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Charles Tiayon
August 11, 2024 11:21 PM
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In the framework of the celebration of the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, four articles published in the journal Educación Superior y Sociedad address priority issues for advancing cultural diversity in the region. Since 2022, the journal Educación Superior y Sociedad (ESS) has configured as an editorial policy and in favour of the inclusion of diversity, a space dedicated to the indigenous peoples of the region, to the rescue of their languages and to the reflection on their situation in higher education. Since then, researchers and scholars of higher education for the Indigenous peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean have had a section for the publication of academic articles on the various topics of interest to these peoples in the area of higher education, some of them written in one of the languages of the Indigenous peoples and translated into Spanish. This action allows the Institute to contribute to the Indigenous Languages Decade (2022-20232) and to the implementation of its Global Action Plan by presenting this section of the ESS as a space for the preservation, revitalisation and promotion of indigenous languages and the most urgent issues related to higher education. To celebrate the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, we share below a compendium of the four articles published to date: Science, philosophy and technology of the Mayan Peoples: A paradigm of education that promotes human fulfillment, harmony with nature and the cosmos, by Vitalino Similox Salazar, Universidad Maya Kaqchikel, Guatemala, and José Antonio Otzoy, Universidad Maya Kaqchikel, Guatemala. This paper describes the epistemological proposal and path of Mayan peoples, inspired by their scientific, philosophical and technological paradigm; as an expression of their constellation of beliefs, principles, values and techniques; whose essential focus is the protection and promotion of natural life, the link with territorial life, local community, and nature, which supports their cultural identity practices, as an exercise of epistemic pluralism and a proposal to make human fulfillment possible, as an alternative to the globalising and homogenising models of higher education, responsible for the destruction of the planet. “These Indians never learn”… University, racism and interculturality in Peru, by Vicente Torres Lezama, Universidad Nacional de Arte Diego Quispe Tito del Cusco, cusco, Perú. This article aims to critically discuss the continuity of old colonial structures in the Peruvian university that prevent its transformation into a relevant institution that responds to the cultural diversity of the country. The university continues to operate under the monocultural and hegemonic perspective of Westernised knowledge that invisibilizes and folklorizes the knowledge and worlds of other Andean, Amazonian, and Afro-descendant peoples. The essay seeks to reflect on the experiences of national universities with groups of students of ethnic origin in the first decades of the 21st century, specifically, affirmative action programs in which the author had experience as a student and later as a teacher in two public universities. Native Languages in Community Higher Education in Oaxaca, Mexico, by Jazmín Nallely Arguelles Santiago, Consejo Nacional de Humanidades, Ciencias y Tecnologías (CONAHCYT), Oaxaca, México CONAHCYT / CIESAS Pacífico Sur. This article analyzes the role of indigenous youth in the preservation of indigenous languages and the construction of Community Higher Education in Oaxaca, Mexico. The analysis focuses especially on the experiences of indigenous students from the Centro Universitario Comunal de Santa María Yaviche (Unixhidza), which is part of the Universidad Autónoma Comunal de Oaxaca (UACO) and the Instituto Superior Intercultural Ayuuk (ISIA). The text addresses the curricular proposals of these universities and their treatment of native languages from the perspective of young people who are being trained as new professional cadres in their territories of origin. Gaps between the discourse and practice of interculturality in the UNIBOL Guaraní and lowland peoples “Apiaguaiki Tûpa”, by Marcia Mandepora Chundary, Gabriel René Moreno Autonomous University (UAGRM), Santa Cruz, Bolivia. In Bolivia, in 2008, three universities were created jointly called Bolivian Indigenous Community, Intercultural and Productive Universities (UNIBOL) with the purpose of becoming national referents for the provision of indigenous university professional training committed to the strengthening of cultural identity and the recovery, valuation, development, and dissemination of ancestral knowledge. They were also given the mission of strengthening and developing native and indigenous languages at the oral level. This article analyzes the experiences in the realization of the educational bases, objectives and institutional framework of operation of the UNIBOL Guarani and Lowland Peoples and the limiting factors it faces to move towards an intercultural institutional and academic management.
Heritage pride in the samba schools of Rio de Janeiro is just one important symbol of a 3,000-plus-word legacy that is still subject to stigma
"...Nearly all samba schools celebrate Brazil’s African heritage in one way or another. Mangueira used its parade to praise Bantu culture, with many of its members wearing costumes honoring the African vocabulary that has long been integrated into Brazilian Portuguese. This is no minor contribution, but rather a 3,000-word lexicon inherited from the nearly five million Africans who, after being kidnapped and enslaved, arrived in Brazil between the 16th and late 19th centuries.
This linguistic diversity, despite all possible prohibitions and barriers, wound up molding the Portuguese that is spoken in Brazil today. Nor is its impact is limited to vocabulary; African heritage has left its mark on pronunciation, syntax and grammar.
The primary languages that survive in Brazil are Yoruba, Fon, Kimbundu and Kikongo, the last two hailing from the Bantu linguistic group, which is has had the greatest influence on modern-day speech. They belong to different ethnic groups from sub-Saharan Africa, the inhabitants of the lands that today are known as Nigeria, Benin, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola. Once enslaved, their speakers were forced to abandon their mother tongues, and for good measure, slave owners would place members of different communities together in order to prevent them from communicating with each other.
Many words survived in private, and due to this, it’s no coincidence that the majority have to do with Candomblé and other African faiths, as well as food. Acarajé, which refers to a spicy empanada that has become the gastronomic emblem of the state of Bahia, is a Yoruba world that literally means “to eat a ball of fire.”
Culinary examples are numerous, as are those related to music and with the Orishas and rituals practiced in terreiros (ceremonial spaces). Nowadays, these hidden places, as well as quilombos, the communities formed by the descendants of those who came from Africa that are largely located in rural areas, are the last bastions in which the languages that came from the continent can be heard.
Still, many words have made the leap from spaces of Black resistance and are now used in everyday Brazilian life, by members of all racial groups, who are often unaware of their origin. Going to the beach to take a dip in one’s thong or sunga (men’s swimming briefs) and sunbathing on a canga (sarong) requires the use of African words. So do samba and the chachaça (distilled spirit) used in the cocktail cairpirinha, as well as terms less easily translated, like cafuné (an affectionate head caress).
Many of these African words wound up taking the place of those that came from Portugal on the caravel sailing ships. To speak of the youngest member of the family, the Portuguese say benjamin; Brazilians, caçula. In Lisbon, during nap time, they dormitam, but in Rio, they take a cochilo. The list is long and has led the intellectual Lélia Gonzalaz, a leader in the Black Brazilian movement, to declare that Brazil doesn’t speak Portuguese, but rather, Pretugués (from preto, a word for Black).
Many of the historical prejudices against the African influence on Brazilian Portuguese are related to a lack of written records and the difficulty that academia has had in addressing the complexity of oral cultures. One of the few documents that have proved helpful in codifying linguistic history has been a Kimbundu grammar book published in 1697 by the priest Pedro Dias. The booklet, which is less than 50 pages long, is titled Arte da Língua de Angola, and was designed to be used by the Jesuits so that they could more easily preach to the enslaved individuals who had recently arrived from the western coast of Africa.
For Federal University of Bahia African linguistics professor Wânia Miranda Araújo da Silva, the lack of records is “one of the greatest challenges” to the social pedagogy that must be constructed in order to place proper value on the oral knowledge that has been passed down from generation to generation, above all in traditional communities. It’s the only way to be able to demonstrate that there has been a notable impact that goes beyond lexicon.
Indeed, intonation, the way in which some phonemes are pronounced, the tendency to place vowels where there are none (as opposed to Portuguese in Portugal, which is highly consonantal) and the double negative (não vou não, literally “I am not going no”) are all vestiges of Africanness in the speech of Brazilians, she explains in a phone interview.
These are factors, says Araújo, that add tension to the ever-complicated relationship with language purists, especially in the homeland of Luís de Camões. “With Portugal there is tension, we have an orthographic agreement between the countries that speak Portuguese, but the linguistic emancipation between Brazil and Portugal took place long ago, on various levels,” she says.
There are more and more programs of study at Brazilian universities that, instead of looking to Portugal, prefer to delve into the similarities of Brazilian Portuguese with the Angola language of Mozambique, for example. But at the institutional level, there is still much to be done.
Despite the fact that in Brazil, hundreds of languages are spoken (largely due to diverse Indigenous communities), it is still seen as a monolingual country, says Araújo. The closest the country has to a public policy to properly value African languages is a law passed in 2003 that requires public schools to teach Afro-Brazilian history and culture, though it is hardly ever enforced."
https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-03-23/yoruba-kimbundu-and-kikongo-how-african-languages-shaped-brazilian-portuguese.html
Translator Vacancy at Azam Media (Azam TV )
TRANSLATOR VACANCY @ AZAM MEDIA (TANZANIA)
"...Role Overview
Translate visual material from the source language to the target language while ensuring accuracy and clarity.
Key Responsibilities
Watch and rewrite content while preserving meaning
Use translation software for consistency
Research terminology using dictionaries & references
Work with dubbing teams to clarify content
l Proofread and edit translations
Follow legal and ethical translation standards
Qualifications & Skills
Degree in Translation, Linguistic or relevant field
Proficiency in two languages English & Swahili
Strong writing, editing & grammar skills
Experience with translation in media contents & films.
Proficiency in translation software or subtitling tools.
Detail-oriented & able to meet tight deadlines
Ability to work independently & in team
Translator Vacancy at Azam Media (Azam TV )
How to Apply :
Application Deadline: March 24th , 2025.
Please submit your CV to recruitment@azam-media.com
Kindly indicate Job Tittle you are applying for in the subject line of your email."
https://lnkd.in/ejQbnwHK
This might be the first generation to succeed in making themselves fully incomprehensible
"...Are the kids all right? How can we tell, when we literally don’t speak their language?
One of the most hair-raising moments in Adolescence – the hit Netflix drama about a 13-year-old boy accused of murder – occurs when the detective investigating the case gets a linguistics lesson from his teenage son, Adam.
“It’s not going well ’cause you’re not getting it. You’re not reading what they’re doing,” explains Adam, pointing to the emoji symbols in a seemingly friendly Instagram exchange between the dead girl and her murderer.
The dynamite symbol is meant to be an exploding red pill, and a red pill is code for “incel”, meaning someone who is involuntarily celibate, which means the girl was publicly insulting the boy by suggesting he would never get laid.
Then there’s the coffee bean, which has somehow become a derogatory symbol for women in the so-called “manosphere”, and the 100 per cent sign, which refers to the incel theory that 80 per cent of women are attracted to only 20 per cent of men. “It all has meaning, Dad. Everything has meaning.”
Teenagers, like freemasons, have a long history of speaking in code. It’s an enjoyable way to simultaneously evade and annoy the older generation. But in the past, teenage slang was relatively easy to crack. It consisted of a familiar medium – words – conveyed through the long-established modes of speech or writing.
Smartphones, it hardly needs saying, are transforming human communication. After six centuries of dominance, words are being supplanted by images. Videos, photos, memes, emojis: these are now quicker and easier modes of transmission than writing. Why laboriously tap out your feelings in words when you could just fire off an aubergine emoji?
Or send a “snap”, being careful to obey the unwritten rules of Snapchat: a photo of the wall behind you, if you’re just saying hello; half your face, for something a bit friendlier; or a full selfie if you’re feeling flirty.
All languages are best learnt through immersion. British teenagers spend an average of 8.5 hours a day on their phones – equivalent to a 40-hour week. Parents can’t possibly keep up, let alone provide effective oversight. Since the kids mostly talk among themselves, they have been able to develop a dialect – or rather, multiple interwoven dialects, depending on which app they are using – which is deliberately impenetrable to adults.
There are now almost 3,000 different emojis – all of which may have multiple meanings, depending on who is using them, and in what context. A cherry emoji, for example, might denote cannabis, or breasts, or sexting, or (if the sender is very ancient) a small red stone fruit. The side-eye symbol – innocently used by parents to convey mild displeasure – might, from a younger user, suggest they are dealing drugs..."
By Jemima Lewis
20 March 2025
#metaglossia_mundus
Annonce de la 2e édition du Prix de l'édition en Afrique, dont la cérémonie de remise de prix est prévue en septembre prochain à Alger... Le prix est ouvert aux livres publiés dans une ou plusieurs des langues officielles de l'UA: l'arabe, l'anglais, le français, le portugais, l'espagnol, le swahili et toute autre langue africaine.
"La Banque africaine d'export-import (Afreximbank) a annoncé, samedi, le lancement de la 2e édition du Prix de l'édition en Afrique, dont la cérémonie de remise de prix est prévue en septembre prochain à Alger, lors de la 4e Foire commerciale intra-africaine (Iatf), le plus grand événement commercial et d'investissement en Afrique. «Nexus de l'Afrique Créative (Canex), une initiative de la Banque africaine d'export-import (Afreximbank), invite les éditeurs africains de livres spécialisés à postuler pour la deuxième édition du Prix Canex Book Factory pour l'édition en Afrique», précise la banque dans un communiqué, notant que cette compétition est ouverte aux livres commerciaux publiés par des maisons d'édition domiciliées en Afrique au cours de l'année précédant le Prix et ce, dans une ou plusieurs des langues officielles de l'Union africaine (UA). Le Prix est destiné à célébrer et à reconnaître les contributions exceptionnelles des éditeurs et des auteurs africains au monde littéraire, souligne la même source, ajoutant que le prix est ouvert aux livres publiés dans une ou plusieurs des langues officielles de l'UA: l'arabe, l'anglais, le français, le portugais, l'espagnol, le swahili et toute autre langue africaine."
#metaglossia_mundus
Dans cet entretien de 1966, Aimé Césaire raconte son parcours et la lutte contre l'oppression coloniale, transformant la douleur en une œuvre littéraire et politique qui redéfinit l’identité antillaise et africaine.
🎬 Comment Aimé Césaire a-t-il utilisé la poésie pour dénoncer l'injustice et éveiller les consciences ?
⚖️ Comment le poète et homme politique antillais a-t-il confronté les mécanismes du colonialisme et du capitalisme ?
🕰️ Comment son art, entre surréalisme, littérature engagée et vie politique, a-t-il forgé une vision révolutionnaire ?
🎙️ Un entretien réalisé par José Piva, diffusé pour la première fois sur France Culture le 30 janvier 1966.
#interview #colonialisme #AiméCésaire #archive
Chapitres :
00:00:00 Introduction et présentation
00:00:57 L’appel à la révolte culturelle
00:02:20 Son enfance, ses racines martiniquaises
00:02:34 L’imaginaire poétique et les symboles antillais
00:03:28 La critique du système colonial
00:15:51 L’éveil littéraire et la révolte personnelle
00:39:11 L’engagement politique et le passage à l’action
00:40:25 Le Discours sur le colonialisme
00:46:50 La question de la langue et l’identité culturelle
00:51:52 Conclusion
_________________________________
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"Carl Benedikt Frey Pedro Llanos-Paredes / 22 Mar 2025
Advances in artificial intelligence are rapidly transforming the world of work. This column investigates the effects of machine translation on (1) employment and wages in the translation sector, and (2) the demand for foreign language skills across various jobs and industries. Using variation in the use of machine translation across local labour markets in the US after the launch of the Google Translate mobile app, the authors find that areas with higher adoption of Google Translate experienced a decline in translator employment. The authors also show that improvements in machine translation have reduced the demand for foreign language skills in general.
AUTHORS
Carl Benedikt Frey
Dieter Schwartz Associate Professor of AI & Work, Oxford Internet Institute University of Oxford
Pedro Llanos-Paredes
Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are rapidly transforming the world of work (Acemoglu et al. 2022, Brynjolfsson et al. 2025). As AI progresses, debates continue over whether this technology will complement human labour or displace it (Autor 2015, Frey 2019, Susskind 2020). In recent years, concerns have grown about AI’s impact on a range of professions. One striking example is the translation industry, where machine translation (MT) tools have seen rapid improvement. A 2024 survey found that over three-quarters of translators expect generative AI to adversely affect their future incomes, while others even question the enduring value of foreign language skills. Notably, The Economist recently remarked that “AI could make it less necessary to learn foreign languages”, a view echoed by OpenAI’s demonstration of Sky, which seamlessly translated speech between Italian and English in real time.
Yet, advancements in MT are not all that recent. The IBM701, the first MT system, was launched in 1954 in a collaboration between IBM and Georgetown University. Later milestones include free online translation services like Babel Fish in 1997 and Google Translate in 2006. However, it was the launch of Google Translate as an app on Android and iOS in 2010 – and its integration into browsers like Chrome – that triggered widespread adoption. As illustrated in Figure 1, searches for “Google Translate” spiked around this time, while queries for “Translator” declined correspondingly.
Figure 1 Google searches for “translator” and “Google Translate”, 2004-2024
Note: This graph plots monthly ‘interest’ in two Google search terms: “translator” (on the left axis) and “Google Translate” (right axis). The interest index is calculated by Google Trends using an unbiased sample of searches for different time periods and geographies.
In a recent paper (Frey and Llanos-Paredes 2025), we examine the impact of this shift on translator employment and the demand for foreign language skills.
Machine translation at work
We begin our analysis by constructing a city-level dataset using individual records from the 2010–2023 American Community Survey (ACS), which provides annual 1-in-100 samples of the US population. We then integrate these data with measures of the geographic spread of Google Translate based on search engine data, job postings data from Lightcast, and local employment and wage statistics for translators and interpreters from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) series.
Figure 2 Changes in searches for “Google Translate” across local labour markets, 2010-2023
Note: This map reports the 2010-2023 log change in internet searches for “Google Translate” across local labour markets.
In our study, we take advantage of the variation in MT uptake across 696 local labour markets in the US after 2010 (Figure 2). By comparing regions with high versus low adoption rates, we isolate the impact of MT on translator employment and wages. Recognising that changes in “Google Translate” searches might also be driven by other unobserved factors affecting translator employment, we address this potential endogeneity by instrumenting interest in Google Translate with local changes in “Google Drive” search activity. The rationale behind this instrument is that, although the two digital products serve distinct functions, both qualify as ‘experience goods’ (Chen et al. 2022). Recent research indicates that their adoption was primarily driven by the growth of Google’s brand awareness and reputation, rather than by other factors that could concurrently influence translator employment (Barwise and Watkins 2018).
Our findings indicate that regions with greater use of Google Translate experienced a growth slowdown in translator and interpreter jobs. In fact, for each 1 percentage point increase in MT usage, translator employment growth dropped by approximately 0.7 percentage points. Cumulatively, this effect translates into an estimated loss of about 28,000 new translator positions that might otherwise have been created over the 2010–2023 period.
Impacts on foreign language demand
The ripple effects of machine translation extend well beyond the translation industry. Traditionally, foreign language proficiency has been highly valued across sectors – from customer service and international business to healthcare and education. However, as MT accuracy and accessibility improve, this is changing. Our analysis of millions of job postings across local labour markets shows that regions with high MT adoption experience slower growth in job advertisements requiring foreign language skills.
This is true of all language pairs investigated: areas with robust Google Translate usage saw job postings demanding Spanish fluency grow by about 1.4 percentage points less than in other regions, with similar declines of roughly 1.3 and 0.8 percentage points for Chinese and German, respectively, and measurable dampening even for Japanese and French.
These effects are robust across various occupational categories, although the impact on Chinese language skills is relatively muted in IT, science, and engineering, suggesting that language remains important for technology transfer in these fields. Overall, our findings imply that as AI translation technology advances, the demand for bilingual skills is likely to continue its decline.
Broader implications: Translation and trade
These findings also carry potentially transformative implications for the future of globalisation. Historically, linguistic differences have posed significant challenges to trade, with research indicating that sharing a common language can boost bilateral trade by roughly 50% (Frankel and Rose 2002, Baldwin 2017). In many instances, the costs imposed by language barriers have been comparable to – or even exceeded – those of tariffs, quotas, and other formal trade restrictions.
In particular, improved machine translation could significantly boost global services trade, offering developing countries a new pathway for economic growth. Historically, many low-income countries have grown through industrialisation by capitalising on low labour costs to generate manufacturing exports. However, in recent decades, this manufacturing-led growth model has been increasingly challenged by automation and robotics, which, while boosting production, simultaneously diminish employment opportunities (Rodrik 2015). Consequently, tradeable services are emerging as a potential new driver of economic growth. Scholars such as Baldwin (2018) contend that future improvements in the economic fortunes of developing nations will be primarily derived from services trade rather than the traditional goods trade, a shift that is facilitated by advancements in digital platforms and AI translation technologies. By reducing language barriers, machine translation potentially enables billions of non-English speakers to participate in the global services marketplace, offering skills in engineering, design, marketing, consulting, and other areas.
Outlook
Whie the current effects of machine translation on translator employment and the demand for language skills have been moderate, they are likely to intensify as these technologies continue to advance. In particular, improvements in simultaneous speech interpretation pose a new frontier. In the past, interpreter work has been relatively insulated from automation; however, recent breakthroughs – exemplified by OpenAI’s demonstration of Sky – indicate that even real-time voice translation is beginning to encroach on this domain. These developments have significant implications for education policy, especially given that nearly 20% of students in American schools are enrolled in foreign language courses. As real-time voice translation becomes more refined, its labour market impacts, including potential effects on interpreters, warrant further investigation.
References
Acemoglu, D, D Autor, J Hazell and P Restrepo (2022), “Artificial intelligence and jobs: Evidence from online vacancies”, Journal of Labor Economics 40(S1): S293-S340.
Autor, D H (2015), “Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? The History and Future of Workplace Automation”, Journal of Economic Perspectives 29(3): 3–30.
Baldwin, R (2018), “Machine learning is tearing down language barriers: What does it mean for trade?”, VoxEU.org, 21 September.
Baldwin, R (2019), The Globotics Upheaval: Globalization, Robotics, and the Future of Work, Oxford University Press.
Barwise, P and L Watkins (2018), “The Evolution of Digital Dominance: How and Why We Got to GAFA”, in Digital Dominance: The Power of Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple, Oxford University Press
Brynjolfsson, E, D Li and L R Raymond (2025), “Generative AI at Work”, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, forthcoming.
Chen, Y, Z Li and T Zhang (2022), “Experience Goods and Consumer Search”, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics 14(3): 591–621.
Frankel, J A and A K Rose (2002), “An Estimate of the Effect of Common Currencies on Trade and Income”, Quarterly Journal of Economics 117(2): 437–466.
Frey, C B (2019), The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation, Princeton University Press.
Frey, C B and P Llanos-Paredes (2025), “Lost in Translation: Artificial Intelligence and the Demand for Foreign Language Skills”, Oxford Martin School Working Paper.
Rodrik, D (2015), “Premature deindustrialisation in the developing world”, VoxEU.org, 12 February.
Susskind, D (2020), A world without work: Technology, automation, and how we should respond, Princeton University Press.
AUTHORS
Carl Benedikt Frey
Dieter Schwartz Associate Professor of AI & Work, Oxford Internet Institute University of Oxford
Pedro Llanos-Paredes
https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/lost-translation-ais-impact-translators-and-foreign-language-skills
#metaglossia_mundus
"3/19/2025 Russia (International Christian Concern) — Earlier this month, the Moscow City Court banned a Bible translation by a popular Chinese Christian, labeling it as “extremist.”
It is now illegal to distribute the New Testament: The Recovery Translation, translated by Witness Lee, founder of the Local Church in Moscow. In the 1950s, Witness Lee led much of the Local Church’s expansion into Taiwan, the United States, and other nations.
Witness Lee had been sent and commissioned by Watchman Nee, the famous Chinese Christian leader who founded the Local Church in the 1920s and who was imprisoned in 1952 for life by the Chinese Communist Party for his Christian activities.
The Moscow court ruled that the Bible was un-canonical and unnecessarily exclusive over other Bible translations, especially those from the Russian Orthodox Church.
“This is likely to create more pressure and a chilling effect on the members of the Local Church Congregation in Moscow and around Russia,” an International Christian Concern (ICC) staffer said. “It is fascinating that a Bible translation born out of so much persecution of Chinese Christians is now at the core of increasing pressure on evangelical believers in Russia. Please continue to pray for the local church members, for the evangelical Christians in China and Russia, and also for ongoing Bible translation efforts across the globe.”"
https://www.persecution.org/2025/03/19/russian-court-bans-extremist-bible-translation/
#metaglossia_mundus
The United States made English its main language, but in Japan things seem to be heading in a different way.
"...At the heart of the discussion is the term 公用語 (kōyōgo, official language). The situation in the U.S. has been comparable to that in Japan, as neither country specifies an official language in its 憲法 (kenpō, constitution). The closest equivalent in Japan is article 74 of the 裁判所法 (saibansho-hō, Court Act), which simply states: 裁判所では、日本語を用いる (Saibansho dewa Nihongo o mochiiru, In court, Japanese is used).
The two countries are also comparable in that both have a 事実上公用語 (jijitsujō kōyōgo) or de facto official language. This is a common situation worldwide, particularly in countries where one language is clearly dominant. As with English in the U.S. and Japanese in Japan, there is often little need to make that language 法律上公用語 (hōritsujō kōyōgo, a de jure official language). Enter Trump 2.0...
But Japanese is not Japanese. A somewhat confusing distinction exists between 国語 (kokugo, the national language) and 日本語 (Nihongo, Japanese). Both essentially refer to the same thing, the Japanese language, but differ based on who is learning it.
The subject in which children attending a Japanese school are instructed is called 国語, whereas all non-native learners learn 日本語. This difference is also reflected in the two expressions 国語教育 (kokugo kyōiku, national language education) and 日本語教育 (Nihongo kyōiku, Japanese language education)...
Put somewhat roughly, 国語 is understood to be reserved for natives, whereas 日本語 is for everyone else. Now the good news is that there are no recognizable differences in pronunciation, grammar or vocabulary between the two. So don’t worry: If you properly know日本語, you shouldn’t have any problems communicating with native speakers.
Speaking of which, the idea of tying a language to a place is also embedded in the term 母国語 (bokokugo), which literally translates as “motherland tongue.” However, since your mother (and, hopefully, father) is arguably more important in early language acquisition than your country, many people now prefer the term 母語 (bogo, mother tongue), not just because it’s shorter.
A similar option applies when counting languages. If you speak two of them, and are therefore バイリンガル (bairingaru, bilingual), you can either include the idea of “nation” by calling them 二か国語 (ni-kakokugo, literally “two countries’ languages”) or omit it and simply say２言語 (ni gengo, two languages).
The concept of 国語 has increasingly come under pressure due to its underlying assumption of a “one nation, one language” model. Imported from 19th-century Europe, it was considered a necessary component for modernization and nation-building by language planners in Meiji Japan. Subsequent policies codified and promoted a standard language, or 標準語 (hyōjungo), based on the dialect spoken in and around Tokyo, at the expense of other linguistic varieties; monolingualism became the order of the day.
Fast forward to Reiwa Japan and the situation couldn’t be more different. Since the 1980s, administrative agencies at both the national and local levels have been actively working to make Japan a more multilingual society. This push was initially driven by the arrival of foreign workers during the height of the bubble economy, followed by major sporting events such as the 2002 FIFA World Cup and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which — though ultimately held without live audiences due to COVID-19 — had already prompted extensive preparations for multilingual accessibility. More recently, the surge in inbound tourism has further accelerated efforts to provide information in languages other than Japanese.
The umbrella term for these initiatives is 言語サービス (gengo sābisu, language services). These include multilingual consultation hours, guidebooks and other printed materials, multilingual signage and public transportation announcements and a wide range of language support on the internet. The most commonly available 使用言語 (shiyōgengo, languages used) are English, Chinese and Korean, but there are many others depending on the medium, location and level of necessity.
And this is where Japan’s trajectory diverges from that of the United States under Trump’s second term. While his recent executive order signals a push toward linguistic homogeneity, Japan has moved in the opposite direction by becoming increasingly multilingual. And so far, no Trump-like figure has emerged to reverse this course.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2025/03/22/language/official-languages-japanese/
Un important syndicat fédéral se dit préoccupé par un projet d'élimination de plus de 300 postes au Bureau de la traduction du Canada.
"Dans un communiqué de presse, l'Association canadienne des employés professionnels (ACEP) condamne un plan d’activités quinquennal qui entraînerait une réduction des effectifs du Bureau de près de 25 %.
...Le Bureau de la traduction est un service fédéral relevant de Services publics et Approvisionnement Canada qui fournit des services de traduction et d'interprétation aux ministères et aux clients privés.
Un document gouvernemental contenant les points saillants du plan d’activités du Bureau de la traduction pour la période de 2025 à 2030... indique que le Bureau prévoit assurer sa viabilité financière en éliminant 339 employés par attrition naturelle sur cinq ans.
Le document indique que le plan reflète une «baisse générale» de la demande de services de traduction traditionnels dans l'industrie...
«Nous sommes révoltés par le fait que le Bureau de la traduction du gouvernement du Canada trahisse son rôle central dans l’application de la Loi sur les langues officielles», a écrit Nathan Prier, président de l'ACEP, dans le communiqué diffusé par l'association.
M. Prier demande au ministre des Services publics et de l'Approvisionnement, Ali Ehsassi, d'«annuler ce plan malavisé» et de financer adéquatement le Bureau de la traduction.
Michèle LaRose, porte-parole de Services publics et Approvisionnement Canada, a indiqué dans un courriel que le Bureau ajuste chaque année ses prévisions financières pour les services fournis aux ministères et organismes fédéraux.
«Le Bureau de la traduction continuera de mettre à jour ses projections chaque année en fonction de l'évolution de la demande des clients», a écrit Mme LaRose.
Le document gouvernemental indique que les ministères se tournent vers des services de traduction en ligne «par le biais d'outils Internet gratuits» ou «investissent de leur propre chef pour déployer des outils de traduction propulsés par l'intelligence artificielle».
Il indique que le volume de mots traités par le Bureau de la traduction a diminué de 1,34 % en 2022-2023 et de 7,78 % en 2023-2024, en raison d'une baisse de la demande de 120 ministères et organismes.
Le gouvernement indique que le volume devrait diminuer de 9,38 % en 2024-2025, en raison de son intention de recentrer ses dépenses, d'une augmentation des tarifs facturés par le Bureau pour ses services et de l'adoption croissante d'outils de traduction automatique, et de 2,36 % en 2025-2026, en raison de la baisse de la demande pendant les élections et d'une nouvelle augmentation des tarifs.
Le document précise que le Bureau veillera à ce que les postes clés et spécialisés restent pourvus.
L'an dernier, le gouvernement fédéral a été contraint d'adapter le système de traduction simultanée à la Chambre des communes et dans les salles de comité après que plusieurs interprètes eurent subi des blessures auditives importantes."
https://www.noovo.info/nouvelle/des-compressions-au-bureau-de-la-traduction-nuiraient-dabord-aux-francophones.html
#metaglossia_mundus
"CHRONIQUE - Dans une nouvelle traduction parue cette semaine, Une chambre à soi devient Une pièce à soi. L’eau du militantisme a coulé sous les ponts.
Il est amusant de voir les traductions changer, comme les modes, au fil des saisons. Prenons un exemple : A Room of One’s Own, le chef-d’œuvre de Virginia Woolf (1929). Le Quarto Romans, essais sorti il y a dix ans reprenait la traduction de Clara Malraux : Une chambre à soi. Mais l’eau du militantisme ayant coulé sous les ponts, Marie Darrieussecq a préféré en 2016 Un lieu à soi (dans sa version chez Denoël) parce que la chambre est un endroit trop intime, avec un lit pour se coucher, ce qui n’est pas assez féministement correct. Or cette semaine, la nouvelle traduction de Laurent Bury dans la prestigieuse bibliothèque de la Pléiade est Une pièce à soi. La pièce est plus précise, moins floue que le lieu (qui peut faire penser aux toilettes, parfois surnommées « lieux d’aisance »). Et mieux vaut écrire dans sa pièce que dans sa chambre : cela fait plus sérieux. Je parie que dans dix ans A Room of One’s Own deviendra « Un bureau à soi » (plus entrepreneurial), dans…"
https://lnkd.in/eKYBFRS6
#metaglossia_mundus
"It’s no understatement that AI technology has impacted nearly every industry sector – from healthcare and manufacturing to customer service and education.
It’s no understatement that AI technology has impacted nearly every industry sector – from healthcare and manufacturing to customer service and education. Yet, the adoption of AI and its role in the creative sector has been both surprising and a major source of debate among industry peers. In fact, the entertainment industry has seen much resistance to AI, not only from writers and artists but also from actors, as Hollywood unions are currently fighting against the use of AI-generated actors and voiceovers. However, this has not stopped the rapid adoption of this latest technology, where according to a recent survey by AudienceView, 63% of theatre organisations plan to invest in AI technology in the next 12 months alone. This was supported by a report by Gartner, which revealed AI adoption will grow by 38% in the entertainment industry during 2025. Creative industries such as marketing, advertising and entertainment thrive on human emotion and connection and while AI brings significant operational benefits, there is some cause for concern particularly when it comes to originality, emotional response and cultural awareness. Artificial Creativity Vs Human CreativityWhile AI may excel in data-driven processes, creativity is an unpredictable, fantastical and complex phenomenon that AI cannot simply replicate. According to the study published in Scientific Reports 13 by Koivisto and Grassini, it found that the top-performing humans still outshine AI in tasks requiring creative divergent thinking. Furthermore, recent research has also shown that while AI chatbots may outperform humans in terms of creative output, the most innovative humans can still match or exceed the performance of these chatbots. This is not to say that AI is not beneficial for idea generation based on analytics and data – but it cannot derive ideas from human experiences and emotions. These elements are essential for true creativity, which is often inspired by life events, cultural shifts and emotional connections. Therefore, the necessity of human creativity and input cannot be overlooked, especially in industries focused on eliciting emotional responses from consumers, such as in advertising, film and theatre. Advertising & MarketingThere is no doubt that AI technology can be a valuable tool for advertising and marketing, especially in terms of its predictive analysis and data-driven insights. Yet, it does fall short in key areas essential for creating and delivering truly impactful campaigns. Successful advertising goes beyond just data, research and patterns – it relies on storytelling, emotional depth and cultural relevance – all of which work towards fostering genuine connections and long-term brand loyalty. Take, for instance, the much-anticipated John Lewis Christmas advert. Awaiting each retailer’s Christmas advert every year has become almost a tradition, sparking conversation and debate for a number of weeks. But what makes it so successful? John Lewis advertisements are renowned for forging emotional connections through powerful storytelling. These beloved adverts are remembered and talked about long after they’re off the air. These adverts typically showcase a cinematic narrative with a happy ending that stirs feelings of togetherness and love. This evokes an emotional response from viewers and has become a successful long-running campaign for the company. In order to build a lasting impression and connection with the consumer, empathy and emotional depth are key to delivering meaningful marketing campaigns, that inspire, engage and connect. The Entertainment IndustryWhile technological advancements are continuing to push the entertainment industry forward, creating new opportunities and jobs, the industry cannot overlook the essential skills and insights gained from that of a human creative mind. From the unforgettable lyrics of Stephen Sondheim, to the masterpieces of Mozart and the comedic scripts and stylings of British sitcom favourites such as Gavin and Stacey, by Ruth Jones and James Corden, these diverse but treasured works have been derived by some of the most creative minds, able to reach audiences on an emotional and engaging level. This is because creative fields like music, film and theatre rely on spontaneity, intuition, human experience and emotion – something which AI is unable to deliver. That being said, the use of AI for industries such as film, TV and theatre can be of value. Due to its ongoing developmental nature, AI promises innovations in film and TV that were never before possible and could unlock a host of potential for filmmakers, which could revolutionise the way in which stories are told. As such, it is important to remember that AI can empower and assist the industry in delivering impactful stories, but it should work alongside creative minds rather than replacing or silencing them. A Balancing ActAs AI continues to evolve, industries will continue to use this latest technology. However, in sectors where innovation and connection are essential, such as entertainment and marketing, the unique qualities that humans bring to the table – creativity, empathy, cultural sensitivity and emotional intelligence – are irreplaceable. While there is room for further enhancements in AI’s abilities, it’s vital to maintain a balanced approach where AI serves as a tool to enhance the creative, rather than replace it. Industries can leverage this technology to enhance creative vision and assist the creative in idea generation, while preserving the essential role of human input. By embracing AI as a tool for efficiency and supporting human creative minds, the industry can enjoy the best of both worlds: the speed and data-driven insights of AI, combined with the depth, authenticity and originality that only the human mind can deliver. Terence Rodia, Director of YOU Management
"Behind the Scenes: How Conference Interpreters Bring Award Ceremonies to Life
March 20 / 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm EDT
Discover the art of conference interpreting in global events like the Oscars, Grammys, and Champions League interviews. This exclusive roundtable highlights the techniques and strategies interpreters use to convey not just words but emotions and cultural nuances in high-stakes environments. Learn how these practices can enhance traditional interpreting.
Conducted in Portuguese, this event is for PLD members only..."
https://www.atanet.org/event/behind-the-scenes-how-conference-interpreters-bring-award-ceremonies-to-life/
#metaglossia_mundus
Mary Ann Newman curates the Sant Jordi Festival under the tenet that literature in translation is a channel for cross-cultural discourse.
Aleah Gatto
March 18, 2025
Mary Ann Newman is translating a Catalan tradition for New Yorkers. For more than ten years, Newman has helped organize NYC’s iteration of the Sant Jordi Festival—otherwise known as the Day of Books and Roses—that celebrates the Catalan tradition and highlights literature in translation.
A writer, translator, and active member of PEN America’s Translation Committee, Newman curates the festival under the tenet that literature in translation is a channel for cross-cultural discourse. In this interview with Membership Engagement Manager Aleah Gatto, Newman speaks about the exciting line up of this year’s festival and shares her thoughts about the progression of bringing literary translation into the limelight in the United States.
The Sant Jordi Festival, also known as the Day of Books and Roses, is steeped in the rich literary history of Catalonia. Can you talk about the origin of the festival and its significance in Catalan culture?
The origin is the legend of St. George the Dragon Slayer. Sant Jordi—Saint George—is the patron saint of Catalonia, as well as England, Malta, and Lithuania (he’s very popular). As the legend goes, there was a fire-breathing dragon that was attacking the walled city of Montblanc. The dragon demanded sheep and goats or else it would burn the town down. And when they ran out of livestock, he demanded humans. The town drew lots and the king’s daughter got the short straw. She was dressed as a bride going down to the river to meet the dragon, then Sant Jordi showed up. He wounded the dragon, and from the blood that fell from his wounded wing, a rosebush sprang up. That’s why gentlemen give their ladies a rose on Saint George’s Day (Diada de Sant Jordi).
Sant Jordi started in the 15th or 16th century, but in the 1920s, the Catalan Booksellers Association and the Barcelona Booksellers Guild decided to mix books into the rose festival, held on April 23rd, which is now International Book Day. It was so successful that, now, ten percent of all the books sold in Catalonia are sold on Sant Jordi.
In Catalonia, most of its seaside towns have promenades to the sea that used to be canals. For those boulevards and promenades to be lined with book stands and flower stalls is just gorgeous.
Can you tell me how this epic celebration found its way to the United States, and how you came to co-organize its NYC iteration?
As long as there have been Catalans in New York, they have been gathering to celebrate Sant Jordi. My co-organizing organization, the Catalan Institute of America, another centenary organization, used to organize events celebrating Catalan literature. In 2014, we decided we wanted to go beyond the Catalan-speaking, because Sant Jordi in Catalonia is not exclusively about Catalan literature. It’s about literature. We wanted to reflect that, and we also wanted to embrace people beyond the Catalan community. The first time we did that—we organized a lit crawl in DUMBO—we were able to do it thanks to the PEN America Translation Committee. Everybody was very enthusiastic about having an opportunity to read from their translations of authors from Poland, the Czech Republic, Argentina, Mozambique, and Catalonia. It was quite the party. We were like the Pied Pipers of Hamelin, picking up new readers as we went from bookstore to bookstore.
How has the festival transformed over the years?
There have been really important transitional moments. One of them was 2020, because we were planning lit crawls in five neighborhoods when Covid shut us down. Since we were working with the extraordinary multimedia artists, Laia Cabrera and Isabelle Duverger, who were going to do projection mappings on buildings, when we learned that all our plans were dashed, I asked them what they would think of going online. Within three hours, they came up with a concept and Isabelle had a sketch for a landing page. We became the webpage for other literary festivals that year, including the PEN World Voices Festival and its Translation Slam. The most important thing was that we discovered our international audience: people were tuning in from Finland, Iceland, Iraq. Sinan Antoon read from his new publication, The Book of Collateral Damage. After the U.S. and Spain, Iraq was the country from which we had most website visits. There were people in Finland seeing writers who were reading from Japan, et cetera. It was incredible.
Last year, our website had 35,000 visitors, and people come throughout the year because it’s simply there. In 2022, we went back to doing in-person events, in addition to online events, and you can find all of that on the website, as well.
The most important development since 2020 is that, this year, the West Village Business Improvement District (BID) is hosting us. This means that the city devotes a percentage of the taxes paid by businesses in the district to improve the atmosphere of the neighborhood, which can include second garbage pickups and more security, as well as cultural events. Working with the West Village BID, on April 26th, we’re going to close down Christopher Street and have book stalls and food and beverage tastings. Books, roses, and food! So that’s really exciting.
What does this year’s festival look like in terms of the types of languages that we’ll see and events that you’re looking forward to?
To honor the West Village’s literary history, we’re hosting an online conversation with Luisa Valenzuela, the Argentine novelist who lived in the West Village in the ‘90s, and Suzanne Jill Levine, who is the translator of Manuel Puig, the Argentine author of Kiss of the Spider Woman, who also lived there from 1963-1973. Jill is a good friend of Luisa’s and was also running around in the village in those days. Luisa will be reading a piece from a novel she wrote that takes place in the West Village, and Marguerite Feitlowitz will read her English translation. It will be a jumping off point for talking about the atmosphere of being a Latin American writer in The Village. Jill will regale us with anecdotes, some taken from her biography of Puig. She is a master schmoozer with a capacious memory of those days.
For the in-person events, on April 24th, we’ll be presenting Ara Merjian’s translation of Aram’s Notebook, a 1997 novel by Catalan author Maria Àngels Anglada, who died in 1999. It’s important for these times because it’s the story of the Armenian Genocide told from the perspective of a mother and son who escaped the massacre because they were on a pilgrimage. Professor Merjian of NYU will be in conversation with Professor Aurélie Vialette of Yale. And we hope to have a special guest who I can’t quite mention.
There will also be a beautiful in-person event with Emma Ramadan and Julia Sanches. Emma translates from French and Julia from Spanish, Catalan, and Portuguese. Both have translations coming out this year by authors of North African origin who are writing from Europe: Munir Hachemi from Madrid, Meryem el Mehdate from Tenerife, and Abdellah Taïa from Paris. Their writings push back against this monolithic idea of what North African writers living in Europe are experiencing. I think it’ll be a really compelling conversation.
In a similar vein, Jennifer Shyue will be reading her translation of A Blind Salmon by Julia Wong Kcomt, a writer of Chinese Peruvian descent. In this way, we will be reflecting the question of migration as a vein of modern literature. Considering the current attitude toward immigration, it’s really important to be focusing on that.
When we highlight all of these international literatures through English, we are bringing them an audience that they would not have otherwise.
As a longtime member of PEN America, a writer, and a translator, you undoubtedly carry a wellspring of experience advocating for greater attention to be paid to literary translation in the U.S. In your experience, what efforts have seen the greatest success?
There have been a lot of things. There was Chad Post, who started the Three Percent blog, which discussed the terrible statistic that, of all the books published in the U.S., only three percent were published in translation (and that’s not talking only about literature—that includes medical textbooks and things like that). Bringing attention to that and making that shameful percentage part of the conversation was very important.
Since then, translation has begun to come into its own. I can remember an event maybe twelve or fifteen years ago at which a renowned editor (whose name I won’t mention) said that putting a translator’s name on the cover was automatically to lose buyers. It was the general atmosphere at the time. Thankfully, that feeling has changed, in part because of some translation successes: books by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein, Karl Ove Knausgård, translated by Don Bartlett, and Geetnajli Shree, translated by Daisy Rockwell, have become best sellers. All of these things have made it impossible for an editor to make that argument anymore.
There’s still a terrible lag in books in translation getting published but you can point to these bestsellers and say, “Hey, give it a chance.” As an agent once remarked, a translation is a good bet because it’s already been vetted in another country in another language and reached the top of the pile. Publishers like Jill Schoolman of Archipelago, Edwin Frank of New York Review of Books, Chad Post of Open Letter have made translation more visible. They’ve created a narrative of international literature. There has been an incredible groundswell in the past twenty years thanks to very specific people. And there are many more beyond New York City and State (my provincialism is showing).
What advice would you give to PEN America’s community of writers, translators, and advocates for uplifting the work of literary translators?
Above all, read. Try to fit one book in translation into your reading schedule. And when you’re planning events, if you’re an event planner, try to include a cross-cultural or intercultural translation by including translated literature. Nobody’s better than PEN’s community of writers and translators to begin to establish that as a practice rather than an exception.
I would also say that people should come to the Sant Jordi Festival!
Absolutely: check out our website. There’s always wonderful stuff there: you’ll find things from other years and you can search for languages. It’s a wonderful resource.
Is there anything else that you’d like to share about the Sant Jordi Festival, advocacy, or the art of literary translation?
In international publishing, English is the great monster. Every other language translates from English, but English doesn’t necessarily translate from the other languages. One of the things we’ve discovered in doing Sant Jordi over the years is that, if we are giving a platform in English for the literatures of the world, we’re kind of countering that role of English as the three hundred-pound gorilla. It doesn’t matter if you’re a minoritized or lesser-known literature. Except for English, French, German, maybe Italian, and Russian, most literatures are lesser-known. How many books are translated from Hungarian in a year? When we highlight all of these international literatures through English, we are bringing them an audience that they would not have otherwise. For example: Catalan exists in a position of disadvantage in Spain vis-a-vis Castilian, just as Spanish does vis-à-vis English in New York, or Quechua vis-à-vis Spanish in Peru. When Catalan or Assamese is on a platform in English next to books in Castilian or Hindi, they’re all the same. The celebration is a useful medium for international literatures to bump up against one another. And it’s nice for English to be able to be a communicating vessel for other languages and cultures, which is a role I like to think we share with the PEN World Voices Festival.
Mary Ann Newman is a translator by vocation and cultural administrator by profession. She has translated such major Catalan authors as Quim Monzó, Josep Carner, Josep Maria de Sagarra, and Joan Fuster. Her professional life has revolved around Catalan and Hispanic literatures and cultures. She was the founder of the Catalan Studies Program and the Catalan Center at New York University. She is the founder and executive director of the Farragut Fund for Catalan Culture in the U.S., President-delegate of the jury of the Premi Internacional Catalunya (International Catalonia Award), and, as of March 2025, a Corresponding Member of the Institute for Catalan Studies. In 1998 she received the Creu de Sant Jordi (Cross of St. George), the highest honor awarded by the Catalan government and was awarded the 2017 North American Catalan Society Prize and the J-B Cendrós Award from Òmnium Cultural for her translation of Sagarra’s Private Life, and the 2022 Ramon Llull International Award for Cultural Diversity."
https://pen.org/books-roses-and-food-sant-jordi-festival-celebrates-translation-in-new-york/
“All written examinations administered to applicants for a driver license or intermediate driver license must be in English only. An applicant shall not use a translation dictionary, an electronic device, or an interpreter to assist with the administration of the examination,” the bill reads.
"NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) - A bill requiring all written driver’s license exams to only be offered in English in Tennessee failed in a House subcommittee on Tuesday.
In a split vote during Tuesday’s meeting of the House Transportation Subcommittee, three representatives voted for the bill, five others voted no, and one abstained from voting.
Last week, the bill, HB 0556/SB 1373, was placed on the Senate Transportation and Safety Committee calendar for Wednesday, March 19.
Related Coverage:
“All written examinations administered to applicants for a driver’s license or intermediate driver’s license must be in English only. An applicant shall not use a translation dictionary, an electronic device, or an interpreter to assist with the administration of the examination,” the bill reads.
Tennessee’s written driving tests are currently offered in English, Spanish, German, Korean and Japanese. Translation dictionaries are also allowed during the test, but an interpreter is not.
With SB1373, all written driver’s license tests would only be offered in English and would also ban, as stated in the language of the bill, the use of a translation dictionary, electronic device, or interpreter to assist a person taking the examination.
According to the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security, around 12,494 written exams are taken in another language other than English each year. And with the fee for a standard driver’s license at $26, the estimated lost revenue is believed to be around $58,000.
Also last year, Our State, Our Languages Coalition filed a complaint against the TDOSHS and its Driver Services Division for not providing driving tests in more languages. The complaint alleged that the state was violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by not including other highly spoken languages, such as Chinese or Arabic."
By Caleb Wethington
https://www.wsmv.com/2025/03/18/bill-aiming-ban-non-english-drivers-tests-translation-dictionaries-interpreters-tn-fails-house/
#metaglossia_mundus
"When someone asks Damion Searls how he “chooses” words for a translation, he likens it to asking a reader how they “choose” what Mr. Darcy looks like when reading “Pride and Prejudice.” Neither is so much a choice, he says, but a response shaped by the text.
“We’re not translating the words that are there. We’re having a reading experience, and then we’re giving a version of that that someone who reads English can then have,” Searls ’92 told the audience... “This is why there are no perfect translations or ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ translations, just like there’s no wrong way that Mr. Darcy looks.”
Searls, who works from German, Norwegian, French, and Dutch, has translated Nobel Prize winner Jon Fosse, Proust, Rilke, Nietzsche, Thomas Mann, and Max Weber. He discussed his philosophy, which he outlines in his 2024 book, at a lecture co-hosted by the Department of Comparative Literature, the Department of Philosophy, and the Mahindra Humanities Center’s Rethinking Translation Seminar...
“Whatever you think translating is, it’s some kind of reading and some kind of writing joined together,” the former Adams and Dunster House resident said. “Reading explains a lot about translation, and if you unpack what reading is you’re going to get most of the way to the philosophy of translation.”
“Reading explains a lot about translation, and if you unpack what reading is you’re going to get most of the way to the philosophy of translation.”
Searls said translation isn’t that different from other forms of writing in English, which require the same skills. However what distinguishes translation is the way translators read, a close reading that engages deeply with a language’s structure.
When “reading like a translator,” Searls said he must identify which linguistic elements can be omitted in English and which are intentional stylistic choices by the author. When translating Uwe Johnson’s “Anniversaries,” for example, he noticed frequent “not this but that” constructions (“the train leaves at not 7:00 but 6:00”), which are more common in German than in English.
While it would be easy to rephrase for smoother English, he realized Johnson used this pattern deliberately to express a personal vision and “slowly hone in on the truth.”
“We can’t just erase it because it’s not just the German language: It’s him, the author,” Searls said. “Every writer is using the resources of their language to do what they want to do, and as translators we have to do the same thing with an entirely different body of resources.”
In “The Philosophy of Translation,” Searls draws from French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s ideas about perception to describe how translating happens, arguing the “living bond” that exists between people and objects also exists between translators and the language they are reading..."
By Eileen O’Grady
"The International Criminal Court (ICC) is looking for freelance transcribers who are proficient in the Filipino and Cebuano language.
Transcribers who will be hired by the ICC will be assigned in its Language Services Unit, Integrated Services Division under the Office of the Prosecutor.
“A roster of freelance transcribers will be established as a result of this selection process. Once accredited, freelance transcribers may be offered contracts for the provision of remote transcription services in keeping with the operational needs of the Unit,” the job posting read.
“Mindful of the nature of the ICC’s mandate and operations, freelance transcribers must understand that the audio/video material outsourced for transcription may on occasion risk being of an upsetting or disturbing nature,” it read further.
The job opening was posted on ICC’s website on January 28, 2025 or more than a month before the arrest of former President Rodrigo Duterte.
Duterte, whose primary language is Cebuano or Visayan language, is currently detained in The Hague, Netherlands as he face charges of crimes against humanity before the ICC.
According to the arrest warrant, the ICC pre-trial chamber found reasonable grounds to believe he was "individually responsible for the crimes against humanity of murder" in connection with the killings blamed on his war on drugs.
It stated that the Duterte Death Squad (DDS) and Philippine law enforcement personnel under his leadership targeted persons allegedly involved in drug-related criminal activities.
Government records show that there were at least 6,200 drug suspects killed in police operations from June 2016 to November 2021, but several human rights groups have refuted this and say that the number may have reached as much as 30,000 due to unreported related killings. —VAL, GMA Integrated News
https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/topstories/nation/939760/icc-opens-freelancing-job-posts-for-tagalog-cebuano-transcribers/story/
#metaglossia_mundus
"March 18, 2025 MIT
How far back does our ability to speak stretch? A new analysis of genomic data suggests that the capacity for human language existed at least 135,000 years ago, a timeline that places its origins deep within the history of Homo sapiens. This finding, published in Frontiers in Psychology, offers a fresh perspective on a question that has long intrigued scientists: when did humans begin to communicate in the ways we recognize today?
The study, led by Shigeru Miyagawa, an MIT professor emeritus, examined 15 genetic studies published over the last 18 years...
“The logic is very simple,” says Miyagawa. “Every population branching across the globe has human language, and all languages are related.” He adds, based on the genomic data, “I think we can say with a fair amount of certainty that the first split occurred about 135,000 years ago, so human language capacity must have been present by then, or before.”...
This meta-analysis was made possible by the increasing availability of genomic studies. “Quantity-wise we have more studies, and quality-wise, it’s a narrower window [of time],” Miyagawa explains, highlighting the convergence of evidence from various research efforts. The studies showed that after Homo sapiens emerged roughly 230,000 years ago, groups of people began to move apart geographically, leading to genetic variations over time.
The authors also considered the archaeological record. Roughly 100,000 years ago, there was a widespread appearance of symbolic activity, such as meaningful markings on objects and the use of fire to produce ochre. “Behaviors compatible with language and the consistent exercise of symbolic thinking are detectable only in the archaeological record of H. sapiens,” the paper notes. This period of symbolic activity, they suggest, might have been triggered by the development of language.
Ian Tattersall, a co-author and curator emeritus of human origins at the American Museum of Natural History, has long held the view that language served as an “ignition for symbolic thinking and other organized activities.” Miyagawa elaborates, “Language was the trigger for modern human behavior. Somehow it stimulated human thinking and helped create these kinds of behaviors. If we are right, people were learning from each other [due to language] and encouraging innovations of the types we saw 100,000 years ago.”
However, the researchers acknowledge that not all scholars agree with this interpretation...
The research also delves into the distinction between language as a cognitive system and a communication system. “Language is both a cognitive system and a communication system,” Miyagawa states. “My guess is prior to 135,000 years ago, it did start out as a private cognitive system, but relatively quickly that turned into a communications system.”
https://scienceblog.com/557285/the-dawn-of-words-did-language-emerge-135000-years-ago
#metaglossia_mundus
Can cooperation in space have any implications for better cultural cooperation on earth?
"The Space Station as a Model for Intercultural Cooperation
Mar 18, 2025
By H. Steven Moffic, MD
Perhaps sometime over the last 9 months, you noticed that 2 NASA astronauts were stuck at the International Space Center due to a malfunction—quite a difference from the few days of stay expected... They are due back on earth this evening.
The replacement crew arrived last Sunday, representing NASA, the Japanese space agency, and the Russian space agency. It was this variety of cultural and international backgrounds that also got my attention. It reminded me that apparent enemies on earth—say, Russia and the United States—can be so cooperative in space. Can that have any implications for better cultural cooperation on earth?
Here is what the space international partnership did to evolve from competition to some collaboration. For decades, a competition for leadership in space seemed to alternate with a more cooperative approach.1 For instance, in 1967, there was a United Nations resolution by the United States and Japan to prevent the development of nuclear arms in outer space, but Russia vetoed the resolution. Last year, the relationship of the United States and Japan continued to evolve, with President Biden’s announcement that Japan’s astronauts would join an upcoming Artemis mission, projecting the first time a non-American would set foot on the moon. With the Russians and the United States, we have gone from the Russian Sputnik lead to teams of both Russian and American astronauts. For shifting alliances, we must remember that Japan was a dangerous enemy and Russia an ally in World War II.
The challenge now is to steer an international coalition of traditional allies, traditional enemies, emerging space nations, and innovative private entities. The United States has been prioritizing African countries such as Rwanda and Nigeria to join the Artemis accords. Some other African countries, though, are joining China.
There has been social psychological research over time that has relevance for helpful cooperation over damaging competition.2 In the 1954 Robbers Cave Experiment with young male teenagers at summer camp, their division into 2 competitive groups caused increasing friction and fights over inadequate resources. One group burned the other’s flag, for instance. Attempts to resolve the tension through friendly encounters like meals together did not work, one devolving into a food fight. But shared challenges, like fixing the camp’s sabotaged water supply, stimulated ongoing cooperation...
Our challenge in space is its peaceful exploration, giving humanity another chance for better cooperation, the kind exhibited by these astronauts. As the jazz great Sun Ra catchingly chanted over and over about the potential future: “Space is the Place.”
https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/the-space-station-as-a-model-for-intercultural-cooperation
"Saudi Arabia: Mecca's Grand Mosque sermons now translated into 11 languages to reach global worshippers
The translations span a wide linguistic range — English, French, Urdu, Malay, Persian, Hausa, Chinese, Russian, Bengali, Turkish and Indonesian.
Last updated: March 16, 2025 | 13:19
By Khitam Al Amir
Dubai: Sermons and religious lessons from the Grand Mosque in Mecca are now being translated into 11 languages, to make Islamic teachings more accessible to worshippers around the world, the General Authority for the Care of the Two Holy Mosques said.
The multilingual broadcasts, available through the Manarat Al Haramain digital platform, cover high-profile sermons including Friday and Eid prayers, as well as religious addresses delivered during Arafat, eclipses, and rain-seeking prayers.
Ramadan Prayer Timetable 2025
The translations span a wide linguistic range — English, French, Urdu, Malay, Persian, Hausa, Chinese, Russian, Bengali, Turkish and Indonesian.
The authority said the service aims to remove language barriers for non-Arabic speakers, who make up a significant portion of the millions who tune in virtually or attend the mosque in person during Ramadan, Hajj, and other religious occasions.
The initiative also extends beyond sermons. Interpretations are offered for religious lectures by senior scholars, Ramadan and Hajj enrichment programs, and conferences and seminars hosted within the mosque’s premises..."
https://gulfnews.com/world/gulf/saudi/saudi-arabia-meccas-grand-mosque-sermons-now-translated-into-11-languages-to-reach-global-worshippers-1.500062283
"This may come as a shock, but it turns out that an astounding proportion of AI search results are flat-out incorrect, according to a new study published by the Columbia Journalism Review...
Conducted by researchers at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, the analysis probed eight AI models including OpenAI's ChatGPT search and Google's Gemini, finding that overall, they gave an incorrect answer to more than 60 percent of queries.
It should tell you something that the most accurate model to emerge from these tests, Perplexity from Perplexity AI, still answered 37 percent of its questions incorrectly. The village idiot award, meanwhile, goes to Elon Musk's chatbot Grok 3, which was wrong a staggering 94 percent of the time. Impressively bad.
"While traditional search engines typically operate as an intermediary, guiding users to news websites and other quality content, generative search tools parse and repackage information themselves, cutting off traffic flow to original sources," the authors warned. "These chatbots' conversational outputs often obfuscate serious underlying issues with information quality."
By now, of course, the proclivity of large language models to lie or wrongly report information is well documented. But that hasn't stopped tech companies from trying to supplant the traditional web search, with some releasing versions of their existing chatbots tailor-made to do just that, like ChatGPT search. Google has even debuted an "AI Mode" that only shows Gemini summaries instead of web links.
This latest study quantifies why this might be a bad idea. It was conducted by choosing ten random articles each from a pool of twenty publications, ranging from The Wall Street Journal to TechCrunch. In what should've been a softball, the chatbots were asked to identify an article's headline, its publisher, its publication date, and its URL. To make things even easier, the researchers made sure to only choose article excerpts that returned the original source within the first three results of an old-fashioned Google search.
In addition to showing the AI models were wrong over half the time, these tests exposed other idiot tendencies. A classic one? Passing off their dubious wisdom "with alarming confidence," by either not qualifying their responses or failing to decline questions they didn't know the answer to.
This lines up with other research documenting how AI models would rather hallucinate — or make up — answers instead of admitting they're out of their depth. Maybe that's because a policy of honesty would betray just how useless the AI models can be; Microsoft's Copilot, for example, declined more questions than it answered, the researchers said.
The AI search tools were also terrible at citing their sources. ChatGPT Search linked to the wrong source article nearly 40 percent of the time, and straight up didn't bother to provide one in another 21 percent of cases....
https://futurism.com/study-ai-search-wrong
"La Camerounaise Hemley Boum, nouvelle lauréate du Grand Prix Afrique, succède au Congolais Jean-Aimé Dibakana. Cette récompense littéraire lui a été décernée lors du salon du livre africain à Paris, pour son cinquième roman, "Le rêve du pêcheur", puissante fresque familiale entre Douala et Paris.
Déjà récompensée du Grand prix d’Afrique pour son roman "Les maquisards", Éditions La cheminante, en 2015, puis par le prix Louis-Guilloux en 2024 pour son roman "Le rêve du pêcheur", Éditions Gallimard, Hemley Boum a su conquérir cette fois-ci le jury du Grand Prix Afrique qui l’a choisie parmi les six finalistes en lice.
Elle remporte le prix littéraire intitulé Grand Prix Afrique (des écrivains de langue française), anciennement Grand prix littéraire d’Afrique noire, décerné annuellement par l’Association des écrivains de langue française, reconnue d'utilité publique depuis le 19 juillet 1952, et ayant pour but de « promouvoir l’œuvre des écrivains qui, à travers le monde, s’expriment en français ». Il est ouvert aux « écrivains de langue française originaires de l’Afrique subsaharienne, ou à un ouvrage concernant cette zone géographique, en excluant les traductions ».
À travers son roman, l’auteure invite le lecteur à plonger et à s’immerger en plein cœur de la société camerounaise d’hier et d’aujourd’hui. Elle aborde des sujets aussi douloureux que l’exil et le déracinement, et aussi lumineux que l’amour, la résilience et le pardon.
Zack a fui le Cameroun à 18 ans, abandonnant sa mère, Dorothée, à son sort et à ses secrets. Devenu psychologue clinicien à Paris, marié et père de famille, il est rattrapé par le passé alors que la vie qu’il s’est construite prend l’eau de toutes parts. A quelques décennies de là, son grand-père, Zacharias, pêcheur dans un petit village côtier, voit son mode de vie traditionnel bouleversé par une importante compagnie forestière. Il rêve d’un autre avenir pour les siens... Avec ces deux histoires savamment entrelacées, Hemley Boum signe une fresque puissante et lumineuse qui éclaire à la fois les replis de la conscience et les mystères de la transmission.
Extrait
« Dans l’avion qui me menait au loin, j’ai eu le sentiment de respirer à pleins poumons pour la première fois de ma vie et j’en ai pleuré de soulagement. On peut mourir mille morts,un peu à la fois, à essayer de sauver malgré lui l’être aimé. J’avais offert à Dorothée mon corps en bouclier, mon silence complice, le souffle attentif de mes nuits d’enfant et, en grandissant, l’argent que me rapportaient mes larcins, sans parvenir à l’arrimer à la vie. Je pensais ne jamais la quitter mais, lorsque les événements m’y contraignirent, j’hésitai à peine. C’était elle ou moi. »...
ISBN : 2073032427
Nombre de pages : 352
€21,50
https://www.adiac-congo.com/content/grand-prix-afrique-hemley-boum-nouvelle-laureate-163474
"In this talk, Stephanie McCarter will discuss her recent translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Penguin, 2022). She will first address her tactics for transforming Ovid’s poetic and metrical effects into English verse. She will then outline her strategies for interpreting and rendering Ovid’s themes of sexual violence, gender, sexuality, and the body. She will consider throughout how she carefully negotiated Ovid’s playful style and disturbing subject matter to produce a poetic, accurate, and ethical translation.
Stephanie McCarter is a professor of Classics at the University of the South in Sewanee, TN. Her works of translation include Horace’s Epodes, Odes, and Carmen Saeculare (University of Oklahoma Press, 2020) and Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Penguin Classics, 2022), which won the 2023 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets. She also recently edited and contributed translations to Women in Power (Penguin Classics, 2024), an anthology of classical myths and stories about ancient female rulers.
Cosponsored by the IHC’s Key Passages series and Hester and Cedric Crowell Endowment"
Date & Time
Thu, Apr 17 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
https://www.independent.com/events/ihc-talk-translating-ovids-metamorphoses/
"Senior Lecturer / Lecturer, Department of Translation
Employer
LINGNAN UNIVERSITY
Location
Tuen Mun, Hong Kong
Closing date
24 Mar 2025
...
Senior Lecturer / Lecturer
Department of Translation
(Post Ref.: 25/74)
The Department of Translation sets out to provide an education in bilingual studies which can nourish graduates with competence in Chinese and English as well as capacity to think independently. One of its central features is the equal emphasis on translation as a profession and as an academic discipline. Another feature is the importance attached to the socio-cultural environment of the Chinese and English languages. The appointee will be required to teach courses in some of the following areas: Practical Translation, Computer-aided Translation, Interpreting, Translation and Culture, Corporate Communications, English through Subtitles and Business Translation. Excellent command of Chinese and English is a must, and competence in both Cantonese and Putonghua will be an advantage. Further information on the Department and its programmes and activities can be found on the Department’s website: http://www.LN.edu.hk/tran/.
General Requirements
Candidates should have a master degree in Translation Studies or related disciplines and have substantial relevant teaching experience (not less than eight years in universities for Senior Lecturer).
Appointment
The conditions of appointment will be competitive. The rank and remuneration will be commensurate with qualifications and experience. Fringe benefits include annual leave, medical and dental benefits, mandatory provident fund, gratuity, and incoming passage and baggage allowance for the eligible appointee. Appointments will be normally made on a contract basis for up to two years.
Application Procedure (online application only)
Please click "Apply Now" to submit your application by 24 March 2025. Applicants shall provide names and contact information of at least three referees to whom applicant's consent has been given for their providing references. Personal data collected will be used for recruitment purposes only..."
.https://www.timeshighereducation.com/unijobs/listing/390071/senior-lecturer-lecturer-department-of-translation/
It will offer both Irish Sign Language (ISL) or British Sign Language (BSL) interpreting at the touch of a button.
"The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) has launched a new sign language video relay service for deaf people.
It will offer both Irish Sign Language (ISL) or British Sign Language (BSL) interpreting at the touch of a button.
From Tuesday users will have 24 hour, seven days a week access to the facility on the SignVideo app or via a call button on the PSNI website.
This will put them through to an interpreter who will then relay the call through to the Contact Management Centre where it will be progressed like all other calls received.
Chief Insp Michelle Adams of the PSNI's Strategic Partnerships and Prevention Branch said: "This service means that people from the deaf community will now be empowered to report anything to us themselves, allowing us to take the most meaningful information we can from them and start investigating or supporting in the most appropriate way.
"We want to reassure the deaf community that they will be treated with the utmost respect if they need to contact the Police Service.
"We also want to allay any concerns about data protection. SignVideo interpreters are NRCPD qualified which takes seven years to achieve. They also have a minimum of three years community practitioning experience.
"All interpreters are bound to confidentiality and will not answer any questions or discuss anything regarding a conversation they have been interpreting with any other person."
'Significant development'
British Deaf Association NI Manager Majella McAteer welcomed the launch of the service.
"We are especially delighted that this launch coincides with our annual Sign Language Week during which we aim to celebrate and raise awareness about British Sign Language and Irish Sign Language," she said.
"This is a significant development and a true step forward in achieving equality for sign language users.
"With the video relay service, deaf individuals can now make non-emergency calls to the Police Service independently, without relying on family members, friends, or others for communication support.
"This increased independence and confidence will be greatly welcomed by the sign language community.""
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2yp9dxzgeo
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"In the framework of the celebration of the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, four articles published in the journal Educación Superior y Sociedad address priority issues for advancing cultural diversity in the region.
Since 2022, the journal Educación Superior y Sociedad (ESS) has configured as an editorial policy and in favour of the inclusion of diversity, a space dedicated to the indigenous peoples of the region, to the rescue of their languages and to the reflection on their situation in higher education.
Since then, researchers and scholars of higher education for the Indigenous peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean have had a section for the publication of academic articles on the various topics of interest to these peoples in the area of higher education, some of them written in one of the languages of the Indigenous peoples and translated into Spanish.
This action allows the Institute to contribute to the Indigenous Languages Decade (2022-20232) and to the implementation of its Global Action Plan by presenting this section of the ESS as a space for the preservation, revitalisation and promotion of indigenous languages and the most urgent issues related to higher education.
To celebrate the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, we share below a compendium of the four articles published to date:
Science, philosophy and technology of the Mayan Peoples: A paradigm of education that promotes human fulfillment, harmony with nature and the cosmos, by Vitalino Similox Salazar, Universidad Maya Kaqchikel, Guatemala, and José Antonio Otzoy, Universidad Maya Kaqchikel, Guatemala. This paper describes the epistemological proposal and path of Mayan peoples, inspired by their scientific, philosophical and technological paradigm; as an expression of their constellation of beliefs, principles, values and techniques; whose essential focus is the protection and promotion of natural life, the link with territorial life, local community, and nature, which supports their cultural identity practices, as an exercise of epistemic pluralism and a proposal to make human fulfillment possible, as an alternative to the globalising and homogenising models of higher education, responsible for the destruction of the planet.
“These Indians never learn”… University, racism and interculturality in Peru, by Vicente Torres Lezama, Universidad Nacional de Arte Diego Quispe Tito del Cusco, cusco, Perú. This article aims to critically discuss the continuity of old colonial structures in the Peruvian university that prevent its transformation into a relevant institution that responds to the cultural diversity of the country. The university continues to operate under the monocultural and hegemonic perspective of Westernised knowledge that invisibilizes and folklorizes the knowledge and worlds of other Andean, Amazonian, and Afro-descendant peoples. The essay seeks to reflect on the experiences of national universities with groups of students of ethnic origin in the first decades of the 21st century, specifically, affirmative action programs in which the author had experience as a student and later as a teacher in two public universities.
Native Languages in Community Higher Education in Oaxaca, Mexico, by Jazmín Nallely Arguelles Santiago, Consejo Nacional de Humanidades, Ciencias y Tecnologías (CONAHCYT), Oaxaca, México CONAHCYT / CIESAS Pacífico Sur. This article analyzes the role of indigenous youth in the preservation of indigenous languages and the construction of Community Higher Education in Oaxaca, Mexico. The analysis focuses especially on the experiences of indigenous students from the Centro Universitario Comunal de Santa María Yaviche (Unixhidza), which is part of the Universidad Autónoma Comunal de Oaxaca (UACO) and the Instituto Superior Intercultural Ayuuk (ISIA). The text addresses the curricular proposals of these universities and their treatment of native languages from the perspective of young people who are being trained as new professional cadres in their territories of origin.
Gaps between the discourse and practice of interculturality in the UNIBOL Guaraní and lowland peoples “Apiaguaiki Tûpa”, by Marcia Mandepora Chundary, Gabriel René Moreno Autonomous University (UAGRM), Santa Cruz, Bolivia. In Bolivia, in 2008, three universities were created jointly called Bolivian Indigenous Community, Intercultural and Productive Universities (UNIBOL) with the purpose of becoming national referents for the provision of indigenous university professional training committed to the strengthening of cultural identity and the recovery, valuation, development, and dissemination of ancestral knowledge. They were also given the mission of strengthening and developing native and indigenous languages at the oral level. This article analyzes the experiences in the realization of the educational bases, objectives and institutional framework of operation of the UNIBOL Guarani and Lowland Peoples and the limiting factors it faces to move towards an intercultural institutional and academic management."
#metaglossia_mundus: https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/university-space-contributing-interculturality?hub=981