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There are requirements at polling places, but help doesn't reach everyone who needs it.
Elections have been hectic for Cesar Liriano for most of the nine years he's lived in the city of Lebanon. Presidential elections are craziest, but he's busy during the lower-turnout local and gubernatorials, too.
"Normally, I get up at 5 o'clock every day, doesn't matter elections or not," Liriano says. "I go down as soon to the polls as soon as they open, I go and vote with my wife, and then I get prepared to be running from one poll to the other."
Liriano, who's from the Dominican Republic, has run for City Council before, as a Democrat, but it's more his role as a community leader that puts him in demand as a translator.
He says he's often summoned to a polling place and arrives to find well-intentioned election workers simply unable to communicate with voters. He says he hasn't always made it before the language barrier discouraged voters away.
"At the end, they end up without voting just because they can't understand what the people at the polling place are telling them to do," he says.
Liriano, 40, has been trying to raise awareness about the shortage of language support at the polls since last spring, at least.
Cesar Liriano attends a poll watchers training with the Lebanon County Democrats at Hoss’s Restaurant. (Lindsay Lazarski/WHYY)
The city of Lebanon is known for its sizeable Latino population, so the county puts interpreters at some precincts and all voting machines offer Spanish versions of ballots.
But it's not a requirement under federal law.
The way the Voting Rights Act is written it can leave gaps between community need for translation and interpretation at the polls and what's provided, advocates say.
In places like Lebanon, the shortfall is due mainly to how legal requirements are triggered.
How it works
Voters can bring along someone to assist them, so long as that person isn't their employer or union representative.
But what if that's not feasible?
Basically, the law determines whether the government has to provide support for voters with limited English proficiency by counting how many speak the same language in a given jurisdiction.
If it hits 10,000 people or 5 percent of eligible voters, translation and interpretation requirements are triggered under Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act.
But the population thresholds are calculated at the county level. In Pennsylvania, three counties meet it, in each case for Spanish: Berks, Lehigh and Philadelphia.
"I think that the law works for the majority and I guess that's appropriate, in a lot of ways, or people feel like it's appropriate," says Hazel Diaz, volunteer coordinator for the Lebanon County Democratic Committee.
By the numbers
In the city of Lebanon, 12 percent of eligible voters have limited English proficiency and speak Spanish. Countywide, it's 3 percent — comfortably under the 5 percent federal threshold.
Nineteen Pennsylvania municipalities meet the threshold, but are within a county that does not. The list includes Lebanon, Lancaster, Hazleton, West Hazleton, Harrisburg and York. Combined, they're home to more than 15,000 Spanish-speaking eligible voters with limited English proficiency.
"We've had people run for city council and win by 11 votes," Diaz says. "So every vote really does count."
Sufficient data to do a similar analysis for other languages wasn't available.
But there are more than 140,000 eligible voters with limited English proficiency statewide speaking a language other than Spanish, the vast majority residing in Philadelphia and surrounding counties.
In Philadelphia, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund' has been trying to get more language support at polls, including through a complaint under the city's Fair Practice ordinance.
Support spectrum
Exactly what kind of help is required?
It's varies among counties, or even polling places within the same county.
"Reasonable and effective," says Will Gonzalez, who heads Philadelphia-based Latino coalition Ceiba. "Those are the two subjective terms by which you judge compliance [with the Voting Rights Act]. ... [It comes down to] balancing the need of limited English proficient citizens in a particular precinct relative to the resources available."
There's general agreement that ballots and voting machines must offer translations, for example.
But in practice, particularly when it comes to verbal communication between poll workers and voters, there's ambiguity as to what constitutes "reasonable steps" taken to provide "effective" support to overcome language barriers.
None of the three counties under federal mandate supplies bilingual election workers at every polling place. Berks and Lehigh counties' election officials we spoke with say workers at sites without an interpreter can call the main office for help interpreting — but only in Spanish. They say other language barriers have never come up.
Philadelphia poll workers have access to interpreters in languages other than Spanish via Language Line translation service.
But Vattamala says the service is "something that's there on paper but in practice it never gets used."
Language Line representatives didn't respond to requests for comment. The company website describes the service as on-demand, 24/7/365, and available in 240 languages, although advocates for refugees and other LEP populations typically make appointments to ensure they get through to someone.
When translators are accessible by phone, they're highly preferable to mobile apps such as Google Translate, because mechanical translation of text to try to facilitate verbal conversation, Gonzalez says, "leads to misunderstandings" and "isn't effective at all."
But even when telephonic interpretation works optimally, some say it still leaves much to be desired.
"Some of my advocate friends say ... the impersonality and the difficulty of exchanging a handset or exchanging a mobile telephone back and forth makes telephonic interpretation not effective and not reasonable," Gonzalez says.
Places where translation is not required, but is available
York, Dauphin, Luzerne, Lancaster and Lebanon counties are not under the federal mandate to provide translation services, but include at least one of the 19 towns that "would be" if population thresholds were calculated at the municipal level.
Each of these counties provides Spanish translations of printed ballots, electronic versions on voting machines, or both. They also provide interpretation over the phone or through bilingual poll workers, assigned to select precincts based on feedback from election judges.
Dauphin, for example, ensures bilingual support at two precincts in the city of Harrisburg, and all 164 sites countywide have hard-copy provisional ballots in English and Spanish, according to Dauphin County Director of Elections & Voter Registration Jerry Feaser.
The translation that doesn't add to the printing expense, Feaser says.
Voting machines offer a Spanish language option throughout Lebanon County. It cost $4,000 or so – about 2 percent of the county's total election budget – to program machines to offer each of the 56 precinct's different ballots in Spanish, according to voter registration director Michael Anderson.
Lebanon County will staff 15 polling places in the city of Lebanon with 22 interpreters. About half of those are students at the city's public high school, Anderson says.
Lehigh County has a similar partnership with Muhlenberg College, according to Timothy Benyo, chief the county's clerk of registration and elections.
Vatamalla says using students is a "wonderful idea that would be one of the best ways to eliminate almost all of the problems that we've encountered and observed in the last several elections." But he says students aren't used very frequently.
Anderson says he'll also call on some of the Lebanon Democratic Committee's bilingual volunteers, should the need arise, on Election Day.
Anderson says he's not concerned about using party-affiliated translators. Anyone helping voters communicate with poll workers would be within the 10 feet distance at which rules against politicking kick in, the same guidelines which apply to county-trained, county-paid poll workers, he says.
Vattamala says having people who are associated with a political party at the polls leads to problems.
"We've seen this in numerous elections," Vatamalla. "They oftentimes will be persuaded or through language barriers, the person that is assisting that is partisan will oftentimes choose candidates that the voter themselves did not want to choose."
Editor's note: Statistics on voter residency, English proficiency and native language are based on a Keystone Crossroads analysis of 2014 Census data, the most recent available.
Via Charles Tiayon
Fary Ndao rappelle, études scientifiques à l’appui, qu’on apprend mieux en commençant l’école dans sa langue maternelle.
Par Fary Ndao
LE MONDE Le 02.11.2016 à 11h37 • Mis à jour le 02.11.2016 à 11h48
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L’Afrique est le seul continent où les langues maternelles parlées au quotidien ne sont pas enseignées dans le cadre scolaire officiel. [Un sujet central qui a agité plusieurs des Débats que Le Monde Afrique a organisés à Dakar fin octobre sur le thème de l’éducation supérieure.]
Lire aussi : « Une Afrique moderne et pleine d’elle-même », le slam des futurs Einstein africains
La langue dite « maternelle » est définie par l’Unesco comme étant « la ou les langue(s) de l’environnement immédiat et des interactions quotidiennes qui construisent l’enfant durant les quatre premières années de sa vie ». Ainsi, beaucoup d’enfants africains, notamment en Afrique de l’Ouest, ont une langue maternelle africaine de portée nationale (wolof au Sénégal, bambara au Mali, fon au Bénin) et une seconde langue maternelle d’extension régionale parlée dans leur village, leur ville ou leur province.
Les langues internationales compliquent la diffusion du savoir
En délaissant ces langues maternelles au profit exclusif des langues internationales (français, anglais, arabe), les pays africains ne facilitent ni la diffusion du savoir au sein de leurs sociétés, ni l’intégration de leur intelligentsia à la communauté académique mondiale. Il est important de rappeler, pour convaincre les sceptiques, ce chiffre issu du rapport de l’Unesco sur la science : sur les 20 pays effectuant le plus de publications académiques dans le monde, l’on retrouve une majorité de pays (douze) où la langue officielle n’est parlée que dans ledit pays et ses zones frontalières. Ces douze pays sont : la Chine (mandarin), le Japon (japonais), la Corée du Sud (coréen), l’Inde (hindi), la Russie (russe), l’Italie (italien), les Pays-Bas (néerlandais), la Turquie (turc), l’Iran (persan), la Norvège (norvégien) et Israël (hébreu). La langue seule n’explique pas tout et il existe bien entendu plusieurs facteurs qui contribuent au dynamisme de la recherche dans un pays : tradition universitaire, moyens économiques, existence d’un tissu industriel, etc.
Lire aussi : La fausse réforme de l’éducation islamique enseignée aux enfants marocains
Cependant, la vitalité académique de ces pays démontre qu’il n’est pas nécessaire d’avoir une langue parlée sur trois continents pour trouver des solutions originales aux problématiques endogènes ou pour contribuer à l’amélioration du savoir mondial. Les pays asiatiques ont le fait le choix d’une éducation basée sur la langue maternelle. Leur réussite académique et économique montre qu’il existe une différence significative entre la langue d’acquisition du savoir, c’est-à-dire la langue d’enseignement, et la langue de communication qui correspond à une langue de portée internationale utilisée pour partager ce savoir en dehors de ses frontières. Ceux qui en doutent pourront répondre à cette question : qui parle le coréen à part les Coréens ?
Lire aussi : Cédric Villani : « Les étudiants africains sont très intéressants, on sent l’appétit, l’enthousiasme »
En Afrique, il ne s’agira pas de remplacer le français ou l’anglais par une seule autre langue, fût-elle africaine. Il apparaît plus judicieux de se diriger vers un enseignement multilingue basé sur la langue maternelle comme le recommande l’Unesco et ses nombreuses études de cas pratiques depuis 1953. Cet enseignement pourrait se décliner comme suit : une langue africaine d’extension régionale pour la primo-alphabétisation, rapidement complétée par l’enseignement dans la langue africaine de portée nationale avant l’enseignement des langues internationales. Le triptyque « un territoire, une langue officielle, une nation » est davantage un fantasme qu’une réalité tangible dans les pays africains. Les langues internationales n’y sont bien souvent comprises que par une minorité qui les utilise pour confisquer les débats démocratiques, monopoliser l’information économique et contrôler l’appareil d’Etat. Il faut donc faire la promotion de nations africaines basées sur la reconnaissance de la diversité linguistique et culturelle.
85 % des enfants concernés en école primaire
L’enseignement en langue maternelle permet d’éviter le temps d’acculturation qui oblige l’enfant sénégalais ou malien découvrant l’école primaire à effectuer un sevrage brutal où il abandonne les acquis de sa ou ses langue(s) maternelle(s). Des études de l’Association pour le développement de l’éducation en Afrique (ADEA) estiment en effet qu’au moins 85 % des enfants africains débutent leur vie scolaire avec l’obligation d’apprendre dans une langue qu’ils n’ont jamais parlée, ni souvent entendue. Il suffit d’imaginer la situation cocasse où 85 % des petits Français entrant au CP seraient alphabétisés en wolof ou en bambara. C’est pourtant une telle aberration qui se déroule, depuis des décennies, dans beaucoup de pays d’Afrique noire francophone.
Renverser ce paradigme linguistique permettrait aux enfants de ne pas subir cette rupture violente qui va à l’encontre de tous les résultats de recherches en sciences cognitives depuis plus de quarante ans. Ceux-ci montrent en effet qu’un apprentissage est plus efficace si l’apprenant possède déjà des connaissances, même rudimentaires, sur le sujet d’apprentissage. Il est par exemple beaucoup plus facile d’apprendre à programmer dans un nouveau langage informatique, lorsque l’on connaît déjà un autre langage informatique, quel qu’il soit. C’est ce que confirme le docteur Seynabou Diop, spécialiste des sciences cognitives, dans cet article paru en 2012 : « Les connaissances antérieures de l’enfant peuvent être inadéquates, peu structurées, mal structurées ou totalement fausses au départ (…) Les langues nationales, parce qu’elles offrent une pléthore de connaissances antérieures propres aux enfants, permettent de les engager dans un processus de restructuration et de construction active des connaissances. »
Faciliter l’alphabétisation
Ainsi, la primo-alphabétisation doit toujours être effectuée avec l’une des langues maternelles de l’enfant. Un enfant du Fouta, au Sénégal, devrait aborder les premières années de sa vie scolaire en pulaar. Dans d’autres régions ayant des identités linguistiques fortes, des concertations sur le choix de la langue de primo-alphabétisation pourraient être menées par les autorités administratives avec les parents d’élèves, les enseignants appuyés par des spécialistes en sciences cognitives. Un tel processus a été adopté avec succès au Burkina Faso au début des années 2000.
Lire aussi : Quel avenir pour la francophonie numérique ?
Un enfant apprenant dans sa langue maternelle a statistiquement moins de chances de redoubler à la fin du primaire. Il comprend mieux et peut se faire aider par ses parents, même si ceux-ci ne sont pas alphabétisés, car ils comprennent de fait la langue de primo-alphabétisation qui est celle qu’ils parlent à leur enfant à la maison.
Un enfant alphabétisé dans sa langue maternelle n’a généralement aucune difficulté pour apprendre une nouvelle langue. Plusieurs expériences, menées au Sénégal et en Ethiopie, montrent que les enfants qui sont alphabétisés en wolof ou amharique, obtiennent de meilleurs résultats en français ou en anglais que les élèves qui sont exclusivement alphabétisés dès l’entrée au primaire en français ou en anglais. Nul paradoxe ici : l’apprenant intègre les nouvelles langues en les comparant aux structures grammaticales et syntaxiques qu’il a apprises dans sa langue maternelle.
Enfin, l’enseignement du français et de l’anglais à la fin du primaire ou dès l’entrée au collège, permettra à nos (futurs) chercheurs de continuer à disposer de langues de communication internationales et ainsi rester en contact fécond avec le reste de l’intelligentsia académique mondiale. Ces langues font par ailleurs partie d’un héritage historique et culturel africain qu’il est inutile de nier.
Doper la recherche et consolider la démocratie
Au-delà de la primo-alphabétisation, la possibilité de mener des études supérieures dans une langue maternelle doit également être envisagée. L’étudiant africain ayant appris les bases des mathématiques, de la grammaire puis de la physique dans sa langue maternelle depuis ses premiers pas à l’école, voit se développer chez lui un sentiment naturel de banalisation du savoir scientifique et historique et arrive à ne plus considérer ce savoir comme un sanctuaire de vérité absolue. On s’épargnerait ainsi les scènes de mémorisation par cœur auxquelles l’on assiste dans les allées des grands temples de l’apprentissage machinal que sont les universités africaines.
Couplé à celui, plus tardif, des langues internationales, l’enseignement en langues africaines augmentera mécaniquement la base démographique potentielle de chercheurs, d’ingénieurs, de philosophes, de sociologues, d’écrivains, corps indispensables pour tirer l’Afrique noire de sa léthargie culturelle, et la mettre à l’abri des risques sécuritaires et idéologiques qui pèsent sur elle. Cela permettra également d’améliorer la vie démocratique au sein des pays africains, une urgence lorsque l’on voit la facilité avec laquelle les masses sont manipulées par les lettrés, politiciens ou intellectuels. Enfin, cela pourrait faire reculer l’obscurantisme religieux dans des pays où la masse communique avec ses « guides » dans les langues qu’elle comprend quand, dans le même temps, les lettrés s’enferment dans de nombreux colloques boudés par cette même masse. A l’heure où émergent de plus en plus de mouvements radicaux, la langue maternelle peut constituer un rempart contre le fanatisme, grâce à l’ouverture qu’elle pourra apporter sur d’autres horizons culturels.
Fary Ndao est ingénieur géologue, ancien membre du cercle de réflexion L’Afrique des Idées.
Via Charles Tiayon
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It’s not a stretch to say that effective software localization begins with good strategic planning. But localization is also a tactical…
Between History and Memory
Deadline for submission of proposals extended to 30 November 2016
1st Hong Kong Baptist University International Conference on Interpreting
9-10 March 2017
Hong Kong Baptist University
Call for Proposals
With an aim to promote the study of interpreting in Hong Kong and the greater China area, Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) is launching a biennial conference with the title of “HKBU International Conference on Interpreting”.
For the first HKBU International Conference on Interpreting, we have chosen the theme of the “History of Interpreting” not only because it is a logical beginning, but also because the history of interpreting, along with the history of translation, has been one of the most rapidly progressing lines of research in the fields of interpreting studies and translation studies. This trend was clearly manifested in the First International Symposium on the History of Interpreting, held at Rikkyo University in Tokyo in May 2014 and in the publication of New Insights in the History of Interpreting (Takeda & Baigorri-Jalón, 2016), a collection of selected papers, mostly from the Rikkyo Symposium.
The first HKBU Conference, inspired by the successful Rikkyo Symposium, aims to further explore interpreting phenomena in history and examine the different roles interpreters have played in historical events, focusing in particular on “how the practice of interpreting has evolved to address the needs of different historical contexts, and how understanding interpreting history is relevant to interpreters and interpreting practices in the present” (Takeda & Baigorri-Jalón, 2016, p. VII).
Together with this first instalment of the conference, we also plan to hold a photo exhibition under the name of The Interpreter’s One Hundred Years of Solitude: Between History and Memory, curated by Prof. Jesús Baigorri-Jalón, historian and interpreting scholar, and Dr. Icíar Alonso-Araguás. Images from the last 100 years will be shown to connect important historical events with the role of interpreters as linguistic and cultural mediators. The exhibition has travelled to Tokyo (Japan), Graz (Austria), Brussels and Antwerp (Belgium), Forlì (Italy), Hildesheim (Germany), as well as different cities in Spain, and will be brought to the Chinese-speaking world for the first time.
Themes:
Practices of interpreting in different cultures, historical periods and geographical or geopolitical regions
Reception of interpreters in different cultures, historical periods and geographical or geopolitical regions
Evolution of the norms, code of ethics, and social status of interpreters
Methods and approaches in the research on the history of interpreting
The relationship between historical research and interpreting practice
Keynote Speakers:
Professor Jesús BAIGORRI-JALÓN
(Associate Professor (Emeritus), Department of Translation and Interpretation, and Member of the Alfaqueque Interpretation Research Group, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain)
Professor Kayoko TAKEDA
(Professor, College of Intercultural Communication, Rikkyo University, Tokyo, Japan)
All presentations should be given in English. (In exceptional cases, the organizers may entertain requests for presenting in Putonghua, subject to arrangement of the necessary interpreting provision).
Length of presentations: 30 minutes (20 minutes for presentation and 10 minutes for discussion)
Submission of Proposals:
Deadline for submission of proposals: 31 October 2016
Notification of the decision by the programme committee: 15 November 2016
Submissions must include the following information (in English):
– name of author(s)
– affiliation
– email address
– abstract of 300-400 words
– 3-5 keywords
– short author biography of 50 to 100 words
Conference Website: http://tran.hkbu.edu.hk/interpreting_conf2017
*ctn@hkbu.edu.hk (+852 3411 5383
Via Charles Tiayon
Systran 8 Translator : un outil pour traduire plus vite que son ombre
jeudi 3 novembre 2016
Mysoft lance la nouvelle version de son traducteur Systran Translator. Une version 8 qui réserve plusieurs nouveautés dont :
une nouvelle interface utilisateur.
la possibilité de traduire un texte libre, des documents Office, des courriels ou une page Web.
la possibilité de personnaliser les traductions grâce à la création de dictionnaires utilisateurs et de mémoires de traduction pour une plus grande précision de traduction.
le traitement des documents PDF. Grâce à un accord technologique signé avec I.R.I.S, le logiciel convertit de façon transparente les documents PDF en textes éditables et les traduit directement.
l'intégration des outils de traduction au sein des navigateurs Web dont Chrome, Internet Explorer et Firefox.
la fonction OmniTranslator pour traduire instantanément ce qui est affiché à l’écran en pointant simplement le curseur de la souris sur n’importe quelle partie du texte.
la traduction en masse de fichiers avec des options supplémentaires permettant d’appliquer plus de filtres dans la sélection de fichiers à traduire.
" Grâce à une nouvelle interface utilisateur, traduire un texte libre, des documents Office, des courriels, une page Web, ou bien consulter la traduction d’un mot ou d’une expression dans un dictionnaire devient extrêmement simple avec Systran 8 Translator ", explique l'éditeur. Les fonctionnalités sont accessibles sans connexion Internet.
Systran 8 Translator offre la possibilité de personnaliser les traductions grâce à la création de dictionnaires utilisateurs et de mémoires de traduction pour une plus grande précision de traduction.
Systran 8 Translator est disponible en deux versions :
Systran 8 Translator Essential pour les utilisateurs occasionnels à 79 euros (français/anglais-anglais/français) et 129 euros (Europe).
Systran 8 Translator Professional pour les utilisateurs réguliers et exigeants à 249 euros (français/anglais-anglais/français) et 369 euros (Europe).
Via Charles Tiayon
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November 2, 2016 10:34 AM
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Research translators are people who read research articles from scientific refereed journals and distill the wisdom from those articles into practical recommendations for practitioners.
Numéro 28(2) - 2016 de la revue Parallèles Le numéro 28(2) de Parallèles vient d'être mis en ligne. Vous y trouverez, d’une part, sept articles et, d’autre part, six comptes rendus d’ouvrages.
Via Charles Tiayon
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November 1, 2016 7:48 AM
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The conference #TranslatingEurope Forum 2016 was held on October 27-28 in Brussels. Besides presentations, the conference included two sessions of mini-workshops: the idea was to present some practical aspect of translation in small group – three people at a time. The workshops included my submission on terminology mining. I realized from the start that participants won’t be able to remember anything from 15-minute session with three different software tools, I have prepared handouts with some background information I had no time to introduce and description of all steps presented in the procedure. Since the workshop was quite popular (all groups were far larger than 3), I’m publishing somewhat extended version of the handout, which is available here.
Via Stanislav Okhvat
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Developments in neuroscience mean that the impact of loss and trauma on early brain development is widely understood.
Dakar, 29 oct (APS) – La pharmacienne, Dr Maimouna Diop a lancé, samedi à Dakar, un dictionnaire local du médicament appelé
Via Charles Tiayon
Dakar, 29 oct (APS) – La pharmacienne, Dr Maimouna Diop a lancé, samedi à Dakar, un dictionnaire local du médicament appelé
Via Charles Tiayon
Plusieurs acteurs de l’éducation de douze (12) pays d’Afrique francophone planchent depuis lundi sur la question des langues nationales et leur impact sur les cursus scolaires. L’initiative est de l’Ecole et langues nationales en Afrique (ELAN-Afrique) qui veut à travers cette rencontre régionale, permettre un meilleur apprentissage scolaire, histoire de réduire considérablement…
Via Charles Tiayon
The job of language translators and interpreters is never easy, but the task becomes especially dicey in the realm of politics. Differing interpretations of a turn of phrase, after all, have been known to lead to war.
The challenge is even greater when the translator is attempting to interpret words and phrases that even native speakers find hard to understand.
Such is the plight of foreign language interpreters and translators who have wrestled with statements by Donald Trump in his bid for the US presidency. His NSFW language, malapropisms, chants in B flat, and twisted logic have perplexed translators around the world.
Below is what foreigners hear in foreign language translations of Trump’s linguistic quirks:
He sounds more concise and authoritative
Trump’s rhetoric is notorious for being vague and evasive, but the haziness is often lost in translation. “A wink and a nudge from head to Artioli-shod toe, he exhales a cloud of words in which listeners see their chosen shape: a castle, a pony, a grinning skull.” This is how Tokyo-based freelance writer and translator Agnes Kaku described Trump’s rhetorical style on LinkedIn.
Kaku says his frequent use of phrases like “I don’t know, probably, maybe, I’m not sure, other people say, the lawyers say, I haven’t looked at it, I’m not familiar” make Trump sound more authoritative. As an example, she notes Japanese translations of Trump’s comments about why Khizr Khan’s wife, Ghazala, didn’t speak during her husband’s speech at the Democratic National Convention.
In English, Trump’s comments to ABC News after the speech implied that Ghazala’s silence was a sign of religious suppression: “I saw him. He was—you know, very emotional and probably looked like—a nice guy to me. His wife—if you look at his wife, she was standing there, she had nothing to say, she probably, maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say, you tell me, but plenty of people have written that.”
By contrast, Japan’s public broadcaster, NHK, turned his rambling response into: ”おそらく彼女は発言することを許されなかったのだろう” or “She likely wasn’t allowed to give a statement.”
CNN Japan simply stated: “発言を許されていなかったのかもしれない,” or “It could be she wasn’t allowed to speak.”
He sounds more sexist and racist
Much has been made of Trump’s comments in a surfaced Access Hollywood video about making advances on a woman without her consent. Trump dismissed the comments as “locker talk,” but foreign language translations of the lewd banter have only made the remarks sound worse.
According to Victor Mair, a professor of Chinese at the University of Pennsylvania, the sentence, “I moved on her like a bitch, and I could not get there, and she was married,” became “Wǒ xiàng zhuī biǎozi yīyàng zhuī tā, dàn méi néng chénggōng,” on people.cn, which means: “I pursued her like a whore / prostitute / harlot / strumpet, but I couldn’t succeed.”
Another news site translated the sentence into, “Wǒ xiàng duìdài dàngfù yīyàng kàojìn tā,” or, “I treated her like a slut to get close to her.” Mair wrote on the blog Language Log.
In an attempt to reach Hispanic voters, Trump’s campaign organizers created a sign that read “Hispanic para Trump,” which irked Spanish speakers who knew better. The Spanish word for Hispanics is “Hispanos,” and in this case the word “para” should have been “por.”
In some cases, his delivery is actually softer
Translators say they often dodge Trump’s crude language altogether, either because they have no choice or to get around internal censors.
Odd but telling words like “bigly” and “braggadocious” caught Spanish translators so off-guard that they skipped right over them, according to Aida González del Álamo, who translated Hillary Clinton in the debates.
In another example, Chinese translators interpreted the word “pussy,” which does not have a direct translation in Chinese, as: “Nǐ xiǎng zěnme zuò dōu xíng, bāokuò mō tāmen de yǐnsī bùwèi,” or “You can do whatever you want, including touching / feeling / stroking / groping their private parts.”
Instead of “I moved on her like a bitch,” News.sina.com had Trump saying, “Wǒ duì tā cǎiqǔle qiángliè de jìngōng,” or “I made a strong attack on her.”
Del Álamo said her colleague used “coger sus genitales,” or “grab them by the genitals”and “tocar a las mujeres sin su permiso,” or “touch women without their consent,” to describe Trump’s “pussy” comments.
The term “bad hombres” in the third presidential debate was translated into “hombres malos” by Daniel Sánchez Reinaldo, a Spanish interpreter for National Spanish Televisión RTVE in Madrid, which made Trump sound childish, Reinaldo told Quartz.
In some ways, Trump’s habit of interrupting also worked in his favor. One of his shortest and most mocked utterances—”Wrong!”—couldn’t be directly translated into “Eso no es correcto” in Spanish because it took too long to say. To be quicker, the translator used “Es falso,” or “That is not true,” which inadvertently sounded more polite.
In the third debate, Reinaldo made a snap decision to use the softer phrase “Qué mujer más desagradable” for Trump’s “nasty woman” comment. Then he tried to make up for it by using a disgusted tone.
Via Charles Tiayon
As our nation becomes increasingly more diverse, so does our patient population and healthcare workforce. Diversity in healthcare manifests itself in many different and beautiful ways, but one of the most important is the number of languages patients and providers can, and perhaps more importantly, cannot speak. According to a 2015 U.S. Census Bureau report, data from an American Community Survey showed at least 350 languages were spoken in U.S. homes. With data like these, healthcare providers face many challenges in caring for the patients they serve and in getting the bilingual and multilingual staff they need to deliver that care. Inability to meet these challenges can lead to misinterpretations, miscommunications, mishaps and even malpractice. Nurses spend more time with patients than any other healthcare group, so the ability to speak more than one language is a major asset for nurse applicants and a skill recruiters value. Whether teaching medication doses, giving instructions on diagnostic testing, explaining procedures or making sure a consent is truly an informed one, the quality of the communication between the nurse and the patient is crucial. Along with their recruitment work, healthcare facilities also provide services like telephone language lines and other mobile computer technologies for patients and families because staff translators are not always available and families may not be present or able to help with translation. Some also use contracted language interpreters who work in person or off-site by phone or video, but if the interpreter has good language skills and is not highly knowledgeable about medical standards, terminology, etc., there’s a risk of information being lost in translation. Regardless of the problems that may arise with these services, healthcare facilities are required by regulatory agencies to provide language services that will help ensure access to quality care no matter which language the patient speaks. The intent of the regulations is that the interpretation and translation methods used support effective communication between patients and care providers and are effective in a variety of care situations. Simply put, the services must meet the patient’s needs. But the need is not a new one. As long ago as 2004, when The Institute of Medicine report, “Health Literacy: A Prescription to End Confusion,” was published, health literacy was defined as “the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions,” and language is most certainly a vital part of health literacy. It can mean the difference between life and death if what the patient or provider is trying to communicate is not clear and understandable. Read the article, “Speaking their language” for a look at some special roles bilingual nurses in meeting the needs of the diverse patient populations they serve. Patients’ safety and recovery depend on good communication all along the care continuum, and bilingual staff, as well as interpretation and translation services play a vital role in making that happen. • About the authorEileen Williamson, MSN, RN Eileen Williamson, MSN, RN, is senior vice president and chief nurse executive at OnCourse Learning, where she leads nursing programs and initiatives. She writes for Nurse.com; heads the national nursing excellence GEM Awards program; chairs company advisory board meetings; and represents OnCourse Learning on various healthcare committees and boards and at regional and national nursing and healthcare programs and meetings. Before joining the company in 1998, Eileen was employed by North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System in New York, where she held a number of leadership positions in nursing and hospital administration, including chief nurse at two of the system’s member hospitals. She holds a BSN and an MSN in administration, and is a graduate fellow of the Johnson & Johnson University of Pennsylvania Wharton School Nurse Executives program. She also is a board member and past president of the New Jersey League for Nursing, a constituent league of the National League for Nursing.
Via Charles Tiayon
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Scooped by
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October 26, 2016 8:44 AM
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This is a guest post by "Vova" from SmartCAT . I connected with him on Twitter and learned about the SmartCAT product which I woul
This book focuses on women and translation in cultures 'across other horizons' well beyond the European or Anglo-American centres. Drawing on transnational feminist connections, its editors have assembled work from four continents and included…
Via Charles Tiayon
A project in development by the Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation aims to revolutionise the teaching and learning of literacy in indigenous communities across Australia.
Via Charles Tiayon
The home and church are being promoted as places to help the endangered Tokelauan language survive.
Via Charles Tiayon
This is a call for submission in the form of an abstract/write-up, artistic impression, video, blog around the following four thematic pillars of the demographic dividend road-map:....Selected entries will be invited to partake in the 2017 January Heads of States Summit. Female applicants are highly encouraged to apply. The deadline for submissions is 25 October,…
Via Charles Tiayon
For those who don't speak or read Irish fluently, it may come as surprise to know that many popular novels have been translated for those who can read as Gaelig
Via Charles Tiayon
Les listes de diffusion, nouvelle fonctionnalité induite par l’usage d’Internet, permettent aujourd’hui aux traducteurs de se regrouper en réseaux de façon à partager avec leurs collègues les difficultés rencontrées dans l’exercice de la profession. Ces listes s’inscrivent donc en complément des stratégies classiques de résolution de problème et se substituent parfois même à certaines étapes du processus de traduction. La dimension cognitive, jusqu’à présent abordée à l’échelle individuelle, acquiert de ce fait une dimension collective, non sans incidence sur la représentation du processus de traduction.
Via Charles Tiayon
Is the Maltese population losing its command of English? Are standards of English in Malta in decline? Is it true that there was a time when Malta’s population had a faultless command of English?
Some emerging facts and figures might suggest a different, and altogether mor
Via Charles Tiayon
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Translation help at the polls: what's required and how it works — NewsWorks