More than words

I had dinner last evening with a ninety-two year old gentleman for whom I had done some translation work.  Because we are both volunteers for our local Forest Preserve District, I don’t charge him for my translation work which is related to our volunteer service.  He, in turn, shows his appreciation by treating me to dinner in his favorite restaurant. 

At ninety-two, his only problem is a bit of a hearing loss, electronically corrected, but problematic enough for him to request a corner booth rather than a table in the midst of the dinner traffic.  Dr. DuBose and I exchanged documents over a glass of Malbec, both of us refusing a refill because we each had to get behind the wheels of our cars to drive home later.  This morning, I saw the time stamp on his Email, thanking me, and realized that he had stayed up much later than I had after a sumptuous dinner that had made me overwhelmingly sleepy.

My own father, who is ten years younger than my dinner companion, has long since given up driving his enormous tank of a Buick and never made the leap to cyberspace, Email and the Internet.  He knows how to reset his answering machine and leaves me to pay his bills on-line for him.

Aside from studying the Secret of Youth that my dinner partner embodies, and listening to his acquired wisdom on the subject of the translated documents, I had an additional “cultural” surprise last evening.  The observance of cultural trends is vital to translation and interpreting.  Beyond my daily personal contacts in France, I make a practice of watching the French news on the Internet.  When I started interpreting, there was no “mad cow” disease, “bird flu” or “airbags” in automobiles, and watching the French news keeps me abreast of evolving vocabulary.  Without the Journal de 20 heures, I might not have encountered éthylotest, béguinage, or gaz de schiste.

Dr. DuBose’ blue eyes twinkled across the table when he took a small, battered box out of his coat pocket, and removed the rubber band that held on the cover.  “I wanted to show you this.”  He handed me a medal, his Purple Heart.  While serving in the infantry in France, he had been critically wounded by a German bullet.

I have always considered myself lucky and mysteriously supervised by a Guardian Angel, but this man clearly has had some miraculous chances in life.

The next thing I knew, the party at the booth next to ours had politely interrupted our conversation.  “Did I hear you say ‘Purple Heart’?”  The setting for the conversation was perfect, since Veteran’s Day is just around the corner and the restaurant had lined the walls with a collection of vintage Armed Services posters.

The young father who had spoken to us from the next booth handed his little girl out from behind their table to see the medal, which they all admired, to the complete delight of Dr. DuBose.  Wait staff moved in to eavesdrop on the conversation, and my dinner companion was repeatedly thanked by complete strangers for his service to our country.

After the young family left, our server came up to our table, glowing and clutching the black folder containing our bill.  “Before he left, the gentleman who sat next to you paid your dinner bill.”

Dr. DuBose and I looked at each other in amazement.  His was more an expression of pride, that his youthful brush with death on a battlefield could still be so appreciated this many years later.

In my case, my surprise took me back to an evening only a couple of weeks ago. 

I had been sitting at the table in my sister’s house and listening to my cousin Larry talk about his return from Viet Nam where he had served in the Marine Corps.  He and his fellow Marines, when they stepped off their plane coming back home onto U.S. soil, were met by complete strangers who threw animal excrement at their sparkling uniforms.

I am not (yet) as old as Dr. DuBose, to be able to witness as many sweeping cultural changes as he obviously has.  This change in public opinion of the military has a particularly strong impact on me since my son has just recently entered the Navy.  Coming of age in the Viet Nam era, I had always secretly plotted to move any as-yet-unborn sons to French-speaking Canada to avoid the draft.  I never thought I’d have a son who would voluntarily enlist.  As a mother who has watched her country in and out of a few wars, my heart swims in a dizzying cocktail of fear, pride, confusion and hope.

My thoughts went back to my visit with my father that same afternoon.  I had asked him if he had voted to re-elect President Obama.  Four years earlier, he admitted voting for McCain.  His reasoning at the time was weirdly prescient, if not tinged with racism.  My Dad didn’t have any personal objections to voting for a black President, but he explained that Obama didn’t have what basically amounted to a snowball’s chance in hell to get anything done, precisely because he was black. 

It was for that very same reason that he voted for Obama this time, saying he wasn’t going to vote for a loser.

Culture shifts in just such ways, changing perceptions over time.  The determination of who is a winner and who is a loser sometimes needs to mature, like a good glass of wine, over time.

Between the lines

Translation is so much more than a word-by-word rendering of a text from one language to another.  The translator is often called to be a cross-cultural specialist.  In a world supposedly made “smaller” electronically, there are still so many moments when a cultural difference pops up on the horizon, and the translator becomes a sort of Tour Guide, explaining a foreign terrain dotted with custom and history and politics, like so many impressive buildings on the skyline.

How do you explain to an American Project Manager who takes calls at all hours on a cellphone, for whom the lines between workday and private life are constantly blurred, that the contact in France is either a “juilletiste” or an “aoûtien” and will be on vacation for the entire month of July or August?  The month of May in France this year had no less than four legal holidays, two of which are tied to the Catholic calendar.  Ascension Thursday is a four-day holiday, since “le pont” [making the bridge through Friday to the weekend] is the standard practice.  November 1^st is All Saints’ Day, another national 4-day weekend.  My French family will drive out to the country to decorate Papy and Mamy’s graves, one day after Americans raise the dead in the streets trick-or-treating.  Either way, it seems the beginning of autumn is the time to reflect on mortality.

Metrics for evaluation, another cultural stumbling block, are learned at an early age in school.  American clients don’t understand that a Frenchman will be reluctant to rate a product or service a “10” out of ten possible points.  School work in France is graded on a twenty-point scale and absolutely no student ever receives a score of 20 out of 20.  A score of 12/20 is acceptable, yet in the U.S., an equivalent 60% is a failing grade.  Americans aim for “A’s” and can aspire to an A+.  We are cheerleaders, fond of the pat on the back and a declaration of “great job”!  On a French report card, when the teacher adds a comment of “assez bien” or “pretty good”, that is a respectable outcome, even though “assez” can also be translated as the lukewarm “sufficient”.  To add to the student’s stress, the French grade report clearly indicates both the best and the worst score attained by individuals in the class, making the whole process comparative and thereby more competitive.  Imagine the humiliation of having your personal score in Column One of your report card being identical to the “worst in class” in the next column!  And the number of students in the class is also indicated, to further calculate the depth of your disgrace.

One of the most difficult assignments I have had was to interpret a motivational speaker.  I had listened to his kind before: a wannabe stand-up comic, fond of spicing his monologue with regional jargon, liberally dosed with slang intended to wake up the audience, and embellished with sports metaphors for male-bonding with the suits in the audience.  The interpreter doesn’t have the time to explain the intricacies of baseball to a French audience who wants to know what is meant by “pinch hitting” or “it came at me right out of left field.”  My compassionate soul wants to run up to the speaker and explain that some of his audience is not laughing at the right moments because they didn’t understand the reference to an American sitcom.  Yet, at the same time, I’m culturally embarrassed that my French-speaking audience from third world countries has no frame of reference for the fable they are hearing through translation.  The guy at the podium is trying to preach a message of personal responsibility as the key element to success.  Having ordered a subordinate to send a can of caramel popcorn to a client, the penitent businessman realizes he should have handled the task himself.  To an audience that has known the earthquake in Haiti and devastating poverty and famine, how do you explain why in the world anyone would chastise a secretary who neglected to overnight a can of caramel popcorn across the country by FedEx as a gift to someone!  Each concept here is an obstacle.  First:  why popcorn?  And next, popcorn with caramel on it?  In a can (why not a box?) and why by an expensive overnight air service?  Would it spoil?  And what makes a can of mostly air, sugar and some corn an exceptional gift? 

Beyond cultural and linguistic challenges, even small ambiguities in a Source text can lead to a translation that does not reap the desired results.  In an on-line marketing study, the following question was asked:  “Imagine that you are going to employ Product X.  What job would you give him?”  The intended goal was to gather responses that compared the product to a living, breathing person holding a job:  a social worker, a dietician, a traffic cop, a carpenter – in short, a noun, a profession.  The purpose, of course, was to elicit the consumer’s perception of the product through an image.  To the surprise of the researchers, the answers did not match expectations.  They were all adjectives:  soothing, calming, enjoyable, fun…  Perhaps a French cognate got in the way:  “employ” means “employment” in English, while “employer” in French can mean “to use.”  If the translator had bypassed the verb, better results would have been achieved with “Imagine Product X is a human being.  What sort of job would he do for a living?”  This translation is not word-for-word what the original English says, but it would have produced the desired reaction from the respondents.  So the translator has to be intuitive to scope out the purpose of the original text.

Tour guide, sociologist, mind reader:  these are just some of the skills the translator needs to flesh out the deeper meaning of a communication, to read between the lines.

 

Bonne fête de la Saint Jérôme … Or Happy Translator’s Day

The big maple tree outside my home office window seems to turn to gold every year on the Feast of Saint Jerome, on the other side of the window pane overlooking my computer where I disappear into my world of words. Nature is winding down to the end of another year, and it is a good time for me to take a moment to reflect on just what it is I do as a translator and interpreter.

There are the piles of personal documents I translated, to help individuals get where they wanted to go: to school abroad or here in the States, to get married, to get divorced, to adopt a baby, to become legal residents, to advance their education or to show proof of the one they have. There are even documents that helped families lay a loved one to rest on a distance shore that was once called home.

There are words that are the nuts and bolts of selling trucks and services, drywall tools and floor cleaner. My files hold notes from board meetings where the esoteric technical terms become my passwords into the private directors’ club. It is a strange cultural phenomenon that these meetings always seem to conclude over huge slabs of beef. Why do all board meetings adjourn to a steak house? I order fish, declaring my separateness.

Somewhere in file boxes in law offices are reams of paper with interpreted depositions: the details of someone’s tragedy, from debts to dents to death.

There are Frenchmen who have returned to France with perhaps a new perception of the United States or Chicago, having glimpsed them through the bilingual comments of a native.

I had a cathartic moment this year of discussing religion, politics and the woman’s place in the church and in the world, with a French archbishop from the Vatican, who subsequently gave me his blessing.

I feel fortunate to make a living with words. I have friends and acquaintances who earn much more than I by managing things and people and processes. In a society that doesn’t really “craft” anything anymore, I get a good feeling when I turn out a document that you can hold in your hand, which physically carries an important message to someone. Translation is not like building a piece of furniture or baking bread, yet there are ingredients and skills and an end product.

But the best experience of the past year was the opportunity I had to work as an interpreter for the World Association of Girl Guides and Scouts. 2012 marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of Girl Scouts, and Chicago was the site of a forum that brought together some nearly 600 Girl Scouts and Guides from around the world. The girls came together to discuss grass roots solutions to the enormous world problems of hunger, gender equality, and poverty. Decades ago, when I was a Girl Scout, we earned badges for housekeeping and childcare and sewing. The girls who gathered in Chicago were tackling issues like education and sanitation, literacy and nutrition, with the same heart and capable hands we applied to domestic arts, with the same attention to the task in front of them. We heard wonderful speakers tell of small hometown miracles, like buying a few goats to provide income and milk, and how whole villages of women became empowered through sharing and learning together. Stories were told of twelve year old girls who were made to marry and have children instead of an education. The girls compared the skin-and-bones poverty of Africa against the obese homeless on the Chicago street corners. And in between the serious discussions, they sang songs together, in a beautiful sisterhood where no one was ostracized for not having the latest athletic shoes, or for wearing glasses or their hair in pigtails. The cruelties of the junior high school yard did not exist here, and this was one place where it was truly “hip to be square”, to express the joy and promise of young womanhood.

Promise was a palpable perfume in the air. During the course of the forum, the planet seemed to right itself on its axis and turn confidently towards a better tomorrow. If the future of the human race were to be determined by the heart and brains, graciousness and grace, determination and clear-eyed hope of the young women I saw at this Forum, we have nothing to fear. The planet will be cleaner, our children will be literate and productive, and the inequalities of society would disappear in the embrace of the future mothers of this Earth. The girls laughed and sang together, and each one went home with a concrete mission to accomplish: a drive to obtain supplies for a school in Africa, a neighborhood recycling project, a plan to conserve water, or promote products that protected orangutans in the rain forests. Their little sparks of light dispersed across the globe to light the way to something better.

Any project that requires more than one set of hands requires language. I love being a part of that verbal bridge.

Here is a link to “The Girl Effect: The Clock is Ticking”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=1e8xgF0JtVg

A little respect

I dropped a juice glass in my kitchen one morning. This was sad for me on a couple of levels.

1. The Paris Musées glasses aren’t sold at World Market anymore. I treated myself to a set after my mother died. The heavy glass goblets are molded with the Napoleonic bee, which also happens to be my name (“Deborah” means “little bee” in Hebrew, I’ve been told).

2. I was in my nightgown, and in bare feet, while drinking my orange juice.

After cleaning up, I realized I had embedded a tiny lump of glass in a toe. Even a Yoga Master could not bend enough to reach it.

3. The bill came from my local podiatrist. $500. She had to take a scalpel to my toe, but I didn’t require any numbing drugs. I have a high pain threshold. I did need a bandage for the bleeding, and her office insisted on a follow-up visit to check for infection. This second visit was also billed to me.

I probably could have gone to an emergency room, but I think my bill would have been much higher. In any case, I required some professional help.

Flash forward to a client inquiry about a week ago.

I was asked to provide a quotation for an English translation of a prospectus. A French company seeking American investors needed their executive summary translated into English.

Because it was a high volume assignment (it would take approximately ten working days)… because it was a direct client (not through an agency, which would pay me one-third or optimistically one-half of what they bill…), because this contact was found through my modest networking efforts (I am not a natural born saleswoman…), I quoted a reasonable rate. One that would split the difference between what an agency would pay and what an agency would charge.

The response from this potential client astonished me.

“Could you throw in translation of my PowerPoint presentation for that price?”

Should I have asked my podiatrist to “throw in” the follow-up visit?

What my podiatrist billed for thirty minutes of her time might take me as much as two full working days to earn on this particular translation assignment. The doctor will be paid in part by my insurance. On the other hand, I have no guarantee that this new client would pay me for my efforts.

He is seeking an English translation so that he can reach potential American investors. I do not choose to be his first.

I don’t pretend to practice at the same level as a physician, nor do I think I should earn a doctor’s wages. Nevertheless, a translator’s knowledge of language is a life-long learning endeavor, particularly given the technical complexity of certain assignments. Translators don’t get the respect they deserve.

There are technical and commercial writers who are hired to work a text from English into English, to make it presentable for publication. The translator goes above and beyond that skill to widen the audience to new cultures and linguistic groups.

Well, as it turns out, I acquired other business during the month that filled my time, and shored up my self-respect as well. They also paid better and I had great reviews all around.

Both my toe and my self-esteem are doing better.

The Dying of the Bees

The greatest happiness of my translation work is the successful communication between two parties who have important information to share.

Here in the U.S., I had the pleasure to assist Dr. Lawrence DuBose - known locally as the Bee Man or Dr. Du Bees - in communicating with a French beekeeper whom I had met by chance in the south of France this past September. Dr. DuBose had long been seeking confirmation of the beekeeping situation in France, in support of his theories on threats to bees around the world. Honey bees perform essential, life sustaining work on the planet. Napolean chose the bee as the industrious symbol of his empire.

With Dr. Du Bose' permission, I have attached the paper he recently completed and which he hopes to circulate at an upcoming convention in Las Vegas. I hope you will find his message as deeply compelling as I have.


BEEKEEPING AND PESTICIDES - IS THE END NEAR?
By Dr. Lawrence DuBose, Ph.D. Retired
November 2011

Beekeepers must become aggressive in finding positive answers why their bees continue to be killed. Another research grant, with more input by beekeepers, is needed to identify what is killing our honey bees. The random list of possibilities presented by university studies funded by chemical companies is not acceptable.

Since 1979, 1 have been associated with beekeeping continuously. In my youth, I had my first hive at age 13; overall I have been associated with beekeeping for more than 40 years. Excluding winter losses, all ten of my hives were lost at two locations in Southern Illinois when either a pesticide or a herbicide was used near the bee hives. Two neighbors also lost their colonies at the same time.

At Kline Creek Farm in DuPage County, Illinois I have had bees die five times in the last three years during the months of September and October. I realize that bees may die for multiple reasons but during these months it was certainly not diet nor travel stress.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR BEEKEEPER ACTION:

1. The American Beekeeping Federation must be prompt in responding to misleading articles, reports, and studies.
2. The ABF must demand unbiased studies of the possible impact of pesticides on birth defects. Some believe ADHD, autism, asthma, and other children's ailments have increased with the use of pesticides which are sprayed on our food as it is growing.
3. The ABF must push for a study of gardening chemicals and their possible relationship to Parkinson's Disease.
4. The incident of cancer by golf course managers is greater than those not so employed, according to the book A Spring without Bees. ABF should request further investigation on this matter.
5. Beekeeping programs should facilitate communications and recording of information about beekeepers who have suffered large colony losses.
6. U.S. beekeepers should follow the lead of France and the United Kingdom by sending petitions to our representatives in Washington, D.C. We must become more vocal.
7. Pesticides are blamed for killing small pets. Is that not a clue that our children playing on the same treated grass are at risk? Soccer parents in New England successfully banned certain pesticides from use on their children's playing fields. The same concerns should be echoed in Illinois, Texas, California, and other states. Emphasis should be placed upon adhering to guidelines such as those of Midwest Ecological Landscaping Association.


PREVENTING CANCER, AUTISM AND ASTHMA BY RESTRICTING THE USE OF CERTAIN PESTICIDES IS WORTH THE INCONVENIENCE WHEN THERE ARE OTHER OPTIONS.

A person reviewing early beekeeping literature - Langstroth’s Hive and the Honey Bee
by Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth (1810-1895), and Fifty Years Among the Bees by Dr. C. C. Miller (1830-1920) - will find no mention of pesticides killing bees. In the 1930s, there were two professional beekeepers in my hometown of Falfurrias, Texas. I once helped Mr. Richardson take off supers of honey and was involved in extracting honey in Mr. Bowen's honey house. Neither beekeeper lost bees to pesticides in the 1930s.

One of my uncles had started keeping bees before 1920 and had 40 hives in 1930. After he sprayed his cotton crop in 1934, he had boxes with dead bees. I had taken two of my bee hives to another uncle's farm in hopes of getting some clover honey. He sprayed a crop with an insecticide, and I had two boxes of dead bees. A third uncle kept bees in the small town of Pharr, Texas in the Rio Grande Valley. His bees were in an urban area where pesticides were not used and his bees survived.

Keeping bees in the 1930s was quite simple. I never fed nor medicated my bees. The brood foundation was never changed. Re-queening was taken care of by the bees. In 1950, the remaining four hives were still producing honey. At that time, the main problems for the beekeeper were the foulbrood disease and wax moths that would generally kill weak hives.

Concerns about pesticides killing bees were developing in the 1930s. The April 1935 issue of National Geographic Magazine pointed out that with the tractor replacing the horse, forests being cut down and wetlands being drained, more land was being farmed. These factors would result in more insects; consequently more insecticides were being used, and these new chemicals made no distinction between harmful and beneficial insects.

With the United States preparing for World War II, war materials took priority over agricultural chemicals. With fewer pesticides and more demand for honey because of a sugar shortage, the number of bee hives in the U.S. reached almost six million in 1946 - an all-time high. After WWII ended, more agricultural pesticides were produced and the bee colony population began to decline.

In the USDA Handbook 335 - first issued in 1967 - this statement was made: "One of the major problems faced by beekeepers in the United States and other major countries with highly developed agriculture is the poisoning of bees by pesticides."

The American Bee Journal of December 1976 told of 2,500 colonies being lost near Lewiston, Idaho because of pesticides. Then in May 1977, the same magazine told of 5,000 colonies being lost in Kerr County, California from aerial spraying of crops. The killing of bees from pesticides was considered normal at that time and routinely accepted and reported. We did not have university researchers telling us pesticides were not killing bees.

During the period 1967 to 1978, there was a honey bee subsidy program where a beekeeper could receive $20 for colonies killed by approved pesticides. Now, we spend billions of dollars to subsidize corn, wheat and many other crops but not on colonies being killed.

With many concerns about the new chemicals in the marketplace, the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) was formed in 1970, and the law was amended in 1972. The primary purpose of the EPA was to regulate pesticides and other chemicals "...to insure that these products do not pose adverse effects on humans and the environment." According to "Pesticides" from Wikipedia, "Complex and costly studies must be conducted to indicate whether the material is safe for use and effective against the intended pest."

In 1988, the Bayer Chemical Company patented new pesticides with a nicotine base.
These new pesticides were advertised as affecting the nervous system of a termite, thus making it unable to find its way home. The honey bee is an insect, and there are those who say it is also having a problem finding its way home.

Imidacloprid (IMD) is now the most widely used of the new neonicotinoid pesticides and has many negative properties, such as:
• Killing small birds and fish and causing eggshell thinning and lower egg production
• Causing health problems with laboratory test animals
• Polluting streams and the groundwater
• Killing many thousands of bee colonies

EUROPEAN EXPERIENCES WITH PESTICIDES

France was the first country to experience problems with the pesticide IMD. In the 1990s, the French beekeepers observed bees dying shortly after the sunflowers bloomed. One year, the sunflowers bloomed two weeks later than usual; the bees also died two weeks later. Some of the Frenchmen were intuitive enough to believe that there was a relationship between the dying of the bees and the use of IMD. Tests performed using very small amounts of IMD confirmed their suspicions. Bayer performed tests using large amounts of the pesticide and claimed the French were wrong. The French claimed the bees were repelled by the larger dosages of the pesticide and stayed away from the blossoms. This may be something like a non-drinker refusing whiskey on the rocks but enjoying a smooth cocktail. The French did ban the pesticide and were followed by Slovenia, Italy, and Germany. The Cooperative in the United Kingdom, which manages 96 square miles of farmland, banned all eight of the neonicotinoids.

Some researchers in the United States have pointed out that the French bees "... did not come back..." after IMD had been banned. There may be several reasons for this alleged possibility. First, the stocks of IMD in France were permitted to be used. Then, Fipronil, another neonicotinoid, was permitted to be used before it was banned. IMD was found to be more persistent in the soil than had been claimed by Bayer. An even bigger concern was the fact that the pesticide had the ability to break down in the environment, combine with another chemical, and produce a product many times more toxic than the original pesticide.

Beekeepers in Paris, where pesticides are prohibited, have been producing more than 100 pounds of honey per hive. Henry Clement, President of the National Union of French Beekeeping, suggested that the higher honey production could be that beekeepers were avoiding sunflower fields where large numbers of colonies had been lost in previous years.

Concerns pertaining to the new pesticides continued in Europe. An article in Buzz About
Bees, dated January 24, 2011, announced a victory against authorization of the Syngenta pesticide - Cruise - which is a neonicotinoid thiamethoxam. In the UK, Martin Caton proposed an Early Day motion to suspend neonicotinoids, pending more exhaustive tests and the development of international methodologies for assessing long term effects of systemic pesticides on invertebrate populations.

The Urban Farm and Beehives posted the article "A Million Strong Swarm to Save the
Bees" on April 19, 2011. More than one million people, including 200,000 in France, signed an explosive petition to ban pesticides that are mass-killing bees the world over. The campaign continues!

The above references are certainly current with the dates of 2011. What was done in the United States during this period? One may be inclined to say "nothing", but that is not really true. There were many articles explaining why bees were dying - some maybe plausible, others not really. But was any conscientious research done to relate pesticides to the dying of bees? What was happening in Europe was basically either ignored or misrepresented.

NEONICOTINOIDS COME TO THE UNITED STATES

According to Michael Schacker in A Spring without Bees, Imidacloprid was first used in the United States in 1997 on crops in seven states. Before the year 2006 ended, this pesticide had been used in 24 states. European experiences were ignored by the EPA, and IMD was given "temporary emergency authorization". No complex and costly testing was done.

Lobbying — $50 million — by chemical companies one year and deregulation of the chemical industry during the recent Bush administration may help explain how some of these events happened. Now, the chemical companies help decide how they are to be regulated. Once a product is given "temporary emergency authorization", removal becomes very difficult.

U.S. beekeepers began to experience losses after the new pesticides started to be used on an increasingly larger scale. Not only was their use increasing, but their toxicity also was increasing. The treatment for some genetically engineered seeds was increased from 0.25 mg/seed to 1.25 mg/seed. These seeds became available in 2004-2005. Starting about 2004, some of the commercial beekeepers began losing large percentages of their colonies. Examples would be John Miller from Blackfoot, Idaho who lost 40 percent of his 14,000 hives and David Hackenberg from Pennsylvania who lost 2,000 out of 2,900 colonies. There were many others.

UNITED STATES RESEARCH PAPERS DO NOT BLAME PESTICIDES

Shortly after David Hackenberg reported his large losses, research papers began to appear and there were talks before Congress and the USDA, usually by university researchers. First to be blamed were cell phones - ignoring the fact that bees seemed to do well in cities where there were many cell phones and no pesticides - and Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV) until it was discovered the virus was in the United States before Australia was accused of importing it.

Travel stress continues to be mentioned as a possible cause of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). The shipment of bees in small wire cages has been going on for more than one hundred years; it was an efficient way of moving small packages using the Postal Service until employees became abusive in the way they handled the shipments. Packages of bees are still shipped in wire cages by trucks every spring. Today, moving a colony in a Langstroth-type hive with a food supply, their mothers and sisters should be less stressful than being shipped in a wire cage. Of course, there can always be unusual weather — a blizzard or heat wave — and bees may be stressed. Usually, travel stress is presented in such a way that the reader expects the bee to do a lot of traveling. Actually, most bees will make one leg of the trip from Florida to California and then back to Florida or to North Dakota, Washington, or some other place. As David Mendes, past president of the ABF, once said, "I never had a problem transporting healthy bees."

No one questions that parasitic mites (tracheal and varroa) have killed and will continue to do so, but the mite problem was with us long before CCD was ever reported.

Some claim the disease nosema ceranae has caused CCD. A French scientist, working for the National Institute for Agronomic research in Avignon, concluded that Imidacloprid significantly weakens bees and stated, "Thus the interaction between imidacloprid and, nosema are not only responsible for an increase in the mortality rate, but also for weakening the colony." The September 2011 issue of the American Bee Journal carried an article where the researcher reversed the French conclusions and claimed nosema ceranae weakens the bee's resistance to pesticides. Apparently, this researcher was not aware of the honey bee subsidy program.
Poor nutrition also has been cited as the cause of CCD. Two different explanations have been given. One is that bees being prepared for a trip to California were fed high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) as their only food. After reaching the almond orchards, hives suddenly collapsed. However, there were hives that had never been fed HFCS, and some of these also collapsed. In order for this hypothesis to have validity, one must know the condition of the hives when feeding started. Some articles suggest that there was no other food available in the hives. Is it responsible beekeeping to remove all honey from hives before winter begins? Also, whether or not these colonies had been exposed to pesticides should be known.

Suppliers of high fructose corn syrup claimed their product was not causing problems.
One supplier explained to me, in a phone call, "We have been feeding HFCS to beekeepers for 25 years and we are not aware of problems."

Another hypothesis was published in Scientific American about two years ago. The writer blamed poor nutrition and, subsequently CCD, on mega-farming. With the sixteen row planters and cultivators, along with huge harvesting machines, that appeared on the farm scene about 40 years ago, fence rows were removed. The diversity in plants was thus eliminated. The writer seemed to have ignored the fact that, in most areas, the honey bee will travel about two miles from the hive. The area available for foraging will be major parts of 16 sections of land which may have 17 to 18 miles of roads with ditches on both sides of most roads. In these strips of land beside the road would not a person expect to find the diversity of plants missing from fence rows? One should ask, "Why did it take more than 40 years for this to happen?" Pheasants, which had been plentiful enough in Central Illinois for a hunting season, disappeared in only a few years. CCD is more likely due to pesticides than it is to mega-farming practices.

Recently, Dr. Jeff Pettis of the USDA stated that it now appears that the cause of CCD can be narrowed to diet and pathogens. Then why not conduct research in non-farm areas and see if one or more of the above can be eliminated? The 4300 registered organic beekeepers must keep bees three miles from farm land and claim no problems -except one questionable case.

AN EXAMPLE OF THE EPA AT WORK

Near the end of 2010, there were many headlines stating, "EPA Document Shows It
Knowingly Allowed Pesticide that Kills Bees". The document, which was leaked to a Colorado beekeeper, tells us that warnings about the use of clothianidin were ignored. The main risk of clothianidin, which is used to treat corn, is to non-target insects, especially the honey bee. Clothianidin is a neonicotinoid insecticide that is toxic on both a contact and oral basis. EPA staff were ignored.

THE UPHILL BATTLE OF BEEKEEPERS

Beekeeping is not a job for a lazy man. Work must be done on schedule, and the commercial beekeeper cannot wait for better weather, even if it means working all night in the rain. Seasonal, qualified help can be a problem. After the almond pollination season, John Miller trucks his bees to North Dakota and uses summer help from South Africa. Some "old" beekeepers retire; others have reduced their number of colonies; and others have quit as a result of expensive losses. Some children do not wish to take over their father's business. It is expensive to start a commercial bee business. Rich uncles usually have other uses for their money. Banks consider beekeeping a risky business. Those with the necessary money may find it more entertaining to watch the ponies run or spend time in Las Vegas.

WHAT IS BEING DONE BY THE BEEKEEPING INDUSTRY

Each year, the American Beekeeping Federation sponsors a Honey Queen and a Honey Princess contest. These two young ladies do a tremendous job for one year with countless appearances where they speak to thousands of people, telling them about the importance of the honey bee.

A few of the more dedicated, professional beekeepers have met with USDA personnel and some members of Congress and have even made trips to Europe. There are times when one wonders if they have been talking to deaf ears in the United States.

There are films available that tell much about the current problems of the honey bee. Films such as Nicotine Bees, Vanishing of the Bees, Queen of the Sun, COLONY- The Endangered World of Bees, and The Last Beekeeper are available. These films have been seen by only a small percentage of the beekeepers and almost none of the general public. They tell stories that everyone should be aware of. The World According to Monsanto and how they were able to get certain products approved should receive more publicity.

The film Vanishing of the Bees, produced by George Southworthy and Maryam Heifien (both English), certainly ends with a sobering statement: "When the last tree has died, the last stream poisoned, the last fish caught, then we will realize money cannot buy everything."

MY HYPOTHESIS AS TO WHY BEES MAY BE DYING

My hypothesis is there can be a parallel between the excessive use of tobacco and the increased use of pesticides. Some readers may be old enough to recall when the tobacco industry began an aggressive campaign in the mid 1930's to encourage women to smoke. I still remember the attractive large bill board showing grandma sitting in her rocking chair, and while reaching for a cigarette, saying, "I think I'll try one." Women did begin smoking in large numbers.

Only a few years passed before doctors began to see an increase in lung cancer, throat cancer, and other health problems they related to the use of tobacco - both directly and as "second hand smoke."

We must thank Congress for acting about 40 years ago and we can now enjoy smoke-free environments while enjoying public transportation (airplanes, trains, buses) dining in restaurants, attending meetings and theaters, and just working in an office. The October, 2011 issue of National Geographic discusses a reduction in cancer rates and makes this sobering statement:

"About a third of U.S. cancer deaths are still related to tobacco." And we still have researchers who do not blame pesticides with nicotine for killing bees?

On or about September 26, 2011, hundreds of bee colonies were wiped out in Brevard
County, Florida after an area was sprayed by helicopters for mosquitoes. The mass dying took place immediately following the spraying. Of course, the officials responsible for the spraying denied their chemicals had killed the bees. Haven't we heard this story before? "We don't know what killed the bees, but it wasn't the pesticides!"

A FRENCH BEEKEEPER IS HEARD FROM

After four unsuccessful attempts over three years, with the help of a French-English
Translator & Interpreter, I was finally able to receive a latter from a French beekeeper. On
December 5, 2011 Dominique Meglioli did write to me.

Dominique introduced himself as not only the founding Director of the magazine Volez! dedicated to aerial sports, but an amateur beekeeper with about 20 years’ experience. While discussing the mite, disease, and the Asian hornet problems, I believe the important conclusions one can draw from this letter are:

1) Colony losses in urban areas, where there is little or no use of pesticides, are about five percent.
2) Colony losses in rural areas where chemicals are used are about 30 percent.
3) A pesticide, relatively harmless by itself, produces deadly results in connection with Nosema Cernae.
4) In lobbying against the ministry in charge of regulating pesticide uses, the industrial and large farm groups are much more powerful than the beekeepers.

SOME FINAL THOUGHTS

There are those who contend the CCD problem is no longer with us. However, bees are still dying and the same people claim the neonicotinoid pesticides are not a problem. Yet, they tell us to replace the brood foundation every two or three years and to re-queen more often. The problem has not disappeared, but there may be fewer cases as the beekeepers are more careful where their bees are kept.

Our principal concern should be what chemicals may do to people, especially young children, pets, beneficial insects, the environment, streams, and fragile ground water systems. Unfortunately, these concerns may be of secondary consideration when EPA compares the benefits of producing a few more bushels of corn or soy beans (both highly subsidized) to the killing of honey bees and other beneficial insects. ALREADY SOME HAVE DISAPPEARED!

SO, WE GOTTA MAKE NOISE

Beekeeping and Pesticides by Lawrence A. DuBose, Ph.D. November 2011

Le Subjonctif

I am sitting in a stretch limo on a rain pelted highway, the only American among the passengers. Everyone is quietly consulting their electronic umbilical cords to home or the office while the raindrops and rubber tires produce an isolating hum. Three times a year, I look forward to a certain Email from France, communicating hotel and air reservations, and the invitation to join the little band of Frenchmen on their Midwestern excursion from one subsidiary to another, as dictated by some articles of incorporation and the need to look in on investments. Two of my French employers do not speak English, and so I am called to perform what I love best – the schizophrenic metamorphosis of biculturalism. I get to be French and American in alternate doses. American comes naturally; French comes from an act of the heart.

My employer is a French entrepreneurial legend. At a very spry seventy-five years of age, he wears his Lacoste and needs his cigarette at regular intervals. A French client once lamented to me, out on the sidewalk at Michigan and Wacker, where he had gone to grab his dose of nicotine: “Society imposed these damn things on us and now society is taking them away...!”

I am accustomed to working with French businessmen of a “certain” age. Non-English speaking – the only line they remember from English lessons is the classic “My tailor is rich”. They follow a fixed set of manners: the handshake, the use of Monsieur and Madame instead of a first name, a certain wariness. The French are observant. They have radar. As a linguist, I’m fascinated with reflections of the parent culture in its language. It is impossible to speak a foreign language well without knowing something of how the brain and heart of the foreign speaker work. Correctly conjugating the verbs will only get you so far. Phrasing and intonation help to make someone “fluent” just as they turn someone who sings in the shower into a “vocalist”. The French language is more musical than English, whose consonants overpower the vowels. French, on the other hand, sings with pure vowels, undiluted by diphthongs. Getting the vowels wrong marks an American every bit as much as wearing a Stars and Stripes lapel pin.

In addition to the lyrical beauty of spoken French, I love its special attention to the subjunctive tense. The subjunctive feels natural to me, since doubt and emotion are ever present in a profession where you toggle back and forth between two idioms and two cultures. The act of leaving one’s native language and assuming the language of another country is an emotional uncertainty, a step into an exotic world, which flips some electric switches in the brain, firing up synapses. Interpreters are fountains of adrenaline. The trick is to be someone you are not. The second language is the costume and the stage and the voyage of the mind we perform in order to convince the listener that we belong to that other culture.

When I have taught French, I found it very difficult to work with American students who didn’t learn parts of speech in “grammar school”. “Grammar” went away when the place became “elementary” school. Both the name of the institution and its objective seem somehow diminished. I went to “grammar school” as a child, a world of diagramming sentences and knowing the difference between “you and I” and “you and me”. I wince when I hear television news broadcasters misusing object and subject pronouns and I have long ago given up the battle of the dangling preposition.

My approach to teaching French grammar to a generation raised on Whole Language is to venture away from the strict mechanics of language, and the scaffold structures I learned as a child, with sentence diagrams stretching the length of the chalk board. Instead, I go for the thought processes behind French grammar. If you want to speak French, you have to play at being French. The actor in you must get into the character.

I lectured once on the Cartesian quality of the French language. I was shocked to find college French students who didn’t recognize the name of René Descartes, the Father of Modern Philosophy. I feel his cogito ergo sum in the subtleties of the French language. I think, therefore I am. The Frenchman’s awareness of himself permeates his speech, so structured as to give the impression that he is observing himself while speaking. For example, a conversation in French will not go two minutes without use of a pronominal – or reflexive – verb. Their use is like looking in a mirror. Je me lève. I get (myself) up. Je me demande. I wonder (I ask myself). Je m’amuse. I’m having a good time (I amuse myself). Even at the moment of death, the Frenchman’s thoughts reflect objectively on his dying body. Je me meurs.

At the same time, the French use of the subjunctive places the French speaker at a cautious distance from what he sees around him, ever critically observant. The subjunctive is the mood of uncertainty and emotion, with its discreet backing away from the unknown, its recognition of an emotional impact, its attenuation following a wish, a command, and even distancing the speaker from a superlative, because you never know if something really is la meilleure chose qu’on puisse dire. The subjunctive curls back up and around the French speaker, after “whomever”, “whatever” or “wherever”, like a shield protecting him from a possible misconception. No one really knows the future or the outcome or what will follow, and the French language swims in the softer sibilance of those doubts. Qu’il fasse, qu’il plaise, qu’il puisse, qu’il soit….

While I’m changing from one language to the other in my work, I’m striving to plant the seed of doubt in the mind of my listener as to my origin. Singing my vowels and reflexing my verbs, I live for the moment when I am asked: “Are you French?”

Ah, I wish that I were (subjunctive tense).

Pardon my French...

Hardball’s Chris Matthews on MSNBC and the French have something in common. Besides left-leaning politics, they share a dialogue style that is unacceptable in American conversation.

Listening to the shrill crescendo of Eleanor Clift and Monica Crowley launching “Excuse Me’s” across their political divide on the McLaughlin Group, I long for John McLaughlin’s programmed dominance of the conversation which allows him to quiet everyone so that one person can be heard. His intervention always reminds me, through my long association with the French and my eager participation in the French sport of “Conversation”, that Americans, unless they are fighting about politics in the media, expect to be heard ONE AT A TIME.

In Raymonde Carroll’s classic “Cultural Misunderstandings, The French-American Experience”*, I learned early on about the French conversational style that I had unconsciously adopted in my years among the French.

“Americans often expressed surprise in my presence at the fact that French people, ‘who claim to be very big on manners,’ are themselves so ‘rude’: ‘they interrupt you all the time in conversation,’ ‘they finish your sentences for you, ‘ they ask you questions and never listen to the answer,’ and so on.”

Spontaneity and “fueling” of a conversation are key to understanding and participating in any discussion with the French. Interruptions are not so much considered “rude” as evidence of emotional engagement, of being hooked on the speaker’s message, to the point that an immediate reaction is complimentary and proof of active involvement in the conversation.

The previously cited work by Ms. Carroll was originally published in French under the title “Evidences Invisibles”, a wonderful paradoxical title that perfectly describes so many subtle nuances of cultural differences. Her work was the standard among French teachers and students more than twenty years ago, long before Peter Mayles and Polly Platt brought their foreigners’ views of the French into popular literature. Aside from her analysis of the Frenchman’s relationship with the telephone, which has been turned completely upside down with the advent of the “portable” or cell phone, Ms. Carroll’s observations remain pertinent to this day.

While most Americans visit France for the scenery, and perhaps the cuisine, a trip to France for me, not surprisingly, is a linguistic adventure. Although I never miss the opportunity to visit an unknown church, castle or museum, the real highlight for me is dinner conversation long into the night, around a table where plates can be cleared away, but the stemware lingers as long as our verbal exchanges continue, warm and raucous. I teach Gallicismes in my French classes, because they are the Passwords for an American to dive in to the conversation and be accepted. French conversation is a sport, in its own way, with challenges and jousts, a kind of seduction to which one must alternately succumb or wield. The subjects of politics, religion, and sex are all fair game. But, unlike Americans, the French do not discuss money. Not how much they make or have, or how much they have spent. Money, as a topic of conversation in France, is as “dirty” and untouchable as sexuality is in the United States.

I have an old video of an evening spent with my French family, all of us squashed into a tiny apartment in the Hauts-de-Seine and gaily talking together long into the night about food, about culture, about family vacations, telling jokes. The host that evening had just acquired a new video camera and was trying out all its features while the conversation rolled on. When I’m homesick for France, I pop the tape into my old VCR. Some people look at photo albums… My vacation memories need a sound track.

The verbal sparring, the play on words, the chorus of voices rising and falling together on my tape, all remind me that the art of conversation is practiced entirely differently in France. How often do Americans just sit together and talk? Without the background noise of the television ?

Living among Americans, with my French soul, I have to make a conscious effort to keep from interrupting someone with whom I am engaged in conversation. I wait anxiously for the end of a sentence. And even then, I often find that I did not respect the essential interval before launching my rejoinder. Sometimes waiting for the other person to take a breath does not suffice. I have to wait for other clues that the person’s train of thought has pulled into a station and has opened its doors for the new passengers of my thoughts to climb aboard.

So, in the sincere hope that this explantion will allow me to be culturally understood for my linguistic rudeness, I ask my American friends, colleagues and family to forgive me for past conversational transgressions.

… dis seulement une parole et je serai guérie… Amen.

*Raymonde Carroll, Cultural Misunderstandings, The French-American Experience, Translated by Carol Volk, University of Chicago Press, 1988; page 23.