Metaglossia: The Translation World

"July 28, 2026 ATC Blog, News, ISO Standards
Welcome to the latest ATC ISO News! In this article, we give you a comprehensive tour of ISO standards for spoken language interpreting and what’s currently under development...

20228 Legal Interpreting Under Review
A revised draft standard for legal interpreting is now open for public comment. For language service providers, interpreters, and legal institutions, this is a development worth paying close attention to. ISO/DIS 20228:2026, Interpreting Services — Legal Interpreting — Requirements, is the second edition of ISO 20228:2019. The draft is currently in its DIS (Draft International Standard) ballot stage, with the public commenting window running from 10 June to 3 August 2026...

20109 Simultaneous Interpreting Equipment Under Review
ISO 20109 is the international standard for simultaneous interpreting equipment. Its 2025 edition sets out requirements for the systems used to deliver audio and video to interpreters and audiences whether everyone is in the same room, participating remotely, or working in a hybrid setup. Amendment 1 to this standard is now open for public comment via your National Body, with a comment window running from 6 July to 29 August 2026...

18884 Interpreting Services Under Review
ISO 18841 specifies basic requirements for the provision of interpreting services. It is currently undergoing review at the Draft International Standard DIS stage to replace the previous 2018 edition...

21998 Healthcare Interpreting Under Development
ISO 21998 currently under development in its early working drafts specifies requirements and recommendations for healthcare interpreting services in spoken and signed communication, intended for interpreting service providers and healthcare interpreters...

23155 Conference Interpreting
ISO 23155 from 2022 specifies requirements and recommendations for the provision of conference interpreting services. It is primarily addressed to conference interpreters and conference interpreting service providers...

13611 Community Interpreting
ISO 13611 from 2024 specifies requirements and recommendations for the provision of community interpreting services. It establishes the foundational principles and practices necessary to ensure quality community interpreting services for all language communities (spoken and/or signed), for end users, as well as for clients, and for community interpreters...

6253 Training Programmes in Community Interpreting Under Development
ISO 6253 for requirements and recommendations for training programmes in community interpreting is currently under development in the committee draft stage to replace the earlier technical specification..."
July 28, 2026 ATC Blog, News, ISO Standards
Read more👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿
https://atc.org.uk/atc-iso-news-focus-on-interpreting/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

How Translating Korean Literature Made Me a Better Fiction Writer
Lizzie Buehler on Incorporating Techniques From Literary Translation Into Her Writing Practice

There is one conversation I remember most distinctly from my MFA in literary translation. I was chatting with a nonfiction student about the novel I was translating at the time when she said with a slight air of amazement, “I could never be a translator. I’m too selfish.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, confused. I had no idea what translating had to do with selflessness.

“I want what I’m writing to be mine,” she replied.

I’ve thought about this conversation frequently in the years since, first as a translator who didn’t think I had an interest in writing my own prose, and later as a soon-to-be novelist. There is the obvious fact that, as a translator, our names are never going to come first on the book cover. It will be in small letters underneath the author’s name, if it’s there at all. Translators will also always have to share the text that we’ve worked so hard on. We may have come up with all the English words on the page, but many readers won’t see what we’ve created as our own, because they don’t realize that translation involves a lot more effort than one-to-one correspondence of vocabulary.

If translating a novel felt like hanging drywall in a newly framed house, writing a novel felt like framing the whole house myself.

In my view, though, the point of translation is that the text is never one single person’s work: it’s always a collaboration, between the author and the translator, or even multiple translators. (I’ve noticed that co-translations are much more common than co-authored prose, perhaps directly reflecting the openness to working in community that is inherent to the translator’s ethos.)

So, no, you can’t be so selfish as a translator that you want the text all to yourself. But if you wanted that, why be a translator at all? And honestly, why be a writer?

My favorite way to begin the writing process is to jot down observations from daily life in my journal, be it a funny phrase overheard at the grocery store or an interaction noticed between two strangers waiting at a crosswalk. It feels like scrapbooking, using specific moments as the tokens I’m trying to remember, and when I have enough moments swirling around in my head, they combine into a specific story. This is a common way for writers to approach fiction—from parts to the whole, rather than beginning with a predetermined story—but I didn’t think about story building in this way until I became a translator, and specifically a translator of the Korean writer Yun Ko-eun.

I’ve now worked with Yun on two novels and one short story collection. I’ve talked with her at length about her creative process, participating in interviews where she discussed the inspiration for her dystopian climate novel The Disaster Tourist, the absurdist story collection Table for One, and her more recent art-world satire Art on Fire. Yun describes specific moments that grow from seeds into a full plot: weird little things that she sees, or questions she has about everyday occurrences. She sums up her way of thinking in the following description of The Disaster Tourist’s protagonist: “Yona was always wondering about…unknown information—like where rocks that fell off the side of a mountain ended up. And what about the scales removed from a filleted fish, or unwanted potato sprouts, or even bullets?”

Would I, too, have learned to wonder like Yona, and to channel this into my own writing, without spending hundreds of hours intently focused on Yun Ko-eun’s words? Maybe, but the apprenticeship via translation certainly helped the process. And beyond the specificities of Yun as a writer, there are so many more general Korean literary details I’ve come to know and appreciate as a translator that have made me think What’s stopping me from doing this in English? Korean doesn’t have English’s fear of repeating the same word over and over—instead of immediately seeing this as clunky, I’ve come to appreciate the rhythm that repetition can enable. There’s also the Korean tendency to anonymize characters or locations in literature by referring to them as A, or B City, or C University—a habit I find oddly charming. Having access to a specific language’s literary quirks is like opening a second toolbox for your own writing.

So rather than seeing a translation practice as selfless, I’d argue that it’s a bit selfish. By translating, you gain so much confidence and experience as a writer. When I was revising my debut novel The Obsessed, I struggled with the opening, rewriting the chapter multiple times before scrapping it and creating an entirely new scene. The experience was daunting—how was I supposed to throw away all the words I’d written and come to feel comfortable with? What if the sentences I wrote to replace them were worse than the originals?

Now that I’d written my own novel, I returned to translation with a new level of belief in my stylistic decisions.

But I’d had this experience before. When translating The Disaster Tourist, I too struggled most with the opening scene, rearranging, deleting, and replacing my rendition of Yun’s sentences multiple times. It was painful, but eventually I found the right arrangement of English words to match Yun’s Korean.

My translation practice doesn’t serve only to benefit my writing; the inspiration and benefits go both ways. Translation requires you to come up with creative reworkings of preexisting ideas; you move these ideas between languages and cultures, but for the most part, you don’t come up with plot yourself. Writing, on the other hand, forces a sense of self-confidence that one can sometimes avoid when translating. That was what really scared me at the beginning of my own novel-writing process. When translating, I trusted that the plot of the story was good, because it had already been published in the source language—vetted by the “experts.” But my novel hadn’t been published in any language; it was still a draft. I had only my own belief in my writing to lean on. My close friends and family who read early versions of The Obsessed reacted positively, but can you really trust the people who love you to tell you if the creative work you’ve invested so much in is terrible? If translating a novel felt like hanging drywall in a newly framed house, writing a novel felt like framing the whole house myself.

But now that I know how to install the foundation on my own—having leaned on the toolbox of skills offered to me by my translation practice—I am able to go back and affix the drywall, too, with greater confidence than ever. The later stages of novel revisions felt like I was back to translation editing; I was no longer being asked to rearrange scenes, change timelines, or cut out and add entire plotlines, but rather to focus on the way paragraphs flowed between each other, and how dialogue embodied certain voices. At the time, I was also simultaneously translating my fourth book from Korean (and my third book by Yun Ko-eun), the novel Art on Fire. Every new translation provides its own challenges—Yun’s new book is a parody of the art world, a sphere about which I don’t know much—but as much as is possible, I was able to translate the novel with a newfound confidence. Now that I’d written my own novel, I returned to translation with a new level of belief in my stylistic decisions.

Jumping between edits on my translation and edits on my own novel was dizzying, but doing so allowed me to see how the two work in tandem together. Being a good translator—knowing when to trust your gut, when to accept edits, when to reject them—means being a good writer. I can only hope—selfishly or not—that the two skills will continue to build upon each other in my future as a translator and author.

____________________________

The Obsessed by Lizzie Buehler is available from G.P. Putnam’s Sons, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC.

Craft Advice fiction writing G.P. Putnam's Sons Korean literature literary translation Lizzie Buehler novel writing Penguin Publishing Group Penguin Random House Putnam The Obsessed translating

Lizzie Buehler
Lizzie Buehler is the translator of The Disaster Tourist (winner of the CWA Dagger for crime fiction in translation), Art on Fire, and Table for One by Yun Ko-eun, and Korean Teachers by Seo Su-jin. She holds an MFA in literary translation from the University of Iowa and has studied comparative literature at Harvard and Princeton. The Obsessed is her debut novel."

Lizzie Buehler
Lit Hub Daily
July 28, 2026

https://lithub.com/how-translating-korean-literature-made-me-a-better-fiction-writer/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"The Passion Translation is under scrutiny. As a Bible translator, here’s my view on the controversy
By Rev Dr David Instone-Brewer27 July 20263 min read

The Passion Translation (TPT) has enjoyed significant popularity in charismatic and Pentecostal circles. But in recent weeks a number of influential pastors and churches have been quietly distancing themselves from the project, citing alledged plagiarism and disputed translation methodology. Rev Dr David Instone-Brewer, who sits on the NIV translation committee, takes a look at the issues and shares his own perspective

Many people love The Passion Translation (TPT) of the Bible and many hate it.

I would love it, but only if the name changed to The Passion Paraphrase. It is written to bring out the passion of the text and has sold over one million copies, but it has also provoked a lot of passionate criticism.

Asking different questions
I’ve just returned from Nashville. Instead of listening to bands, I spent the week in a committee room from 8.30am until evening, enjoying a rather unusual form of Bible study with some of the world’s leading Hebrew and Greek scholars.

This NIV Bible translation committee meet every year to discuss possible improvement to the NIV. It’s expensive to bring scholars together from Africa, India, Australia and Europe to examine a translation that we all agree is already excellent. Every decision has to be almost unanimous, and the discussions are painstakingly detailed. I remember spending half an hour debating a comma. A few of us were unconvinced that it represented the flow of the Hebrew, so nothing changed. Sometimes, as on that occasion, a representative from Biblica, who own the text and fund the committee, sits in on the discussions. I remember glancing at him guiltily, wondering what he was thinking. He didn’t seem concerned. 

The Passion Translation has no committee to challenge individual interpretations or theological leanings. On the NIV committee, I’ve never heard anyone argue: “This shows God’s sovereignty”, or “We need to avoid/emphasise egalitarianism.” I’m not even sure who would be on which side of such issues, because our discussions are never about promoting a theological viewpoint. They are simply about expressing, as accurately as possible, what the text says. What I do hear are comments such as, “That isn’t in the Hebrew,” “Leave that for commentaries,” “The Greek is ambiguous, so we need a footnote,” or “But how does that translate into natural English?” 

Brian Simmons, the author of TPT, appears to be asking himself different questions: “How can I convey the passion implied in this verse?”, “Can I include this word’s other meanings?”, and “Can I help the reader interpret this?” These are all good aims – but they belong only to a paraphrase, not to a translation. That approach has produced valuable works such as The Message, The Amplified Bible, and The Living Bible. These Bibles are proud to be paraphrases: engaging, explorative, expansive and enlivening. TPT, however, misleadingly describes itself as a “translation of the Hebrew and Greek”.

Misleading
One interesting experiment in TPT is including insights from the early translations of the New Testament into Syriac. The Syriac-speaking church was established in Antioch from where (according to tradition) Thomas was sent to India and Thaddaeus to Turkey. They translated and merged the Gospels as the Diatessaron, only a century after they were written. Because Syriac is somewhat similar to the Aramaic spoken by Jesus, these early translations might preserve clues as to how his words were originally understood.

Unfortunately, TPT presents this in a misleading way, with footnotes such as “The Aramaic literally states…”, implying that the later Syriac translation preserves the original Aramaic wording. Many of these are very similar to notes in Victor Alexander’s self-published Aramaic Bible. Simmons has not acknowledged this, which has resulted in accusations of plagiarism. It is very difficult to translate the Bible without using phrases found in other translations, and, he has, as might be expected, done this – although perhaps too often from The Message.

The extent and creativeness of his paraphrase is clear in a familiar passage such as Matthew’s version of the Lord’s prayer. Here are two paraphrases, from TPT and The Message. Which do you think is which?

Our Beloved Father, dwelling in the heavenly realms, may the glory of your name be the center on which our lives turn.  Manifest your kingdom realm, and cause your every purpose to be fulfilled on earth, just as it is in heaven. We acknowledge you as our Provider of all we need each day.  Forgive us the wrongs we have done as we ourselves release forgiveness to those who have wronged us. Rescue us every time we face tribulation and set us free from evil. For you are the King who rules with power and glory forever.  Amen. Our Father in heaven, Reveal who you are. Set the world right; Do what’s best— as above, so below. Keep us alive with three square meals. Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others. Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil. You’re in charge! You can do anything you want! You’re ablaze in beauty! Yes. Yes. Yes.
You’ve probably guessed that the shorter version is from The Message – though The Message often also expands the text (eg Acts19:2). I’ve underlined words in TPT that are not implied by the Greek. I do like some of its interpretations – for instance, unpacking the Jewish idiom of ‘debt’ and ‘debtors’ as referring to being wronged and offering forgiveness. However, I don’t like the way the prayer asking for daily food has become an expectation as if we will never go hungry; or the lack of a prayer for Jesus to “come” again – although alternatives are acknowledged in the footnotes. Its footnotes also mention that “evil” could refer to “the evil one”, as in The Message.

The problem with puns
Simmons likes ‘playing’ with words, rather like the rabbis did. In a footnote he says: “The Aramaic for ‘name’ is shema… It can also be translated as ‘light’, ‘sound’ or ‘atmosphere’ …”. I suspect he is referring to similarities between the Hebrew words shem (‘name’), shama (‘to hear’) and shemayim (‘heavens’) and punning these in a playful way. In that case, this is factually problematic because these similarities do not work in Aramaic; and I don’t find the resulting interpretation helpful. 

The ending of the Lord’s prayer is omitted in the earliest Greek manuscripts, rather like a dictated letter might end simply with “Yours etc”. Scribes added a suitable ending in the later manuscripts that were available to the King James Bible translators. Modern translators usually follow the earlier Greek manuscripts which do not include this doxology, just like the Syriac translations in the Diatessaron and early Peshitta. However, a footnote in TPT misleadingly states that the ending is “translated from the Aramaic”, even though only the later Syriac manuscripts have included it. I suspect that Simmons inserted this doxology in an attempt to satisfy readers who prefer the traditional ending. 

Overall, I do like the liveliness of the TPT – but I don’t regard it as a translation. Simmons himself sometimes described it as a paraphrase in interviews. The accusation of plagiarism should be addressed by acknowledging the work Alexander and perhaps others in the introduction. Also, the description of its “translation philosophy” must be revised, since comparing it with translations such as the NIV are misleading. 

Nevertheless, I congratulate Simmons for the creativity of his paraphrase, which encourages readers to re-explore the implications of the Bible text and brings passion to their devotional reading. But please stop calling it a ‘translation’ of the Bible. 

Rev Dr David Instone-Brewer
Rev Dr David Instone-Brewer is a retired Baptist minister and Cambridge scholar. He has authored several books, mostly on the Jewish background to the New Testament, and is a member of the Committee for Bible Translation (NIV). He is also a regular columnist for Premier Christianity. See articles and videos on more topics, which you can share and comment on, at BibleContexts.com"
https://www.premierchristianity.com/theology/the-passion-translation-is-under-scrutiny-as-a-bible-translator-heres-my-view-on-the-controversy/21906.article
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Google seems to be testing a major redesign for the Google Translate app on Android.
The new layout moves language selectors to the top, adds a redesigned bottom navigation bar, and reorganizes translation tools for more efficient use.
Google Translate has rapidly evolved over the past few years. What started as a straightforward app for translating words and phrases now also lets you hold multilingual conversations and even practice new languages. Despite these new capabilities, Translate’s home screen and overall app design have barely changed and have started to feel dated compared to Google’s other Android apps. Now, it looks like Google is finally giving Translate a much-needed refresh.

You’re reading an Authority Insights story. Authority Insights brings you all the latest exclusive reports, app teardowns, leaks, and in-depth tech coverage from the Android Authority team that you won’t find anywhere else.

While digging through version 10.25 of the Google Translate app for Android, we found a redesigned home screen that modernizes the interface and better highlights the app’s growing list of features. Google has also reorganized translation tools throughout the app, and although the redesign isn’t live yet, it looks like the company is actively working on this new look.

Google Translate New Home Screen
The first thing you’ll notice is a new navigation bar at the bottom of the screen. Instead of using a traditional full-width bottom bar with tabs like many other Google apps, Translate is getting a pill-shaped bottom bar with four sections:

Translate for the main translation screen.
Live for real-time conversations.
Camera for visual translation.
Practice for language learning.
Another major change is that the language selectors have been moved to the top of the interface. This gives the translation area more room and makes the layout feel cleaner and less cramped.
Meanwhile, the translation input box is moving to the bottom, rather than a large text field dominating the center of the screen. The card includes quick actions, including a three-dot menu for additional options, a Paste shortcut, and a mic button for voice input.

Above the input card, Google also surfaces some contextual shortcuts. If you’ve recently been practicing a language, you’ll see a card to continue your practice. Likewise, recent conversations can be resumed through a “Jump back into conversation” shortcut that takes you directly into Live Translate.

Another small but noticeable change can be seen in the top-left corner. The old standalone Saved shortcut has been removed and replaced by a traditional hamburger menu. This will likely give Google more room to organize additional options in the future without crowding the main interface.

Tapping the hamburger icon now opens a new “Your activity” screen that brings together your translation history, saved translations, and saved transcripts in one place. Previously, saved transcripts were stored in the account switcher, while translation history could be accessed by swiping down on the home screen or in the account switcher menu. Consolidating everything into a dedicated activity page should make it much easier to revisit past translations and conversations.

Google has also moved a couple of secondary tools into the new translation input card. The three-dot menu on the left side of the input box now houses the Translation model picker, allowing you to switch between available translation models, along with the Handwriting option for writing text instead of typing or speaking it. This keeps the main interface cleaner while ensuring these features remain only a tap away.

Google Translate New Translate Screen
The redesign doesn’t stop at the home screen. Google has also refreshed the text input screen that appears when you start typing a translation.

Compared to the current interface, the new screen looks much more modern, with several UI elements repositioned to better use the available space. The language selectors remain pinned to the top, while the translation area now takes the form of a large, rounded card that matches the rest of the redesigned interface. Your recent translations now also appear directly in the input card while you’re typing.

Google is also redesigning the screen that appears after you’ve translated something.

Compared to the current interface, the new translation results page adopts the same rounded card-based design seen throughout the redesigned app. Instead of displaying the source text and translated text directly on the page, each now lives in its own card, giving the screen a cleaner, more organized look.

The layout has been shuffled around as well. Several action buttons have been repositioned, while the language picker remains pinned to the top, allowing you to quickly swap languages or start another translation without leaving the page.

Google has also decluttered the top bar by moving some options into the overflow menu. Previously, History and Save had dedicated icons in the app bar. In the new interface, both options have been tucked into the three-dot menu alongside actions like Reverse translate, Share, Choose text translation model, and Send feedback."
By Adamya SharmaAssembleDebug
Jul 6, 2026 — 11:30 PM ET
https://www.androidauthority.com/google-translate-redesign-3684635/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"'I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script'

British American classicist Emily Wilson's translation of Homer's The Odyssey made waves when it was released in 2017, marking the first time a woman translated the ancient Greek epic to English.

It also served as an inspiration for British American director Christopher Nolan. In early publicity for his recently released The Odyssey, Nolan cited Wilson's controversial opening line — "Tell me about a complicated man" — as a reference point for main character Odysseus.

But Wilson's feelings about Nolan's take, which has so far made more than $600 million US since its release just over a week ago, appear more mixed, according to a new essay published online Monday in the London Review of Books (notably titled "An Uncomplicated Man").

"I was humbled to learn that Nolan has read at least the first line of my translation," she wrote. "But I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script."

Nolan film lacks depth, narrative: Wilson
The essay took issue with nearly every aspect of The Odyssey aside from its entertainment value, which is credited to the source material — "impossible to mess up entirely," wrote Wilson, who is also a classical studies professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

But the film's narrative and emotional depth is at about the same level as "an elaborate Fourth of July fireworks display," she wrote.

The movie doesn't have a through line pulling together the multitude of ideas it presents, she argued, nor does she believe it develops its characters enough to deliver a clear message.

Emily Wilson, who translated The Odyssey into English, breaks down Christopher Nolan's blockbuster version that has everyone talking about Homer this summer. Wilson spoke with Megan Williams, guest host of CBC Radio's The Sunday Magazine. CORRECTION (July 27, 2026): A previous title of this video suggested the word "slave" was not used in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. In fact, the term is referenced in the film.
"Nolan's Odyssey lacks many of the elements that make the poem great," the essay reads. The main couple, Odysseus and Penelope (Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway, respectively), have neither chemistry nor a deep connection, she wrote, while Tom Holland does well playing their son, Telemachus, as a man aged "20 going on 12."

Of the leading performers, meanwhile, Damon's Odysseus is "lummoxy," "neither a master storyteller nor a flirt," while Hathaway's Penelope "looks beautiful and mysterious" but is given little to do but yearn for Odysseus "for reasons unknown."

Chief among her objections was that she didn't feel the film had a clear message. When Odysseus defies the gods, for example, the act is portrayed as noble and brave, but when his second-in-command Eurylochus does the same, it is "stupid and greedy," she wrote.

An epic stretch — Christopher Nolan tries to conquer The Odyssey

Does it really matter how you watch The Odyssey? Film-lovers are divided

On a larger scale, the Trojan War, which Odysseus helps start, is portrayed as being horrifying, with innocent civilians subjected to violence and terror. But at the same time, the final scene, where Odysseus massacres Penelope's suitors, is presented as a series of "action-movie sequences in which the reluctant warrior finally gets his hands on his bow and the blood starts flowing."

She also challenged Nolan's decision to film part of the movie in the Moroccan-occupied territory of Western Sahara, which she said "[normalized] the ongoing violence against the indigenous Sahrawi people."

Wokeness allegations
Both Nolan's and Wilson's takes on The Odyssey have received similar criticism from some right-wing users, who charge them with diverting from the source material for political means. Wilson, in particular, has received so much backlash that she has included a separate contact form on her website for "misogynistic trolling."

The war against her translation focused on her "complicated man" opening line. "Complicated" was her interpretation of the ancient Greek word polytropos, an unusual term that has in other versions been translated to "skilled in all ways," or "man of twists and turns."

For her part, Wilson defended the choice on her Substack, saying that other phrases didn't fit her meter- and pacing-related constraints, nor did she feel they were as evocative. But online critics fought back, calling it "vandalism," "condescending" and even an "assault on a foundation of Western culture" with a "clear feminist woke agenda."

The Odyssey the film also garnered its own share of racist and transphobic backlash even before its release, due to its casting of Lupita Nyong'o, who is of Kenyan descent, as Helen of Troy, and Elliot Page, who is trans.

The Odyssey is nearly 3,000 years old. But its message about seeking home resonates today

In her review, Wilson didn't take issue with the race-neutral casting itself but said there was "nothing progressive about" it, noting that most of the non-white actors' roles resembled the "Black best friend," referring to the trope of Black characters being reduced to supporting roles for (often) white leads, with no lives of their own.

Even still, she concluded that the film's release was "an event to celebrate," bringing audiences back to theatres and potentially sparking new interest in ancient Greek and the humanities.

She acknowledged that it helped propel sales of her own book and that Nolan was doing his best to "get the general public reading again." Besides, her teenagers had a good time.

Hanna Lee
Copy Editor
Jul 27, 2026 3:12 PM EDT
https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/emily-wilson-the-odyssey-nolan-review-9.7286280
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Translation troubles: saving penalties
From goalie day to nutmegging, these are the sporting translation conundrums that have got us thinking this week

Valen Iricibar
June 23, 2024
We’ve already had banderazo and the unfortunate LTA as football translation troubles. Still, since we watched the Argentina-Canada match at the fourth Herald Night on Thursday and the Copa América is officially in full swing, I thought we’d dedicate this week’s columns to some football-related phrases.

Día del arquero
As Fernando wrote, “An old Argentine adage says that when a debt is likely to go unpaid, the creditor will get their due ‘on goalkeeper’s day.’” We’re not sure where it comes from but in Argentina, it’s a way of referring to a distant, impossible future — the idea being that it’s never goalie day. A little bit like “till kingdom come” or “until the cows come home.”

That, however, was before 2011, the year Argentina got an official Goalkeeper’s Day in honor of Amadeo Carrizo’s birthday. And before Argentina won the World Cup with Dibu Martínez. What underappreciated job do you reckon we should use instead?

Meter un caño
This was a double translation trouble in the newsroom: someone asked what meter un caño meant and when I answered “nutmeg” the indignant answer was “Why the hell is it called ‘nutmegging’?”

For those unfamiliar, both terms refer to kicking the ball through someone’s legs and making off with it. In Argentina, the move might come with a gleeful cry of “Caño!” because it’s fun if you manage it and embarrassing when it’s done to you. Caño means pipe (also called túnel in other Spanish-speaking countries). Germany, Italy, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway apparently use similar words to denote that you have “tunneled” through your opponent’s legs.

As for the English version, there are several theories as to why “nutmeg” was the chosen word (as far as I can tell other linguistic variations of the practice don’t include the spice). They include 1940s Cockney rhyming slang for “leg,” an allusion to the, er, nuts of a player, and a nod to swindling practices in the nutmeg trade. Whatever its origins, we decided against Amy’s literal translation of nuezdemoscadeó.

You may also be interested in: Your guide to the nicknames of Argentina’s 10 most popular football clubs

Atajando penales
I’m including this turn of phrase because I love it and can’t say it in English which is bizarre given the prominence that football — and penalties specifically — has in both British and Argentine culture. As anyone who’s watched penalty shootouts, especially World Cup-defining shootouts, they’re stressful and the uncertainty can be nauseating.

The closest translation I’ve come up with is “putting out fires.” You’re “saving penalties” when you’re being called to step up to the plate (or multiple spinning plates, to mix metaphors), having to lunge suddenly and quickly one way to the other to stop the ball from getting into the net.

I use it a fair bit to describe how my afternoon shift went after a hectic day of editing multiple urgent stories. Do let me know if there’s a football-related idiom or phrase in English that captures the sentiment!"
https://buenosairesherald.com/culture-ideas/translation-troubles-saving-penalties
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"...the Hebrew Bible has been translated hundreds of times into dozens of languages. Each translation — even the most faithful ones — inherently add connotations, remove context and subtly change the original text’s meaning.

So which of the many, many official Biblical translations have our state legislators decided is most appropriate to display for our schoolchildren?

None of them, actually.

Graven images in the Supreme Court version of the Bible
Turns out, the Louisiana legislators adopted their version of the Ten Commandments not from the original Hebrew, nor from one of the 64 official Christian Biblical translations available, but from a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court case: Van Orden v. Perry.

That case argued the constitutionality of displaying a Ten Commandments monument on the Texas State Capitol grounds. The stone monument in question was donated by the Fraternal Order of Eagles in 1961, and it’s not readily apparent which translation they used.

For example, in the King James Version, Exodus 20:4 in full reads:

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

Meanwhile, in Louisiana’s law, it simply reads:

Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven images.

That version of the verse excludes crucial context about not fashioning false gods from natural phenomena (a reminder that the Israelites clearly needed, given their past with the Golden Calf).

Essentially, our Louisiana legislators are canonizing an entirely new translation of the Bible that exists largely within our country’s court records. It doesn’t bother with accuracy or consistency to the Hebrew, and excises entire sentences from the holy words of the divine.

How can Louisiana students be expected to take in the Ten Commandments as intended when they’re not even getting a full and accurate translation of the text in question?

Are the Ten Commandments “foundational” to Louisiana politics?
If the state is truly committed to the idea that public schoolchildren should deeply value the Ten Commandments, let’s lean into that, too.

Why not use the Ten Commandments to teach kids how to interrogate and interpret primary sources? Let’s educate them on how different translations can reflect the priorities and values of the societies from which they originate, and how contemporary governments who claim to use the Ten Commandments as “foundational documents” actually put them into practice.

For example, if the Ten Commandments teach us not to bear false witness, then how can Louisiana’s legislators claim that there isn’t enough money in the state budget to require public school buses to provide air conditioning?
...

Lara Crigger

https://stljewishlight.org/opinion/im-a-louisiana-jew-the-ten-commandments-get-lost-in-translation-in-the-new-law/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Courts Service considers implementing AI translators in bid to save money

The Courts Service is considering implementing an AI translation service to save money and speed up hearings.

The service spends approximately €4m on translation and interpretation services annually.

The AI alternative is at a “proof-of-concept” stage, and the Courts Service says further “development and evaluation is required”.

Testing is underway “to measure accuracy”.

A digital audio recording AI assistant project has already passed initial testing and will be rolled out in a controlled deployment during September and October, “subject to readiness”."
Mon, 27 Jul, 2026 - 06:00
Ann Murphy
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41886148.html
#metaglossia #metaglossia_mundus

"...In the age of artificial intelligence, foreign language education must pivot from rote memorization and mechanical grammar exercises toward cultivating critical thinking, cultural empathy and self-directed learning.

Additionally, they said students should engage in genuine dialogue with texts, critically evaluate AI-generated content and take ownership of their own learning.

Chen Zehang, a professor at Beijing Normal University's School of Foreign Languages and Literature, said the fundamental value of reading lies in genuine dialogue with a text — questioning, challenging, imagining and empathizing.

"AI can help students understand what a text says, but it cannot help them experience the real meaning of reading," she said. "We are not spending time on reading to memorize words or translate sentences. We are reading to build minds that can question, infer and connect — and that is exactly what AI cannot do."

As AI increasingly handles grammar and other surface-level language tasks, teachers' roles must also evolve, Chen said. Rather than serving primarily as language instructors, teachers should become designers of thinking experiences and facilitators of transferable reading strategies.

For example, instead of asking students to identify grammatical mistakes in AI-generated content, teachers can encourage them to evaluate its accuracy, fairness and appropriateness, she said.

"Teachers are irreplaceable guides to meaning, judgment and curiosity," Chen added.

Yang Luxin, dean of Beijing Foreign Studies University's School of English and International Studies, said AI can also support learning when designed with clear educational objectives.

She has been piloting task-specific AI agents in writing classes, allowing students to receive personalized, text-specific feedback while drafting and continue revising over multiple rounds of interaction.

"The advantage is not that the AI has better professional judgment than the teacher," Yang said. "It is that every student can receive individualized feedback while still drafting."

"In a class of 19 to 27 students, I could not sustain that kind of immediate dialogue with everyone at once," she added.

To prevent students from simply copying AI-generated answers, Yang's team designed the agents with explicit pedagogical limits. They are instructed to diagnose problems before offering corrections, focus only on the current learning objective and ask guiding questions rather than rewrite an entire passage.

Students are required to complete their first draft independently before consulting the AI, decide for themselves what revisions to make and submit a record explaining how they used the AI during the writing process.

Student feedback has been generally positive, with many reporting reduced writing anxiety, greater confidence and stronger motivation.

"We present the AI not as a 'robot teacher' replacing the human teacher, but as a patient writing partner available during drafting and after class," Yang said. "The teacher remains the designer and final professional authority."

Cheng Liying, dean of the School of Education at City University of Macau, said learning a foreign language opens a window — or a door — to understanding different ways of seeing the world.

"The most important thing is that humans are curious and should not sit at the bottom of a well," she said, referring to the Chinese idiom describing people with a narrow outlook.

Cheng said her school's educational philosophy places nurturing at its core.

"We require our postgraduate students to respect others, take responsibility and show resilience," she said. While AI can be a helpful learning companion and mentor, she stressed that it "cannot care for you".

Addressing concerns that memorization and grammar instruction may become obsolete in the AI era, Cheng said mastering the fundamentals remains indispensable.

"If people do not understand basic concepts, they cannot recognize or process information beyond that level," she said. "Having AI does not mean we stop learning basics. The fundamentals still need to be learned; AI can just help us learn them faster."

zoushuo@chinadaily.com.cn"
https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202607/27/WS6a66ae58a310986e2b46761a.html
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

New Testament translated into English from Greek

"500th anniversary of the first printed English New Testament. This is the story …

Quincentenary

This year marks the quincentenary, or 500th anniversary, of William Tyndale’s New Testament, which was published in 1526. Not only was it the first time that the New Testament had been translated into English from Greek, but it was also the first time that the New Testament had been printed in English.

Up to that point, there was an old fourteenth-century New Testament which had been translated from Latin by Wycliffe and his followers, but it had to be laboriously copied by hand. English had changed so much since it was made about 150 years before that comparing Wycliffe’s translation to Tyndale’s is akin to comparing the English of Chaucer with the English of Shakespeare.

Five hundred years ago, in 1526, England was very different. Henry VIII was on the throne and the Catholic Church held sway. Church services were in Latin, and the Bible in English was illegal. It is hard for us to imagine today, when you can walk into most bookstores and buy a copy of the Bible, but owning an English New Testament was dangerous, and copies had to be smuggled in.

The Reformation

William Tyndale was born in southern Gloucestershire, in the west of England, probably in 1490 or 1491, and studied at Oxford University. He graduated aged 24 and was ordained as a priest in 1515, just before the Reformation began.

Meanwhile, in Europe, Erasmus was collecting and collating Greek manuscripts, and in 1516 he published his Greek New Testament alongside a fresh translation into Latin, which highlighted some of the issues with the standard Latin Vulgate text.

The following year, in 1517, a German Augustinian monk called Martin Luther pinned his protests against the Catholic Church onto the castle church door in Wittenberg. The printing presses copied them and disseminated them across the Holy Roman Empire, and they chimed with so many people that they triggered the Reformation.

Then, using Erasmus’s Greek text, Luther was able to translate the New Testament directly from Greek into German, which was published in 1522. Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples then did the same, translating the New Testament from Greek into French, which was published in 1524.

Tyndale’s New Testament

Somewhere around this time, Tyndale got a copy of Erasmus’s Greek New Testament and Luther’s German New Testament and decided England also needed a translation into her language.

He did not like the ignorance which the common people, and even the priests, had of the Bible. They often practised a religion which was more ceremony, tradition and superstition than faith, but many did not know the difference.

According to John Foxe, Tyndale pledged to a priest, “I will cause the boy who driveth the plough to know more of the Scriptures than thou dost.” He dreamt of a time when ordinary people would engage with the Bible in their own language, and he set out to achieve it.

Tyndale in London

There was an old law in England dating from 1407, which was a reaction to the Peasants’ Revolt, stating that a person needed the permission of a bishop to translate the Bible into English.

For Tyndale, the bishop who seemed like the obvious man to ask was Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of London, who was a friend of Erasmus and had helped him with his printed Greek New Testament.

Tyndale left Little Sodbury in southern Gloucestershire, where he had been living and where he had likely already started to translate. With a letter of introduction, he went to London and asked the bishop.

Perhaps recalling the Peasants’ Revolt which followed Wycliffe’s translation and observing events in Germany, the bishop was reluctant to give permission. However, without his permission, which never came, no printer in London would print the translation, which would be considered illegal without it.

Tyndale Continues in Europe

So Tyndale left London aboard a merchant’s ship for Hamburg, and thence up the River Elbe to Wittenberg, where he likely studied Greek and Hebrew under Philipp Melanchthon and was inspired by Luther.

In 1525, he headed to Cologne, where friends helped him to print the completed English New Testament, which was modelled on Luther’s. His plan was discovered by less sympathetic authorities, and he escaped and travelled further up the River Rhine to Worms, where he started again.

The First English New Testament

In 1526, Tyndale published the first New Testament in English, which he called The Newe Testamente, such were the spellings then.

Copies were smuggled into England by traders of the Hanseatic League. Copies were confiscated and burnt in London, and today only three copies of this original 1526 New Testament are known to exist.

There is a copy at the British Library, which they bought for over a million pounds in 1994. The only pristine copy is in the State Library in Stuttgart, and there is a nearly complete copy in St Paul’s Cathedral.

Impact

The language in Tyndale’s translation has influenced the way we speak, and the words and phrases he coined and first put into print are now part of everyday language.

His translation of the New Testament, in a slightly edited form, ended up in the King James Version and, in modernised and updated forms, is still recognisable in the Revised Standard Version, the New King James Version, the New Revised Standard Version, and the English Standard Version, which very much preserve Tyndale’s phraseology and terminology.

Exhibitions

The British Library copy was on display recently in its Treasures room, the St Paul’s copy is currently on display at an exhibition at the Cathedral, and the Stuttgart copy is going on loan back to Worms, where it was printed, for an exhibition there starting in September.

There are currently other exhibitions at Tewkesbury Abbey and Scarborough, with others planned at Oxford and the Faith Museum in Bishop Auckland. Some conferences are also going to mark the anniversary.

The Tyndale Society has its own conference at Oxford in October.

Events

Churches, cathedrals and other groups are slowly catching the vision of the 500th anniversary, which gives an opportunity to tell the story of the English Bible, reflect on our history, and remind ourselves that there are still places where the Bible does not exist in the local language and still places where it is smuggled in.

There have been events all over the country, with more to come. Many churches are holding special services or having talks at church groups.

At the forefront of these events has been the Tyndale Society, which was founded in 1995 and kicked off the 500th anniversary event with a conference in Antwerp in 2025.

The Tyndale Society has supplied speakers, helped organise, or advertised many events, which are listed on the website.

Walks and Trails

With the growing popularity of pilgrimages - no longer to obtain time off in Purgatory, but redeemed by Protestants as walking in the footsteps of history - you can now walk in the footsteps of Tyndale on the Gloucestershire Tyndale Trail, the London Tyndale Trail, or the Stinchcombe Heritage Walk.

For those with energy, you can even walk or cycle down the River Rhine from Cologne to Worms.

Website

The Tyndale Society holds a monthly online “Tyndale Talk” about Tyndale and his impact, which can be found on Eventbrite and which are posted to the “Tyndale Talks” YouTube channel.

To find out more, for facts and information, to see if there is an event near you, or to get help holding an event, see the Tyndale Society website or join the Facebook page."
https://www.christiantoday.com/news/celebrating-500-years-of-the-english-new-testament
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"TEHRAN – The Persian translation of the book “The Secret of the Galician Bagpipe” written by Xose Lois Foxo was unveiled on Saturday, July 25, in Tehran, in a ceremony attended by the book translator, well-known bagpipe player Liana Sharifian and her father, prominent bagpipe player Mohsen Sharifian.

 

Liana Sharifian, 28, is a music researcher, performer, and translator specializing in regional music, particularly Ney Anban, the traditional Iranian bagpipe. She spent a period in the Galicia region of Spain, studying and training on the Galician bagpipe. She has now shared her experience with Persian-speaking audiences through the translation of the book “The Secret of the Galician Bagpipe,” ISNA reported.

 

During the ceremony, Liana spoke about her motivation for publishing the book under current conditions in Iran, as the country has been at war with the US in the past months: “I have always believed that art and culture find their way, even in the darkest of days. Every book published, every piece of knowledge shared, and every bridge built between cultures is a response to violence and despair. That is why I decided not to wait for better days and to release this book in the current circumstances.”

 

Explaining her fascination with other cultures and languages, she added: “I studied for six months in Galicia, in northwestern Spain, and became familiar with the culture and music of the region. The author of this book taught me a love for culture and its promotion, and I translated this work into Persian to pay my dues to the community of Iranian musicians.”

 

Regarding the content, Sharifian noted: “This book is not merely a translation; it is a bridge between the cultures of Iran and Spain. The book covers the history, structure, playing techniques, and various types of Galician bagpipes. In the footnotes, I have added explanations and comparisons with Iranian culture and music wherever possible.”

 

Highlighting the historical background of the bagpipe in Iran, she said: “Based on historical evidence, there are carvings of instruments similar to the bagpipe at Taq-e Bostan in Kermanshah, dating back to the 6th century BC, as well as artifacts from Susa and Haft Tapeh dating to the 8th century BC. This was very interesting to the school where I studied, and they even hung a picture of Taq-e Bostan in their educational space.”

 

“This work can serve as a source and educational reference for musicians who want to learn the Galician bagpipe in the Spanish style. About three-quarters of the book is dedicated to lessons, exercises, and training; readers can follow it as a self-study guide, from music theory topics to basic exercises and the performance of local pieces,” Sharifian added.

 

Reflecting on her life in Spain, she added: “In terms of temperament, there are many similarities between the people of Iran and Spain. In the realm of music, in addition to historical commonalities, some of the rhythms and structures of the Galician bagpipe share similarities with the music of Southern Iran. Throughout my time in Spain, whenever I had the opportunity, I talked about Iran, the music of the south, and my country’s culture, and I consider this my greatest achievement.”

 

Liana Sharifian is a professional player and teacher of the Iranian bagpipe, the Ney Anban. From the age of 16, she studied with her father, the acclaimed piper Mohsen Sharifian.

 

She has distinguished herself by becoming the first documented woman player of the Ney Anban. Passionate about all the bagpipes of the world, she obtained a diploma in Galician Gaita from the school in Ourense. She has appeared on numerous recordings, both as a vocalist and a piper.

 

The Ney Anban is a captivating Persian music instrument that resonates with the soul of southern Iran’s cultural heritage. With its emotive melodies and distinctive construction, this folk music instrument has been a cornerstone of community life in provinces like Bushehr, Hormozgan, and Khuzestan for centuries.

 

From accompanying fishermen at sea to enlivening weddings and rituals, the Ney Anban embodies the spirit of Iranian cultural heritage, blending Persian, Arab, and African influences into its vibrant sound.

SS/SAB"

https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/528551/Persian-translation-of-The-Secret-of-the-Galician-Bagpipe-unveiled

#metaglossia 

#metaglossia_mundus 

"Translating the “Japanese Shakepeare”
Isabel Adair discusses Japanese literature with Natsume Soseki’s translator Nick Bradley

by Isabel Adair
Monday July 27 2026, 8:44am

You may have heard of popular Japanese novelists, Haruki Murakami or Kazuo Ishiguro – or maybe Japanese literature is completely new territory for you. It certainly was for me: my exposure to Japanese writing only went as far as flicking through some token Japanese novels on the tables in Waterstones. But that all changed when I attended Nick Bradley’s talk at Japan House in South Kensington, where he discussed Natsume Soseki’s ‘I am a Cat’. Bradley has translated several of Soseki’s works and is a novelist in his own right. Soseki is one of Japan’s most celebrated writers, often described as “the Japanese Shakespeare.”

Soseki’s works are timeless in the way they discuss the relationship between traditional Japanese values and Western culture, as Bradley emphasised during his talk. Bradley explained the challenges he has encountered in making Soseki’s work accessible to the British public- trying to make sure his book was true to Soseki’s original work while also catering to British tastes and humour. Keen to hear more from Bradley after the talk, I sat down with him last Wednesday. We talked about his work as a writer, translator, and English teacher in Japan looking for inspiration.

“Translation involves the translation of words, of course, but also the translation of culture and experiences”

Being both a published writer and translator, Bradley was able to shed light on both sides on a hotly debated topic – the translator’s role: “You don’t go into radio because you want your face to be recognised everywhere, and the same is true of the translator.” The translator’s work is behind-the-scenes and acknowledging this is necessary to find fulfilment in the role: when translating Soseki, Bradley’s task is not to stand out, but to remain faithful to the author. “How can I convey Soseki in my writing?” he asks himself, implicitly asking how he can convey more than just his words in English.

Bradley emphasised how deeply personal the translation process is: he feels a relationship with Soseki, which transcends the page. Soseki is a figure he identifies with as a fellow student of literature, and as a man also caught between two places – England and Japan. As he was drawing these connections for me, I realised that translation involves the translation of words, of course, but also the translation of culture and experiences. Translation is a means of connection.

Experiencing another culture was crucial in shaping Nick’s own writing. He has published two books, The Cat and the City (2020) and Four Seasons in Japan (2023), both of which are inspired by his time living in Tokyo. The latter is centred around a disillusioned translator struggling to make a life for herself in the city (how apt!). When I asked Bradley about why he writes novels, he replied that writing is, above all, something he does for himself. “My response to reading books that I love is writing,” he said, “and hoping my books inspire other people to write in the same way.” Where a lot of popular Japanese novels or novels set in Japan can feel like stylised guidebooks – providing Brits with a snapshot of life in a foreign place – Bradley’s writing takes a different approach: he is sharing his experiences, and if they appeal to a wider audience, even better.

“Books should convey the experiences of an individual and invite readers to get a flavour of a country as they flick through its pages”

I think this speaks for the future of foreign literature. In an age of social media and digital technology, where life abroad is often romanticised and stylised – leading to the dreaded “Paris syndrome”, or worse, complete disengagement with the authentic culture of a country – books should convey the experiences of an individual and invite readers to get a flavour of a country as they flick through its pages:

“Paris syndrome”: a severe form of culture shock and psychological distress exclusively experienced by some Japanese tourists. It strikes when the heavily idealized, romantic vision of Paris portrayed in Japanese media shatters upon arrival, leading to acute disappointment, psychiatric breakdowns, and even hallucination.

My conversation with Nick ended with him encouraging me to read as widely as possible. After telling him about my interest in dark, existential novels (I am well aware of how pretentious this sounds!), Bradley recommended me the writing of Kenzaburo Oe, who combined British and French existentialism with Japanese prose – and won a Nobel prize in the process – and Kobo Abe, who explores surrealism and alienation in the modern world. Bradley is full of recommendations: see his article ‘Top 5 Novels from Japan’ for more.

READ MORE
Review of The Mays 34

I can also pass on Bradley’s final piece of advice: go out into the world and experience things for yourself. Although I speak no Japanese, and have only begun to read Japanese literature, I believe my contribution to the task of the translator can be as simple as recording my experiences while respecting that translation should always remain true to the original culture.

Support Varsity

Varsity is the independent newspaper for the University of Cambridge, established in its current form in 1947. In order to maintain our editorial independence, our print newspaper and news website receives no funding from the University of Cambridge or its constituent Colleges."
https://www.varsity.co.uk/arts/31803
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"...Those who have criticized the translation and the film of The Odyssey for contemporary language should understand Wilson’s commitment to avoiding the choices of some other translators who “turned a great poem into a hard one.” “I write for the body,” she tells The New Yorker’s Judith Thurman. Wilson also translated Homer’s The Illiad, the prequel to The Odyssey, in 2023.

In 2023, Wilson, who lives near the Penn campus, took Thurman for a walk along the banks of the Schuylkill and told her about her complicated background. Her mother, Katherine Duncan-Jones, was an Oxford scholar specializing in Elizabethan literature. Her father, A. N. Wilson has written famous biographies of Jesus, Darwin, Tolstoy, Milton, Shakespeare, and Queen Victoria. Her younger sister Bee Wilson is a noted British food writer. The parents divorced in 1988. Emily stayed in Oxford to support her devastated mother and to study English literature. In 1996, she took a big leap, travelling to Yale to pursue a doctorate. Wilson became a U. S. citizen in 2022, “to vote where I live.”

She believes that coming from two worlds has made her a better translator and a professor who can better understand her students. Those who attended elite private secondary schools “don’t doubt that they belong” in a classics program. She is committed to nurturing her public school students, making “the whole human experience of the poems accessible to them.”

The importance of the humanities for all students
While I’m not suggesting that Homer and Virgil led directly to my becoming an English professor and university president, an early background in the classics provided the foundation for my career and for my eternal grappling with the meaning of life.

And I’m not alone. The public is voting with movie tickets and book sales for the importance of the humanities. The New York Times reports in “The Revenge of the Philosophy Majors” that the demand for philosophy majors with A.I. training is outstripping demand.

So much for the false humanities/career dichotomy! It’s possible—and desirable– to be highly employable and to study Homer’s Odyssey.

What’s the meaning of it all?
These questions can and should be explored in university general education and elective courses, as well as in humanities majors. Pennsylvania’s public universities (PASSHE) are now considering three-year bachelors degrees. That would inevitably mean cuts in general education and elective courses.

I’m not entirely opposed to three-year bachelors degrees, especially for returning adults and for others who have self-educated in the humanities and want now to focus entirely on professional preparation. But for 18-22 year-olds, for whom college is a life-changing, growing-up experience, a four-year bachelors’ degree offers the range and scope for both career preparation and reflection on life’s meaning.

It’s particularly galling to be told that three-year bachelors degrees are good enough for low-income students who are advised to rush through higher education and join the work force. Stop. Take a breath. There must be time to read The Odyssey, or, if you’re determined to be in a hurry, at least see Christopher Nolan’s film with friends who want to talk about it.

What should we do?
Go to see Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, read and/or listen to Emily Wilson’s translation.
Encourage K-12 teachers to tell Homer’s stories.
Urge colleges and universities to support humanities programs and electives and to connect humanities majors to A. I. training
Inspire students to be life-long learners, forever improving career skills, while exploring life’s meaning.
Elaine Maimon, Ph.D., is the author of Leading Academic Change: Vision, Strategy, Transformation. Her long career in higher education has encompassed top executive positions at Governors State University (IL), University of Alaska Anchorage, and Arizona"
https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/the-odyssey-is-for-all-of-us/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Spotlight on Translation Funding: Sheikh Zayed Book Award

The Sheikh Zayed Book Award started their Translation Grant in 2018 with a goal to expand the reach of Arabic literature around the world.

By Erin L. Cox, Publisher | @erinlcox

Last week, guest contributor Chad Post wrote about the recently-launched Literary Arts Fund in the United States which was founded last October to give away $50 million over five years to the nonprofit literary arts, including many translation publishers who have been impacted by the cuts to the National Endowment of the Arts.
Around the world, there are a number of government and private institutions that support the publication of books in translation. In this series, Publishing Perspectives will highlight funding opportunities for publishers who are looking to bring books in translation to readers in their market.

The Sheikh Zayed Book Award is one of the Arab World’s most prestigious and well-funded prizes. In 2018, the award launch a translation fund initiative to support the publication of not only winning but also shortlisted titles in the Literature and Children’s categories by publishers in countries outside the Middle East.

The goal of the translation funding initiative is to promote the spread of Arabic literature around the world. The grant provides financial funding of up to $19,000 USD per title and is available to all publishing houses working to publish books in foreign languages.

This year’s titles for consideration are:

Winner of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in Literature – Births in the Zoo by Egyptian author, judge, and legal scholar Ashraf Elashmawy. The book is a satirical allegory of contemporary Egypt which portrays the Giza zoo as a microcosm of Egyptian society. Elashmawy’s works have been published in English, French, German, Japanese and Italian translations, including a series of English translations of his novels by the American University in Cairo’s Hoopoe Press.
Fourrure by Iraqi author Nizar Abdulsattar sees its protagonist tracing the legacy of his mother from the Moulin Rouge cabaret in Baghdad to Egypt, Lebanon, and finally London, where he becomes immersed in the world of Christie’s auction house and the inner workings of the art market. Abdulsattar was previously shortlisted for the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in 2019 for his novel The Sequin Embroidery.
Secret of the Al Za‘farana by Saudi author Badriah Albeshr portrays three generations of Bedouin women to create a tapestry of women’s lives in Bedouin society. In the novel, a young girl becomes a gifted storyteller, retelling women’s stories passed down through generations. The novel offers varied depictions of women’s lives in past and present Arab societies, celebrating the importance of women’s solidarity..."

Erin L. Cox
July 24, 2026
https://publishingperspectives.com/2026/07/spotlight-on-translation-funding-sheikh-zayed-book-award/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Translation and dubbing specialist Lingopal will show how AI-powered language workflows can be integrated into existing broadcast and streaming infrastructures at IBC2026.

According to the company, its latest multilingual content services are designed specifically for live and on-demand workflows. The platform currently supports more than 120 languages and offers live AI dubbing for broadcasts, events, sports, news, and streaming content. Other services include real-time translation and multilingual audio distribution, as well as AI-generated captions and subtitles.

Casey Schneider, CEO of Lingopal, said: “Language remains one of the biggest barriers to audience growth”
The company is also showcasing VOD localisation workflows for media libraries, content archives, and Lingopal Rooms, which enable viewers to access translated audio on their own devices.

Casey Schneider, CEO of Lingopal, said: “The future of media is global, but language remains one of the biggest barriers to audience growth. Our goal is to help organisations make live and on-demand content accessible to more people, in more languages, than ever before.”"
By Anne Morris
24 July 2026
https://www.ibc.org/artificial-intelligence/news/lingopal-blends-ai-language-localisation-into-streaming-workflows/22794
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"The AI security layer and guardrails for many AI products don't evenly protect against jailbreaking and unsafe actions in every single language.

Alexander Culafi,Senior News Writer,Dark Reading
July 24, 2026

Not all languages are treated equally when it comes to AI model function and safety, and European organizations face a particular risk when it comes to this reality.

The modern large language model (LLM) ecosystem relies heavily on natural language, whether a user is speaking to a chatbot, issuing specific instructions for software development, generating emails, or performing large-scale data analysis. This reliance is further illustrated through the wide range of prompt injection attacks that rely on language-based trickery.

While leading models can process text in dozens to hundreds of languages, performance and safety capabilities vary dramatically between languages.

Many of the less-supported languages, such as Welsh and Swahili, can answer only basic prompts and may make grammatical errors. Mainstream models like OpenAI's GPT, Google's Gemini, and Anthropic's Claude demonstrate strong performance in around 30 to 40 languages such as English, Arabic, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, and Hindi.

English is by far the language best supported by many AI models. English benefits both from disproportionate training data and from tokenization schemes that often represent English more efficiently than many other languages.

Academic research shows that many LLMs perform logic, reasoning, coding, and math tasks best when prompted in English language, and many major AI labs conduct safety tuning, behavior alignment, and reinforcement using English-speaking annotators.

There are exceptions to this rule. Chinese models like Qwen and DeepSeek outperform Western models when handling Chinese text and cultural context, and certain initiatives are in place to further support languages in Europe and the Middle East. But it would not be a stretch to call the modern AI landscape English-centric.

From a global perspective, this is not just a comprehension or AI function problem but a security issue as well. On July 22, AI security vendor DeepKeep published a blog post titled, "Your AI Speaks 100 Languages. Your AI Security Layer Doesn't."

As DeepKeep explained, the AI security layer and guardrails that exist on top of so many AI products don't necessarily protect against jailbreaking and unsafe actions equally in every single language.

"Security intent can shift during translation. A jailbreak may become less explicit. A prompt injection may lose some of its command structure," the blog post read. "A culturally specific phrase may be flattened into harmless text. A sensitive term may be translated poorly or mapped into language that no longer matches the security policy. Mixed-language inputs can preserve the malicious instruction in one language while surrounding it with benign context in another."

This becomes particularly problematic when many organizations collaborate and use AI tools across multiple languages. This is the case at any globally operating company, but particularly one based somewhere like Europe, Asia, or Africa.

Europe provides one of the clearest examples of the challenges described. Yossi Altevet, chief technology officer (CTO) and co-founder at AI security vendor DeepKeep, tells Dark Reading that dozens of languages sit inside one regulatory and economic bloc, and cross-border operations are the norm rather than the exception.

"That density means Europe is more exposed by design, simply because the odds of hitting a language gap in daily operations are so much higher," he says. "Every multilingual enterprise, anywhere, carries the same underlying risk the moment it processes a non-English prompt."

The Unique Place Europe Sits In
The European Union recognizes 24 official languages, and there are many more regional and minority languages an employee could easily use predominantly.

Paolo Palumbo, VP of strategic threat intelligence and research for WithSecure (a vendor that specializes in European cybersecurity), tells Dark Reading that Europe is not uniquely affected by the security and safety inconsistencies across lower-resourced AI languages, but Europe faces a particularly complex operational challenge "because organizations commonly deploy the same product across multiple linguistic and environments."

"A product may appear to converse competently in a particular language even though its moderation, prompt-injection detection, data-loss prevention, or incident-monitoring controls have not been validated to the same standard in that language," he says.

Palumbo says multilingual security could become an overlooked part of AI governance, and argues organizations should require evidence of multilingual safety from vendors, rather than inferring it from claims of support.

"The EU AI Act does not impose a general requirement that every AI product must achieve identical safety performance in every supported language, and an ordinary chatbot is not automatically a high-risk system," he explains. "For high-risk systems, however, the act requires continuous risk management and appropriate levels of accuracy, robustness, and cybersecurity throughout the system's life cycle. Providers must also address foreseeable misuse and test whether the measures they have implemented are effective. Where linguistic differences materially affect those controls, language-specific testing may become part of the evidence needed to demonstrate compliance."

In DeepKeep's benchmark testing, German, Spanish, French, and Italian all showed meaningful accuracy drops for translation-based personally identifiable information (PII) detection compared to native language analysis. "Europe's multilingual reality just means this gap gets exposed constantly, across nearly every one of its major markets at once," Altevet adds.

That being said, Europe has some advantages over other parts of the world in this respect. Filip Mazán, senior manager of AI research at ESET, points out that many European languages share similarities.

"English and German, for example, have overlapping vocabulary, and large language models can often leverage that common ground. The same applies to many Slavic languages, which share linguistic structures and vocabulary," he says.

The Security Question Behind Multilingual AI Support
One must distinguish between language capability, safety alignment, and downstream security controls, which may not perform equally across languages, even when the model itself appears highly capable. In other words, even if a model speaks and understands German or Spanish well, it does not mean security guardrails will necessarily perform equally as well.

Altevet explains that the risks behind AI multi-language support are not theoretical; attackers repeat malicious commands across multiple languages specifically to slip past filters tuned primarily for English.

The vendor cited Brown University research from 2023 and 2024, which found that OpenAI's GPT-4 provided harmful and actionable responses to unsafe prompts 79% of the time when translated into low-resource languages. The original English prompts generated similar harmful responses less than 1% of the time.

Pete Bryan, technical lead of Microsoft's AI red team, tells Dark Reading that the tech giant has been testing its AI systems for years across a range of different languages specifically because "model safety and behavioral profile can change depending on the language it is prompted in, as well as which it responds in."

"Language is just one dimension of the safety story, and a safe response for a user in a particular language may be unsafe in the same language if that user is in a different cultural context — for example an American in California speaking Korean versus a Korean in Seoul speaking Korean," he says.

Similarly, major AI vendors like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google also test their models against multilingual issues, though the battle continues.

Addressing Multilingual AI Issues
There are different ways organizations attempt to address the issues posed by multilingual inconsistencies across LLMs in Europe and beyond.

A standard option is translation-first security filtering, where an organization's security layer translates content into English, applies guardrails, and chooses whether to allow or block the output. There are also native language guardrails, where instead of translating everything into English, the security layer evaluates prompts and meaning in the original language.

Vendors like DeepKeep and Lakera advertise this capability as superior to the blind spots introduced by translation-based guardrails, as intent is accounted for and policy is, ideally, better preserved.

Many AI-focused red teaming firms offer multilingual evaluation. Microsoft's internal AI Red Team tests across multiple languages, different modalities including text and audio, as well as the various cultural contexts that come with different languages.

"We aren't just doing direct translation of English to another language in our scenarios. In addition, we often mix and combine languages in order to test systems, with scenarios incorporating multiple languages at once to see what effect that may have on the safety of the systems under test," he says.

Finally, runtime AI firewalls and policy enforcement tools cover the bigger risks posed by threat actors. AI firewalls block suspicious tool calls, prevent sensitive data exfiltration, attempt to block prompt-injected actions, and log suspicious incidents for investigation.

About the Author

Alexander Culafi
Senior News Writer, Dark Reading

https://www.darkreading.com/cybersecurity-operations/europes-multilingual-reality-exposes-ai-security-gaps
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"...Is there some specific set of principles which ought to guide the translation of great books? If so, what might they be? In other words, particularly when it comes to a great work of literature or philosophy, what distinguishes a great translation from an adequate translation from a poor translation?

A lot of big names have weighed in on this topic over the years. One of the biggest in modern times is the Russian novelist, translator, and polyglot, Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita. In Nabokov's view, any translation except the strictly literal is a travesty. In a 1955 Paris Review piece entitled "Problems of Translation: Onegin in English", he writes: "The person who desires to turn a literary masterpiece into another language has only one duty to perform, and this is to reproduce with absolute exactitude the whole text, and nothing but the text".

Nabokov adds for good measure that anything smoother than "the clumsiest literal translation...sends me into spasms of helpless fury". Pressing the point even further, he rails against "readable" translations, declaring that "a schoolboy's boner is less of a mockery in regard to the ancient masterpiece than its commercial interpretation".

The only acceptable translation standard, he says, is "literalism, literality, literal interpretation...the absolutely literal sense,", which he equates with "absolute accuracy". If a translator's exclusive fixation on the letter "kills the spirit" of the Source Text, so be it: that only means there was something wrong with that Source Text in the first place. And "this is not really a translator's concern", he says.

In short, for Nabokov, an ideal translation sacrifices the text's "original spirit", its readability and intelligibility, its tone and register and style, even its meaning as it exists independent of the Source Language's specific idiosyncrasies, all for what amounts to word-for-wordism. To make up for the extraordinary losses required by this approach, translators should just include "copious footnotes reaching up like skyscrapers to the top of this or that page".

Even aside from his gratuitous allusion to schoolboy sexuality, this is all very odd. In addition to his native Russian, Nabokov spoke excellent English and French, along with decent German. He therefore must have known that in most cases, languages do not permit anything close to word-for-word interchange. You could get close with Portuguese and Spanish and a few other pairings, but for the most part, languages don't relate to each other that way. Yes, they often contain deep-level structural affinities with each other; but at the same time, each contains its own internal logic, grammar, and conventions; its own unique allusions, idioms, and sayings; its own cultural history and context; its own channels of perception, perception-ordering, and thinking; its own ways of instigating and connecting certain arguments, feelings, and images.

This is all obvious even at the most superficial levels of speech. Imagine, for example, you're translating a short story from French into English. In the opening scene, a police officer has pulled over a motorist and now stands at the driver's window, whereupon the driver says, "Pourquoi tu m'as arrêté?"

A truly literal translation (which Nabokov claims to want) would be, "Why you me have stopped?". A slightly less literal translation would be, "Why did you stop me?" (although in English, drivers would more likely say, "Why did you pull me over?").

But no matter which option we chose, if we stopped there, this hyper-literal approach into English would fail to convey important elements of meaning embedded in just that one simple question. One such element is that, in French, the driver addresses the officer using the informal "you" (tu), as opposed to the formal "you" (vous) (because English nowadays lacks anything but "you" as an equivalent to either word, that distinction would be lost). A related element is that drivers in France would never address a police officer using tu unless they were either ignorant of French language and culture, or expressing deliberate disrespect, even contempt, for the officer.

So if we're reading that opening scene in French, we're already experiencing a dramatic set-up—an initial conflict that will propel the rest of the story: a driver needlessly speaks disrespectfully to a police officer. We would instantly anticipate the officer taking offense at the question, or growing suspicious of wrongdoing, and acting accordingly. We can sense this exchange might well drive the events about to follow. In the Source Language, we're already on the roller coaster ride of the story, so to speak.

Not so if we're reading a strictly literal translation in English. We wouldn't know there was any disrespect at all. And if the officer immediately asks the driver to exit the vehicle, we wouldn't have any idea why. All we've heard so far is what sounds like an innocent question from the driver.

This little example suggests Nabokov's equation of hyper-literalism with "absolute accuracy" is misguided. The absolutely accurate conveyance of a passage can only mean the faithful reproduction in the Target Language of the psychological and emotional effects of the passage's properties and functions in the Source Language. (If the phrase absolutely accurate doesn't mean that, then it means nothing). So if, say, a perfectly intelligible passage becomes unintelligible, or loses important information, due to strict literalism, it has by definition not been conveyed accurately—at least not in any meaningful, human sense. And it would therefore be a poor translation, no matter how literal it might be.

So back to that French sentence. Is there a more faithful way to convey its properties, and its narrative function?

That's a tough one, but a conscientious translator would try. In this case, a footnote might be defensible. But another option would be to try to reflect the tone of disrespect without changing the wording of the question too much. Off the top of my head, and depending on the character's subsequent tone of voice and actions, one of the following might work: "You pulled me over for what?". "What'd you pull me over for?", or "Why ya stopping me, dude?" The point is that the reality of language is such, that judicious departure from strict literalism is often necessary to achieve the accuracy Nabokov wants, but which his own prescriptions would make unattainable.

So when it comes to formulating a set of rules or maxims to guide translation, I'd propose this as the first: A translation is great to the extent it reproduces the overall reader experience while adhering as closely as possible to the original text.

(That wording, I think, covers everything from information transfer to honoring the narrative function of specific words and passages to reproducing the jokes and tone and mood and key words and everything else.)

In any case, one thing my proposal means is that when a passage can be translated strictly literally without degrading transmission of the reader experience (and certainly, when literalism optimally reproduces it), then surely that's the best option. That's even the case, I would argue, when the translated passage sounds somewhat foreign in the Target Language. Nabokov wasn't wrong to reject specific features like smooth-sounding paraphrase in place of what reads roughly in the original. But he erred in pushing an extreme, dogmatic literalism which inevitably erodes, distorts, and omits the very qualities he says he wants to preserve. Great translations, by contrast, take a different path.

More 👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿
https://www.steynonline.com/16325/strictly-literal
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Zoom launches live voice translation, with Arabic coming in late 2026
Initial service will feature English, Chinese, French, Japanese and Spanish

Alvin R Cabral
July 24, 2026

Zoom Technologies has launched a new live voice translation service, with Arabic support coming in the fourth quarter of this year.

Five languages – English, Chinese, French, Japanese and Spanish – will initially be available, the California-based company said.

A Zoom representative confirmed to The National that Arabic will be available in the fourth quarter, alongside German, Italian and Portuguese.

Zoom launched a version of the service in April, after promoting it at its Zoomtopia conference last September.

Using the live voice translation feature requires a Pro, Business, or Enterprise account, the artificial intelligence plug-in ZoomMate, or a stand-alone add-on. Zoom has posted instructions on how to activate the service on its website.

Added features include voice cloning, which preserves the original speaker's voice characteristics, and translation projection, which allows people to speak in their own language and everyone else to hear it in theirs.

Zoom said the feature was designed to minimise distraction and add more focus when on calls.

“The core design principle here is simple: keep people in the conversation,” the company said. “Translated captions require you to split your attention between reading and listening. Voice translation lets you do what you'd do in any meeting – listen, react and respond naturally.”

Advertisement

Video conferencing exploded in popularity during the Covid pandemic of 2020, as people were confined to their homes and restricted from meeting face-to-face.

That offered companies such as Zoom a huge opportunity to tap into the market. In addition to offering a free tier, they have introduced paid tiers with more features.

Zoom has around 300 million daily active users and accounts for more than 55 per cent of the videoconferencing market, with the number of annual meeting minutes well over 3.3 trillion, according to data compiled by industry tracker DemandSage. The company reported revenue of more than $4.6 billion in 2025.

Competition has also heightened in the sector, as videoconferencing companies work to add AI features to enhance the user experience.

Zoom also stressed that live voice translation is secure, with no data from meetings stored.

“Voice translation processes audio in real time to deliver the feature. No meeting audio is stored, no voice prints are created and no persistent user profiles are built from translation data,” it said. “The feature processes what it needs for the meeting and discards it.”"

https://www.thenationalnews.com/future/technology/2026/07/24/zoom-launches-live-voice-translation-with-arabic-coming-in-late-2026/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Homer, Nolan and the art of translation

Nobody knows for sure exactly how Homer composed “The Odyssey,” or even who Homer was, but scholars seem to agree at least that this foundational epic of Western culture originated in a preliterate oral tradition. Before literature was fixed in writing, tales and songs were composed on the tongue more or less extemporaneously for a live audience. The 24 books and thousands of lines of “The Odyssey” were probably first performed over weeks or months in a public forum by a bard skilled in long-form storytelling propelled by the rhythmic force of the ancient Greek hexameter, a six-beat line that countless translators have tried, in countless verse translations, to give the modern reader a persuasive illusion of.

It is that propulsive rhythmic language as much as the fabulous story that has captivated me in the versions of the poem I’ve read by Robert Fitzgerald (1961) and Richmond Lattimore (1967). More recent translations by Allen Mandelbaum (1990), Robert Fagles (1996), Emily Wilson (2017) and Daniel Mendelsohn (2025), among others, have brought the original more variously into our contemporary idiom — and in Wilson’s case a feminist sensibility — as classics almost by definition must be endlessly renewed and reinterpreted in every generation. What is “untranslatable” in the greatest poetry, the singular magic of its language, is what generates so many translations, none of which can ever be definitive.

Christopher Nolan’s new movie is another kind of translation, into another medium, and in its own way brings across the tremendous scope and intimate drama of Homer’s epic. It measures up, in cinematic terms, to the awe-inspiring narrative of Odysseus, the original superhero, a complex character of wily skills, trying to find his way home from the Trojan war and back to the embrace of his wife, Penelope, whose subtle craftiness complements his own. Surrendering to the visual virtuosity and sonic onslaught of Nolan’s art, I was caught in its current and carried into its world.

Never having seen a movie in an IMAX theater, I don’t know what I was missing, but even on a regular wide screen, Nolan’s film is an immersive experience, immensely absorbing both for its vast sensory scale and for the intimacy with which it brings you into the lives of its main characters and the archetypal themes of the longing for home, a son’s search for his father, a wife’s abandonment and uncertainty whether her missing mate will ever return, and the profound psychic wounds of war.

California AG says Paramount-Warner Bros merger would 'extinguish competition'

Young Telemachus, the son of Odysseus, lacks the experience and confidence to fend off his mother’s obnoxious suitors or track down his wayward dad, but in the course of the story comes into his manhood, assisting his father in slaughtering the creeps who have besieged their home and made his mother’s life even more miserable. Odysseus in the end feels the gratification of homecoming but also the guilt of having lost his shipmates in the series of ordeals they have endured on their journey and remorse for the suffering they’ve inflicted on the Trojans. The chaos and brutality of war have been conveyed in many movies, but Nolan’s depiction, in sound as well as images, is visceral in its stomach-tightening storms of disorienting violence.

Very few films improve on the books they’re based on, and Nolan’s “Odyssey” will never replace the original. And yet, in our postliterate age, as people lose the focus and the patience to be swept along by Homer’s translators’ language on the page, it proves the classics are inexhaustible. For me, the extraordinary spectacle of Nolan’s movie was compelling as a cinematic experience, but beyond that, it has stoked my desire to read Homer again, in one or more of the newer versions.

I hope it does that for other viewers, not only promoting the reading of the poem but reviving the enchantment of the oral tradition where the power and beauty of language and storytelling torqued to their maximum intensity inspire and expand our imagination.

Stephen Kessler’s versions of books by the Spanish poet Luis Cernuda have received a Lambda Literary Award, the PEN Center USA Translation Award and the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets."
By Stephen Kessler | Santa Cruz Sentinel
PUBLISHED: July 24, 2026 at 2:56 PM PDT
https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2026/07/24/stephen-kessler-homer-nolan-and-the-art-of-translation/
#metaglossia #metaglossia_mundus

"Oxford translation competition success for Wycombe High student
17th July

Education

By James Richings
News and Sports Reporter

A high school student has achieved national success after receiving recognition in one of the UK's most prestigious language competitions.

Emma Zadoroznyj, a Year 12 student, was commended in both the French and Spanish categories of the Queen's College Oxford Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators 2026.

The annual competition, organised by the Queen's College Translation Exchange at the University of Oxford, attracted more than 35,000 entries from students across the UK.

Emma's double success places her among a select group of young linguists recognised for their translation skills, creativity and understanding of language.

Receiving a commendation in one language category is considered a significant achievement due to the scale and competitiveness of the contest.

Being recognised in two separate categories is an even rarer accomplishment and reflects a high level of proficiency in both French and Spanish.

Entries were assessed by professional literary translators alongside Modern Languages students from the University of Oxford.

Nicola Renyard who is headteacher of the school Emma attends, Wycombe High School in Buckinghamshire, praised the student's achievement.

She said: "We are absolutely delighted for Emma.

“To receive national recognition in both French and Spanish is an exceptional achievement and a testament to her talent, hard work and love of languages.

"We are incredibly proud of everything she has accomplished and hope her success inspires other students to embrace the opportunities that learning languages can offer."

Emma was presented with her certificates at the school by Mrs Renyard during a special presentation attended by members of the Modern Foreign Languages Department.

Among those celebrating her success were teachers Rafael De Souza and Annemarie Doran.

Mrs Doran said translation required far more than simply converting words from one language to another.

She added: "Emma's success is richly deserved. Translation requires not only an excellent understanding of language but also creativity, cultural awareness and attention to detail.

"To earn commendations in both French and Spanish in such a competitive national field is a fantastic accomplishment, and we are thrilled to see her efforts recognised."

The Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators was established to celebrate literary translation and encourage young people to engage with languages in new and creative ways.

Named after the acclaimed translator Anthea Bell, the competition challenges students to translate authentic texts from a variety of world languages, testing both their linguistic skills and their ability to convey meaning, style and nuance.

With more than 35,000 entries submitted from across the country, her commendations represent a notable achievement for both her and the High Wycombe school, demonstrating the talent of local students on a national stage."
https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/26289785.wycombe-high-student-wins-prize-oxford-translation-competition/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

Study finds AI translates fluently but professional interpreters better preserve context, culture, rhetoric, and communicative intent accurately.

 

"AI Translation and Human Interpretation Differ in Handling Contextual Meaning, Study of UN Speeches Finds

External Contributor

7/25/2026 02:56:00 PM

 

By Lingnan University

 

As generative artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly widely used in translation, questions have been raised over whether it could eventually replace professional interpreters. A joint study led by Lingnan University found that while AI can improve translation efficiency, it is still less capable than professional interpreters of adapting language to context and preserving rhetorical and communicative effects. The researchers conclude that human judgement and oversight remain essential, particularly in politically, diplomatically, and culturally sensitive settings. These findings have been published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, a Nature Portfolio journal.

 

The research team from Lingnan University and the Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications analysed 16 Chinese-language speeches delivered at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) between 2008 and 2023, and compared the official English interpretations by professional UN conference interpreters with AI-generated translations produced by ChatGPT-4o, examining how each handled language in different contexts.

 

Before generating the AI translations, the researchers designed detailed prompts that included the speaker's official position, institutional background, year of delivery, audience, and broader sociopolitical stance in order to approximate the contextual information available to professional interpreters. However, despite providing the AI model with extensive contextual information, they found major differences between AI-generated translations and human interpretations in both contextual understanding and translation strategies.

 

One key difference concerns the use of personal pronouns. As Chinese frequently omits subjects, professional interpreters were more likely to introduce pronouns such as “our” and “they” to reflect interpersonal meanings and relationships between speakers and audiences, reinforcing collective identity and shared responsibility. AI-generated translations, by contrast, tended to produce more literal renderings with fewer personal pronouns.

 

For example, a Chinese sentence referring to vaccines as a powerful weapon against the pandemic was rendered by a professional interpreter as:

 

“Vaccination is our powerful weapon against COVID-19.”

 

whereas ChatGPT-4o translated it as:

 

“Vaccines are a powerful weapon against the pandemic.”

 

The researchers found that the interpreter’s addition of “our” strengthened the sense of collective identity, while the AI translation adopted a more neutral tone. The study also identified distinct differences in how obligation and responsibility were expressed. Professional interpreters were more likely to adjust modal verbs according to context, using expressions such as “should” and “need to” to convey persuasive rather than mandatory obligation. AI-generated translations, however, relied more heavily on “must” and passive constructions, making responsibility less explicit.

 

For example, the professional interpretation reads:

 

“We need to enhance coordinated global COVID-19 response and minimise the risk of cross-border virus transmission.”

 

whereas the AI translation states:

 

“International joint prevention and control must be strengthened, and the cross-border spread of the virus must be minimised.”

 

The researchers found that the AI version obscures the agent responsible for action by using passive constructions.

 

The study also examined culturally embedded metaphors. More than half (52.63 per cent) of the AI translations reduced culturally specific metaphors to their literal meanings, weakening their rhetorical force. By contrast, professional interpreters adopted more flexible strategies, preserving, adapting, and explaining metaphorical expressions according to context. In about one-third of the cases (31.6 per cent), interpreters retained the metaphor and also conveyed its intended meaning.

 

One example involved the traditional Chinese metaphor of people travelling “in the same boat”. The professional interpreter translated it as:

 

“We are called upon by our times to unite as one and work together for mutual benefit and win-win progress like passengers in the same boat.”

 

While ChatGPT-4o rendered it as “Working together and achieving mutual benefits and win-win outcomes are the objective demands of our time.”

 

According to the researchers, the AI translation conveyed the general meaning, but omitted the metaphorical imagery and its rhetorical impact.

 

The team noted that ChatGPT-4o generally produces fluent and grammatically accurate translations capable of completing translation tasks effectively. However, drawing on socio-cognitive theory, the study argues that professional interpreters consider not only the source text itself but also factors such as the speaker's identity, communicative setting, audience, cultural background, stance, and rhetorical purpose when deciding how to translate. This suggests that current large language models have yet to replicate fully the human capacity to interpret context and cultural meaning.

 

Prof Wang Binhua, Professor of the Department of Translation and Head of the Centre for English and Additional Languages at Lingnan University, member of the SIG on Artificial Intelligence in Translation and Interpreting of the European Language Council (ELC), said “Large language models still face the challenge of the ‘black box’, meaning that the mechanisms through which they produce particular translations remain difficult to explain. Unlike professional interpreters, who work within established professional ethical standards and are accountable, AI systems generate translations by identifying patterns in large volumes of language data and do not possess an intrinsic ethical framework. In translation tasks that require careful attention to cultural meaning and contextual understanding, human interpreters remain indispensable in making informed judgements about interpersonal relationships, rhetorical choices, and cultural expression.”

 

He added that AI is better positioned to augment rather than replace professional translators and interpreters. When integrated with human expertise, AI has the potential to improve efficiency while leaving context-sensitive and culturally informed decision-making in human hands.

 

For the full research paper A tale of two ‘contexts’: ideological differences in the translations of UN political speeches by human interpreters and by ChatGPT4o, please visit: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-026-07877-7.

 

This article was originally published by Lingnan University and republished here with permission.

 

Reviewed by Irfan Ahmad."

https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2026/07/ai-translation-and-human-interpretation.html?m=1

#metaglossia

#metaglossia_mundus

"This feminist translation of ‘The Odyssey’ is controversial. And it’s flying off shelves
As Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster movie is smashing box-office records this summer, ‘The Odyssey’ ebooks and audio books are seeing a spike as well.

BY Jennifer Mattson

It’s The Odyssey effect: As Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster movie The Odyssey is smashing box-office records—the July 17 opening weekend took in $124 million in the U.S. ($260 million globally)—it’s also bringing back gladiator sandals, and having an effect on book sales of Homer’s classic, especially for one translation.

The 8th or 7th century BCE work is one of two ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It recounts the legendary king of Ithaca’s arduous journey home following the Trojan War. (The other is, of course, “The Iliad.”)

For his film, Nolan used a modern-day translation from professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania Emily Wilson. It’s unique in two ways. It uses contemporary language to tell the story; and a feminist lens to interpret one of perhaps the earliest masculine origin stories and tropes in Western civilization: the hero’s quest to return home against all odds.

A look at sales for all translations of ‘The Odyssey’ shows purchases are up 76% year-to-date, per Circana BookScan; and e-book and audiobook lender Libby reports library checkouts are up 217% from this time last year, USA TODAY reported.

Meanwhile, Wilson’s translation of “The Odyssey” alone has sold more than one million copies since it was published in November.

However, people remain split over whether that’s a good thing. The debate: While modern language makes the text more accessible to a larger audience, is it, in fact, dumbing down the story, and adding intention where there is none?

Some examples of this retelling: Wilson’s translation uses “dad” and “daddy” instead of “father,” and more contemporary language like “crazy” and “tote bag,” which appear in Nolan’s movie...

More controversial, though, are Wilson’s translations of the classic’s female characters, and her comments on gender.

“Contemporary translators and commentators often present the massacre of these women [12 unnamed enslaved maidservants who worked in Odysseus’s palace] as if it were quite ordinary, and entirely justified,” Wilson writes in the New Yorker. “The murdered slaves are routinely described in contemporary American English translations as ‘disobedient maids’ and are labelled as ‘sluts’ or ‘whores’—a level of verbal abuse that finds absolutely no analogue in the Greek.”

Wilson has said she doesn’t think there’s just one way to reinvent “The Odyssey.”

“That’s part of why it’s been interesting to so many people for so long,” Wilson said. “In the end, if a new movie gets people curious about the ancient world, it’s a win.”

Jennifer Mattson is a Contributing Writer at Fast Company, where she covers news trends and writes daily about business, technology, finance and the workplace..
https://www.fastcompany.com/91576753/the-odyssey-feminist-translation-ebook-audio-book-sales-spike
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

Tech Now explores a brief history of emojis and how the tiny symbols can express what words can't.

 

"How emojis became the world's universal language

 

Emojis began as simple smiley faces, now they're a shared visual language across cultures and platforms.
 Reporting for Tech Now, Martin Sharkey puts together a brief history on emoji symbols and how they came to express what words sometimes can't.

 

 

 

 

This video is from Tech Now, the BBC's flagship technology programme."

 

https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p0nh7hg9/watch

 

#metaglossia 

 

#metaglossia_mundus 

"The collapse of the ‘Tower of Babel’: Humans have lost thousands of languages since antiquity
According to a study in ‘Science,’ Earth reached its greatest linguistic diversity between 1,000 and 3,000 years ago, with a number of languages roughly 10 times higher than today’s 7,500

Papua New Guinea accounts for 11% of the world’s languages. In the image, men of the Huli wig community from the highlands.
Design Pics Editorial (Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Miguel Ángel Criado
Almería (Spain) - Jul 24, 2026 - 15:50CEST

The Tower of Babel described in Genesis may have been built not in Babylon, as the biblical account states, but in New Guinea. In the western part of the island, Papua New Guinea, located north of Australia, about 840 languages are spoken despite a population of barely 12 million. By comparison, Europeans — 745 million people — speak a quarter of that number of languages. Such linguistic diversity is exceptional in today’s world, but it wasn’t in the past: a study published in Science shows how the Tower of Babel rose over the last 12,000 years, peaking a few millennia ago and then beginning to crumble.

Today, humans speak or write roughly 7,500 languages. More than half have so few speakers or face so many threats that they are heading toward extinction. Sixty percent of the world’s population communicates in one of the 10 most widely spoken languages. One final figure to complete the picture: each year the last speaker of four languages dies, and with each extinction a portion of knowledge disappears. That is why researchers are so interested in understanding how linguistic diversity evolved in the past, so it can be preserved in the future.

“In the highlands of New Guinea, it’s a kind of Garden of Eden. There is an abundance of available resources. These people have access to incredibly fertile land and the potential for an extremely wide dietary niche,” says Damián Blasi, a researcher at the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) and the study’s lead author. In reality there is not one Eden but many isolated edens, “with an environment so rich and generous that it reduces the need to wage war or trade with other communities,” Blasi adds; he is also a scientist in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University (United States). And that isolation fuels linguistic divergence.

What Blasi and his colleagues did was build a model of past linguistic diversity using available data. They used as a basis 171 traditional hunter-gatherer communities, like those in Papua New Guinea. Drawing also on evidence from anthropology, archaeology, paleontology, demography, and other fields, they modeled the evolution in the number of languages from the end of the Paleocene through the current geological epoch, the Holocene.

“The [scientific] literature tells us that 12,000 years ago there were between four million and 10 million people on the planet. So what we asked was: how do we divide that number by the average population size of hunter-gatherer communities?” Blasi says. The dynamics of these groups are limited by available resources and group size. Under normal conditions, beyond a certain threshold, populations split in search of new territories. “So we divide, and that gives you an approximation of the total number of languages,” the Argentine researcher adds. His calculations suggest that at the end of the last glaciation, as the Pleistocene ended, between 4,500 and 6,200 languages were spoken on Earth. However, with the Holocene everything changed.

Improved climatic conditions, aided by innovations characteristic of the Neolithic (the spread of agriculture and sedentarization in different parts of the globe at different times), triggered a huge human population expansion. At the same time, societies grew larger, which meant that more and more people could share the same language.

The graph shows the evolution of linguistic diversity. The vertical axis shows the number of languages (the thickest line indicates the most likely number). The horizontal axis shows the timeline in millennia. At the top are historical milestones.
Blasi et al. Science
To capture these opposing processes, the researchers modeled thousands of possible trajectories connecting estimates from the start of the Holocene to the present. Although the precise trajectory remains uncertain, the models produced a general pattern: linguistic diversity increased for most of the Holocene, peaking between 1,000 and 3,000 years ago, with a number of languages roughly 10 times greater than at the end of the Pleistocene.

“The most unexpected result is how recent the linguistic boom appears to have been,” Claire Bowern, a researcher at Yale University (United States) and co-author of the study, says in a statement. “The period of greatest linguistic diversity may not have occurred in the distant Paleolithic [the archaeological equivalent of the geological Pleistocene], but during the era of state expansion and the first empires,” she adds. In other words, it was in the times of the emergence of writing and the rise of great Mesopotamian, Anatolian, and Egyptian civilizations, and beyond them those of the Indus valley and eastern Asia, that the biblical Tower of Babel was tallest.

But it is also with the expansion of the first empires that the decline in linguistic diversity begins. The model also captures later impacts. Perhaps the best known is that of the Roman Empire. When Rome was still a dream, Latin was spoken only in Latium (the present-day Lazio region) on an Italian peninsula where some 400 other languages were spoken. A millennium later, it was the language of half the known world.

The authors of the study have created a map that, based on species categories, shows the number of endangered languages and their level of endangerment.
Claire Bowern
Until now, many theorists and those outside the field blamed European colonialism from the 16th century onward for the extinction of many languages. “This work demystifies the idea that language loss is due solely to western expansion,” says Antonio Benítez, a professor at the University of Seville. “The study’s authors are leading experts and used a multitude of data, from demographic to epidemic records, to carry it out.”

For Benítez, the study highlights what he considers dramatic: “The loss of linguistic diversity implies other losses, because language stores everything that is culturally relevant.” The professor points out the two main predictors of language extinction, both processes inherent to globalization. “The most relevant predictor is the number of miles of road in a given territory.” The second is “the number of years we spend in school,” he adds. Both destroy isolation. Blasi, the study’s lead author, points to a new worry to which he is now devoting his efforts: the impact of artificial intelligence on the languages that remain on Earth."
https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2026-07-24/the-collapse-of-the-tower-of-babel-humans-have-lost-thousands-of-languages-since-antiquity.html?outputType=amp