Metaglossia: The Translation World

An award for translators from Ukrainian into other languages

"Open Call for the 2026 Drahomán Prize
october 12, 2026

On October 12, the founding organizations of the Drahomán Prize, an award for translators from Ukrainian into other languages, announced an open call for 2026.

Based on the conditions of the Prize, all translators who have at least one translated and published literary or documentary work from Ukrainian language, can be nominated for the Prize. Literary and documentary works include prose, poetry, drama, and non-fiction (essays, reportage, interviews, biographies, memoirs). At the same time, anthologies of translated texts by three or more translators are not eligible for submission.

Translators can be nominated for the Prize by foreign cultural and academic institutions, diplomatic missions, publishing houses, creative associations, and members of the Chapter. The nominated book of the translator must be published by a foreign publisher within two years prior to the award year and should be compatible with values and principles of the founding organizations. Nomination of a tandem of translators who worked together on translating the same text is possible. Laureates of the Prize cannot be nominated for the second time.

The submission includes a filled-out application form as well as electronic and hard copies of the nominated book in Ukrainian and in the language of translation. Applications for 2026 will be accepted from October 12 to December 4.

Please send electronic copies to drahoman.prize@gmail.com. Details for sending paper copies of publications:

Recipient: Angelina Kucherenko
Telephone number: 0 (63) 704 75 00
Email: info@pen.org.ua
Postcode: 04052
Address: 14a Lukyanivska Street, Office 1, Kyiv, Ukraine
The long list of nominees for the 2026 Drahomán Prize will be announced no later than December 10. The winner of the Prize will be announced at a gala ceremony in spring 2027. The winner will receive a statuette created by a Ukrainian artist, a cash prize of 3,000 euros (after tax), as well as further opportunities to work on and promote their art.

The German translator Claudia Dathe became the first laureate of the Prize in 2020. Also, Imadeddine Raef, a translator from Ukrainian into Arabic, was awarded the Chapter’s Special Honor "for the excellence in translation and promotion of Ukrainian classical literature."

The Polish translator, writer, and literary critic Bohdan Zadura became the laureate of the 2021 Drahomán Prize. The Special Honor of the Chapter "for the filigree translation of the classics of Ukrainian literary modernism and contribution to the promotion of Ukrainian literature in Europe" was awarded to Tobias Wals, a Ukrainian-to-Dutch translator.

The French translator Iryna Dmytrychyn became the laureate of the 2022 Drahomán Prize. The Special Honor of the Chapter "for the particular contribution in translating and promoting Ukrainian literature, and in developing the Ukrainian studies in Italy" was awarded to Giovanna Brogi, a translator from Ukrainian into Italian.

The Polish translator Katarzyna Kotyńska was named the 2023 laureate of the Drahomán Prize. The Special Honor of the Chapter "for building cultural bridges between Ukraine and Georgia" was awarded to Raul Chilachava, a translator from Ukrainian into Georgian.

The Finnish translator Eero Balk has been awarded the 2024 Drahomán Prize. The Special Jury Commendation for the high professionalism and humanism in developing the Ukrainian-Lithuanian literary dialogue was given to a translator from Ukrainian into Lithuanian, Vytautas Dekšnys.

The Ukrainian-American translator and poet Nina Murray has been awarded the 2025 Drahomán Prize. The Special Jury Commendation "for her profound contribution to building a shared context between two distant cultures" was given to Mridula Ghosh, a translator from Ukrainian into Bengali.

***

Ukrainian Institute is a state institution dedicated to spotlighting Ukrainian culture globally and nurturing profound cultural ties with other countries and peoples. Since 2018, the Institute has worked worldwide with the head office in Kyiv. In 2023, its first branches opened in Europe: Berlin, Germany, and Paris, France. The Ukrainian Institute is affiliated with Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

PEN Ukraine is a cultural and human rights NGO uniting Ukrainian intellectuals – writers, journalists, scholars, publishers, translators, human rights defenders, culture managers. With over 170 members, it is one of 146 national centers of PEN International. It is a co-founder of the Vasyl Stus Prize, the Yuri Shevelyov Prize, and the George Gongadze Prize.

Ukrainian Book Institute is a government entity affiliated to the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine. Its mission is to develop state policy in the book sector, promote book reading in Ukraine, support book publishing, encourage translation activity, and popularize Ukrainian literature abroad."
https://pen.org.ua/en/rozpochavsya-konkurs-na-zdobuttya-premiyi-drahom-n-prize-za-2026-rik
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Lost In Translation: How Language Changes Which Brand AI Recommends
Your English-only AI visibility checks can miss how brand recommendations change when AI answers the same buying questions in five different languages.

Reza Moaiandin

Chances are you’ve already got some idea of your brand’s visibility in AI responses. But I’m willing to bet those visibility checks were carried out in just one language: English.

If a customer in Singapore asks an AI chatbot a buying question in Simplified Chinese, and a customer in Kazakhstan asks the same question of the same AI in Russian, would they get the same recommendation? What about a customer in Riyadh asking in Arabic or a customer in Los Angeles asking in Persian?

These aren’t hypothetical customers. According to Statcounter’s August 2026 figures, ChatGPT was responsible for roughly three-quarters of website visits that came from AI chatbots in Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, and Singapore. Add in Claude and Gemini, and these three U.S.-based models accounted for more than 90% of AI referrals in each market.

Of course, you don’t need to leave the U.S. to find customers whose first language isn’t English. More than half of Los Angeles County residents speak another language at home, including around 74,000 Persian speakers, according to the latest Census estimates. I’d be surprised if they all switched to English every time they opened ChatGPT.

But when somebody asks an AI chatbot a question in another language, the response won’t simply be a translation of the answer it would give in English. The AI reasons and composes its response in that language. And that brings a whole slew of cultural values and other factors to bear on how the model responds.

Why The Choice Of Language Matters In AI
I’m not the first person to write for Search Engine Journal on how brand visibility and messaging in AI can come across differently in languages beyond English. In April, Duane Forrester explained why AI visibility strategies built in English don’t transfer easily to other markets. For a start, ChatGPT and Gemini aren’t accessible in China at all, while Claude isn’t officially offered in mainland China, Russia, or Iran. Instead, your brand’s AI visibility in some countries may depend on regional, homegrown models, such as Baidu’s ERNIE in China, Naver in South Korea, Mistral in France, and so on. As Forrester explains, each of these models evolved from a different starting point entirely: a national corpus, a specific cultural identity, and in some cases a government mandate. If you haven’t read his article, I’d bookmark it now to read after this one.

However, as we’ve seen, Western AI models like Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini are still widely used in plenty of locations where other languages are spoken, not to mention all the diaspora communities around the world.

In July, Anthropic published a report on Claude’s values across languages and models. By values, we’re talking about the factors that shape responses where there is no definitive right answer. For example, are responses more likely to display deference or caution, warmth or rigor, depth or brevity, candor or execution?

The researchers sampled just under 310,000 real conversations across the 20 most common languages, equally split between three models (Sonnet 4.6, Opus 4.6, Opus 4.7). They found that the values Claude demonstrated shifted according to the language it was addressed in, such as leaning toward greater warmth in Hindi and Arabic and toward greater rigor in English and Russian."
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/lost-in-translation-how-language-changes-which-brand-ai-recommends/591585/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"More Indigenous Languages Come to iPhone and iPad Keyboards in New Apple Update
Some schools are using these keyboards to help students learn these endangered languages.

Students can use the iPad and other Apple devices to study Cherokee and other Native American languages.
Apple
When Apple released iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 in September, much of the buzz centered on the update’s revamped Siri AI. However, the update also brought a handful of new indigenous languages to the device’s keyboard, allowing users to type and send messages in Blackfoot and other languages. In the US, Monday is Indigenous Peoples’ Day, a federally recognized holiday honoring Native American heritage, culture and sovereignty.

Some of the supported languages have only a couple of thousand speakers. Consider Cherokee, which has only about 1,500 fluent speakers in the entire world. Cherokee was the first Native American language Apple added to iOS back in 2010, and its inclusion has been seen by some as a welcome development.

“The technology that we utilize with Apple has allowed us to take everything that we really are trying to achieve here, which is the perpetuation and the revitalization of Cherokee language and culture, and use that same technology to make it relevant to the young people that are learning here,” Chuck Hoskin Jr., principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, said, according to Apple.

Teachers in Oklahoma are also using these tools in their classrooms to help more students engage with Native American languages. These tools can help students practice their pronunciation by allowing them to record themselves to revisit later.

“In Cherokee language, every sound is so important,” Erlinda “Daksi” Soap, a fifth-grade teacher at Oklahoma’s Cherokee Immersion School, told Apple. “One sound off, and you’re saying a completely different word.”

The Cherokee keyboard can be accessed and used across iOS devices.

There are 85 characters, originally 86, in the written Cherokee language used to represent the sounds — or syllables — in the spoken language. Cherokee artist Roy Boney Jr. worked with Apple engineers to bring the Cherokee syllabary to Apple devices.

“A big part of being Cherokee is you ensuring things like language and culture survive and continue,” he told Apple.

High-schooler Olivia Daugherty graduated from the immersion school in 2024. She said she remembers her father teaching her to count and name animals in Cherokee as a child, and that she was nervous about losing her language and culture. Now, younger generations are helping to secure the language’s future.

“I was worried about my language and culture, and the way I might lose my community, and I might lose my language,” Daugherty told Apple. “My niece, she’s a first-language speaker in our language … She’s one of the first in a very long time.”

Zachary McAuliffe
Senior writer
Edited by Gael Cooper
October 12, 2026, 3:31 pm ET
https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/indigenous-languages-iphone-ipad-keyboards-apple-update/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Dubverse – Plateforme de doublage vidéo par IA, sous-titrage et synthèse vocale

Dubverse double des vidéos dans d'autres langues grâce à des voix d'intelligence artificielle, tout en générant des sous-titres et de la synthèse vocale (TTS). Vous importez un clip, choisissez une langue et une voix, et la plateforme produit une piste doublée conçue pour préserver l'émotion de l'original. Les modèles utilisés sont Neo.One et Candy.Two. Le clonage vocal permet de conserver un locuteur attitré pour une marque d'une langue à l'autre, y compris pour des tournures bilingues comme le hinglish ou le spanglish au cours d'une même session. La synchronisation labiale (lip sync) et la traduction de texte incrusté dans la vidéo font partie des fonctionnalités des forfaits supérieurs. Une API permet d'intégrer ces voix dans des applications, avec une latence annoncée de moins de 500 ms. L'abonnement Pro est affiché à environ 18 $ par mois pour 50 crédits (soit environ une minute de doublage pour quatre crédits). Le plan Supreme coûte environ 30 $. L'entreprise à l'origine du projet est Lensmatic Solutions, basée en Inde, ce qui fait des langues indiennes un point fort indéniable. Le site revendique plus de 200 voix et des millions de voix off générées chaque jour.

Forces
• Doublage, sous-titrage et synthèse vocale regroupés sous un même compte
• Des voix fidèles et adaptées aux langues indiennes comme internationales
• Clonage d'une voix de marque, au lieu de se limiter à des voix pré-existantes standard
• API dédiée aux équipes produit
• Modification du script textuel avant la génération audio finale 

Idéal pour
Les créateurs et les marques qui ont besoin d'une vidéo en hindi, en espagnol ou dans une autre langue sans avoir à passer par un studio d'enregistrement.

En bref
• Plus de 10 langues indiennes prises en charge
• Traitement par lots (batch processing) pour les séries de vidéos
• Glossaire de termes personnalisés
• Vérification humaine disponible sur l'offre Enterprise
• Approche « Made in India » garantissant une excellente restitution des accents locaux 

Potentiels problèmes
• Les crédits s'épuisent plus rapidement pour le doublage que pour les sous-titres
• Vérifiez les conditions de votre forfait en cours avant de traiter une vidéo longue
• La synchronisation labiale n'est pas parfaite sur tous les types de visages
• Une voix naturelle ne remplace pas une traduction professionnelle certifiée
• L'offre Enterprise nécessite de contacter l'équipe commerciale 

Verdict final
4.1/5 étoiles. Utilisez Dubverse lorsque la tâche consiste à dire « cette vidéo a besoin d'une autre langue cette semaine ». Écoutez un extrait de 60 secondes dans la langue cible avant de lancer le traitement de la vidéo complète. Gagnez également 1 QUA en laissant un avis sur Quasa.io !"
https://quasa.io/fr/video/dubverse-plateforme-de-doublage-video-par-ia-sous-titrage-et-synthese-vocale
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

China, the original source of vertical text, fully adopted horizontal writing after the war. Postwar Japan, by contrast, has managed to use vertical and horizontal writing skillfully depending on the purpose

"Yoroku: Let's not allow Japan to slip into a horizontal writing-only world

"It was more than 100 years after the arrival of the Dutch that the study of horizontal letters began." What Japanese scholar Sugita Genpaku (1733-1817) recorded in "The Beginning of Dutch Learning" was the Kyoho Reforms of Tokugawa Yoshimune, the eighth shogun of the Edo period (1603-1867). In 1720, the ban on importing Western books was eased, and Dutch interpreters in Nagasaki were permitted to study "horizontal letters" -- script written and read horizontally.

The reason "horizontal letters" refers to Western languages is that it rests on the premise that Japanese is written vertically. Vertical writing came from ancient China, where it was used to write characters on oracle bones and bamboo slips. On long horizontal plaques hung at temple gates and elsewhere, there are characters that appear to be horizontal writing from right to left, but apparently the correct interpretation is that they are vertical writing, one character per line, according to the book "Yokogaki tojo" authored by Makoto Yanaike and published by Iwanami Shoten Publishers.

Horizontal writing is said to have become common after the Meiji Restoration in 1868, as Japan absorbed Western culture. Before World War II, there was much horizontal writing from right to left, in keeping with vertical writing whose columns proceed in the same direction. Horizontal writing from left to right took hold after the war. Today, even textbooks are almost all written horizontally except for Japanese language texts.

"Do you have occasions in daily life to read or write characters vertically?" In the Agency for Cultural Affairs' "public opinion survey on the Japanese language," a little more than 30% answered, "No." For media that publish vertically, that is a jolting figure.

Not only newspapers but magazines and novels, too, are still mainly written vertically. The reason people can live without encountering it is probably that more and more people now rely on smartphones as their main source of information. Vertical writing does not suit internet media, which developed under the leadership of the "horizontal letters" world.

China, the original source of vertical text, fully adopted horizontal writing after the war. Postwar Japan, by contrast, has managed to use vertical and horizontal writing skillfully depending on the purpose. There is also the traditional culture of calligraphy, which presupposes vertical writing. A future of nothing but horizontal writing would be less than desirable.

("Yoroku" is a front-page column in the Mainichi Shimbun)"
October 11, 2026 (Mainichi Japan)
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20261009/p2a/00m/0op/005000c
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Anger as interpreters for foreign benefits seekers cost taxpayers' £12.9m last year
Latest official figures show translation services for benefit claimers have continued to soar year-on-year, sparking disbelief.
Tony Whitfield
Oct 10, 2026
The cost of providing translation and interpreters for foreign benefit seekers has nearly doubled in just a few years, with taxpayers picking up a £12.9million bill last year. Year-on-year the bill has increased from £2.7million in 2019-20 and providing assistance for claimants who cannot speak English increased from £6.9million in 2023-24, the DWP said. Interpretation costs made up the lion’s share, accounting for £6.2million in 2023-24. Around one in six Universal Credit claimants - 1.3 million - were foreign nationals in February.

Three fifths were EEA citizens eligible to claim benefits under the EU settlement scheme, while the remainder were eligible either because they have humanitarian, refugee, indefinite leave to remain or limited leave to remain including family reunion status.

Currently the DWP has a legal duty to provide spoken and written language services to those whose do not speak English as a first language or have hearing impairments under the Equality Act. The proportion of annual interpreter related and translation costs for deaf and hard of hearing people in 2025 is 17%, the government said.

William Yarwood, campaigns director at the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Taxpayers will be alarmed that the bill for translation and interpretation at the DWP has more than doubled in just a few years. Support such as British Sign Language is clearly necessary, but ministers should separate those costs from foreign-language services, which are rising due to years of low-quality mass migration

“Clamping down on claims for foreign nationals would protect the benefits system and help cut the translation bill taxpayers are being asked to fund.”

Robert Jenrick, Reform UK MP for Newark, added: “This is yet another example of successive Tory and Labour governments’ insane waste of taxpayers’ money.

Reform UK treasury spokesman Robert Jenrick during a recent visit to Redcar (Image: Andy Commins)
“A Reform government would stop handing out benefits to foreign nationals and prioritise British citizens. Those who enter our country should speak English and be here to work, not leech off British taxpayers.”

A Government spokesperson said: “It is right that we support benefit customers to improve their chances of finding work. Help is on offer regardless of nationality, and some people who are deaf or hard of hearing rely on our translation services. Net migration continues to fall under this Government, helping to ease pressure on housing, the NHS and other public services.”

They added net migration continued to fall under the Labour Government and is now 82% below its 2023 peak, helping to ease pressure on housing, the NHS and public services.

The government has also raised the Skilled Worker visa to degree level, raised salary thresholds and raised the English language requirement to A level equivalent. More than 100 occupations have been denied access to overseas recruitment, and the Immigration Skills Charge has increased to invest in domestic training.

They stressed it provides support services to enable customers to access the benefits and other DWP services they are entitled to."

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/2255890/anger-interpreters-foreign-benefits-seekers
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

Along with the literal word-for-word translation, the new Smart Assist mode should help clean up spoken words and prepare them for translation.

"Google might be bringing one of the best Gboard features to Translate. A smart-assist tool has been spotted in the Google Translate app code, and it should work similarly to the popular Rambler tool in Gboard...

Along with the literal word-for-word translation, the new Smart Assist mode should help clean up spoken words and prepare them for translation.

Google created Rambler to deal with filler words, bad pronunciation, and other artifacts of spoken language. You see, when we speak, we don't sound clear and formal like a well-written article; we use a lot of filler words, pauses, filler sounds, and exclamations, and oftentimes we're just mumbling under our breath.

If you try to transcribe all these extra noises word-for-word, you end up with nonsense or, in the best-case scenario, text that's full of unwanted clutter that needs to be redacted and removed. When trying to translate such voice-to-text input into another language, things get even messier.

This could change with the new Smart Assist tool, but there might be some limitations.

Smart Assist limitations

Given that Rambler in Gboard is only supported on Pixel 11 devices, there are questions about this new feature and its compatibility.

Another interesting question is whether this Smart Assist tool will be available offline when you're not connected to the big Google data centers, or if it will require an internet connection to work properly.

It's not clear whether the models behind Smart Assist use on-device AI, whether they need to send data online, or whether they use AI in the first place. Gboard Rambler, for example, uses AI models and works differently depending on whether you're online or offline.

In online (cloud-assisted) mode Rambler is much more accurate and fast, removing complex filler words, fixing mid-sentence self-corrections, and seamlessly switching between different languages. If you're offline, the advanced features are disabled and the tool transcribes your voice with minimal and basic cleanups.

Testing this new feature, Android Authority found that Translate only appears to be planning to support Smart Assist in Conversation mode. The option is unavailable (at the moment) in both Listening and Text-only modes.

Is it a game-changer?

It could be, if executed flawlessly. I've found that sometimes using such smart assistants can result in messier situations than not using them at all.

This Smart Assist tool could, for example, start cutting out important phrases, and even though you probably won't end up in a life-threatening lost-in-translation situation, it could ruin your time abroad...

It's not clear when Google will roll out the new Smart Assist tool, or whether it will land on all Android phones or be limited to just Pixel 11 devices."
Google Translate is borrowing Gboard’s best feature — and it changes everything
Mariyan Slavov
Oct 10, 2026
https://www.phonearena.com/news/google-translate-is-borrowing-gboards-best-feature--and-it-changes-everything_id183982
#metaglossia #metaglossia_mundus

"Lost in Pace, Not in Translation: An Intern's View from Inside a Chinese AI Start-up

I arrived in June 2026 as a trained Chinese-English translator, expecting to learn about technology. I did. But the real lesson was that the hardest thing to translate between China and its Eurasian partners is not language. It is pace.

My job was to help build a distributor network for the device across the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). I studied competitors, analyzed marketplace data, built a database of more than a hundred potential partners and helped prepare a market-entry plan.

One of my most memorable days was at the factory, where I took part in checking the first batch of devices. Every unit was tested step by step, and every result was recorded. What struck me even more was the absence of distance. In Shenzhen, engineers, suppliers and production lines are often a short drive apart. A change discussed in the office can be tested on real units within days. Chinese hardware companies are fast not only because people work hard, but because the whole ecosystem is built for iteration.

Speed, in writing

Inside the company, decisions that would take a week of meetings elsewhere were made in a short chat thread. That speed was not chaos. Nearly all work lived in Feishu, a Chinese workplace platform: documents, tables, tasks and every conversation. Anyone could see the status of any project at any time, which made it the fastest onboarding I have ever had.

The flip side is an expectation of responsiveness. Messages arrive in the evening and on weekends, and a quick reply signals commitment. Learning where the real boundaries are is one of the first adjustments a foreigner has to make.

Equally striking was the preference for action over perfection. Managers wanted a rough answer today rather than a perfect report next month. For someone trained in a profession where every comma matters, this was uncomfortable at first. Over time I saw the logic: in a fast market, a good-enough decision made early often beats a perfect one made too late.

Hierarchy, but close at hand

Respect for seniority is real in Chinese companies, yet in a start-up the founders joined working chats, commented on drafts and asked interns for their views. Hierarchy shaped how things were said, with tact and attention to face, more than whether they could be said. The key skill for a foreigner is reading what is left unsaid. A polite "let's think about it" can mean no.

Fast meets careful
The most interesting part of my work was standing between two worlds. My Chinese colleagues thought in terms of scale, speed and product. Potential partners in the EAEU thought in terms of trust, risk and paperwork. On almost every call, the questions came in the same order: certification, warranty, exclusivity, margins.

Certification is where the gap becomes concrete. Electronics sold in the EAEU need proof of conformity marked with the EAC sign, and the document must be issued to a company registered inside the Union. A Chinese manufacturer cannot fully certify its product alone; it needs a local partner first. Add lab testing, special rules for shipping lithium-battery devices and customs clearance for samples, and it is clear why partners in the region move carefully.

Neither side was wrong, but each misread the other. A Chinese team could see a cautious partner as slow. A partner could see a fast-moving Chinese company as not serious about the long term. Much of my work was translation in the broadest sense: explaining speed to one side and caution to the other.

What I take away

Trade between China and the EAEU is growing, and more Chinese technology brands will try to enter these markets. Their success will depend less on product quality, which is often excellent, and more on people who understand both business cultures. For Chinese companies, my advice is to plan certification from day one and to treat the first local partner as a co-founder of the market, not just a buyer.

Too often, cooperation with China is discussed only in terms of trade volumes. In my experience, the real bottleneck is people who can translate between business cultures, and universities on both sides should be training them.

For students from Eurasia considering work in China, my advice is simple: go, learn the tools, learn the pace, and listen to what is left unsaid. In Shenzhen, everyone knows who does what, and by when. Between China and Eurasia, the open question is who will do the translating.

Katsiaryna Hruzheuskaya
Yazhou Bay Science and Technology City
Yazhou District, Sanya, Hainan 572025
China

Katsiaryna Hruzheuskaya is an MBA student at China Agricultural University (Sanya) and a Chinese-English translator with about five years of professional experience as a teacher, translator and executive assistant. In 2026 she completed a business development internship at a Shenzhen-based AI hardware company, helping build its partner network across the Eurasian Economic Union. She is a graduate of Minsk State Linguistic University and a winner of the 7th "Belt and Road" International Scientific and Technical Translation Competition. She writes about Chinese business culture and China-Eurasia cooperation.
10-07-2026
Press release from: Independent Author
This release was published on openPR."
https://www.openpr.com/news/4653471/lost-in-pace-not-in-translation-an-intern-s-view-from-inside
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Unified Speech-Text Pre-training for Speech Translation and Recognition
Yun Tang
Hongyu Gong
Ning Dong
Changhan Wang
Wei-Ning Hsu, Jiatao Gu, Alexei Baevski, Xian Li,
Abdelrahman Mohamed, Michael Auli, Juan Pino

Abstract
We describe a method to jointly pre-train speech and text in an encoder-decoder modeling framework for speech translation and recognition. The proposed method incorporates four self-supervised and supervised subtasks for cross modality learning. A self-supervised speech subtask leverages unlabelled speech data, and a (self-)supervised text to text subtask makes use of abundant text training data. Two auxiliary supervised speech tasks are included to unify speech and text modeling space. Our contribution lies in integrating linguistic information from the text corpus into the speech pre-training. Detailed analysis reveals learning interference among subtasks. Two pre-training configurations for speech translation and recognition, respectively, are presented to alleviate subtask interference. Our experiments show the proposed method can effectively fuse speech and text information into one model. It achieves between 1.7 and 2.3 BLEU improvement above the state of the art on the MuST-C speech translation dataset and comparable WERs to wav2vec 2.0 on the Librispeech speech. "
License: CC BY 4.0
arXiv:2204.05409v1 [cs.CL] 11 Apr 2022
https://arxiv.org/html/2204.05409v1
#metaglossia #metaglossia_mundus

"Who Brought Easter Eggs to Eid? Auditing LLM-Generated Cultural Translation of Math Word Problems Across Languages and Regions
Authors
Parisa Suchdev
Department of Computer Science, University of Vermont Vermont Complex Systems Institute, University of Vermont Computational Ethics Lab, University of Vermont
Juniper Lovato
Department of Computer Science, University of Vermont Vermont Complex Systems Institute, University of Vermont Computational Ethics Lab, University of Vermont Complexity Science Hub
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1609/aies.v9i4.43321
Abstract
Large language models are increasingly used to adapt math word problems for personalized learning at scale, but it remains an open question whether those adaptations are consistent across models, preserve cultural diversity at scale, and reveal which cultural entities models treat as most salient. We analyze how Claude Opus 4, GPT 4.1, and Gemini 2.5 Pro adapt 60 English math word problems into Bengali, Hindi, Punjabi (India), Urdu, Sindhi (Pakistan), Italian, and Sicilian (Italy), a language set spanning the full resource spectrum, from high-resource Italian and Hindi to under-studied Sindhi, Sicilian, and Punjabi. We annotate 6,489 entity transformations, coding whether models preserve, localize, generalize, omit, or change entities such as names, foods, and places. Models agree on transformation type in 62.5% of cases and on specific substitutions in only 33.5%, meaning model choice directly shapes which cultural world students encounter. All 21 language-model combinations show entropy collapse, with adaptation compressing rather than expanding cultural diversity. Models prioritize surface markers such as names, foods, and currencies while preserving deeper structural features such as grade-level systems that embed culturally specific assumptions. Despite prompts specifying target countries, models misattribute regional context by using Bangladeshi taka for Indian Bengali students and produce cross-cultural contamination, such as adapting egg hunts as Eid activities. Some failures are visible in individual translations. Others, including diversity collapse, systematic preference for surface markers, and consistent regional misattribution, emerge only through corpus-level analysis. The surface plausibility that makes adapted problems look correct is precisely what makes deeper failures easy to overlook."
https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/AIES/article/view/43321
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Are Shared Games Building Bridges Across Borders?

A shared match gives players from different countries a clear reason to talk. Research shows how far that connection can go, and where it stops.

A shared match gives players from different countries an immediate, purposeful reason to communicate.
89% of U.S. teens who play video games play with others, according to Pew Research Center.
Repeated sessions turn recognition into familiarity, and 47% of teen players have made an online friend through a game.
A shared match can give people from different countries an immediate reason to communicate. Players do not need identical backgrounds to understand a goal, a teammate’s position, or the importance of good timing. That common focus can turn a brief interaction into a conversation with a clear purpose.

Continued access helps players remain part of the online spaces where those interactions happen. A United States Zenlesszone zero top up is one restrained example of a region-specific in-game purchase that can support participation in a shared title. The social value still comes from the communication and cooperation between the people playing.

Shared Objectives Create A Practical Social Language

Heroes in Overwatch
Gaming’s social side can be easy to miss when the visible activity is play itself. Pew Research Center found that 89% of U.S. teens who play video games play with others online or in person, while 72% said spending time with others was a reason they played. Those figures place shared play at the center of many players’ routines.

Common objectives give strangers a useful starting point. Team roles, map knowledge, visual signals, and short callouts can communicate intent without long personal introductions. Players can understand what needs attention in the moment, then build more familiar conversation over repeated sessions.

Research involving a World of Warcraft guild with 20 participants from 10 countries described online games as spaces for intercultural communication. Shared goals and cooperation helped participants work around limited language proficiency and different ideas about time. Those differences remained present, yet the game supplied a framework for adapting to them.

Repeated Play Gives Cross-Border Connection Room To Grow

League of Legends.
Players can buy digital games from official platform stores or digital marketplaces. Eneba is one option for game keys or gift cards, and its product pages can show region tags and platform information to help shoppers choose content suited to their account.

Regional availability belongs in the wider social picture because a community needs participants who can stay involved in the same game. Checking the relevant region and target platform is a straightforward part of selecting a digital purchase. It supports access while keeping attention on the relationships and routines that form during play.

Repeated sessions can turn recognition into familiarity. Guilds, squads, and community groups give people recurring contact, where they can learn another player’s communication style and establish a shared routine. In Pew’s survey, 47% of teen players said they had made an online friend because of a video game they both played, which demonstrates a real possibility rather than a universal outcome.

Cross-border communities still include different humor, customs, and expectations around teamwork. Players may simplify their language, clarify plans, or adjust to a teammate’s level of directness. An ethnographic study of an international Lords Mobile guild identified both bonding social capital within relationships and bridging social capital across cultural or social differences, alongside emotional support among members.

The evidence calls for a measured view. The World Health Organization describes research on digital play and social connection as limited and mixed, so games provide a setting where connection can develop rather than a guaranteed answer to isolation. Digital marketplaces like Eneba can offer deals on digital products and a practical route to region-specific content, while meaningful cross-border connection comes from shared play and clear communication."
By Moiz Banoori
https://exputer.com/features/shared-games-building-bridges-across-borders/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

Can an Emoji Be Rude? A Cross-Cultural Study of Emoji Interpretation in Dig
11 Oktober 2026, 20:53 WIB

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Can an Emoji Be Rude? A Cross-Cultural Study of Emoji Interpretation in Digital Communication

By Kayla Putri Ramadani and Kireina Syavel Azzahra

Cross-Cultural Communication Students, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Airlangga

Have you ever sent a crying emoji because something was funny, only to have someone think you were actually sad? I have experienced a similar misunderstanding in digital communication. An emoji I used to express laughter was interpreted as a sign of sadness. I also used a smiling emoji with a reddish face to express sarcasm, but it could be understood as a genuine smile. These experiences made me realize that emojis do not always communicate the feelings we intend to express.

Today, emojis are commonly used to express feelings that can be difficult to communicate through text. They can make digital conversations feel more like face-to-face interactions. However, people do not always interpret emojis in the same way. Cultural differences between countries, regions, and communities can influence how people understand and use them.

 

Emojis are more than just pictures that make digital conversations interesting. In face-to-face conversations, people communicate emotions through facial expressions, gestures, and tone of voice. These signals are often missing from text-based communication. Emojis can help express feelings and intentions that words alone may not convey clearly. According to Kavanagh (2016), emoticons can also convey politeness in online communication. This suggests that emojis and similar symbols serve a social purpose rather than simply decorating messages.

However, using the same emoji does not guarantee that everyone will understand it in the same way. Although emojis are used worldwide, people from different cultural backgrounds may have different habits when using and interpreting them. Guntuku et al. (2019) compared emoji usage among users from China and Japan with users from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Their study found differences in the frequency, context, and topics associated with emoji use. The researchers also identified similarities between cultures. These findings suggest that emojis are widely shared symbols, but their use can still be influenced by cultural background.

When Emojis Mean Different Things

Cultural differences can become particularly noticeable when emojis communicate meanings that are not stated directly. Sarcasm and irony are examples of this. A person may use an emoji to show that a statement should not be taken literally, while the receiver may interpret it differently.

Du (2024) examined how emojis influenced the interpretation of verbal irony among Chinese and American participants. The study found cultural differences in how participants understood irony when different emojis were used. American participants showed better understanding of irony when a winking emoji was used, while Chinese participants showed better understanding when a smiling emoji was used. This finding illustrates how a small symbol can influence the interpretation of a message.

For example, imagine someone sends the message, "Great job!" followed by a particular emoji. Depending on the situation and the relationship between the sender and receiver, the message might be interpreted as genuine praise or sarcasm. Without understanding the context, the receiver may misunderstand the sender's intention.

Emojis, Politeness, and Relationships

Emojis can also influence how people express politeness and maintain relationships. In digital conversations, an emoji can make a message seem warmer, friendlier, or less serious. Kavanagh (2016), who studied American and Japanese online blogging communities, found that both groups used emoticons to express positive politeness. However, Japanese users in the study used them more frequently than American users. This difference suggests that the use of emojis to maintain friendly communication may be connected to cultural communication patterns.

These differences do not mean that emojis are ineffective or that people should stop using them. Instead, they show that digital communication is not always as universal as it appears. People from different cultural backgrounds bring different experiences and expectations to online conversations."

Kireina Syavel Azzahra

Pelajar

https://www.kompasiana.com/kireinasyavel6777/6acb94de34777c6f3409c7a2/can-an-emoji-be-rude-a-cross-cultural-study-of-emoji-interpretation-in-dig
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Untangling Multiple Meanings in the English Language in the Courts

Professor's New Book Examines Ambiguities in English Language
by Alex Russell October 05, 2026
There’s a joke by British TV comedian Benny Hill that Americans usually don’t get.

Hill is dressed up as an irate mother talking to the school headmaster who says her son is always absent and now he’s boozing. Hill insists that there are 40 pubs in town, and Johnny hasn't been in one of them. The headmaster says, “Oh, yes, which one's that?”

The humor comes from a very subtle ambiguity in what both sides mean by Johnny being in “not in one” pub. Hill means Johnny hasn’t been in any pubs, but the headmaster is implying that Johnny has more likely been in all of them.

But not all ambiguity in language is funny. In a court of law, the way ambiguity is interpreted can have repercussions measured in the billions of dollars.

“What frequently happens?” said John Hawkins, a Distinguished Professor of linguistics at UC Davis. “One side picks the one meaning and the other side picks the other. What you need is a linguist to come in and say, ‘Well, how does disambiguation normally work?’”

Hawkins is just such a linguist, and he has served as an expert witness in numerous high-profile court cases that hinge on disambiguation, which is the process of removing the multiple meanings contained in a passage of text.

His new book, The English Language on Trial (Cambridge University Press, 2026), untangles some of the fundamental linguistic issues underpinning cases involving high-profile clients including Hollywood celebrities, major league sports teams and some of the world’s largest corporations. Each of them came down to some of the built-in ambiguities or other subtleties in the English language itself.

“People wouldn't normally disagree on these things if it was outside the courtroom, and these are systematic and there's many of them,” said Hawkins. “I've written many reports over the years that have tried to explain to lawyers and to the courts what the linguistic issue is, and what the proper judgment should be.”

Ambiguity in the English Language
The English language has many more ambiguities than many other languages, said Hawkins, and for specific reasons. One is that over the past millennium, English has undergone incredible simplification in its word forms compared to its predecessor language Old English. These changes were driven by contact between the English and populations from Denmark and other Vikings, as well as by the 1066 conquest by the French-speaking Normans.

“English has been exposed to a battering from languages and contact over its history, more than other similar languages have,” said Hawkins.

Ambiguity is rampant in English partly because so many of its verbs are used in ways they are not in other languages. For example, in English, you can break both a leg and a tennis racket string, but other languages use different words depending on what’s broken. Spanish has both romper, used in the general sense for causing damage, and quebrar, used for brittle things that shatter or for bankruptcy.

Another source of ambiguity are words with multiple meanings. Port is a type of wine as well as a place to dock a boat or to plug in a phone charger. Knowing the context of the sentence eliminates the alternative meanings.

In court cases, the word “substantial” comes up often, and it’s a word that almost could not be more ambiguous. The sun is substantially larger than the Earth, which compares the size of both celestial bodies, but your homework can also be substantially finished when most, but not all of it, is.

But what if a legal contract states that a billboard must be "substantially below" the top of a building’s roof? Does all of it have to be below? How far below? Here, the context must make clear what was intended.

Taking ambiguity in the English language to court
In total, Hawkins has served as an expert witness in over 50 cases. In his book, he details what many of the fundamental linguistic issues are and what the proper judgment should be.

In some of the cases Hawkins has worked on, he had to look closely at the broader context around the language under dispute. What other bits of language are relevant? How will average readers understand it? Sometimes that context involves how a word is used across society.

In a case involving the company Salesforce, Hawkins conducted an extensive analysis over the spelling of the company name that would be used to determine whether it could be used as the company trademark.

“When you have a trademark, you have to protect it,” said Hawkins.

Sometimes companies don’t succeed. Xerox and aspirin are two examples of “genericide,” in which a brand name becomes generic through common use.

At issue in the Salesforce case was how different is that one-word spelling from the general use of “sales force” as two separate words to describe personnel at any company who are responsible for sales.

Hawkins conducted a comprehensive database search to find out. He counted the instances in which the one-word version identified either the company or a corporate sales team and vice versa. He found that overwhelmingly the single-word version, “Salesforce,” was used in the context of the company itself.

Hawkins was also an expert witness in Apple’s 2013 trademark dispute against Amazon over the use of the name “App Store.” Apple claimed trademark for the name, arguing it had been the first to use it.

One of the lawyers Apple hired was Robert Leonard, a well-regarded linguist, who came to one of Hawkins’ depositions and supplied questions to Apple’s legal team. Leonard leads the Forensic Linguistics Justice Project at Hofstra University that reanalyzes cases in which language evidence played a crucial role in the defendant's conviction and sentence of death.

In the end, Hawkins’ analysis showed that “app store” truly was used generically. Even Apple CEO Tim Cook had used the term generically in an earnings call. In the U.S., Apple went on to withdraw its claim before trial.

“If you've got a phone from a manufacturer other than Apple and you have an ‘app store,’ it’s because of me,” said Hawkins."
https://www.ucdavis.edu/magazine/untangling-multiple-meanings-english-language-courts
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Tomedes Expands Its AI Translation Platform for Professional Translators With CAT Tool File Support
Translators can now upload XLIFF and MQXLIFF files from MemoQ, Trados, and Phrase to MachineTranslation.com and import the AI-translated file straight back into their CAT tool.

BEAVERTON, Ore. - Oct. 9, 2026 - PRLog -- Tomedes, a professional translation company, has extended its AI translation platform, MachineTranslation.com, to work directly with XLIFF and MQXLIFF files. Translators using computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools can now upload project files and receive the translated file back in its original format.

CAT tools such as MemoQ, Trados, Phrase, Wordfast, and OmegaT exchange project content through XLIFF, a file that holds source text, target segments, and project metadata together. Previously, using MachineTranslation.com with this content meant copying the text into a separate document and transferring the results back into the project by hand.

Workflow
Export an XLIFF or MQXLIFF file from the CAT tool.
Upload it to MachineTranslation.com and choose the languages.
Download the translated file in the same format.
Import it back into the CAT tool for review.

During processing, the platform sends each segment to multiple AI models, compares their translations, and keeps the version most of them agree on.

"Translators have spent years setting up their CAT tools, and that setup is where their work happens," said Ofer Tirosh, CEO of Tomedes. "XLIFF and MQXLIFF support lets them bring MachineTranslation.com into a project without leaving that environment."

Comparing output across models

Many AI features in CAT tools rely on a single model that offers one suggestion per segment. MachineTranslation.com translates the same text with 22 AI models and selects the version most of them produce, setting aside translations that differ from the majority.

"XLIFF support was one of the most frequent requests from our professional users," said Shashank Jain, Tech Lead at Tomedes. "Handling the format on both upload and download takes manual conversion out of the process."

XLIFF and MQXLIFF support is now live on https://www.machinetranslation.com/, which covers more than 330 languages.

About MachineTranslation.com

MachineTranslation.com is an AI translation platform built by https://www.tomedes.com/, a professional translation company with nearly 20 years in the language industry. It has AI models such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepL, and Google translate the same text separately, then shows the translation most of them agree on.

Media Contact
Rachelle Garcia
rachelle@tomedes.net"
https://www.prlog.org/13175725-tomedes-expands-its-ai-translation-platform-for-professional-translators-with-cat-tool-file-support.html
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"The growing use of artificial intelligence in online search is changing how consumers discover information about businesses, products, and services. Rather than relying exclusively on traditional search engine results, consumers increasingly encounter AI-generated answers that summarize information gathered from websites and other digital sources.

For businesses, this development introduces additional considerations regarding website content, organization, and the accuracy of publicly available information.

Rhino Web Studios, a New Orleans-based website development and digital marketing company, is examining how website content contributes to business visibility within AI-generated search responses.

Traditional search engines generally present lists of websites based on relevance, authority, and other ranking factors. AI-powered search systems may instead generate conversational responses that combine information from multiple sources. Depending on the platform and search query, responses may include citations, business descriptions, recommendations, or links to supporting websites.

Technical considerations remain important. Pages blocked from crawling, dependent on inaccessible content, or affected by indexing problems may be difficult for search systems to retrieve.

Structured data markup can provide machine-readable information about certain website elements, including business details, articles, and frequently asked questions. However, structured data alone does not establish eligibility for inclusion in AI-generated answers.

Answering Common Questions Through Website Content

Informational articles represent another component of website content development.

Businesses frequently receive questions concerning service procedures, materials, maintenance requirements, pricing considerations, and industry terminology.

Publishing factual explanations of these subjects can establish additional context surrounding a company’s activities.

A heating and air conditioning contractor, for example, might publish articles explaining refrigerant leaks, airflow restrictions, seasonal maintenance, or common causes of equipment failure.

Such information can address consumer questions while creating relevant material that search systems may retrieve when processing related inquiries.

Thomas noted that the usefulness of informational content depends partly on its accuracy and specificity.

“An article should provide meaningful information about the subject being discussed,” Thomas said. “Simply repeating keywords or publishing large amounts of generic material does not necessarily help an AI system understand a business. Accurate explanations, relevant details, and clearly identified subjects provide more useful context.”

Business Information Consistency Remains Important

Information consistency across digital platforms is another consideration.

Business names, physical addresses, telephone numbers, operating hours, and service descriptions may appear on company websites, business directories, mapping platforms, and industry listings.

Conflicting information can create uncertainty for consumers and automated systems attempting to identify a particular business.

Maintaining accurate business details across relevant platforms can support a more consistent digital identity.

Company websites can also provide information about professional experience, geographic service areas, licensing where applicable, and the individuals responsible for business operations.

These details may help establish context, although AI search systems apply different methods when evaluating sources and generating responses.

AI Search Does Not Replace Traditional Search Optimization

The emergence of AI-generated answers does not eliminate the role of traditional search engine optimization.

Search engines continue to use established crawling, indexing, and ranking processes. Many AI-powered search experiences also depend on search infrastructure to retrieve supporting information.

Consequently, website accessibility, technical performance, relevant content, and logical information architecture remain important considerations.

Differences between AI platforms also make visibility difficult to predict. A business cited by one system may not appear in another system’s response to a similar question.

AI-generated answers can also change over time as underlying models, retrieval systems, and available information evolve.

“Businesses should understand that appearing in an AI-generated answer is not something that can be guaranteed,” Thomas said. “The practical focus should remain on maintaining a website that accurately explains the business, provides useful information, and makes that information accessible to search technologies.”

An Evolving Approach to Online Information

As AI-powered search continues to develop, website content is becoming relevant to multiple forms of online information discovery.

Traditional search results, AI-generated summaries, conversational search interfaces, and other digital platforms may interpret and present business information differently.

For businesses, the underlying consideration remains the same: publicly accessible information should accurately represent the organization and provide meaningful explanations of its activities.

The continuing development of AI search technologies is likely to influence how businesses organize, maintain, and evaluate website content in the years ahead.

About Rhino Web Studios

Rhino Web Studios is a New Orleans, Louisiana-based website development and digital marketing company providing website design, search engine optimization, website hosting, content development, and related digital services. The company works with businesses across multiple industries to develop and maintain their online presence.

Morgan Thomas
Rhino Digital, LLC
+1 504-875-5036"
https://www.courier-journal.com/press-release/story/239733/website-content-plays-a-growing-role-in-how-businesses-appear-in-ai-generated-search-answers/
#metaglossia #metaglossia_mundus

«Allô ? Oui bonjour, j’ai un texte IA à vous faire reprendre.» Dans les agences de traduction, les propositions de ce genre sont devenues monnaie courante

«Je me suis senti insulté» : les traducteurs excédés d’être réduits à de simples «toiletteurs d’IA»

"De plus en plus de contrats ne proposent que de «nettoyer» une traduction générée par l’intelligence artificielle. Bafouant le savoir-faire et la dignité du métier, s’insurgent des traducteurs auprès du Figaro.

«Allô ? Oui bonjour, j’ai un texte IA à vous faire reprendre.» Dans les agences de traduction, les propositions de ce genre sont devenues monnaie courante. Au lieu de traduire un document «from scratch», soit «de zéro», les traducteurs reçoivent une version produite par l’intelligence artificielle générative, et doivent la «nettoyer», comprenez la rendre exploitable. Une pratique qui dénature le métier, en retirant tout le plaisir attelé à la traduction et posant de nombreux problèmes. Petit à petit, les rôles s’inversent : les traducteurs sont-ils en passe de devenir des… assistants d’IA ?

Si le terme «post-édition» s’est largement répandu pour qualifier cette nouvelle manière de travailler, les traducteurs lui préfèrent les termes «nettoyage» ou «toilettage» de «sortie machine», comme nous l’indique Laura Hurot, traductrice de l’allemand et membre du collectif IA-lerte générale. Son confrère Cyril Laumonier, président de l’Association des traducteurs littéraires de France…"
Par Romain Ferrier
Publié le 11/10/2026 à 08
https://www.lefigaro.fr/langue-francaise/actu-des-mots/je-me-suis-senti-insulte-les-traducteurs-excedes-d-etre-reduits-a-de-simples-toiletteurs-d-ia-20261011
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Interpreting, communication and animal welfare. An ecosemiotic analysis of interspecies translation is written by Xany Jansen van Vuuren (2025). The book is based on van Vuuren´s PhD project which she finished in 2022 at the University of the Free State, in South Africa, where she is currently a Senior Lecturer and Academic Head of Department for Linguistics and Language Practice.

This is one of the first books, to my knowledge, that engages comprehensively with animal welfare issues within an ecosemiotic framing. This is in itself laudable. In biosemiotics at large, animal welfare has received scant attention, although issues in animal ethics as well as environmental ethics have been addressed by some scholars. Animal welfare issues are ethically relevant for anyone who cares about the wellbeing of animals – and this book provides a treatment of such issues while at the same time applying a semiotic framing.

Specifically, van Vuuren relates to NGO work in the form of animal welfare interventions in South Africa. Situated at the intersection of ecosemiotics, translation studies, studies of horses, and animal welfare, van Vuuren explores her topic matter by navigating what is presented as four interwoven fields of study. Rather than providing any theoretical treatise, the book leads by example, as it were, by fleshing out the particular circumstances that are relevant in the book´s context. The book consists of eight chapters, starting with an introduction to horses, translators and signs, and then continuing with a chapter on ecosemiotics and animal welfare and a chapter on the semiotics of translation. This is followed by a chapter on the compatibility of horse Umwelten and human Umwelten and a chapter on interspecies agency and positionality. Further chapters deal with affordances and constraints in the materiality of animal welfare, and the interaction of constraints and affordances in ecology. The book concludes with a final chapter that revisits the purpose of the book and includes reflections on connections between translation theory, semiotics and ecological issues.

Spread out over the eight chapters, the book contains no less than 65 figures. Many of these involve photos from the field work the book builds on and give insights into the South African case study of the book and how horses are treated. Other figures detail theoretical models, including of signs. Lastly, a series of figures present schematic triadic modelling of selected situations encountered during the field work, drawing on Peircean semiotics. For anyone with some education in semiotics, the implied semiotic analysis should be easy to follow. Apart from demonstrating how a Peircean analysis of the subject matter of the book can look like, the informational value of these latter figures, which are quite lengthy, is somewhat limited.

A key phrase in van Vuuren´s work is “interspecies translation”. This phrase, which is used in the book´s subheading, highlights the significance of understanding animals and what they communicate either directly or by way of their behaviours. With regard to translation theory, Van Vuuren draws on the work of her colleague Kobus Marais. In his book on a biosemiotic theory of translation (Marais, 2019), Marais challenges the traditional linguistic bias in translation studies and outlines an alternative conceptualization of translation. In this understanding, translation, far from being restricted to the realm of language, is a systemic process that underlies semiosis. That book is now Marais´ most cited work, and it is reasonable to assume that this achievement has in turn contributed to making translation studies one of the fields of study where biosemiotic theory has had the most significant impact over the last few years. Van Vuuren´s book contributes to developing this line of research further.

A strength of Interpreting, communication and animal welfare is that it is very informative with regard to the behaviour and perception of horses and how they are treated by people. For instance, she explains how horses´ sight differs from humans´ sight, and what various horse vocalizations, movements, and ear positions can be taken to mean, for example as indications of pain (for a brief introduction into how animals´ feelings can be interpreted as symptomatic of their welfare, see Duncan, 2006). A key message is that a proper understanding of horses´ Umwelt is required as the basis for any successful interspecies communication between horses and humans. Reading horses the right way is in turn a precondition for keeping horses in a manner that results in a satisfactory level of welfare. In this context, van Vuuren observes that skilful NGO representatives can act as translators and intermediaries.

To foster truly communicative relations between humans and animals, comprehensibility should in my opinion go both ways. In other words, while people should strive to “read” animal behaviour appropriately, as van Vuuren stresses, they should also strive to behave in ways that can be “read” by, and make sense for, the animals they engage with – and preferably in more humane ways than e.g. communicating with horses through whips (a point made by van Vuuren). Mutual comprehensibility should be sought by people involved in veterinary work, wildlife management, zoo and farm work etc., in so far as the animals in question are capable of relating to human beings perceptually and behaviourally as human beings (rather than as some generic mammal or animal). Animal literacy, in this view, concerns using communicative skills in an interspecies setting (the ability to communicate something to the animal) just as much as it concerns interpreting and understanding animal behaviour. Most veterinarians probably already have something akin to this in mind when they interact with individual animals, whereas conditions are worse in most other settings – especially in the context of industrialised agriculture, where animals are hardly engaged with at a personal level at all.

A well-known example of an animal that is incapable of relating to human beings as human beings is the tick, or rather, ticks (there are about a thousand different species of ticks). As Jakob von Uexküll (2010) famously narrated, ticks treat humans as they treat any other mammal and perceive not human beings but rather some generic mammal when they engage with us. I note that in Interpreting, communication and animal welfare, ticks are treated quite extensively in the context of horses being infected by ticks, but that van Vuuren´s treatment of ticks in this context is limited to the subjective perspectives of horses and humans, while the tick´s subjectivity and agency is left out of the picture. The implication is that ticks are objectified and reduced to being treated as sources of pain and carriers of disease."
Morten Tønnessen
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12304-026-09668-8
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Supermarket chain Lidl has replaced car park signs wrongly installed at a store in Nottingham that featured text in English and Welsh.

Confused shoppers noticed the signs at the Carlton Road store after they appeared following routine maintenance earlier this year.

They have now been replaced with English-only versions, as originally intended.

In Wales, public sector businesses and organisations are required by law to have bilingual signage in Welsh and English, with private businesses encouraged to follow suit.

A spokesperson for the German retail chain said: "At Lidl, we take great pride in supporting the Welsh language.

"However, it seems our enthusiasm for the language briefly crossed the border, with Welsh signage mistakenly being installed in our Carlton Road store during routine maintenance.

"We can assure local shoppers that standard signage is now safely back in place."

Lidl became the first major supermarket to achieve the 'Cynnig Cymraeg' certification in 2023, a recognition of a company's efforts to prioritise the Welsh language in Wales.

There is currently no official data on Welsh speakers outside of Wales, but Nottingham is home to the oldest active Welsh society in the East Midlands.

According to its website, The Nottingham Welsh Society has been active in the city since 1904."
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm4g1zpned1yo
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

The Bible Society
New EasyEnglish Bible aims to make scripture accessible to more people

A Bible translation designed to make scripture easier to understand for people with reading difficulties and those whose first language is not English, has been published in print in the UK for the first time.

The EasyEnglish Bible, produced by Christian charity MissionAssist, uses simplified vocabulary and shorter sentences to make the Bible more accessible to a wider audience.

The translation is particularly aimed at people who struggle with traditional Bible language, including those with dyslexia, people learning English and readers with limited literacy skills.

The approach is intended to help readers engage with the Bible without being discouraged by complicated language, unfamiliar expressions or lengthy passages.

One example is John 3:16, among the best-known verses in the New Testament.

The New International Version (NIV) begins: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son."

The EasyEnglish Bible uses more straightforward language, beginning: "God loved the people in this world so much that he gave his only Son."

Most of the vocabulary in the translation is drawn from a bank of just 1,000 commonly used English words, while sentences are generally limited to 20 words..."

Oct 08 2026
Martin Hart
https://premierchristian.news/us/news/article/new-easyenglish-bible-aims-to-make-scripture-accessible-to-more-people
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Edge is testing a feature that lets you translate entire documents into another language

Microsoft is testing a new feature on Edge Canary; it can translate a whole PDF document from the right-click menu and open the entire translated PDF as a separate copy.

This was initially reported by the folks at Windows Report in a hands-on test.

On Edge, you can already translate text within a PDF. You also have the option to select a paragraph and then use the PDF toolbar to translate the text, which shows up in a side pane. However, this old feature doesn’t cover the entire document. You’d have to end up scrolling through the entire PDF, which can get annoying if it’s several pages long.

In 2025, Microsoft said that the feature would continue to evolve. In a few clicks, it was supposed to provide a fully translated document, so that readers don’t have to work through the document line by line or paragraph by paragraph. It appears that the update to the feature has finally landed now in Edge Canary.

In the hands-on test at Windows Report, the writer opened a 10-page document, which was written in Hindi. A simple right-click is all that was needed to find the “Translate document to English” option. Choosing it opens a new tab, and then the browser displays “Translating…”

Finally, the translated document opens up, and the original one still remains open in the browser.

This is a practical new feature, and users won’t have to resort to highlighting specific parts of the document to obtain the translations. Since it builds an entirely new document, the source and translation can sit open side by side.

I have checked for this feature on the latest version of Edge Canary. However, right-clicking on the document didn’t show me the option. I’m running macOS, and the test from the original source was performed on Windows, so it likely hasn’t made it to macOS at the time of writing.

The feature is still in testing, and there’s no exact ETA available for a public release. Since it hasn’t even reached everyone on Edge Canary, it could take a while.

PiunikaWeb’s Take
It is good to see this feature actually implemented and running, even if it is only in Canary for now. Reading a document in another language usually means exporting pages, uploading them somewhere, and using random third-party tools.

Having the entire translation occur in the browser and also leaving the original copy alone is very convenient. It’s useful for manuals, study material, and various lengthy documents.

We stand out from the tech-media crowd because we break news stories; we mainly bring you stuff that you won’t find anywhere in the mainstream tech media. Our stories have been picked up by some of the world’s most popular websites and media outlets...
Sudhanshu K
Oct 10, 2026
https://piunikaweb.com/2026/10/10/edge-testing-feature-translate-documents-language/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"AI Translation Needs More Than Speed to Serve Global Customers

A message that works in one market can miss the mark in another. Fast AI translation still needs human judgment to get local context right. (AI-generated image)
For global e-commerce and CRM teams, fast AI translation does not necessarily produce content that fits local markets. Keeping product information and customer communications current across languages also requires workflows that preserve accuracy, brand voice, and cultural context.

Localization adapts content for a market's language and cultural expectations. Continuous localization connects that work to content systems so new or revised text moves through translation and review as part of ongoing updates rather than separate projects.

Translation and localization company Acclaro introduced its Augmented Translation offering in August. According to the company, it combines machine translation, automated editing, AI-based quality assessment, and human review to help enterprise teams manage multilingual content.

Connecting Translation to Content Updates
Andrew Thomas, vice president of marketing at Acclaro, told CRM Buyer that the approach connects localization to ongoing content production rather than handling each update as a separate translation project.

Application programming interfaces (APIs) connect content systems with translation services, allowing new or changed text to move through the localization workflow automatically. Publication timing depends on the review requirements and system configuration.

Andrew Thomas, VP of Marketing at Acclaro
Consider a retailer updating a product description and a promotional slogan. The description might need approved terminology and an accuracy check, while the slogan could require creative adaptation for each market. Continuous localization can keep both changes moving through the process, with different review requirements for each.

Acclaro connects with systems such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Adobe Experience Manager, Shopify, and code repositories to retrieve updated text and return localized versions with less manual file handling, he explained.

Clients can also connect Acclaro's services to their existing translation management systems, he noted. Integration capabilities and update timing depend on the systems involved.

The platform is designed to preserve brand voice and tone and support regulatory compliance as content changes across markets. However, he cautioned that speed without context can weaken brand messaging.

Feedback from local reviewers, sales teams, and end users can inform future translations, Thomas explained. Translation memories — databases of previously translated text — help teams reuse approved wording.

Routing Content by Audience
Within a continuous localization process, different content may require different treatment, according to Thomas. Incremental software updates may need straightforward translation and review, while marketing campaigns may require transcreation — adapting a message's creative intent for a local audience rather than translating it directly.

Metadata identifying the intended audience can also guide terminology and review decisions within those workflows. The workflow includes decision points for assigning tasks to automated tools or human reviewers, he explained.

For example, content for engineers may require different terminology from content for marketers. Applying those distinctions across languages and markets requires detailed workflows and substantial integration work, he added.

Where Human Judgment Matters
AI can help generate wording options, but sensitive creative work still requires human judgment, Thomas explained. Cultural meanings can change, making local reviewers important even when a translation is linguistically accurate.

"Performing well in one market might actually harm brand impact in another due to cultural nuances," he said.

He recommended using market-level content performance to guide decisions about when direct translation is sufficient and when a message needs creative adaptation.

Turnaround time alone does not establish whether localization is effective. Other considerations include how much editing translations require, how often terminology needs correction, and how localized content performs with customers.

Managing E-Commerce and Customer Communications
Product catalogs and digital campaigns require frequent changes to promotional banners, product descriptions, and pricing messages.

Customer communications across emails, push notifications, support portals, and sales materials also need consistent terminology and messaging across languages.

For teams managing those updates, the practical challenge is deciding which tasks can be automated and which need human review.

Consumer expectations also extend to transparency. Research published in 2025 by language services provider RWS, involving about 5,000 consumers across 14 markets, found that 62% said transparency about AI use would increase their trust in a brand. More than 80% believed AI-created text, images, and video should be clearly labeled.

The survey measured attitudes toward AI-generated content broadly, not AI translation specifically.

In Acclaro's announcement, Amy Grace O'Brien, senior linguistic quality manager at Adobe, said automating repetitive translation tasks can give linguists more time for work that requires their expertise. A thoughtful combination of AI and human review can help teams manage more content while preserving quality and brand voice, she added."
Jack M. Germain
October 9, 2026 5:00 AM PT
https://www.crmbuyer.com/story/ai-translation-needs-more-than-speed-to-serve-global-customers-177759.html
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"Two Chinese Books Shortlisted for US National Translation Awards
This week’s shortlist announcement included two works of prose originally written in Chinese. A separate Chinese anthology was also longlisted for the poetry prize last month.

Two books translated into English from Chinese have been shortlisted for the 2026 U.S. National Translation Awards, which recognize excellence in both original and translated literary works.

The shortlist, announced Tuesday by the American Literary Translators Association, includes two originally written in Chinese: Chinese author Shuang Xuetao’s short story collection “Hunter,” translated by Jeremy Tiang, and Hong Kong writer Hon Lai Chu’s “Mending Bodies,” translated by Jacqueline Leung, among a total of 11 poetry and prose works translated from nine languages.

“The Ruins,” an anthology by Chinese poet Ye Hui and translated by Li Dong, was longlisted among 23 works across prose and poetry on Sept. 3 but did not make the shortlist. Ye is known for his spare, understated poems that draw on everyday life and nature and explore questions of time, memory, and existence.

Established in 1998, the awards rank among the world’s top professional accolades for literary translation. Winning translators in both categories — poetry and prose — each receive a $4,000 prize. Translations of Chinese works have previously been listed for the prize, including works by contemporary writers Xu Zechen and Yan Lianke, as well as Qing dynasty (1644–1911) novelist and playwright Li Yu.

Shuang Xuetao, author of “Hunter,” one of the two shortlisted Chinese works, was born in 1983 in Shenyang, capital of the northeastern Liaoning province. He is widely considered a leading figure in the “Dongbei Renaissance,” a cultural movement emerging from northeast China, or Dongbei. Known for his use of local dialect, Shuang often portrays the lives of ordinary people in the region, long dismissed as a cultural backwater and rust belt. Several of his works have been adapted into films.

“Hunter” features 11 standalone stories, some of which were originally written in Dongbei dialect: from provincial ambulance drivers searching for a hospital in the middle of the night, to a legendary knife fighter working in a factory. In a note about their selection published alongside the announcement, the competition’s judges wrote that Shuang’s stories “paint a portrait of a region marked by gritty pragmatism, dark humor, and magical realism.”

The work was translated by Shuang’s long-term collaborator Jeremy Tiang — a novelist in his own right. The judges wrote that Tiang “expertly translated Shuang’s often inventive, utterly unique description; his English texts are layered and witty.”

The second book nominated for the prize, “Mending Bodies” by Hong Kong writer Hon Lai Chu, is a work of speculative fiction and follows a young woman adjusting to life after surgically binding her body to a partner, in a future where people are encouraged to do so. Hon has previously drawn praise for her surreal, introspective fiction, which often explores the fragility of the body, memory, and human relationships.

According to the judges, Jacqueline Leung, the book’s Hong Kong-based translator, “flawlessly translates the between-the-lines subtleties of the languages.”

“The shortlisting of these works carries substantial significance for the overseas circulation of Sinophone literature and its greater visibility within global professional literary circuits, representing, in a sense, a multifaceted retelling of Chinese stories across fiction and poetry,” Shao Dong, an assistant professor of creative writing at Hong Kong Metropolitan University, told Sixth Tone.

The overall award winners will be announced on Oct. 23 as part of the American Literary Translators Association’s annual conference.

By Li Xin
Oct 09, 2026
Editor: Marianne Gunnarsson
https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1019103
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"Anne Carson's Nobel Prize Win Settles an Argument About Translation That Has Run For a Century

Anne Carson prints the holes in Sappho where other translators quietly filled them. The Swedish Academy has now called that work original, settling something it left open in 1913.

The Swedish Academy said something on Thursday that it has spent more than a hundred years avoiding. Announcing the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature for Anne Carson, it stated that her translations from Classical Greek stand as independent works rather than as service to somebody else's text. Translators are rarely told any such thing. The convention holds that translation is honourable, secondary labour, the kind acknowledged in small type on a copyright page while the author's name carries the cover.

Anne Carson's Nobel Citation Says What Tagore's In 1913 Only Implied

What The Academy Said In 1913
The argument has a precedent, and it belongs to India. Rabindranath Tagore's citation praised his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he had made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West.

Five of those words carry the entire problem. The Academy honoured the English, and the English was Tagore's own rendering of poems he had written in Bengali. Nominated by the British poet Thomas Sturge Moore, he was known to the committee largely through a slim body of self-translated material. Scholars have argued ever since about whether the prize went to 'Gitanjali' or to 'Song Offerings', which are not the same book.

What Carson Does With A Damaged Page
Her method makes the question concrete in a way that no amount of theory manages. 'If Not, Winter', her Sappho published by Knopf in 2002, prints square brackets wherever the papyrus is torn. Sappho survives in scraps, and most of her translators have quietly completed her. Mary Barnard in 1958 grew a four-word fragment into a poem. Willis Barnstone in 1998 took a scrap of eleven words and produced eight stanzas with a title attached. Carson leaves the holes open instead, and one fragment arrives in her version as four words on a white page: do not move stones. She has written that brackets are exciting, and that they imply a free space of imaginal adventure.

The Position The Academy Has Now Taken
Refusing to fill a gap is a decision, and it belongs to the translator rather than to Sappho. Barnstone's eight stanzas were also a decision. Both are acts of composition, and what separates them is temperament rather than fidelity, which is precisely the thing the profession has spent centuries declining to admit.

That admission is what Stockholm has now made. In 1913 the Academy arrived at the same conclusion by accident, crowning a Bengali poet for English sentences he had built himself and then saying nothing further about it. In 2026 it has put the claim in the citation.

Nothing about the economics shifts because of a sentence from a committee. Translators remain poorly paid and frequently uncredited, and a great deal of Indian writing still travels the world inside English versions whose makers nobody can name. What has changed is that the most conservative institution in letters has stopped treating the work as invisible, and it took a woman who spent fifty years alone with a dead language to extract the concession..."
Girish Shukla
Oct 9, 2026
https://www.timesnownews.com/lifestyle/books/anne-carsons-nobel-prize-win-settles-an-argument-about-translation-that-has-run-for-a-century-article-156299251
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Binghamton University's Translation Research and Instruction Program (TRIP) hosted the 15th International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS) Regional Workshop on Oct. 3-4 at the University Downtown Center.

"The language of resistance: Binghamton University hosts conference on translation and intercultural studies
First North American conference for IATIS focused on literary activism

Binghamton University's Translation Research and Instruction Program (TRIP) hosted the 15th International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS) Regional Workshop. Image Credit: Ava Poole '27.
By Ava Poole '27
October 09, 2026
Binghamton University's Translation Research and Instruction Program (TRIP) hosted the 15th International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS) Regional Workshop on Oct. 3-4 at the University Downtown Center.

The first IATIS conference to be held in North America featured 21 speakers from eight different countries and 10 different educational or publication institutions, including five TRIP faculty members and PhD candidates.

As an international conference, it presented the opportunity to showcase Binghamton's local charm and history to academics from around the world.

On Saturday, the group took a tour that started with the new Harriet Tubman statue and continued through several stops along the Downtown Binghamton Freedom Trail, a project begun by Binghamton University in 2021. Associate Professor Sharon Bryant, associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion for the Decker College of Nursing and Health Sciences, led the tour. Bryant showcased the history of the City of Binghamton and its role in the Underground Railroad.

Associate Professor Sharon Bryant led a tour showcasing the history of the City of Binghamton and its role in the Underground Railroad as part of the International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS) Regional Workshop. Image Credit: Ava Poole '27.
The IATIS Regional Workshop attracts professors, PhD candidates, translators, and independent researchers from across the globe to discuss and present their studies in translation. This year, the topic of the conference was "Translating Resistance: Literary Activism in Conflict and Solidarity," which opened the floor for presenters to focus on numerous humanitarian topics in translation, from historical presentations of feminist writings to modern poetry calling out political violence.

Keynote speaker Professor Samah Selim from Rutgers University spoke on Saturday. Her presentation, titled "Translating Archives: 'Radical Remembering' and the Politics of Solidarity," discussed a commissioned translation of three short books written by Egyptian painter and activist Inji Aflatoun.

"It started out as a commissioned project, but then it evolved into what I sometimes call a passion project. My journey with Aflatoun led me to an archive of transnational feminism that helped me think about the problems of women's struggles in Egypt today in new and productive, empowering ways," Selim said.

Throughout her speech, Selim referred to translation as a medium of memory, a form of political labor, and a journey of discovery. These ideals were echoed by the presentations that followed, which addressed the many applications of translation work...

Professor Omid Ghaemmaghami from Binghamton’s Department of Middle Eastern and Ancient Mediterranean Studies (MEAMS) gave Saturday’s final presentation.

"Translation," he said, "is never neutral. It can frame, it can amplify, and contest, and the act of undertaking it can determine who gets to read a text at all."

For organizers, the IATIS presentations represented the different aspects of translation that add to a text or divide the reader from the original. Who and what is translated, now and throughout history, affects what information readers have access to across language barriers.

They hope that conferences such as the IATIS Regional Workshop continue the global conversation around translation and keep the intentions, interests, and responsibilities of translators clear and peer-reviewed.

© 2026 Binghamton University

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https://www.binghamton.edu/news/story/6529/the-language-of-resistance-binghamton-university-hosts-conference-on-translation-and-intercultural-studies
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Canadian poet, essayist and translator Anne Carson won the Nobel Prize in literature Thursday for playful, genre-blending works that fuse the classical and the modern

"By The Associated Press
STOCKHOLM — Canadian poet, essayist and translator Anne Carson won the Nobel Prize in literature Thursday for playful, genre-blending works that fuse the classical and the modern.

Toronto-born Carson, 76, draws on themes and stories from ancient Greek and Roman literature for works that often mix elements of poetry, essay and fiction.

Ingrid Carlberg, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, said Carson was in Iceland “listening to the wind” when the academy reached her to notify her of the win.

“She was very taken by surprise,” Carlberg said.

Works range from classical Greek translations to poetry
Carson’s books include “Eros the Bittersweet,” a look at the pleasure and pain of desire in ancient Greek literature; the verse novel “Autobiography of Red”; “Men in the Off Hours,” a collection of poetry and prose that won Canada’s Griffin Prize for poetry in 2001; and “Norma Jeane Baker of Troy,” which compares Marilyn Monroe and Helen of Troy.

She also has translated works of classical Greek literature that, the Swedish Academy said, “may be regarded as independent works in their own right.” They include “If Not, Winter,” based on poem fragments by Sappho; Sophocles’ tragic plays “Electra” and “Antigone”; and Euripides’ “Bakkhai.”

“Almost all her literary production has centered upon the intersection between the philologist’s obsession with words and the poet’s desire for new meaning,” said Anders Olsson, chair of the literature committee.

Olsson added that Carson’s juxtaposition of influences ranging from the ancient Greeks to John Keats, Virginia Woolf and Emily Brontë “leads to playful and ironic works that move not only between classical and modern poetry but also between different genres and artforms.”

Carson wrote about her own life and struggles
Carson has taught classics at several North American universities and has lived in Iceland, where she and her husband, Robert Currie, were granted citizenship in 2022...

She also has drawn on her own life for works such as “Nox,” which was published in 2010 and dealt with the decades-long absence and then death of her brother Michael. Olsson called it “a creation as sculptural as it is literary, an epitaph in the form of a box containing an accordion-fold-out of pictures, letters and other written texts dedicated to her dead brother.” It also includes Carson’s translation of an elegy by the Roman poet Catullus for his own brother.

Among her most recent work is “Wrong Norma,” a wide-ranging 2024 collection of pieces from publications including The Paris Review and The New Yorker, accompanied by Carson’s hand-drawn illustrations.

Also that year, Carson wrote in the London Review of Books about being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. She said, “A symptom particularly mortifying to me was that my handwriting disintegrated.”

“Hard to describe or explain the shame of bad handwriting,” she said. “Bad handwriting is ugly. Also it is inauthentic. In the sense it is not you.”

The prize was announced by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. The Associated Press’ efforts to reach Carson and her literary agent, Nicole Aragi, were not immediately successful.

Friday to bring peace prize winner
The prize money this year is 12 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million) per prize.

Last year, Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai, whose surreal and anarchic novels combine a bleak world view with mordant humor, won the Nobel Prize in literature for work the judges said upholds the power of art in the midst of “apocalyptic terror.”"

https://www.nbcnews.com/world/europe/nobel-prize-literature-awarded-stockholm-rcna602243
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