Metaglossia: The Translation World

"Arabic-First AI: Building From the Ground Up

Translating an English AI system into Arabic might seem like a reasonable solution, but this shortcut doesn’t work for two reasons. First, the Arab world is diverse; many versions of Arabic are used daily across the region, and not all are mutually intelligible. Second, translating from English carries over the assumptions, framings, and blind spots of English. An Arabic-first AI system has to be built from the ground up.

Governments across the Arab world have committed to AI through a series of national strategies currently in motion. The question is whether the systems being built will speak the language, reflect institutional realities, and leave room for local institutions to shape how they behave.

“Arabic-first is the starting point: the data, the model, the user flow, the product itself, all built for the region rather than adapted to it.”
Hisham Mohamed, PhD, Engineering Director, Global Public Sector at Scale

How Arabic-First AI Gets Built
An Arabic-first system has to decide at the outset which register and which region it’s being built for. This decision is skipped entirely when an English-language AI system is translated into a singular form of Arabic. Scale's Arabic-first approach sets the direction at the start, and dictates every layer that follows: the data it learns from, the dialects that data spans, the people who label that data, the model itself, the interface users touch, the evaluation that tells you whether any of it works, and the governance that surrounds it.

Arabic-first data pipelines: We start with Arabic at the source, in the registers and dialects that matter for the region, treating dropped diacritics and complex morphology as design requirements. We account for bilingual workflows, local terminology, and the language used in the documents, services, and decisions a system will support.

Labeling in the language: Our annotators read the language the way its users do. Labeling guidelines are written in Arabic, so reviewers work with the full texture of the language: dialect, tone, religious and cultural nuance, and the register expected in professional and government settings. Every label reflects how Arabic is used.

Where the task requires it, local subject-matter experts help define the guidelines, resolve ambiguity, and identify the failures that matter in context. Arabic-first labeling ensures that the people evaluating the system understand the language, domain, and consequences of getting it wrong.

Models tuned for where they’ll live: We tune on local terminology, official register, place names, and the conventions of government communication. Cultural and religious awareness is built into model behavior through training data and evaluation criteria sourced from the region. We measure success against regional use cases, because that is the benchmark that matters for this work.

End-to-end interface: The interface, the prompts, the search, the way the system reads a request and writes back, all of it is built in Arabic. We build the full experience for the region, from the first screen to the last.

Evaluation, past fluency: For Arabic-first systems, evaluation goes beyond fluency. It tests factuality, dialectal understanding, cultural fit, register, domain terminology, and whether users can safely act on the output. It also tests whether users understand the system's limits, can identify when it is wrong, and know when human judgment must override its output.

Governance held locally: Data is gathered and kept locally. End users also receive clarity and control over how data is accessed, retained, reused, audited, and governed over time.

Building for Adoption
“AI gets adopted when users can understand it, question it, apply it to their work, and feel that it respects their language, culture, and professional context.”
Norah Abokhodair, PhD, Head of Upskilling and Enablement at Scale

Most AI rollouts fail after the system is built and deployed, when the people inside the institution do not use it, do not trust it, or cannot fit it into how their work actually gets done. A system built outside an institution and translated into it produces outputs that people can read but can't fully judge. Trust is built when users have a system that fits the language they work in, the workflows they follow, and the accountability they answer to.

Arabic-first closes the gap through two choices built into the system from the start rather than layered on top. Evaluation is built to test whether users can catch the system when it's wrong, not only whether the model tends to be right. And labeling guidelines are written by local subject-matter experts, which improves the institution's ability to identify which errors are most costly, so those failure modes are found and corrected before deployment.

The goal is durable institutional capability: teams that can use AI, make informed decisions about where it belongs in their work, where it does not, and how it should change over time. That is the target that matters for the institutions these systems are meant to serve.

Arabic-First Upskilling
A deployed system gives an institution potential, but actual capability rests in the people who use the system daily. Unlocking this capability is its own piece of the work, and it has to happen in the language of the people who will team with the AI system. Scale established an Arabic-language AI literacy and upskilling program, Alif, to provide foundational Gen AI knowledge to native Arabic speakers.

The course is designed around how Arabic-speaking professionals learn, ask questions, evaluate risk, and apply AI. It starts from the conditions of the work. These workplaces are bilingual by default: policy is written in formal Arabic, the technical vocabulary of AI arrives in English, and people move between the two in a single task. The language is also sector-specific, and the setting is public, which brings trust requirements: decisions have to be traceable, sensitive data has to stay in controlled systems, and a human stays accountable for anything that affects a citizen.

Learners practice inside sector specific context. They work through how to evaluate outputs, how to protect sensitive data, and how to decide when human judgment must stay in the loop. Everyone leaves with a concrete proposal for their unit, and entities that want more can commission a run tailored to their own workflows. Alif is where people build it. The goal is people who can use AI and keep accountability for the decision. For a government, that is what makes the rest of the Arabic-first model hold over time.

AI Built for the Region
Arabic-first AI development takes the harder path: building the data, model, evaluations, and capabilities in Arabic itself, rather than delivering a finished translation. What translation misses is the ability to serve Arabic speakers as well as English systems serve the users they were built for. Building natively means a system can meet its users in their own dialect, their own register, and their own context, not an approximation of it."
By Hisham Mohamed, Norah Abokhodair, Myrna Rofael & Matthew Siegel
July 8, 2026
https://scale.com/blog/arabic-first-ai
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Le Conseil de l’Europe appelle à mener une action résolue pour protéger les langues régionales et minoritaires en Bosnie-Herzégovine

La structure administrative complexe de la Bosnie-Herzégovine continue d'entraver la mise en œuvre de la Charte européenne des langues régionales ou minoritaires

La Bosnie-Herzégovine doit mener une action résolue et mieux coordonnée pour protéger et promouvoir ses langues régionales ou minoritaires, selon le nouveau rapport d’évaluation publié aujourd’hui par le Comité d’experts de la Charte européenne des langues régionales ou minoritaires du Conseil de l’Europe.

La plupart des langues minoritaires demeurent absentes des systèmes éducatif et judiciaire
Si les efforts déployés récemment – notamment les travaux concernant un nouveau projet de loi sur les droits des minorités nationales – sont salués dans le rapport, il est conclu en revanche que l’enseignement de la plupart des langues minoritaires reste largement absent du système d’éducation public. Par ailleurs, ces langues ne sont pas employées dans les procédures judiciaires et administratives, ni dans les échanges avec les autorités administratives. Cela étant, le comité prend note avec satisfaction des initiatives prises par le service public de radiodiffusion pour faire mieux connaître les minorités nationales et leurs cultures. Il demande par ailleurs que des émissions de radio et de télévision soient produites directement dans les langues régionales ou minoritaires, conformément aux engagements pris par le pays en vertu de la charte.

Le rapport évalue la mise en œuvre par la Bosnie-Herzégovine de la charte, qui est entrée en vigueur dans le pays en 2011 et protège 15 langues régionales ou minoritaires : l’albanais, le tchèque, l’allemand, le hongrois, l’italien, le ladino, le polonais, le romani, le roumain, le ruthène, le slovaque, le slovène, le turc, l’ukrainien et le yiddish. Le comité note que la structure administrative complexe du pays continue d’entraver la mise en œuvre de la charte et il réitère sa recommandation d’élaborer une politique nationale structurée et une stratégie à moyen terme s’appuyant sur une coordination renforcée des autorités compétentes à tous les niveaux et des représentant·es des locuteurs et locutrices des langues régionales ou minoritaires. Il souligne le rôle important que les conseils des minorités nationales pourraient jouer à cet égard.

Un nouveau projet de loi salué
Le comité accueille favorablement l’élaboration d’un nouveau projet de loi sur les droits des minorités nationales et le lancement de consultations avec les représentant·es des minorités, estimant qu’il s’agit d’une importante possibilité d’alignement de la législation nationale sur les dispositions de la charte. De plus, il encourage les autorités à supprimer les seuils numériques qui limitent actuellement l’utilisation effective des langues régionales ou minoritaires et à établir un cadre juridique qui favorise davantage la protection et la promotion de ces langues.

Le rapport souligne que la plupart des langues régionales ou minoritaires demeurent absentes du système d’éducation public. Il met en évidence le manque persistant de personnel enseignant qualifié et de supports pédagogiques, et recommande que les programmes d’apprentissage de l’allemand, de l’italien et du turc, actuellement enseignés comme des langues étrangères, reflètent davantage l’histoire et la culture dont ces langues sont l’expression en Bosnie-Herzégovine. Le comité appelle également à accroître, d’une manière équitable et prévisible, le soutien financier aux initiatives en rapport avec les langues régionales ou minoritaires.

* * *

La Convention-cadre pour la protection des minorités nationales est le traité européen le plus complet en matière de protection des droits des personnes appartenant à des minorités nationales. Il s'agit du premier instrument multilatéral juridiquement contraignant consacré à la protection des minorités nationales dans le monde. Sa mise en œuvre fait l’objet d’un suivi, assuré par un Comité consultatif composé d'experts indépendants. Ayant pris effet au 1er février 1998, ce traité est aujourd’hui en vigueur dans 38 États.

La Charte européenne des langues régionales ou minoritaires est la Convention du Conseil de l’Europe qui protège et promeut les langues régionales ou minoritaires traditionnellement parlées dans les États parties. Elle permet aux locuteurs de ces langues de les utiliser à la fois dans la vie privée et la vie publique. Sa mise en œuvre est contrôlée par un comité d’experts qui est indépendant. Entré en vigueur le 1er mars 1998, ce traité est aujourd’hui en vigueur dans 25 États."
Conseil de l'Europe Strasbourg 9 juillet 2026

https://www.coe.int/fr/web/portal/-/council-of-europe-calls-for-resolute-action-to-protect-regional-and-minority-languages-in-bosnia-and-herzegovina
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

Les associations professionnelles au cœur du métier
Visibilité, formation et durabilité au service de l’avenir de notre profession

Tatiana Kaplun

"Dans un contexte de mondialisation caractérisé par l’intensification des échanges internationaux, la médiation interculturelle, la traduction et l’interprétation occupent une fonction stratégique dans la communication. Ces professions assurent non seulement la transmission des informations d’une langue à l’autre, mais facilitent également les échanges et les interactions commerciales, culturelles, diplomatiques et scientifiques pour ne citer que quelques exemples (Bassnett, 1998 ; Cronin, 2013). Elles constituent également un levier essentiel d’accès aux services publics et à la justice (Gavioli et Wadensjö, 2023 ; McEvoy, 2023).

Toutefois, en dépit de leur rôle central, ces professions souffrent d’un déficit de visibilité et sont confrontées à des défis majeurs, notamment une pression économique accrue et une précarisation croissante sur certains marchés. Les difficultés de recrutement dans les filières linguistiques, la fermeture de programmes spécialisés depuis 2020, et les résultats de l’étude ELIS 2026 – selon lesquels 17 % des professionnels envisagent de quitter le métier1 – témoignent de l’ampleur de ces évolutions préoccupantes.

Cet environnement de mutation profonde rend le rôle des associations professionnelles plus crucial que jamais. Les traducteurs et les interprètes qui exercent aujourd’hui font face à une multiplicité de défis, parmi lesquels les transformations technologiques et le développement accéléré de l’intelligence artificielle ne représentent que la partie émergée de l’iceberg. Loin d’être isolés, ces métiers s’inscrivent dans un écosystème interdépendant où le partage des idées, des savoirs et des ressources est essentiel. Les associations professionnelles contribuent ainsi à structurer les deux métiers, à défendre les intérêts collectifs et à accompagner cette évolution.

Cet essai examine, à travers le prisme de la visibilité, de la formation et de la durabilité, le rôle de l’action collective dans la pérennité de ces professions, avec une attention particulière portée à la formation continue..."

Plan
Bref survol historique de l’action collective dans la profession
Nouveaux défis de la visibilité professionnelle
Apprendre, transmettre et évoluer : du savoir à l’action
Vers une durabilité des métiers et des pratiques
En guise de conclusion. L’action collective comme horizon stratégique
Traduire 254 | 2026
Ensemble sinon rien
Les associations professionnelles au cœur du métier
Visibilité, formation et durabilité au service de l’avenir de notre profession
Tatiana Kaplun
p. 88-98
https://doi.org/10.4000/16j89
https://journals.openedition.org/traduire/5705
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"iOS 27 va donner un sérieux coup de fouet à l'application Traduire

 

 

 

 

S'il y a bien un domaine où Apple aime avancer à son propre rythme, c'est celui de la localisation. Il y a quelques mois, l'entreprise ajoutait onze nouvelles langues à App Store Connect pour faciliter le travail des développeurs. À la rentrée, avec la sortie d'iOS 27, cette dynamique s'accélèrera et se concrétisera directement sur nos iPhone. Le clavier aura droit à une mise à jour majeure, tout comme l'application Traduire qui recevra un sérieux coup de boost.

 

 

 

 

Un système toujours plus ouvert sur le monde

 

Lors de la WWDC26, la firme de Cupertino n'a pas caché ses ambitions pour les utilisateurs multilingues. Le système d'exploitation gagnera en souplesse et s'adaptera à de nouvelles cultures à travers l'ensemble de son interface. Concrètement, le clavier d'iOS 27 fera un bond en avant en intégrant la prise en charge de plusieurs nouveaux idiomes. Les utilisateurs pourront ainsi profiter d'améliorations de frappe en afrikaans, en guarani, en zoulou, ainsi que dans plusieurs langues autochtones. Une excellente nouvelle qui témoigne de la volonté d'Apple de ne laisser aucun marché sur la touche.

 

 

 

 

Trente langues au compteur pour Traduire

 

Mais la véritable vedette de cette transition linguistique sera l'application Traduire. Si l'outil d'Apple a pris son temps pour s'étoffer face aux autres ténors du secteur, iOS 27 marquera une étape charnière dans son développement.

 

 

 

 

Lors de son déploiement final cet automne, l'application passera de 21 à 30 langues et accents pris en charge. Comme l'a notamment repéré le site The Verifier dans la troisième bêta d'iOS 27, l'hébreu fera officiellement son apparition.

 

 

 

 

Afin d'y voir plus clair, voici la liste des neuf nouvelles langues et déclinaisons régionales qui viendront enrichir le catalogue de l'application :

 

Chinois (Cantonais, Traditionnel)

 

Danois

 

Espagnol (États-Unis)

 

Espagnol (Mexique)

 

Hébreu

 

Malais

 

Norvégien (Bokmål)

 

Portugais (Portugal)

 

Suédois

 

 

 

 

Ces nouveautés s'ajouteront aux langues historiques du service (telles que l'anglais, le français, l'allemand, le japonais, l'arabe ou encore le russe), consolidant ainsi la place de Traduire comme un compagnon de voyage robuste et de plus en plus polyvalent. Apple rattrapera doucement, mais sûrement, son retard, en peaufinant un outil qui sera désormais parfaitement intégré à son écosystème.

 

 

 

 

Toute cette montée en puissance sera d'ailleurs une excellente nouvelle pour les utilisateurs d'AirPods Pro. Grâce à leur fonction de traduction en direct, les écouteurs d'Apple tireront pleinement parti de ce catalogue élargi."

 

Christophe Laporte

 

9 juillet 2026

 

 

 

 

https://www.igen.fr/ios/2026/07/ios-27-va-donner-un-serieux-coup-de-fouet-lapplication-traduire-156991?amp

 

#metaglossia 

 

#metaglossia_mundus 

"Langues officielles et langues de travail : Le Burkina Faso invente-t-il un nouveau modèle ?
Publié le mardi 7 juillet 2026 à 23h10min

La Loi n°045-2023/ALT du 30 décembre 2023 portant révision de la Constitution introduit une distinction majeure entre langues officielles et langues de travail. Heureet calendriers

Les langues nationales officialisées par la loi sont les langues officielles du Burkina Faso, tandis que l’anglais et le français sont des langues de travail. Cette réforme ouvre un débat important sur la souveraineté linguistique, la gouvernance et l’avenir des langues nationales.

Une réforme linguistique passée relativement inaperçue

Parmi les innovations introduites par la Loi n°045-2023/ALT du 30 décembre 2023 portant révision de la Constitution, la question linguistique mérite une attention particulière. Le texte établit une distinction explicite entre les langues de travail et les langues officielles. Les langues nationales officialisées par la loi sont désormais les langues officielles du Burkina Faso, tandis que l’anglais et le français sont reconnus comme langues de travail. Heureet calendriers

À première vue, cette disposition peut surprendre. Pour beaucoup de citoyens, une langue officielle est naturellement aussi une langue de travail. Pourtant, les deux notions ne désignent pas exactement la même réalité. Une langue officielle est d’abord une langue reconnue par l’État. Elle possède une valeur juridique, politique et symbolique. Une langue de travail, en revanche, est celle qui sert au fonctionnement quotidien des institutions : administration, justice, enseignement, services techniques, correspondances officielles, réunions, rapports et documents publics.

La réforme burkinabè ouvre donc un débat important : peut-on avoir des langues officielles différentes des langues de travail ? Les langues nationales peuvent-elles devenir progressivement des langues de gouvernance ? Et que signifie, dans un État multilingue comme le Burkina Faso, reconnaître officiellement les langues nationales tout en maintenant l’anglais et le français comme langues de fonctionnement administratif ? Africainset diasporas

Encadré 1 : Les principales dispositions linguistiques de l’article 35 révisé

Les langues nationales officialisées par la loi sont les langues officielles du Burkina Faso.
La loi fixe les conditions de promotion et d’officialisation des langues nationales.
L’anglais et le français sont des langues de travail.
La réforme ouvre la voie à une redéfinition du régime linguistique de l’État.

Les langues au cœur de la construction nationale

Depuis l’indépendance, le français a occupé une place centrale dans les institutions publiques du Burkina Faso. Il a été la langue de l’administration, de la justice, de l’école moderne, de la diplomatie, des textes officiels et de la plupart des communications institutionnelles. Dans les faits, il est devenu la principale langue de l’État.
Parallèlement, les langues nationales ont continué à porter l’essentiel de la communication quotidienne des populations. Le mooré, le dioula, le fulfulde et plusieurs dizaines d’autres langues constituent les langues de la famille, du marché, du village, du quartier, des cérémonies, des échanges sociaux, de la transmission des savoirs et de nombreuses pratiques économiques et culturelles. Africainset diasporas

Cette coexistence a longtemps produit un décalage entre la réalité linguistique du pays et le fonctionnement de ses institutions. La majorité des citoyens vit, pense, échange et travaille dans les langues nationales, alors que l’État fonctionne principalement dans une langue que tous ne maîtrisent pas au même degré.

Cette situation pose plusieurs questions. Comment rapprocher l’administration des citoyens lorsque la langue des procédures n’est pas toujours celle des usagers ? Comment renforcer la participation citoyenne si les informations publiques demeurent souvent formulées dans une langue peu accessible à une partie de la population ? Comment promouvoir un développement réellement endogène sans accorder une place plus importante aux langues dans lesquelles les populations expriment leurs besoins, leurs savoirs et leurs visions du monde ?

Ces questions ne sont pas nouvelles. Depuis plusieurs décennies, chercheurs, éducateurs, acteurs de l’alphabétisation et responsables  politiques soulignent la nécessité d’intégrer davantage les langues nationales dans les politiques publiques. La réforme de 2023 semble donc ouvrir une nouvelle étape dans une réflexion ancienne : celle de la réconciliation entre les institutions et les réalités sociolinguistiques du pays. Politique

Une question de souveraineté linguistique

La portée de cette réforme dépasse le domaine strictement linguistique. Les langues ne sont pas seulement des moyens de communication. Elles sont aussi des instruments de mémoire, de savoir, d’identité, de représentation du monde et de transmission culturelle.

Depuis quelques années, les débats sur la souveraineté occupent une place croissante dans plusieurs pays africains, notamment dans l’espace sahélien. On parle de souveraineté politique, économique, sécuritaire, diplomatique ou culturelle. Mais la souveraineté concerne aussi les langues. Une nation se construit aussi à travers les langues dans lesquelles elle pense, éduque, administre, juge, informe et transmet.

Reconnaître les langues nationales comme langues officielles revient donc à reconnaître leur rôle dans la définition même de la nation. Cela signifie que ces langues ne sont plus seulement considérées comme des langues de la société, de la tradition ou de la vie quotidienne ; elles sont appelées à devenir des langues de l’État, de la citoyenneté et de la vie publique.

Cette évolution est importante. Elle modifie la hiérarchie symbolique héritée de l’histoire coloniale, dans laquelle la langue européenne occupait le sommet de l’organisation institutionnelle, tandis que les langues nationales restaient confinées aux usages sociaux, culturels ou communautaires.

La réforme de 2023 semble affirmer que les langues nationales font partie du socle de la souveraineté burkinabè. Mais elle le fait sans rupture brutale, puisque l’anglais et le français demeurent langues de travail. C’est précisément cette combinaison entre affirmation symbolique et prudence administrative qui rend le cas burkinabè particulièrement intéressant. Africainset diasporas

Ce que font d’autres pays

Le Burkina Faso n’est pas le premier pays à distinguer langues officielles et langues de travail. Plusieurs États multilingues ont adopté des solutions diverses pour concilier identité nationale, pluralité linguistique et efficacité administrative.

L’Inde constitue un exemple bien connu. L’hindi occupe une place importante parmi les langues officielles de l’Union, mais l’anglais continue de jouer un rôle majeur dans l’administration centrale, la justice, l’enseignement supérieur et les échanges entre certaines institutions. Plus de soixante-dix ans après l’indépendance, l’anglais reste un outil puissant de fonctionnement de l’État indien.

Au Pakistan, l’ourdou est fortement associé à l’identité nationale. Cependant, l’anglais demeure largement utilisé dans l’administration, les universités, les juridictions et les secteurs économiques stratégiques. On observe donc une distinction entre la langue de légitimité nationale et la langue de fonctionnement institutionnel.

En Afrique du Sud, onze langues bénéficient du statut officiel. Cette reconnaissance reflète la diversité linguistique du pays et l’objectif de corriger les déséquilibres hérités de l’histoire. Pourtant, dans la pratique, l’anglais reste dominant dans de nombreuses administrations, universités, entreprises et institutions nationales. Activitéscommerciales

Le Rwanda offre un autre exemple intéressant. Le kinyarwanda est la langue nationale commune à la grande majorité de la population. Mais l’anglais a progressivement acquis une place importante dans l’administration, l’enseignement supérieur et les relations internationales. Le pays montre ainsi que les choix linguistiques peuvent aussi être liés à des orientations politiques, économiques et géopolitiques.

La Tanzanie est souvent citée comme un exemple africain de promotion réussie d’une langue nationale. Le swahili y joue un rôle majeur dans la vie publique, l’école, la communication politique et l’administration. Cette réussite n’est pas le fruit du hasard. Elle résulte d’une politique durable d’aménagement, de standardisation, d’éducation et de production documentaire. Politique

Ces exemples montrent que la distinction entre langue officielle et langue de travail n’est ni absurde ni impossible. Elle peut être un instrument de gestion du plurilinguisme. Mais chaque pays l’adapte à son histoire, à ses rapports de force linguistiques, à ses besoins administratifs et à ses choix  politiques.

Ce que font les grandes institutions internationales

Les organisations internationales offrent également des exemples utiles. Elles doivent souvent concilier le principe d’égalité entre leurs membres et la nécessité de fonctionner efficacement au quotidien.

L’Organisation des Nations unies reconnaît six langues officielles : l’arabe, le chinois, l’anglais, le français, le russe et l’espagnol. Ces langues permettent d’assurer une représentation symbolique et diplomatique des grandes aires linguistiques du monde. Toutefois, dans le fonctionnement quotidien du Secrétariat, l’anglais et le français occupent une place particulièrement importante.

L’Union européenne dispose de vingt-quatre langues officielles. Les textes juridiques sont disponibles dans les langues des États membres, ce qui traduit un principe d’égalité entre les citoyens européens. Cependant, les activités internes de nombreuses institutions européennes reposent principalement sur l’anglais, le français et l’allemand.

L’Union africaine reconnaît plusieurs langues officielles et affirme régulièrement sa volonté de promouvoir les langues africaines. Pourtant, son fonctionnement courant reste dominé par l’anglais, le français, l’arabe et le portugais. Cette situation reflète les difficultés que rencontrent les institutions africaines pour intégrer pleinement les langues africaines dans les mécanismes de gouvernance continentale.

Ces exemples montrent qu’il existe souvent un écart entre reconnaissance officielle et usage pratique. Une langue peut être officiellement reconnue sans être utilisée de manière égale dans toutes les activités. Inversement, une langue peut être très présente dans le fonctionnement quotidien sans être la seule langue symboliquement reconnue.

Ce qui rend le cas burkinabè original Africainset diasporas

L’originalité du Burkina Faso ne tient donc pas simplement à la distinction entre langue officielle et langue de travail. Cette distinction existe ailleurs. Ce qui rend le cas burkinabè particulier, c’est la manière dont cette distinction est organisée.

Dans la plupart des exemples internationaux, les langues officielles sont déjà fortement institutionnalisées ou disposent d’une longue tradition administrative. Au Burkina Faso, la réforme semble suivre une logique inverse : elle prévoit d’abord l’officialisation des langues nationales avant leur éventuelle transformation en langues de travail.

Autrement dit, les langues nationales accèdent d’abord à une légitimité symbolique et juridique. Leur fonctionnalisation administrative reste un chantier à construire. C’est là que réside l’innovation principale.
Cette approche peut être comprise comme une stratégie progressive. Elle reconnaît la valeur politique, culturelle et identitaire des langues nationales sans imposer immédiatement à l’administration une transformation totale pour laquelle les outils ne sont pas encore entièrement disponibles. Politique

L’anglais et le français assurent donc la continuité administrative et l’ouverture internationale, tandis que les langues nationales acquièrent une reconnaissance officielle qui peut préparer leur montée progressive dans les sphères de gouvernance.

Cette démarche présente un avantage : elle évite l’opposition simpliste entre langues nationales et langues internationales. Il ne s’agit pas de rejeter le français ou l’anglais, mais de redéfinir leur place dans un système linguistique plus équilibré. Le véritable enjeu est de permettre aux langues nationales de prendre progressivement part à la vie publique, sans isoler le Burkina Faso du monde.

Les langues nationales peuvent-elles devenir des langues de travail ?

La question est désormais centrale. Si les langues nationales deviennent officielles, pourront-elles un jour devenir aussi des langues de travail ?

D’un point de vue linguistique, rien ne s’y oppose. Aucune langue n’est naturellement administrative, scientifique ou juridique. Toutes les grandes langues de gouvernance ont été aménagées au fil de l’histoire.
Le français lui-même n’a pas toujours été la langue de l’État français. Il l’est devenu progressivement à travers des choix politiques, éducatifs, administratifs et culturels. L’anglais, l’espagnol, l’arabe standard moderne, le swahili, l’amharique ou l’indonésien ont également connu des processus d’aménagement et d’institutionnalisation. Politique

Les langues nationales burkinabè peuvent donc devenir des langues de travail si elles bénéficient d’une politique cohérente. Le Burkina Faso dispose déjà d’importants acquis. Plusieurs langues ont fait l’objet de travaux de description, de normalisation orthographique, d’alphabétisation et de production pédagogique. Le mooré, le dioula et le fulfulde disposent notamment de ressources importantes : alphabets stabilisés, dictionnaires, grammaires, manuels, supports d’alphabétisation et usages sociaux étendus.

Ces acquis ne suffisent pas encore à faire de ces langues des langues de travail à part entière, mais ils constituent une base solide. La question n’est donc pas de savoir si les langues nationales en sont capables. La vraie question est de savoir quels moyens seront mobilisés pour leur permettre d’assumer de nouvelles fonctions.

Les défis à relever

Le passage d’une langue officielle à une langue de travail suppose plusieurs conditions.

La première est terminologique. Une administration moderne utilise des concepts précis dans les domaines du droit, de la fiscalité, de la santé, de l’agriculture, de l’éducation, de l’état civil, de la gestion territoriale et de l’économie. Les langues nationales devront disposer de terminologies stables, validées et partagées pour exprimer ces réalités.

La deuxième condition est la formation. Parler une langue ne suffit pas pour l’utiliser dans un cadre professionnel. Il faut savoir la lire, l’écrire, rédiger des documents, traduire des textes, produire des rapports et communiquer dans un registre administratif. La formation des agents publics, enseignants, traducteurs, interprètes et communicateurs sera donc déterminante.

La troisième condition est documentaire. Les formulaires, guides, notices, supports pédagogiques, textes de vulgarisation, messages de santé publique, documents agricoles et informations administratives devront progressivement être disponibles dans certaines langues nationales.

La quatrième condition est institutionnelle. Il faudra déterminer quelles langues seront concernées, dans quels domaines, selon quel calendrier et avec quels moyens. Le Burkina Faso compte plusieurs dizaines de langues. Une politique linguistique réaliste devra donc concilier équité, efficacité et progressivité. Africainset diasporas

L’approche la plus raisonnable pourrait consister à commencer par certains domaines prioritaires : collectivités territoriales, services de proximité, santé communautaire, alphabétisation, état civil, médiation administrative, campagnes d’information publique et éducation de base.

Encadré 3 : Trois scénarios pour l’avenir
Scénario 1 : l’officialisation symbolique. Les langues nationales sont reconnues juridiquement, mais les pratiques administratives changent peu.
Scénario 2 : la fonctionnalisation progressive. Certaines langues sont introduites dans des secteurs ciblés, avec expérimentation et évaluation.
Scénario 3 : la gouvernance multilingue. Certaines langues nationales deviennent progressivement de véritables langues de travail dans plusieurs secteurs publics.

Un chantier plus qu’une réforme

La réforme linguistique de 2023 ne constitue pas l’aboutissement d’un processus. Elle marque plutôt le début d’un chantier historique.

Son importance ne réside pas seulement dans la reconnaissance juridique des langues nationales, mais dans les perspectives qu’elle ouvre pour leur participation future à la vie publique. Elle invite à réfléchir à la place réelle des langues nationales dans l’administration, l’éducation, la justice, les collectivités territoriales, l’information publique et le développement. Références

Au-delà du Burkina Faso, cette réforme intéresse l’ensemble de l’Afrique, en particulier les pays du Sahel. Depuis les indépendances, les États africains ont souvent hésité entre deux options : maintenir les langues héritées de la colonisation au cœur des institutions ou promouvoir symboliquement les langues nationales sans leur transférer de véritables fonctions de gouvernance.

Le Burkina Faso semble aujourd’hui explorer une troisième voie : reconnaître les langues nationales comme langues officielles, tout en maintenant provisoirement les langues internationales comme langues de travail, afin de préparer une transition progressive.

Cette voie mérite d’être suivie avec attention. Elle peut permettre de concilier souveraineté culturelle, pluralisme linguistique et pragmatisme administratif. Elle peut aussi rapprocher l’État des citoyens, améliorer l’accès à l’information publique et renforcer la participation démocratique. Références

Si cette réforme est accompagnée par des  politiques cohérentes de recherche, de formation, de terminologie, de traduction et de production documentaire, le Burkina Faso pourrait devenir un laboratoire africain de gouvernance linguistique.

L’officialisation des langues nationales n’est donc pas l’aboutissement du processus. Elle en constitue le point de départ. Le véritable défi sera de transformer progressivement ces langues en instruments de gouvernance, de citoyenneté et de développement.

À travers cette distinction entre langues officielles et langues de travail, le Burkina Faso expérimente peut-être une nouvelle manière de penser les politiques linguistiques africaines. L’avenir dira si cette innovation ouvrira réellement la voie à un nouveau modèle. Mais une chose est déjà certaine : la question des langues nationales n’est plus seulement une affaire de culture ou d’alphabétisation. Elle devient désormais une question de souveraineté, de gouvernance et de développement. Politique

Citation finale proposée
« L’officialisation des langues nationales n’est pas l’aboutissement du processus. Elle en constitue le point de départ. Le véritable défi sera de transformer progressivement ces langues en instruments de gouvernance, de citoyenneté et de développement. »

Bibliographie sommaire
Assemblée législative de transition du Burkina Faso. Loi n°045-2023/ALT du 30 décembre 2023 portant révision de la Constitution.
Agence d’Information du Burkina. « Burkina : L’anglais et le français deviennent des langues de travail, les langues nationales officielles », 30 décembre 2023.
Bamgbose, A. (1991). Language and the Nation : The Language Question in Sub-Saharan Africa. Edinburgh University Press.
Calvet, L.-J. (1996). Les politiques linguistiques. Paris : Presses Universitaires de France.
Guespin, L. & Marcellesi, J.-B. (1986). « Pour la glottopolitique ». Langages, n° 83.
Sanogo M.L., 2025, “ Officialisation des langues nationales – enjeux et défis pour le Burkina Faso”, in  Politique linguistique en Afrique (LPIA), 1(2), https://bop.unibe.ch/LPIA/article/view/11285
UNESCO. (2003). L’éducation dans un monde multilingue. Paris : UNESCO."
Par Pr Mamadou Lamine SANOGO
Directeur de recherche en Sociolinguiste,
Responsable du Laboratoire Langue, Education, Lettres, Arts et Communication (LEAC)
l’Institut des Sciences des Sociétés (INSS)
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique et Technologique (CNRST)
https://lefaso.net/spip.php?article147681
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"What does it mean to translate in a world where everything is translated automatically?
Umberto Eco famously wrote that translating means “saying almost the same thing”. What does that “almost” mean in the age of artificial intelligence? To reflect on the changing nature of translation in the age of AI, digital communication and global connectivity, we spoke with Barbara Ivančić, Associate Professor of German Language and Translation at the University of Bologna

"Today, in a world where the internet promises instant communication and digital tools can translate almost any text in a matter of seconds, Eco’s reflections on translation feel more relevant than ever"
07 July 2026

We translate constantly, often without even realising it: an automatically subtitled reel, an email drafted with DeepL, a conversation mediated by ChatGPT, a Korean series streamed online. Translation has become invisible, instantaneous and embedded in everyday life.

Yet long before artificial intelligence and global platforms transformed the way we communicate, Umberto Eco had already recognised that translation is far more than replacing words from one language with those of another. It involves interpretation, choice, loss and, inevitably, a transformation of meaning. It is no coincidence that one of his best-known books on the subject is titled Dire quasi la stessa cosa (Saying Almost the Same Thing). It is precisely that “almost” that captures the full complexity of translation.

Today, in a world where the internet promises instant communication and digital tools can translate almost any text in a matter of seconds, Eco’s reflections on translation feel more relevant than ever.

To revisit Eco’s ideas in the age of digital communication, artificial intelligence and global connectivity, we spoke with Barbara Ivančić, Associate Professor of German Language and Translation at the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Bologna.

Umberto Eco famously wrote that translating means “saying almost the same thing”. What does that “almost” mean in the age of artificial intelligence?

From the perspective of machine translation, one might argue that the “almost” has become less relevant, because translation is viewed primarily as a process of decoding and replacing symbols. The technological landscape has changed dramatically since Eco wrote those pages, but the basic premise behind machine translation remains much the same.

Eco carried out his own experiments with machine translation before the advent of neural systems, when systems relied on statistical methods. Although these represented a significant improvement over earlier approaches, the results were still fairly poor, as anyone who used the first versions of Google Translate, or even earlier tools such as Babel Fish, Altavista’s translation service in the early 2000s, will remember. It was Babel Fish that Eco used for the experiments described in Dire quasi la stessa cosa (2003). As many readers may recall, the results were often unintentionally hilarious. As Eco pointed out in that book, it was clear at the time that these systems lacked both encyclopaedic knowledge of the world beyond the text and the contextual information needed to disambiguate words and determine their meaning in a specific context.

Today, in the age of neural machine translation and generative AI, the technologies that underpin large language models (LLMs), those same experiments would undoubtedly produce far more convincing results. This is because machines are now designed to learn autonomously, or, in technical terms, through machine learning, drawing on vast quantities of linguistic data used during training. Yet beyond the technical advances, language remains, for these systems, a mathematical construct. More than ever, translation outputs are the result of numerical transformations and probabilistic calculations. The “almost” Eco referred to belongs to a different realm altogether: that of interpretation and negotiation, concepts to which he devoted considerable attention in Dire quasi la stessa cosa and throughout his work. These concepts concern the meaning of linguistic signs, the sociocultural environment in which a text is produced and received, and, not least, the emotional and affective dimensions involved in reading and interpreting a text. All of these elements lie beyond the scope of language machines. For this reason, I do not believe that Eco’s “almost”, at least as he understood it, can be meaningfully applied in this context.

Do machine translation systems actually translate meaning, or merely linguistic correlations?

I’ll answer by quoting the linguist Giuseppe Antonelli, who, in an article published in La Lettura, the cultural supplement of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, on 10 August 2025, reflected on large language models designed to generate outputs across a range of natural language tasks. As Antonelli writes, these outputs are “sequences of words that, when put together, look very much like human language. But they are not.  Rather, they are the product of an entirely alien process of numerical transformations, one that bears little resemblance to the way human beings produce language.” Machine translation, as one of the many tasks performed by these systems alongside text generation, summarisation and analysis, falls squarely within this framework.  The same applies even to models trained exclusively on translation data.

Going back to the previous question, regardless of the extraordinary improvements we are witnessing, the underlying principle of machine translation remains essentially the same as that which guided the earliest research in the field. It is worth remembering that much of this research was heavily driven by military interests during the Second World War and the Cold War. Its primary goal was not communication across cultures, but the deciphering of encrypted enemy messages.

Alan Turing, now best known for the Turing Test, played a crucial role in this phase, as did the mathematician Warren Weaver, whose name is associated with the famous Weaver Memorandum (1955), one of the earliest texts to consider the possibility of using computers for translation between languages. Significantly, Weaver opens the essay with what he calls a “war anecdote”: the story of a Turkish text given to a mathematician who, despite having no knowledge of Turkish, managed to reconstruct the original message. From this, Weaver concluded that “this process made use of frequencies of letters, letter combinations, intervals between letters and letter combinations, letter patterns, etc., which are to some significant degree independent of the language used”. I believe that observation still provides a compelling answer to the question we started with.

What is lost when translation becomes fully automated?

From my perspective, quite a lot is lost. First of all, we risk losing our relationship with the very idea of untranslatability. The notion that everything can be translated at the click of a button, an idea understandably promoted by the language industry, distances us from the awareness that not everything can be translated, and that we need to learn how to engage with what remains untranslatable. This does not mean giving up on translation. Quite the contrary. It is precisely because not everything can be translated perfectly that we continue to translate, accepting that something may always be lost in the passage from one language to another, and from one text to another. That is precisely what Eco's “almost” refers to. It reflects a human approach to translation, one that listens to nuance, embraces interpretation and acknowledges ambiguity. Technology, by contrast, is built around speed, efficiency and scale.

From this perspective, the relationship between translation and technology is both complex and deeply ambivalent. It inevitably forces us to reflect on our relationship with language itself and with linguistic diversity. These issues are explored particularly well in The Routledge Handbook of Translation Technology and Society (2025), edited by Stefan Baumgarten and Michal Tieber, which I would recommend to anyone interested in these questions.

For me, automation also entails the loss of the embodied dimension of translation. Emotions, perceptions, personal experience and even the unconscious all play a role in how we read and interpret texts. They shape our translational choices, whether consciously or not. That is why, fortunately, no two translations are ever exactly the same. This is not to say that all translations are equally successful. Rather, it means that every translation, like every literary work, bears the imprint of a human presence. These are aspects that will inevitably be transformed by the automation of translation and writing itself. To me, those transformations amount to losses.

We should also speak of loss in social and cultural terms. The pursuit of immediate translatability raises ethical, political and environmental questions that deserve far greater attention than they currently receive. This is something we ought to discuss much more, especially within academia. We should be asking what society loses when increasing amounts of attention, funding and trust are invested in an industry from which large language models have emerged, an industry built on forms of human and environmental exploitation and on what many have rightly described as a vast appropriation of intellectual property. After all, without the linguistic data acquired by a small number of private companies, we would not be talking about translation automation in these terms today.

What does a society lose when, apart from a handful of dissenting voices, it embraces without question an ideology of instrumental rationality that ultimately serves the interests of the dominant actors in the global economy?

These are the questions that should be at the centre of discussions about machine translation, rather than an almost exclusive focus on the tasks machines still cannot perform. We should also be paying closer attention to the risk that both language itself and our sensitivity to linguistic nuance may gradually become flattened if we feed exclusively on outputs generated from the data on which machines are trained. I like to think that Eco, in his own way, would have helped keep a spotlight firmly trained on issues such as these.

Eco argued that every translation is a form of interpretation. Does the same hold true for AI?

No, not if we understand interpretation as the attempt to grasp a text's deeper meaning and recreate its effect. As Eco pointed out, interpretation in translation goes hand in hand with the negotiation of meaning: the process of deciding what a translation should convey and how it should convey it. This is very different from the mathematical logic that underpins artificial intelligence systems, which operate by performing calculations on numerical representations of data, linguistic and otherwise, as I mentioned earlier.

One possible objection is that, in machine translation, interpretation and negotiation still have a role to play. They come into play when users provide detailed instructions to a system, through prompting, and especially during post-editing, when machine-generated output is revised and corrected by a human translator. However, this remains a highly debated issue. Post-editing raises a number of questions about how much room is actually left for human intervention understood as interpretation and negotiation.

In particular, I am referring to what is known as the priming effect, the influence that machine-generated output exerts on the person revising it. A growing body of research shows that, especially in literary translation, this effect shapes not only linguistic choices but also the way a text is interpreted. In both cases, there is a tendency to remain anchored to the machine's initial output. Creating the critical distance needed to evaluate alternative solutions becomes much more difficult. Yet that distance is precisely what allows translators to reflect on their choices and to regard them as the result of interpretation and negotiation, rather than simply corrections applied to a pre-existing text.

Barbara Ivančić
Barbara Ivančić is Associate"
https://magazine.unibo.it/en/articles/what-does-it-mean-to-translate-in-a-world-where-everything-is-translated-automatically
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"An Aboriginal Australian people of northern Queensland speak a language with no words for left or right — only for north, south, east, and west — so instead of asking you to move your left foot, they will ask you to move your east foot, and can point due north almost without thinking
Ask a Guugu Yimithirr speaker to shift along the bench and you will not hear anything about your left or your right.

Ask a Guugu Yimithirr speaker to shift along the bench and you will not hear anything about your left or your right. You will hear a compass point. Move a little to the north, put the cup down on its western side, watch the dog coming up from the south. Guugu Yimithirr, spoken by Aboriginal people around Hopevale and Cooktown in far northern Queensland, does not carry the everyday spatial vocabulary that most languages lean on. It has no ordinary word for left or right, and in place of our habitual in-front and behind it reaches, again and again, for the cardinal directions.

The person who documented this most carefully is Stephen Levinson, a linguist at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, working alongside the anthropologist John Haviland, who spent years with the community. Their reading is that nearly every description of location on the horizontal plane in Guugu Yimithirr runs through the four cardinal roots. Not as a specialist navigation register, the way a sailor or a bushwalker might reach for a compass, but as the default grammar of where things are.

What the language actually does
In English, most of us describe space relative to our own body. The chair is on my left, the shop is on the right as you come out, the salt is just in front of you. Move your body and the description moves with it. Levinson calls this a relative frame of reference, and it is the water most European languages swim in.

Guugu Yimithirr leans instead on what he terms an absolute frame. A thing is to the north of you, or to the west of the tree, and that stays true no matter which way you turn. In his 1997 paper in the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, “Language and Cognition: The Cognitive Consequences of Spatial Description in Guugu Yimithirr,” Levinson works through how far this reaches, and he returned to it at length in his 2003 book Space in Language and Cognition. Haviland, in his paper Guugu Yimithirr Cardinal Directions, notes that the terms do not map neatly onto the tidy compass points a Western reader might picture. They cover quadrants rather than knife-edge lines, and the whole system sits rotated slightly clockwise from true north, which he suggests may track the coastline, the prevailing winds, or the arc the sun draws across the sky through the year.

So the north of Guugu Yimithirr is not quite the north of a hiking map. It is close enough to translate, far enough off to matter.

Nor is the language stripped of every other way to place a thing. It still has words for up and down, for near and far, and it still names landmarks. What it lacks is the left-and-right habit that most speakers of English would consider basic. The cardinal terms are the workhorses, not the only tools in the shed.

Where the famous examples come from
If you have encountered this idea before, you probably met it through a memorable line: that you might be told there is an ant on your south-west leg, or that the way to say hello is to ask which way someone is heading. Those examples are real, and they are worth knowing, but they belong to a different language.

Within hours of reaching microgravity, astronauts’ body fluids shift toward the head, dulling smell and taste — one reason NASA monitors daily nutrition so closely as crews fight the muscle loss space exercise alone cannot fully prevent

In villages in the mountains of Sardinia, men reach 100 nearly as often as women, unlike almost anywhere else in the developed world — and the popular explanation isn’t diet or exercise, it’s that nobody there retired into irrelevance”
They come from the cognitive scientist Lera Boroditsky, drawing on fieldwork she and the linguist Alice Gaby did at Pormpuraaw, on the west coast of Cape York, and reported in their 2010 paper in Psychological Science, “Remembrances of Times East.” The language there is Kuuk Thaayorre, a separate tongue from Guugu Yimithirr, though it shares the same absolute-direction habit. In Boroditsky’s telling, a Kuuk Thaayorre greeting turns on heading: you ask which way a person is going, and the reply names a direction and a distance. Do that all day, she points out, and you stay oriented as a matter of course, because you cannot get past hello without knowing where you are pointed.

The two cases get folded together constantly in popular write-ups. We are keeping them apart because the distinction is the sort of thing this kind of story usually flattens. Guugu Yimithirr is the northern Queensland language of the headline. Kuuk Thaayorre supplies the ant-on-your-leg image. Both are Cape York languages that describe the body and the tabletop in cardinal terms, and neither is a stand-in for the other.

The claim about the mind
What draws linguists to Guugu Yimithirr is not only the grammar. It is the everyday competence the grammar seems to require. To speak this way at all, a person has to keep a running fix on the cardinal directions, indoors and out, in unfamiliar terrain, without pausing to work it out. Levinson reports that his Guugu Yimithirr consultants could point to the cardinal directions with striking accuracy, off by something in the order of thirteen degrees, a figure summarised in the astronomy and navigation review Ray Norris published in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, the fifth Dawes Review. Haviland made a related observation in his 1993 study of pointing gestures in the same journal, finding that speakers’ hands pointed consistently to real directions even when they were retelling events from far away and long ago. Boroditsky describes the same ease in the community she worked with, where a young child could point south-east on request without hesitation, a task that reliably scatters a room of adults from a relative-frame culture in every direction at once.
Levinson’s stronger argument is that this reaches past speech into memory. To store an event so it can later be described in absolute terms, he suggests, a speaker has to remember the orientation of things at the time, not just their appearance. On his account, Guugu Yimithirr speakers hold onto direction as part of the memory itself, and continue to do so even when they are not speaking the language.

That is an interesting claim, and it should be taken as a claim. The broader question it sits inside, whether the language you speak shapes the way you think, is one of the longest-running arguments in the study of language, and it is not settled by any single community or any single task. What the Cape York evidence shows plainly is a difference in trained attention. Whether that difference is caused by the language, or by a way of life the language grew out of, is harder to pin down and remains genuinely contested.

What it does not settle
A few cautions are worth holding. The absolute frame is not unique to Australia, and it is not a curiosity confined to a single group. Related patterns turn up in languages across the world, from Mesoamerica to the Himalayas, and even neighbouring Cape York languages differ in how loosely or tightly they fix their cardinal points. Some peg east and west to the rising and setting sun. Others define the directions in ways that shift from place to place.

It is also easy to romanticise a living community into a party trick. Guugu Yimithirr is spoken by a relatively small number of people, and like many Aboriginal languages it has been under pressure for generations, with revitalisation work now underway. A sense of direction that reads as astonishing from the outside is, for the people who have it, simply the ordinary competence their language asks of them, the way tense or number is ordinary for us.

And a description is not an explanation. Naming the pattern tells us what these speakers do. It does not license confident stories about brain wiring, and the fieldwork does not claim to.

What stays with us is smaller and more durable than any theory of cognition. There are people for whom the walls of a room do not reset the map, for whom the north wall is the north wall whether you are facing it or have your back to it. Most of us carry our directions around with us, fixed to the body, resetting every time we turn. Some people keep theirs fixed to the ground.

About this article

This article is for general information and reflection. It is not medical, mental-health, or professional advice. The patterns described draw on published research and editorial observation, not clinical assessment. If you're dealing with a serious situation, speak with a qualified professional or local support service.
By Space Daily Editorial Team · Editorial process
Published July 8, 2026
https://spacedaily.com/d-an-aboriginal-australian-people-of-northern-queensland-speak-a-language-with-no-words-for-left-or-right-only-for-north-south-east-and-west-so-instead-of-asking-you-to-move-your/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

Advancing African Languages in the Digital Age at the 30th International AFRILEX Conference
"The University of Venda (UNIVEN) has reaffirmed its position as a leading institution in African language scholarship and research by successfully hosting the 30th International Conference of the African Association for Lexicography (AFRILEX) from 1 to 4 July 2026 at the Education Building Hall. The landmark conference brought together leading academics, researchers, lexicographers, language practitioners and technology experts from across Africa and beyond to explore innovative approaches to advancing African languages through lexicography, artificial intelligence and digital technologies. The conference also served as a platform for sharing cutting-edge research, fostering collaboration and identifying sustainable strategies for preserving, developing and promoting African languages in the digital era.

Officially opening the conference, the Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Venda, Professor Bernard Nthambeleni, warmly welcomed all attendees to the 30th International AFRILEX Conference. In his address, he highlighted the significance of the conference theme, which celebrates three decades of African lexicography while reaffirming the vital role of dictionaries, terminology development, language documentation, and multilingualism in preserving African languages, promoting cultural identity, advancing research, and expanding access to knowledge. Professor Nthambeleni further emphasised that lexicography extends beyond compiling words and defining meanings; it is a powerful tool for preserving cultural heritage, supporting education, and fostering social and economic development.
Professor Nthambeleni also reaffirmed the University of Venda’s commitment to African language development, research excellence, community engagement, and international collaboration. Reflecting on the University’s long-standing partnership with AFRILEX and its role in hosting national lexicography units, he encouraged delegates to use the conference as a platform to share knowledge, strengthen partnerships, embrace digital innovation, and shape the future of African lexicography.

Alongside, Prof Nthambeleni opening, AFRILEX President Prof Dion Nkomo, joined the Vice-Chancellor in warmly welcoming delegates to the 30th International AFRILEX Conference, expressing gratitude to the University of Venda for hosting the conference for the second time since 2006. He described the gathering as an important opportunity to celebrate three decades of African lexicographic achievements while reflecting on future directions in the fi eld, particularly in response to rapid technological advancements and artificial intelligence.
He emphasised that the conference would provide a platform for scholarly exchange, collaboration, and innovation through keynote addresses, research presentations, special sessions, and roundtable discussions involving experienced lexicographers, publishers, teachers, and National Lexicography Units. Professor Nkomo also highlighted the importance of strengthening partnerships between lexicography and education to promote a sustainable dictionary culture, acknowledged the valuable contributions of the conference organisers, keynote speakers, delegates, and publishers, and paid tribute by observing a moment of silence to the late honorary AFRILEX member Dr Johan du Plessis for his lifelong contribution to African lexicography.

A major highlight of the conference was a pre-conference workshop with its strong focus on artificial intelligence and digital Lexicography led and facilitated by internationally renowned Lexicographer Prof Gilles-Maurice de Schryver.
Prof Gilles-Maurice de Schryver’s pre-conference workshop highlighted how African lexicography has evolved through digital innovation, corpus linguistics and artificial intelligence. He emphasised the importance of collaboration in developing dictionaries and language resources that preserve and promote indigenous African languages. The workshop concluded that AI and digital technologies will play a vital role in shaping the future of African language research and lexicography.

Another highlight of the conference was a demonstration of the TLex Suite by Prof David Joffe, which showcased how modern dictionary compilation software is transforming lexicographic practice. The presentation illustrated the platform’s capabilities in streamlining dictionary development, terminology management and digital publishing, enabling lexicographers to produce high-quality, user-friendly language resources more efficiently. The demonstration showed the growing importance of digital tools in supporting multilingualism, preserving indigenous languages and advancing contemporary lexicographic research.
Throughout the three-day scientific programme, delegates went on and explored cutting-edge research on digital dictionaries, multilingual terminology development, corpus linguistics, language accessibility, translation studies and AI-powered language resources. These discussions demonstrated how technological innovation can accelerate the development of indigenous African languages while improving access to equitable education, research and knowledge across diverse communities.
The conference also showcased the University of Venda’s research expertise. UNIVEN academics presented research addressing sustainable terminology development in Tshivenda, digital language innovation and inclusive lexicography, reflecting the University’s commitment to producing locally relevant research with continental significance. Presentations highlighted the importance of developing indigenous language resources that support quality education, preserve cultural heritage and promote knowledge production in African languages.
International keynote addresses further enriched the programme. In his keynote address titled “AFRILEX at Thirty”, Prof Gilles-Maurice de Schryver reflected on the remarkable growth of African lexicography over the past three decades, highlighting AFRILEX’s significant contribution to advancing dictionary research, indigenous language development and language technology across the continent. He traced the evolution of lexicography from traditional dictionary-making to data-driven language technologies, corpus linguistics and artificial intelligence, demonstrating how the discipline has become an internationally recognised scientific field. He also emphasised the importance of collaboration, innovation and digital resources in ensuring that African languages continue to thrive and remain relevant in an increasingly technology-driven world.

Special sessions involving publishers, South African National Lexicography Units and veteran scholars provided opportunities to strengthen collaboration between academia and industry while reflecting on AFRILEX’s contribution to indigenous language development over the past 30 years.

Dr Mulalo Takalani, Local Organiser of the 30th International African Association for Lexicography (Afrilex) Conference, reflected with immense pride and profound honour on the successful hosting of the landmark event held under the theme “30 Years of African Lexicography: Perspectives and Engagement”. She described the conference as a celebration of three decades of advancing African lexicography, multilingualism, language development and dictionary-making, while providing an invaluable platform for lexicographers, academics, researchers, language practitioners, students and policymakers from South Africa and beyond to exchange knowledge, present research fi ndings and engage in meaningful dialogue on the future of African lexicography. Dr Takalani further highlighted the significance of the University of Venda hosting the conference once again, following its previous hosting in 2006 during the formative years of the Tshivenda National Lexicography Unit. She noted that the Vice-Chancellor and Principal, Prof Nthambeleni, reaffi rmed the University’s commitment to promoting African scholarship, strengthening international academic partnerships and contributing meaningfully to global conversations on language, culture and identity.

Dr Takalani emphasised that the conference was enriched by insightful keynote presentations from Prof Morris de Schryver of the UGent Centre for Bantu Studies, Ghent University, on “Generative AI and Lexicography” and Prof Langa Khumalo of SADiLaR and North-West University on “AI and the Future of African Lexicography,” both of which inspired critical discussions on the evolving role of artificial intelligence in lexicographic practice. She also highlighted the engaging panel discussions featuring former AFRILEX Presidents and Editors-in-Chief of the South African National Lexicography Units, as well as a dedicated teachers’ session that empowered educators to integrate dictionaries eff ectively into teaching and learning. The conference concluded with a memorable excursion to Phiphidi Waterfall and Nandoni Dam, including a relaxing boat cruise and lunch at The Vuez Restaurant. Dr Takalani concluded by expressing her sincere appreciation to all delegates, presenters, keynote speakers, sponsors, publishers, exhibitors, the University of Venda and the Local Organising Committee, acknowledging that their dedication, professionalism and collaboration were instrumental in ensuring the seamless organisation and resounding success of the conference.

By hosting AFRILEX 2026, the University of Venda has again demonstrated its commitment to advancing African-centred scholarship, fostering international research partnerships and as well as driving innovation in language research. The conference did not only celebrate the rich linguistic diversity of the African continent but also, it highlighted the University’s growing role in shaping the future of African languages through research excellence and digital innovation.

Issued by:
Department of Marketing, Branding & Communication University Of Venda
Tel: 082 868 2218 / 082 868 1811
https://www.univen.ac.za/news/advancing-african-languages-in-the-digital-age-at-the-30th-international-afrilex-conference/
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#metaglossia_mundus

"À Bujumbura, le kiswahili s’impose comme une langue d’avenir à l’ère de l’intelligence artificielle
SOS Médias Burundi

Bujumbura, 8 juillet 2026 — Du 5 au 7 juillet 2026, la capitale économique du Burundi a accueilli la 7ᵉ Conférence internationale sur la promotion du kiswahili. Réunissant des experts, des responsables gouvernementaux, des universitaires et des partenaires de la région, cette rencontre a mis en lumière le rôle croissant de cette langue dans l’intégration régionale, l’éducation, le commerce et les nouvelles technologies. Les participants ont notamment plaidé pour une meilleure exploitation des opportunités offertes par l’intelligence artificielle (IA) afin d’accélérer le rayonnement du kiswahili en Afrique et dans le monde.

Organisée par la Commission du kiswahili de la Communauté d’Afrique de l’Est (KAKAMA), la conférence s’est penchée sur les stratégies susceptibles de renforcer l’utilisation du kiswahili à l’heure où les outils numériques et l’intelligence artificielle transforment les modes de communication et d’apprentissage.

La Secrétaire exécutive de la KAKAMA, Caroline Asiimwe, a expliqué que les travaux avaient porté sur les moyens d’intégrer davantage le kiswahili dans les plateformes numériques, les applications d’intelligence artificielle, la recherche et les systèmes éducatifs. Selon elle, cette évolution est indispensable pour permettre à la langue de conserver toute sa place dans un monde de plus en plus dominé par les technologies.

La Directrice générale chargée de la culture au ministère burundais de la Jeunesse, des Sports et de la Culture, Aline Munyaneza, a rappelé que les États membres de la Communauté d’Afrique de l’Est avaient fait du kiswahili une langue prioritaire. Elle a souligné que le Burundi avait déjà intégré son enseignement à tous les niveaux du système éducatif, de l’école fondamentale jusqu’à l’université.

Une langue africaine au rayonnement international

Né il y a plusieurs siècles sur les côtes de l’océan Indien, principalement dans les actuels Kenya et Tanzanie, le kiswahili est une langue bantoue qui s’est développée grâce aux échanges commerciaux entre les peuples africains, arabes et asiatiques. Au fil du temps, elle est devenue l’une des langues les plus influentes du continent.

Aujourd’hui, entre 200 et 250 millions de personnes utilisent le kiswahili comme langue maternelle ou seconde langue. Il est parlé dans une quinzaine de pays, notamment en Tanzanie, au Kenya, en Ouganda, au Burundi, en République démocratique du Congo, au Rwanda, aux Comores, au Mozambique, en Zambie et au Malawi.

Le kiswahili est langue officielle de plusieurs pays ainsi que de la Communauté d’Afrique de l’Est (EAC), de l’Union africaine et de la Communauté de développement de l’Afrique australe. Depuis 2021, l’Organisation des Nations unies pour l’éducation, la science et la culture célèbre chaque 7 juillet la Journée mondiale du kiswahili, faisant de cette langue la première langue africaine à bénéficier d’une journée internationale reconnue par les Nations unies.

Changer les mentalités

Les participants ont toutefois reconnu que plusieurs obstacles continuaient de freiner la progression du kiswahili. Ils ont regretté que cette langue soit encore associée, dans certains milieux, aux personnes peu instruites ou aux conducteurs de camions et de bus assurant le transport des marchandises et des voyageurs.

Pour les intervenants, ces préjugés ne correspondent plus à la réalité. Ils ont appelé les gouvernements, les établissements scolaires, les médias et les acteurs culturels à intensifier les campagnes de sensibilisation afin de mieux faire connaître les atouts du kiswahili comme langue de communication, d’innovation, de commerce, de diplomatie, de culture et d’intégration régionale.

Le Burundi cité en exemple

Au cours des échanges, plusieurs participants ont salué les progrès réalisés par le Burundi dans la promotion du kiswahili. Ils ont notamment relevé que le pays figure parmi ceux où cette langue est largement utilisée dans les médias, en plus de son intégration progressive dans le système éducatif et l’administration.

Selon eux, cette dynamique contribue à renforcer les échanges avec les autres pays de la région et favorise une meilleure intégration du Burundi au sein de la Communauté d’Afrique de l’Est.

Les participants ont également rappelé que les langues constituent un puissant facteur de rapprochement entre les peuples. Elles facilitent la compréhension mutuelle, les échanges économiques, la coopération et la consolidation de la paix entre les nations.

Rendez-vous en 2028 en RDC

À la clôture des travaux, Caroline Asiimwe a annoncé que la 8ᵉ Conférence internationale sur la promotion du kiswahili se tiendrait en 2028 en République démocratique du Congo.

La conférence s’est achevée le 7 juillet 2026 avec la célébration, pour la cinquième fois, de la Journée mondiale du kiswahili. Instituée par l’UNESCO, cette journée vise à promouvoir une langue devenue un symbole de l’unité africaine et de l’intégration régionale.

À l’heure où l’intelligence artificielle transforme profondément la production et le partage des connaissances, les participants ont estimé que le kiswahili disposait d’une occasion historique pour renforcer sa place parmi les grandes langues de communication internationales."
8 juillet 2026
David Irakoze
https://www.sosmediasburundi.org/2026/07/08/a-bujumbura-le-kiswahili-simpose-comme-une-langue-davenir-a-lere-de-lintelligence-artificielle/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Journée mondiale de la langue swahili : la femme, première passeuse de la langue aux enfants

À l’occasion de la Journée mondiale de la langue swahili, célébrée chaque 7 juillet, l’attention est portée sur le rôle déterminant des femmes dans la transmission, la valorisation et la préservation de cette langue africaine parlée par plus de 200 millions de personnes.

Les femmes, gardiennes de la langue
En Afrique de l’Est comme en République démocratique du Congo, les mères et les grands-mères sont les premières à transmettre le swahili aux enfants. Langue du foyer, souvent désignée par l’expression swahilie lugha ya nyumbani (« langue de la maison »), le swahili constitue le premier outil de communication et de socialisation de nombreuses générations.

Au-delà du cadre familial, les femmes contribuent également à son rayonnement dans les écoles. De nombreuses enseignantes du primaire utilisent le swahili comme langue d’alphabétisation.
En République démocratique du Congo, le swahili figure parmi les quatre langues nationales reconnues pour l’enseignement.

Une langue au service de l’unité africaine
Le kiswahili ou le swahili, est une langue bantoue qui joue un rôle essentiel dans la communication entre les peuples d’Afrique de l’Est, d’Afrique centrale et au-delà. Langue officielle dans plusieurs États africains ainsi qu’au sein de l’Union africaine, elle constitue un puissant vecteur d’identité culturelle, d’intégration régionale et de développement.
Aujourd’hui, le kiswahili est l’une des rares langues africaines à bénéficier d’un rayonnement international.

Son expansion a été favorisée par les échanges commerciaux, les migrations et les politiques linguistiques mises en œuvre pour renforcer la cohésion nationale dans plusieurs pays.

Une journée proclamée par l’UNESCO

En novembre 2021, l’UNESCO a proclamé le 7 juillet Journée mondiale de la langue swahili afin de souligner son importance dans le dialogue interculturel, le rapprochement des peuples et la promotion de la diversité linguistique.

Cette date fait référence au 7 juillet 1954, jour où le kiswahili a été adopté comme langue officielle du Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), mouvement panafricaniste qui a joué un rôle majeur dans la lutte pour l’indépendance de l’actuelle Tanzanie.

Promouvoir les langues africaines
À travers cette célébration, l’UNESCO entend mettre en valeur la richesse du kiswahili ainsi que sa contribution à la paix, à l’éducation et au développement durable. La Journée mondiale poursuit notamment deux objectifs : encourager l’enseignement et l’apprentissage du kiswahili à travers le monde, et sensibiliser à l’importance des langues africaines dans la préservation du patrimoine culturel mondial."
Par Ezéchiel NGAMANIA
Lessa
08/07/2026 
https://pourelle.info/journee-mondiale-de-la-langue-swahili-la-femme-premiere-passeuse-de-la-langue-aux-enfants/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"L’intelligence artificielle a le potentiel de transformer l’avenir économique de l’Afrique, mais un obstacle subsiste : cette technologie reste largement inexploitée dans les langues les plus parlées du continent. Si les développeurs privilégient le français, l’anglais et les langues à large diffusion comme le kiswahili et le wolof, le secret pour exploiter le potentiel démographique de l’Afrique réside dans la richesse de ses milliers de langues nationales.

Former une main-d’œuvre compétente en IA ne commence pas par apprendre aux enfants à coder dans une langue étrangère. Cela commence par leur apprendre à lire dans leur propre langue. Sur tout le continent, des millions d’enfants, scolarisés, n’acquièrent pas les compétences de base en lecture et en calcul à l’âge de 10 ans, non pas par manque de talent, mais parce qu’ils sont contraints de déchiffrer une langue étrangère avant même de maîtriser la leur. Ce fossé linguistique constitue un frein silencieux à la croissance économique de l’Afrique, empêchant notre jeunesse de développer les bases cognitives nécessaires pour tirer pleinement parti des technologies de pointe.

Pour utiliser efficacement l’IA, les élèves doivent d’abord posséder de solides bases éducatives leur permettant de formuler des consignes précises, de développer leur esprit critique et de vérifier l’exactitude des résultats d’un modèle de langage étendu (LLM). Les recherches en neurosciences montrent que les enfants doivent acquérir des compétences en lecture et en mathématiques dès leur plus jeune âge, et plus précisément durant la période cruciale comprise entre 7 et 10 ans.

Le rôle du langage dans l’éducation est parfois sous-estimé, or il constitue l’une des principales raisons pour lesquelles des millions d’enfants africains n’apprennent pas, ou n’apprennent pas assez vite. Nous savons que les enfants acquièrent mieux ces compétences fondamentales lorsqu’ils sont enseignés dans une langue qu’ils comprennent, et nous disposons d’une feuille de route pour mettre en œuvre un enseignement bilingue à l’échelle nationale.

Plus précisément, le programme ARED (Associates in Research and Education for Development) a mis en œuvre une approche de « bilinguisme en temps réel », récompensée par le prix Yidan 2025 pour le développement de l’éducation. La langue maternelle de l’élève, comme le pulaar ou le wolof, est introduite parallèlement au français oral dans toutes les matières fondamentales dès la première année d’enseignement, facilitant ainsi l’apprentissage, améliorant la compréhension et renforçant les compétences en lecture et en calcul. Des recherches plus vastes sont menées sur ce sujet. Cela se confirme, en démontrant que les enfants bilingues font preuve d’une plus grande flexibilité cognitive et d’un esprit critique plus aiguisé. De plus, il a été constaté que l’utilisation des langues locales durant ces premières années favorise, au lieu de nuire, l’apprentissage ultérieur du français.

Ce qui rend l’approche d’ARED novatrice, au-delà des progrès considérables réalisés en matière d’alphabétisation, c’est son intégration systémique. En élaborant des programmes d’études en collaboration avec les communautés locales, les éducateurs et les linguistes, ARED a réussi à intégrer l’enseignement bilingue dans la politique nationale d’éducation du Sénégal et a servi de base au Modèle harmonisé d’éducation bilingue au Sénégal (MOHEBS), qui est en cours de déploiement à l’échelle nationale. Ce modèle favorise la prise de conscience des communautés afin de surmonter les réticences à l’égard de l’enseignement en langue locale et l’héritage colonial qui a conditionné les enfants à privilégier l’anglais et le français au détriment de leurs langues nationales. Ceci est essentiel, car il est prouvé que les enfants apprennent beaucoup mieux lorsqu’ils pratiquent davantage leur langue maternelle.

Pour que l’Afrique puisse pleinement exploiter son talent, sa créativité et son énergie, il est essentiel de développer et de programmer la prochaine génération de technologies éducatives afin de soutenir les langues nationales des élèves. Faute de quoi, des millions d’enfants risquent d’être laissés pour compte et de devenir des consommateurs passifs plutôt que des acteurs de la révolution de l’IA.

Le Sénégal est l’un des rares pays à mettre en œuvre avec succès un enseignement bilingue simultané en lecture, écriture et calcul, et à utiliser des technologies adaptées au contexte local pour accélérer les progrès. Grâce à ces technologies, les innovateurs parviennent désormais à faire répondre l’IA directement à la voix des élèves dans leur langue maternelle. Il en résulte un apprentissage hautement personnalisé, dans une langue que les enfants parlent et comprennent à la maison, à une échelle sans précédent. L’IA, initialement perçue comme une simple technologie disruptive réservée aux environnements à ressources élevées, devient un outil puissant qui valorise les langues locales et améliore l’apprentissage fondamental partout dans le monde.

Pour généraliser le succès du Sénégal à l’ensemble du système éducatif, il est urgent de déployer à plus grande échelle les outils de recherche et la méthodologie de mise en œuvre prometteurs. Les gouvernements africains, les organisations philanthropiques et les leaders technologiques du secteur privé doivent nouer des partenariats solides afin d’intégrer l’enseignement multilingue au cœur de l’éducation préscolaire sur tout le continent. Nous pouvons nous inspirer d’initiatives multinationales telles que le programme Bilingual Boost, qui vise à adapter les enseignements fondamentaux de l’apprentissage des langues nationales aux différents systèmes éducatifs africains.

Développer ces programmes n’est pas seulement un impératif moral ; c’est l’un des investissements économiques les plus judicieux qu’un gouvernement puisse réaliser. L’apprentissage fondamental dès le plus jeune âge offre un retour sur investissement exceptionnel (30 pour 1). C’est un levier éprouvé et rentable pour stimuler le PIB d’un pays à long terme, jetant ainsi les bases d’une croissance durable et d’une voie vers l’autonomie. L’adoption de cadres bilingues peut contribuer à accélérer la croissance économique des pays du continent, comme l’illustre le travail mené au Sénégal avec le soutien d’ARED.

Le vaste répertoire linguistique africain, l’un des plus riches au monde, recèle un potentiel immense qui ne demande qu’à être exploité, mais il est essentiel d’agir dès le plus jeune âge. En combinant les bienfaits avérés d’un enseignement dispensé aux enfants dans une langue qu’ils comprennent avec le potentiel transformateur de l’intelligence artificielle, nous pouvons offrir à la prochaine génération de jeunes Africains les clés d’une vie prospère. Car ce n’est pas seulement ce qu’un enfant apprend qui compte, mais aussi la manière dont il apprend."
Mamadou Amadou Ly, de l’ARED, et Ben Piper, de la Fondation Gates
08.07.2026

https://www.afrik.com/et-si-l-avenir-de-l-ia-africaine-commencait-par-apprendre-a-lire-en-wolof-pulaar-ou-haoussa
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#metaglossia_mundus

"Stylistic analysis of translated languages: A perturbation-based XAI deep learning framework
Dan Feng Huang, Dennis Tay

Abstract
Text classification using traditional machine learning techniques has been used in natural language processing (NLP) tasks to distinguish translated from non-translated languages, with high accuracy scores indicating the distinctive style of translated languages. While deep learning (DL) has demonstrated impressive performance in terms of representation learning and capturing nuanced patterns in natural language data, DL models act as black boxes, making their results difficult to interpret. This study addresses this issue by demonstrating an explainable AI (XAI) DL framework in a case study of United Nations (UN) meetings. The framework consists of three stages: i) train a variational autoencoder (VAE) combined with BERT embeddings converted from translated and non-translated texts; ii) utilize the majority vote from three classifiers selected from a stacked ensemble to classify the VAE’s latent representations; iii) implement a perturbation-based XAI method to interpret the DL model’s decisions. The results indicate that the VAE-based model effectively distinguishes the two text types, with accuracy scores above 0.8. The XAI analysis reveals that interpreting the VAE-based model’s decision uncovers stylistic differences between the two text types beyond superficial lexical and syntactic features. This proof-of-concept study demonstrates the potential of the XAI DL framework in other NLP studies that aim to analyze style.

Citation: Huang DF, Tay D (2026) Stylistic analysis of translated languages: A perturbation-based XAI deep learning framework. PLoS One 21(7): e0352889. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0352889

Editor: Teddy Lazebnik, Ariel University, UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND

Received: October 25, 2025; Accepted: June 16, 2026; Published: July 7, 2026

Copyright: © 2026 Huang, Tay. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All primary data are publicly available at the UN official website (https://media.un.org/en/webtv). Code for data processing and analysis, model results and supporting qualitative data are openly accessible via https://zenodo.org/records/19589395. The collection and analysis of the data complied with the terms and conditions of the data source.

Funding: The work of Dan Feng Huang was supported by a Faculty Startup Grant from Guangdong Polytechnic Normal University (Award 2026SDKYB114); The work of Dennis Tay was supported in part by a Faculty Startup Grant from Nanyang Technological University (Award 024271-00001) and in part by a Faculty Startup Grant from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Award R9130). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript."
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0352889
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"ASCO 2026: the art of translation
Translating emerging science into care that works meaningfully in practice

Every year, ASCO arrives with a theme. Most quietly disappear into the background by the end of the opening session, overtaken by survival curves, late-breaking data and the relentless pace of oncology innovation.

This year’s theme was different. Translation.

More than a congress slogan, it felt like a call to action. The opening message was that oncology’s job isn’t just to generate innovation, but to ensure that innovation makes a difference where it matters.

That means translating emerging science into care that works meaningfully in practice. And translating clinical research into real-world impact across different healthcare systems, settings and communities.

For those working in healthcare marketing, there’s another challenge too: translating complex science into communications and experiences that help people understand, trust and act on it.

Because, as ASCO President Eric Small put it: “What matters to patients is what matters most.”

This year, breakthroughs were only part of the story.

What stood out most was how much smarter oncology is becoming in terms of when, why and how to treat. Across tumour types, discussions repeatedly returned to the same themes: intervening earlier, understanding disease more precisely, tailoring treatment more effectively and making better use of the tools available to clinicians.

Ultimately, ASCO 2026 wasn’t just about hazard ratios and first-in-class molecules. It was about exploring a broader question: how do we translate scientific progress into better outcomes for patients? Here are the trends that stood out.

Read the article in full here.

Costas Saratsis is Medical Strategy Director and Disha Srivastava is Group Director, Medical Strategy, both at VML Health
6th July 2026"
https://pmlive.com/pharma_news/asco-2026-the-art-of-translation/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

During nearly forty years in Pakistan, the Dutch Franciscan missionary carried out an unparalleled body of biblical and liturgical translations that enabled the emerging local Catholic Church to enter into profound dialogue with the country’s Muslim spirituality. An interview with American scholar Charles Ramsey

Last update: 2026-07-07 15:37:12

Last 6-7 June, the conference Of Priests and Sufis: Revisiting Catholic Scholarship on Islamic Mysticism was held at the Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies (IDEO) in Cairo. Organized by Riccardo Paredi, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow at the Catholic University of Milan, as part of the SEMENSUF (Seminal Sufism in Motion) project, the conference explored the contribution of Catholic priests and religious to the study of Sufism. Among the speakers was Charles Ramsey, chaplain at Baylor University, who presented a paper entitled “Liberius Pieterse (1905–1993) and the Sufic Roots of the Urdu Bible.” His presentation focused on a Dutch Franciscan missionary who spent nearly forty years in Pakistan and whose theological outlook was profoundly shaped by the country’s devotional and mystical traditions. We asked Ramsey to tell us more about this remarkable figure and to explain how Pieterse came to produce his Urdu translation of the Bible

 

Interview by Claudia Catanzaro

 

In the conference Of Priests and Sufis held in Cairo on June 6-7, you presented a paper on Liberius Pieterse. Who was this little-known scholar and what makes his missionary experience different from that of other Catholic missionaries in Pakistan?

What drew me to this person was that he was like one of those aromas that you smell and then ask yourself where it is coming from. Who is that? Liberius Pieterse, born Simon Carel, who converted to Catholicism as a young man. He took on this name and became a priest, but he remained someone about whom we know relatively little. He adopted a hidden spirituality. Not that he was hiding anything; rather, he wanted to make himself truly a servant of the Church, a servant of the people, and to live among the poor. I think that was at the heart of his spirituality, and it was faithful to his religious tradition as a Franciscan.

I had heard many times about the Catholic Bible translated by Pieterse. I myself am Protestant and Baptist, and so it was one of those that we’d consult on occasion, but it’s not something that I use daily. But everyone who studies Urdu, Urdu theology, and Urdu biblical tradition, agrees that the Catholic Bible is better. We all agree that the phrases are nicely said and sound somehow a little more natural and more literary than the Protestant version. There is an Urdu Bible translation that was prepared mostly in the modern era by Protestant missionaries – British, American, German. The Roman Catholics in the Punjab, what is now Pakistan, came quite late. Part of what Father Liberius Pieterse did was address a community that was forming. It was a church that was coming into being and that was using the Bible prepared by Protestants, that was missing the deuterocanonical portions of it – which can be important in liturgy. 

At this time, there was no formal liturgy in Urdu, no songbook or hymnal, and people had to use what they had. Liberius Pieterse took what was there and, with a deep understanding of the community and love for the people, improved the Urdu Bible, brought forth the additional deuterocanonical books, and, through deep engagement with the biblical texts and Church tradition, as well as a knowledge of poetry and music, combined singing, poetry, hymns, and the music of the people with the scriptures of the people, the Bible of the people.

That is very special, that usually does not happen in such a way. It usually takes hundreds of years, many different people. He was not a lone man working by himself, he’s a man working in community, with other priests and scholars from the community, men and women, mostly Pakistani. But he’s the one who helps and guides them and provides a culture for those who are translating the texts and are committed to the culture and the local language. A Sufi culture, but also committed to the church. 

Pieterse wanted the Bible to be clearly and evidently connected to Rome and to its tradition, but truly and authentically Pakistani. I emphasize Pakistani because he lived there before and during the violent and chaotic period of Partition. He lived among the people and learned their languages. Partition happened, and he, unlike any other missionary we know of, became a Pakistani citizen. He was so committed to the land, to its people, and to the future of this new nation that he lived among them until his death. He died during a visit to Rome. He was there for a conference and suffered a heart attack at the airport. By that time, he had been in Pakistan for over forty years, and we can only assume that he would have remained there until his death.

Liberius Pieterse was a very special man: not very well known, and someone who did not draw attention to himself. Most of the things he wrote did not bear his name, and additional research is needed to find him there. But his voice and his influence have been very faithful and fruitful. 

 

Which elements of Sufism are most clearly reflected in Pieterse’s Urdu translation of the Bible? And which linguistic choices most clearly reveal the influence of the Sufi context?

I would begin with the culture. As someone living in that land and among the people, the Islam that Pieterse experienced and came to know was Sufi Islam. He was in rural Sindh, in an area that is known even today as the heartland of Sufism in Pakistan. It was almost a rebellious center, because there was so much pressure from the Arab world and from the modernizing world to leave these old traditions and this spirituality behind.

In my paper, I emphasized that there is both a theological aspect and a sociological aspect. The theological aspect concerns the importance of these living saints, these awliyāʾ, spiritual figures who have authority. Through them comes the grace of God: healing, health, childbearing, protection from demons – everything related to the spiritual and inner world – and access to divine power through what we would call shafāʿat, the ability of one person to intercede on your behalf. In fact, throughout much of Sindh, not to have an allegiance to the Sufi awliyāʾ and to the chain of blessing would be seen as a character flaw. The whole idea is that there is this chain of blessing that has been passed on, so that they can intercede. The theology of that is very important. These people occupy a great place of honor. 

From a sociological perspective, the awliyāʾ have a great deal of social power. They are able to gather people and give them direction. They can greatly influence elections, and they have access to significant financial resources and land. They have both social and financial capital. Even today, many elections in Pakistan are shaped by the authority, the sīfārish, of these great leaders. One of the most famous is Pir Pagara, who lived in the very area where Liberius lived, during a time of social unrest, when people wanted the British to leave. In fact, one of the last people executed – hanged by the British for insurrection – was the father of the Sufi leader living in the area where Liberius was.

Liberius lived within this whole world of theological, cultural, and political Sufism. He understood the place these spiritual authorities had in the lives of the people. He understood the rhythms of going to festivals, to the ʿurs, and he understood the music. Sindhi Sufism is deeply musical: its shrines hold regular singing events. It is a thriving, vital, and very colorful culture. That is where he learned Islam and the language. The conversations he had there shaped his view of the world and of the people.

Secondly, this was a time when Pakistan was defining itself as a land for Muslims. Those translating the Bible or working as missionaries before Partition had always worked with a multi-religious audience. They had been preparing something that had to be understood by Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Muslims. The questions were many: what language should we use? What codes should we use to clarify and communicate our vision of the divine and the meaning of Scripture in a way that was understandable to the people?

Pieterse, however, was writing for an audience that had defined itself as Muslim. This was a Bible for the Urdu-speaking Church of Pakistan. There was already a history of Muslim influence in Urdu Bible translations, going all the way back to Protestant work, such as that of William Carey and Henry Martyn, and others who had drawn on Muslims because they were leaders in society, they had great influence, and they were also specialists in Urdu. Urdu had so many Persian and Arabic roots that it made sense to draw on Muslim interlocutors.

 

When Pieterse was working on his translation, he was looking through a particular lens, one shaped by the linguistic and cultural tools available in the Sufi culture around him. The audience that was going to receive, hear, and read it was Muslim. Also, most of the people among whom he lived were poor and illiterate, whether they were Muslim or new Christians who had become part of the Church.

Those who could read were likely to belong to the middle or upper classes; they were likely to be Muslim and to have been educated in a very particular way, through the Persian kitābī tradition. To be educated meant that you had memorized and learned a great deal of Persian poetry, that you had learned how to read Arabic and recite the Qur’an, but that much of your cultural learning, your poetry, and what shaped your vision of the world was actually Persian. Those who could read were reading that tradition. Those who could not read were reciting Sufi poetry, and so these were the tools that were available to him. When Pieterse sat down to prepare his Urdu translation, he read it in the company of friends, both Christian and Muslim. As he read it, he worked on the phrases and the language to make sure it was understandable to them. He made it as indigenous and as contextualized as he could.

For instance, many of the deuterocanonical books contain a great deal of poetry. What Pieterse did was take the existing Hebrew, and some Syriac, and, as he looked at the poetic structures there, try to match them and bring them into a localized poetic idiom, with a rhyme form that would be familiar and, as I like to say, “prayable.” It is something that, when you read it, you can pray it. There was a rhythm, there was a cadence. It was natural not only to understand the meaning, but to engage with it and to pray these words.

There is a sense of the poetic nature of the language in the theological aspect of intercession. Pieterse inserted a word that is very clearly Sufi, we see it in poetry over and over again: wajd. It is the idea of experiencing the Holy Spirit, of being overcome by the Spirit by entering the Spirit. He was in a very ecstatic culture, where people wanted to cultivate that kind of experience. So he pointed to the experience of the Holy Spirit, to the coming of the Holy Spirit, through a word that had direct Sufi connotations and had not been used in any other Bible translation, certainly not in the Urdu one.

 

And when there was no equivalent in the Sufi lexicon?

Indeed he created some new categories. He was trying to say: we can bring the Hebrew into Urdu, but some ideas are not simply one-to-one. Even when we talk about love: what is the definition of love? What does love look like? How do we take a term like agápē, love, and bring it into Urdu? It had not been easy for earlier translators to move from Hebrew to Greek, and it was not easy for him either to bring these ideas into Urdu without mixing the meaning. That is the difficulty of translation. It needs to be understandable and somehow digestible, but without lessening the value of what you are saying. You want the reader to grapple with this new idea, or with a new way of understanding the word itself.

I think Liberius was very intentional about that. He made certain choices in order to make the Gospel appealing to a Muslim reader hearing or reading it for the first time. I think he wanted it to be familiar, but at the same time he did not want them to think that it was exactly what they already had. That would have confirmed that they were right and that they could simply go on unchanged. He invited them to reflect on certain words, such as “church” and “baptism.” The Protestant Bible had rendered “church” as jamāʿat, a gathering. He decided to stay with the Greek and use ekklēsía. He then reflected on what it meant to be part of the Church, because he wanted to introduce the ecclesiology of which he was a part. He wanted them to understand the importance of being grafted into this larger structure of the universal Church, the Roman Church. The other word was “baptism.” There were many options, but again he chose to use the Greek term, báptisma. Sometimes, instead of giving a meaning that would be more readily understandable, he left the word opaque, so that the person had to reflect on its meaning.

 

What are the advantages or potential risks of translating Christianity through a vocabulary closely associated with Islamic spirituality?

I would say that this is no more dangerous than translating the Bible into German and placing it within a pre-existing German spirituality. That was very difficult. People already had their own understanding. Before someone like Martin Luther translated the Bible into German, people already had a Bible in their own language, and there was already a spirituality there. There were things they had heard and things they had read. So the translator was grappling with the text, with the language, and with the spirituality of the people. There is a context, a pretext, and a text.

I do not think we need to be afraid of coming too close to Islamic spirituality. I do not think it is any more dangerous, or any more difficult, than translating the Bible into any other cultural spirituality. There are certainly points of connection, echoes, and a language that is very rich and full of meaning.

If we think about the history of Muslim-Christian relations, the Bible has been a place of disagreement and conflict. We have not seen the Muslim community engage deeply or closely with Scripture, not even scholars. It is quite a modern phenomenon to see this kind of intentional engagement.

We have plenty of examples of Muslim exegetes who studied the Bible and included it in their commentaries of the Qur’an. We also have plenty of sayings of Jesus. But when one tries to grapple with the Christian and biblical message, it has always been a point of contention. I do not think we made it easier for them. In Pakistan, as the translation moved forward through successive editions, it became less available to Muslims, not more. The language began to shift, with fewer Arabic or Persian words and simpler sentences, so that a common laborer, or a reader without much education, could understand it. Today the Bible, particularly the Protestant Bible more than the Catholic one, has a kind of “Christianese” Urdu: a language known only to Christians and used only in the Church. This translation choice was intended to protect a community that owned the word and the Bible. It was the Bible for their community; it was not for the majority of people. I do not think that was Liberius’ heart. I think his intention was to create a Bible accessible to everyone, because we do not know who is going to end up in the Church.Today, most of the church comes from one particular segment of society. They tend to be from the Punjab, quite poor, from a particular background that doesn’t connect easily with their Muslim or “higher status” neighbors. There is a 5,000-year history of division between them that predates the modern era. They comprise the majority of the church today and this pre-existing cultural identity affects the reception of the translation in use today. Liberius was creating something available to everybody, and he had to use a language that was understandable, a Sufi-infused language. 

After him, and in Pakistan today, there are Christians and Muslims working together who have experimented with studies of the Bible in an Urdu that readily embraces Muslim spirituality and Sufi terms. Those trained there were trained in the seminary founded by the Franciscans, and we see some of that heritage and teaching. There is a journey today; it is not a closed book, but a thriving community. It is a community of growing relationships and growing influence in society. We see that in the arts, in music, and in so many areas of Pakistani culture. It is an exciting day when you see Muslim scholars reading the Bible with care and interest, wanting to study Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic, and attempting studies on their own. I see that as connected to the legacy and work of Liberius Pieterse. He is known among the people as Āzād, which is the translation of Liberius, meaning “free man” or “the man who has been set free.” We see his spirituality being carried forward even among some Muslim scholars and thinkers today.

 

If Pieterse were working in present-day Pakistan, a country that differs profoundly from the Pakistan of the first year of independence, would he still adopt the same approach?

I cannot help but compare Father Liberius to some of the Catholic missionaries I know today. Two are from Ireland, one from the Netherlands, and they have done beautiful work. They themselves have adopted a form of dress and a style that are very indigenous, very Pakistani. Walking through the community, they look like Sufi saints, with their clothing, their white beards, and the love people have for them. People go to them for prayer and blessing; they are seen as holy people in the community. There is something very Sufi in the way they carry themselves. But I think they are also very gentle and careful to remain under the authority of the indigenous Church, of the bishops and the archbishop. The culture today is one in which protecting people from danger and persecution is very important. Nobody wants to be accused of pretending to be a Muslim, or of trying to convert Muslims, or of saying anything negative about Islam; that can be extremely dangerous.

The second element is that you do not want your Church to be confused or to come under pressure to become Muslim. If Liberius arrived in Pakistan today and were beginning his work, I think he would look around the community and say: “Wow, there is so much to be done, so many educational needs, so much poverty. We do not need to put our energy into evangelization, or into taking the Gospel into other languages and communities, because we have so much to do right here.” So I do not think he would adopt the same approach. I think he would have Muslim friends and would love music and poetry. But I think the fact that he arrived when he did gave him a particular perspective, a particular understanding. Again, he was a man within history. He was living at a time when the Church had not yet been formed. The clay was still very wet, and I would say that God used him to help shape the clay, which is the Church of Pakistan, and he did that very beautifully.

But no, I do not think he would be doing the same thing today. I think the contextualization of the Gospel within Muslim spirituality today is the work of Muslims. I think there is a curiosity and an interest, and those who are doing that today tend to be Muslims. The beauty of it is that they meet Christian friends, priests, and missionaries who are willing to engage with them and want to help: “Do you need a Bible dictionary? Do you need me to explain what this means? Because I hear that you want to do this in a way that is authentic and faithful. You are not trying to subvert the Bible; you are trying to understand it.” In relationships like that, I think something special happens, but there is also a shift of power.

Liberius, if you will, was going to be the one printing the Bible; he was going to be the one making the final choices. He was authorized to decide what went on that page and what people would read. The power was in his hands. When someone else reads the text and prepares their own translation, then in a sense the power is in their hands. That is a very different dynamic.

I think maybe the beauty of the Church today in Pakistan is that it is a vulnerable Church. It is not there with the force of empire, or of the East India Company, or of colonialism, and it can only survive if the community receives it and protects it. In my paper, we look back to a time when there were no Catholic Christians, zero Catholics. Now, there are likely over three million. I sometimes give a lower estimate, 2.5 million, but there are likely three million. It is a growing and thriving Church.

"US Poet Laureate Arthur Sze is taking on the art of translated poetry
By Tess Terrible, Catherine Shen
Published July 6, 2026 at 6:15 AM
Shawn Miller

Born in 1950 to Chinese immigrants, his family wanted him to pursue a safe career path that would assure security and prosperity. But while studying at MIT, he felt the call to write and study poetry; a call that changed the trajectory of his life.

Sze spent his career translating traditional Chinese poetry. He also taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts in New Mexico and is now a professor emeritus of the institute.

Sze is currently traveling the country with his signature Poet Laureate project “Words Bridging Worlds,” a series of workshops and readings that celebrate poetry in translation.

He joins us for a conversation on poetry, the power of language and the art of translation.

Where We Live is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode."
https://www.ctpublic.org/show/where-we-live/2026-07-06/us-poet-laureate-arthur-sze-interview-2026
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"BEYOND LANGUAGE 2026: Living Up to Its Name
12 cities, 6 countries, 373 participants, 295 presentations, 51 academic institutions, 14 countries represented, and 3 continents, figures that could just as easily describe a scientific expedition, an international congress, or an ambitious mission to explore new intellectual frontiers. Instead, they offer the most fitting summary of BEYOND LANGUAGE 2026, which once again demonstrated that young scholarship recognizes no boundaries, geographical, disciplinary, or intellectual.

Over the course of this year’s edition, participants delivered 295 presentations addressing topics related to language, culture, communication, media, education, technology, and society. The conference brought together representatives of 51 academic institutions from 14 countries worldwide. Particularly impressive was the participation of international institutions, which accounted for 72.5% of all participating organizations. While institutions from Poland (14) and Ukraine (19) formed the largest national groups, the conference reached far beyond Europe. Thanks to scholars affiliated with institutions in Australia, Asia, and Africa, the event acquired a truly intercontinental dimension. One might therefore say that while many different languages were spoken during BEYOND LANGUAGE 2026, scientific curiosity remained the universal language shared by all.

The conference was not only a venue for presenting research findings but also a space for meaningful encounters, inspiring conversations, and the formation of new academic connections. Informal discussions and spontaneous exchanges of ideas served as a reminder that scholarship advances not only during presentations but also in the moments between them. More than one new research project likely began over a cup of coffee, and more than one future publication may have originated from a brief conversation following a panel session.

• This year’s edition unfolded from May through late June, gradually traveling across a series of distinguished academic centers throughout Europe. Each stop had its own unique character, yet all were united by the same goal: creating a platform where young researchers could engage in dialogue across linguistic, disciplinary, and cultural boundaries."
  https://uwr.edu.pl/en/beyond-language-2026-living-up-to-its-name/
  #metaglossia
  #metaglossia_mundus

"Summary: A new study utilized artificial intelligence and ultra-sensitive magnetic brain imaging to map neuro-aging. By tracking a cohort of multilingual individuals from the Basque region of Spain, the team discovered a striking, direct gradient between language count and neurological preservation.

Speaking two languages shaved approximately 6 years off a participant’s biological brain age, while those mastering four languages possessed brains that appeared an astonishing 13 years younger than their actual chronological age.

Key Facts
Building the Neural Timepiece: To construct a highly accurate baseline for normal cognitive decline, the researchers deployed AI to analyze the MEG brain connectivity profiles of a massive training group consisting of 728 individuals spanning a wide age spectrum.
The Basque Multilingual Matrix: The team then applied this validated “brain aging clock” to a test cohort of 144 individuals from the Basque country. This unique population was chosen because participants naturally juggle between one and four distinct languages, including combinations of Spanish, Basque, French, and English.
The Multilingual Gradient Unmasked: When the AI cross-referenced chronological ages with structural brain signatures, it unmasked a step-by-step biological fountain of youth:
Bilinguals (2 Languages): Brains appeared 6 years younger than normal baselines.
Trilinguals (3 Languages): Brains appeared 7 years younger than normal baselines.
Quadrilinguals (4 Languages): Brains appeared an incredible 13 years younger than normal baselines.
Depth of Experience Matters: Dr. Amoruso emphasizes that this neurological protection is not a binary, all-or-nothing switch. The protective delay in brain aging runs along a clear gradient tied directly to high language proficiency, high fluency, and the early childhood acquisition of a second language.
Managing Linguistic Rivals: The research team points out that the brain works hardest when it has to constantly suppress one language to speak another. They plan next-phase trials to investigate whether speaking languages that are highly similar (like Spanish and Italian) triggers an even larger brain-youth effect, as managing closely related vocabulary requires significantly higher levels of active cognitive control.
The Prevention Horizon: While factors like education, sex, and age were rigorously controlled, the team is expanding their scope to track patients with neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. The goal is to see if lifelong multilingualism can preserve functional independence even after physical pathology begins damaging brain cells.
Source: FENS

People who speak more than one language seem to have younger brains, according to research presented at the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) Forum 2026.

Our brains are made up of billions of nerve cells which need to communicate with one another. As we age, the connectivity in our brains tends to deteriorate and, as a result, our memory and the speed of our thinking also decline.

The new research found that the more languages people speak, the younger their brains appear. Learning an extra language at a younger age and learning to become highly fluent in another language also seem to slow brain ageing.

The research was presented by Dr Lucia Amoruso from the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, San Sebastián, Spain, who worked with a team from the Latin American Brain Health Institute at the Universidad Adolfo Ibañez, Chile, the Cognitive Neuroscience Center at the Universidad de San Andres, Argentina, and the Global Brain Health Institute at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.

The researchers recently published a study showing that in countries where people typically speak more than one language, people seem to age more slowly. In the new study, the researchers carried out detailed analysis on a group of people from the Basque region of Spain who spoke between one and four different languages including combinations of Spanish, Basque, French and English.

They began with a group of 728 people to create a ‘brain ageing clock’. They used a technique called magnetoencephalography which measures brain activity by the faint magnetic fields produced when brain cells are active. The researchers used artificial intelligence to process data on brain activity in people of different ages to show what is a normal level of brain connectivity at any given age.

Then the team used this clock to gauge the ‘brain age’ of a second group of 144 people.

When they compared people’s real age with the age of their brain, they found that those who spoke two languages had brains that appeared around six years younger than those who spoke only one language. For people who spoke three languages, their brains were around seven years younger, and for those who spoke four languages, their brains were around 13 years younger.

Dr Amoruso said: “In simple terms, people who spoke more languages tended to have brains that looked younger than expected for their chronological age. The effect was not only related to the number of languages spoken. Higher language proficiency and earlier acquisition of a second language were also associated with more delayed brain ageing. This suggests that multilingual experience matters as a gradient: it is not simply about being bilingual or not, but about the depth and duration of language experience.”

The researchers took account of factors such as people’s age, sex and education, but caution that they cannot rule out the potential influence of other factors that may have an impact on the brain, such as lifestyle and social engagement.

Dr Amoruso and the team now hope to carry out similar work in people with neurodegenerative conditions, such as Alzheimer’s disease, where brain ageing and resilience are especially important. They also plan to look at whether speaking two or more languages that are very similar could have a bigger effect on the brain, as managing closely related languages may require greater language control.

Professor Christina Dalla from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, is chair of the FENS Forum communication committee and was not involved in the research. She said: “We know that many factors can influence our brain health and mental abilities as we age. For example, we know that not smoking, eating well, social and artistic engagement, as well as being active, can help. How we use our brains throughout life can also have an impact, especially if we engage in effortful learning that activates our brain.

“This study suggests that learning a second, third or fourth language could help our brains to stay younger for longer, and the earlier we start, the better. There are many good reasons for learning another language at any age – social, cultural and for the health of your brain – so we should support language learning at school and throughout life, even if it’s hard.”

Key Questions Answered:
Q: How can simply speaking another language make a person’s physical brain look 13 years younger?
A: Think of your brain like a high-performance muscle. When you speak only one language, your brain retrieves words easily without any internal competition. But when you are multilingual, all your mastered languages are constantly active at the exact same time inside your mind. Your brain has to work incredibly hard to suppress the languages you don’t need so you can speak the one you do. This intense, continuous mental effort keeps the brain’s communication pathways heavily active, reinforcing cell connectivity and delaying the natural fraying that occurs as we age.

Q: What is a “brain aging clock” and how did the researchers use AI to build it?
A: A brain aging clock is an artificial intelligence algorithm trained to recognize what a healthy brain looks like at every stage of life. The researchers used a highly advanced brain-mapping machine called a magnetoencephalograph (MEG) to record the microscopic magnetic fields created by active brain cells in 728 people. The AI studied these patterns to map out a “normal” baseline of how brain connectivity naturally drops over the years. When they plugged the multilingual group into this clock, the AI discovered that their internal neural wiring matched the profiles of people who were up to 13 years younger.

Q: Is it worth learning a new language as an adult, or does it only work if you learn it as a kid?
A: It is absolutely worth it at any age. While Dr. Amoruso’s study notes that the absolute strongest, 13-year anti-aging effects happen when you learn languages early in childhood and achieve deep fluency, learning an extra language later in life still provides immense benefits. Professor Christina Dalla, an independent expert from FENS, emphasizes that engaging in “effortful learning”, forcing your brain to tackle a difficult task like a new grammar system, is exactly what sparks neuroplasticity. No matter how old you are, picking up a new language is a phenomenal workout to keep your mind sharp and resilient.

Editorial Notes:
This article was edited by a Neuroscience News editor.

Original Research: The study will be presented at FENS Forum 2026

Neuroscience News is an online science magazine offering free to read research articles about neuroscience, neurology, psychology, artificial intelligence, neurotechnology, robotics, deep learning, neurosurgery, mental health and more.

https://neurosciencenews.com/multilingualism-ai-brain-age-clock-30999/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

Large language models exhibit stigmatizing behaviour in contextual judgements of health conditions

"Current fairness evaluations of large language models (LLMs) deployed in healthcare settings largely focus on explicit statements about health-related stigma. Here we show that this may overestimate safety by contrasting explicit stigma-scale scores with contextual judgements in 51 scenarios. Across six LLMs and three high-stigma domains (human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis B virus (HBV) and mental health), LLMs scored below the meta-analytic human benchmark on six stigma scales (Nhuman = 56,612). However, in a contextual judgement task with 61,200 model decisions, LLMs showed systematic differences in stigma-congruent judgements across health conditions, with the largest differences observed when mental-health disorders and highly stigmatized physical conditions (HIV/HBV) were compared with healthy baselines. Reasoning-enabled models were associated with smaller health-condition differences. From their reasoning content, we identified transferable prompting strategies that were associated with lower rates of stigma-congruent output in non-reasoning models across languages and scenarios. These findings expose a dissociation in LLM outputs between explicit statements and contextual judgements in the evaluated versions, and argue for context-sensitive audits of LLMs before health deployment."
Xi Wang, Yujia Zhou & Guangyu Zhou
Nature Health (2026)
Published: 06 July 2026
Abstract
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44360-026-00164-4
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

Traduit de l’arabe par Antonino D’Esposito et publié chez Del Vecchio, le roman de Yassin Adnan figure dans la dernière sélection du Pisa Book Translation Awards 2026, aux côtés d’œuvres d’Amélie Nothomb et de Kevin Chen.

 

La traduction italienne de "Hot Maroc", roman de l’écrivain marocain Yassin Adnan, figure parmi les trois finalistes du Pisa Book Translation Awards 2026, prix italien consacré à la traduction littéraire.

 

La version italienne du roman, traduite de l’arabe par Antonino D’Esposito et publiée en 2025 par Del Vecchio, est en lice aux côtés de "L’impossibile ritorno" d’Amélie Nothomb, traduit du français par Federica Di Lella, et de "Città fantasma" de Kevin Chen, traduit du chinois par Silvia Pozzi.Cette sélection place "Hot Maroc" dans la dernière ligne droite de la sixième édition du prix, organisé dans le cadre du Pisa Book Festival...

 

https://medias24.com/2026/07/07/litterature-la-traduction-italienne-de-hot-maroc-se-hisse-en-finale-a-pise-1717773/

 

#metaglossia 

 

#metaglossia_mundus 

"Cahiers de littérature orale, n° 99 | 2026 : "Am Slam Gram !"

Am slam Gram ! aborde le slam comme art contemporain d’une parole scénique ouverte à toustes, où se mêlent des genres et registres émergeant à la confluence des domaines et des disciplines. Aucune revue francophone n’avait encore dédié de numéro thématique à cet espace d’expression. C’est maintenant chose faite avec ce numéro des Cahiers de littérature orale, dont le propos est d’en explorer les formes actuelles, non seulement en termes de dispositifs et de formes d’énonciations, mais aussi d’espaces de publication. À travers les expériences poétiques présentées, il est question de traduction dans des performances plurilingues, d’ateliers d’éloquence, d’éthique dans l’animation de scènes ouvertes, de confrontation postcoloniale avec d’autres traditions orales, ou encore de résistance face au chaos sociopolitique. Dans une perspective transdisciplinaire, ce volume donne à entendre des voix singulières et collectives, parfois vulnérables, souvent agentives, naviguant entre Haïti et La Réunion, la France et les États-Unis – berceau du slam –, en passant par l’Italie et l’Allemagne.

—

Sommaire

In memoriam
Laurent LegrainRoberte Hamayon (1939‑2025) [Texte intégral]

Éditorial
Philippe Glâtre et Camille Vorger Am slam gram ! [Texte intégral]

Articles
Eleonora Fisco Translating Slam and Spoken Word Poetry. Translation through Performance [Texte intégral] Traduire le slam et le spoken word. Expériences de traduction en performanceTradurre attraverso la performance. Pratiche di traduzione di slam e spoken word poetry

Jérôme Cabot La cheville ouvrière du dispositif slam [Texte intégral] Fonctions de l’animateur de scène ouverteThe Kingpin of the Slam Apparatus. Functions of the Emcee on Slam Open Stages

Élodie Géas Des ateliers de slam au lycée : l’expression de soi au service du care [Texte intégral] Slam workshops at secondary school: self-expression in the service of care

Audrey Noël et Francky Lauret Un dispositif créole autre que le slam : la pratique poétique réunionnaise du kabar fonnkèr [Texte intégral] A Creole Approach Other Than Slam Poetry: the Poetic Practice of Kabar Fonnkèr in Reunion IslandIn ron la pa lo slam : lo kabar fonnkèr La Rénion

Document
Esther Eloidin Voix insurgées [Texte intégral] L’émergence et l’impact du slam en Haïti, un art de résistance et de renaissanceRebellious voices. The emergence and impact of slam poetry in Haiti, an art of resistance and rebirthVwa ensurjan yo. Aparisyon ak enpak slam an Ayiti, yon atizay rézistans ak renésans

Entretien
Camille Vorger Mélodit [Texte intégral] Trouver sa voix entre slam, poésie et chant. Entretien avec LucioleWords’melody. Interview with Luciole, Between Slam Poetry and SongLa melodía de las palabras. Entrevista con Luciole

Compte-rendu
Laurent LegrainRiverti Camille, 2022, Humour et érotisme dans les Andes. Une ethnographe à marier, Paris : Les Indes savantes, 262 p. [Texte intégral]

Url de référence :
https://journals.openedition.org/clo/15337";
Date de publication : 07 Juillet 2026
Publié le 07 Juillet 2026 par Marc Escola
https://www.fabula.org/actualites/135503/cahiers-de-litterature-orale-n-99-2026-am-slam-gram.html
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

Kindle Translate : comment traduire vos livres autoédités du français vers une autre langue ?

Auteurs, vous pouvez traduire vos livres en 6 langues et quelques clics ! Moins de 5 % des livres disponibles sur Amazon sont traduits dans plus d’une langue.

Pour les auteurs indépendants, le coût et la complexité d’une traduction professionnelle ont toujours été un frein.

C’est pour briser cette barrière qu’Amazon lance Kindle Translate, son outil de traduction géré par IA. Maintenant en français.  L’autoédition en France, franchit un nouveau cap !

Initialement limité, le service évolue en s’ouvrant désormais à six langues. Les auteurs indés utilisant Kindle Direct Publishing peuvent désormais traduire leurs ebooks entre l’anglais, l’espagnol, l’allemand, le français, l’italien et le portugais.

Kindle Translate – Comment ça marche ?
Directement depuis l’espace de gestion KDP, vous pouvez générer une version entièrement mise en page de votre livre en quelques clics. L’outil est entièrement gratuit pendant sa phase beta.

Avant la publication, chaque texte est évalué par un système automatisé. Le but est de garantir la qualité et l’exactitude. Les auteurs conservent le choix de prévisualiser le document ou d’activer une publication automatique.

Les livres traduits bénéficient des mêmes options de redevances (abonnements Kindle Unlimited etc.).  Ils portent une étiquette indiquant qu’ils ont été traduits via l’IA d’Amazon.

Un succès qui se chiffre en millions de pages
Pour les auteurs autoédités, l’opportunité est immense. Pouvoir toucher un public mondial sans investir des milliers d’euros c’est une manne, mais attention à ne pas perdre le contrôle.

Des milliers d’auteurs ont déjà adopté l’outil, et les lecteurs ont dévoré des millions de pages de ces livres traduits, selon Amazon.

Avec cette expansion, l’autoédition n’a plus de frontières. Une histoire écrite dans une chambre à Paris ou à New York peut instantanément trouver son public à l’autre bout de la planète dans une multitude de langues."

Par Elizabeth Sutton / 06/07/2026 / Autoédition, IA, Intelligence Artificielle, kindle
https://www.idboox.com/news-livres/kindle-translate-lia-damazon-accepte-le-francais-pour-les-livres-des-auteurs-independants/
#metaglossia : À vos claviers !
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"Google lance le premier laboratoire africain d’IA à Accra

Google a annoncé le lancement à Accra, au Ghana, du premier laboratoire africain consacré à l’intelligence artificielle appliquée, une initiative destinée à accélérer le développement de start-up africaines spécialisées dans l’IA. L’annonce a été faite le 1er juillet à Johannesburg, à l’occasion du premier Google Cloud Summit organisé sur le continent, où le groupe américain a également indiqué avoir dépassé son objectif d’investir un milliard de dollars en Afrique sur une période de cinq ans.

Baptisée Google Africa Applied AI Lab, cette nouvelle structure sera installée au sein de l’AI Community Centre d’Accra. Elle réunira des entrepreneurs issus de différents pays africains, des chercheurs de Google et des partenaires spécialisés dans le capital-risque afin d’accompagner le développement de solutions fondées sur les technologies d’intelligence artificielle. Les candidatures resteront ouvertes jusqu’au 31 août 2026.

Le programme offrira aux jeunes entreprises un accès anticipé aux derniers modèles d’IA développés par Google ainsi qu’un accompagnement technique et stratégique. Les projets retenus concerneront notamment les secteurs du travail, de la création, de la gestion des connaissances, du divertissement et du développement logiciel. L’objectif affiché est de favoriser l’émergence de futures licornes africaines, ces entreprises technologiques non cotées dont la valorisation dépasse le milliard de dollars.

Lire aussi : Au Ghana, la réforme des redevances sur l’or fragilise confiance et investissements

Une opportunité majeure pour le continent
Selon James Manyika, vice-président senior de Google chargé de la recherche, l’intelligence artificielle représente une opportunité majeure pour le continent africain, et le groupe entend collaborer avec les acteurs locaux afin de soutenir cette dynamique.

Le choix d’Accra s’inscrit dans la continuité de la stratégie africaine de Google. En 2019, l’entreprise y avait déjà inauguré son premier centre de recherche en intelligence artificielle sur le continent, qui mène depuis des travaux portant notamment sur la prévision des inondations, la santé maternelle, la sécurité alimentaire et le développement des langues africaines. En 2025, ce dispositif avait été renforcé par la création d’un AI Community Centre, soutenu par 37 millions de dollars d’investissements cumulés consacrés à la recherche, à la formation et aux infrastructures."
El Mehdi El Azhary
Publié le 06/07/2026 à 17:02
https://www.lebrief.ma/afrique/laboratoire-africain-ia-accra-google-100158685/
#metaglossia
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‘A window for seeing, a window for hearing’: On translating Dalit writer Chandu Maheria’s memoir
Translator Hemang Ashwinkumar writes that the memoir helped him ‘reclaim a lost home … from the fog of neofascist irrationality, singularities and despair.’

Writer Chandu Maheria.
One of my favourite poems of all time is “To a Crow” from Arun Kolatkar’s Kala Ghoda Poems (2004), where the humble bird ponders over a roadside twig, wondering if it’ll be a perfect fit for the nest it is building. The bird’s dilemma represents all creative processes, but it also stands in for the ontological and epistemological dilemma of humanity. A dilemma about a home one dreams of, wishes to erect and inhabit, be it textual, cultural, social, national or universal. To cultures attuned to binaries, home is the self to the other of the outside. But a home, with its inheritance of chains, can also be a cage the self seeks to break free of. Thus, the struggle of a creative practitioner, including a translator, is a concomitant abjuring and conjuring of homes. I decided to translate Chandu Maheria’s Homes Without Windows because it afforded my crow the possibility of both: breaking a home and making a home, leaving a nest and weaving a nest, twig by choice twig.

The seedy architecture of caste
The memoir unearths the vibrant community life of the Dalits who had to migrate post-independence to Rajpur and Gomtipur, the working-class suburbs in east Ahmedabad, from far-flung villages in Gujarat because “there was no place for us there, just none” and because seedy chawls, mushrooming in the shadow of mill chimneys, offered them home. A home without windows, perhaps built to the dictates of caste that Dalpat Chauhan so painfully describes in his story “Home”.

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Homes Without Windows is a scathing comment on the seedy architecture of the caste universe whose politics is best captured in Slavoj Žižek’s hermeneutics of toilets. Essentially a schtick, it examines the designs of French, German and Anglo-Saxon toilets to posit the ideologies and cultures of those societies. Indian society remains conspicuously absent from Žižek’s tripartite analysis, but Maheria’s memoir fills that gap. The very first essay presents a profound and multi-layered exploration of the relationship of Dalits with the material, structural reality of toilets and, more significantly, with the idea of faeces. What does a toilet, like the ones at the mouth of Hiralal’s chawl in Rajpur, or its outright, inexplicable absence in different parts of the country even today, say about the character of Indian society? What explains its absence in key human institutions like temples, churches, schools and bazars? Even in homes, for that matter. Notably, toilets in Indian households for a long time were located at the far end of the backyard, that is, away from the sanctum sanctorum of family life. The answer lies in the caste order, rooted in the mendacious metaphysics of purity and pollution, which has been the organising principle of Indian society and, as Alan Dundes shows in Two Tales of Crow and Sparrow (1997), a part of cultural memory. And the people who have borne the burden, the sheer violent brunt, of this toxic ideology are the Dalits, a people ordained to perform dirty jobs as hereditary occupations. At the height of upper caste disgust, a Dalit body, forced to negotiate human excreta, becomes one with it, something which is borne out time and again by unspeakable atrocities like the recent one in which a Dalit youth was force-fed faeces of a dog. The author brings the pathologies of this home in all its revolting starkness and shames us into dumping it.

A longing for equality
Homes Without Windows concomitantly provides us a window to a world not long bygone, a world where identities were not hard-edged or hate-fed but bloomed in the osmosis of lives. A window Forough Farrokhzad sought to “the moment of awareness and seeing and silence.” Thus, in Maheria’s world, Christians celebrated Christmas by organising Natal Garba and Hindus looked forward to sevaiya and holy prasad of Qurbani on Eid and saw teachings of Islam as a part of their moral universe. Here, in a mind-boggling twist to the hoopla of conversion, Hindus called their temples deval (church) and converted Christians insisted on asserting their Hindu identities without guilt. Perhaps, it’s this culture of intermingling that enables Maheria to accommodate Gandhi’s anti-caste campaign within Dalit politics in a luminescent essay, just as it helps him deconstruct the apparently adversarial relationship of the Marxist and Dalit struggles for subaltern emancipation. The way he subverts gender roles in the memoir, invoking the tradition of calling his father Ba (mother), for example, underlines his deep longing for a home of equality, love and friendship. His long essay on his mother Dahima is a paean of love, devotion and admiration for the life of a Dalit woman, spent in fighting odds, altruism and providing her family an anchor of dignity, self-identity and hope.

“A woman as generous as she was truthful and optimistic, Ma never tired of running around for the welfare of her family, neighbours, remote acquaintances, even random passers-by and thus, won glad, grateful hearts, almost in hundreds. Thus, my Dahima, literally a sane mother, was Ma to many.”

Dahima becomes a Cosmic Mother and Maheria prefers to be known, as he was in his Rajpur years, as Dahima no Dikaro (Sonny of a Sane Mother).

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Central to Maheria’s polemic is the idea of biradari, a call to transcend the boundaries of ethnic or social identities, a hail to join forces for imagining a common future on a shared, salubrious planet. He rues the emergence of a political context in Gujarat whereby the Dalit and the Muslim residents of Baharpura in Dhoraji remain outside not just of the town but outside the imagination of developers and policymakers. When a large part of society begins to look upon such exclusion as a precondition to the onward march of history, it augurs a dangerous trend, the erection of a windowless, claustrophobic home.

Homes Without Windows is a mirror, reflecting both the self and the home it has chosen to inhabit in all their hideousness and beauty. It dreams of a home, to use Tagore’s vision for Viswa Bharati, where the whole world meets in a single nest. Translation is an intimate act of reading, but reading, if conscientiously done, can also be an act of translation, a thoroughgoing translation of the self, a self at home (with windows) in the world. In the age of slop and destruction of reason, Maheria’s memoir helped me reclaim a lost home – a Rajpur of my own – from the fog of neofascist irrationality, singularities and despair. The name of his home is “Nirant” (A place sans terror/fear). What’s yours called?"
Hemang Ashwinkumar
Jul 05, 2026 · 07:30 am
https://amp.scroll.in/article/1093668/a-window-for-seeing-a-window-for-hearing-on-translating-dalit-writer-chandu-maherias-memoir
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Sakana AI launches Sakana Translate, a free web app for Japanese, English, and Chinese translation with unique proofreading and Q&A features.

"Sakana AI is stepping into the translation arena with the launch of Sakana Translate, a new feature within its Sakana Chat service. This move aims to bridge language gaps with a focus on the nuances specific to Japanese communication...

Existing translation tools fail: struggle with Japanese subtleties like honorifics and cultural concepts

 

Sakana AI develops: proprietary Namazu model series adapted for Japanese language

 

Launches Sakana Translate: free web app for Japanese, English, Chinese translation

 

Deep Japanese understanding: focus on post-training technologies for nuanced Japanese communication

 

Three core functions: Translate, Proofread, and Ask for comprehensive experience

 

Bridges language gaps: aims to improve communication with unique features

 

The new tool leverages Sakana's proprietary model series, Namazu, which has been specifically adapted for Japanese language contexts. Sakana Translate supports bidirectional translation between Japanese, English, and Chinese.

 

Sakana Translate offers three distinct modes: Translate, Proofread, and Ask. This multimodal approach seeks to provide a more comprehensive translation experience than standard tools.

 

Deep Translation for Japan

 

The company states that existing translation tools often falter when dealing with the subtleties of Japanese, such as business honorifics, cultural concepts, and informal language. Sakana AI's development of Sakana Translate stems from its research into post-training technologies focused on a deep understanding of Japanese language and culture.

 

The concept is to go beyond mere word replacement, aiming to convey the underlying context, tone, and register of the original text. This is crucial for effective communication, especially in business settings.

 

Three Core Functions

 

The 'Translate' mode handles long texts, up to approximately 5,000 characters, with real-time streaming output. This is designed for documents, articles, and emails.

 

The 'Proofread' mode refines input text for naturalness, politeness, and appropriate tone, highlighting changes for easy review. This feature is particularly aimed at improving business correspondence and written English.

 

The 'Ask' function allows users to directly query the translation results. This includes clarifying nuances, exploring alternative phrasing, and understanding grammatical choices, all within the same interface.

 

 

 

 

Competitive Benchmarks

 

Sakana AI reports that Sakana Translate achieves competitive scores in translation quality benchmarks, placing it in a similar range to leading models when evaluated using XCOMET-XL on the WMT 2024 dataset.

 

 

 

 

Qualitative assessments on real-world Japanese texts have reportedly confirmed its strengths in handling honorifics, cultural concepts, and context-specific language.

 

 

 

 

Sakana Translate is currently available for free as a web app, requiring only an account registration. Sakana AI plans future enhancements including industry-specific engines, file translation, and enterprise-focused features like API access and on-premises deployment."

 

Jul 6 at 1:03 AM

 

https://www.startuphub.ai/ai-news/technology/2026/sakana-ai-launches-deep-translation-tool

 

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