[Owen Caldwell]: Midterm Portfolio – #2 Plain Language

The Project

Assignment Translation:

Original Assignment

Midterm Prompt #2 provides a more creative avenue in which you are in charge of setting up a booth at the “2024 International Cannabis Expo”, in which you will develop an idea for a booth and submit a typed proposal as well as a supporting creative element for consideration for inclusion  in the expo. Your proposal is to be submitted in the form of a 1-page (approximately 500 word), typed proposal to support the concept and goals of the booth, along with an advertisement highlighting the booth. Your advertisement can be in the form of a poster, pamphlet, newspaper ad, magazine ad, radio ad, television ad, etc. This project is intentionally open -ended to allow for creativity and flexibility. The expo can feature a variety of businesses, and your booth can be pro-cannabis, anti-cannabis, or something in between. The written portion should cite at least 2 credible sources that include books or journal articles. Students are expected to utilize readings and class discussion to illustrate their points. 

 

Plain Language version

Midterm Prompt 2 is more creative than prompt 1. For Midterm Prompt 2, you are in charge of setting up a booth at an imaginary 2024 International Cannabis Expo.

 

You will come up with an idea for something to present at the international cannabis expo. Your idea can be anything you want about Cannabis. 

You will write 500 words describing: 

• Your idea
• The goal of your idea
• Why people would be interested in your idea.

 

Research 2 trustworthy sources to come up with your idea about Cannabis,

and use things the class has read and talked about to support your idea.

 

Your idea can be in support of cannabis use or not.

 

To promote your idea at the international cannabis expo, you will create an advertisement. You can choose to make any kind of popular advertisement. You can…

• Make a poster advertisement
• A pamphlet
• A newspaper advertisement
• A magazine advertisement
• A radio advertisement
• A television advertisement

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn:

Brooklyn, New York was quiet and peaceful on a Saturday afternoon in the summer of 1912. Everywhere in Brooklyn was somber except Williamsburg. You couldn’t describe Brooklyn with the words Prairie or Shenandah, quiet and peaceful are better ways of describing Brooklyn. Fancie Nolan watched the setting sun at her house and recalled a poem she recited in school.

 

This is the forest primeval. The murmuring

Pines and the hemlocks,

Bearded with moss, and in garments green,

Indistinct in the twilight,

Stand like Druids of eld.

 

There was one tree in Francie’s yard. It is not a pine tree or a hemlock tree. The tree has pointed leaves that grow along green switches. The leaves look like open green umbrellas. Some people call it the Tree of Heaven, because it didn’t matter where the tree’s seed fell, it would always struggle to grow. Many trees in brooklyn grew in boarded-up lots and surrounded by trash piles, but the tree in Francie’s yard grew out of cement. These trees grew lushly, but only in the tenements areas.

You took a walk on a Sunday afternoon and came to a nice, very refined neighborhood. If you spot a small one of these trees through the iron gate leading to someone’s yard, that means the area you’re in will soon become a tenement area. The tree was there first and it saw when foreigners built houses and those houses became apartments and the foreigners put feather beds on window sills. Through the change of the area, the Tree of Heaven flourished because it liked the poor foreigners.

The tree that saw the neighborhood change and liked poor foreigners was the kind of tree in Francie’s yard. Its umbrellas curled around and under her 3rd floor fire escape. Francie could pretend that the fire escape was like a tree house because of the tree curled under it.

Saturday was a wonderful day in Brooklyn. Saturday was a wonderful day anywhere. People were paid on Saturday. Saturday is a holiday, but it’s not as serious as Sunday.

 

When people got paid on Saturday they could do the following:

• On Saturday people could go out and buy things.
• On Saturday people ate well.
• On Saturday people could get drunk
• On Saturday people could go on dates.
• On Saturday people could make love
• On Saturday people could stay up all night singing, playing music, fighting, and dancing.
• On Saturday people could be care free because Sunday was free and they could sleep late until mass.

 

On Sunday more people went to the 11:00 AM mass, and less people went to the 6:00 AM mass. The people who went to the 6:00 AM mass didn’t deserve credit for coming because they were the ones who stayed out all night and would leave and go to sleep for the rest of the day.

 

Like other Brooklyn kids, Francie started her Saturday by going to the junk collector with her brother Neeley. Francie collects junk that has metal in it, melts some of it down, and goes to sell it to the junk collector.

Francie and Neeley go down to the cellar of their building each evening and store all their trash. Francie collects trash from her mom because she is a janitor.

Some junk is more valuable than others:

• For a pound of paper Francie only gets 1 cent.
• For a pound of cloth Francie gets 2 cents.
• For a pound of iron Francie gets 4 cents.
• For a pound of copper, Francie gets 10 cents.

 

If Francie is lucky, she will find a wash boiler which is worth a lot.

 

At 9:00 AM on a Saturday, lots of kids take their valuable junk to Manhattan Avenue, the main road in the area. Kids carry their junk in their arms, with wagons, wooden soap boxes, and sometimes loaded baby strollers.

Francie and Neeley drag their junk in a cloth bag along Manhattan Avenue to Scholes Street. The streets they pass are ugly but they have beautiful names. On each side of the street, lots of dirty children come out to make fun of people walking by. 

 

The dirty children yell “Rag picker! Rag picker!” to Francie and Neely when they are walking back after selling their junk.

 

Even though the kids calling Francie a “Rag picker” were also “rag pickers,” Francie was still offended by the insult. Francie knew her brother and his friends would also call people “rag pickers.” Francie felt ashamed.

Carney the junk collector stored his junk business in a stable. When Francie turned she noticed the doors were open and she felt welcomed to put her junk on the weighing scale. Carney has rusty hair, a rusty mustache, and rusty eyes. Carney likes girls better than boys, and if Francie stays relaxed when Carney pinches her cheek, then Carney gives her an extra penny.

Neeley waited outside while Francie went in with their junk. Carney dumped Francie’s junk bag onto the floor and pinched Francie’s cheek. Francie adjusted her eyes to the darkness of the smelly moist room, and Carney put Francie’s junk onto the scale. After reading the scale, Carney offered Francie some money and she accepted. Carney sorted Francie’s junk, pinched her harder on the cheek, and gave her his offer in pennies. Francie left and Carney rudely called in the next person in line. All of the children had to do what Carney said even though they didn’t want to.

Outside, Francie counted 16 cents + 1 cent for the pinch. Neeley said that the extra 1 cent belonged to Francie. Francie put the extra cent in her dress, and Neeley took the rest of the money because he is a boy.

Neeley and Francie put 8 cents in a tin-can in their house for safe keeping. Franice took 5 cents and was happy because 5 cents made a nickel. Neeley and Francie went to Cheap Charlie’s, a candy store right next to the junk collector’s stable. The store doesn’t allow girls to go inside, so Francie waited by the door. All the boys in Cheap Charlie’s dress the same. The youngest boys in the store are 8 years old, and the oldest are 14 years old. The boys stood waiting for their candy looking not relaxed, and they would look this way when they grow up as well. The only difference between the boys’ lives now and when they are older is that they will be smoking cigarettes instead of eating candy.

The boys were nervous as they waited for Charlie. Francie looked at the boys’ new summer short haircuts. The boys with summer haircuts had their baseball caps either in their pockets or pushed back on their heads. The boys without haircuts were using their baseball caps to hide their long hair because they are afraid to look like a girl.

Cheap Charlie was not using his real name, and his candy was expensive. But Francie believed Charlie. 

When you gave Cheap Charlie a penny, you could get candy or a prize:

• You could get roller skates,
• You could get a catcher’s mitt,
• You could get a doll with real hair.
• You could also get blotters, pencils and other penny articles.

Neeley put his money in to win a prize and got a cheap pen wiper. Francie thought the prizes were a scam and always bought candy instead. One day when Francie has 50 cents, she will buy all the prizes in the store. Buying all the prizes in the candy store would impress Charlie and would be a good deal because some of the prizes were worth a lot more than 1 cent.

Project Description 

Plain Language is a simpler, more direct way of writing thats easier to understand for people with learning disabilities. For this project, I’ve translated a homework assignment, and an excerpt from “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.”

Documentation 

In general, for both the assignment translation and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, I read and tried to understand the gist of a paragraph, and I put those ideas and actions in my own more direct words. I consistently re-introduce nouns instead of using pronouns, and I steer clear of words that are too specialized or lesser-known. If the author lists out a bunch of items, I use line breaks to separate the list from the rest of the reading.

For both assignments, I had the original document and the translated version side-by-side so I could refer back and forth easily as I wrote.

Reflection Questions

• What is the theme of the work? How is that theme particularly expressed through the modality of the week?

The world of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is an interesting subject matter to express in an accessible way. Without going into too many specifics I would compare and contrast the world of a Tree Grows in Brooklyn to the modern world we have today. There would have been absolutely no care or consideration for disabled communities in early 20th century New York. It’s telling how even when I was young, learning disabilities were frowned-upon and thus kept hidden by friends I knew (along with queerness, which, in my world in New York has luckily had a turn-around since the early 2000s). One could imagine the struggle and sacrifice required for someone with a learning disability to fit in.

• Which elements of the work are beautifully/wonderfully/perfectly expressed through the modality?

For everything that had these long repetitions of elements like, for example, “the things people in Brooklyn did on Saturday,” I found that bullet-pointing these things with plain-language made these parts surprisingly proseful (prose-full; that’s a made up word). Line-breaks have this punchy affect, like:

Here are the items.

One.

Two.

Three.

Each line commands authority,

hierarchy,

sequencing. — I’m on the edge of my seat!

• Which elements are lost or inexpressible through the modality of the week?

The poem at the start of the excerpt was something that I thought about for a long time. I decided it shouldn’t be put in plain-language, because it was short enough and wasn’t necessary for getting the jist of the story. In general, I would have a tough time figuring out how to translate prose because so much of what makes poems poetry is that complexity and “literary jazz(??).” I don’t believe there are too many substitutions available for something so specially-crafted.

• Who does this project exclude, Who would not be able to interact with this work, and who is this modality not accessible for?

Plain language does not necessarily include people with vision loss, nor is it necessarily intuitive to interface with if you have vision impairment.

• Now that you’ve identified who is excluded, what is one way you could remix this piece to include another population? (You don’t have to make this part, but think about it and write about it).

Whether it be printed material or digital, a screen reader, audio description, or an additional translation to braile should accompany a plain-language translation in order to make it accessible to people with impaired vision.