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Charles Tiayon
October 3, 2012 12:18 PM
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PUTRAJAYA: Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin today announced an allocation of RM1 million for an incentive scheme to benefit language translators beginning next year. He said the move was aimed at boosting translation of works in various fields including science and technology, management and religion. "If we don't have enough translators, some of the knowledge cannot reach our children for them to read, so this matter should be given due attention," he said in his speech at the presentation of the National Translation Award 2012. Muhyiddin hoped the incentive scheme would encourage more people to do translation work on a full-time basis and no longer part-time, and that they had a role in introducing local culture and sharing thoughts with the rest of the world. "For example, Germany and Turkey are able to promote their respective culture and literature through the German-Turkish translation awards, thus also giving good economic returns," he said. The prime minister said to reach such a goal, students had no other choice but to widen their knowledge and sharpen their thinking, besides being exposed to knowledge in various languages from original or translated works. Muhyiddin, who is also Education Minister, said with the rapid shift in the world of education, there must be more earnest efforts to enrich knowledge that were available in various languages. He said besides encouraging the people to master various languages to enable them to acquire more knowledge, translation of important works into the national language must also continue. Read more: RM1 mln incentive scheme for translators - Latest - New Straits Times http://www.nst.com.my/latest/rm1-mln-incentive-scheme-for-translators-1.152012##ixzz28FlWa4PY
Researchers across Africa, Asia and the Middle East are building their own language models designed for local tongues, cultural nuance and digital independence
"In a high-stakes artificial intelligence race between the United States and China, an equally transformative movement is taking shape elsewhere. From Cape Town to Bangalore, from Cairo to Riyadh, researchers, engineers and public institutions are building homegrown AI systems, models that speak not just in local languages, but with regional insight and cultural depth.
The dominant narrative in AI, particularly since the early 2020s, has focused on a handful of US-based companies like OpenAI with GPT, Google with Gemini, Meta’s LLaMa, Anthropic’s Claude. They vie to build ever larger and more capable models. Earlier in 2025, China’s DeepSeek, a Hangzhou-based startup, added a new twist by releasing large language models (LLMs) that rival their American counterparts, with a smaller computational demand. But increasingly, researchers across the Global South are challenging the notion that technological leadership in AI is the exclusive domain of these two superpowers.
Instead, scientists and institutions in countries like India, South Africa, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are rethinking the very premise of generative AI. Their focus is not on scaling up, but on scaling right, building models that work for local users, in their languages, and within their social and economic realities.
“How do we make sure that the entire planet benefits from AI?” asks Benjamin Rosman, a professor at the University of the Witwatersrand and a lead developer of InkubaLM, a generative model trained on five African languages. “I want more and more voices to be in the conversation”.
Beyond English, beyond Silicon Valley
Large language models work by training on massive troves of online text. While the latest versions of GPT, Gemini or LLaMa boast multilingual capabilities, the overwhelming presence of English-language material and Western cultural contexts in these datasets skews their outputs. For speakers of Hindi, Arabic, Swahili, Xhosa and countless other languages, that means AI systems may not only stumble over grammar and syntax, they can also miss the point entirely.
“In Indian languages, large models trained on English data just don’t perform well,” says Janki Nawale, a linguist at AI4Bharat, a lab at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. “There are cultural nuances, dialectal variations, and even non-standard scripts that make translation and understanding difficult.” Nawale’s team builds supervised datasets and evaluation benchmarks for what specialists call “low resource” languages, those that lack robust digital corpora for machine learning.
It’s not just a question of grammar or vocabulary. “The meaning often lies in the implication,” says Vukosi Marivate, a professor of computer science at the University of Pretoria, in South Africa. “In isiXhosa, the words are one thing but what’s being implied is what really matters.” Marivate co-leads Masakhane NLP, a pan-African collective of AI researchers that recently developed AFROBENCH, a rigorous benchmark for evaluating how well large language models perform on 64 African languages across 15 tasks. The results, published in a preprint in March, revealed major gaps in performance between English and nearly all African languages, especially with open-source models.
Similar concerns arise in the Arabic-speaking world. “If English dominates the training process, the answers will be filtered through a Western lens rather than an Arab one,” says Mekki Habib, a robotics professor at the American University in Cairo. A 2024 preprint from the Tunisian AI firm Clusterlab finds that many multilingual models fail to capture Arabic’s syntactic complexity or cultural frames of reference, particularly in dialect-rich contexts.
Governments step in
For many countries in the Global South, the stakes are geopolitical as well as linguistic. Dependence on Western or Chinese AI infrastructure could mean diminished sovereignty over information, technology, and even national narratives. In response, governments are pouring resources into creating their own models.
Saudi Arabia’s national AI authority, SDAIA, has built ‘ALLaM,’ an Arabic-first model based on Meta’s LLaMa-2, enriched with more than 540 billion Arabic tokens. The United Arab Emirates has backed several initiatives, including ‘Jais,’ an open-source Arabic-English model built by MBZUAI in collaboration with US chipmaker Cerebras Systems and the Abu Dhabi firm Inception. Another UAE-backed project, Noor, focuses on educational and Islamic applications.
In Qatar, researchers at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, and the Qatar Computing Research Institute, have developed the Fanar platform and its LLMs Fanar Star and Fanar Prime. Trained on a trillion tokens of Arabic, English, and code, Fanar’s tokenization approach is specifically engineered to reflect Arabic’s rich morphology and syntax.
India has emerged as a major hub for AI localization. In 2024, the government launched BharatGen, a public-private initiative funded with 235 crore (€26 million) initiative aimed at building foundation models attuned to India’s vast linguistic and cultural diversity. The project is led by the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay and also involves its sister organizations in Hyderabad, Mandi, Kanpur, Indore, and Madras. The programme’s first product, e-vikrAI, can generate product descriptions and pricing suggestions from images in various Indic languages. Startups like Ola-backed Krutrim and CoRover’s BharatGPT have jumped in, while Google’s Indian lab unveiled MuRIL, a language model trained exclusively on Indian languages. The Indian governments’ AI Mission has received more than180 proposals from local researchers and startups to build national-scale AI infrastructure and large language models, and the Bengaluru-based company, AI Sarvam, has been selected to build India’s first ‘sovereign’ LLM, expected to be fluent in various Indian languages.
In Africa, much of the energy comes from the ground up. Masakhane NLP and Deep Learning Indaba, a pan-African academic movement, have created a decentralized research culture across the continent. One notable offshoot, Johannesburg-based Lelapa AI, launched InkubaLM in September 2024. It’s a ‘small language model’ (SLM) focused on five African languages with broad reach: Swahili, Hausa, Yoruba, isiZulu and isiXhosa.
“With only 0.4 billion parameters, it performs comparably to much larger models,” says Rosman. The model’s compact size and efficiency are designed to meet Africa’s infrastructure constraints while serving real-world applications. Another African model is UlizaLlama, a 7-billion parameter model developed by the Kenyan foundation Jacaranda Health, to support new and expectant mothers with AI-driven support in Swahili, Hausa, Yoruba, Xhosa, and Zulu.
India’s research scene is similarly vibrant. The AI4Bharat laboratory at IIT Madras has just released IndicTrans2, that supports translation across all 22 scheduled Indian languages. Sarvam AI, another startup, released its first LLM last year to support 10 major Indian languages. And KissanAI, co-founded by Pratik Desai, develops generative AI tools to deliver agricultural advice to farmers in their native languages.
The data dilemma
Yet building LLMs for underrepresented languages poses enormous challenges. Chief among them is data scarcity. “Even Hindi datasets are tiny compared to English,” says Tapas Kumar Mishra, a professor at the National Institute of Technology, Rourkela in eastern India. “So, training models from scratch is unlikely to match English-based models in performance.”
Rosman agrees. “The big-data paradigm doesn’t work for African languages. We simply don’t have the volume.” His team is pioneering alternative approaches like the Esethu Framework, a protocol for ethically collecting speech datasets from native speakers and redistributing revenue back to further development of AI tools for under-resourced languages. The project’s pilot used read speech from isiXhosa speakers, complete with metadata, to build voice-based applications.
In Arab nations, similar work is underway. Clusterlab’s 101 Billion Arabic Words Dataset is the largest of its kind, meticulously extracted and cleaned from the web to support Arabic-first model training.
The cost of staying local
But for all the innovation, practical obstacles remain. “The return on investment is low,” says KissanAI’s Desai. “The market for regional language models is big, but those with purchasing power still work in English.” And while Western tech companies attract the best minds globally, including many Indian and African scientists, researchers at home often face limited funding, patchy computing infrastructure, and unclear legal frameworks around data and privacy.
“There’s still a lack of sustainable funding, a shortage of specialists, and insufficient integration with educational or public systems,” warns Habib, the Cairo-based professor. “All of this has to change.”
A different vision for AI
Despite the hurdles, what’s emerging is a distinct vision for AI in the Global South – one that favours practical impact over prestige, and community ownership over corporate secrecy.
“There’s more emphasis here on solving real problems for real people,” says Nawale of AI4Bharat. Rather than chasing benchmark scores, researchers are aiming for relevance: tools for farmers, students, and small business owners.
And openness matters. “Some companies claim to be open-source, but they only release the model weights, not the data,” Marivate says. “With InkubaLM, we release both. We want others to build on what we’ve done, to do it better.”
In a global contest often measured in teraflops and tokens, these efforts may seem modest. But for the billions who speak the world’s less-resourced languages, they represent a future in which AI doesn’t just speak to them, but with them."
Sibusiso Biyela, Amr Rageh and Shakoor Rather
20 May 2025
https://www.natureasia.com/en/nmiddleeast/article/10.1038/nmiddleeast.2025.65
#metaglossia_mundus
La traduction représente un «soft power» essentiel pour façonner un discours sécuritaire global inclusif et promouvoir la compréhension interculturelle.
"La traduction s’est imposée comme un levier incontournable pour le renforcement de la sécurité nationale et internationale, ont affirmé les participants à un colloque international organisé mercredi à Rabat, sur le thème «Traduction et sécurité : le rôle de la traduction dans le renforcement de la sécurité nationale et internationale.»
Organisée par l’Organisation du monde islamique pour l’éducation, les sciences et la culture (Icesco), en collaboration avec l’Université arabe Naif des sciences de sécurité en Arabie saoudite, cette rencontre a permis de mettre en exergue le rôle multidimensionnel de la traduction, notamment en termes de transfert rapide et précis d’informations sensibles, dans le cadre de la lutte contre le terrorisme et la criminalité organisée ou encore en matière de gestion des crises sécuritaires urgentes.
S'exprimant à cette occasion, le directeur général de l’Icesco, Dr Salem ben Mohammed Al-Malik, a souligné que la traduction représente aujourd’hui un «soft power» essentiel pour façonner un discours sécuritaire global inclusif et promouvoir la compréhension interculturelle, mettant l’accent sur la nécessité de créer des espaces culturels sûrs, fondés sur la diversité linguistique et les valeurs d'entente mutuelle.
Dr Al-Malik a également mis en garde contre une dépendance excessive à la traduction automatique, qui, malgré ses avantages technologiques, demeure incapable de saisir la complexité des contextes culturels et sécuritaires. Dans ce sens, il a rappelé la création par l’Icesco d’un centre spécialisé de traduction et d’édition, dédié à la production de traductions fidèles, respectueuses des spécificités culturelles et sécuritaires, et à la valorisation de la culture islamique sur la scène mondiale.
De son côté, le contrôleur général et porte-parole de la Direction générale de la Sûreté nationale (DGSN) et de la Direction générale de la surveillance du Territoire (DGST), Boubker Sabik, a fait observer que la traduction constitue un maillon essentiel de la coopération sécuritaire et judiciaire internationale, notamment en matière d’extradition, de mandats d’arrêt ou d’exécution des commissions rogatoires.
Il a expliqué que la traduction exige une extrême précision et des compétences élevées, en raison de la sensibilité des informations échangées, qui peuvent avoir d’importantes implications juridiques, notant qu'une traduction rigoureuse contribue à neutraliser les menaces sécuritaires et à renforcer la stabilité.
Évoquant l’impact des technologies, M. Sabik a souligné que la sécurité et la traduction ont toutes deux bénéficié des avancées numériques, notamment de l’intelligence artificielle, dans le traitement rapide et massif de données et de textes, relevant que cette technologie ne saurait remplacer la supervision humaine, notamment dans des domaines sensibles comme la sécurité et la justice.
Pour sa part, le secrétaire du conseil supérieur de l’Université arabe Naïf pour les sciences de la sécurité, Khalid bin Abdulaziz Al Harfash, a précisé que l’université a lancé «l'initiative de la traduction sécuritaire» dans le cadre de ses stratégies de recherche visant à soutenir les politiques sécuritaires fondées sur les preuves scientifiques.
Cette initiative tient compte de l'insuffisance des références scientifiques disponibles en langue arabe en matière de formation sécuritaire, a fait observer M. Al Harfash, également chargé des relations extérieures à l’université.
Dans ce contexte, l’université veille à traduire d'ouvrages enseignés dans les établissements de formation sécuritaires les plus prestigieux à l’échelle mondiale, dans le cadre de ses efforts soutenus visant l’amélioration des cursus, a-t-il poursuivi.
Au programme de ce colloque figurent plusieurs axes traitant du «Rôle de la traduction face aux questions sécuritaires et le renforcement de la sécurité nationale et internationale», «Le partenariat stratégique entre les institutions sécuritaires, les experts en traduction et les organisations internationales», «Les défis linguistiques et culturels dans la traduction sécuritaire», «La traduction sécuritaire et les défis de l’évolution numérique» ainsi que de «La traduction et la cybersécurité».
À cette occasion, un mémorandum d’entente a été signé entre le centre de traduction et d'édition et l’École supérieure Roi Fahd de traduction, en vue de renforcer la coopération scientifique et la formation mutuelle, et de promouvoir la traduction au niveau régional et international, dans la voie de la promotion de la connaissance et le soutien des compétences dans le domaine de la traduction spécialisée.
LE MATIN | 03 JUILLET 2025 À 16:15
https://lematin.ma/culture/la-traduction-levier-de-la-securite-nationale-et-internationale/289104
#metaglossia_mundus
Créé en 1995, et d'abord connu sous le nom de Prix Amédée Pichot, le Grand Prix de traduction de la Ville d’Arles distingue chaque année la traduction littéraire d’une œuvre de fiction contemporaine. Il honore à la fois sa qualité et les défis qu’elle a relevés. Le jury, composé de traductrices et traducteurs aux côtés d'écrivaines et écrivains, vient de dévoiler la liste des six finalistes de l’édition 2025.
"Qui remportera le Grand Prix de traduction de la Ville d’Arles ?
Créé en 1995, et d'abord connu sous le nom de Prix Amédée Pichot, le Grand Prix de traduction de la Ville d’Arles distingue chaque année la traduction littéraire d’une œuvre de fiction contemporaine. Il honore à la fois sa qualité et les défis qu’elle a relevés. Le jury, composé de traductrices et traducteurs aux côtés d'écrivaines et écrivains, vient de dévoiler la liste des six finalistes de l’édition 2025.
Le 03/07/2025 à 13:02 par Dépêche
Le Grand Prix de traduction de la Ville d’Arles souffle déjà ses 30 bougies. Cette année, la remise du prix se fera le vendredi 7 novembre 2025 à la Chapelle du Méjan, à Arles, à l’occasion des 42es Assises de la traduction littéraire.
Le jury 2025 du Grand Prix de traduction de la Ville d’Arles réunit l’écrivaine et traductrice de l’anglais Jakuta Alikavazovic, l’écrivain et traducteur du russe Yves Gauthier, ainsi qu’Isabelle Kalinowski, spécialiste de la traduction de l’allemand. Emmanuelle Péchenart apporte son expertise du chinois, Delphine Valentin celle de l’espagnol, tandis que Dominique Vitalyos navigue entre anglais, malaisien et indonésien. L’écrivaine Nina Yargekov complète ce jury.
Ensemble, ils ont constitué une liste de 6 ouvrages finalistes, concourant au titre de grand lauréat et à sa récompense de 5000 €. Alors, qui succédera à Monique Baccelli et Antonio Werli, lauréats 2024 pour leur traduction de l’italien de Horcynus Orca, de Stefano d’Arrigo (Le Nouvel Attila, 2023) ?
Voici la sélection 2025 :
Bernard Banoun pour sa traduction de l’allemand (Autriche) de Le champ de Josef Winkler (Verdier, 2024)
Laura Brignon pour sa traduction de l’italien de Les Merveilles de Viola Ardone (Albin Michel, 2024)
Sébastien Cagnoli pour sa traduction du finnois de À la recherche du vivant d’Iida Turpeinen (Autrement, 2024)
Stéphanie Dujols pour sa traduction de l’arabe (Palestine) de Je suis ma liberté de Nasser Abu Srour (Gallimard, 2024)
Laure Hinckel pour sa traduction du roumain de Théodoros de Mircea Cărtărescu (éditions Noir sur Blanc, 2024)
Marily Le Nir pour sa traduction du roumain (Moldavie) de Cette corde qui m’attache à la terre de Lorina Bălteanu (éditions des Syrtes, 2024)
Retrouver la liste des prix littéraires français et francophones
Par Dépêche
Contact : depeche@actualitte.com"
https://actualitte.com/article/124756/prix-litteraires/qui-remportera-le-grand-prix-de-traduction-de-la-ville-d-arles
#metaglossia_mundus
"MONTREAL — Quebec’s language watchdog has changed its tune on whether it’s acceptable to use the word “go” to cheer on sports teams.
In a new guideline posted in its online dictionary, the Office québécois de la langue française says that while “allez” is the preferred term, it’s now “partially legitimized” to use the English word to show encouragement.
The flip-flop comes after the office took a hard line with Montreal’s transit agency, pressing it for months in 2024 to scrub the word “go” from the electronic signs on more than 1,000 city buses.
The watchdog confirmed it had changed its position after The Canadian Press obtained a series of emails through access to information legislation, revealing it gave the transit agency a green light to use “go” in June.
The reversal followed a public outcry on the eve of the Montreal Canadiens’ first playoff home game in April, when the Montreal Gazette reported how the transit agency had replaced “Go! Canadiens Go!” with “Allez! Canadiens Allez!” to stay on the watchdog’s good side.
The revelations prompted French-language Minister Jean-François Roberge to intervene, declaring that the expression “Go Habs Go” is part of Quebec culture, and that any future complaints about the slogan would be dismissed.
That statement verged on political interference and placed the watchdog in a difficult position, according to one expert.
“The office had to respond to a political order,” said Benoît Melançon, emeritus professor of French literature at Université de Montréal. “The minister said, ‘You will accept this,’ so the office had to find a way to accept it.”
The transit agency says it hasn’t decided whether it will put the word “go” back on its bus displays. On Wednesday, a spokesperson said the agency is now “beginning its reflection on the subject.”
In an April statement, Dominique Malack, the president of the language office, agreed that the slogan “Go Habs Go” is anchored in Quebec’s history. Still, she went on to say that the word “go” is an anglicism, and that public bodies have an obligation to use “exemplary” French, which includes using only French words in their signage.
Emails released to The Canadian Press show the transit agency asked the watchdog in May, following the uproar, for authorization to start using “go” again. A month later, on June 6, the language office directed transit officials to its new entry for the word “allez” in its online dictionary of terminology, a reference guide for the proper use of French in Quebec.
The page notes how the anglicism “go” has been used in Quebec since at least the 1980s and is “well-established” in common parlance. “It is considered to be partially legitimized,” the entry says.
When asked by The Canadian Press to comment on the newly released email correspondence, the watchdog confirmed it had updated its position.
“The office now considers that a public body can use the interjection go in a context of encouragement … without this compromising the duty of exemplarity incumbent upon it under the Charter of the French Language,” spokesperson Gilles Payer told The Canadian Press in an email.
Payer confirmed the entry was newly published on May 30. “The media coverage of the case concerning the use of the borrowed word ‘go’ in a sports context led the office to officially assess the acceptability” of the word, he said.
Melançon, the French literature professor, said the new rationale – especially the term “partially legitimized” – suggests the office was uneasy with the change.
“This must have given rise to some pretty intense internal debates,” he said. “‘Do we take into account what the minister is telling us or do we not take it into account? If we don’t take it into account, what are the consequences? If we do, how do we justify changing our minds?’”
At least one transit agency official felt dubious about the original complaint, which related to a bus displaying the words “Go! CF Mtl Go!” in support of Montreal’s professional soccer club. She called the issue a “grey zone” in a June 2024 email to colleagues.
“We’ve been using the word ‘go’ for years without a problem,” she wrote. “Are we going to change everything because of one complaint?”
But by later that month, the agency had decided to scrap the word, which involved manually updating the display on each of more than 1,000 buses over a period of months.
The agency has said no further change will be made before the buses undergo regular maintenance in the fall.
The language office has received at least two other complaints about the word “go” in the last five years, according to a response to a separate access-to-information request.
In 2023, someone complained about the slogan “Go Habs Go” appearing on an outdoor billboard. That complaint was dismissed because the expression is a trademark.
A similar complaint in 2021 targeted the hashtag #GoHabsGo that appears in oversized letters outside the Bell Centre in Montreal, the home arena of the Canadiens.
The person who filed the complaint suggested that to comply with Quebec’s language rules, the expression “Allez les Habitants allez” should appear alongside the English slogan, in larger letters. “And yes, I’m serious, if the law applies, then apply it! :)” the person wrote.
According to the language watchdog, that complaint was resolved following an intervention, though it provided no details. A spokesperson for the hockey team declined to comment."
By Canadian Press
Jul 3, 2025 | 2:05 AM
https://larongenow.com/2025/07/03/quebec-language-watchdog-now-says-its-ok-to-use-go-to-support-sports-teams-2/
#metaglossia_mundus
"RWS continues winning streak with four awards in a year for its neural machine translation solution
MAIDENHEAD, England–(BUSINESS WIRE)–RWS, a content solutions company, powered by technology and human expertise, today announced that its Language Weaver solution has been selected as winner of the ‘Machine Translation Solution of the Year’ award in the 8th annual AI Breakthrough Awards program conducted by AI Breakthrough.
The AI Breakthrough Awards shine a spotlight on the boldest innovators and most impactful technologies leading the charge in AI across a comprehensive set of categories, including generative AI, agentic AI, natural language processing and industry-specific AI applications. This year’s program attracted more than 5,000 nominations from over 20 different countries.
“While many competitors offer fragmented capabilities, Language Weaver delivers a uniquely comprehensive translation experience tailored for global enterprises,” said Steve Johansson, Managing Director, AI Breakthrough. “We’re pleased to award RWS with the 2025 award for ‘Machine Translation Solution of the Year!’”
The latest award follows three other recent industry accolades, including two 2025 AI Excellence Awards and an AI Breakthrough Award in 2024.
Language Weaver is an AI-powered translation solution that seamlessly integrates adaptive neural machine translation (NMT), scalable performance, intuitive usability and enterprise-grade security into a single, end-to-end platform. The solution ensures compliance with data protection regulations and offers robust privacy controls as well as flexible deployment options – whether in the cloud, on-premises, or in hybrid environments.
“This award is a true testament to the incredible dedication and innovation of our Language Weaver team,” said Mark Lawyer, President of Regulated Industries & Linguistic AI at RWS. “Their passion, expertise, and relentless pursuit of excellence have positioned Language Weaver as a leader in AI-powered translation – capable of helping clients to handle high volumes of complex, multilingual content.”
The Language Weaver platform processes up to 500,000 words per minute across 150+ languages and its adaptive AI models continuously learn and refine translations. It incorporates industry-specific glossaries, branded terminology, and real-time feedback for enhanced contextual accuracy.
About RWS
RWS is a content solutions company, powered by technology and human expertise. We grow the value of ideas, data and content by making sure organizations are understood. Everywhere.
Our proprietary technology, 45+ AI patents and human experts help organizations bring ideas to market faster, build deeper relationships across borders and cultures, and enter new markets with confidence – growing their business and connecting them to a world of opportunities.
It’s why over 80 of the world’s top 100 brands trust RWS to drive innovation, inform decisions and shape brand experiences.
With 60+ global locations, across five continents, our teams work with businesses across almost all industries. Innovating since 1958, RWS is headquartered in the UK and publicly listed on AIM, the London Stock Exchange regulated market (RWS.L).
For further information, please visit: rws.com.
About AI Breakthrough
Part of Tech Breakthrough, a leading market intelligence and recognition platform for global technology innovation and leadership, the AI Breakthrough Awards program is devoted to honoring excellence in Artificial Intelligence technologies, services, companies and products. The AI Breakthrough Awards provide public recognition for the achievements of AI companies and products in categories including Generative AI, Machine Learning, AI Platforms, Robotics, Business Intelligence, AI Hardware, Computer Vision and more. For more information visit AIBreakthroughAwards.com.
Tech Breakthrough LLC does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in our recognition programs, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with award designations. Tech Breakthrough LLC recognition consists of the opinions of the Tech Breakthrough LLC organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Tech Breakthrough LLC disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this recognition program, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
Contacts
RWS
Denis Davies
Corporate Communications
ddavies@rws.com
+44 1628 410105
https://siliconcanals.com/language-weaver-takes-grand-prize-for-machine-translation-at-2025-ai-breakthrough-awards/
#metaglossia_mundus
"Can AI Translators Do the Work of Bilingual Staffers?
As demographics change, bilingual public-sector workers can’t always keep up with all the “new” languages spoken by constituents. A Wordly report and client offer an inside view of the changes.
Bilingual staffers shoulder much of the translation burden for local governments, but artificial intelligence is taking on more of that work.
That’s according to a fresh report from Wordly, an AI translation service used by public agencies.
The survey findings from Wordly, combined with experiences from one of its larger clients, paints a useful picture of the state of public-sector translation.
The company found that 66 percent of local governments rely on bilingual staff, while 31 percent use AI tools for translation.
The findings were based on survey responses from 117 local public agencies of various sizes, though almost half of them had populations between 50,000 and 300,000.
San Jose, Calif., is one of the cities that has shifted from in-person interpreters to Wordly’s AI translation tool, a move that, according to the company, has reduced costs and expanded access for people who don’t speak English or don’t speak it well.
The survey also found that local governments tend to improve their translation capabilities mainly to widen access to permitting and other services, to increase civic participation at meetings and other events, and for public safety alerts and communications.
In Washoe County, Nev. — home to Reno — officials use the Wordly AI tech mainly for public meetings, according to Elizabeth Jourdin, an HR manager.
That said, the tool also helps the county onboard new employees who are hard of hearing, train case management professionals who are “monolingual,” provide “language access during marriage ceremonies,” support food safety programs for restaurant owners, and boost customer service at front desk counters in county departments, she told Government Technology via email.
Spanish stands as the county’s primary language need besides English, Jourdin said, though the area’s demographics are changing as the county attracts more people who speak such languages as Korean, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Hindi, Urdu and others.
The county has even bigger plans when it comes to translation. It's working from what she called a “multi-year language access policy which includes enhancing staff support, testing and training to utilize bilingual skillset.”
One thing learned during the effort is that officials should have a broad view of the challenges that come with different languages and translation.
“One of the greatest lessons we learned is that there is not a ‘one-size-fits-all solution’ for our community, or employees,” she said. “The needs of our employees and community occur on a spectrum, and we need to be prepared to offer multiple solutions.”
Thad Rueter
July 02, 2025
https://www.govtech.com/biz/can-ai-translators-do-the-work-of-bilingual-staffers
#metaglossia_mundus
UCLA professor chooses text that an AI platform almost certainly could not translate.
"Michael Berry’s translations make contemporary Chinese fiction accessible to Americans
Peggy McInerny/UCLA
July 2, 2025
UCLA professor Michael Berry has translated 11 Chinese-language works of fiction, three of which were published in early 2025. Among them is “Dead Souls,” the last book in the “Hospital Trilogy” by one of China's most celebrated science fiction writers, Han Song, and two novels by Chinese novelist Fang Fang: “Soft Burial” and “The Running Flame.”
Berry’s most recent translations build on his extensive body of work — scholarly cultural history, translations of Chinese-language novels and books on (and interviews with) Chinese filmmakers — all of which make contemporary Chinese culture more accessible to American audiences.
A professor of contemporary Chinese cultural studies and director of the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies, Berry spent five years translating Han’s trilogy, with a Guggenheim Fellowship supporting his work on “Dead Souls,” which was published in January. The two newest Fang Fang translations were published in March, in part supported by a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship.
In a recent op-ed on artificial intelligence in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Berry said the three Han novels were one of the more difficult projects he had ever undertaken, in part because he chose material that could not be translated by an AI translation platform.
Read more about Berry’s most recent translations and their contemporary significance on the UCLA International Institute’s website."
https://newsroom.ucla.edu/dept/faculty/michael-berry-translations-contemporary-chinese-fiction-accessible-to-americans
"Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation announces languages for 12th edition
03/07/2025
The Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding has announced the languages for its upcoming 12th edition in 2026, months ahead of the nomination and application period, which is scheduled to take place from January 1 to March 31, 2026, via the award’s official website: www.hta.qa.
In a statement on Wednesday, the award explained that the early announcement of the upcoming edition’s languages comes in response to repeated requests from translators and publishers, contributing to the enhancement of the quality of nominated works and promoting competitiveness and excellence.
The Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding has selected the languages for the 2026 edition in the Single Book Category, choosing English and Chinese among the most widely spoken languages globally.
Chinese returns to the award after being featured in two previous editions, reaffirming the deep Arab-Chinese cultural ties and the growing momentum in translation between the two languages. The total prize amount in this category is $200,000, distributed among the top three winners in each translation direction: from Arabic and into Arabic.
In the Achievement Category, which honours distinguished career paths and cumulative efforts in the field of translation, whether by individuals or institutions, five languages have been selected: Italian, Azerbaijani, Fula (Fulani), in addition to English and Chinese. One prize of $100,000 will be awarded for each language.
The statement clarified that the selection of the award’s languages each year is based on in-depth field studies conducted by a committee of experts and specialists in translation and comparative studies. The selection is guided by precise criteria that take into account the volume of knowledge and translation exchange with the Arabic language, geographical reach, and cultural diversity, reflecting the award’s philosophy of promoting intercultural dialogue and expanding the circles of understanding between cultures.
The Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding is one of the world’s leading independent prizes in the field of translation."
https://www.qatar-tribune.com/article/183879/nation/sheikh-hamad-award-for-translation-announces-languages-for-12th-edition
#metaglossia_mundus
La plateforme de streaming dédiée aux anime cède à la tentation de l'intelligence artificielle et suscite la colère des abonnés.
"Par Arthur Nicolle le 3 juillet 2025 à 9h02
La plateforme de streaming dédiée aux anime cède à la tentation de l’intelligence artificielle et suscite la colère des abonnés.
Il n’aura pas fallu attendre longtemps avant que Crunchyroll ne revienne sur ses promesses concernant l’utilisation de l’intelligence artificielle. En avril dernier, le président de l’entreprise Rahul Purini déclarait dans une interview confiée à Forbes que la plateforme de streaming “n’envisage pas d’utiliser l’IA dans le processus créatif, y compris pour les performances vocales“. Mais si le doublage reste pour l’heure épargné, voilà que la traduction des sous-titres se retrouve déjà affectée par la démocratisation de l’intelligence artificielle. Ce mardi 1er juillet, une nouveauté du nom de Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show a fait son apparition dans le catalogue du service et celle-ci s’accompagne d’anomalies qui ne sont pas passées inaperçues.
Les abonnés allemands ayant fait le choix de regarder la série en version originale sous-titrée ont eu la mauvaise surprise de découvrir une coquille pour le moins choquante. À 19min et 12 secondes du premier épisode de l’anime, le dialogue localisé est malencontreusement précédé de “ChatGPT said”, une erreur fatale qui confirme l’utilisation de l’intelligence artificielle pour la traduction des sous-titres.
Crunchyroll has just been caught using ChatGPT for their translations 💀 pic.twitter.com/K93sAbOmMY
— d0nut2x (@d0nut2x) July 1, 2025
Un phénomène généralisé pour cet anime
Cet oubli dans les sous-titres en version allemande a motivé d’autres spectateurs à analyser les traductions dans leurs langues natales et le constat est sans appel. Pas une seule localisation ne semble avoir été épargnée par l’intelligence artificielle. Un rapide coup d’œil sur les dialogues traduits en français suffit à se rendre compte de la catastrophe linguistique que nous impose Crunchyroll. Laisser passer des coquilles telles que “Dites fromages !” – soit la traduction littérale de “Say Cheese” – en lieu et place de “Oustiti” ou “Souriez” lorsque que les personnages prennent une photo est véritablement inadmissible.
Ça va @Crunchyroll_fr on vous dérange pas trop avec votre traduction bien merdique faite par IA ? https://t.co/K5xWZvrtGH pic.twitter.com/el24tB2mlX
— Yoka (@Yokanime) July 1, 2025
Seulement, si les soucis dont souffre cet anime sont très flagrants, combien de séries ont vu leurs sous-titres traduits de la sorte sans que l’on s’en rende compte ? Cette pratique contredit les précédentes promesses de Crunchyroll et apparaît comme un véritable manque de respect, aussi bien pour les professionnels de la traduction dont le travail a été remplacé, que pour les abonnés qui payent afin d’obtenir un service de qualité et non pas ce genre de magouilles. À l’heure où nous écrivons ces lignes, Crunchyroll n’a pas encore publié de réponse officielle à ce scandale qui fait rage sur les réseaux sociaux. Il faudra désormais être à l’affût lors des visionnages en VOSTFR sur la plateforme afin de pouvoir repérer et dénoncer d’autres anomalies du genre. Avez-vous déjà remarqué des sous-titres qui vous ont paru étrangement incorrects ?"
https://www.journaldugeek.com/2025/07/03/scandale-chez-crunchyroll-les-sous-titres-traduits-par-ia-font-leur-entree/
#metaglossia_mundus
"By Molly Reinmann, CNN
(CNN) — A federal judge grappled for over an hour on Wednesday with an effort to force the Trump administration to provide American Sign Language interpreters at White House press briefings.
The case, brought by the National Association of the Deaf, alleges that, in failing to provide sufficient ASL interpretation, the White House is violating deaf Americans’ rights under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 from accessing “critical information in real time.”
US District Judge Amir Ali, one of former President Joe Biden’s final appointees, did not immediately issue a ruling, but he appeared sympathetic to the group’s arguments.
Without live ASL interpretations readily available at White House briefings, NAD attorney Ian Hoffman argued, deaf Americans are “deprived of their ability to participate in the democratic process.”
The Biden administration had staffed all of its press briefings with qualified ASL interpreters, but that policy was discontinued by the Trump White House earlier this year.
In court on Wednesday, the Justice Department argued that the current accessibility services offered by the administration — including live closed captions and written transcripts – are sufficient in providing the deaf community with “meaningful access” to White House information.
In briefings, the NAD had pushed back on this argument, asserting that ASL and English are distinct languages and that closed captioning is “especially inaccessible to the many thousands of deaf persons fluent only in ASL.”
Ali pressed Hedges about the utility of written transcriptions.
“How does it help to point to things that may not be adequate?” he said, asking why DOJ hadn’t presented evidence to show that written means were sufficiently able to inform the deaf community.
Hodges responded that the burden was on the plaintiffs to show that more thorough ASL translations were necessary and repeated her previous claim that the type of services provided should be at the discretion of the White House.
The National Association for the Deaf also took aim at the first Trump administration in 2020 for its failure to provide ASL interpretation during important Covid-19 briefings.
In that suit, a federal judge ordered the White House to provide in-frame videos of ASL interpreters during televised press events. In his ruling, US District Judge James Boasberg specifically clarified that written means such as transcripts and closed captions — the methods emphasized by the DOJ — “may constitute a reasonable accommodation under some circumstances, but not here.”
After Boasberg’s order, the first Trump White House began providing ASL interpreters for all pandemic-related press events. When Biden took office in 2021, his administration expanded accessibility programs and began staffing all press briefings with ASL interpreters. But on the first day of his second administration, Trump halted the use of all ASL interpreters at White House briefings, prompting the lawsuit filed in May.
The courtroom on Wednesday was flooded with members of the deaf community showing their support for the plaintiffs. ASL interpreters provided live translations throughout the duration of the nearly 90-minute hearing.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
https://localnews8.com/news/2025/07/02/judge-weighs-push-to-require-asl-interpreters-at-white-house-briefings/
#metaglossia_mundus
AWA, l’IA qui parle votre langue : quand la tech donne une voix aux oubliés du numérique
"...Dans un monde où l’intelligence artificielle redéfinit les usages, Alioune Badara Mbengue, jeune entrepreneur et fondateur de la startup Andakia, a choisi de relever un défi audacieux : faire parler les machines dans les langues africaines. En donnant naissance à AWA, une interface vocale intelligente capable de comprendre et de répondre en wolof – et bientôt en pulaar et haoussa –, il ne crée pas seulement une technologie innovante, il initie une révolution culturelle et sociale...
Quelle a été la motivation derrière le projet AWA ?
En 2015, nous avons conçu Mbal-it, une poubelle intelligente s’exprimant en langues nationales pour sensibiliser au tri sélectif. Cette expérience nous a révélé le fossé technologique concernant les interfaces vocales en langues africaines...
Quels sont les défis que vous avez rencontrés au niveau technique et linguistique ?
AWA, c’est un écosystème de plusieurs modules : reconnaissance vocale, LLM, voix de synthèse, etc. Chacun a ses propres défis. Par exemple, les données audio annotées disponibles en wolof sur internet ne dépassent même pas 100h au départ, alors qu’il en faut des milliers, par exemple Whisper, le système de reconnaissance vocale développé par OpenAI, a été entraîné sur un ensemble de données massif de 680 000 heures d’audio multilingue et multi tâche collecté sur le web. Il a donc fallu collecter, nettoyer et annoter des centaines d’heures supplémentaires. Pour le LLM, on a dû construire un corpus textuel solide, et pour la synthèse vocale, enregistrer plusieurs centaines d’heures de qualité en studio.
Au-delà des données, la langue elle-même pose des défis : différence entre wolof parlé et écrit, mots wolofisés, absence de norme claire… On travaille avec des linguistes, et même aujourd’hui certaines formulations font débat. Enfin, il y a la question de la puissance de calcul et de l’ingénierie nécessaire pour faire tourner tous ces modules ensemble...
Concrètement, quels sont les cas d’usage d’AWA et ses bénéfices pour les populations ?
AWA se positionne comme une interface vocale entre les populations non lettrées et la technologie. Ce que l’IA ou le numérique offrent aujourd’hui à ceux qui maîtrisent le français, l’anglais ou le digital, AWA peut le rendre accessible à ceux qui ne savent ni lire ni écrire dans ces langues...
Mais l’enjeu dépasse les services ponctuels : imaginons que l’État digitalise l’accès aux services administratifs (extrait de naissance, demande de papiers, etc.). Sans interface inclusive, des millions de citoyens resteraient exclus car incapables d’utiliser un formulaire en ligne. AWA lève cette barrière...
Notre objectif est clair : couvrir un maximum de locuteurs en Afrique pour que l’IA ne soit pas un privilège réservé aux élites francophones ou anglophones, mais un outil accessible à tous..."
01/07/2025
https://www.socialnetlink.org/2025/07/01/awa-lia-qui-parle-votre-langue-quand-la-tech-donne-une-voix-aux-oublies-du-numerique/
#metaglossia_mundus
In this paper, a multimodal dataset was collected between July 2023 and April 2024 through purposive sampling from a field survey of proper households (households with at least one parent and one child) in South-South Geopolitical Zone of Nigeria. The dataset includes 543 validated responses captured in real-time using an online survey developed with Google Forms. The survey instrument synthesised attributes derived from the United Nations, Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) 2003 Language Vitality and Endangerment (LVE) framework, to capture household-specific data from five households per Local Government Area (LGA). The dataset also includes audio recordings of 108 words selected from the Swadesh wordlist and a transcription of the gloss, and tone patterns of each word, for proper description of the language’s speech system. The multimodal dataset can support the analysis of LVE patterns, linguistic trends, and complex interactions affecting language sustainability. It is reusable in linguistic, cultural and social science research, providing a robust resource for examining language diversity and preservation.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-025-05337-6
#metaglossia_mundus
Learn how to effectively communicate with and accommodate deaf employees by fostering collaboration and cultural sensitivity and adapting to individual needs.
"Challenge Your Assumptions About Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Workers
July 1, 2025 | Allen Smith, J.D.
Sometimes, uncomfortable questions can be enlightening. Jay Burkey, SHRM-CP, vice president of human resources at CareerSource Hillsborough Pinellas in Dunedin, Fla., who is deaf, challenged attendees at SHRM25 to reconsider their views of deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals.
“When you meet a deaf person, what assumptions do you have?” Burkey asked at a SHRM25 session in San Diego.
One attendee said they’d expect the person to be honest and direct, because that’s common in Deaf culture.
“That’s a great point,” Burkey said, “speaking from my own experience. I don’t speak for the Deaf community.”
Another attendee said they’d assume the person might struggle to have a conversation with “people like me.”
“What if they don’t sign, what do you assume?” Burkey asked.
If someone doesn’t sign and instead speaks aloud, people might think the person isn’t deaf, a conference attendee said. The last two assumptions may be incorrect. For Burkey, deafness came after learning how to talk.
“There are a lot of strange assumptions,” Burkey said, such as, after learning someone is deaf, others asking, “Can you drive?” or “Can you work?”
Other common misconceptions are about a deaf person’s education, Burkey noted. Burkey challenged attendees not to use terms that might offend, including “hearing impaired.” Call someone deaf or hard of hearing instead, Burkey recommended.
Forcing someone who is deaf to use their voice risks exhausting them, Burkey added. “I can’t hear while I speak” and it’s consequently tiring to speak, he explained.
Communication Tips
When communicating with someone who is deaf or hard of hearing, ask the person about their communication preferences, then try to communicate using their preferred method, said Julie DeLuca, SHRM-SCP, recruitment manager for Screen Actors Guild — American Federation of Television and Radio Artists in Clearwater, Fla.
Those methods might include:
Pen and paper.
Instant messaging.
Speech-to-text apps.
Sign language.
Text messages.
Emails.
Speech reading.
Toolkit: BEAM Framework for Inclusion
Meeting and Interpreter Etiquette
DeLuca also provided meeting etiquette tips, including:
Provide an agenda.
Have a note taker.
If using an interpreter, give the interpreter time to catch up.
Always say who is speaking.
Only one person should talk at a time.
Don’t schedule unnecessary meetings.
Keep meetings as short as possible.
Interpreter etiquette includes:
Speaking directly to the deaf or hard of hearing person, not the interpreter.
Allowing the interpreter and deaf client to decide the best place to sit or stand in the room.
Using the interpreter to engage the deaf person.
Not asking the interpreter for their own opinions or to explain what the deaf person means.
EEOC Guidance
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) guidance issued Jan. 24, 2023, explained what types of reasonable accommodations applicants or employees with hearing disabilities may need.
Some examples the EEOC gave of reasonable accommodations for employees with hearing disabilities, other than sign language interpreters, are:
Assistive technology.
Assistive listening devices.
Note-taking assistance for those using Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) services or sign language interpretation.
Work area adjustments (for example, a desk away from a noisy area or near an emergency alarm with strobe lighting).
Time off in the form of accrued paid leave or unpaid leave if paid leave has been exhausted or is unavailable.
Adjustments to an employee’s nonessential job functions.
Reassignment to a vacant position.
In addition, live captioning through artificial intelligence may offer reasonable accommodation options for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Burkey said that with real-time AI interpreters, “some of the software is OK.” But Burkey added that it’s not perfect and declined to recommend any particular software. “Try it out and see how it is.”
Takeaways for HR Professionals
In summary, DeLuca encouraged HR:
Not to make assumptions.
Not to share medical information.
Not to be unwilling to accommodate.
She added that HR should:
Ask deaf or hard-of-hearing individuals what a good accommodation might be.
Use the individuals’ communication preferences.
Be flexible and open about accommodations.
It can be a challenge for hearing people to consider what it would be like if everything is visual, she said.
Other takeaways include cultural sensitivity, collaboration, and feedback and continuous improvement, DeLuca said."
https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/challenge-assumptions-about-deaf-hard-of-hearing-workers
#metaglossia_mundus
"Le Prix Cheikh Hamad pour la traduction et la compréhension internationale dévoile les langues de sa 12ᵉ édition (2026)
Divers 02 Jul 2025 9:40 PM
Doha, le 2 juillet /QNA/ Le Prix Cheikh Hamad pour la traduction et la compréhension internationale a annoncé les langues retenues pour sa 12e édition, prévue en 2026, plusieurs mois avant l'ouverture des candidatures et nominations, fixée du 1er janvier au 31 mars 2026 via le site officiel du prix : www.hta.qa.
Selon le communiqué publié ce mardi, cette annonce anticipée répond à une demande récurrente des traducteurs et éditeurs. Elle vise à améliorer la qualité des œuvres présentées tout en renforçant le niveau d'excellence et de compétitivité.
Catégorie "Ouvrages individuels"
Pour cette catégorie, le Prix a sélectionné l'anglais et le chinois parmi les langues les plus parlées au monde. Le retour du chinois, après deux participations précédentes, met en lumière :
· La profondeur des relations culturelles arabo-chinoises
· Le dynamisme croissant des échanges traductionnels entre ces langues
La dotation pour cette catégorie s'élève à 200 000 USD, répartis entre les trois premiers lauréats pour chaque direction de traduction (de l'arabe et vers l'arabe).
Catégorie "Accomplissement"
Cette section récompense les parcours professionnels exceptionnels et les contributions majeures dans le domaine de la traduction, qu'elles émanent de personnes ou d'institutions. Cinq langues ont été choisies :
1. Italien
2. Azéri
3. Peul (fulani)
4. Anglais
5. Chinois
Chaque langue de cette catégorie bénéficie d'une récompense unique de 100 000 USD.
Appel à participation
Le Prix encourage toutes les personnes et institutions intéressées par la traduction à :
· Consulter régulièrement son site web officiel
· Suivre ses comptes sur les réseaux sociaux
· Préparer dès à présent leur participation à l'édition 2026
Cette prochaine édition devrait attirer des candidatures de haut niveau venues du monde entier, confirmant le rayonnement international croissant de ce prestigieux prix."
https://qna.org.qa/fr-FR/news/news-details?id=le-prix-cheikh-hamad-pour-la-traduction-et-la-comprehension-internationale-devoile-les-langues-de-sa-12-edition-2026&date=2/07/2025
"Gilles Philippe et Julien Piat (dir), La Langue littéraire : une histoire de la prose en France de Gustave Flaubert à Claude Simon, Paris, Fayard, 2009. EAN : 9782213631158.
Alors que la sociologie littéraire sous ses différentes formes privilégie généralement le texte et le contexte, soit d’un côté les discours de l’œuvre et de l’autre les réalités sociales corrélées à ces discours, il m’a semblé important, voire indispensable, suite à ma lecture des livres de Renée Balibar1, d’intégrer les styles littéraires à ce type d’exploration. Attentive aux ouvrages des linguistes et stylisticiens, qui décrivant et analysant les évolutions de la langue fournissent des outils pour penser les faits de style comme réalités sociales et politiques, j’ai beaucoup compulsé, par exemple, le premier volume de L’histoire de la langue française de Gérald Antoine et Robert Martin2, qui couvre la période 1880-1914, comporte des chapitres sur le français enseigné à l’école ou le français populaire, et dont la troisième partie est consacrée aux « Aspects de la langue littéraire ».
Mais un livre a constitué pour moi un apport fondamental. Il s’agit du livre La langue littéraire. Une histoire de la prose en France de Gustave Flaubert à Claude Simon paru en 2009 chez Fayard, dirigé par Gilles Philippe et Julien Piat3. Les comptes rendus ont souligné l’extrême unité de l’ouvrage. C’est que ce travail collectif de grande ampleur est en fait pris en charge par un petit nombre d’auteurs. Ils sont six en tout à se partager l’écriture des 13 chapitres et de l’introduction. Aux maîtres d’œuvre, Piat et Philippe, se sont joints Christelle Reggiani, Michel Murat, Stéphanie Smadja et Stéphane Chaudier. Les huit premiers chapitres consistent en une enquête transversale qui s’attache à repérer et à décrire des phénomènes collectifs. Ce sont les traits saillants, les modes, les routines et les innovations qui caractérisent la langue littéraire tout en l’instituant de la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle à la seconde moitié du XXe. Sont mis en lumière ici, entre autres, le rapport à l’oralité, l’avènement de la phrase ou, faisant écho au sous-titre de l’ouvrage, l’invention de la prose elle-même. Les chapitres ix à xiii par lesquels l’ouvrage se termine proposent des études de cas et sont organisés autour de noms d’auteurs : Zola, Péguy, Proust, Sartre et Barthes qui emblématisent chacun à la fois un état et un usage de la langue littéraire un rapport à un moment donné.
3Outre la clarté de son architecture, l’ouvrage possède un certain nombre de qualités remarquables qu’on va essayer d’évoquer brièvement ci-dessous.
Le concept de langue littéraire est problématisé. À preuve, l’introduction de Gilles Philippe, « Une langue littéraire ? », se présente avec un point d’interrogation. La possibilité de construire un tel concept est examinée. C’est de cette interrogation que résulte l’élaboration du concept de langue littéraire. À terme, ce concept fonctionne ; il permet d’éclairer certains aspects de la réalité, à savoir, des faits de langues qui apparaissent en littérature.
Une langue littéraire se constitue comme autre de la langue commune. Ce postulat implique qu’une langue commune se constitue, à distance de la langue littéraire. On voit que ce qui s’inscrit dans ce double écart, c’est le processus d’autonomisation de la littérature, saisie dans sa dimension linguistique. La période recouverte par l’ouvrage coïncide de fait peu ou prou avec celle que Bourdieu et son école assignent à l’autonomisation institutionnelle du champ littéraire. Dans le dernier article de l’ouvrage (« Roland Barthes et la langue littéraire vers 1960 »), Julien Piat constate que, à la suite du « tournant énonciatif » négocié par la littérature à partir des années 80, la différence entre langue ordinaire et langue littéraire s’est réduite, est devenue floue et fluctuante, quand elle n’a pas purement et simplement disparu. Le mythe d’une spécificité de la langue littéraire n’exerce plus aujourd’hui sa fonction régulatrice sur les auteurs, les lecteurs, la critique. L’ouvrage ouvre in fine des pistes pour comprendre la réorganisation actuelle du paysage littéraire en formulant l’hypothèse que notre époque est marquée par une sortie de l’autonomie et par la réassignation de la langue littéraire à des contraintes hétéronomes.
L’historicisation des phénomènes de style fait partie intégrante du projet. On assiste donc à un effort de périodisation visant à désigner les épisodes et les étapes qui scandent cette séquence. La période elle-même est inaugurée par une rupture. La langue littéraire s’édifie sur la mort de la rhétorique. On sort des belles-lettres pour entrer dans la littérature. On passe du discours au texte, de la période à la phrase, du latin au français, de l’éloquence à l’écriture, du modèle de la communication à celui de la représentation4. À l’intérieur de ce cadre général sont instaurés des « moments » et des « tournants » : un moment grammatical, un moment linguistique, un moment énonciatif, un tournant autobiographique. On pourrait aussi, suivant Julien Piat et Stéphanie Smadja, parler d’un moment syntaxique et d’un moment déverbal. Les bornes chronologiques ne sont au demeurant pas rigides. Ces moments se succèdent mais ils se superposent également par certains endroits. Le moment grammatical, qui avait déjà fait l’objet d’un livre de Gilles Philippe5, et s’étend de 1850 à 1950 environ, s’entrecroise nécessairement avec le moment énonciatif, puisque c’est dès la fin du XIXe siècle, avec Zola, Flaubert et les réglages du style indirect libre, que la littérature devient, selon l’expression de Christelle Reggiani, un « laboratoire de voix ». Si, à la fin du XXe siècle, la littérature bascule en dehors du paradigme de la langue littéraire et revient au modèle de la littérature-discours, c’est parce que les enjeux énonciatifs ont eux-mêmes été absorbés dans un « tournant autobiographique ». Par ailleurs, la frontière chronologique n’est pas étanche. Des pratiques liées à l’âge de la rhétorique font retour dans la langue littéraire où elles sont soumises à de nouveaux enjeux. Tel est le cas de l’éloquence. Tel est le cas du classicisme dont Stéphane Chaudier étudie la réutilisation dans la prose moderne6, en notant que ces réemplois sont souvent des déformations de l’original et qu’ils obéissent à des visées contradictoires puisqu’ils sont associés aussi bien à la simplicité qu’à la complexité et que, selon les auteurs, la langue classique fantasmée nourrit des postures de droite et de gauche, des prétentions à l’aristocratie et des propensions à la démocratie.
Les événements qui surviennent dans la langue littéraire sont contextualisés. Ils sont, par exemple, référés aux évolutions du système scolaire et à l’enseignement de la langue. Michel Murat montre ainsi (Chap. vi)7 comment la disparition de l’enseignement de la rhétorique entraîne une séparation de la littérature et de la critique. L’émergence d’une fonction critique indépendante a pour corolaire la naissance d’une « prose d’idées » qui dans un premier temps évolue au sein de la langue littéraire avant d’être aspirée par les sciences humaines puis par la sphère médiatique.
La scène philosophique est l’autre horizon de référence de la langue littéraire historicisée. Aux découvertes du phénoménisme, de la phénoménologie, de la psychologie et de la psychanalyse correspondent différentes adaptations formelles de la langue littéraire. À travers des exercices d’oralisation et de vocalisation auxquels se livrent Les Goncourt, Zola, Céline, Aragon ou Sarraute, à travers les expérimentations syntaxiques et l’usage inédit de la ponctuation mises en œuvre de Proust à Claude Simon, s’élaborent les modalités stylistiques de l’écriture de la conscience 8. La langue littéraire s’efforce de traduire les réalités psychiques que Freud, Bergson, Sartre ou Husserl sont en train de conceptualiser : mouvements d’une conscience percevante, travail de la mémoire, méandres d’une « pensée en acte9 », variations du point de vue.
Le concept de langue littéraire permet d’englober à la fois les styles d’auteur et les styles d’époque, montrant comment ils se croisent et se contraignent mutuellement et réciproquement. Chaque auteur fait un usage particulier des consignes stylistiques de l’époque. Ainsi le « triomphe du nom10 » au détriment du verbe, tendance stylistique et même linguistique qui s’impose dès la fin du XIXe siècle, et conduit à écrire « la propreté des vitres11 » plutôt que « les vitres sont propres », produit des effets antithétiques selon les écrivains. Marqueur de préciosité chez les prosateurs symbolistes, il est à l’inverse un marqueur de simplicité chez Charles- Ferdinand Ramuz.
La langue littéraire est l’usage que la littérature fait de la langue dans un intervalle situé entre deux emprises : l’emprise de la rhétorique en amont, et l’emprise de l’énonciation en aval. L’établissement d’une langue littéraire coïncide avec le processus d’autonomisation de la littérature. C’est ce processus d’autonomisation langagière qu’examinent Philippe, Piat et leurs collaborateurs. Leur livre élabore à cet effet une stylistique historicisée et contextualisée où styles d’auteur et styles collectifs se rencontrent.
4L’ouvrage donne des clés pour penser en termes politiques et sociologiques la sortie de l’Ancien régime littéraire et l’institution d’un ordre nouveau. Toutefois dans cet ensemble je voudrais invoquer deux textes en particulier. Il s’agit de l’introduction et du premier chapitre, tous deux rédigés par Gilles Philippe et traitant, l’un de l’avènement de la langue littéraire, et l’autre des rapports de la langue littéraire et de la langue parlée. Ma propre réflexion sur la démocratisation des styles littéraires a reçu de ces textes une nouvelle et précieuse inspiration qui a guidé la rédaction de certains chapitres de Proses du monde12 et influencé la conception du Peuple à l’écrit13.
5Tout d’abord, l’introduction de Philippe m’a permis de mieux comprendre comment l’autonomisation de la langue littéraire malgré ses effets de distinction, était en fait un processus de démocratisation.
6La sortie de la langue commune est la conséquence paradoxale de la rencontre entre littérature et démocratie. En quoi une sortie du commun peut-elle être synonyme d’un événement démocratique ?
7Il faut s’entendre sur le sens la langue commune. La langue commune est une fiction. Elle n’est parlée par personne. Ce n’est ni la langue du peuple ni la langue du plus grand nombre. C’est un idéal de communauté linguistique institué après la Révolution française.
8Que se passe-t-il exactement autour du changement de régime communicationnel par la révolution française ?
9Alors que l’Ancien Régime régissant les arts du langage postulait une concordance entre hiérarchie des styles (bas, moyen, sublime), hiérarchie des genres (roman, drame, tragédie) et hiérarchie sociale (peuple, bourgeoisie, noblesse), le nouveau régime proclame l’égale dignité de tous les sujets et de toutes les manières de dire, ouvrant la voie non seulement à la fiction mais aussi à la diction démocratique.
10Jacques Rancière dans Politique de la littérature rappelle qu’Aristote avait donné le primat à la définition mimétique de l’art littéraire : la diction était soumise à la fiction, les manières de dire étaient déterminées par les choses à dire. Sortie de l’ère mimétique, la littérature est privée de cette régulation ; elle devient « un régime nouveau d’identification de l’art d’écrire.14 ». L’effet le plus troublant de cette bascule démocratique est de conduire à « l’absolutisation du style »15. Entre le style absolutisé de Rancière et la langue littéraire autonormée de Philippe existe une évidente ressemblance. Révélateur de ces affinités est le rôle attribué à Flaubert. Pour Philippe, l’auteur de Mme Bovary est l’inventeur de la prose moderne. Pour Rancière, Flaubert, lorsqu’il affirme que le style est « à lui tout seul une manière absolue de voir les choses », exemplifie la connivence entre démocratisation des lettres et absolutisation du style. Ce que Sartre a dénoncé comme une « pétrification du langage » chez Flaubert était, pour ses contemporains « la marque de fabrique de la démocratie », puisque « Flaubert rendait tous les mots égaux de la même façon qu’il supprimait toute hiérarchie entre sujets nobles et sujets vils, entre narration et description, premier plan et arrière-plan, et finalement entre hommes et choses. »16 Et c’est précisément une telle « pétrification de l’écriture » qui « accomplit la logique démocratique de l’écriture sans maître ni destination, la grande loi de l’égalité de tous les sujets et de la disponibilité de toutes les expressions, qui marque la complicité du style absolutisé avec la capacité de n’importe qui de s’emparer de n’importe quels mots, phrases ou histoires. »17 Rancière pensait en termes politiques une réalité qu’il appréhendait avant tout à travers des catégories esthétiques. En revenant à la langue, Philippe permet de penser les enjeux politiques d’une mutation stylistique.
11La langue littéraire est appelée, pour récupérer sa spécificité, à s’instituer en autre de la langue commune, à se tenir à distance de la norme haute et de la norme basse de la langue nationale. Gilles Philippe a mis en évidence cette nouvelle distribution des rôles. Il montre par ailleurs que, jusqu’au milieu du XXe siècle, la perception classique de la langue littéraire va se maintenir et se superposer — avec des effets tantôt cumulatifs, tantôt contradictoires — à la conception « moderne »18. Sous l’impulsion notamment de l’école, la littérature enseignée continuera à incarner la « norme haute » de la langue nationale, tandis que sous la pression des écrivains, des linguistes et des grammairiens, la littérature vivante va tendre à s’affranchir de l’usage standard. En même temps qu’elle cesse d’être dominée par un principe hiérarchique, la langue littéraire cesse donc de s’identifier unilatéralement à la norme haute de la langue nationale, sans pour autant s’aligner sur l’usage courant.
12En second lieu, Philippe a apporté une la clarification décisive à la problématique de l’oralisation de la langue littéraire. Depuis le début de mes recherches, la mimésis de la langue orale est pour moi synonyme de la démocratisation de l’expression littéraire, pressée de s’ouvrir à la parole du peuple. Mais, comme le remarque Gilles Philippe, « la question de l’oralité se dédouble : il faudrait au moins séparer, d’une part, la volonté de rendre compte, dans le texte littéraire, de la diversité des parlures et sociolectes attestés et, d’autre part, la revendication d’un idiome écrit qui retrouve l’expressivité et la vigueur de la parole prononcée19 ». Il convient donc de distinguer deux oralisations ; la première tend vers la vocalisation, cherche à restituer la parole vive du locuteur dans le système de l’écrit ; la seconde, à visée sociologique, a pour objectif d’assurer la présence de l’oral populaire dans le texte littéraire. Les Goncourt et Flaubert illustrent la première formule, Zola la seconde, et Vallès, une fusion des deux. La science politique (Rosanvallon) nous a appris à déceler les multiples sens du mot peuple en démocratie. Dans son acception politique, il désigne un principe de souveraineté. Dans son acception sociale, il renvoie à deux réalités distinctes et presque opposées : l’ensemble du corps social d’une part, composant une collection d’individus juridiquement égaux ; et d’autre part, la fraction dominée de cette totalité composée par les classes populaires. Laissons de côté le demos souverain, qui pour moi, comme je l’ai développé dans Le Roman de la démocratie, se profile sous la voix du narrateur abstrait dans le roman hétérodiégétique. Cette réserve étant faite on peut se demander si les deux oralisations ne coïncident pas avec les deux interprétations sociales du demos, la vocalisation représentant la société des locuteurs pris dans le flux des échanges ordinaires, et l’oralité populaire donnant voix à la fraction dominée de cette communauté linguistique. Aragon est passé expert dans l’art d’entremêler les différents exercices d’oralité. « Victor en avait marre des chevaux20 ».
13L’ouverture de la langue littéraire à l’oralité ne la rapproche pas de la langue commune, car la langue commune n’est pas la langue réelle mais une fiction de norme linguistique unifiée. Les exercices d’oralité auxquels se livrent les écrivains font éclater cette fiction linguistique. Ils lui opposent une autre fiction, la fiction d’une langue accueillant et entrecroisant une vaste gamme de pratiques et de codes linguistiques. Langue littéraire est une autre fiction qui s’éloigne de la première en mettant à nu la disparate des pratiques.
NOTES
1 Renée Balibar, Les Français fictifs, Paris, Hachette, 1974 ; Renée Balibar et Dominique Laporte, Le Français national, Paris, Hachette, 1974.
2 Gérald Antoine et Robert Martin Histoire de la langue française. 1880-1914, Paris, CNRS éditions, 1999.
3 Gilles Philippe et Julien Piat, La Langue littéraire : une histoire de la prose en France de Gustave Flaubert à Claude Simon, Paris, Fayard, 2009.
4 Gilles Philippe, op.cit, p. 5 ; Christelle Reggiani, Ibid., p. 122.
5 Gilles Philippe, Sujet, verbe, complément : le moment grammatical de la littérature française. 1890-1940, Paris, Gallimard, 2002.
6 Stéphane Chaudier, « La référence classique dans la prose narrative », dans Gilles Philippe et Julien Piat, La Langue littéraire…, op. cit, p. 281-321.
7 Michel Murat, « Phrase lyrique, prose d’idées », Ibid., p. 235-279.
8 Gilles Philippe, « La langue littéraire, le phénomène et la pensée », Ibid, p. 91-119.
9 Julien Piat, Ibid., p. 227.
10 Julien Piat et Stéphanie Smadja, « Le triomphe du nom et le recul du verbe », dans Ibid., p. 155-177.
11 Ibid., p. 159.
12 Nelly Wolf, Proses du monde. Les enjeux sociaux des styles littéraires, Villeneuve d’Ascq, Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 2014
13 Nelly Wolf, Le Peuple à l’écrit. De Flaubert à Virginie Despentes, Saint-Denis, Presses universitaires de Vincennes, 2019.
14 Jacques Rancière, Politique de la littérature, Paris, Galilée, 2007, p. 19.
15 Ibid. p. 15.
16 Ibid., p. 16.
17 Ibid, p. 30.
18 Gilles Philippe, « Une langue littéraire ? », Ibid., p. 7-56.
19 Gilles Philippe, « Langue littéraire et langue parlée », Ibid., p. 57.
20 Aragon, Les Cloches de Bâle dans Œuvres romanesques complètes, Paris, Gallimard, « Bibliothèque de la Pléiade », 1997, t. I, p. 898.
AUTEUR
NELLY WOLF
Voir ses autres contributions
nelly.wolf14@gmail.com
POUR CITER CET ARTICLE
Nelly Wolf, « La langue de la littérature », Acta fabula, URL : http://www.fabula.org/revue/document19807.php, page consultée le 03 July 2025. DOI : https://10.58282/acta.19807
https://www.fabula.org/revue/document19807.php
#metaglossia_mundus
"Prix de la traduction Inalco-Vo/Vf 2025 : cinq ouvrages en lice
2 juillet 2025
Cinq titres ont été retenus pour le Prix de la traduction Inalco-Vo/Vf 2025.
Titres en lice pour le Prix Inalco de la traduction 2025 © DR
Le prix de la traduction, lancé en 2019 par l'Inalco en partenariat avec le Festival Vo-Vf, récompense une traduction effectuée en français à partir d’une des langues enseignées à l'Institut. Doté à hauteur de 2500 euros, ce prix est destiné à mettre en avant la qualité du travail d’un traducteur ou d’une traductrice ainsi que la richesse de littératures parfois encore peu connues du grand public car souvent moins diffusées.
Le Prix de la traduction Inalco 2025 sera remis le dimanche 5 octobre de 11h à 12h par les initiatrices du prix, Marie Vrinat-Nikolov et Nathalie Carré (Inalco), et par le traducteur Olivier Mannoni.
Les ouvrages présélectionnés
Cinq titres ont été retenus pour le Prix Inalco de la traduction :
Le livre de l'Una de Faruk Sehic, traduit du bosnien par Olivier Lannuzel (Agullo)
Cette corde qui m'attache à la terre de Lorina Bălteanu, traduit du roumain par Marily le Nir (éditions des Syrtes)
A contre jour de Pirkko Saisio, traduit du finnois par Sébastien Cagnoli (Robert Laffont)
Au soir d'Alexandrie d'Alaa El Aswany, traduit de l'arabe par Gilles Gauthier (Actes Sud)
Petits travaux pour un palais de László Krasznahorkai, traduit du hongrois par Joëlle Dufeuilly (Cambourakis)
Merci aux maisons d’édition qui nous ont fait parvenir leurs ouvrages et félicitations aux traductrices et aux traducteurs !
La précédente édition du prix avait récompensé Marie-Cécile Fauvin pour sa traduction du grec du roman Heureux qui dit son nom de l’écrivain Sotiris Dimitriou, paru aux éditions Quidam en 2022..."
https://www.inalco.fr/actualites/prix-de-la-traduction-inalco-vo/vf-2025-cinq-ouvrages-en-lice
#metaglossia_mundus
Kalyani Warrier
I don’t know what I’d do without translated works. I say that because it’s one of my favourite genres in literature. But also, I wonder what the world would be like if translating works, or any translations for that matter, didn’t exist.
Which makes me appreciate the importance of these works so much more.
I’m a huge fan of East Asian translations, especially Japanese translations. It exposes me to stories I’ve not yet come across in the English language (that must be because I would not have explored much of niche topics and Indie authors that are written in English. Either way, I’m able to enjoy them because of Japanese authors).
Fortunately/Unfortunately, depending on what perspective you choose to look at it from, for quite some time now, English has been the language used widely for pretty much all sorts of communication in the global scale.
Therefore, when it comes to the literature landscape and the publishing industry, works written in English naturally dominate other literatures that are written in non-English languages.
But I’m not too fond of this. Despite English being my primary language, I wouldn’t want English to dominate a huge part of the industry.
That is because, in my opinion, it saturates the market. And why do I think that? Because I feel like the stories narrated and consumed are going to start repeating itself. We would only get to see people of the same culture being talked about time and time again. That means having no exposure to cultures that we are not as familiar with. What is popular, advertised the most, and accepted by publishers will be read by the majority of the readers. Even non-readers will be turned off by having the same stories marketed to them, which will significantly impact the consumption of literature.
I love exploring different cultures — their people, history, heritage, region and everything else they have to offer — because that’s one way to expand my knowledge on topics I’m not that familiar with. I love learning about different lifestyles, especially those that differ from mine, at the same time, find similarities between mine and their lives. Translated works really help in broadening that horizon.
I have experimented with quite a wide range of genres throughout my life. Which has helped me realise what genres I love to consume and analyse, genres that I always look out for — one of them is translated fiction. Having read a lot of translated fictions, I have realised how unique their storytelling, plot structure, character profile is. To me, they bring such a breath of fresh air to mainstream publishing.
They set a background that is surreal, themed on peculiar stories, at the same time, represent ordinary, average characters, who are set beautifully in the backdrop and premise of the work.
I can see the arguments being made against translated works. One of them being: people can learn the language the work is written in. Why would you lose the opportunity to learn a new language? But to counter the argument, I have to mention that this isn’t a viable option for many readers as learning a new language fluently is time-consuming; everyone doesn’t have the willpower for that. It must also be said that it is impossible for anyone to multiple languages in the world just to read a text written in a particular language. (Also, let’s be real. Learning an entire language just to read one or a few works would not be worth it for a large chunk of readers.)
Another argument I’ve heard is that translations, no matter how precisely done, can never convey a 100% of the intent of the original text. I can understand this argument better because it is, in my opinion, a valid worry. While translating from one language to another, nuance can get lost due to various factors: certain vocabulary would not exist in the target language (or any close equivalents to the original word or phrase), sentence structuring can affect the overall meaning while translating, cultural nuances that exist in the source language can’t be explained properly in the target language, etc.
But translation is an actual job. It creates job opportunities for translators who convey the story to those who don’t know the language, but are still interested to read the story. And this is the best way for anyone to have access to works written in a language they’re not familiar with.
Translators use a varied number of methods while translating. If the translator is able to translate the text well enough — makes sure that nuance of the text is conveyed thoroughly and accurately, then the second argument can be pacified.
Translated Fiction Recommendations
I have some recommendations for translated fictions (mind you, they are mostly Japanese):
The Lantern of Lost Memories by Sanaka Hiiragi (Magical Realism — Japanese)
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery (Fantasy — French)
The Kamogawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai (Mystery — Japanese)
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami (Literary Fiction — Japanese)
Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-reum (Literary Fiction — Korean)
Butter by Asako Yuzuki (Crime — Japanese)
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqualine Harpman (Dystopian Fiction — French)
Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa (Literary Fiction — Japanese)
The Door-to-Door Bookstore by Carsten Henn (Literary Fiction — German)
A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees by Kenkō (Classics — Japanese)
Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (Magical Realism — Japanese)
Lonely Castle in the Mirror by Mizuki Tsujimura (Magical Realism — Japanese)
Mrs Rosie and the Priest by Giovanni Boccaccio (Classics — Italian)
Almond by Wohn Pyung Sohn (Literary Fiction — Korean)
The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez (Horror — Spanish)
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami (Magical Realism — Japanese)
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa (Dystopian Fiction — Japanese)
Kim JiYoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam Joo (Feminism — Korean)
Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto (LGBTQ+ — Japanese)
Miramar by Naquib Mahfouz (Literary Fiction — Arabic)
Feel free to voice your opinions in the comments below! I’d love to hear if you agree or disagree with my takes!"
https://medium.com/@kalyaniwarrierreads/a-rant-on-translated-works-b3550b4640e2
#metaglossia_mundus
"À partir du 1er juillet, la rémunération minimale du feuillet de traduction passe à 24 euros au lieu de 23 euros.
Par Adèle Buijtenhuijs
le 01.07.2025
Dans un contexte anxiogène pour le monde de la traduction menacé par l'intelligence artificielle, le Conseil d’administration du Centre national du livre (CNL) annonce augmenter la rémunération minimum du feuillet de traduction. Déjà revalorisée en juin 2024 à 23 euros, celle-ci gagne un euro à partir du 1er juillet, passant à 24 euros.
Éligibilité aux aides
L'augmentation s’applique sur des paragraphes de 25 lignes dactylographiés et 1 300 signes en cas de comptage informatique. Ainsi, les traducteurs seront éligibles à différents types d’aides telles que les subventions à la traduction, à la publication pour des ouvrages traduits ou à une bourse de traduction.
À cela s’ajoute l’instauration d’un nouveau mode de calcul en cas de comptage informatique."
https://www.livreshebdo.fr/article/le-cnl-revalorise-le-taux-de-remuneration-minimal-des-traducteurs
#metaglossia_mundus
"...Tense is whether an action happened in the past, present, or future. Some languages, like Finnish, have a non-past tense that includes both present and future. Other languages have several past tenses depending on how remote the action was.
Aspect is whether the action is completed, in progress, planned, iterative, a general truth, and so forth.
A language can have tense that implies aspect, or aspect that implied tense.
You can also express aspect without tense, but in English you have to use a verb form that has a tense. If you say, “the sun rises every morning” or “justice is important,” or “Daddy comes home at four o’clock,” you are making an assertion about aspect, not tense (which is past, present, and future)..."
What is the difference between aspect and tense? - Quora https://share.google/E8ObE9A6tmhDbtksy
#metaglossia_mundus
Speakers debated the possibility of achieving true multilingualism in universities at the latest Language Debates event on 23 June, hosted by Language Acts and Worldmaking.
"01 July 2025
'Multilingualism is seen as a problem' – valuing languages in university settings
Speakers debated the possibility of achieving true multilingualism in universities at the latest Language Debates event on 23 June, hosted by Language Acts and Worldmaking.
Although diversity in universities has increased, partly in response to widening participation initiatives, the issue of multiple languages is still missing from equality, diversity and inclusion statements across institutions.
As part of the Language Debates series by Language Acts and Worldmaking, this event posed the question: what would the multilingual university look and act like?
Language Acts and Worldmaking explores language as a 'material and historical force' in the world. We have always been interested in how languages circulate, in their contact zones, in how we communicate across language and culture. Our emphasis on the understanding of multilingualism in UK educational institutions allows us to put our research into work in our close environments and to ask ourselves how we can make the most of that richness.
Professor Emerita Debra Kelly from the University of Westminster, who is a Visiting Senior Research Fellow to the centre, co-chaired the debate, beginning by introducing her colleague Professor Terry Lamb.
As Professor of Languages and Interdisciplinary Pedagogy, Professor Lamb founded and leads The Multilingual University – A Westminster Learning Community, which aims to put the university’s multilingualism on the institutional agenda. Professor Lamb set up this learning community in response to the diversity in the university, which he felt offered opportunities to ‘be very excited about its multilingualism’.
Not everyone is quite so enthusiastic about multilingualism as I am. In most places I work it’s seen as a problem – something to be ignored or wished away.
Professor Terry Lamb, University of Westminster
Professor Lamb highlighted that teachers across Europe feel that any other language other than the one of the school of English get in the way of learning, but his research shows this isn’t the case. Instead, he proposes shifting to plurilingualism, where the presence of multiple languages is seen as normal and something to enjoy. He is leading this work at the University of Westminster by building a picture of the extent of language diversity in the institution.
There are seven considerations for creating a multilingual university that will help us to see ‘language as a resource for learning as well as a very important part of our identity’, said Professor Lamb:
Understand the extent of our multi/plurilingualism
Challenge monolingual habitus and the problemisation of bi- and plurilingualism
Valuing our multilingualism and plurilingualism for everybody
Ensuring that our linguistic landscape reflects our linguistic diversity
Developing language sensitivity across our teaching
Building our collaborations with language communities beyond the university
Challenging linguistic discrimination
Cross-linguistic cooperation
Event co-chair Dr Ana de Medeiros, Director of King’s Language Centre, introduced Professor Jo Angouri, Professor in Sociolinguistics and Deputy Pro-Vice Chancellor for Education and Internationalisation at the University of Warwick to present her research.
Professor Angouri explored the European Commission’s commitment to transnational and multilingual collaboration, which aspires for all citizens to be able to speak two languages. However, Professor Angouri argues that this commitment refers only to nation state varieties of languages, ignoring that there are multiple varieties within what we would consider to be “one language”.
Languages are not socially and politically equal. They can be used as the arena for separating “us” and “them” – such as how the onus is on those who come new to prove good citizenship by speaking the language.
She proposed using alliances between universities as connected learning communities across linguistic divides, as ‘the more we create connections, the more students see themselves become members and belong’. This can help to build an inclusive ecosystem that shows the value of all languages.
She also shared her experience of creating MultiDev, an interdisciplinary research module open to all undergraduate students at the University of Warwick, which aimed to make students’ linguistic capabilities relevant to the learning journey. The project gave voice to large communities in universities and societies that are often silenced in policy documents and linguistic maps of Europe. Students worked comfortably in a multilingual environment, saying that it gave them new perspectives on language as something political, as well as legitimising their own linguistic skills.
Decolonising the university
In response to the arguments put forward, Dr Jarad Zimbler, Director of Research at the Global Cultures Institute, said Professor Lamb’s offer is ‘enticing’ for literary scholars – yet he also highlighted the need for pluralising language that is inclusive, non-hegemonic and non-hierarchical.
This requires addressing the idea of hierarchy head-on said Dr Zimbler, who used the example of the University of Nairobi in 1968 who wanted to abolish the Department of English in favour of the Department of African Literatures and Languages. This proposition sparked discussion on why English should be the central pillar as the operational language for literary studies at the university.
The idea mapped the inevitable directions of study in an African university and recommended that studying Swahili, English and French remained compulsory. However, Dr Zimbler argued that this was still a hierarchical vision of the world, despite offering a different perspective for the creation of a new kind of department.
How do we incorporate a gesture that seeks to include a new hierarchy in place of the old?
Dr Jarad Zimbler, Director of Research, Global Cultures Institute
True linguistic diversity?
The debate was followed by an audience Q&A directed by Professor Kelly, in which people asked about whether multilingualism is diverse in terms of class, how it can be better embedded in humanities programmes at university level, and the concept of ‘translanguaging’ – switching between appropriate languages.
We perpetuate a framework of multilingualism that is important – but it’s not the only one.
Professor Jo Angouri, University of Warwick
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About Language Debates
The Language Debates series fosters a dialogue on the traditions and innovations and the synergies and fissures within Modern Languages, Language Education and allied disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
About Language Acts and Worldmaking
Language Acts and Worldmaking is a flagship project funded by the AHRC Open World Research Initiative, which aims to regenerate and transform modern language learning by foregrounding language's power to shape how we live and make our worlds.
About the Global Cultures Institute
Even in a globalised world, we come into daily contact with limits and boundaries, which divide us in stark and sometimes harmful ways on the grounds of language, culture, community, and identity.
At the Global Cultures Institute, by fostering conversations that are profoundly interdisciplinary, we probe and articulate these boundaries, developing a critical understanding of their origins and development, and sharing this understanding through research, education and public engagement.
Shaping a space at King’s for debate that is generous and robust, we confront the challenge of intensifying divisions and seek ways to talk beyond boundaries.
In this story
Professor Catherine Boyle
Professor of Latin American Cultural Studies
Dr Jarad Zimbler
Reader in English and Global Cultures
Debra Kelly
Research Fellow
Dr Ana Maria Sousa Aguiar de Medeiros
Director of King's Language Centre
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/multilingualism-is-seen-as-a-problem-valuing-languages-in-university-settings
#metaglossia_mundus
"Vers le lancement d’une plateforme dédiée à la traduction des langues nationales
MARDI 24 JUIN 2025 À 19H13
Dakar 24 juin (APS) – Le projet de banque de données terminologiques et de traductique (BDT) dénommé ‘’Sentermino’’, qui vise à harmoniser et uniformiser la production terminologique dans les langues nationales et à faciliter leur traduction, sera officiellement lancé en septembre 2025, a-t-on appris de l’Institut fondamental d’Afrique noire (IFAN).
‘’Le projet ”Sentermino” est une initiative nationale d’envergure, qui vise à harmoniser, centraliser et valoriser les terminologies dans les langues nationales du Sénégal, notamment le wolof, le pulaar et le seereer’’, d’après un communiqué parvenu mardi à l’APS.
Le texte signale que le projet ‘’ facilitera non seulement l’enseignement bilingue, mais aussi la traduction entre les langues nationales elles-mêmes, et entre celles-ci et le français, grâce à la traductique’’.
Ce projet de recherche-action ambitionne de créer une base de données centralisée, évolutive et accessible en ligne, contenant des terminologies validées et adaptées à tous les domaines : éducation, santé, environnement, artisanat, TIC, agriculture, etc.
La plateforme contribue directement à l’opérationnalisation du modèle harmonisé de l’enseignement bilingue au Sénégal (MOHEBS) et à l’atteinte de l’ODD 4 sur une éducation de qualité, inclusive et équitable, ajoute le communiqué.
Le projet ”Sentermino” est mis en œuvre par l’IFAN en partenariat avec l’École Supérieure Polytechnique (ESP), le ministère de l’Education nationale (MEN), avec l’appui de l’UNESCO via le programme CapED, et de l’Institut de la Francophonie pour l’Education et la Formation.
Une rencontre stratégique du comité scientifique de validation du projet est prévue mercredi, indique la source.
‘’En réunissant des linguistes, des spécialistes de terminologie, des experts sectoriels, des développeurs informatiques et des représentants institutionnels, cette journée de travail marque une étape clé avant le lancement officiel prévu en septembre 2025’’ explique le document.
Ce lancement sera l’occasion de présenter la plateforme numérique dans ses quatre langues de départ, ‘’ français, wolof, pulaar et seereer’’, et d’annoncer son extension prochaine à d’autres langues nationales.
‘’Ce moment fort permettra également de mettre en lumière la bibliothèque numérique intégrée, regroupant des documents en langues nationales, ainsi que le réseau pluridisciplinaire d’experts et de personnes ressources mobilisées à travers tout le pays pour faire vivre ce projet novateur’’, ajoute le communiqué.
MF/ABB/AB
https://aps.sn/vers-le-lancement-dune-plateforme-dediee-a-la-traduction-des-langues-nationales/
#metaglossia_mundus
Songscription Launches AI Tool Converting Audio to Sheet Music
#metaglossia_mundus
One theme for this small language is the importance of quality over quantity in amassing data and developing models.
What The Future Of Translation Tech Means For The Basque Language
ByChristine Ro, Contributor. Christine Ro is a journalist covering science and development.
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Jun 27, 2025, 03:00am EDT
Jun 27, 2025, 04:23am EDT
In a warehouse-like space on a narrow island in Bilbao, Spain, linguists and technologists are testing the possibilities of automated translation. Their projects include antispoofing work to better detect and combat synthetic voices, which are now highly sophisticated; vocal analysis of calls to potentially identify early signs of neurological disorders; and a limited set of speech commands in elevators, which may be especially useful to people with disabilities.
This is the Bilbao base of Vicomtech, a nonprofit research foundation focused on technology. Its funders include private companies and four layers of government (provincial, regional, national, and European). The strong influence of local governments, in particular, is a common theme across both language-revitalization and technology-development projects in the Basque Country.
An automated translation program that Vicomtech worked on, Itzuli, is used for 300,00 translations a day, according to the organization. Itzuli is embedded on a government website, where it allows general translation between Basque and Spanish, French, and English. It also offers formal translation, appropriate for legal language, between Basque and Spanish. And the developers are working to add an offering specific to the Bizkaian dialect of Basque.
However, Itzuli remains less well-known than Google Translate, which remains convenient for many Basque Country businesses, even if it’s not quite as sophisticated. (Google did not respond to a request for comments regarding Google Translate and Basque.)
Basque’s Hard-Fought Current Status
Basque (euskara), a language spoken in parts of northern Spain and southern France, is unusual for several reasons. Most languages spoken in Europe are Indo-European, but many linguists believe that Basque predates those. It’s now essentially unique in Western Europe.
While many minority languages in Europe are dwindling, Basque is bucking the trends. Over 1 million people can now speak or understand it. Some of the numbers are dramatic. For instance, while in 1997–98, 40% of students in the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC) of northern Spain chose to take their university entrance exams in Basque rather than Spanish, this shot up to over 70% in 2018–19, according to Euskararen Etxea, a museum and cultural center dedicated to the Basque language.
This points to another unusual feature of Basque: it’s a young language. In contrast, many minority languages remain the preserve of the oldest community members. In Basque, 22% of BAC residents older than 70 speak Basque, dwarfed by the over 90% of 10–14-year-olds who speak Basque.
However, while Basque has grown significantly as a language of education and culture, it is not yet spoken casually to the same degree. “Basque is a young language because it is children and young people who use it most, and that includes use on the street,” according to Euskararen Etxea.
Also, the expansion of Basque has been uneven. It is declining in the French Basque Country, though overall Basque punches above its weight, in terms of representation. For example, there are about the same number of active users for the Basque and Uzbek versions of Wikipedia, although Uzbekistan has roughly 18 times the population size.
Basque has had a tumultuous recent history. It was banned under the Spanish dictatorship of Francisco Franco, which began in 1936. In the decades that followed, the Basque nationalist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (Eta) killed over 800 people while agitating, among other things, for protection of the Basque language. In the Basque regions, language battles have been closely intertwined with tensions, sometimes violent, over identity and power. Controversies have continued over, for example, proposed Basque language requirements for some public jobs.
It wasn’t until 1968 that a standardized version (euskara batua) was created. Language enthusiasts have embraced new technologies such as video games for keeping Basque alive. Now, digitizing Basque is part of the regional government’s drive to both safeguard the language and to invest heavily in technology.
This is symbolized by Zorrotzaurre, the artificial island housing Vicomtech’s Bilbao office. Construction is occurring all over this formerly run-down strip of land, which many industrial companies abandoned after the 1980s. The island still appears modest, but two international starchitects have left their fingerprints on it. Zorrotzaurre’s master plan was drawn up Zaha Hadid, and the island is connected to the mainland by Frank Gehry Bridge (Frank Gehry Zubia), whose Guggenheim Museum design was a controversial and expensive gamble that has hugely paid off. Now, Vicomtech associate director Jorge Posada says of the authorities’ plans, “they want to create a kind of Guggenheim effect” for Zorrotzaurre as well.
A Deliberately Smaller And Slower Approach To Language Tech
The technology has advanced faster than some people’s desire to incorporate it.
A logical source of Basque-language content for tech developers, including Vicomtech, is the public broadcaster, Euskal Irrati Telebista (EITB). EITB has five TV channels, of which two are fully in Basque, and six radio stations, with two of them exclusively in Basque. “As a public service, it is one of our big goals” to preserve the Basque language, says Igor Jainaga Irastorza, the chief technology officer for EITB. “It’s one of our foundational basics.”
So far, the broadcaster is taking a cautious approach to AI-based translation technologies, with automatic transcription being the first critical step. Jainaga has seen much improvement in the services over the last few years. He calls them “good enough for being helpful,” especially for general purposes or non-native speakers. But overall, “we are going slowly with these [AI-based] services, because what we see is that if technology is not mature enough, it can introduce noise in the production processes.”
While they haven’t set a specific accuracy threshold they need to reach, “it’s best effort,” Jainaga reports. It’s particularly important to avoid language-based errors in certain types of content: “If it’s an entertainment program, maybe it’s not as critical as if it’s a news program.”
That balance of caution and context means that EITB allows different levels of AI-powered translation for different types of programming. As Jainaga says, “We have a big mixture of some of the programs being transcribed by humans, some with automatic processes and some with automatic transcription with human checks, mainly with the products that are coming from outside.”
More specifically, for some of EITB’s news programs, the automatic transcription of subtitles may be supervised by humans. Some online broadcasts have automatic transcription with human checks, but not automatic translation. The audio platform Guau has automatic transcription and translation. And the recently launched news site Orain allows automatic translation into Spanish, English, and French (using Itzuli).
Itzuli interface on the euskadi.eus website.
CHRISTINE RO
All of this needs localization into Basque. In weather forecasts, repeated weather-related terms may be easy to automate and achieve 100% accuracy. But AI models may need to be trained to accurately reproduce names of athletes and small towns, for instance. “If you are giving that service to the people of the Basque Country, what they expect is that the names of the towns or local people are properly spelled,” Jainaga says.
One theme that has emerged from the creation of AI language tools for this small language is the importance of quality over quantity in amassing data and developing models. Jainaga comments, “Big companies or other developers can…eat all the info on the internet available,” potentially without obtaining rights. “With minority languages, we have less information, so the only thing that we can do from our point is to have good-quality data.”
An organization currently working on collecting high-quality language data is Euskorpora, a young nonprofit whose partners include government departments, private companies, and language institutes. (EITB and Vicomtech are also partners.) Euskorpora’s flagship project is the Basque Language Digital Corpus, a collection of audio, text, and video samples of Basque from varied settings, with different language varieties represented over time. The intention is for this corpus to be available to anyone who wants to use it, though likely with some sort of payment structure for commercial uses.
This type of corpus is needed, according to Leire Barañano Orbe, Euskorpora’s general manager, because other Basque corpora for training machine learning models have focused on research or academic exploration. She believes that “this distinction is crucial, as research-oriented projects often prioritize innovation and theoretical advancements, while commercial efforts aim to create practical, user-ready tools.”
Another difference with the Basque Language Digital Corpus is that Euskorpora is spending a lot of time and care on making sure that they have all the legal permissions for the content they would like to incorporate. In contrast, some other datasets for machine learning models may have murky origins. For instance, it’s challenging to gather enough spontaneous snippets of audio and video. So Euskorpora is looking into using audio from call centers—though this would require careful consideration to ensure that all such data is anonymous, with no identifying details captured.
Audio is also a challenge for Vicomtech. It can be hard to capture good-quality audio from real-world recordings on the street, or to refine speech recognition in noisy environments like elevators or factory floors. For the moment, direct speech–speech translation is not mature enough, according to Arantza Del Pozo, head of speech and language technologies at Vicomtech. And there is a “concatenation of errors” when AI systems translate between speech and text, she says.
The quality-over-quantity approach means that Basque language tools won’t be the biggest. Nor will they be the quickest, given the European Union’s more careful approach to regulating AI, compared to the U.S. and China. Vicomtech isn’t looking to be the fastest or the first, Posada says.
Another gap in recorded spoken language is in specialized areas like law and engineering, where there may not be many media samples using this type of specific language. So for such areas, Euskorpora is considering using some proportion of synthetic data to supplement the real-world data. There again, care would be needed to avoid distorting the datasets.
Like just about everyone working on Basque language tools, Barañano of Euskorpora wants to ensure the vitality of the language. She believes that the main European languages have been very strong in terms of digital transformation, but there has a been a large and widening gap for other languages.
For this it’s necessary to tap into not only government resources, but also larger networks of collaboration and support. For a language fighting for survival, no one organization can go it alone. Barañano believes that “this collective effort can advance both the preservation and modernization of a minority language in an increasingly digital world.”
Reporting for this story was supported by a press trip organized by the Provincial Council of Bizkaia."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinero/2025/06/27/what-the-future-of-translation-tech-means-for-the-basque-language/
#metaglossia_mundus
"DPR Issues California Notice 2025-08 Adding and Revising Multilingual Translation on Pesticide Labeling
Lisa R. Burchi, Barbara Christianson
On June 26, 2025, the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) issued California Notice 2025-08 announcing that pesticide registrants may add or revise multilingual translation of its labels by non-notification. With this change, DPR now is consistent with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) decision to allow pesticide registrants to add the required Spanish-translated sections on its labels by non-notification as part of the Spanish translation requirements under the Pesticide Registration Improvement Act of 2022 (PRIA 5).
Prior to Notice 2025-08, if a registrant wanted to add multilingual translations to its marketing labels, it was required to submit these label changes as an amendment. While Notice 2025-08 now allows the addition or revision of multilingual translation to DPR-registered labels to be made as a DPR non-notification,” DPR adds, however, that registrants may not add or revise “multilingual labeling elements if the English version is not previously listed and has not been reviewed and accepted by DPR.”
DPR states it expanded the scope of allowable translated labels falling under non-notification to include “all languages and allow for translation of the entire product label.” DPR notes it is allowing non-notification for translation of the entire product labels, which is not required by EPA, to acknowledge the diversity of the spoken language within California’s agricultural workforce.
As part of DPR’s implementation of the new procedure, DPR states it will allow the addition or revision of multilingual translations of previously approved labels either directly on the container or through web-based links (e.g., websites or QR codes) without notification to DPR. DPR notes, however, that registrants are responsible to ensure that all translated language on the label is a true and accurate representation of the accepted English language. For the web-based links, DPR states that explanatory text can be added via non-notification that explains the purpose of the website or QR code, such as “Escanee el código QR para etiqueta española” (i.e., “Scan QR Code for Spanish Label”), but states that it intends to maintain discretion to review the multilingual language and potentially require revisions to translations when appropriate. Additionally, DPR states that the full English-accepted labeling must appear on a product’s container label. Specifically, “[m]ultilingual labeling can be used in addition to English labeling but may not replace the required English label.”
When submitting an application through DPR’s new online system, California Pesticide Electronic Submission Tracking (CalPEST), DPR requires the pesticide applicant to agree to DPR’s Terms and Conditions, including a self-certification statement that the multilingual translations are correct and accurate. It states:
I certify that all multilingual translations printed on the pesticide product labels or other collateral labeling, including labeling found through web-based links (i.e., website or QR code), submitted for registration, are a true and accurate representation of the English labeling elements."
June 30, 2025
https://www.lawbc.com/dpr-issues-california-notice-2025-08-adding-and-revising-multilingual-translation-on-pesticide-labeling/
#metaglossia_mundus
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