"Charles Tiayon, cartographer of the translation world
Charles Tiayon is a translator, lecturer and consultant whose Scoop.it activity reflects the professional universe named in his bio: translation, terminology, lexicography and intercultural issues. Through METAGLOSSIA, his public selection tracks language as a field of work, a field of rights, and a field being altered by AI.
A systems view of language Tiayon looks at translation as a living system. His selections connect interpreters, translators, dictionary makers, universities, publishers, language activists and software companies, rather than treating them as separate worlds.
Technology with memory AI is a recurring concern, but it is not treated as the whole story. Real-time speech translation, OCR and voice AI appear alongside older and slower forms of linguistic work: dictionaries, terminology, literary translation and language education.
A multilingual compass The geographic spread is notably international, with attention to French, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, Maltese, Breton, Ukrainian, Filipino, Indigenous languages in Canada and Indian language politics. No single country dominates the map.
What defines this selection Archive-scale attention With 99,235 posts analysed in a single topic, this is a long-running, high-volume observatory of the translation world. The account dates back to 2011, giving the selection the feel of an archive as much as a live feed.
A broad professional lens The material moves easily between AI translation tools, national dictionaries, literary translation, terminology work, market news and language policy. That range reflects a professional view of language work as both craft and infrastructure.
Mixed-source reliability The sources span institutions, universities, technology companies, mainstream media and regional outlets. UNESCO, university sites, DeepL, Mistral, CBC, Ouest-France and other sources create a mixed diet of policy, research, product news and local reporting.
Specialist reach, public scale The audience numbers are substantial, with more than 567,000 views and over 424,000 unique visitors across all topics. The reach suggests sustained interest beyond a narrow specialist circle.
Topics ◍ Metaglossia: The Translation World This flagship topic covers translation, interpreting, intercultural communication, terminology and lexicography as they unfold in public life. It is especially strong on AI language tools, institutional language policy, minority languages, literary translation and dictionaries.
99.2K posts en Deep dives Where language becomes infrastructure Charles Tiayon’s main topic reads like a newsroom for the language professions, but with a wider lens than trade news alone. Translation, interpreting, terminology and lexicography appear beside minority-language rights, literary circulation, dictionaries, competitions, and the fast-moving world of AI speech and OCR tools.
Metaglossia: The Translation World
The strongest thread is the collision between language as culture and language as system. A new Maltese digital dictionary, a Doha historical dictionary with text-to-speech, UNESCO and Unicode cooperation, and First Nations language translation all sit in the same frame as DeepL, Mistral OCR, and real-time speech models.
Metaglossia: The Translation World
His editorial voice is not silent aggregation. The analysis points to regular INSIGHT notes, often substantial and quote-based, with an explanatory tone and occasional sharper framing when language politics or AI consequences are at stake. The result is a practical map of a field being reshaped by institutions, software, markets and communities at once."
When a human interpreter is not available within five minutes, most healthcare leaders say they would consider AI instead. That is the central finding of AI Interpreting in Healthcare 2026, a new report from Boostlingo produced in partnership with Fierce Healthcare, based on a survey of 123 healthcare leaders.
Only 1 in 5 respondents said they would use AI immediately, even with the right safeguards in place. Once a wait passes five minutes, that number rises to roughly 3 in 4. More than 8 in 10 leaders said longer waits would make them more likely to evaluate AI at all.
The shift reflects where the pressure is coming from. Delays in care were the top consequence named when an interpreter is not available, cited by 60% of respondents, ahead of patient dissatisfaction and communication errors. Managing cost ranked as a top challenge for 54%.
"Organizations want high-quality interpreting services, but often select the lowest-cost provider," said Merrie Wallace, MN BSN, Chief Revenue Officer at Boostlingo. "There is a trade-off point between cost and quality that needs to be explored."
Trust, not cost, is the bigger barrier to using AI. Doubt that it will hold up in real conversations was the top concern, named by 59% of respondents, ahead of accuracy, compliance, and liability concerns.
Comfort with AI depends heavily on the interaction. Scheduling and billing conversations, with a human interpreter available as backup, were acceptable to 85% of respondents. Comfort drops sharply for emergency and sensitive care, where most leaders still prefer a human interpreter by default.
"Instead of asking questions like, 'Should we use AI or human interpreters?' the better question becomes 'What is the right modality with the right safeguards for this specific interaction?'" said Dr. Julie Mills, CNE at Boostlingo.
Taken together, the findings point to a hybrid approach. AI interpreting has a role in healthcare, according to 95% of respondents, and 61% say they are open to piloting it within the next 12 months.
The findings come from a survey of 123 healthcare respondents, fielded with Fierce Healthcare from April 6 to May 6, 2026. Results are directional and are not intended as a statistically representative benchmark of the healthcare market.
About Boostlingo
Boostlingo is an interpreting technology company based in Austin, Texas. Its platform provides organizations with video, phone, and AI interpreting, plus scheduling, management, and reporting tools to run them, all in one place. The goal: communicate without barriers.
Media Contact Morgan Lierley Boostlingo media@boostlingo.com"
"Even though the capital of Belgium is also that of Flanders, many Flemish people can frequently be heard exclaiming that "Brussels is another country".
And while there are many layers to that statement, the fact that Dutch speakers generally have a hard time using their native language in the city plays a big role. To find out how they felt about Brussels' complicated language situation, The Brussels Times took to the streets of the capital.
"When I came to Brussels 50 to 60 years ago, I would mainly hear French. And with my poor French at the time, I felt like an outsider," said Hélène Verelst, 73, a former secretary from Zemst in Flemish Brabant.
"But when I come to Brussels now, I hear lots of different languages. People are coming here from all over the world, and they usually speak poor French too," she said. "So weirdly, I actually feel more at ease now."
Like many Flemish people of her generation, Hélène rented a kot in Brussels when she was studying, and even though she later found work in the city, she opted to commute from her hometown every day rather than become a 'real' Brusseler.
Her sister, however, met her husband in Brussels and moved to the city permanently. "I like visiting her, like I am doing today. But I prefer Zemst, where I can know for sure what language to say 'hello' in," she said.
'A lot has changed' Still, Brussels is popular among Flemish people: every year, some 13,000 to 14,000 people move from Flanders to Brussels – for work, studies, love or another reason entirely.
The latest official figures by the Brio language barometer (2024) show that just 7.5% of the capital's residents exclusively speak Dutch at home, while 4.3% live in a Dutch/French mixed-language household – bringing the total ratio of native Dutch-speakers in the capital to just over one in 10 (11.8%). Meanwhile, over 60% of residents speak French at home.
According to Michiel*, a 58-year-old Dutchman who spent his teenage years in the French-speaking part of Belgium and now lives in Woluwe-Saint-Pierre, a lot has changed over the years.
"When I came to Brussels as a young man, it was of course very francophone, but as soon as you went to the east, north or northwest of the city, you would hear Flemish people around you," he said.
Some areas in the northeast or Brussels, like Schaerbeek, traditionally have many Dutch speakers. Credit: Visit Brussels
Michiel used to regard Brussels as a bilingual city – with a lot of English thrown in because of the international organisations located there. Now, however, he feels that the international organisations speak English, and everybody else speaks French.
"If I go to places that traditionally were strongholds of the Dutch language in Brussels, I might as well speak French immediately," he said. "I still try in Dutch, but it usually does not get me very far. It does not bother me, but it is an interesting change that I have had to get used to."
For many other Dutch speakers in the capital, however, not being able to speak their own language is a common frustration – whether it is in the hospital, while grocery shopping or when arranging official matters with the municipality.
'Smoother in French' "Sometimes the lack of Dutch bothers me when I need to deal with official bodies, such as the police or a government department," said Freija Poot, 29.
Her parents are Flemish but moved to Jodoigne in Wallonia, right on the linguistic border. Freija first went to a French-speaking school, then later to a Dutch-speaking one. She went to university in Brussels and permanently moved to the city after finishing her studies.
"I was brought up bilingually, but in those official situations, it is still easier for me to speak Dutch," she said. "However, I noticed that the process goes a lot smoother when I do it in French."
Officially, the Brussels-Capital Region is a bilingual territory. According to Belgium's language laws, which date back to 1966, public authorities and administrations in Brussels are obliged to communicate in Dutch and French – with citizens, internally and with other administrations.
Importantly, this does not mean that every person working for one of the municipalities, the police, Public Welfare Centres (CPAS/OCMW), hospitals, or other official institutions in Brussels must speak both Dutch and French.
Rather, it means that those official bodies must be able to provide their services in both languages: a dedicated number of staff members must be able to master the minority language (in Brussels' case, Dutch) to help citizens who only speak that language.
'A lottery' While the system sounds fine on paper, in practice the policy often leaves much to be desired – to the frustration of many Dutch speakers. Eddy Vanderschueren, who moved from Flanders to Brussels in 1988, agrees that it can be difficult at times.
"I am currently receiving treatment for a condition, and I went specifically to the UZ Jette because I am sure everyone there speaks Dutch," he said. "At other hospitals, whether someone will be able to help me in Dutch is often a bit of a lottery."
When Vanderschueren brings up issues he has experienced in Brussels in conversation with French speakers, he says he is often dismissed as an extremist or Flemish nationalist. But he insists it has nothing to do with that.
"If people cannot or do not want to speak Dutch to me in a shop, that is fine. It is not ideal, but it's a private matter, they can do as they please and I will never say a word about it," he said. "But when it comes to official bodies, they should respect the law."
The language parity in Brussels – which guarantees representation for the Dutch-speaking minority – is directly linked to parity at the federal level, where French speakers are in the minority.
"If they do not want to follow the law, they will have to secure a two-thirds majority to abolish it. And then we will abolish it at the Belgian level too. But of course, they do not want that either," he said. "I absolutely get that Dutch is not always easy, but neither is French."
The fact that Brussels' new Minister-President Boris Dilliès (MR) does not speak Dutch – something that became clear during an embarrassing television interview on his first day – exemplifies the issue, according to Vanderschueren.
"It is a real disgrace for a bilingual region. [The previous Minister-President Rudi] Vervoort did not speak Dutch very well either, but he at least spoke it a little," he said. "Dilliès was a mayor, and is now Minister-President. He says he’s going to learn Dutch. On verra."
Correcting the imbalance Difficult to learn or not, Belgian-American writer and consultant, Patricia Finn, 61, quickly mastered Dutch after moving to Belgium, speaks it fluently, and now always uses it when she is in Brussels.
"Many of my Flemish friends in Brussels – and Flemish people in general – seem to have the idea that there’s a sort of language hierarchy where one language is more important than another," she said. "But this is not true."
As many Flemish people are able to get by in French, however, she noticed that they are quick to switch. "I think this is partly to do with the Flemish mentality: they want to make others feel at ease. They tend to speak so many languages that they will just switch to ensure that their conversation partner does not have to make an effort," Finn said.
But as a result, they speak their own language less and less often in the capital. "And so, they are not helping their own case."
Finn believes that Flemish people should be proud of their culture, their identity and their language. "This quickly gets mixed up with what the Flemish nationalists are saying, but that is not what I am talking about. I mean, there is no need for Flemish people to put themselves second to make others more comfortable."
She therefore speaks Dutch as often as she can, and urges her Flemish friends to do the same when they are in Brussels. "I am not a Flemish nationalist," she said. "I am just trying to correct the imbalance between the languages a little, especially in Brussels."
*Name has been changed to protect the speaker's privacy. Lost in translation? Why Dutch-speakers still feel out of place in Brussels Monday, 13 July 2026 By Maïthé Chini
"The word Engrish is a slang term used to describe inaccurate, awkward, or nonsensical English produced by native speakers of other languages.
It originally referred to the way some Japanese speakers pronounce certain English sounds. Since Japanese does not distinguish between the English L and R in the same way, words like English may sound closer to Engrish, while London can sound more like Rondon..."
"An interpreter has described how she stopped getting work at a university after she reported anti-Semitic comments that she was supposed to translate.
The woman, appearing at a royal commission under the pseudonym ACK, is not Jewish but has close connections to the community.
"Two Novellas by Vasil Bykaŭ Translated and Published in Vietnam 11.07.2026 / 15:48 БелŁacРус Nashaniva.com
A book by the Belarusian writer Vasil Bykaŭ has been published in Vietnam, featuring two of his well-known novellas — "The Alpine Ballad" and "To Live Till Dawn". They were translated into Vietnamese by the renowned Russologist and educator Vu The Khoi, as reported by the Embassy of Belarus in Vietnam.
"The Alpine Ballad" is one of Bykaŭ's early novellas. It was first published in 1964 in the magazine "Maladost" (Youth) and later released as a separate book. The plot centers on the love story of Soviet prisoner-of-war Ivan and Italian Giulia, who escape from a fascist camp and together overcome difficult trials in the Alps.
Translator Vu The Khoi noted that it was a great honor for him to translate "The Alpine Ballad" into his native language. He emphasized that Bykaŭ's works have been repeatedly published in Vietnam and continue to attract the interest of local readers thanks to their humanist ideas, profound portrayal of characters' experiences, and condemnation of war.
The second part of the new Vietnamese edition is the novella "To Live Till Dawn"." https://nashaniva.com/amp/en/399691 #metaglossia #metaglossia_mundus
"Student's £30 device 'translates in real time' Britta Zeltmann Devon University of Plymouth Milya Mohd Asyraf designed her advice to be affordable and accessible A student who has designed an affordable device which can translate and transcribe language in front of people's eyes hopes to make tech more accessible for all.
Milya Mohd Asyraf, 22, spent six months coming up with the design as part of her electrical and electronic engineering degree at the University of Plymouth.
The gizmo, which costs about £30 to make, translates speech into text before projecting it onto a small screen in front of a person's glasses via a clip-on electronic box, she said.
Using affordable and recycled materials, it was cheaper than many existing versions of the concept and ultimately aimed to help people overcome a range of communication barriers, she added.
More news stories for Devon Listen to the latest news for Devon Milya said: "My whole inspiration behind this project is that I grew up in a multilingual environment and was always one of those people who didn't understand what everyone else was saying.
"Language barriers – or even differences in accents – can make communication tricky, and many translation tools currently rely on phones, playback or expensive smart glasses that either interrupt conversations or reduce accessibility."
She said her device addresses that by fitting on someone's glasses "without additional features like other smart glasses that cause the high prices".
University of Plymouth The device where the text would appear, sat beside a pair of glasses The design captures speech through a small microphone, where an AI model translated and converted it into written text in real time.
The translated text was then sent over wi-fi Fi via a "microcontroller" which Milya said "sends signals from one thing to another".
She explained the controller was, in essence, "a small computer, and that's how the language is detected and also translated".
The text is reflected through a mirror, lens and reflector, appearing like subtitles in the user's field of view, she said.
Milya said the device was more accurate if programmed for a specific language - but was also not just helpful for understanding foreign languages.
She said: "Besides translation, it's really good at transcription.
"So, people hard of hearing can have a subtitle display."
Milya Mohd Asyraf The electronics are hidden in casing to which a mirror, lens and reflector are attached She added: "I'm really interested in accessibility technology and I'd like to make technology that people actually need, something that doesn't take advantage of people by taking their data, for example.
"I'd like to make something that people actually would like to use without any of that risk."
Asked what advice she would give to others hoping to create their own designs, she said: "I would say to just get started immediately, even if you don't know anything.
"Just have a piece of paper and write something down, whether it's a plan to get out of your head. Everything will fall in place."" https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ced47540de2o #metaglossia #metaglossia_mundus
L’IA au service des langues locales Le Togo veut donner une place à ses dizaines de langues vernaculaires dans le monde de l'intelligence artificielle.
12 Juil 2026
Le gouvernement lance une initiative pour développer des modèles d'IA capables de comprendre et de parler ces langues, avec un double objectif : améliorer l'accès aux services publics numériques et combler la sous-représentation chronique des langues africaines dans les systèmes d'IA.
Annoncé cette semaine à Genève lors du sommet ‘AI for Good’, le projet réunit Togo AI Lab, la plateforme africaine Zindi et l'entreprise technologique togolaise Umbaji. Il s'inscrit dans la stratégie nationale d'IA du Togo, qui vise à renforcer l'inclusion numérique à travers des services capables de fonctionner en langues locales.
Le plan : bâtir une plateforme open-source pour collecter des données vocales et textuelles auprès des communautés du pays, avec un objectif d'au moins 50 heures de voix validées et 6 000 paires de phrases traduites pour chacune des 50 langues nationales.
Ces données alimenteront quatre compétitions d'IA ouvertes sur la plateforme Zindi, destinées à développer des modèles open-source de reconnaissance vocale, de synthèse vocale et de traduction automatique, avec 40 000 dollars de prix à la clé.
Le moment n'est pas choisi au hasard. Selon l'UNESCO, plus de 2 000 langues africaines restent gravement sous-représentées dans les jeux de données utilisés pour entraîner les modèles d'IA, privant des millions de personnes d'un accès véritable aux services propulsés par l'IA, largement construits autour de l'anglais ou du mandarin.
Ce n'est pas une première collaboration entre le Togo et Zindi. En 2024, le ministère en charge du Numérique avait déjà organisé, avec la plateforme, une compétition utilisant des données démographiques et géospatiales pour prédire la demande en infrastructures de fibre optique. Plusieurs des meilleurs participants avaient ensuite été recrutés par Togo AI Lab.
« Nous considérons les modèles linguistiques comme une infrastructure publique essentielle pour l'ère numérique », a déclaré la ministre de l'Efficacité du service public et de la Transformation numérique, Cina Lawson...
Pour la directrice générale de Zindi, Celina Lee, le constat reste le même : « Trop de langues africaines restent sous-représentées. En réunissant les communautés locales, des données ouvertes et un réseau mondial de praticiens de l'IA, cette initiative garantit que la diversité linguistique du Togo se reflète dans la prochaine génération de technologies d'IA africaines. »
Fondée en 2018, Zindi revendique une communauté de plus de 100 000 experts en IA répartis dans plus de 180 pays. Umbaji a, de son côté, déjà mené des projets de collecte de données multilingues couvrant 11 langues africaines dans six pays.
Seamus Heaney’s translations: An exploration of a gifted work Like Joyce, Heaney was keen to ‘dislodge’ his work from the single-perspective canon of English literature
Seamus Heaney and the Art of Translation Author: Edited by Eugene O’Brien and Ian Hickey
Eugene O’Brien’s introduction to 11 chapters exploring Seamus Heaney’s gifted translations opens with the “helmeted pump” in Heaney’s essay Mossbawn where he links the pump with “the Greek word, omphalos, meaning ... navel ... hence the stone that marked the centre of the world” and repeating it “until its blunt and falling music becomes the music of somebody pumping water at the pump outside our back door”.
O’Brien sees this “seminal point” as a carrying over or translation of sound rather than meaning “a thing becomes a sound which becomes a word which allows for connection, empathy ... multiple perspectives.”
Translation is a tricky, layered art and O’Brien references Susan Bassnett’s view of “a dangerous act, potentially subversive and always significant”. Like Joyce, Heaney was keen to “dislodge” his work from the single-perspective canon of English literature. One can feel the sheer rebellious delight in his description of Beowulf as “somebody from the southwest of Sweden coming down into Denmark and helping the Danes, then returning to the southwest of Sweden and clearing a dragon out of that place. It is written in England, perhaps in Northumbria, but then Northumbria itself was a hybrid enough place…”
This book celebrates the endless ripples, each essay diving down and coming up with a fresh look. Ian Hickey sees Heaney’s translations as a shadow play between the original text and “the contemporary moment”, tracing the etymology of “confound” as it’s used in the sense of a blending of “the Lethe in Moyola” in Heaney’s poem The Riverbank. In From a Dark Wood to the Light of Heaven Mariella Gatto traces Heaney’s struggle to maintain poetic integrity while acknowledging that poetry and politics were “indissolubly linked” in what he called his “po-ethics”...
Heaney’s translations form a net of connections, rather than pointing out difference, O’Brien seeing them as a “heterogeneous, diverse and open interrogation of the present through the lens of the past.”
And Dennis O’Driscoll’s conversations with Heaney in Stepping Stones are an invaluable resource too, referenced many times here. Whether it’s Josie O’Donoghue’s On the Whim of a Marvellous Thing or O’Brien’s vision of Heaney “caught up in, and created by” a riverrun of languages – there is an exhilarating sense of an ever-renewing river of translations where no one will ever step twice." Martina Evans Sat Jul 11 2026 https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2026/07/11/seamus-heaneys-translations-an-exploration-of-a-gifted-work/ #metaglossia #metaglossia_mundus
Having an AI for Literature NAAV AI is utilising an AI-assisted, human-refined process to translate India’s rich body of writing
Vikram Sampath and Sandeep Singh Chauhan Mohd Shehwaaz Khan Updated on: 12 Jul 2026, 1:33 am
It was not so much a coincidence as a statement that the first major book NAAV AI translated was Vikram Sampath’s My Name is Gauhar Jaan into Kannada. Published in English in 2010, the award-winning biography had never reached Kannada-speaking readers, even though Sampath grew up in Bengaluru and Gauhar Jaan spent her final years in Karnataka.
For Sampath, the choice was symbolic. More than a century after Gauhar Jaan became the first Indian artiste to commercially record her voice on the gramophone, her story became one of the first full-length books to be translated into Kannada using AI-assisted technology.
“As a historian, I look at patterns,” says Sampath. “When Gauhar Jaan embraced recording technology, many musicians said it would destroy music or anger the gods. Today, writers and publishers have similar doubts about AI. History is repeating itself.”
The brainchild of Sampath and technologist Sandeep Singh Chauhan, Bengaluru-based NAAV AI—short for Navigating AI Across Vocabularies, and a play on the Hindi word naav (boat)—uses artificial intelligence and human expertise to translate long-form content such as books. It currently supports 11 Indian languages, including Hindi, Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam, as well as five foreign languages: French, German, Russian, Italian and Spanish.
The idea grew out of a frustration Sampath knew well as an author. “Only about five or six per cent of India consumes content in English. The actual soul of Bharat is in the Bharatiya bhashas,” he says. “But translation in India has largely remained a manual, mechanical, expensive and time-consuming process.”
Covers of books translated to Kannada, Tamil, Odia, and Hindi Its flagship product, Translit, generates a first draft of an odd 300-page book in about an hour. It is then reviewed by language experts and professional translators, some from the Central Institute of Indian Languages Mysuru, who refine the text before publication. “The heavy lifting is done by AI, but the final product is human-refined,” adds Chauhan. “Every language has cultural and linguistic nuances that technology alone cannot fully capture.”
The result is a dramatic reduction in time. A 300-350 page book that would ordinarily take six to seven months can now be completed in around four weeks. “This isn’t about replacing translators,” says Chauhan. “Instead of translating one book in six months, the same translator can now work on six or seven books. Their role becomes more valuable.”
Winning over publishers, however, has required patience. Sampath says much of his time is spent explaining that NAAV is AI-assisted rather than AI-driven. “It is natural for people in the creative industry to have doubts,” he says. “The fear is that AI will write the book or replace the translator. But the human expert remains central to the pipeline.”
The other product ZuNAAV creates audiobooks using AI-assisted technology in no time. “We make books come alive through immersive background sound, special effects and music. Our audio engineers and language experts refine the final version before it reaches the publishers,” adds Chauhan. The company has also successfully tested a Live Translation App with the spiritual organisation of Sadguru Madhusudan Sai, expected to go live shortly.
The startup has received funding support from Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal and investors such as Asha Jadeja Motwani, Prashanth Prakash and Subrata Mitra.
For Sampath, the larger ambition goes beyond technology. “If technology helps literature travel across languages,” he says, “India’s languages will grow together rather than compete with one another, as they most often do in current times.”" https://www.newindianexpress.com/magazine/2026/Jul/12/having-an-ai-for-literature #metaglossia #metaglossia_mundus
Créer en langues africaines: Nigeria, littérature en yoruba et roman fondateur de D.O. Fagunwa
50 millions de personnes parlent yoruba à travers les pays d’Afrique de l’Ouest et leurs diasporas. C’est une langue essentiellement orale mais qui possède tout de même des œuvres littéraires. Daniel Olorunfemi Fagunwa publie le premier roman en langue autochtone en 1938, à une époque où seule la Bible était disponible en langue locale. Aujourd’hui, des acteurs de la culture œuvrent pour entretenir et encourager une production littéraire.
«La forêt aux mille démons » de Daniel Olorunfẹmi Fagunwa, premier roman publié en langue yoruba.
De notre correspondante à Lagos, Harmony Pondy Nyaga
Dans La Forêt aux mille démons, Daniel Olorunfẹmi Fagunwa conte en Yoruba l'épopée d'un héros confronté à des épreuves surnaturelles, entre le monde des vivants et celui des esprits. Un premier roman publié en 1938, dans le but de contribuer à l’alphabétisation de son peuple dans un Nigeria encore sous domination britannique, mais aussi de préserver et partager un patrimoine culturel.
Ce n’est que trente ans plus tard que ce roman pionnier sera traduit en anglais par Wole Soyinka, dramaturge et prix Nobel de littérature, considéré comme l’un des héritiers de Fagunwa. Dans sa note de traduction de l’ouvrage, il admet que : « Le plaisir que procure son talent verbal est sans aucun doute largement perdu dans la traduction, mais cela ne justifie pas pour autant de réserver la lecture de Fagunwa aux seuls locuteurs du yoruba ».
Cette réflexion résume le paradoxe des auteurs yorubas, tiraillés entre le désir de préserver la pureté de leur langue et la nécessité de traduire pour exister auprès d’autres publics.
Mettre en avant la littérature yoruba Rasaq Malik Gbolahan, poète et écrivain, a choisi et il a lancé Atelewo, un magazine en ligne en langue autochtone qui décerne chaque année un prix aux œuvres en yoruba : « L'un des principaux projets que nous avons réalisés lorsque nous avons lancé Atelewo, nous avons lancé un appel à soumission d’œuvres littéraires : poèmes, nouvelles, essais écrits en langue yoruba. Nous voulions nous concentrer uniquement sur la langue yoruba. »
Au centre J. Randle pour la culture Yoruba, à Lagos, entre tenues et objets traditionnels sont également exposés les auteurs populaires de la littérature yoruba comme Amos Tutuola, Wole Soyinka ou plus récemment Lola Shoneyin.
Le directeur du centre, Qudus Onikeku, prépare l'ouverture d'une bibliothèque entièrement dédiée à ce patrimoine : « Ce serait une énorme collection de livres sur la culture yoruba et nigériane principalement, mais aussi sur l’Histoire. » « Je veux redonner vie à la tradition orale, poursuit-il, parce que je pense que la littérature pour nous était surtout puissante lorsqu'elle était lue à haute voix. »
Afin d'assurer de nouvelles générations de lecteurs, le centre culturel propose tout au long de l’année des cours de yoruba." 13/07/2026 - 00:05
German Bundestag Opens Applications for 2027 International Parliamentary Scholarship (IPS)
"The German Bundestag has announced the opening of applications for the 2027 International Parliamentary Scholarship (IPS), an internationally recognised programme that offers young graduates the opportunity to gain first-hand experience of Germany’s parliamentary system and political processes.
The five-month scholarship provides participants from eligible countries with practical insight into parliamentary work while strengthening their understanding of democratic governance, political institutions, and intercultural cooperation. The programme is designed for academically qualified young professionals with a strong interest in politics, public affairs, and civic engagement.
Eligible candidates are encouraged to submit their applications through the German Embassy in their home country before the applicable national deadline.
Scholarship Provides Five Months of Parliamentary Experience The International Parliamentary Scholarship (IPS) is one of the German Bundestag’s flagship international exchange programmes aimed at promoting democratic values and international understanding.
Over a five-month period, participants gain practical exposure to the work of the German Parliament while expanding their knowledge of legislative processes, policymaking, and political institutions.
The programme enables scholars to: Gain practical experience within Germany’s parliamentary system. Develop a deeper understanding of democratic governance. Strengthen intercultural communication and international cooperation. Build professional networks with fellow scholars and parliamentary stakeholders. Enhance their knowledge of political and social issues affecting Germany and the wider international community. The IPS programme provides participants with valuable academic, professional, and cultural experiences that support future careers in public service, politics, international relations, research, and civil society.Health Foundations & Medical Research
Eligibility Requirements Applicants must meet several academic, language, and personal requirements to be considered for the scholarship.
Eligible candidates must:
Hold citizenship of a participating country. Be younger than 30 years of age at the start of the scholarship. Have completed university studies with at least a Bachelor’s degree. In justified cases, proof of graduation may be submitted until 31 December 2026. Demonstrate a strong interest in political and social issues. Show evidence of social and/or political engagement. Possess very good German language skills at Level B2 or higher according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). The programme seeks motivated young graduates who are committed to democratic participation and international cooperation.
Required Application Documents Applicants must submit their complete application as a single PDF file by email to the German Embassy responsible for their country.
The application file should not exceed 10 MB. Applicants with larger files should divide their documents into multiple emails. ZIP files are not accepted.
A complete application must include:
Completed application form in German. Proof of German language proficiency. Motivation letter written in German (maximum two pages). University degree certificate or officially certified copy in English or German. Two recent letters of recommendation in German or English assessing professional qualifications.
Copy of a valid passport or national identity card confirming citizenship. A recent passport-style photograph in JPEG or another standard image format. Applicants are also encouraged to use the official application checklist to ensure all required documentation has been included before submission.
Selection Process The International Parliamentary Scholarship follows a two-stage competitive selection process.
The recruitment process includes:
Initial assessment by the relevant German diplomatic mission abroad. Invitation of shortlisted candidates to a personal interview. Final selection by a committee of the German Bundestag. Interviews are expected to take place between July and December, with final decisions based on applicants’:
German language proficiency.
Academic qualifications. Professional potential. Social engagement. Intercultural competence. The programme seeks candidates capable of contributing positively to international dialogue and democratic cooperation.
How to Apply Interested applicants should submit their application electronically to the German Embassy serving their country of citizenship.
Applicants are advised to:
Complete the official application form in German. Prepare all supporting documents in the required format. Combine documents into a single PDF where possible.
Ensure file sizes comply with submission requirements. Submit applications before the national deadline established by the relevant German Embassy. Country-specific application deadlines for the 2027 programme are available through the German Bundestag and participating German diplomatic missions.
An Opportunity to Experience Germany’s Parliamentary Democracy The International Parliamentary Scholarship offers young graduates a unique opportunity to gain practical parliamentary experience while expanding their understanding of democratic institutions and international cooperation.
By combining professional exposure with academic and intercultural learning, the programme equips participants with valuable leadership skills that can be applied in government, diplomacy, research, non-governmental organisations, and public policy.Health Foundations & Medical Research
Young leaders with strong academic backgrounds, demonstrated civic engagement, and advanced German language skills are encouraged to prepare their applications and contact the German Embassy in their respective countries for country-specific deadlines and submission instructions.
"Des phrases limpides, sans fautes de grammaire. Sans hésitation, Lukaku déroule alors qu'il n'a jamais joué pour un club espagnol dans sa carrière, ni même vécu dans ce pays.
En l'occurrence l'attaquant de 33 ans a joué dans trois pays, mais son bagage linguistique va bien au delà de ça. Il y a d'abord les langues de son enfance, le français, héritage de son père, le lingala transmis par sa mère et le néerlandais appris à l'école, car il a grandi à Anvers, ville flamande belge. Si l'on ajoute l'espagnol évoqué précédemment, voilà déjà quatre langues maîtrisées.
Romelu Lukaku n'est pas polyglotte, mais hyper-polyglotte. Ce statut, on l'obtient lorsque l'on parle couramment six langues ou plus. Lukaku maîtrise aussi l'anglais, après avoir obtenu sa majorité à Londres durant son long passage au club de Chelsea. À l'époque, le jeune joueur qu'il était avait aussi appris le portugais comme une éponge auprès de son partenaire aîné, José Bosingwa. À cela s'ajoute son italien, parfait pour comprendre les consignes de son actuel entraîneur à Naples et aussi l'allemand, même si aucune explication n'est connue sur les motifs d'apprentissage de la langue de Goethe.
Au total, Romelu Lukaku sait s'exprimer dans huit langues. Le profil linguistique de l'avant-centre des Diables rouges fait de lui ce que les journalistes appellent « un bon client »." Coupe du monde 2026: Romelu Lukaku, l’attaquant belge hyper-polyglotte qui étonne le monde - RFI https://share.google/PVcAbJDC6Nl3OgTwN #metaglossia #metaglossia_mundus
Emotional Intelligence Plays a Role in Creativity, This is the Explanation of an Expert
YOGYAKARTA - Emotional intelligence and creativity are actually interrelated. Until now, many people think that creativity is only influenced by talent, although the ability to recognize and manage emotions also has an important role. A number of recent studies show that emotional intelligence can help a person think more flexibly, face challenges, and generate new ideas.
This was discussed by Anthony D. Fredericks, Ed.D., Professor Emeritus of Education at York College of Pennsylvania, reported by Psychology Today, Monday, July 6. He explained that emotional intelligence is one factor that can support the creative process. Although not the only determinant, the ability to understand and manage emotions makes a person more prepared to face the challenges that arise when looking for or developing ideas.
What is emotional intelligence? Emotional intelligence or emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize, understand, manage, and effectively utilize emotions. This concept includes self-awareness, self-control, motivation, empathy, and relationship-building skills. With these abilities, a person can use their emotions as a source of energy to make decisions and solve problems.
A meta-analysis that combines the results of various studies found a positive relationship between emotional intelligence and creativity. The relationship is not very strong, but it is consistently found in various studies. According to researchers, people who have better emotional intelligence tend to be able to use emotions as fuel to generate ideas and reduce obstacles such as fear of failure or anxiety.
A systematic review published in 2025 also showed that adults with better emotional abilities generally have higher levels of creativity. However, the researchers stressed that the relationship still needs to be studied further to understand how the two affect each other. Nevertheless, the results of this study show that developing emotional intelligence has the potential to support creative thinking abilities.
Why does emotional intelligence play a role in creativity? People who are able to recognize their emotions are usually easier to understand what they are feeling when facing a challenge. This awareness helps them turn emotional experiences into a source of inspiration, not an obstacle. As a result, they are more open to exploring various possibilities and generating more diverse ideas.
The ability to manage emotions also helps a person to survive when the ideas they have are rejected or have not been successfully realized. In the creative process, failure and criticism are normal so that resilience becomes an important ability. With more stable emotions, a person can try a new approach without easily giving up.
In addition, empathy allows a person to understand another person's point of view. The more perspectives that are understood, the greater the opportunity to find unique solutions or ideas. This is one of the reasons why emotional intelligence is considered to have a role in the creative process.
How to train emotional intelligence to develop creativity One of the recommended exercises is to recognize the emotions you are feeling, then pour them into the form of a work or idea. For example, sad experiences can be written into stories, poems, or used as inspiration in solving a problem. This exercise helps the brain get used to processing emotions as a source of creativity.
You can also train empathy by trying to see an event from another person's point of view. This way makes you accustomed to understanding various perspectives that may not have been thought of before. The wider the point of view you have, the greater the opportunity for new ideas to emerge.
In addition, get used to reframing unpleasant experiences. Instead of just seeing it as a failure, try to find lessons or opportunities that can be taken from the experience. This habit can train flexibility of thinking, which is one of the important elements of creativity.
Creativity can continue to be developed. Creativity is not just about talent that is possessed from birth. Various studies show that this ability can continue to be honed through experience and habits, including by developing emotional intelligence. When a person is able to understand and manage their emotions well, the creative thinking process can run more optimally.
Therefore, if you want to increase creativity, there is no harm in starting to train emotional intelligence in everyday life. The ability to recognize emotions, manage stress, and understand others can be an important asset to generate fresher and more innovative ideas. Thus, emotional intelligence is not only beneficial for social relationships, but also plays a role in supporting the creative process." 06 Juli 2026, 14:48 https://voi.id/en/lifestyle/583377 #metaglossia #metaglossia_mundus
Les erreurs de traduction qui ont marqué l’histoire du marketing
"“Mordre le têtard de cire” ou suggérer à ses clients de “Ne rien faire” : les archives du marketing regorgent de perles qui font sourire les étudiants, mais beaucoup moins les directions financières. Très souvent, la réussite d’un nom repose sur sa capacité à susciter une émotion en phase avec l’identité de l’entreprise. Dans un communiqué, l’agence Caupenne & Co revient sur certains “ratés” marketing devenus cultes et rappelle pourquoi la localisation est un enjeu de réputation autant que de communication. Comme le souligne Leylak de Caupenne, fondatrice de l’agence, “Une erreur de traduction marketing n’est jamais seulement une erreur de langue. C’est une erreur de perception”.
Le piège des expressions littérales et des faux amis Le passage des frontières transforme parfois des slogans percutants en messages embarrassants. KFC en a fait l’expérience en Chine lorsque son célèbre “Bon à s’en lécher les doigts” s’est transformé en une invitation à “Manger ses propres doigts”. De même, Parker Pen aurait frôlé l’incident au Mexique en confondant le terme anglais “embarrassed” avec le mot espagnol “embarazada”, qui signifie enceinte. Une traduction efficace recrée l’effet voulu dans la culture cible plutôt que de calquer mécaniquement le texte source. Ces anecdotes montrent que l’humour ou l’image publicitaire ne survivent pas à une approche purement lexicale.
Anticiper pour protéger la réputation commerciale Certains ajustements sont purement préventifs mais vitaux. Mitsubishi a ainsi dû renommer son modèle Pajero en « Montero » sur les marchés hispanophones en raison de la connotation vulgaire du nom original. Pour HSBC, une erreur d’adaptation du slogan « Assume Nothing » en « Do Nothing » a nécessité un investissement de remplacement pour lancer la campagne globale « The world’s local bank ». La localisation doit débuter dès la conception du produit pour éviter des refontes publicitaires onéreuses. Selon Leylak de Caupenne, “La bonne traduction n’est pas celle qui colle le plus au texte d’origine. C’est celle qui produit le bon effet dans la langue d’arrivée”.
La rigueur linguistique comme levier de performance Pour rappel, fondée en 1994 et figurant dans le top 10 national des agences de traduction, Caupenne & Co accompagne des groupes tels qu’Alstom ou Engie sur plus de 160 combinaisons linguistiques. Certifiée ISO 9001 et ISO 17100, l’entreprise mise sur l’alliance entre expertise humaine et outils technologiques pour sécuriser la communication de ses clients. Le métier de traducteur consiste à garantir l’intégrité d’une intention commerciale dans un monde où une campagne traverse les frontières instantanément. Dans un environnement globalisé, l’approximation linguistique n’est plus une option pour les décideurs soucieux de leur image de marque." https://www.e-marketing.fr/marques-1296/veille-et-tribune-2251/les-erreurs-de-traduction-qui-ont-marque-lhistoire-du-marketing-173499/amp #metaglossia #metaglossia_mundus
On pensait que dater l’apparition du langage était impossible : des chercheurs viennent de trouver la réponse dans notre ADN
Depuis quand les humains parlent-ils ? Jusqu’à présent, dater l’apparition du langage relevait du casse-tête. Entre les fossiles, les artefacts et les théories linguistiques, aucune piste ne permettait de répondre avec certitude à cette énigme. Toutefois, en étudiant la génétique des premières populations humaines, des chercheurs ont peut-être trouvé la clé du mystère. Une étude récente basée sur l’analyse de notre ADN avance une hypothèse surprenante : nous avions déjà la capacité de parler il y a au moins 135 000 ans.
Une approche génétique pour dater l’origine du langage Jusqu’ici, les théories sur l’apparition du langage reposaient principalement sur des indices fossiles et archéologiques. Par exemple, certains scientifiques estiment que la modification du larynx et du crâne chez Homo sapiens suggérait une capacité à produire des sons articulés. D’autres se basaient sur les premières traces de pensée symbolique pour déduire que le langage devait déjà exister. Néanmoins, ces approches manquaient d’une base temporelle solide.
C’est ici que l’équipe de chercheurs, menée par Shigeru Miyagawa du MIT, a adopté une méthode inédite. Plutôt que d’analyser les vestiges matériels, ils ont étudié l’ADN des populations humaines anciennes. Leur raisonnement repose sur un principe simple : toutes les langues du monde sont issues d’une langue commune. Or, si l’on sait à quel moment les premiers groupes humains ont commencé à se séparer géographiquement, on peut estimer quand cette langue originelle était parlée.
Les chercheurs ont donc analysé quinze études génétiques qui couvrent les dix-huit dernières années. Ces études se basaient sur l’ADN mitochondrial (hérité de la mère), le chromosome Y (hérité du père) et des séquençages du génome entier. Le résultat ? Toutes les données convergent vers un point commun : il y a environ 135 000 ans, Homo sapiens formait encore une population unie avant de commencer à se disperser à travers le monde. Cela signifie que la capacité linguistique devait déjà être présente avant cette première grande séparation.
L’émergence du langage comme outil social il y a 100 000 ans Si Sapiens possédait la capacité biologique de parler il y a 135 000 ans, cela ne signifie pas que le langage, tel que nous le connaissons aujourd’hui, existait déjà à cette époque. Selon les chercheurs, il aurait fallu encore plusieurs dizaines de milliers d’années pour que cette capacité se traduise par un véritable système de communication structuré.
Les indices archéologiques montrent qu’à partir de 100 000 ans avant notre ère, les humains ont commencé à produire des objets à forte valeur symbolique. Des pigments d’ocre rouge étaient utilisés pour décorer des coquillages et des outils, des gravures complexes apparaissent sur des os et des pierres, et des formes d’organisation sociale plus sophistiquées émergent. Cette explosion de créativité et de pensée symbolique suggère une transition majeure : le langage n’était plus seulement une capacité latente; il était devenu un outil actif de communication entre les individus.
D’après Miyagawa et ses collègues, cette transformation du langage a dû jouer un rôle clé dans le développement humain. Il aurait permis une meilleure transmission des connaissances, renforcé la cohésion des groupes et facilité la coopération. Autrement dit, il y a environ 100 000 ans, les humains ne se contentaient plus d’avoir la capacité de parler : ils parlaient réellement, échangeaient des idées et transmettaient leur savoir de manière organisée.
Une théorie qui divise encore la communauté scientifique Bien que cette étude apporte des éléments solides à la compréhension de l’origine du langage, elle ne fait pas l’unanimité. La question de la date exacte de l’apparition du langage reste un sujet de débat intense. Certains chercheurs estiment en effet que le langage pourrait être bien plus ancien. Des études basées sur l’anatomie des hominidés suggèrent que des espèces comme Homo heidelbergensis, il y a 600 000 ans, possédaient déjà des capacités vocales avancées. D’autres vont encore plus loin et avancent que certaines formes rudimentaires de langage existaient peut-être chez les Australopithèques, il y a plus de deux millions d’années.
D’un autre côté, certaines théories postulent que le langage s’est développé de manière très progressive. Au lieu d’être un événement soudain, il aurait évolué par petites étapes au fil du temps, au fur et à mesure que les besoins de communication devenaient plus complexes.
Enfin, un point essentiel reste en suspens : comment prouver avec certitude que nos ancêtres parlaient ? Contrairement aux outils ou aux œuvres d’art, le langage ne laisse pas de traces fossiles. L’archéologie et la génétique peuvent fournir des indices, mais elles ne peuvent pas, pour l’instant, donner une preuve irréfutable de l’existence du langage à une époque précise." Brice L. 10 juillet 2026, 17 h 32 min https://sciencepost.fr/on-pensait-que-dater-lapparition-du-langage-etait-impossible-des-chercheurs-viennent-de-trouver-la-reponse-dans-notre-adn/ #metaglossia #metaglossia_mundus
How the Bilingual Brain Switches Languages With Ease Similar concepts in different languages share an address in the brain
Shelly Fan Jul 06, 2026
My octogenarian father-in-law is trilingual and a lifelong fan of the World Cup. As he cheers on his favorite teams in English, Spanish, or French—sometimes switching between them mid-sentence—I’m always amazed at how easy it seems.
Scientists have long been fascinated by the brain’s ability to learn and retain multiple languages. Even after years of disuse, a brief exposure can quickly revive a language without having to consciously relearn its grammar or vocabulary. Bilingualism may offer other cognitive perks. Small studies suggest it delays brain aging, lowers dementia risk, and provides a slight edge in executive function (the ability to stay focused on a goal).
But most of the evidence is from brain imaging studies that offer only a bird’s-eye view of neural activity and miss the finer details.
Now, scientists from the Baylor College of Medicine and collaborators have recorded activity from single neurons in four bilingual volunteers with epilepsy as they listened, read, and spoke in English and Spanish. The participants already had electrodes implanted in the hippocampus—a brain region critical for learning and memory—to track the source of their seizures.
“This is the very first study to look at how bilingual brains work at the level of individual neurons, and to do so in real time,” said study author Xinyuan Yan in a press release.
The results suggest the bilingual brain operates on two levels. Individual neurons often showed a strong preference for one language when participants heard or spoke words with the same meaning. But networks of neurons were largely language independent. They spontaneously organized into a concept map, placing words with related meanings—such as “dog” and “wolf”—closer together than unrelated words like “fork.”
Surprisingly, both languages relied on the same underlying map. Using the English concept map alone, the team could accurately predict clusters of related Spanish words.
“It’s like looking into a room from a different window. Everything inside is the same, but the perspective is different,” said study author Sameer Sheth.
Bridging Worlds Language is central to human connection. Although some words don’t directly translate, people can express the same ideas across multiple languages without losing their core meaning.
Children raised in multilingual households are especially adept at switching between languages, often blending words and phrases together. Even when languages differ dramatically in grammar, syntax, and pronunciation, the brain somehow keeps their structures distinct while fluidly merging their meanings.
Long before we learn to speak, neural networks transform thoughts into electrical patterns that form words and sentences. Because languages are built differently—for example, where a verb falls in a sentence—it seems reasonable that each language would have a unique neural fingerprint.
But that might not be the case. A recent AI-powered analysis of functional MRI (fMRI) scans from monolingual speakers of 21 languages suggested that languages share a similar neural scaffold that represents meaning and concepts. Even fictional languages, including Klingon from Star Trek and Na'vi from Avatar, appear to tap into the same underlying system.
A growing body of evidence from bilingual speakers echoes these findings. One fMRI study found native Chinese speakers learned English more efficiently when they recruited brain networks used for Chinese. Another study identified shared speech-related brain activity sufficient for decoding words across languages.
Despite hinting at a universal language map, these standard imaging technologies struggle to capture detailed patterns as people switch languages in real time. To see how bilingual brains actually pull off the feat, we need to listen in on single cells.
Mapping It Out The team studied four volunteers fluent in English and Spanish. All had learned the languages before age five and continued to use them regularly. Each also had electrodes implanted in the hippocampus to monitor seizures as part of epilepsy treatment, allowing researchers to track individual neuron activity as they listened and spoke.
Though often overlooked in language research, the hippocampus is increasingly recognized as a hub for word meaning, and it may also link concepts together. Here, the team monitored more than 100 neurons in each participant as they completed three language tasks.
First, the participants listened to roughly an hour of YouTube videos and the audiobook Eat Pray Love (Come Reza Ama). Next, they read aloud nearly 100 phrases displayed on a screen, such as “let’s have fun” and its Spanish equivalent “vamos a divertirnos.” Finally, they spent up to 90 minutes chatting with native speakers of each language, discussing everything from family to their epilepsy journey.
By the end, the team had compiled thousands of spoken words, hundreds of matched phrases, and hours of natural conversation.
A Language Landscape Only a handful of neurons appeared truly bilingual, responding similarly to equivalent words such as "friends" and "amigos." To better interpret the neural activity, the team turned to mBERT, Google's multilingual language model that understands more than 100 languages. Like other LLMs, the model represents words according to their relationships and context rather than simple dictionary definitions.
The comparison revealed a similar pattern in brains and machines. Individual neurons rarely encoded the same word across languages. Instead, meaning emerged at the population level.
Both neural activity and mBERT tracked broader context, organizing words into an abstract conceptual landscape called semantic geometry. In this map, related concepts cluster together—“cat” sits closer to “dog” than to “galaxy,” for example—even if the precise features defining those relationships are unclear.
Yet the map remained largely unchanged across languages, suggesting it captured a fundamental mechanism for language processing in the brain. Using the English map alone, the team could predict which Spanish words would cluster around “perro” (or “dog”).
“This is how the brain encodes the meaning of words across languages,” said Yan. “It doesn’t rely on individual neurons translating individual words, but groups of neurons adjusting their activities to create the similar pattern for equivalent words in both languages.”
The study focused on semantics, or meaning, as opposed to syntax, the rules governing sentence structure. A recent study also using single-cell recordings from people with epilepsy suggests that other groups of neurons, particularly those in the frontal parts of the brain, may specialize in grammar while ignoring semantics. Whether they also share a “map” across languages remains to be seen.
The next step is to watch these maps emerge. The team hopes to track people as they learn a new language, revealing how new words and concepts are woven into semantic landscapes in real time. The results could deepen our understanding of one of the most fundamental communication skills and even inspire more capable and efficient language models in AI.
“Our study shows that the brain is wired to learn multiple languages,” said study author Benjamin Hayden.
Neuroscience Shelly Fan Dr. Shelly Xuelai Fan, a neuroscientist-turned-science-writer"
"Charlotte Mecklenburg Library expands language access with new translation plan WFAE | By Julian Berger Published July 6, 2026 at 5:00 AM EDT
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library translated materials into Spanish, French, Russian, Vietnamese and Hindi. Julian Berger Charlotte Mecklenburg Library is rolling out a new language access plan across its 21 branches this week.
Key documents, including library card information, library use guidelines and branch hours and locations, will be available in the five most commonly spoken non-English languages in Mecklenburg County: Spanish, French, Russian, Vietnamese and Hindi.
"The language access plan is designed to really focus on making sure that all of our materials are something that can be read and accessed by everyone," said Cameron Smith, branch manager at the Pineville Library and co-leader of the library's Welcome CLT initiative. "Anyone that comes through our door should have that ability to be able to understand what we are offering."
The plan builds on years of work through the library's Welcome CLT initiative, which was launched in 2017 to better serve immigrants, refugees and other newcomers moving to the Charlotte area.
"We wanted to make sure that the library is a place where they feel at home, where they can access materials," said Lonna Vines, branch manager at Myers Park Library and co-leader of Welcome CLT. "That's what this team is all about, coordinating programs and resources for everyone in our community, including those international newcomers."
Vines said Charlotte's rapid growth helped drive the effort.
"When our team started in 2017, there were 42 people moving to Charlotte every single day," she said. "Now that number has just exploded, and so many of those people are moving from international locations as well."
Welcome CLT leaders said they began developing the language access plan after attending a language access workshop in 2025 and studying similar plans at other library systems around the country. The rollout was supported by a $10,000 grant from the American Library Association, which helped pay for translations and printing.
"An exhibition at Square Street Gallery examines how language is an evolving marker of sociocultural relations
If language is an intimate form of embodied transmission, whereby words are spoken by individuals whose understanding of their meaning is contingent on contextual and interpersonal relations, then it is through language’s everyday use that a more complex, materialist understanding of culture emerges. The title of Faan1jik6 Zi1gaan1, a three-artist group show, is the Romanised, Cantonese transliteration of 翻譯之間 (meaning: ‘In between translations’) and pointedly reflects on that dynamic in the context of Hong Kong.
Yip Kai Chun’s installation 崖hea響槓言 voice from the root, reclaiming (2016) traces the artist’s reconnection to his father’s native language, Hakka. Spoken by an ethnic group understood to have migrated from Northern China to the South during the thirteenth century, Hakka is often considered a phonetic bridge between Mandarin, China’s official language, and Cantonese, a dialect or distinct language, depending on who you’re asking. A rag-tag group of stools is positioned in front of a television set with speakers on either side, its red screen soundtracked by Yip speaking with his father in Cantonese about colours, about how he identifies, while recalling sayings like “a home with a podocarpus always has a surplus,” and so on. Yip asks his father to translate words and phrases into Hakka throughout, with black characters appearing onscreen in traditional Chinese script (rather than the simplified system introduced to Mainland China in the mid-twentieth century) to transliterate those expressions with Cantonese words. The Hakka pronunciation for ‘Occupy Central’, or instance, referring to Hong Kong’s 2014 Umbrella Movement, phonetically approximates to Zam1 (hair pin in phonetic romanisation), Ling5 (to lead), Zung2 (swollen), Wan4 (circle).
The abstract poetry of these notations mirrors those in Yan Wai Yin Winnie’s two-channel video Too Long Ago, Not Far (2024). Using a Super8 camera, Yan filmed everything around her between 2019 and 2023, while preparing to leave Hong Kong for England. These images of daily life in Hong Kong were then digitised to create the backdrop for an audiovisual dictionary drawing from a nineteenth-century publication commonly referred to as 華英通語 or Huaying Tongyu (literally: ‘interchangeable expressions between Chinese and English’), which taught English pronunciation using phonetically aligned Chinese characters. English words and their transliterations appear in white on the top and bottom corner of one screen, while their Cantonese phonetic notations and literal English translations appear on the other: so ‘cut’, for example, becomes phonetically aligned with the Cantonese for ‘cough’. Simultaneously, words and phrases are spoken aloud over parallel images, creating an expanded field of interpretation. In the case of ‘lion’, views of Hong Kong’s iconic Lion Rock mountain overlap: a landmark associated with the Lion Rock Spirit popularised during the 1970s to define a resilient Hong Kong identity.
At times, the phonetic notations from Yan’s source material seem off when spoken aloud, perhaps reflecting changes in pronunciation across some two centuries – a temporal gap that Yip’s father likewise demonstrates with a dialect that forms a bridge not just between Mandarin and Cantonese, but across time and space. These fissures refute the idea that culture is immutable: a material reality that language reveals as an unruly source-code of cultural transmission, whether in the context of nation-states standardising heterogenous tongues into one official language in the name of modernisation, or through the endurance nevertheless of those who have been marginalised as a result. Melody Chan’s installation Mind Palace (2023) pays tribute to that grounded, somewhat anarchic, reality. Four long scrolls printed with I-Ching hexagrams appear like Chinese text. Drawing from binary logic, each hexagram forms part of an indecipherable encryption that Chan devised to express a mesh of her own private writings and the texts of philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. What emerges is a common portrait of language as an unruly field of embodied relations and transmissions across a sociocultural spectrum that never stops evolving, rather than an apparatus of static containment: something to be created, learned, concealed, recalled, even defended.
Faan1jik6 Zi1gaan1 (In Between Translations), Square Street Gallery, Hong Kong, 29 January – 7 March
From the Summer 2026 issue of ArtReview Asia – get your copy."
"Open positions at UNFPA: Translate and review the UN guidance document into Arabic
Home-based; Volunteering Application deadline in 10 days: Wednesday 22 Jul 2026 at 00:00 UTC
Open application form Overview Translate and review the UN guidance document into Arabic.
You have:
Excellent written English and Arabic. Previous experience translating reports, publications or technical documents. Strong attention to detail. Ability to deliver high-quality work within agreed deadlines. Experience translating UN or development-related documents is desirable but not mandatory. Contract This is a UNV contract. More about UNV contracts.
Your input = a better platform for everyone looking to work with the UN. UNTalent Community Details UNFPA, in partnership with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), has developed the Guidance for Strengthening Marriage and Divorce Registration Systems in Africa. The publication provides practical guidance to governments and civil registration authorities to strengthen marriage and divorce registration systems, improve legal identity, and ensure that registration processes are inclusive, accessible and rights-based.
To make this important resource accessible to Arabic-speaking audiences, UNFPA Egypt is preparing an official Arabic version of the publication. We are inviting a team of 10 Online Volunteers to work together remotely to translate and review the document. By contributing to this assignment, volunteers will help make valuable knowledge available to policymakers, practitioners and institutions working to strengthen civil registration systems across the region.
UNFPA Egypt is seeking 5 Online Volunteers with excellent English and Arabic language skills to support the translation and quality review of a 111-page technical guidance document.
Selected volunteers will work collaboratively as one translation team. Depending on their qualifications and experience, volunteers may be assigned either a translation or a review role.
The team will:
Translate assigned sections of the document from English into Standard Arabic. Review translated sections to ensure accuracy, clarity, consistency and correct terminology. Preserve the meaning, technical content and formatting of the original publication. Coordinate with the UNFPA focal point and fellow volunteers through email to ensure consistent terminology and timely completion. Submit completed translations or reviewed sections according to the agreed timeline.
Each volunteer is expected to translate 22 pages of the publication, enabling the team to complete the assignment within the project timeframe.
Excellent written English and Arabic. Previous experience translating reports, publications or technical documents. Strong attention to detail. Ability to deliver high-quality work within agreed deadlines. Experience translating UN or development-related documents is desirable but not mandatory." https://untalent.org/jobs/translate-a-un-guidance-on-marriage-and-divorce-registration-to-arabic #metaglossia #metaglossia_mundus
"Translating ‘The Odyssey’ for a Modern Audience Wilson joins us to discuss translating ancient Greek, how modern English influenced her telling and why The Odyssey endures today.
Christopher Nolan’s latest film, The Odyssey, doesn’t debut in theaters until next week, but it’s already drawing online backlash for perceived inaccuracies from Homer’s epic poem. The story dates back to ancient Greece and has been told countless times; Nolan’s interpretation draws from a 2017 translation of classical studies scholar Emily Wilson that’s noted for its conversational language and feminist approach. Wilson argues that any given translation is a product of both the author who writes it and the era in which they interpret the text. Wilson joins us to discuss translating ancient Greek, how modern English influenced her telling and why The Odyssey endures today.
Guests: Emily Wilson, department chair and professor of Classical Studies Organization, University of Pennsylvania; author of the forthcoming book “Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: Journeys Through Ancient Literature"
Papua New Guinea has a population of roughly 10 million people and 840 living languages — more than any other country on Earth, a number greater than all the languages spoken across every nation in Europe combined
"In parts of the Papua New Guinea highlands, two villages within a day's walk of each other can speak languages as far apart as English and Japanese.
In parts of the Papua New Guinea highlands, two villages within a day’s walk of each other can speak languages as far apart as English and Japanese. Cross a ridge, and the words change entirely. This is not folklore. It is the ordinary texture of a country that holds more living languages than any other place on Earth.
The figure most often cited is 840, drawn from Ethnologue, the language database maintained by SIL International. That sits against roughly 7,170 living languages worldwide, which means a nation of about 10.5 million people accounts for more than one in ten of all the languages currently spoken. Indonesia comes second, with around 721, and Nigeria third with 538. No other country is close.
What the number actually counts The 840 figure should be handled with some care, because counting languages is not like counting rivers or mountains. The line between a language and a dialect is a judgement, not a measurement, and reasonable people draw it in different places.
The numbers wander accordingly. Ethnologue’s own totals have sat at 839, 840, and 841 across recent editions. In 2006, then Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare put it at 832, and was careful to specify languages, not dialects. The spread is not a sign of sloppiness. It reflects a genuine problem in linguistics, where mutual intelligibility, shared vocabulary, and speaker self-identification do not always point the same way.
What is not in dispute is the order of magnitude. Whether the true count is 832 or 843, Papua New Guinea sits far ahead of anywhere else.
More languages than all of Europe The comparison that tends to stop people is with Europe. Depending on how migrant and minority languages are counted, the whole continent is home to somewhere between about 250 and 300 languages, according to the survey in Wikipedia’s overview of the languages of Europe. Even on the most generous count, that is roughly a third of Papua New Guinea’s total. One country, slightly larger than the state of California, speaks more than twice as many languages as every nation from Portugal to the Urals put together." By Space Daily Editorial Team · Editorial process Published July 10, 2026 https://spacedaily.com/d-papua-new-guinea-has-a-population-of-roughly-10-million-people-and-840-living-languages-more-than-any-other-country-on-earth-a-number-greater-than-all-the-languages-spoken-across-every-nati/ #metaglossia #metaglossia_mundus
One Nation calls for end to government translation services in push for English-only Australia
Senator Sean Bell wants to end government funding for translation services
Today, One Nation Senator, Sean Bell, called for all Australian government services to be delivered exclusively in English, arguing that translated services undermine unity, and need assimilation and discourage migrants from learning English. In an interview with Sky News, Senator Bell blamed multiculturalism for social division, claimed translation services encourage long-term reliance on government assistance, and said a One Nation government would abolish the Office of Multiculturalism, which oversees the Translating and Interpreting Service (TIS). He argued English should be the sole language of government communication.
Advertisement Neos Kosmos sought comment from Senator Bell, but after speaking with his media adviser for around 10 minutes, the newspaper was told the “Senator’s views have already been expressed on Sky News, and he would not be providing any further comment to Neos Kosmos”. Given that the adviser declined to make the Senator available for an interview, Neos Kosmos considered it important to report the core substance of the discussion, as we were not allowed access to Senator Bell.
“Taxpayers”, but which ones? The adviser said “$300 million of taxpayers’ money was wasted on multiculturalism”, including translation services, which kept people “in their own groups” rather than encouraging them to learn English before arriving in Australia, and assimilating when here. He said the Translating and Interpreting Service, which was meant to “ease participation in Australia”, had instead divided and made the country more “tribal.” Asked whether people with little or no English proficiency were also taxpayers, the adviser said that his comments had been misrepresented.”Of course, they are citizens, you’re not listening”.The Commonwealth Translating Service was established in 1947 to support Australia’s post-war immigration program. Responsibility passed to the Department of Immigration in 1958, the Emergency Telephone Interpreter Service was established in 1973, and the Translating and Interpreting Service (TIS) was created in 1991.
These services are meant to enable Australians with limited English proficiency to access government and other services, from paying a gas bill and obtaining a driver’s licence to communicating with a doctor. The senator’s adviser rejected suggestions that elderly migrants with limited English—including those living with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, who often revert to their first language—demonstrate a need for government interpreting services. However, the adviser said this was “not what the Senator said.”
Asked whether governments have a responsibility to provide public information in languages other than English, the adviser said: “This was not the role of government”, and that those issues matter for hospitals. Neos Kosmos noted that public hospitals are government-funded, but the adviser declined to discuss that. The adviser said people could rely on translation applications such as “Duolingo” or similar technologies. When asked whether taxpayers should be expected to use third-party applications to access services funded through their taxes, he replied that he was “not here to argue”.
Advertisement Perfect monoculture in a multicultural Australia In response to the concern by One Nation over migrants maintaining community and linguistic enclaves, Neos Kosmos said that post-war Greek migrants in Australia with no English have paid taxes, and contributed significantly to the nation’s economic development and maintained separate churches, community organisations, Greek language schools and welfare organisations, many of them securing government funding. The adviser said Greek Australians were “the good example” of monoculture.
And added that One Nation “has never argued they should stop speaking Greek”. However, he was asked whether that contradicts Senator Bell’s criticism of multiculturalism, given that Greek Australians benefited from those policies and funding. He said Greek Australians were “the right example of the monoculture” advocated by Senator Pauline Hanson and Senator Bell. Asked how that is a logical position given the Greek community that had preserved language, faith and institutions. How could the Greek community be a representation of a “monoculture”, he was asked. The adviser repeated that Greeks were a good example that One Nation looks at of assimilation.”
When asked to elaborate, given the contradiction between calls for a monoculturalism, English-only approach and the example of the Greek community, which maintains strong linguistic and cultural traditions, the adviser became irritable and said he was not going to “argue”. “One Nation will not force people to speak English, that’s not what we’re saying,” the adviser said.
Driver’s licence culture wars Senator Bell’s representative said the NSW driver licence knowledge test, which can be undertaken in several languages despite road signs being in English, illustrates the problem with translation services and multiculturalism. When asked whether allowing the test to be taken in another language helped ensure understanding of road rules and improve road safety, he replied only that Australian road signs are in English. Neos Kosmos referred to the 1978 Galbally Report, commissioned by the Fraser Liberal government, which laid the bipartisan foundations of Australia’s multicultural policy. Its recommendations included culturally appropriate welfare services, language services, and support for community organisations to assist migrants’ settlement and integration. The adviser said the Galbally Report contributed to “division” by encouraging people to “remain in their own cultures” or enclaves. Asked if he pointed to where the report advocated such an outcome, he acknowledged it did not, but maintained this had been its effect.
Advertisement Multiculturalism is a cover for “a push to change laws”
He added a claim that there was a “push to change Australian laws” and to “stop people speaking English”. Asked as to who is advocating such changes, and to what laws, he said there were attempts “to introduce Sharia law in Australia”, and to “not speak English”. When asked to be pointed to any evidence of that, he said that was “not the point”, and he was “not going to argue.”
Neos Kosmos asked whether One Nation viewed multilingualism as a positive asset, particularly in areas such as international trade—for example, Greek Australians engaging with Greek institutions or Chinese Australians with China. The adviser replied that “this was not what the Senator was saying”, but declined to address the question or comment on the benefits of multilingualism. He repeated that Senator Bell would not be speaking with Neos Kosmos after we request direct comment." Fotis Kapetopoulos 6 July 2026 5:18pm https://neoskosmos.com/en/2026/07/06/news/australia/one-nation-calls-for-end-to-government-translation-services-in-push-for-english-only-australia/ #metaglossia #metaglossia_mundus
Barbara 'Bobbi' Harshav, who translated works by Agnon, Amichai and Sutzkever, among others, has died at 85
In the world of Jewish translators, she was known as a mentor, a friend and a literary giant
Translator Barbara Harshav Courtesy of Yale University
By Aviya Kushner
July 8, 2026
Barbara Harshav, widely considered one of the most important translators of Jewish literature of our time, passed away June 24 at age 85. She translated from French, German, Hebrew, and Yiddish — and won acclaim from scholars and fellow translators for her range and high standards. Her curiosity and willingness to tackle difficult material were legendary.
“Few people would be able to and feel comfortable translating from French and German alongside Hebrew and Yiddish,” Shachar Pinsker, professor of Judaic Studies and Middle East Studies at The University of Michigan, wrote in an email.
She translated giants, including Shmuel Yosef Agnon, winner of the Nobel Prize; Avrom Sutzkever, the towering Yiddish poet; the Israeli novelist Meir Shalev; and the beloved poet Yehuda Amichai. But she was also loved as a mentor and friend to scholars and translators of several generations.
“I knew Bobbi Harshav through reading her translations before I met her for the first time, when I helped her carry a suitcase to a room in Berkeley’s Bancroft Hotel in 2005,” Pinsker recalled. “Since then, we have seen each other in Ann Arbor, Tel Aviv, New York and Boston. It was always a thrill to meet her, speak and correspond with her, and learn from her.”
Her personality was reflected in the books she translated.
“Bobbi had a fierce sense of curiosity and independence that carried her forward. I can’t think of anyone else who would translate the Palestinian author Emile Habibi’s essay ‘Your Holocaust and our Catastrophe,’ alongside poetry by Abraham Sutzkever, Yehuda Amichai, the best of American Yiddish poetry, as well as novels, stories, and plays by Hanoch Levin, Yoram Kaniuk, Yehudit Hendel, Yehudit Kazir, and Leah Goldberg,” Pinsker wrote.
Harshav also co-translated many books with her late husband, Benjamin Harshav, including Sing Stranger: A Century of American Yiddish Poetry.
Her translations included some of the most challenging books in recent Jewish literature, like Agnon’s fiction. Made up of layers upon layers, with allusions to Jewish texts everywhere, it is notoriously challenging, if not impossible, to translate.
“Bobbi took on the heroic task of translating S.Y. Agnon’s Tmol Shilshom (“Only Yesterday”), which many considered untranslatable, and although she was aware of the limitations of Agnon in English, she proved them wrong,” Pinsker recalled.
“Perhaps the main thing about this translation is that Bobbi captured Agnon’s sense of irony, because of her own smart and wicked sense of humor.”
On social media, scholars mourned this loss.
“I just read her translation of The Loves of Judith. It’s a stunning and masterful translation of a book that plays with languages, gender, timelines and so much,” Shayna Weiss, Senior Associate Director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis, wrote. “What a loss.”
Weiss, in an email, shared that she was reading Harshav’s translation of Shalev’s book because she is speaking at a film festival that is showing For the Love of a Woman, a new film based on this book.
Bobbi, as she was known, was famous inside translation circles for her warmth and kindness to other translators, including invitations to live in her home, rent-free, while translating.
She was especially encouraging to beginners.
When I was a graduate student, she emailed me out of the blue and invited me to participate in a panel at the American Literary Translators Association conference, which was meeting that year in Chicago. I knew no one there, and made a friend — the Yiddish translator Leah Zazulyer, also gone now — while waiting for Bobbi to show up.
I did not know it then, but Bobbi was a celebrity in that conference; she was a past president of the American Literary Translators Association. Later she would become the only Hebrew or Yiddish translator in history to win the PEN/ Manheim medal.
The Manheim medal is awarded every three years for lifetime achievement in literary translation. Bernard Malamud and Gay Talese donated the initial funding for the award; it received additional support from the family and friends of Ralph Manheim, the American translator of Mein Kampf, who died in 1992, and it is now named after him.
The medal recognizes translators “whose career has demonstrated a commitment to excellence through the body of their work.” Prior winners include Gregory Rabassa, translator of A Hundred Years of Solitude, which Gabriel García Márquez famously declared superior to his original, and Edith Grossman, translator of Don Quixote and author of the influential book Why Translation Matters.
Harshav published more than 40 books of translation including works of poetry, drama, fiction, philosophy, economics, sociology and history.
“I know that the Manheim Lifetime Achievement medal acknowledges the full range of Barbara’s work, including her translations from French and German, but the fact that this award casts the spotlight on Hebrew and Yiddish translation, languages that often are overlooked in the world literary economy, is just monumental,” translator, scholar, and Oxford professor Adriana X. Jacobs said when Harshav won the medal.
“In all her translations, Barbara’s voice comes across so clearly and distinctly, even as she is capturing the qualities unique to a specific writer. And what I mean is that when you read Barbara’s translations, her commitment to her choices is evident. And every time I have heard Barbara speak on translation, this has been confirmed,” Jacobs said. “She can tell you why she made one choice and not another, why she chose to translate a particular text and not another, and she always — always — stands by her work.”
Harshav’s comments on writing and translation sometimes made it to Twitter and other social media, like this snippet from her talk at Davidson College: “Style is the morality of the mind. And obscurantism is sinful.”
She came of age in a time well before AI and before translation apps. Learning a language then was slow hard work. For French and German, she focused on basics, then read newspapers and novels.
“As for Hebrew, I started studying Jewish history and realized that I had a serious handicap because I did not know Hebrew at all, not the alphabet, nothing,” she told Rainer Schulte in Translation Review in 2012.
Unlike many Hebrew translators, Harshav came to the language relatively late, at 34.
“I literally fell in love with the language. There was the exhilarating feeling of learning a new language and a new alphabet at that age. It must have repeated the original childhood sense of learning to read, when the letters suddenly make sense and a new world is opened.” She learned Yiddish last.
Scholars and translators saw something distinctive in Bobbi Harshav’s work, in all four languages she translated from. In conversation, she often talked about translation quality; her goal was always excellence.
One reason for her excellence was that she was always reading. Another reason was her attitude, toward the text, and toward herself.
“I carry books all the time because you never know when the elevator will break down, and I am reading all the time,” she told Translation Review. “It is the element of play that is very important. Humility is also important, and the text is sacred. It is also true for performance. You have to have a kind of humility. I take what I do very seriously, but I do not take myself seriously.”
You can hear all of that in her translator’s note to Tmol Shilshom, or Only Yesterday, by Agnon. “If there is some other world, where translators can discuss ‘deviations’ with authors,” she wrote,” I hope Agnon will understand.”"
Translating an English AI system into Arabic might seem like a reasonable solution, but this shortcut doesn’t work for two reasons. First, the Arab world is diverse; many versions of Arabic are used daily across the region, and not all are mutually intelligible. Second, translating from English carries over the assumptions, framings, and blind spots of English. An Arabic-first AI system has to be built from the ground up.
Governments across the Arab world have committed to AI through a series of national strategies currently in motion. The question is whether the systems being built will speak the language, reflect institutional realities, and leave room for local institutions to shape how they behave.
“Arabic-first is the starting point: the data, the model, the user flow, the product itself, all built for the region rather than adapted to it.” Hisham Mohamed, PhD, Engineering Director, Global Public Sector at Scale
How Arabic-First AI Gets Built An Arabic-first system has to decide at the outset which register and which region it’s being built for. This decision is skipped entirely when an English-language AI system is translated into a singular form of Arabic. Scale's Arabic-first approach sets the direction at the start, and dictates every layer that follows: the data it learns from, the dialects that data spans, the people who label that data, the model itself, the interface users touch, the evaluation that tells you whether any of it works, and the governance that surrounds it.
Arabic-first data pipelines: We start with Arabic at the source, in the registers and dialects that matter for the region, treating dropped diacritics and complex morphology as design requirements. We account for bilingual workflows, local terminology, and the language used in the documents, services, and decisions a system will support.
Labeling in the language: Our annotators read the language the way its users do. Labeling guidelines are written in Arabic, so reviewers work with the full texture of the language: dialect, tone, religious and cultural nuance, and the register expected in professional and government settings. Every label reflects how Arabic is used.
Where the task requires it, local subject-matter experts help define the guidelines, resolve ambiguity, and identify the failures that matter in context. Arabic-first labeling ensures that the people evaluating the system understand the language, domain, and consequences of getting it wrong.
Models tuned for where they’ll live: We tune on local terminology, official register, place names, and the conventions of government communication. Cultural and religious awareness is built into model behavior through training data and evaluation criteria sourced from the region. We measure success against regional use cases, because that is the benchmark that matters for this work.
End-to-end interface: The interface, the prompts, the search, the way the system reads a request and writes back, all of it is built in Arabic. We build the full experience for the region, from the first screen to the last.
Evaluation, past fluency: For Arabic-first systems, evaluation goes beyond fluency. It tests factuality, dialectal understanding, cultural fit, register, domain terminology, and whether users can safely act on the output. It also tests whether users understand the system's limits, can identify when it is wrong, and know when human judgment must override its output.
Governance held locally: Data is gathered and kept locally. End users also receive clarity and control over how data is accessed, retained, reused, audited, and governed over time.
Building for Adoption “AI gets adopted when users can understand it, question it, apply it to their work, and feel that it respects their language, culture, and professional context.” Norah Abokhodair, PhD, Head of Upskilling and Enablement at Scale
Most AI rollouts fail after the system is built and deployed, when the people inside the institution do not use it, do not trust it, or cannot fit it into how their work actually gets done. A system built outside an institution and translated into it produces outputs that people can read but can't fully judge. Trust is built when users have a system that fits the language they work in, the workflows they follow, and the accountability they answer to.
Arabic-first closes the gap through two choices built into the system from the start rather than layered on top. Evaluation is built to test whether users can catch the system when it's wrong, not only whether the model tends to be right. And labeling guidelines are written by local subject-matter experts, which improves the institution's ability to identify which errors are most costly, so those failure modes are found and corrected before deployment.
The goal is durable institutional capability: teams that can use AI, make informed decisions about where it belongs in their work, where it does not, and how it should change over time. That is the target that matters for the institutions these systems are meant to serve.
Arabic-First Upskilling A deployed system gives an institution potential, but actual capability rests in the people who use the system daily. Unlocking this capability is its own piece of the work, and it has to happen in the language of the people who will team with the AI system. Scale established an Arabic-language AI literacy and upskilling program, Alif, to provide foundational Gen AI knowledge to native Arabic speakers.
The course is designed around how Arabic-speaking professionals learn, ask questions, evaluate risk, and apply AI. It starts from the conditions of the work. These workplaces are bilingual by default: policy is written in formal Arabic, the technical vocabulary of AI arrives in English, and people move between the two in a single task. The language is also sector-specific, and the setting is public, which brings trust requirements: decisions have to be traceable, sensitive data has to stay in controlled systems, and a human stays accountable for anything that affects a citizen.
Learners practice inside sector specific context. They work through how to evaluate outputs, how to protect sensitive data, and how to decide when human judgment must stay in the loop. Everyone leaves with a concrete proposal for their unit, and entities that want more can commission a run tailored to their own workflows. Alif is where people build it. The goal is people who can use AI and keep accountability for the decision. For a government, that is what makes the rest of the Arabic-first model hold over time.
AI Built for the Region Arabic-first AI development takes the harder path: building the data, model, evaluations, and capabilities in Arabic itself, rather than delivering a finished translation. What translation misses is the ability to serve Arabic speakers as well as English systems serve the users they were built for. Building natively means a system can meet its users in their own dialect, their own register, and their own context, not an approximation of it." By Hisham Mohamed, Norah Abokhodair, Myrna Rofael & Matthew Siegel July 8, 2026 https://scale.com/blog/arabic-first-ai #metaglossia #metaglossia_mundus
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