The Eastern SIG is officially out of hibernation. And the second formal meeting of the season was appropriately held just before the first day of spring. It was a good turnout with seven participants, and the morning’s topic was Brexit. Or is it Breggsit? Even its pronunciation triggered a discussion. Although Brexit is undoubtedly a divisive topic, our meeting was a model of harmony. We covered a range of Brexit-related topics, kicking off with a newsletter from the Dutch Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) and later moving on to letters to the editor of the Dutch quality daily paper Trouw.

It was difficult to tell whether the newsletter had been written directly in English or translated from the Dutch. We had fun trying to figure out which. One thing no-one had any doubts about was that the author was a non-native speaker, considering perplexing headings such as ‘Visitors open Brexit meetings pleased with IND presence’ and the references to ‘British’ when referring to Britons. It also got us talking about the (non)sense of embedded brackets and why it’s ‘Brexit’ in the UK and ‘de brexit’ in the Netherlands.

But we were not only there to linger over language. We had more important issues to tackle. Brexit itself. So we looked at the merits of solutions to Brexit submitted by readers of Trouw, one by our very own convener. Her suggestion was to set up a citizens’ assembly, similar to the one held in Ireland. Just as we had finished talking about this sensible course of action, several of us happened to receive an email from the IND. Attached was their second newsletter and, believe it or not, this one contained none of the errors we had just been discussing. We suspect that the IND is keeping tabs on us. In which case, we might be able to solve Brexit after all!

One new member of SENSE commented: "I felt very welcome during my first presence at a SIG meeting. As a starting translator into French and English (a native Dutch speaker), it was very useful for me to hear about the experiences of others – translators and otherwise – working in the field of languages. I was impressed with the thorough comments made by the native speakers in the group on an English text from a Dutch organization, which we analysed during our meeting and which, at first sight, seemed okay to me! I learned a lot, and look forward to more networking within SENSE."