Metaglossia: The Translation World

It seems like new online services for collaborative writing are emerging all the time. After a series of postings about the powerful collaborative capabilities of the GitHub platform, used for writing code by programmers around the world, I suggested that this opens up the possibility for radical new ways to engage in academic scholarship and explore ways of forking the academy. For this to even stand a chance though, we need writing platforms that work better for our needs than the steep learning curve and some of the other limitations of Github. I offered my own list of suggestionsabout what that kind of platform might look like and in the next few weeks I’ll take a closer look at some of new options out there to consider. I begin with Draft, a new writing platform created by the extremely talented Nathan Kontny.

Draft is designed for drafting and collaborative writing of text. It is not a blogging platform or a live editing environment like Google Docs, and the documents created within Draft are not designed to have their final home there. As it functions now, you write, collaborate, edit, and then export or directly publish the documents to your cloud hosting service such as Dropbox, Evernote, or Google Drive, to a social platform such as Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr, and Twitter or, if you use the Chrome or Firefox additions, directly back into a text box in another browser tab. Get a quick overview of its features here.

JERUSALÉN.— Al traductor, escritor y periodista israelí Ioram Melcer le gusta decir , con una amplia sonrisa, que “Rayuela y yo cumplimos 50 este año”. Al presentarse recientemente la traducción al hebreo de la inolvidable novela del argentino Julio Cortázar, precisamente en el cincuentenario de la publicación de Rayuela, Ioram no puede menos que sentirse satisfecho.

“Para un traductor, traducir esto es como escalar el Everest”, dice entre orgulloso y aliviado por haber terminado el trabajo.

Ha traducido más de 90 libros, entre ellos obras de Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Jorge Volpi, Paulo Coelho, Antonio Lobo Antúnez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Antonio Skarmeta, Fernando Pessoa, Salman Rushdie, Jorge Icaza , Junot Díaz y muchos más. Pero no tiene dudas: los que más le han impactado han sido El libro del desasosiego de Fernando Pessoa y Rayuela de Julio Cortázar.

Sus estudios de lingüística en la Universidad Hebrea de Jerusalén han sido claves para Ioram Melcer (estudió también Historia, Filosofía e Informática), pero más allá de ello, lo esencial es su deseo de compenetrarse con la obra de un autor y lograr “meterme en su piel”.

“A veces siento que el trabajo de traductor es un poco como el del detective, que va buscando piezas y armando un mosaico”, comenta a EL UNIVERSAL dando como ejemplo las numerosas oportunidades en las que sintió que para traducir exitosamente determinada frase o expresión, debía llegar al origen etimológico del mismo. Y el desafío fue tal que hasta “inventó” unas 30 palabras en hebreo. “Ningún traductor ha hecho algo así ni en inglés, ni en francés”, señala Ioram Melcer. 

 

Some budding literary translators may be interested in attending this conference on 21st June at the University of Westminster in London.

The Languages of Exile: Translating Modern and Contemporary Hispanic Literaturewill bring together scholars, translators, writers, publishers and others from a variety of different backgrounds and interests to consider representations of exile and how translators respond to these in their own ‘languages’.

EVENT OUTLINE

A day of presentations, readings, and discussions on the translation of fiction, prose and poetry from Spanish.Key note speaker: Peter Bush (Translator and former Director of the British Centre for Literary Translation)

Confirmed speakers include the following translators, academics, researchers, writers and publishers:

Dr. Tom Boll (King’s College, London)Dr Rocío Duran Barba (Writer, translator, Ecuador)Dr. Steven Cranfield (University of Westminster)Noèlia Diaz Vicedo (Alba Londres & University of Westminster)Francisco Brines (Poet, Spain) – in a pre-recorded interview for the conferenceÁlvaro Fierro (Poet, Spain)Rosalind Harvey (Translator, coordinator of Emerging Translators Network)Claudio Tedesco (Translator, London)Stefan Tobler (Translator, publisher of ‘And Other Stories’, UK)

A Round Table discussion on translating César Vallejo between:

Valentino Giannuzzi (Researcher and translator, UCL)Michael Lee Rattigan (Translator, poet, UK)Joseph Mulligan (Translator, USA)Professor William Rowe (Birkbeck College, London)

The event is FREE, but places are limited.

Today we have another important and interesting contribution to our ongoing series on race and health in Philadelphia. Oni Richards-Waritay, executive director of the African Family Health Organization (AFAHO) discusses how cultural and linguistic barriers as well as an unfamiliarity with western medicine can lead to poor health outcomes.

--Michael Yudell

 

Research indicates that the health of immigrants to the United States worsens the longer they are here. For example, many members of Philadelphia’s African and Caribbean immigrant and refugee community are healthier than other residents upon arrival in the U.S. But their health deteriorates the longer they stay here.

How is this possible in a nation that is supposed to have the best healthcare in the world?

Part of the answer is that as newcomers assimilate, they adopt the unhealthy dietary and physical activity habits of longtime residents. The other part is that quality healthcare is not accessible to everyone, particularly those who are low-income, Limited English Proficient, have no health insurance and live in “health deserts.” This inevitably leads to many being forced to use emergency rooms as a source of primary care; a lose-lose situation for both the patient and the over burdened health system.

The Mayor’s Commission on African and Caribbean Immigrant Affairs reports that there are nearly 60,000 African and Caribbean immigrants and refugees in the city. At the African Family Health Organization, which provides services to nearly 900 people a year from 30 countries, we constantly witness the challenges that this population faces in accessing quality health and human services.

Barriers to healthcare as well as low-quality healthcare contribute to health disparities and poor health outcomes in immigrant and refugee communities. Though access to Western medicine was limited for some in their home countries, they had access to fresh foods; opportunities for frequent outdoor activities; and traditional medicines, which focused on prevention. Prevention plays a critical role in improving health, yet it is rarely the focus of medical care in the American system, partly due to the lack of adequate time that health providers have available to spend with each patient.

Doctor office visits are sometimes compared to “speed dating,” even for those immigrants and refugees who have a good grasp of the English language, health insurance, and are able to successfully navigate the often complex healthcare system. Many tell us that, despite going to the same provider for a year or more, they have yet to develop a rapport that encourages meaningful dialogue due to the rushed and impersonal nature of time spent with their doctors. And now that everything is online, health providers seem to spend more time looking at their computers, as they quickly type in answers to their patients’ questions, than with the people sitting across from them. This can be intimidating and isolating for anybody; for an immigrant or refugee, it might justify claims that providers now are more concerned with curing disease using medication rather than healing and preventing it in the first place.

Imagine for a moment that you are not fluent in English; already have some distrust of the health system; have no health insurance; are not culturally familiar with Western medicine, and not very literate. What is the likelihood that your experience with a medical provider will be positive and effective? For many, the chances are slim. That’s why one of the services our organization offers is a medical escort to help our clients get through some of their language, culture, and navigation barriers – a difficult task to accomplish when using only a telephone interpreter.

Providers often don’t get that interpretation is not just linguistic, it is also cultural. When patients shake their head to indicate “yes,” for example, that does not necessarily mean that they understand what’s being said; it might simply mean that they’re doing what they think they should be doing. Many immigrants and refugees revere medical providers and see them as “all knowing.” As a result, they might blindly follow instructions without raising the kind of questions that educated people who grew up here would instinctively ask.

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/public_health/The-health-of-the-African-and-Caribbean-immigrant-community.html#LdgLBYqK0R2LSJiC.99

As I read Robert Zaretsky’s recent post, “What’s at Stake with Grade Inflation,” in which he notes how poorly his history students write, I couldn’t help but recall a confrontation I had several years ago with a business professor at the college where I was teaching at the time.

I was walking across campus one bright, sunny day (this was in Florida, where almost all the days are bright and sunny), when I saw this colleague coming toward me on the hedge-lined concrete walkway. He and I had enjoyed a cordial relationship over the years, occasionally stopping to chat about children and vacations and such when we ran into each other on campus, so I smiled as he approached and prepared to greet him.

Then I noticed he wasn’t smiling.

In fact, he looked downright angry. And as he got closer, I could see that he was indeed livid. Before I could ask what was wrong, he stopped directly in front of me, blocking my path, and launched into an expletive-laced, five-minute tirade on how terribly his students wrote. In his view, that sorry state of affairs was entirely the fault of the English department, of which I was merely unfortunate enough to be the immediate embodiment.

Duty Station

NEW YORK

Posting Period

20 May 2013-19 July 2013

Job Opening number

13-LAN-DGACM-27279-R-NEW YORK (L)

United Nations Core Values: Integrity, Professionalism, Respect for Diversity

Organizational Setting and Reporting

This position is located in the Terminology and Reference Section (TRS) of the Editorial, Terminology and Reference Service (ETRS) of the Documentation Division of the Department for General Assembly and Conference Management. The incumbent reports to the Chief of the Section.

Responsibilities

Within delegated authority, the Terminologist will be responsible for the following duties (These duties are generic and may not be carried out by all terminologists):

Monitors documentation and other materials and identify changes, developments, linguistic inconsistencies and variations in different areas of terminology used in the United Nations.

Develops new terminology for use where none exists in the target language.

Carries out linguistic research and prepare terminological bulletins and glossaries, technical vocabularies and related language tools.

Counsels and assists language staff and briefs them on the procedures and practices of the Section, terminology work and a broad range of technical subjects as required.

Establishes terminology standards

Contributes terms and titles, along with definitions and notes, in English and/or in the assigned language to the terminology database and is responsible for the relevance and accuracy of this data.

Proposes solutions to terminology issues raised by staff members and conducts documentary research and consultations to this end.

Answers terminology queries from other departments of the Secretariat, specialized agencies, governmental and non-governmental agencies and other outside bodies.

Keeps abreast of developments in machine-assisted translation and terminology

Google Now's new Reminders feature is pretty darn awesome, but readerGmapper14 found a great, lesser-known feature: you can add reminders right from Google search results.

 

You probably already know that certain searches will come up with "cards" on Google, like searching for a movie, a holiday, or other query. Well, if your search comes up with something associated with a date—like the release date of a movie—, you should now see a new option to "Remind Me on Google Now." Click this, and it'll add a reminder to your phone and tablet for you.

Le ministre de l'Education nationale Vincent Peillon s'est dit aujourd'hui sur France 2 "favorable" à un renforcement de l'enseignement des langues régionales, relevant qu'un amendement sénatorial à sa loi sur l'école avait été déposé en ce sens. 

"J'y suis favorable. C'est d'ailleurs toujours la gauche qui a fait progresser les langues régionales", a déclaré le ministre au moment où le Sénat entame aujourd'hui l'examen de son projet de loi après l'Assemblée en mars. 

Un capitaine de police s’est amusé à répertorier dans un abécédaire les expressions employées le plus fréquemment par les forces de l’ordre. Son titre : « Parlez-vous keuf ? ».

Keuf, poulet, flic, schmitt… Le policier peut être surnommé de différentes façons selon les régions et l’humeur de chacun. Mais savez-vous ce que signifie « beurrer le marmot » ou « aller à la poule » ? Un capitaine de police a créé un abécédaire du jargon policier. Intitulé Parlez-vous keuf ?, ledictionnaire est en vente depuis le 15 mai aux éditions Vuibert.

You’re doing something right now that can educate, inform, inspire and entertain you. It’s excellent exercise for your brain and promotes good eye muscles. It could make you rich and might even save your life someday.

You’re reading.

For an activity that’s over 5, 000 years old, one might think everyone reads. Sadly, that’s not true. According to these 2013 statis-tics from the U.S. Department of Education, illiteracy is widespread in our world and in our country. Worldwide, some 774 million people are illiterate. Of those, 32 million are American adults. And graduating from high school does not automatically mean that students read well. Nearly 20 percent of American high school graduates cannot read.

I can personally attest to the truth of that last statistic. After almost 30 years of teaching hundreds of college students, I can recall no more than five or six who actually displayed genuine college-level reading skills — and those students had either attended private school or were home schooled.

It’s almost impossible to exaggerate the importance of reading as a skill, especially in our modern, high-tech world. To categorize it even as a “necessity” is putting it mildly. Reading is the single most practical and useful skill that students must master, followed closely by writing, its sister skill.

Regardless of educational level, social status or financial situation, everyone will need to read something sooner or later. In literally a matter of seconds, drivers zooming down I-57 must read and interpret overhead informational signs. Prescription meds come with printed sheets warning users about dangerous side effects. Loan applications, employment applications, house-closing papers, car-buying papers — all these documents presume the ability of the recipient to read them carefully. Next time you sign such a document, notice carefully the wording right above the signature line. It begins, “I have read the foregoing document …”

Most measures of creativity are based on the work of psychologist Joy Paul Guilford (1897-1987), who defined creativity as the ability to think differently along a number of clearly defined dimensions. Building on Guilford's work, psychologist Ellis Paul Torrance (1915-2003), probably the international leader in creativity research, developed the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT), which are used in the business world and in education to assess individuals' capacities for creativity.

In the early 2000s, Torrance's metrics were adapted to an advertising context by a group around communications researcher Robert Smith from Indiana University. Focusing only on the components that are directly related to how consumers consume and process advertisements, Smith's group defined advertising creativity as the degree of divergence from a norm along five dimensions: originality, flexibility, elaboration, synthesis, and artistic value.

As we describe in our HBR article, we used Smith's scale to assess the creativity of 437 TV advertising campaigns in Germany. We recruited a panel of representative consumers and asked them to give a response on a scale of one to seven to a series of questions. From these responses we were able to assess the various ads and we found that there was significant divergence across ads in terms of the type of creativity that were most salient. Here's how we defined and assessed the five dimensions:

Originality

An original ad comprises elements that are rare, surprising, or move away from the obvious and commonplace. The focal element here is uniqueness of the ideas or features contained in the ad. To assess originality we asked three questions:

Après son adoption par l'Assemblée nationale le 20 mars dernier, le projet de loi pour la refondation de l'École est examiné à partir de ce mardi 21 mai et jusqu'au vendredi 24 mai, si nécessaire, au Sénat, en séance publique. Plusieurs amendements concernant les langues "régionales" seront débattus. L'amendement concernant le financement des ikastola, par contre, a été déclaré irrecevable.

La commission de la culture du Sénat a adopté la semaine dernière 130 amendements. Bien que la présence des langues "régionales" reste très faible, elle a rectifié l'article 27 bis qui avait été introduit par les députés en première lecture et qui imposait des conditions plus restrictives que celles issues de la loi Deixonne de 1951. La commission a supprimé l'accord parental préalable et élargi la possibilité de recourir aux langues "régionales" aux enseignants du second degré. En plus, l'article ne limite plus la possibilité de recourir aux langues "régionales" à la seule fin d'améliorer l'apprentissage du français, mais l'ouvre à tout enseignement.

OGDEN — There was quiet chatter at Zucca Trattoria earlier this week as more than 20 T.H. Bell Junior High School English students were rewarded...

Reading comprehension is a key factor in English and Language Arts curricula from elementary school to the university level. This aspect of academia measures the reader's level of understanding of a text. The main topics in reading comprehension include understanding meaning, drawing connections, summarizing, building vocabulary and increasing reading rate.

Understanding Meaning

Understanding the meaning of a text means figuring out what the passage is trying to tell you. This includes determining what is important in a passage by identifying ideas, actions, themes or lessons that are more important than others. Sometimes meaning is implied, rather than explicitly stated. To infer meaning, students must use textual clues and background knowledge to draw conclusions, make predictions and interpret meaning. One strategy to increase students' comprehension of meaning is to read actively, taking notes, asking questions and looking up unfamiliar words. They can also use the title, subheadings and background information to help in the overall comprehension of meaning.

Drawing Connections

Drawing connections in reading comprehension means identifying relationships between two or more things in order to deepen the student's comprehension of the material. This includes relating elements in the text to real life and to the reader's personal experiences and perspectives. For example, readers can ask themselves whether the text reminds them of other texts or films. They can reflect on how their own background specifically contributes to their understanding of the content. Drawing correlations like these enhances the overall meaning of the text by illuminating shared or contrasting aspects.

Summarizing and Synthesizing

An important skill in reading comprehension is being able to retell a story, essay or article in just a few sentences without looking at the original text. Summarizing includes being able to distinguish between major and minor points in a text and determining which details are crucial to the overall meaning and which are supplementary. Synthesizing, or pulling together parts to form a whole and coherent meaning is also a crucial aspect of reading comprehension. For example, with a short story, the reader can examine the characters, conflicts, symbols and figurative language to gather main idea or central theme.

Building Vocabulary

Building vocabulary is critical to language arts at all levels. In reading comprehension, students use contextual analysis to understand new terms. In cases when the context does not clearly define the unknown word, students should list, define and practice using new vocabulary words. Over time, familiarizing students with new words allows them to avoid getting stuck when they are confronted with those words again. Building vocabulary also gives students a more precise understanding of the material's meaning.

Increase Reading Rate

In order to increase reading rate, students must improve their attention and concentration while reading. A key strategy for improving reading rate is to practice reading with and without a time constraint.

The address field in Mozilla Firefox's Navigation Bar enables you to search for keywords, similar to its dedicated search field. Both search options rely on Google by default, but the search provider could have been changed by another user or add-on. Although the search field is easily changed back by selecting "Google" from the drop-down menu, the address field requires a behind-the-scenes tweak.

What is a translation memory? A translation memory or TM as it is often referred to, is a bilingual file that contains text in one language, as well as the translation of said text. The text is stored in the form of segments. In general, segments are pieces of text that can be divided by a comma, a period, a colon or a semicolon. This, depending on how it is determined when the TM is set up. We can consider that asegment is therefore something similar to a phrase. Segments are created by translation tools and in general, as the resource advances with the translation file, the tool makes up the memory automatically.

What are TM’s for? One of the most important aspects of working with a translation memory is so that we can divide one document amongst various translators and as such, still manage to achieve consistency. At Trusted Translations, for example, we create a memory for each client. This is how we assure that clients’ documents have consistent vocabulary, and thus adding to the quality of our deliveries. Additionally, some clients provide us with their own TM’s, which include specific translationsassigned to specific segments. Clients in turn ask that all documents to be translated respect the TM by applying the terminology found within.

 

Highlights from ELIA Munich ND My view of a conference is usually determined by the quality of the sessions related to MT and translation automation, or sometimes other sessions  that may trigger new thoughts on innovation and business process evolution. The ELIA conferences I have attended, stand out for me because I think they have better content in general than most, and one actually learns new things. To me it is clear that business translation is evolving beyond a focus on software and documentation localization (“the SDL mindset”) and I look for content that recognizes and addresses these emerging issues and market imperatives.
 
One of the most interesting sessions and perhaps the only one by a translation buyer was entitled “How Cloud TMSs are Changing the Relationship Between a Translation Buyer and LSPs” by Elina Lagoudaki of Turner Broadcasting. She described how cloud-based technology is used to manage a growing stream of digital media localization projects. Turner is a good example of a translation customer who has many small jobs (micro translation), often involving social media content and usually also closely  linked to dynamic web content that needs to go out in 15 languages. Elina presented her very organized and structured process to identify, administer and supervise translation projects and also provide final quality feedback to translators on an ongoing basis. Some things that she pointed out about her process included:
A preference for a SaaS or Cloud-based TMS solution (WordBee in her case) over inflexible, costly, arcane and management-heavy onsite solutionsThe need for a management dashboard that allowed high level and job-specific status monitoringA translation management environment that allows and facilitates collaboration between translatorsA translation management environment that allows and facilitates online review and content sign-offA translation management environment that allows and facilitates ongoing feedback to translatorsA translation management environment that allows and facilitates that enabled terminology and TM collection and centralizationA translation management environment that allows and facilitates that facilitates vendor comparison and selection

Developments in Language Technologies Open Up New Opportunities for Companies

If you want to convince someone that machine translation (MT) is a technology best left well alone, you will find countless examples online to prove your point — just browse through one of the many websites dedicated to collecting content that has truly been "lost in translation" when processed by a machine translation engine. Using MT to translate snippets of text without any context is a sure-fire way to produce an inaccurate and, admittedly, often hilarious result. However, in reality, this type of fragmented content only accounts for a tiny fraction of the information that business customers submit for translation.

The world's expectations of machine translation technology are another factor contributing to its somewhat undeserved poor reputation; perhaps we simply set the bar too high. Consider, for example, this quote from Dr. Thomas Goppel, then a member of state parliament and State Secretary of the Bavarian State Ministry of Sciences and the Arts, at the Machine Translation Summit II on August 16, 1989 in Munich: "When politicians see progress being made in the field of machine translation, they expect that they will have almost instant access to translated German versions of the massive collection of data and written records held by the European Union."

 

Un abécédaire recense les expressions employées par la police et leur traduction en bon français. Le saucisson et les morilles prennent une autre saveur...

Chaque corps de métier à son argot. Les bouchers ont inventé le Louchebem qui faisait florès aux Halles. Depuis, d'autres sabirs ont connu leur heure de gloire, devenant presque une langue à part entière. L'un des plus savoureux est celui employé par la maréchaussée. Autrement dit, les flics, les keufs, les condés. Il est en perpétuelle évolution, et croît à chaque progrès technique, fait divers ou sous la plume imaginative des auteurs de polars. San Antonio et Michel Audiard ont puissamment et abondamment contribué à enrichir cette langue. Restait à en faire le dictionnaire. C'est chose faites grâce au capitaine de police Gilles Braun, 51 ans. Il publie Parlez-vous keuf ? (éditions Vuibert), un abécédaire précieux et amusant. 

Si vous avez l'habitude de ralentir sur l'autoroute pour regarder un accident, ne vous étonnez pas si un CRS vous traite tout haut de "cref" en riant sous casque. Sachez que le CRS vous a traité de "con qui regarde en face". Un "sigle utilisé", selon l'auteur, "pour désigner" un automobiliste qui, afin de satisfaire sa curiosité, a l'habitude de "créer des bouchons inutiles voire un sur-accident" en regardant l'événement "survenu en sens inverse".