Metaglossia: The Translation World

"Titre du Poste : Consultant en traduction
Publié par Lucas A. le 31 mai 2024
Lieu du Travail : Nigeria
Date de Soumission : 06/06/2024

Description de l'emploi
International Alert a été fondée en 1986 pour aider les populations à trouver des solutions pacifiques aux conflits. À cette époque, le nombre de conflits entre pays diminuait, mais on assistait à une augmentation alarmante du nombre de conflits à l’intérieur des pays.

International Alert (IA), avec le soutien d’Irish Aid, met en œuvre le projet « Powering Peace through Climate Action » qui vise à mettre au point des approches pionnières pour construire la paix grâce à une action climatique inclusive et intersectionnelle dans les États de Benue et de Sokoto.

Arrière-plan

International Alert a élaboré une note d’orientation axée sur l’impact sexospécifique du changement climatique et de la gestion des ressources naturelles sur les moyens de subsistance, les conflits et la criminalité dans les États du nord-ouest et du centre-nord du Nigeria. Le dossier fournit des informations et des recommandations essentielles aux parties prenantes pour résoudre ces problèmes de manière efficace. Pour garantir une diffusion et une accessibilité plus larges, il est nécessaire de traduire la note d’orientation en langues haoussa et tiv, couramment parlées dans les régions cibles."
#metaglossia_mundus: https://yop.l-frii.com/emploi/international-alert-recrute-pour-ce-poste-31-mai-2024/

 

PODCAST - Dans une minute, vous connaîtrez l'origine insolite du terme "soins palliatifs".

Pourquoi le terme "soins palliatifs" est né d'un problème de traduction ? PODCAST - Dans une minute, vous connaîtrez l'origine insolite du terme "soins palliatifs".

 

Pourquoi le terme "soins palliatifs" est né d'un problème de traduction ? Florian Gazan - édité par Nathan Joubioux

publié le 31/05/2024 à 07:47

Depuis lundi, les débats sur la loi sur la fin de vie ont débuté à l'Assemblée nationale. Au cours des discussions, il sera forcément question des "soins palliatifs". Mais si ce terme est, aujourd'hui, entré dans le langage courant, son origine est insolite et peu connu.

En 1842, à Lyon, Jeanne Garnier, veuve âgée de 24 ans, crée l'association des Dames du Calvaire pour accueillir des femmes incurables dont les hôpitaux ne veulent plus. Elle les accompagne alors jusqu'à leur mort. Et c'est d'ailleurs pour cela que, aujourd'hui, le plus grand centre français de soins palliatifs, à Paris, s'appelle la Maison Jeanne Garnier.

Mais c'est en Angleterre que l'on commence à prendre réellement en charge les personnes en fin de vie. On est en 1948. Cette année-là, Cicely Saunders, une infirmière londonienne, rend visite tous les jours à David, un homme de 40 ans en train de mourir d'un cancer. 

Supprimer la douleur en l'anticipant

Pendant les huit dernières semaines de sa vie, ils vont beaucoup parler. Et David finit par avouer à Cicely Saunders que sa présence quotidienne et leurs échanges lui font oublier ses douleurs. De là naît une idée : créer un lieu où des patients comme David trouveraient des soins adaptés et une présence aimante. Avec les 500 livres sterling qu’il lui laisse à son décès pour la remercier, elle se lance. Elle devient médecin et fait des recherches sur le traitement de la douleur. Elle étudie notamment la morphine et a l’idée de l’utiliser par voie orale de façon régulière afin de supprimer la douleur en l’anticipant, au lieu d’essayer de la calmer une fois qu’elle s’est installée.

C'est également Cicely Saunders qui définit le concept de "Whole person care", soit "prendre soin de la personne dans l'intégralité de ses besoins", donc traiter sa souffrance physique, mais aussi psychologique et sociale avec les effets sur l’entourage.

"Pallier" les douleurs

En 1967, après avoir recueilli des fonds, elle crée, à Londres, ce premier vrai lieu pour les personnes en fin de vie, le Saint Christopher’s hospice. En français, le mot "hospice" n'est pas très valorisant et est le nom, péjoratif, donné jusqu'aux années 1970 aux maisons de retraite. 

 

Voilà pourquoi lorsque le Professeur Balfour Mount créé, en 1974 à Montréal, un centre similaire à celui de Cicely Saunders, il décide de lui trouver un autre nom. Il pense au verbe "pallier" dans le sens "atténuer", "remédier à". Car c’est le but : atténuer les symptômes pénibles de la maladie, car agir sur elle n'est plus possible. 

Il invente donc le terme "soins palliatifs" qui, rappelons-le, n’a rien à voir avec l’euthanasie. L’euthanasie, c’est aider à mourir, les soins palliatifs, c’est aider à mieux vivre ce qu’il reste à vivre."

#metaglossia_mundus

31/05/2024 [Autres langues English 日本語 简体字 繁體字 Français Español العربية Русский] "Des scientifiques et des malvoyants ont collaboré au Japon pour traduire en braille un livre sur la recherche avancée en physique.
Celui-ci, qui traite de l’origine de l’univers et de la matière, vient s’ajouter à la liste des ouvrages scientifiques écrits en braille, très peu nombreux au Japon compte tenu des connaissances spécifiques nécessaires à leur traduction.
Rédigé par des chercheurs de l’Organisation de recherche avec des accélérateurs de haute énergie (KEK), le livre explique comment l’univers a été créé il y a 13,8 milliards d’années et comment la matière, la terre et la vie sont apparues, en s’appuyant sur les connaissances et les résultats des expériences les plus récentes.
Il s’adresse aux personnes ayant au moins des connaissances de niveau secondaire. La version originale, publiée en mars dernier, fait partie de la série de livres scientifiques « Blue Backs », éditée par Kodansha.
L’équipe chargée du projet de traduction comprenait des membres de la KEK et de l’université de technologie de Tsukuba, la seule université nationale du Japon destinée aux personnes souffrant de handicaps visuels et auditifs."
#metaglossia_mundus

 

"Séminaire à Beijing sur l'art de la traduction du professeur Li Yumin

French.china.org.cn　|　Mis à jour le 31-05-2024 "Un séminaire sur l'art de la traduction du professeur Li Yumin s'est tenu jeudi à l'Université normale de la capitale, à Beijing. Cet événement a réuni des experts, des professionnels et des étudiants francophones pour discuter du rôle majeur que joue la traduction littéraire dans les échanges culturels sino-français à l'occasion du 60e anniversaire de l'établissement des relations diplomatiques entre la Chine et la France.

Le professeur Li Yumin est un célèbre traducteur littéraire contemporain en Chine, engagé dans la traduction de la littérature française de tout genre depuis plus de quarante ans. Ses traductions littéraires dépassent plus de 25 millions de caractères chinois, dont la moitié pour des œuvres introduites pour la première fois en Chine.

Sous sa plume, la majesté et le romantisme de Notre-Dame de Paris de Victor Hugo, la délicatesse et la profondeur de Le Lys dans la vallée de Balzac, le courage et la sagesse de l'œuvre Les Trois Mousquetaires d'Alexandre Dumas, le réalisme et la vivacité de Maupassant dans Une Vie et Bel-Ami, ainsi que la philosophie et l'humanité de La Peste de Camus, ont été parfaitement recréés. En outre, ses traductions d'œuvres comme Comédies et Proverbes d'Alfred de Musset, Les Fleurs du mal de Baudelaire, et Les Chants de Maldoror de Lautréamont illustrent son excellence dans divers domaines littéraires.

"Dans ma famille, mon père, mon fils et moi-même partageons un beau souvenir de la lecture du roman français Les Trois Mousquetaires d'Alexandre Dumas, traduit par Li Yumin", a raconté le vice-président de l'Université normale de la capitale, Ma Ligeng, lors de son discours prononcé à l'événement. Il a loué Li Yumin comme traducteur de littérature française ayant contribué à façonner les souvenirs de lecture de plusieurs générations de Chinois.

Sarah Yvonne Jacqueline Briand, attachée culturelle de l'Ambassade de France en Chine, a exprimé sa gratitude au nom de nombreux écrivains français envers Li Yumin. Elle a remercié M. Li d'avoir introduit la littérature française aux lecteurs chinois et a qualifié M. Li de véritable passeur culturel entre la Chine et la France.

Li Yumin a déclaré qu'il ressentait un grand bonheur chaque fois qu'un lecteur chinois découvrait et appréciait un nouvel auteur français grâce à ses traductions. Il a expliqué combien il aimait sa carrière de traducteur et que la traduction littéraire français-chinois constituait tout son univers matériel et spirituel.

Suivez China.org.cn sur Twitter et Facebook pour rejoindre la conversation.

Source: Agence de presse Xinhua"

#metaglossia_mundus

"Sealaska Heritage Institute has published a trilogy of illustrated dictionaries in Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian languages in efforts to help preserve some of Alaska's native languages."

#metaglossia_mundus

By  Dhanshree Shripad Shenwai - "May 30, 2024 The primary goal of Sign Language Production (SLP) is to create sign avatars that resemble humans using text inputs. The standard procedure for SLP methods based on deep learning involves several steps. First, the text is translated into gloss, a language that represents postures and gestures. This gloss is then used to generate a video that mimics sign language. The resulting video is further processed to create more interesting avatar movies that appear more like real people. Acquiring and processing data in sign language is challenging due to the complexity of these processes. 

Over the past decade, most studies have grappled with the challenges of a German sign language (GSL) dataset called PHOENIX14T and other lesser-known language datasets for Sign Language Production, Recognition, and Translation tasks (SLP, SLR, and SLT). These challenges, which include the lack of standardized tools and the slow progress in research on minority languages, have significantly dampened researchers’ enthusiasm. The complexity of the problem is further underscored by the fact that studies using the American Sign Language (ASL) dataset are still in their infancy.

Thanks to the current mainstream datasets, a lot of progress has been made in the sector. Nevertheless, they fail to tackle the new problems that are appearing:

1. Pre-existing datasets sometimes include files in complicated forms, such as pictures, scripts, OpenPose skeleton key points, graphs, and perhaps other formats used for preprocessing. Directly trainable actionable data is absent from these forms. 
2. Annotating glosses by hand is a tedious and time-consuming process. 
3. After obtaining several sign video datasets from sign language experts, the data is transformed into various forms, making expanding the dataset very difficult.

Researchers from Rutgers University, Australian National University, Data61/CSIRO, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Texas at Dallas, and University of Central Florida present Prompt2Sign, a groundbreaking dataset that tracks the upper body movements of sign language demonstrators on a massive scale. This is a significant step forward in the field of multilingual sign language recognition and generation, as it is the first comprehensive dataset combining eight distinct sign languages and using publicly available online videos and datasets to address the shortcomings of earlier efforts.

The researchers begin by standardizing the posture information of video frames (the original material of the tool) into the preset format using OpenPose, a video processing application so that they can construct this dataset. Reducing redundancy and making training with seq2seq and text2text models easier can be achieved by storing key information in their standardized format. Then, to make it more cost-effective, they auto-generate prompt words to decrease the need for human annotations. Lastly, to address the issues with manual preprocessing and data collecting, they enhance the tools’ processing level of automation, making them extremely efficient and lightweight. This improves their data processing capabilities without the need for further model loading. 

The team highlights that the current model could benefit from some tweaks because the new datasets present different obstacles while training models. Due to the variances in sign language from country to country, it is not possible to train several sets of sign language data simultaneously. Managing additional languages and larger datasets makes training more complex and time-consuming, making downloading, storing, and loading data more painful. Therefore, investigating training techniques at fast speeds is essential. Furthermore, it is important to investigate under-researched topics like multilingual SLP, efficient training, and the capacity to understand prompts since the current model structure cannot comprehend more languages and more complicated, natural human conversational inputs. This pertains to questions like improving the large model’s generalization capability and fundamental understanding prompts ability.

To address these issues, the team presented SignLLM, the initial large-scale multilingual SLP model built on the Prompt2Sign dataset. It generates the skeletal poses of eight different sign languages given texts or suggestions. There are two other modes for SignLLM: (i) The Multi-Language Switching Framework (MLSF), which dynamically adds encoder-decoder groups to generate many sign languages in tandem. (ii) The Prompt2LangGloss module enables SignLLM to generate static encoder-decoder pairs. 

The team aims to use their new dataset to set a standard for multilingual recognition and generation. Their latest loss function incorporates a novel module grounded in the Reinforcement Learning (RL) idea to expedite model training on more languages and larger datasets, thereby resolving the prolonged training time caused by these factors. A large number of tests and ablation investigations were carried out. The outcomes prove that the SignLLM outperforms baseline methods on both the development and test sets for a total of eight sign languages.

Even though their work has made great strides in automating the processing and capture of data in sign language, it still needs to provide a comprehensive end-to-end solution. For example, the team highlights that to utilize one’s private dataset, one must use OpenPose to extract 2D keypoint json files and then update them manually."

#metaglossia_mundus

"‘We must build the language to sustain our interfaith dialogue’

• 30/05/2024
• Movement for Reform Judaism

Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner has spoken powerfully on the need to maintain interfaith relationships in the UK, despite the huge difficulties presented by events in Israel and Gaza

Speaking in the Thought for the Day slot, on BBC Radio 4’s flagship Today programme, she talks of the friendships that have been fragmented and events cancelled because of the war.

Rabbi Laura (pictured with her Muslim interfaith partner Julie Siddiqi) then recognises the bravery of those organisations taking part in interfaith work – including many Progressive synagogues – and how we must build the language to speak to each other in ways that don’t exacerbate division and hatred.

Images from Gaza this weekend are almost unbearable to see, let alone discuss with any coherence or clarity.

It’s hard not to import battles from there into relationships here and even more difficult to sustain space for dialogue – but it is possible.

When I lived in Jerusalem, I worked with West Bank Palestinians – Muslims and Christians – and Israeli Jews, facilitating conversations about the most painful, traumatic subjects that directly affected their lives and interdependent futures. The entities of Israel-Palestine are hyphenated because they’re existentially interdependent.

Unfortunately, this war’s also been destructive for some interfaith relations here. Some friendships are fragmented or severed, and events have been abandoned out of kindness, fear or fury.

But even whilst this war wages, I’m astounded by the bravery of a range of organisations – sporting, religious, transport, and health, who’ve asked my Muslim work partner and friend, and myself, to teach them how to have difficult conversations. In wartime, we must build language to agree, disagree and protest in ways that don’t exacerbate division and hatred.

We teach that it is possible to criticise Hamas or the Israeli government without holding Muslims or Jews here responsible for actions there.

We invite people to envisage what being pro-peace, rather than just pro-Israel or pro-Palestine, might look like.

We suggest conversational red lines – don’t compare the Israeli government or army or Hamas to the Nazis, for example. We consider whether British Muslims or Jews might be targeted for criticism, bias or hatred from ulterior motives or political opportunism.

I find the best, most effective word for difficult conversations is ‘some’ – some Jews, some Muslims, some people.

And you might be pleasantly surprised. When God first appears to Moses, it’s in the form of a burning bush. Moses must’ve wanted to flee. Instead, that fiery plant contained liberation for the Israelite slaves, and the message of the power of relationships, as God assures Moses – ‘don’t be afraid, I’ll be with you’.

We need to talk, with people with whom we disagree and who may infuriate us.

Next week I’m off to Bradford – and really looking forward to teaching in Muslim schools who contacted me near the beginning of the war. ‘Rabbi Laura’, they told me. ‘We practiced these conversations before the war, but now, even though it’s hard, it’s time to talk more.’"

#metaglossia_mundus

"On Monday, May 27, the Commission d'enrichissement de la langue française met in the presence of the Minister of Culture. At the end of this session, an unprecedented exchange took place with the youth of the Culture pass invited to follow the debates.

Published on 29 May 2024

« Enrich our language ”, according to Rachida Dati, Minister of Culture, “ core mission », whose key players are the nineteen experts of the French Language Enrichment Commission (CELF) They are responsible for proposing French equivalents to foreign terms in economic, scientific, technical or cultural fields. ' You work for all French citizens but also for all francophones, continued the Minister in her speech towards the new members of the Commission. Our French language is as much a matter for everyone as it is for the state. The proper meaning of words is also movement. In societies that are constantly evolving, the language must live at the same pace to restore the creation, the intention, the innovation to allow us to think and express all the realities of the contemporary world. »

On the occasion of the installation, Monday, May 27, of the new Commission renewed for four years with seven new qualified personalities, the Minister returned on this unique device to which are associated four hundred personalities from twelve ministries, and that accompanies the General Delegation to the French Language and the Languages of France (DGLFLF) of the Ministry of Culture. “ There is no such device in any country, this political and cultural determination to make our language a living language that speaks the world today "said Frédéric Vitoux of the Académie française, writer, journalist and President of the Commission.

Exchanges with the youth of the Culture pass

This installation session was attended, for the first time, by young culture pass, invited to discuss with the Members of the Commission the choice of words and their equivalents. “ I knew there were commissions that analyzed the words but I did not know who and where ", admits Apolline, 19. "JI didn’t know any of the words and I came out with four! I could see that it was not only the Académie française that made this decision in a closed circle but several people specialized in different fields and even the minister "Carla continues. Heaven-Abeba, beside her, also appreciated the Celf. " The comments of the commission bring a new angle on the words and it was very interesting to see them exchange between them. »

On the occasion of the establishment of the new Commission, four terms (see box) were selected upstream by the working groups for consideration: doomscrolling, patent troll, sharenting and predatory publisher. These examples come from groups of experts who monitor emerging foreign terms and propose a French equivalent and a definition to the CELF. Like the four examples of the day, 300 terms were recommended in 2023, a quarter of which were submitted by the general public. Once their equivalent and definitions have been adopted, they shall be communicated for notice to the French Academy then definitively validated by the Minister of Culture and finally published in the Official Journal and on the FranceTerme basis.

In all, since 1972, when the CELF was founded, nearly 9,500 terms have been recommended. “ A nation must appropriate its modernity, instruments and words. It may seem ridiculous to say computer or software instead of computer and software, whether we talk about biofuel, of carpooling, crowdfunding or infox but it is precisely in this way that the great nations find their place in the world of today and print their mark on that of tomorrow Amin Maalouf, Permanent Secretary of the Académie française, is also present at the Commission’s installation.

New actions for speaking and learning French

Also on the occasion of the installation of this new Commission, the Minister of Culture presented Éloquence, a new project aimed at enhancing speaking, especially for young people aged 16 to 25 in integration. This audience will be trained in public speaking, eloquence and cultural professions including mediation. “ This device will be intended for young people in a situation of inhibition vis-à-vis these rich, varied and diversified professions because they are afraid to express themselves in French "explains Culture Minister Rachida Dati. This experiment is launched with the French Academy through mentoring workshops by academics. It will begin next fall with a hundred young people, will include, for a year, workshops on speaking and will conclude with a grand prize of eloquence.

Another action will be aimed at allophone audiences – whose mother tongue is not that of the country in which they live – with the establishment of a partnership with OFII (French Office of Immigration and Integration) to strengthen both the offer of French language training and the cultural offer for people involved in learning French. Such a partnership was already signed with the National Monuments Centre. “ We will extend this device to other cultural institutions ” added the Minister.

Four terms discussed by the Commission

• Doomscrolling : morbid scrolling
  Definition: practice that consists of scrolling on a screen, in a repetitive way, a large amount of anxiety-provoking information from the Internet, especially social networks.
  « There was a debate with sickly but the term morbid seemed to us the most appropriate and adapted "explains Philippe Lechat, President of the Health and Social Affairs College. University professor Marianne Doury asks about the use of “repetitive” in the definition rather than “compulsive”. « This term describes what is happening, rather than compulsive, which had an almost pathological meaning ", replied Philippe Lechat.
• Patent troll : patent grabber
  Definition: natural or legal person without productive activity who acquires patents not to exploit them but only to obtain compensation from other companies under the threat of infringement action.
  Debates have revolved around the choice between “hunter” and “patent taker”. “ But hunter was further from what one meant, refers to another image ” continues Vincent Chabin.
• Sharenting Child overexposure
  Definition: The practice of parents exposing their children on social media.
  The link between the French equivalent and the definition was particularly discussed at the Commission. ' Are we on the side of parents and sharing or on the side of children and overexposure? », asks Étienne de Laharpe, an expert in communication strategies. Cécile Isidoro, State Councillor, points out that children refer to early childhood when the concept concerns all ages. “ The choice of terms bothers me, the definition seems incomplete. » Finally, for Jean-Michel Gaussot, Minister Plenipotentiary, the term overexposure is “ very general ” and the definition would benefit from being “ more precise ".
• Predatory publisher : predatory editor
  Definition: publisher of non-referential journal, with scientific claims, generally digital, which publishes articles against payment without having been peer-reviewed.
  The choice of the word “predator” has not convinced some experts who do not find this notion in the proposed definition. “ This is a commercial operation where everyone finds his account », notes Philippe Saint Raymond, honorary mining engineer who prefers the equivalent «parasitic editor», also acclaimed by Philippe Lechat because « it drowns out good publications ". This debate was an opportunity to discuss these practices in the scientific field, particularly with young researchers at the end of their thesis for whom ' the pressure to publish is very strong ", concludes Antoine Triller, Perpetual Secretary of the Academy of Sciences."

#metaglossia_mundus

"Professor Laura Álvarez López's interview is featured in São Paulo's Museum of Portuguese Language Exhibition "African Languages That Shape Brazil"

The Museum of Portuguese Language in São Paulo has just opened its latest exhibition, "African Languages That Shape Brazil," running from May 24, 2024, to January 2025. A notable feature of the exhibition is a series of records showcasing Afro-Brazilian cultural manifestations. The exhibition also includes comprehensive content on African languages and their enduring presence in Brazil, enriched by interviews with researchers, including Professor Laura Álvarez López. For more details, please visit the Museum of Portuguese Language."

#metaglossia_mundus

Thursday 30 May 2024 By Isabella Vivian  "A century ago, French was seen as Europe's lingua franca, used by the elite in discussions of diplomacy and politics. But the European Union's latest language barometer shows English to be by far the most popular language – perhaps even to the detriment of multilingualism.

 

The Eurobarometer surveyed language trends among EU citizens, focusing on how the use of languages and attitudes towards language learning evolve over time. One of the most notable findings of the latest EU barometer was the prominence of English spoken as a foreign language.

 

 

 

The survey found that almost half of Europeans (47%) speak English as a foreign or second language – up 5% since 2012. A substantial 70% of young Europeans (15-24) can have a conversation in English (+9% since 2012).

There has been a considerable drop in the other most widely spoken languages after English: just 11% speak French, 10% speak German and 7% speak Spanish as a foreign language. The growing gap begs the question: is multilingualism on the way out?

 

 

 

In the European Commission, English translators have certainly experienced a dramatic reduction in workload over the past two decades, as most official documents are pre-written in English and therefore do not need to be translated.

 

 

'An instrument for all'

 

Former Executive Vice-President for the European Green Deal Frans Timmermans believes Europeans should embrace "bad English" – with all its accents and grammatical flaws – as the European lingua franca, rather than shying away from it.

 

"This is the first time in human history that we have a lingua franca that is not just for the elites; a global lingua franca that transcends societal layers thanks to the internet and the predominance of Anglo-Saxon culture. English is an instrument for all," the Dutch national stated during a visit to the University of Twente in the Netherlands in May 2023.

 

Though the UK parted ways with the EU in January 2021, the language has only increased in popularity across the 27 Member States. As well as being the co-official language in both Malta and Ireland, English is taught as a foreign language to over 97% of school pupils in the EU.

Philosopher Philippe Van Parijs notes that English acts as an "essential instrument for communication", facilitating conversations that wouldn't otherwise take place, more often among young people.

Many also see English as neutral ground, with no political affiliations attached. This is especially true in Belgium, where the division between French and Dutch language communities has been at the centre of a decades-old regional rift. In this context, English brings a refreshing respite.

 

'Support for multilingualism is solid'

 

But despite the prevalence of English, EU citizens still fiercely support multilingualism, with 86% agreeing that everyone should speak at least one other language than their mother tongue and 69% more than one additional language.

Over three quarters of Europeans (76%) think that improving language skills should be a policy priority. Language diversity is also considered important and 84% of Europeans believe that regional and minority languages should be protected.

 

"Support for multilingualism is solid. Since the last survey in 2012, knowledge of a foreign language has increased and three in five Europeans feel confident holding a conversation in another language," Director-General for Translation at the European Commission, Christos Ellinides, stated on social media.

Ellinides underscored that translation and interpreting are vital to boosting multilingualism in the EU. "For the European Union to function, translation is essential. I am not just referring to the work by my staff of translating EU legislation and communication into 24 languages, but also access to translation for businesses and organisations operating across borders."

As well as translating EU texts, the Commission's Directorate-General for Translation also invests in activities that promote language learning and translation as a profession, Ellinides said. He cited as examples the 'JuvenesTranslatores' translation school contest, the European Master's in Translation, the Translating Europe Forum, European Day of Languages, and visits to schools and universities.

 

More generally, multilingualism prevents discrimination between citizens whose languages are spoken by a large number of people and others using less widely spoken ones and ensures inclusivity, giving all EU citizens access to legislation, procedures and information in their own languages.

A rich tapestry of languages and translation into all 24 is fundamental to the European project. So for now, at least, multilingualism is in no danger of dying out in the EU."

#metaglossia_mundus

"» Conference 2024 IALC Conference, Wales 2024 Live your language: Increasing the use of minority and official languages The eighth conference of the International Association of Language Commissioners (IALC) will be held in Wales this year on 11 June.

Live your language: Increasing the use of minority and official languages

The eighth conference of the International Association of Language Commissioners (IALC) will be held in Wales this year on 11 June. The conference will provide an opportunity to explore the real effects of legislating in favour of languages in Wales and beyond. As well as practical sessions sharing the experience of Welsh institutions there will be contributions by the following main speakers:

• Raymond Théberge, Commissioner of Official Languages, Canada
• Professor Fernand de Varennes, Former UN Special Rapporteur on minority issues
• Professor Rob Dunbar, UK representative on the Committee of Experts of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages

This event is supported by Welsh Government.

The Welsh Language Commissioner, Efa Gruffudd Jones, is the current chair of the IALC. The conference was last held in Wales in 2017.

Conference Programme

Official Launch of the IALC Conference

A launch event will be held prior to the conference on 10 June in Cardiff Bay. The launch will be an opportunity to celebrate ten years since the establishment of the IALC in the company of:

• Efa Gruffudd Jones, Welsh Language Commissioner and Chair of the IALC
• Delyth Jewell MS, Chair of the Culture, Communications, Welsh Language, Sport, and International Relations Committee
• Professor Fernand de Varennes, Former UN Special Rapporteur on minority issues

Renowned poet Mererid Hopwood will read her specially-commissioned poem to mark the occasion and entertainment will be provided by the musician and composer Gwilym Bowen Rhys and the Ysgol Hamadryad choir.

Please note that attendance of the launch is by invitation only.

The launch is sponsored by Delyth Jewell MS.

A special thanks to Darwin Gray for their generous sponsorship.

www.darwingray.com"

#metaglossia_mundus

"For those of us who grew up in the wake of the Second Vatican Council—the era of felt banners and guitar Masses—the confusion over what the Catholic Church taught was real. The catechesis of the 1970s became a cautionary tale, a model for what not to do when passing on the faith.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church is the first comprehensive document to explain Catholic faith and morals in more than 400 years and has sold about 20 million copies in at least 44 languages.

May 29, 2024 Patrick Novecosky

Various editions of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The English-language edition was first published 30 years ago this month.

For those of us who grew up in the wake of the Second Vatican Council—the era of felt banners and guitar Masses—the confusion over what the Catholic Church taught was real.

The catechesis of the 1970s became a cautionary tale, a model for what not to do when passing on the faith.

Our well-meaning teachers told us that “all you need is love,” echoing the Fab Four instead of reaching for the Baltimore Catechism. In 1978, they joked that after Pope John Paul I, we might just get Pope George Ringo.

Instead, we got John Paul II.

One of the Polish pontiff’s seminal accomplishments was to give us the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The English-language version dropped 30 years ago this week.

The Catechism was an instant international best-seller that became a reality only with the intervention of an American businessman. More on that in a moment.

John Paul II inherited the arduous task of unpacking Vatican II, arguably the most important religious event of the 20th century. The Council met in four sessions between 1962 and 1965. Pope St. John XXIII, who opened the Church’s 21st ecumenical council, asked bishops to examine how the Church could best proclaim the Gospel in the modern era.

 

Twenty years later, in 1985, John Paul convoked a meeting of bishops to examine how well the Church had implemented the Council. The synod returned with several recommendations, including the suggestion that the Church produce a new, comprehensive universal catechism.

Critics harped that the Church didn’t need a new Catechism. Papal biographer George Weigel has noted that opponents of the proposal said that Catholics were no longer interested in “conceptual” approaches to religious education.

John Paul II persevered.

On May 27, 1994, the pope received the first English-language version of the Catechism. Even though nearly 700,000 copies of that version were on shelves by the end of June, the pope had no idea that he had an international bestseller on his hands.

Since its 1992 publication in French, the Catechism has sold about 20 million copies in at least 44 languages. It is the first comprehensive document to explain Catholic faith and morals in more than 400 years.

Following the Council of Trent (1545–1563), called in response to the Protestant Reformation, the Vatican published the Roman Catechism in 1566; council fathers found it necessary because both priests and the lay faithful at the time were poorly catechized.

John Paul II saw a parallel after the Second Vatican Council.

 

 

Decades of poor catechesis and the disastrous “Spirit of Vatican II” had the Catholic Church in turmoil. In developing a new universal catechism, John Paul II didn’t primarily intend to squash dissent. Instead, he wanted to put forth a modern, comprehensive, and authoritative teaching document containing all the tenets of the Catholic faith contained in Scripture and Tradition.

He tasked a group of 12 bishops with creating the new catechism. They were led by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger—the future Pope Benedict XVI, then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—and Fr. Christoph Schönborn, later archbishop of Vienna.

Like all major undertakings, there were hiccups.

One significant obstacle was funding. Tight budgets had virtually brought the Vatican’s ambitious project to a grinding halt. The project apparently found an unlikely savior in American pizza tycoon Tom Monaghan.

The Domino’s Pizza founder was on a pilgrimage to Rome in the late 1980s and met with Schönborn. Monaghan, who would sell Domino’s for $1 billion in 1999, told the Austrian priest that he would sponsor the research, travel, staff, and equipment necessary to complete the project. In 2003, Schönborn acknowledged that without Monaghan, the Catechism might never have been published.

Politically correct opposition demanded gender-neutral language. But the English-language version retained the generic use of “man” and “men” for humanity, both men and women.

John Paul II also drew fire for the Catechism’s stance on the death penalty after later revisions. The Catechism’s first edition discouraged authorities from capital punishment. In 1997, John Paul ordered an update of paragraph 2267 limiting the use of the death penalty to circumstances where it was the “only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.”

 

That revision was drawn from his 1994 encyclical Evangelium Vitae, in which he wrote that “as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent.”

In 1999, John Paul told Catholics in St. Louis that “modern society has the means of protecting itself without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform. I renew the appeal I made most recently at Christmas for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and unnecessary.”

Twenty years later, Pope Francis revised the passage again. “The death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person, and the Catholic Church works with determination for its abolition worldwide.”

In its 30-year run, the Catechism has proven to be an indispensable resource for catechesis and evangelization. It spells out the “what” and “why” of Church teaching—and distinguishes the Catholic Church from other world religions.

After all, what other major faith has published a comprehensive volume of its beliefs and the reasons behind them?

About Patrick Novecosky  2 Articles

Patrick Novecosky is a Virginia-based journalist, author, international speaker, and pro-life activist. He met Pope St. John Paul II five times. His latest book is 100 Ways John Paul II Changed the World."

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"Full Transcript Note: Transcripts are generated by machine and lightly edited by humans. They may contain errors. Kevin Cool: If we want to make empowered decisions, then we need to care about accounting. Grant Means: No matter what somebody does for a career, they earn money.

If we want to make more empowered decisions, then we need to care about accounting.

May 29, 2024

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Unless you’re a CPA or a business owner, you might not want to think about accounting. While it’s true that the average person doesn’t necessarily need to be able to read a corporate balance sheet, Professor Ed deHaan says a deeper understanding of accounting — a greater fluency in the “language of business” — can help everyone better understand their finances and make more empowered decisions.

Money Talks: Understanding the Language of Business, with Ed deHaanMoney Talks: Understanding the Language of Business, with Ed deHaan

 

As a professor of accounting at Stanford Graduate School of Business, deHaan teaches and studies financial reporting, corporate governance, household finance, and market regulation. In much of his research, he’s seen how many people, from everyday credit card users to finance industry professionals, don’t have an adequate level of financial literacy. In this episode of If/Then: Business, Leadership, Society, he explores why accounting principles are crucial given money’s centrality across personal and professional domains.

While financial decisions around budgeting, investing, debt, and more can feel overwhelming, according to deHaan, education is the first step to preparing people for success with money. “It’s wild that we are not teaching all of our middle schoolers and high schoolers how to manage household finance, understanding things like credit and interest and risk,” he says.

When it comes to navigating complex financial products, deHaan cautions that institutions have a systematic advantage over consumers, akin to a casino over gamblers. “You need to go in recognizing the house always wins on average. Assume you’re playing against the smartest poker players, not your neighbor,” he advises.

This doesn’t mean services are inherently deceitful, but a lack of transparency, coupled with human tendencies toward irrationality, often leads to predictable wealth transfers away from individuals. “There’s a huge amount of research on the systematic errors that we make,” he says. “We have an overconfidence in the fairness of the system. You need to comparison shop. You need to be skeptical. Read the fine print. There are sharks out there who are just looking for minnows.”

As new technology and financial products make it easier than ever to trade stocks, invest, and buy now while paying later, deHaan believes financial savvy is needed now more than ever. “People can trade with a swipe of a finger before they even get out of bed in the morning or after three drinks at night,” he says. “The ubiquity of ways to invest or take on debt, and how quickly this is expanding, is a huge cause for concern.”

By proactively fostering financial literacy, deHaan believes we can empower a generation of informed consumers and leaders equipped to harness money as a force for good. To get there, we must learn to speak “the language of business.”

Host

Kevin Cool

Senior Editor, Stanford GSB

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If/Then is a podcast from Stanford Graduate School of Business that examines research findings that can help us navigate the complex issues we face in business, leadership, and society. Each episode features an interview with a Stanford GSB faculty member.

Full Transcript

Note: Transcripts are generated by machine and lightly edited by humans. They may contain errors.

Kevin Cool: If we want to make empowered decisions, then we need to care about accounting.

Grant Means: No matter what somebody does for a career, they earn money.

Kevin Cool: Grant Means is a personal finance coach to people of all ages and different professions. He is trying to help Kai, an employee of a biotech startup, make sense of her relatively new and somewhat complicated compensation.

Chai: So when I started, they gave me cover money, shares, RSUs. And I’m not entirely certain about all of the exact terms. I just know that was in addition to the base salary and any bonuses when you’re here.

Kevin Cool: And to make matters harder, her employer’s stock price goes up and down depending on the breakthroughs it may or may not make.

Grant Means: There’s all these terms. It almost feels paralyzing. You don’t know exactly what to do. And then all along the way, there’s this volatility.

Kevin Cool: So over a Zoom session, Grant coaches Kai through this struggle by asking about her financial goals.

Kai: So definitely saving up for a house; investing in — er, getting another car; taking care of parents as they age, and also children. So I think just educating myself and knowing how to do that effectively would definitely allow me to feel better about putting my money in places where I know it’s not too risky, where I might lose money.

Grant Means: It’s important to understand your own personal risk tolerance.

Kai: I think one of the issues is that I’m so risk-averse.

Grant Means: Risk-averse?

Kai: Yeah.

Grant Means: Well, it’s interesting because, actually, the majority of your finances are extremely risky [unintelligible]. But at least the majority of your net worth, especially as it vests over time, is in something that … It very easily could go to zero if clinical trials don’t go well next week for whatever reason.

Kevin Cool: Grant tells Chai about a fundamental concept of investing.

Grant Means: There’s this principle called diversification: taking risk and spreading it around. So if you’re able to diversify your finances, then even as some of your dollars are in extremely risky places or relatively risky places, your overall financial risk is actually reduced. It’s kind of crazy. So right now, you’re one of the least-diversified people, actually, in the world because you’re invested in cash and one stock.

Kevin Cool: Chai still struggles to get her head around the financial decisions she needs to make.

Kai: Being here at my company, we’ve had financial advisers, representatives from the bank, coming in at different times to speak to us. And that was just something we never really did when I was going through grad school — not really thinking about how to organize in terms of planning how to [unintelligible] [some money]. It’s very different. So from not really having that to having it. So many choices.

Grant Means: I think we can take what looks like needing to make a decision every paycheck and needing to make a decision every day and every market swing and turn it into just a few well-thought-out decisions that stand the test of time.

Kevin Cool: Chai says she is encouraged by Grant’s advice as she figures out her life plans; but she also reflects on how she can be so educated, with a PhD, and know so little about finances.

Kai: I’m probably not alone in not really thinking about a lot of these things that you probably should think about. That is just maybe something that, growing up, I hadn’t really considered as much. I’m not saying that what we learned in school wasn’t useful, but I think — you know, even elementary, high school, I feel like there could have been maybe more of an emphasis on things that were practical, like life skills and managing your finances. And that was just one thing that was quite glaringly not present.

Kevin Cool: Even if Chai doesn’t yet know exactly what to do, she at least has a better understanding thanks to the kind of advice Grant offers. And she’s not alone. At work or at home, knowing about finance and basic accounting can help people make more-empowered decisions. That’s our focus today.

This is If/Then, a podcast from Stanford Graduate School of Business, where we examine research findings that can help us navigate the complex issues facing us in business, leadership, and society. I’m Kevin Cool, Senior Editor at the GSB. Today we speak with Ed deHaan, Professor of Accounting.

Ed deHaan: I think it’s wild that we are not teaching all of our middle schoolers and high schoolers how to manage household finance, understanding things like credit and interest and risk, so that when they go off to college or they go into the world and start working, they have some understanding of this.

Kevin Cool: I want to start by talking about … You have a broad set of work around financial literacy in various settings. And we’re going to get into that, but I want to start with a more basic question, which is: If I’m not an accountant, and I don’t plan to be an accountant, why should I care about accounting?

Ed deHaan: One answer is that, hopefully, on a day-to-day basis most of us don’t need to care about accounting. Accounting is what they call the “language of business.” It’s the backbone of communication within organizations and from organizations to outsiders. When it’s working as designed, the only people who need to worry about it are the accountants; the managers who are using the accounting reports — but hopefully they’re just using them as they are, without having to give it a lot of deep thought to where they come from; and then the industries who analyze the reports.

So when it works, it facilitates everything in business. Internally what’s called “managerial accounting” is all the information that companies need to produce and use to run that business efficiently. “Financial accounting” is how people outside of the organization use financial information, what information they want, how companies produce it and communicate it.

When it’s working well, it’s working well. And when it fails, we see catastrophic problems. Organizational failures. We can even see situations like bank failures, which we just observed here locally. Enron, parts of the financial crisis, were due to accounting failures. So every 10 years or so things blow up, and we try to avoid that as much as possible.

Kevin Cool: Right. If I am a leader in an organization, what is my responsibility to the employees in terms of their financial literacy and understanding of what it is, how their money is being managed?

Ed deHaan: So I think there’s a couple of different ways we can think about this. I’ll start with an example of my own research from a few years ago, where we looked at S&P 500 index funds. We showed, even among these identical index funds, some are charging, say, 2 basis points a year — so they’re practically free; it’s a great deal — and some are charging up to 500 basis points a year for functionally the same thing. Now, 500 basis points here is 5 percent a year, which means that if somebody has invested $100 in this, they’re down to $95 before anything else happens.

Now, interesting: I presented this at a university — I think it was at University of Texas — where somebody in the room was a professor and was on the board that oversaw the retirement choices for University of Texas employees, and was shocked at this disparity in fees.

And so this is somebody who works in a business school and who, presumably, has better-than-average knowledge. So I think there is — I don’t know if the word is “responsibility,” but I think there’s a benefit to employers to keeping a careful eye on what’s in these retirement plans, making sure that their employees are getting good options that are going to make them wealthier and them happier, which ultimately makes them happier working for the organization.

Another completely different way we can think about this is the financial performance of the company itself. And I think it — you know, maybe at face value you would think, “Yeah, the average employee cares about whether the company they’re working for is doing well or not.” One big thing is: Is the company going to be here in five years?

But what our research shows is that employees actually care about the financial performance of the company perhaps far more than the average manager realizes. They probably think, “Oh, I put out these earnings announcements; and the IR teams, the institutional investors, they get involved.” What we find is that employees are remarkably sensitive to the information that’s contained in these earnings announcements, and it has a major impact on their decisions about whether to stay working for a company as well as their decisions about where to go work in the future.

Kevin Cool: In those cases, would you say that employees understand those earnings reports? Are they interpreting them accurately?

Ed deHaan: My suspicion is no. The average person outside of Wall Street really struggles to understand the financial performance of a company. If I gave you, or gave even any of my students who have taken my class, the earnings announcement, they would maybe be able to get the basics; but it’s really complicated to understand what accounting reports say and what this means for the future of the company.

So what we actually find in our research is that the number one way that employees appear to learn is from the media coverage of those earnings announcements. So it’s how the media are talking about it. The average reporter is probably a bit more savvy than the average person — Wall Street Journal reporters are very savvy — but that doesn’t mean that they even get it right all the time.

Kevin Cool: So let’s walk through a typical earning report. How should an employee interpret that? What should they be looking for?

Ed deHaan: Yeah, so I think advice that goes for almost any industry is you have to have a long-term perspective — not 10 years, because that’s probably longer than the average person works for a company; but certainly not just one quarter, either. I think we get overly fixated on “Did this quarter’s earnings hit the analysts’ forecast or what the Street was expecting?” There’s just a lot of randomness in every quarter, so I wouldn’t focus too much on that.

I would be thinking more like, “How long would I like to work for this company? Two, three, four years?” and, “What is the company’s prospects looking like over that longer-term perspective?” I certainly wouldn’t be following the company’s stock price on a daily basis. This is just a recipe for madness.

But that longer-term perspective that you could get from reading thoughtful media articles: Wall Street Journal type articles, New York Times articles. I almost certainly would ignore everything on social media. Most of that is designed to get clicks and to attract attention, and long-term predictions are generally not click-worthy. So I think I would be thinking about that.

You also want a company that’s relatively consistent with their plan. If each quarter or once a year they’re coming out with some radical shift, what we might call a restructuring — you know, we’re completely changing our vision; we’re shutting down branches — this is probably an indicator that there’s a lack of stability at the senior-leadership levels, which, for many employees, is probably not so desirable if this is a job that you’re hoping to stay and grow within.

Kevin Cool: Do you think companies … Are companies aware of the mindset or the effect that these reports can have on employees?

Ed deHaan: Yeah, I’m not sure if the average manager is aware of this. I think the easy and the obvious answer is: Company is doing well; employees are happy. Company is not doing well; employees are going to start looking for another job. And that is certainly true. But this thing that we call “résumé value” is really important, as well: that employees want their résumé to reflect organizations that they’re proud of, that the outside market values — “outside market” being other employers. When the company is doing well, that increases the résumé value.

Kevin Cool: Sure.

Ed deHaan: So there is this maybe counterintuitive finding that when the company really has a great quarter, it’s not necessarily that their employees want to stay even more, but some number of employees think, “This is my time to move. This is when I can capitalize on the résumé value of my company.”

Kevin Cool: So if we have a situation where people are acting, to some degree, on reports that they don’t understand, how do we remedy that?

Ed deHaan: If I was a manager advising managers, I would say, “We think a lot about how to communicate financial information to our investors and maybe to our lenders. Maybe what we should do is think more about how we communicate this financial information to our employees so that they understand it.”

So some companies do now have internal conference calls that follow the public conference call with all the analysts. These things are all hands, or at least all available — anybody can log on — and the CFO or the CEO will help the employees interpret what’s happening and will talk to them about the future of the company.

Kevin Cool: You’re listening to If/Then, a podcast from Stanford Graduate School of Business. We’ll continue our conversation after the break.

[Pause]

Kevin Cool: So let’s pivot and talk about household finance. Some of your research has dealt very directly with this. How common is it for people to lose out when they’re working with companies that have a very sophisticated understanding of this and they have a very unsophisticated understanding of it? What’s the danger here? And can you offer some examples about mistakes people make, either in investing or how their money is being managed?

Ed deHaan: Yeah. I think the best analogy when thinking about the financial sector as a normal person interacting with financial products, whether it’s choosing which stocks to invest, which credit cards to have, which savings products to use — the best analogy is a casino. When you walk into a casino, you expect to, on average, lose money to the casino. The casino is much more sophisticated than you are.

Kevin Cool: The house always wins.

Ed deHaan: The house always wins. And even if you’re a poker player playing against other poker players, probably there’s better poker players than you in the room. So this is the attitude, I think, we need to have.

Now, it’s fair: The casino provides you a benefit, and they should make some money. And in the same way, in the financial sector, if a company is providing you a credit card or an index fund or a mortgage, they need to make money. That’s how they do it if they’re providing you financial advice. We just don’t want them to have too much of it. Right? You want a balance so that the companies make a profit and people can prosper.

So I think we need to go into this recognizing that you are going to pay, and you are going to lose on average, particularly when you’re making a stock trade. If you are making a trade, you are making a bet, and somebody is on the other side of that. So assume that you are playing against the smartest poker players in the world, not your neighbor.

So in terms of the mistakes that people make, there was a huge amount of research on the systematic errors that we make — these decision errors, these processing errors. Much of it goes back to Kahneman and Tversky, the sort of seminal psychologists. Tversky won a Nobel Prize for this. And we see this all the time in financial markets, things like: We are quick to recognize our gains and quick to forget our losses.

So somebody might say, “Oh, I made a ton of money in the market last year.” And that’s true — maybe they made some really good bets that paid off — but they also lost a lot of money in small bits and pieces. And you put those together: It ends up worse than if they just invested in an S&P 500 index fund. This result has been replicated time after time after time. We have this overconfidence in our ability to invest, and we lose out as a result.

I think another systematic mistake that we make is we have an overconfidence in the fairness of the system. If you think: I’m going to go out and get a credit card. Maybe they’re all the same. I’ll look at two or three. I’ll pick the one that seems to have the best website. Something like this, making these arbitrary — not arbitrary but sort of relatively surface-level decisions. This is a mistake. You need to comparison-shop. You need to be skeptical and read the fine print as much as you can because there are sharks out there who are just looking for minnows.

Kevin Cool: Are there any interventions? Obviously regulation is an important part of this, but are there any interventions that we should be thinking about to protect people?

Ed deHaan: The regulations or the interventions that I would recommend differ depending on what type of product we’re talking about. I think financial education is probably the biggest bang for the buck across all of those.

I think it’s wild that we are not teaching all of our middle schoolers and high schoolers how to manage household finance, understanding things like credit and interest and risk, so that when they go off to college or they go into the world and start working, they have some understanding of this. So there’s some great work being done already here at GSB with Annamaria Lusardi on education starting at a very low level, young people, with financial literacy. So I think that’s first and foremost.

Second, I think that we have some good regulations in place already, but the financial services sector moves more quickly than regulators. So one good example is Buy Now, Pay Later. You might have seen this. It’s popped up everywhere in the last couple of years. Double-digit growth rates year over year. Young people are using this for every transaction.

Now, essentially, that’s like a credit card. There’s no real difference here. But the way that the fintech companies have structured this, it falls outside of the usual regulations around credit cards.

So you don’t have protections, like very clear disclosures that are designed to help everyday people understand the fees they’re going to have to pay. Basic fraud protections. Communications from the Buy Now, Pay Later providers to credit bureaus, which is a really important part of our system for preventing people from what we call debt-stacking, meaning that you max out one credit card; you get another. You max that out; you get another. You max that out, and before you know it, you’re in a hole you can never dig your way out of.

So Buy Now, Pay Later — or BNPL — is outside of that sector right now. New York state actually is going to be the first state that is going to be starting to regulate this, but it’s taken three-four years for anybody to make that first move.

Kevin Cool: So I want to dig into this a little bit more and ask you how worried you are. You mentioned the “pay later” situation. I know if you make an Amazon purchase now, often you will get a pop-up that says you can do this in four payments or whatever. And as you say, there are no disclosures about fees or anything like that. Robinhood is an example of a company where you can easily, basically, day-trade. It’s very seamless, kind of frictionless. So there are all of these situations where people can easily spend their money and maybe not have much transparency about what those transactions are like.

Ed deHaan: I’m hugely concerned about this. I think, going back to my “casino” example, it would be the equivalent of a casino popping up on every street corner and that if you can see above the jackpot machine, you can pull the lever — you know, this level of protection. Certainly there’s nothing in Robinhood that prevents a 16 year old really from going on and trading. Even if it’s against their terms of service, you can do it.

So I think the ubiquity of ways to invest or to take on debt, and how quickly this is expanding, is a huge cause for concern. I think research has shown time and time and time again that people lose money in the stock market.

I have a study that’s just coming out now where we try to investigate what we call the protectionary effects of trading hours. So until recently, if you wanted to trade, you had to trade from 9:30 AM to 4:00 PM New York time — which, for a California person, essentially means 6:30 AM until 1:00 PM. That’s a form of market-access protection. It’s a friction to engaging in the stock market for people on the West Coast or each time zone moving west.

We do some fancy econometrics there, and what we find, using tax records for the entire U.S. population, is that losing one hour of morning trading because you’re more likely to be asleep than awake — because you’re trading on New York time — actually results in about a three-percentage-point increase in your net capital gains per year. These are meaningful results.

We also see that, over the last decade, this protectionary effect has dwindled dramatically. That’s because we’re not just picking up trading gains to the New York Stock Exchange during regular hours. We’re now also picking up cryptocurrencies. We’re picking up round-the-clock trading, which you can do on Robinhood — out-of-hours trading, which has become more accessible. So this protectionary effect has waned over time.

I think this is a huge problem. What I’m worried about is that people can trade with the swipe of a finger before they even get out of bed in the morning or after that three drinks at night, and they’re going to systematically transfer money from their bank accounts to the institutions who are taking the other sides of these trades.

Kevin Cool: So let’s talk a little bit more about financial literacy, especially in an educational setting. Some families give their children allowances — $5 a week or $10 a week, however much that is — and part of the rationale, I think, is to give them some very basic experience in handling money. You mentioned earlier the value of savings, delaying the gratification until later. But as they age, what should we be doing to make that understanding a little bit deeper, a little bit more sophisticated? What should we be thinking about?

Ed deHaan: There’s a lot of reasons to give a kid the allowance. Sometimes it’s to motivate them to do their chores. Sometimes it’s to give them some autonomy and start letting them feel more adult. Perhaps what we could think about doing is starting with the basic $5 a week, or whatever it is, and then slowly having them graduate up to larger and larger autonomy over their financials.

So you could imagine a system where, instead of parents taking their child clothes-shopping and paying for it themselves, you come up with a clothing budget of what the parent would spend on the kid per year or per quarter, and then sort of depositing that $200 a quarter or whatever into their allowance account, and then they can go and buy their own clothes. Getting experience with these sort of micro transactions maybe would allow them, when they get to their college years and beyond, to make more savvy decisions about their financials.

This is not within my research, but something I’ve observed across families is just the extent to which parents are transparent with their children about the household finances. Many kids grow up in a back box — you know, the parents pay for things, and they have absolutely no understanding of the parents’ financial situation. That might have all sorts of benefits in not transferring stress to young people when they don’t need it.

But there also is something to be said for helping kids from a young age understand what income is and what a budget is, and why it is that we don’t go on vacations every week and why we don’t have the holidays four times a year or five times a year — things like this — and just making those conversations part of the dinner-table conversation.

I think another part of it, which relates to what we’ve seen in meme stocks and whatnot, is sometimes young people need to feel the pain of their mistakes. So I think following some of the meme-stock and crypto crashes, there was some outcry as to who is going to make these young people whole who have lost their money.

And I think the answer is “Nobody,” that when you touch a stove and you get burned, you get burned. We don’t want people to lose their arm, but we want them to feel enough pain that they won’t touch it again. But I also think young people have a remarkable ability to understand these concepts when presented to them. So I don’t think we should underestimate what they’re capable of.

Kevin Cool: So hearing you talk about these things, it occurs to me that you look at things through a certain lens, through a particular lens. Now, maybe that is as an accounting expert, or maybe it is a mindset. But is it useful for people to apply that sort of lens in other parts of their lives?

Ed deHaan: I suppose the lens I think that I see through is, really, an economic lens. I was an undergraduate business economics major. I did an economics master’s. The accounting PhD much of the first couple of years is, essentially, an economics PhD.

So when I say “economic lens,” what I mean is just a really rational and sober approach to costs and benefits, and thinking carefully not only about the direct costs that you observe in making a transaction or in a decision but, also, the opportunity costs involved with it — all of the indirect things, or what you’re giving up.

Now, that sober and rational approach is really difficult for us to maintain when we are talking about buying things that we want. When it comes to … You’re at the cash register just before the holidays. You see that perfect gift, and you think, “Somehow I’ll just squeeze it out. I’ll somehow manage to pay off the credit card. I’m going to buy that.” But if we could apply that rational lens at each step in our lives, I think this is something I would recommend. I can also tell you it can go too far — you probably don’t want to treat your personal relationships in this way.

Kevin Cool: [Laughs]

Ed deHaan: But at least when it comes to work and it comes to your house finances, trying to step back, being as rational as possible, is beneficial. An example I often give for this is: Pretend you’re not making the transaction, but you’re advising your grandmother about whether she should make the transaction, or your grandfather. What would you recommend to them? And try to follow that advice yourself.

Kevin Cool: Well, thanks, Ed. This was really interesting. I appreciate it.

[Music plays]

Kevin Cool: It might start with knowing how to manage the household budget or understanding how credit cards work, but approaching the world with an accountant’s mindset can help you make all kinds of life decisions, including whether or when to leave your job. If we make sure people start learning about money at a younger age, it should make things easier later in life. As Ed says, we shouldn’t underestimate what young people can understand. Maybe that goes for all of us, whatever age we are.

If/Then is produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Nuzum of Magnificent Noise for Stanford Graduate School of Business. Our show is produced by Jim Colgan and Julia Natt. Mixing and sound design by Kristin Mueller. From Stanford GSB: Jenny Luna, Sorel Husbands Denholtz, and Elizabeth Wyleczuk-Stern.

If you enjoyed this conversation, we’d appreciate you sharing this with others who might be interested and hope you’ll try some of the other episodes in this series. For more on our professors and their research, or to discover more podcasts coming out of Stanford GSB, visit our website at gsb.stanford.edu. Find more on our YouTube channel. You can follow us on social media at Stanford GSB. I’m Kevin Cool."

#metaglossia_mundus

BY LILY KEMPCZINSKI ON MAY 29, 2024 "Sign-language interpreters in the Durham schools demanded better pay during a school board meeting on Thursday. Meanwhile, dozens of Durham Association of Educators members and supporters called on the board to recognize the union and give it a stronger role in the planning process. 

The comments by staff who serve deaf students came after department members called in sick on Thursday to protest insufficient pay. 

After the district’s salary debacle, sign-language interpreters “now earn an average of $932 less per month than we were promised in October of 2023,” said interpreter Sarah Leonard, reading from a letter from the staff to the board.

“Due to this change, many of us are contemplating leaving the district in order to support ourselves and our families with community positions that pay significantly more. If we are forced to leave, the district will find itself in a precarious position, both financially and legally,” Leonard continued.

Other DPS staff also spoke about salary issues at the meeting. Christie Clem, a DAE member and physical therapist, called for more transparency about future pay rates. 

“The classified pay crisis caused employees to leave and destroyed our trust not only with the board but also with administration,” she said. “Classified employees don’t feel any better now than we did in January.”

Interim Superintendent Catty Moore said the district hopes to release individual salary projections for the next school year by the end of this week. 

Clem was among more than 35 individuals who turned out to advocate for the Durham Association of Educators on Thursday. The advocates, many wearing DAE T-shirts and carrying homemade signs, called on the board to formally recognize the union and to establish a “formal meet and confer policy” by the start of the upcoming school year.

Representatives from nine other unions — including the Union of Southern Service Workers, the Duke Graduates Students Union, and National Nurses United — spoke out in solidarity with the DAE. 

DAE President Symone Kiddoo laid out a clear timeline for the board.

“If the board is not ready to formalize union recognition this year, we can take the summer to do all that we can to get on the same page about this…If, after that, the board does not pass a standard union recognition policy at or near the start of the school year, we will have to spend the next year at loggerheads as well.”

North Carolina is among the few states where public-sector employees are prohibited from engaging in collective bargaining. DAE views meet and confer as an “alternative framework for honoring workers’ rights.”

Efforts to establish a meet and confer policy have been ongoing in Durham. On February 15, DAE members met with the school board, leading to the formation of an ad hoc committee to work towards a meet and confer policy. However, the committee has been in tension. 

DAE members walked out of a May 20 ad hoc committee meeting after hearing the board’s proposed policy. 

The DAE posted on Facebook the following day that “our talks with the district about union recognition have broken down. Despite the fact that we now represent a majority of DPS workers, the board continues to delay the process, divide workers, and discredit our organizing.”

Alongside urging the board to establish a formal policy, DAE members expressed anguish over the current state of the district. 

“We are in triage. We are in the trenches, as you already know. We can’t wait. We are in the middle of a staffing crisis and basically fueled by pay cuts, lack of trust in the district, quality teachers are leaving left and right, it’s like we’re bleeding from the arteries,” said educator Shamia Truitt. 

Also on Thursday, members of the public made another appeal to renovate the current Durham School of the Arts rather than build a replacement school. Moore reiterated that plans to build a new Durham School of the Arts will proceed. 

Speakers argued that the funds for the new construction, now estimated at more than $240 million, could better be allocated to aid in facility maintenance at other schools. Several also pointed out the historical, cultural, and emotional significance of the current DSA site.

“It is vital that a school that calls itself the School of the Arts have a significant and visible presence in the downtown corridor,” said designer and two-time DSA parent Alicia Hylton-Daniel. “DSA’s current location does that, and so much more. The location tells a story of preservation and significant progress as it went from an all-white Durham high school to the cultured, diverse student body makeup it is today.”"

#metaglossia_mundus

Andrzej Duda argued that Silesian is a dialect of Polish and not a language in itself. He also cited national security concerns.

MAY 29, 2024 | CULTURE, LAW, POLITICS, SOCIETY "President Andrzej Duda has vetoed a law that would have made Silesian – which is spoken in the historical area of Silesia in southwest Poland – a recognised regional language.
In his justification, Duda argued that Silesian is a dialect of Polish, rather than a language in itself, and also cited national security concerns. The president’s decision, which had been widely expected, was criticised by figures from the ruling coalition, whose parliamentary majority had approved the law in April.
In the most recent national census, around 460,000 people in Poland said they use Silesian as their main tongue at home. That is far more than the 87,600 who speak Kashubian, a language native to northern Poland that is currently the country’s only recognised regional language.
Such official recognition allows a language to be taught in schools and used in local administration in municipalities where at least 20% of the population declared in the last census that they speak it.
However, in the justification for his veto today, Duda argued that, in “the opinions of experts, especially linguists”, Silesian does not meet the criteria defining a language laid out in the 2005 law regulating Poland’s recognised ethnic minorities and regional languages.
It is instead an “ethnolect”, said Duda, a term that refers to a variety of a language associated with a certain ethnic group. The president noted that, as such, Silesian is still subject to legal protections and support, as are other dialects of Polish, under separate legislation.

Duda also voiced his concern that, if Silesian were recognised as a regional language, it could “result in similar expectations among representatives of other regional groups who want to cultivate their local tongues”.

Finally, the president also cited national security concerns in relation to the “current social and geopolitical situation…related to the war being waged on the eastern border”. At such a time, there must be “special care to preserve national identity”, including “cultivating the native language”.

That latter justification was criticised as “nationalist hysteria” by Monika Rosa, an MP from the ruling coalition and one of the most vocal proponents of recognising Silesian as a regional language, reports the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.

Rosa also dismissed Duda’s reference to experts. She said that everyone chooses whichever expert opinions best suit them. The MP pledged that another bill recognising Silesian would be presented to parliament and signed by the new president who will replace Duda when his final term ends next year.

The speaker of parliament, Szymon Hołownia, who is a leader of one of the parties in the ruling coalition, also criticised Duda’s decision.

“Diversity is Poland’s strength, not a threat to it. I’m sorry you don’t understand that, Mr President,” he wrote on social media.

However, the president received praise from Janusz Kowalski, an opposition MP from the right-wing Sovereign Poland (Suwerenna Polska) party.

“Respect for President Andrzej Duda, who defends the unitarity of the Republic of Poland,” tweeted Kowalski. “The Silesian language is the Polish language. Silesians are Poles! The German plan to break up the Polish national community has been stopped today.”

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support."
#metaglossia_mundus

"When we're told "This coffee is hot" upon being served a familiar caffeinated beverage at our local diner or cafe, the message is clear. But what about when we're told "This coffee is not hot"? Does that mean we think it's cold? Or room temperature? Or just warm?

by New York University

When we're told "This coffee is hot" upon being served a familiar caffeinated beverage at our local diner or cafe, the message is clear. But what about when we're told "This coffee is not hot"? Does that mean we think it's cold? Or room temperature? Or just warm?

 

A team of scientists has now identified how our brains work to process phrases that include negation (i.e., "not"), revealing that it mitigates rather than inverts meaning—in other words, in our minds, negation merely reduces the temperature of our coffee and does not make it "cold."

"We now have a firmer sense of how negation operates as we try to make sense of the phrases we process," explains Arianna Zuanazzi, a postdoctoral fellow in New York University's Department of Psychology at the time of the study and the lead author of the paper, which appears in the journal PLOS Biology.

"In identifying that negation serves as a mitigator of adjectives—bad or good, sad or happy, and cold or hot—we also have a better understanding of how the brain functions to interpret subtle changes in meaning."

In an array of communications, ranging from advertising to legal filings, negation is often used intentionally to mask a clear understanding of a phrase. In addition, large language models in AI tools have difficulty interpreting passages containing negation. The researchers say that their results show how humans process such phrases while also potentially pointing to ways to understand and improve AI functionality.

While the ability of human language to generate novel or complex meanings through the combination of words has long been known, how this process occurs is not well understood.

 

To address this, Zuanazzi and her colleagues conducted a series of experiments to measure how participants interpreted phrases and also monitored participants' brain activity during these tasks—in order to precisely gauge related neurological function.

In the experiments, participants read—on a computer monitor—adjective phrases with and without negation (e.g., "really not good" and "really really good") and rated their meaning on a scale from 1 ("really really bad") to 10 ("really really good") using a mouse cursor. This scale was designed, in part, to determine if participants interpreted phrases with negation as the opposite of those without negation—in other words, did they interpret "really not good" as "bad"—or, instead, as something more measured?

Here, the researchers found that participants took longer to interpret phrases with negation than they did phrases without negation—indicating, not surprisingly given the greater complexity, that negation slows down our processing of meaning.

In addition, drawing from how the participants moved their cursors, negated phrases were first interpreted as affirmative (i.e., "not hot" was initially interpreted as closer to "hot" than to "cold"), but later shifted to a mitigated meaning, suggesting that, for instance, "not hot" is not interpreted as either "hot" or "cold," but, rather, as something between "hot" and "cold."

The scientists also used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to measure the magnetic fields generated by the electrical activity of participants' brains while they were performing these phrase-interpretation tasks. As with the behavioral experiments, neural representations of polar adjectives such as "cold" and "hot" were made more similar by negation, suggesting that the meaning of "not hot" is interpreted as "less hot" and the meaning of "not cold" as "less cold," becoming less distinguishable.

In sum, neural data matched what was observed for the mouse movements in the behavioral experiments: negation does not invert the meaning of "hot" to "cold," but rather weakens or mitigates its representation along the semantic continuum between "cold" and "hot."

"This research spotlights the complexity that goes into language comprehension, showing that this cognitive process goes above and beyond the sum of the processing of individual word meanings," observes Zuanazzi, now at the Child Mind Institute.

More information: Zuanazzi A, Ripollés P, Lin WM, Gwilliams L, King J-R, Poeppel D, Negation mitigates rather than inverts the neural representations of adjectives. PLoS Biology (2024). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3002622"

#metaglossia_mundus

"History of remote simultaneous interpretation and its impact on interpreters, and a description of sound tests conducted by the Translation Bureau.

Developed in the mid-20th century, simultaneous interpretation is closely related to the development of sound systems. The invention of the microphone and speakers allowed interpreters to reproduce what one person is saying in another language without interrupting them.

The introduction of teleconferencing and video conferencing gave rise to remote simultaneous interpretation, where the interpreter is not in the same place as the person speaking. It’s quite challenging for interpreters, who have to clearly see and hear the person speaking to render their message in another language, using the right words and tone. In addition, converting the sound to allow its transmission by telephone or over the Internet can affect the sound quality.

Over the years, requests to interpret teleconferences and video conferences increased in the Government of Canada. Interpreters started reporting headaches and hearing problems, which prompted the Translation Bureau to create a working group to regulate remote simultaneous interpretation in 2015. In April 2019, after several accidents related to the quality of the sound transmitted by phone, the Bureau put an end to teleconference interpretation.

In spring 2020, the lockdown due to the pandemic resulted in an explosion of requests for videoconference interpretation. This immediately resulted in an increase in health problems reported by interpreters. The Bureau quickly took action to protect them but interpreters are still feeling the effects today. This is why the Bureau is continuing its efforts to better understand and solve problems related to remote simultaneous interpretation.

Analyzing the sound

Even though the consequences of being exposed to loud noise are well known, few studies have been conducted on the effects of long-term exposure to sound from videoconferences. Over the past few years, the Bureau has called on a variety of sound and hearing specialists from Canada and other countries to obtain data that will help it to choose the best measures to protect interpreters.

Tests may involve many factors, as shown in the list of studies obtained by the Bureau. For example, in spring 2023, sound specialists tested the frequency spectrum Footnote1 (sound quality) and the level of sound pressure Footnote2 (intensity or volume of sound) transmitted to interpreters in parliamentary committee rooms.

The frequency spectrum test is relatively simple: a device that measures the frequencies received is plugged in, and used to determine whether these frequencies cover the recommended spectrum, between 125 and 15,000 hertz for simultaneous interpretation.

With regard to sound pressure, a mannequin made of silicone designed to represent the human body, specifically the human ear, is used. Equipped with sensors, the mannequin reproduces the sound vibration in the ear and body and allows specialists to determine whether the sound pressure is appropriate.

 

 

The mannequin’s ear is designed to reproduce the human ear canal and linked to an electronic eardrum.

The data collected this way in spring 2023 was sent to hearing specialists so they could determine if the sound transmitted posed a danger to interpreters and make recommendations to reduce the risks. That is one example of the Bureau’s ongoing efforts to improve its understanding of the effects of remote simultaneous interpretation and better protect interpreters.

Related links

• Translation Bureau's language services and tools (only accessible on the Government of Canada network)

Footnote 1

Measurement of the sound transmitted in hertz, from the lowest to the highest. If the spectrum is not broad enough, it is harder to understand what is being said.

Return to footnote1Referrer

Footnote 2

The higher the sound pressure, the higher the risk of causing hearing damage."

 

#metaglossia_mundus

"Translation, Cross-Cultural Adaptation, and Validation of Measurement Instruments: A Practical Guideline for Novice Researchers

Paulo Cruchinho,1 María Dolores López-Franco,2 Manuel Luís Capelas,3 Sofia Almeida,4 Phillippa May Bennett,5– 7 Marcelle Miranda da Silva,1,8 Gisela Teixeira,1 Elisabete Nunes,1 Pedro Lucas,1 Filomena Gaspar1 On Behalf of the Handovers4SafeCare

1Nursing Research, Innovation and Development Center (CIDNUR) of Lisbon, Nursing School of Lisbon, Lisboa, Portugal; 2CTS-464 Nursing and Innovation in Healthcare, University of Jaén, Jaén, Spain; 3Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Faculty of Health Sciences and Nursing, Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Health (CIIS), Lisboa, Portugal; 4Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Faculty of Health Sciences and Nursing, Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Health (CIIS), Porto, Portugal; 5Center for English, Translation, and Anglo-Portuguese Studies (CETAPS), Lisboa, Portugal; 6Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of the New University of Lisbon, Lisboa, Portugal; 7Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, Coimbra, Portugal; 8Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Anna Nery Nursing School, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Correspondence: Paulo Cruchinho, Nursing School of Lisbon, Avenida Prof. Egas Moniz, Lisboa, 1600-190, Portugal, Tel +351 217913400, Email pjcruchinho@esel.pt

Abstract: Cross-cultural validation of self-reported measurement instruments for research is a long and complex process, which involves specific risks of bias that could affect the research process and results. Furthermore, it requires researchers to have a wide range of technical knowledge about the translation, adaptation and pre-test aspects, their purposes and options, about the different psychometric properties, and the required evidence for their assessment and knowledge about the quantitative data processing and analysis using statistical software. This article aimed: 1) identify all guidelines and recommendations for translation, cross-cultural adaptation, and validation within the healthcare sciences; 2) describe the methodological approaches established in these guidelines for conducting translation, adaptation, and cross-cultural validation; and 3) provide a practical guideline featuring various methodological options for novice researchers involved in translating, adapting, and validating measurement instruments. Forty-two guidelines on translation, adaptation, or cross-cultural validation of measurement instruments were obtained from “CINAHL with Full Text” (via EBSCO) and “MEDLINE with Full Text”. A content analysis was conducted to identify the similarities and differences in the methodological approaches recommended. Bases on these similarities and differences, we proposed an eight-step guideline that includes: a) forward translation; 2) synthesis of translations; 3) back translation; 4) harmonization; 5) pre-testing; 6) field testing; 7) psychometric validation, and 8) analysis of psychometric properties. It is a practical guideline because it provides extensive and comprehensive information on the methodological approaches available to researchers. This is the first methodological literature review carried out in the healthcare sciences regarding the methodological approaches recommended by existing guidelines.

Keywords: cross-cultural comparison, decision-making, psychometric properties, research design, validation studies, health services research"

#metaglossia_mundus

"« Il n’y a aucune raison que l’édition vive dans une réserve alors que l’intelligence artificielle finira par être utilisée dans tous les secteurs », explique au Figaro Renaud Lefebvre, directeur général du syndicat national de l’édition (SNE).

« Le téléphone a commencé à moins sonner, puis les deux maisons avec qui j’ai l’habitude de travailler m’ont tout simplement annoncé qu’elles préféraient se tourner vers des solutions d’intelligence artificielle, faute de moyens », confie de son côté Capucine, traductrice de livres pratiques, d’ouvrages de développement personnel et de biographies de stars.

« C’est la deuxième maison en quatre mois qui me propose des contrats au rabais, en troquant mon statut d’auteur pour celui de prestataire de services », témoigne un autre traducteur : « On me demande désormais d’éditer à la marge des textes, qui ont préalablement été traduits par une machine ».

« Dans les traductions littéraires, l’utilisation de l’intelligence artificielle n’est pas envisageable », tempère Anne Michel, à la tête du département étranger chez Albin Michel, qui note que « Dans les contrats rédigés par les maisons d’édition anglo-saxonnes, il est désormais demandé très spécifiquement, depuis plus de six mois, que les traductions soient faites par des humains et non par la machine ».

A contrario, des éditeurs de BD, mangas et webtoons se tournent désormais vers GeoComix/ComixSuite, une start-up française qui développe depuis 8 ans « une Intelligence Artificielle unique capable d'extraire et d'analyser tous les éléments présents sur une page de bande dessinée », de sorte d'automatiser la traduction et la réécriture des légendes dans plusieurs langues.

Une société britannique, DeepZen, « promet de son côté aux éditeurs de diviser par dix le temps de production d’un livre audio, et par quatre le coût de conception ». Le Figaro relève qu'Audible « propose déjà plus de 40 000 livres audio dont les voix sont générées par IA », et que le deuxième groupe d’édition du monde, HarperCollins, vient de son côté d’officialiser un partenariat avec la start-up de clonage de voix, ElevenLabs, afin d’élargir son catalogue de livres audio en langues étrangères à coût réduit.

« Nous sommes dans un moment pivot. C’est inévitable que des emplois soient décimés dans les prochains mois », explique au Figaro Stephan Kalb, membre du bureau de l’association professionnelle LESVOIX qui, avec le Syndicat Français des Artistes interprètes (SFA), a lancé une pétition en janvier, Pour un doublage créé par des humains pour des humains, qui affiche plus de 120 000 signatures :

« Nous risquons d’être parmi les premier·es à être remplacé·es, à très court terme par les outils de l’intelligence artificielle générative (IAG), capables de traduire, cloner, synthétiser des textes, des voix, des interprétations et des émotions avec une similitude étonnante. Nous sommes en première ligne car le traitement des données vocales nécessite moins de puissance de calcul que l’image. »"

#metaglossia_mundus

"Dans cet article, Pascal Médeville décortique des crevettes (avec quelques conseils gastronomiques ) et le vocabulaire khmer autour de la stupidité.
Écrit par Pascal Médeville
Publié le 26 mai 2024, mis à jour le 26 mai 2024
Ce matin, j’ai été un peu agacé en vérifiant une traduction en khmer faite pour un client. Le client voulait un document bilingue, avec la traduction en khmer sous chaque paragraphe en anglais. Il avait à cet effet, dans son fichier Excel, inséré une ligne sous chaque ligne anglaise, et avait ajouté dans les lignes insérées la mention « Khmer Translation ». Or, notre traducteur a eu la brillante idée d’ajouter sa traduction dans les cellules anglaises, sous l’anglais, et de mettre sous les lignes ayant la mention « Khmer Translation », la ligne « សំណៅបកប្រែខ្មែរ » (traduction en khmer)…
En expliquant à ma relectrice que « Khmer Translation » indiquait que le client souhaitait que nous insérions la traduction dans les lignes ainsi balisées, je ne pus m’empêcher de lui expliquer que si je ne doutais pas que notre traducteur possédât un cerveau, je le soupçonnais d’avoir oublié de s’en servir…
En réponse à mes commentaires, mon adorable assistante m’a dit deux mots : ខួរបង្កង [khuo bâng-kâng], littéralement « cerveau de grosse crevette d’eau douce ».
Les traductions en anglais que je trouve dans les dictionnaires en ligne pour l’expression ខួរបង្កង expliquent toutes que le mot ខួរបង្កង désigne ce que les cuisiniers français appellent le « corail », qui « est le nom donné à la partie verte devenant orangée à la cuisson qui se trouve dans le coffre des homards et des langoustes, et qui sert d’élément de liaison aux sauces d’accompagnement de poisson, de crustacés ou de coquillages. » (définition fournie par le site Gastromaniac).

Le mot khmer ខួរ est un terme générique qui désigne la cervelle, la moëlle et, donc, le corail des crustacés : ខួរក្បាល signifie « cerveau », ខួរឆ្អឹង désigne la « moëlle des os », et ខួរបង្កង fait ainsi référence au corail des « chevrettes » ou des « demoiselles d Mékong » (autres noms donnés aux grosses crevettes d’eau douce fameuses au Cambodge). (Signalons en passant que, si jamais vous dégustez des chevrettes, ne vous abstenez surtout pas de sucer l’extrémité de la tête détachée du corps, pour en extraire la substantifique moëlle le corail dont la saveur est inoubliable !)
En comparant le cerveau de notre cher traducteur à une « cervelle de chevrette », mon assistante suggérait qu’il n’était pas doté d’un cerveau humain, mais plutôt de celui d’un crustacé et que c’était là l’explication de son erreur.
Au Cambodge, l’expression cervelle de chevrette est une expression gentillette couramment utilisée pour parler de quelqu’un qui ne brille pas par la vivacité de son esprit.

Je qualifie cette expression de gentillette car il en existe d’autres beaucoup moins amènes : pour décrire une personne stupide, on utilise en général l’adjectif ល្ងង់ [l’ngung] et, pour appuyer son affirmation, on peut dire d’une personne qu’elle est bête comme un buffle (ល្ង់ងដូចក្របី), comme un bœuf (ល្ងង់ដូចគោ) ou encore comme un porc (ល្ងង់ដូចជ្រូក). Si je puis me permettre de vous prodiguer un conseil, c’est de vous abstenir d’utiliser ces métaphores, qui sont considérées comme des insultes majeures."
#metaglossia_mundus

May 26, 2024 Code de l'info: 3488661 "IQNA-Zafarul Islam Khan, chercheur et penseur indien, a récemment achevé une traduction moderne des concepts du Saint Coran en anglais, qui correspond aux besoins des musulmans d'aujourd'hui et aide les non-musulmans à comprendre l'Islam.
Zafarul Islam Khan, chercheur et penseur indienDans une interview accordée à Al Jazeera, ce chercheur de 75 ans a déclaré : « Ce projet a été réalisé dans le but de corriger et de réviser la traduction d'Abdullah Yusuf Ali dans les années 1930, qui contient de nombreuses erreurs et des équivalents incompréhensibles.

Pour cette traduction, les commentaires, les biographies du Prophète (as) et les dictionnaires arabes les plus fiables ont été utilisés. Nous avons tenté de créer un pont culturel et religieux entre musulmans et non-musulmans, et de fournir une compréhension précise et équilibrée de l'Islam, et une traduction conforme aux croyances islamiques authentiques. Nous allons essayer de publier une deuxième édition car la plupart de ceux qui demandent des traductions sont des non-musulmans qui souhaitent en savoir plus sur l'Islam. Les nombreuses annotations prennent en compte les questions que le lecteur moyen, musulman ou non musulman, peut se poser en lisant le Coran. L’absence de cette approche dans de nombreuses traductions, a conduit à des problèmes et à des doutes, exploités par les ennemis de l’Islam.

کامل شود برای سوژه محققان//یازده سال تلاش محقق هندی برای ارائه ترجمه تازه قرآن به زبان انگلیسی

L’éloignement de la parole de Dieu est une des principales raisons du déclin moral de certaines sociétés islamiques, en particulier des musulmans indiens.

Dieu parle à chacun de nous personnellement, à travers le Coran. Il est dommage de tirer le message de Dieu non pas de son livre, mais de ceux qui n'ont pas de réelles connaissances dans ce domaine. Certains interdisent même de lire la traduction du Coran et prétendent que si les gens le font, ils s’égareront. En insistant pour prononcer des sermons en arabe, que la grande majorité de notre peuple ne comprend pas, nous avons gaspillé une grande opportunité d’éducation et de formation hebdomadaire, lors du sermon du vendredi. Le sermon hebdomadaire du vendredi est une occasion pour conseiller et éduquer le grand public, mais en insistant sur les sermons en arabe, nous avons raté une excellente occasion de communiquer, chaque semaine, avec les gens sur des questions qui préoccupent la société. Si nous nous soucions vraiment de nous-mêmes, des générations futures et du bien-être de la nation et du pays, nous devons réfléchir et formuler un plan sérieux de réforme ».

یازده سال تلاش محقق هندی برای ارائه ترجمه روزآمد قرآن به زبان انگلیسی /// تکمیل شد

Cette traduction a été publiée par l'éditeur de Delhi, Faros Media, en 1234 grandes pages et comporte le texte arabe et sa traduction anglaise. Une autre édition sans texte arabe, a été publiée en 815 pages, au prix de 795 roupies, et sera disponible sur le site : TheGloriousQuran.net

Zafarul Islam Khan est l'un des intellectuels musulmans les plus célèbres de l'Inde. Il est né en mars 1948 à Badaria, et est le fils de Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, un penseur musulman qui dirigeait le centre islamique « Al-Rasalah » de New Delhi. Zafarul Islam Khan a étudié à Al-Azhar et à l’Université du Caire de 1973 à 1966. En 1987, il a obtenu son doctorat en études islamiques à l'Université de Manchester.

Zafar al-Islam a travaillé comme traducteur et éditeur au ministère libyen des Affaires étrangères dans les années 1970. Dans les années 1980, il a travaillé avec le « Muslim Institute », basé à Londres, dirigeant le service d'information « MuslimMedia » et leurs autres publications.

کامل شود برای سوژه محققان//یازده سال تلاش محقق هندی برای ارائه ترجمه تازه قرآن به زبان انگلیسی

Il est l'auteur et traducteur de plus de 50 livres en arabe, anglais et ourdou, dont « Hijrah in Islam » (Delhi, 1996) et « Palestine documents » (New Delhi, 1998). Il a publié huit articles dans l'Encyclopédie de l'Islam (Leiden) sur les questions indo-islamiques, et est un analyste des questions islamiques et sud-asiatiques sur des chaînes de radio et de télévision, notamment Al Jazeera et BBC Arabic, et dans des journaux, sur les questions internationales et islamiques, en particulier la question de la Palestine.

یازده سال تلاش محقق هندی برای ارائه ترجمه روزآمد قرآن به زبان انگلیسی /// تکمیل شد

En 2000, il lance « Milli Gazette », un bihebdomadaire en anglais. En décembre 2007, il a été élu pour un mandat de deux ans (2008-2009) président du « All India Muslim Majlis » (AIMMM), qui regroupe toutes les organisations islamiques en Inde. Il a également été élu président de l'AIMMM pour deux mandats supplémentaires. En juillet 2017, il a été nommé pour un mandat de trois ans, président de la Commission des minorités de Delhi, chargée de défendre les droits des minorités. En tant que président, Khan a constitué un comité d'enquête chargé de faire un rapport et des recommandations au gouvernement de Delhi, sur les émeutes de Delhi de 2020. Ce penseur musulman est l'auteur et le traducteur de plus de 40 livres en arabe, anglais et ourdou, publiés au Koweït, au Caire, à Beyrouth, à Londres et à Delhi depuis 1968. 4216374"
#metaglossia_mundus

"Les étudiants en traduction, premières victimes de l’ère ChatGPT

Depuis novembre 2022, le secteur de la traduction s’inquiète : l’intelligence artificielle va-t-elle bouleverser le métier, voire remplacer ses acteurs ? «Libération» a rencontré plusieurs de ces étudiants, qui ont commencé leur cursus avant même que ChatGPT n’existe.

par Enora Foricher

publié le 26 mai 2024 à 11h55

Il y a quelques semaines, une étudiante en traduction, qui a souhaité rester anonyme, passe un entretien d’embauche dans un cabinet d’expertise financière à Paris. Alors qu’elle expose ses compétences, acquises après cinq ans d’études dont un concours sélectif, le recruteur lui assène : «De toute façon, les traducteurs, vous allez être remplacés. Avant Chat GPT, on avait besoin de deux postes, maintenant un seul suffit.» Décontenancée face à un tel discours, la jeune femme se souvient de son inconfort jusqu’à la fin de l’entretien. Retenue pour le poste, elle préfère décliner. «Même si le salaire était intéressant, plus de 2 000 euros net mensuels, je ne peux pas accepter de travailler pour quelqu’un qui dénigre mon métier et n’en voit pas l’utilité.»

Qu’il s’agisse des inquiétudes sincères de leur entourage ou de remarques désobligeantes lancées à la volée, tous les étudiants en traduction que Libération a rencontrés racontent avoir été confrontés à une même crainte. Leur profession va-t-elle disparaître ? «Impossible», répondent-ils. «Du moins pas tout de suite», nuance l’une d’entre eux. «Et pas pour toutes les tâches», complète une autre.

 

«Cela nous fait réfléchir»

Depuis l’arrivée sur le marché grand public de Chat GPT en novembre 2022, deux mots – intelligence artificielle – voire deux lettres – IA – sont sur toutes les lèvres. Et pour cause, le développement de l’intelligence artificielle a connu un grand coup d’accélérateur ces deux dernières années..."

#metaglossia_mundus

"Depuis plus de 20 ans, Lhousseine Eshimi traduit dans les tribunaux la parole de mis en cause arabisants. Un destin auquel rien ne destinait ce professeur d’anglais né au Maroc.

Justice : « Le traducteur-interprète est un pont entre deux rives »

Depuis plus de vingt ans, Lhousseine Eshimi travaille comme traducteur-interprète pour la cour d’appel d’Agen. 

 Justice, Lot, Cahors

Publié le 25/05/2024 à 18:01 , mis à jour le 27/05/2024 à 11:58

Valentin Pacaud

l'essentielDepuis plus de 20 ans, Lhousseine Eshimi traduit dans les tribunaux la parole de mis en cause arabisants. Un destin auquel rien ne destinait ce professeur d’anglais né au Maroc.

 

Lorsqu’il s’avance à la barre, il ajuste d’un air habitué le micro du pupitre. Il attend, les mains croisées et le regard alerte, le moment de parler. Ici, il se tient seul, au milieu du tribunal, et entouré de tous les côtés de robes noires.

Un quotidien dans l’urgence

Cet homme, c’est Lhousseine Eshimi, 60 ans. Il n’est pourtant ni juge, ni avocat, ni prévenu, ni témoin ou victime. Non, son métier c’est de traduire les paroles de prévenus qui ne parlent d’autres langues que l’arabe. « Traducteur-interprète », nous corrige-t-il d’abord. « Le travail de traduction est toujours accompagné du domaine de l’interprétariat. Le travail que je suis amené à faire nécessite que je doive interpréter, expliquer et expliciter certaines choses, par exemple au niveau culturel. » Un travail périlleux qui, s’il n’est pas mené correctement, peut mener à de fâcheuses déconvenues : « Une fois, dans le cabinet d’un juge d’instruction, un mis en cause a dit : "Je ne pardonnerai pas aux personnes qui m’ont accusé. À cause d’eux, je suis dans cette situation". La juge d’instruction et les avocats ont compris cela comme une menace. J’ai dû intervenir pour expliquer que cette personne voulait dire : "Je ne pardonne pas à ces personnes devant Dieu. C’est-à-dire que je délègue la justice à Dieu" ».

 

Un travail qu’il met à disposition de la cour d’appel d’Agen. D’où sa présence, ce vendredi, au tribunal de Cahors qui dépend de la juridiction agenaise.

Si nous avions pu prendre rendez-vous un mois en avance, nous ne savions pourtant pas qu’il serait sur nos terres deux jours plus tôt. En cause, les aléas du métier qui font qu’on doit être disponible rapidement selon les affaires. Dès mercredi, Lhousseine Eshimi s’est rendu au commissariat et au tribunal de Cahors pour aider les enquêteurs suite à l’interpellation de neuf personnes dans le cadre d’un réseau de cocaïne qui sévissait dans la ville.

 

20 ans de traduction et d’interprétation

« Cela a fini tard tous les jours », souffle cet épris de justice qui doit assister aux auditions, audiences du tribunal, confrontations, écoutes téléphoniques… etc.

Pourtant rien ne destinait ce Marocain – désormais naturalisé — à œuvrer dans ces salles où on décide le sort d’hommes et de femmes. Diplômé d’un DEUG en anglais à la faculté de lettres et de sciences de Kénitra (Maroc) en 1987, il rejoint la France cinq ans plus tard avec sa femme. Ici, il tente bien de continuer son métier de professeur mais les mutations ne l’enchantent guère. Il décide finalement d’ouvrir en 1997 un magasin d’alimentation à Agen, où se trouvent aussi une boulangerie et une boucherie. Elle ferme finalement en 2013. Entre-temps, il a ouvert en 2004 un cabinet de voyages toujours actif aujourd’hui. L’année d’avant, il a repris ses études pour faire une licence en langues arabes. Bref, Lhousseine a plusieurs vies.

Celle qui le mène au tribunal commence seulement au début des années 2000. « Un juge d’instruction d’Agen avait entendu de parler de moi, que j’avais été professeur et m’a demandé mes services pour traduire. Je n’ai aucune idée de comment elle a eu mon téléphone. Je n’avais jamais travaillé pour la police ou la gendarmerie pourtant », s’étonne encore Lhousseine. Pour son baptême du feu, l’ancien prof découvre la gravité et les horreurs de la cour d’assises : une affaire de viol. Satisfaite, la juge le rappellera plusieurs fois. Ce qui a alors commencé comme une activité complémentaire est devenu un travail à temps plein où il enregistre désormais presque 20 ans au compteur.

Un travail qui le passionne. En témoigne la lettre qu’il fait au procureur général d’Agen pour lui demander de renouveler, cette année, son assermentation (qui doit être renouvelée tous les cinq ans). Une formalité que Lhousseine transforme en une page recto verso où il loue « le rôle du traducteur-interprète [qui] est semblable à celui d’un pont qui relie deux rives. »"

#metaglossia_mundus

Par Julien DONMEZ 25 mai 2024 "Japon : découvrez ces vitres innovantes offrant des traductions instantanées pour les touristes
Au Japon, une entreprise développe une technologie innovante : des vitres transparentes capables de traduire instantanément les conversations entre Japonais et étrangers, favorisant ainsi l’interaction sans barrière linguistique.
Le paysage technologique japonais continue de se transformer avec des innovations destinées à améliorer la vie quotidienne. Parmi ces innovations, une entreprise japonaise franchit un nouveau cap en facilitant les interactions entre touristes et locaux. L’initiative vise à réduire les défis linguistiques grâce à une vitre spéciale capable de traduire instantanément les propos échangés.

 

Alors que la plupart des gens se tournent vers des applications comme Deepl ou Google Traduction pour surmonter les barrières linguistiques, cette approche japonaise se distingue par sa capacité à offrir une communication claire sans recourir à un smartphone. Cette invention s’inscrit dans le cadre d’une tendance plus large visant à rendre l’expérience touristique plus fluide et agréable.

Des vitres qui traduisent instantanément
Le Japon connaît une hausse spectaculaire du nombre de touristes, ayant doublé en une décennie. Dans ce contexte, la langue demeure une barrière importante, d’autant plus que la maîtrise de l’anglais parmi la population japonaise y est relativement faible.

Pour répondre à ce défi, la société Toppan a mis au point une vitre transparente révolutionnaire. Cette technologie permet aux Japonais et aux étrangers de se comprendre en temps réel, en affichant la traduction des propos dans des bulles blanches, rappelant les dialogues des bandes dessinées. L’ensemble du dispositif est pensé pour être intuitif et facilement accessible.

Sur le même sujet : Voitures électriques : ce chargeur rapide fonctionne à l’hydrogène, le voici
Un outil appelé à prospérer
La vitre de Toppan mesure 40 centimètres de haut et 60 centimètres de large. L’une de ses forces réside dans le fait qu’elle a été entraînée directement en japonais pour traduire une douzaine de langues, dont l’anglais, le français, le chinois et le coréen. Contrairement à d’autres outils de traduction qui passent souvent par l’anglais comme langue intermédiaire, cette vitre limite les risques d’erreurs en traduisant directement depuis le japonais.

Cette technologie a déjà été installée dans plusieurs gares de Tokyo, notamment devant les guichets, facilitant la communication entre le personnel ferroviaire et les voyageurs étrangers. Son efficacité et son utilité ont conduit à une demande croissante à travers le pays.

Une adoption en expansion
L’expansion de ces vitres de traduction ne se limite pas aux gares. On les trouve aussi dans d’autres lieux touristiques majeurs et dans certains commerces à forte affluence touristique. Le concept séduit par sa capacité à rendre les échanges plus naturels et spontanés, sans nécessiter l’utilisation d’un appareil mobile.

Les retours des utilisateurs sont particulièrement positifs. Les touristes apprécient de pouvoir dialoguer plus facilement et les Japonais bénéficient d’un outil qui facilite leur quotidien, sans les forcer à une maîtrise d’une langue étrangère.

Impact sociétal et futur potentiel
Le succès de ce dispositif repose sur plusieurs facteurs. En premier lieu, il répond à un besoin réel dans un pays qui voit son taux de tourisme exploser. Par ailleurs, il s’inscrit dans une volonté plus globale de démocratiser les outils numériques pour une utilisation quotidienne.

De plus, cette technologie pourrait trouver des applications dans d’autres contextes, tels que les services médicaux, où la communication entre patients étrangers et personnel soignant peut être cruciale.

Les développements technologiques, comme cette vitre de traduction, pourraient jeter les bases d’une interaction plus harmonieuse partout où la barrière linguistique demeure un obstacle. En somme, au Japon, cette innovation pourrait bien préfigurer d’autres outils similaires adaptés à des environnements variés.

À long terme, la question se pose : cette innovation pourrait-elle influencer d’autres pays à intégrer des solutions de traduction instantanée dans les espaces publics et les services essentiels ?"

#metaglossia_mundus