Kew's Indian Orchid Festival Video

When Spring is only just beginning to appear to British gardens, Kew stages its colourful, annual Orchid Festival. The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew focused on Indian orchids and culture this year. 

The Princess of Wales Conservatory was a riot of colour during our Sunday afternoon visit. You can sample what we saw on the following video:

Photographers' Paradise
The conservatory was full of enthusiastic visitors - both young and old. I lost track of the number of different languages spoken around me as I wandered around the magnificent displays with my elder son. It seemed to be a photographers' paradise.  We saw amateurs snatching shots on their smartphones, as well as more advanced photographers with the best cameras and lenses available on the market. 

Kew's beautiful orchids provide plenty of photo opportunities

Education Role
Kew Gardens are not just brilliant at staging popular events like the annual Orchid Festival for the public. The Botanical Gardens also carry out valuable scientific research and have an important educational role. They teach schoolchildren about the natural world, as well as offering advanced training for expert botanists at the other end of the spectrum. It therefore came as no surprise that brightly-coloured signposts informed visitors about orchids and Indian culture.

One of Kew's brightly- coloured and informative signs

Rich Diversity
The above sign informed visitors about the rich diversity of Indian orchids. It explained that orchids are often divided into 3 main groups based on their habitat:

• terrestrial orchids grown in the ground and have underground roots
• lithophytic orchids grow on rocks
• epiphytic orchids grow attached to trees

An elderly visitor in the medicinal plant section

Deforestation Risk
Indian orchids are extremely vulnerable to deforestation as more than half of Indian orchid species grow on trees. Kew's scientists are currently working on a checklist of Indian orchids as part of the Flora of India project in cooperation with Indian botanists.

Medicinal Plants
Another sign informed visitors about medicinal plants. Up to 80% of Indians use some form of traditional medicine.  Some 79 species of orchid are used in this way.

Cultural Explanations
I was somewhat baffled when I saw a small-leaved, green plant apparently sitting on the best spot amid the elaborate, colourful displays. The puzzling choice only made sense once I spotted Kew's informative sign. 

Holy Basil or Tulsi is sacred plant to India's Hindus

Holy basil (Ocimum tenuiflorum) is a sacred plant to Hindus. They call it Tulsi, meaning 'the incomparable one'. The leaves are an essential part in the worship of Vishnu. Signs also highlighted the importance of other plants in Hinduism and Sikhism. 80% of the Indian population is Hindu. Flowers have deep meanings and are used to celebrate, worship and mourn. 

Flowers are not used in worship to the same extent in Sikhism. Kew's sign carries a powerful and relevant message in this age of climate change:

Life depends on nature, and an awareness of the sacred relationship between humans and the environment is necessary for the health of the planet and human survival.

It's a neat summary for the importance of Kew's plant conservation work. All the world's people share a deep connection to, and dependence on Nature.

Karen at Kew's Orchid Festival 2017

Karen Andrews is a freelance digital marketer, freelance French>English translator/transcreator, content writer and editor. She has a strong background in global marketing.

Email Karen for further information via karenanglicityen@gmail.com in French, German or English.

Green Environment Events 2017

A selective list of green urban environment, healthy water, air quality, biodiversity, nature conservation and climate change events:

7-9 March
Ecobuild
Focus: Sustainability in Building
Excel
London

8 March 6.30-8.30pm

Bristol Viewpoints: Waste Water and Water Waste

1^st in series of 3 free talks on water research

Bristol Natural History Consortium

Watershed

Bristol

13 March 6.30-8.30pm

Bath Viewpoints: How Water Shaped Bath

2^nd in series of 3 free talks on problems and solutions for waterways

Bristol Natural History Consortium

Bath Guildhall, Bath

13 March-31st March
Air Quality and Hydrogen Exhibition
City Hall
London

20 March 6pm

Placemaking and Planting

Kew Mutual Improvement Society Lecture

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

23 March 6.3—8.30pm

Keynsham Viewpoints: Healthy Water

3^rd in series of free talks on water research

Bristol Natural History Consortium

Keynsham Community Space

Bristol

28-30 March

Flood and Coast 2017

Theme: Risk, Resilience and Response in a Changing Climate

Telford International Centre

UK

Preview

30 March 8.30am-2pm
Low Emission freight logistics: all you need to know
ARUP Offices
London

13 April-15 October

IGA Berlin 2017

International Garden Design and Green Urban Lifestyle Exhibition

Berlin

Germany

Twitter: #IGABerlin

15-26 May 9am-5.30pm

Tropical Plant Identification Course

For conservation & environment professionals, graduate ethnobotanists, ecologists and zoologists

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

25-26 May

State of the World’s Plants Symposium 2017

Special Focus on Madagascar

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

8-25 June

Festival of Nature

Bristol Natural History Consortium

Bristol

Twitter: @festofnature

NB: Inclusion in this list does not constitute endorsement of any conference, event or third party. This list is for information purposes only. All details should be checked on the organisers' websites, as they may be subject to change.

Karen Andrews is a freelance French to English translator, transcreator, content writer and editor. She has a strong background in global marketing.

Email Karen for further information via karenanglicityen@gmail.com in French, German or English.

Struck by Honey Fungus?

Armillaria is fatal. It attacks the roots. By the time the danger is spotted, you’re a goner. Honey Fungus (Armillaria) attacks trees not the translation industry. It nonetheless provides an interesting metaphor for the current state of the translation ‘family’ tree.

If you are bathed in sunshine in the topmost branches, it’s easy to overlook or play down the creeping fungus. A well-known proverb states:

‘A fish rots from the head down’.

When an organisation fails, it is the leadership that is the root cause. By contrast, a tree rots from the bottom up. When the root system fails, the top of the tree comes crashing down too.

Pollution is reportedly bad in London. There is a fight for oxygen in the upper branches. It is no doubt a relief to see that competitive Lionbridge branch take a pruning.

While your eyes are focused on the competitive branches, the honey fungus takes hold below. No problem, you think? You’ve taken measures to ensure a good flow of nutrients; the direct flow of the best university students is secure for your future growth. I’m all right, Jack*.

Future represented by conkers

Those down at the roots are much more aware of how toxic the environment is becoming than those in the uppermost tree branches.

Every now and again, those in the topmost branches have a ‘little chat’ with the established freelancers below. Those below naturally want a good rapport with those above. They need the light from above. Even if deep down they are more than a little worried about the impending storm above and the creeping fungus below, they want to sound positive and smile sweetly.

Established freelancers are the trunk of the tree. It’s a good, solid place to hang on. Honey fungus is merciless. It cracks and bleeds the bark from the base. As the summer temperatures rise, upper parts of the tree die too. The leaves look smaller, paler and less healthy than in the past. Branches die back over several years. The root system fails, just like the feared toxic environment for today's freelancers and future generations of linguists.

Horse Chestnut tree with leaves turning yellow

Until recently my mother’s house looked out on a magnificent horse chestnut tree. Now, there is a gaping hole in the view and a rotting stump. The local children used to love collecting the conkers as they waited for the local school bus in the autumn.

Honey Fungus on a rotting tree stump

The honey fungus has spread from garden to garden – just as toxic pricing and anti-competitive practices have spread from continent to continent, country to country and company to company.

When honey fungus brings a tree down, it’s the uppermost branches that take the biggest crash of all.

Can we plant a new tree? The ground remains toxic. There are no effective chemicals. The only effective remedy is to excavate and destroy. Burn all the infected root and stump material.

To stop the fungus spreading you need to build a physical barrier and bury it deep in the soil. Very few trees are resistant to honey fungus.

Maybe tech has the solution? Hasn’t it got the solution for everything according to all the hype? I recently revisited Bristol’s Millennium Square. The metal Energy Tree looked somewhat sad after its European Green Capital heyday. I can’t help thinking that it’s a bit like Rules-based Machine Translation (RMT) or Statistical Machine Translation (SMT). They are now abandoned for the shiny new Neural Machine Translation (NMT).

A metal tree is no match for a real tree's healthy foliage however shiny

NMT isn’t a match for strong, healthy human translation despite the hype. And that metallic Energy Tree is no match for the gloriously healthy foliage of a Horse Chestnut.

The moral of this tale for those in the uppermost branches of the translation industry at GALA, EUATC, ELIA and FIT? Watch out for the translation equivalent of honey fungus. Deal with the problems at the roots, even if you feel that they are not your problems... YET.

References:

A fish rots from the head down

*I’m all right, Jack.

Collins Dictionary: a remark indicating smug and complacent selfishness.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jan/18/im-all-right-jack-philip-french-classic-dvd

Honey Fungus

Karen Andrews is a freelance French to English translator, transcreator, content writer and editor. She has a strong background in global marketing.

Email Karen for further information via karenanglicityen@gmail.com in French, German or English.

Earth's Passengers: AI's Titanic

Not every film you see at the cinema is going to win Oscars. Sometimes you just want an evening out, some entertainment and pure escapism. Even if the reviews don’t appear that favorable in advance, you can usually trust Hollywood to provide an hour or so’s entertainment. It was with that in mind that my son and I headed for our local cinema on a cold winter evening. Passengers offered more than we bargained for. Sometimes a diverting tale can reveal serious undercurrents when you reflect afterwards.

Chemistry and asteroids

If the onscreen chemistry between Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt didn’t remind you of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic, Hollywood seemed be dropping other hints. Hibernation pods that couldn’t possibly go wrong? Think unsinkable Titanic on her maiden voyage - just replace the iceberg with an asteroid.

Implausible v. plausible

Yes, the plot is probably full of holes. No doubt, any knowledgeable scientist would tear it apart. We don’t have the science to make 5,000 people hibernate for 90 years until they reach a distant new colony on a remote planet. I hope that we would possess the technology to communicate with Earth in real-time by the time we can make people hibernate.

References to the Homestead company sent shivers down my spine. The idea that the safety of thousands of lives would be placed in the care of a private timeshare company with greedy shareholders was unnerving. It seemed so plausible.

Chris Pratt, initially the only human awake on board, is reminded of the astronomical bills that he is running up. The Titanic similarity is further underlined when he discovers the nutritional difference between a third-class and first-class breakfast. By that time, he’d been eating the former for a year with all the other 5,000 passengers asleep. Their lives end up depending on the out-of-the-box thinking of this third-class engineer.

AI's Limitations

Our hero engineer also spends a year trying to break into the hibernating crew’s quarters. All the spaceship’s controls are designed to keep passengers out. The ship is designed to repair itself. It’s a warning for the direction that artificial intelligence (AI) is currently taking. The Internet of Things is already poised to take control. Humans design machines to deal with any risk or worst case scenario that they can dream up. How they are supposed to design spaceships to go into the Unknown beats me.

We still can’t get cinema/train ticket machines, Wi-Fi, computers or printers to work 100% reliably without human intervention. There’s a risk that we will stop training basic engineering skills or out-of-the-box thinkers and dispense with capable human standbys.

The robot barman highlights the serious issue with AI. He’s programmed to handle cheerily all the normal human soul-searching associated with the role. He’s happy endlessly polishing glasses even in a life or death crisis. His inability to handle the complexity of human ethics puts the only two humans awake on the spaceship in near-murderous conflict. He isn’t programmed to deal with the complex set of circumstances before him. It isn’t supposed to happen – like the Titanic sinking.

Pure Hollywood fiction?

This is just a Hollywood film. I wonder. If you worked in total secrecy at NASA and were uneasy about some of the ethical decisions and directions being taken, how would you handle it? Get the US President to speak to the people like they do in the alien and apocalypse movies? It always causes widespread panic and rioting.

Gracious. The President-elect is causing enough worldwide consternation by his very appointment. If I were in NASA, I would get Hollywood to explore scenarios. Come to think of it, there’s quite a glut of space movies of late.

The New World

Space exploration is exciting. It’s the new frontier, the New World all over again. Leaving planet Earth even with thousands of first-class passengers would mean leaving billions of ‘second- and third-class’ human beings behind.

We still don’t know enough about the long-term health effects on astronauts - usually the fittest among us. I noted that an astronaut died of cancer at Christmas. We do know that the best international scientific expertise and resources are devoted to exploring how we could live and survive in space.

Space colonies sound like a Kennedy PR exercise given that the world’s problems are piling up. Why are the world’s best brains working on them?

Priorities?

What about making global warming solutions and feeding an ever-growing world population on Earth the major international priorities? The World’s population is estimated at between 7.4 and 7.5 billion as I type. The United Nations predicts that it could reach 9.7 billion by 2050 and over 11 billion by 2100. In a March 2016 article for the BBC, David Satterthwaite of the International Institute for Environment and Development in London said:

“It is not the number of people on the planet that is the issue – 

but the number of consumers and

 the scale and nature of their consumption’.

What about sorting out the United Nations or creating a new global body so that no rogue nation can threaten global security with the technology that we have already got?

I know, I know. I’m daydreaming. Passengers is just a Hollywood movie. 

Still, it’s alarming to be a Passenger on Planet Earth in Third Class locked out of the cockpit. People are questioning the new Captain’s suitability and motives to handle the dark times ahead. Artificial Intelligence may end up rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic*.

*rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic
Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary and Thesaurus definition: used for saying that someone is wasting time dealing with things that are not important, and is ignoring a much more serious problem.

Karen Andrews is a freelance French to English translator, transcreator, content writer and editor. She has a strong background in marketing and project management.

Email Karen for further information via karenanglicityen@gmail.com in French, German or English.

Architects' Gingerbread City

The Museum of Architecture and Tibbald's Planning and Design came up with a novel way to increase public awareness of urban planning. I hurried along to see the unusual Christmas exhibition on its final day in London's South Kensington.

Recognisably Foster & Partners even in gingerbread!

Judging by the range of gingerbread creations, architects were inspired by the opportunity to work in a new medium. It also brought out a competitive edge. Museum visitors were requested to vote for their favourites. Judge for yourself using my photos and YouTube video below.

Cottrell & Vermeulen's gingerbread entry

Piercey & Company's gingerbread entry

Penoyre & Prasad's gingerbread entry

Sarah Wiggleworth Architects included a roof-top tennis court and swimming pool

It's amazing that most gingerbread buildings managed to survive days of visitors and inquisitive little fingers after the tempting sweets...

Under grandmother's watchful eye

Urban design with water and green environment

Aerial view of rooftops in varied materials and popcorn trees

They even thought of a crane!

Dahl's Centenary at RHS Cardiff

A wicker BFG at RHS Cardiff

2016 is an extraordinary year for literary anniversaries. It's not all about Shakespeare and Cervantes. Cardiff is celebrating the centenary of the birth of the famous author Roald Dahl. Roald Dahl's children's characters featured prominently at the Royal Horticultural Society's Cardiff Flower Show. We were barely inside the entrance before we saw the towering figure of Dahl's BFG made out of wicker (left).

Roald Dahl was born in the North of Cardiff, the capital of Wales. His parents were Norwegian and he was baptised in the Norwegian Church in Cardiff Bay.

Dahl-inspired Pure Imagination Garden

One of the show gardens was called Pure Imagination. It was inspired by Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It was a surreal representation complete with chocolate pond. It captured something of the storyteller's wonderful imagination. 

The best Roald Dahl-themed show contributions came from local children. Local nursery schools, primary schools, Beavers, Brownies and various other children's groups transformed wheelbarrows to represent their favourite stories. Show visitors were given counters to vote for their favourite wheelbarrow. It was extremely difficult to choose.

My elder son chose the Enormous Crocodile (left). It brought back fond memories of bedtime stories when he was younger. He now towers over me - not as tall as the BFG, but pretty tall nonetheless. 

We remembered how he used to love the ending when the enormous crocodile gets sent spinning off into space. 

Roald Dahl wrote great stories that are still capturing children's imaginations. 

My younger son always loved listening to Roald Dahl's stories. He liked James and the Giant Peach, Fantastic Mr Fox and George's Marvellous Medicine. He loved that the wicked grandmother got her comeuppance in the latter.



Not every child finds reading and writing easy. Reluctant readers and children with early learning difficulties often appreciate Roald Dahl's stories. If they grow to love the stories through other means like artwork and gardening, it is much easier to motivate them to read the books afterwards. Fresh air and improving hand strength for writing are added bonuses.

James and the Giant Peach Wheelbarrow

Not only was Roald Dahl an inspirational storyteller, his own story is inspiring for such children.  It now seems incredible to think that Roald Dahl's teachers did not think much of his writing skills. Their comments were cruel. Yet, he went on to become one of our best-known and best-loved authors.

I thought it was a great idea for the RHS to host such a competition. It combined literacy skills and gardening. The children had obviously put a lot of thought, work and love into their wheelbarrows. Capture them young. I'm sure that early interests in reading, the environment and gardening never go away.  They certainly didn't in my case. 

Moorlands Primary School's entry complete with a Norwegian flag and Dahl's writing hut

After a great start to the RHS Show season, I am now looking forward to the Chelsea and Hampton Court Flower Shows. Tickets already booked.

RHS On Tour Bus ready for the next show

Karen Andrews runs
Anglicity Ltd. She is

an English copywriter 

and digital marketer

with Welsh roots.

She loves gardening

and visiting gardens.

For further information see
Anglicity's website