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Charles Tiayon
November 21, 7:58 PM
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On Dante Alighieri’s ‘Paradiso,’ a new translation by Mary Jo Bang
Matthew NisinsonNovember 20, 2025 Mary Jo Bang’s translation of Dante Allighieri’s Paradiso by Copper Canyon Press, 2025 displays the enduring power of this classic work of Western literature. For such an old text, a contemporary reader might be surprised by Paradiso’s continuing relevance. Dante wrote at a time of intense political strife characterized by war, institutional corruption, and civil conflict. Dante’s Paradiso, imagining a better world through the lens of divine love, was written by a man exiled from his beloved home city, and worried that the powerful were destroying his beloved homeland. While Dante’s specific 14th century conflicts may not always resonate, his efforts to conceive a better world built on sincere goodness resonate—when we think earnestly about what makes a good person, it helps us to be better. Paradiso is a rich text to explore, but foremost, it’s a beautiful poem, written by a skillful poet and thinker, conveyed in translation by Mary Jo Bang, another excellent poet, with a rich appreciation for Dante’s work and a persuasive belief in Dante’s continued relevance. Translating a book like Paradiso, enshrined in many literary canons, is different from producing the first English translation of contemporary writing. In the notes, Bang lists 15 different prior translations of Paradiso into English, from as long ago as 1819 to as recent as 2008. Retranslations necessarily react to and build upon the translations that came before them, the position the source text occupies in our culture, and the difference between contemporary and original audiences. The translator has to convey the source material to a new audience in a manner worthy of source and audience. Translation is not a perfect one-to-one correspondence of source language and translated text. Translation is art. Sawako Nakayasu conveys the nature of this art in her long poem Say Translation Is Art, Ugly Duckling Presse 2020. Translations can take many forms and approaches, Bang’s approach calls to mind Nakayasu’s passage: Say what is the largest unit of translation, say poem, say
book, say all the books, say everything they ever wrote,
say everything they never wrote, have yet to write, say
the transit between everything they ever wrote, or say
something larger, more vast. Bang demonstrates a deep appreciation for the contradictions and balancings of translation, consistent with Dante’s focus on approachability for the reader. Bang’s knowledge of Dante guides and enriches her translation. As she explains in her note on the translation, Dante deliberately chose not to use Latin, the poetic language of his era. Latin “would overpower whatever was being said and make it seem cold and remote.” Instead, Dante chose to use “the language that everyone learns effortlessly as a child because he wanted as many people as possible to read his poem—even women, he said. Thirdly, he wanted the intimacy, familiarity, and warmth that are innate in the language with which one speaks to family and friends.” Bang’s translation honors Dante’s goal to support a broad readership, while her detailed notes convey the depth of scholarship and understanding that position her to do so. In form, Bang reflects Dante’s complex rhyme scheme, terza rima, with a three line free verse stanza that reflects the structure without contorting the English language into an awkward rhyme scheme that flows more naturally in Dante’s Italian. Bang’s notes appear at the end of each canto, but the reader need not turn to them to appreciate the poem. If one turns to the notes, they enrich the experience of the text. Bang is transparent about her process and choices as translator, and committed to making available the broader context for readers interested in how Dante’s religious, literary, and historical references, plus his life and contemporaries, suffuse the text. For example, in Canto VI, Justinian tells Dante about the divine eagle from its origins as symbol of ancient Rome to its current role as papal standard. Through this eagle symbol the legitimacy of divine and worldly institutions extend backwards and forwards in time, reinforcing each other. But Justinian warns it is unrightfully used and opposed by factions in Dante’s Italy: And you know what it did, from the wronged Sabine women to the grief of Lucretia, defeating The nearby nations over the reign of seven kings. You know what it did when it was carried By illustrious Romans against Brennus, against Pyrrhus, and other principalities and districts, After which Torquatus and Quinctus, called Curly Locks for his wet-mop hair, and the Decii and Fabii Acquired fame—gladly, I’ll keep it with mine— Justinian’s Roman history continues to Dante’s present, with Bang’s endnotes to Canto VI providing context on each historical figure and event referenced. Having completed his litany, Justinian contrasts the noble past with the present’s unworthy factions: Now you can judge for yourself the offenses Of those same people I’ve accused above, Which have caused all your suffering. One group pits the gold-fleur-de-lis Against the official symbol, the other usurps it For their party—it’s hard to know which is worse. (from Canto VI) Dante, through Justinian, calls out Italian factions for how their focus on worldly honor and fame lead them astray from the true path, weakeningThe Holy Roman Empire and the Church, and harming the people who depend on these institutions. For all he moralizes about others’ sins, Dante errs too. He may write about saints but he isn’t one himself. His struggles with the ethical quandaries forced on him by the attempt to portray heaven have allowed generations of readers to find value wrestling with the text. One need not share Dante’s Catholicism, or Christianity, to benefit from his effort. The unfairness that so many people are excluded from heaven merely because they lived in circumstances where they could not know about Christianity, by distance or time, troubled Dante. This subject recurs throughout Paradiso, and while Dante does not resolve the issue clearly, he approaches the subject from a sincere depth of care. And for all that Dante accepts that belief in Christ is essential to get to heaven (See e.g., Canto XIX vv103-105), Paradiso nonetheless includes a significant number of preChristian figures among heaven’s residents. As Bang points out in her endnote to Dante’s lines about Ripheus the Trojan’s inclusion in heaven, Dante’s “implication is that, through his righteousness, Ripheus must have intuited God’s grace and trusted that He would provide a means for his salvation.” It struck me as a potentially heretical notion for Dante that a person’s goodness is sufficient, even without Christianity. And poor Virgil, stuck in Limbo! Bang writes that translating Dante “helps me to see the world from a new and much more empathetic perspective.” Conveying some of her motivation moving in line with his. Consider, Reader, if what’s beginning here Didn’t go any further, how you’d be left With an anguished craving to know more, And you’ll appreciate for yourself how much I wanted to find out about their situation As soon as they appeared before my eyes. (from Canto V) This passage describes fictional Dante’s motive to learn more. Bang in her notes points out that some scholars say that, by this direct address to the reader, Dante “heightens the empathic relationship between reader and text.” This relationship, and the passage’s impact, is further heightened because it describes the authorial Dante’s intention in writing The Divine Comedy. By speaking directly to the reader, Dante invites us to collaborate in this project. Bang’s translation, notes, and introduction continue this ongoing collaboration. The reader is asked to meaningfully engage with Dante’s successes and failures, not passively accept his conclusions. One flaw that stood out to me, and Bang, was Dante’s struggle with the concept of predestination, characterized both by the religious doctrinal question (Bang’s focus), and Dante’s historical approach. It’s an easy trap to see one’s present as the natural and necessary end goal of all that came before it. In Paradiso Dante interprets past events by how they connect and justify his present. For example, in the passage from Canto VI, cited above, Dante’s Justinian explains Roman history and castigates the factional conflicts of Dante’s Italy. A modern reader will be accustomed to a version of Roman history that treats a succession of global hegemonies as a natural process, falling into a similar trap. As a contemporary, Jewish reader, I was struck when Dante, speaking of the crucifixion in Canto VII, says “That one death suited God and the Sanhedrin; / With it, the earth shook and Heaven opened.” With the crucifixion as crux of Dante’s history, all that came before was always leading to it and an inevitable Jewish culpability. In her note to these lines, Bang connects this scene to Inferno and Dante’s encounter with “Caiaphas, the Roman-appointed priest who chaired the Sanhedrin (Jewish Council), explaining that Caiaphas argued that if Jesus were perceived as a Jewish political threat by the Romans, all the Jews might suffer and, therefore, it was ‘expedient, for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not’ (John 11:50).” But, Bang continues “However Dante or the Gospels might frame the Crucifixion, Christ was a victim of anti-Jewish violence by Roman Gentiles (non-Jews). The New Testament’s persistence in placing the blame for Christ’s death on the Jews has given rise to centuries of anti-Semitism.” This lapse is easier for Dante to fall into because he already established the Roman Empire as precursor to, and legitimizer for, the Church’s authority. Dante’s Roman Empire cannot simultaneously play the role of villain of the crucifixion. Dante’s error, blaming an imperial power’s actions on the members of a minority group involved, and conflating specific politically powerful people with their entire ethnic group, are common. By connecting the dots and criticizing the conclusion, Bang shows her strength as translator. It’s challenging to approach a work of this scale. Helpfully, Bang’s introduction acts as paratextual “ladder”— a summarizing prose poem positioning the reader as the Dante of Paradiso. This interpretative scaffolding previews the poem’s ethical problems and formal pressures, and characterizes Bang’s interpretation. The impact is to strengthen Paradiso’s poetry and story, not “spoil” it, as might occur with a text focused on narrative surprise. Disclosure here intensifies, rather than diminishes, the experience of discovery. Bang begins: “You’re finally nearing the end of the Holy Highway that leads to gladness and joy. This after so many beginnings. It was six days ago that you found yourself in a dark forest, lost and ready to give up. The roman poet Virgil arrived, and the two of you traveled through Hell’s nine circles and up Mount Purgatory’s seven terraces to arrive here, where you are now, standing next to Beatrice, Bice, your childhood love.” Bang does not hide behind impartial distance, but allows her personality and perspective to come through. She subtly incorporates language from more contemporary sources—showing in the notes how she conveys Dante with nods to Beyoncé, Emily Dickinson, Bob Dylan, Madeleine L’Engle, Whitney Houston, Charles Mingus, The Simpsons, and Jethro Tull, among others. In the first stanza of Canto VIII Bang translates: The world, when in peril, used to believe, beauty Queen Venus, moving through the third epicycle, Radiated love that was crazy and deranged, This phrasing “crazy and deranged” derives from Beyonce’s lyrics in Crazy in Love. Similarly in Canto XIX she translates “Oh earthly creatures! Oh, minds as thick as a brick!” borrowing from Jethro Tull’s album, Thick as a Brick. Bang delights in Dante’s use of the rhetorical device hysteron proteron, “a figure of speech in which the last comes first”, noting Dante’s uses of the device in Paradiso. In the first use, Canto II, Dante describes with wonder the speed of his arrival with Beatrice in the first celestial layer of heaven, the moon, “In maybe as much time as an arrow lands, / Flies, and the notch lets go of the bow—”. Bang explains that the device is “used to represent the near simultaneity with which these events take place.” In other notes, Bang links the hysteron proteron to Bob Dylan, and to a Balliol College, Oxford dining club that reversed the order of courses in a meal, and even, per a letter from Graham Greene, hosted an entire “backwards day”, beginning the morning with formal dress and a game of bridge. Bang’s endnotes often explain the depth of Dante’s meaning and references and how this understanding guided her choices in translation. Hosanna, Holy Lord of Hosts, Overlighting with thy brightness The blessed fires of these kingdoms. (from Canto VII) Bang explains, among other things, that she chose “overlighting” to convey Dante’s coinage of a “Latinate neologism, superillustrans”, departing from “double lighting”, used by many other translators of Dante. “Overlighting” because the Latin super means “over” or “above”, and Dante’s Italian separates this from the image of a double light a few lines later. Bang doesn’t call it out, but “overlighting” also produces a more elegant poetic line in English. Bang’s insight into Dante’s holy guide, Beatrice strengthens the poem. Few readers would be surprised to learn that portraying Beatrice as Dante’s intellectual and spiritual superior and guide has upset certain readers since Dante’s time. Bang sees that Dante chose to portray Beatrice with tremendous respect, not as damsel in distress, but as committed savior, descended from heaven to instigate his salvation (an interesting parallel descent, perhaps another reason Beatrice upsets some). As Bang explains in her Purgatorio (also excerpted here), Beatrice “is glorious, with a candor that results from a clarity of thought. What looks like heartlessness, or arrogance, is the awareness that if she shows Dante mercy, she’ll jeopardize the outcome. She’s not about to fail. Not Beatrice.” A translator’s biases can unintentionally influence their work. In another’s hands Beatrice could read as foolish, hyperbolic, or mere mouthpiece for Dante. Bang shows her as a powerful, noble mind, dedicated to doing the right thing, unwilling to soften the truth if it risks her responsibility to her pupil. We see this posture of firm, loving correction even in her first words to Dante in Canto I, telling him they have arrived in heaven: And began: “You get all mixed up by sticking With a figment of your imagination, so you don’t See what you would see if you shook it off. You’re not, as you believe, on earth. In truth, lightning escaping its natural place Never raced so fast as you back to yours.”
At the end, Beatrice and Bang accomplish their missions, Dante journeys through heaven, beholds god, and is returned to share his experience with the rest of us, The Divine Comedy—stark warnings about the consequences of our selfishness and cruelty, promise that if we are good to each other, we will be rewarded. Paradiso is the pinnacle of that argument. Dante died soon after finishing it." https://therumpus.net/2025/11/20/on-dante-alighieris-paradiso-a-new-translation-by-mary-jo-bang/
#Metaglossia
#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
"“Words the Color of Pulsating Flesh”: Frantz Fanon and the Politics of Translation
NGF Conference Room, De la Costa Hall, Ateneo de Manila University
10 Dec 2025 05:00 pm - 10 Dec 2025 07:00 pm
This lecture explores how translation operates within the intertwined realms of the historical, social, and biopolitical, particularly in colonial contexts. Drawing on Frantz Fanon’s writings, it examines the necropolitical dynamics of language, race, and decolonization, highlighting how translation underlies both imperial rule and anti-colonial resistance. The discussion situates these insights within the contemporary resurgence of fascism.
Admission is free and open to the public. Books will be available for purchase before and after the event. Please bring a valid ID for campus access.
ABSTRACT
Gramsci once wrote that translation is always conjunctural, at the crossroads of the historical and the social. It is thus woven into the politics of life, or what some have called the biopolitical. We can see this most clearly in colonial regimes. Imperial rule as well as resistances to it across different linguistic and social groups would be inconceivable without the workings of translation. In this essay, I flesh out this history by looking at specific biopolitical and necropolitical formations in colonial translation found in the writings of Frantz Fanon especially with regard to language, race and decolonization. And I do so against the backdrop of the surge of fascism today.
BIONOTE
Vicente L. Rafael is Professor of History and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle. His research and teaching have focused mostly on the comparative political and cultural history of the Philippines, the United States and Southeast Asia.
He is the author most recently of The Sovereign Trickster: Death and Laughter in the Age of Duterte (2022). The rest of his books include Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society Under Early Spanish Rule (1988/1993); White Love and Other Events in Filipino Histories (2000); The Promise of the Foreign: Nationalism and the Technics of Translation in the Spanish Philippines (2005); and Motherless Tongues: The Insurgency of Language Amid Wars of Translation (2016), all published by Duke University Press and co-published in the Philippines by Ateneo de Manila University Press.
He also edited Discrepant Histories: Translocal Essays in Filipino Cultures (1995) and Figures of Criminality in Indonesia, the Philippines and Colonial Vietnam (1999). Rafael also wrote the Introduction to a collection of Nick Joaquin's stories, The Woman Who Had Two Navels and Tales of the Tropical Gothic, published by Penguin Classics (2017).
Rafael also writes, in the Philippines, op-ed columns for Rappler and Philippine Daily Inquirer, and has written, in the US, for The Atlantic and The New York Review of Books. He has been the recipient of numerous awards both abroad and in the Philippines, including a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, Social Science Research Council Fellowship, a Ford Foundation fellowship, and residencies at the Stanford Humanities Center, University of California, Irvine Humanities Center, East-West Center in Honolulu, and several others. After graduating with a PhD in History and Anthropology from Cornell University, he taught at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, the University of California at San Diego, Stanford University, and currently at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is married to Lila Ramos Shahani.
ABOUT KRITIKA KULTURA
Kritika Kultura is acknowledged by a host of Asian and Asian American Studies libraries and scholarly networks and indexed in the MLA International Bibliography, Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Clarivate), Scopus, EBSCO, the Directory of Open Access Journals, and the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs (ICCTP). Read KK issues and learn about submission guidelines and events at https://archium.ateneo.edu/kk or email the editors at kk@ateneo.edu."
The public is invited to
“Words the Color of Pulsating Flesh”: Frantz Fanon and the Politics of Translation
by Vicente L. Rafael (University of Washington)
Part of the KRITIKA KULTURA LECTURE SERIES
To register, visit https://go.ateneo.edu/KKLectureRafael
https://www.ateneo.edu/events/2025-12-10-words-color-pulsating-flesh-frantz-fanon-politics-translation
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"...Traduire, un acte proche de la peinture
Lauréat cette année de ce Grand Prix Société des Gens de Lettres / ministère de la Culture pour l’œuvre de traduction, Philippe Vigreux cite, pour décrire son métier, une phrase de Victor Hugo : « Le traducteur est un éternel peseur d’acceptions. ». Il s’agit pour lui d’un travail sinueux, à la fois syntaxique, stylistique et culturel qui se rapproche… de la peinture. « Dans l’acte de traduire, il doit y avoir ce double mouvement de rapprochement et de distance qu’effectue le peintre en peignant. Il s’approche au plus près de la toile pour y déposer une touche puis s’éloigne pour voir si cette touche s’inscrit bien dans l’ensemble du tableau et est en cohérence avec lui. C’est exactement comme cela qu’on procède pour traduire. »
Ce Grand Prix est le couronnement de son travail et une reconnaissance par ses pairs. « Je suis issu d’un milieu très modeste et le peu que je possède, je ne le dois qu’à mon travail. Ce prix en est la confirmation. » Très humblement, il se voit comme une « menuisier littéraire » - terme emprunté à Jacques-Alain Miller - des auteurs qu’il traduit. Un terme d’autant plus important en regardant les évolutions du métier de traducteur littéraire, par essence humain et artisanal. « La traduction littéraire est l’étalon idéal pour mesurer les dangers que l’IA fait peser sur une partie de nos vies. »"
https://www.culture.gouv.fr/actualites/traduire-un-texte-litteraire-un-travail-dans-l-infiniment-petit
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
La traduction comme geste. Un article de la revue TTR (Redéfinir la traduction ? Fluctuations historiques, nouvelles pratiques et épistémologies en devenir) diffusée par la plateforme Érudit.
Un article de la revue TTR
Volume 38, numéro 1, 1er semestre 2025, p. 241–269
Redéfinir la traduction ? Fluctuations historiques, nouvelles pratiques et épistémologies en devenir
Tous droits réservés © Freddie Plassard, 2025
Résumé
Inspiré de la philosophie du geste de Michel Guérin, le présent article aborde la traduction sous l’angle du geste, à la fois concret et abstrait, physique et mental voire métaphorique. Pour étayer ce point de vue, les propos de traducteurs ou traductologues et la désignation de la traduction dans différentes langues sont passés en revue, avant de procéder à un inventaire sommaire de gestes traductifs mis en évidence par les méthodologies d’étude de la traduction aux différents stades de sa réalisation. Si les études cognitives se focalisent sur les gestes concomitants de la lecture (balisage, écrémage, exploration ou autres) et de l’écriture, les études génétiques portent, elles, sur les gestes propres à l’écriture et c’est sur elle que nous nous appesantirons. En renouant avec une conception instrumentiste de la traduction où traduire est posé comme savoir-faire, le concept de geste permet de rendre compte de l’acte dans sa globalité, mais aussi dans le détail des opérations discrétisées de son effectuation, lesquelles embrayent à leur tour sur la question de leur automatisation.
Mots-clés : traduction, geste, philosophie du geste, lecture, écriture
Abstract
Drawing inspiration from Michel Guérin’s philosophy of gesture, this article approaches translation from the perspective of gesture, considered to be at once concrete and abstract, physical and mental, and even metaphorical. To support this point of view, we first review a selection of qualifications proposed by translators and translation theorists, as well as designations of translation in different languages. We then provide a brief inventory of translational gestures as they are revealed by the methodologies used to analyze the various stages and operations involved in producing a translation. While cognitive studies focus on concomitant reading gestures (tagging, skimming, exploration, etc.) and writing gestures, genetic studies focus on writing-specific gestures, upon which we elaborate. Finally, returning to an instrumentalist conception of translation, according to which translating is considered a skill, the concept of gesture enables us to understand the entire translation process, on the one hand, and, on the other, the details of the discrete operations involved in its execution. In turn, this raises the question of their automation.
Keywords: translation, gesture, philosophy of gesture, reading, writing
"Machine Translation Literacy in the Scholarly Community. Bingley, Emerald Publishing Ltd.
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#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"Qu'est-ce qui va changer?
...
La première occurrence du mot « amour » est remplacée par « miséricorde » :
« Sa miséricorde s’étend d’âge en âge »
Le mot grec qui correspond à miséricorde (éléos) revient trois fois dans les Cantiques évangéliques (Lc 1, 50.54.72) mais avait été traduit par le terme plus large "amour". Pour laisser place à cette facette de l'amour qu'est la miséricorde, la nouvelle traduction l'a introduite mais à un seul endroit seulement pour que ces cantiques restent aisément chantables.
Le mot « race » est remplacé par « descendance » :
« en faveur d’Abraham et de sa descendance à jamais ».
Le terme race a été retiré pour des raisons compréhensible de sensibilité à ce sujet dans la société. De plus, descendance correspond mieux au grec (spermati) et à l'hébreu sous-jacent. Il s'agit de génération, donc de descendance, pas de "race".
Communiqué de la CIPL et de Mgr Jean Kockerols, président de la Commission interdiocéaine de pastorale liturgique"
https://www.cathobel.be/2025/11/magnificat-nouvelle-version/
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"How did the first words originate?
The first words may have emerged 135,000 years ago.
Ingrid Schou
journalist
Published 28 November 2025
“The first words and languages left no traces,” says Jan Terje Faarlund. He is a linguist at the University of Oslo. (Photo: University of Oslo)
According to the Norwegian dictionary, jeksel derives from the Old Norse word jaxl. And that's where the explanation ends.
But what kind of word is jaxl? And how did words emerge, way back in the beginning?
Probably started as sounds
“In short – we don't know,” says Sverre Stausland. He is a professor of linguistics at the University of Oslo.
“The first words and languages haven’t left any traces,” says Jan Terje Faarlund, also a linguistics professor at the University of Oslo.
Part of the reason is that words arose so long ago – well before humans learned to write and longer still before any audio recorders were available. The latest research suggests that verbal languages may have arisen 135,000 years ago.
Ugh! Ouch! Oh!
Our human species, Homo sapiens, has existed for around 300,000 years. At least that is what we have solid evidence for to date. Some researchers believe that we may yet find even older skulls and skeletal remains of our species.
But regardless, we might have lived without words for more than half of our time as Homo sapiens. That seems almost impossible – but remember that no other species besides ours uses words today either. Nor do dogs or elephants speak with words.
“It could be that we used body language,” says Faarlund.
Like pointing at things, hugging to show love, or touching our stomachs when we were hungry.
“Early humans probably made sounds to express emotions like joy, fear and pain. And then they probably had other sounds to warn of danger, call to each other and so on.
Just think of sounds like ugh, ouch, or oh.
“Are they really ‘words’ as such?” asks Stausland.
We might have lived without words for more than half of our time as Homo sapiens. It sounds almost impossible – but no other species besides ours uses words today either. (Photo: Gorodenkoff / Shutterstock)
From sounds to words
Researchers believe that the first proper words most likely originated from imitation.
“People would try to imitate the sound that some animal or thing made,” says Faarlund.
An example is the ancient Egyptian and Chinese word for cat – “mao,” which is similar to the “meow” sound that cats make.
“How the rest of our words originated is a big mystery,” says Faarlund.
And the same applies to the word for the tooth at the back of the mouth. Jeksel remains a mystery.
“We don’t know where the word comes from,” Stausland says.
Words have both a function and a history, but basically they often consist of random sounds.
“Words are really just sounds that allow us to distinguish them from each other,” says Stausland.
Today, we often use words we already have in our vocabulary to create new ones. Just think of ‘snowboard’ or ‘cellphone’, for example, or the word Lego which is made up of the Danish words leg godt, meaning ‘play well’.
Researchers believe that the first proper words originated from imitation. An example is the ancient Egyptian and Chinese word for cat – “mao”, which sounds similar to ‘meow’.
"Mamama, papapa"
So we don't know what the very first word is. But researchers have tried to find some of the oldest words that still exist. They include "mama" and "papa".
“These words are found across many languages in the world,” says Stausland. “It's easy to understand why. Small babies make their first sounds with their lips,” he says.
Those sounds correspond to the letters m, p and b, and the vowel a. That's why the first sounds are often "mamama" and "papapa".
“When the mother or father is nearby, they think the child is using a word about them. But these are actually just the simplest sounds a baby can make,” says Stausland.
Our species originated in Africa, and gradually humans spread across the globe. We brought with us the ability to learn languages, and today we have between 6,000 and 7,500 different languages, according to SNL.no.
People with different languages met long before there were schools, language books or Google Translate. For example, the Vikings travelled a lot. How did they manage to talk to people? You can read more about that here.
Perhaps people in the future will also wonder about what words and languages people used before them. This research will continue to be a difficult task, because languages come and go.
UNESCO believes that 1,500 of today's languages are at risk of disappearing. You can read more about that here.
References:
First traces of language: Miyagawa et al. (2025). Linguistic capacity was present in the Homo sapiens population 135 thousand years ago. Frontiers in Psychology, 16. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1503900
First Homo sapiens discovery: Hublin, J.-J. etc. (2017). New fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and the pan-African origin of Homo sapiens. Nature, 546, 289–292. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature22336
———
Translated by Ingrid P. Nuse
Read the Norwegian version of this article at forskning.no
https://www.sciencenorway.no/language-the-human-body/how-did-the-first-words-originate/2576459
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"À un peu plus de vingt ans, Nafissa Misili incarne cette génération africaine mobile, ambitieuse et prête à franchir les frontières pour se construire un avenir solide...
Arrivée en Turquie après son baccalauréat, Nafissa choisit ce pays pour « sa capacité d’intégration » et pour les opportunités qu’il offre aux étudiants étrangers, notamment africains. « Beaucoup pensent que la Turquie est un pays raciste, mais au contraire, c’est un pays qui prône l’intégration », dit-elle. Coûts d’études abordables, bourses publiques accessibles pour les étudiants africains, environnement cosmopolite : pour elle, le choix s’est imposé comme une évidence.
Titulaire d’une licence en Relations internationales, elle poursuit aujourd’hui un master en gestion des crises humanitaires et des catastrophes naturelles, un domaine exigeant qui correspond à sa sensibilité et à son désir d’agir... Nafissa a dû suivre une année entière de cours intensifs de turc...
Un profil trilingue très recherché
Étudiante dynamique, elle multiplie les petits emplois pour arrondir les fins de mois. Sa capacité à parler français, anglais et turc attire rapidement l’attention. Dans un pays où « il est rare de trouver des francophones », Nafissa devient un profil recherché. Traduction dans le tourisme, accompagnement dans le secteur médical… puis, plus récemment, une expérience marquante : interprète officielle lors de la 28e session de formation au journalisme de guerre, organisée du 3 au 14 novembre 2025 à Ankara par Anadolu Ajansi (AA), l’Académie de police et la TİKA.
Au sein de cette formation exigeante, destinée à 24 participants issus de neuf pays africains, Nafissa était la voix entre les formateurs turcs et les journalistes francophones. «C’était très challenging », reconnaît-elle. Travailler avec des militaires, comprendre des notions liées au combat, traduire avec précision chaque instruction… un rôle clé, parfois délicat: «Les formateurs, je parle à leur place. Il faut être prête. Chaque soir, je me préparais pour le lendemain.»
Ses pairs comme les formateurs ont salué sa vivacité intellectuelle, notamment sa capacité à retenir instantanément les questions des journalistes francophones et à reformuler avec exactitude les explications techniques des instructeurs turcs. Une intelligence pratique et linguistique qui a largement facilité le déroulement des séances.
Où se voit-elle dans cinq ans ? Elle sourit: «On ne sait pas où le vent peut nous mener. Mais j’espère travailler pour une organisation internationale, que ce soit dans la traduction ou mon domaine de spécialité.»...
Des monts turcs à son Cameroun natal, elle porte une histoire inspirante : celle d’une jeune femme africaine qui se construit loin de chez elle, avec courage, intelligence et une maîtrise linguistique qui ouvre les portes.
Cheikh Tidiane NDIAYE"
https://lesoleil.sn/actualites/arts-et-culture/nafissa-misili-la-jeune-interprete-camerounaise-qui-relie-lafrique-et-la-turquie/
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"Le Vatican élargit ses règles linguistiques : la Curie romaine autorise désormais la rédaction de ses documents officiels non seulement en latin, mais aussi dans d’autres langues.
Le latin n’est plus la seule langue officielle autorisée pour la rédaction des documents au Vatican, a annoncé la Curie romaine, le gouvernement du Saint-Siège, mardi.
L’article 50 du règlement général de la Curie a été modifié en ce sens. On peut désormais y lire : « Les autorités de la Curie devront, en règle générale, écrire leurs actes en latin ou dans une autre langue. » Jusqu’à présent, il était permis d’utiliser « d’autres langues plus courantes aujourd’hui, en cas de besoin. »
Les déclarations officielles et discours du pape sont actuellement publiés en anglais, en italien, en espagnol et en français. L’allemand et le polonais ne sont plus utilisés, dans ce cas, depuis la fin des pontificats de Benoît XVI, d’origine allemande, et de Jean-Paul II, polonais.
https://www.rtl.be/actu/monde/europe/le-vatican-rompt-avec-la-tradition-et-annonce-un-changement-important/2025-11-25/article/771626
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"...Le prix Pierre-François Caillé de la traduction 2025 a été décerné le 20 novembre, au FIAP Jean Monet de Paris, à Louise de Brisson pour sa traduction du letton de "La Rivière" de Laura Vinogradova publiée aux éditions Bleu et Jaune (2024).
Louise de Brisson à la cérémonie de remise du prix Pierre-François Caillé de la traduction 2025 © SFT
Louise de Brisson est traductrice littéraire du letton et enseignante à l’Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (Inalco), à Paris.
Elle se passionne très tôt pour la culture et la langue lettones, qu’elle commence à étudier à l’Inalco. Elle continue à cultiver cet intérêt tout en poursuivant sa carrière dans le domaine des droits de l’homme, puis décide de s’orienter vers la traduction. Elle termine actuellement le master en traduction littéraire à l’Inalco.
En 2022, elle commence à assurer des cours de version lettone en licence à l’Inalco et, à partir de janvier 2024, elle y dispense des enseignements de littérature et de culture lettones.
La Rivière est le premier roman dont Louise de Brisson signe la traduction.
Fondé en 1981 par la Société française des traducteurs (SFT) avec le concours de l’École supérieure d’interprètes et de traducteurs (ESIT), le prix Pierre-François Caillé de la traduction récompense chaque année un traducteur ou une traductrice qui débute dans l’édition. Il vise à encourager les jeunes talents et à valoriser le rôle essentiel de la traduction dans l’accès à la littérature mondiale.
Le jury a salué le travail de Louise de Brisson pour :
la fluidité de sa langue, sa fidélité à la sobriété poétique de l’original, sa capacité à restituer l’atmosphère intime du texte, une traduction française qui « coule comme une rivière », naturelle, épurée, sans jamais trahir l’autrice.
Dix ans après la disparition de sa sœur et toujours hantée par les souvenirs de son enfance malheureuse, Ruta s’enfuit – d’une vie confortable, de la ville, de son travail, de son mari et surtout d’elle-même – dans la maison héritée de son père.
Elle découvre les secrets de cet homme qu’elle n’a jamais connu, apprend à vivre simplement, et tisse des liens avec ses voisins. Parviendra-t-elle à comprendre son passé et à apprécier son présent ?
Écrit dans un langage volontairement simple, ce roman aborde des questions complexes : la quête de sa place et de son épanouissement dans la vie. C’est un récit universel sur l’acceptation de soi et des autres."
26 novembre 2025
Europe et Eurasie
https://www.inalco.fr/actualites/louise-de-brisson-laureate-du-prix-pierre-francois-caille-de-la-traduction-2025
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"Maria B. Olujic Considers the Role of Neologisms and Idioms in Croatia’s Linguistic Landscape
Czesław Miłosz wrote, “Language is the only homeland.” I didn’t understand that sentence when I first read it. I was too busy trying to speak correctly—in English, in Croatian, in a blend that never quite landed on either shore.
The first time I tried to read Miłosz aloud, my tongue caught on the ł in his name. I was in class, new to the U.S., and eleven years old. My American teacher smiled, corrected me gently, but my cheeks burned hot. That same week I said “misery” instead of “mystery.” A few kids laughed. I didn’t. I stopped raising my hand for a month. I learned to taste every word before I let it out.
But I understand Miłosz now—not just intellectually, but bodily. Like tongue in English, the Croatian word jezik refers to both language and the tongue in our mouths—the spoken word, and the muscle that shapes it, or gets bitten when silence is safer. Or scorched, when a truth slips out too fast.
What he meant, I think, is that when borders collapse, when flags change, when your birthplace wakes up with a different name—sometimes six names—you realize your country hasn’t just split; your language has, too. Suddenly, one tongue wears four alphabets. Six new passports, three new anthems, and a dozen ways to say mine. What lingers is the echo of a phrase that only your people say. A joke that dies in translation. The lullaby your grandmother hummed while shelling white beans into her apron, her voice low enough not to wake the war. What stays is the syntax. The cadence. The words no one else knows how to carry.
The old state had collapsed. The new state was telling us how to speak. We used our tongues to carve out a space between what was imposed and what was ours.
In my grandmother’s kitchen, sentences simmered like soup. She never snapped. Even anger came out in full idioms: “Prije ispeci pa onda reci,” Bake it before you speak it, she’d say, tapping a wooden spoon against a pot for punctuation. Words were not thrown, they were tempered.
At first, I thought that saying was just village wisdom—a folksy version of Think before you speak. But under communism, it meant something else. A careless sentence, a joke dropped at the wrong table, could mark you. Or your father. Or the neighbor with too many books. Language wasn’t expression; it was a confession, or armor.
Even children knew this. On the walk to the village school, we knew we had to greet strangers—always. But before we spoke, we had to choose. Two greetings danced on our tongue: Good day or Blessed be Jesus and Mary. Both polite. One dangerous. We had no way of knowing which of these the stranger expected—only that one might keep you safe, and the other might mark you.
You chose. You spoke. You got it wrong.
The stranger pulled your ear until it burned raw. And the next day, the teacher called you to the front of the classroom: Didn’t we teach you how to speak properly? How to greet people? Then came the walk—the shuffle to the front of the classroom, the shame of standing there on display.
Speech was a test. A trap. You learned to scan a face, to read a posture, to hesitate. Because as they say, “Cim otvoriš usta, odmah znaju tko si.” The moment you speak, they know exactly who you are.
That’s how it worked—even the smallest words carried weight. Every sentence was a risk, every greeting a gamble. Meaning bent itself around silence. Opinion disguised itself as proverb. Grief folded tightly inside idiom, like a note slipped under a door.
I still carry that delay in my mouth. Even in English, I sometimes test a sentence before it leaves me—like checking the oven. The habit is not fear, exactly. It’s memory. It’s the politics of the tongue.
For decades, the tongue was policed. Jokes were told behind hands. Opinions were filtered through euphemism. Even laughter came out sideways. Then Yugoslavia unraveled and suddenly the gates burst open. We spoke until our jaws ached. After years of swallowing our words, we let them spill.
When a regime collapses, one of the first things to erupt is language. Suddenly, the unspoken can be spoken, but still in disguise. We didn’t say, The new president is absurd, but we made up a word like nabiguz (someone who stuffs their ass with greed) or samofukalo (self-fucker), and everyone understood. The absurdity was shared. Laughter was code.
After the war began, everyone wanted a piece of the tongue. It was as if each republic reached for a slice—Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, Slovenia, Macedonia, Kosovo—each claiming theirs, correcting it, renaming it. The language was so savory, so full of bite and mischief, that no one wanted to admit we’d been sharing it all along. Everyone wanted their own version. Their own dictionary. Their own alphabet.
We speak now of the balkanization of nations, but what about the balkanization of the tongue? Suddenly, one language had to wear four new names. People who’d grown up understanding each other perfectly were told they no longer shared a vocabulary. New alphabets, new rules, new slogans. Yet beneath it all, the rhythm stayed the same. The vowels stretched in the same spots. The jokes still landed—if you knew how to hear them. What we witnessed wasn’t just linguistic divergence. It was a rupture we tried to bandage with phonetics.
Overnight, dictionaries announced new norms, as if speech could be disinfected. Words were “cleansed” of their Yugoslav residue, scrubbed down to fit a newly drawn border. In Croatian, this led to
brzoglas—fast voice—for telephone,
zrakomlat—air beater—for helicopter,
milokliz—sweet-slider—for penis,
and for condom? Udna tuljica. A limb sheath.
It would’ve been funny if it hadn’t been official—if it hadn’t come with flags and checkpoints and new textbooks for children. And the more official the rules became, the more an underground language—humorous, grotesque, barbed—rose up in protest.
We created entire anti-dictionaries, full of words not meant for permanence but for play. For a release.
A chair? Cetveronožni guzni podupirac—a four-legged ass prop.
A radio? Zvucni propovjedac—a sonic preacher.
Pants? Dvocjevni nabiguz—two-barreled ass stuffers.
A belt? Okolotrbušni hlacodržac—around-the-belly pants-holder.
A pencil sharpener? Zarezivac drvene misli—carver of wooden thoughts.
Absurd? Absolutely. But also brilliant. The old state had collapsed. The new state was telling us how to speak. We used our tongues to carve out a space between what was imposed and what was ours.
These neologisms weren’t just clever. Vulgar and vivid, they were the people’s unofficial dictionary. A resistance lexicon. They were a gesture—a sticking-out of the tongue to the regime that had tried to silence it for so long. In our culture, to bare your tongue—especially in crude or exaggerated ways—isn’t just playful. It’s profane. It means: Fuck you. It means: You don’t own my mouth anymore.
Today, if you search for neologizam in Croatian, you’ll mostly find imported marketing terms: anti-aging, afterwork, aquapark. Borrowed words for borrowed lives. The kind of language you pack in a dutyfree suitcase. There’s even an official Dictionary of Neologisms, compiled by the University of Zagreb’s Department of Linguistics. Flip through it and you’ll find global gloss: android, after party, all-inclusive. Language of the market, not the street. Branding, not survival. But the neologisms I remember weren’t about trends or tech. They were local and lowbrow and laughed in the face of collapse.
The tongue I remember did more than speak. It bit. It barked. It joked. Made mischief. Broke rules. Even when we borrowed, we bent the new words until they fit our crooked rhythm. Take guglati—a perfectly conjugated Croatian verb born from Google, now fully domesticated. We twisted it. Made it ours. Now it lives in sentences with samofukalo and nabiguz, cheek by jowl. Global brand, village filth, one syntax.
This, too, is tongue-work: the art of blending the absurd, the slick, and the subversively local until the whole hums with mischief.
In my case, it’s a tongue stitched from Dalmatian hinterland dialect, postwar Zagreb officialese, and Midwestern Montessori English. A patchwork—frayed in places, but alive.
Even now, my aunt in California says she’s “driving a car-u.” Half-English, half-Dalmatian, fully hers. The suffix roots a foreign word in local soil—makes it ours.
I’ve spent decades switching tongues. In Dalmatia, I learned to stretch vowels wide, to tuck meaning into idioms, to joke before I wept. In America, I learned to speak gently, cleanly—apologizing in every sentence. Croatian stalled for me around age eleven. English rushed in: fast, glossy, eager to please. One tongue paused, the other performed.
When I returned to Croatia during the war, I sounded strange in Zagreb. A shopkeeper stared when I said “šta” instead of “što.” She smiled—tight-lipped, like I’d walked in barefoot. My cousin whispered, They can tell you’re from the village.
Sometimes, in the pause before you speak—in the silence between layers—you taste the word. It stings. It startles. And it belongs.
I still mix those sounds. I still mistranslate myself. But that mix—awkward, stitched, imperfect—is what keeps the whole thing alive.
It was that roughness that carried humor, resistance, survival. In my village, jokes weren’t told so much as inhabited. We didn’t speak about trauma—we cooked with it, laughed around it. A cousin once said, “Ako žurimo živjeti, imat cemo vremena za sprovod.” If we rush to live, we’ll have plenty of time for the funeral. A proverb disguised as a punchline. That was our syntax.
But not all tongues were treated equally.
We were in a café in Zagreb, my coffee cooling untouched. Without thinking I said, “Bog.” My friend looked up and, in English, corrected me lightly: “It’s Bok here.” I felt something shift behind my ribs—like a word was being evicted. Bog means God. Bok, on the other hand, means nothing. A stylish secularism had replaced a word much older and deeper. Such changes were never about mere sound and grammar. They were about who gets to seem modern. Whose tongue remains relevant.
Now a new kind of voice has entered the room. Not urban or rural. Not Zagreb or Dalmatian. A voice with no accent, no idiom, no pause. It speaks smoothly, but it remembers nothing it says.
Machines are fluent. GPS voices give directions in accentless English. Chatbots complete our sentences. The radio spoke English before we did. But all of that fluency is hollow. It carries no hesitation, no inheritance, no risk.
A machine will never know what zrakoprc means—air-fucker, a word for someone who talks and talks but says nothing. It will never understand the weight behind “Bacila se u Crveno jezero”—She threw herself into Red Lake. Not just a sentence, but a wound. It won’t get the joke when someone says, “Bacila se u Hercegovacko jezero”—She threw herself into Herzegovinian Lake—a lake that doesn’t exist, in a country that barely holds. The satire only lands if you know the absence.
My cousin once joked, Kids chew rubber boots now too. Only theirs are screens. He was remembering the cow he once left to graze behind a bush while he played soccer. He kept glancing over in case she wandered off. But she stayed. After the game, he found her chewing an old rubber boot. She looked content. But she wasn’t fed.
That’s how this new fluency feels. The voice is smooth, but it tastes nothing. It remembers nothing. It speaks, but hasn’t lived.
The same cousin now beams about ChatGPT.
She knew everything about Imotski, he said. So polite. So clear.
A voice with no hunger. No grief. No gossip. A voice that’s never bitten itself trying not to speak. Real language stumbles. It hesitates. It remembers.
I think of Tin Ujevic, Croatia’s great poet, who once entered a tavern unshaven and was refused wine. He returned the next day in a suit. They served him. He poured the wine into his pocket. Feeding the coat, he said. You weren’t serving me.
That, too, is language. Who’s being fed? What’s being served?
So which tongue do I speak? The one with its idioms and bite? The one honed in books and softened with apology? I don’t know. I’m still patching it together. Still chewing on rubber boots and village jokes. Still testing the oven. Still translating—not just between Croatian and English, but between worlds. Because in the end, the tongue remembers what the dictionary forgets. Sometimes, in the pause before you speak—in the silence between layers—you taste the word. It stings. It startles. And it belongs.
“The Tongue Remembers” by Maria B. Olujic appears in the latest issue of AGNI."
Maria B. Olujic
November 24, 2025
https://lithub.com/creating-new-tongues-on-language-as-adaptation-and-resistance/
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"Language Matters | Why language loss in indigenous communities hurts biodiversity conservation
Ecosystem loss and language erosion often occur in tandem. Thankfully, Cop30 marked an unprecedented effort to elevate indigenous voices
Lisa Lim
Published: 5:15pm, 23 Nov 2025
Cop30, the 30th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (Cop) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the 1992 landmark international treaty and parent treaty to the 2015 Paris Agreement, began on November 10 and was scheduled to end on November 21.
Hosted in Belem, Brazil, Cop30 was the “Forest Cop”, not only for its Amazon rainforest venue, but because a focus of the UN Climate Change Conference is forest and biodiversity protection. Central to this endeavour has been the significant inclusion of indigenous peoples in dialogue.
Indigenous peoples, numbering some 476 million worldwide, comprise just 6 per cent of the global population – but almost 40 per cent of the planet’s intact forests are located in indigenous territories. Indigenous peoples are thus stewards of hundreds of millions of hectares of land, safeguarding much of the world’s biodiversity.
Regions of great endemic biodiversity that contain at least 1,500 species of vascular plants found nowhere else on Earth, but which have also lost at least 70 per cent of their primary native vegetation – usually because of human activities and influences – are known as “biodiversity hotspots”.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres speaks during a press conference at the Cop30 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Belem, Brazil on November 20, 2025. Photo: AFP
Currently, 36 biodiversity hotspots are identified globally, which, while comprising only about 2.5 per cent of Earth’s land surface, are home to more than half of the world’s plants and 43 per cent of land vertebrates.
But it is not only flora and fauna that are of importance – so too are the ecologies’ communities and their languages and cultures.
The correlation between regions of high biodiversity and high linguistic diversity has long been recognised. These locales have a higher concentration of languages than would be expected by chance. The most floristically diverse island on Earth, New Guinea, boasts 840 living languages, while Indonesia and the Philippines, both biodiversity hotspots, are home to, respectively, 703 and 175.
Crucially, the loss of ecosystems and the erosion of languages often occur in tandem: when traditional habitats and ecological niches come under threat, the indigenous peoples who inhabit them, with their cultures and languages, are affected.
And conversely, language loss hurts biodiversity conservation. Indigenous communities are widely recognised as possessing a body of knowledge, beliefs and practices, reflecting a deep understanding of the local environment and sustainability of local resources. Such traditional or indigenous ecological knowledge (TEK/IEK) is passed on through generations, embedded in names, systems and oral traditions.
The historical and extant importance of indigenous peoples for cataloguing biodiversity, contributing to taxonomy and, more broadly, being involved in biodiversity protection, is now widely recognised.
The Maori of New Zealand – the entire archipelago a biodiversity hotspot – have ancestral sayings that encompass information concerning plant growth, soils and nutrients, ecological niches and communities, and landscape processes.
In Yunnan’s Nujiang prefecture, a core area of the Mountains of Southwest China biodiversity hotspot, the Lisu, Nu and Dulong people hold traditional knowledge regarding edible and medicinal plants, bamboo weaving, beekeeping, large old trees and biocultural diversity management.
Cop30 marked an unprecedented effort to elevate indigenous voices, with the largest indigenous delegation in the summit’s history, comprising more than 3,000 indigenous representatives and a record number of over 900 indigenous delegates taking part in official debates.
Outcomes include the creation of 10 new indigenous territories in Brazil, where their culture and environment are protected by law; and – with indigenous groups historically receiving less than 1 per cent of climate-change funding – steps towards indigenous-led governance and direct funding access.
Demonstrators take part in a march in defence of the forest, territorial rights and climate responsibility during Cop30 on November 13, 2025. Photo: AP
Beyond Cops, scholars and practitioners continue their efforts on smaller but no less effective scales.
A project of the Unesco Chair in Environmental Leadership, Cultural Heritage and Biodiversity, established at VinUniversity in Hanoi in 2024, documents the cultural heritage, ethnobotany and language of the Bahnar ethnic group in Vietnam’s Central Highlands, a region that is part of the Indo-Burma biodiversity hotspot.
Priorities lie in working in partnership with ethnic minority community members, as well as in training the next generation of environmental leaders – perhaps two of the most significant dimensions in climate-change action for a sustainable future."
https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/3333625/why-language-loss-indigenous-communities-hurts-biodiversity-conservation
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"A new report from the Center for News, Technology & Innovation (CNTI) reviewed over 55 studies to better understand the state of AI translation and transcription in journalism. The global research center’s AI and Journalism Working Group has been regularly surveying AI research, with its last installment from July tackling studies on AI literacy and communication.
For this new report, the group combed through the work of social scientists, linguists, and computer scientists. One of the report’s topline findings: there is a major divide between the accessibility and accuracy of AI transcription and translation tools when they’re used for English and other dominant languages, and when they’re used for languages that AI researchers have termed “low-resource.”
English represents more than 50% of the domains on the web. Mainstream language models are largely trained on data scraped from the internet, which is one reason transcription and translation tools perform so well in English. “Low-resource” languages are those that have comparatively little digitized text on the web available to train models. Even some of the most-spoken languages in the world, like Urdu, are considered low-resource.
The working group outlined a few ways this creates accessibility barriers. An AI translation tool may perform very well for a language pair like English and Spanish, but introduce significant errors when it’s used for a pair of less common languages. In particular, AI transcription and translation tools often struggle with “language ambiguity and cultural nuance,” show an inability to perform tasks “at the level of human experts,” and introduce “inherent biases” present in their training data.
Take one study reviewed by the working group that looked at AI translations of international news in Tanzania. Researchers found that 13% of translated sentences reviewed included some kind of mistranslation or inaccuracy. One article, for instance, mistranslated the English term “street food” into Kiswahili as “food of the road.”
The group also found that AI translation tools may struggle to adjust the formality of written statements when moving between different languages. Korean and Japanese, for example, often have stricter rules around formal language. As a result, translations of less formal English into Korean can sometimes be read as “socially inappropriate.”
Some newsrooms in the Global South are working to surmount the challenges they face in using AI transcription and translation tools in low-resource languages. The working group spotlighted Dubawa, a fact-checking project based in Nigeria, that has been training tools on local dialects and accents in order to more accurately transcribe radio broadcasts.
The working group also pointed to the use of AI transcription tools to cover public meetings as particularly promising for all journalists. That’s in part because in these transcripts “figurative language and wordplay” — both types of speech that AI tools struggle to process — are uncommon.
As for translation, the group says that due to how common mistakes are, one of the most promising ways to incorporate AI tools into newsrooms is through “hybrid translation” — that’s when AI translations are reviewed by humans before publication.
You can read the full report from CNTI’s Global AI and Journalism Research Working Group"
Posted by: Andrew Deck
November 25, 2025
https://www.niemanlab.org/2025/11/studies-on-ai-transcription-and-translation-in-journalism-reveal-low-resource-language-gap-new-report-finds/
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
TUNIS, 26 Novembre (KUNA) -- L’Organisation arabe pour l’éducation, la culture et les sciences (ALECSO) a annoncé, mercredi, que l’écrivaine et universitaire française Stéphanie Dujols a remporté le 18e Prix Ibn Khaldoun-Senghor de traduction pour l’année 2025.
Artificial intelligence investment by the federal government poses risks of job loss, and error. Can GCtranslate avoid this?
"The federal government’s increasing use of artificial intelligence for translation services may threaten the French language and will “1,000 per cent” affect the more than 1,300 employees in the Translation Bureau, say critics of the strategy.
The union that represents translators estimates 339 workers will lose their jobs.
As well, while there will likely be more efficiencies and flexibility, one expert cautions that without human supervision, translation accuracy is at risk.
On Sept. 25, the federal government announced GCtranslate, a new AI translation tool being tested across six departments and agencies to improve productivity.
In June, an earlier version, referred to as PSPC Translate, was in effect for three months. Public Services and Procurement Canada reported more than 60 million words or 3,000 document pages were translated each workday.
GCtranslate has become one of PSPC’s most used tools, spokesperson Michèle LaRose told Capital Current. She said the tool aims to compliment translation services, such as routine business documents, and allow translators to direct their expertise towards “complex, high-value government content.”
The AI move is part of a broader approach to boost efficiency while streamlining the public service. On Nov. 4, the budget revealed plans to slash 16,000 positions in the bureaucracy over three years, and 28,000 more by 2029.
The budget also revealed $1 billion will be spent on optimizing Canada’s AI use across the federal government over five years, as part of a larger AI integration strategy.
Fears over French being “diluted”
“Outsourcing” part of translators’ work to AI sacrifices quality, said Antoine Hersberger, vice-president of the Canadian Association of Professional Employees (CAPE), which represents translators and interpreters.
“Let’s say someone is doing their taxes, and they’re trying to see if they’re admissible to a specific tax credit. If that explanation has been … translated by AI without any human involved, there’s a good chance the person might miss out on that tax credit because the explanation wasn’t clear or entirely accurate,” he said.
“Since the vast majority of translations are from English into French, we know that it’s mainly going to be francophones that will find themselves in these kinds of situations.”
Ryan Williams, a former MP from the Bay of Quinte, is worried AI translation will lead to bilingualism being treated as an “afterthought.” He said French must be strengthened rather than “diluted.”
“If we’re using it to fully replace people it is irresponsible, considering the importance of the French language in Canada and how it needs to be upheld,” he said.
The threat to job security for public servant translators is “1,000 per cent” real, he said.
Hersberger says there needs to be a greater interest in protecting the French language. “If the government really wants to show it cares about bilingualism, it should invest in the Translation Bureau to improve the quality of French rather than actively participating in the race to the bottom.”
On Sept. 25, CAPE raised concerns with Bloc Québécois MPs about the strain translators will face because of cuts and AI tools replacing human translators.
“If the government adequately funded the Translation Bureau … it wouldn’t be a source of administrative process slowdowns,” Hersberger said.
“It could be a hub of innovation where professionals, often with decades of translation experience, can take advantage of the best of new technologies, without sacrificing the quality that is the foundation of Canadian bilingualism.”
Last year, Commissioner of Official Languages Raymond Théberge wrote to the President of the Treasury Board pointing out problems regarding bias, risk of error and hindering French language use with the use of AI.
While stressing that AI should not weaken services in either languages, he said he welcomed tools like GCtranslate, noting its ability to “support translation” and “language learning.”
But Théberge warned AI translations can “miss cultural nuances,” as these tools often rely on English data, which can produce bias and “impact the equitable use of French.”
LaRose said PSPC reported a “noticeable increase in French-to-English translations,” since the implementation of the tool.
Job security concerns
On Nov. 20, an Angus Reid Institute survey found 86 per cent of Canadians think “AI will cause more job losses than jobs that are created because of it.”
“I think we always need to be mindful and cognitive about what the government is trying to do, especially with AI because I have no confidence at this point that the government will do it right,” Williams said.
Elizabeth Marshman is an associate professor in the School of Translation and Interpretation at the University of Ottawa. She said AI is already handling minor translation tasks, separate from work done by public servants and believes the same may be done with GCtranslate.
“I am not sure exactly where we will land in the end in terms of net job changes, gains or losses, but I do not fear the elimination of human language professionals any time soon,” she said.
AI reliability
Williams said there is, “no shortage of work to improve government processes” and AI translation tools can help with speed, but he said AI works best alongside humans who provide oversight.
Marshman says in some cases, where nuance is required, AI may not be the appropriate choice and could lead to “communication” and “safety issues.”
“I do believe that important public-facing documents do need to be reviewed by qualified and capable humans to be sure we are sending the right message on both levels, in a way that will get it across effectively,” Marshman said.
She said she hopes the federal government recognizes this level of risk and works to minimize it.
At the same time, Williams said AI tools present a possibility to “enrich” the language. “I think it allows French to be used more often. It’s allowing educational tools so that we can teach our children more French. … That’s going to be the best result — that we … maintain our bilingualism in Canada,” he said.
Marshman added AI can be used to promote use of French.
“By making sure users are aware of limitations, we can encourage them to continue to learn and explore languages. Tools such as machine translation and genAI can even be used in creative ways to support language learning, provided that they are presented realistically and used responsibly.”
A look ahead
“It is very impressive to hear about the number of pages that can be churned out by such tools every working day. However, without the assurance that there are skilled human resources to monitor this output and ensure it is meeting needs, that kind of figure does not guarantee effective communication,” Marshman said.
“I do hope that there is a solid plan for careful evaluation and monitoring, most especially in these initial phases, so that we have a realistic view of performance and can make decisions based on that.”
More feedback on GCtranslate’s integration in the public service workforce is to come and the federal AI strategy will be revisited in 2027 to evaluate effectiveness."
By Lynn Robchinsky and Niko Athanasopoulos , November 26, 2025
https://capitalcurrent.ca/federal-push-toward-ai-translation-threatens-french-and-jobs-for-public-servants-critics-say/
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
Grants to enhance the quality of translations of Swedish literature and drama
Deadline: 27-Jan-2026
"The Swedish Arts Council (Kulturrådet) invites professional translators of Swedish literature and drama to apply for its Swedish Literature Grant Programme. The grants support international exchange, skill development, mentorships, and sample translations, helping translators improve the quality and reach of Swedish literary works worldwide.
Overview of the Programme
The Swedish Literature Grant Programme promotes international collaboration and skill improvement for translators working with Swedish literature and drama. By funding translation-related activities, the programme strengthens the global presence of Swedish literary and cultural works.
Purpose of the Grant
Enhance the quality of translations of Swedish literature and drama
Foster international exchange between translators and literary communities
Support mentorships, workshops, and professional development activities
Enable sample translations for publishers and theatres to evaluate works for full translation or performance
Eligible Applicants
Professional translators translating from Swedish into other languages
Translators must be working on literary or dramatic works, including works in Swedish or Swedish national minority languages
Applicants cannot be:
Translators working into Swedish
Organizations, publishers, or networks
Eligible Activities
Grants can cover costs associated with:
Sample translations for publishers or theatres
Mentorship collaborations between established and emerging translators
Participation in literary festivals, seminars, fairs, workshops, and conferences
Travel and accommodation directly linked to translation projects
Course or conference fees related to skill development
Exclusions:
Textbooks, scholarly works, reference books, study materials, cookbooks, yearbooks, hobby books, exhibition catalogues, craft books, handbooks, travel guides, Festschrifts, homage volumes, or sheet music
Projects already contracted or activities already completed
Funding Details
Grants for sample translations or mentorships: up to SEK 12,000
Other activities funded based on actual project costs
Allowable expenses include travel, accommodation, fees for courses/conferences, and mentorship fees
Application Process
Submit applications through the Swedish Arts Council online portal
Ensure submissions are complete and on time for the relevant assessment round
Include required attachments:
Current CV listing published translations from Swedish
Sample translation projects: rights holder’s certificate
Mentorship projects: jointly signed project plan and motivation letter
Applications are reviewed by expert senior advisors, evaluated collectively, and funding proposals are approved by the Department Head for Literature and Libraries
Conflicts of interest are formally managed to maintain transparency
Assessment Rounds
There are four assessment rounds per year
Late or incomplete applications may be considered in the next round if deadlines permit
Why It Matters
Supports high-quality translations of Swedish literature globally
Encourages international collaboration and knowledge exchange
Provides emerging translators with mentorship and professional development
Ensures Swedish literary works reach broader audiences and cultural impact
Tips for a Strong Application
Submit a complete application before the deadline
Clearly outline the scope and purpose of your translation or mentorship project
Include all required supporting documents, including CV and project plans
Emphasize the literary or dramatic nature of the work
Ensure your translation work is directly from Swedish or a Swedish minority language
FAQ
1. Who can apply for this grant?
Professional translators working from Swedish into other languages in the fields of literature and drama.
2. What activities are funded?
Sample translations, mentorships, international festivals, workshops, seminars, travel, accommodation, and related professional development costs.
3. Are translations into Swedish eligible?
No, the grant only supports translations from Swedish into other languages.
4. What is the maximum funding amount?
Up to SEK 12,000 for sample translations or mentorship projects; other activities are funded based on actual project costs.
5. How do I submit an application?
Through the Swedish Arts Council online portal before the relevant assessment round deadline.
6. What supporting documents are required?
CV with published translations, rights holder certificate for sample translations, and a project plan/motivation letter for mentorship projects.
7. Can I apply for work already contracted or completed?
No, the programme does not fund previously contracted translations or completed activities.
Conclusion
The Swedish Literature Grant Programme by Kulturrådet is a key opportunity for translators to enhance their skills, engage internationally, and promote Swedish literary works globally. By funding mentorships, sample translations, and professional development activities, the programme strengthens both the translator’s career and the international visibility of Swedish literature.
For more information, visit Kulturrådet."
https://www2.fundsforngos.org/individuals/rfps-grants-for-translators-of-swedish-literature/amp/
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"Workshop for Legal Language Professionals – De la traduction des lois à la corédaction, l'avènement d'une jurilinguistique canadienne
Tuesday, January 13, 2026 12:00to13:30
Online
Language of Delivery: French
In this series of workshops, the Graduate Diploma in Legal Translation at McGill University invites you to discover different dimensions of professions at the crossroad of law and languages. We offer both introductory workshops to key professions, such as legal translation and court interpreting, as well as workshops on highly specialized issues that will better meet the needs of experienced jurilinguists.
Legal translation stands apart from all other forms of translation in one key respect: it is governed by the binding force of the law itself. In translating legal texts such as acts, regulations, judgments and contracts, translators must also contend with the specific challenges inherent to these documents. The first of these challenges arises from the law and legal system itself. Between English and French, and vice versa, we enter the realm of comparative law, in which two very different systems coexist. By nature, the legal translator is a comparatist, obliged to render the law faithfully within the framework of its own rules. The second challenge lies in the readability and clarity of the target text. And the third and final challenge resides in the form of the target text, which varies between systems depending on the culture in question. This is especially true of the common law–civil law pair, with each system expressing, sui generis, its culture and its rules through writing. This mode of expression—whether verbose or concise—immediately signals to readers the distinctive nature of each legal culture. These observations apply to the three main types of legal texts—acts, judgments, and contracts—each of which has its own distinctive features. Our analysis focuses primarily on the act, the “window on the law,” and on the translation process leading to the emergence of a Canadian legal language, as revealed through the co-drafting of legislation.
This initiative is supported by Justice Canada's Access to Justice in Both Official Languages Support Fund.
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School of Continuing Studies
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Workshop for Legal Language Professionals
Last updated: Tue, 11/25/2025 - 20:18
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School of Continuing Studies
680 Sherbrooke Street West, 11th floor
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514-398-6200
info.conted@mcgill.ca
Atelier pour jurilangagiers – De la traduction des lois à la corédaction, l'avènement d'une jurilinguistique canadienne
Mardi, 13 janvier, 2026 12:00à13:30
En ligne
Langue: Français
Dans le cadre de cette série d’ateliers, le programme d’études supérieures en traduction juridique de l’Université McGill vous invite à découvrir différentes facettes des métiers spécialisés dans le domaine du langage du droit. On propose à la fois des ateliers d’introduction aux professions phares, comme la traduction juridique et l’interprétation judiciaire, ainsi que des ateliers sur des questions très pointues qui répondront davantage aux besoins des jurilangagier.ère.s d’expérience.
La traduction juridique se distingue de tous les domaines où s’exerce la traduction par un trait qui lui est propre : le droit est porteur de règles contraignantes. Aussi traduire des textes juridiques tels que lois, règlements, jugements et contrats expose les traducteurs aux difficultés singulières de ces textes. La première d’entre elles est posée par le droit lui-même et son système. C’est ainsi que, de l’anglais au français -- et réciproquement --, on entre dans le droit comparé, deux systèmes très différents étant en présence. Le traducteur juridique est, par essence, comparatiste et tenu de rendre le droit dans le respect de ses règles. La deuxième difficulté réside dans la lisibilité du texte d’arrivée, sa clarté. La forme, enfin, du texte d’arrivée, qui diffère d’un système à l’autre selon la culture en jeu. Tel est le cas du couple common law – droit civil, chaque système exprimant dans l’écrit sa culture et ses règles de façon sui generis. Cette expression, prolixe ou concise, révèle immédiatement aux yeux des lecteurs le caractère de chaque culture juridique. Ces constats s’appliquent aux trois principaux types de texte juridique que sont la loi, le jugement et le contrat, chacun d’eux présentant ses propres particularités. Notre analyse porte essentiellement sur la Loi, « vitrine du droit », et le parcours de la traduction conduisant à l’avènement d’une jurilinguistique canadienne révélée par la corédaction des lois.
Cette initiative est soutenue par le Fonds d’appui à l’accès à la justice dans les deux langues officielles de Justice Canada.
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Catégorie:
École d’éducation permanente
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Atelier pour jurilangagiers
Externe
Dernière mise à jour : mar, 11/25/2025 - 20:17
Site de source:
/continuingstudies
https://www.mcgill.ca/continuingstudies/channels/event/workshop-legal-language-professionals-de-la-traduction-des-lois-la-coredaction-lavenement-dune-369317
"Macquarie Dictionary, considered the standard reference on Australian English, has announced that 'AI slop' has been chosen by its committee and voted by the public as the Word of the Year for 2025.
From “Shrimp-Jesus” to Mark Zuckerberg wood carvings and even Donald Trump’s crass content spewing, “AI slop” has permeated every corner of the internet in 2025, and we’re more zombified as a result.
The term has been named Macquarie Dictionary’s Word of the Year for 2025, and it is defined as “low-quality content created by generative AI, often containing errors, and not requested by the user”.
Generic, soulless and mind-numbingly ubiquitous, “AI slop” is ‘advanced’ internet spam and seems to be the perfect choice for 2025’s Word of the Year – as evidenced by it winning the people’s choice vote on top of the decision made by the committee of word experts.
“We understand now in 2025 what we mean by slop – AI generated slop, which lacks meaningful content or use,” the committee said in a statement announcing its decision.
“While in recent years we’ve learnt to become search engineers to find meaningful information, we now need to become prompt engineers in order to wade through the AI slop. Slop in this sense will be a robust addition to English for years to come.”
The committee added: “The question is, are the people ingesting and regurgitating this content soon to be called AI sloppers?”
“AI slop” is also an appropriate pick considering it reflects widespread anxieties about the flood of meaningless, low-quality AI-generated content and how we evaluate information online.
Macquarie’s choice joins other 2025 Words of the Year which collectively reflect wider concerns regarding the reach of AI, the way it regurgitates copyrighted material and threatens cognitive capacities, as well as the potentially damaging influence of social media.
Dictionary.com chose the viral TikTok slang “6-7” (read our explainer on the meaningless phenomenon here); Collins Dictionary crowned “vibe coding” (“making an app or website by describing it to (AI) rather than by writing programming code manually”); and last week, Cambridge Dictionary elected “parasocial” as its Word of the Year, highlighting the hollow, one-sided and “unhealthy” connections people feel between themselves and a celebrity, fictional character or an AI chatbot."
https://www.euronews.com/culture/2025/11/26/ai-slop-macquarie-dictionarys-word-of-the-year-is-a-sad-reflection-of-modern-anxieties
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
Alors que la recherche plaide depuis des décennies pour l’usage des langues nationales à l’école, leur intégration demeure inégale sur le continent. Dans la majorité des pays francophones, lusophones, hispanophones et même anglophones, l’école continue de reposer presque exclusivement sur les langues héritées de la colonisation.
"...L'UNESCO préconise au moins six années d'enseignement dans la langue maternelle pour améliorer durablement les apprentissages. Pourtant, malgré des décennies de recherches, de comparaisons internationales et de projets pilotes sur le bi-plurilinguisme, les progrès restent faibles en Afrique subsaharienne.
Dans la majorité des pays francophones, lusophones et même anglophones, l'école continue de reposer presque exclusivement sur les langues héritées de la colonisation. Ce choix se maintient alors même qu'il coexiste avec des échecs massifs : surpopulation des classes, faibles niveaux de lecture, décrochage, programmes inadéquats, enseignants peu formés au multilinguisme, pénurie de matériel didactique et de financements.
Dans plusieurs zones rurales, les langues maternelles demeurent le seul moyen de communication quotidien. Les enfants qui ne maîtrisent ni le français ni l'anglais entrent à l'école en situation de handicap linguistique, ce qui favorise l'échec et le décrochage.
Une réalité que l'Unesco souligne également : en Afrique subsaharienne, un enfant sur cinq n'a pas accès à l'école, et seuls 20 % des enfants scolarisés atteignent un niveau satisfaisant de lecture en fin de primaire.
Face à ces défis, l'organisation encourage les États à renforcer la production de matériels pédagogiques multilingues et à s'appuyer davantage sur la langue maternelle pour améliorer les apprentissages de base."
https://www.bbc.com/afrique/articles/c4gjnv024xeo
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"Le traducteur – ambassadeur silencieux de sa propre culture
« La traduction de la littérature albanaise et l'accès des lecteurs étrangers aux œuvres albanaises » était le thème de la table ronde organisée mercredi au petit amphithéâtre du KCB, dans le cadre de la « Semaine des bibliothèques du Kosovo ».
Par: Sinan Berisha
9 octobre 2025 08:00
En tant que traducteurs, Nerimane Kamberi, Sébastien Gricourt et Robert Wilton ont partagé mercredi, lors de la table ronde organisée dans le cadre de la « Semaine des bibliothèques du Kosovo », leurs expériences avec cet art particulier, à la frontière des langues et des mondes. Ils ont essentiellement parlé de la traduction des lettres albanaises, la considérant comme un acte d'amour, d'amour pour le mot, pour la culture et pour la possibilité d'être compris par autrui. Mais, selon eux, la traduction est aussi un acte de responsabilité : chaque traducteur devient l'ambassadeur silencieux de sa propre culture, une voix qui s'efforce de préserver l'esprit de l'original.
Ce que signifie traduire la littérature albanaise, les bénéfices pour une œuvre, une culture et un lecteur lorsqu'un texte passe d'une langue à l'autre, tels étaient les thèmes abordés lors de la table ronde des traducteurs organisée dans le cadre de la 22e édition de la « Semaine des bibliothèques du Kosovo » à la Bibliothèque nationale du Kosovo. Cette table ronde, intitulée « Traduction de la littérature albanaise et approche des œuvres albanaises par les lecteurs étrangers », s'est tenue mercredi dans le petit amphithéâtre de la BKK. Elle a suscité des échanges sereins, mais chargés de sens profonds dans l'art de la traduction, ainsi que de la sensibilité culturelle, de l'interprétation et de la créativité que transmet le traducteur.
Trois traducteurs : Nerimane Kamberi, Sébastien Gricourt et Robert Wilton sont assis sur le même panel pour partager leurs expériences avec cet art particulier qui se situe à la frontière entre les langues et les mondes.
Animée par Saranda Krasniqi, la discussion a essentiellement sur la traduction des lettres albanaises, qu'elle considère comme un acte d'amour, d'amour pour la parole, pour la culture et pour la possibilité d'être comprise par autrui. Mais, selon eux, la traduction est aussi un acte de responsabilité : chaque traducteur devient un ambassadeur silencieux de sa propre culture, une voix qui s'efforce de préserver l'esprit de l'original.
À l'heure où les frontières culturelles se déplacent sans cesse, la traduction sert de pont entre les mondes et permet à la littérature albanaise de s'exprimer librement dans d'autres langues. Il ne s'agit pas seulement d'un processus linguistique, mais d'une forme de diplomatie douce, une façon de faire connaître, de rendre compréhensible et sensible la beauté d'une petite culture dans un vaste monde.
Pour la poète et traductrice Nerimane Kamberi, la traduction est bien plus qu'un simple procédé technique de transmission des mots. Pour elle, le traducteur est un médiateur entre deux mondes qui, par les mots, se rapprochent et se connaissent. Elle a insisté sur la nécessité pour les institutions de laisser plus d'espace aux traducteurs, car de nombreuses œuvres traduites avec passion restent inédites.
La traduction est un véritable pont entre les cultures et facilite la lecture. Elle est essentielle, car elle transmet la beauté du mot, les difficultés et les phénomènes d'une langue. C'est ce pont qui permet à ces œuvres de faire le tour du monde. Il faut faire davantage, une forme de diplomatie culturelle : nos gouvernements, des deux côtés de la frontière, doivent s'engager davantage pour soutenir non seulement la traduction de ces œuvres, mais aussi leur publication. Car, bien sûr, les traducteurs naissent d'un amour et d'une passion pour une œuvre ; ce sont souvent eux qui découvrent une œuvre ou un écrivain. Sans le soutien des institutions, l'œuvre reste dans les rayons et ne peut être appréciée par les lecteurs étrangers », a-t-elle déclaré.
Dans un contexte plus large, elle a également évoqué de nouvelles façons de promouvoir la littérature albanaise, notamment au sein de la diaspora. Selon elle, les réseaux sociaux créent un nouvel espace où la littérature ancienne et contemporaine peut renaître.
« Il est bénéfique pour les lecteurs de la diaspora de lire de la littérature albanaise dans leur langue maternelle afin de maintenir le lien avec leur pays d'origine. La promotion via les réseaux sociaux est possible. Nous avons constaté que TikTok fait revivre des auteurs classiques : lire un roman classique et le publier sur TikTok, qui devient viral, permet de retrouver une œuvre. Les réseaux sociaux, en particulier pour les jeunes, jouent un rôle essentiel dans la diffusion de la littérature, même au sein de la diaspora. Je crois et j'espère que, même si leurs familles parlent encore albanais, ils lisent dans la langue de leur enfance et de leur éducation. C'est très bénéfique pour eux de connaître un auteur et, grâce aux traductions, de découvrir l'histoire de notre pays », a déclaré Kamberi.
Traduire la poésie albanaise est considéré comme l'un des plus grands défis des traducteurs. Selon eux, contrairement à la prose, la poésie exige de préserver le rythme, le son, l'imagerie et les émotions, souvent étroitement liés à la langue d'origine. Ils s'accordent à dire qu'une belle métaphore en albanais peut perdre sa « lumière » dans une autre langue si le traducteur ne trouve pas un nouveau moyen de la rendre plus « lumineuse ».
Le traducteur et éditeur français Sébastien Gricourt, qui traduit la littérature albanaise depuis des décennies, la considère comme une forme particulière de communication culturelle. Il affirme ne pas choisir une œuvre pour son contenu littéraire, mais pour ce qu'elle révèle de l'époque et de la réalité albanaises.
Je pense que nous sommes à un moment où il est crucial de donner une variété créative aux lettres albanaises. Il y a donc certaines idées que je souhaite, par exemple, transmettre en français. Lorsque je choisis une œuvre, je ne la choisis pas nécessairement pour son contenu littéraire, mais pour ce qu'elle raconte de notre époque dans le monde albanais. L'essentiel est que le monde occidental comprenne le monde albanais.
« C’est un grand défi de faire cela », a-t-il déclaré.
D'après son expérience, le chemin de la traduction n'est pas aisé. Au début des années 90, lorsqu'il a commencé à traduire de l'albanais, ses traductions sont restées inédites pendant des années.
« Au début, lorsque j'ai commencé à traduire en Albanie dans les années 90, je l'ai fait parce que j'étais étudiant en albanais. J'ai traduit moi-même trois romans et je ne les ai jamais soumis. Bien plus tard, j'ai commencé à présenter mes traductions aux maisons d'édition, mais j'ai rencontré de nombreuses difficultés. Il m'a fallu beaucoup de temps pour surmonter ce genre d'obstacles, car je doutais de mes capacités, c'est une question de confiance en moi, mais j'ai persévéré jusqu'à ce que je réalise que toutes les maisons d'édition ont une politique », se souvient Gricourt.
Robert Wilton, traducteur et écrivain britannique, a vécu l'albanais de l'intérieur, une langue porteuse d'un riche univers émotionnel et esthétique. Il a évoqué ses efforts pour préserver le sentiment, et pas seulement le sens. Il a notamment mentionné que traduire des auteurs comme Visar Zhiti et Ag Apolloni représente un défi en soi, car l'univers psychologique et linguistique de ces auteurs est très complexe et requiert une intuition particulière pour le transposer dans une autre langue.
Bien que le vocabulaire anglais soit plus riche que celui de l'albanais, il y a des éléments d'élégance en albanais que je ne parviens pas à traduire en anglais. Zhiti, par exemple : son roman dépeint un univers psychologique et linguistique complètement dépravé, très difficile à saisir en anglais. En tant que traducteur, je m'efforce non seulement de permettre au lecteur anglophone de comprendre le sens des mots, mais aussi de ressentir la même émotion et la même émotion qu'un lecteur albanophone ressent en lisant de l'albanais », a déclaré Wilton, citant des cas concrets de difficultés à traduire des expressions poétiques, métaphoriques et idiomatiques dans les romans.
Selon eux, la traduction demeure le moyen le plus sûr pour la littérature albanaise de pénétrer l'esprit des lecteurs étrangers. L'exemple le plus frappant est celui de Kadare, l'auteur albanais le plus traduit, qui a profondément influencé le regard que le monde porte sur la littérature et la culture albanaises. Par ses nombreuses traductions en français, en anglais et dans d'autres langues, Kadare a prouvé que la littérature albanaise est indissociable de la littérature mondiale. Il a fait de la traduction une véritable fenêtre d'accès à la connaissance culturelle, non seulement pour le lecteur étranger, mais aussi pour les Albanais eux-mêmes, qui se voient à travers cette fenêtre avec un regard différent."
https://www.koha.net/fr/kulture/perkthyesi-ambasador-i-heshtur-i-kultures-se-vet
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"Le Bureau de la traduction dément les affirmations d’interprètes parlementaires qui soutiennent que la qualité de la traduction baissera au Parlement en raison d’une décision du gouvernement de prioriser « le plus bas soumissionnaire » pour les interprètes pigistes.
Services publics et Approvisionnement Canada (SPAC) est en processus de renouvellement des contrats des interprètes parlementaires pigistes, qui prendront fin en décembre. Un peu moins de 50 % de ces interprètes sont des pigistes alors que le reste est employé au Bureau de la traduction, selon l’Association internationale des interprètes de conférence — Région Canada (AIIC-Canada).
Cette dernière avance qu’un nouveau processus de SPAC sacrifiera la qualité au nom du soumissionnaire au plus bas prix. L’AIIC-Canada soutient que seuls le prix et le fait d’être un interprète accrédité auprès du Bureau de la traduction seront pris en considération. Par le passé, c’est la qualité de l’interprète ou encore la disponibilité qui faisaient partie d’un ensemble de critères évalués.
« Cet indice de qualité n’est pas mentionné dans cette nouvelle version que l’on nous a présentée. On ne sait pas trop comment il (le bureau de la traduction) pense faire l’évaluation », a affirmé Alionka Skup, la présidente de l’AIIC-Canada lors d’une comparution au Comité des langues officielles mardi.
Les élus du comité font actuellement une étude sur le renouvellement du contrat de travail des interprètes parlementaires.
L’AIIC-Canada estime qu’une telle nouveauté pénalisera le français au Parlement, car la majorité de la traduction se fait de l’anglais vers le français et que les meilleurs interprètes seront écartés.
« On a des interprètes qui sont présents sur la colline depuis très longtemps et qui ont différentes spécialités, alors ça serait logique qu’ils soient affectés aux comités relatifs à leurs autres connaissances, au lieu de simplement prendre la liste et d’aller au moins cher », poursuit Mme Skup.
« Si on fonctionne de cette façon, les interprètes avec le plus d’expérience vont simplement ne plus être présents parce que leurs tarifs vont être trop élevés », statue-t-elle.
L’AIIC-Canada déplore aussi le fait que les nouvelles règles ne permettent pas de rémunérer le temps de préparation des interprètes, mais seulement celui passé au micro, à effectuer la traduction.
Le prix parmi un ensemble de critères
Le Bureau de la traduction affirme ne pas encore avoir pris de décision concernant le renouvellement des contrats en décembre des interprètes pigistes.
« Dire que c’est uniquement les soumissionnaire à bas prix, vous me permettrez de dire que je ne suis pas tout à fait en accord, a réfuté son président-directeur général, Jean-François Lymburner devant les députés fédéraux. On a besoin d’avoir des interprètes qui ont été certifiés par le Bureau de la traduction. Pour nous, c’est un gage de qualité certain. Tous les soumissionnaires ne seront pas accrédités. »
« De plus, avance M. Lymburner, des interprètes pigistes seront toujours sélectionnés en fonction de critères comme le fait d’avoir une cote de sécurité et d’habiter dans la région d’Ottawa. »
« À l’heure actuelle, les pigistes ont tous un indice de qualité identique », a indiqué Annie Plouffe, vice-présidente, Services au Parlement et Interprétation au Bureau de la traduction, qui précise qu’il n’est pas question d’avoir des interprètes non accrédités au Parlement.
Cette dernière soutient aussi qu’à l’heure actuelle, les expertises externes des pigistes, comme le fait d’être un ancien juriste, ne sont pas prises en compte dans leur assignation quotidienne.
L’organisme qui relève de SPAC a terminé ses consultations. Il se trouve maintenant à l’étape d’analyse de la rétroaction reçue des membres de l’industrie, ce qui est considéré comme « une étape normale » selon M. Lymburner.
Questionné à maintes reprises par le député conservateur Joël Godin, Jean-François Lymburner n’a pas divulgué le mandat confié au Bureau de la traduction par SPAC concernant le renouvellement des contrats des interprètes. Cette réticence a poussé l’élu à se tourner vers le président du comité pour demander « que le témoin puisse répondre à mes questions ».
« Évidemment, à un certain point, on est des gestionnaires et on a des pressions un peu comme tout le monde et on regarde le prix et la valeur », a lâché le dirigeant quelques minutes plus tard."
Pascal Vachon
Journaliste, correspondant parlementaire Chambres des communes
Publié le
07 octobre 2025
Mise à jour
11 novembre 2025
https://onfr.tfo.org/parlement-interpretes-bureau-traduction-langues-officielles/
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"Le secrétariat général du gouvernement consacre une partie de ses actions à la mise en œuvre du caractère officiel de l’amazigh au sein du système juridique marocain. Devant la Commission parlementaire de la justice, mardi 5 novembre 2025, Mohamed Hajoui a détaillé les avancées concrètes réalisées dans ce domaine. Deux conventions de partenariat ont été conclues avec l’Institut Royal de la culture amazighe et le ministère de la Transition numérique pour accélérer la traduction des textes législatifs et réglementaires. Le site web institutionnel publie désormais les ordres du jour et comptes rendus du Conseil du gouvernement en amazigh.
Mardi 5 novembre 2025, en présentant le budget sectoriel du SGG pour l’exercice 2026, Mohamed Hajoui a consacré un développement aux avancées réalisées dans la mise en œuvre du caractère officiel de l’amazigh. Cette initiative s’inscrit dans le cadre de la loi organique fixant le processus de mise en œuvre du caractère officiel de l’amazigh, ainsi que les modalités de son intégration dans l’enseignement et dans les domaines prioritaires de la vie publique. Le secrétaire général du gouvernement a souligné que l’approche adoptée était résolument «participative et collective». C’est dans cet esprit que deux conventions de partenariat et de coopération ont été conclues avec le ministère de la Transition numérique et de la réforme de l’administration, d’une part, et l’Institut Royal de la culture amazighe, d’autre part.
Une mutualisation des ressources pour accélérer les traductions
Ces conventions visent à «mettre en commun les ressources humaines, matérielles et morales pour travailler ensemble à l’accélération des mesures nécessaires» à la concrétisation des engagements de l’État en matière d’officialisation de l’amazigh. L’objectif est de «coopérer en vue de la publication progressive des textes législatifs et réglementaires à caractère général dans cette langue». Pour sensibiliser à l’importance de ce chantier et lui donner une impulsion forte, le SGG a réuni des compétences spécialisées dans la traduction vers l’amazigh et organisé une rencontre d’étude à laquelle ont participé des représentants de différents ministères et départements gouvernementaux. En coordination avec ses partenaires, le secrétariat général du gouvernement a déjà commencé à prendre «les mesures pratiques nécessaires pour traduire une première série de textes juridiques en amazigh», a précisé Mohamed Hajoui.
Une présence renforcée sur les supports numériques
Au-delà de la traduction des textes juridiques, le SGG a déployé des efforts considérables pour renforcer la communication et garantir la diffusion de l’information juridique en amazigh. Il est désormais possible de consulter, sur le site web du secrétariat général du gouvernement, les ordres du jour et les comptes rendus des réunions du Conseil du gouvernement en amazigh. La page amazighe du site web de l’institution publie également des annonces informant des numéros du Bulletin officiel publiés, ainsi que l’actualité concernant les activités quotidiennes de l’institution. Cette présence numérique renforcée témoigne de la volonté d’inscrire durablement l’amazigh dans le paysage institutionnel marocain, au-delà des simples déclarations d’intention."
Brahim Mokhliss
06 Novembre 2025 À 17:53
https://lematin.ma/nation/le-sgg-accelere-la-traduction-des-textes-juridiques-en-amazigh/312175/amp
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"Upstage partnership fuels 500% traffic surge as global media cite Chosun Daily translations
Last September, Reddit, the world’s largest community site with 100 million daily visitors, was heatedly discussing a Korean issue. The debate centered on whether the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was justified in raiding Hyundai and LG Energy Solution factories in Georgia and detaining Korean workers. The original post cited a real-time AI-translated Chosun Daily article quoting this newspaper’s piece: . Over 300 participants joined the discussion, with 2,500 “likes.”
Chosun Ilbo’s English service, The Chosun Daily, has established itself as a global media platform reaching readers in 100 countries within three months of its AI-powered relaunch. Since September 3, The Chosun Daily has partnered with leading domestic AI company Upstage to provide real-time English translations of all Chosun Ilbo articles using a custom AI model. An average of 600 articles per day now reach global audiences. Page views and visitors have surged by over 500% compared to pre-launch levels.
Starting on the 24th, Chosun.com added a “View English Article” button at the bottom of all Hangeul articles, linking to their English translations. Similarly, all The Chosun Daily articles now include a button to access the original Hangeul version on Chosun.com. Readers can now seamlessly switch between Korean and English versions.
◇Global Media Actively Utilize The Chosun Daily
Over the past three months, the most-read article on The Chosun Daily was the translation of <“Is This Okay?” Young People Worried… K-Pop Heroine Steps In to Save the Day> (September 27 edition), which analyzed the phenomenon behind the K-Pop animation *KPop Demon Hunters*. It was read by over 300,000 people....
The New York Times cited a Chosun Ilbo column by Yang Sang-hoon in its October 27 article , criticizing U.S. government policies. Other frequent citers include Hindustan Times (India), Straits Times (Singapore), and Sports Illustrated (U.S.).
◇‘Clear and Confident Translations’ Praised
Previous translation AIs often produced awkward English and struggled with cultural nuances. However, The Chosun Daily’s AI translations are praised for their accuracy and ability to capture Korean subtleties. This is attributed to training on over 200,000 Chosun Ilbo English articles published since 2000.
Professor Lee Jun-ho of Chung-Ang University’s Advanced Interpretation & Translation Program stated, “Clarity is paramount in news translation, and The Chosun Daily’s AI articles feel natural and confident.”
For instance, while Google Translate and Naver Papago render the derogatory term “kkondae” (old fogey) simply as “Old Man,” Chosun Ilbo’s AI translates it as “Old Fogey,” preserving the sarcastic nuance."
By Yun Jin-ho,
Sung Yu-jin
Published 2025.11.25.
https://www.chosun.com/english/special-en/2025/11/25/GYV7767I4ZBRTPGO42YR4G2VWI/
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"Simultaneous interpreting, as a demanding discipline, requires advanced language competencies in both working languages, strong cognitive abilities, and a solid understanding of interpreting techniques. As a complex skill that requires thorough study, it is essential to shed light on its fundamental characteristics through a descriptive method. This paper aims to present the challenges and issues that may arise during the process of simultaneous interpreting. The primary focus of this work is an analysis of an interpreter’s performance while rendering a speech from English to Serbian at a United Nations conference. This research paper examines the challenges observed during the simultaneous (conference) interpretation provided on the national broadcasting service, with a focus on interpreting techniques, cognitive processing, and errors that impact message fidelity. Through a translational analysis based on a product-oriented view of quality, the study identifies errors in simultaneous interpreting and distinguishes them from interpreting techniques. The analysis focuses on the linguistic accuracy and completeness of the interpreted output. Linguistic accuracy refers to the correct and faithful rendering of both grammatical structures and semantic content, ensuring that the meaning and form of the source message are preserved. Completeness, in this context, is defined as the accurate transfer of the entire message, including key ideas, speaker intentions, and discourse structure. Delivery related features such as intonation, voice quality, and prosody fall outside the scope of this study. The descriptive analysis of the interpreted segments of the speech reveals that most problems stem from cognitive skill deficits, indicating that the interpreter’s insufficiently developed memory processes impeded delivery at a high level of accuracy."
Translational Challenges in Simultaneous Interpreting: A Case Study
Author(s): Marko E. Kukić
Subject(s): Translation Studies
Published by: Филозофски факултет, Универзитет у Приштини
Keywords: simultaneous interpreting; interpreting techniques; cognitive abilities; error analysis; translational analysis; descriptive method; memory processes.
Summary/Abstract
https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=1375592
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"Rhona Amos will join the Editorial Board of Target. International Journal of Translation Studies from January 2026 as an Associate Editor. Rhona was selected for the role due to her expertise in Interpreting Studies, experimental methods and Psycholinguistics, and will take over from Agnieszka Chmiel."
https://www.unige.ch/fti/en/a-la-une/rhona-amos-editor-target
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was deeply troubled on the closing day of the G20 Summit in Johannesburg (South Africa) by an interpreter's unprofessional behavior. “Only [First Lady] Janja [da Silva] may whisper in my ear!” he stressed.
Lula interrupted his speech on Sunday to complain about the translator's low voice on the headphones. The South American leader asked the language expert to move closer to a journalist asking a question. “You're translating only for yourself. Speak up, man,” Lula complained as he addressed the emptying of the G20 and its effects on future meetings.
After the interpreter obliged, Lula insisted he did not like simultaneous translation devices..."
https://en.mercopress.com/2025/11/25/lula-troubled-by-interpreter-s-poor-work-at-g20-summit
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
As deepfakes blur truth and political divides widen, the arts and humanities offer essential skills such as reflection and resilience. And, of course, they provide respite and balance. Patty Raun explains
"When I look at the world my students are graduating into, I am both awed and alarmed. They face accelerating technologies, a political environment that feels brittle and an information landscape that demands constant vigilance. Yet what I see most clearly in my classroom is something quieter: the profound need for spaces where people can process their experience, make meaning and remember what it feels like to be human.
Last year, in a graduate seminar on communication and creativity, I asked my students to do something that seemed, to many of them, impossible: commit two to three hours each week to a creative practice of their choice. Anything. Painting. Singing. Woodworking. Writing poems that no one would read. The only requirement was that the practice be regular, embodied and done with the understanding that it was part of their education – not an add-on.
The initial reaction was predictable. “I don’t have time.” “This feels indulgent.” “How is this related to my research?” Their early journal entries were full of apology, as if creativity were a guilty pleasure they needed to justify.
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But within weeks, their tone shifted. A doctoral student who began beading – something she had not done since childhood – found that repetitive handwork gave her a way to metabolise complex research questions. Another student returned to the piano for the first time in a decade; she wrote about how the physicality of playing restored her equilibrium after long days surrounded by screens and data. A student who started sketching during lunch breaks said he felt “mentally refreshed in a way coffee doesn’t touch”.
Across the class, journals filled with reflections that surprised even the students who wrote them: these small acts of creativity were not escapes from their work but avenues into deeper thinking. They offered clarity when analysis felt muddled. They revealed emotions students hadn’t realised they were carrying. They brought a sense of steadiness in a time of relentless uncertainty.
What were they processing?
In their writing, students named burnout, fear about the job market, grief for the state of the world, exhaustion from the political climate, and anxiety about the rapid encroachment of artificial intelligence on their fields. Some were sorting out conflicts with advisers; others were trying to understand what they wanted their lives to look like beyond their degrees. Many were carrying the quiet, cumulative strain of feeling perpetually behind – a feeling that is nearly universal among young adults today.
The creative practices gave shape to feelings that were otherwise amorphous. When students drew, stitched, sculpted or played, they could hold their experience at arm’s length long enough to examine it. They could ask: “Why does this feel heavy?” or: “What is the pattern beneath my stress?” That emotional and cognitive processing is essential – not decorative – to learning and to well-being.
Why does this matter for educators?
It matters because no amount of digital literacy or critical thinking instruction can help a student who is too overwhelmed to notice what they’re feeling, too depleted to be curious or too anxious to reflect. In an era defined by acceleration, the arts and humanities offer something irreplaceable: deliberate practices that cultivate attention, perspective and resilience.
Educators can make space for this kind of practice without overhauling curricula. Three strategies emerged clearly from my seminar:
Build creative practice into coursework – not as extra credit but as part of the learning goals. Students took the assignment seriously because it counted. When creativity is framed as central rather than peripheral, students stop dismissing it as a luxury.
Tie creative practice to reflection. Weekly journals were the engine of the class. Students didn’t just make things, they wrote about the making. This is where insights surfaced: moments of calm, new connections or realisations about habits of mind.
Model vulnerability. I practised alongside them. I shared my own frustrations when my creative work felt stalled and my discoveries when it illuminated something. Students trust the process when they see an instructor trusting it, too.
How do we convince students of arts‘ and humanities‘ value?
You don’t persuade them with abstractions; you let the experience convince them. Many of my students entered reluctantly and emerged protective of their new routines. They described feeling more grounded, more capable of deep focus and more connected to their peers. One student wrote: “This practice helped me think like a human again.” That felt like a revelation.
We might not be able to measure this like a standardised test measures recall. But we can measure changes in engagement, attendance and emotional articulation. We can measure whether students return to the practice after the course ends – which many did. And we can measure the quality of their analytical work, which often became more nuanced as their creative practices matured.
Some outcomes are subtler but no less real: steadier breathing, better sleep, improved concentration. Students reported these without prompting. They noticed that time spent creating made them more patient with themselves and with others. These are not soft outcomes. They are the very capacities – reflection, adaptability, imaginative problem-solving – that the future demands.
If we want graduates who can withstand disinformation, polarisation and the pressures of AI-driven work, we need to cultivate not only their intellects but their interior lives. Arts and humanities education does that not through slogans about empathy or critical thinking but through sustained human practices: making, observing, storytelling, questioning, listening.
Creativity is how we stay human in a world that feels increasingly inhuman. In my classroom, I watch students discover that truth for themselves – and once discovered, it is hard to forget.
Patricia Raun is alumni distinguished professor of theatre arts at Virginia Tech and founding director of the Center for Communicating Science."
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/arts-and-humanities-celebrate-what-makes-us-human
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
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On Dante Alighieri’s ‘Paradiso,’ a new translation by Mary Jo Bang
Matthew NisinsonNovember 20, 2025
Mary Jo Bang’s translation of Dante Allighieri’s Paradiso by Copper Canyon Press, 2025 displays the enduring power of this classic work of Western literature. For such an old text, a contemporary reader might be surprised by Paradiso’s continuing relevance. Dante wrote at a time of intense political strife characterized by war, institutional corruption, and civil conflict. Dante’s Paradiso, imagining a better world through the lens of divine love, was written by a man exiled from his beloved home city, and worried that the powerful were destroying his beloved homeland. While Dante’s specific 14th century conflicts may not always resonate, his efforts to conceive a better world built on sincere goodness resonate—when we think earnestly about what makes a good person, it helps us to be better. Paradiso is a rich text to explore, but foremost, it’s a beautiful poem, written by a skillful poet and thinker, conveyed in translation by Mary Jo Bang, another excellent poet, with a rich appreciation for Dante’s work and a persuasive belief in Dante’s continued relevance.
Translating a book like Paradiso, enshrined in many literary canons, is different from producing the first English translation of contemporary writing. In the notes, Bang lists 15 different prior translations of Paradiso into English, from as long ago as 1819 to as recent as 2008. Retranslations necessarily react to and build upon the translations that came before them, the position the source text occupies in our culture, and the difference between contemporary and original audiences. The translator has to convey the source material to a new audience in a manner worthy of source and audience. Translation is not a perfect one-to-one correspondence of source language and translated text. Translation is art. Sawako Nakayasu conveys the nature of this art in her long poem Say Translation Is Art, Ugly Duckling Presse 2020. Translations can take many forms and approaches, Bang’s approach calls to mind Nakayasu’s passage:
Say what is the largest unit of translation, say poem, say
book, say all the books, say everything they ever wrote,
say everything they never wrote, have yet to write, say
the transit between everything they ever wrote, or say
something larger, more vast.
Bang demonstrates a deep appreciation for the contradictions and balancings of translation, consistent with Dante’s focus on approachability for the reader. Bang’s knowledge of Dante guides and enriches her translation. As she explains in her note on the translation, Dante deliberately chose not to use Latin, the poetic language of his era. Latin “would overpower whatever was being said and make it seem cold and remote.” Instead, Dante chose to use “the language that everyone learns effortlessly as a child because he wanted as many people as possible to read his poem—even women, he said. Thirdly, he wanted the intimacy, familiarity, and warmth that are innate in the language with which one speaks to family and friends.” Bang’s translation honors Dante’s goal to support a broad readership, while her detailed notes convey the depth of scholarship and understanding that position her to do so. In form, Bang reflects Dante’s complex rhyme scheme, terza rima, with a three line free verse stanza that reflects the structure without contorting the English language into an awkward rhyme scheme that flows more naturally in Dante’s Italian.
Bang’s notes appear at the end of each canto, but the reader need not turn to them to appreciate the poem. If one turns to the notes, they enrich the experience of the text. Bang is transparent about her process and choices as translator, and committed to making available the broader context for readers interested in how Dante’s religious, literary, and historical references, plus his life and contemporaries, suffuse the text. For example, in Canto VI, Justinian tells Dante about the divine eagle from its origins as symbol of ancient Rome to its current role as papal standard. Through this eagle symbol the legitimacy of divine and worldly institutions extend backwards and forwards in time, reinforcing each other. But Justinian warns it is unrightfully used and opposed by factions in Dante’s Italy:
And you know what it did, from the wronged
Sabine women to the grief of Lucretia, defeating
The nearby nations over the reign of seven kings.
You know what it did when it was carried
By illustrious Romans against Brennus, against
Pyrrhus, and other principalities and districts,
After which Torquatus and Quinctus, called Curly
Locks for his wet-mop hair, and the Decii and Fabii
Acquired fame—gladly, I’ll keep it with mine—
Justinian’s Roman history continues to Dante’s present, with Bang’s endnotes to Canto VI providing context on each historical figure and event referenced. Having completed his litany, Justinian contrasts the noble past with the present’s unworthy factions:
Now you can judge for yourself the offenses
Of those same people I’ve accused above,
Which have caused all your suffering.
One group pits the gold-fleur-de-lis
Against the official symbol, the other usurps it
For their party—it’s hard to know which is worse.
(from Canto VI)
Dante, through Justinian, calls out Italian factions for how their focus on worldly honor and fame lead them astray from the true path, weakeningThe Holy Roman Empire and the Church, and harming the people who depend on these institutions.
For all he moralizes about others’ sins, Dante errs too. He may write about saints but he isn’t one himself. His struggles with the ethical quandaries forced on him by the attempt to portray heaven have allowed generations of readers to find value wrestling with the text. One need not share Dante’s Catholicism, or Christianity, to benefit from his effort. The unfairness that so many people are excluded from heaven merely because they lived in circumstances where they could not know about Christianity, by distance or time, troubled Dante. This subject recurs throughout Paradiso, and while Dante does not resolve the issue clearly, he approaches the subject from a sincere depth of care. And for all that Dante accepts that belief in Christ is essential to get to heaven (See e.g., Canto XIX vv103-105), Paradiso nonetheless includes a significant number of preChristian figures among heaven’s residents. As Bang points out in her endnote to Dante’s lines about Ripheus the Trojan’s inclusion in heaven, Dante’s “implication is that, through his righteousness, Ripheus must have intuited God’s grace and trusted that He would provide a means for his salvation.” It struck me as a potentially heretical notion for Dante that a person’s goodness is sufficient, even without Christianity. And poor Virgil, stuck in Limbo!
Bang writes that translating Dante “helps me to see the world from a new and much more empathetic perspective.” Conveying some of her motivation moving in line with his.
Consider, Reader, if what’s beginning here
Didn’t go any further, how you’d be left
With an anguished craving to know more,
And you’ll appreciate for yourself how much
I wanted to find out about their situation
As soon as they appeared before my eyes.
(from Canto V)
This passage describes fictional Dante’s motive to learn more. Bang in her notes points out that some scholars say that, by this direct address to the reader, Dante “heightens the empathic relationship between reader and text.” This relationship, and the passage’s impact, is further heightened because it describes the authorial Dante’s intention in writing The Divine Comedy. By speaking directly to the reader, Dante invites us to collaborate in this project. Bang’s translation, notes, and introduction continue this ongoing collaboration. The reader is asked to meaningfully engage with Dante’s successes and failures, not passively accept his conclusions.
One flaw that stood out to me, and Bang, was Dante’s struggle with the concept of predestination, characterized both by the religious doctrinal question (Bang’s focus), and Dante’s historical approach. It’s an easy trap to see one’s present as the natural and necessary end goal of all that came before it. In Paradiso Dante interprets past events by how they connect and justify his present. For example, in the passage from Canto VI, cited above, Dante’s Justinian explains Roman history and castigates the factional conflicts of Dante’s Italy. A modern reader will be accustomed to a version of Roman history that treats a succession of global hegemonies as a natural process, falling into a similar trap.
As a contemporary, Jewish reader, I was struck when Dante, speaking of the crucifixion in Canto VII, says “That one death suited God and the Sanhedrin; / With it, the earth shook and Heaven opened.” With the crucifixion as crux of Dante’s history, all that came before was always leading to it and an inevitable Jewish culpability. In her note to these lines, Bang connects this scene to Inferno and Dante’s encounter with “Caiaphas, the Roman-appointed priest who chaired the Sanhedrin (Jewish Council), explaining that Caiaphas argued that if Jesus were perceived as a Jewish political threat by the Romans, all the Jews might suffer and, therefore, it was ‘expedient, for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not’ (John 11:50).”
But, Bang continues “However Dante or the Gospels might frame the Crucifixion, Christ was a victim of anti-Jewish violence by Roman Gentiles (non-Jews). The New Testament’s persistence in placing the blame for Christ’s death on the Jews has given rise to centuries of anti-Semitism.” This lapse is easier for Dante to fall into because he already established the Roman Empire as precursor to, and legitimizer for, the Church’s authority. Dante’s Roman Empire cannot simultaneously play the role of villain of the crucifixion. Dante’s error, blaming an imperial power’s actions on the members of a minority group involved, and conflating specific politically powerful people with their entire ethnic group, are common. By connecting the dots and criticizing the conclusion, Bang shows her strength as translator.
It’s challenging to approach a work of this scale. Helpfully, Bang’s introduction acts as paratextual “ladder”— a summarizing prose poem positioning the reader as the Dante of Paradiso. This interpretative scaffolding previews the poem’s ethical problems and formal pressures, and characterizes Bang’s interpretation. The impact is to strengthen Paradiso’s poetry and story, not “spoil” it, as might occur with a text focused on narrative surprise. Disclosure here intensifies, rather than diminishes, the experience of discovery. Bang begins:
“You’re finally nearing the end of the Holy Highway that leads to gladness and joy. This after so many beginnings. It was six days ago that you found yourself in a dark forest, lost and ready to give up. The roman poet Virgil arrived, and the two of you traveled through Hell’s nine circles and up Mount Purgatory’s seven terraces to arrive here, where you are now, standing next to Beatrice, Bice, your childhood love.”
Bang does not hide behind impartial distance, but allows her personality and perspective to come through. She subtly incorporates language from more contemporary sources—showing in the notes how she conveys Dante with nods to Beyoncé, Emily Dickinson, Bob Dylan, Madeleine L’Engle, Whitney Houston, Charles Mingus, The Simpsons, and Jethro Tull, among others. In the first stanza of Canto VIII Bang translates:
The world, when in peril, used to believe, beauty
Queen Venus, moving through the third epicycle,
Radiated love that was crazy and deranged,
This phrasing “crazy and deranged” derives from Beyonce’s lyrics in Crazy in Love. Similarly in Canto XIX she translates “Oh earthly creatures! Oh, minds as thick as a brick!” borrowing from Jethro Tull’s album, Thick as a Brick.
Bang delights in Dante’s use of the rhetorical device hysteron proteron, “a figure of speech in which the last comes first”, noting Dante’s uses of the device in Paradiso. In the first use, Canto II, Dante describes with wonder the speed of his arrival with Beatrice in the first celestial layer of heaven, the moon, “In maybe as much time as an arrow lands, / Flies, and the notch lets go of the bow—”. Bang explains that the device is “used to represent the near simultaneity with which these events take place.” In other notes, Bang links the hysteron proteron to Bob Dylan, and to a Balliol College, Oxford dining club that reversed the order of courses in a meal, and even, per a letter from Graham Greene, hosted an entire “backwards day”, beginning the morning with formal dress and a game of bridge.
Bang’s endnotes often explain the depth of Dante’s meaning and references and how this understanding guided her choices in translation.
Hosanna, Holy Lord of Hosts,
Overlighting with thy brightness
The blessed fires of these kingdoms.
(from Canto VII)
Bang explains, among other things, that she chose “overlighting” to convey Dante’s coinage of a “Latinate neologism, superillustrans”, departing from “double lighting”, used by many other translators of Dante. “Overlighting” because the Latin super means “over” or “above”, and Dante’s Italian separates this from the image of a double light a few lines later. Bang doesn’t call it out, but “overlighting” also produces a more elegant poetic line in English.
Bang’s insight into Dante’s holy guide, Beatrice strengthens the poem. Few readers would be surprised to learn that portraying Beatrice as Dante’s intellectual and spiritual superior and guide has upset certain readers since Dante’s time. Bang sees that Dante chose to portray Beatrice with tremendous respect, not as damsel in distress, but as committed savior, descended from heaven to instigate his salvation (an interesting parallel descent, perhaps another reason Beatrice upsets some). As Bang explains in her Purgatorio (also excerpted here), Beatrice “is glorious, with a candor that results from a clarity of thought. What looks like heartlessness, or arrogance, is the awareness that if she shows Dante mercy, she’ll jeopardize the outcome. She’s not about to fail. Not Beatrice.”
A translator’s biases can unintentionally influence their work. In another’s hands Beatrice could read as foolish, hyperbolic, or mere mouthpiece for Dante. Bang shows her as a powerful, noble mind, dedicated to doing the right thing, unwilling to soften the truth if it risks her responsibility to her pupil. We see this posture of firm, loving correction even in her first words to Dante in Canto I, telling him they have arrived in heaven:
And began: “You get all mixed up by sticking
With a figment of your imagination, so you don’t
See what you would see if you shook it off.
You’re not, as you believe, on earth.
In truth, lightning escaping its natural place
Never raced so fast as you back to yours.”
At the end, Beatrice and Bang accomplish their missions, Dante journeys through heaven, beholds god, and is returned to share his experience with the rest of us, The Divine Comedy—stark warnings about the consequences of our selfishness and cruelty, promise that if we are good to each other, we will be rewarded. Paradiso is the pinnacle of that argument. Dante died soon after finishing it."
https://therumpus.net/2025/11/20/on-dante-alighieris-paradiso-a-new-translation-by-mary-jo-bang/
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus