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"The Language Flagship Program at Brigham Young University was discontinued... because of government funding cuts. The program, funded by the Department of Defense, was an undergraduate program that offered students opportunities to enhance their language skills to a professional level. According to the flagship center website, students were provided with experiences that focused on global engagement, professional skills, language proficiency and community and service. At BYU, Chinese and Arabic were offered through the program. Kirk Belnap, a professor in the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages, was the director of the flagship program. Belnap said a loss associated with the cancellation of the program was the departure of Ahmad Karout, a native Arabic speaker from Syria who worked as the academic director and coordinator for the program. “We don’t have an Arab who is full-time on the faculty, so losing Ahmad Karout was a real loss for us,” Belnap said. One of the opportunities offered through the program was the chance to travel abroad for intensive language study. Chinese Flagship students were sent to China before COVID-19 and then to Taiwan post-pandemic. The Arabic study abroad was in Morocco. Nicholas Heil joined the Arabic flagship program in 2020 and participated in the capstone from 2023 to 2024 before its discontinuation. “It provided a lot of opportunities that were really cool, and then the capstone was really helpful for getting to an advanced level of Arabic,” Heil said. “I think we were cut because we are a private university and they knew that they could cut us and we’d be okay," Belnap said. Even without this program available, BYU has created an independently funded Master of Arts in Professional Language (MAPL). This program provides similar opportunities for students. The MAPL program first admitted students learning Chinese in fall 2022. It began teaching Arabic in 2024 and administrators hope to offer French sometime this year. Steve Riep is the director of the MAPL program and has been with the program since it started. While the flagship program was more flexible, Riep said the MAPL program requires a professional focus. “We give them an opportunity to develop professional-level fluency in a target language, in a professional domain,” Riep said. “So it would be in whatever their professional area is. That could be microbiology, engineering, business or even diplomacy.” A study abroad is also offered through MAPL, allowing students to travel to Taiwan and Morocco to take a specified profession class in their intended language. Students also complete an internship abroad as a part of their education. “The program is growing; it’s begun sort of small, but our hope is that this year we’re going to have a much larger pool of applicants than we’ve had in the past. We’re excited about the future,” Riep said." Sophia Howcroft, January 23, 2026 https://universe.byu.edu/campus/byu-cuts-arabic-chinese-flagship-programs-following-federal-funding-loss #Metaglossia #metaglossia_mundus #métaglossie
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
"As a rare Irish-language translator, Timothy McKeon enjoyed steady work for European Union institutions for years. But the rise of artificial intelligence tools that can translate text and, increasingly, speech nearly instantly has upended his livelihood and that of many others in his field.
He says he lost about 70% of his income when the EU translation work dried up. Now, available work consists of polishing machine-generated translations, jobs he refuses “on principle” because they help train the software taking work away from human translators. When the edited text is fed back into the translation software, “it learns from your work.”
“The more it learns, the more obsolete you become,” he said. “You’re essentially expected to dig your own professional grave.”
While workers worldwide ponder how AI might affect their livelihoods – a topic on the agenda at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week – that question is no longer hypothetical in the translation industry. Apps like Google Translate already reduced the need for human translators, and increased adoption of generative AI has only accelerated that trend.
A 2024 survey of writing professionals by the United Kingdom’s Society of Authors showed that more than a third of translators had lost work due to generative AI, which can create sophisticated text, as well as images and audio, from users’ prompts. And 43% of translators said their income had dropped because of the technology.
In the United States, data from 2010-23 analyzed by Carl Frey and Pedro Llanos-Paredes at Oxford University showed that regions where Google Translate was in greater use saw slower growth in the number of translator jobs. Originally powered by statistical translation, Google Translate shifted to a technique called neural translation in 2016, resulting in more natural-sounding text and bringing it closer to today’s AI tools.
“Our best baseline estimate is that roughly 28,000 more jobs for translators would’ve been added in the absence of machine translation,” Frey told CNN.
“It’s not a story of mass displacement but I think that’s very likely to follow.”
Timothy McKeon refuses to edit machine translations, saying it's like digging "your own professional grave." Courtesy Timothy McKeon
The story is similar globally, suggests McKeon: He is part of the Guerrilla Media Collective, an international group of translators and communications professionals, and says everyone in the collective supplements their income with other work due to the impact of AI.
‘The entire US is looking at Wisconsin’
Christina Green is president of Green Linguistics, a provider of language services, and a court interpreter in Wisconsin.
She worries her court role could soon vanish because of a bill that would allow courts to use AI or other machine translation in civil or criminal proceedings, and in certain other cases.
Green and other language professionals have been fighting the proposal since it was introduced in May. “The entire US is looking at Wisconsin” as a precedent, Green said, noting that the bill’s opponents had so far succeeded in stalling it.
While Green still has her court job, her company recently lost a major Fortune 10 corporate client, which she said opted to use a company offering AI translation instead. The client accounted for such an outsized share of her company’s business that she had to make layoffs.
Christina Green has had to let staff go because her translation company has lost a large amount of work to AI. Courtesy Alvin Connor/Havone Studios
“People and companies think they’re saving money with AI, but they have absolutely no clue what it is, how privacy is affected and what the ramifications are,” Green said.
‘Governments are not doing enough’
Fardous Bahbouh, based in London, is an Arabic-language translator and interpreter for international media organizations, including CNN. She has seen a considerable reduction in written work in recent years, which she attributes to technological developments and the financial pressures facing media outlets.
Bahbouh is also studying for a PhD focusing on the translation industry. Her research shows that technology, including AI, is “hugely impacting” translators and interpreters.
Governments should be doing more to protect foreign-language professionals from the threat posed by AI, according to Fardous Bahbouh. Courtesy Fardous Bahbouh
“I worry a great deal that governments are not doing enough to help them transition into other work, which could lead to greater inequality, in-work poverty and child poverty,” she told CNN.
Many translators are indeed looking to retrain “because translation isn’t generating the income it previously did,” according to Ian Giles, a translator and chair of the Translators Association at the UK’s Society of Authors. The picture is similar in the United States: Many translators are leaving the profession, Andy Benzo, president of the American Translators Association, told CNN.
And Kristalina Georgieva, the head of the International Monetary Fund, said in Davos Thursday that the number of translators and interpreters at the fund had gone down to 50 from 200 due to greater use of technology.
Governments should also do more for those remaining in the translation industry, by introducing stronger labor protections, Bahbouh argued.
Human professionals still needed
Despite advances in machine translation and interpretation, technology can’t replace human language workers entirely just yet.
Andy Benzo, president of the American Translators Association, says the risks of using AI translation in "high-stakes" fields are "humongous." Courtesy Andy Benzo
While using AI tools for everyday tasks like finding directions is “low-risk,” human translators will likely need to be involved for the foreseeable future in diplomatic, legal, financial and medical contexts where the risks are “humungous,” according to Benzo.
“I’m a translator and a lawyer and in both professions the nuance of each word is very specific and the (large language models powering AI tools) aren’t there yet, by far,” she said...
Giles, who translates commercial fiction from Scandinavian languages into English, used to supplement his income with translation work from companies, but that has now disappeared. Meanwhile, literary commissions have continued to come in, he said.
There’s also one key element of communication that AI can’t replace, according to Oxford University’s Frey: Human connection.
“The fact that machine translation is pervasive doesn’t mean you can build a relationship with somebody in France without speaking a word of French,” he said."
Lianne Kolirin
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/01/23/tech/translation-language-jobs-ai-automation-intl
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
#métaglossie
"Iowa State University researchers received unexpected answers to the question of how often people humanize artificial intelligence in news writing.
ISU English professor Jo Mackiewicz and Jeanine Aune, an English teaching professor and director of the university’s advanced communication program, recently published a study on how prevalent the use of anthropomorphizing, or humanizing, language is when it comes to artificial intelligence programs.
They were surprised to find that AI was not typically described in human terms. Even the use of humanizing verbs like “learns,” when considered in context, did not always treat the technology like a person.
“It’s the exact opposite of what I was expecting,” Aune said.
Aune said the pair got the idea for this research from a conference they both attended. The discussion included the suggestion that educators emphasize that AI is a tool that cannot replace communication principles and practices and to avoid anthropomorphizing the technology when they talk about it.
Iowa State University alumni were also involved in the study, including current Brigham Young University associate professor of linguistics Matthew Baker and University of Northern Colorado assistant professor of English Jordan Smith.
Heading into their research, Aune and Mackiewicz said they both had their assumptions as to what they’d find — that humanizing the technology would be widespread. Prior research has shown people anthropomorphize when working with robotics, and Aune said they’ve read articles written about how people use and perceive AI that have suggested humanization is happening.
The research team used News on the Web to study language relating to AI, Mackiewicz said, as it includes the most recent data aggregated from news articles originating from 20 different countries. The database has topped 20 billion words, and it includes some of the earliest news articles about AI to recent articles covering the technology.
“When we started to do an analysis of the individual pairings, that’s where the findings became most interesting, because the overall finding was that, oh, they don’t really pair as frequently as prior research or opinion pieces would have you think,” Mackiewicz said.
Words the team was on the lookout for focused on “verbs that reflect cognition,” Mackiewicz said, also known as “mental verbs” — needs, learns, means, and understands are just a few examples. They also narrowed the search to references to AI or ChatGPT, as it was one of the first AI tools to become publicly available and known.
What they found is that these mental verbs are not often paired with the identified terms, and there was nuance to the instances where they were used together.
“AI means, or AI needs, or ChatGPT knows — you put those together, just on the surface, they seem anthropomorphizing, but they’re not necessarily,” Mackiewicz said.
Anthropomorphization “exists on a spectrum,” Mackiewicz said, where a word like “means” could apply to different senses and meanings depending on how it is being used. Other words have different meanings in their common usage or usage by different disciplines, such as “learns.” Mackiewicz said the terms “AI” and forms of “learn” were paired together frequently in the data, which to some would seem to say that the technology is learning like a human could, but to others would mean something completely different.
It’s this nuance that shows why strict guidelines of what words can and cannot be used in relation to AI are flawed, she said, and what advice the researchers would offer instead is that people need to be careful about knowing who their audience is when writing about AI and thinking about how their words could be interpreted.
Mackiewicz said that in a way, this work showed the value of human beings. It’s easy for a computer to count how many times words are paired together, but it’s harder to analyze it within its context and determine the language’s actual meaning.
While it would be a bigger lift than this study, the researchers said they would be interested in studying what language is used to refer to AI in other areas of writing, like social media. This would require them to create their own database and scrape social media for the necessary information, Mackiewicz said, but it could yield interesting results.
While journalists utilize style guides created by the Associated Press or other organizations when deciding how to write on certain topics and receive editing on their writing, Mackiewicz said, social media generally doesn’t follow such rules.
“We now even had some students refer to ChatGPT with a male pronoun, not talk about it as ‘it,’” Aune said. “So I personally really advocate being intentional with the language, so talking about output text and it uptakes the prompt, you could really kind of emphasize that it is a tool that’s really helpful, but it’s not replacing our brains.”"
https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2026/01/23/iowa-state-university-researchers-dive-into-language-that-humanizes-ai-systems/
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
#métaglossie
"Bill would protect language access for 25 million individuals in the U.S. with limited English proficiency, including 32 percent of Asian Americans and 12 percent of Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, Chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC) Rep. Grace Meng (NY-06), Chair Emerita Rep. Judy Chu (CA-28), and CAPAC members Rep. Dan Goldman (NY-10) and Rep. Juan Vargas (CA-51) introduced the Language Access for All Act of 2026 to codify language access requirements for federal agencies, including translation and interpretation services under threat from the Trump administration.
In March 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order (EO) 14224 that declared English as the official language of the United States and revoked EO 13166, a 25-year-old mandate that required agencies and recipients of federal funding to provide meaningful language access to individuals with limited English proficiency (LEP). The Trump administration's Department of Justice issued new guidance that minimizes multilingual services and redirects resources towards English language education and assimilation.
These policy changes threaten language access for the over 25 million individuals in the United States—eight percent of the U.S. population—with limited English proficiency. Asian Americans have among the highest language access needs of any racial group, with 32 percent having LEP. 12 percent of Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders also have significant language access needs. And while Spanish language speakers make up the majority of those who speak another language in the United States, nearly 40 percent report speaking English “less than very well” in the most recent U.S. Census.
The Language Access for All Act of 2026 modernizes and strengthens the federal government’s approach to language access by codifying EO 13166 and establishing a coordinated, accountable framework to ensure meaningful access for individuals with limited English proficiency. The legislation promotes consistency across agencies, increases transparency and public engagement, and updates federal language access policy to reflect evolving technologies.
“Every American deserves equal access to federal services and programs in a language they can understand. Language access is essential to ensure individuals are able to access small business loans or receive the right medical care,” said Rep. Grace Meng, Chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. “I am proud to introduce the Language Access for All Act alongside my colleagues to safeguard translation services for individuals with limited English proficiency, including millions in the Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander community. We will continue to fight against the Trump administration's attacks on immigrants and the essential services that our communities rely on and deserve.”
“For more than 25 years, both Democratic and Republican presidents have supported language accessibility across the federal government. Trump’s roll back of these protections is simply wrong. In my district, translation services are essential for parents applying for a home loan, seniors accessing Medicare, immigrants starting a small business, and disaster survivors accessing the FEMA’s resources. That is why I’m proud to co-lead the Language Access for All Act to ensure no one is denied health care, housing, or disaster assistance because English is not their first language. Language access is a civil right and rolling back these services is an attack on our immigrant communities,” said Congressmember Judy Chu (CA-28), CAPAC Chair Emerita.
“In my district, in the most linguistically diverse city on earth, language access mandates across the federal government helps ensure that everyone has meaningful access to housing loans, health care, workforce programs, and life-saving emergency alerts. Trump's attempt to roll back language access is just one of his many xenophobic attempts to attack immigrant communities, and it is completely unacceptable. I am proud to be introducing legislation to restore common sense requirements and ensure information about basic government services is made available to all,” said Rep. Dan Goldman.
“For decades, federal language access services have helped millions of people file taxes, get emergency alerts, apply for loans, and access health care. Trump’s decision to designate English as our country’s official language and attempt to scrap these critical services is dead wrong,” said Rep. Juan Vargas. “No one should be locked out of federal programs because of the language they speak. This legislation is critical as we fight to push back on Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda and keep in place the services our communities rely on.”
The Language Access for All Act of 2026:
Requires federal agencies to ensure that individuals with LEP can meaningfully access the federally conducted programs and activities of the agency, including through translation and interpretation.
Creates a public complaint system to track complaints regarding barriers to meaningful access at agencies.
Requires agencies to develop and maintain language access plans consistent with EO 13166, with public notice and comment, and to submit plans to Congress and publish them on LEP.gov.
Establishes language access technical standards that allow individuals with LEP to access agency content and applies to all agency communications, including AI and automated language assistance services.
Ensures AI-assisted language services do not replace qualified translators and interpreters, comply with federal privacy requirements, and are continuously tested for bias, discrimination, and errors.
Creates an interagency language access working group to provide guidance, coordination, and technical assistance.
Requires each agency to designate a language access coordinator to lead implementation and serve as a point of contact.
Together, these reforms aim to improve service delivery, reduce barriers to access, and ensure federal agencies are equipped to meet the language needs of the public.
This legislation builds on previous actions from CAPAC lawmakers to protect language access.
In April 2025, Members demanded answers from the 15 federal agencies regarding potential disruptions to services and programs for individuals with limited English proficiency, and demanded answers from President Trump and the Department of Justice about the steps the administration is taking to ensure essential translation services continue uninterrupted.
In July 2025, CAPAC leadership issued a joint statement condemning the Department of Justice’s new memorandum that slashes access to multilingual government services.
The Language Access for All Act of 2026 is endorsed by 53 organizations..."
January 23, 2026
Press Release
https://capac.house.gov/press-release/meng-chu-goldman-and-vargas-introduce-bill-protect-multilingual-services-federal
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
#métaglossie
"Des chercheurs européens ont mis au point un modèle baptisé EuroLLM-22B. Complètement open source, il intègre les 24 langues officielles de l'UE et 11 autres langues.
Face à la dominance des LLM anglo-saxons ou chinois, le projet EuroLLM entend se démarquer à travers le nombre de langues adressées et son caractère totalement open source. Le modèle a été développé par l’Universidade de Lisboa (Instituto Superior Técnico), l’Université d’Édimbourg, l’Université Paris‑Saclay, Sorbonne Université, Naver Labs, Unbabel et l’Université d’Amsterdam. EuroLLM a également reçu le soutien des programmes européens comme Horizon Europe pour financer la recherche et l’innovation et EuroHPC dédiée au calcul haute performance. Au sein du laboratoire MICS (Mathématique, informatique et système complexe) de CentraleSupélec, deux doctorants en informatique Hippolyte Gisserot-Boukhlef et Nicolas Boizard ont développé le modèle EuroLLM-22B (22,6 milliards de paramètres), entraîné sur le supercalculateur MareNostrum 5 du Barcelona Supercomputing Center.
Dès sa conception, EuroLLM-22B a voulu intégrer les 24 langues officielles de l’Union européenne. Il a ajouté 11 langues supplémentaires parmi lesquelles l’arabe, le catalan, le galicien, le norvégien, le russe, le turc, l’ukrainien, le chinois, l’hindi, le japonais et le coréen. Au démarrage, le groupe universitaire EuroLLM a livré un premier modèle modeste avec 1,7 milliard, puis 9 milliards de paramètres. « Nous avons progressivement augmenté l’échelle pour relever des tâches de complexité croissante : mathématiques, code, traduction », explique Hippolyte Gisserot-Boukhlef. Aujourd’hui, le modèle atteint 22,6 milliards de paramètres. Les premiers résultats donnent de bonnes performances dans la compréhension, la traduction et la génération de texte multilingue.
Un ADN complétement open source
L’autre aspect sur lequel insiste le co-fondateur d’EuroLLM-22B, c’est le caractère complètement open source du LLM. « En partant d’un modèle existant, même open weight, une partie de la recette d’entrainement reste inconnue. Or pour revendiquer le full open source, il faut que tout soit transparent : poids, données et méthodologie », souligne-t-il. Une référence à la distinction entre les fournisseurs qui proposent des LLM dits ouverts comme Llama, Gemma, Qwen ou Deepseek, mais qui ne publient pas leurs données d’entraînement. EuroLLM-22B, qui a utilisé un dataset de 4 000 milliards de tokens pour son training en puissant dans les ressources de Wikipédia et Arvix (travaux de recherche universitaires), se compare à des modèles comme Olmo développé par AI2 et Apertus élaboré par un consortium d’universités suisses.
Pour les développements futurs d’EuroLLM, plusieurs pistes sont explorées. « Nous travaillons sur des architectures de type Mixture of Experts, qui offre la possibilité de réduire les coûts de calcul tout en maintenant un haut niveau de performance », précise Nicolas Boizard. Par ailleurs, la multimodalité (audio et vidéo) est un axe de réflexion en s’appuyant sur les capacités de calcul du supercalculateur Jupiter à partir de 2026. « L’objectif est de créer des modèles performants sur plusieurs types de données, de les combiner et d’améliorer globalement leurs résultats », conclut le co-fondateur."
Louise Costa et Pierre Khan
22 janvier 2026
https://www.lemondeinformatique.fr/actualites/lire-eurollm-22b-parie-sur-un-modele-open-source-et-multilingue-98963.html
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
#métaglossie
"Une nouvelle traduction pour "La Mort à Venise" de Thomas Mann
Plus d’un siècle après la première publication de "La Mort à Venise", une nouvelle traduction française restitue la force et la complexité d’un texte majeur, dont le trouble, dans une Venise gagnée par le choléra, demeure intact.
Avec
Claire de Oliveira, traductrice, maîtresse de conférence à l'Université Paris-Sorbonne.
Thomas Mann est né en juin 1875, il y a un peu plus de 150 ans, ce chiffre rond a occasionné plusieurs manifestations, lectures et relectures en 2025 partout dans le monde. En 2026, son œuvre entre dans le domaine public dans de nombreux pays et vient alors relancer les lectures et les adaptations de ses textes. Dans ce sens, une nouvelle traduction de « La Mort à Venise », texte publiée en 1912, paraît en 2026 avec d'autres nouvelles aux éditions Christian Bourgois. Nous y lisons la ville italienne, plusieurs mystérieuses apparitions masculines, le désir homosexuel, le vieillissement, la création et la mort. Venise y est, tour à tour somptueuse, malsaine et soumise à une épidémie de choléra.
La langue de Thomas Mann
Claire de Oliveira trouve la langue de Thomas Mann "somptueuse, très originale et en lutte contre une peur de l'inachèvement et du silence. Pour Thomas Mann , l'un des moyens d'échapper au mutisme est ce qu'il appelle l'imposture. L'incipit de « La mort à Venise » est une parodie du style d'Achenbach qui est lui-même le personnage principal de cette nouvelle."
Le grand sujet de « La mort à Venise » pour Claire de Oliveira est "la passion interdite de l'homosexualité. À mot couvert, Thomas Mann nous parle dans ce texte de l'homosexualité pénaliséeet réprimée. L'engouement pour cet adolescent du même sexe est exprimé par des métaphores qui le subliment, qui se situent au-delà du délabrement pour s'élever vers la contemplation platonicienne de la beauté" dans laquelle Thomas Mann "élabore une conception inédite de l'esthétique."
Prendre soin du lecteur dans la traduction
Claire de Oliveira prend soin du lectorat contemporain de Thomas Mann grâce à un appareil critique comprenant "des notes explicatives" pour que "certaines allusions culturelles" puissent "être décelées par les lecteurs contemporains francophones." Claire de Oliveira a également été, dans sa traduction, attentive aux "'intertextes au sens large, car Thomas Mann est un très grand lecteur et ne cesse de faire des allusions à des auteurs qu'il adore." Il y a notamment des "références extrêmement cryptées à Gustave Flaubert."
La question de l'auditrice Yulia @yulia_morel à l'attention de Claire de Oliveira : "En tant que traductrice, comment garder quelque chose de l'esprit ou de l'identité allemande propre à Thomas Mann en français ? Faut-il forcément chercher à le préserver ou accepter que la traduction transforme notre lecture ?""
Jeudi 22 janvier 2026
Provenant du podcast
Le Book Club
https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/le-book-club/une-nouvelle-traduction-pour-la-mort-a-venise-de-thomas-mann-2557648
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
#métaglossie
"ChatGNB, une IA utilisée pour la traduction par les fonctionnaires du N.-B.
Le Nouveau-Brunswick a maintenant sa propre plateforme bilingue d'Intelligence artificielle (IA). Créée il y a un an, ChatGNB est réservée aux employés du gouvernement. Dans la seule province bilingue, l'outil est notamment utilisé pour la traduction de l’anglais vers le français.
La plateforme est actuellement en phase pilote et prend en charge la génération d’idées, les brouillons, les explications et les résumés pour les besoins liés au travail, explique Mir Hyder, agent de communications du ministère des Finances et du Conseil du Trésor du gouvernement du Nouveau-Brunswick.
Cet outil est aussi actuellement utilisé pour traduire des documents de l’anglais vers le français, à l’interne.
La province note que l’outil a été développé pour répondre à la nécessité de satisfaire aux exigences en matière de confidentialité et de sécurité qui n’étaient pas disponibles auparavant dans les services commerciaux.
ChatGNB est sous la responsabilité du bureau du directeur des systèmes d’information de la province et possède un cadre de contrôles stricts en matière de confidentialité, de sécurité et de gouvernance, assure-t-on du côté du gouvernement.
Lorsque Radio-Canada à demandé si ChatGNB pourrait être utilisée pour les communications bilingues officielles de la province ou avoir de possibles répercussions sur les traducteurs contractuels, la province demeure vague.
L’outil d’IA est utilisé pour traduire des documents de l’anglais vers le français, le gouvernement explorant de nombreuses façons de rendre notre travail plus efficace et de réduire les coûts. À ce jour, l’accent a été mis sur la traduction de documents internes, lorsque cela était approprié, écrit par courriel Mir Hyder, du ministère des Finances et du Conseil du Trésor.
Une mise en garde des traducteurs
Il n’existe pas de syndicat pour les traducteurs au Nouveau-Brunswick.
Le Bureau des traducteurs de la province a dirigé Radio-Canada au ministère des Finances et du Conseil du Trésor...
Traductions approximatives et fautes : le PCNB a du mal avec le français
Dans une déclaration écrite, la Corporation des traducteurs, traductrices, terminologues et interprètes du Nouveau-Brunswick (CTINB) commente que, bien que l’IA soit un outil puissant et innovant, son utilisation soulève d’importantes préoccupations dans le milieu quant à la précision des traductions qu’elle génère.
Particulièrement en ce qui concerne les documents médicaux, légaux ou techniques ou ceux nécessitant des nuances venant du contexte culturel.
Dans le cas précis de ChatGNB, la CTINB souligne que la plateforme semble être un bon exemple d’une façon de réduire le temps et les coûts à l’interne, mais met tout de même une mise en garde quant à une possible utilisation de l’outil pour des communications externes.
Le consensus de l’industrie est clair : la totalité des contenus traduits par l’IA doivent être considérés comme des brouillons qui nécessitent une révision en profondeur par des experts humains.
Une citation deSergey Petrov, président de la Corporation des traducteurs, traductrices, terminologues et interprètes du Nouveau-Brunswick
Sergey Petrov souligne que l’essor rapide de l’IA dans la société est une réalité qui force les traducteurs dans l’ensemble à s’adapter professionnellement.
Elle n’élimine pas le besoin d’expertise humaine, mais le redéfinit, avance-t-il. Le rôle du traducteur professionnel en tant que rédacteur principal pourrait évoluer comme éditeur, valideur et stratège linguistique.
Une pente très glissante
La professeure agrégée au département de traduction et des langues à l'Université de Moncton, Arianne Des Rochers, craint pour sa part les dérives potentielles liées à l'utilisation de ChatGNB.
Elle s'inquiète des erreurs et biais de cet outil, qui peut être utilisé par tous les fonctionnaires du gouvernement provincial, sans révision de traducteurs formés
C’est une inquiétude parce que ça aurait une incidence sur la qualité des communications gouvernementales, des textes et des services en français, avance la professeure.
Selon elle, cela peut mener à un pas en arrière pour la minorité linguistique francophone.
On aurait des services inégaux parce qu’il y a une langue qui est desservie par l’intelligence artificielle, tandis que l’autre demeure plus sous contrôle humain.
Une citation deArianne Des Rochers, professeure agrégée au département de traduction et des langues à l'Université de Moncton
Elle s'interroge à savoir si l'exigence de bilinguisme dans la fonction publique pourrait ainsi être revue si l'IA devient la solution pour toutes les traductions du gouvernement. Je pense que c’est une pente très glissante et qu’il faut demeurer très très prudent.
La SANB voit d’un bon œil l’usage du IA
La Société de l’Acadie du Nouveau-Brunswick (SANB), vouée à la défense et à la promotion des droits et des intérêts de la communauté acadienne et francophone de la province, se dit en accord avec l’utilisation possible de l’IA pour les traductions de l’anglais vers le français des communications officielles gouvernementales.
Avec l’IA, il y a de bonnes choses et il ne faut pas mettre ça de côté. Il faut aller de l’avant avec, mais, il ne faut pas écarter le fait que de la traduction par l’IA, il faut que ce soit vérifié par des experts en traduction. Il ne faut pas éliminer ça , affirme la présidente de la SANB, Nicole Arseneau-Sluyter.
C’est sûr que ça va réduire les coûts des traducteurs, mais il faut quand même qu’il y ait des traducteurs. Je ne suis pas contre l’IA, mais le dernier mot doit être fait par des experts, poursuit-elle.
Nicole Arseneau-Sluyter ajoute qu’il sera important aussi que le projet n’ait pas de répercussion négative sur le fait francophone dans la province.
Il ne faut pas qu’on perde nos services en français, déjà qu’on les perd assez là. Il ne faut pas qu’on perde du terrain au niveau du français, ajoute Nicole Arseneau-Sluyter.
Pascale Savoie-Brideau (Consulter le profil)"
https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2220784/ia-traduction-bilingue-francais-anglais
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
#métaglossie
"Quand la langue française envahit l’espagnol
On pointe volontiers du doigt les anglicismes. Mais des termes français s’introduisent aussi depuis des siècles dans la langue espagnole. Si certains de ces gallicismes sont assimilés, donnant naissance à de nouveaux mots, d’autres sont importés tels quels. De quoi susciter parfois la perplexité de l’hispanophone et mettre à rude épreuve sa volonté d’inclusion, écrit ce quotidien madrilène.
Traduit de l’espagnol
Publié le 19 janvier 2026 à 05h00
Il suffit de jeter un coup d’œil à une carte pour saisir toute l’importance de la relation qui unit depuis des siècles l’Espagne et son voisin du nord, par la force des choses. La France est un passage obligé ; sans elle, point de communication ou de lien avec le reste de l’Europe. Il y a certes les Pyrénées – on a largement ironisé sur leur présence et leur rôle. La voie maritime permet aussi, bien sûr, d’atteindre d’autres terres.
Pourtant, quoi qu’on en pense, la France coiffe l’Espagne. Nous l’aurons crainte, aimée, haïe ; nous aurons tour à tour cultivé la gallophilie et la gallophobie. Nous donnons des surnoms péjoratifs à ses habitants, par exemple gabacho [de l’occitan gavach, “qui parle mal”] ou encore franchute [qui peut être traduit par “franchouillard”]. Nous qualifions d’afrancesados [“francisés”] les Espagnols qui ont collaboré avec Bonaparte… Mais le fait est qu’ils sont là, la France et les Français. Et, dans l’ensemble, nous leur devons beaucoup, et même énormément.
Notre langue doit beaucoup à la leur. Du Moyen Âge à nos jours, le français a enrichi l’espagnol de nombreux mots, parfois évidents (jardín, parterre, bulevar, coqueta) et parfois moins (le mot ideología a des racines gréco-latines, mais il n’existerait pas sans son modèle français, “idéologie”)..."
https://www.courrierinternational.com/article/vu-d-espagne-quand-la-langue-francaise-envahit-l-espagnol_238889
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
#métaglossie
"Plafonnement du CPF : pourquoi un amendement vise à exclure les formations linguistiques
Arnaud
il y a 3 jours
Alors que le débat sur le plafonnement du Compte Personnel de Formation entre dans sa phase décisive, un amendement déposé à l’Assemblée nationale attire particulièrement l’attention des acteurs de la formation. Il propose d’exclure explicitement les formations menant à une certification linguistique du mécanisme de plafonnement introduit par le Sénat dans le cadre du projet de loi de finances pour 2026.
Derrière cette formulation technique se cache un enjeu de fond, à la fois social, économique et stratégique pour la politique de formation professionnelle.
Ce que prévoit exactement l’amendement
Sur le plan juridique, l’amendement est simple dans sa rédaction mais structurant dans ses effets. Il vise à compléter un alinéa du texte budgétaire afin d’exclure du plafonnement :
les formations menant à une certification visant l’atteinte ou l’amélioration d’un niveau de connaissance d’une langue.
Autrement dit, si cet amendement était adopté, les formations linguistiques certifiantes inscrites au Répertoire spécifique ne seraient pas soumises au plafond de droits CPF mobilisables, contrairement à d’autres certifications relevant du même répertoire.
Il s’agit bien d’une exclusion ciblée, et non d’une remise en cause générale du principe de plafonnement.
Le contexte : un plafonnement voté par le Sénat
Pour comprendre la portée de cet amendement, il faut revenir sur le texte adopté par le Sénat.
Dans le cadre du projet de loi de finances pour 2026, les sénateurs ont voté un dispositif visant à plafonner les droits mobilisables sur le CPF pour les actions de formation sanctionnées par des certifications du Répertoire spécifique. L’objectif affiché est double :
responsabiliser davantage les usages du CPF,
maîtriser la dépense publique dans un contexte budgétaire contraint.
Ce principe de plafonnement s’appliquerait de manière indifférenciée à toutes les certifications concernées, sans distinction de nature ou de finalité.
C’est précisément cette approche uniforme que l’amendement de l’Assemblée nationale vient questionner.
Pourquoi les formations linguistiques posent un cas particulier
L’exposé sommaire de l’amendement développe plusieurs arguments structurants, qui méritent d’être explicités.
Un levier clé pour les publics éloignés de l’emploi
Les formations linguistiques jouent un rôle central dans les parcours d’insertion et de réinsertion professionnelle. Elles concernent directement :
les demandeurs d’emploi de longue durée,
les personnes peu ou pas qualifiées,
les salariés en situation de précarité,
les publics issus de parcours migratoires,
ou encore les personnes exerçant dans des territoires où la maîtrise des langues conditionne l’accès à l’emploi.
Dans ces situations, la compétence linguistique n’est pas un simple “plus”. Elle constitue souvent un pré-requis d’employabilité, voire un facteur déterminant de sécurisation des parcours.
Plafonner strictement l’accès à ces formations reviendrait, selon les auteurs de l’amendement, à affaiblir un levier majeur de réduction des inégalités d’accès à l’emploi.
Une logique de progression sur le temps long
Autre point central de l’argumentaire : la nature même des compétences linguistiques.
Contrairement à certaines certifications du Répertoire spécifique qui correspondent à une habilitation ponctuelle ou à une compétence immédiatement acquise, la langue s’inscrit dans une dynamique de progression continue.
Maintenir, consolider ou améliorer un niveau linguistique suppose souvent des formations successives, étalées dans le temps.
Appliquer un plafonnement uniforme risquerait donc de freiner cette progression naturelle et d’entrer en contradiction avec l’objectif fondamental du CPF, qui est la montée en compétences tout au long de la vie.
Des compétences transversales, pas uniquement liées au poste
L’amendement insiste également sur un point juridique et économique important.
Les formations linguistiques ne peuvent être assimilées à de simples formations d’adaptation immédiate au poste de travail, qui relèveraient exclusivement de la responsabilité de l’employeur. Elles développent des compétences transversales, transférables d’un emploi à un autre, d’un secteur à un autre, voire d’un pays à un autre.
À ce titre, elles s’inscrivent pleinement dans la vocation du CPF comme outil d’autonomie professionnelle des actifs, et non comme simple instrument de formation interne à l’entreprise.
Une cohérence avec les textes récents sur le CPF
L’amendement souligne enfin que cette exclusion s’inscrirait dans la continuité de choix déjà opérés par le législateur, notamment lors des textes récents consacrés à la lutte contre la fraude au CPF.
Dans ces réformes, la spécificité des certifications linguistiques a déjà été reconnue, précisément pour permettre leur mobilisation répétée dans une logique de progression et non d’usage unique.
L’exclusion du plafonnement serait donc cohérente avec cette reconnaissance antérieure, sans remettre en cause l’équilibre général du dispositif.
Un amendement ciblé, sans remise en cause globale
Il est important de le souligner : cet amendement ne conteste ni le principe du plafonnement, ni l’objectif de maîtrise de la dépense publique. Il propose un ajustement ciblé, fondé sur la nature spécifique des formations linguistiques et sur leur impact social et économique.
Le texte prévoit d’ailleurs explicitement un mécanisme de compensation financière pour l’État, via la création d’une taxe additionnelle, afin de préserver l’équilibre budgétaire global.
Une issue encore incertaine
À ce stade, cet amendement n’a pas été adopté. Il est en attente dans le cadre des discussions parlementaires à l’Assemblée nationale. Son sort dépendra directement :
du calendrier des débats,
des arbitrages politiques de la semaine en cours,
et, le cas échéant, du recours ou non à l’article 49.3 sur le budget.
En cas de passage en force, il est possible que cet amendement ne soit jamais examiné ni voté.
Ce qu’il faut retenir
Cet amendement constitue une prise de position claire sur la place des formations linguistiques dans l’écosystème du CPF. Il met en lumière une tension structurante entre deux objectifs légitimes : la maîtrise des dépenses publiques et la préservation d’un accès effectif à des compétences clés pour l’emploi.
Quelle que soit son issue, il illustre un point essentiel : la réforme du CPF ne se résume pas à un plafonnement budgétaire. Elle pose des questions de fond sur la nature des compétences que la collectivité choisit de soutenir prioritairement.
Les prochains jours permettront de savoir si cette spécificité linguistique sera reconnue dans le texte final, ou si elle devra s’adapter au nouveau cadre commun qui se dessine pour l’ensemble des formations certifiantes.
Texte intégral de l’amendement relatif à l’exclusion des formations linguistiques du plafonnement du CPF
À l’alinéa 5, après le mot :
« professionnelles »,
insérer les mots :
« , ainsi que de celles menant à une certification visant l’atteinte ou l’amélioration d’un niveau de connaissance d’une langue ».
Exposé sommaire
Le présent amendement vise à exclure explicitement les formations aux langues du champ du plafonnement instauré par l’amendement adopté par le Sénat à l’article 81 du projet de loi de finances pour 2026, en raison de la durée longue de ces formations et de leur rôle déterminant en matière d’employabilité des personnes éloignées de l’emploi.
L’amendement adopté par le Sénat prévoit un mécanisme de plafonnement des droits mobilisables sur le compte personnel de formation (CPF) pour les actions de formation sanctionnées par des certifications enregistrées au répertoire spécifique (RS). Si l’objectif de responsabilisation des acteurs et de maîtrise de la dépense publique est partagé, l’application indifférenciée de ce plafonnement aux formations linguistiques apparaît inadaptée et contre-productive au regard des finalités mêmes du CPF.
Les formations en langues constituent en effet un levier essentiel d’accès ou de retour à l’emploi pour les publics les plus fragiles : demandeurs d’emploi de longue durée, personnes peu qualifiées, salariés occupant des emplois précaires ou exposés aux mutations économiques, mais également personnes issues de parcours migratoires ou résidant dans des territoires où les opportunités professionnelles exigent une maîtrise accrue des langues. À ce titre, elles contribuent directement à la réduction des inégalités d’accès à l’emploi et à la sécurisation des parcours professionnels.
Par nature, les compétences linguistiques s’inscrivent dans une logique de progression continue, sur le temps long. Contrairement à d’autres certifications du répertoire spécifique, elles ne correspondent pas à une habilitation ponctuelle ou définitivement acquise, mais à un apprentissage évolutif nécessitant des formations successives pour consolider, maintenir ou améliorer un niveau de maîtrise. Leur plafonnement risquerait de freiner cette progression et d’entraver l’objectif de montée en compétences poursuivi par le CPF.
En outre, les formations linguistiques ne peuvent être assimilées à des formations strictement liées à l’adaptation immédiate au poste de travail, relevant de la seule responsabilité de l’employeur au titre de l’article L. 6321-1 du code du travail. Elles participent au développement de compétences transversales, transférables d’un emploi à l’autre, et répondent ainsi pleinement à la vocation du CPF comme outil d’autonomie et d’émancipation professionnelle des actifs.
Enfin, l’exclusion des formations en langues du mécanisme de plafonnement s’inscrit dans la continuité des choix opérés par le législateur dans d’autres textes récents, notamment en matière de lutte contre les fraudes au CPF, où la spécificité des certifications linguistiques a été reconnue afin de permettre leur mobilisation répétée dans une logique de progression des compétences.
Le présent amendement vise donc à préserver l’accès effectif aux formations linguistiques financées par le CPF, compétence indispensable à l’insertion professionnelle et à l’adaptation des actifs aux évolutions du marché du travail, tout en maintenant l’équilibre général du dispositif de plafonnement pour les autres certifications du répertoire spécifique.
La perte de recettes pour l’État est compensée à due concurrence par la création d’une taxe additionnelle aux droits mentionnés aux articles 575 et 575 A du code général des impôts.
Source : https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/17/amendements/2247/AN/2483";
https://cpformation.com/plafonnement-du-cpf-pourquoi-un-amendement-vise-a-exclure-les-formations-linguistiques/amp/
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
#métaglossie
"For African enterprises navigating global business, the question has shifted from whether to use AI translation to which system to trust when accuracy affects contracts, compliance, and customer relationships.
The global AI translation market is expanding from $1.20 billion in 2024 to $4.50 billion by 2033 at 16.5% CAGR. Despite 70% of global businesses integrating AI translation by 2025, a trust gap persists: advanced AI tools achieve only 60-85% accuracy versus professional human translation’s 95%+ accuracy.
How Do You Trust AI Translation When You Don’t Speak the Target Language?
For African enterprises expanding across the continent’s 54 countries and 2,000+ languages, or engaging with international partners, this challenge is particularly acute. Decision-makers regularly need to approve critical translations, contracts, compliance documents, and product specifications in languages they don’t understand. The traditional approach has been frustratingly inefficient: copy text into Google Translate, then DeepL, then maybe ChatGPT, manually comparing outputs and hoping for the best.
“The biggest issue isn’t that AI makes mistakes, it’s that you can’t easily tell when it’s wrong unless you speak the target language,” noted a user in the r/LanguageTechnology Reddit community, where translation professionals frequently discuss the challenges of trusting single AI engines. This sentiment echoes across enterprise technology discussions throughout 2024 and 2025, as businesses grapple with the practical reality of deploying AI translation at scale.
MachineTranslation.com’s newly launched SMART (consensus translation) feature offers a fundamentally different approach: instead of asking which single AI engine is best, it answers which translation multiple independent engines agree is correct. SMART provides the most trusted translation by comparing the outputs of 22 AI models. It automatically selects the version that the majority of AIs agree on for each sentence. This drastically reduces risk and cuts AI translation errors by 90%. This verification-first methodology represents what industry experts are calling the most significant advancement in machine translation reliability since neural networks became mainstream.
What Is AI Translation Hallucination and Why Does It Matter?
AI hallucinations in translation occur when systems generate fluent, grammatically correct content containing factual inaccuracies or fabricated information.
A 2025 Scientific Reports study analyzing 3 million mobile app reviews found 1.75% of user complaints were about hallucination-like errors. In enterprise deployments, 47% of AI users in 2024 made at least one major decision based on hallucinated content, while 39% of AI-powered customer service bots were reworked due to hallucination errors.
For translation, hallucinations manifest as dropped words, fabricated facts, and terminology drift—especially in low-resource African languages. MIT’s analysis shows hallucinations are particularly prevalent when translating out of English. OpenAI’s latest models demonstrate hallucination rates of 33-79% depending on complexity.
How Does SMART’s 22-Model Consensus Actually Work?
SMART transforms the translation workflow by querying multiple independent AI engines, including Google, DeepL, Claude, Microsoft, and others from its platform of over 22 AI models, and automatically selecting the sentence-level translation that the majority of engines converge on. Crucially, this isn’t about adding a rewriting layer or stylistic polish on top. SMART picks the strongest consensus result without modifying meaning.
“When you see independent AI systems lining up behind the same segments, you get one outcome that’s genuinely dependable,” explained Rachelle Garcia, AI Lead at Tomedes, the company behind MachineTranslation.com. “It turns the old routine of ‘compare every candidate output manually’ into simply ‘scan what actually matters.'”
The consensus model delivers three key advantages that directly address enterprise pain points:
Hallucination Mitigation:
When one engine fabricates details, others typically don’t. SMART follows the majority rather than the outlier, significantly reducing the risk of invented content making it into final deliverables.
Non-Linguist Confidence:
Stakeholders who don’t speak the target language finally see “the translation where most AIs agree,” providing a practical safety net for approval processes.
Review Efficiency:
Editors and reviewers no longer need to scrutinize five separate versions of the same sentence, dramatically accelerating quality assurance workflows.
What Results Has SMART Demonstrated in Real-World Testing?
Internal evaluations on mixed business and legal material revealed that consensus-driven choices reduced visible AI errors and stylistic drift by 18-22% compared to relying on a single engine. The largest gains came from fewer hallucinated facts, tighter terminology consistency, and fewer dropped words, all critical factors for professional content used in contracts, compliance documents, and stakeholder communications.
Even more striking for enterprise decision-makers: in a focused review where professional linguists rated SMART output, 9 out of 10 described it as the safest entry point for stakeholders who don’t speak the target language at all. This directly addresses the fundamental pain point in global business operations, where executives regularly need to approve translations in languages outside their competency.
According to Ofer Tirosh, CEO of Tomedes: “MachineTranslation.com is no longer just a scoring and benchmarking layer for AI outputs; it now builds a single, trustworthy translation from those outputs, end to end. We’ve evolved beyond pure comparison into active composition, and SMART surfaces the most robust translation, not merely the highest-ranked candidate.”
These improvements arrive at a critical moment for African enterprises. As AI adoption accelerates across the continent, with industries from finance to healthcare increasingly relying on automated translation for cost efficiency, the need for verifiable accuracy has never been greater.
Where Does Consensus Translation Provide Maximum Value?
SMART offers benefits across all scenarios, but certain use cases show particularly strong ROI:
Contracts and Legal Policies:
Less scrutiny required; reviewers focus on sensitive clauses, trusting consensus for standard language. Legal AI translation achieves 90% compliance with jurisdiction-specific terminology.
Product Pages and UI Content:
Consistent phrasing across SKUs and interfaces enables faster localization. Critical for African e-commerce – 76% of online buyers prefer products with information in their local language.
Compliance and Regulatory Documents:
Fewer wording slips enable enterprises to align terminology once and distribute confidently across jurisdictions.
Technical and Medical Content:
Healthcare AI localization reduced medical translation errors by 35%, but stakes remain high. Consensus provides a “safety net” when multiple engines converge on medical terminology.
The African context makes these improvements timely. Digital transformation initiatives are driving AI adoption, while Africa’s projected AI market growth to $16.5 billion by 2030 signals increasing enterprise investment.
When Should Enterprises Still Use Human Translation?
SMART’s consensus approach significantly improves AI translation reliability, but it doesn’t eliminate the need for human expertise in all scenarios. The platform explicitly acknowledges this through its optional Human Verification feature for mission-critical content.
Industry data suggests a tiered approach delivers optimal results:
High-Stakes Content (legal documents, marketing campaigns, public-facing materials): Requires human expertise and review. Professional translation delivers 95-100% accuracy versus AI’s 70-85%, and the reputational and legal risks of errors justify the investment. Cost: $0.10-$0.25 per word for common language pairs.
Medium-Stakes Content (help articles, internal policies, onboarding materials): Works well with AI translation plus light human review, especially when using consensus approaches like SMART. Hybrid workflows combining AI draft translation with certified linguist review deliver savings of up to 45% compared to pure human translation while maintaining 97% accuracy. Cost: approximately $0.08 per word including post-editing.
Low-Stakes Content (internal communications, routine emails, preliminary drafts): SMART consensus translation without human review provides a reliable, cost-effective baseline. Free to use for basic implementations, with API options for enterprise integration.
For African SMEs with limited resources, this tiered approach offers a practical pathway. As businesses across the continent seek to transform operations with AI, understanding where to allocate human expertise versus AI automation becomes a crucial competitive advantage.
How Does SMART Fit Into Secure Enterprise Workflows?
Enterprise adoption requires robust data governance. MachineTranslation.com addresses this through:
Secure Mode:
SOC 2-compliant AI processing meeting enterprise security standards
Automatic Anonymization:
Sensitive fields anonymized before processing
Temporary Sharing:
Expiring guest links for controlled collaboration
Format Preservation:
Maintains layouts for PDFs, Word docs, and PowerPoints
No Long-Term Storage:
Content isn’t retained, addressing data sovereignty concerns
These features align with African regulatory frameworks including South Africa’s POPIA, Nigeria’s Data Protection Regulation, and the emerging AU Data Protection Framework.
What Does the Reddit Translation Community Say About This Approach?
The value of comparing multiple AI outputs resonates in translation technology discussions. In r/LanguageTechnology communities, users frequently discuss challenges of trusting single AI engines, with consensus emerging that comparing multiple outputs reduces error risk.
Reddit invested substantially in AI translation, expanding to over 35 countries in 2024. According to Slator, Reddit’s translation cost per language was under $1 million in Q3 2024. CEO Steve Huffman called machine translation “one of the best opportunities we’ve ever seen to rapidly grow the content base outside of English.”
How Should African Enterprises Implement Consensus Translation?
For technology leaders considering SMART:
Identify High-Volume Content:
Start with reliable but not mission-critical translations – product descriptions, support docs, routine correspondence.
Measure Baseline Metrics:
Document current error rates and review time before implementation.
Run Parallel Testing:
Process content through both existing workflow and SMART for 2-4 weeks.
Define Review Triggers:
Establish when consensus translations need human verification.
Scale Gradually:
Begin with one department, validate results, then expand.
This measured approach allows African enterprises embracing AI to validate results before full adoption.
What Are the Broader Implications for African Business?
SMART’s consensus approach signals a shift: rather than seeking the “best” single AI system, orchestrate multiple specialized systems and leverage agreement as reliability proxy.
For Africa’s language diversity, consensus-based approaches offer value for:
Intra-African Trade:
Reliable contract and specification translation as AfCFTA drives cross-border commerce
Regulatory Compliance:
Consistent documentation across multiple African jurisdictions
Digital Public Services:
Verifiable accuracy for e-government initiatives in multiple official languages
Healthcare and Education:
Safety mechanisms where translation errors have direct human impact
The translation market’s projected growth to $27.46 billion by 2030 (from $6.93 billion in 2024) at 25.79% annual growth reflects recognition that language barriers represent genuine economic obstacles.
What Comes Next in Translation Verification?
SMART is live on MachineTranslation.com, free for basic use with enterprise API options. The platform supports 270+ languages via web, Android, iOS, and API.
As AI reshapes enterprise operations, consensus approaches suggest a principle: when single AI systems struggle with reliability, orchestrating multiple systems and extracting consensus offers a practical path forward.
For African technology leaders, the question isn’t which AI translator is best – it’s how organizations verify translation accuracy when decisions depend on it. SMART’s 22-model consensus provides one answer, reducing errors by up to 90% and giving non-linguists a practical safety net.
In a continent where linguistic diversity is simultaneously cultural asset and business challenge, tools making multilingual communication trustworthy aren’t just convenient – they’re an infrastructure for economic integration and growth."
https://www.itnewsafrica.com/2026/01/stop-asking-which-ai-translator-is-best-start-asking-how-translation-gets-verified-inside-smarts-22-model-consensus/
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
#métaglossie
"“AI-powered translations for Reels are starting to roll out in more languages, including Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, and Kannada, on Instagram. These new additions build on our existing language support for English, Hindi, Portuguese, and Spanish.”
The addition of more of the languages spoken in India is significant, because India is now the biggest single market for both Facebook and Instagram usage, beating out the U.S. by a significant margin.
As such, the capacity to translate your Reels into more natural language for this audience could give some creators a big boost in their audience reach.
Meta’s AI Translations use the sound and tone of the creators own voice, in alignment with lip-synching, to create a more authentic representation of the original clip.
And thus far, it’s having an impact. Instagram chief Adam Mosseri says that creators are seeing increased reach due to translated content, with more Reels from around the world now making their way into people’s feeds.
It could be a valuable consideration, and having the capacity to connect in more languages could boost your exposure to millions more Reels viewers.
In order to activate Meta’s AI translations, you’ll need to have a Page, or have professional mode turned on, and have at least 1,000 followers. Meta’s AI translations are available in countries where Meta AI is available..."
https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/meta-adds-more-languages-to-ai-translations-for-reels/810019/
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#metaglossia_mundus
#métaglossie
"Prix de de la traduction ATTF-BNP PARIBAS Association taiwanaise des traducteurs de français
Hsieh Pei-chi remporte le prix de traduction avec La vie secrète d’un cimetière
Hieh Pei-chi remporte le prix de traduction 2025 de l'ATTF-BNP Paribas pour sa traduction de La vie secrète d'un cimetière, de Benoît Gallot (photos ATTF, montage Rti)
L’Association taïwanaise des traducteurs de français (ATTF) a annoncé aujourd’hui que Hsieh Pei-Chi (謝珮琪) est la lauréate du prix de la traduction de 2025 pour l’ouvrage La vie secrète d’un cimetière, de Benoît Gallot.
L’ATTF décerne chaque année un prix à la meilleure traduction pour des œuvres françaises publiées à Taïwan, sponsorisé par BNP-Paribas et alternant les catégories littéraire et sciences humaines et sociales d’un an à l’autre, cette dernière étant la catégorie de 2025.
Suivant la nomination de cinq ouvrages en novembre dernier, le jury final s'est réuni à Taipei le 11 janvier pour délibérer, noter chaque traduction et choisir la lauréate. Hsieh Pei-chi était nominée pour la première fois à ce prix. Selon Caroline Jortay, qui fait partie de jury : « C'est une traduction exceptionnellement fluide que nous livre Hsieh Pei-chi dans sa traduction de La vie secrète d’un cimetière de Benoît Gallot. On y retrouve toute la délicatesse et la musicalité du texte français, tandis que la traductrice guide avec beaucoup d'habileté les lecteurs sinophones vers les recoins méconnus du Père Lachaise. »
Notons que le jury était composé de l’autrice Wei-Yun Lin-Górecka (林蔚昀), la chercheuse du CNRS Coraline Jortay, la chercheuse à l’Institut d’histoire et philologie de l’Academia Sinica Dai Lijuan (戴麗娟), le docteur en philosophie diplômé de l’Université de Louvain Shen Ching-Kai (沈清楷) et le professeur de politique à l’Université Cheng Chi Yeh Hao (葉浩)."
21/01/2026 14:51
Par： La Rédaction
https://www.rti.org.tw/fr/news?uid=3&pid=187576
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
#métaglossie
"Atos et Graia s’unissent pour lever les barrières linguistiques au travail grâce à la traduction vocale en temps réel
Paris, France – 20 janvier 2026 – Atos, un leader mondial de la transformation digitale accélérée par l’IA, annonce aujourd’hui un partenariat stratégique avec Graia, une plateforme d’intelligence artificielle qui redéfinit l’expérience client au travers d’interactions intelligentes et empathiques. Ensemble, les deux entreprises ont pour objectif de révolutionner le support multilingue au sein de l‘écosystème Digital Workplace d’Atos en intégrant à ses centres de services et de support la technologie de traduction vocale bidirectionnelle de pointe de Graia.
Cette initiative positionne Atos à l’avant-garde de l’innovation en matière d’environnement de travail augmenté par l’IA, en permettant une traduction vocale fluide et en temps réel. Les utilisateurs et les agents de support s’expriment naturellement dans leur langue maternelle pendant que le système traduit instantanément. L’IA générative de Graia ne se contente pas de transcrire et traduire en temps réel, elle surveille également les expressions clés, suggère aux agents des formulations adaptées à la culture de leurs interlocuteurs et automatise l’évaluation des appels. Atos bénéficie ainsi d’un contrôle qualité homogène et d’un suivi des performances d’une grande précision.
Atos accompagne aujourd’hui plus de 5 millions d’utilisateurs à travers le monde dans plus de 100 langues. Grâce à la technologie de Graia, Atos comblera les imperfections linguistiques d’utilisateurs non anglophones rencontrant des difficultés à s’exprimer avec précision en anglais. Déployé initialement dans le cadre du support multilingue, le service sera ensuite étendu aux parcours d’intégration et de formation inclusifs disponibles au sein de l’offre Digital Workplace d’Atos.
Ce partenariat marque un tournant pour l’accessibilité au travail. La traduction en temps réel accélérera la résolution des incidents et éliminera les blocages linguistiques, offrant une expérience positive, tant aux utilisateurs qu’aux équipes de support. Les clients bénéficieront de services hyper-localisés, adaptés à leur langue, leur culture et leurs préférences, et intégrés à une offre dont l’efficacité est reconnue par le marché.
L’IA générative de Graia transcrit et traduit les conversations en temps réel tout en surveillant les expressions clés et fournit aux agents des énoncés adaptés aux nuances culturelles. L’évaluation automatisée des appels garantit un contrôle qualité constant et des indicateurs de performance fiables à chaque interaction. Cette intégration renforce le leadership d’Atos dans la création d’environnements de travail digitaux inclusifs et évolutifs.
Mike McGarvey, responsable mondial de la stratégie, Digital Workplace, Atos Group, a déclaré : « En intégrant la technologie de traduction vocale de Graia à notre écosystème Digital Workplace, nous donnons à nos équipes le moyen de dialoguer plus naturellement avec nos clients du monde entier. Il s’agit d’un pas décisif vers des expériences digitales véritablement inclusives, intuitives et localisées. Des clients des secteurs de la finance, des services publics, du commerce de détail ou de la santé ont déjà manifesté un vif intérêt pour ce service et nous ont confié des projets en phase pilote. »
Sahil Rekhi, directeur commercial, Graia, a déclaré : « Atos innove sans cesse afin de proposer des environnements de travail fluides. Nous sommes très fiers d’avoir été choisis pour enrichir les interactions multilingues au sein des opérations de support technique d’Atos. Ensemble, nous démontrons comment l’IA générative et agentique peut accroître la satisfaction et la productivité des clients grâce à un support intelligent et adaptatif. »
Cette initiative s’inscrit dans la stratégie d’Atos de proposer un support informatique proactif, comme en témoigne l’Experience Operations Center (XOC). Ce service d’Atos identifie et résout en temps réel les problèmes liés à l’expérience collaborateur, créant ainsi un environnement de travail numérique plus engageant et valorisant.
***
À propos d’Atos Group
Atos Group est un leader international de la transformation digitale avec près de 67 000 collaborateurs et un chiffre d’affaires annuel de près de 10 milliards d’euros. Présent commercialement dans 61 pays, il exerce ses activités sous deux marques : Atos pour les services et Eviden pour les produits. Numéro un européen de la cybersécurité, du cloud et des supercalculateurs, Atos Group s’engage pour un avenir sécurisé et décarboné. Il propose des solutions sur mesure et intégrées, accélérées par l’IA, pour tous les secteurs d’activité. Atos Group est la marque sous laquelle Atos SE (Societas Europaea) exerce ses activités. Atos SE est cotée sur Euronext Paris.
La raison d’être d’Atos Group est de contribuer à façonner l’espace informationnel. Avec ses compétences et ses services, le Groupe supporte le développement de la connaissance, de l’éducation et de la recherche dans une approche pluriculturelle et contribue au développement de l’excellence scientifique et technologique. Partout dans le monde, le Groupe permet à ses clients et à ses collaborateurs, et plus généralement au plus grand nombre, de vivre, travailler et progresser durablement et en toute confiance dans l’espace informationnel.
Contact presse
Isabelle Grangé | isabelle.grange@atos.net | +33 (0) 6 64 56 74 88"
https://www.24matins.fr/pr/atos-et-graia-sunissent-pour-lever-les-barrieres-linguistiques-au-travail-grace-a-la-traduction-vocale-en-temps-reel
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
#métaglossie
"At The Hindu Lit for Life 2026, Deepa Bhasthi unpacked the choices, politics and power behind translating Kannada into English.
“There is no such thing as proper English.” That opening remark by writer and translator Ms. Bhasthi anchored one of the sessions at The Hindu Lit for Life 2026 titled ‘Re-imagining Stories’, moderated by writer and translator Nandini Krishnan. The discussion centred on Ms. Bhasthi’s acclaimed translation of Heart Lamp, the International Booker Prize-winning collection of Kannada stories by Banu Mushtaq.
Ms. Bhasthi was unequivocal that her role went far beyond that of a linguistic mediator. In selecting, editing and translating these works, she acted as editor, interpreter and cultural custodian, shaping what global readers now recognise as Ms. Mushtaq’s literary voice in English. “It wasn’t just the labour of translation,” she noted, “but the choices on what to include, what to leave out, that travelled internationally,” Ms. Bhasthi says.
Ms. Bhasthi opened the session by reading out an excerpt from the Kannada version of Heart Lamp. The discussion lingered on her decision to retain culturally specific terms such as ganda, pati, yajamana, and akki roti without any footnotes. Such choices allow the English version of Heart Lamp to carry an accent, a geography and a lived social texture. Translation, for her, is not about erasing difference but about inviting readers to inhabit another linguistic world. “I am more led by the language than the writer. I want the reader to understand as much of Kannada linguistic culture as possible… If someone can learn a new Kannada word, then why not?” Ms. Bhasthi says.
Ms. Bhasthi spoke about resisting the idea of a “neutral” or “global” English, particularly one shaped by colonial or metropolitan standards, which is why “South Indian speech rhythms deliberately find space in the stories,” says Ms. Bhasthi. She also acknowledged moments of negotiation, particularly with Western publishers unfamiliar with Indian languages. The term “nursing home,” she recalled with humour, proved to be one of the rare compromises.
The session also explored how Ms. Bhasthi’s translations across different authors demand different forms of attentiveness. With Heart Lamp, she said, the process required immersion into unfamiliar religious and cultural registers, including Urdu and Arabic influences within Kannada. On being asked about death as an underlying theme across the stories, Ms. Bhasthi spoke about how they are peppered with dark humour rather than being an easy or light read. “I wanted to ensure that all stages of womanhood are touched upon, from a young bride to an old woman. You realise patriarchy and religious fundamentalism affect women of all ages,” Ms. Bhasthi says.
Despite winning one of the world’s most prestigious translation prizes, Ms. Bhasthi noted that translators continue to remain marginal figures. “As long as reviewers keep calling translations ‘seamless’, they erase the labour and thinking behind every line,” she observes.
Ultimately, the session foregrounded Ms. Bhasthi not just as a translator of Heart Lamp, but as a thinker reshaping how Indian literature travels, insisting that readers learn to listen to stories that challenge them linguistically."
https://www.thehindu.com/lit-for-life/re-imagining-stories-when-language-travels-honestly/article70510354.ece
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#métaglossie
"Hugging Face has released FineTranslations, a large-scale multilingual dataset containing more than 1 trillion tokens of parallel text across English and 500+ languages. The dataset was created by translating non-English content from the FineWeb2 corpus into English using Gemma3 27B, with the full data generation pipeline designed to be reproducible and publicly documented.
The dataset is primarily intended to improve machine translation, particularly in the English→X direction, where performance remains weaker for many lower-resource languages. By starting from text originally written in non-English languages and translating it into English, FineTranslations provides large-scale parallel data suitable for fine-tuning existing translation models. Internal evaluations also indicate that the resulting English text performs on a similar level to FineWeb for English-only model training, allowing the data to be reused beyond translation-specific tasks.
Beyond translation, Hugging Face reports that the resulting English corpus retains substantial cultural and contextual information from the source languages. In internal experiments, models trained on the translated English text achieved performance comparable to those trained on the original FineWeb dataset, suggesting that FineTranslations can also serve as a high-quality supplement for English-only model pretraining.
The dataset is sourced from FineWeb2, which aggregates multilingual web content from CommonCrawl snapshots collected between 2013 and 2024. To reduce skew toward highly repetitive or domain-specific material, such as religious texts and Wikipedia pages, only language subsets with a bible_wiki_ratio below 0.5 were included. For each language, up to 50 billion tokens were processed, with quality classifiers from FineWeb2-HQ applied where available, and random sampling used otherwise.
Translation was carried out at scale using the datatrove framework, which enabled robust checkpointing, asynchronous execution, and efficient GPU utilization on the Hugging Face cluster. Documents were split into chunks of up to 512 tokens, with a sliding-window strategy to preserve context across segments. Additional safeguards were introduced to mitigate common large-scale translation issues, including early classification of toxic or spam-like content, strict formatting constraints, and post-processing to ensure consistency of line breaks and structure.
Each dataset entry includes aligned original and translated text chunks, language and script identifiers, token counts, quality and educational scores, and references to the original CommonCrawl source. The dataset can be accessed through the Hugging Face datasets library...
FineTranslations is available now on Hugging Face. The dataset is released under the Open Data Commons Attribution (ODC-By) v1.0 license, and its use is subject to CommonCrawl’s terms."
Robert Krzaczyński
Senior Software Engineer
https://www.infoq.com/news/2026/01/huggingface-fine-translations/
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#metaglossia_mundus
#métaglossie
This Collection invites interdisciplinary scholarship that explores translation as a cultural, aesthetic, and political practice across literature, film, and other media.
"Translating across cultures: literature, film and other media
Submission status
Open
Submission deadline
15 October 2026
Translation is a creative, interpretive, and often contested process that shapes how cultures encounter one another. From literary classics to contemporary cinema, from subtitling and dubbing to fan translations and digital adaptations, translation mediates meaning across languages, genres, and media. It raises questions about fidelity and transformation, visibility and invisibility, and the power dynamics embedded in cultural exchange.
This Collection invites interdisciplinary scholarship that explores translation as a cultural, aesthetic, and political practice across literature, film, and other media. We welcome contributions from across the humanities and arts, including linguistics, literary studies, film and media studies, cultural studies, philosophy, and related fields. — show all
Submit manuscript
Submission guidelines
Manuscript editing services
Editors
Feng Cui, PhD,
Martyn Gray, PhD &
Irene Ranzato, PhD
Collection content How to submit About the Guest Editors Collection policies
Feng Cui is a Senior Lecturer and PhD Supervisor in the Chinese Programme at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. He also serves as Coordinator of the Minor in Translation program and the Han Suyin Award Fund at NTU. Dr. Cui’s research interests include the history of translation in China, translation theories, 20th-century Chinese literature, and comparative literature. He has authored, co-authored, edited, and translated ten books and published over 50 journal articles and book chapters. He was also Guest Editor of a special issue titled “Transforming Translation Education through Artificial Intelligence” in The Interpreter and Translator Trainer.
Martyn Gray is Assistant Professor in Translation Studies at the University of Nottingham, UK, where he teaches a range of theoretical and practical undergraduate and postgraduate modules. His most recent monograph, entitled Making the 'Invisible' Visible? Reviewing Translated Works (Peter Lang, 2024), focusses on how and against which criteria the work of translators is assessed by amateur and professional reviewers.
Irene Ranzato is Associate Professor of English Language, Translation and Linguistics at Rome Sapienza University, Italy, and Honorary Research Associate at UCL, UK. She is a member of the board of the Italian Association of English Studies (AIA) and is part of the committee in charge of revising the national school guidelines, by appointment of the Italian Ministry of Education. Her research lies at the intersection of linguistic, ideological and cultural issues and focuses on the sociolinguistic analysis of film and television dialogue, and on audiovisual translation, which she explores also in connection with adaptation studies and with gender studies."
https://www.nature.com/collections/gibifiddaj/guest-editors
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#métaglossie
Imagine watching Money Heist or Prison Break in your preferred language without waiting for a dubbed version. Or picture being a die-hard K-Drama fan who does not understand Korean but can still follow conversations without constantly reading subtitles. That vision sits at the heart of live translation, a technology increasingly shaping entertainment, education and cross-border communication.
Over the past two decades, translation tools have moved from static text boxes to experiments in real-time audio. While the promise of seamless, human-like translation is not yet fully realised, rapid advances in artificial intelligence are bringing it closer than ever.
Early years: Literal text on screen
When Google Translate launched in 2006, it functioned as a basic text tool. Users typed or pasted content and received instant translations. The results were often literal and awkward, struggling with grammar and nuance, but the service was transformative. For the first time, millions could access free translations across dozens of languages.
Microsoft took an early step towards spoken translation with Skype Translator in 2014. The system enabled near real-time speech translation between limited language pairs, including English and Spanish. Although conversations required pauses and corrections, it demonstrated that translation could move beyond text.
Smartphones expand the use case
The spread of smartphones widened translation's reach. Google introduced voice input, allowing users to speak and see translations appear on screen. Camera translation followed, letting travellers scan signs, menus and documents.
These tools made travel and everyday interactions easier, but real conversations still felt fragmented. Delays, robotic voices and mismatched tone reminded users that translation remained mediated by machines rather than flowing naturally.
Smart speakers and home use
Amazon entered the space in 2020 with Alexa's Live Translation on Echo devices. The feature allowed conversations across several major languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Hindi. It proved useful in bilingual households, though its reliance on Amazon hardware limited broader adoption.
Conversation mode and meetings
Google's Conversation Mode marked another step forward. Two speakers could take turns while the app translated each side. While more practical, users still had to hold their phones and wait for processing, preventing a fully fluid dialogue.
Video-conferencing platforms also began to experiment. Zoom introduced AI-generated live captions and translated captions, and in 2025 said it was testing more advanced real-time translation features for meetings, according to company announcements. These tools primarily targeted corporate users rather than everyday conversations.
Gemini and real-time audio experiments
Recent attention has focused on Google's Gemini AI model. In early 2026, Google demonstrated and began limited testing of an upgraded "Live Translate" experience within Google Translate, according to company briefings. The system aims to deliver near real-time spoken translations through connected audio devices, including headphones, rather than only displaying text on a screen.
Google says the feature is designed to better reflect tone and emphasis than earlier systems, though it remains in beta testing and continues to face challenges around latency, accuracy and emotional nuance. Access is currently limited by region, language pair and device compatibility, and the company has not positioned the technology as flawless or universally available.
Rose Yao, a Google executive involved in product development, said in company materials that users can activate live translation through the Translate app, while Google continues to refine the experience based on feedback.
Competing approaches
Other technology companies are pursuing similar goals through different routes. Meta announced live translation features for its Ray-Ban smart glasses in 2024, with wider availability beginning in 2025. The glasses play translated speech through built-in speakers, but require dedicated hardware.
Apple has also expanded translation features across Messages, FaceTime and phone calls since 2025, and later integrated translation support with AirPods. Apple emphasises on-device processing for privacy, but its tools remain closely tied to its own ecosystem.
Microsoft continues to offer translation through Azure Cognitive Services and Teams, focusing on enterprise users, while Amazon maintains translation capabilities through Alexa.
Text translation becomes smarter
Alongside audio, AI has improved written translation. Systems are increasingly able to interpret meaning rather than translating word-for-word. Idioms, slang and local expressions are now more likely to be rendered in context, according to developers from Google, Apple and Microsoft.
This shift reflects a broader move away from mechanical translation towards systems that attempt to model how humans interpret language, though errors and cultural misunderstandings still occur.
Language learning and education
Google is also integrating translation into language learning. New features allow speakers of several languages, including Bengali, Hindi, German and Italian, to practise English, while English speakers can practise selected foreign languages. Feedback tools and progress tracking aim to encourage regular use, placing Google Translate closer to dedicated learning apps.
The bigger picture
From simple text boxes to camera scans, conversation modes and experimental real-time audio, live translation has steadily evolved. What began as a traveller's aid is becoming a broader communication platform, though fully natural, human-level translation remains a work in progress.
With Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Zoom all investing heavily, the competition to make live translation faster, more accurate and more natural is intensifying. Headphone-based translation may represent the next step, but for now, it remains an emerging technology rather than a finished solution.
Mishuk Rahman and Md Jafar Uddin contributed to this report
https://www.tbsnews.net/tech/when-ai-speaks-you-future-live-translation-1338521?amp
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
#métaglossie
"Alexa Translations Deepens Its UAE Presence Through Trusted Legal Partnerships
Selected as One of Three Canadian Companies to Participate in Minister Sidhu's UAE Trade Mission
DUBAI, UAE, Jan. 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Alexa Translations, a leader in AI-powered language solutions, continues to strengthen its presence in the region through its participation in a formal engagement held as part of Minister Sidhu's GCC trade mission.
As one of only three Canadian companies participating, alongside Novisto and National Bank of Canada, Alexa Translations was recognized for its commitment to delivering trusted legal technology tailored to the needs of Arabic-speaking professionals across the region.
Alexa Translations
During the weeklong visit, Alexa Translations further deepened its collaboration with Al Tamimi & Company, one of the most respected legal firms in the Middle East. This partnership builds on an established relationship and reflects the company's long-term investment in building technology that supports local legal infrastructure and digital transformation initiatives.
"Our presence in the UAE reflects the region's rapid economic growth and its role as a global hub for business and talent," said Gary Kalaci, CEO of Alexa Translations. "As organizations operate across borders, languages, and legal systems, they need language technology built to support that complexity. Alexa Translations helps bridge those language barriers so teams can operate with confidence in high-stakes environments."
Alexa Translations A.I. solution is purpose-built for legal use cases and shaped in collaboration with Arabic-speaking legal practitioners, combining dialect-sensitive processing, culturally attuned workflows, and secure deployment options designed for regional legal environments.
The company's continued growth in the UAE reflects a long-term commitment to supporting cross-border legal collaboration, improving access to legal services through technology, and strengthening Canada–UAE innovation ties.
About Alexa Translations
Alexa Translations provides A.I.-powered translations for the largest and most prestigious legal, financial, and government institutions. Our unique combination of advanced technology and professionally certified translators deliver tailored solutions with unparalleled quality. Thanks to over two decades of award-winning client success, you can rely on us as a true extension of your team.
Media Contact: Mark Vecchiarelli, Vice President, Marketing, Alexa Translations, media@alexatranslations.com"
News provided by
Alexa Translations
Jan 19, 2026, 10:20 ET
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/alexa-translations-deepens-its-uae-presence-through-trusted-legal-partnerships-302664547.html
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
#métaglossie
Dans son nouveau roman, désormais traduit en français, l’écrivaine autrichienne met en scène la lutte d’un jeune homme pour quitter le carcan d’une enfance faite de maltraitances.
"...Paru en 2024 sous le titre de Zitronen, désormais traduit en français, L’invention de la douleur vient d’être récompensé du Prix du livre autrichien remis par l’ambassade d’Autriche en France, dont le jury a salué «un roman saisissant qui aborde un sujet très difficile dans l’une des plus belles langues». C’est que, nous explique Valérie Fritsch, autrice née en 1989 à Graz, «la violence m’était tellement étrangère et lointaine que je voulais mieux la comprendre». Elle a fait de nombreuses recherches pour écrire ce roman. «J’ai commencé par lire beaucoup d’ouvrages spécialisés et quand j’ai eu le sentiment d’en savoir assez sur le plan scientifique, je suis allée à la rencontre des gens pour les observer concrètement.»
« Restons-nous prisonniers de l’identité forgée par l’enfance? »
Valerie Fritsch
Dans la deuxième partie du roman, August est adulte, ou du moins tente de vivre une vie d’adulte. Car le jeune homme est «capable de trébucher et de tomber sur un obstacle inexistant, tant il était habitué à en rencontrer depuis sa plus tendre enfance». Comment sortir d’une enfance qui est pourtant encore partout en nous? Comment conjurer cette souffrance, qui reste «inaccessible, enfermée dans une chambre, dans un corps»?
August tombe follement amoureux d’Ava, goûte au miracle d’être aimé et d’aimer sans que cela fasse mal, mais les blessures restent à vif. Le temps n’a rien pansé, il a enfoui, mais cet amour fait tout resurgir. Possessif, August sent Ava se lasser de ses insécurités et s’éloigner de lui, alors il tombe malade. «Sans hésiter, il donn(e) son corps en offrande, se crucifi(e) lui-même dans l’espoir d’obtenir le grand pardon.» La logique connue dans l’enfance se perpétue ainsi dans l’âge adulte, qui n’apparaît que comme une répétition, avec variations, de l’enfance.
Prison de l’identité
«Détermination et autodétermination» s’affrontent dans sa vie, comme dans celle de tout un chacun. C’est ce qui intéresse l’autrice autrichienne: «Le passé et l’enfance forgent notre identité, façonnent notre personnalité. Puis vient ce moment passionnant où l’on devient adulte: restons-nous prisonniers de cette identité? Est-ce qu’elle nous retient? Ou s’en échappe-t-on?»
Yaleo
C’est dans une langue calme, attentive, «précise et condensée», rendue de manière admirable par la traduction de Tatjana Marwinski, que Valerie Fritsch creuse cette question. L’autrice varie sans cesse le plan large, où l’on observe les personnages de loin, et les plans serrés où, l’espace d’un instant, le lecteur est au plus près de leurs sensations et ressentis. C’est ainsi que le roman nous conduit, pas à pas, vers une fin inéluctable, dont le tragique nimbait déjà les premières pages.
Valerie Fritsch, L’invention de la douleur, trad. Tatjana Marwinski, Ed. Plon, 224 pp."
https://www.laliberte.ch/articles/culture/livres/lecrivaine-autrichienne-valerie-fritsch-face-au-tabou-de-la-violence-maternelle-1275839
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Study calls for restoring status of humanities in higher education
"A recent academic study has called for restoring the central role of the humanities within Oman’s higher education system, describing them as a cornerstone for building a balanced, sustainable knowledge-based economy.
The study, authored by Dr. Maryam bint Ali Al-Hanaei, Associate Professor of Intercultural Communication, and Prof. Mohammed bin Ali Al-Balushi, Professor of Archaeology and Heritage Studies at Sultan Qaboos University, was published in the Journal of Arabian Studies under the title “Reimagining the Knowledge Economy: A Critical Call to Recentre the Humanities in Omani Higher Education.”
The researchers argue that prevailing narratives surrounding the knowledge economy often equate progress and innovation solely with scientific and technological advancement, overlooking the vital contribution of the humanities and social sciences in developing critical thinking, reinforcing ethical values, and preserving cultural identity.
The study highlights a disconnect between national strategic frameworks—such as Oman Vision 2040 and the Cultural Strategy 2021–2040, which emphasize identity, culture, and creativity—and the realities of higher education practices that tend to prioritise scientific, technical, and business disciplines.
Through an analysis of faculty distribution and student enrolment patterns both inside and outside Oman, the study finds that while the humanities continue to hold a notable presence—particularly in education, community, and cultural fields—their share is gradually declining compared to engineering and technical disciplines, especially among students studying abroad.
The researchers stress that recentring the humanities is neither a luxury nor a purely cultural endeavour, but a strategic necessity for sustainable development.
They argue that cultivating informed, creative citizens requires ensuring that scientific and technological progress remains aligned with ethical, social, and cultural values. The study calls for education and research policies that foster integration between the humanities and scientific disciplines through interdisciplinary curricula, institutional and research support, and the embedding of humanities-based knowledge within national innovation systems—consistent with Oman’s aspirations for a knowledge society rooted in identity and openness to the world.
According to the study, investment in the humanities equips future generations with both technical competence and ethical and cultural awareness, supporting comprehensive and balanced development in the Sultanate.
Dr. Al-Hanaei said the research forms part of a broader intellectual project launched in 2022 to reassess the position of the humanities and the knowledge-production system within Omani higher education. She explained that the study presents a methodological critique of neoliberal approaches that frame education primarily as an economic tool measured by profitability rather than human or societal value—an approach that marginalises local and humanistic knowledge and creates ethical and epistemological gaps.
She added that academic experience reveals a clear contradiction between the principles of Oman Vision 2040—which stress identity, values, sustainability, and human development—and educational practices that prioritise technical and professional disciplines driven by market logic. This contradiction, she noted, raises fundamental questions about the purpose of education: whether it should merely supply labour-market skills or also nurture critical awareness, cultural belonging, and intellectual responsibility."
https://www.pressreader.com/oman/times-of-oman/20260119/281552297258671
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"African publishers see Sharjah festival as bridge for culture and translation
The event opens doors for cross-border learning, book translations and new partnerships
The Sharjah Festival of African Literature (SFAL 2026) brings writers and publishers closer to the Arab world.
Sharjah: Literary festivals rooted in culture play a key role in sharing knowledge and bringing communities closer, African publishers and booksellers said at the second edition of the Sharjah Festival of African Literature (SFAL 2026).
Participants said the event offers a rare space where African and Arab writers, publishers and readers can meet, exchange ideas and explore translation opportunities that are often missing back home.
Learning across African borders
James Odhiambo, CEO of the Kenya Publishers Association, said the festival has been an eye-opener even for Africans themselves. The association represents 158 publishers across Kenya.
“This festival is a real learning experience, not only for people outside Africa but also for Africans,” he said. “I discovered here that Ethiopian writing styles and stories are very different from those in Swahili literature. We usually don’t meet, but here in Sharjah, we can sit together, talk and learn from one another.”
Also Read:
Africa’s stories take over Sharjah with culture, food and fashion
Odhiambo said he is also looking to translate African works into Arabic through contacts made at the festival. He pointed out that Swahili and Arabic share many words and cultural links, making collaboration a natural step.
Giving African voices a platform
Mkuki Bgoya, Managing Director of Tanzania-based Mkuki na Nyota Publishers, said African literature is often sidelined on the global stage.
“Many African writers end up being published outside the continent,” he said. “This festival brings them closer to Arab publishers and allows for honest conversations around translation rights and storytelling. This is how culture travels — through seeing yourself in others and being seen in return.”
Building links with the UAE
Ditiro Huma, Director of Mosala Masedi Publishers and Booksellers from South Africa, said the festival also helps visitors understand how publishing and education work in the UAE.
“There is strong potential to build long-term partnerships between South Africa and the UAE,” she said. “Very few festivals allow you to hear Ethiopian stories, learn Arabic basics and enjoy African food, all in one place.”"
January 18, 2026
Balaram Menon, Senior Web Editor
https://gulfnews.com/uae/people/african-publishers-see-sharjah-festival-as-bridge-for-culture-and-translation-1.500412047
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"Literary agents and publishers from French, Korean and Spanish languages showed more interest in translating Tamil books at Chennai International Book Fair 2026. From Tirukkural to Bharathiar poems to contemporary short stories, Tamil books are set to be widely translated, while children's books and science books from foreign languages will be translated into Tamil.
Laticia Ibanez, a French literary teacher and translator, said contemporary Tamil literature, including works of Perumal Murugan and Imayam, is getting translated into French. "We collected 15 Tamil poems from Bharathiar to Perundevi and translated them into French. Tamil publishers are also interested in translating award-winning French novels and non-fiction into Tamil," she said.
Vivian Lavin, a literary agent from Chile, is planning to translate children's literature and non-fiction from Spanish into Tamil.
"We have two Nobel prizes in Spanish, including Gabriela Mistral, the first Latin American and children's author to win the prize in 1945. We are planning to translate her works with Tamil Nadu Textbooks and Educational Services Corporation," she said. "In Latin American literature, landscape is another protagonist. It is not only the people," she added. She is planning to take Tirukkural to her country with illustrations for children.
"CIBF is the fastest-growing international book fair in Asia, with participation from more than 100 countries. Now, we will focus on converting these agreements into books," said T Sankara Saravanan, coordinator of the rights committee, CIBF. School education secretary B Chandra Mohan, who is chairman of the organising committee, said 1,830 expressions of interest (EoIs) were signed this year. "This includes 1,273 agreements to translate Tamil books into other languages, and 260 to bring other language books into Tamil," he said."
A Ragu Raman / Jan 19, 2026, 01:43 IST
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/french-korean-spanish-publishers-interested-in-translating-tamil-books/articleshow/126658436.cms
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"Appel à communication
Équipe de recherche
PLIDAM
Date limite
Samedi 31 janvier 2026
Type d'évènement
Colloque
PROBLEMATIQUE
Dans de nombreuses régions du monde, les populations sont confrontées à des bouleversements sociaux de grande ampleur pour des raisons multiples. Des conflits voire des guerres engendrent l’exode rural et des migrations qui ont pour conséquence le dépeuplement des régions entières, aussi bien en milieu rural que dans des centres urbains. Ces réalités contribuent à la perturbation et même à la scission de continuums historiques, sociologiques et culturels. Du point de vue des langues, outre la variation dialectale, ces facteurs impliquent leur développement dissocié selon les contextes urbains et ruraux et une perte de connaissance des langues de socialisation première, et ceci dès le plus jeune âge.
La désintégration de structures familiales naguère existantes, l’accès limité aux nouvelles langues et aux nouveaux codes culturels fragilisent l’implication des parents dans l’éducation de leurs enfants.
OBJECTIFS
L’objectif est de comprendre et d’expliquer ces bouleversements et leurs conséquences préjudiciables sur les structures sociales, familiales et culturelles qui affectent en profondeur la vie des populations. La complexité des situations varie, entre autres, en fonction du degré d’éloignement des migrants pluriel partout par rapport à leur milieu d’origine.
Le type de relation que les migrants vont établir avec leur nouveau milieu a des implications sur le devenir des familles, notamment du point de vue culturel, en plusieurs dimensions. D’où les quatre axes de focalisation : (a) transmission de langue d’origine et éducation ; (b) enseignement de la langue du migrant ; (c) perception sociale et statut de la langue du migrant ; (d) et place des multimédia, formes d’expression et de communication.
Axe transmission de langue et éducation : il englobe surtout la pratique éducative au niveau informel, c’est-à-dire par la participation familiale, et au niveau formel, c’est-à-dire le rapport aux politiques linguistiques dans leur rôle de régulateurs institutionnels sur l’enseignement et l’usage des langues ; quels sont les fonctions de la littérature et des différents genres de la littérature orale dans la transmission de la langue ?
Axe enseignement de la langue du migrant : il s’intéresse à l’enseignement dans les deux contextes : quels sont les enseignements dans les régions / les pays d’origine du migrant ; quelles formes d’enseignement peuvent être développées en contexte de migration ?
Axe perception sociale et statut de la langue du migrant : cet axe interroge d’abord la dynamique linguistique dans la vie collective des immigrés, la loyauté par rapport à la langue d’origine. Elle interroge en même temps la gestion réciproque (immigrés et population hôte) des rapports humains et des réajustements sociaux : s’agit-il d’une gestion syncrétique, par exclusion ou alors par hiérarchisation ?
Axe multimédia, formes d’expression et de communication : ce troisième axe met l’accent sur le concept de communication dans un sens large, pouvant se manifester comme un acte verbal ou artistique, public, collectif ou individuel, solennel ou informel, dans les médias ou en sous forme de contes dans les réseaux sociaux, de maximes et de proverbes, entre autres.
Contributions
En inscrivant leur réflexion dans un cadre interdisciplinaire, les intervenants sont invités à positionner leurs contributions dans l’un des axes et par rapport à l’une des pistes suivantes :
description linguistique ou impact des langues de contact au plan de la phonologie, de la morphologie, de la syntaxe ou de la sémantique, entre autres ;
littérature et oralité : discours solennels, narration, récit, contes, proverbes, entre autres ;
aspects sociolinguistiques : contact de langue et de culture, politique linguistique ;
pratiques didactiques et modes de transmission de langue : en famille et en contexte d’enseignement, dans les rites initiatiques, etc. fonctions et usages de la littérature et des différents genres de la littérature orale ;
graphies, alphabets et transcriptions (ajami, caractères latin), problèmes de transcription et de traduction ainsi que des questions éditoriales ;
usage des langues dans les médias sociaux : Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, entre autres, formes et visées illocutoires ;
la langue en contexte de migration ;
la langue dans le milieu artistique et dans les médias publics ;
l’histoire et l’anthropo-sociologie en contexte migratoire ;
Tous les axes peuvent être abordés par rapport à une langue ou dans une perspective transversale.
Date limite : 31 janvier
Dépôt de dossier :
https://drive.inalco.fr/s/NS3ctX57myotmKF
ORGANISATEUR
Abdourahmane Diallo
CONTACT
Voir l'e-mail"
https://www.inalco.fr/recherche/appels-communication/modes-dexpression-et-de-transmission-culturelles-en-contexte
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"The Hindu Lit for Life 2026
Translators discuss the challenges of re-representing authors across languages
In conversation with Mini Krishnan at the session on ‘Translation: The Bridge Over Lives and Landscapes’, Chandan Gowda, Gowri Ramnarayan, and Vanamala Viswanatha say it’s essential to create the ambience and feel of the original text for meaningful translations
Translation is not only a representation of an author in another language, it is also re-presenting the author, with change at the heart of translation, bilingual scholar and translator Vanamala Viswanatha said here at The Hindu Lit for Life 2026, on Saturday (February 17, 2026).
At the session on ‘In Translation: The Bridge Over Lives and Landscapes’, Ms. Viswanatha, along with journalist and author Gowri Ramnarayan, and columnist, Professor and Dean, School of Liberal Arts, Bengaluru’s Vidyashilp University Chandan Gowda discussed various aspects of translations and their challenges in a conversation with Mini Krishnan, Managing Editor, Tamil Nadu Textbook and Educational Services Corporation.
Elaborating on her English translation of celebrated Kannada author Kuvempu’s novel Malegalalli Madumagalu, into Bride in the Hills, Ms. Viswanatha said Kuvempu was not just a writer, he was a symbol of Kannada culture and literature, and also an icon of Kannada pride.
Set in 1893, the novel traces the social and spatial history of the Malnad region in Karnataka, advocates values of equality, and presents the novelist’s critique of caste prejudices. The canvas of the novel is not human-centered alone but deeply biocentric, rooted in the landscape of the Western Ghats, making it a compelling read. As part of the translation, Ms. Viswanatha said she drew up a list of characters, their location, and a map of region.
Speaking about his edited anthology, Sangama-Pastorale: The Kannada and English Short Stories of Rajalakshmi N. Rao, Mr. Gowda said the author wrote for only a few years while in her early 20s during the mid-1950s, and then vanished from the literary scene. One of her stories, ‘August 15’, was a surrealistic response to India’s Independence celebrations. A translator must strike a relationship with the voice of the text, Mr. Gowda said.
Highlighting her translation of Kalki’s Ponniyin Selvan, Ms. Ramnarayan said that although she had read the book many times, translating it was a learning experience. Author Kalki believed art and culture must foster communal harmony, and embedded ethical convictions in some of his characters, Ms. Ramnarayan said. He used writing as a responsibility to oppose violence and regressive ideas, while promoting liberal and humane values, she said.
The speakers noted that it was essential to create the ambience and feel of the original text for meaningful translations."
January 17, 2026
Lakshmi Immanuel
https://www.thehindu.com
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Justice Prabha Sridevan discusses the emotional intricacies and challenges of translating Imayam's works at The Hindu Lit for Life 2026.
"Translator has to be functionally true to the author, says Justice Prabha Sridevan
January 17, 2026
B. Kolappan
Translating the works of Imayam is an emotional experience and a form of catharsis, said Justice Prabha Sridevan, who has translated four books by the Sahitya Akademi Award–winning writer.
“He asked me whether I would go through the same pain that he had experienced. I said yes,” Ms. Sridevan said in conversation with journalist Kavitha Muralidharan on the Joys and Challenges of Translating Imayam at The Hindu Lit for Life 2026.
She said she had to remain functionally true to the author and ensure that the reader experienced a significant degree of the pain and anguish she herself felt during the process of translation.
When Kavitha Muralidharan asked about the challenges faced by a translator — particularly since the English reader enters the work during the act of translation — Ms. Sridevan said, “I hear the words in Tamil when I read, and I hear them in English when I translate them into English.” She reiterated that she translated the works not as Justice Prabha Sridevan, but as Ms. Prabha Sridevan.
Describing her collaboration with Mr. Imayam during the translation process as a “lovely journey”, she said her chief concern was the possibility of misunderstanding elements related to tradition and custom, which are not easily translated. She pointed out that neither Begetter in English nor Le Père in French could fully capture the meaning of the Tamil word Pethavan (father).
No area of the Constitution should be immune from judicial review, says former CJI D.Y. Chandrachud
She added that Mr. Imayam himself was unhappy with the English title Salt Seller for Uppu Vandikaran, as it suggests a stationary shopkeeper. By contrast, a salt vendor conveys movement — someone who pulls a cart and travels from place to place. “Vendor alone gives mobility to the word Uppu Vandikaran,” she said.
Responding to a question on whether her familiarity with the author and the text made her prone to overlooking details, Ms. Sridevan said she did not read the text as a reader. “I do not overlook even a comma. Every word is an adventure. If I overlook anything, I fail as a translator,” she said.
Ms. Sridevan also clarified that the objective of translation was not to make the work read better. “Something is always lost in translation. It is like carrying water in your hands — however careful you are, some water will spill,” she said.
Kavitha Muralidharan observed that retaining the author’s voice was essential and that the translator could not afford to intrude upon the text.
Ms. Muralidharan opened the session by quoting Mr. Imayam’s social media post: “I understand life as I write, and as I write, life itself becomes writing.”
Mr. Imayam said that words overheard often became the origin for his stories. He recalled how, at a recent funeral, a father’s cry at the graveyard — “How will I go home alone without you? (his son)” — had become an obsession.
He said that once he began writing a story, he lost himself in the process and became the characters he created. “I become the Arokyam of Koverukazhuthaikal. I become Sedal. But once the book goes to print, the story and the characters leave me. Then, like a beggar, I begin searching for new stories,” he said.
His advice to aspiring writers was simple: “Follow writing as though your parents begot you for that purpose.”"
https://www.thehindu.com/lit-for-life/imayam-and-prabha-sridevan-convo-with-kavitha-muralidharan-lfl/article70481852.ece
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"The Language Flagship Program at Brigham Young University was discontinued... because of government funding cuts.
The program, funded by the Department of Defense, was an undergraduate program that offered students opportunities to enhance their language skills to a professional level.
According to the flagship center website, students were provided with experiences that focused on global engagement, professional skills, language proficiency and community and service. At BYU, Chinese and Arabic were offered through the program.
Kirk Belnap, a professor in the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages, was the director of the flagship program.
Belnap said a loss associated with the cancellation of the program was the departure of Ahmad Karout, a native Arabic speaker from Syria who worked as the academic director and coordinator for the program.
“We don’t have an Arab who is full-time on the faculty, so losing Ahmad Karout was a real loss for us,” Belnap said.
One of the opportunities offered through the program was the chance to travel abroad for intensive language study.
Chinese Flagship students were sent to China before COVID-19 and then to Taiwan post-pandemic. The Arabic study abroad was in Morocco.
Nicholas Heil joined the Arabic flagship program in 2020 and participated in the capstone from 2023 to 2024 before its discontinuation.
“It provided a lot of opportunities that were really cool, and then the capstone was really helpful for getting to an advanced level of Arabic,” Heil said.
“I think we were cut because we are a private university and they knew that they could cut us and we’d be okay," Belnap said.
Even without this program available, BYU has created an independently funded Master of Arts in Professional Language (MAPL). This program provides similar opportunities for students.
The MAPL program first admitted students learning Chinese in fall 2022. It began teaching Arabic in 2024 and administrators hope to offer French sometime this year. Steve Riep is the director of the MAPL program and has been with the program since it started.
While the flagship program was more flexible, Riep said the MAPL program requires a professional focus.
“We give them an opportunity to develop professional-level fluency in a target language, in a professional domain,” Riep said. “So it would be in whatever their professional area is. That could be microbiology, engineering, business or even diplomacy.”
A study abroad is also offered through MAPL, allowing students to travel to Taiwan and Morocco to take a specified profession class in their intended language. Students also complete an internship abroad as a part of their education.
“The program is growing; it’s begun sort of small, but our hope is that this year we’re going to have a much larger pool of applicants than we’ve had in the past. We’re excited about the future,” Riep said."
Sophia Howcroft,
January 23, 2026
https://universe.byu.edu/campus/byu-cuts-arabic-chinese-flagship-programs-following-federal-funding-loss
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