Eurovision 2011 report

The Eurovision Song Contest 2011 held in Düsseldorf pulled in 12.7 million UK viewers on Saturday - that's a third more than last year. It could be that this year we fielded an entry who had actually previously released a song, let alone three albums, rather than Joe Bloggs, 48, from Barnsley. I would rather put it down to the fact that it was the second time in a row that Western Europe had snatched the contest back for about a decade, following a long stretch of Eastern bloc-voting...you know, the old "sorry we went to war with your country, here's twelve points to say sorry." 

The national jury element of voting was reintroduced in 2009 in an attempt to break bloc voting and make the contest fairer by having a panel of politically unbiased professionals judge the quality of the song, rather than the nationality of its singers. By combining the jury vote with a public televote, each comprising 50% of the total vote, abracadabra, Norway won, followed by Germany the next year. Hallelujah, Europe is in equilibrium once again. Oh wait, no it isn't.

The split voting table reveals that public votes alone mean that Norway still would have won by miles. However, with a pure jury vote, the UK's 2009 entry came third (that time Andrew Lloyd Webber got involved), rather than tenth which is how the European public deemed us. Eventually, we came fifth after combining the two votes, a great improvement after sending Jemini (Royaume-Uni: nil points) and Scooch (Royaume Uni: mais c'est quoi ça?? qu'est-ce qui se passe!)

It was Azerbaijan who took the crown this year with a fairly reasonable, albeit soppy, love song (see right). This will be the first time the contest won't be held in Europe. The 2004 contest in Turkey got away with it by holding it on the European side of Istanbul. It will also be the first time the contest will be held in a country with several active military conflicts, reports Cafe Babel, as Azerbaijan is home to several disputed territories and ongoing military conflicts in Chechnya, South Ossetia and Dagestan. Next year will be interesting then.

The reason I was just moaning about bloc voting and how it has apparently been resolved is that the vast majority of Azerbaijan’s points came from eastern European countries. The only Western European country to give Azerbaijan 12 points was Malta, and if you saw their entry this year, you would question their legitimacy in judging musical talent.

Eastern bloc countries now make up more than half of the participants and this has resulted in a shift of weighting towards the east. Russia's win in 2008 prompted long time Eurovision commentator, Terry Wogan, to quit after the country received huge numbers of votes from former USSR states and virtually none from western Europe.

After a two year absence, bloc voting is back, but let's also take into account that the 2011 top ten was equally composed of Western and European countries. Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland and Germany came second, third, fifth, eighth and tenth respectively. So was it really worth re-introducing a national jury, or should we just ban Eastern Europe from entering the contest, because it couldn't possibly be due to any other factor such as sharing a similar cultural background or taste in music.

Bilingualism in Wales - is it just for show?

There have been a fair number of stories in recent years about the English and Welsh on road signs not quite matching up. The latest one is at a Tesco with the arrow for "Exit" pointing right, and "Allanfa" (Welsh for exit) pointing left. 

In the same town, the local council requested a translation by email for a sign which read in English: "No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only". They then received an automated reply, which they assumed was the translation into Welsh, and put it on the sign. Unfortunately the sign actually read in Welsh: "I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated."

There's no harm in giving motorists something to chuckle about, but when it comes to translating instructions for pedestrians on crossing the road, it's best not to give conflicting information by telling English speakers to look left and Welsh speakers to look right in Central Cardiff.

So far, we've seen mistranslations which are at least comprehensible, but translation into gibberish just takes the biscuit, even if that's what Welsh may look like to the non native eye. A sign that in English read "pupils' and staff entrance" at a school in Wrexham included a word for staff meaning "wooden stave".

Finally, one of my favourites, was a sign telling cyclists in Cardiff to dismount in English, but that they had problems with an inflamed bladder in Welsh. 

We're all human. We all make mistakes. However, it does call into question the competence of council staff but perhaps more importantly the worthiness of bilingualism in official domains. These mistranslations could have easily been dispelled with a simple proofreading. Yet, councils seem to just be throwing thousand of pounds at bilingualism, without a second thought on how well it is spent, to satisfy the Welsh Language Board who as you can imagine isn't too pleased about these continuous errors. They even offer free translations on their website to businesses to help promote their use of the language and attract Welsh-speaking customers. 

I am by no means against bilingualism in Welsh; I did well in my Welsh GCSE. Nevertheless, if we are going to see our taxes spent on the renaissance of cymraegophonous culture (yes, I did invent that word), let's see it done properly. Otherwise it undermines the translation industry, it undermines native Welsh speakers and it undermines multiculturalism.