Exeter and District slave trade; Fridjof Nansen (Nansen of the North), who took deep water temperatures in 1894; Wally Herbert, arguably the greatest of all polar explorers; Gertrude Bell, a fearless explorer and Yuri Gagarin, the first person to travel in space.
one’s native language. However, we were surprised to learn that Leslie found it was easier for him to translate from English to Arabic, as he found he could more readily remember what had been said in English, rather than in Arabic.
Controversially, he omitted the title figures of his book Shackleton and Scott preferring, because of his contribution to science, Doctor Edward Wilson, who accompanied Scott on the race to the South Pole (1910-1912). They were, however, also covered in his earlier book The Seventy Great Journeys in History.
This was fascinating insight into an area of language which was unfamiliar to most of our members. A more detailed account of Leslie McLoughlin’s interesting life is available in his recently published book Confessions of an Arabic Interpreter: the Odyssey of an Arabist, copies of which were available to members at the meeting.
On being asked during question time what was there that was left to explore he highlighted that there were still 90% of caves unexplored and 93% of species undiscovered. On being asked about climate change he emphasised what he did know – that what we are doing is bad, particularly with respect to deforestation (of the Amazon) and acidification of the oceans. John Baxter concluded the proceedings with some encouraging words to the aspiring young explorers to be in the front row! Robin had copies of his new book The Great Explorers for purchase and signing at the refreshments at the end. Gil Patrick, ESU Cornwall Consultant, explained to all present that donations made would be a vital part of our fund raising to support the cultural and educational programmes and scholarships of the EnglishSpeaking Union, and the new branch project - training for disaster relief management work that we are doing in with ShelterBox. (www.shelterbox.org)
Neil McRae (treasurer), Gillian Greene, Susan Howe (our speaker) and one of our sponsored gap year students, Luke Chapman.
For our first meeting of the calendar year we were pleased to welcome as our speaker Leslie McLoughlin, Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Exeter, who describes himself as historian, Arabist, interpreter and writer. Leslie began by informing us of the importance of the Arabic language, spoken by 350 million people in an area extending from Morocco in the west to the borders of Iran and from Turkey in the north down to central Africa. Unlike English, the spoken form of Arabic has not been subject to change and is essentially the same today as it was in the 7th century. Leslie has had many interpreting assignments in the past, including the Lockerbie trial, a $10 billion fraud case in the Bahamas and the funeral of the Princess of Wales. He described his experience of interpreting for Margaret Thatcher and the protocols that needed to be observed. One of the skills that he needed to acquire was to be able to interpret whilst continuing to eat a meal - a matter of seizing opportunities as they arose or finding oneself very hungry at the conclusion of the meal. Most people assume that it is always easier to translate from a second language into
Our December event was billed as a Christmas party and the room looked very festive, with Christmas decorations, candles in silver candelabras, crackers, poppers and red table decorations. In his welcome, chairman Laurie Burbridge explained that we had two speakers to enjoy. Firstly, we were pleased to welcome Luke Chapman, who the branch had sponsored during his gap year. Luke is currently reading Mathematics at Queen’s College, Cambridge and he spoke fluently and effortlessly about his year in Guyana under the auspices of Project Trust. He had had to raise nearly £5,000 for his placement and he was extremely grateful to the Exeter branch of the ESU who had been by far his largest sponsor. He spent most of the year at St Ignatius Secondary School in a remote part of Guyana as a Maths and English teacher, living in the school compound with another volunteer. He felt that he had learned a great deal about himself, gained independence and would recommend Project Trust to anyone thinking of DIALOGUE 63