his pager.

Freamon: Now, there’s gonna be a re-up of four G-packs in the low-rise court. Stinkum is on the re-up and it’s gonna go down around noon.

McNulty: Are you sure about all that?

[Freamon writes a pager message on a piece of paper, “5-21-07-1111”, and hands it to McNulty. Herc and Carver look at it quizzically.]

Pryzbylewski: Turn it upside down.

[The paper now reads, “1111-LO-12-S”.]

Pryzbylewski: Four hash marks in a row, one for each G-pack.

McNulty: “LO” for low rises.

Herc: “12” for the time.

Carver: “S” for Stinkum.

McNulty: How long to figure that out?

Pryzbylewski: Four or five hours.

Carver: You sit here looking at beeper messages for five hours at a time?

Pryzbylewski: I don’t know, it’s kinda fun figuring shit out.

Reference Books in Jail, Prison, Hoosegow, Clink, Big House

5 September 2010

A Canadian federal judge in Vancouver has ruled that a prisoner is entitled to his own copy of a thesaurus, according to the Montreal Gazette. The judge ruled that a thesaurus is an “educational text” and not a “personal” book and that prison authorities should fork over the $23.14 to buy the Oxford University Press paperback for the prisoner. Prisoners in Canada have a personal expenditure budget, but this prisoner was over his limit and therefore submitted the invoice to the prison as an educational cost, which doesn’t fall under the “personal” category. Prison authorities denied the purchase, saying that thesauruses were available in the prison library.

The judge also cited the Humpty Dumpty scene from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass in his decision.

(Hat Tip: Martin Laplante, DSNA mailing list)

Future of the Print OED

31 August 2010

The demise of the print version of the Oxford English Dictionary has been greatly exaggerated, or at least the obituary is premature. Several news articles in recent days have run with the statement that the third edition of the OED will not be printed, remaining an online resource only. According to these sources, the size of the dictionary (the second edition consisted of twenty volumes) and the decline of the print dictionary market in favor of the online market necessitated this decision.

But actually no such decision has been made and will probably not be made for another decade. Here is the official statement from Oxford University Press, via Jesse Sheidlower’s personal blog.

If I had to speculate, I would predict that there will be a print edition, but aimed at presentation copies and for those who have money to burn and like the ego boost that impressive-looking books filling their shelves gives them. The print runs will be small, and perhaps printed on demand. Other than possibly “college” or “pocket” dictionaries for quick reference, I just don’t see a market for print dictionaries. I don’t believe that “print is dead” (print is and will remain a very useful technological form), but certain classes of printed material certainly are dying, and dictionaries and similar reference books are among them.

A Whorfian Summary

31 August 2010

It is a few days old, but I just came across this New York Times article by Guy Deutscher. It is an excellent summation of how linguistic relativity (the Sapir-Whorf theory, which should really be called just the Whorf theory as Sapir really had nothing to do with it) is and is not valid.

I particularly like the quote from Roman Jakobson that, “Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.”

(Hat tip to Arts and Letters Daily)

Video Friday: Stephen Fry on Swearing

27 August 2010

Not much to say, other than seeing a young Hugh Laurie doing comedy is also fun. (Why is it that comedians so often turn out to be fine dramatic actors, but the reverse is usually not the case.) Enjoy.

(Hat tip to Pharyngula)