Test entry!

A sacrifice of bonsai!

Just metaphors you haven't mixed

• Have you ever been burned by bacteria?
• Have you ever dug watering holes by a river?
• Has a coffee bar ever cared for morning if it didn't sleep?

Sounds familiar? If none of the above sounds familiar to you, obviously you don't stay in the same Singapore as these copywriters do.

And you'd know that that mee siam is served with cockles.

Germans write better English

After two years of planning, Singapore 2006 is finally happening. From the unprecedented display of political correctness in the inaugural Singapore Biennale to the Orwellian combination of photo portraits and the tagline, “We are happy to have you here," the organisers plan to leave no doubt in the minds of the 16,000 visitors that the country does not know the meaning of subtlety.

With projects of such a national scale, the triumvirate priorities of corporate publicity are usually (though not logically), 1) hyperbole, 2) self-congratulation and 3) the cutting of unnecessary costs, such as the hiring of good copywriters.

The following is the concluding paragraph from the Introduction to the exhibition programme for All The Best: The Deutschbank Collection and Zaha Hadid:

“Global City—World of Opportunities”: this is Singapore’s motto on the occasion of the IMF World Bank Meetings. The title “All the Best” not only means that “the best”—the highlights of the Deutsche Bank Collection—is being shown: it is also stands for personal yearnings, social alternatives, and global perspectives. In a synthesis of avant-garde exhibition design, and young controversial works, this third anniversary show of the Deutsche Bank Collection reflects the fears and hopes of the 21st century. Ultimately, it also expresses a wish not just for art, but for the future of our global society: “All the best.”

This is a bad combination of two over-earnest domains——the kitschy, patronising language of local English-language art scene, and jargon from the corporate sphere. There isn't "synthesis" between exhibition design and the actual works of art, unless one believed in the symbiotic relationship between bread and jam; calling the controversial works “young” doesn't work as personification either. Explaining “All the Best” as “personal yearnings, social alternatives, and global perspectives” is hardly artistic conceit.

Only in Brobdingnag

I recently discovered that HPB's HealthZone, Southeast Asia's only one-stop healthy lifestyle exhibition centre, features a "life-size Healthy Diet Pyramid", to educate visitors on how to develop a healthy eating lifestyle.

And I wondered to myself, what should a real-life Healthy Diet Pyramid should look like?

Dumberer

Perhaps the animal known as the Politically-correct is a close relation to the species known as the Socially-inadequate. After all, both share the trait of fearing offence, the only distinction between them being that the former is far less conflicted about using politeness to seek attention.

It is easy to mistake one for the other. Take, for example, this letter from the Forum page of the July 4 Straits Times, about a recent publicity poster by Singapore Association for the Deaf:

July 4, 2006

Better ways to tell the public that the deaf can contribute to society

I would like to bring to attention an advertisement by the Singapore Association for the Deaf (SADeaf) that I have seen displayed at a bus stop, which I am rather perturbed by.

The advertisement shows a man who is hearing impaired climbing a wall with a smile on his face and the following text:

'I'm an engineering graduate. I'm a teacher. I'm a sportsman.

'I'm deaf. But I'm certainly not dumb and mute.'

While I understand that SADeaf is trying to create awareness of the hearing impaired, that they have capabilities and skills the public cannot underestimate, I question the ethicality of the advertisement.

Besides telling us that the hearing impaired are capable of doing things like normal people, there seems to be another subtle message hidden within.

Is the advertisement telling the public that the dumb and mute are not capable people, even when compared to the deaf?

Under the Singapore Code of Advertising Practice, 'advertisements should not downplay the importance of having a caring and compassionate attitude for the less fortunate members of the community'. They should also not 'unfairly attack or discredit other products, organisations or professions directly or by implication'.

I feel the advertisement by SADeaf has breached these rules because while it is helping one segment of the disabled, it is done at the expense of another (unfairly discrediting the dumb and mute).

Where is the ‘caring and compassionate attitude for the less fortunate members of the community’?

It may not be intentional but were there no care taken by its sponsors to ensure the integrity of the advertisement?

How did ClearChannel, an advertising space provider and one of the sponsors of the advertisement, allow this advertisement to pass through?

Perhaps SADeaf wanted so much to push its intended message across that it unconsciously ignored the other degrading message, but I am certain that there are better ways to tell the public that the deaf can contribute to society.

Jason Too Jun Long

And the reply:

July 6, 2006

Singapore Association for the Deaf clarifies messages in poster

The Singapore Association for the Deaf (SADeaf) would like to thank Mr Jason Too Jun Long for his feedback on the advertisement which shows a man who is deaf climbing a wall with a smile.

The SADeaf would like to highlight that there are no subtle messages hidden in the poster. In fact, the text was intended to convey two simple messages:

1. “I’m an engineering graduate. I’m a teacher. I’m a sportsman.”
What we meant is the deaf can achieve, if given equal opportunities.

2. “I’m deaf. But I’m certainly not dumb and mute.” Members of the deaf community who prefer to use signs as a means of communication, on many occasions are referred to as “deaf and dumb” or “deaf and mute” which literally means “unable to hear and unable to speak”. Hence, we want to make it clear that “being unable to hear does not equate unable to speak”. The fact is the deaf can articulate. Under no circumstances is SADeaf discrediting or drawing comparisons directly or by implication. Any misunderstanding caused is regretted.

Jenny Ho (Mrs), Executive Director, SADeaf

I must be an insensitive, anachronistic boor, because like Mr Jason Too I wasn’t aware that being called mute was considered stigmatisation. Like my mother, I thought Deaf and Dumb was a technical, descriptive, and widely-accepted term. Nor did I know that being deaf was a superior condition to being mute.

SADeaf's publicity backfired not because of an unmoved, insensitive public; it failed because their tagline was really about propriety, and not real issues. (I had a rough episode this week writing a press release peppered with the acronym "PWD", referring to People with Disabilities. Apparently, it's more acceptable than the simple "disabled people". Is dehumanising people, by reducing them to acronyms, really better than to risk subhumanising them by being concise?)

Martin Amis, who famously described prejudices as cliches and "secondhand hatreds", praised (rightly or wrongly) fellow writer Saul Bellow’s writing as "a source of constant pleasure because of its manifest immunity to all false consciousness." Immunity to all false consciousness. That’s an ideal we can all work towards, I think.

The sound of one hand clapping

The Psalmist writes, "Mercy and faith have come together; righteousness and peace have given one another a kiss." A beautifully-constructed turn-of-phrase makes meaning immediate and obvious; conversely, a bad anthropomorphism makes one desire a nice scalp massage.

Our Deputy Prime Minister, congratulating the Raffles Medical Group for making the medical arts available to the well-heeled, sees in Bangkok's plush Bumrungrad Hospital an exemplar of success. So he says,

Thailand sees an estimated one million foreign patients a year. The lion’s share goes to the Bumrungrad Hospital, which has almost single-handedly come to define medical tourism in Asia. ... [After the Asian financial crisis of 1997,]... domestic demand for private healthcare collapsed, the Baht lost 60 per cent of its value against the US dollar, and many new hospitals built just before the crisis in anticipation of growing local demand, faced two choices – they could either fold up or seek new markets overseas. Those who took the latter path succeeded, exploiting the growing global demand for good healthcare as well as the cheap Baht.

Actually, I don't quite know what to make of "almost single-handedly" in this passage. Did Wong mean that Bumrungrad owed only a little of its commercial success to government funding? I mean, we all know how closely the Thai government is closely tied to business interests, but what would a publicly-listed company with rich, captive clients want with fiscal injection...?

But let me guess. The speechwriter clipped from these articles.

"Almost single-handedly", combined with "has come to define". Brilliant!

English speakers leave Singapore in droves: Minister

In an effort to appear plugged in to current affairs, here's a post about the ongoing Speak Good English Campaign (or SGEM, which is not to be confused with the Go-the-Extra-Mile for Service movement, or GEMS). Despite that I don't want to establish a tradition of criticising spoken English because 1) rules for spoken words is (and should) be looser than written text, 2) for this reason, throwfurther is dedicated to written rather than spoken English, and 3) nitpicking already is a road well-travelled.

Anyway, the prepared text of Rear-Admiral Lui Tuck Yew's speech at the Launch of SGEM offers an interesting specimen of bad English we can take a look at. I note that Lui's actual speech was improvised, and so would be somewhat different from the linked text--and irrelevant to this blog.

Paragraph 6 reads,

Singapore’s demographic landscape is changing fast. In 1996, 1 in 3 pupils in Primary One came from homes where English was the main language. Now, 1 in 2 pupils in Primary One speak mostly English at home. However, we realise that many Singaporeans are not aware that they are not speaking Standard English. This in turn impacts the way their children pick up English.

Wordiness and the tacky use of "impact" aside, here's an example of that vulgar desire to impress by means of big words.

"Demographic landscape" is just meaningless, inflated padding. First of all, population and geography are clearly too related in meaning to pair up without muddling. ("Did you leave move from Hougang to Jurong West because of the recent earthquakes?") More obviously, it isn't actually our population that's changing--it's our use of language that's changing. ("Nah, I just had enough of Mr Low Thia Khiang's English.")

More important than an conscious effort to get our tenses, articles and subject-verb agreements right, I think, is the conscious effort mean what we say.