Quezil - News on Language & Technology

Spanish, Mandarin and Polish, as well as English, are the dominant languages spoken by new students in the Wilton Public School District, according to Connecticut Open Data (data.ct.gov).

The information in the dataset was reported by LEAs for students and English-learners during the 2014-15 school year.

Under Connecticut General Statute 10-17f and No Child Left Behind, local education agencies are required to “ascertain the dominant language of all new K-12 students, which is typically done through a home language survey,” according to Connecticut Open Data.

According to the dataset, the following number of new public school students in Wilton speak the dominant world languages:

Miller-Driscoll School: 807 speak English, seven speak Spanish, 10 speak Mandarin and nine speak Polish.
Cider Mill School: 937 speak English and six speak Spanish,
Middlebrook School: 1,009 speak English, seven speak Spanish and seven speak Mandarin.
Wilton High School: 1,311 speak English, eight speak Spanish and six speak Polish.
Click here to view the dataset.

Below is a glossary of terms used in broadcasting. This video is targeted to blind users. Attribution: Article text available under CC-BY-SA Creative Commons ...

Ethiopian Amharic learning lessons in Common phrases and usage of words in everyday language. rastafarigroundation.com lojsociety.org ...

Posted November 11, 2015 by Jost Zetzsche, PH.D., Certified English-to-German Technical Translator, Consultant, and Author
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In today’s world, it’s become a truism: Translation is an essential key for unlocking commerce, communication, mutual understanding, and many other doorways of great and profound importance. I don’t want to belittle this obvious fact. Instead, I’d like to take you on a little journey to a different doorway, one which reveals translation as a master key of even greater complexity and significance than we had thought, one which shows that translation truly defines us.

Sound a bit like hyperbole? Well, hear me out.
Language is an essential part of who we are as human beings—in fact, many say it is the very characteristic that makes us human beings. Given the importance of language, it stands to reason that we need to look at how languages develop. Language is not static; instead, it’s continually and often rapidly evolving. And, not surprisingly, we often feel threatened by that development. Again, everything related to language cuts close to who we are.

For instance, most of us have encountered or participated in discussions on how texting is “ruining” the English (or German or French or other) language. If you’ve been among those expressing concern for the future of your language, you might want to have a look at John McWhorter’s TED talk.

How do the majority of new words enter a language? One path is through technology that extends or confines our ability to express ourselves, as in the example of texting. Another way is through youth language (you might want to check out the Urban Dictionary if you don’t know what I’m talking about). Yet another pathway is the expression of new technologies (“tweet” me if that needs to be explained).

But a very large source—maybe even the largest—comes from translation. You will see this less often in dominant languages such as English, but if you were to ask your Italian, Russian, or Dutch friend to tell you the name of some modern technology, you might think she was still speaking English since many of those terms are “translated” by using the English loan word.

Translators are gatekeepers who decide how to transfer terms and concepts from one language to another and from one culture to another. While you and I as the language’s speakers have the last word (pun intended) on which new words make it into our vocabulary and which do not, we almost always start off with a suggestion that originated with an anonymous translator. And more often than not, that translator’s suggestion will stick—if he’s done his job right.

In fact, it’s hard to imagine an experienced professional translator who has not coined one or many new terms in her field of specialization within her target language (the language into which she translates). And this isn’t surprising. The encounter of languages and cultures provides the most fertile ground for newly introduced ideas and concepts, and one result is new language, the very language that we use day in and day out.

Sometimes stories of such encounters make us view our world in a whole new light, even if they come from very unexpected sources.

Inuktitut is the language of the Inuit people in northern Canada, most of whom live in the territory of Nunavut. Like most languages, Inuktitut speakers at some point needed to find a word to express the English term “Internet.” When faced with this predicament, translators from the vast majority of languages have chosen the easy and slightly unimaginative route of adopting some version of the English term.

You can see a sample of this method here:


No question—it’s straightforward, but rather dull. And not good enough for Eva Aariak, Nunavut’s former languages commissioner, who after much consideration chose the word (ikiaqqivik) as the Inuktitut translation for Internet. This choice dug deep into Inuit culture to unearth a novel connection with the modern technological world.  is a traditional term that means “traveling through layers,” and it refers to what a shaman does when he travels across time and space to mine information about living or deceased relatives. Kind of like what the Internet does.

It’s a powerful and very intuitive image for Inuktitut speakers. But of equal significance is the power of this translation for us. Next time you hear the word “Internet,” your mind’s eye may very well picture Inuit shamans traveling through layers to find meaning. That’s the power of translation: It has the potential to change our view of the world, even through languages that we don’t know and may never master or even otherwise encounter.

It also means that we need to do everything in our power to preserve the world’s 6,000 existing languages, many of which are threatened. Because it’s not only about “them”; it’s about what you and I lose when we can’t learn through these kinds of stories and insights.

And Eva Aariak? She became the premier of Nunavut. Seems like an appropriate position for someone with such power over language and the human mind.

About the author
Jost Zetzsche is a certified English-to-German technical translator, a translation technology consultant, and a widely published author on various aspects of translation. Originally from Hamburg, Germany, he earned a Ph.D. in the field of Chinese translation history and linguistics.

His computer guide for translators, A Translator’s Tool Box for the 21st Century, is now in its eleventh edition and his technical newsletter for translators goes out to more than 10,000 translation professionals. In 2012, Perigee/Penguin published his co-authored Found in Translation, a book about translation and interpretation for the general public.

His Twitter handle is @jeromobot.

We are talking about what agencies really want from translators, how to apply to them, how to appear professional and get continued jobs.

November 11, 2015

Middlebury Institute alumna Jennifer An MACI ’11 was recently honored with the Korean Literature Translation Award for New Career Translators for her translation into English of the short story “Lady Venus” by novelist Eun Heekyung. 

The Translation Award for New Career Translators, now in its 14th year, was created for the purpose of discovering and encouraging promising new translators. “Working on the submission for the award reminded me of my true passion,” says An, “and I am excited to see what paths in literary translation will open up as a result of winning the translation award.” An has a degree in comparative literature from the University of California Berkeley.

An came to the Institute as an advanced entry student, having already completed a master’s degree in translation and interpretation from a university in Korea. She served as chief interpreter at the annual Fall Forum as well as at TEDxMonterey 2011. Since graduating, Jennifer has worked as a freelance conference interpreter and translator in Geneva and Washington D.C., working for the U.S. State Department and the World Intellectual Property Organization among others, but this summer she and her husband decided it was time to move back to sunny California. “The year I spent at MIIS opened up so many doors for me.”

What happens when there are no words in a language to refer to a new situation or process? People naturally make up new ones, either using their own language, borrowing from others, or a combination of both.

November 11, 2015

Middlebury Institute alumna Jennifer An MACI ’11 was recently honored with the Korean Literature Translation Award for New Career Translators for her translation into English of the short story “Lady Venus” by novelist Eun Heekyung. 

The Translation Award for New Career Translators, now in its 14th year, was created for the purpose of discovering and encouraging promising new translators. “Working on the submission for the award reminded me of my true passion,” says An, “and I am excited to see what paths in literary translation will open up as a result of winning the translation award.” An has a degree in comparative literature from the University of California Berkeley.

An came to the Institute as an advanced entry student, having already completed a master’s degree in translation and interpretation from a university in Korea. She served as chief interpreter at the annual Fall Forum as well as at TEDxMonterey 2011. Since graduating, Jennifer has worked as a freelance conference interpreter and translator in Geneva and Washington D.C., working for the U.S. State Department and the World Intellectual Property Organization among others, but this summer she and her husband decided it was time to move back to sunny California. “The year I spent at MIIS opened up so many doors for me.”

Why Nigerian languages are dying –Linguists
Posted By: JOEL AJAYIon: November 18, 2015In: NewsNo Comments Print Email

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Linguists in Ni­geria, yesterday, called on the fed­eral government to un­dertake language sur­vey, documentation and analysis of oral legisla­ture and lexicon to have a correct statistics of languages in the coun­try and to prevent them from going dying.

They noted that some of the languages, which signify the strength and diversity of Nigeria were practically dying due to the recognition given to one language by law over another and the desirability of the users to abandon their languages for others.

A Professor of Lin­guistics from the Uni­versity of Jos, Prof. An­drew Haruna, and other speakers who contrib­uted their views spoke at a national consulta­tive forum on Nigerian endangered languages with the theme, Creat­ing Strategies for Pre­venting Language Loss in Nigeria, in Abuja.

The don said that Ni­geria is the third rich­est country in the world in terms of language, as it has about 500 lan­guages out of 7,000 lan­guages in the world.

He noted that Nige­rian linguistic diver­sity is in controversy, as no specific figure of languages in Nigeria is known due to lack of survey.

He added that most of the figures (450 or 500 languages) given emanated from survey undertaken by foreign­ers.

“The fact remains that the task of docu­menting and describ­ing the languages of Nigeria is best suited to national linguists, not foreigners. A great deal of time has been lost and we are yet to know many languages and cultures there are in Nigeria,” he said.

Haruna maintained that the disappearance of language is the dis­appearance of culture; meaning that the coun­try would be witnessing depletion in its cultural heritage as languages disappear.

Citing Bauchi State as an example, the don disclosed that a study had shown that there were 64 languages in the state, but only five of them are currently active.

Also, a former Presi­dent of Linguistic As­sociation of Nigeria, Prof. Ahmed Amfani, further explained that a research carried out in Kaduna State revealed that many languages in the state, particularly in the Southern Kadu­na, are gradually going into extinction.

They told the govern­ment categorically that language could be used as an instrument to pro­mote unity in diversity, if properly harnessed.

In his remarks, the Minister of Informa­tion and Culture, Lai Mohammed, said it was unfortunate that “80 per cent of Nigerian youths, especially those between the age bracket of 12 to 18 years, find it difficult to speak their mother tongue fluently or do not speak them at all.”

Represented by a di­rector in the ministry, Mr. Adebola Kayode, said western education and globalisation had set Africa back signifi­cantly in the area of linguistics, which per­tinently is the corner­stone of every nation’s development.

The minister added that “language impe­rialism which causes the abandonment of cultures and traditions should be discouraged through international legislations and proc­lamations by UNESCO which is the body in charge of this disci­pline.”

The Director of Cul­tural Industries and Heritage, Mr. Seyi Wom­iloju, said about 400 Ni­gerian indigenous lan­guages are endangered and that they would go into extinction in the next 50 years, if noth­ing is done.

“To prevent this, this ministry had earlier on conducted a mapping and documentation of these endangered lan­guages across the six geo-political zones and arrived at a publication titled ‘Pilot survey on Endangered Languages and Cultures of Nige­ria,” he added.

Mozilla Community Localization by Seth Bindernagel Part 3.