Pic: © Bob Collins, Courtesy Museum of London



An exhibition of “London Street Photography” opened last week at the Museum of London. It provides a fascinating glimpse of London life throughout the last 150 years, using street photography largely from the museum’s archive that has not been widely exhibited before.

London Street Photography brings together the work of almost 60 photographers. Some of the interesting inclusions are by the less well-known ones, including the first female photojournalist to work in the UK.

From the faded blurry images at the beginnings of the new technology of the camera to the sharp colourful images taken with digital cameras today, we can examine fleeting moments captured in London’s streets. Though the photography styles and technology have changed dramatically, it struck me that there are common threads throughout the decades. Images show people’s changing looks and lifestyles, areas changed and rebuilt. But they also show the consistently multicultural character of London.

I was struck by the scenes of Chinese New Year – a celebration we captured with some of our own images this year in London’s Chinatown. Also captured are Portuguese community celebrating football victory, along with images of everyday street life and occasional tensions such as hippies and skinheads crossing paths in the late 1960s.

The exhibition documents the city through times of change and conflict – highlighting the importance of photography in providing us with a connection to the past.

The museum has also recently launched a London iphone app which shows you glimpses of London’s past as you move around the present day city:

“Streetmuseum gives you a unique perspective of old and new London whether you’re discovering the capital for the first time or revisiting favourite haunts. Hundreds of images from the Museum of London’s extensive collections showcase both everyday and momentous occasions in London’s history, from the Great Fire of 1666 to the swinging sixties.”

Both the app and the exhibition are well worth a look in my opinion.

The “London Street Photography” exhibition is free and runs until 4 September at The Museum of London, 150 London Wall, London EC2Y 5HN.

One reason it’s easy to get correct is because Portuguese spelling, unlike English, is largely phonetic. But what happens in the cases when it’s not? And what happens when words have alternate pronunciations? Are they spelled differently? Should they be?

How to standardise spelling is an issue for all languages, and never a straightforward one. English spelling is a mish-mash of phonetic rules, grammatical rules, etymological rules, and exceptions and variations. Other languages have long adopted more systematic spelling systems: the first official Italian orthography dates back to 1582, French to 1635, and Spanish to 1713.

The first official Portuguese system was much more recent: 1911. It was adopted in Portugal and its overseas territories. But Brazil, which had gained independence nearly a century earlier, wasn’t consulted on the spelling reform, and didn’t adopt it either. Instead it introduced its own official system – similar but not identical to the Portuguese one – in 1938. So Portuguese spelling was standardised, but in two different ways.

Since then, there have been several attempts to unify official spelling across the whole Portuguese-speaking world, and an agreement was finally reached by representatives of 8 countries in 1990.

Various follow-up meetings ensued, and in the end it took nearly two decades before the first country adopted the new system: Brazil, in 2009. The other signatories to the agreement are still due to do so, with a transition period until 2012.

For Portuguese translation providers, this means that there are currently still two spelling systems in operation: one in Brazil, one for the other Portuguese-speaking countries. You’ll still have to specify which to use.

When the new agreement is implemented in all countries, does that mean that translation providers will no longer have to make the distinction? No. Brazilian Portuguese has further significant differences in vocabulary, grammar and syntax. So you’ll still have to distinguish Brazilian from Iberian Portuguese, even when they both finally use the same spelling system.

If you’re a Portuguese translator, you might find the following Portuguese links useful. This simple guide (in Portuguese) outlines the main changes made in the 1990 agreement. More entertaining to read is another guide (again in Portuguese) in which the writer pours scorn on the welter of misinformation surrounding the spelling reform, and tries to set the record straight.