A weblog for Pete Ellertsen's mass communications students at Benedictine University Springfield.

Thursday, April 27, 2006

Gobbledygook generator

Somehow I surfed up on this UN Gobbledygook Generator, apparently put up on the web by an English expat who has a blog in Hanoi, in Vietnam.Rather than try to explain it, I'll just quote from this tongue-in-cheek instroduction on the UNFG (United Nations Foundation for Gobbledygook) website:
A staggering 800 million adults possess no writing skills at all, leaving them on the margins of all development opportunities. Evidence-based assessments suggest that this occurs mainly at the provincial and local level, however even at the international level writing skills are being challenged  by a lack of proper training and ICT-enabled drafting and authoring tools.
 
In this context, the UNFG developed the Program for Capacity-Building in the Field of Language Transparency Impact. The program assists in dispensing with harmful idiomatic practices, and promotes the use of a standardized international framework for document authoring. Designed as a Public-Private-Sector Partnership within the Framework of the Global Compact, and supported through supplemental grants from individual donors, the program has made a significant contribution in this field.

This web-based application is useful for people who feel that report drafting skills are important in a UN context, and are in need of occasional assistance in order to carry out their duties.  It may also be of  help for citizens aspiring to become officials, particularly at the international level. The tool can be accessed through this website at no cost, by simply clicking on the button below.
The button says "Generate Some Gobbledygook." And it does. I clicked, and got:
In the context of decentralization, the Chief Technical Adviser will work to unlock clusters, through culturally sensitive outcome-oriented stakeholder awareness and ownership.
Wow! "[O]utcome-oriented stakeholder awareness!" I can't wait to show this to SCI's Assessment Committee. Click again, and I get:
Evidence-based assessments suggest that effective Government interventions include evaluative governance-related socio-economic policy advocacy activities.
This is marvelous! Click again:
In the context of improving the legal and regulatory framework, the Member States will develop cross-sectorial organisational Education for All policies targeted at improving enrolment and retention rates amongst marginalized groups.
Of course, it's designed for multinational non-governmental organizations rather than small liberal arts colleges. Click:
The relevant modules of the project are, at the inter-governmental level, mapped onto sector-wide governance-related feasibility studies of recommendations for change to be implemented.
Click again:
The Honorable Representative concluded that this approach is based on context-specific governance-related poverty reduction and sustainable growth strategies.
So, yeah, it's clearly from the world of NGOs and third-world economic development planning. But this honorable veteran of small-college faculty committees recognizes the language. Worse yet, he wonders if he's beginning to speak it ...

1 comment:

Hengist said...

For utter crap and endless, meaningless sentences, I strongly recommend the papers churned out by ESADE Business School's Public Policy Department. I have this sneaky suspicion that they are all written by a gobbledygook generator using "human" pen names.

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About Me

Springfield (Ill.), United States
I'm a retired English, journalism and cultural studies teacher at Springfield College in Illinois (acquired by Benedictine University and subsequently closed). I coordinate jam sessions for the "Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music" at Clayville Historic Site and the Prairieland Strings dulcimer club, and I sing in the choir and the contemporary praise team at Peace Lutheran Church in Springfield. On Hogfiddle I post links and video clips for our sessions and workshops on the mountain dulcimer (a.k.a. "hog fiddle"), as well as research notes on folklore and cultural studies, hymnody and traditional Anglo-Celtic and Scandinavian music. I also posted assignments and readings in my interdisciplinary humanities classes. The Mackerel Wrapper (now on hiatus), carried assignments and readings for my mass comm. students. I started teaching b/log when I chaired SCI-Benedictine's assessment committee, and reopened it as the privatization of public schools grew increasingly troubling and closer to home.