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Charles Tiayon
August 3, 2022 12:10 AM
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Dans chaque langue il existe pas mal d’adages et de proverbes. On les utilise sans réfléchir bien que parfois ils peuvent être au moins mystérieux. Focus sur les proverbes polonais ! - Vous a-t-on déjà appelé "francuski piesek" ? Tout savoir sur les proverbes polonais !
Par Zuzia Czekajewska | Publié le 03/08/2022 à 00:00 | Mis à jour le 03/08/2022 à 00:00 Est-ce que quelqu’un t’a déjà dit de ne pas laisser les poires dormir dans la cendre ? (« Nie zasypiaj gruszek w popiele. ») Ou est-ce que tu as peut-être déjà entendu parler des difficultés dont on ne peut pas sortir comme Zabłocki quand il est sur du savon ? (« Wyjść na czymś jak Zabłocki na mydle. ») Est-ce qu’il y a des choses que tu crains autant que le diable craint l’eau bénite ? (« Bać się jak diabeł święconej wody »). Si tu es Polonais – probablement oui. Si tu n’es pas Polonais – il est fort probable que non. Dans chaque langue il existe pas mal d’adages et de proverbes. On les utilise sans réfléchir bien que parfois ils peuvent être au moins mystérieux. C’est surtout en apprenant une autre langue qu’on se rend compte de la bizarrerie de certains proverbes. En polonais, de même qu’en français et que dans chaque autre langue, on peut en trouver une multitude. Dans cet article nous allons parler d’une petite partie de ces curiosités que nous offrent les deux langues. Les proverbes similaires (ou presque) Pour commencer – regardons les proverbes similaires, ceux qu’on peut utiliser en polonais aussi bien qu’en français. On va juste donner quelques exemples, si on voulait les trouver tous, ça serait un « sacré morceau » (en polonais « twardy orzech do zgryzienia » - « une noix difficile à mordre » - ce qui est presque la même chose qu’un « sacré morceau »). Chaque Français et chaque Polonais a son « talon d’Achille » (« pięta Achillesa ») – son point faible. C’est une expression qui vient de la mythologie grecque, comme beaucoup d’autres. Quand quelqu’un nous trahit, on dit qu’il nous a « planté un couteau dans le dos » (« wbić komuś nóż w plecy »). Quand on veut révéler ses secrets et dire toute la vérité on « joue cartes sur la table » (en polonais « grać w otwarte karty » - « jouer cartes ouvertes »). Les Français comme les Polonais ont sans doute été impressionnés par le travail des horlogers suisses ce qui explique la phrase « marcher comme une montre suisse » (« chodzić jak w szwajcarskim zegarku »). Les personnes craintives « ont peur de leur ombre » (« bać się własnego cienia »). Ceux qui profitent du mal d’autrui « jouent au détriment de quelqu’un » (« bawić się czyimś kosztem »). Dans les deux pays on sait bien que les bonnes intentions ne suffisent pas : on dit alors que « l’enfer est pavé de bons intentions » (en polonais « dobrymi chęciami piekło jest wybrykowane ».) Cependant en polonais on peut dire aussi « niedźwiedzia przysługa » (« un service rendu par un ours ») – on utilise cette expression quand quelqu’un nous a nui en voulant nous rendre un service. Et pour finir, on dit que les gens qui aiment le risque « jouent avec le feu » (« igrać z ogniem »). Beaucoup de ces adages sont vraiment universels et ils n’existent pas qu’en français et en polonais, on peut les trouver aussi dans d’autres langues. Les proverbes typiquement polonais Pourtant, il y a des expressions qui n’existent pas dans notre langue et qui peuvent nous sembler très drôles quand on les apprend dans une autre langue. Regardons ce que les Polonais ont inventé. En Pologne la religion joue un rôle important pour beaucoup de gens et évidemment les adages le montrent aussi. Si on est sûr de quelque chose on dit « comme amen dans la prière » (« jak amen w pacierzu »). Nous avions aussi déjà vu que si tu as peur de quelque chose on peut dire que « tu as peur autant que le diable craint l’eau bénite » (« bać się jak diabeł święconej wody »). Des événements inattendus se passent « comme un tonnerre venant du ciel clair » (« jak grom z jasnego nieba »). Si tu essaies de faire quelque chose de presque impossible tu peux entendre que tu vas « bécher avec une houe en plein soleil » (« porywać się z motyką na Słońce »). Quand une personne dont tu es tombé amoureux ne s’intéresse pas à toi ou quand quelqu’un n’accepte pas ta demande en mariage, tu peux dire que « quelqu’un t’a donné un panier » (« dać komuś kosza ») ou « une soupe noire » - une soupe faite de sang du canard (« dać komuś czarną polewkę »). Ce deux adages viennent de vieilles traditions slaves. Le « petit chien français » Si tu mens en France, quelqu’un peut te dire que tu « mens comme un arracheur de dents », en Pologne on dit « mentir comme sur des notes de musique » (« kłamać jak z nut »). Une expression qui forcément n’existe pas en français est « francuski piesek » (« le petit chien français »). On appelle ainsi des gens très (trop) délicats. Les faux amis Certaines expressions peuvent engendrer de la confusion : en français on dit « oiseau de nuit » pour les gens qui se couchent tard, pendant qu’en polonais on les appelle « nocny marek » (marek de nuit). Le mot « marek » vient de la religion également et il signifie une âme qui traîne en enfer. En revanche, on dit « oiseau de jour » (« ranny ptaszek ») pour ceux qui se réveillent tôt. Il existe aussi cette expression « l’Alpha et l'Omega » (« Alfa i Omega ») - en français elle signifie le commencement et la fin de tout. En polonais on appelle ainsi les gens qui sont très intelligents et qui savent plein de choses sur plein de sujets différents. Il n’y a aucun doute que dans chaque langue il y a plein de proverbes et d’adages. Très souvent on les utilise souvent alors qu’on n’a aucune idée d’où ils viennent. Et parfois on peut entendre des expressions qui vont nous choquer dans notre propre langue aussi !21
Researchers across Africa, Asia and the Middle East are building their own language models designed for local tongues, cultural nuance and digital independence
"In a high-stakes artificial intelligence race between the United States and China, an equally transformative movement is taking shape elsewhere. From Cape Town to Bangalore, from Cairo to Riyadh, researchers, engineers and public institutions are building homegrown AI systems, models that speak not just in local languages, but with regional insight and cultural depth.
The dominant narrative in AI, particularly since the early 2020s, has focused on a handful of US-based companies like OpenAI with GPT, Google with Gemini, Meta’s LLaMa, Anthropic’s Claude. They vie to build ever larger and more capable models. Earlier in 2025, China’s DeepSeek, a Hangzhou-based startup, added a new twist by releasing large language models (LLMs) that rival their American counterparts, with a smaller computational demand. But increasingly, researchers across the Global South are challenging the notion that technological leadership in AI is the exclusive domain of these two superpowers.
Instead, scientists and institutions in countries like India, South Africa, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are rethinking the very premise of generative AI. Their focus is not on scaling up, but on scaling right, building models that work for local users, in their languages, and within their social and economic realities.
“How do we make sure that the entire planet benefits from AI?” asks Benjamin Rosman, a professor at the University of the Witwatersrand and a lead developer of InkubaLM, a generative model trained on five African languages. “I want more and more voices to be in the conversation”.
Beyond English, beyond Silicon Valley
Large language models work by training on massive troves of online text. While the latest versions of GPT, Gemini or LLaMa boast multilingual capabilities, the overwhelming presence of English-language material and Western cultural contexts in these datasets skews their outputs. For speakers of Hindi, Arabic, Swahili, Xhosa and countless other languages, that means AI systems may not only stumble over grammar and syntax, they can also miss the point entirely.
“In Indian languages, large models trained on English data just don’t perform well,” says Janki Nawale, a linguist at AI4Bharat, a lab at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. “There are cultural nuances, dialectal variations, and even non-standard scripts that make translation and understanding difficult.” Nawale’s team builds supervised datasets and evaluation benchmarks for what specialists call “low resource” languages, those that lack robust digital corpora for machine learning.
It’s not just a question of grammar or vocabulary. “The meaning often lies in the implication,” says Vukosi Marivate, a professor of computer science at the University of Pretoria, in South Africa. “In isiXhosa, the words are one thing but what’s being implied is what really matters.” Marivate co-leads Masakhane NLP, a pan-African collective of AI researchers that recently developed AFROBENCH, a rigorous benchmark for evaluating how well large language models perform on 64 African languages across 15 tasks. The results, published in a preprint in March, revealed major gaps in performance between English and nearly all African languages, especially with open-source models.
Similar concerns arise in the Arabic-speaking world. “If English dominates the training process, the answers will be filtered through a Western lens rather than an Arab one,” says Mekki Habib, a robotics professor at the American University in Cairo. A 2024 preprint from the Tunisian AI firm Clusterlab finds that many multilingual models fail to capture Arabic’s syntactic complexity or cultural frames of reference, particularly in dialect-rich contexts.
Governments step in
For many countries in the Global South, the stakes are geopolitical as well as linguistic. Dependence on Western or Chinese AI infrastructure could mean diminished sovereignty over information, technology, and even national narratives. In response, governments are pouring resources into creating their own models.
Saudi Arabia’s national AI authority, SDAIA, has built ‘ALLaM,’ an Arabic-first model based on Meta’s LLaMa-2, enriched with more than 540 billion Arabic tokens. The United Arab Emirates has backed several initiatives, including ‘Jais,’ an open-source Arabic-English model built by MBZUAI in collaboration with US chipmaker Cerebras Systems and the Abu Dhabi firm Inception. Another UAE-backed project, Noor, focuses on educational and Islamic applications.
In Qatar, researchers at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, and the Qatar Computing Research Institute, have developed the Fanar platform and its LLMs Fanar Star and Fanar Prime. Trained on a trillion tokens of Arabic, English, and code, Fanar’s tokenization approach is specifically engineered to reflect Arabic’s rich morphology and syntax.
India has emerged as a major hub for AI localization. In 2024, the government launched BharatGen, a public-private initiative funded with 235 crore (€26 million) initiative aimed at building foundation models attuned to India’s vast linguistic and cultural diversity. The project is led by the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay and also involves its sister organizations in Hyderabad, Mandi, Kanpur, Indore, and Madras. The programme’s first product, e-vikrAI, can generate product descriptions and pricing suggestions from images in various Indic languages. Startups like Ola-backed Krutrim and CoRover’s BharatGPT have jumped in, while Google’s Indian lab unveiled MuRIL, a language model trained exclusively on Indian languages. The Indian governments’ AI Mission has received more than180 proposals from local researchers and startups to build national-scale AI infrastructure and large language models, and the Bengaluru-based company, AI Sarvam, has been selected to build India’s first ‘sovereign’ LLM, expected to be fluent in various Indian languages.
In Africa, much of the energy comes from the ground up. Masakhane NLP and Deep Learning Indaba, a pan-African academic movement, have created a decentralized research culture across the continent. One notable offshoot, Johannesburg-based Lelapa AI, launched InkubaLM in September 2024. It’s a ‘small language model’ (SLM) focused on five African languages with broad reach: Swahili, Hausa, Yoruba, isiZulu and isiXhosa.
“With only 0.4 billion parameters, it performs comparably to much larger models,” says Rosman. The model’s compact size and efficiency are designed to meet Africa’s infrastructure constraints while serving real-world applications. Another African model is UlizaLlama, a 7-billion parameter model developed by the Kenyan foundation Jacaranda Health, to support new and expectant mothers with AI-driven support in Swahili, Hausa, Yoruba, Xhosa, and Zulu.
India’s research scene is similarly vibrant. The AI4Bharat laboratory at IIT Madras has just released IndicTrans2, that supports translation across all 22 scheduled Indian languages. Sarvam AI, another startup, released its first LLM last year to support 10 major Indian languages. And KissanAI, co-founded by Pratik Desai, develops generative AI tools to deliver agricultural advice to farmers in their native languages.
The data dilemma
Yet building LLMs for underrepresented languages poses enormous challenges. Chief among them is data scarcity. “Even Hindi datasets are tiny compared to English,” says Tapas Kumar Mishra, a professor at the National Institute of Technology, Rourkela in eastern India. “So, training models from scratch is unlikely to match English-based models in performance.”
Rosman agrees. “The big-data paradigm doesn’t work for African languages. We simply don’t have the volume.” His team is pioneering alternative approaches like the Esethu Framework, a protocol for ethically collecting speech datasets from native speakers and redistributing revenue back to further development of AI tools for under-resourced languages. The project’s pilot used read speech from isiXhosa speakers, complete with metadata, to build voice-based applications.
In Arab nations, similar work is underway. Clusterlab’s 101 Billion Arabic Words Dataset is the largest of its kind, meticulously extracted and cleaned from the web to support Arabic-first model training.
The cost of staying local
But for all the innovation, practical obstacles remain. “The return on investment is low,” says KissanAI’s Desai. “The market for regional language models is big, but those with purchasing power still work in English.” And while Western tech companies attract the best minds globally, including many Indian and African scientists, researchers at home often face limited funding, patchy computing infrastructure, and unclear legal frameworks around data and privacy.
“There’s still a lack of sustainable funding, a shortage of specialists, and insufficient integration with educational or public systems,” warns Habib, the Cairo-based professor. “All of this has to change.”
A different vision for AI
Despite the hurdles, what’s emerging is a distinct vision for AI in the Global South – one that favours practical impact over prestige, and community ownership over corporate secrecy.
“There’s more emphasis here on solving real problems for real people,” says Nawale of AI4Bharat. Rather than chasing benchmark scores, researchers are aiming for relevance: tools for farmers, students, and small business owners.
And openness matters. “Some companies claim to be open-source, but they only release the model weights, not the data,” Marivate says. “With InkubaLM, we release both. We want others to build on what we’ve done, to do it better.”
In a global contest often measured in teraflops and tokens, these efforts may seem modest. But for the billions who speak the world’s less-resourced languages, they represent a future in which AI doesn’t just speak to them, but with them."
Sibusiso Biyela, Amr Rageh and Shakoor Rather
20 May 2025
https://www.natureasia.com/en/nmiddleeast/article/10.1038/nmiddleeast.2025.65
#metaglossia_mundus
"Riyad, 17 juillet 2025, SPA -- La Commission saoudienne de la littérature, de l’édition et de la traduction (LPTC) a organisé une rencontre virtuelle consacrée à la traduction juridique, soulignant son importance dans le développement des relations internationales et commerciales.
Les échanges ont mis en avant les compétences requises pour exercer cette spécialité, qui va bien au-delà de la simple traduction linguistique. Elle exige une maîtrise des concepts juridiques, des normes rigoureuses et une connaissance précise des textes législatifs, contrats et accords.
Cette rencontre s’inscrit dans une série d’initiatives destinées à renforcer le dialogue avec les professionnels du secteur et à soutenir le développement de la traduction et de l’édition en Arabie Saoudite.
-- SPA
12:05 Heure locale 09:05 GMT
0022"
https://spa.gov.sa/fr/N2362300
Kim Hye-soon a été désignée lauréate du Prix international de littérature pour la traduction allemande de son recueil « Autobiographie de la mort ».
"La poétesse Kim Hye-soon remporte le Prix international de littérature du HKW
2025-07-18 09:55:37/Update: 2025-07-18 10:54:43
La poétesse sud-coréenne Kim Hye-soon a été désignée lauréate du Prix international de littérature pour la traduction allemande de son recueil « Autobiographie de la mort ». Elle devient ainsi la première sud-Coréenne à recevoir cette récompense, décernée par la Maison des Cultures du Monde (HKW) en Allemagne.
La cérémonie de remise des prix s’est tenue jeudi. Etant donné que cette distinction est conjointement attribuée à l’auteur et au traducteur, Park Sool et Uljana Wolf, qui ont assuré la traduction de l’ouvrage du coréen vers l’allemand, ont eux aussi été couronnés.
« Autobiographie de la mort » est un recueil poétique publié en 2016. Il a été inspiré par l’effondrement de Kim dans une station de métro en 2015. Elle y évoque diverses tragédies sociales telles que l’épidémie de MERS et le naufrage du ferry Sewol, à travers 49 poèmes.
Créé en 2009, le Prix international de littérature du HKW récompense chaque année une œuvre contemporaine traduite en allemand. Le prix est doté d’un montant de 35 000 euros, dont 20 000 pour l’auteur et le reste pour le traducteur."
https://world.kbs.co.kr/service/news_view.htm?lang=f&Seq_Code=91336
#metaglossia_mundus
"Le réseau LTT (Lexicologie, Terminologie, Traduction): Appel à projets AUF 2024-2025 : le réseau LTT met en œuvre sa feuille de route
Formations sur l'intelligence artificielle, mobilité universitaire francophone : le réseau Lexicologie, Terminologie, Traduction (LTT), lauréat de l’appel à projets AUF 2024-2025, a engagé la première phase de ses actions. Retour sur les temps forts de ce déploiement.
Le réseau LTT (Lexicologie, Terminologie, Traduction) a lancé deux chantiers majeurs de sa feuille de route :
• Un cycle de formations sur les enjeux de l’intelligence artificielle (IA)
• Un programme de coopération universitaire Nord Sud, fondé sur la mobilité étudiante.
Trois formations pour sensibiliser aux enjeux de l’IA
En partenariat avec ses laboratoires membres, le réseau LTT a proposé trois cours de sensibilisation entre avril et mai 2025, dans le cadre du Projet Réseaux AUF 2024.
En avril, DataFranca.org est intervenu sur les fondements de l’IA et ses enjeux éthiques, dans une perspective de littératie numérique.
En mai, une deuxième formation a abordé les usages professionnels des agents conversationnels, en s’intéressant aux risques cognitifs et éthiques liés à leur utilisation abusive.
Une troisième session a exploré les méthodes d’acquisition de termes spécialisés, notamment via des logiciels dédiés et ChatGPT, avec un focus sur le développement de l’esprit critique dans l’éducation.
Une coopération universitaire Nord Sud concrétisée
Parallèlement, un appel à projets internes a permis de faire émerger un partenariat entre :
• Le CERTTAL (Centre de recherche en traductologie, en terminologie arabe et en langues) de l’École de Traducteurs et d’Interprètes de Beyrouth (ETIB),
• Le centre TELL (Technologies et Environnement linguistiques) de l’Université de Mons (Belgique).
Ce partenariat a pour objectif l’élaboration d’un cours d’initiation à la linguistique computationnelle et à la pré-édition, destiné à des étudiants de niveau licence.
Une première mobilité dans le cadre de ce projet s’est tenue en juin 2025 au centre TELL de Mons. Elle illustre pleinement la mission du réseau LTT : soutenir la lexicologie, la terminologie et la traduction à travers des dynamiques de coopération et de formation, en assurant la relève scientifique francophone par une mobilité internationale solidaire.
🔗 Plus d’actualités du réseau LTT à retrouver sur son site web.
DATE DE PUBLICATION : 18/07/2025"
https://www.auf.org/nouvelles/actualites/appel-projets-auf-2024-2025-le-reseau-ltt-met-en-oeuvre-sa-feuille-de-route/
#metaglossia_mundus
This year, our free, virtual reading series gathers voices from across time zones for an international celebration!
"This August we once again celebrate Women in Translation (#WiT) Month! This reading series was initiated by blogger Meytal Radzinski in 2014 to raise awareness of translated literature by women, queer, and nonbinary authors, and promote gender and cultural diversity in literary publishing. This year, our free, virtual reading series gathers voices from across time zones for an international celebration!
Organized under the support of PEN America and the PEN America Translation Committee, these events bring together three panels of translators, joined by their authors, working in a diversity of languages. The readings will be followed by brief Q&A discussions. We hope you’ll join us for these one-of-a-kind bilingual readings!
The Women in Translation Reading Series will take place on Zoom on August 7, 14, and 21, 2025. The conversations will be moderated by Nancy Naomi Carlson, Christina Daub, and Marguerite Feitlowitz.
The August 14 session will be moderated by Marguerite Feitlowitz, with readings in Chinese (Taiwan), German, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian (Ukraine), and Vietnamese.
Marguerite Feitlowitz has published five volumes of translations from French and Spanish, most recently Night, by Ennio Moltedo, Pillar of Salt: An Autobiography with Nineteen Erotic Sonnets, by Salvador Novo, and plays by Griselda Gambaro. She is the author of A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture."
https://pen.org/event/women-in-translation-month-reading-series-2025-session-2/
#metaglossia_mundus
"The Translation Movement Between East and West (Arabic version)
BY VARIOUS CONTRIBUTORS
No Ratings (0 customer reviews)
http://doi.org/10.56656/101249
SKU: 101249
Date: 2025
Edition: 1
ISBN: 9781788149198
Format: Paperback
No. of Pages: 292
Summary
From the earliest periods of recorded history until today, translation has played a crucial role in disseminating scientific knowledge. The translation movement, as we will explore in this symposium proceedings, has been a tool and a driving force in the exchange of knowledge and the development of science, enlightening us about the interconnectedness of our world.
During the medieval period, the renowned Graeco-Arabic translation movement established Arabic as the lingua franca for scientific discourse. Subsequently, Latin became the dominant lingua franca of scientific exchange throughout much of the medieval and early modern eras. In more recent times, a reverse translation movement has emerged, facilitating the translation of various European languages into Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman.
To illuminate the significant scientific exchanges and cultural fusion between East and West and to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of Al-Furqān with special projects, events, and publications, we organised a one-day symposium in 2023. This milestone honoured our late Chairman, HE Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani (may he rest in peace), and his vision of bridging cultures - a fundamental mission of Al-Furqān and a key reason for its establishment in London. The symposium, focusing on three major translation movements, underscored our unwavering commitment to fostering dialogue and understanding between diverse cultures through the power of translation, inspiring us all to continue this important work.
Content
From the earliest periods of recorded history until today, translation has played a crucial role in disseminating scientific knowledge. The translation movement, as we will explore in this symposium proceedings, has been a tool and a driving force in the exchange of knowledge and the development of science, enlightening us about the interconnectedness of our world.
During the medieval period, the renowned Graeco-Arabic translation movement established Arabic as the lingua franca for scientific discourse. Subsequently, Latin became the dominant lingua franca of scientific exchange throughout much of the medieval and early modern eras. In more recent times, a reverse translation movement has emerged, facilitating the translation of various European languages into Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman.
To illuminate the significant scientific exchanges and cultural fusion between East and West and to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of Al-Furqān with special projects, events, and publications, we organised a one-day symposium in 2023..."
https://al-furqan.com/publication/the-translation-movement-between-east-and-west-arabic-version-9781788149198/
#metaglossia_mundus
Le livre écrit par Adolf Hitler a été publié pour la première fois il y a tout juste cent ans, le 18 juillet 1925
"Voici la folle histoire de la traduction de Mein Kampf en français, interdite par Hitler lui même
Ce vendredi, cela fait un siècle jour pour jour que le dictateur nazi Adolf Hitler a publié pour la première fois Mein Kampf, livre dans lequel il expose sa « vision du monde » et son idéologie.
Jamais interdit en France, l’ouvrage est entré dans le domaine public en 2016 et est en circulation libre dans le pays, comme partout dans le monde.
Si le livre est toujours aussi tabou aujourd’hui, c’est parce que « les ignominies antisémites qu’on y trouve sont toujours aussi révoltantes aujourd’hui qu’il y a cent ans », pointe l’historien Florent Brayard.
C’est l’un des livres les plus tabous de la période contemporaine. Mein Kampf, le livre dans lequel Adolf Hitler expose sa « vision du monde » et son idéologie empreinte de haine, de racisme, d’antisémitisme et de nationalisme, a été publié pour la première fois le 18 juillet 1925. Cent ans après, l’ouvrage suscite toujours de vives réactions et controverses, certains appelant à son retrait des rayons, d’autres soulignant son importance historique. Quoi qu’il en soit, il ne laisse pas indifférent, et heureusement.
Contrairement à la croyance répandue, Mein Kampf n’a donc jamais été interdit à la vente en France pour l’idéologie qu’il véhiculait. Jusqu’en 2016, année où il est entré dans le domaine public, une seule édition était en circulation en France : une traduction non autorisée parue en 1934 aux Nouvelles éditions latines, attaquée en justice par Hitler et les ayants droit de l’ouvrage original, le ministère des Finances bavarois. Si aucune autre édition n’a circulé, c’est donc avant tout car le ce dernier refusait toute nouvelle édition, même critique.
Un livre massivement en circulation
La seule mesure prise en France a été « l’introduction d’un avant-propos d’une dizaine de pages mettant en garde le lecteur contre les dangers de l’idéologie hitlérienne » en 1978, précise Florent Brayard, historien, directeur de recherche au CNRS, membre du Centre de recherches historiques de l’EHESS (Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales). Celle-ci faisait suite à une action en justice de Serge Klarsfeld entre autres. L’ouvrage était pour le reste « vendu légalement et on pouvait le commander en librairie », poursuit-il.
Depuis 2016 et son entrée dans le domaine public, Mein Kampf a été réédité en France et est disponible sur les grandes plateformes de vente, au milieu des autres livres. Florent Brayard rappelle aussi « qu’il suffit de trois clics sur Internet pour télécharger une version PDF ». De ce fait, l’ouvrage « est massivement en circulation partout dans le monde depuis les années 1990 ».
Un livre « qui fait partie de notre passé »
C’est ce qui a conduit l’historien à participer à l’élaboration du livre Historiciser le mal (éd. Fayard, 2021), une version de Mein Kampf présentant analyse critique, mise en contexte et déconstruction ligne par ligne de l’ouvrage de Hitler. « Puisque Mein Kampf est déjà en circulation, autant faire en sorte que ce soit dans une bonne édition, c’est-à-dire une édition critique », justifie le spécialiste. Bien loin de l’édition d’origine, qui s’est vendue à plus de 12 millions d’exemplaires entre 1925 et 1945 en Allemagne.
D’autant que ce livre « est une source fondamentale pour l’Histoire, appuie Florent Brayard. Le nazisme a été la pire expérience du XXe siècle, la plus criminelle et la plus barbare, et Mein Kampf permet de mieux comprendre le mystère de l’évolution de cette société criminelle. » Insistant bien sur le fait que cet ouvrage soit « ennuyeux, raciste » et « [promeuve] une idéologie nauséabonde », l’historien rappelle qu’il « fait partie de notre passé, et on ne peut pas sélectionner ce qu’on souhaiterait mettre en avant dans notre passé, ni faire comme si Mein Kampf n’a pas existé ».
Un ouvrage « d’actualité »
Et si l’ouvrage fait toujours parler de lui, c’est parce que « les ignominies antisémites qu’on y trouve sont toujours aussi révoltantes aujourd’hui qu’il y a cent ans, pointe l’historien. Si une autre personne reprenait aujourd’hui en son nom les horreurs que Hitler peut dire sur les juifs, les Polonais, les Tsiganes etc., il serait condamné, et ce serait juste ».
Voici la folle histoire de la traduction de Mein Kampf en français, interdite par Hitler lui même
C’est pour cette raison que le livre du dictateur n’est pas près de tomber dans les oubliettes de l’Histoire : « Je pense qu’il s’écoulera encore des siècles avant qu’on oublie la Shoah, et tant qu’on se souvient de la Shoah, Mein Kampf est un livre d’actualité », prévoit Florent Brayard. Un ouvrage d’autant plus d’actualité que les manœuvres politiques en vogue actuellement dans le monde - l’historien cite notamment les Etats-Unis –, en premier lieu « l’usage massif du mensonge » et la rhétorique « de l’élection volée », sont « la preuve qu’on ne peut malheureusement pas refermer le passé et se dire qu’on s’en fiche parce que c’était il y a un siècle », avertit Florent Brayard."
Publié le 18/07/2025 à 10h32 • Mis à jour le 18/07/2025 à 10h32
Pourquoi « Mein Kampf » ne tombera pas de sitôt aux oubliettes de l’Histoire https://share.google/D8CiTDwENrGiLg69i
#metaglossia_mundus
"Senior Lecturer / Lecturer, Department of Translation
Employer
LINGNAN UNIVERSITY
Location
Tuen Mun, Hong Kong
Closing date
24 Aug 2025
Lingnan University is one of the eight publicly funded institutions in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) and has the longest established tradition among the local institutions of higher education. It is widely recognised for providing quality education with a focus on whole-person development and conducting high-impact research for a better world. Moving forward, Lingnan University is well positioned to take lead as a comprehensive university in arts and sciences in the digital era, with impactful research and innovations.
Lingnan University offers undergraduate, taught postgraduate, and research postgraduate programmes in the Faculties of Arts, Business, Social Sciences, and the Schools of Data Science, Graduate Studies and Interdisciplinary Studies. To foster interdisciplinary collaboration and scientific progress, Lingnan University established the Lingnan University Institute for Advanced Study (LUIAS), attracting distinguished scholars from around the world to collaborate with its faculty and students. With traditional strengths in arts, business, social sciences, and interdisciplinary studies, the University aims to equip students with practical knowledge and critical thinking skills to thrive in the future. Subsequent to the establishment of the School of Data Science and LUIAS, Lingnan University is transforming into a hub for global leaders to develop and promote human-centric technology and social policies. Further information about Lingnan University is available at https://www.ln.edu.hk/.
Applications are now invited for the following post: Senior Lecturer / Lecturer. Department of Translation
(Post Ref.: 25/177)
The Department of Translation sets out to provide an education in bilingual studies which can nourish graduates with competence in Chinese and English as well as capacity to think independently. One of its central features is the equal emphasis on translation as a profession and as an academic discipline. Another feature is the importance attached to the socio-cultural environment of the Chinese and English languages. The appointee will be required to teach courses in some of the following areas: Computer-aided Translation, Public Relations in Practice, Business Translation, Translation and Technology, Interpreting, Translation and Culture, and English through Subtitles. Excellent command of Chinese and English is a must, and competence in both Cantonese and Putonghua will be an advantage. Further information on the Department and its programmes and activities can be found on the Department’s website: http://www.LN.edu.hk/tran/.
General Requirements
Candidates should have a master degree in Translation Studies or related disciplines and have substantial relevant teaching experience (not less than eight years in universities for Senior Lecturer).
Appointment
The conditions of appointment will be competitive. The rank and remuneration will be commensurate with qualifications and experience. Fringe benefits include annual leave, medical and dental benefits, mandatory provident fund, gratuity, and incoming passage and baggage allowance for the eligible appointee. The appointment will be normally made on a contract basis for up to two years.
Application Procedure (online application only)
Please click "Apply Now" to submit your application before 24 August 2025. Applicants shall provide names and contact information of at least three referees to whom applicant's consent has been given for their providing references. Personal data collected will be used for recruitment purposes only.
We are an equal opportunities employer. Review of applications will continue until the post is filled. Qualified candidates are advised to submit their applications early for consideration.
The University reserves the right not to make an appointment for the post advertised, or to fill the post by invitation or by search. We regret that only shortlisted candidates will be notified."
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/unijobs/listing/396252/senior-lecturer-lecturer-department-of-translation/
#metaglossia_mundus
"How the EU translates
Thursday 17 July 2025
By Sam Morgan
The European Union has 24 official languages and must provide translations of all crucial legislation in those native tongues. It is a mammoth but necessary task.
There are 27 EU members and 24 official languages.
They are: Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish and Swedish.
Each EU citizen is entitled by law to read official legislation in their native tongue. That means a lot of translation is needed.
Luxembourgish is not counted among the official list, as it is long-standing policy of the Grand Duchy’s government not to seek official status for the language. Austrians speak German and Cypriots speak Greek.
Interestingly, the Cypriot government has flirted with the idea of pushing for Turkish to be accepted as an official language of the EU, but that idea has always turned out to be rather impossible once exposed to the vagaries of politics.
After Brexit, there were some calls for English to be dropped as an official language, but that rather ludicrous idea forgot that it is de facto the lingua franca of the Union, not to mention that it is an official language in both Ireland and Malta.
Irish was initially under a derogation, where only certain top-level legislation was required to be translated into that language. But it has since been lifted, meaning every single one of the 24 tongues have equal status.
Official translations are handled by the various translation departments of the respective European institutions. The Commission’s does a lot of the heavy lifting, translating mostly from English into the 21 other language combinations.
Technology is playing an increasingly important role in translation, as large language models are becoming more sophisticated day by day.
Machine translation is never perfect but for some language combinations can do most of the work, simply requiring post editing by a qualified translator before it can be published.
Experts are divided about how good machines will actually get at translation. Some languages are very poor fits for one another and there is not much material for algorithms to pull from.
For example, the body of translated work between Croatian and Estonian is probably very limited indeed.
English, French and German are the working languages of the EU but every bit of official legislation has to be translated at some point.
For newer member states like Croatian and Bulgarian, that meant employing a whole team of translators to sift through all the existing legislation from the last seventy-odd years of Union activity.
There is also the interesting question of what will happen when the Union adds another member in the future. At the moment there are 552 possible language combinations, if you add one more country, that shoots up to 600.
Would new countries insist on having their language be an official tongue? Montenegrin and Serbian, for example, are extremely similar to Croatian, so would separate translation departments have to be set up?
The politics of language are fascinating and it is one aspect of multilingualism that will not be replaced anytime soon by technology."
https://www.brusselstimes.com/eu-affairs/1664808/how-the-eu-translates
#metaglossia_mundus
"Arabic translations in HK digital publishing soon
2025-07-16 HKT 17:34
Secretary for Culture, Sports and Tourism Rosanna Law said on Wednesday that Hong Kong's enhanced digital publishing initiative will soon incorporate Arabic translations in the hope of strengthening cultural ties with the Middle East.
Law made the announcement at a launch ceremony for Publishing 3.0+, where she highlighted the success of its predecessor, Publishing 3.0.
That project enabled approximately 60 local publishers to convert paper publications into 5,000 bilingual e-books and audiobooks in Cantonese, Putonghua and English, capitalising on digital transformation.
Building on this success, Publishing 3.0+ leverages artificial intelligence to further modernise the industry.
Law said the enhanced initiative will utilise large language models to significantly improve multilingual translations and content conversion capabilities.
"Publishing 3.0+ will refine the e-books and audiobooks converted over the past years and further deliver another 5,000 translated and converted copies of books," she said.
"The fruitful expected outcome of 10,000 e-books and audiobooks will be showcased in Hong Kong pavilions at various international book fairs in the coming months."
Law also confirmed plans to incorporate Arabic translations into the project.
"During my official visit to the Middle East in April this year, I was deeply impressed by the region's rich cultural and historical heritage," she said.
"I am most delighted that Publishing 3.0+ will contribute to our effort to realising closer cultural links and friendship between the Middle East and Hong Kong, aligning the shared visions of both regions."
Sharon Wong, one of the chairs at Publishing 3.0+, said the first phase saw a 75 percent improvement in e-book conversion speed and that the new initiative enhances local publishers’ multilingual capabilities.
"I hope that through this project, we can bring copyright holders, creators and AI developers together and work together in enhancing Hong Kong as a cultural centre or IP trading hub because we are under rapid AI development," she said.
"That is to promote the publishing industry and to promote our cultural product overseas.""
https://gbcode.rthk.hk/TuniS/news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1813620-20250716.htm?spTabChangeable=0
#metaglossia_mundus
The July 14 memo encourages agencies to determine which services would be better operated exclusively in English and to make use of AI where translations are needed.
"Justice pushes agencies to use AI-assisted translations, when offering them at all
By NATALIE ALMSJULY 16, 2025 04:46 PM ET
The July 14 memo encourages agencies to determine which services would be better operated exclusively in English and to make use of AI where translations are needed.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
JUSTICE
The Department of Justice is leading an effort to reduce multilingual services deemed “non-essential” across the government. When translations are needed for government products, DOJ is recommending that agencies use technology to get the job done.
The push to use artificial intelligence and machine learning is part of DOJ’s implementation of a March executive order deeming English the official language of the United States. That order rolled back another decades-old policy requiring agencies to enhance access for people that have limited English proficiency.
Although AI and machine learning could expedite translation work and potentially save the government money, the government’s own how-to resource on translation technology cautions that technology-assisted translations should still involve a human translator.
A new DOJ memo calls for “responsible” AI, but provides little detail on how agencies should address risk.
“Technological advances in translation services will permit agencies to produce cost-effective methods for bridging language barriers and reducing inefficiencies with the translation process,” the new guidance says.
“The Department encourages other agencies to follow its approach of considering responsible use of artificial intelligence and machine translation to communicate with individuals who are limited English proficient,” it continues.
The accuracy of AI-assisted translation generally worsens in more specialized contexts, like when the technology is used for legal or policy documents, according to Sonny Hashmi, the head of global public sector at Unqork and former appointee at the General Services Administration during the Biden administration.
And in these contexts, accuracy especially matters, he said, asking “what is the impact of somebody not understanding the instructions in a form … and as a result, missing out on a benefit that they're otherwise owed?”
Agencies may want to either train bespoke models for these jargony situations, or have people validate the accuracy of translations and offer end users that have questions a clear way to get answers, he said.
The government’s own guide on AI and translation tells agencies to include humans in the process, something the DOJ memo doesn’t reference at all.
Agencies “should not rely solely on automatic machine translation services or computer-aided technology,” reads a government resource on translation technology housed on digital.gov, which is run by GSA. “All translations should be checked by a competent human translator.”
“AI can expedite and save costs substantially,” said Amy Holmes, partner and principal at Holmes Consulting Group, which is focused on data, AI and digital transformation. “But you need to have some guardrails in place to ensure that it’s accurate.”
DOJ offered no comment when asked about risk mitigation.
“You don’t want to just take a generative AI translation tool and just flip it on and assume everything is perfect,” said Michael Boyce, the generative AI lead for the civic tech group U.S. Digital Response, which has collaborated on translation work using generative AI in New Jersey.
Boyce, who formerly directed the AI Corps at the Department of Homeland Security, emphasized the need for testing and user input on AI-assisted translations.
Still, when technology can potentially speed up translations and help improve access, “you also are creating other types of downside risks” when you don’t use the tool to help translate government materials, said Boyce.
Cutting multilingual services
Trump’s March executive order didn’t require agencies to remove or stop creating products in languages other than English. A fact sheet about the order touts flexibility for agencies to decide when and how to offer services in languages other than English.
But Attorney General Pam Bondi’s memo does recommend that agencies determine “which of their programs, grants and policies might serve the public at large better if operated exclusively in English,” where allowed by law.
"The Department of Justice will lead the effort to codify the President’s Executive Order and eliminate wasteful virtue-signaling policies across government agencies to promote assimilation over division,” Bondi said in a statement.
DOJ “will lead a coordinated effort to minimize non-essential multilingual services,” the memo states.
The administration’s Department of Government Efficiency has reportedly already canceled at least ten language or translation service contracts.
Civil rights law requiring language access in federally funded programs and services remains on the books, although the DOJ did rescind its guidance on the matter under the latest memo, which also set in motion new, forthcoming DOJ guidance.
Critics say that the policies will harm taxpayers’ access to government services. The Census Bureau estimates that 8.3% of people in the U.S. have limited English proficiency.
“Diversity is what makes America strong and unique,” Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center, said in a statement after Trump signed the order in March.
“[This order] is just another notch in Trump’s belt of cruelty and xenophobia that will make it harder for people to understand and access essential services, like education and health care,” she continued."
https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2025/07/justice-pushes-agencies-use-ai-assisted-translations-when-offering-them-all/406776/?oref=ng-homepage-river
#metaglossia_mundus
El Centro de Literatura Islandesa, como cada año, dispone una serie de becas de traducción abiertas a editoriales extranjeras que deseen publicar una obra traducida del islandés. En esta ocasión la convocatoria cierra el próximo 15 de septiembre.
"El fondo de traducción del Centro de Literatura Islandesa está abierto hasta el próximo 15 de septiembre
Publicado por Lorenzo Herrero | Jul 8, 2025 | 0
El Centro de Literatura Islandesa, como cada año, dispone una serie de becas de traducción abiertas a editoriales extranjeras que deseen publicar una obra traducida del islandés. En esta ocasión la convocatoria cierra el próximo 15 de septiembre.
El objetivo del fondo es promover la literatura islandesa en el extranjero. Se ofrecen subvenciones para literatura (prosa, poesía y teatro), no ficción de interés general (incluyendo ensayos y biografías), cómics y libros infantiles.
Las solicitudes de apoyo solo pueden presentarse una vez que el solicitante haya adquirido los derechos de la obra y firmado un contrato con el traductor. El Centro de Literatura Islandesa no concederá apoyos a las traducciones publicadas antes de la fecha límite para la presentación de la solicitud.
El formulario de solicitud está disponible...
Las solicitudes pueden realizarse por un máximo del precio de traducción acordado con el traductor. No obstante, por lo general, las ayudas cubren solo una parte del precio de traducción. La subvención a la traducción se aplica exclusivamente a los honorarios base del traductor, no a las regalías ni a una posible parte de las ganancias procedentes de audiolibros o libros electrónicos.
¿Qué debe contener la solicitud?
Se deberán adjuntar al formulario de solicitud los siguientes documentos:
El CV del traductor y los títulos traducidos y publicados previamente. El traductor debe traducir a su lengua materna.
Una copia del contrato con el titular de los derechos en islandés
Una copia del contrato con el traductor
Tres páginas de texto de muestra (traducción) y una copia del mismo texto en el idioma original
¿Cómo se evaluará su solicitud?
Al evaluar una solicitud, se valora la calidad de la obra en cuestión y la cualificación del traductor. Normalmente, se espera que el traductor sea un profesional con al menos una obra traducida, publicada o interpretada, dentro del mismo género que la obra para la que se solicita la subvención. En el caso de la no ficción, el criterio principal del comité es que la obra sea de interés general. No se conceden subvenciones para la traducción de otros tipos de no ficción, como libros de texto educativos..."
https://publishnews.es/el-fondo-de-traduccion-del-centro-de-literatura-islandesa-esta-abierto-hasta-el-proximo-15-de-septiembre/
#metaglossia_mundus
"Abstract: Based on the English-Chinese Parallel Corpus of Children’s Literature and the Corpus of Chinese Children’s Literature, this study investigates the feature of normalization in the Chinese translation of English children’s literature. Normalization refers to the adaptation of foreign features in the source text to comply with the cultural and linguistic norms of the target culture. The study analyzes both macro and micro levels of language features in translated children’s literature, comparing them with original Chinese and English texts. The findings reveal a clear trend towards normalization, evidenced by shorter sentences, increased repetition of high-frequency words, a lower frequency of hapax legomena, and a higher textual readability in translated Chinese versions. Furthermore, linguistic structures such as reduplication, modal particles, “把” (BA), and “得” (DE) constructions are found to occur at rates comparable to or significantly higher than those in the original Chinese corpus. This paper argues that normalization is a creative outcome, molded by translators aligning with reader expectations, conscientiously considering the psychological characteristics of child readers, and adapting to social, cultural, and market influences. The study contributes to understanding linguistic features of translated children’s literature, sheds light on translation universals, and underscores the dynamic interplay between normalization and translator creativity."
Published: 08 July 2025
Normalization or creation? A corpus-based study of normalization in the Chinese translation of English children’s literature
Yang Han
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume 12, Article number: 1051 (2025) Cite this article
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-025-05379-6
#metaglossia_mundus
"...Taipei, July 8 (CNA) The 2025 Taiwan-Ireland Poetry Translation Competition is now accepting entries, inviting translators worldwide to take on a poem by Taiwanese poet Dong Shu-ming (董恕明), organizers announced Tuesday.
This year's featured work is "Like a Song -- to 107-year-old Mumu on Her Journey"-- an elegy written in a combination of Chinese, Bopomofo, English, and the indigenous Puyuma language, said the National Museum of Taiwan Literature, which co-hosts the event with Trinity College Dublin's Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation.
The poem pays tribute to Dong's grandmother, a 107-year-old elder whose life embodies a century of Puyuma resilience, cultural memory, and multilingual heritage, the museum said.
"Through richly textured imagery, multilingual cadences, and intergenerational echoes, the poem traces mumu's life as a woman of the Pinaski (a Puyuma tribe) community, spanning languages from Puyuma to Japanese to Mandarin and beyond," Trinity said in a press release.
Now in its fifth year, the competition has previously featured poems in Chinese, Taiwanese and Hakka by poets including Tsao Yu-po (曹馭博), Cheng Shun-tsong (鄭順聰), Tseng Kuei-hai (曾貴海), and Temu Suyan (黃璽).
The initiative was launched in 2021 by Trinity College Dublin and the Taipei Representative Office in Ireland.
Winners will be invited to take part in an international online exchange in November 2025 to share insights on translation and creative writing. The deadline for submissions is Sept. 10, 2025.
For more information and to submit your entry, visit: https://lnkd.in/eHdXn6qT
Enditem/AW"
(By Chiu Chu-yin and Lee Hsin-Yin)
July 8, 2025
https://lnkd.in/ewDug4vT
#metaglossia_mundus
Find out why it's a great idea to study English Language and Linguistics in the most linguistically diverse city in Western Europe.
"Linguistics and English Language
Linguistics and English Language
Study
Why study here?
Explore the ways in which English dialects differ, how children learn language, how languages arise, how they change and so much more.
Did you know?
You'll be studying at one of the UK's top four institutions for linguistics.
The Complete University Guide 2020
Linguistics is the ideal subject for analytical minds. You will delve into the science of language - an everyday phenomenon which impacts our lives on an individual and a global scale. English Language covers the history of the English language and the variation between English dialects in the UK and further afield.
Linguistics and English Language at The University of Manchester is unrivalled in its exceptional breadth of subject areas and theoretical approaches.
We are ranked in The Complete University Guide 2019 top 10 universities for Linguistics in the UK.
Opportunities
Access cutting-edge resources, including one of the largest holdings of linguistics texts in the UK
Conduct research using English manuscripts held in our prestigious Special Collections
Work in close collaboration with internationally renowned experts
Conduct fieldwork and analyse linguistic corpora
Study in the most linguistically diverse city in Western Europe – home to over 150 languages
Specialist master's exploring the full breadth and depth of linguistic theory
Become the best you can be by participating in Stellify for true personal and professional growth.
Careers and employability
Study Linguistics and English Language at Manchester and you will develop a range of analytical and problem-solving skills that can be applied to many careers.
The University of Manchester is also the most targeted university in the UK for top graduate employers, according to High Fliers Research..."
https://www.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/linguistics-and-english-language/study/why-study-here/
#metaglossia_mundus
A few years ago a controversy arose at UNH over American Sign Language. For a long time the introductory course in it had two or three sections, but suddenly the sections ballooned to eight or ten.
"Speaking of Words: Is ASL a Language?
A few years ago a controversy arose at UNH over American Sign Language. For a long time the introductory course in it had two or three sections, but suddenly the sections ballooned to eight or ten. A commission was set up to look into the reasons for this surprising jump in students. Were they all really interested in communicating with deaf people? Students planning to be social workers had long been taking a year of ASL to help them in their future work, but these new students were not making such plans.
What we found out is that a lot of students had learned it was easy to get a good grade in a year-long course in ASL and thereby dispose of the foreign-language requirement for the BA. A survey showed that the average grade was A- and the amount of homework very modest; with twice as much homework students in first-year Spanish were earning an average grade of B-. This seemed unfair, somehow, but what could be done? I was appointed to the commission, so I read several books about ASL, watched videos, and listened carefully to a colleague on the commission who was a native signer as well as native speaker of English and a professor of linguistics at UNH Manchester. I did not master ASL, but I learned a lot about it.
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As I discussed the problem in my own department (English) and the Languages Department I found there was a good deal of ignorance about it, some of which I had shared before joining the commission. Some thought that ASL was the same as “signing English,” that is, spelling out English with manual equivalents of letters, something like Braille or Morse Code. Such a thing exists, but that is not ASL, which is in no way dependent on English or on any other spoken language. The fact that it is called American Sign Language means only that it is the sign language used by the deaf in America (and Canada outside Quebec). Some signers of ASL do not know English at all, though most have learned to read and write English, and some to lip-read it, and some to vocalize it.
ASL is a language in its own right. It is a “natural language” like English and Urdu. It is not a pidjin, which is a limited system constructed by adults to communicate across two or more languages; it is more like a creole, which is typically the product of children. ASL, and the other sign languages around the world, were created by deaf people, with at least a large input by children signing it as their first language.
Anyone studying it as a second language will be struck at how differently the words are ordered from the way they are in English. The train of signs usually begins with the topic, not what we call the grammatical subject. For example, “Do you have many children?” would begin with children: CHILDREN + HAVE + MANY? + YOU. The YOU (pointing a finger) may be left out, of course, as it may be implied by the situation, and the question may be indicated by a raised eyebrow.
Sometimes the word order reflects the actual sequence of events: NEW YORK + THERE + HOTEL + ARRIVE + FINISH + TIRED + I = “I was exhausted by the time I arrived at the hotel in New York.” FINISH is a sign that indicates the completed aspect of the preceding verb, making it similar here to the English past tense. The “I” at the end is another pointing finger, very possibly omitted.
There is a lot of pointing in ASL, of course, and it means that it can incorporate a large number of pronouns. If you are telling a long story about your family gathering at Christmas, the first time you mention your mother you sign MOTHER and point to a space on one side of the line of sight between you and the one you are signing to. When you first mention your father, your aunt, your sister, your brother, you assign them each to a unique spot on one or the other side of the line. Further mentions of the same people require just pointing to the right spot. In English “she” would be confusing, since it might refer to your mother, aunt, or sister, but in ASL they are differentiated in space. ASL has no problem either with the non-binary “they/them”: that non-binary person gets their own little spot in space waiting to be pointed at when needed.
Signing is done with the face as well as the hands. In a spoken language we can add quite a bit with hand gestures, tones of voice, and a few facial expressions as well, but ASL enlists the face in important ways, often as adverbs modifying the verb. An expression of disgust or contempt, with the tongue between the teeth like a strong th-sound, means “carelessly.” So “John does his homework” as a neutral fact would be JOHN + WRITES + HOMEWORK. But to say “John does his homework carelessly” (or “John blows off his homework”) would be JOHN + th-WRITES + HOMEWORK, where the th-gesture with the tongue is made during the manual sign for WRITE.
I have taken these examples from the books I read while serving on the commission. I did not learn enough or practice enough to talk with a deaf person, but I gained a lot of admiration for the community that created ASL and continually adds to it in brilliant and often witty ways. As for the unusual problem at UNH, it was pretty much resolved when it was discovered that each department in the College of Liberal Arts can decide if ASL counts as the language requirement for their majors. English and many other departments decided not to count it, though the linguistics majors may take it as their second foreign language requirement. Certainly, if you are studying English literature, knowing some French or Latin is more useful than knowing ASL. But students who really care about it can still study it, and if they really care about it they will grow a new and wonderful visual language in their head.
I am happy to hear from readers: mferber@unh.edu. If any of them know ASL and can correct any mistakes, I would be especially glad to learn from them.
Michael Ferber moved to New Hampshire in 1987 to join the English Department at UNH, from which he is now retired. Before that he earned his BA in Ancient Greek at Swarthmore College and his doctorate in English at Harvard, taught at Yale, and served on the staff of the Coalition for a New Foreign Policy in Washington, DC. In 1968 he stood trial in Federal Court in Boston for conspiracy to violate the draft law, with the pediatrician Benjamin Spock and three other men. He has published many books and articles on literature, and has a deep interest in linguistics. He is married to Susan Arnold; they have a daughter in San Francisco."
https://indepthnh.org/2025/07/16/speaking-of-words-is-asl-a-language/
#metaglossia_mundus
"Xi jinping likes to call the world’s dependence on advanced Chinese technologies his shashou jian. He means it’s the ace up China’s sleeve, but translated literally into English, shashou jian is “assassin’s mace”.
Translation has been an issue since the beginning of America’s formal relationship with Communist China. And as relations between the two great powers enter a less-predictable phase, linguistic sleight of hand has the potential to become more consequential..."
Jul 15th 2025
https://www.economist.com/podcasts/2025/07/15/lost-in-translation-how-language-complicates-us-china-relations
#metaglossia_mundus
Recent federal reductions in funding for language assistance and President Donald Trump’s executive order designating English as the official language of the United States have som⁵e health advocates worried that millions of people with limited English proficiency will be left without adequate support and more likely to experience medical errors.
"Lost in Translation: Interpreter Cutbacks Could Put Patient Lives on the Line
By Vanessa G. Sánchez
JULY 16, 2025
Federal law entitles patients to interpreters if they don’t have a strong grasp of English. KFF Health News correspondent Vanessa G. Sánchez appeared on WAMU’s “Health Hub” on July 9 to explain why some Trump administration policies are leaving patients fearful to ask for language services.
Patients need to communicate clearly with their health care provider. But that’s getting more difficult for those in the U.S. who don’t speak English.
Budget cuts by the Trump administration have left some providers scrambling to keep qualified medical interpreters. And an executive order designating English the official language of the United States has created confusion among providers about what services should be offered.
Patients who don’t speak English are left afraid, and perhaps at risk for medical mistakes. What happens when those who need help are too frightened to ask?
In WAMU’s July 9 “Health Hub” segment, KFF Health News correspondent Vanessa G. Sánchez explained why health advocates worry these changes could lead to worse patient outcomes."
https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/medical-interpreter-funding-staff-cuts-patient-lives-english-language-services/
#metaglossia_mundus
"Nevada needs court interpreters. See if you qualify
LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — An urgent need for qualified court interpreters exists in Nevada as the demand for language services grows.
Nevada courts handled more than 3,100 cases in 2024 that relied on interpreters to help participants understand and engage in legal proceedings, according to a Tuesday news release.
The Supreme Court of Nevada invites bilingual individuals to explore opportunities in the justice system as certified court interpreters. Registration for the Fall 2025 Certified Court Interpreter Exam is now open. The deadline to register for the Oct. 20 exam is approaching: Sept. 22.
The most requested languages last year were Spanish, Tagalog, Cantonese and Vietnamese. Court officials said Nevada had only 79 certified Spanish court interpreters, with an urgent need for more.
“Court interpreters make the justice system accessible for thousands of Nevadans,” Amanda Walker, Language Access Program administrator, said. “We’re asking bilingual residents to be part of this essential public service.”
Interpreters licensed in other states may be eligible.
Oral exams are scheduled in Las Vegas (Nov. 3-7) and in Carson City (Nov. 10, Nov. 12). Written exams are scheduled on Nov. 7 in Las Vegas and Nov. 10 in Carson City. Find more information and a self-assessment tool online to evaluate your readiness before registering.
To become a certified court interpreter in Nevada, applicants must complete an online Written Orientation Workshop, available mid-July. This virtual workshop introduces candidates to Nevada’s judicial system, court interpreting standards, and interpreter ethics.
Applicants must also pass the written exam with a minimum score of 80 percent. The test is two hours and 15 minutes long and includes 135 multiple-choice questions that cover language proficiency, legal terminology, and professional conduct."
by: Greg Haas
Posted: Jul 15, 2025 / 11:56 AM PDT
Updated: Jul 15, 2025 / 11:56 AM PDT
https://www.8newsnow.com/news/local-news/nevada-needs-court-interpreters-see-if-you-qualify/
#metaglossia_mundus
"English-only: DOJ announces plan to phase out costly translations
WASHINGTON, D.C., (KTAL/KMSS) – The federal government will soon eliminate what it calls “wasteful virtue-signaling policies” involving multilingual services.
On Monday, President Trump’s Executive Order No. 14224 established English as the official language of the United States, and Attorney General Pam Bondi wasted no time asserting that the DOJ would follow suit and eliminate what she sees as costly translations “to promote assimilation over division.”
To comply with the president’s EO, Bondi said her department will rescind prior Limited English Proficiency (LEP) Guidance, passed during the Clinton Administration, which prohibited national origin discrimination affecting people with limited English proficiency.
The DOJ will also conduct an internal inventory of all existing non-English services and release a plan to phase out “unnecessary multilingual offerings” Department-wide. AG Bondi said the DOJ will temporarily suspend the operation of LEP.gov and other public-facing materials related to language access for individuals with LEP, including letters, internet posts, YouTube videos, and training materials, pending internal review.
Within 60 days, the DOJ will solicit input and recommendations from other federal agencies regarding programs and policies that can be implemented in an English-only format. This new guidance will help agencies prioritize English while explaining when and how to implement multilingual assistance as needed to fulfill the missions of federal agencies.
Recommended actions for communicating with those with limited English proficiency
Machine learning translations using AI are recommended as a cost-effective measure to facilitate communication with individuals who have limited English proficiency.
Consider English-only services where allowed by law, to consider programs, grants and policies would serve the public better if they were English-only.
Disclaimers announcing that English is the official language of all federal information.
Redirect funds that were used for LEP translation initiatives toward research and programs that will improve English proficiency.
President Trump’s Executive Order rescinds Executive Order No. 13,166, signed by President Clinton on August 16, 2000. Executive Order No. 13,166 directed agencies to enhance access to federal programs for persons with limited English proficiency and required tailored guidance for recipients of federal funding, straining federal resources and impeding the assimilation of new Americans, AG Bondi said in the DOJ announcement."
by: Marlo Lacen
Posted: Jul 15, 2025 / 11:13 AM CDT
Updated: Jul 15, 2025 / 03:04 PM CDT
https://www.ktalnews.com/news/u-s-world/english-only-doj-announces-plan-to-phase-out-costly-translations/
##metaglossia_mundus
"General Hamza Johari has urged the Office of the Chief Parliamentary Draftsman to fast-track the translation of all national laws into Kiswahili, especially election-related laws and regulations, to ensure public access before this year’s general election.
Mr Johari issued the directive during his visit to the Office of the Chief Parliamentary Draftsman (OCPD) pavilion at the recently concluded 49th Dar es Salaam International Trade Fair (DITF). During the visit, he also inquired about the issues and concerns raised by citizens at the pavilion to enable his office to take appropriate action.
“I believe we must continue strengthening our efforts in translating laws, especially election laws and their regulations. Doing so will significantly improve access to justice for our citizens,” said the Attorney General.
He commended the OCPD for its public awareness efforts at the exhibition and for the vital legal work it continues to undertake in fulfilling its statutory responsibilities.
Meanwhile, the Minister for Constitution and Legal Affairs, Dr Damas Ndumbaro, emphasised the crucial role of the OCPD in the legislative process, stating that no law can be enacted in Parliament without the involvement of this key institution.
Dr Ndumbaro highlighted the office’s importance in drafting, revising and translating both principal and subsidiary legislation.
“The Office of the OCPD is central to the entire process of drafting, amending and interpreting laws in the country. Without this office, no bill would be tabled in Parliament. It is also responsible for drafting amendments and subsidiary legislation. In essence, it is the legal engine room of the nation,” he said.
He further explained that the judiciary relies heavily on the OCPD to ensure accurate and up-to-date legal references.
“If this office ceased to function, courts would struggle to interpret and apply laws,” he noted, highlighting the OCPD’s role in verifying legal texts and identifying outdated statutes.
He also praised its efforts to translate laws into Kiswahili for greater public accessibility.
Earlier, OCPD Legal Officer Ms Mariam Possi briefed visitors on key legal topics, including the lawmaking process, legal amendments and the role of translation in promoting justice.
She reaffirmed the office’s commitment to legal drafting, revision and translation in line with existing regulations."
https://dailynews.co.tz/ag-fast-track-kiswahili-laws-translations/
#metaglossia_mundus
Le gouvernement fédéral compte désormais privilégier le plus bas soumissionnaire lorsque vient le temps de choisir ses interprètes pigistes.
Ottawa–Gatineau
Interprètes : pour économiser, le fédéral souhaite privilégier le plus bas soumissionnaire
L’Association internationale des interprètes de conférence (AIIC) Canada estime que ces propositions risquent de compromettre les engagements électoraux du gouvernement Carney sur le renforcement du bilinguisme officiel.
André Boisjoli (Consulter le profil)
André Boisjoli
Le gouvernement fédéral, le plus grand employeur d’interprètes au Canada, envisage de prendre le plus bas soumissionnaire lorsque vient le temps de choisir un interprète pigiste. Une option qui inquiète des voix du milieu.
Services publics et Approvisionnement Canada (SPAC) souhaite toujours choisir le meilleur interprète pour l’affectation, mais compte maintenant se tourner vers le fournisseur qui offre le prix le plus bas.
C'est en tout cas ce qu'on peut lire dans une demande d'information concernant les services d'interprétation parlementaire et de conférence de haut niveau dans les langues officielles, dont Radio-Canada a obtenu copie.
Dans le cadre de notre mandat visant à moderniser les pratiques d’approvisionnement et à assurer une gestion responsable des fonds publics, nous révisons nos processus tout en maintenant notre attachement à la qualité des services offerts, notamment en matière d’interprétation, déclare dans une réponse écrite le cabinet du ministre de la Transformation du gouvernement, des Travaux publics et de l’Approvisionnement, Joël Lightbound.
Ce changement aurait presque certainement pour effet d'écarter les pigistes les plus chevronnés d'une équipe déjà en sous-effectif. [...] La qualité ne serait plus évaluée de manière objective, ce qui ouvrirait la voie au favoritisme, au copinage et à d'autres pratiques déloyales et dangereuses, a indiqué l’AIIC Canada par voie de communiqué de presse mercredi.
L’association s’inquiète aussi de la suppression de mesures qui visent à protéger la santé auditive des interprètes, notamment en ce qui a trait à la qualité sonore."
https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2179948/interprete-parlement-langue-officielle
#metaglossia_mundus
"Google is rolling out new AI features for its search engine, including a more advanced language model and the ability for the AI to call local businesses on behalf of users.
Soon, users will be able to pick between two different models in AI Mode using a drop-down menu. For complex tasks involving logic, math, or programming, Gemini 2.5 Pro will provide better answers. Most everyday searches will still default to what's likely the less powerful (and cheaper) Gemini 2.5 Flash, though Google doesn't make this distinction clear in the interface.
Gemini 2.5 Pro, which launched in March 2025, is currently Google's most advanced language model. It can process up to one million tokens at once, understands multiple types of input, and handles complex reasoning. Google updates it regularly with small improvements. According to the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, which combines results from several standard benchmarks, only OpenAI's o3-pro and the new Grok 4 outperform it.
Deep Search for tougher questions
Google is also rolling out Deep Search, which it describes as its "most advanced search tool." Built on Gemini 2.5 Pro, Deep Search can run hundreds of queries at once, gather information from different sources, and assemble detailed, referenced reports.
Google says Deep Search is intended for more involved research, such as work projects, hobbies, or academic assignments. The company also lists potential uses like looking into real estate or analyzing finances, with the goal of reducing lengthy research to a shorter process.
The naming can be confusing. After recently sorting out its AI subscription tiers with "AI Pro" and "AI Ultra," Google now has two similarly named features: Deep Search in AI Mode and Deep Research in Gemini—both meant for advanced search tasks.
Deep Search and Gemini 2.5 Pro will debut first for AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers in the US who join the AI Mode experiment in Google Labs. Eventually, Google plans to roll them out globally.
AI that makes phone calls for you
One of the more unusual new features lets Google's AI call local businesses to check prices and availability. Searching for "dog groomers near me," for example, will show a "Let the AI check prices" button that triggers an automated call.
The AI contacts multiple providers, then organizes the responses—like available appointments and services—into a simple summary. Google says this saves time for users while giving businesses another way to handle bookings.
This calling feature will launch first for all US users, with paid subscribers getting higher usage limits. Businesses can decide if they want to receive AI-generated calls through their business profile settings."
https://the-decoder.com/google-brings-gemini-2-5-pro-and-deep-search-to-ai-mode-and-adds-ai-phone-calling-to-search/
#metaglossia_mundus
"Abstract: This study addresses the challenges of translating culture-specific nonverbal communication in literature, focusing on the complexities of conveying rich kinetic-visual imagery across languages. By examining 18 English and French translations of a sample verse, the research aims to explore how translators handle kinesic and oculesic elements intrinsic to the source text. The comparative analysis reveals that while many translators struggle to convey cultural nuances, often simplifying or misinterpreting nonverbal cues, some successfully navigate these complexities. Factors such as chronology, interpretive choices, and domestication strategies significantly impact the translation process. The study’s findings underscore the importance of cultural awareness and sensitivity in achieving effective literary translations, highlighting the need for translators to act as cultural mediators rather than mere linguistic converters. This research contributes to the field by demonstrating how varying approaches to translating nonverbal cues can significantly impact the preservation of a text’s cultural essence, thereby advancing our understanding of the intricacies involved in cross-cultural literary translation and emphasizing the translator’s role in bridging cultural gaps..."
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311983.2025.2526941?src=#abstract
#metaglossia_mundus
"Abstract: Generative language modelling has surged in popularity with the emergence of services such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini. While these models have demonstrated transformative potential in productivity and communication, they overwhelmingly cater to high-resource languages like English. This has amplified concerns over linguistic inequality in natural language processing (NLP). This paper presents the first systematic review focused specifically on strategies to address data scarcity in generative language modelling for low-resource languages (LRL). Drawing from 54 studies, we identify, categorise and evaluate technical approaches, including monolingual data augmentation, back-translation, multilingual training and prompt engineering, across generative tasks. We also analyse trends in architecture choices, language family representation, and evaluation methods. Our findings highlight a strong reliance on transformer-based models, a concentration on a small subset of LRLs, and a lack of consistent evaluation across studies. We conclude with recommendations for extending these methods to a wider range of LRLs and outline open challenges in building equitable generative language systems. Ultimately, this review aims to support researchers and developers in building inclusive AI tools for underrepresented languages, a necessary step toward empowering LRL speakers and the preservation of linguistic diversity in a world increasingly shaped by large-scale language technologies..."
License: CC BY 4.0
arXiv:2505.04531v2 [cs.CL] 08 Jul 2025
Overcoming Data Scarcity in Generative Language Modelling for Low-Resource Languages: A Systematic Review
Josh McGiff
josh.mcgiff@ul.ie
Nikola S. Nikolov
Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, University of LimerickLimerickIreland https://share.google/AOO4jEsEQMTmFIjNX
#metaglossia_mundus
✨ Human + AI-Assisted Workflow Leveraging the latest state-of-the-art AI technologies and natural language processing, Colibri generates tailored codeframes, translates verbatims, and enables dynamic chat-based data exploration.
Nuance Launches Analytics Tools for Open-Ended Data
July 15 2025
Nuance, a subsidiary of Texas-based Decision Analyst with a focus on language-based analytics, has launched a verbatim coding and analytics platform called Colibri, which it says will transform how researchers and analysts explore, process, visualize, plot and interpret unstructured information.
Colibri is the Latin American word for a hummingbird, and according to the company the new platform 'brings speed and precision' to the process of coding open-end survey data and textual data of any type, in over 30 different languages.
Decision Analyst specializes in strategy research, new product development, ad testing and advanced modeling to aid marketing decisions. Nuance's expertise lies in understanding global consumers through 'the words, phrases, photos and expressions of human behavior.'
Colibri features AI-enhanced coding tools for faster, more consistent classification of open-ended data; a project dashboard for management of multiple studies in one place; built-in translation capabilities for more than 30 different languages; and collaboration and reporting tools.
'Colibri combines decades of expertise in verbatim analysis with cutting-edge software development and advanced analytics,' according to Nuance President Lisa Hazen (pictured). 'It's intuitive, collaborative, and scalable, offering researchers a smarter, more productive way to work with open-ended data.'
CEO Jerry W. Thomas comments: 'Lisa Hazen and Claire Jones are the creative geniuses behind the design of Colibri, and Cody Parker, Johnny Seay, and Justin Thomas are the software engineering savants bringing the creative ideas to life. Colibri is the future of verbatim coding and textual analytics'.
The firms are online at www.nuancecoding.com/colibri and www.decisionanalyst.com .
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"Est-ce que quelqu’un t’a déjà dit de ne pas laisser les poires dormir dans la cendre ? (« Nie zasypiaj gruszek w popiele. ») Ou est-ce que tu as peut-être déjà entendu parler des difficultés dont on ne peut pas sortir comme Zabłocki quand il est sur du savon ? (« Wyjść na czymś jak Zabłocki na mydle. ») Est-ce qu’il y a des choses que tu crains autant que le diable craint l’eau bénite ? (« Bać się jak diabeł święconej wody »). Si tu es Polonais – probablement oui. Si tu n’es pas Polonais – il est fort probable que non.
Dans chaque langue il existe pas mal d’adages et de proverbes. On les utilise sans réfléchir bien que parfois ils peuvent être au moins mystérieux. C’est surtout en apprenant une autre langue qu’on se rend compte de la bizarrerie de certains proverbes. En polonais, de même qu’en français et que dans chaque autre langue, on peut en trouver une multitude. Dans cet article nous allons parler d’une petite partie de ces curiosités que nous offrent les deux langues."
#metaglossia mundus