The last month has seen more diamonds of economic news than there are in Cullinan mine. While British retail remains patchy, UK and other European companies selling “luxury” have done phenomenally well on the global stage. They have reaped dividends of promotion in emerging economies, especially in the Asia-Pacific region, targeting High Net Worth Individuals or those aspiring to perceived luxury.

Translation plays no small part in this global success: research has shown that the majority of consumers will only buy from websites with information presented in their language. This effect becomes more pronounced the higher the value of the product or service. (see Can’t Read, Won’t Buy: Why Language Matters, Common Sense Advisory)

A few news snippets illustrate the trend:

Paul Smith smartens up profits
Paul Smith, the fashion designer famed for his smart suits and signature rainbow stripes, has notched up a 31 per cent increase in pre-tax profits…
Turnover increased 15 per cent to £171.6m, but international sales were the star performer, rising 16 per cent in Europe, and 15.5 per cent in the rest of the world. By contrast, UK sales rose by just over 7 per cent.
Financial Times

Bentley leads convoy for mini-recovery in UK car production
December PMI figures and Bentley’s 37% global sales rise bring a little new year cheer to European stockmarkets
The luxury carmaker Bentley has defied the economic gloom with a 37% surge in global sales, producing a sparkling set of figures for 2011, powered by rising sales to China and the United States. It has forecast strong growth this year.
The Guardian

Ferragamo takes a sexy step on the red carpet
Asia-Pacific accounts for 36 percent of Salvatore Ferragamo’s global sales from January to September 2011. Paul Cadman, Ferragamo’s regional chief executive officer for Asia Pacific, says “The biggest challenge we foresee is how we will be able to keep up with the demand for our products given our forecast for the region for 2012. Our China market alone grew by 50 percent from January to September of 2011 as compared to the same period in 2010. Growth is what we anticipate for the region with our expansion plans, especially in China.”
The Philippine Star

China boosts Rolls Royce sales
Rolls-Royce said sales in Asia-Pacific grew 47pc in 2011. China is now its largest market. Sales in Germany and Russia more than doubled. Torsten Müller-Ötvös, chief executive, said “Our business is in excellent shape. We are developing our dealer network, moving into new markets like South America”
Daily Telegraph

China: number one for Rolls-Royce
Rolls-Roycerevealed that in 2011, for the first time ever, China over took the US as its biggest market. Arndt Ellinghorst, an analyst at Credit Suisse, pointed to South Korea, Turkey and South America as regions where demand was likely to expand rapidly. The proportion of sales across the luxury vehicle universe from “non-traditional” markets could grow to 60-70 per cent of total sales, he added.
Financial Times beyondbrics blog

This trend is not just present in exports but also in sales within the UK – to those who have travelled here.

Foreign tourists have boosted profits at top London store Harvey Nichols by 32 percent. Harrods saw a 39 percent rise, with Chinese visitors spending an average of £3,500 per visit. With an eye on this market, Burberry has spent £20m upgrading its London stores. Angela Ahrendts, Burberry’s chief executive explained to the Financial Times recently, “When Chinese consumers travel, they spend six times more than when they stay at home. Saying ‘I bought this in London’ adds further cachet.”

The effect extends beyond London too, at least as far as the Oxfordshire town Bicester – which boasts the only station in the UK with signs signs translated into Chinese and Arabic. The designer outlet centre Bicester Village is now the UK’s third-biggest tourist shopping destination after Harrods and Selfridges. Visitor numbers are expected to exceed 5.5m in 2012, with 40 percent of shoppers coming from outside of the EU and some two-thirds coming from outside the UK.

So, what conclusions should we draw from all this?

First, any brand that considers its products positioned at the premium or luxury end of the continuum should start taking emerging markets seriously. Of course, Arabic, Russian and Japanese remain key languages to be addressing consumers in but the list is expanding to include Chinese, Brazilian Portuguese and more.

Secondly, the “blank slate” of these markets provides an opportunity for brand transformation and hegemony – I wrote last year about wealthy Chinese tourists and Clarks shoes.

Finally, the internet is a cost effective place to start. Many companies get a shock when they see the number of non-English speakers among their existing visitors, never mind potential new ones. Isn’t it about time we started speaking to this global audience in their language?

Meanwhile, the new year has brought a crop of online excerpts and short stories translated from Arabic to English via the Arabic Literature blog. Works include a short excerpt of Kamel Riahi’s al-Ghurila (The Gorilla), poems from Hussein Habasch and Joyce Mansour and a short story inspired by the Egyptian revolution from Hamdy El-Gazzar. The Arab Spring and its repercussions are also a dominant theme at the Beirut Book Fair.

The European Society of Authors is continuing to promote their annual “Finnegan’s List” in which well-known polyglot writers are asked to recommend titles by other writers deserving of wider translation. London author Adam Thirlwell gets one of the nominations. A PDF of the full list is available for download: Finnegan’s List [pdf].

One European author to obtain wider translation is Spaniard Javier Marías with seven titles from his backlist being translated into English at least, having been signed up by Penguin Modern Classics. The titles, which are all to be published at the beginning of August 2012, are All Souls, A Heart So White, Tomorrow in the Battle Think On Me, Dark Back of Time, When I was Mortal, The Man of Feeling and Written Lives.

As well as serving drinks to revolutionaries, the original Crown Tavern pub on Clerkenwell Green has the dubious reputation of having exhibited a mummified cat. Apparently during the 17th Century the cat “which some mason of John or Richard’s reign had cruelly buried alive in one of the walls of St. James’s Church, used to be solemnly shown there”.

Other mysterious events in and around Clerkenwell include the Cock Lane Haunting. The elaborate tale as thick as a modern day Eastenders plot began in 1762. It centred on a userer named Michael Kent who became romantically involved with his sister Fanny. After Fanny’s death from smallpox, Kent’s landlord Richard Parsons claimed to be haunted by the ghost of Fanny. She appeared to tell Parsons that Kent had poisoned her with arsenic. Samuel Johnson investigated the claims that led to Kent being suspected of murder. Eventually it was determined that Parson’s daughter had faked the haunting. Parsons was motivated by an ongoing financial dispute with Kent and was sent to prison for two years.

Ghost stories like this were probably an inspiration for the writer Charles Dickens who grew up in nearby Camden in the early 19th Century. Dickens father was sent to debtors prison and as a child Dickens experienced harsh poverty in London, which influenced his writing. At the time of writing Oliver Twist in the late 1830s Dickens was living in Holborn, and knew Clerkenwell well. He banked at the Finsbury Savings Bank, which you can see on Sekforde Street. Scenes from Oliver Twist when Fagin and The Artful Dodger introduce Oliver to the trade of picking pockets were set in Clerkenwell Green. Tribute has recently been paid to Dickens in Clerkenwell by the naming of The Betsy Trotwood pub on Farringdon Road after one of his characters from David Copperfield.

We have barely scratched the surface of the rich history Clerkenwell has to offer in these posts, other intriguing and creepy sites include the currently fairly uninspiring Spa Fields, which used to form part of the pleasure garden experience that made Clerkenwell such an attractive resort. But it gained a bad reputation by the 17th century so that the gentry required escorts to pass through. It became a burial ground in the 1780s, which was eventually shut down after fifty years by which time 8000 bodies had filled the tiny space.

As multilingual typesetters here at WorldAccent we were curious about the naming of Sans Walk. Does it have any connection to the history of sans serif fonts, given the connections locally to printing? Sadly our research has not uncovered any evidence of that. But nearby is the site of the Clerkenwell House of Detention, which between the 17th and 19th century was the site of various prisons, was destroyed by fire during the Gordon riots in 1780 and where a terrorist attack killed several people in 1867. Amongst its 18th Century inmates was Jack Sheppard, the notorious burglar and thief. Largely demolished in 1890, the prison’s perimeter wall and warden’s residence were left untouched along with the prison’s underground level. These underground cells were used as air raid shelters during World War Two. The site has more recently been used for filming of Oliver Twist, Sherlock Holmes and Spooks as well as a theatre production of Macbeth. Unsurprisingly, ghost stories abound here too with one telling of a little girl whose “heart-rending sobs reverberate from the inner depths of the jail”.

That concludes this round up of Clerkenwell history for now. We hope you’ve found it as enlightening as we have, and will see Clerkenwell’s streets and buildings in a new light. The EC1 Local History Trail [pdf] takes you on a tour of many of the sites mentioned, and is well worth a wander on a fine day. Also well worth a look is this map of The Clerkenwell Historic Trail [pdf]. Enjoy!

Illustration top from Oliver Twist: James Mahoney (1810-1879) (Scanned by Simsalabim) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons [CC-BY-SA-2.5], via Wikimedia Commons

Where would you find Russian revolutionaries in the early 1900s? The biographies of the future leaders of the Soviet Union show that they were men well travelled as it was not easy to organise left-wing parties in Tsarist Russia, and radicals were often forced into exile. I wrote last week about Clerkenwell’s radical history, and in 1902, the leading Bolshevik Vladimir Lenin came here. He set about publishing the revolutionary newspaper Iskra (The Spark) to be shipped back to Russia.

Lenin worked from an office at 37a Clerkenwell Green. The building had originated as a Welsh charity school and was later occupied by socialist publishers The Twentieth Century Press. Artist William Morris initially helped pay the rent. In 1933 the building became The Marx Memorial Library to mark fifty years since the death of Marx. The founders felt that a library would be an appropriate memorial as the world was then witnessing the sight of Nazis burning books in Germany. The library is still maintained today, holding an impressive collection and Lenin’s office has been preserved for visitors to take a tour.

The diaries of Lenin’s wife have been preserved for history and indicate that he hated it here at first, having no appetite for English food:

“We found that the Russian stomach is not easily adaptable to the ‘ox-tails,’ skate fried in fat, cake and other mysteries of English fare.” [quoted in Islington Now]

However Lenin reportedly grew to enjoy having a drink in the pubs around Clerkenwell Green in addition to riding on London’s open top buses. Some claim he took the young Joseph Stalin for a drink in 1903 at Clerkenwell Green’s The Crown and Anchor (now The Crown Tavern). Stalin was in London to attend the Second Congress of the Russian Democratic Labour Party but it has to be noted that these accounts are somewhat sketchy. The pub’s history also includes the filming in 2006 of scenes from ‘Notes on a Scandal’, with Dame Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett; a fact that is probably more easily verified!

Not a movie star or a revolutionary, but a very notable and fascinating figure from Clerkenwell history is “the musical small-coal man”. Thomas Britton lived near Clerkenwell Green in the decades either side of 1700. Britton did his coal round in the morning before joining local literati to discuss books and learning at a booksellers on Paternaster Row.

His home was a former stable at the corner of Aylesbury Street and Jerusalem Passage. The ground floor was used to store coal while he lived in a single room above, reached by an external ladder. From this home he ran a musical club on Thursday evenings for about forty years. In October 1714 a contemporary newspaper, The British Mercury, described him as “universally known to all Lovers of Musick, of what Quality soever”.  Coffee was served while music was performed, attracting great musicians as members including the composer Handel. The influential royalist pamphleteer Roger L’Estrange was among the founder members of his ensemble.

Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver’s Travels, alludes to Britton in his poem “A Description of the Morning”:

“The Smallcoal-Man was heard with Cadence deep,
‘Till drown’d in Shriller Notes of Chimney-Sweep.”

Nineteen century author John Hawkins later pointed out the historic significance of Britton’s “musical club” in molding the concept of the public concert:

“The truth is, it was nothing less than a musical concert; and so much more does it merit our attention, as it was the first meeting of the kind, and the undoubted parent of some of the most celebrated concerts in London.”

Perhaps the next time crowds gather for a gig in Victoria Park, they should reflect on the legacy of Britton the musical coal-man. He died in 1714 leaving behind a large collection of books, fine musical instruments and sheet music.

Enjoyed this? Read our previous posts on Clerkenwell history: ghosts, cows, medical monks and revolution and Clerkenwell Green: radical centre & relaxing spa springs

Coming up next the next instalment of our history of Clerkenwell: pickpockets, a mysterious mummified cat and a feigned haunting…

The Sun says Aston Villa “refused to give up the ghost”. Wendy Richard calls her EastEnders character Pauline Fowler “the salt of the earth”. The England cricket coach tells reporters, “You can’t put words in my mouth.” Daily Mirror fashion pages call Tilda Swinton “a law unto herself”.

Now today’s Observer is going even further: it carries a full page article proclaiming “This is the age of the translator”. This marks the same anniversary and the recent appetite in the English-speaking world for “foreign fiction”, such as the Millennium trilogy by Steig Larsson, claiming “2011 has been an extraordinary year for the art of translation” But this is more than a paean to translation. The article also attempts to deconstruct what Google Translate does in contrast to what a “proper” human translator does, and quoting David Bellos (author of the excellent Is That A Fish In Your Ear?) saying

“Translation is what you get, but translation isn’t really what Google does. It’s like the difference between engineering and knowledge. An engineering solution is to make something work, but the way you make it work doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the underlying things. Airplanes do not work the way birds fly.”

Clerkenwell as a haven from the urban bustle? It may be hard to believe it now, but Clerkenwell was once considered to be a country retreat from the city. King John stayed for a break in the Clerkenwell Priory in 1212. The area was also renowned for its relaxing spa springs and pleasure gardens during the 13th Century but its tranquility would soon be broken.

The sanctuary was disrupted when the Priory was mostly destroyed by fire during The Peasants’ Revolt in 1381. The rebels had also burnt down the Savoy Palace and stormed the Tower of London. One of the peasants’ leaders, Wat Tyler of Maidstone, met with Richard II at Smithfield in Clerkenwell. He demanded the end of Lordships and that all men should be free.

What precisely was said between Wat Tyler and the King is largely hearsay, mostly as recorded by supporters of the King. But it is historical fact that Tyler was attacked and mortally wounded – perhaps after a scuffle broke out or possibly as part of a plot – by the Mayor of London and the King’s men. One account of the time recounts he was taken to a hospital for the poor (St. Bartholomew’s) but the Mayor went after him. After Tyler’s death, the King promised the rebels reform while the Mayor simultaneously raised a militia to surpress them. The rebels, gathered on St John’s Fields, dispersed although many of the leaders were pursued and executed in grisly fashion.

The Priory and the landmark St John’s Gate were rebuilt, being completed by 1504. But in 1536 Henry VIII began the process of the dissolution of the monasteries. The monarch became the leader of the Church of England and separated the church from the Pope’s authority in Rome. The process involved the closing of monasteries, convents and priories while Henry disposed of their assets. Most of the remaining Knights Hospitaliers of Clerkenwell went to Malta, but three who remained were executed as traitors. Clerkenwell Priory was sold off to The Duke of Northumberland for £1,000. Henry VIII’s daughter, Mary I, briefly reinstated Catholicism and the Priory reverted to its religious purpose. It has had several owners and uses since, including as a Presbyterian Meeting House. St John’s Gate is now the only remaining part of the structure.

The area was also home to a group of “Lollards” in the 15th Century, part of a religious and political movement who challenged the church’s doctrine of the sacrament, opposed capital punishment and rejected religious celibacy. The group were dismissed as heretics and repressed, one member being burnt at the stake in 1410. Their beliefs had some overlaps with later Protestant groups.

Tyler’s radical influence reverberated in Clerkenwell again when anti-Royalist Oliver Cromwell took up residence near Clerkenwell Green in the 17th Century. He owned a house on Clerkenwell Close, just off Clerkenwell Green. Izaak Walton also lived just off the Green, where he wrote the famous book The Compleat Angler which was first published in 1653.

In 1675, a Mr Pinks had recorded numerous bowling-greens in Bowling Green Lane, both open and covered, and laid with turf or gravel. The reputation of the area as a fashionable resort declined however during the Industrial Revolution as Clerkenwell became a centre of the printing industry and breweries. Poverty was on the rise creating fertile ground for The Chartist movement of the 19th Century, which campaigned for democratic inclusion and the citizenship rights. An account of the historic Chartist demonstration of 10 April 1848 describes the march’s progress through Clerkenwell on its way to Kennington Common:

“The churchwardens of Clerkenwell assembled the special constables of the parish at the workhouse, and proceeded subsequently to Clerkenwell-green, in the absence of the G division, for the purpose of preventing any riotous proceeding. About eight o’clock a body of Chartists appeared on the ground, several of them carrying flags and banners, one of which had on it the following inscription – ‘The voice of the people is the voice of God.’ There were two poles surmounted with the cap of liberty, with a tri-coloured flag and an American flag. The procession was formed two-and-two, shortly before nine o’clock, consisting of between 300 and 400 persons. It entered St. John-street, crossed Smithfield, and passed through Farringdon-street to Kennington-common. There were about 4,000 persons present.”
What happened on 10 April 1848? From The Illustrated London News, 15 April 1848

Coming up next in Discovering Clerkenwell: find out which 20th Century historic figures met over a pint in Clerkenwell and how a humble coal man made beautiful music for Handel.

Picture top: Jean Froissart’s Chronicles (Bib. Nat. Fr. 2644, fol. 159v), 15th century manuscript via Wikimedia Commons

Ever wondered what lies behind the name of the area you live or work in, what history is held by the streets you tread daily? In a rush to get around much of the time we remain unaware of the dramas of the past. Our office is based in Clerkenwell, a busy part of central London with plenty of fascinating stories to tell. The area has connections to the Knights Templar, historic revolutionary figures, legendary literary pickpockets, a notable musical coal-man and faked ghost appearances.

In this series of posts about Clerkenwell’s history I will reveal the identity of these coal-men, revolutionaries, pickpockets and more.

Clerkenwell has long been a centre of commerce and trade. You may know Cowcross Street, a thoroughfare that connects Smithfield Market with Farringdon station, which is now full of fashionable bars and eateries. The road’s name derives from being a route for cows to be taken to Smithfield market, where you could buy live animals till the 1850s. The meat market remains though, housed in an imposing building, inspired by Italian architecture and designed by Victorian architect Sir Horace Jones. In fact, this is one of London’s oldest markets having been in operation for over eight hundred years. The market buildings also house the Cock Tavern – an underground pub that opens at 6am and is well known for its devilled kidneys washed down with a pint.

The area also has strong connections to religious orders. The name Clerkenwell derives from The Clerk’s Well where Parish clerks would gather to perform biblical mystery plays. The site of the well was formally within St Mary’s Nunnery of the Benedictine order. It was founded in 1100 and remained till 1539 when Henry VIII disbanded the monasteries and convents. The well fell out of use in the mid 19th century, only being rediscovered when unearthed in 1924. You can see it today at 14–16 Farringdon Lane by peering through the windows of the building that now houses it or joining a Clerkenwell walk with an official guide.

Nearby is St John’s Gate where now stands the Museum of the Order of St John. This was the site of Clerkenwell Priory from the 12th Century and the base of the Knights Hospitaliers of St John of Jerusalem. They were part of a larger religious order founded in Jerusalem known as The Order of Hospitaliers. In 1237 a group of thirty of the Knights Hospitaliers of St John of Jerusalem set out from Clerkenwell Priory for the “Holy Land” to provide medical assistance to the Crusades where they served alongside the legendary Knights Templar. The Venerable Order of St John went on to found the modern day St Johns Ambulance Association established in 1877 to teach and practice First Aid internationally. Their distinctive black and white insignia echoes the design used by the original Knights Hospitaliers.

Coming up in the next blog post: Clerkenwell the rural retreat and radical hotbed…

Picture top: St John’s Gate, Clerkenwell, Islington. Photographer: Fin Fahey [CC-BY-SA-2.5], via Wikimedia Commons

Pic: By Ricardo Stuckert/PR (Agência Brasil [1]) [CC-BY-2.5-br], via Wikimedia Commons



Will translation rescue London businesses from the morass of the UK economy? A report today by the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry shows a difficult last few months for London business, but concludes that part of the solution is reaching out globally to growing economies.

Most of the key performance indicators for London’s businesses fell in the third quarter of 2011, according to the LCCI’s latest Quarterly Economic Survey. London businesses saw sales and orders in both domestic and export markets fall significantly.

The report [.pdf] notes confidence figures at an individual company level remained relatively steady in Q3, but confidence in the UK’s economic situation fell drastically.

Interviewed on the BBC, Colin Stanbridge, Chief Executive of the LCCI, said, “London business have to get out to places where economy is growing.”

He commented further on these results:

“There are economies beyond Europe experiencing huge surges in consumer demand, not least in Brazil, China and Russia. The business community and the government must work together to harness these opportunities for UK firms.”

As regular readers will know, this day celebrating translation was established in 1991 by the Fédération Internationale des Traducteurs (International Federation of Translators). Our translation agency, WorldAccent, is proud to be a memeber of one of the federated bodies, the Institute of Translation & Interpreting. The date of 30 September was chosen as it is the feast day of St. Jerome (347-420 AD), patron saint of translators, interpreters and librarians. The day celebrates and promotes translation as an essential activity in contemporary society – but one which too often remains invisible and ignored.

This year’s theme celebrates the professional translators, interpreters and terminologists represented by FIT member associations that build bridges between cultures and facilitate communication that creates prosperity and cultural enrichment. As the Federation note in their press release for International Translation Day 2011:

“Thanks to translators, interpreters and terminologists, peoples around the world can preserve their cultural heritage while being active participants in the “global village”. Cultural diversity makes our world a better place, but we have to understand each other in order to avoid international conflicts and to help each other in times of need. We have to understand each other to appreciate our cultural differences.”

However you mark today, best wishes from all of us at WorldAccent on International Translation Day!

Download the International Translation Day 2010 greeting card as a PDF.

It’s a brilliant introduction to the sort of conundrums that can crop up in translating even the most “common sense” concepts. The book itself, Is that a fish in your ear: Translation and the meaning of everything has been garnering some rave reviews.

While Shaun Whiteside in the Independent says

“I can quite imagine translators, particularly those who also do a spot of teaching, being consumed with envy at Bellos’s ability to entertain while getting difficult linguistic ideas across to the general reader… Is That a Fish in Your Ear? is essential reading for anyone with even a vague interest in language and translation – in short, it is a triumph.”

While Michael Hofmann in the Guardian says

“I could say anyone with an interest in translation should read Is That a Fish, but there wouldn’t be very much point; instead, anyone with no interest in translation, please read David Bellos’s brilliant book.”

(As an aside, the Guardian have also teamed up with Penguin Books to celebrate the book’s publication with a chance to win a £400 voucher towards a life changing volunteering trip overseas.)

These reviews were enough to get a copy of the book sitting on my desk. Its Prologue promises a wide ranging discussion including:

“What can we learn from translation? What does it teach us? What do we actually know about translation? What is it about translation that we still need to find out? … Is translating fundamentally different from writing and speaking, or is it just another aspect of the unsolved mystery of how we come to know what someone else means?”

Some big questions, but they seemed to be tackled in a fun as well as informative way. I am sure I will be sharing some interesting tidbits from the pages ahead. In the meantime, anyone wondering about the title should have a look here for some mostly harmless background!