Metaglossia: The Translation World

Federal protections promise a fair trial in a language you understand, but for millions who speak lesser-known languages, courts can’t keep that promise.

In northern Oregon, just before dawn in October 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested and shackled two farmworkers on their way to work. The man and woman were Guatemalan citizens who spoke no English and very little Spanish. They spoke Mam, an Indigenous Mayan language.

 

Despite the man trying to tell an ICE officer as much, he was not provided with an interpreter, according to his sworn declaration. Suspected of being in the country illegally, they were detained in an immigration processing center and signed papers they did not understand. They were released later with ankle monitors and placed under an intensive supervision program requiring frequent check-ins at an ICE office in Portland.

 

Their experience points to a problem that reaches far beyond Oregon.

 

The civil liberties guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution broadly apply to everyone in the U.S., regardless of immigration status. Courts have held that the right to an interpreter is protected by the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees the right to a fair trial – including understanding court proceedings and communicating with counsel. It’s also protected by the Fifth and 14th amendments, which state that no person can be deprived of “life, liberty, or property, without due process.”

 

But in a multilingual society, these rights collide with how little most Americans, including law enforcement and court professionals, are taught about language itself. Speakers of minority languages, or languages that are not commonly used in schools, courts or government, are often disadvantaged by this lack of linguistic awareness. This can even affect nonstandard English speakers or people who speak a variety of English that differs from the mainstream varieties privileged in courts and schools.

 

Imagine an English speaker detained abroad and forced to navigate a criminal trial in a language they do not understand. Most people would recognize that as fundamentally unfair, but speakers of minority languages often face this reality in U.S. courtrooms.

 

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These failures are poised to multiply. Early in his second term, President Donald Trump issued an executive order designating English as the official U.S. language and rescinding a 2000 executive order that directed federal agencies to provide language access – despite the fact that around 25 million people in the U.S. have limited English proficiency.

 

At the same time, the Trump administration has sharply expanded an immigration crackdown that targets Latino communities. In immigration enforcement, heavily reduced training may be leaving ICE officers with limited understanding of constitutional protections, sweeping growing numbers of Indigenous-language speakers into a legal system unequipped to communicate with them.

 

As a linguist, translator and courtroom interpreter for the Ch'ol language – a Mayan language spoken by roughly a quarter of a million people – I see firsthand the ways in which the court system is unprepared.

 

Minority and Indigenous languages

More than 30 Mayan languages are spoken today by roughly 7 million people; they’re not dialects of Spanish but members of a separate linguistic family and have their own vocabulary, grammar and sound systems, as distinct from one another as the languages spoken across Europe. A speaker of Ch'ol would not be able to understand Mam, as is the case for thousands of other minority or Indigenous languages worldwide.

 

Since 2015 I have worked in southern Mexico with speakers of Ch’ol, and since 2023 I have been an expert witness and court interpreter. I have twice worked with defendants suspected of having learning disabilities, when, in reality, they had just been provided interpretation in the wrong language.

 

Consequences in the courtroom

A lack of awareness about language diversity and linguistic needs can have serious consequences in the courtroom. In the 1980s, a speaker of a Mixtec language was wrongfully convicted of murder after a trial conducted through a Spanish interpreter, a language he barely spoke. Four decades later this problem persists: In Texas in 2022, a man who spoke the Northern Tepehuan language was convicted of possession of marijuana with intent to distribute and sentenced to 24 months in prison despite not understanding his court proceedings.

 

Data on linguistic diversity is more available in Los Angeles and New York City, two cities with large Indigenous populations. But in other areas of the country, court systems are unprepared for diverse linguistic needs. Even the 2020 census, which researchers and Indigenous-rights advocates say undercounts these communities, recorded more than 1.3 million people identifying as Latin American Indian. Still, in court files and immigration records, Indigenous-language speakers are typically logged as Hispanic or Spanish-speaking, erasing the distinction that determines whether someone gets an interpreter they can understand.

 

Although neither ICE nor Customs and Border Protection tracks Indigenous immigrants or the languages they speak, reporting at the border suggests as many as 1 in 5 people in immigration detention are Indigenous.

 

By one estimate, speakers of Indigenous languages represent between 10% and 44% of new arrivals at the U.S.-Mexico border, but without the right language services, misunderstanding and bias can push asylum-seekers to abandon valid claims and return to dangerous situations or otherwise jeopardize their chances of gaining entry.

 

Indigenous language–speakers are denied asylum in the U.S. more often than speakers of more commonly spoken languages. In one instance, when a woman was asked to describe a domestic abuse injury to a judge, one interpreter used the word “heel”; another, later, used “ankle.” In Mam, “heel” and “ankle” are the same word, but the inconsistency led the judge to think the asylum-seeker was changing her story. The judge ordered her removed.

 

A broader impact

The failure to respect language and dialect diversity threatens the fairness of the legal system for immigrants and citizens alike, as linguistic discrimination can extend to varieties of English as well.

 

Court reporters are required to transcribe at a minimum of 95% accuracy, but that measure does not evaluate their ability to transcribe nonstandard English. In one study, researchers tested more than two dozen Philadelphia court reporters and found that when it came to African American English, their transcriptions were less than 60% accurate, sentence by sentence. AAE is a group of varieties of English spoken by many Black communities in the U.S. with their own rule-governed syntax, lexicon and phonology that make them distinct from mainstream American English. Inaccurate transcription, the study explained, can lead to errors that “change the official record of who performed what actions under which circumstances, with potentially dramatic legal repercussions.”

 

In 2012, George Zimmerman killed unarmed Black teenager Trayvon Martin and was charged with second-degree murder. Rachel Jeantel was on the phone with Martin before his death and, so, was a key witness for the prosecution. She testified for nearly six hours – including about the start of the encounter and who confronted whom, a question central to Zimmerman’s self-defense claim – but jurors found her testimony not credible and ended up disregarding it. One said it was hard to understand. Zimmerman would eventually be acquitted.

 

Rachel Jeantel, a key witness in George Zimmerman’s trial, testifies in Florida in 2013. AP Photo/Orlando Sentinel, Jacob Langston

It is difficult to show how many people are affected by linguistic discrimination. Unlike people whose proficiency in English is low, AAE speakers are not counted as a distinct linguistic group, so the scale of the harm is undocumented. Nevertheless, one study showed that witnesses with foreign-accented English are viewed as less credible, and studies in both the U.K. and the U.S. found that speakers of nonstandard varieties of English are perceived to be guiltier.

 

In cases involving stigmatized varieties of speech, expert witnesses could help jurors understand linguistic diversity and separate how someone speaks from whether they are credible. Expert witnesses could also help jurors understand what linguistic discrimination is and explain that biases against someone’s language are often masked biases against their race, gender or socioeconomic background.

 

‘The last bastion of overt social discrimination’

The case against the two Mam-speaking farmworkers in Oregon was challenged in court, and in January 2026 a federal judge found the agents’ actions to be “reckless and erroneous.” The judge ordered ICE to remove their ankle monitors and end the supervision program imposed on them. Neither was convicted of a crime.

 

Despite the ruling in the farmworkers’ favor, though, their case reflects a broader problem: Although the right to an interpreter is constitutionally protected, that right means little when courts and officers are unaware of linguistic needs. Education for law enforcement and court officials on linguistic diversity, early language identification and increased funding for interpretation services are all essential before the courts can deliver on the rights the Constitution guarantees.

 

As sociolinguist James Milroy argued in a 1998 essay about linguistic discrimination in education, unless societies become more educated about linguistic diversity, “the last bastion of overt social discrimination will continue to be a person’s use of language.”

Carol Rose Little

Assistant Professor of Linguistics, University of Oklahoma

https://theconversation.com/the-constitution-promises-an-interpreter-for-fair-trials-us-courts-often-cant-deliver-283540

"AI language translation equipment
Officers are using upgraded body cameras that instantly auto-detect and translate 56 languages to eliminate interpreter wait times and speed up police report transcription.

RENTON, Wash. - As FIFA World Cup fans and international tourists flood into the region, the Renton Police Department deployed new technology — including automated drone trackers and AI-powered body cameras — to handle the influx of global visitors.

...Renton officers have been outfitted with upgraded body-worn cameras capable of translating 56 different languages instantly.

"We have a very diverse community here in Renton, and it’s incredibly important for us to be able to support everyone in the community, not just people who can speak English," said Denis Moynihan, Renton PD’s north sector Patrol Operations Commander.

Officers began training with the AI-powered translation software in February and have since been utilizing it on an almost daily basis. When an officer encounters a language barrier, they can manually activate the AI translation tool.

"We hold down a button, and we can either identify a language that we know somebody is speaking or we can allow the device to auto-detect, and then it will begin translation," explained Moynihan.

What they're saying:
Officials said the tool prevents confusion, eliminates waiting times for a live interpreter to arrive on scene, and helps de-escalate tense situations. Officials added that the software automatically transcribes the whole conversation, allowing officers to write faster, more accurate police reports.

"This is a huge pathway to helping people when they have problems or need our assistance," Moynihan said. "We have different people in this community that we need to be able to serve."

The rollout of the new drone-tracking trailer and translation software did not happen overnight. The equipment and upgraded software were part of a contract extension with safety technology vendor Axon Enterprise Inc.

The Renton City Council approved the contract extension back in 2025.

Renton Police are reminding all drone hobbyists to check current FAA flight restrictions before taking off. The temporary flight restrictions in Renton will be enforced through July 21."
By Franque Thompson
FOX 13 Seattle
Renton
Published June 11, 2026
https://www.fox13seattle.com/news/renton-drone-tracker-ai-translators
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Date limite de soumission des résumés : 30 septembre 2026
Retour aux auteurs sur intention de publication : 1er novembre 2026
Remise des articles longs (30000 à 50000 signes) : 30 mars 2027
Publication du numéro prévue : janvier 2028
Écrire fait partie intrinsèque du quotidien des chercheuses et chercheurs en Sciences de l’information et de la communication (SIC), mais « ce dénominateur commun masque à l'évidence une grande diversité quant aux pratiques d'écriture » (Le Bart et Mazel, 2021, p. 7). L’écriture intervient à différentes étapes de la production des connaissances. Elle comprend d’abord des « écritures intermédiaires » (Achard, 1994), qui permettent de structurer la pensée et le raisonnement, de confronter des données, participant à l’évolution conceptuelle des connaissances (Berthelot, 2003). Elle participe également à la production des traces de l’enquête, à travers des formes diverses - visuelles, graphiques, sonores, filmiques ou encore performatives - mobilisées dans les processus d’observation, d’analyse et de restitution. Enfin, l’écriture scientifique ne se limite pas à la publication académique entendue comme un ensemble de connaissances certifiées par et entre pairs : elle engage aussi des stratégies de médiation, de circulation et de valorisation des savoirs auprès de publics variés (Jeanneret, 1994). Le terme d’« écriture » est ici entendu dans une acception large, qui dépasse la seule dimension langagière ou textuelle du « langage scientifique », pour mettre l’accent sur les dimensions subjectives, matérielles, médiatiques, relationnelles et situées de la production des savoirs, en intégrant les formats, les dispositifs et les pratiques qui rendent possible leur élaboration et leur circulation.

L’écriture scientifique est devenue un objet de recherche à part entière en SHS depuis les années 1970, dans un contexte où les chercheur·se·s, entre autres les sociologues, anthropologues, historien·ne·s, linguistes, rendent simultanément compte du contexte social et du contenu scientifique, en s’interrogeant sur les modes d’élaboration du savoir scientifique (Lefebvre, 2006). Ils et elles questionnent alors les conditions nécessaires au développement scientifique ou encore les relations qu’entretiennent les sciences et la société. En SIC, les années 1990 sont marquées par les premières études critiques sur les « écrits d’écran » interrogeant l’écriture et ses « nouveaux » formats numériques (Jeanneret et Souchier, 1999 ; Souchier et al., 2019). L’écriture scientifique n’est dès lors plus envisagée comme un simple support de diffusion des connaissances ; elle devient un « dispositif » de production des savoirs, où le sens et la forme ne sont plus dissociables et où se jouent également des rapports de pouvoir liés aux normes d’écriture, aux conditions de légitimité et aux modalités d’énonciation scientifique (Foucault, 1971). D’autres travaux ont mis en évidence la multiplication des pratiques collectives centrées sur le document numérique (Zacklad, 2007 ; Zacklad et al., 2007), y compris pour la production des écrits scientifiques. Au prisme de la notion de « document », ces écrits sont aussi envisagés comme un ensemble de fragments issus d’annotations et de transactions entre des chercheur·se·s impliqué·es, « mettant en jeu leur "self" et des connaissances liées à la production d’une "œuvre" […] » (Zacklad, 2007, p. 2). Ces dynamiques prolongent la conception de l’écriture comme dispositif de production des savoirs, en soulignant sa dimension distribuée et collaborative.

Dans leur ouvrage, Le Bart et Mazel (2021) font l’hypothèse d’une standardisation des pratiques d’écriture en SHS fondée sur la quête d’un idéal positiviste de neutralité, emprunté des sciences dures, qui plaideraient pour faire du langage un instrument aussi neutre que possible. Il s’agirait ainsi de rechercher une « écriture froide, désencombrée d’affects et de subjectivité, pour dire, avec les outils d’objectivation par exemple statistique, la réalité vraie du monde social » (Le Bart et Mazel, 2021, p. 10). Or, bien que le « savoir écrire » hérité d’une tradition scolastique semble faire partie intrinsèque des « compétences » exigées pour l’exercice du métier de checheur·se en SIC, on observe des pratiques d’écritures plurielles au sein de la discipline.

Ces écritures plurielles sont parfois renvoyées au statut d’écrits « alternatifs » évoquant ainsi une prise de distance critique à l’égard des modèles académiques conventionnels. En même temps, l’« alternatif » peut aussi renvoyer aux diverses injonctions composant les appels à projets actuels, visant à donner à voir la recherche en train de se faire (Renaud, 2025). Ces injonctions s’appuient souvent sur une « culture des livrables » directement associée aux logiques de financement de la recherche par projet ou des commandes scientifiques, se conformant parfois à des formats associés à des logiques marchandes (comme ceux promus par des réseaux socio-numériques ou par d’autres acteurs économiques) ou encore à des méthodes de travail managériales. Ces écritures sont aussi pensées dans leurs dimensions « créatives » ou « expérimentales » impliquant la dimension sensible de celle ou de celui qui écrit. Elles tendent également à investir des espaces de visibilité élargis. Alors même que la corporalité, les affects, les sensations sont convoquées dans ces pratiques d’écriture, demeure la question de la généralisation des constats et de la démontrabilité des résultats scientifiques. Elles font ainsi apparaître des tensions fortes entre scientificité, expressivité et reconnaissance disciplinaire.

En outre, tandis que l’écriture scientifique collective tend à être valorisée, entendue comme une entreprise assumée d’effacement des subjectivités, « la production scientifique n’étant pas celle d’un intellectuel isolé, elle est le fait d’un collectif (unité, équipe, réseau…) » (Le Bart et Mazel, 2021, p. 12), elle interroge davantage quand il s’agit d’impliquer des acteur·trice·s académiques et non-académiques (entreprises, organisations publiques, collectifs de la société civile, artistes, citoyen·ne·s). L’écriture scientifique faite à plusieurs voix, et notamment par plusieurs catégories d’acteurs, postule un dialogue entre savoirs dits « savants », scientifiques ou académiques ; savoirs dits « experts » ou analogiques ; et savoirs « expérientiels » (Gardien, 2017 ; Amaré et Valran, 2017). Elle peut exiger une adaptation des normes, investissant d’autres genres d’écrits (narratifs, poétiques, pédagogiques), et s’inscrire dans des démarches de recherche-action, de recherche-création ou, plus largement, de sciences participatives (Bouillaguet, 2024).

Plusieurs numéros de revue récents en SIC ont interrogé ces écritures polyphoniques, autour de la « recherche-intervention » dans le champ de la communication organisationnelle (Ruelland et al., 2020 ; De La Broise et al., 2022), autour des cultures de conception et de co-design (Bonnet, 2021) ou encore des sciences participatives au prisme des SIC (Pascual Espuny et al., 2021). D’autres initiatives, telles que celles portées par le Groupe d’Études et de Recherche (GER) « Recherche et Création » de la SFSIC[1], appellent à articuler différentes postures, en associant pratiques artistiques et créatives à la production de connaissances, tout en nourrissant ces pratiques par l’heuristique de la recherche. Dans tous ces cas, il s’agit d’interroger les rôles, les responsabilités et les modalités d’engagement du/de la chercheur·se dans la production des savoirs. La dimension éthique renvoie alors autant aux modalités de collaboration, de représentation et de restitution des expériences qu’aux conditions de légitimation des savoirs produits. Ces pratiques mettent également à l’épreuve la validité des démarches théoriques et méthodologiques mobilisées, dont les implications doivent être explicitées tout au long du processus de recherche.

Enfin, il est indéniable que ces écritures plurielles s’inscrivent dans des débats et des luttes à la fois épistémiques et épistémologiques au sein des SIC. Épistémiques, car elles participent à définir la manière dont la chercheuse ou le chercheur s’engage dans la situation étudiée, vis-à-vis de son objet de recherche et de son contexte d’études. Épistémologiques, dans le sens où ces écritures interrogent les frontières des savoirs exigeant un repositionnement presque continu des communautés académiques sur ce qui relève ou non de la discipline et de ce l’on envisage comme « science ». D’autant plus qu’en tant que 71e section du Conseil national des universités (CNU), les SIC relèvent du « groupe 12 », dit « pluridisciplinaire », dans la mesure où les travaux « agence[nt] des théories et méthodes venant d’autres disciplines » dans « des analyses centrées sur des acteurs, des usages, des textes, des documents et des discours, des images, des situations et des contextes »[2]. Si l’interdisciplinarité constitue un fondement de l’identité des SIC en France, elle ne fait toutefois pas consensus comme principe unificateur des pratiques scientifiques de la discipline (Fleury et Walter, 2011). Ces débats témoignent d’une quête récurrente de légitimité des SIC au sein des SHS et, plus largement, dans leurs rapports aux autres disciplines scientifiques.

Ce dossier souhaite prolonger les discussions autour des écritures plurielles menées par des chercheuses et chercheurs en SIC. Comment expérimenter des formes d’écriture aux frontières des normes académiques ? Comment en prendre en compte le corps et les sensibilités des chercheurs·es, ou encore s’immerger dans les terrains et communautés étudiés ? De quelles manières ces tentatives d’écriture interrogent-elles l’autorité et la légitimité des chercheurs·es ? Quels enjeux dans la construction et dans la valorisation des savoirs scientifiques ? Qu’est-ce qui fait discipline ? In fine, ce dossier invite à interroger les écritures plurielles en SIC comme des pratiques situées, traversées par des tensions épistémiques et épistémologiques, par des rapports de pouvoir entre les acteurs de l’écriture, et par des formats et des temporalités hétérogènes.

Les contributions proposées sont invitées à s’inscrire dans l’un des axes suivants ou à en croiser les perspectives, ces derniers n’étant pas limitatifs.

Axe 1 : Reconfigurations des écritures scientifiques en SIC

Cet axe propose d’interroger les transformations contemporaines des normes d’écriture scientifique en SIC, dans un contexte marqué par la diversification des formats, la contrainte des dispositifs d’évaluation et l’accélération des temporalités de production du savoir. Les formes longues et stabilisées coexistent désormais avec des écritures plus courtes, fragmentées et situées - appels à projets, publications rapides, productions intermédiaires - qui reconfigurent les conditions d’élaboration et de diffusion des connaissances. Ces évolutions s’inscrivent dans un mouvement plus large de rationalisation et d’intensification du travail scientifique, participant au déploiement de dispositifs et de structures qui contribuent à la reconfiguration des pratiques d’écriture de la recherche, par exemple, des lieux de pratique de l’enquête et de l’observation comme La fabrique des écritures[3], ou bien la multiplication des résidences d’écriture[4], ou encore le soutien aux travaux de recherche-création comme à l’Université de Rennes avec un label recherche-création[5].

Dès lors, la question de la « publicisation » des savoirs apparaît centrale. Le passage de l’écrit pour soi à l’écrit destiné à des publics élargis engage une dynamique de formalisation et de distanciation vis-à-vis de l’objet scientifique (Licoppe, 1996). Il participe également à une circulation des écrits entre différents espaces - académiques, médiatiques, professionnels - contribuant à brouiller les frontières entre écriture de recherche, communication scientifique et présence du/de la chercheur·se dans la Cité. Ces dynamiques se prolongent aujourd’hui dans les environnements numériques qui participent à redéfinir les modalités d’écriture et de restitution des savoirs (Angé, 2018 ; Chabert, 2025), notamment dans le cadre de démarches de « recherche-création » (Hambefort, 2016). Ces transformations peuvent être mises en perspective avec les travaux en Humanités numériques, qui envisagent les écritures comme des environnements numériques de production et de circulation des savoirs (Doueihi, 2011), ou encore les effets qu’induisent les dispositifs numériques sur la dimension collective et éditoriale des écritures savantes (Sauret, 2020).

Que dire de ces transformations ? Peuvent-elles être lues comme l’émergence d’un nouveau paradigme des écritures de recherche ? Comment les chercheurs·es composent-ils/elles avec des injonctions parfois contradictoires entre standardisation, visibilité et expérimentation, qui redessinent les conditions de production et de circulation des savoirs ? Elles traversent à la fois les formes d’écriture dédiées à la communication scientifique et des formats plus créatifs, inscrits dans une « culture triviale » du/de la chercheur·se et rejouent les frontières entre écriture de recherche et présence publique.

Axe 2 : Poïétique des écritures numériques : formes hybrides et usages de l’IA

À partir d’une perspective critique et « poïétique » (Persillet, 2024), qui se veut centrée sur les processus de création, cet axe propose d’interroger comment les pratiques d’écriture scientifique en SIC se transforment à partir de l’articulation des dispositifs techniques, des contraintes institutionnelles et des environnements numériques. Alors que la matérialité des supports et des formats participe pleinement à la production de sens, l’écriture scientifique se reconfigure au contact de pratiques artistiques, mais aussi d’injonctions issues des industries culturelles, médiatiques et créatives (Alexis et al., 2019).

Il s’agit ainsi d’analyser les phénomènes de résistance ou d’hybridation entre écriture académique, communication médiatique et formats professionnels. Ces dynamiques s’inscrivent souvent dans une tension entre une « scientificité du calcul » dont le numérique supposément révèle « une sorte de réel ontologique immédiatement perceptible », fondée sur des logiques industrielles (Saemmer, 2015), et une « liberté créative » revendiquée fréquemment par les concepteurs·trices d’outils numériques. L’essor de l’IA générative accentue ces transformations en introduisant de nouvelles formes d’agentivité et de production. Les « machines à prédire » (Benbouzid et Cardon, 2018) reconfigurent les conditions d’écriture et participent à une redéfinition du social fondée sur les traces (Boullier, 2015), tout en soulevant des enjeux éthiques majeurs (Bertrand et Gosselin, 2020 ; Zacklad et Rouvroy, 2022).

Dans ce contexte, les contributions peuvent traiter différentes questions. Comment certains·es chercheurs·es en SIC articulent pratiques artistiques et créatives à leurs écritures scientifiques ? De quelles manières les dispositifs techniques et, en particulier, les outils d’IA générative transforment-ils les pratiques d’écriture de la recherche des chercheurs.es ? En quoi le prompt peut-il être envisagé comme une compétence communicationnelle et une forme d’agentivité créatrice (Baillargeon, 2018) ? Comment penser les articulations entre calcul algorithmique et création ? Dans quelle mesure les formats numériques redéfinissent-ils les normes de scientificité et de légitimité ? Enfin, quelles implications éthiques ces transformations engendrent-elles pour la production et la diffusion des savoirs ?

Axe 3 : Écriture, corps et affects dans la production des savoirs

Cet axe propose d’explorer la dimension incarnée et sensible des pratiques d’écriture en SIC, en considérant l’écriture comme une activité traversée par des formes d’implication personnelle (Lambert, 2007). À distance d’un idéal d’objectivité, de nombreux travaux invitent à reconnaître le rôle du corps et des émotions dans les processus de production des savoirs (Martin-Juchat, 2020). L’acte d’écrire ne relève pas seulement d’une opération cognitive, mais engage des perceptions, des sensations, des attachements et des positionnements qui participent à la construction du regard scientifique (Stassin, 2025).

Dans cette perspective, les affects, les émotions, la subjectivité, l’engagement peuvent être envisagés comme des ressources heuristiques au regard des exigences de scientificité. Les écritures réflexives, les démarches auto-ethnographiques ou encore certaines formes de recherche-création rendent visibles ces dimensions en intégrant les conditions situées de production des savoirs dans l’écriture elle-même. Les travaux récents soulignent ainsi l’importance d’écritures que l’on pourrait qualifier de « sensibles », qui articulent images, récits et expériences, et participent à une exploration des formes de connaissance au-delà des formats académiques traditionnels (Bationo-Tillon et al., 2024). De même, les pratiques hybrides d’artistes-chercheurs·es interrogent les manières de « performer » les savoirs, en mobilisant le corps comme vecteur de production et de transmission des connaissances (Boudier et Déchery, 2022).

Ces approches invitent à repenser les formes et les critères de légitimité de l’écriture scientifique, en interrogeant la place accordée à la subjectivité et à l’expérience sensible. Les contributions pourront ainsi explorer différentes questions : comment le corps et les affects interviennent-ils dans les pratiques d’écriture scientifique ? Dans quelle mesure ces dimensions sont-elles reconnues, intégrées ou au contraire marginalisées dans la discipline ? Quelles formes d’écriture permettent de rendre compte de cette dimension sensible sans renoncer aux exigences de formalisation et de démonstration ? Enfin, comment ces pratiques participent-elles à redéfinir les frontières entre écriture scientifique, écriture littéraire et écriture artistique ?

Axe 4 : Écritures participatives et co-construction des savoirs

Cet axe propose d’explorer les écritures scientifiques dites « participatives » comme dispositifs de médiation entre différents régimes de savoirs académiques et non-académiques. L’écriture y est envisagée à la fois comme un outil de traduction, de négociation et de structuration de connaissances permettant la rencontre de mondes sociaux hétérogènes. Ces pratiques interrogent la place et la légitimité des voix engagées dans la documentation des traces et dans la production des données, dans la construction des savoirs, ainsi que dans les modalités de partage de l’autorité scientifique. Elles permettent de repenser les formes de restitution et de circulation des résultats dans une perspective de co-construction (Kollman et al., 2025 ; Bats et May, 2023). Ces pratiques d’écriture invitent également à questionner les conditions éthiques de production et de circulation des écrits, notamment les modalités d’attribution de la parole, de co-énonciation et de partage de l’autorité scientifique, ainsi que les effets potentiels des choix d’écriture en termes de risques réputationnels, d’exposition ou d’invisibilisation des individus et des collectifs, selon la manière dont leurs propos et leurs pratiques sont relatés et interprétés. L’écriture devient ainsi un espace de tension entre validation scientifique et reconnaissance des savoirs situés.

Dans cette perspective, les écritures « participatives » contribuent à transformer les pratiques scientifiques en SIC, en questionnant leurs finalités, leurs méthodes et les postures des chercheurs·es (Pascual Espuny et al., 2021). Ces écritures peuvent ainsi favoriser des dynamiques d’encapacitation des publics non-académiques, s’inscrivant dans une visée entendue comme émancipatrice (Bacqué & Biewener, 2013), ou répondre davantage à des injonctions institutionnelles s’adaptant à des logiques de financement publiques ou privées. D’autres approches questionnent davantage le rôle des sciences et les hiérarchies scientifiques en prenant en compte des savoirs vernaculaires et une perspective élargie du vivant, intégrant même des entités non humaines dans les processus de production des savoirs et les récits du « faire ensemble » (Escobar, 2018 ; Martin-Juchat, 2024). En outre, la prise en compte des corpus scientifiques et patrimoniaux invite à questionner les logiques de documentarisation « participatives » (Chupin, 2016).

Plusieurs questions peuvent être formulées au sein des contributions : comment l’écriture participe-t-elle à la co-construction des savoirs entre chercheur·ses et publics non-académiques ? Quelles formes de légitimité et d’autorité scientifique émergent dans ces pratiques ? Dans quelle mesure ces pratiques favorisent-elles des démarches d’encapacitation des publics impliqués ou reproduisent-elles des logiques institutionnelles ? Enfin, quels enjeux éthiques, politiques et épistémologiques soulèvent ces formes d’écritures « participatives » ? Dans quelle mesure ces formes d’écritures « participatives » peuvent-elles être rapprochées des travaux sur la genèse documentaire et les écritures hypertextuelles (Le Deuff, 2019), qui interrogent les logiques de documentation, d’annotation et de recomposition des savoirs ?

Ce dossier invite ainsi à saisir les écritures en SIC comme des lieux d’expérimentation, de tension et de reconfiguration des pratiques scientifiques. Il s’agit d’interroger ce que ces formes plurielles font aux manières de produire, de légitimer et de partager les savoirs, ainsi qu’aux frontières de la discipline elle-même. Les contributions sont ainsi encouragées à proposer des analyses empiriques, des réflexions théoriques ou des retours d’expérience, susceptibles d’éclairer les transformations contemporaines de l’écriture scientifique, dans toute leur diversité de formes, de contextes et d’enjeux.

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Bacqué, M.-H., & Biewener, C. (2013). L’empowerment, une pratique émancipatrice. Revue Projet, (336–337), 186a–187.

Baillargeon, D. (2018). Articuler pratiques stratégiques, régionalité et institution. Un point de vue ventriloque sur la créativité en agence. M@n@gement, 21, 913–943.

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Bats, R., & May, N. (2023). Sciences et recherches participatives : Les BU en quête du bon positionnement. Arabesques, 111. https://publications-prairial.fr/arabesques/index.php?id=3687.

Benbouzid, B., & Cardon, D. (2018). Machines à prédire. Réseaux, (211), 9–33.

Berthelot, J.-M. (Dir.). (2003). Figures du texte scientifique. Presses universitaires de France.

Bertrand, G., & Gosselin, P. (2020). Éthique de l’intelligence artificielle. Presses de l’Université Laval.

Bonnet, F. (2021). Culture·s de conception – Entre « progrès », « innovation » et « stratégie », quels signes, quels dispositifs et quels modèles d’organisation pour se projeter aujourd’hui ?. Revue française des sciences de l’information et de la communication, 23. http://journals.openedition.org/rfsic/11830.

Boudier M.et Déchery C. (2022), Artistes-chercheur·es, chercheur·es-artistes. Performer les savoirs, Nanterre, Presses universitaires de Paris Nanterre.

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Chabert G. (2025), Expériences numériques et enjeux de recherche-création sur l’immersion, Revue française des sciences de l’information et de la communication [En ligne], 29. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/rfsic/16304.

Chupin L. (2016). Documentarisation participative et médiation du patrimoine scientifique numérisé. Le cas des herbiers‪. Études de communication, 46,1, p.  33-50.

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Doueihi Milad, (2011). Pour un humanisme numérique, Paris, Seuil

Escobar, A. (2018). Sentir-penser avec la terre. Une écologie au-delà de l’Occident. Éditions du Seuil.

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Hambefort F. (2016), Mise en œuvre d’une démarche de recherche création dans un doctorat en SIC portant sur l’art numérique, Actes Eustocchia des doctorales du réseau Iris. URL : https://ajccrem.hypotheses.org/tag/methode-heuristique.

Jeanneret, Y. (1994). Écrire la science : formes et enjeux de la vulgarisation, Paris, Presses universitaires de France.

Kohlmann, É., Inaudi, A., & Coulbaut-Lazzarini, A. (2025). Enjeux de légitimité dans la médiation scientifique : Approche par les usages du livre. Les Enjeux de l’information et de la communication, 25(1), 123–137.

Lambert, F. (2007). L’écriture en recherche, Paris, Parcours(sic) éditions.

Lefebvre, M. (2006). Les écrits scientifiques en action : pluralité des écritures et enjeux mobilisés, Sciences de la société, n°   67.

Le Bart, C., & Mazel, F. (Dir.). (2021). Écrire les sciences sociales, écrire en sciences sociales Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes.

Le Deuff O. (2019). Hyperdocumentation, hyperville et hyperloin. Jusqu’où peut-on étudier l’hypertexte ?, H2PTM’19 : De l’hypertexte aux humanités numériques, Montbelliard, France. p.  47-62.

Martin-Juchat, F., (2020), L’aventure du corps. La communication corporelle, une voie vers l’émancipation, Presses Universitaires de Grenoble.

Martin-Juchat, F. (2024). Des communications organisationnelles « écoféministes » : Nouvel esprit du capitalisme ou « dynamiques transformatives » ? Communication & Organisation, (2024/2), 239–255. Presses universitaires de Bordeaux.

Pascual Espuny, C., Catellani, A., & Jalenques-Vigouroux, B. (2021). Les sciences participatives au prisme des Sciences de l'information et de la communication. Introduction. Études de communication, (56), 7–20.

Persillet, C. (2024). Poïétique, pratique et théorie : Méthodologie de la recherche en arts plastiques. Marges, (39), 21–42.

Renaud, L. (2025). La recherche en SIC face à la figuration des médias informatisés, Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches, Avignon Université.

Ruelland, I., Lafortune, J.-M., & Rhéaume, J. (2020). L’intervention en milieux organisés : fondements et enjeux communicationnels. Communication et organisation, (30), 1–9.

Saemmer, A. (2015). Rhétorique du texte numérique : figures de la lecture, anticipations de pratiques. Presses de l’Enssib.

Sauret, N. (2020). De la revue au collectif : la conversation comme dispositif d’éditorialisation des communautés savantes en lettres et sciences humaines. Thèse de doctorat en Sciences de l'Information et de et de la communication à Paris 10 en cotutelle avec l’Université de Montréal.

Souchier, E., & Jeanneret, Y. (1999). Pour une poétique de l’écrit d’écran. Xoana, (6), 97–107.

Souchier, E., Candel, É., Gomez-Mejia, G., & Jeanne-Perrier, V. (2019). Le numérique comme écriture : Théories et méthodes d’analyse. Armand Colin.

Stassin, B. (2025). La place des affects dans la recherche en terrain sensible. Du « besoin informationnel » au « travail émotionnel  », Habilitation à diriger des recherches, CREM, Université de Lorraine.

Zacklad, M. (2007), Annotation : attention, association, contribution. Annotations dans les Documents pour l'Action, Hermes science publications, pp.29-46.

Zacklad, M., Bénel, A., Bringay, S., Barry-Gréboval, C., Charlet, J., et al. (2007) Processus d’annotation dans les documents pour l’action : textualité et médiation de la coopération. Roger T. Pédauque. La redocumentarisation du monde, Cépaduès, pp.149-166.

Zacklad, M., & Rouvroy, A. (2022). L’éthique située de l’IA et ses controverses. Revue française des sciences de l’information et de la communication. En ligne : https://journals.openedition.org/rfsic/13204. https://doi.org/10.4000/rfsic.13204.

[1] URL https://www.sfsic.org/sfsic-association-information-communication/groupes-detudes-et-de-recherche/ [consulté le 9 mai 2026].

[2] Voir la page du CNU sur les Sciences de l’Information et de la Communication : https://conseil-national-des-universites.fr/cnu/#/entite/entiteName/CNU/idChild/34/idNode/4471-4497  [consulté le 29 avril 2026].

[3] https://fabecritures.fr/ [consulté le 07/05/2026].

[4] Par exemple, à l’EHESS : https://www.ehess.fr/jcms/43924_JNewsArticle/fr/deux-projets-de-recherche-creation-en-residence-d-ecriture-au-campus-condorcet [consulté le 07/05/2026].

[5] https://www.univ-rennes2.fr/recherche/label-recherche-creation [consulté le 07/05/2026].

Responsable :
Revue ATIC, Lorreine Petters, Lucie Alexis
Url de référence :
https://atic.hypotheses.org/2060
Adresse :
Revue ATIC"
https://www.fabula.org/actualites/135063/proposition-de-dossier-thematique-revue-atic-ecrire-en.html
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"Lancement de la traduction audio du Coran en tadjik
IQNA-Le Complexe d'Impression du Saint Coran King Fahd a récemment lancé une traduction audio des significations du Saint Coran en langue tadjike, rendant ainsi les enseignements coraniques accessibles aux auditeurs parlant tadjik à travers le monde.

Selon SPA, cette initiative s'inscrit dans le cadre des efforts continus du complexe pour utiliser les technologies modernes afin de servir le Saint Coran et faciliter l'accès à ses significations pour les musulmans de différentes langues.

Les utilisateurs peuvent désormais écouter les traductions audio en tadjik, naviguer entre les sourates et les versets, et télécharger des fichiers audio.

Cette traduction audio se distingue par des enregistrements de haute qualité, une narration claire et une transmission précise des significations des versets coraniques, contribuant ainsi à une compréhension plus profonde du Saint Coran parmi les locuteurs tadjiks.

Le CComplexe roi Fahd, basé dans la ville sainte de Médine, produit chaque année des millions de copies du Coran et publie également des traductions de ce livre sacré dans diverses langues.

Cette nouvelle ressource représente un pas important vers l'inclusivité et l'accessibilité des enseignements islamiques."
June 12, 2026
https://iqna.ir/fr/news/3495778/lancement-de-la-traduction-audio-du-coran-en-tadjik
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"How Soviet prisons spread a secret 'language of thieves' now spoken by millions

The tricks of the jail jargon Fenya were once used to bewilder guards in Stalin's Gulags. Now they are being used by Russian cyber-criminals.

When would you hide in a raspberry? Why don't you want to be a sixer? And what does it mean to go to the akademiya?

Russian often takes slang to complex levels, such as through Mat, its linguistic system for obscenities. But even a "matershchinnik" (a well-practiced master of swearing) might find the above phrases nonsensical – unless, of course, they are familiar with Fenya, the language of Russia's colossal prison system.

This language of criminals has been deployed by underworld figures for centuries to puzzle and evade. But during the 20th Century, its curious mixture of double entendre and loan words ballooned in Soviet prisons.

With German, Greek and Yiddish influences, Fenya is brimming with confusing hidden meanings. In Russian, "babki" literally means "grandmas", but in Fenya, it also means "money". "Varezhka" means a "mitten" but also a "mouth, while "khalyava", derived from the Hebrew for "milk", is a "freebie" or "giveaway".

A single word in Fenya can contain hidden codes known only to speakers of the slang. And just as it once bewildered prison camp guards, its language tricks are now being being used online, obscuring the intent of cyber-criminals and confusing authorities.

For instance, while the Russian words мусор or musor normally translate to "trash", its Fenya equivalent today means a cop who may have infiltrated the dark-web forums where cyber-attacks are organised.

With Russian cyber-crime booming, investigators must now familiarise themselves with this jargon if they want to get the drop on perpetrators. Even with advances in artificial intelligence, though, machines can struggle to pick up Fenya's constantly evolving nuances.

So how did we get here? While Fenya was muttered on the streets of Tsarist Russia for centuries, it was a series of decisions taken by the Soviet justice system that resulted in its explosion into the mainstream – and ultimately onto the internet too.

Clandestine beginnings
Broadly speaking, Fenya is a type of cryptolect – a camouflaged language often used to confuse others. Today, it has burrowed into broader Russian culture to the degree that some may be unaware of words' original ties to the underworld.

Fenya's origins are shrouded in mystery. One intriguing (though disputed) theory suggests it began with nomadic salesmen called Ofeni who travelled on foot across Russia selling religious knick-knacks. A 17th-Century church schism, the theory goes, declared their wares items heretical, so wayfaring merchants adopted their own unique modes of speech.

Fuel Russian Criminal Tattoo Archive
The king of clubs was known as "St Nicholas" in fenya, while "to hold a suit" means having authority over a community of thieves (Credit: Fuel Russian Criminal Tattoo Archive)

More is known about how Fenya spread. The vocabulary is thought to have started expanding in the 19th Century, writes Mark Galeotti, an expert in modern Russia, intelligence consultant and honorary professor at University College London, in his 2018 book The Vory: Russia's Super Mafia. It was then, he says, that street urchins and criminals started to place "fe" and "nye" sounds in the middle of words.

These particular tics, redolent of an underworld pig-Latin, were eventually dropped, writes Galeotti. But not before gangs of pickpockets and street scammers adopted Fenya. Initiations into their crews counted on a basic understanding of it. Words and phrases were documented at length in an 1863 dictionary of living Russian,which attempted to categorise Russian as it was lived and spoken.

In Fenya, hierarchies are expressed through card-game jargon, with suits and clubs symbolising bona fide thieves. Animals take on secret double-lives as objects, so speakers know that a monkey is a mirror and a fox is a folding-knife. Altogether, Fenya's vocabulary is thought to comprise between 10,000 and 27,000 words.

Among the intelligentsia of the late Tsarist period, the tantalising suggestion of a shadow criminal society fascinated literary figures and inspired so-called vagabond music – where performers sang in Fenya and romanticised slum life.

But it was the enormous social upheaval of wars and revolution to come that really cemented Fenya's rise.

Fenya's explosion
After winning the Russian civil war and creating the USSR in 1922, the Bolsheviks experimented with expanding the country's prison camps. In these forerunners to the notorious Gulag system, all sorts of people would mix with petty criminals – giving everyone from peasants to the intelligentsia a first-hand taste of Fenya.

Alamy
In Soviet Gulags, everyone from peasants to the intelligentsia mixed with petty criminals, giving them a first-hand taste of Fenya (Credit: Alamy)

When Stalin took power, millions more were incarcerated, leading the enigmatic vocabulary to spread among even more prisoners and become standardised among criminals, eventually evolving into a kind of prison-camp vocabulary with whole new terms.

"Language became a kind of communicative survival tool," says Martin Puchner, professor of English and comparative literature at Harvard University in the US, and author of The Language of Thieves: The Story of Rotwelsch and One Family's Secret History.

In the prisons, professional criminals formalised Fenya into the "vorovskoy zakon", or thieves' code, a Mafioso-style set of laws that signalled status: those familiar with its rules, and the commoners or "muzhik" (peasants) who would only ever be their marks.

Fenya and cyber-crime lingo are almost like a form of convergent evolution – Roman Sannikov
Meanwhile, Stalin attempted to crush criminality, along with anything he associated with it – like Fenya. As early as 1930, official Soviet magazines decried "thieves songs" as a dangerous affront to proletarian culture.

Popular artists reinvented themselves in more ideologically acceptable directions. The famous Soviet estrada singer Leonid Utesov – whose jaunty thieves' song From The Odessa Gaol was once a crowd-pleaser – began performing for the military instead, converting his style into what one historian called a "Soviet product cleansed of decadence".

Leaving the prisons
The days following Stalin's death in 1953 brought another twist to the tale of Fenya.

A mass amnesty of more than a million prisoners meant petty criminals left the Gulags in droves. They returned home, bringing Fenya with them. "Blatnaya pesnya" – thieves' songs – broke out in taverns across the country.

"[At this time] there was a sense that criminal culture was a folk culture, suppressed by the official party," says Svetlana Stephenson, professor of sociology at London Metropolitan University and author of Gangs of Russia: From the Streets to the Corridors of Power. "There was a flirtation with this world among the intelligentsia."

Cryptolects

Many other communities around the world have developed secret languages, or "cryptolects". Examples include:

• The Kali-worshipping Thuggees of India talked in Ramaseeana from the 1700s

• London's 1800s "demimonde" chittered in Flash, famously spoken by the Artful Dodger when he utters: "Hullo, my covey! What's the row?"

• In the 1900s, US carnival workers talked in Ciazarn, the secret language of "carnies", with some words still used in professional wrestling today

• During Brazil's military dictatorship, the travesti (a distinct LGBTQ community) created the Pajubá language, adopting Yoruba words into Portuguese, as protection from government persecution

• Before the UK decriminalised homosexuality in 1967, some gay men would use Polari to communicate in secret

• Some twins invent entirely new languages – spoken only by two

Attempts to suppress thieves' songs only boosted their popularity. As the USSR intensified its censorship, enterprising citizens bootlegged music, cutting cheap X-ray sheets into disc shapes with scissors and printing sounds on them using home-made lathes. Known as "jazz on bones", these were playable on gramophones. The burgeoning black market in these sheets allowed people to trade music from denounced Russian émigrés as well as record their own songs, which was otherwise impossible.

Home recordings of thieves' songs circulated widely. Later, with the advent of the cassette tape, the rowdy sounds of underground artists like Arkady Severny and emigrant singer Dina Vierny – with their bawdy tales of sex, robberies, violence and gulags – thundered through the USSR.

By the time the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, Fenya's folkloric status was cemented, despite the best efforts of the state. Yet speaking Fenya in polite society was still unthinkable.

At the turn of the millennium, however, it entered a surprising new era of acceptability. Russian political elites including Vladimir Putin began to use Fenya in their official communiques, says Larissa Ryazanova-Clarke, professor of Russian and sociolinguistics at the University of Edinburgh in the UK. This "period of linguistic turmoil" was due to the "landslide of the norm", she says, reflecting the dramatic changes of the time.

Officials probably used this language to lend them a populist appeal, says Stephenson, who has described the trend as "Kremlovskaya Fenya" – Kremlin Fenya. "I think it expresses the culture of violence, which has penetrated to the very top of Russian society," she says. Paradoxically, officials banned speaking Fenya in Russian prisons but continued to speak it themselves.

Obfuscating the web
​As Fenya burrowed into everyday language at the turn of the 21st Century, it also began to evolve in a new arena: the digital revolution.

In 1999 on the early Russian internet (or "RuNet"), a user on the FidoNet bulletin board published a "Manifesto of Anti-Literacy", writes academic Larisa Morkoborodova. This railed against "the so-called spelling correctness on the Net" and urged "all masters of the Russian word" to "challenge the killing of our live language by soulless automatons!".

Check Point Research
An apparently nonsense output from an automated translation tool of Fenya words (Credit: Check Point Research)
Their deliberate misspellings and punny inventions evolved into new slang known as padonki, also ironically named olbanian. Millions per month speak in padonki online, writes Morkoborodova, and it has seeped into broader society. It means many Russians are familiar with padonki – only a subset of them criminals. Still, its creative semantics can cause headaches for cyber investigators.

The lingo deliberately breaks Russian language conventions, emphasising double consonants and phonetically written words, with loanwords from English that deviate from their original meanings.

For example, Russian speakers might write "email" as "mylo" – literally "soap dish" – because at the dawn of digital culture in Russia there was simply no word for email, says Roman Sannikov, a cyber-security expert who's worked as a linguist for the FBI. The Russian word for soap dish sounded phonetically close enough. "If you're using machine translation, sometimes you'll get 'soap' instead of an 'email'," he adds.

With Cyrillic (Russian) keyboards rare at the time, some web users also deployed the numerical "4" as shorthand for a "ch" sound, because "four" is "chetyre" in Russian. 

"A lot of it came from English, because the words just did not exist in Russian," Sannikov says. "A hard drive was frequently called a 'winch', because many of them were branded 'Winchester'."

'Cyber-Fenya'
"Most of the people that created cyber-slang were kids or young people," says Sannikov – rather different from the Fenya-uttering vory (thieves) of the past.

So when Fenya words do crop up, says Fyodor Yarochkin, a researcher at the cyber security company Trend Micro, they might speak to a rarer sort of cross-pollination: traditional crooks who've entered the realm of white-collar cyber-criminals, perhaps to discuss more physical kinds of lawbreaking.

More like this:

• The lost medieval pronouns of English intimacy

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Or, having learned phrases from gangster movies, they might just be trying to impress their associates and look tough, he suggests, using Fenya as a status symbol or cultural signifier rather than evasion.

Still, when chat logs from the Russian cyber-crime gang Conti leaked in 2022, among the logistics, obscenities and general blather were words that can be traced back to Fenya.

Researchers at global cyber-security firm Check Point noted that some of the chat logs appeared impossible to understand, with machine translation failing when they said phrases to each other such as: "My soaps don't bathe. I've been warming them up for months." What the criminals were really talking about was avoiding email blacklists.

Forums for "initial access brokers" – the insider threats at organisations who open the doors to cyber-attackers – also often speak in a mixture of Fenya and Mat, helping to disguise what they're up to.

"Fenya and cyber-crime lingo are almost like a form of convergent evolution," says Sannikov – together forming an intricate semantic tapestry that's hard to unpick. You could call the jumble of online criminal lingo "cyber-Fenya", he adds.

This internet usage is just the latest example of how criminal argot continues to be diluted, changed and occasionally absorbed into Russian. And Fenya's reach today is ultimately thanks to Stalin and the Gulags, which turned it into one of the most widespread covert languages in the world.

Many of the prisoners there could have told you that a raspberry was a secret lair, a "sixer" was at the very bottom of the criminal hierarchy, and that the "akademiya", or prison, is where you never wanted to end up – though it certainly would have given you a good education in Fenya."
Tamlin Magee
Alamy
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260611-fenya-how-cyber-criminals-adopted-russias-secret-language-of-thieves
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Pensées arabes en traduction - Livres des 2 rives
12 ressources pour faire dialoguer les acteurs du monde du livre arabe et la France

Pensée avec l'Institut français, cette liste présente d'importantes bases de données, aides et initiatives artistiques et linguistiques en faveur de liens éditoriaux soutenus entre les différents acteurs du monde arabe et la France.

1/ Catalogue Pensées arabes en traduction
Produit dans le cadre de la phase 1 du projet Livres des deux rives, le catalogue Pensées arabes en traduction rassemble 31 notices d'ouvrages de sciences humaines et sociales. Son objectif est de porter à la connaissance du public francophone une série d'ouvrages marquants de sciences humaines et sociales déjà publiés en arabe. Ce catalogue a permis la traduction de plusieurs titres recensés, au sein d'une nouvelle collection coéditée par les éditions de l'Atelier et l'Institut du monde arabe, « Pensées arabes contemporaines ». Cette initiative trouve un prolongement aujourd'hui dans le projet « Tarjamat » porté par l'Institut français de Tunisie. Ce projet met en œuvre des formations sur la traduction des sciences humaines et sociales pour permettre un meilleur repérage de ces publications dans le monde arabe. « Tarjamat » a déjà permis la formation de 35 traducteurs, la traduction de deux ouvrages et de 10 articles sur Open-Edition et l'enrichissement du catalogue Pensées arabes en traduction avec la production de 60 nouvelles notices...

2/ Annuaire des traducteurs
Livres des deux rives a pour objectif de soutenir les flux de traduction entre les langues arabe et française et de favoriser le renouvellement des générations de traductrices et traducteurs dans les pays impliqués, comme leur professionnalisation. Depuis sa première phase, le projet a mis en œuvre une série d'ateliers de formation à la traduction littéraire, tant dans une démarche de sensibilisation que de professionnalisation. Ainsi plus de 150 jeunes traducteurs ont pu bénéficier de ces ateliers. Les profils de traducteurs professionnels ont été recensés dans cet annuaire, établi par l'association Atlas, afin de permettre aux professionnels de l'édition de mieux identifier ces profils.

3/ Catalogue Leila
Leila est un projet coopératif qui vise à promouvoir la traduction et la diffusion en Europe de la littérature arabe contemporaine. Il a été conçu et mis en œuvre en 2021 par l'iReMMO, en partenariat avec ATLAS, BOZAR / Chaire Mahmoud Darwish, et la Fédération Tunisienne des Éditeurs, dans le cadre d'un financement de l'Union européenne. À la faveur de sa seconde phase, le projet Livres des deux rives enrichit le catalogue New Books in Arabic, créé au sein du projet Leila, en proposant 10 nouvelles fiches de lectures, la promotion du site et du catalogue enrichi, à l'occasion de salons littéraires ou événements internationaux ; et la production d'un catalogue complet Leila en anglais."
Institut Français
12.06.2026
https://www.livreshebdo.fr/article/12-ressources-pour-faire-dialoguer-les-acteurs-du-monde-du-livre-arabe-et-la-france
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"DeepL étend son service de traduction vocale en temps réel à Google Meet, complétant ainsi un trio de plateformes de visioconférence aux côtés de Zoom et Microsoft Teams.

DeepL a annoncé l’intégration de Google Meet à la liste des plateformes compatibles avec « DeepL Voice for Meetings », son service de sous-titrage traduit en temps réel. Une offensive qui place l’entreprise allemande en concurrence directe avec les solutions natives des géants de la tech, au moment où la réunion d’entreprise multilingue s’impose comme un enjeu stratégique.

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Les utilisateurs peuvent désormais accéder à cette fonctionnalité sur Google Meet, en plus de Zoom et Microsoft Teams, déjà pris en charge. Le service supporte actuellement plus de 40 langues et est réservé aux abonnés au forfait Enterprise.

Cette extension permet aux équipes internationales de bénéficier de sous-titres traduits automatiquement (dans plus de 40 langues), quelle que soit la plateforme de réunion utilisée au sein de leur organisation.

Google Meet et Microsoft Teams : la fin de la guerre des salles de réunion
96 % des experts préfèrent DeepL Voice
DeepL s’appuie sur un benchmark indépendant pour asseoir sa crédibilité sur ce marché.

Le cabinet de recherche spécialisé Slator, expert en traduction, localisation, interprétation et IA linguistique, a publié les résultats d’une étude comparant les sous-titres natifs de Google Meet, Microsoft Teams et Zoom à ceux de DeepL Voice.

Verdict : 96 % des experts linguistiques ayant participé à une évaluation en aveugle ont désigné DeepL Voice comme la solution préférée, notamment pour la qualité de traduction et la stabilité des sous-titres.

Une pression accrue sur les solutions natives
En s’installant sur les trois principales plateformes de réunion en ligne, DeepL crée une alternative directe aux fonctionnalités de sous-titrage intégrées par Google, Microsoft et Zoom.

L’enjeu est de taille : la réunion d’entreprise multilingue représente un marché en forte croissance, porté par la mondialisation des équipes et l’essor du travail à distance.

Pour les entreprises qui communiquent quotidiennement dans plusieurs langues, la qualité de la traduction en temps réel est devenue un critère de productivité à part entière."
Par Kim Mi-jeong
Publié le 12/06/2026 à 08:45 | Mis à jour le 12/06/2026 à 09:58
https://www.zdnet.fr/actualites/deepl-sinvite-dans-google-meet-avec-des-sous-titres-traduits-en-temps-reel-496717.htm
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Papers of Former Nuremberg Trial Translator Come to Hoover
Hildy Jarman was a multilingual educator who survived the London Blitz and served as a translator at the Nuremberg war trials before teaching at Palo Alto's Castilleja School for over two decades. Her collection — discovered in a travel-worn suitcase — includes rare correspondence with U.S. Army generals and documentation of war crimes investigations, offering a window into the role of women who worked behind the scenes of postwar justice.

Thursday, May 28, 2026  1 min read
featuring the work of Jean McElwee Cannon

Hoover Institution (Stanford, CA) — The Hoover Institution Library & Archives has acquired a collection of correspondence, photographs, printed material, and ephemera formerly belonging to Hildy Jarman, a talented Allied translator during World War II.

Born in Strasbourg, France, on November 6, 1910, Jarman was educated at the Sorbonne in Paris and the University of Bristol in England. She lived through the London Blitz during World War II and was selected to translate at the Nuremberg war trials. After teaching in England and Switzerland following the war, she eventually moved to Palo Alto, California, where she taught French and German at Castilleja School for 21 years and was known by students and staff as "Madame Jarman."

In 1980, she married U.S. Army Major General Ralph Corbett Smith, whose papers are also preserved at the Library & Archives. Smith, a rugged Nebraskan, was decorated for bravery in World War I and commanded an infantry division in combat in the Pacific during World War II. He became the oldest surviving general officer of the United States Army, passing away in 1998 at the age of 104. Jarman died in Santa Clara County on August 1, 1995, at the age of 84.

Jarman's papers mainly concern her time abroad, preceding her career at Castilleja, and include materials on the war crimes trials investigations. Noteworthy items include correspondence between Jarman and Smith with U.S. Army General Albert C. Wedemeyer, who served in Asia during World War II and whose papers are also held at Hoover.

The Jarman collection offers documentation of women's essential but often overlooked roles in the Nuremberg trials, where translators enabled international justice through their linguistic expertise. Her papers also outline connections to military leadership networks through correspondence with generals whose papers are held at Hoover, allowing scholars to examine World War II and postwar accounts from multiple perspectives.

Samira Bozorgi, a former archivist at the Hoover Institution Library & Archives and current associate librarian at Castilleja School, facilitated the acquisition of the material. She is pictured (left) with the collection, which was housed in a well-worn suitcase adorned with tags and markers from Jarman’s frequent travels abroad."

https://www.hoover.org/news/papers-former-nuremberg-trial-translator-come-hoover
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Professor Dr Kosar Mohammed Ali, President of the University of Sulaymaniyah, has honoured the supervisors and translators of Happiness Around the World Book in recognition of their academic and cultural contribution to making the work accessible to Kurdish readers.

During a meeting held on 10 June 2026, the President welcomed members of the translation team and praised their efforts in producing the Kurdish edition of the book. The recognition reflects the University's commitment to supporting academic translation and fostering cultural exchange through scholarly initiatives.

Speaking on behalf of the team, Dr Harem Osman, a lecturer at the University of Sulaymaniyah, expressed his appreciation for the University's support and acknowledgement.

"We are grateful to the University Presidency for this recognition. Most members of the team are students at the University of Sulaymaniyah from two different colleges, and their dedication played a vital role in the success of this project," he said.

Ahmed Rashid Hamad Murad, a member of the translation team, highlighted the collaborative nature of the initiative. "The project brought together students from several colleges and academic departments across the University. Our goal was to accurately convey the ideas and perspectives presented in the original English text to Kurdish readers," he said.

The team described the book as an important milestone in their translation work and expressed hope of undertaking further academic and cultural projects in the future."
PUKMEDIA
https://www.pukmedia.com/EN/Details/81773
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

iPendoring celebrates work that champions South African languages through storytelling, creativity and design

"The School of International Letters and Cultures, part of The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, will launch a Bachelor of Arts in global citizenship beginning in fall 2026. It is the first standalone bachelor's degree in global citizenship in Arizona.

The program is available both in-person and through ASU Online.

"The new BA in global citizenship is a game changer, a humanities degree for today," said Jeffrey Cohen, dean of humanities in The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. "The BA prepares students to engage thoughtfully and ethically with an interconnected world while building a successful career."

Cohen said the school has outstanding expertise in language, culture and intercultural communication, and the new program enables students to change the world through what they learn.

While most universities offer global citizenship as a certificate, a general education requirement or a concentration within a broader major, ASU's program is a full degree that equips students with the cultural insight, language skills and ethical framework to explore questions such as:

What does it take to lead in a globally connected workforce?
What role does language play in shaping culture and identity?
How can intercultural understanding drive social justice?
How do migration and climate change connect communities across borders?
The program builds on the strengths the school has developed over decades: faculty expertise spanning global regions and a curriculum that connects language study with intercultural competence and real-world communication skills.

Core courses cover topics including introduction to global citizenship, cross-linguistic cultural competence and globalization from colonialism to climate change. Students also take 300-level coursework in a language of their choice.

Every student completes required experiential learning through an internship, applied research or study abroad, with the option to immerse themselves in the language and culture of their choice while earning credit toward the degree.

The BA prepares students to engage thoughtfully and ethically with an interconnected world while building a successful career.

Jeffrey Cohen
Dean of humanities, The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
The launch comes at a time of surging interest in language and culture programs at the school, which saw a 52% jump in entry-level language enrollment this spring. The degree reflects growing employer demand for graduates who can work across cultures and borders. A 2025 survey by the American Association of Colleges and Universities found that 75% of employers prefer hiring graduates with cross-cultural experience.

"In a world shaped by global challenges and cultural interconnectedness, the BA in global citizenship empowers students to become informed, multilingual and socially engaged leaders committed to building a more just, inclusive and sustainable future," said Sara Beaudrie, director of the School of International Letters and Cultures.

"Through the development of language proficiency, intercultural understanding and critical thinking skills, students gain the knowledge and experiences that employers and communities value most, giving them a competitive edge in an increasingly globalized world."

The school's graduates are already building careers that reflect what this degree formalizes.

Tatum Koroli, who graduated in 2020 with a degree in Spanish and global studies, now serves as a consular officer in Mexico for the U.S. Department of State. Monica Orillo, who graduated the same year with a degree in German and political science, is now a foreign service officer posted in Wuhan, China, after studying German, Chinese and Indonesian through the school.

Building global literacy from day one
The program's foundational course, SLC 125: Introduction to Global Citizenship, launches this fall.

"SLC 125 invites students to think beyond national boundaries and toward an understanding of how social, cultural, political and ecological systems are all connected," said Nina Berman, professor in the School of International Letters and Cultures.

"Through the study of migration, climate change, language loss, global inequalities and social movements, the course builds the critical literacy students need to navigate our interconnected world."

Berman said the course combines cultural analysis with questions of human rights, social justice and planetary responsibility, preparing students to think across borders and disciplines while recognizing their own role in global networks.

Careers that cross borders
The program aligns with United Nations and UNESCO global citizenship education priorities and prepares graduates for careers that span industries and borders. Graduates can pursue paths in diplomacy and foreign service, international law, journalism, nonprofit leadership, global security, education and beyond.

Students already pursuing another major can add the BA in global citizenship as a concurrent degree, pairing intercultural competence and language skills with their primary field. Barrett, The Honors College students looking for a second or third degree will find it especially relevant for careers in the global and international market."
https://news.asu.edu/20260611-arts-humanities-and-education-arizonas-first-bachelors-degree-global-citizenship-launches
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Environmentalists, myself included, pay close attention to gloomy topics like species extinctions and Earth’s dwindling life-support systems. It’s not for the love of dark matters that we keep tabs on depressing metrics. Rather, it’s with the hope that they teach us something and guide us toward mitigating future losses.

On the biological front, about a million species could be taken by an extinction vortex by the end of the century. That’s also when linguists estimate about one-third of the world’s 7,000-plus Indigenous languages will go silent — and with them, most of their related cultures.

This is not uplifting news, to be sure. Nonetheless, people concerned with environmental protection can learn a lot from language extinctions. As it turns out, the survival of languages and species may well be linked. And when we wrap our minds around this, the panorama for conservation actually gets a little brighter.

A Confluence of Curious Similarities
Linguistic variation around the world caught the imagination and attention of naturalists going back at least to the Victorian era of exploration, when folks like Alfred Russell Wallace and Charles Darwin traveled across the wilds of South America and the Malay Archipelago.

Wallace marveled at the linguistic diversity shown by communities spread along the edges of the watery world in the Amazon basin and dotting the highlands of New Guinea. He even wrote out partial lexicons to aid in communicating with his guides. Darwin, in his ruminations on the descent of man, went so far as to remark that languages and species are “curiously the same.” He was thinking about human evolution and wondering if languages might evolve by natural selection. With his thoughts on the flowering of languages, he did not give time to their senescence.

It would take more than 100 years, after the concurrent publication of Darwin and Wallace’s theory of natural selection, for scientists to uncover the full extent of global linguistic variation, and also the languages’ risk of extinction. Today the patterns emerging from these discoveries hold lessons for environmentalists.

One of the pioneering explorations was conducted by Larry Gorenflo (Penn State University) and his team of conservation biologists and linguists. Their labors produced some profound findings.

First off, the places on Earth with outrageously high numbers of species also have outrageously high numbers of Indigenous languages. Furthermore, many of the species and languages of these hyper-rich spots are endemic. They don’t occur, much less co-occur, anywhere else.

Gorenflo and team went on to examine language diversity in regions that conservationists designate as “priority areas.” A second striking fact emerged: High-priority conservation regions are home to nearly 70% of the world’s languages.

These results demonstrate we can either win big or lose big, depending on the success of our efforts in these doubly diverse hotspots. It’s like playing a Daily Double, with “How to save life on Earth?” as the question to the answer.

Lullaby for Language
Extinction is forever. Except when it’s not. This isn’t a reference to de-extinction and the facsimiles brought into existence by technology. It’s about languages.

When the last speaker of a language falls into eternal slumber, so does their language. Linguists say that such languages are “dormant.” Dormancy is different from the extinction of biological species, at least in principle.

Sleeping languages can, hypothetically, experience reawakening. That is, they can be spoken again after a period of dormancy, but only under special circumstances. At a minimum there must be a written record of the lexicon and syntax.  For instance, Hebrew came back in the 19th century after a long slumber.

Sadly, however, the vast majority of Indigenous languages only exist in the oral form, making linguistic resurrections nearly impossible. This is why dormancy and extinction are, for all intents and purposes, synonymous. It’s also why we must work to document and teach Indigenous languages before they nod off.

High Tolls for Both Languages and Species
Just as the vastness of language varieties was unearthed, the global decline became apparent as well. Nowadays researchers race to figure out what drives language endangerment. Lindell Bromham and Xia Hua (Australian National University) are two such investigators, who lead a large interdisciplinary team analyzing the subject.

In a recent cutting-edge study of massive scope and scale, the team uncovered the principal determinants that drive the downturn. One of the top three is strangely simple: roads.

“Greater road density, which may encourage population movement, is associated with increased (language) endangerment,” Bromham and team conclude.

You might say that roads compromise the linguistic intactness of a landscape. Conservation biologists, well versed in the dangers that roads pose to natural ecosystems, should relate to that.

A South American tapir crosses a fresh road cut across fragmented habitat in Mato Grosso, Brazil. Photo by Leandro Maracahipes, with permission to use.
This is not to suggest that road effects are perfectly analogous in their impacts on languages and species. There are major differences. They have to do with the paradoxical capacity of roads to both create and destroy connections.

For remote ethnolinguistic groups, a frontier highway increases connectivity. Distances that once required weeks or more to cross may be traversed in hours or days. Lines of communication suddenly open — for material goods, of course, but also for the transmission of diverse ideologies and ways of life.

When this happens with high speed or without guardrails, a collision with cultural traditions and language preservation ensues. Often, such roads are the handiwork of large industries, looking to make money in the frontier, usually at the expense of local peoples whose lands they usurp.

One of the first casualties of enhanced contact is the local vernacular. This is a big blow to culture, potentially harming people’s health, wellbeing, and identity. The loss is accompanied by a shift to another language, usually the parlance of government, business, and education. A new sociocultural reality arises as the highway expansion continues.

By contrast, roads harm ecosystems by severing connections. Effectively, highways fracture natural populations and break the fundamental rules of ecology.

Renowned ecologist and conservation biologist Dr. William Laurance (James Cook University) tells me that bulldozing through forest expanses is like opening Pandora’s box.

“It’s because of the transformative effect that (roads) have,” he says. “They’re the single most important proximate driver of environmental change and degradation. A road goes in and six months later the forest is split open like a splayed fish.”

In distant lands, far from government regulation and oversight, a motorway quickly spawns ghost roads — unauthorized byways branching from the central transit spine. In short order, plantation monocultures flatten forests and open-pit mines erupt like infectious pocks. The cleavage of habitats puts native plant and animal populations at greater risk of declines, even extinctions. Curbside, roadkill piles up.

So while highways and their byways exert harm in different ways, they are nonetheless critical factors that must be reckoned with, for both conservationists and linguists.

We Don’t Need No Education?
The work by Bromham and team produced a result that may run counter-intuitive to every reader of this piece. Next to roads, say the investigators, the biggest threat to languages is formal education.

Educators may shake their heads, but there’s good evidence that Bromham and colleagues are right. They argue that monolingual education can lead to language shifts, with local Indigenous languages yielding to rising tongues. Young people, looking ahead to professional careers, may be strongly incentivized to adopt the language that advances their aspirations.

Various lines of evidence suggest this is, indeed, what happens. An example comes from Papua New Guinea, a tiny nation in Melanesia whose name graces the very top of the list of language-rich countries. That diversity is endangered, in large part, due to high school education, say Alfred Kik (University of Goroka) and Vojtěch Novotný (Czech Academy of Sciences). They’re long-term investigators in Papua New Guinea who have been documenting students’ Indigenous language skills and knowledge of local flora and fauna.

Their work demonstrates a “precipitous” decline in both. The result derives, they argue, from the push for children to learn English, which is used in schools and perceived to be the language of opportunity. The shift is also related to the spread of Tok Pisin, a type of pidgin English used extensively as the lingua franca in multilingual settings, including cafeterias and playgrounds.

The message is not that formal education should be eliminated for the sake of global linguistic diversity. The lesson, rather, is that the language of instruction, which is usually determined by education policy and funding availability, is highly consequential. Multilingual education is a possible antidote, especially in the context of environmental education.

Nature and Knowledge
K. David Harrison (Swarthmore and Vin University), an environmental linguist, emphasizes the “nature-centric” qualities of Indigenous tongues. They are distinguished, he writes, by the great diversity of words that describe plants and animals and the way that grammar encodes information about the world around them.

Harrison attributes nature-centrism to longstanding, intimate relationships between Indigenous speakers and their natural surroundings. It reflects a mindset in which people are part and parcel of nature, not separate entities.

For oral languages, words are key to the transmission of traditional ecological knowledge. This refers to a body of information and concepts held collectively by community members. As such, it is a living, evolving, and growing library that is honed and built incrementally over time and comes to life in use. When language goes extinct, so does the knowledge it holds.

The continued existence of ethnolinguistic groups in remote, harsh, and untrammeled areas is proof that knowledge and communication skills ensure sustainable ways of life. Gorenflo argues that, with a million species at risk of extinction, we should have regard for those who demonstrate a history of conservation success.

“Traditional ecological knowledge provides a glimpse into how people adapt to, and use, resources without destroying them,” Gorenflo tells me.

Along the same vein, Kik is racing against time to document the traditional ecological knowledge of the elders in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. He says it’s an effort to keep language and nature alive.

“Traditional ecological knowledge plays an important role in biodiversity conservation, sustainability, and natural resource management,” he tells me. “It plays a crucial role. If we lose language, we lose knowledge, and then there is a problem for environmental conservation. This will have impacts,” he warns.

Environmentalism, Language, and Culture
As we learn more from the results of interdisciplinary investigations, like those mentioned here, lessons for environmentalists emerge.

The first, of course, is to do more. Conservation biologists and linguists benefit greatly from cross-pollination, and the cause of language and species can profit, too.

In the meantime we know there are key action items that can be focal points for the short term. They include allocating the always-slender conservation monies toward diverse eco-linguistic landscapes, which are now well-documented by the mapping studies of Gorenflo and others.

Other priorities are to support the cataloguing of Indigenous languages and ethnobiological knowledge while speakers can tell their stories. In classroom settings, especially in locations where Indigenous tongues are still spoken, there should be real efforts to include multilingual programming, especially in relation to environmental education. Even better, where elders are able to share, their original voices should be heard.

Undoubtedly today’s environmentalists stand to derive great insights from supporting Indigenous groups in leading their own kinds of conservation. Most importantly, nature and knowledge will be the biggest beneficiaries. But first we must first embrace the idea that the extinction of languages and cultures is an environmental issue."
https://therevelator.org/extinction-languages/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"The New York state Legislature passed a bill that replaces the words “mother” and “father” in some state laws with gender-neutral language, a move that New York’s bishops say will further “muddy what is true and good.”

The bill, passed by the state Assembly in March and by the state Senate on June 2, now heads to Gov. Kathy Hochul to be signed into law.

Under the new law, “mother” would be replaced with “gestating parent,” and “father” would be “non-gestating parent.” The words “paternity” and “filiation” would be replaced with “parentage.”

The New York State Catholic Conference issued a memorandum on June 10 noting the bishops’ opposition to the new law, calling it “politically charged” and “unnecessary.”

“The truth is that mothers are mothers, and fathers are fathers,” the bishops wrote. “Words matter, and serious changes to our governing language serve only to wash away the importance of these roles in our society.”

“The yearslong push in our state for abortion on demand and up until birth, the endless millions of dollars funneled to Planned Parenthood, and the legalization of commercial surrogacy have reduced women to vessels and babies to disposable commodities,” they said.

“The Legislature’s final twist of the knife is now apparently removing the term ‘mother’ altogether,” they wrote. “We must reverse course and recognize the importance of both mothers and fathers and pursue changes that truly support women and families.”

The legislation (Senate Bill S9316/Assembly Bill A8382A) targets parts of the Family Court Act and laws having to do with, among others, domestic relations, social services, vehicle and traffic, alcoholic beverage control, child support statutes, and education law.

On June 3, Hochul said she was unfamiliar with the specifics of the bill and would familiarize herself with them before commenting.

“I have until the end of the year to review them and make a decision,” she said, though according to New York state law, now that the Legislature is adjourned, she has 30 days to sign it. If she does not, the bill is automatically pocket-vetoed (it dies and does not become law).

New York’s bishops urged Hochul “to veto this upsetting legislation and uphold the importance of both mothers and fathers in our state,” saying the bill’s “wholesale effect will be to mock the foundation of the family.”

The bishops accused legislators of “political pandering and appeasing a small group of very loud advocates.”

“Erasing the terms ‘mother’ and ‘father’ from our laws will not help struggling New Yorkers afford groceries, access healthcare, or find housing, but it will further muddy what is true and good,” they wrote.

All 38 Senate Democrats who voted supported the measure, while all 22 Republicans voted against it. One Democrat also voted no, joining the unanimous Republican opposition. The bill had previously passed the Assembly 91-46 on March 19, with almost all Democrats voting for it and almost all Republicans against.

According to reporting by Fox5 New York, the state Senate bill passed quickly and with no debate, “shocking” some lawmakers.

While there was a short floor speech last week by Republican State Sen. Dean Murray opposing the bill, the overall process was rushed as the legislative session wrapped up June 10.

“These terms matter,” Murray said. “’Mother’ is one of the most sacred titles you can have. As is ‘father,’ ‘grandmother,’ grandfather.’”

He continued: “In fact … the term mother is so important, we have a special day named after it,” referring to Motherʼs Day.

“Of course, now maybe we change that to Gestating Parentʼs Day … and Fatherʼs Day, just change it to Parentʼs Day.”

Republican Rep. Claudia Tenney, a U.S. Congresswoman who previously served in the New York State Assembly from 2011 to 2016, issued a strong rebuke on social media, stating: “The party that can’t define a woman is now rewriting New York law to erase mothers and fathers. Only in Albany could ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ become too controversial.”

Proponents argue the new language is more inclusive and takes into account special cases that occur when there is no clear biological parent, such as in surrogacy and adoption situations."
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2026/06/11/new-york-bishops-say-gender-neutral-language-law-mocks-the-foundation-of-the-family/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

Sen. Jim Banks is urging HHS to probe a rule imposed by Biden that forces healthcare providers to cover the costs of language interpreters.

"Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) is urging President Donald Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to probe a rule imposed by former President Joe Biden that forces healthcare providers to cover the costs of language interpreters for patients who do not speak English, many of whom are illegal aliens.

 

In 2024, the Biden administration finalized a rule requiring healthcare providers to provide free language services to patients who cannot speak English.

 

The rule, Banks writes in a letter to HHS that was exclusively reviewed by Breitbart News, has been crushing for small, independent, and rural hospitals that do not have the massive operating budgets that larger hospitals enjoy.

 

“This additional restriction places a substantial and even unsustainable burden on health care providers. In-person medical interpretation services can cost anywhere from $45 to $150 per hour,” Banks writes:

 

In many instances, these costs exceed the reimbursement that providers receive for the underlying medical visit. As a result, providers are forced to absorb the costs. Larger hospital systems may easily bear this financial burden, but independent, rural, and smaller providers are buckling under the financial strain in Indiana and elsewhere. [Emphasis added]

 

Additionally, these costs may push providers that are already at risk of closure over the edge, reducing access to care in their communities.

[Emphasis added]

 

Banks also notes that many patients who require such language services are, in fact, illegal aliens.

 

“Additionally, it is important to recognize that the language assistance requirement frequently benefits illegal immigrants, who may not be eligible for public assistance in the first place,” Banks writes. “In many instances, these language assistance mandates are forcing U.S. healthcare providers to subsidize services for individuals who are in the country illegally while undermining their ability to serve Americans.”

 

Banks is asking HHS officials to “reexamine the legal basis for the language assistance mandate, previous administrations’ regulatory and policy interpretations, and the inability for health care providers to recoup these costs,” asking the agency to provide details on whether or not it may help hospitals recoup such costs."

 

John Binder10 Jun 2026

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com.

 

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2026/06/10/exclusive-jim-banks-language-services-healthcare-biden/

#metaglossia 

#metaglossia_mundus 

Olga Perez of Lake Worth, one of Florida's few Mayan translators, faces deportation, leaving her four U.S.-citizen children and community vulnerable.

 

Key points:

Olga Perez has served as a rare translator of the indigenous Mayan language Mam for 20 years.

Her absence has left a void for Florida's indigenous community, impacting access to legal and medical services.

Perez's four U.S.-citizen children are struggling financially and emotionally while their parents are in custody

 

"LAKE WORTH BEACH — Olga Perez has spent the past 20 years helping Florida government agencies, hospitals and nonprofits work with people who speak an indigenous Mayan language. Now, she faces possible deportation to her native Guatemala, leaving her four U.S.-citizen children behind.

 

Perez is in custody in Arizona following her detention by Florida Highway Patrol in November as she rode in her family's landscaping truck on Interstate 95 near Hypoluxo Road. Now 47, she arrived in the U.S. seeking asylum in 1997, her attorney says, and has filed a request for cancellation of removal.

 

Immigrations and Custom Enforcement had detained Perez's husband two months earlier as he worked a landscaping job in Lake Worth Beach.

 

A judge was scheduled to decide Perez's case on Thursday, Feb. 19, but issues in the Arizona immigration courtroom delayed action until March 4. One of the problems: Deputies brought out the wrong woman to face the judge. The delay left her four children sobbing as they watched the hearing by livestream at the Guatemalan-Maya Center in Lake Worth Beach..."

https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/local/lakeworth/2026/02/26/mayan-translator-faces-deportation-leaving-4-kids-in-lake-worth-beach/88775206007/

#metaglossia

#metaglossia_mundus

The International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) has taken years to return to Africa. Unfazed by the irony, the association is blowing its trumpet, giving itself brownie points, for taking its 66th congress to Africa, in Kigali in October 2027.

"...Europe will host COP 31, likely to attract 50,000 people, in November. This will be the 15th time that Europe hosts the rotational COP, the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, to Africa’s five times. Rotating events, or the World Cup, has a transformational effect. The recognition of any host city is symbolic but there are also tangible and immediate benefits such as forex. Beyond those points, the sector is well-placed to foster regional collaborations, buoy inter- and intra-trade, and, in the case of COP gatherings, say, raise awareness about issues like drought, rising sea levels and a list of other vulnerabilities.

 

Still – despite their numeric significance, half a billion people in 20 countries – West and Central Africa regions have never had the opportunity to host the world’s largest climate change conference. Like its southern cousin, East Africa has hosted it once. That brings us back us to the question pondered by delegates at Poate: is Africa missing in action or being overlooked? Ask the UN. Rotation is a throwaway line. If it weren’t, Africa would host no fewer than two COP editions per decade. Added to showcasing host territories even to the millions of people following the event on TV, the business-card effect widened, these events bring a thick slice of GDP. Look at Davos, hosts of the World Economic Forum annual meeting. Davos generates €65-million each January when the WEF meeting swings by in winter. The sum exceeds €100-million when the rest of Switzerland is factored in. As an aside, Swiss media reported, the United States delegation once paid a hotel bill of €390,000, in St Gallen, and signed a €1-million car rental contract. The sums are huge and there is good human-developing legacy.

 

Global entities, including the UN, known for its inconsistency and uneven distribution of opportunities, must be called out for their tokenisation of Africa. Kampala and Nairobi stand up. Will African leaders from Bassirou Diomaye Faye, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni and Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwa to King Mohammed VI and their peers in Asia, Europe and beyond take global entities to task?

 

Let the students in economics, media, politics, science and other fields at Cairo, Makerere, Roma, UCAD, Wits and every other institution also rise and, through tourism-centred diplomacy and economy, build an Africa they want – the land that Thomas Sankara dreamed of.

 

To tap the realm of possibilities, when will Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, and Senegal bid to host COP? Citizens should be asking governments, academia and the private sector. Has Nairobi and Durban, as previous COP hosts, put their names in the hat of late? Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda or – near the Sahel – Algeria, Nigeria and Cameroon could also do it. If governments are slow or lazy, as they often are, where is the private sector to take charge?

 

Back to ICCA’s GlobeWatch: had Africa been treated equally, why wouldn’t its cities have claimed a bigger slice of the pie? That, after all, is the metric the surveyors are using. Regardless of the prevailing bias, African nations must double incoming tourist traffic. Bidding for more MICE opportunities is an avenue. East Africa punches below its weight in MICE and leisure categories. At the last count, Uganda tallied 1.3 million tourists, in the league of Ghana and Senegal, according to data collated by the UN World Tourism Organisation. Excepting the likes of Chad and Malawi (a nation prone to very high ministerial turnover) – with each scraping south of a million arrivals – Africa-bound tourist traffic is rising. But that’s off a very low base. Scratch the surface for context.

 

The Great Wall of China reportedly drew about 15 million people each year to Paris’s 25 million. The latter exceeds the whole of West Africa’s inbound traffic. Africa attracts 80 million per annum – Southern Africa and its northernmost cousin claim big chunks of that. For the bigger picture, look at France’s lively 100 million. Time for a paradigm shift.

 

Some of these points made it to this year’s Poate, which drew about 2,000 people. If the delegates enjoyed their time they’d be back. Anyway, what’s there not to like about Uganda? But the expo – like Afcon (set to come to East Africa next June) – is a bridge. It’s not a destination.

 

Government and the private sector must join forces to grow Uganda’s sector: double arrivals for two years in a row, consolidate for another two. Repeat. That’ll bring six million visitors per annum before Kagwa’s fifth anniversary. Diversifying the offering and adding signature meetings will help. Uganda, like some of her peers, underwhelms partly due to lazy and perennial overreliance on wildlife and waterfalls. We haven’t even touched on cuisine, filmmaking or heritage.

 

To the southernmost tip, in Durban, Africa’s Travel Indaba does the same, at a significantly larger scale, through gathering industry players from across the continent and the globe each year. According to the tourism ministry, almost 10,000 people turned up for Indaba in May. The expo added $51 million in tourism expenditure and sustained 1,100 jobs for the coastal city.

 

 

The streets of Kigali.

Abroad, WTM London, which calls itself the world’s premier trade show though it’s short on voices from the Global South, congregates nearly 50,000 participants per year. The show adds £200 million ($270 million) to London’s economy and maintains thousands of jobs. Broadly, WTM generates an estimated £2.8 billion in contracts. It is worth reflecting how much each nation realised for their investment.

 

Taxpayers, from Egypt, Kenya, Uganda and Mali to Ghana, Canada and Japan, must pose such questions lest those events become a cool jaunt for those sent as representatives.

 

Finally, how much the MICE sector adds to the GDP is the easiest part. What’s more critical, but often left unsaid, is that business events accelerate training, foster regional collaborations, and stimulate various areas of the economy, sometimes across borders. The sector is a PR and branding exercise, a forex earner and a practical catalyst for change, for shared growth. It just has to be used right, make the circle bigger. Time for a shift.

 

Finally, how much the MICE sector adds to the GDP is the easiest part. What’s more critical, but often left unsaid, is that business events accelerate training, foster regional collaborations, and stimulate various areas of the economy, sometimes across borders. The sector is a PR and branding exercise, a forex earner and a practical catalyst for change, for shared growth. It just has to be used right, make the circle bigger. Time for a shift.

 

Shoks Mnisi Mzolo

https://www.ghanabusinessnews.com/2026/06/10/time-for-a-shift-african-countries-must-claim-their-share-of-the-global-conferences-economy/

#metaglossia 

#metaglossia_mundus 

"A Write-On Writers Guild prompt led to a column about a short proofreader job and an early newspaper byline tied to a lifelong writing dream

At a recent meeting of Coshocton's Write-On Writers Guild, our Writing Prompt was, "Tell About a Job you Once Had." Would you like to read my offering? It was kind of prophetic, telling about one of my first jobs.

Come to think of it, Glenn may not know about this job that only lasted during the two weeks of my high school Christmas-through-New Year's break one winter. It could have been 67 years ago, when I had the unexpected boon of learning a job that would be connected with my dream of being a writer of letters.

There are many unanswered questions about this long-ago job. Who got me the job? How long did it actually last? How did I get to work, since Daddy drove our only car to work at Togus, which was five miles in the opposite direction from our home? Did I walk the one and a half miles, crossing the Kennebec River from our British side to the American side? That's a mystery. Also, did I carry my lunch with me each day?

Did Mum drive Daddy to work so that she could take me to my job across the river? None of those details are important now. My job was located in a building four streets up from the river, reached by turning left around the big fountain on Haymarket Square on Water Street where we gathered to celebrate a football win over our Cony High School arch rivals, Gardiner High School. Then we would drive up Winthrop Street, which rose steeply from the River, past Water Street then Commercial Street, over the Maine Central Railroad tracks, then turn right onto a narrow, dead-end street to The Augusta Print Shop where I substituted for the proofreader while she was on vacation.

To this day, I can remember the symbol of a double P which meant starting a new paragraph. To eliminate something, like an extra dot for a period, circle it, then have a long tail going upwards. Drawing a skinny box in the middle of a word means to insert a space because two words were run together as one. Drawing a headless snake in the middle of a word, up over one letter then down under a second letter and back up, meant to reverse those two letters. Of course there were many other symbols for spelling and moving words or phrases, capitalizing letters of the alphabet, etc. It was a fun job for me, resulting in making the printed word easier to understand so that the words would flow smoothly.

Thinking about that first job made me recall another thing I did years ago, that had a connection to what I'm doing today. I interviewed someone and wrote a story for the KJ, the beloved initials for Kennebec Journal. Again, the reason for writing about this interview escapes me, but it happened. I interviewed a man in a toll booth at the Eastern end of Augusta's Memorial Bridge. The man would take money and make change for someone buying a strip of 10 tickets or a single ticket to cross the bridge. He would make change. And, he would count the vehicles that went past his toll booth. He allowed me to stand inside the booth and do his job for a few minutes.

When I typed up my story, it was a thrill to choose a title for it. Somehow, someone took a picture to accompany my story. My story used alliteration, "A Tribute to the Ticket Takers." A few days later, my story appeared in the KJ, along with a picture of me taking a ticket. What a thrill it was for me to see my story in print! But my title was changed. It now read, "Toll Booth is Driver's Confessional." I thought my title was better, but, too late, someone with authority changed the title, after I did all the work.

Josie usually changes my title, but it's okay, because she rarely changes the content. It's more important for me to realize that there were early writing jobs that were related to my dream profession. It still gives me a thrill, after all these years, to read what I wrote as it appears in the newspaper."
June 10, 2026
Letter From Sally
https://www.yourohionews.com/coshocton/coshocton-writer-recalls-first-jobs-in-print/1047026
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Brisbane-based translator Jenny Lu has been shortlisted for the inaugural Voices of Today Literary Translation Prize.

Participants were invited to translate a substantial excerpt from the novel Salty Jokes by Liu Zhenyun (People’s Literature Publishing House) from Chinese to English, with the prize attracting over 100 entries from 14 countries.

The shortlisted translators are:

Jenny Lu (Australia)
Christopher MacDonald (UK)
Andrew Rule (US)
Alex Woodend (US)
Alexis Wu (US/UK)
Yaqi Xi (UK)
Yee Heng Yeh (Malaysia).

Judging panel chair Nicky Harman said, “The text chosen, taken from a novel by one of China’s best-loved authors, Liu Zhenyun, was challenging, with its highly individual authorial voice, its sprightly rhythm and use of dialect, and its lines of classical poetry. But this year’s entrants rose to the challenge: the standard of entries was gratifyingly high and it was clear to us judges how much care had been taken to deliver texts that not only reflected the multi-layered content but recreated the voice of the author in English. In short, the Voices of Today Prize has succeeded in showcasing some remarkable new talent.”

Created and administered by consultancy Singing Grass, the Voices of Today Literary Translation Prize aims to “connect contemporary literary output from China with the rest of the world while showcasing the wealth of a new generation of literary translators from Chinese to English”.

The winner will be announced at the Beijing International Book Fair on 18 June 2026."
Wednesday, 10 June 2026  @booksandpublishing
https://www.booksandpublishing.com.au/articles/2026/06/10/332120/local-translator-on-voices-of-today-literary-translation-prize/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"A Symphony of Island and Literature: 2026 Workshop for Translating Taiwan Literature - Call for Applications

 

Mission: An International Workshop for Chinese-to-English Translators

From 2021 to 2025, the National Museum of Taiwan Literature (NMTL) collaborated with the British Centre for Literary Translation (BCLT) to deliver a series of Taiwan literature translation workshops with the view to nurture a new generation of literary translators. In 2026, the NMTL is partnering once again with BCLT to present A Symphony of Island and Literature: 2026 Workshop for Translating Taiwan Literature. This intensive and immersive training program is tailored for translators of Taiwan literature into English, consisting of practical translation exercises, panel discussions, and visits to places of literary and cultural heritage.

 

The workshop will feature internationally acclaimed translator Jeremy Tiang and senior editor Dennis Zhou as mentors, joined by Taiwanese authors, and literary translators, agents, and publishers from Finland, Japan, Korea, the United Kingdom, and other countries. Through a rich program, the workshop aims to strengthen participants' skills in translating Taiwan literature, deepen their engagement with Taiwan’s literature, culture and languages, broaden their networks, explore professional development opportunities in literary translation, and foster cross-cultural dialogue.

 

Organizer: National Museum of Taiwan Literature (NMTL)

[Application Deadline: June 21, 2026 (Sunday), 11:59 p.m. (Taiwan Time, UTC+8). Late applications will not be considered]"

Post Date:2026-06-11

分享到

https://www.roc-taiwan.org/ie_en/post/5729.html

#metaglossia 

#metaglossia_mundus 

Language comprehension relies on memory, Winkowski writes. In many cases, we need information scattered throughout a text to understand what it means.

 

"On Wednesday 17 June, Jan Winkowski will defend their dissertation ‘Memory retrieval in presupposition processing: An experimental and computational approach’. In this thesis, Winkowski explores the hidden memory work behind everyday language comprehension.

 

Reading and remembering 

Language comprehension relies on memory, Winkowski writes. In many cases, we need information scattered throughout a text to understand what it means. Take the sentence ‘Mary, who was really tired, passes the bag to Suzy’. To understand who is doing the passing, our mind needs to reach back and retrieve ‘Mary’ from memory. 

 

Something similar happens with words like ‘too’. Consider: ‘Suzy lives in Paris. Kelsey lives in France, too.’ The word ‘too’ asks the reader to look back: who else was mentioned and where did they live? This means that we have to retrieve from our memory a slightly different type of information than in the case of ‘Mary’.

 

Behavioural experiments and computational modelling

In their dissertation, Winkowski investigates exactly this type of relations. What happens when the two connected words are far apart in a sentence? Through behavioural experiments, they found that the greater the distance, the more effort is needed to make the connection. 

 

To explain this, Winkowski built computational models. The models explored a variety of possible explanations and ultimately pointed to a combination of causes: parallel processing and diminishing activation. During reading the reader must process multiple things at the same time and the memory of an earlier word fades as time passes.

 

Winkowski’s research contributes to our understanding of how memory and language comprehension work and highlights the difficulties and pitfalls of capturing cognition in computational models.

 

Prior to the defence, Winkowski will give a layman’s talk starting at 10:00.

 

Start date and time

17 June 2026 - 10:00

End date and time

17 June 2026 - 11:15

Location

Hybrid: online (click here) and at the Utrecht University Hall

PhD candidate

J.L. Winkowksi

Dissertation

Memory retrieval in presupposition processing: An experimental and computational approach

PhD supervisor(s)

Dr R.W.F. Nouwen

Co-supervisor(s)

Dr J. Dotlacil

Add to calendar"

 

https://www.uu.nl/en/events/phd-defence-jan-winkowski-how-our-minds-juggle-memory-and-language

#metaglossia 

#metaglossia_mundus 

"Lisle International Invites Applications for Global Seed Grants 2026: Supporting Intercultural Projects Worldwide

 

Lisle International is encouraging organizations and community leaders around the world to apply for its Global Seed Grants program, which provides funding for innovative projects that promote intercultural communication, mutual learning, and global understanding.

 

The grant initiative supports emerging projects that bring people from diverse backgrounds together through meaningful engagement and collaborative learning.

 

According to the organization, successful proposals must demonstrate intercultural exchange as a central objective rather than a secondary outcome.

 

Supporting Projects That Build Global Understanding

The Global Seed Grants are designed to advance Lisle International’s mission of fostering world citizenship and strengthening connections across cultures.

 

The organization prioritizes projects that create opportunities for participants to share experiences, learn from one another, and build lasting relationships across cultural, social, or geographic boundaries.

 

Applicants are expected to clearly explain how intercultural engagement will be integrated into project activities and outcomes.

 

Preference for Emerging Organizations and New Initiatives

Lisle International emphasizes the “seed grant” nature of the program by focusing on projects with strong growth potential rather than established programs that already have substantial funding sources.

 

The organization generally prefers:

 

Applications from organizations rather than individuals

New and innovative projects

Small or emerging organizations

Clearly defined initiatives with measurable goals

Projects where Lisle can serve as a significant funding partner

Individuals may still apply but are encouraged to partner with an organization responsible for project implementation.

 

Projects Eligible from Any Country

The grant program is open to applicants worldwide, reflecting Lisle International’s commitment to supporting intercultural learning on a global scale.

 

Key eligibility points include:

 

Projects may be based in any country

U.S. nonprofit status is not required

Local organizational registration or certification is welcomed

International and community-based initiatives are encouraged

This global approach enables organizations from diverse regions to access funding for projects that promote dialogue, cooperation, and mutual understanding.

 

Priority Areas for Funding

 

Lisle International identifies several characteristics commonly found among successful grant recipients.

 

Projects are most likely to receive support if they are:

 

Innovative and collaborative

Focused on intercultural interaction and exchange

Working toward conflict resolution and peacebuilding

Promoting community development and social cohesion

Creating opportunities for shared learning among diverse groups

The organization seeks initiatives that foster authentic engagement and generate long-term benefits for participating communities.

 

Activities Not Supported by the Grant Program

 

To ensure funding remains focused on intercultural engagement, Lisle International excludes several categories of expenditures and activities.

 

The program does not fund:

 

Infrastructure projects, including construction and school facilities

Hardware purchases such as computers and equipment

Travel expenses for U.S. participants in international programs

Salaries for U.S.-based volunteers working abroad

Religious education programs

Proselytizing or faith-conversion activities

Applicants are encouraged to review these restrictions carefully before preparing their proposals.

 

Guidance on the Use of Artificial Intelligence

 

Lisle International has also issued guidance regarding the use of artificial intelligence in grant applications.

 

While the organization recognizes that AI tools can assist applicants—particularly non-native English speakers—with translation, grammar, and editing, it strongly encourages authentic storytelling and original content.

 

According to the grant guidelines, proposals should reflect the applicant’s own experiences, community context, and vision. Generic AI-generated narratives may weaken an application because they often fail to capture the unique characteristics of a project.

 

Applicants are therefore advised to use AI tools primarily for:

 

Translation support

Grammar correction

Spell-checking

Language accessibility improvements

The organization recommends avoiding AI-generated proposal content and instead focusing on presenting a genuine and compelling project story.

 

How to Begin the Application Process

Organizations and individuals who believe their projects align with Lisle International’s mission are encouraged to submit a Request to Apply form through the organization’s application process.

 

Prospective applicants should review all eligibility requirements and funding priorities before submitting their request and are encouraged to include any questions related to their proposed project.

 

Advancing Intercultural Communication Worldwide

Through its Global Seed Grants program, Lisle International continues to support grassroots leaders, community organizations, and emerging initiatives that promote intercultural understanding and global citizenship.

 

By investing in projects that connect diverse communities and encourage meaningful dialogue, the organization aims to strengthen international cooperation and create opportunities for shared learning across cultural boundaries.

 

VISIT OFFICIAL WEBSITE HERE

For more opportunities such as these please follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and WPChannel

Disclaimer: Global South Opportunities (GSO) is not the organization offering this opportunity. For any inquiries, please contact the official organization directly. Please do not send your applications & CVs to GSO, as we are unable to process them. Due to the high volume of emails, we receive daily, we may not be able to respond to all inquiries. Thank you for your understanding

https://www.globalsouthopportunities.com/2026/06/11/lisle/

#metaglossia 

#metaglossia_mundus 

"Island may soon be called Naoero – an Indigenous name that honours the country’s heritage and identity

Nauru, the world’s smallest republic, may soon make a big change: renaming itself “Naoero”.

The switch would “more faithfully honour our nation’s heritage, our language, and our identity”, said the president of the Pacific microstate, David Adeang, in a speech to parliament in January.

After Nauru’s parliament passed the proposal unopposed, the island – with an estimated population of 13,000 – will vote in a referendum on whether to make the change official.

“Naoero” – pronounced Now-ero – is the term Nauruans use in their own language. “Nauru” – commonly pronounced Now-roo – became the island’s official name because its Indigenous name “could not be properly pronounced by foreign tongues”, the government said, adding it was “changed not by our choice, but for convenience”.

The remote island country – located about 3,000km north-east of Australia, and similar in size to London’s Westminster, at 21 sq km – has a history of name changes.

In 1798 it was christened “Pleasant Island” when sighted by a British seafarer, who was struck by its beauty and the generosity of its people. After Germany annexed the island in 1888, the name “Nauru” entered official records, though variants “Nawodo” and “Navoda Onawero” were also used.

When Australia took over primary administration of the island in 1919 under a League of Nations mandate, it maintained the “Nauru” spelling, which persisted after independence in 1968. In 2001, Australia began to use the island as an offshore detention centre.

For scholars of Indigenous placenames, such changes are never just a matter of spelling. Zoltán Grossman, a professor of geography and Native American studies at Evergreen State College in the US, says changing names has long been part of exercising colonial power.

“Changing placenames has been an integral part of colonialism to erase the presence of the original peoples,” he says. “It’s not just about the names themselves, it’s about who has the power to change the names.”

In arguing for Naoero, the Nauruan government has pointed to other countries that have changed their official names to better reflect local language, including Türkiye (formerly Turkey) and Eswatini (Swaziland). It also cited the nearby Micronesian state Chuuk, which until 1990 was widely known as Truk – another foreign rendering of an Indigenous name.

This “re-Indigenisation” of placenames to reflect local pronunciations is how formerly colonised peoples assert their sovereignty, Grossman says. The breakup of the Soviet Union led to the de-russification of eastern European countries: Byelorussia became Belarus and Moldavia changed to Moldova. India has de-anglicised many city and state names since independence.

Jordan Engel, founder of the Decolonial Atlas, a project to map and document Indigenous placenames, says there is a “growing momentum” to use them for landmarks and places.

“At its core, decolonisation is about self-determination, and one of the most basic expressions of self-determination is being able to speak your language and use your ancestral placenames,” Engel says.

View image in fullscreen
The entire country of Nauru, surrounded by a coral reef and the Pacific Ocean. Photograph: mtcurado/Getty Images/iStockphoto
But changing a place’s name is not always straightforward. A petition to change New Zealand to the Māori name of Aotearoa gathered more than 70,000 signatures, but its official use has sparked rows in parliament. Cook Islands has long wrestled with whether to drop the name of the British explorer James Cook.

Nauru’s government declined to comment on the potential name change when approached by the Guardian.

Nauruan Arcmen Willis, a wrestler who has represented Nauru internationally, supports the change; he hopes non-Nauruans people will make the effort to pronounce the new name correctly.

“I want to tell people now how to pronounce it, so it goes around and people would pronounce it right,” Willis says. “It’s good to keep our identity,” he says, “because once it’s gone, there will be no more Nauru or Naoero.”

View image in fullscreen
Arcmen Willis, a wrestler from the southern Nauruan district of Meneng, hopes people ‘pronounce it right’ if the name of his country changes from Nauru to Naoero. Photograph: Arcmen Willis
Unesco officially classifies Nauru’s language – Nauruan or dorerin Naoero – as “severely endangered”. While Nauruans like Willis speak it among friends and family, it is not taught in schools.

Engel says a name change to Naoero can help protect the language for future generations. “Changes like this can play an important role in language revitalisation and cultural continuity.”

While the change may take some time to become official, the name “Naoero” has already been adopted by the postal service, national health service and utility provider. The Australian high commission is using both names in its public communications.

For Nauruans like Willis, the change matters most in how the country is recognised from afar. At home, he says, it carries less weight.

“I feel the same, because it’s only the name change,” he says. “It doesn’t change me.”"
Prianka Srinivasan
11 Jun 2026
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/11/nauru-name-change-naoero
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

Read the new issue of Language

"As newly minted Editor and Co-Editor, we (Shelome Gooden and Mike Putnam) are delighted to invite you to explore the latest issue of Language, the flagship journal of the Linguistic Society of America, now available for the first time on Cambridge Core! Volume 102 brings together seven articles spanning phonology, morphology, syntax, sign language, language acquisition, pedagogy, and research methodology. This continues the journal’s commitment to publishing research that advances the full breadth of linguistic inquiry.

Word-specific tonal realizations in Mandarin – Yu-Ying Chuang, Melanie J. Bell, Yu-Hsiang Tseng and R. Harald Baayen

The first article in the is a study of tonal realization in Mandarin. Using a corpus of Taiwan Mandarin spontaneous speech and generalized additive regression modelling, the authors demonstrate that a word’s meaning, not just its phonological form, shapes the realization of its pitch contour. Further, their finding that context-sensitive embeddings can predict tonal shape offers solid evidence that the relationship between sound and meaning is more complex than has been previously assumed.

Toward an information-theoretic model of morphological fusion – Neil Rathi, Michael Hahn and Richard Futrell

This morphology paper investigates instances of morphological fusion, i.e., the phenomenon where several abstract features are realized by a non-compositional, single morpheme. The authors discuss the complex trade-offs that instances of fusion present for psycholinguistic models of language processing. The authors use paradigm and frequency data from four different languages to test a gradable measure of fusion known as informational fusion, which they find is higher when features are highly correlated.

Pragmatics of spatial descriptions: Sign language loci – Dorothy Ahn, Annemarie Kocab and Kathryn Davidson

This sign language paper is a contribution to the field at the intersection of semantics and spatial cognition. The authors examine the use of loci in sign languages, arguing that loci are both fundamentally linguistic, functioning as modifiers, and fundamentally spatial, and show that their distribution in nominal and verbal domains is governed by pragmatic principles of disambiguation.

The effects of sound change vs. analogy on paradigm complexity -Borja Herce and Clayton Marr

The Herce and Marr paper takes a quantitative approach to examining how sound change and analogy shaped verbal paradigm complexity in the case of changes from Latin to French. They combine automated application of historical sound changes with an entropy-based analysis across more than 11,000 inflected forms. Their analysis confirms that sound change complexifies paradigms while analogy regularizes them. However, the model shows no comparable effect on more modern measures of complexity. Finally, the paper offers new insight about which predictors of analogy remain robust under large-scale quantitative scrutiny.

Mind the gap: Learning the surface forms of movement dependencies – Laurel Perkins, Naomi H. Feldman and Jeffrey Lidz

This paper addresses how children learn the surface properties of object movement dependencies. Using computational modeling, the authors propose that acquiring abstract syntactic dependencies requires statistical inference over both present linguistic material and violated grammatical predictions, whereby the absence of an expected verbal argument serves as evidence for a movement gap. This insight helps explain why argument-structure knowledge in children developmentally precedes movement acquisition in languages like English.

Phonology as coding: An online tool for teaching and developing analyses [Teaching Linguistics] – Daniel A. Kaufman, Raphael Finkel and Cynthia Gan

The authors introduce Phonomaton, a freely available online tool that allows students to implement and test phonological analyses interactively. This teaching tool operationalizes phonological processes as a form of formal coding, opening new pedagogical possibilities for the classroom, and promises to enhance both the teaching and learning experiences.

Enhancing linguistic research through critical use of race and ethnicity information [Commentary] – Robert Squizzero Martin Horst, Alicia Beckford Wassink, Alex Panicacci, Anna Kristina Moroz, Kirby Conrod and Emily M. Bender

The last paper in this issue is a commentary piece offering discussion and some concrete guidance to linguistic researchers on how to collect, report, and theorize race and ethnicity data across subfields. The suggestions span a range of fields from computational linguistics to qualitative fieldwork, in ways that are both ethically grounded and scientifically rigorous.

All articles in this issue are open access. Read it here, and click here to sign up for email alerts about future issues.

Shelome Gooden, Editor
Michael Putnam, Co-Editor"
https://www.cambridge.org/core/blog/2026/06/10/hot-off-the-press-read-the-new-issue-of-language/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"...Google annonce Gemini 3.5 Live Translate, son nouveau modèle audio de traduction vocale en quasi-temps réel, capable de traduire la parole en continu dans plus de 70 langues, plus de 2 000 combinaisons linguistiques. La nouveauté est d’ores et déjà disponible à tous dans l’application Google Traduction.

Une traduction continue, sans attendre la fin de la phrase
Les systèmes de traduction vocale classiques fonctionnent par tours de parole : ils attendent que l’orateur ait terminé sa phrase avant de restituer la version traduite. Gemini 3.5 Live Translate adopte une approche différente. Le modèle génère la traduction en temps réel, à mesure que les mots sont prononcés.

Google précise :

3.5 Live Translate traduit en continu, trouvant le juste équilibre entre l’attente du contexte pour une meilleure qualité et la traduction immédiate pour une parfaite synchronisation avec l’orateur. Il offre un son fluide, sans pauses intempestives, et reste synchronisé avec l’orateur de quelques secondes seulement tout au long de la session.
Le modèle détecte automatiquement plus de 70 langues sans réglage manuel, et restitue une voix qui préserve l’intonation, le débit et la hauteur de l’orateur. Google met également en avant sa robustesse au bruit, conçue pour les environnements imprévisibles des conversations réelles. Le modèle est développé à partir de Gemini 3 Pro.

Côté sécurité, l’ensemble de l’audio généré par le modèle est marqué d’un filigrane imperceptible baptisé SynthID, tissé dans le signal sonore pour que les contenus produits par l’IA restent détectables.

Développeurs, Google Meet, Google Traduction : un déploiement en trois temps
Gemini 3.5 Live Translate se déploie simultanément sur trois fronts : l’application Google Traduction iOS et Android, Google Meet, et l’API Gemini Live pour les développeurs. Les calendriers varient selon la surface.

Dans Google Traduction sur iOS et Android
Pour le grand public, le modèle arrive dans l’application Google Traduction sur Android et iOS, via la fonctionnalité Conversation. La traduction « reflète fidèlement l’intonation de l’orateur », promet la firme. Sur Android, Google ajoute un « mode écoute » qui diffuse la traduction directement dans l’écouteur du téléphone, sans casque : il suffit de tenir l’appareil à l’oreille comme lors d’un appel classique. Ce mode vise les situations où discrétion et simplicité priment, lors d’une visite guidée à l’étranger, par exemple.

Pour les développeurs, via l’API Gemini Live
Le modèle est disponible dès maintenant en préversion publique via l’API Gemini Live et Google AI Studio. Il s’intègre à des flux audio en streaming et gère les entrées multilingues sans configuration manuelle, ce qui le rend utilisable pour des applications de réunion, d’assistance client, de diffusion en direct ou de traduction mobile. Google met à disposition des exemples de code dans le Gemini Cookbook pour faciliter la prise en main...
José Billon
10 juin 2026

https://www.blogdumoderateur.com/google-traduction-voix-en-direct-70-langues/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

Alassane Ba, ex-dirigeant de Shelter Afrique et de la BAD, publie le premier lexique bancaire et financier français-pulaar pour l'inclusion en Afrique.

"La publication du Lexique spécialisé Banques/Finances Français-Pulaar marque une étape singulière dans le rapprochement entre langues africaines et terminologie financière. Son auteur, Alassane Ba, ancien Directeur général de Shelter Afrique, ex-haut responsable de la Banque africaine de développement (BAD) et ancien Directeur général par intérim d’Africa50, mobilise une expérience de plusieurs décennies au sommet de l’architecture financière africaine pour livrer un outil sans précédent. L’ouvrage s’inscrit dans un mouvement plus large de valorisation des langues vernaculaires, désormais intégrées aux politiques publiques, aux curricula scolaires et aux stratégies d’inclusion sur le continent.

Un projet linguistique au service de l’inclusion financière
Le pulaar, parlé par des dizaines de millions de locuteurs du Sénégal au Tchad en passant par la Mauritanie, le Mali, la Guinée, le Burkina Faso, le Niger, le Nigeria et le Cameroun, n’avait jusqu’ici jamais fait l’objet d’une codification systématique du vocabulaire bancaire et financier. Le projet d’Alassane Ba comble cette lacune en transposant dans cette langue les concepts clés de la comptabilité, des marchés de capitaux, de la microfinance ou encore de la régulation prudentielle. L’enjeu dépasse la simple curiosité académique. Il touche à la capacité des populations rurales et des opérateurs informels à comprendre, négocier et utiliser des produits financiers souvent libellés dans une langue étrangère.

Les politiques d’inclusion financière menées au sein de l’Union économique et monétaire ouest-africaine (UEMOA) et de la Communauté économique des États de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (CEDEAO) butent régulièrement sur cette barrière de la langue. Les taux de bancarisation, encore modestes dans les zones où le pulaar prédomine, s’expliquent en partie par l’éloignement culturel des produits proposés. Un lexique de référence offre aux établissements bancaires, aux institutions de microfinance et aux régulateurs un socle commun pour concevoir des supports de communication adaptés.

Traduire les concepts sophistiqués de la finance moderne
L’exercice de transposition relève d’un défi méthodologique de premier plan. Comment rendre en pulaar des notions telles que « titrisation », « swap de taux », « ratio prudentiel » ou « actif sous-jacent » sans dénaturer leur sens technique ? Alassane Ba revendique une démarche méthodique, à mi-chemin entre l’expertise sectorielle et le travail lexicographique. Le lexique ne se contente pas de juxtaposer des équivalents. Il propose une grille de lecture qui mobilise le génie propre de la langue pour exprimer des réalités économiques contemporaines, depuis la finance islamique jusqu’aux instruments dérivés.

Ce travail intervient alors que plusieurs pays du Sahel ont engagé des réformes éducatives intégrant les langues nationales comme vecteur d’apprentissage. Le Sénégal, la Mauritanie et le Mali figurent parmi les États où le pulaar bénéficie d’un statut officiel ou para-officiel. La disponibilité d’un corpus financier structuré ouvre la voie à des formations professionnelles dispensées dans la langue maternelle des apprenants, notamment pour les agents de terrain des institutions de microfinance.

Une trajectoire au sommet de la finance africaine
L’auteur n’est pas un inconnu dans l’écosystème financier continental. À la tête de Shelter Afrique, institution panafricaine dédiée au financement du logement, il a piloté des opérations dans une trentaine de pays. Son passage à la BAD et à Africa50, plateforme d’investissement dans les infrastructures, lui confère une connaissance fine des instruments mobilisés pour mobiliser l’épargne et orienter les flux vers les économies réelles. Cette double culture, technique et institutionnelle, irrigue le contenu du lexique.

La démarche pourrait essaimer. D’autres langues africaines à forte audience, du wolof au haoussa en passant par le bambara ou le swahili, manquent encore d’outils comparables dans le domaine bancaire. La publication d’Alassane Ba dessine un modèle reproductible, susceptible d’alimenter une véritable stratégie continentale de souveraineté linguistique appliquée aux secteurs régaliens de l’économie. Reste à mesurer l’appropriation par les acteurs financiers et les autorités de tutelle, condition d’une diffusion à grande échelle. Selon Financial Afrik, l’ouvrage constitue une première du genre dans le paysage éditorial africain."
Aïcha Diallo
10 juin 2026

https://africtelegraph.com/blog/alassane-ba-publie-le-premier-lexique-bancaire-francais-pulaar/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus