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Language as a passport. The European Day of Languages, celebrated since 2001 to promote multiculturalism, was observed at the University of Oslo, Friday, in a lecture entitled “When your language becomes your only passport: Language as an indicator of origin for asylum seekers”. Hosted by the Center for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan, this event was the second annual Einar Haugen Lecture, a series named for Norwegian-American linguist Einar Haugen (1906-1994), recognized for his landmark book in bilingual linguistics, The Norwegian Language in America (Further reading). The speaker was Professor Monica Schmid (1967- ) of the University of Essex, Department of Language and Linguistics, one of the largest academic departments of its type in the world. Herself multilingual and binational (German and Swiss), she brought lively presence to a theme increasingly crucial in the asylum and immigration issues on the agenda across Europe.
Teaching indigenous languages at schools should be made a priority, President Jacob Zuma said on Thursday. "Our children should be proud of our 11 languages and should learn to speak as many as possible," he said at the SA Democratic Teachers' Union congress in Boksburg, on the East Rand. "It is up to educators to produce these new South Africans... from the ashes of our tragic past." He said Sadtu's congress was important because of the critical role the union played in transforming the country."With quality education we can move our country forward," he said. -Sapa
“My father told me that [in his village in Mahra] back in the day, they did not use any language but Mahri in their daily lives, as there was no need to use ‘formal language’ [Arabic],” said Saeed Bin Basheer, 52, who lives in Al-Ghaiyda, the capital city of Mahra governorate.
Basheer still speaks the Mahri language and urges his four sons to do the same.
“I always tell my sons not to forget Mahri as it is part of our culture and identity. Arabic, English, and other languages have become easy to learn anywhere, whereas Mahri [is in danger of dying],” Basheer added.
In 2009, the Yemeni Central Statistical Organization estimated the population in Al-Mahra governorate at 101,701—many of whom speak the region’s traditional Mahri language.
Like Arabic and Hebrew, Mahri is a Semitic language. Unlike its two Semitic counterparts, however, it lacks a written tradition. Except for a few short lines and word lists, which have been published in Arabic, the Mahri language has only been written down for scholarly audiences.
Considering that Arabic has effectively erased and replaced a great number of spoken languages in the Middle East, the survival of Mahri can be considered impressive.
According to Samuel Liebhaber, a professor at Middlebury College in the US who published a collection of Mahri poetry in 2011, Mahri was only formally recognized in the mid-19th century. While classical and medieval Arabic scholarship acknowledged the existence of living pre-Arabic languages like Mahri, contemporary Arabic scholarship is divided on the issue.
Some have denied that Mahri is an independent language, instead labelling it as a divergent dialect of Arabic. They often argue that Mahri, like other dialects, is only spoken and not written.
Others, who regard Mahri as a language, widely emphasize its ancient character.
Yahya Salama, a linguist at Sana'a University, explains that Mahri dates back to 1000 BC.
He describes Mahri as a “Himyari” language, thereby associating Mahra with the prestigious, pre-Islamic kingdoms of Saba, Qitban, Ma’in, and Himyar. While that glorious history continues to fill Yemenis with pride, calling Mahri a Himyari language also assigns it to the distant past.
For young Yemenis like Sabri Al-Bahr, the language’s ancient character renders it somewhat obsolete. The 22-year-old Sana’a resident and student is originally from Mahra. He considers the Mahri language as a part of Yemen’s cultural heritage that should be admired and kept in historical documents, but he prefers not to use it in his daily life.
“My studies are either based on English or Arabic and communication with the people surrounding me never requires anything beyond these two languages. So there is no need for Mahri. It is useless. I prefer to study beneficial languages, like English,” Al-Bahr explained.
Mahri language has become endangered, according to the Global Language Association (GLA), with its influence being limited to people in Mahra and the western border of Oman.
Of the approximate 6,500 languages spoken around the world, as many as 90 percent may be gone by the end of the 21st century, according to the GLA. While languages have come and gone over the course of human history, the present rate of extinction is unprecedented. On average, one language dies every two weeks, the GLA reported.
The Student Language Exchange (SLE) organization at Brown University is now offering unique opportunities for students to explore other cultures from the comfort of Rhode Island. This is being achieved by the hosting of classes in Tagalog, Macedonian, and Bengali, taught by student teachers (fellows) who are native speakers. Student Language ExchangeAccording to the SLE website, the organization is an exploratory initiative to acquaint students with cultures and languages that they cannot otherwise access through the regular curriculum at Brown. The program provides opportunities for undergraduates who are native speakers of less commonly represented languages to offer weekly language lessons. The SLE program began three years ago at Brown, and it is now being modeled at Columbia University, Brandeis University, and Tufts University. To ensure the quality of the course experience, prospective student teachers must pass a selection and training process, and their required online training course includes the creation of lesson plans and syllabi drafts. Once selected, the teachers must attend training sessions for classroom techniques, support structures, and basic communication skills. The new language sessionsThis fall, five undergraduate students at Brown University will be offering SLE courses. Each class can accommodate up to 16 students, and the weekly sessions last for 80 minutes. According to Amelia Friedman, a native Uruguayan and the Executive Director and Founder of SLE, she established the organization because she was frustrated with the almost non-existent access to lesser-known Spanish dialects. Lizzie Pollock of the Swearer Center for Public Service noted that some widely spoken languages are not commonly available in the curriculum of even the most prominent of colleges. This is unfortunate, since language diversity is one major way to help students become truly global citizens. Brown’s SLE seeks to increase cultural awareness by creating new types of intersections between individuals from different cultures. However, as Friedman has assured, the SLE’s goal is not to agitate for changes to Brown’s curriculum or to compete with the university’s current programs. Focus on different culturesAt Brown, the SLE focuses on international cultures, specifically the ones of the students involved in the organization. Filip Simieski, a Macedonian student at Brown and SLE fellow, commented that sharing his culture and language with people who are unfamiliar with it made him appreciate his own culture all the more. He also learned that India and Croatia share some of the same idioms as Macedonia, such as “The bear gets married when the rain falls.” Meanwhile, Tuft’s SLE organization has also set up a language program this fall to teach non-traditional languages. Turkish will be offered on Tuesdays and Vietnamese on Wednesdays. This will increase the number of languages the university currently offers in its curriculum, which includes Japanese, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, Swahili, German, Russian, and the Romance languages. Image credit: Brown University gates taken by Girona7 under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unportedlicense.
HOW MODERN MONEY WORKS — Economist Alan Nasser presents a slashing indictment of the vicious nature of finance capitalism; The Bio-Social Facts of American Capitalism: David Price excavates the racist anthropology of Earnest Hooten and his government allies; Is Zero-Tolerance Policing Worth More Chokehold Deaths? Martha Rosenberg and Robert Wilbur assay the deadly legacy of the Broken Windows theory of criminology; Gaming the White Man’s Money: Louis Proyect offers a short history of tribal casinos; Death by Incarceration: Troy Thomas reports from inside prison on the cruelty of life without parole sentences. Plus: Jeffrey St. Clair on how the murder of Michael Brown got lost in the media coverage; JoAnn Wypijewski on class warfare from Martinsburg to Ferguson; Mike Whitney on the coming stock market crash; Chris Floyd on DC’s Insane Clown Posse; Lee Ballinger on the warped nostalgia for the Alamo; and Nathaniel St. Clair on “Boyhood.” Order your subscription today and getCounterPunch by email for only $35 per year. In Need of More Humility Biodiversity and Sustainability Are Closely Linked to Language and Cultureby DADY CHERY An unprecedented study of global biological and cultural diversity paints a dire picture of the state of our species. Like the amphibians that climb to ever tinier areas at higher altitudes to avoid being extinguished by global warming, most of the world’s species currently huddle in a tiny fraction of the Earth’s surface, and most human cultural diversity — as measured by the number of languages — occupies essentially the same tiny fraction of the planet. We are dying. A scientist would never say it quite this way. Instead, he would tell you that the world’s animal and plant species are disappearing 1,000 times faster than ever in recorded history. He might add that some areas of the world have lost 60 percent of their languages since the mid-1970’s, and 90 percent of the world’s languages are expected to vanish by the year 2099. In Haitian Creole, we would yell “Anmwe!” (Help!), and this would be right and proper. As ever, the best scientific studies merely quantify what everybody has known all along. Life, in general, has suffered horribly from the runaway spread of European values and the notions of progress that began with the Industrial Revolution. A sharp bit of mathematics finally brings forth the maps that expose the poverty of the world’s major carbon emitters and the wealth that remains in those parts of the world where the indigenous are making their final stand. High-biodiversity wilderness areas There currently exist very few places on Earth that could be considered intact. The researchers found only five such areas, which are numbered 36-40 on the global biodiversity map and colored in shades of green. These are, by number: 36 = Amazonia; 37 = Congo Forests; 38 = Miombo-Mopane Woodlands and Savannas; 39 = New Guinea; 40 = North-American Deserts. Together these intact spots amounted to only about six percent of the terrestrial surface but were home to 17 percent of vascular plants and eight percent of vertebrates that could not be found anywhere else. The same areas were the refuge for 1,622 of the world’s 6,900 languages. Little New Guinea topped the chart at 976 tongues. The only glimmer of hope from the study was the discovery that, contrary to what conservationists might presume, a place does not have to be untouched by humans to serve as a refuge for the world’s plants and animals. Instead, habitats must be handled in the right way, and more than anything, they must be protected from the kinds of blows dealt by industrialization.
Maybe you majored in philosophy as an undergrad or spent a few years after college teaching kindergartners their ABCs. But now you want to get an MBA and the idea of taking a class that involves math, as many MBA courses often do, scares you. The good news is you're probably not alone. "Students have the most challenges with the quantitative classes," says Don Harter, the associate dean for master 's programs at Syracuse University's Whitman School of Management. The classes can cover statistics, finance and supply chain management, he says. Some MBA instructors would also addaccounting to this list. [Learn how to leverage MBA mentors to reach career goals.] Even students who took math classes in college may have trouble with similar MBA courses. A number of years may have passed between a student's sophomore year accounting class and the first day of that student's accounting class in an MBA program, says Ajay Adhikari, senior associate dean for academic affairs and a professor of accounting in the Kogod School of Business at American University. The skills they once learned could be long forgotten. Whether you're an aspiring MBA who can't remember the basics of algebra or didn't really learn them to begin with, there are a few options for preparing for the quantitative classes you'll face in graduate school. "Get ready before you even apply to these programs," says Harter. He encourages students to assess their math skills while studying for the GMAT or GRE, the exams most graduate business schools require applicants take. Students can aim to improve their math skills by taking practice exams or "sometimes they can simply by a test prep book," he says. If students notice their scores improve, they're moving in the right direction, he says. A better score can also have the added benefit of helping students get into more competitive programs, he says. [Find ways to make the most of a business school experience.] For students who have already taken admissions exams and are accepted into a program, their schools may offer resources to help them prepare for classes that teach quantitative skills. At the Merage School of Business at University of California—Irvine, students have the option of taking a workshop on the basic concepts of statistics, says Rick So, a professor and associate dean of undergraduate programs for the business school. The Kogod School of Business requires students to take a preparation course to refresh their basic skills that can help with quantitative courses, says Adkhikari. If a school doesn't offer a course, the campus bookstore might also help incoming students. "Most university book stores will have refresher books on how to practice algebra, calculus and statistics," Harter says. He also suggests students read the outlines from the Schaum series, which has published books on algebra, statistics, geometry and several other subjects, the summer before classes begin. So, who teaches statistics for management, recommends students prepare by reading the beginning of their textbook before their course starts. But students shouldn't expect to instantly grasp concepts when reading the text by themselves. If they've never taken a statistics class before or had a job that involves using statistics, reading about it might not be easy. "If they don’t have the right background, they find it very difficult to read it on their own," he says. [Get more advice on preparing for business school before classes begin.] If reading the material doesn't sink in, another method of learning may work. "Students learn in different ways," says Harter from Syracuse. In the weeks before classes start, they can consider watching YouTube presentations on algebra and statistics or taking a massive open online course in math subjects through a service such as Coursera, he says. Many MBA programs have students from diverse backgrounds, and expect to teach some students who have a strong quantitative background and some who don't. But, "they should be able to learn the material and pass the class," says So.
The Department of Modern Languages, The Center for International Programs and INTO Marshall University is hosting a Modern Language Film Festival. “Beyond Silence,” a German film, was shown Tuesday evening in Drinko Library. The film follows the story of Lara, the daughter of two deaf parents. Even as a young child, it is her job to be an interpreter for her parents in many situations. For Christmas, Lara receives a clarinet from her Aunt Clarissa. Lara discovers the world of music, where her parents cannot follow her. She later becomes a talented clarinet player. After Lara’s mother is killed, her father feels abandoned. When 18-year-old Lara wants to study music in Berlin, her family begins to drift apart. Since this is a German film, the festival provided German foods and drinks for the spectators who attended. Yaris Mason, a spectator, expressed how different this experience was for her. “I’ve never seen a German film, let alone tried German foods,” Mason said. “This was such a different experience for me, but I really enjoyed it.” Anke McCown, German professor, explained why this movie was picked for the film festival. “Although this is a decent movie, we were very limited to the movies we choose,” McCown said. “They’re aren’t very many German movies, but this was a great choice.” “Beyond Silence” won many awards, including Best Film Score, Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role, Outstanding Feature Film, Best Screenplay Award and Most Popular Film. “I’m not surprised that this film has received so many awards,” Mason said. “This film made a silent movie become musical. The cast was great, this was a great movie that balanced happiness and sadness all in one.” Donyelle Murray can be contacted at murray91@marshall.edu.
The new Masters in Interpreting and Translation Program was launched on the evening of Tuesday 23 September at UNSW, Australia. The postgraduate Program will commence in 2015 and will include new degrees of Master of Translation, Master of Interpreting and Master of Translation and Interpreting. The launch was attended by stakeholders of multilingual and multicultural education institutions including representatives from NAATI, Ausit, TAFE NSW, Instituto Cervantes in Sydney, AUTIF, UNSW Advisory Committee, UNSW International as well as members of the Programs teaching and academic staff. Professor Vanessa Lemm, Head of School for Humanities and Languages opened the night’s proceedings introducing Associate Professor Ludmila Stern the Program convenor who highlighted the innovations in the new Program. “The new degrees which will be one semester longer than the current ones, will strengthen the competencies and skills of the graduates” Ludmila explained. “The Program will contain additional training in the state-of-the-art translation technology, media translation and translation practicum with authentic client relations and commissions.” She went onto say “with its strength in legal (court) and community interpreting, the Program has the added benefit of advanced conference interpreting, interpreting in international settings and interpreting technologies." Other innovations include four x $5000 scholarships for students commencing in 2015, exchange opportunities with Paris-7 University Denis Diderot (French) and Buenos Aires-besd Belgrano University (Spanish). Guest speaker, the esteemed Senior Crown Prosecutor Mark Tedeschi, QC, AM commended the efforts of UNSW, the School of Humanities and Languages, and Ludmila Stern for recognising the need for this high level new program “the criminal justice system will be one of the primary organisations to benefit from this new Masters degree in Interpreting and Translation” he said. “The new Interpreting and Translation Masters program will undoubtedly raise the bar in the standard of interpreting in this State.”
Click Here to find out more about the new Program
Iran (SAT-7/MNN) — Israel’s Prime Minister is in the U.S. this week, trying to warn the nation’s leaders about Iran’s nuclear intentions. Yesterday, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu met with U.S. President Barack Obama to discuss the P5+1 (U.S., Russia, China, France, and Britain, plus Germany) nuclear negotiations with Iran. So far, Netanyahu’s advice has largely fallen on deaf ears, and the negotiation deadline is fast approaching. Israel’s PM has long warned the international community about Iran’s ambition to develop nuclear warfare. Despite all of this, church leaders are celebrating. SAT-7, a Christian satellite television ministry to the Middle East and North Africa, says there’s a new Bible for a new Iran. The New Millennium Version’s language and style make it more accessible to readers, especially novice Bible learners. Its translation uses modern, easily-understandable language. The NMV also strives for literary excellence, in recognition of the deep love Persians have for poetry. Rev. Dr. Mehrdad Fatehi, Coordinator and Chief Editor of the New Millennium Version described the translation as a new Bible for “a new Iran,” referring to what some have called a “tsunami” of church growth in the country. At the time of the 1979 Iranian revolution, there were few Christians outside of Iran’s Armenian and Assyrian communities. Now, Iran is thought to have the fastest-growing church in the world. According to SAT-7, Farsi speakers in Iran are actively reaching out and searching for a deeper relationship with Jesus. Many do not have access to physical Bibles but are finding the words of Scripture on the SAT-7 PARS channel. Some have contacted SAT-7 PARS and shared that when Bible verses are shown on the TV screen, they hurry to write them down on paper so they can continue to study them. Please pray that God will use this new translation of the Bible to declare spiritual truth to Farsi speakers, and that those who cannot access a physical Bible will learn its words through SAT-7 PARS. Click here to learn more about SAT-7 PARS, which broadcasts to an audience of over 2 million Farsi-speakers in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. You can help God’s Word reach more people in Iran with a gift to SAT-7 PARS. Find out how $1 can bring SAT-7 PARS to one person for an entire year.
She single-handedly launched Al-Bawtaka Review (The Melting Pot Review) the first and only outlet for Arabic translations of contemporary English-language literature, made available completely free of charge online. But she's not stopping there. Hala Salah is now venturing onwards to new grounds with her latest audiobook project, sponsored by UNESCO and entitled This is Not Chick Lit: Stories by Ordinary Women in and Beyond Turmoil. The project is set to provide translated texts available to the blind in the form of audiobooks, in what is probably the first major effort to make literature widely available to the blind. We speak to her about her history with Al-Bawtaka Review, the audiobook project, and her reasons behind launching both. Tell us a little about yourself. I was brought up in Tanta, in the Delta. I'm 36-years old, I studied English literature. I have a Bachelor of Arts from Tanta University. Through my university years I learned practically nothing. I'm basically self-taught when it comes to literature and translation. When did you start translating, and what are the main texts you have worked on? I started translating ten or eleven years ago. My first encounter with translation was translating the english text of a novel titled An Artist of the Floating World by a Japanese-British novelist called Kazuo Ishiguro. I then translated a short story anthology called The Gilgul of Park Avenue: An Anthology of American Short Fiction. I also translated a book by Jihane el-Sadat. It was originally written in English, titled My Hope for Peace. When and how did you start Al-Bawtaka? I started Al-Bawtaka Review in April 2006, more than eight years ago. It started as a monthly review for almost a year, then I had a small amount of money and then I decided to obtain copyrights. During my first year, it was just one story, then I took some literary agency from the author, so I was basically stealing. So I summoned the courage and with that amount of money I had I thought I would try my luck and see what happens. Surprisingly I did very well with copyrights. I obtained permission for almost all the stories for free, or I paid a very small fee of about $50-100. In July 2010, I established a small publishing house back in Cairo. I only produced four books, all translated anthologies. How have you sustained Al-Bawtaka? I won five grants for Al-Bawtaka until now; two from the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, two from the British Council in Cairo, and one from UNESCO's International Fund for the Promotion of Culture. While I was cooperating with the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture I produced four books: Sharp Senses, Ghosts With No Maps, Hidden Faces and A Brush With Fate. Tell us about your latest audiobook project. I actually never thought of working on the ground for the blind, but it all started after the January 25th Revolution. Back then, emotions and patriotism were soaring. You always feel this void or space when demolition takes place, so it basically throws back in your face your responsibility to build. My plan initially wasn't for audiobooks at all, it was to print books in braille. It was right after Gaddafi fell, and with Benghazi so close to us I really racked my brain to try to find socially oriented ways that Al-Bawtaka Review can carry out a project there. I just wanted to integrate the social factor with the cultural factor. So it hit me when I was signing copyright contracts with some of the American agencies. I found a few of them giving me the rights - without even asking - to print stories in braille, or in big letters. However, printing books in braille turned out to be surprisingly really expensive. I could have looked for funding forever and I still wouldn't be able to do it. After I spoke to the people at the Blind Association Downtown, you could actually feel [the blind people's] resentment. They feel as though they are second-class citizens, because they are forced to be in that position. There are no alternatives. When I saw the UNESCO grant I was unsure whether I could do it, because I wanted to print 10,000 copies in Egypt and Libya, and when I calculated everything it didn't seem promising that they would fund me, so I though of audiobooks. We will produce 10,000 copies, and distribute them equally between the Blind Associations in Cairo and Benghazi. Why was this project important to you? The whole idea of translating the text is that people have been translating for forever now. I don't mean to brag but if you search for any translations of contemporary English literature you will only find Al-Bawtaka. There are no other doors to knock on. Sometimes you get short fiction translated in Gulf magazines, but they are very short and old, not contemporary. The old masters have taught us a lot, but I just can't grasp that people are still translating Edgar Alan Poe. You can read Al-Bawtaka review online, for free here
La Academia Valenciana de la Lengua (AVL) ha puesto en marcha una campaña de difusión de los contenidos su polémico Diccionario Normativo. El verbo dimitir ha dado pie a la entidad a sacar a colación la reciente renuncia de Alberto Ruiz Gallardón como ministro de Justicia. Mientras, al hilo del fallido referéndum independentista, la AVL hace alusión al origen escocés del término «xotis» (chotis en castellano). La AVL, que este jueves patrocina junto a la Generalitat de Cataluña una jornada en la sede de Acció Cultural del País Valencià (ACPV),difundirá esta campaña todas las semanas a través del envío de correos electrónicos y de las redes sociales con el objetivo de promocionar un Diccionario que nació bajo el signo de la controversia por la definición en la que la entidad equipara el valenciano y el catalán, a los que considera una misma lengua.
Abuja — THE Executive Secretary of the National Mass Education (NMEC), Alhaji Jibrin Paiko, has said that literacy was key to reducing child mortality, maternal deaths and child marriages. Paiko stated this in an interview with journalists recently, on the sidelines of the national celebrations to mark the International Literacy Day (ILD) in Awka. According to him: "The commission is deeply concerned on the findings of the 2013/2014 Education For All Global Monitoring Report (GMR). "Evidence from the report shows, for example, that if all women had primary education, child mortality could fall by a sixth and maternal deaths by two thirds. "Child marriages would fall by14 per cent if all girls in Sub Saharan Africa and South and West Asia had primary education, by 64 per cent with secondary education. "Based on current trends, the GMR projects that it will take until 2072 for the poorest young women in developing countries to learn to read," the secretary said. He therefore tasked governments, especially at the grassroots, to take up the fight because it was at that level that illiteracy thrives most. According to him, in spite of the slow global progress in reducing the number of illiterate adults, the commission has not relented in its efforts to improve the status of literacy in the country through various activities and programmes. Paiko said this year's celebration with the theme; "Literacy for Sustainable Development" was apt as the link between literacy and sustainable development was an opportunity to remember the fact that "literacy does change lives and at the same saves lives". "We are not under illusion that we have miles to go to accomplish what we have set out to achieve. "I appeal to every state and all our partners to redouble efforts, politically and financially, to ensure that literacy is fully recognised as one of the most powerful accelerators of sustainable development," he said.
Avec George Steiner et son Après Babel (Albin Michel, 1975), la traduction gagnait sa philosophie. Après de nombreuses années d’écriture en français et en allemand, Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt donnait chair à cette expérience de l’entre-deux langues en y consacrant un récit autobiographique : la Joie du (...)
Conferencias, mesas redondas y talleres integran el programa de tres días del XXIII Encuentro Internacional de Traductores Literarios El XXIII Encuentro Internacional de Traductores Literarios (EITL) , enfocado en las estrategias, destrezas y recursos usados para enfrentar el humor, el albur, el erotismo, el sarcasmo, la ironía, la blasfemia y otros temas relacionados con la transgresión lingüística, inició hoy en esta ciudad, para desarrollarse durante tres días. Especialistas preguntan hoy en la Sala Carlos Chávez del Centro Cultural Universitario (CCU) "¿Se puede producir un texto meta tan transgresor como el texto fuente?", "¿En qué medida la censura y la autocensura intervienen en el proceso de traducción?", y "¿Qué tan universales son el humor, el sarcasmo, la ironía, la blasfemia?". Y responden. Teresa Uriarte, coordinadora de Difusión Cultural de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) y Rosa Beltrán, directora de Literatura UNAM, dieron la bienvenida a los participantes y el público que a lo largo de tres jornadas de trabajo seguirá atentamente las conferencias, mesas redondas y talleres que integran el programa del EITL. Patric Clanet (Instituto Francés de América Latina, IFAL) , Noemí Novell (Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, UNAM), Alina Signoret (Centro de Enseñanza de Lenguas Extranjeras, UNAM), y Luz Elena Gutiérrez de Velasco (Centro de Estudios Lingüísticos y Literarios, COLMEX) son algunas personalidades del comité organizador del evento. El XXIII EITL tiene como el tema central "De albures e insolencias: Traducir la transgresión", el cual será abordado a través de conferencias, mesas redondas, paneles y talleres, que hoy se está trabajando en la UNAM, mientras que el 2 de octubre la sede será la Sala Alfonso Reyes de El Colegio de México, y el día 3 la Sala Molière del Instituto Francés de América Latina. Las actividades formales iniciaron hoy con la conferencia inaugural "La transgresión al traducir literatura infantil y juvenil" a cargo de Carlos Fortea Gil, y a lo largo del día se realizará la mesa "Obscenidad y humor" con Tatiana Sule Fernández y Cristina Azuela, Cecilia Jaime, Radina Dimitrova y Malka Irina Acosta Padilla, moderados por Carlos Calvillo. Céline Desmet hablará de "La imposible y necesaria tarea de la traducción: la hibridez en la literatura postcolonial"; Pilar Ortiz y Diana Luz Sánchez, sobre "Traducción comentada del cuento ‘Negro y blanco' de Monique Proulx" ; Olivia Díaz Pérez del discurso transgresor en la novela Balas de plata de Elmer Mendoza en su traducción alemana, y Tomás Serrano de El tratamiento de la blasfemia en la traducción. La dinámica del evento señala que el XXIII Encuentro Internacional de Traductores Literarios, en la Sala Carlos Chávez de la UNAM, tendrá un horario de 10 a 20 horas, con un intervalo de dos horas, de 14 a 16 horas para comer y cuenta con la participación de especialistas mexicanos e internacionales sobre el tema. La entrada es libre.
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Amamantar no evita enfermedad celíaca - 09:45
Hallan en Colombia a argentino desaparecido por 12 años - 09:42
Sener informa a inversionistas ubicación de zonas de extracción - 09:33
“El trasero de J.Lo es mejor que el de Kim Kardashian” - 09:29
Francisco Toledo apoya proyecto educativo - 09:22
Burócratas se suman a búsqueda de 43 normalistas - 09:18
Descarta Messi jugar en un futuro en México - 09:16
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Critican a Stella McCartney por foto de modelo en extrema delgadez
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A lawsuit challenging the manner in which profits from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the GSEs) have been allocated to the U.S. Treasury was dismissed on Tuesday by a U.S. District Court judge. The suit, brought by institutional investors Perry Capital, LLC, Fairholme Funds, Inc. and Arrowood Indemnity Company, contested a change in the Senior Preferred Stock Agreement negotiated between the GSEs and the Treasury Department in August 2008 when the GSEs were placed in government conservatorship. The three companies originally filed separate lawsuits in July 2013 but it appears that they may have been combined by the courts into a single action. The investors maintained that the 2012 changes violated the original terms of the government's 2008 bailout agreement and that they unlawfully impair shareholder value. Under the terms of the original agreement the GSEs were permitted to make a quarterly draw from the Treasury to cover net worth deficits up to a cap of $100 billion each, later increased to $200 billion. In return the GSEs gave Treasury senior preferred stock with an initial value of $2 billion which increased dollar-to-dollar with each draw made from the Treasury. As of December 2012 Treasury held senior preferred stock with a liquidation preference of $189.5 billion for the two GSEs - the original $2 billion plus an aggregate of $187.5 billion in draws to that date. No further draws have been made since that date. The GSEs also agreed to provide Treasury with quarterly dividends at an annual rate of 10 percent of the liquidation preference. As a result, even before Treasury provided any funds to the GSEs, they each owed Treasury dividend payments of $100 million per year. The structure of the agreement meant that the quarterly net deficit of each GSE was increased each quarter by the amount of the required dividend as was the size of the necessary Treasury draw. In August 2012 both GSEs announced they had generated positive quarterly earnings and two weeks later Treasury and the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), the GSE conservator, announced modifications to the PSPAs in five areas one of which was a change to the structure of the dividends. As of January 1, 2013 the payment would no longer be based on a fixed percentage of the liquidation preference but on a positive net worth model in which Treasury would simply do a quarterly "sweep" of the entire positive net worth of each GSE above a buffer. The buffer was originally set at $3 billion of each GSE and would gradually be reduced to zero over five years. At the time it was filed the Fairholme suit argued that The GSEs are not allowed to build any capital reserves and the amounts paid to Treasury do not count toward paying back the billions of dollars Treasury contributed to shoring up the companies as they rebuilt their businesses. The Perry lawsuit said, "This blatant overreach by the federal government to seize all of the companies' profits at the expense of the companies and all of their private investors is unlawful and must be stopped," The Perry suit maintained that the U.S. Treasury could collect more than $200 billion of profit from the two companies. As of the September 2014 dividend payment Fannie Mae will have paid a total of $130.5 billion in dividends to Treasury in comparison to $116.1 billion in draw requests since 2008 and Freddie Mac's dividends will total $88.2 billion against $72.3 billion in Treasury support. In dismissing the suits yesterday' the court stated that Treasury and FHFA had been given the power by Congress under the Housing and Economic Recovery Act (HERA) to take the companies' profit, although he said it was understandable for the sweep to "raise eyebrows or even engender a sense of discomfort." The judge cited the "unambiguous" language of HERA's statutory provisions and the "unequivocal language" of the senior preferred stock certificates issued under the original agreement. These, he said, compelled the dismissal of the plaintiffs' claims. He suggested that the investors take up their grievances with Congress. Both Perry and Fairholme are known to have invested heavily in the GSEs since they were put in conservatorship. While the extent of Perry's holdings are not known, Fairholme had confirmed its acquisition of $2.3 billion in GSE stock prior to filing its lawsuit.
In a letter to William Graham in 1881, Charles Darwin -- a year before he died -- expressed a grave misgiving about his theory: But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?
Conviction: it's a word implying semantics. The dictionary defines conviction as "the act of moving a person by argument or evidence to belief, agreement, consent, or a course of action; the act of convincing" or "the state of being convinced." These presuppose a conceptual realm, for which language is a tool for communication of abstract ideas that may or may not relate to tangible things. Can animal minds hold convictions? A materialist might be tempted to think so: a bird might have a conviction it can fly through a window. A cat might have a conviction it can leap from a fence to a table. A monkey might be convinced it can fight off a rival. The "course of action" the animal takes will be confirmed or disconfirmed by evidence. None of us, though, would attempt to reason with the bird, cat, or monkey, using logical argument and appeals to evidence. That requires language. The "evolution of language" remains a severe challenge to materialist conceptions. Not only must the materialist presuppose that thoughts can supervene on physical neurons, he or she must also attempt to account for a plausible account of the progression of semiotics (the study of meaning-making) from nonlife to animal communication, then from animal communication to human language with its rich vocabulary and capacity for abstract thought. A valiant effort was made recently by linguist Noam Chomsky, paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersal, cognitive neurobiologist Johan J. Bolhuis, and brain scientist Robert Berwick in PLoS Biology. In the end, however, their effort goes to show how difficult the job is when intelligent causes have been ruled out of bounds a priori. The evolution of the faculty of language largely remains an enigma. In this essay, we ask why. Language's evolutionary analysis is complicated because it has no equivalent in any nonhuman species. There is also no consensus regarding the essential nature of the language "phenotype." According to the "Strong Minimalist Thesis," the key distinguishing feature of language (and what evolutionary theory must explain) is hierarchical syntactic structure. The faculty of language is likely to have emerged quite recently in evolutionary terms, some 70,000-100,000 years ago, and does not seem to have undergone modification since then, though individual languages do of course change over time, operating within this basic framework.
Language's "recent" origin has made all the difference: Our species was born in a technologically archaic context, and significantly, thetempo of change only began picking up after the point at which symbolic objectsappeared. Evidently, a new potential for symbolic thought was born with our anatomically distinctive species, but it was only expressed after a necessary cultural stimulus had exerted itself. This stimulus was most plausibly theappearance of language in members of a species that demonstrably already possessed the peripheral vocal apparatus required to externalize it. Then, within a remarkably short space of time, art was invented, cities were born, and people had reached the moon. By this reckoning, the language faculty is an extremely recent acquisition in our lineage, and it was acquired not in the context of slow, gradual modification of preexisting systems under natural selection but in a single, rapid, emergent event that built upon those prior systems but was not predicted by them.... For reasons like these, the relatively sudden origin of language posesdifficulties that may be called "Darwin's problem." (Emphasis added.)
In order to solve "Darwin's problem," they looked for some new thing, some new trait beyond mere "animal communication" (which is widespread in the living world), that would allow language to develop and proliferate. It's not that hierarchical syntax couldn't have originated in some other species by natural selection, they speculate, but they know it never did. It's even absent in the great apes. So in "comparative linguistics" between animals and man, they know there's "not much to compare." What could be responsible for this sudden burst of cultural and mental activity? Assuming that the physical capacity for speech was already in place, they offer a new suggestion: the "merge" operation: In this view, human language syntax can be characterized via a single operation that takes exactly two (syntactic) elements a and b and puts them together to form the set {a, b}. We call this basic operation "merge". The "Strong Minimalist Thesis" (SMT) holds that merge along with a general cognitive requirement for computationally minimal or efficient search suffices to account for much of human language syntax. The SMT also requires two mappings: one to an internal conceptual interface for thought and a second to a sensory-motor interface that externalizes language as speech, sign, or other modality. The basic operation itself is simple. Given merge, two items such as the and apples are assembled as the set {the, apples}. Crucially, merge can apply to the results of its own output so that a further application of merge to ate and {the, apples} yields the set {ate, {the, apples}}, in this way deriving the full range of characteristic hierarchical structure that distinguishes human language from all other known nonhuman cognitive systems.
This presupposes a lot and omits much. It's not clear why parrots or chimpanzees could not come up with the "merge" operator, if it is that simple. And it presupposes (1) computationally or efficient search, (2) an internal conceptual interface for thought, and (3) a sensory-motor interface that externalizes language in speech or hand signals. This is a case of "assume a can opener." Assuming those leaps and bounds were already made somehow (how did those arrive by mutation and selection?), they have made Darwin's problem much simpler. They know they have glossed over a lot by assuming "possibly preexisting perceptual and motor mechanisms" before speculating on the magic bullet that gave rise to hierarchical syntax. Interestingly, one of their references in the preceding quote is to a 2009 article in Nature by Bolhuis and Wynne, "Can Evolution Explain How Minds Work?" In fact, they refer to that article six times. It's worth re-reading. David Klinghoffer referred to it when it first appeared. Michael Flannery pointed out that same article in three of his posts for ENV in 2011 to support his recounting of Alfred Russel Wallace's views on intelligent design in the human mind, to show that nothing has changed since Wallace contended that human language was a bridge too far for natural selection. The Nature of Evolution One interesting paragraph in their paper is called "The Nature of Evolution." Here, the authors undermine the explanatory power of Darwin's greatest idea, natural selection: Questions of evolution or function are fundamentally different from those relating to mechanism, so evolution can never "explain" mechanisms. For a start, the evolution of a particular trait may have proceeded in different ways, such as via common descent, convergence, or exaptation, and it is not easy to establish which of these possibilities (or combination of them) is relevant. More importantly,evolution by natural selection is not a causal factor of either cognitive or neural mechanisms. Natural selection can be seen as one causal factor for the historical process of evolutionary change, but that is merely stating the essence of the theory of evolution.
Wait a minute -- wasn't natural selection supposed to be a "mechanism" of evolution that made Darwin famous? Here, they have just undermined it as a mechanism or as an explainer! They add, "In addition, evolutionary analysis of language is often plagued by popular, naïve, or antiquated conceptions of how evolution proceeds." Agreed. From there, they leap to speculation that might be described as a punctuated equilibrium model for the origin of language: "evolution is often seen as necessarily a slow, incremental process thatunfolds gradually over the eons," they say; "Such a view of evolutionary change is not consistent with current evidence and our current understanding, in which evolutionary change can be swift, operating within just a few generations..." Conveniently, this allows them to sneak in the "merge" operator in a hidden moment when some caveman found a new way to join two thoughts; the rest is history. Their entire attempt to evolve language amounts to this: assuming what they need to prove, and leaping in the dark. They presuppose all the hardware and software, then stuff a "merge" operation in at some moment that seems almost magical. "Although this thesis is far from being establishedand contains many open questions, it offers an account that is compatible with the known empirical evolutionary evidence," they boast. It's a story, in other words; a narrative gloss after the fact. You decide if Chomsky, Berwick, and Tattersall have helped Bolhuis make progress beyond his 2009 worries with Clive Wynne: Clearly, functional and evolutionary questions are intertwined, as are questions ofcausation and development. It is unclear, however, what an analysis of the evolutionary history of cognitive behaviours could add to our understanding of how they work, even if such an analysis were possible.... As long as researchers focus on identifying human-like behaviour in other animals, the job of classifying the cognition of different species will be forever tied up in thickets of arbitrary nomenclature that will not advance our understanding of the mechanisms of cognition. For comparative psychology to progress, we must study animal and human minds empirically, without naive evolutionary presuppositions.
The power of intelligent design theory will become clearer when William Dembski's new book hits the shelves. In Being as Communion, Dembski will make the case that "information" is a fundamental entity of the universe, preceding matter. That is bound to elucidate not only the origin of human language, but of animal communication as well. Image source: Valerie/Flickr.
Référence bibliographique : Dictionnaire des revues littéraires au XXe siècle. Domaine français. Sous la direction de Bruno Curatolo, Honoré Champion, collection "Dictionnaires et Références, 30", 2014. EAN13 : 9782745327567. 1352 pages, 2 vol., reliés. 275 EUR Présentation de l'éditeur : Au XXe siècle, les revues littéraires ont foisonné, et souvent sur de longues périodes, au point que les différents catalogues et répertoires dressés à ce jour ne suffisent pas à en établir une recension exhaustive : le présent dictionnaire ne prétend pas y réussir davantage, mais à travers quelque 350 titres, des plus significatifs aux plus méconnus, il propose de décrire une activité essentielle à l’exercice de la littérature. Est couvert ici un domaine géographique qui va de la France au Québec, en passant par la Suisse, la Belgique et différents pays du pourtour méditerranéen, toutes contrées unies par l’usage de la langue française et l’attachement à une culture commune. Lieu irremplaçable de la création, de la confrontation des idées, de la visée critique, les revues donnent à lire un feuilleton de l’histoire littéraire au vingtième siècle. Les auteurs : Bernard Baillaud; Cecile Barraud; Marie-Laure Basuyaux; Philippe Baudorre; Thomas Bauer; Florence Bays; Marie-Andree Beaudet; Etienne Beaulieu; David Belanger; Renald Berube; Michel Biron; Hervé Bismuth; Thierry Bissonnette; Bruno Blanckeman; Philippe Blondeau; Claire Bompaire-Evesque; Aude Bonord; Laurence Boudart; Goulven Boudic; Nicole Bourbonnais; Elodie Bouygues; Eddie Breuil; Mariane Bury; Michel Carassou; Olivier Cariguel; Karine Cellard; Joël Champetier; Gil Charbonnier; Tania Collani; Carine Corajoud; Martyn Cornick; Alain Cresciucci; Bruno Curatolo; Marc Dambre; Isabelle Daunais; Christophe Dauphin; Philippe Dazet-Brun; Alessandro De Francesco; Brigitte Denker-Bercoff; Severine Depoulain; Benoit Doyon-Gosselin; Sebastien Dulude; Guy Durliat; Jerome Duwa; Anne-Marie Fortier; Thieri Foulc; Vittorio Frigerio; Nathalie Froloff; Marianne Froye; Elodie Gaden; Nadia Ghanem; Nicholas Giguere; Marie Gil; Robert Giroux; Patricia Godbout; Emmanuel Godo; Marc-Andre Goulet; Marion Graf; Patrick Guay; Jeanyves Guerin; Cynthia Harvey; Annette Hayward; Pierre Hebert; Yvon Houssais; Lucie Joubert; Pierre-Henri Kleiber; Claude La Charité; Pierre Lachasse; Yves Lacroix; Marie-Pier Laforge-Bourret; Olivier Lapointe; Marie Lise Laquerre; Pascal Lecroart; Philippe Lejeune; Françoise Lioure; Jonathan Livernois; Michel Lord; Jean-François Louette; Mikaël Lugan; Daniel Maggetti; Maxime Maillard; Serge Martin; Lucrezia Mazzei; Sylvain Menant; Anne-Sophie Miccio; Jean Morency; Michel Nareau; François Ouellet; Daniel-Henri Pageaux; Alain Paire; Jacques Paquin; François Pare; Sylvie Patron; Jacques Pelletier; Florian Pennanech; Olivier Penot-Lacassagne; Denis Pernot; Stéphane Pétermann; Yves Peyré; Celine Philippe; Jacques Poirier; Eve Rabate; Sandra Raguenet; Vital Rambaud; Paul Renard; Ivanne Rialland; Lucie Robert; Gérard Roche; Pascale Roux; Herve Sanson; Sylvain Santi ; Alain Schaffner; Andrée Scharfmann; Michel P. Schmitt; Maud Simonnot Regnault; Michele Touret; Jean-Louis Trudel; Eric Vauthier; Maria Vega; Yoan Verilhac; François Vignale; Jean-Michel Wittmann; Karl Zieger.
In the first months of life, when babies begin to distinguish sounds that make up language from all the other sounds in the world, they can be trained to more effectively recognize which sounds “might” be language, accelerating the development of the brain maps that are critical to language acquisition and processing, according to new Rutgers research. The study by April Benasich and colleagues of Rutgers Univ.-Newark is published in today’s issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. The researchers found that when four-month-old babies learned to pay attention to increasingly complex non-language audio patterns and were rewarded for correctly shifting their eyes to a video reward when the sound changed slightly, their brain scans at seven months old showed they were faster and more accurate at detecting other sounds important to language than babies who had not been exposed to the sound patterns. “Young babies are constantly scanning the environment to identify sounds that might be language,” says Benasich, who directs the Infancy Studies Laboratory at the university’s Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience. “This is one of their key jobs — as between four and seven months of age they are setting up their pre-linguistic acoustic maps. We gently guided the babies’ brains to focus on the sensory inputs which are most meaningful to the formation of these maps.” Acoustic maps are pools of interconnected brain cells that an infant brain constructs to allow it to decode language both quickly and automatically – and well-formed maps allow faster and more accurate processing of language, a function that is critical to optimal cognitive functioning. Benasich says babies of this particular age may be ideal for this kind of training.
In honour of former Radio 4 presenter Charlotte Green's "corpsing" live on air, here's a collection of some of the most memorable on-air mishaps of British TV
Do you need to improve your writing skills? Has your boss suggested you take writing lessons given by a smart 5th Grader? Enrolling in a remedial writing college course may be expensive and humbling if not humiliating. The Feds may now come to your rescue. One practical piece of legislation passed by Congress in 2010 — it’s amazing Congress managed to do this — requires all federal agencies issuing laws, brochures, reports and so on to insure that the documents be written in clear, concise language free from jargon so that the average American may read and understand it. This site provides a free writing course with simple, clear instructions that, if followed, will improve all writing. To learn more, click on www.plainlanguage.gov.
Learn how to identify and write for your audience; use active verbs, write short sentences and so on. Other parts of the site provide examples of poor or misleading language and provide a helpful corrected version. For the complete course outline click on www.plainlanguage.gov/howto/guidelines/FederalPLGuidlines/. This site, like all Federal Government websites provides free advice. Another example of your tax dollars at work.
Mark Twain observed that if you don’t like the weather, wait 10 minutes and the weather will change. This comment seems especially apt now that everyone believes climate change is happening. Whether people cause the change or the change naturally occurs, a number of outcomes have appeared. For those who value numbers, here are some numbers compiled by www.thinkprogress.org that put a numerical face on climate change. The average coal-fired power plant is 42 years old. 33%, the share of all domestic greenhouse gas emissions come from coal-fired powerplants. When we reduce 30% of carbon emissions the following occur: 6,600 premature deaths avoided; 150,000 asthma attacks avoided; 490,000 number of missed school days and work days avoided. To find out more visit www/progressreport.org/progress-report/acting-on-climate/.
Even though school has started, parents still have time to help their students transition back to the classroom. The U.S. Department of Education has provided a list of seven ways parents can help kids ease back into the school routine. Click on www.free.ed.gov/?p=512. and get the tips. Tip one suggests parents organize and collect all medical records and immunization documentation required for school. Another tip reveals that parents should discuss the year with their kids, highlighting any problems students may face when changing grade levels and schools. For other tips visit the page.
For recent college grads or college seniors who have not yet found a full-time job that interests them, click on www.pogo.org/about/work-at-pogo/. POGO stands for Project On Government Oversight. Founded in 1981 as a private non-profit, POGO investigates government corruption and exposes other misconduct to achieve a more open, honest and accountable federal government. This is a 21st Century muckraking organization with a liberal bent. Currently, POGO has openings for Interns, a funded fellowship and a Congressional Program Coordinator. If interested, put on your ethical Lone Ranger Hat and ride over to the URL. Good Luck.
You may have heard about an Oregon ballot initiative which will require all food manufacturers and retailers to identify genetically modified organisms, GMOS, in all products sold in Oregon. For the past three or four months, concerned foodies have fought first, to put this initiative on the ballot, and second, fought big companies opposed to GMO Labeling to convince Oregon voters to approve the initiative. As you would expect, this is an uphill battle whose proponents constantly ask for donations to continue the fight. Food manufacturers are pouring big bucks into fighting this ballot initiative. For example, Pepsico so far has donated over $160,000 to fight labeling even though its soft drinks don’t include GMOs.
Smuckers, the jam and jelly folks, have spent more than $147,500 to stop labeling. Monsanto, the seller of GMO seed products spent $82,800 in its self-interest. For more about GMO labeling, visit www.oregonrighttoknow.org/no-on-92-coalition-donors/. Last year Vermont passed a similar law and some of the big companies fighting in Oregon have filed suit to stop Vermont from enforcing its law. And so it goes.
Read more: http://www.chronicle-express.com/article/20141001/BLOGS/310019981/-1/news#ixzz3Ey0DWhWn
The Associated Press is out with a list of Secret Service failures today but there's one big incident that they missed. On top of the agency failing to investigate a 2011 shooting at the White House, failing to stop reality TV D-listers from cashing a White House party, failing to keep President Obama out of an elevator with a convicted felon who was carrying a gun, falling down drunk on the job, hiring Colombian prostitutes during an official trip and failing to stop a man carrying a knife from jumping the fence and running all the way across the lawn deep into the White House, the Secret Service also failed to catch the murder, rape and kidnapping charges belonging to fake sign language interpreter Thamsanqa Jantjie, who stood next to Obama on stage during Nelson Mandela's 2013 funeral. The "fake" sign language interpreter who said he suffered a schizophrenic fit onstage at Nelson Mandela's memorial service has a criminal history that includes charges of rape and murder, according to a report.
Thamsanqa Jantjie - who stood near several world leaders, including President Obama, during the event at FNB Stadium in Johannesburg - has been arrested at least five times since the mid-1990s, but he allegedly dodged jail time because he was mentally unfit to stand trial, the South African news station eNCA reported Friday.
The station found that Jantjie, 34, who has a long history of mental illness, has been arrested on suspicion of rape, theft, housebreaking and malicious damage to property. His most recent collar was in 2003, when he faced murder, attempted murder and kidnapping charges, the news station reported. Here is a photo of Jantjie standing next to the President.
A recent Forbes article warns that voice recognition software could be the next big security threat. Technology savvy smart phone users are likely familiar with the likes of Apple’s speech recognizing virtual assistant, Siri or Google’s answer to Siri, Google Now. Most, however, probably will not take too kindly to AVG’s Yuval Ben-Itzhak’s dire warning about the security risk posed by voice recognition software. According to Ben-Itzhak, the risk is so great that users are urged to cease using speech recognition programs immediately. He was quoted in an interview withForbes as saying, Microphones should be disabled immediately and our current recommendation is that the user switch off features [involving voice commands].
Some people may be complacent about being able to ask your phone to send a text message or having a list of gluten-free recipes pop up at the sound of your voice. Others might be excited and wish for the days when making a call will mean talking to someone face-to-face on your smart phone screen. Some are likely to be disheartened about being told that voice recognition software is the next big security threat. Most people might find the actual history of voice recognition software pretty interesting. It started as early as the 1950s when the “Audrey” System, was designed by Bell laboratories. Audrey could understand a single voice reciting digits but in 1962, IBM introduced a machine called the “Shoebox” which could understand 16 English words. In the 1970’s, the U.S. Department of Defense got involved and speech recognition developments began to move rapidly. It was then that “Harpy,” a system that could recognize over 1000 words, was developed.The 1980’s saw speech recognition efforts focused more on prediction. Tech Hive writer, Melanie Pinola, writes about…”A new statistical method known as the hidden Markov model (HMM). Rather than simply using templates for words and looking for sound patterns, HMM considered the probability of unknown sounds being words.” Dragon speaks was introduced in the 1990’s but with a $9000 price tag, making it somewhat unobtainable for many. In fact, advances in speech recognition technology stalled for a period until Google introduced a voice search application for the iPhone in 2008. The next big thing was 2010’s introduction of the voice search feature for Android by Google, of course, and then came Siri. Designed to incorporate what she knows about you, Siri is at once playful as well as entertaining. In answer, Google launched Google Now and Microsoft has jumped into the ring with Cortana which promises the ability to integrate your home based technology, temperature controls and motion sensors, etc., with the voice controls on your smart phone. With all the cool advances in speech recognition some will likely be devastated by Ben-Itzhak’s warning. He and his team, however, performed experiments to test just how far a person of nefarious intent could go by using his or her voice to activate someone else’s speech recognition software. It turns out that voice recognition software does not necessarily recognize just one voice. According to Ben-Itzhak, “…There is something very basic here that everyone seems to have forgotten: authentication. If you have a smart TV at home, for instance, it will respond to a synthesized voice as well as yours.” He warns that voice recognition software will soon be embedded in everything from smart watches to refrigerators. He likens leaving it as it is today to walking away from your computer, “Without a password and just allowing anyone to walk by, click and take an action.” Notwithstanding all the excitement generated by the newest technological advances, people everywhere should beware; voice recognition software could be the next big security threat.
DOHA: People will be able to call emergency number 999 round-the-clock during Eid Al Adha holidays in different languages, including Chinese, Hindi, Tagalog, Persian and French, apart from Arabic and English.
Qatar News Agency (QNA) reported yesterday quoting the official in-charge of the central operation room (999) that they respond to an emergency call within 10 seconds.
Lieutenant-Colonel Hassan Mohamed Al Kuwari said that those who are hearing impaired can also call the emergency number but only in Arabic and English.
Meanwhile, banks will have five days of Eid Al Adha holidays beginning from October 5 until October 11, but they will in effect be closed for 10 days considering their weekly days off on Fridays and Saturdays.
Eid holidays in the government sector, including ministries and state agencies, will also be for five days until October 11. But the government sector will, in effect, also be closed for 10 days.
Civil Defence officials said they will be increasing the number of personnel in the Sealine area during Eid holidays.
The traffic department said they will be deploying patrol teams on all busy roads during the holidays and send text messages to people regarding road safety and jams.
At the airport immigration, the exit permit counter will work 24 hours during Eid holidays, Colonel Mohamed Rashid Al Marzui told QNA. The director of Abu Samra check-post said five lanes will be for customs clearance while nine will be for travellers.
Out of these nine, five will be reserved for families crossing the border or entering Qatar. Brigadier Sheikh Nasser bin Abdullah Al Thani said clearance will take just a few minutes.
The Peninsula
Il faut maintenir l'enseignement de deux langues nationales à l'école primaire, les autorités neuchâteloises en sont convaincues. Le Grand Conseil a adopté mardi par 108 voix et deux abstentions une résolution qui demande au Conseil d'Etat de s'adresser au Conseil fédéral et à la Conférence des directeurs cantonaux de l'instruction publique (CDIP) afin qu'ils veillent au bon apprentissage d'une deuxième langue nationale à l'école primaire. Cette résolution déposée par le groupe libéral-radical est une réaction à la volonté de plusieurs cantons suisses alémaniques de supprimer l'enseignement du français à l'école primaire. Les députés neuchâtelois ont souligné l'importance d'être cohérent au plan national et de pouvoir se comprendre au sein d'un même pays. Les parlements vaudois et fribourgeois viennent également d'accepter de telles résolutions à une large majorité. Les cantons romands pourront donc parler d'une même voix lors de la prochaine réunion de la CDIP fin octobre.
Mardi, le Grand Conseil neuchâtelois a aussi accepté à une large majorité de modifier la Loi d'organisation judiciaire neuchâteloise pour alléger le travail des procureurs. Le statut de greffier-rédacteur sera remplacé par celui de procureur assistant. /mvr
Le Grand Conseil neuchâtelois a rejoint mardi les parlements vaudois et fribourgeois sur la question de l'enseignement des langues nationales en Suisse. Le Grand Conseil neuchâtelois s'est montré soudé mardi sur le front de l'enseignement des langues nationales en Suisse. Rejoignant le mouvement des parlements fribourgeois et vaudois, il a adopté à la quasi-unanimité une résolution urgente à ce sujet. La majorité qualifiée des deux tiers était requise, soit 73 voix sur les 110 députés présents. Le texte élaboré par le groupe libéral-radical en a récolté 108, avec deux abstentions mais sans opposition. Le texte invite le Conseil fédéral à engager plus de moyens dans la promotion de la compréhension mutuelle entre cultures nationales, et à veiller au bon apprentissage d'une deuxième langue nationale à l'école primaire. Il demande aussi à la Conférence des directeurs cantonaux de l'instruction publique (CDIP) de veiller à cet enseignement et de combler les lacunes existantes. Le Conseil d'Etat a soutenu la résolution. Les débats prévus à la CDIP fin octobre promettent d'être nourris entre Romands et Alémaniques, a dit la conseillère d'Etat Monika Maire-Hefti. Toutefois, "nous sommes suffisamment subtils et malins pour ne pas aller à l'affrontement - puisque nous sommes minoritaires - mais pour défendre notre langue" efficacement, a-t-elle commenté. Les parlements fribourgeois et vaudois ont aussi adopté ce mois-ci des résolutions similaires à celle de Neuchâtel. Ces réactions font suite aux projets de renoncer à l'enseignement du français à l'école primaire dans plusieurs cantons alémaniques.
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Scoop.it!
