Every hill got a story: we grew up in country w
as launched this afternoon at Alice Springs Telegraph Station. A companion multimedia site is hosted by SBS Books. The substantial volume is sold by SBS Books and is also available on Kindle.
The volume by ‘men and women of central Australia and the Central Land Council’ is compiled and edited by Marg Bowman, carrying on from the late Jane Hodson, long term anchor of the CLC media section.
Continue reading ‘Every hill got a story oral history just out’ »
New animations with spoken audio in Anmatyerr (‘Anmatyere’), Kriol, Luritja, Warlpiri, and Yolŋu Matha were published on You Tube a couple of weeks ago. There are eight nicely done animations of a minute or two explaining aspects of the water supply in each of the five languages, all available through the NT Power and Water Corporation’s page ‘Use less’ campaign. (Thanks Carmel for the alert.)
There are no credits in the videos, or on the PowerWater web page that I could see, but I presume the translations were arranged through the NT Aboriginal Interpreter Service.
9 February 2012, 2:49 pm by
admin
Felicity Meakins writes…
Just recently I was on Amazon, when I came across two potentially interesting books:
- Frederic P. Miller, Agnes F. Vandome and John McBrewster (eds) (2009), Mixed Language, Alphascript
- Frederic P. Miller, Agnes F. Vandome and John McBrewster (eds) (2010), Michif Language: Language, Métis people (Canada), First Nations, Fur trade, French Canadian, Mixed language, Alphascript
At first I berated myself for having never noticed these books before, let alone the authors. Surely these were important volumes that I should have referenced! However a little further investigation revealed a scam that grew bigger (and actually more impressive) as I dug deeper.
I first became suspicious when I recognised some of the wording of the abstract of the first book. Sure enough, the entire abstract was a word-for-word copy of the Wikipedia entry on mixed languages. A loud excited outburst from me drew Myf Turpin into the fray. We had a look at the Alphascript publishing website only to find that ALL of their books were edited by Frederic P. Miller, Agnes F. Vandome and John McBrewster, with topics ranging from Japanese mythology and Franco-Belgium comics to cloud seeding and swine flu! And when I say “ALL of their books”, I mean all 1006 books. Who were these prolific authors?!
When we googled their names, we found a number of scam alerts, so we are certainly not the first to notice them. Unfortunately the University of Queensland library was drawn in for five books’ worth on topics including abalone and Mayan civilisations. Indeed, as Alphascript publishing proudly announce on their webpage, most of the major book distributors, including Amazon, list their books.
One can’t help being secretly impressed with the size of the scam. Most of the books are sold for AU$40.00. UQ Library would have spent around AU$200 on their books, and there is a good chance too that many other university libraries did the same before realising it was all a scam. In a single year, Frederic P. Miller, Agnes F. Vandome and John McBrewster probably had enough in the bank to buy an small island and disappear.
Aside from being impressed (or gobsmacked), it is probably worth checking your university library and alerting them to the scam, and letting other prospective buyers know if you come across their books on book seller pages.
21 December 2011, 11:47 pm by
admin
In time for the holiday season and the approaching New Year the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project (HRELP) has reorganised its online store to make it easier for customers to find what we have available, as well as allowing us to expand our range of publication offerings. Our publications are now categorised into “Special Offers”, “LDD journal”, “FEL books” and “Other publications”.
For a limited time we have the following Special Offers available:
- a set of Language Documentation and Description Volumes 1 to 9 for £80 (RRP £112.50)
- a set of Language Documentation and Description Volumes 1 to 10 for £100 (RRP £125.00)
- a special package of the Proceedings from the recent Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory 3 conference and archiving workshop for £15 (33% off the RRP of £20)
- Language Documentation and Description Volume 10 which is a special issue on language and music, prosody, and grammar and meaning. This is available until 31 January 2012 for £10 (25% off the RRP of £12.50)
Among our Other Publications are the two Proceedings from the recent conference and workshop that can be ordered separately, and Spoken Hokkien by Meili Fang, an introductory textbook and audio CD for teachers and learners of Hokkien (also known as Minnan, Taiwanese).
We plan to add further to our publications offerings in 2012 so have a look at the new shopfront now and over the coming months.
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