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Charles Tiayon
June 28, 8:52 PM
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"Risk Management in Translation, by Anthony Pym
Abstract: A recent addition to Cambridge University Press’s Elements in Translation and Interpreting series is Risk Management in Translation, authored by Anthony Pym, one of the world’s foremost translation studies scholars (Ioannidis, 2024). In this concise but insightful volume, Pym presents and analyses a topic of immense academic and practical relevance which synthesises and develops aspects touched upon in some of his previous research (e.g., see Pym, 2015). Risk Management in Translation is divided in six sections. The first, entitled ‘Why talk about risk?’ (pp. 1-8), highlights the inherent uncertainty underlying (multilingual) communication. Pym goes beyond traditional rule-based notions of equivalence, highlighting that in many areas of translation, the “problems of translating a text do not have clear, simple solutions” (Pym, 2025a, p. 1). In discussing the role of risk and probability in numerical economic and business-related contexts, Pym then delineates how risk management interplays with the translator’s craft, and how – consciously or not – it may affect a translator’s work and mindset. As such, the importance of cooperation in enhancing the probability of a successful outcome – as well as in the avoidance of failure – is underscored."
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/392812615_Risk_management_in_translation_-_Book_review
#metaglossia_mundus
Researchers across Africa, Asia and the Middle East are building their own language models designed for local tongues, cultural nuance and digital independence
"In a high-stakes artificial intelligence race between the United States and China, an equally transformative movement is taking shape elsewhere. From Cape Town to Bangalore, from Cairo to Riyadh, researchers, engineers and public institutions are building homegrown AI systems, models that speak not just in local languages, but with regional insight and cultural depth.
The dominant narrative in AI, particularly since the early 2020s, has focused on a handful of US-based companies like OpenAI with GPT, Google with Gemini, Meta’s LLaMa, Anthropic’s Claude. They vie to build ever larger and more capable models. Earlier in 2025, China’s DeepSeek, a Hangzhou-based startup, added a new twist by releasing large language models (LLMs) that rival their American counterparts, with a smaller computational demand. But increasingly, researchers across the Global South are challenging the notion that technological leadership in AI is the exclusive domain of these two superpowers.
Instead, scientists and institutions in countries like India, South Africa, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are rethinking the very premise of generative AI. Their focus is not on scaling up, but on scaling right, building models that work for local users, in their languages, and within their social and economic realities.
“How do we make sure that the entire planet benefits from AI?” asks Benjamin Rosman, a professor at the University of the Witwatersrand and a lead developer of InkubaLM, a generative model trained on five African languages. “I want more and more voices to be in the conversation”.
Beyond English, beyond Silicon Valley
Large language models work by training on massive troves of online text. While the latest versions of GPT, Gemini or LLaMa boast multilingual capabilities, the overwhelming presence of English-language material and Western cultural contexts in these datasets skews their outputs. For speakers of Hindi, Arabic, Swahili, Xhosa and countless other languages, that means AI systems may not only stumble over grammar and syntax, they can also miss the point entirely.
“In Indian languages, large models trained on English data just don’t perform well,” says Janki Nawale, a linguist at AI4Bharat, a lab at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. “There are cultural nuances, dialectal variations, and even non-standard scripts that make translation and understanding difficult.” Nawale’s team builds supervised datasets and evaluation benchmarks for what specialists call “low resource” languages, those that lack robust digital corpora for machine learning.
It’s not just a question of grammar or vocabulary. “The meaning often lies in the implication,” says Vukosi Marivate, a professor of computer science at the University of Pretoria, in South Africa. “In isiXhosa, the words are one thing but what’s being implied is what really matters.” Marivate co-leads Masakhane NLP, a pan-African collective of AI researchers that recently developed AFROBENCH, a rigorous benchmark for evaluating how well large language models perform on 64 African languages across 15 tasks. The results, published in a preprint in March, revealed major gaps in performance between English and nearly all African languages, especially with open-source models.
Similar concerns arise in the Arabic-speaking world. “If English dominates the training process, the answers will be filtered through a Western lens rather than an Arab one,” says Mekki Habib, a robotics professor at the American University in Cairo. A 2024 preprint from the Tunisian AI firm Clusterlab finds that many multilingual models fail to capture Arabic’s syntactic complexity or cultural frames of reference, particularly in dialect-rich contexts.
Governments step in
For many countries in the Global South, the stakes are geopolitical as well as linguistic. Dependence on Western or Chinese AI infrastructure could mean diminished sovereignty over information, technology, and even national narratives. In response, governments are pouring resources into creating their own models.
Saudi Arabia’s national AI authority, SDAIA, has built ‘ALLaM,’ an Arabic-first model based on Meta’s LLaMa-2, enriched with more than 540 billion Arabic tokens. The United Arab Emirates has backed several initiatives, including ‘Jais,’ an open-source Arabic-English model built by MBZUAI in collaboration with US chipmaker Cerebras Systems and the Abu Dhabi firm Inception. Another UAE-backed project, Noor, focuses on educational and Islamic applications.
In Qatar, researchers at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, and the Qatar Computing Research Institute, have developed the Fanar platform and its LLMs Fanar Star and Fanar Prime. Trained on a trillion tokens of Arabic, English, and code, Fanar’s tokenization approach is specifically engineered to reflect Arabic’s rich morphology and syntax.
India has emerged as a major hub for AI localization. In 2024, the government launched BharatGen, a public-private initiative funded with 235 crore (€26 million) initiative aimed at building foundation models attuned to India’s vast linguistic and cultural diversity. The project is led by the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay and also involves its sister organizations in Hyderabad, Mandi, Kanpur, Indore, and Madras. The programme’s first product, e-vikrAI, can generate product descriptions and pricing suggestions from images in various Indic languages. Startups like Ola-backed Krutrim and CoRover’s BharatGPT have jumped in, while Google’s Indian lab unveiled MuRIL, a language model trained exclusively on Indian languages. The Indian governments’ AI Mission has received more than180 proposals from local researchers and startups to build national-scale AI infrastructure and large language models, and the Bengaluru-based company, AI Sarvam, has been selected to build India’s first ‘sovereign’ LLM, expected to be fluent in various Indian languages.
In Africa, much of the energy comes from the ground up. Masakhane NLP and Deep Learning Indaba, a pan-African academic movement, have created a decentralized research culture across the continent. One notable offshoot, Johannesburg-based Lelapa AI, launched InkubaLM in September 2024. It’s a ‘small language model’ (SLM) focused on five African languages with broad reach: Swahili, Hausa, Yoruba, isiZulu and isiXhosa.
“With only 0.4 billion parameters, it performs comparably to much larger models,” says Rosman. The model’s compact size and efficiency are designed to meet Africa’s infrastructure constraints while serving real-world applications. Another African model is UlizaLlama, a 7-billion parameter model developed by the Kenyan foundation Jacaranda Health, to support new and expectant mothers with AI-driven support in Swahili, Hausa, Yoruba, Xhosa, and Zulu.
India’s research scene is similarly vibrant. The AI4Bharat laboratory at IIT Madras has just released IndicTrans2, that supports translation across all 22 scheduled Indian languages. Sarvam AI, another startup, released its first LLM last year to support 10 major Indian languages. And KissanAI, co-founded by Pratik Desai, develops generative AI tools to deliver agricultural advice to farmers in their native languages.
The data dilemma
Yet building LLMs for underrepresented languages poses enormous challenges. Chief among them is data scarcity. “Even Hindi datasets are tiny compared to English,” says Tapas Kumar Mishra, a professor at the National Institute of Technology, Rourkela in eastern India. “So, training models from scratch is unlikely to match English-based models in performance.”
Rosman agrees. “The big-data paradigm doesn’t work for African languages. We simply don’t have the volume.” His team is pioneering alternative approaches like the Esethu Framework, a protocol for ethically collecting speech datasets from native speakers and redistributing revenue back to further development of AI tools for under-resourced languages. The project’s pilot used read speech from isiXhosa speakers, complete with metadata, to build voice-based applications.
In Arab nations, similar work is underway. Clusterlab’s 101 Billion Arabic Words Dataset is the largest of its kind, meticulously extracted and cleaned from the web to support Arabic-first model training.
The cost of staying local
But for all the innovation, practical obstacles remain. “The return on investment is low,” says KissanAI’s Desai. “The market for regional language models is big, but those with purchasing power still work in English.” And while Western tech companies attract the best minds globally, including many Indian and African scientists, researchers at home often face limited funding, patchy computing infrastructure, and unclear legal frameworks around data and privacy.
“There’s still a lack of sustainable funding, a shortage of specialists, and insufficient integration with educational or public systems,” warns Habib, the Cairo-based professor. “All of this has to change.”
A different vision for AI
Despite the hurdles, what’s emerging is a distinct vision for AI in the Global South – one that favours practical impact over prestige, and community ownership over corporate secrecy.
“There’s more emphasis here on solving real problems for real people,” says Nawale of AI4Bharat. Rather than chasing benchmark scores, researchers are aiming for relevance: tools for farmers, students, and small business owners.
And openness matters. “Some companies claim to be open-source, but they only release the model weights, not the data,” Marivate says. “With InkubaLM, we release both. We want others to build on what we’ve done, to do it better.”
In a global contest often measured in teraflops and tokens, these efforts may seem modest. But for the billions who speak the world’s less-resourced languages, they represent a future in which AI doesn’t just speak to them, but with them."
Sibusiso Biyela, Amr Rageh and Shakoor Rather
20 May 2025
https://www.natureasia.com/en/nmiddleeast/article/10.1038/nmiddleeast.2025.65
#metaglossia_mundus
AI-assisted translation tools are being utilized in court systems to address language barriers, improve efficiency & maintain public trust.
"AI in court translation: Navigating opportunities, risks & the human factor
Natalie Runyon Director / ESG content / Thomson Reuters Institute
27 Jun 2025
AI-assisted translation tools are being utilized in court systems to address language barriers, improve efficiency, and maintain public trust through effective governance, human involvement, and ethical guardrails
Key insights:
AI-assisted translation toolsare being utilized in court systems to address language barriers, improve efficiency, and maintain public trust through effective governance and human involvement.
Orange County Superior Courtdeveloped its CAT system to address translation issues, starting with Spanish and Vietnamese languages.
Establishing ethical guardrailsis essential for the successful deployment of AI-assisted translation tools to build confidence and maintain public trust.
New ways of utilizing AI are showing up in the nation’s court system regularly. Recently, an AI-assisted victim impact statement made its way into the courtroom at a sentencing hearing. Still, less publicized AI innovations, such improving internal workflows within courts and influencing evidence in trials, are arising across court systems around the world every day.
Yet one of most debated areas of AI use in courts in the United States involves the fundamental challenge of providing timely and accurate language access for individuals with limited English proficiency. The National Center for State Courts (NCSC) and the Thomson Reuters Institute, through their partnership on AI Policy in the Law and Courts, hosted a recent webinar focused on how AI can assist in the translation of written documents from one language to another. (The webinar did not address in detail how AI can support interpretation, or spoken-language conversion from one language to another.) However, the webinar captured key insights from experts on how AI-assisted translation of documents can enhance court services, the pros and cons of using these tools, and the critical risks that must be managed.
Indeed, a core challenge facing courts today is a critical shortage of qualified human translators and interpreters. Not meeting these language demands creates substantial barriers to due process and potentially affects many individuals’ liberties, housing rights, access to justice, and other fundamental legal protections, while simultaneously undermining public trust in the judicial system.
“There’s a very high demand for translators and interpreters, and a shortage of both, particularly in less common language pairs and more rural areas,” said Florencia Russ, an American Translators Association certified translator and CEO of Transcend Translations. “If there isn’t a translator and interpreter available, that can mean that hearings have to be postponed… [and] people may spend more time in limbo.”
Using AI to pioneer translation
To address this long-standing translation issue, courts are turning to AI-powered tools that are specifically designed for use by court systems — something the Orange County Superior Court saw firsthand. After testing other tools to address language barriers in the justice system, the Superior Court took the initiative to develop its Court Application for Translation (CAT) system, powered by Microsoft Azure, according to Deputy COO Blanca Escobedo.
Orange County developed the system with the Spanish and Vietnamese languages first and trained the model using court-specific terms and words. The court system took a thoughtful approach with robust governance, oversight, and input from multidisciplinary teams, said Escobedo, adding that the project’s first phase focused on low-risk use cases, mainly translating educational materials and video scripts. Later phases will concentrate on collaborative court essays and juvenile reports that typically run longer than 100 pages.
Escobedo explained how rigorous quality control has been a key pillar of CAT outputs since its inception, which was essential to ensure trust and confidence in the output. Each output then is reviewed by certified translators and given a score to assess the performance of the AI-assisted translation. Results showed 80% of Spanish translations were usable as-is (with 17% requiring minor corrections, and 3% containing major errors); while Vietnamese translations achieved 57% accuracy (with 39% needing minor adjustments, and 4% with major errors). The difference reflects the greater availability of Spanish training materials.
Governance, human involvement & ethical guardrails
As the webinar pointed out, effective governance, human participation, and ethical guardrails are all key ingredients for the effective deployment of AI-assisted translation tools to build confidence and maintain the trust of the public. Grace Spulak, Principal Court Management Consultant at NCSC, outlined the consequences of using AI-assisted translation tools without deploying such safeguards. “If people do not feel the information they are getting from the courts is accurate and reliable, people will not trust the courts,” Spulak said. “They won’t look to the courts as a source of authority, and they won’t use information that they get from the courts.”
Spulak, Russ, and Escobedo outlined the necessary mechanisms to ensure public trust is maintained with translated documents using AI, including:
Effective governance — Spulak, who is leading NCSC’s efforts to provide guidance on AI translation, recommends that courts have policies in place “if they are going to use AI in any context for translation, so that people understand what it is the court is doing and what things are being translated.” These protocols should have “clear limits on how AI is used, how it will be reviewed, and how the court will ensure that it’s providing quality translations to folks,” she adds. In addition, there should be established guidelines for implementation, human review processes, and feedback mechanisms from internal and external stakeholders.
Humans in the loop for accuracy and quality control — Having individuals review outputs and oversee development, testing, and ongoing quality control are vital mechanisms for using AI to translate documents. “There has to be a human in the loop who has read and has done machine-translation, post-editing to ensure that that those translations are accurate” for effective use in a legal context, explained Russ, of Transcend Translations.
Transparency — The concept of transparency forms the cornerstone of ethical AI translation implementation in courts. Escobedo described how the Orange County Superior Court is purposeful in how it deploys AI assisted translation. In the court’s process, information is shared with executive and judicial leadership to ensure there is a level of comfort with the solutions the court is developing. This includes clearly informing users when AI translation has been used through disclaimers on documents and maintaining open communication with staff and the judiciary. In this way, transparency is enhanced when there are “clear guidelines for how a document translated with AI-assisted translation has to be disclosed, where it is disclosed, and whether it be a watermark or an oral declaration,” Russ said.
Privacy & security — Privacy and security considerations are equally critical. Orange County’s approach demonstrates best practices with an on-premises solution that’s protected by firewalls, ensuring that confidential information remains secure. Additionally, reviewers sign confidentiality agreements to provide another layer of protection.
Using AI’s powerful capability… with caveats
AI-assisted translation has improved language access in courts and addressed resource constraints while enhancing efficiency. Indeed, Orange County’s CAT tool resulted in “a reduction in translation expenditures” and significant improvement in turnaround times, noted Escobedo.
For other courts, the Orange County Superior Court’s approach to AI-assisted translation can serve as a guide for thoughtful implementation through transparency, phased rollout, and continuous quality assessment. Courts modelling their efforts based on the experience of Escobedo and the CAT application will need to balance innovation in order to address a lack of language access within court systems while still actively identifying and mitigating the risks associated with such innovation.
With careful planning and commitment to quality, courts can harness AI to enhance justice for all community members, but as former Minnesota State Supreme Court Chief Justice Bridget Mary McCormack said in concluding the webinar: “We are still at a stage where we want humans supervising this work, and we want humans who are certified and experts to be the ones supervising the work.”"
https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en-us/posts/ai-in-courts/navigating-language-translation/
#metaglossia_mundus
"LuminAfrica brings the Bible to unreached languages and people
Written by: Mergon Foundation
Article source: www.facebook.com
Over 6.1 billion people currently have access to the full Bible in their own language. But more than 1.5 billion still don’t – and for 220 million people, not even a single verse exists in their heart language.
With over 3,500 languages still lacking sufficient scripture, Bible translation remains one of the most urgent and complex missions of our time. Many of these communities come from oral cultures, meaning translation isn’t just about finding the right words. Translation is about honouring culture, traditions, and the culture’s unique ways of engaging with truth.
That’s why translation efforts must be locally led, culturally sensitive, and deeply collaborative. Translators work through each passage – drafting, checking, testing, and refining with their communities and advisors until a clear, accurate version takes shape.
Launched in 2020, LuminAfrica is a Mergon partner that’s making strides in this vital work. Through collaborative efforts between South African Bible translation organisations and local resource partners, they are helping to close the gap between those who have access to God’s word and those who don’t.
Imagine a day when every tribe and tongue have God’s word in their heart language. It’s a mission worth supporting.
Find out more about LuminAfrica here: "https://luminafrica.bible"
https://joynews.co.za/luminafrica-brings-the-bible-to-unreached-languages-and-people/
#metaglossia_mundus
"SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — A former Afghan interpreter for the U.S. military who is seeking asylum in the United States is now facing possible deportation after being detained by immigration officials earlier this month, sparking outrage among supporters who say he should be treated as an ally, not a criminal.
Sayed Naser was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on June 12 following a mandatory immigration hearing at the federal courthouse in downtown San Diego. He has been held at the Otay Mesa Detention Center ever since.
Afghan man who worked as interpreter for US Army detained by ICE in San Diego
Naser, who worked with American forces in Afghanistan, is among the growing number of asylum seekers caught up in the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants. Advocates warn that returning him to Afghanistan could be a death sentence, given his work with the U.S. military and the threat posed by the Taliban.
On Thursday, a federal immigration judge approved a motion to dismiss Naser’s case — a move VanDiver said may sound favorable but could actually strip Naser of his opportunity to formally claim asylum.
“You would think a motion to dismiss is a good thing, but it’s not in this case,” said Shawn VanDiver, a representative of AfghanEvac and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “It means that his notice to appear was dismissed, along with his defense of asylum.”
VanDiver said recent changes in federal immigration policy, including a Supreme Court ruling allowing the administration to redirect asylum seekers to third countries regardless of conditions there, are compounding Naser’s legal peril.
US soldier’s son, born on Army base in Germany, is deported to Jamaica
“Now they’ve put him into expedited removal proceedings,” VanDiver said. “All that stands between him and deportation to anywhere in the world that President Trump decides, thanks to the Supreme Court ruling this week, is a credible fear interview.”
Naser must now convince an asylum officer that he faces a real threat of harm if deported — and he must do so without legal representation, as attorneys are not allowed in that phase of the process. If the officer finds his fear credible, he may be allowed to pursue asylum. If not, he could be deported within days.
“The best-case scenario is he passes his credible fear interview, and gets an expedited asylum interview, get’s his asylum, and can request his green card in a year, and he’s safe — and then his family can come here too,” VanDiver said.
It remains unclear when Naser’s interview will take place. Until then, he remains in federal custody, awaiting a decision that could determine whether he finds asylum or deportation."
by: Tony Shin
Jun 27, 2025 / 07:37 PM PDT
https://fox5sandiego.com/news/local-news/former-afghan-interpreters-deportation-feared-after-san-diego-ice-arrest/
#metaglossia_mundus
"This week’s conversation is about curiosity in translation and interpretation. Not just the literal, “how do you say this thing in that language?” but how do we use our curiosity to communicate our ideas effectively, to investigate what’s really being said when we’re quite literally not speaking one another’s language.
Luckily, there are people like Silvia Villacampa who have a few things to teach the rest of us…
Silvia Villacampa worked in medical interpretation and is now managing director of Liberty Language Services.
“In the moment, the curiosity must be around the culture of both parties, both speakers. Culture is language, language is culture. It’s all intertwined.” ~ Silvia Villacampa
Episode webpage and full show notes: https://lynnborton.com/2025/06/26/curiosity-in-translation-interpretation-with-silvia-villacampa/";
https://kpfa.org/episode/choose-to-be-curious-june-26-2025/
#metaglossia_mundus
A group of authors, including Pulitzer prize winner Kai Bird, accuse Microsoft of using copyrighted works to train its large language model.
by Suhasini Srinivasaragavan
26 JUN 2025
The latest complaint comes as Meta and Anthropic both receive legal relief in similar copyright lawsuits.
A group of authors has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft, accusing the tech giant of using copyrighted works to train its large language model (LLM).
The class action complaint filed by several authors and professors, including Pulitzer prize winner Kai Bird and Whiting award winner Victor LaVelle, claims that Microsoft ignored the law by downloading around 200,000 copyrighted works and feeding it to the company’s Megatron-Turing Natural Language Generation model.
The end result, the plaintiffs claim, is an AI model able to generate expressions that mimic the authors’ manner of writing and the themes in their work.
“Microsoft’s commercial gain has come at the expense of creators and rightsholders,” the lawsuit states. The complaint seeks to not just represent the plaintiffs, but other copyright holders under the US Copyright Act whose works were used by Microsoft for this training.
The aggrieved party seeks damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work, as well as an injunction prohibiting Microsoft from using any of their works without permission.
This latest lawsuit is yet another that seeks to challenge how AI models are trained. Visual artists, news publishers and authors are just some of the creators who claim that AI models infringe upon their rights.
However, yesterday (25 June), a US court ruled that Meta’s training of AI models on copyrighted books fell under the “fair use” doctrine of copyright law.
The lawsuit was brought by author Richard Kadrey and others back in 2023.
Earlier this year, the authors’ counsel claimed that Meta allowed its LLM Llama to commit copyright infringement on pirated data and upload it for commercial gain.
In the decision yesterday, the judge said that the ruling does not mean that Meta’s use of copyrighted materials to train its LLM is lawful but that the plaintiffs “made the wrong arguments”, ultimately failing to prove their case.
He added that Meta’s use of the copyrighted works was “transformative” and the authors failed to provide any meaningful evidence of “market dilution” resulting from Meta’s actions. As a result, he said Meta was entitled to a summary judgement on its fair use defence.
While in another blow to authors, a different US court earlier this week ruled that Anthropic’s use of purchased books to train Claude AI also qualifies as “fair use”.
This case was brought by Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson in 2024, who claimed that Anthropic used pirated versions of various copyrighted material to train Claude, its flagship AI model.
However, “Claude created no exact copy, nor any substantial knock-off. Nothing traceable to [the plaintiffs’] works,” the judge wrote in his summary judgement. The judge said that Anthropic must face a separate trial for the claim that it pirated works from the internet.
Although, it appears that Big Tech companies, at times, acknowledge the role copyright holders play in creating the primary data from which their AI models learn.
Last year, Bloomberg reported that Microsoft and publishing giant HarperCollins signed a content licensing deal where the tech giant could use some of HarperCollins’ books for AI training.
While AI search engine Perplexity, which has repeatedly come under fire for allegedly scraping content from news publishers, also launched a revenue sharing platform with publishers after receiving backlash.
Meanwhile OpenAI has a content-sharing deal for ChatGPT with more than 160 outlets in several languages.
Earlier this year, Thomson Reuters CPO David Wong told SiliconRepublic.com that not only is it possible to create AI systems that respect copyright, but that respecting copyright will further those systems and improve accessibility to information.
Recent rulings seem to place Big Tech as the emerging winner in the AI fair use battle. Still, companies such as OpenAI and Microsoft continue to battle similar lawsuits."
https://www.siliconrepublic.com/business/microsoft-lawsuit-ai-copyright-kai-bird-victor-lavelle
#metaglossia_mundus
Nearly 3 in 4 Imperial County residents speak mostly Spanish at home.
"A new California bill could force local governments in Imperial County to start translating their agendas into Spanish. The lack of translation has kept many county residents from fully participating in the democratic process.
An immigrant worker, who was arrested during a raid outside a hardware store in Pomona in April, has been released from ICE custody. Now, immigrant rights advocates are pushing for the release of two other workers still in detention.
State Bill Would Require Imperial County To Translate Key Documents Into Spanish
Last September, dozens of public speakers gathered at the Imperial County Board of Supervisors meeting in El Centro. They were there to comment on the county’s proposed lithium spending plan — part of a major discussion taking place across the county about future tax revenue from the burgeoning industry. But some of the speakers also wanted to talk about something else.
“There’s no Spanish translation of the updated plan,” said Fernanda Vega, an organizer with the Imperial Valley Equity and Justice Coalition. “We cannot continue to push aside Spanish-speaking residents, especially when their health and livelihoods are at stake.” Nearly 3 in 4 Imperial County residents speak mostly Spanish at home, and more than a quarter don’t speak English fluently, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. But the county government and many cities often don’t publish translated versions of agendas and other key documents. Without consistent Spanish translation in local government, these residents are in essence locked out of the democratic process.
Now, a new California bill could force the county government and the region’s two largest cities to start offering Spanish translations of their meeting agendas, which are currently published only in English. Among other changes, SB 707 would require that certain counties and cities with large communities who speak languages other than English translate their agendas and also provide translated instructions for tuning into meetings remotely. In a speech on the California Senate floor earlier this month, the bill’s author, state Sen. María Elena Durazo (D-Los Angeles), said it would make it easier for non-English speakers to follow local government meetings and strengthen access to the democratic process.
Pomona Day Laborer Released From ICE Custody Faces Work Ban
A day laborer arrested during an immigration enforcement raid outside a hardware store in Pomona in April has been released from custody, but now faces release conditions that immigrant rights advocates call punitive. They’re also pushing for the release of two other workers still in detention.
Sponsored
Edvin Juarez Cobon and nine other day laborers, or jornaleros in Spanish, were arrested by Border Patrol at a Home Depot on April 22. Cobon was released on bond on June 13 under ICE’s Alternatives to Detention program, after being held for nearly two months at the Imperial Detention Facility. Cobon, who is Guatemalan, is now required to wear an ankle monitor and is prohibited from working.
“I’m worried because my family depends on me,” Cobon said in Spanish. “I’m not someone who stays home. I want to be able to work to make ends meet.” Alexis Teodoro, workers’ rights director at the Pomona Economic Opportunity Center (PEOC), said he’s never seen immigration officials restrict someone’s ability to work. “I think it’s part of the strategy of the administration doing everything it can, every step of the way,” said Teodoro, “to make the lives of immigrants impossible so they can self-deport.”"
Keith Mizuguchi
Jun 26
https://www.kqed.org/news/12046054/new-bill-would-require-imperial-county-to-offer-spanish-translations-of-agendas
#metaglossia_mundus
Since April 2024, the word slop has gained traction online, with online searches for the term AI slop increasing dramatically - EducationTimes.com
"Cambridge Dictionary Includes ‘Slop’ As The Low-Quality Content Generated By AI
Cambridge Dictionary includes ‘Slop’ as the low-quality content generated by AI
Since April 2024, the word slop has gained traction online, with online searches for the term AI slop increasing dramatically
TNN | Posted June 24, 2025 05:19 PM
As a new Artificial Intelligence-related definition of the word slop enters the Cambridge Dictionary, language experts are tracking emerging Artificial Intelligence (AI) terms. Traditionally used as the word to define liquid or wet food waste, especially when it is fed to animals, slop has found new meaning due to the rapid rise of AI. As per the newly added definition, slop refers to content on the internet that is of very low quality, especially when it is created by artificial intelligence.
Since April 2024, slop has gained traction online, with online searches for the term AI slop increasing dramatically and continuing to grow.
Colin McIntosh, programme manager, Cambridge Dictionary, said, “The updated entry reflects growing concerns about increasing amounts of low-quality content created by AI. It is an important reminder that quality and integrity remain unmistakably human. In an era of machine-made content, those values are more crucial than ever.”
Wendalyn Nichols, publishing manager, Cambridge Dictionary, said, “Think of email in the 90s or hashtag in the 2000s. Now, AI-related words are becoming increasingly part of our everyday lives. It is our job to track terms used in popular culture and add the ones that are likely to have staying power to the Dictionary.”
Emerging new AI words
Other new words about AI identified by lexicographers at the Cambridge Dictionary reflect the evolving English language as technology continues to re-shape our world. Terms such as AI washing, the behaviour of a company or organisation that tries to make people believe that it is using AI to make its products or services better, when really it is not doing this or is only partly doing it; and decel, someone who believes that AI and other new technologies are developing so quickly that they are likely to cause very serious problems and that progress should be deliberately slowed down, are being monitored for possible inclusion in the Cambridge Dictionary.
Other AI terms which are being monitored by Cambridge Dictionary lexicographers include Neocloud, a noun, which is used to refer to a start-up that specialises in AI-based cloud computing. Meta face, noun, which refers to a trend where photos that have been enhanced using AI technology make everyone look similarly flawless and unrealistically beautiful.
The lexicographers are also monitoring abbreviations such as BYOAI, which is an abbreviation for “bring your own artificial intelligence”: the practice of companies saying that employees can use their own artificial intelligence tools when at work. E/acc is a noun and an abbreviation for “effective accelerationism”: a movement that believes AI and other new technologies should be allowed to develop as quickly as possible without any restrictions.
Some other terms include Artificial superintelligence, a noun, which is used to define a type of artificial intelligence that is much more intelligent than any human and can think, act, learn, etc., independently and beyond the abilities of people. Agentic AI, noun, a term used to describe a type of artificial intelligence that can make decisions and take actions without the need for human input. Intention economy, noun, which is used to refer to a system in which AI learns what people are likely to want to buy or do in the future, with companies using the information to create corresponding products and services."
https://www.educationtimes.com/article/newsroom/99738869/cambridge-dictionary-includes-slop-as-the-low-quality-content-generated-by-ai
#metaglossia_mundus
Shoogly, skooshy, beamer and bummer are among 13 new entries added by editors at the OED.
"Oxford English Dictionary is hoaching with new Scottish words
A total beamer - a football fan deals with Scotland's elimination from a tournament
The Oxford English Dictionary is hoaching with new Scottish words - with beamer, bummer and tattie scone among 13 new entries.
There is also a listing for Scotland's shoogly subway trains - not the kind of place where passengers would want to risk using skooshy cream.
Many of the new additions have a food theme, with Lorne sausage, morning rolls and playpiece also making the grade.
Oxford English Dictionary (OED) editors say they will consider a new word for inclusion when they have gathered enough independent examples of its usage "from a good variety of sources".
They said there also has to be evidence that a word has been in use for a "reasonable amount of time".
Some of the words date back to the 1700s and already feature in Scots language dictionaries.
They are among nearly 600 new words and phrases adopted into the OED.
What new Scottish words are in the OED?
The streets are hoaching during the Edinburgh Festival, if you're planning to chum someone along
Aye, right - A sarcastic phrase - used ironically to express contempt or incredulity. Similar to "yeah, right".
Beamer - A term for a flushed or blushing face, especially one resulting from embarrassment. Extended to mean a humiliating or shameful situation.
Bummer - A person in a position of authority. Normally used in the expression "heid (head) bummer". It sometimes has a humorous suggestion of pomposity or officiousness.
Chum - To join someone as a companion, as in "I'll chum you along".
Hoaching - Crowded, swarming or thronging. It is derived from the verb "hotch" - to swarm', dating back to 1797.
Morton's rolls
A well-fired morning roll, perfect for a slice of square sausage
Lorne or Square sausage - Sausage meat formed into square slices that are grilled or fried.
Morning roll - A soft white bread roll, its first usage dating back to Farmer's Magazine in 1801.
Playpiece - A snack taken to school by children to eat during the morning break or playtime. Also used in Northern Ireland.
Shoogly - A word used to mean unstable or wobbly. The OED cites it being used to describe to describe Glasgow's unsteady subway carriages.
Skooshy - Applied to anything that can be squirted. Whipped cream squirted from an aerosol can is often called "skooshy cream" north of the border.
Tattie scone - A type of flat savoury cake made with flour and mashed cooked potatoes. Goes nicely with square sausage on a morning roll.
Well-fired - Refers to rolls baked until brown or black and crusty on top."
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crenw75rlr1o
#metaglossia_mundus
Peformance Interpretation Limited are on the Isle of Wight for the first time.
"The Isle of Wight Festival is for everyone - and British Sign Language (BSL) interpreters ensure that those who are deaf or hard of hearing can enjoy the music too.
Performance Interpreting Limited are at the festival for the first time in 2025, providing interpretations of performances.
The Isle of Wight Festival's adoption of BSL sees them join many major festivals in offering the language, which makes the event more accessible.
Lynn, co-ordinator of interpretations at the festival, said: "We’re here on the Isle of Wight for the first time as part of Performance Interpreting Limited.
The Corrs go down a storm at Isle of Wight Festival 2025
Emmanuel Kelly feels "part of something iconic" at Isle of Wight Festival 2025
"We’ll be covering around 10 to 15 acts overall, plus any additional requests that come in."
"Our interpreters are prepared for impromptu, last‑minute requests."
The team, five-strong at the Isle of Wight Festival, attend many events across the summer.
Lynn said: "It’s not just festivals, it’s also concerts and sporting events. We will be there."
Interpreters recently provided BSL at Download Festival, and will continue to sign at events throughout the summer.
BSL is a welcome addition to the Isle of Wight Festival, with many benefitting from the interpretations and able to enjoy the music too.
Follow the County Press's live coverage of the Isle of Wight Festival throughout the weekend"
https://www.countypress.co.uk/news/25256830.bsl-interpretation-isle-wight-festival-2025/
#metaglossia_mundus
Incorpora la inteligencia artificial en sus estudios mientras sus responsables evidencian que una correcta interpretación requiere intervención humana
"La Facultad de Traducción de Soria se defiende: «La IA no puede leer entre líneas»
Incorpora la inteligencia artificial en sus estudios mientras sus responsables evidencian que una correcta interpretación requiere intervención humana
La Facultad de Traducción e Interpretación se creó hace 29 años en el Campus de Soria.
Milagros Hervada
Soria
23.06.2025 | 12:00
Actualizado: 23.06.2025 | 19:01
Hacerse entender y comprender otros idiomas es cada vez más sencillo gracias a la inteligencia artificial, IA, pero los resultados no son siempre los deseados. Desde la Facultad de Traducción e Interpretación del Campus Universitario de Soria, dependiente de la Universidad de Valladolid, reconocen que la IA es una herramienta más en su trabajo, aunque les está haciendo «daño», pero también recalcan, «es imposible sustituir al traductor humano».
Y eso es así porque «la IA no puede leer entre líneas», defiende el decano de la facultad, Miguel Ibáñez, quien matiza que «no lee las connotaciones», por lo que «para la traducción de una ruta turística puede valer, pero un texto publicable, un libro, si es importante para la venta de un producto, requiere una revisión», y esa sólo puede hacerla el humano, asegura, por eso se da el caso de que hay empresas que «vuelven al traductor humano y genera más trabajo por la postedición». En resumen, «que no se trata únicamente de sustituir una palabra por otra».
Ibáñez reconoce que la matrícula ha decrecido en los últimos años. El pasado curso iniciaron primero 27 alumnos, y este verano abandonarán la facultad 35 graduados, además de los tres alumnos de máster, precisamente centrado en Entornos digitales multilingües. Igualmente Traducción ofrece formación de doctorado –conjunto con la Universidad de Alicante– y son muchos los que siguen este camino.
La facultad se adapta a los tiempos y también la inteligencia artificial está en sus dinámicas de estudio. De hecho, el decano apostilla que la IA propicia que se traduzca más, y de una forma más cómoda. Por eso la consideran «más que un enemigo, un aliado». Constituye una herramienta estupenda cuando se trata de una pretraducción que hace la máquina y que después requiere una revisión, porque «sólo establece referencias, pero sin saber qué dice». Es decir, traduce palabras pero «sin reflexión», añade Ibáñez, y sin el traductor humano se pierden matices y «es fundamental a la hora de interpretar porque una palabra tiene muchas acepciones».
La Facultad aporta un bagaje de casi 30 años en los que las tecnologías han ido a velocidad de crucero y sus clases se han ido adaptando a los tiempos. Recuerda el decano «cuando los alumnos iban con sus diccionarios en papel». Ahora es todo electrónico. «Surgieron programas de memoria de traducción y lo incorporamos. Ahora es la IA y eso facilita, pero requiere una revisión», insiste. Por eso el Grado incorpora asignaturas de postedición desde hace ya varios cursos.
...
La matrícula en la Universidad de Valladolid está viva en estos días tras las pruebas de acceso –el plazo de preinscripción es del 4 de junio al 4 de julio de 2025, y la matrícula para antiguos alumnos del 24 de junio al 10 julio– y Traducción e Interpretación defiende su espacio porque incorpora la nueva tecnología, ofrece una formación muy personalizada «y un trato cercano». De hecho, la facultad se planificó para no ser un centro masificado, con unas 60 ó 70 plazas.
https://www.heraldodiariodesoria.es/soria/250623/200944/facultad-traduccion-soria-defiende-frente-ia-leer-lineas.html
#metaglossia_mundus
"The future of simultaneous interpretation: AI and the human interpreter
The Future of Simultaneous Interpreting: Artificial Intelligence and the Irreplaceable Role of the Human Interpreter
The simultaneous interpreting sector is undergoing an unprecedented transformation. The emergence of artificial intelligence, remote interpreting platforms, and advances in real-time machine translation are reshaping the way multilingual events are organized. But do these changes represent an opportunity or a threat for professional interpreters?
At Código Lingua, with years of experience in simultaneous interpreting in Valencia and internationally, we analyze the most relevant technological innovations, their apparent advantages, and their real limitations. Because while technology is here to stay, the human factor remains essential to ensure precise, empathetic, and contextualized communication.
What is Changing in the Sector?
Digital Remote Interpreting Platforms
The rise of remote interpreting platforms has been one of the major changes, largely driven by the pandemic. These tools enable the provision of remote simultaneous interpreting services, connecting interpreters and listeners from anywhere in the world. For organizers, they offer a flexible and accessible alternative; for interpreters, an environment that requires new technical skills and constant adaptation.
Generative AI and Real-Time Automated Voice
Another significant innovation is the emergence of automated voice solutions using generative artificial intelligence to produce real-time translation. These tools, integrated into mobile devices or virtual assistants, promise fast translation in multiple languages without human intervention.
Although they are presented as an innovative solution, their use in formal and complex environments is still far from reliable. Simultaneous interpreting is not just about translating words, but about understanding and conveying tone, intent, and context. Using them for travel as a tourist may be somewhat useful, but we insist that, as of today, they are not a reliable tool to replace conference interpreters.
Machine Translation in Virtual Events
Machine translation systems have also proliferated in virtual events, especially webinars and e-learning platforms. Again, these tools can be useful to provide a general idea of the content, but they are far from delivering the necessary quality in situations where nuance, terminological precision, and communicative fluency are essential.
In this changing landscape, the challenge is clear: how to make the most of technology without losing the essence and value of the human interpreter.
Where Is AI Already Being Applied in Interpreting?
Artificial intelligence is already being used in some contexts where accuracy is not critical:
Tourism and basic multilingual customer service
Instant translation mobile apps
Internal corporate events, with low linguistic demands
Video tutorials or pre-recorded presentations with automatic translation
However, when it comes to international conferences, diplomatic negotiations, court proceedings, or technical presentations, the role of a professional interpreter remains irreplaceable. AI lacks the ability to interpret irony, manage non-verbal language, grasp cultural references, or adapt to unexpected situations in real time.
Advantages Promised by New Technological Solutions
New technologies applied to simultaneous interpreting undoubtedly offer several benefits:
Global accessibility: remote interpreting allows working with qualified interpreters regardless of their location.
Reduction of logistical costs: by eliminating travel or on-site equipment.
Speed of implementation: especially for virtual or hybrid events organized on short notice.
Compatibility with new platforms: integration with Zoom, Teams, Meet and other digital tools.
However, these advantages should not be confused with replacement. Technology can facilitate the interpreter’s work, but not replace them. As we know well at Código Lingua, the success of a multilingual event depends on the technical channel and the human and linguistic quality of the professional interpreter.
Risks of Relying Exclusively on AI in Multilingual Events
The advancement of artificial intelligence in the field of remote interpreting has generated great expectations, but also presents significant risks for the quality and reliability of communication in multilingual settings. At Código Lingua, specialists in simultaneous interpreting services in Valencia, we have observed how technology can be useful in very specific contexts, such as for interpreters’ prior preparation, but also how its indiscriminate use can negatively impact the development of a professional event.
When interpretation is entirely delegated to a machine, what is most valuable is lost: the ability to understand nuance, emotion, and context. Below, we analyze the main errors and risks of relying exclusively on AI during congresses, technical meetings, or international conferences.
Common mistakes in automatic interpretation
Ambiguity, irony, technical terms
Automatic interpretation often fails in aspects that are fundamental for a human interpreter. One of the most common mistakes is the poor handling of linguistic ambiguity: words with double meanings, colloquial expressions, or emotionally charged phrases can be misinterpreted or translated literally, leading to confusion or even serious misunderstandings.
Irony and humor are especially difficult for an automated system to grasp. At best, the communicative effect is lost; at worst, the wrong message is conveyed.
In technical or scientific events, specialized terminology requires in-depth knowledge of the subject. Machine translation often fails with technical terms, which compromises attendees’ understanding and the event’s reputation.
That is why relying on simultaneous interpreting services provided by professionals with specific training is essential to ensure the accuracy and coherence of the discourse.
Cultural or institutional context errors
An AI system does not understand the cultural or institutional codes surrounding a speech. In a political congress or an international summit, the human interpreter not only translates but interprets tone, cultural references, formal protocols, or diplomatic expressions.
Simultaneous interpreting in Valencia, when conducted by interpreters with local and international experience, allows the message to be adapted to the specific setting and helps avoid uncomfortable or inappropriate situations. AI, by contrast, lacks this adaptability and sensitivity.
Ethical and privacy implications
Data protection
When using automatic remote interpreting tools, it is important to consider where data is stored, who has access to recordings, and how information security is managed. Many automatic translation platforms use external servers without explicit privacy guarantees, putting the confidentiality of exchanged messages at risk.
In contrast, by hiring simultaneous interpreting services in Valencia with providers like Código Lingua, clients can be sure that all data protection regulations are met and that interpreters operate under strict professional confidentiality agreements.
Confidentiality in legal, political, or business settings
In sectors such as legal, business, or diplomatic, confidentiality is non-negotiable. The involvement of an automated tool may constitute a serious breach of privacy rights, with potential legal or institutional consequences.
Professional interpreters are trained to ensure neutrality, professional secrecy, and respect for the content being interpreted — something that no AI can reliably guarantee. Therefore, in these settings, human presence remains essential.
What happens when technology fails?
Automation is never free from technical risks. Connection outages, synchronization issues, audio errors, or platform malfunctions can leave attendees without access to interpretation during a key presentation. In onsite or hybrid events, this can compromise the entire session.
By contrast, simultaneous interpreting services managed by experienced professionals always include technical support: soundproof booths, specialized technicians, prior testing, and a human team ready to respond to unforeseen events.
Technology can fail. Human judgment cannot. That’s one of the reasons why more and more congress organizers, international forums, and specialized seminars continue to rely on professional interpreters.
The added value of the human interpreter in an automated world
In a context where artificial intelligence and automated platforms are advancing rapidly, it’s worth remembering that simultaneous interpreting is not just a mechanical transfer of words between languages. It is, above all, a human act of understanding, adaptation, and connection.
That is why working with a professional conference interpreter offers a series of irreplaceable advantages, especially in complex multilingual events such as congresses, symposiums, institutional meetings, or international forums. At Código Lingua, with extensive experience in simultaneous interpreting services in Valencia, we witness it every day: the best results are achieved when technology serves human talent — not the other way around.
Real-time adaptability
Program changes
In any event, no matter how well planned, last-minute changes are common: a speaker modifies their presentation, a new order of speakers is introduced, or someone unexpectedly joins the panel. A human interpreter can quickly adapt, reorganize their documentation, and maintain message coherence.
In contrast, an automated tool cannot improvise, anticipate, or modify its behavior based on a new instruction. This real-time adaptability is one of the pillars of the professional value interpreters provide.
Accents, emotions, interruptions
Simultaneous interpreting takes place in very diverse contexts, where speakers may have different accents, intonations, or levels of clarity. Moreover, the emotional component of a speech is often just as important as its content.
A professional interpreter knows how to handle a difficult accent, interpret a contained emotion, or resolve a sentence interrupted by audience reaction. That level of emotional and adaptive understanding is, for now, far beyond the reach of artificial intelligence.
Cultural knowledge and empathy
A key element that distinguishes a human interpreter from any automated system is their cultural knowledge and capacity for empathy.
In multilingual events involving participants from different countries, intercultural sensitivity is essential. The conference interpreter doesn’t just translate words: they contextualize, soften expressions, respect cultural protocols, and prevent misunderstandings stemming from social or institutional differences.
Thanks to their training and experience, a professional interpreter can detect when a phrase may be inappropriate in another culture and adapt it in real time to preserve the speaker’s intent without causing friction. This deeply human role is essential for successful international communication.
The interpreter’s presence as a guarantee of successful communication
Beyond the technique, the presence of the human interpreter at the event inspires confidence. For both the speaker and the audience, knowing that a real person is in charge of the interpretation conveys assurance, professionalism, and responsiveness.
Additionally, in simultaneous interpreting services in Valencia, working with local interpreters who understand the environment, the audience, and the specific sector of the event adds unquestionable value.
At Código Lingua, we advocate for a smart hybrid model, where technology is a useful tool but never a substitute for a trained professional. Because simultaneous interpreting is not just translation: it is understanding, conveying, and connecting.
Simultaneous interpreting in the digital age
Digitalization has opened up new possibilities in the field of simultaneous interpretation, especially with the rise of hybrid events. This format, which combines in-person and remote participation, requires an equally versatile linguistic solution that can maintain interpretation quality regardless of the channel.
In this context, simultaneous interpretation services for hybrid events must rely on technological tools, yes, but without losing the value of the human factor. The key to success lies in combining the support offered by new technologies with professional interpreters, who bring precision, empathy, and communication control.
How to choose the most suitable service depending on the type of event
When planning an international event, choosing the most suitable type of simultaneous interpretation service depends on several factors:
Is it in-person, virtual, or hybrid?
Which digital platforms will be used?
How many languages will be interpreted and in what format?
What is the profile of the audience and the speakers?
What is the level of technical complexity of the content?
Working with an experienced provider like Código Lingua allows for a complete and personalized evaluation, adapting the simultaneous interpretation services in Valencia to the specific needs of each client.
Technological evolution has transformed the way we communicate, but in the field of simultaneous interpretation, the human factor remains essential. Neither artificial intelligence nor automatic platforms can match the precision, empathy, and adaptability of a professional interpreter trained to act in real time, understand cultural nuances, and ensure smooth communication.
The value of professional interpretation
In hybrid events, technical conferences, or institutional meetings, relying on simultaneous interpretation services in Valencia provided by professionals like those at Código Lingua is a guarantee of quality, reliability, and the success of your multilingual event."
https://codigolingua.com/en/future-of-simultaneous-interpretation/
#metaglossia_mundus
"If language is power, why is Australia going quiet?
26 Jun 2025|Francesca Ciuffetelli
In 1992, Paul Keating said, ‘Asia is where our future substantially lies’. Decades later, the rhetoric remains, but the follow-through is still lacking. Despite Australia’s pivot to the Indo-Pacific, our cultural competency is inhibiting our progress, and our next generation of leaders is even less prepared.
National security decisions are often shaped by assumptions grounded in one’s own cultural framework. Misinterpreting another country’s motives, communication styles, or strategic behaviours due to cultural blind spots can escalate tensions or lead to strategic miscalculations. The cause of such blind spots lies within education systems that fail to equip future leaders with relevant regional knowledge and language skills, leaving them ill-prepared to understand or engage effectively with key Indo-Pacific partners.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, Asia-focused engagement in Australia rose, with a particular interest on educating our youth. Under former prime minister Keating, programs such as the Asia Education Foundation were launched, Indonesian became one of the most taught Asian languages, and regional literacy was seen as a national strategic asset. At its peak in 2002, more than 1,000 Victorian Year 12 students studied Indonesian, while more than 300 did so in New South Wales. These numbers reflected a clear priority: building a generation of Australians who understood our region not just strategically, but linguistically and culturally.
Two decades later, this promising momentum has collapsed. By 2022, only 387 students in Victoria and just 90 in NSW studied Indonesian at Year 12 level, a decline of more than 60 percent. While the Asia Education Foundation and other programs still exist today, numbers have plummeted due to a shifting policy focus, low visibility and a lack of strong political advocacy.
Conversely, interest in studying Indonesian has grown in China, with at least 19 Chinese universities offering related modules and exchange programs in Indonesia. This shift reflects a growing recognition of Indonesia’s strategic importance to China. It’s a deliberate investment in future regional understanding, one that recognises language and education as essential tools of strategic influence.
For Australia, this trend presents a strategic challenge. As China equips a new generation of students with the linguistic and cultural tools to engage directly with Indonesian counterparts, it is also enhancing its ability to build trust, shape regional narratives and embed itself more deeply in key diplomatic, economic and security conversations. Without a comparable level of cultural and linguistic capability, Australian officials and institutions may find it increasingly difficult to engage with nuance, foster sustained partnerships, or counter competing narratives in the region. Over time, this capability gap could erode Australia’s relative influence in Indonesia and limit its ability to respond effectively to regional developments.
From a national security perspective, this matters. Language proficiency is not simply a communicative skill; it is a strategic enabler. Security outcomes improve when decision-makers possess cultural intelligence: the ability to interpret behaviour through the lens of another’s worldview. This intelligence is cultivated early, through education that prioritises understanding cultures and languages of Australia’s strategic region, rather than defaulting to traditional Eurocentric languages currently popular within our education system such as French and Italian.
National security training must begin long before entry into government. If Australia is serious about its place in the Indo-Pacific, we need to inspire the next generation to engage with the region. That means embedding cultural competency into the classroom. Expanding regional studies and prioritising languages such as Indonesian and Mandarin should be a national priority, not an afterthought. These languages reflect our geopolitical reality and are key to fostering culturally literate analysts, diplomats and policymakers.
To reverse declining enrolments, students need to see tangible value in choosing these pathways. That could mean higher university admission bonuses for strategic languages, scholarships for study abroad, or guaranteed internships in government and industry for high-achieving language students. These incentives work. A study found that over half of senior students said a university admission bonus had influenced their decision to continue language study into Year 12. The same paper also confirmed that bonus points, clearer university pathways and strategic messaging helped boost enrolments. When students see tangible academic and career value, they are more likely to commit to languages that reflect Australia’s regional future.
At the same time, we must support the teachers delivering this capability. A 2021 report commissioned by the Asia Education Foundation highlighted persistent challenges, including teacher shortages, limited training and a failure to properly integrate Indonesian studies into the curriculum.
Continuing to prioritise such European languages as French and Italian, while culturally enriching, risks reinforcing a Eurocentric bias that no longer aligns with Australia’s strategic future. If Australia wants to lead in the Indo-Pacific, we must invest in the cultural and linguistic capability of our youth. This is not just about language; it’s about building a generation that understands, respects, and can navigate the complexities of our region. By incentivising students and empowering teachers, we can turn cultural competency from a gap in our national security into one of our greatest strengths."
https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/if-language-is-power-why-is-australia-going-quiet/
#metaglossia_mundus
"Feature: Arabic-dubbed Chinese animation "Ne Zha 2" premiers in Riyadh
Source: XinhuaEditor: huaxia2025-06-26 19:24:30
RIYADH, June 26 (Xinhua) -- A soft ripple of guzheng music floated through the foyer of Reel Cinema in northern Riyadh on Wednesday night as dozens of movie-goers posed beneath a towering poster of Ne Zha 2, the first time the Chinese animation blockbuster has reached Saudi screens in Arabic.
Among the early arrivals was Bushra al-Dawood, a journalist for the Saudi outlet Gorgeous. To celebrate the premiere, she paired a black abaya embroidered with red crimson blossoms and matching red shoes. "A nod to the fiery spirit of Chinese culture and Ne Zha," she smiled. "The film's landscapes are so vivid that I can't wait to travel there and see those mountains and rivers for myself."
Inside the 200-seat auditorium, laughter, gasps and spontaneous applause punctuated the two-hour screening of the Arabic-dubbed edition, which blends standard Arabic with Saudi, Egyptian and other dialects. When the lights came up, clusters of children rushed back to the poster for selfies, while adults lingered in animated debate about the plot's twists and mythical creatures.
"The movie is visually stunning, the story is beautiful, and I had no trouble following it thanks to the Arabic dub," said Shahad, a fourth-year Chinese-language major at King Saud University. "I saw posters of Ne Zha 2 all over China during a summer camp but never caught a screening there. The moment I heard it would open in Riyadh, I signed up right away. I'll be back with my family."
The film's Saudi distributor, CineWaves Films, believes the combination of state-of-the-art animation and localised dialogue will broaden its appeal.
"'Ne Zha 2' is a high-quality, truly original work that speaks to audiences everywhere," said Faisal Baltyuor, CineWaves chairman. "By dubbing it into Saudi dialect we remove the language barrier and make the story even more inviting for local viewers."
Directed by Chinese filmmaker Jiaozi, Ne Zha 2 continues the coming-of-age saga of the rebellious boy-god first introduced in 2019's record-breaking Ne Zha. This time the stakes are higher, the universe larger and the visuals more ambitious, with richly textured dragons, fiery battles and sweeping panoramas rendered in full 3-D.
Saudi animation veteran Malik Nejer, who supervised the Arabic version, said selecting different dialects for rival clans helped newcomers navigate a world rooted in Chinese folklore.
"Many Arab viewers don't know Chinese mythology," Nejer explained. "So we matched each on-screen tribe with a distinct Arabic dialect. It guides the audience through the plot and mirrors the linguistic diversity of our own region."
He also mentioned when concepts had no exact equivalent, the team searched for cultural parallels, "letting viewers feel an instant connection."
Backed by CineWaves and Dubai-based PBA Entertainment, Ne Zha 2 opens nationwide in Saudi Arabia on Thursday and will roll out to the UAE, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, and Qatar in early July.
"We've seen Chinese products expand abroad in waves. Now it's time for cultural exports," said PBA chairman Shi Kejun. "With Saudi-China ties deepening, I'm confident we'll soon see more Chinese films not only screened here but even shot on Saudi locations."
Chinese Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chang Hua called the premiere "a highlight of the 2025 China-Saudi Cultural Year," which also marks 35 years of diplomatic relations.
"By hearing the story in their own language, Saudi audiences can better appreciate China's rich mythological heritage," Chang told Xinhua. "We hope the film sparks wider interest in Chinese culture and inspires further collaboration in creative industries."
As the last viewers drifted out into the warm Riyadh night, reporter Bushra al-Dawood adjusted her red-blossom abaya and waved goodbye: "Ne Zha's courage will stay with me, and my next stop would be those beautiful Chinese landscapes!" Enditem."
https://english.news.cn/20250626/01632ddf08e1406c83deb3e2d1aa3eb6/c.html
#metaglossia_mundus
"Du 26 Juin 2025 au 27 Juin 2025
À : Université Lyon 2, Campus Berges du Rhône - voir sur une carte
Publié le 26 Juin 2025 par Marc Escola
Colloque international organisé par
Baudouin Millet (Université Lumière – Lyon 2, laboratoire LCE)
et Carine Barbafieri (Université Polytechnique Hauts-de-France, Laboratoire LARSH)
Retrouver sur Fabula l'appel à contributions…
—
Programme du colloque
Jeudi 26 juin 2025
14h. Mot d’accueil de la directrice du laboratoire LCE, Pascale Tollance, et introduction de Baudouin Millet et Carine Barbafieri.
Présidence de séance : Marie Nadia Karsky
14h30 Claude Bourqui (Université de Lausanne), « L’humour moliéresque : principes et procédés ».
15h. Michèle Vignaux (Université Lumière – Lyon 2), « “French Plays, in which true wit’s as rarely found / As Mines of Silver are in English ground”, ou comment “améliorer” les pièces de Molière.
Pause
16h. Clara Manco (Université Paris Cité), « The Sullen Lovers (1668) ou Molière comme stratégie ».
16h30. Line Cottegnies (Sorbonne Université), « Le polyglottisme chez Molière et chez Aphra Behn dans Sir Patient Fancy (1678) ».
20h. Dîner
—
Vendredi 27 juin 2025
Présidence de séance : Marc Martinez
9h30. Thomas Barège (Université Polytechnique Hauts-de-France), « Traduction des “gasconneries” et autres hétérolinguismes de Molière en anglais ».
10h. Baudouin Millet (Université Lumière – Lyon 2), « Les plaisanteries de Molière et le personnage du fop dans les comédies de la Restauration ».
10h30. Pause
Présidence de séance : Clara Manco
11h. Marc Martinez (Université de Rouen), « Transposition et recréation des plaisanteries de Molière : du jeu verbal au jeu théâtral dans The Miser de Henry Fielding (1733) ».
11h30 Véronique Lochert (Université de Haute-Alsace), « Traduire Molière au féminin ».
Déjeuner
Présidence de séance : Line Cottegnies
14h. Suzanne Jones (Cambridge University), « “Laughter is the best medicine” ? Traduire la satire médicale de Molière au-delà de la Manche et à travers le temps »
14h30. Marie Nadia Karsky (Université Paris 8 – Vincennes Saint-Denis), « “Vous vous moquez, je pense ?” Plaisanter avec Molière dans quelques versions britanniques contemporaines du Misanthrope ».
15h. Véronique Duché (University of Melbourne) et Kirk Weeden (Monash University), « Molière aux antipodes ».
15h30. Clôture du colloque."
https://www.fabula.org/actualites/128415/traduire-et-adapter-les-plaisanteries-de-moliere-en-anglais-du.html
#metaglossia_mundus
"Navigating Cultural Differences: Insights from an Intercultural Relationship
22 Juni 2025 21:50 Diperbarui: 22 Juni 2025 21:50 135 0 0
The YouTube video “CULTURAL DIFFERENCES | INTERCULTURAL RELATIONSHIP!” by Steven & Monica offers a glimpse into the complexities and rewards of navigating an intercultural relationship. The couple, initially from different countries, share their experiences with cultural differences that affect their relationship. This analysis will discover some of the main points stated in the video, offering an overview of the challenges and victories of intercultural couples.
Some points about intercultural relationships that we have from the video are:
Communication Styles
The first point that can be analyzed from Steven and Monica's relationship is their communication styles. They come from different countries; Monica is from Honduras, so she speaks Spanish, and her husband, Steven, is from France, so he speaks French. Although her mother tongue is Spanish, she can speak French but is not a hundred percent fluent. Sometimes, she says phrases or expressions that she uses in her country, and it sounds quite strange but funny to her husband. Furthermore, they both can speak English, so it helps them to communicate. Monica and Steven can communicate fluently although their first languages are different. However, many people perhaps have difficulties overcoming language barriers when they speak with someone who has a different first language. There are several guidelines offered by Reynolds and Valentine (2011) in their book titled Guide to Cross-cultural Communication (Second Edition). One of the things must be attended to is word choices. We must be careful to choose words and avoid disrespectful words when we speak with someone who has a different language, especially if they are non-natives English speakers. Back to the Monica and Steven case, Steven does not use disrespectful words when Monica says something strange and it reflects a healthy cross-cultural communication.
Family Dynamics and Expectations
In Honduras, there is a tradition to spend time with family at night when dinner, unlike in a big city of France which is quite busy with their work and they do not really have so much time to spend with families. So, it feels weird for the husband to spend more than two hours with the family to get to know each other after having dinner together. However, they respect each other and learn to understand their partners’ different cultures. This intercultural relationship shows different cultures in terms of high and low context culture. As in Guide to Cross-cultural Communication (Second Edition) by Reynolds and Valentine (2011), the low context culture emphasizes individual initiative (work, eat, sleep, work again, and so on) while high context culture emphasizes on spending time to maintain strong relationships with family and friends.
Cultural Values and Beliefs
They indeed have different cultures because they come from different countries. There are several cultural differences such as lifestyle. In France, especially in Paris (a big city), the routine is around sleep, work, and eating. Although it is only common in big cities. Meanwhile, in Honduras, they usually spend more time with their friends and family. They must be able to adapt because of their different lifestyle. Moreover, French's food and Honduras' food are very different. In French, the main meal is bread. Bread is like drinking water there. Meanwhile, in Honduras, they love to eat spicy and fried stuff. It is totally different and they must adapt with it. Besides lifestyle and food, there are religious differences between French and Honduras. In Honduras, people prioritize going to church (for Christians) but in French people mostly do not really concern about that. Although they have different beliefs, they still respect each other. The last one is about table manners. In French, they have a knife, a fork, and a spoon to eat in three sections such as entry, meat dish, and dessert. Meanwhile, in Honduras people usually can eating only use their fingers. Those cultural differences does not make them feel impossible for them to live together. As long as they both can respect each other and learn to understand each other. A relationship with different cultures is challenging, as Monica and Steven who have so many differences in their lifestyle. Thus, the couple must learn how to understand each other's cultures as in the book Guide to Cross-cultural Communication by Reynolds and Valentine (2011), such as understanding how low and high context cultures communicate with others, view the relationship with others, and rely on others in their life.
Conflict Resolution
Couples from different cultures often have different ways of dealing with problems. Some like to talk to the point, while others prefer to remain silent to protect their feelings. This video shows that the key is to understand each other's communication style. For example, when one party is angry, it may be their way of showing concern, not because they hate each other, we have to understand that. Successful couples usually make ground rules such as not shouting during an argument or giving time to calm down before discussing to solve the problem. So the problem is discussed with a cool head. They also learn to ask, "What do you really mean?" rather than immediately getting angry when there is a misunderstanding. The point is, conflict is not avoided, but managed patiently and wisely.
https://www.kompasiana.com/akusylca17936/684f0607ed64153b6276c432/navigating-cultural-differences-insights-from-an-intercultural-relationshipi
#metaglossia_mundus
"SAN ANTONIO — Truckers are legally required to speak and read English proficiently to drive their rigs. This isn't new. But starting today they can no longer use aids, like apps or translation books to help them.
The president signed an 'executive order' earlier in the year, citing safety as the reason.
We visited a San Antonio truck stop for 30 minutes and three out of 5 drivers we spoke to could not speak fluent English with us.
Trucker Mark Bolen says that's unsafe.
“You see road construction and all sorts of other signs that you kind of have to know exactly. They say you know all the lanes are closed.” Bolen said.
Before drivers would be allowed to use a translation device, but not anymore.
“You need to read and write in English. it's very important especially in the United States regardless if we're this close to the border of Mexico.” truck driver Reuben Talamantez said.
John Esparza is President and CEO of the Texas Trucking Association, he represents about one thousand different trucking companies and it will be up to officers who pull trucks over.
“There's no place in the state that would be off limits for our enforcement community,” Esparza said.
Sid Miller the Texas Agriculture Commissioner says he supports the new law but it could cause a short term pinch in the shipment of agriculture products but it won't be long.
“We will get our agricultural products to the consumer. I can promise you that.” Miller said.
The new language requirement will be enforced from a traffic violation, like a busted taillight or lane violation, or a set inspection at a weigh station.
That's when law enforcement would engage the driver in conversation, and then evaluate their ability to understand and respond."
https://foxsanantonio.com/newsletter-daily/new-order-bans-translation-aids-for-truckers-sparking-concern-over-safety-and-efficiency-texas-trucking-association-sid-miller-agriculture-commissioner
#metaglossia_mundus
"COLOGNE, Germany, June 24, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- DeepL, a leading global Language AI company, today announced the addition of three new languages to its platform: Vietnamese, Hebrew and an early access version of Thai, currently available on the DeepL API. These updates bring the total number of languages supported by DeepL Translator to 36, further empowering businesses around the world to overcome communication barriers and drive global growth and connectivity.
Additionally, DeepL has enhanced its document translation functionality by adding support for Arabic and Traditional Chinese. The addition of the two languages ensures users can translate entire documents in seconds, while maintaining the original formatting.
"The introduction of these languages is a direct response to demand we're hearing from our customers and will significantly enhance their daily operations," said David Parry-Jones, CRO at DeepL. "Vietnamese and Thai, in particular, are crucial for our manufacturing clients, enabling their teams to communicate swiftly and effectively with colleagues and partners across the Asia-Pacific region."
The expansion of DeepL's language support underscores the company's ongoing commitment to delivering precise, enterprise-grade translations tailored to real business needs. By adding these highly requested languages, DeepL is enhancing support for organizations operating across diverse linguistic and cultural contexts.
Key announcement highlights include:
Three new languages: Vietnamese, Hebrew and an early access version of Thai are now available on DeepL Translator and the DeepL API, bringing the total supported languages to 36. Thai is currently only available on the DeepL API, and will become available on web, mobile and desktop apps in the near future.
All languages in next-generation LLM: All languages are now live on DeepL's next-generation LLM, giving users enhanced precision and parity across the platform.
Enhanced document translation: The addition of Arabic and Traditional Chinese within DeepL's document translation functionality offers users broader compatibility for handling complex multilingual documents.
Jarek Kutylowski, CEO and Founder of DeepL, emphasized the vital role of Language AI in reshaping global communication. "More than 200,000 global business customers rely on the DeepL platform to operate and grow across borders. With every new language we add, we build a bridge between people and markets, expanding businesses' reach and accelerating their ability to compete globally."
Learn more about DeepL and experience the new languages today at www.deepl.com."
https://www.ktsm.com/business/press-releases/cision/20250624NE14311/deepl-accelerates-global-business-connectivity-and-document-translation-with-new-languages/
#metaglossia_mundus
The Language Translation Device Market was valued at USD 1.22 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach USD 3.46 billion by 2032, registering a CAGR of 12.37% from 2024 to 2032.”
"Language Translation Device Market is growing rapidly due to AI advances, global travel, digital use, and cross-cultural communication demand.
Pune, June 25, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Language Translation Device Market Size Analysis:
“The Language Translation Device Market was valued at USD 1.22 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach USD 3.46 billion by 2032, registering a CAGR of 12.37% from 2024 to 2032.”
This expansion is mainly the product of the increase of globalization, the boom of international tourism as well as the increasing demand for real-time, portable and interchangeable communication tools. The increasing penetration of cross-border business and the rising usage of language translators in government, education, medical and other domains are also expected to drive the market growth. Moreover, the development of AI-based translation technology and the integration of voice recognition and neural machine translation functions are improving product accuracy and industry popularity.
The U.S. Language Translation Device Market was valued at USD 0.30 billion in 2023 and is anticipated to reach USD 0.84 billion by 2032, growing at a CAGR of 12.13% from 2024 to 2032. Growth is fueled by increasing international travel, diverse multilingual populations, and demand for real-time communication solutions."
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/language-translation-device-market-reach-140000631.html
#metaglossia_mundus
International (MNN) -- unfoldingWord tools and technology expedite the Bible translation process.
"It often requires Western missionary linguists to spend years learning a language and then carefully translating the Bible, verse by verse...
While traditional methods have made a significant impact, they simply can’t keep up with the growing global demand for Scripture in more languages...
unfoldingWord’s innovative software, translationCore, is transforming how translation happens – putting powerful tools directly into the hands of the global Church.
International (MNN) — Bible translation has traditionally been a slow, labor-intensive process. It often requires Western missionary linguists to spend years learning a language and then carefully translating the Bible, verse by verse.
“We have profound respect for the accomplishment of our brothers and sisters in the traditional Bible translation world,” Dane with unfoldingWord says.
“Several of our founders spent 30 or 40 years in that movement. We couldn’t do what we do without their shoulders to stand on.”
While traditional methods have made a significant impact, they simply can’t keep up with the growing global demand for Scripture in more languages. That’s where unfoldingWord comes in.
unfoldingWord’s innovative software, translationCore, is transforming how translation happens – putting powerful tools directly into the hands of the global Church.
“It is our goal to deliver a comprehensive end-to-end Bible translation tool chain that’s self-service,” Dane says. “It provides self-service capabilities for drafting, checking accuracy, and even publishing translations.”
The impact has been dramatic. According to partners working with unfoldingWord, “‘When we have to check a Bible translation by hand, we can get through maybe 10 verses a day. When using translationCore, we can check 100 verses a day,’” Dane shares.
“They have all the tools right there. They don’t have to be a PhD consultant to do this.”
As the global Church increasingly takes the lead in translating Scripture for their communities, tools like translationCore are essential. However, developing this kind of technology takes resources. You can help by giving.
“It costs several hundred thousand dollars per year to develop these tools,” Dane notes. “We really need people to step up and help us to equip the global Church to translate the Bible for themselves.”"
By Katey Hearth
June 25, 2025
https://www.mnnonline.org/news/new-tools-speed-up-global-bible-translation/
#metaglossia_mundus
"Le patrimoine immatériel marocain traduit en mandarin grâce à un partenariat éditorial
À l’occasion de la 31e Foire internationale du livre de Pékin, un accord culturel majeur a été signé entre la maison d’édition marocaine Axions Communication et l’éditeur chinois People's Tianzhou Publishing. Deux ouvrages emblématiques du patrimoine marocain seront traduits en chinois, renforçant les liens littéraires et culturels entre les deux pays.
À l’occasion de la 31e Foire internationale du livre de Pékin, qui s'est tenu du 18 au 22 juin 2025, la maison d’édition marocaine Axions Communication a signé un accord important avec l’éditeur chinois People's Tianzhou Publishing Co., Ltd. pour la traduction en chinois de deux ouvrages majeurs consacrés au patrimoine culturel marocain. Cet accord marque une avancée significative dans les échanges littéraires et culturels entre le Maroc et la Chine.
Les deux ouvrages concernés sont « Trésors du patrimoine culturel immatériel du Maroc » et « Rabat, la Ville de Lumière ». Tous deux sont des livres richement illustrés, au format large de 240 pages, mettant en valeur la diversité culturelle et le charme architectural du Royaume du Maroc.
L’ouvrage « Trésors du patrimoine culturel immatériel du Maroc » met en lumière les traditions et expressions culturelles reconnues par l’UNESCO, telles que : la place Jemaa el-Fna de Marrakech, le Moussem de Tan-Tan dans le sud-ouest, la fête des cerises de Sefrou près de Meknès, les pratiques ancestrales liées à l’arganier, ainsi que la tradition musicale des Gnaouas.
Quant à « Rabat, la Ville de Lumière », il propose au lecteur une exploration photographique de la capitale marocaine, avec un accent particulier sur son paysage architectural et son développement urbain, notamment à travers de magnifiques images nocturnes.
La cérémonie de signature s’est déroulée au pavillon national du Maroc, organisé par l’Ambassade du Royaume du Maroc en Chine, en présence de Son Excellence l’Ambassadeur Abelkader Ansari.
Cet accord ouvre également la voie à une collaboration plus poussée entre les deux maisons d’édition, incluant la traduction d’autres ouvrages marocains vers le chinois ainsi que de futurs projets d’édition conjointe."
par Mohamed Elkorri
Mercredi 25 Juin 2025
https://www.lopinion.ma/Le-patrimoine-immateriel-marocain-traduit-en-mandarin-grace-a-un-partenariat-editorial_a69146.html
#metaglossia_mundus
"L’Institut fondamental d’Afrique noire (IFAN) annonce le lancement officiel de « Sentermino » en septembre 2025. Ce projet de banque de données terminologiques et de traductique (BDT) vise à harmoniser et uniformiser la production terminologique dans les langues nationales sénégalaises.
« ‘Sentermino’ est une initiative nationale d’envergure, qui vise à harmoniser, centraliser et valoriser les terminologies dans les langues nationales du Sénégal, notamment le wolof, le pulaar et le seereer », précise le communiqué transmis à l’APS. Ce projet facilitera l’enseignement bilingue et la traduction entre les langues nationales, ainsi qu’entre ces dernières et le français. La base de données centralisée, évolutive et accessible en ligne, contiendra des terminologies validées pour divers domaines : éducation, santé, environnement, artisanat, TIC et agriculture. « Sentermino » contribuera à l’opérationnalisation du modèle harmonisé de l’enseignement bilingue au Sénégal (MOHEBS) et à l’atteinte de l’Objectif de développement durable 4, relatif à une éducation de qualité, inclusive et équitable.
Selon Sud Quotidien, cette initiative vise à « faciliter la traduction entre les langues nationales elles-mêmes, et entre celles-ci et le français, grâce à la traductique »."
https://senego.com/ifan-lancement-de-la-plateforme-sentermino-pour-les-langues-nationales_1852463.html
#metaglossia_mundus
"Beyond Words: Defending Language as a Tool for Cultural Survival and Peoples’ Rights
June 25, 2025
Identities and Narratives, Highlighted News
The Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) has today published a new policy paper, “Beyond Words: Language as a Peoples’ Right”, highlighting how the erosion of linguistic diversity poses a direct threat to cultural survival, collective identity, and the ability of Peoples to exercise their right to self-determination.
Based on the experiences of UNPO members, the report demonstrates how the suppression of language is often one of the first steps taken by states to marginalise or erase Indigenous and minority communities. The paper makes a clear connection between language, identity, political participation, and cultural resilience.
Language as a Cornerstone of Rights
Language is not simply a tool for communication, it shapes how communities understand the world, relate to their environment, and pass on knowledge and identity. The paper shows that limitations on language use, especially through state policies of forced assimilation or exclusion, undermine the right of Peoples to self-determination and weaken cultural survival.
It outlines how these patterns of repression are visible across different regions, with examples from UNPO members:
Catalonia, where legal restrictions continue to weaken the Catalan language’s presence in public life and education, despite formal recognition.
Balochistan, where state policies have systematically eroded the Balochi language, contributing to the broader suppression of Baloch identity.
Khmer-Krom, where restrictions on Khmer language education and use reflect a wider system of exclusion targeting cultural and religious practices.
Kabylia, where refusal to fully recognise the Kabyle language and identity forms part of ongoing repression against the Kabyle people.
In all these cases, linguistic repression is closely linked to political marginalisation and cultural erasure. The paper emphasises that when a people’s language is excluded from education, media, public spaces, and governance, their capacity to maintain their identity, culture, and future is directly threatened.
According to UNESCO, 40% of the world’s languages are at risk of disappearing, with at least one language vanishing every two weeks. Globalisation, technological developments, mass migration, and authoritarian policies have accelerated these trends, undermining the ability of Indigenous Peoples and minority communities to transmit their languages to future generations.
The paper also raises concern about how technological advances, including the dominance of major global languages in artificial intelligence and digital platforms, further exclude minority languages, making it harder for them to survive and remain relevant in modern society.
Language Suppression as a Form of Control
The policy paper shows that states often use language as a political tool to assimilate, control, and silence Peoples. Restrictions on language use in education, media, or public life are rarely isolated, they form part of broader policies designed to weaken cultural resilience and suppress demands for recognition or self-governance.
Assimilationist policies, whether imposed through law or more subtle forms of pressure, target language to fragment communities and undermine collective rights. The paper underlines that defending language is an essential act of resistance, closely tied to protecting cultural identity and the right to self-determination.
UNPO’s Call to Action
The policy part is part of UNPO’s ‘Preserving Identities and Re-owning Narratives’ campaign and the 2025 webinar series, ‘Peoples’ Rights, Peoples’ Future – The Foundation of Our Shared Future’, which highlights the links between language rights, cultural survival, and self-determination.
UNPO urges governments, regional bodies, and the international community to:
Recognise and protect linguistic diversity within states;
Guarantee mother tongue education and language rights in public life;
End assimilationist policies and state practices that erode minority and Indigenous languages;
Ensure communities have a meaningful role in shaping language and education policies;
Safeguard linguistic rights as part of broader strategies to support self-determination and cultural resilience.
The loss of language is not only the disappearance of words, it represents the erasure of history, knowledge, identity, and the ability of Peoples to participate in shaping their own futures. Defending language rights is a necessary step towards resisting cultural repression and ensuring that unrepresented nations, Indigenous Peoples, and minority communities can thrive."
https://unpo.org/beyond-words-defending-language-as-a-tool-for-cultural-survival-and-peoples-rights/
#metaglossia_mundus
"IA africaine : quand le Bénin fait parler les langues oubliées du numérique
Le Bénin vient de poser une pierre fondatrice majeure dans la lutte contre l’exclusion numérique linguistique. Le 24 juin 2025, à Cotonou, l’Institut pour une Afrique Numérique Inclusive (IIDiA) et l’Agence des Systèmes d’Information et du Numérique (ASIN) ont lancé le Laboratoire Régional d’Innovation et des Technologies Numériques, avec un projet inaugural à fort retentissement : la création du premier modèle d’intelligence artificielle vocal en langue Fon.
Langue parlée par des millions de personnes au Bénin et dans les pays voisins, le Fon est jusqu’ici absent des interfaces technologiques dominantes. En ciblant les populations non francophones, notamment rurales et âgées, ce projet entend rompre la fracture linguistique numérique en permettant à chacun d’interagir vocalement avec la technologie dans sa langue maternelle, sans avoir recours à l’écrit ou à une langue étrangère.
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Trois cas d’usage prioritaires ont été définis :
– Trouver les pharmacies de garde ;
– Consulter son solde Mobile Money (en partenariat avec Celtis) ;
– Accéder aux démarches administratives pour obtenir un acte de naissance, via des interactions vocales simplifiées.
Pour Marc André Loko, DG de l’ASIN, « il ne s’agit pas seulement de technologie, mais de dignité. Quand une grand-mère dans un village peut demander son solde bancaire en Fon et recevoir une réponse vocale immédiate, c’est ça, l’inclusion numérique. »
Un prototype fonctionnel est attendu dans 9 mois, reposant sur la collecte communautaire de données vocales et l’entraînement de modèles IA sur des GPU de dernière génération (NVIDIA A100/H100).
Ce projet, soutenu par la Fondation Gates et les ministères du numérique du Bénin, du Sénégal et de la Côte d’Ivoire, ambitionne d’être le premier jalon d’une infrastructure publique numérique africaine, multilingue, ouverte et souveraine. L’objectif est d’étendre ce modèle à d’autres langues locales et secteurs stratégiques : agriculture intelligente, e-santé, navigation, services publics digitalisés, éducation en langues locales."
par AITN
25 juin 2025
https://afriqueitnews.com/tech-media/ia-africaine-benin-fait-parler-langues-oubliees-numerique/
#metaglossia_mundus
"GLOSSARY OF GENDER EQUALITY
Glossary of Gender Equality
JUNE 25, 2025
Gender equality discourse in Armenia has often been shaped by direct borrowings from English, frequently without adaptation to Armenian linguistic norms. While these borrowings reflect global influence, they have also contributed to the perception that gender equality is a foreign concept, disconnected from Armenian cultural and intellectual traditions. This perception has created a communicative gap both linguistic and conceptual that limits broader engagement with gender-related issues.
The Glossary of Gender Equality directly addresses this gap. Developed by Assistant Professor Rafik Santrosyan of the American University of Armenia in collaboration with the UNDP Armenia Gender Equality Portfolio, the glossary enriches and standardizes gender-related terminology in Armenian. It introduces expanded definitions and new terms specifically adapted to Armenia’s sociolinguistic context, while drawing on international standards, scientific literature, and legal frameworks.
Designed as a practical reference for policymakers, researchers, educators, students, and practitioners, the glossary not only promotes the accurate use of global gender terminology in Armenian, but also revitalizes the expressive potential of the language itself. Rather than relying on uncritical translations, it restores underused native terms and introduces thoughtful neologisms aligned with Armenian linguistic logic.
The glossary’s innovations extend beyond terminology. Its definitions embed contextually grounded explanations that invite deeper understanding and more inclusive public discourse. In doing so, the Glossary of Gender Equality represents a decolonial intervention reclaiming space for gender discourse that is locally rooted, culturally resonant, and globally connected.
This publication reflects UNDP Armenia’s continued commitment to inclusive governance, linguistic equity, and the advancement of gender equality through accessible and culturally responsive knowledge."
https://www.undp.org/armenia/publications/glossary-gender-equality
#metaglossia_mundus
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"Risk Management in Translation, by Anthony Pym
Abstract: A recent addition to Cambridge University Press’s Elements in Translation and Interpreting series is Risk Management in Translation, authored by Anthony Pym, one of the world’s foremost translation studies scholars (Ioannidis, 2024). In this concise but insightful volume, Pym presents and analyses a topic of immense academic and practical relevance which synthesises and develops aspects touched upon in some of his previous research (e.g., see Pym, 2015). Risk Management in Translation is divided in six sections. The first, entitled ‘Why talk about risk?’ (pp. 1-8), highlights the inherent uncertainty underlying (multilingual) communication. Pym goes beyond traditional rule-based notions of equivalence, highlighting that in many areas of translation, the “problems of translating a text do not have clear, simple solutions” (Pym, 2025a, p. 1). In discussing the role of risk and probability in numerical economic and business-related contexts, Pym then delineates how risk management interplays with the translator’s craft, and how – consciously or not – it may affect a translator’s work and mindset. As such, the importance of cooperation in enhancing the probability of a successful outcome – as well as in the avoidance of failure – is underscored."
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/392812615_Risk_management_in_translation_-_Book_review
#metaglossia_mundus