Metaglossia: The Translation World

"The White House is appealing court orders to restore interpretation services at press briefings.

The White House is making an unusual argument as it resists advocates’ push for sign language interpretation at press briefings conducted by President Donald Trump and press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

Providing American sign language interpretation in press conferences “would severely intrude on the President’s prerogative to control the image he presents to the public,” Justice Department attorneys argued in a lawsuit filed by the National Association for the Deaf.

The novel argument is just one part of the White House’s case against providing ASL interpretation, and DOJ attorneys haven’t elaborated much on the alleged intrusion. But it has raised concerns among advocates, and even the judge in the case.

U.S. District Judge Amir Ali issued an order last month requiring the White House to provide real-time ASL interpretation for Trump and Leavitt’s briefings, rejecting the administration’s argument that closed captioning and transcripts give Americans who are deaf or hard of hearing sufficient access to the president’s statements.

“To the extent the defendants argue that they prefer to act free from association with accessibility for people with disabilities, their gripe is with Congress and” federal anti-discrimination laws themselves, Ali wrote.

The Trump administration immediately appealed Ali’s ruling. The White House has begun providing interpretation for more events since the court issued its injunction, although the two sides of the case have disagreed over the specifics of what’s required.

The administration has argued that complications could arise if, for example, Trump spontaneously chooses to take questions from the press at events other than briefings. The Trump administration has asked Ali to limit his ruling to events scheduled at least 24 hours in advance, but the judge said the White House’s concerns were based on a misunderstanding of his order, which requires officials to “take all reasonable steps” to provide interpretation whenever they have advance knowledge that Trump or Leavitt will provide information or take questions.

The plaintiffs have also noted that President Joe Biden’s administration was able to provide ASL interpretation for events that were announced to the press pool less than an hour before Biden delivered his remarks.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told POLITICO that “the Administration is in compliance with” the judge’s November order. The White House did not respond to additional questions seeking to clarify its position in the case.

Brittany Shrader, director of legal services at the National Association of the Deaf Law and Advocacy Center, told POLITICO that she would rather not speculate about the administration’s “image” arguments.

“The disability laws don’t require a showing of animus or ill will toward people with disabilities to prove discrimination. The laws require that the White House provide access and the failure to provide that access is itself discrimination,” Shrader said. The White House’s arguments are “not a sound basis for declining to provide reasonable accommodations,” she said.

The organization first sued over a lack of sign language interpretation during Trump’s first term, in a bid to ensure that deaf and hard of hearing Americans had access to critical health information from government leaders during the Covid-19 pandemic. The Trump White House fought that lawsuit, but did not make arguments related to the president’s control of his image and messaging.

The Biden White House provided ASL interpreters for its press briefings, but the practice disappeared when Trump came back into power. The National Association of the Deaf filed a new discrimination lawsuit against the administration in May, naming Trump, Leavitt and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles among the defendants.

The NAD and White House are awaiting action from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which could uphold or block Ali’s order."
Hassan Ali Kanu
12/11/2025
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/11/donald-trump-sign-language-lawsuit-00687712
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Translators who work on Parliament Hill say changes to their accreditation process risks worsening the quality of language interpretation in the federal government.

The Translation Bureau...has quietly begun using an external consultant during accreditation exams instead of a jury of senior interpreters from within the bureau.

As of November, an external juror has carried the same weight as four staff interpreters combined previously. In the case of a disagreement, a Translation Bureau executive will break the tie, according to the Canadian chapter of the International Association of Conference Interpreters (AIIC-Canada).

“It’s really the impact on the quality of official languages, at Parliament of all places, where you need high-quality interpretation to make sure that parliamentarians understand one another and can do their job properly for their constituents.”

Michèle LaRose, a spokesperson for Public Services and Procurement Canada, said the Translation Bureau was now including “independent experts from the high-level conference interpretation community to provide an external perspective on the evaluations.”

“This allowed us to obtain a diversity of opinions from experts in their field, ensure greater transparency in the process, and inform any necessary improvements to the process,” said LaRose, who added that there were “no changes to the evaluation criteria from previous years, and performance and quality expectations remain the same.”

In previous years, the bar for the accreditation exam was set so high that some did not pass at all, according to AIIC-Canada.

Since 2022, LaRose said, 193 external candidates had taken the accreditation exam, “of which only 22 were accredited, representing a passing rate of 11 per cent.”

LaRose added that 60 candidates took the most recent exam in November, but she said that the department could not provide the number of successful candidates “as the evaluation process is still ongoing.”

Critics of the change accused the government of seeking to suddenly increase the pool of working freelance interpreters following new procurement rules.

Skup said a “significant number” of freelance interpreters had not bid for contracts since the new procurement rules came into effect because they included an hourly pay model and other changes. She estimated that between one-third and one-half of interpreters in the association had chosen not to work in Parliament because of the new rules.

For Antoine Hersberger, vice-president of the translation group of the Canadian Association of Professional Employees and a translator with the Translation Bureau, giving so much power to an external consultant over experienced staff interpreters was “a bit insulting.”...
“If we’re lowering the bar in Parliament, you can imagine how low the bar can go in other contexts.”"
Matteo Cimellaro
Dec 11, 2025
https://ottawacitizen.com/public-service/freelance-interpreter-accreditation
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"IRC offers its digital safety classes in 12 languages...

International Rescue Committee is adding safe artificial intelligence use to its digital literacy classes.

For newcomers to the U.S., artificial intelligence can be very helpful—and very dangerous...

 

International Rescue Committee serves refugees and forced migrants for at least five years after they come to the US.

 

That means they can help people develop longer-term skills that are essential to living in the States—like digital literacy.

 

IRC's chapter in Spokane has long offered classes on things like setting up an email account or paying bills online.

 

But thanks to emerging tech, their newest digital skills classes are tackling topics like AI.

 

Ab Denman, a digital skills specialist with IRC, says artificial intelligence is being woven into new translation tools—and making them a lot better.

 

“AI translation is really helpful for things to do with tone and context, especially dialect,” Denman said. "My clients have said that dialect is becoming a really big barrier when it comes to, like, Google Translate because it doesn't understand the differences between the same language with different regions and countries."

 

But if non-English speakers ask ChatGPT for help with personal issues, that can put them at risk.

 

“Basically, if you wouldn't tell it to a stranger, don't tell it to the AI," Denman said. "So even if it's something like asking why you're having a specific health issue, we are kind of at the mercy of companies when it comes to trusting that they'll protect our data and not sell it to, say, insurance companies that will want to know about health problems in a specific area and then raise rates.”

 

Denman also teaches participants how to spot housing scams on Facebook Marketplace, or gauge whether the voice on the other end of the phone is actually a government official or an AI-generation.

 

"Unfortunately, the scams move faster than some of the warnings and it's getting very smart," Denman said.

 

Once participants finish the class, they get to take home a brand new Lenovo tablet. That's thanks to a generous IRC donor. Denman says that kind of technology is essential to navigating doctor's offices, banking, and self-sufficiency.

 

And despite its threats, Denman refuses to villainize artificial intelligence.

 

"AI is a tool like any other thing," they said. "Like a hammer, it can be used to fix big problems and it can be used to damage the wall entirely."

 

Denman teaches the digital safety classes in English. Thanks to a real-life translator on the other end of a phone, the lessons are translated into 10 different languages.

 

But IRC says it would be a whole lot cheaper to use an AI translator instead."

Spokane Public Radio

Eliza Billingham

December 10, 2025

https://www.spokanepublicradio.org/regional-news/2025-12-10/artificial-intelligence-language-translation-international-rescue-committee-spokane

#Metaglossia 

#metaglossia_mundus 

"What you don’t realize about theatrical translators

Christopher Hampton, veteran English-language translator, and Daniël Cohen, longtime Dutch-language translator, weigh in on the job that’s trickier than it seems, their specific works and plays versus musicals.

 

Ruthie Fierberg

December 11, 2025 

 

Theatrical translation is much more than converting words in the original language to words with equivalent meaning in a new one. Though a translation is nothing without meaning and clarity, those attributes are not enough. Theatrical translators must consider the style and tone of the show, the way in which language is used (differentiating direct and literal from poetic and beatific), linguistic history (matching words to the era in which the piece is set), cultural understanding (choosing references that ring true for a new audience), rhythm, phrasing and character. 

 

“It’s juggling with 10 balls at the same time,” said Daniël Cohen, a Dutch playwright, lyricist director and translator who has translated more than a dozen musicals from English to Dutch. At the end of the day, these myriad factors that translators consider combine to achieve a simple — if not easy — goal. “The aim is to try and deliver as accurate a translation as possible,” declared Christopher Hampton, a British playwright and translator who has translated dozens of plays into English. “Your duty really, as a translator, is to get out of the way and present as close as you can to what the author intended.” 

 

On Broadway, it’s been historically rare for a musical to have originated in a language other than English. One of the most famous is the French “Les Misérables,” with lyrics by translator Herbert Kretzmer; the most recent is the Korean “Maybe Happy Ending,” translated by its original writing team, Will Aronson and Hue Park. More common is the export of American musicals to countries around the world, which require translation from English to other languages. 

 

When it comes to straight plays on Broadway, there is a long tradition of English translations. Many of the so-called classics originated outside of English: Sophocles’ Greek, Chekhov’s Russian, Ibsen’s Norwegian, Molière’s French. Modern translations have been fewer and farther between. But the fall of this 2025-2026 Broadway season has welcomed three: Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” a translation from French to English by Beckett; Sophocles’ Oedipus, a new adapted English translation by Robert Icke; and Yasmina Reza’s “Art,” a revival of the Tony Award-winning play with translation from French to English by Hampton.

 

There is a distinct art to translation, a necessary discipline for cultural exchange. But, according to Hampton, the practice of hiring a specifically theatrical translator — rather than someone who can simply reword — is fairly new.

 

A tale of two translators

The distinction between academic and performative translation gained prominence in the 1960s, both according to this scholar and Hampton’s own experience.

 

Hampton began working for London’s Royal Court as soon as he completed university, and the Royal Court wanted to shake things up. “They had developed a theory that the classics ought to be translated by playwrights, not by academic translators because, prior to that, whenever there was an Ibsen or a Chekhov production, they would use the Oxford edition translated by some eminent linguist academic,” Hampton explained. But the Royal Court wanted to emphasize “speakable dialogue,” as Hampton put it. He was assigned Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya,” his first ever attempt. 

 

But Hampton doesn’t speak Russian. The Royal Court paired him with a Russian woman who made a literal translation, then Hampton created the play version from that. Soon, he was called to do Ibsen (he doesn’t speak Norwegian). “I found that I really enjoyed the process of translation,” Hampton said of his early exposure to the job. “As opposed to writing your own own plays, it was like going to the gym or something. It was a linguistic exercise.” 

 

Eventually, Hampton transitioned to translate French — a language in which he is actually fluent. Years later, that led him to Reza and “Art.”

 

Cohen took a different path to translation — one forged from necessity. As a theater director in Amsterdam, Cohen wanted to stage Stephen Sondheim’s “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” “In my youthful arrogance, I thought, ‘Well, I’ve never done this before, but I’m sure I can do it,’” he recalled. Directing his own translated text confirmed firsthand the truth in the Royal Court’s 1960s theory. As Cohen said, “It taught me that all the things that I invented writing at my desk weren’t necessarily the best choices for the actors.”

 

How Hampton translates

Hampton describes translating as “a huge number of small decisions.” With a comedy, like “Art,” those choices are not only about how actors can perform the play, but how the text allows them to elicit laughter from the audience. “The way to do that is often the phrasing,” Hampton said. “That often has to do with word order.” Even in a straight play, there is musicality to consider."

 

https://www.broadwaynews.com/what-you-dont-realize-about-theatrical-translators/

#Metaglossia 

#metaglossia_mundus 

"L’Association Camerounaise pour la Traduction de la Bible et l’Alphabétisation (CABTAL) a inauguré son nouveau Complexe Missionnel à Efoulan à Yaoundé, marquant une étape importante dans sa mission de soutenir les individus, les communautés, les églises et les partenaires.

Le Complexe Missionnel CABTAL est équipé d’une imprimerie qui facilitera la production de documents liés à la traduction de la Bible et à la promotion de la littératie. L’organisation prévoit de traduire la Bible dans 17 nouvelles langues et de lancer de nouveaux partenariats pour soutenir ses activités. C’est aussi un bâtiment de quatre niveaux en dehors du sous-sol. Son objectif est de « faciliter le déploiement du corps de Christ en créant un cadre agréable et propice pour le repos et la ressource ». C’est ce qu’à laissé entendre Jean Marc ZE, président du conseil d’administration du CABTAL.

Le Directeur Général de CABTAL, Dr Emmanuel Keyeh Lufang, a souligné que l’objectif de l’organisation est de voir les individus et les communautés transformés par la Parole de Dieu dans leur langue maternelle. Il a également annoncé que CABTAL a déjà traduit le Nouveau Testament dans 38 langues camerounaises et l’Ancien Testament dans deux langues. « C’est un centre mis sur pied pour générer des ressources et pouvoir financer plusieurs travaux, faciliter la traduction de la Bible, le développement communautaire….. »

L’inauguration du Complexe Missionnel CABTAL est un pas en avant vers la réalisation de la vision de l’organisation de promouvoir la littératie et la traduction de la Bible au Cameroun."
11 décembre 2025
Valère Francine Manuela MBANGO KOUOH
https://chretiens.com/chretiensdumonde/chretiens-du-cameroun/lassociation-camerounaise-pour-la-traduction-de-la-bible-et-lalphabetisation-a-son-nouveau-local/2025/12/11/10/30/
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

Santiago Artozqui assesses the linguistic strategies and sociohistorical stakes involved in retranslating Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 novel «Gone with the Wind» into French in 2020.

"In 2020, Éditions Gallmeister published Autant en emporte le vent, a French version of Margaret Mitchell’s lone novel Gone with the Wind, in a new translation by Josette Chicheportiche. The same day, Éditions Gallimard rereleased an earlier translation by Pierre-François Caillé from 1938, accompanied by the preface that J. M. G. Le Clézio wrote in 1989, and by excerpts from the correspondence between the author and her translator. Recent events, impossible for either publishing house to have foreseen, have triggered a global, collective reflection on the place of Blacks in societies in which they are discriminated against. Without a desire to read these two translations exclusively through the lens of the Black Lives Matter movement, it is all the same interesting to note how, seen from this angle, both say “almost the same thing.”

 

Margaret Mitchell, Autant en emporte le vent, translated from the American English by Josette Chicheportiche, Gallmeister, Vol. 1, 720 p., 13€ – Vol. 2, 720 p., 13€.

 

Margaret Mitchell, Autant en emporte le vent, translated from the American English by Pierre-François Caillé, Gallimard Folio, Vol. 1, 784 p., 13€ – Vol. 2, 832 p., 13€.

 

Ever since its original publication, Gone with the Wind has invited superlatives. In 1936, this first novel by an unknown writer was “the most read,” “the most sold,” and, three years later, the eponymous film was “the most watched,” “the highest grossing”… The two French editions published in 2020 have not broken from this tradition—the back cover blurbs mention its “immense success,” its “mythical title,” its “unparalleled historical fresco.” Le Clézio, in his 1989 preface, climbed aboard, affirming in his opening line: “Gone with the Wind is a unique and exceptional book, it is the perfect novel,” and going on to evoke the millions of copies sold and the one hundred and twenty million viewers of the film.

 

This success and the position the book has taken in Western culture is enough to justify the necessity of a new translation into French, but as Marie Vrinat-Nikolov explained in Retraduire: pourquoi ? [“Retranslation: Why Bother?”, En Attendant Nadeau, 7 August 2017], all such justification is pointless: regardless of the text in question, we must retranslate, not against earlier translations, but with them. A translation is a reading, it evolves over time, and this evolution orients the placement of certain markers which, as they provide the text with a frame of reference, anchor a translation within its era.

 

The first of these markers is surely the title. Both French publishers stuck with Autant en emporte le vent, the octosyllabic title already crowned in France by cinematic, editorial, and commercial glory that it would have been foolish to do without. It has a better ring to it than “Emporté par le vent,” a more literal translation that is rather flat, but this embellishment diverts attention from the message: something has been carried off by the wind. This unnamed thing, central to the book’s premise, is the pro-slavery idyllic society constructed by the Whites, a sort of lost paradise where Blacks were happy and stayed in their place. The novel tells the story of Scarlett O’Hara, a wealthy heiress who is going to lose it all because of the War. What follows are fifteen hundred pages of adventures, drama, and unexpected developments during which Scarlett attempts to recover what she considers to be her due: Tara, the family plantation, the literary symbol of a Golden Age to which the American Civil War put an end. But in between the love scenes, the balls, and the battles, this “unparalleled historical fresco” offhandedly defends the idea that Blacks are inferior beings.

 

Consider the following excerpt, in which Pork, one of the slaves on the plantation, presents the woman he has just married to his master (Gerald). She is quick to thank her new master.

 

From Gone with the Wind, 1936:

 

When she spoke, her voice was not so slurred as most negroes’ and she chose her words more carefully.

 

“Good evenin’, young Misses. Mist’ Gerald, I is sorry to ‘sturb you, but I wanted to come here and thank you agin fo’ buyin’ me and my chile. Lots of gentlemens might a’ bought me but they wouldn’t a’ bought my Prissy, too, jes’ to keep me frum grievin’ and I thanks you. I’m gwine do my bes’ fo’ you and show you I ain’t forgettin’.”

 

“Hum–hurrump,” said Gerald, clearing his throat in embarrassment at being caught openly in an act of kindness.

 

Translation by Pierre-François Caillé, 1938:

 

Lorsqu’elle parlait, sa voix n’était pas aussi confuse que celle de la plupart des Noirs et elle s’exprimait avec plus de recherche.

 

— Bonsoi’, mes jeunes demoiselles. Missié Gé’ald, moi je suis t’iste de vous dé’anger, mais je voulais veni’ vous ‘eme’cier de m’avoi’achetée avec l’enfant. Des tas de missiés ils voulaient m’acheter, mais ils voulaient pas acheter ma P’issy pou’ m’empêcher d’avoi’ du chag’in et je vous ‘eme’cie. Moi je fe’ai tout ce que je pou’ai pou’ vous et pou’ vous mont’er que moi j’oublie pas.

 

— Hum… hum… dit Gérald en s’éclaircissant la gorge. Il était fort gêné d’être pris en flagrant délit de bonté.

 

Translation by Josette Chicheportiche, 2020:

 

Lorsqu’elle parla, sa voix n’était pas aussi confuse que celle de la plupart des Noirs et elle choisissait ses mots avec plus de soin.

 

— Bonsoir, jeunes demoiselles. M’sieur Gerald, je suis désolée d’vous déranger, mais je voulais venir vous remercier encore que vous m’avez achetée, moi et ma p’tite. Des tas de messieurs m’auraient peut-être achetée, mais y auraient pas acheté ma Prissy aussi pour pas que je pleure et je vous remercie. J’ferai de mon mieux pour vous et pour vous montrer que j’oublie pas.

 

— Hum, hum, fit Gerald, se raclant la gorge, gêné d’être pris en flagrant délit de bonté.

 

Evidently, on a formal level, the 1938 transliteration of Dilcey’s “patois” doesn’t hold up very well today—the colonialist echoes here are a bit too blatant—and in her translation, Josette Chicheportiche offers to this character a mode of speech that is more comfortable for the contemporary reader, simply because it is less caricatured and less crude. And yet, in the above excerpt, neither of the translators can change the implications of the two sentences that frame Dilcey’s line. In the first of these, the omniscient narrator announces that the speech that is about to follow (despite its approximated syntax) is “less slurred” and “chosen more carefully” than that of “most negroes.” In a tale that endeavors to describe an era with realism and great attention to detail, this “universal truth” is a lie, as much during the period the story takes place—when men such as Frederick Douglass distinguished themselves by their eloquence—as it would have been in the era of the book’s initial publication, when writers such as Zora Neale Hurston were authoring books destined to become classics of American literature. As for the second sentence, where the narrator informs us that Gerald is embarrassed to have been “caught openly in an act of kindness,” suffice it to say that the benevolent act that upsets his natural modesty is the purchase of two slaves, one of whom is a twelve-year-old girl.

 

But the most striking feature is that by comparing these two French translations, we note that the omniscient narrator, himself, has hardly changed over the past eight decades.

 

When she spoke, her voice was not so slurred as most negroes’ and she chose her words more carefully. (1936)

 

Lorsqu’elle parlait, sa voix n’était pas aussi confuse que celle de la plupart des Noirs et elle s’exprimait avec plus de recherche. (1938)

 

Lorsqu’elle parla, sa voix n’était pas aussi confuse que celle de la plupart des Noirs et elle choisissait ses mots avec plus de soin. (2020)

 

“Hum–hurrump,” said Gerald, clearing his throat in embarrassment at being caught openly in an act of kindness. (1936)

 

— Hum… hum… dit Gérald en s’éclaircissant la gorge. Il était fort gêné d’être pris en flagrant délit de bonté. (1938)

 

— Hum, hum, fit Gerald, se raclant la gorge, gêné d’être pris en flagrant délit de bonté. (2020)

 

The text is littered with examples of this sort. Over the course of the book’s pages, it becomes clear that this omniscient narrator’s racism—another marker that the novel hinges on—is not only more insidious, but also more deep-seated than the racism we thought we could make out in the transliteration of the slaves’ patois. Accordingly, even if it is worth pointing out the remarkable job that Josette Chicheportiche has done on the language and the overall text, the problem resides elsewhere. In this book, the slaves are happy with their lot and imagine nothing more for their lives than service to their master; that is enough to make them content, and no matter how much the translator fiddles with the syntax and refines the style, the very notion is racist, today as it was yesterday.

 

 

Hattie McDaniel, Olivia de Havilland, and Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind (1939)

Upon the initial release of the book, and most notably among those who were campaigning for civil rights, the numerous voices that were raised against the manner it represented slavery were largely met with indifference, stifled by its sales figures. An anecdote related by John Bracey, professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, can serve to illustrate the position of American authorities when it came to race in 1939; this regards extras the city of Atlanta recruited to act in vignettes at the film’s premiere. As Bracey explained, the idea was to dress them up like slaves and have them chant spirituals. All the area churches refused, except for one: Ebenezer Baptist, where Martin Luther King, Sr., the father of Martin Luther King, Jr., was a preacher. At the premiere of Gone with the Wind, a ten-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr. found himself seated on a cotton bale, made up like a “colored” from the good old days: a symbolic incarnation of the old South, brought along to amuse the white elites.

 

Let us also recall that Hattie McDaniel, the black actress who played Mammy, was not permitted to attend the opening because the cinema in which it was held was reserved strictly for whites. And at the Oscar ceremonies, where she received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, she was seated at the back of the hall, separate from the other actors. It makes sense that in a society like this, the arguments put forward by Gone with the Wind didn’t encounter much genuine pushback. 

 

That brings us back to the novel, a classic that is emblematic of an important side of American history. Not that of a Golden Age, the end of which is being lamented, but that of the fraction of America who, for the past eighty years, has lauded this novel and who sees itself in the values that it defends. As to these two new publications, the novel’s translation and its retranslation…When a novel tells us that slavery was great, there’s nothing the translator can do about that, because, as Umberto Eco put it, he or she can only say “almost the same thing” as the original. And yet, the publishers are not without resources. They have the option of adding a critical apparatus if they feel the work merits it. In this case, neither of the publishers felt it necessary. However—and this has nothing to do with current events, as it was equally true months and years ago—it wouldn’t have been meaningless to warn readers that the image this novel gives of Blacks is fallacious and that slavery, as it is depicted in the novel, is not in keeping with historical facts. Some might argue that this warning is entirely contained within the very word “novel.” They would be incorrect, as the novel and works of fiction are essential to the construction of the mental image that each of us has of the society we live in, and accordingly, to what we think.

 

Translated by Chris Clarke

 

This essay originally appeared in French in En Attendant Nadeau, No. 108, on July 1, 2020. Hopscotch Translation is grateful to the author and to the team of En Attendant Nadeau for their kind permission to publish this English translation."

 

https://hopscotchtranslation.com/2025/12/09/translations-come-and-go-racism-remains/

#Metaglossia 

#metaglossia_mundus 

"Artificio Processes Documents in 80+ Languages, Enabling Multinational Corporations to Automate Global Operations
News provided by

EIN Presswire
Dec 09, 2025, 8:23 AM ET

Advanced OCR and NLP capabilities now support cross-border document processing in 80+ languages, eliminating translation bottlenecks for multinational companies

Global enterprises shouldn't need separate document automation systems for each country—our multilingual platform delivers the same accuracy across 80+ languages.”— CEO, Artificio Products Inc.
IRVINE, CA, UNITED STATES, December 9, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Artificio Products Inc., a leader in AI-powered intelligent document processing and enterprise workflow automation, today announced that its platform now processes documents in more than 80 languages, positioning the company as a comprehensive solution for multinational corporations managing cross-border document operations. This expanded multilingual capability eliminates translation bottlenecks, reduces operational costs, and accelerates global business processes for enterprises operating across multiple countries and regions.

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Comprehensive Language Coverage Across Six Continents
Artificio's multilingual document processing capabilities span major global languages including English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, and Polish across Europe; Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Bengali, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, and Arabic across Asia and the Middle East; and numerous regional languages serving local business needs worldwide.

The platform's advanced optical character recognition technology handles diverse scripts including Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese characters, Japanese Kanji, Korean Hangul, and Devanagari scripts with exceptional accuracy. Unlike generic OCR tools that struggle with non-Latin scripts or require separate processing pipelines for different language families, Artificio's unified architecture automatically detects document language and applies optimized extraction models without manual configuration.

"Global enterprises shouldn't need separate document automation systems for each country where they operate," said Lal Singh, Founder and CEO of Artificio Products Inc. "Our multilingual platform delivers the same accuracy and automation capabilities across 80+ languages, enabling truly unified global document operations."

Financial institutions processing loan applications across multiple countries benefit from Artificio's ability to extract and validate financial data from documents in any language, automatically converting currencies, normalizing date formats, and ensuring regulatory compliance across jurisdictions. Manufacturing companies managing supplier documentation from China, Germany, Mexico, and Vietnam process purchase orders, invoices, and quality certificates through a single workflow regardless of document language.

Advanced Natural Language Processing Across Language Families
Artificio's platform combines optical character recognition with sophisticated natural language processing capabilities that understand context, terminology, and business logic across languages. The system doesn't simply extract text—it comprehends document meaning, identifies key entities, and applies business rules appropriate to each language and regional market.

For complex documents containing multiple languages, such as international shipping manifests or multinational corporate contracts, Artificio's AI agents automatically segment content by language, process each section with appropriate models, and synthesize results into unified structured data. This multi-language document handling capability proves particularly valuable for global logistics operations managing documentation in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese across transpacific shipping routes.

Insurance companies processing claims documentation submitted by multilingual policyholders achieve 92% straight-through processing rates regardless of document language. Healthcare organizations handling patient records and medical documentation across diverse populations maintain HIPAA compliance while processing information in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Arabic, and Tagalog through unified workflows.

Right-to-Left Language Support and Regional Script Variations
Artificio provides native support for right-to-left languages including Arabic, Hebrew, Urdu, and Persian, maintaining proper text direction, alignment, and layout understanding critical for accurate document processing. The platform handles regional script variations and dialects, recognizing differences between Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Brazilian and European Portuguese, and Latin American and Castilian Spanish.

The system's adaptive learning capabilities improve accuracy for specific industry terminology and regional language variations over time. When processing legal contracts in French Canadian versus Metropolitan French, or technical documentation in British versus American English, Artificio's AI agents learn terminology preferences and regional conventions, ensuring outputs match local business requirements.

Eliminating Translation Bottlenecks in Global Workflows
Traditional approaches to multilingual document processing require manual translation before automation can begin, creating days or weeks of delay in time-sensitive business processes. Artificio eliminates these translation bottlenecks by processing native-language documents directly, extracting structured data, and delivering outputs in the organization's preferred working language when needed.

A multinational retail corporation reduced purchase order processing time from 5 days to 4 hours by implementing Artificio's multilingual automation across supplier documentation in English, Mandarin, Hindi, Spanish, and Vietnamese. The company eliminated translation costs exceeding $500,000 annually while improving order accuracy and accelerating inventory replenishment cycles.

A global pharmaceutical company processing regulatory submissions across North America, Europe, and Asia automated compliance documentation in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, and Korean. The organization achieved 75% reduction in regulatory filing preparation time while ensuring consistent data quality across all language versions of submission packages.

Technical Architecture Enabling Multilingual Intelligence
Artificio's multilingual capabilities leverage advanced machine learning models trained on diverse language datasets, including both common global languages and less prevalent regional languages. The platform employs transfer learning techniques that enable high accuracy even for languages with limited training data, leveraging linguistic similarities across language families.

The system's ensemble architecture combines multiple AI models optimized for different aspects of multilingual document understanding. Vision transformer models handle layout analysis independent of language, while language-specific natural language processing models extract semantic meaning and business entities. An intelligent arbitration layer combines outputs from multiple models to maximize accuracy across all supported languages.

For organizations operating in specialized industries, Artificio's platform supports custom vocabulary training, enabling high accuracy on technical terminology, industry jargon, and proprietary product names across languages. Pharmaceutical companies processing drug safety reports, automotive manufacturers managing supplier quality documents, and telecommunications providers handling service agreements all benefit from domain-specific multilingual models.

Compliance and Data Sovereignty Across Jurisdictions
Artificio's multilingual platform addresses data sovereignty and regulatory compliance requirements critical for cross-border document processing. Organizations can deploy the platform within specific geographic regions, ensuring documents processed in European Union countries remain within EU data centers for GDPR compliance, while Asian operations utilize regional infrastructure meeting local data protection requirements.
The platform maintains audit trails and processing logs in multiple languages, supporting regulatory reporting and compliance verification across jurisdictions. When European financial regulators require German-language audit documentation, while Asian regulators mandate local-language records, Artificio generates jurisdiction-specific compliance outputs from the same source documents.

Real-Time Language Detection and Adaptive Processing
Artificio's intelligent intake agents automatically detect document language upon receipt, routing content through appropriate processing pipelines without manual configuration. When processing mixed-language document batches—such as international vendor invoices arriving via email from suppliers worldwide—the system identifies each document's language and applies optimized extraction models automatically.
The platform handles code-switching and multilingual documents that contain embedded content in multiple languages. When processing English contracts containing Spanish legal clauses, or Chinese technical specifications with English product codes, Artificio's AI agents maintain context across language transitions, ensuring complete and accurate data extraction.

Integration with Global Enterprise Systems
Artificio's multilingual document processing integrates seamlessly with international ERP deployments, supporting SAP installations across Europe and Asia, Oracle systems managing North American and Latin American operations, and Microsoft Dynamics implementations serving global enterprise customers. The platform handles language-specific field mappings, translates codes and classifications when needed, and ensures data consistency across multinational system landscapes.

For organizations utilizing region-specific enterprise software—such as Japanese accounting systems, German HR platforms, or Chinese procurement systems—Artificio's AI agents adapt outputs to match system expectations including date formats, number formats, and character encoding requirements. This localization extends beyond simple translation to ensure seamless integration with local business systems.

Deployment Options for Multinational Organizations
Artificio offers flexible deployment options supporting multinational enterprises' diverse needs. Global deployments provide centralized multilingual processing with regional data centers ensuring compliance with local data protection regulations. Country-specific instances enable localized operations while maintaining consistent processing capabilities across the organization's global footprint.

The platform's scalable architecture handles varying document volumes across regions, accommodating high-volume markets like China and India while efficiently serving smaller regional operations. Organizations pay only for languages and regions actively used, with the flexibility to add new language support as business needs evolve.

Pricing and Availability
Artificio's multilingual document processing capabilities are available immediately for existing customers, with new organizations able to access the platform through flexible subscription plans. Language support is included in standard platform pricing, with enterprise customers receiving dedicated support for multilingual deployments, custom vocabulary training, and integration with regional business systems.

About Artificio Products Inc.
Artificio Products Inc. provides enterprise-grade AI-powered document processing and workflow automation solutions. The company's platform combines specialized AI agents that work collaboratively to automate document intake, classification, extraction, validation, and integration with business systems across 80+ languages. Serving multinational enterprises including Fortune 500 companies, financial institutions, healthcare organizations, logistics providers, and manufacturing firms, Artificio processes millions of documents monthly with industry-leading accuracy and security. The platform's no-code interface enables business users to deploy sophisticated automation without technical expertise, while maintaining enterprise-grade security and compliance across global operations. For more information, visit https://artificio.ai"
https://www.cbs42.com/business/press-releases/ein-presswire/873831589/artificio-processes-documents-in-80-languages-enabling-multinational-corporations-to-automate-global-operations/
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Three Utica Community Schools translators, who help support communications in Albanian, Arabic and Spanish, recently received their Language Line certifications.

 

The translators are UCS employees who work full time in the district. The district paid them to take the courses and get certified as part of their positions at UCS.

 

“The translators work during the day and are busy with enrollment, Individualized Education Plan (IEP) meetings, discipline/student code of conduct meetings, and support communications between the buildings and the families,” Utica Community Schools Public Relations Coordinator Jennifer Kane said in an email. “Buildings can contact the translators directly and staff can send them documents to be translated.”

 

They can be asked to perform extra duties that require them to work extra hours, such as at open houses, conferences, job fairs and back-to-school events.

 

“I think the certification adds to their credentials and ensures we have high quality translators using best practices in the field of translation and interpretation,” Jennifer Hernandez, Utica Community Schools executive director of state and federal programs, said in an email.

 

Luljeta Guri, Aned Bazan and Raad Tomika received their certifications after completing a six-hour online course going over the essentials of interpreting, and three hours of instructor‑led live sessions. The course covers skills such as attentive listening, dual-tasking, note-taking, memory development, and professional presentation and delivery.

 

“Going through the certification program helped with refreshing my industry-based knowledge, assessing the current level of my translation and interpretation skills, and comparing it with the current industry standards,” Guri said in a press release.

 

One key area that their work touches on is enrollment. They are there in every step of the process offering guidance and support to non-English-speaking families.

 

“The adjustment journey is normal but is also challenging and the starting point of that journey is proper communication,” Guri said in a press release. “The difficulties diverse families are facing are not limited to language proficiency.”

 

Guri said the challenges also include balancing new and old ways of life among family members.

 

“We are aware that the experience of working with a diverse population is enriching and challenging at the same time,” Guri said in a press release. “People who come from a diverse culture bring with them life views and approaches that are unique and different. Along with those values they also bring a desire to fit into the U.S. culture. We as interpreters can relate to that.”

 

For more information, visit uticak12.org."

By: Sarah Wright | Shelby-Utica News | Published December 8, 2025

https://www.candgnews.com/amp/news/utica-community-schools-translators-obtain-language-line-certifications-9759

#Metaglossia 

#metaglossia_mundus 

Already longlisted for the prestigious Man Booker International Prize in 2016 for her translation of Maylis de Kerangal’s Mend the Living, and named on the New York Times’ Top Ten Books of 2023 for her translation of De Kerangal’s Eastbound, Moore has now won the 2025 Governor General’s Literary Award for translation for Uiesh/Somewhere.

"Jessica Moore wins 2025 Governor General’s Literary Award for translation

...Moore has now won the 2025 Governor General’s Literary Award for translation for Uiesh/Somewhere.

In the poetry collection, Innu elder Joséphine Bacon — who writes first in French and then self-translates into Innu-Aimun — reflects on her experiences in the northern wilderness of Nitassinan and the bustling city life. Working from the French text and Bacon’s voice, says Moore, meant tuning into the author’s cadence and ensuring it resonated in English.

 

“It’s a difficult prize to win,” she recalls. “All genres are considered together, and I assumed there was no way I could win with a book of poetry.”

 

Then came the phone call. “My whole body was tingling, and I really tried to soak it in,” she says.

 

‘Translation is the rewriting of a work in a new language’

Moore’s path to becoming a French-to-English translator began early. Raised by English-speaking parents, she was encouraged by her grandmother to learn additional languages. She attended a bilingual elementary school, learning in French for half of the day, and eventually did an exchange in Lausanne, Switzerland. Moore then spent a year abroad in Aix-en-Provence, France, where she took her first course in literary translation.

 

These experiences cemented her decision to pursue translation as a career.

 

“It requires so much care,” she says. “It’s often in the stage of revision that I see things and make sure to not lose something in translation. I look for creative ways to include the intention and heart of the original.”

 

Moore’s passion for translation comes from two impulses, she notes: “First, I have always been a writer, and translation is the rewriting of the work in a new language. The second impulse is the deep satisfaction of arranging things in just the right order and delivering words from one language to another.”

 

Honing her craft

Choosing Concordia’s MA in Translation Studies was “the right choice,” says Moore. “The program allowed me to do an interdisciplinary master’s so I had one foot in Concordia’s English department (creative writing) and another in the translation department.”

 

It also helped launch her career. Her first literary translation — which started as part of her master’s thesis — was Turkana Boy, a 2012 novel-poem by Jean-François Beauchemin. The book follows a grieving father who grapples with the mysterious disappearance of his son by searching for meaning in the fossilized remains of “Turkana Boy.”

 

That work helped shape Moore’s own creative practice. In 2012, she published Everything, Now, a hybrid lyric-memoir about navigating grief after the sudden loss of her partner. She uses her own translation of Turkana Boy as a template.

 

“The two were interwoven,” she explains. “I took phrases from the book as scaffolding for my own pieces — it was a call and response.”

 

For Moore, her writing and translation remain inseperable.

 

“I find the greatest strength for translating is that skill and sensibility as a writer,” she says. “I feel very clearly how the writing serves the translation.”"

December 9, 2025 | By Rita Simonetta

https://www.concordia.ca/cunews/offices/advancement/2025/12/09/jessica-moore-wins-2025-governor-general-s-literary-award-for-translation.html

#Metaglossia 

#metaglossia_mundus 

New research shows our pragmatic language abilities — which allow us to understand nonliteral expressions like sarcasm or metaphors — can be grouped together based on what types of inferences they require. MIT researchers identified three clusters of pragmatic skills based on understanding social conventions and rules, how the physical world works, and differences in tone.

"MIT researchers identified three cognitive skills that we use to infer what someone really means.

 

In everyday conversation, it’s critical to understand not just the words that are spoken, but the context in which they are said. If it’s pouring rain and someone remarks on the “lovely weather,” you won’t understand their meaning unless you realize that they’re being sarcastic.

 

Making inferences about what someone really means when it doesn’t match the literal meaning of their words is a skill known as pragmatic language ability. This includes not only interpreting sarcasm but also understanding metaphors and white lies, among many other conversational subtleties.

 

“Pragmatics is trying to reason about why somebody might say something, and what is the message they’re trying to convey given that they put it in this particular way,” says Evelina Fedorenko, an MIT associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences and a member of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research.

 

New research from Fedorenko and her colleagues has revealed that these abilities can be grouped together based on what types of inferences they require. In a study of 800 people, the researchers identified three clusters of pragmatic skills that are based on the same kinds of inferences and may have similar underlying neural processes.

 

One of these clusters includes inferences that are based on our knowledge of social conventions and rules. Another depends on knowledge of how the physical world works, while the last requires the ability to interpret differences in tone, which can indicate emphasis or emotion.

 

Fedorenko and Edward Gibson, an MIT professor of brain and cognitive sciences, are the senior authors of the study, which appears today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The paper’s lead authors are Sammy Floyd, a former MIT postdoc who is now an assistant professor of psychology at Sarah Lawrence College, and Olessia Jouravlev, a former MIT postdoc who is now an associate professor of cognitive science at Carleton University.

 

The importance of context

 

Much past research on how people understand language has focused on processing the literal meanings of words and how they fit together. To really understand what someone is saying, however, we need to interpret those meanings based on context.

 

“Language is about getting meanings across, and that often requires taking into account many different kinds of information — such as the social context, the visual context, or the present topic of the conversation,” Fedorenko says.

 

As one example, the phrase “people are leaving” can mean different things depending on the context, Gibson points out. If it’s late at night and someone asks you how a party is going, you may say “people are leaving,” to convey that the party is ending and everyone’s going home.

 

“However, if it’s early, and I say ‘people are leaving,’ then the implication is that the party isn’t very good,” Gibson says. “When you say a sentence, there’s a literal meaning to it, but how you interpret that literal meaning depends on the context.”

 

About 10 years ago, with support from the Simons Center for the Social Brain at MIT, Fedorenko and Gibson decided to explore whether it might be possible to precisely distinguish the types of processing that go into pragmatic language skills.

 

One way that neuroscientists can approach a question like this is to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of participants as they perform different tasks. This allows them to link brain activity in different locations to different functions. However, the tasks that the researchers designed for this study didn’t easily lend themselves to being performed in a scanner, so they took an alternative approach.

 

This approach, known as “individual differences,” involves studying a large number of people as they perform a variety of tasks. This technique allows researchers to determine whether the same underlying brain processes may be responsible for performance on different tasks.

 

To do this, the researchers evaluate whether each participant tends to perform similarly on certain groups of tasks. For example, some people might perform well on tasks that require an understanding of social conventions, such as interpreting indirect requests and irony. The same people might do only so-so on tasks that require understanding how the physical world works, and poorly on tasks that require distinguishing meanings based on changes in intonation — the melody of speech. This would suggest that separate brain processes are being recruited for each set of tasks.

 

The first phase of the study was led by Jouravlev, who assembled existing tasks that require pragmatic skills and created many more, for a total of 20. These included tasks that require people to understand humor and sarcasm, as well as tasks where changes in intonation can affect the meaning of a sentence. For example, someone who says “I wanted blue and black socks,” with emphasis on the word “black,” is implying that the black socks were forgotten.

 

“People really find ways to communicate creatively and indirectly and non-literally, and this battery of tasks captures that,” Floyd says.

 

Components of pragmatic ability

The researchers recruited study participants from an online crowdsourcing platform to perform the tasks, which took about eight hours to complete. From this first set of 400 participants, the researchers found that the tasks formed three clusters, related to social context, general knowledge of the world, and intonation. To test the robustness of the findings, the researchers continued the study with another set of 400 participants, with this second half run by Floyd after Jouravlev had left MIT.

 

With the second set of participants, the researchers found that tasks clustered into the same three groups. They also confirmed that differences in general intelligence, or in auditory processing ability (which is important for the processing of intonation), did not affect the outcomes that they observed.

 

In future work, the researchers hope to use brain imaging to explore whether the pragmatic components they identified are correlated with activity in different brain regions. Previous work has found that brain imaging often mirrors the distinctions identified in individual difference studies, but can also help link the relevant abilities to specific neural systems, such as the core language system or the theory of mind system.

 

This set of tests could also be used to study people with autism, who sometimes have difficulty understanding certain social cues. Such studies could determine more precisely the nature and extent of these difficulties. Another possibility could be studying people who were raised in different cultures, which may have different norms around speaking directly or indirectly.

 

“In Russian, which happens to be my native language, people are more direct. So perhaps there might be some differences in how native speakers of Russian process indirect requests compared to speakers of English,” Jouravlev says.

 

The research was funded by the Simons Center for the Social Brain at MIT, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation."

https://news.mit.edu/2025/when-it-comes-language-context-matters-1210

#Metaglossia 

#metaglossia_mundus 

"A team of researchers from Saarbrücken and Leipzig has examined around 1,700 languages to identify structures that might occur universally. Of 191 grammatical patterns – known as linguistic universals – one third were found to be present in the languages studied. The team, led by Annemarie Verkerk of Saarland University and Russell Gray from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, has published its findings in Nature Human Behaviour.

 

Natural languages follow certain patterns. To facilitate the analysis and comparison of these patterns, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig made the world’s largest database of grammatical features publicly available two years ago. This database, known as ‘Grambank’, was developed with contributions from over a hundred linguists worldwide and provides the foundation for the current study on shared characteristics among languages. ‘We used several highly complex statistical methods to analyse the Grambank data in order to identify which of the 191 hypothesized linguistic universals were consistently observed across all languages,’ explains Annemarie Verkerk, Junior Professor of Language Science at Saarland University. By using a variety of statistical approaches, the research team was able to achieve a level of statistical precision far beyond that offered by earlier studies.

 

‘Up until now, linguists have typically focused on languages that are geographically distant from one another to avoid excessive similarities within the same language family – for example, comparing Slavic languages not only with other Indo-European languages such as Italian and Romanian, but also with languages from, say, the Turkic or Afro-Asiatic language families,’ Verkerk notes. However, many of these previous studies not only restricted themselves to comparisons between a limited number of languages – resulting in reduced statistical significance – they also paid little attention to language history. ‘Our methods allow us to trace how languages have evolved over time and how they relate geographically to others. By making use of a kind of family tree for each individual language, we were able to exploit inter-language relationships to estimate how linguistic universals arise,’ explains Annemarie Verkerk.

 

Analyses from multiple perspectives confirmed that roughly one third of the 191 proposed universals appear as recurring patterns across all languages. ‘This is a clear indication that language evolution is not random. That’s why we need to continue studying language change to understand why so many languages share similar underlying grammatical structures. It seems very likely that there are deeply rooted principles governing how effective human communication systems are constructed,’ says Verkerk.

 

As an example of a language universal, Verkerk cites word order in sentences – whether verbs precede or follow objects and how this relates to other recurring patterns. In German, verbs typically precede the object, while in Japanese the reverse is true. A related feature is the order of adpositions and nouns. Adpositions are linking words that express a spatial or temporal relationship between a noun and other words or phrases in a sentence. German, for example, uses prepositions, which come before a noun or noun phrase, whereas Japanese uses postpositions, which come after a noun or noun phrase. The correlation between object–verb order and postpositions, as observed in Japanese, is among the strongest universals identified in the study. ‘Using Bayesian statistics, we calculated the probability that these universals can be recognized as grammatical patterns across different languages,’ explains Verkerk.

 

Verkerk‘s research colleague and a co-author of the study Russell Gray of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig explains how the team chose to present their results: ‘We debated whether we should present the findings as a “glass half-empty scenario” or as a “glass half-full”. Should we emphasize how many of the proposed universals lack robust statistical support, or should we highlight the solid evidence that we found for about a third of them?’ ‘Ultimately,’ says Gray, ‘we chose to focus on the recurring patterns and to demonstrate that human languages tend towards a limited set of preferred grammatical solutions, shaped by shared cognitive and communicative constraints.’

 

For future research in this field, Annemarie Verkerk recommends moving away from small samples of individual languages, focusing instead on large cross-linguistic datasets: ‘Future studies should not simply analyse dependencies between features appearing in multiple language systems, they should also consider how human languages have changed over time and which social, ecological and demographic factors have influenced their development.’

 

Wissenschaftliche Ansprechpartner:

Junior Professor Annemarie Verkerk

Department of Language Science and Technology

Saarland University

Tel.: +49 681 302-2550

Email: annemarie.verkerk@uni-saarland.de

 

Professor D. Russell Gray

Director of the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Tel.: +40 341 3550-259

Email: russell_gray@eva.mpg.de"

09.12.2025

https://idw-online.de/de/news863040

#Metaglossia 

#metaglossia_mundus 

 

"A groundbreaking new monolingual dictionary by Foras na Gaeilge that provides people with a new way to understand, use and learn the Irish language, without relying on dictionaries in English or in other languages, has gone live.

Until its publication, anyone trying to understand an unfamiliar Irish word or phrase typically had to look it up in an Irish-English dictionary...

An Foclóir Nua Gaeilge (The New Irish Dictionary) is the first comprehensive monolingual "Irish-Irish" dictionary and was launched by President Catherine Connolly at a special Foras na Gaeilge event in the EPIC Irish Emigration Museum in Dublin.

"A contemporary monolingual dictionary is an essential resource in any living language, in which the language itself and its uniqueness are defined in its own words and by its own community, instead of constantly being defined through the medium of another language," said President Connolly.

"This new dictionary places the Irish language and Irish speakers on an equal footing with other modern languages and communities.

"Irish-language dictionary resources are now a model of best practice for other minoritised languages around the world."

For generations, Irish speakers who encountered unfamiliar Irish words were forced to translate them into English and then search for definitions in English dictionaries.

"This tedious process not only created unnecessary barriers to learning but also shaped how Irish speakers understood the world - through the lens of English," CEO of Foras na Gaeilge Seán Ó Coinn said.

An initial tranche of 20,000 entries has gone live on Focloir.ie
"The new monolingual Irish dictionary changes this paradigm. Instead of asking 'What's the English for X?', speakers will now be empowered to ask 'What does X mean?' in their own language.

"This shift has the potential to transform the teaching and learning of Irish at all levels - from young children discovering new vocabulary for the first time, to advanced speakers seeking deeper linguistic insight," he added.

The monolingual Irish dictionary has several features that make it the first of its kind, such as reflecting Irish as a living language by including real-world, every-day, contemporary usage, aiming to re-affirm current good practice in the standard language as well as recognising common dialectal forms.

It also includes definitions of foreign words that are in common use in the Irish language, such as ad hoc, al fresco, baguette, cappuccino and aide-de-camp.

Work on compiling An Foclóir Nua Gaeilge began in September 2022, with Foras na Gaeilge chief dictionary editor Pádraig Ó Mianáin and dictionary programme manager Cormac Breathnach leading the project.

An initial tranche of 20,000 entries, comprising 40,000 word senses, has gone live on Focloir.ie.

The main phase of the dictionary project is scheduled to be completed by August 2027, by which time it will comprise 30,000 entries and 80,000 senses."
10 Dec 2025
Sharon Lynch
https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2025/1209/1548134-new-irish-dictionary/
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"IA inclusive : pourquoi les langues africaines sont un enjeu stratégique pour l'économie numérique

L'IA inclusive valorisant les langues africaines : réduire les biais, renforcer la souveraineté numérique et ouvrir de nouvelles opportunités économiques.

1. Pourquoi parler d'IA inclusive ?
L'IA est partout : traduction, assistants vocaux, chatbots, applications éducatives. Mais derrière ces progrès, une réalité inquiétante : plus de 80 % du contenu en ligne est produit dans une dizaine de langues, laissant de côté les milliers de langues africaines. Cette absence entraîne des biais culturels et linguistiques, avec un risque d'écarter des millions de citoyens du numérique.

2. Un levier économique sous-estimé
La valorisation des langues locales peut générer de nouvelles opportunités :

Éducation et formation : outils d'apprentissage adaptés aux langues locales.
Tourisme et culture : mise en valeur du patrimoine linguistique.
Innovation et emploi : création de postes pour les data engineers, linguistes, chercheurs.
Selon certains experts culturels à l'instar de Njeunga Yopa, les projections l'IA pourrait rapporter jusqu'à 2 900 milliards de dollars à l'économie africaine d'ici 2030, si son potentiel est exploité pleinement.

3. Les défis d'une IA inclusive en Afrique
Infrastructures insuffisantes : moins d'une centaine de data centers sur tout le continent.

Diversité linguistique extrême : plus de 2 000 langues, souvent non standardisées.

Manque de données annotées : sans corpus, impossible d'entraîner des modèles fiables.

Vision politique encore faible : besoin de financements et de stratégies nationales.

4. Stratégies pour construire des corpus inclusifs
Exploiter les sources publiques : actualités locales, blogs, mozilla commons, réseaux sociaux.

Collaborer avec les communautés : crowdsourcing, collecte via applis mobiles, partenariats avec des locuteurs natifs.

Créer des données synthétiques : paraphrases, back-translation, substitution lexicale.

Traduction et alignement : bâtir des corpus parallèles multilingues grâce à des ressources comme FLORES-200, metchoup translate ou JW300.

5. Étude de cas : le Medumba au Cameroun
Le Medumba, langue bamileke parlée par 200 000 personnes, illustre les difficultés. Faute de ressources numériques, chaque terme technique doit parfois être créé de toutes pièces. Une équipe de chercheurs a récemment constitué un corpus de 2 050 phrases traduites en Medumba. Résultat : un premier pas vers des modèles capables de traiter cette langue, mais aussi un exemple des efforts titanesques nécessaires pour chaque langue africaine.

6. Vers une souveraineté linguistique et numérique
Bâtir une IA inclusive, c'est :

Garantir la souveraineté numérique du continent.
Rendre la technologie accessible à tous, y compris aux populations non alphabétisées via les interfaces vocales.
Stimuler la création de start-ups locales spécialisées dans la data et l'IA.
Favoriser une économie de la connaissance ancrée dans les réalités culturelles africaines.
7. Conclusion & perspectives
L'Afrique ne doit pas seulement consommer l'IA, mais la co-construire. Chaque langue intégrée dans les modèles est une victoire contre l'exclusion numérique et une opportunité économique. La route est longue, mais les initiatives montrent qu'une IA inclusive est possible."
Chronique de Kemit Ing
ktc
29 septembre 2025 11:33
https://www.journaldunet.com/intelligence-artificielle/1544739-ia-inclusive-pourquoi-les-langues-africaines-sont-un-enjeu-strategique-pour-l-economie-numerique/
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"PEN America is delighted to announce the 2026 literary grant winners for works-in-progress. Juried by panels of esteemed and award-winning writers, editors, translators, and critics who are committed to recognizing their contemporaries, these winning works-in-progress show the potential for lasting literary impact. The following grant winners will be supported as they continue their important work. We look forward to seeing these bold and thought-provoking examples of literary excellence brought to the world.

Publishers, agents, and editors who wish to learn more about these projects are invited to contact the PEN America Literary Awards team at awards@pen.org.

PEN/Jean Stein Grants For Literary Oral History ($15,000)

The PEN/Jean Stein Grants for Literary Oral History recognize literary works of nonfiction that use oral history to illuminate an event, individual, place, or movement. The grants are made possible by a substantial contribution from American author and editor Jean Stein, whose groundbreaking work helped to popularize literary oral history. Since 2021, PEN America has conferred two grants with cash prizes of $15,000 each.

Judges: Katie Singer, Deborah Taffa, Raj Tawney

Dayna Bateman, Hustling Vinyl: A Hidden History of the Record Business

A personal examination of the music industry as it transitions from physical to digital formats, Dayna Bateman’s Hustling Vinyl: A Hidden History of the Record Business transcends a mere management chronicle by weaving together grief, cultural memory, and broader questions about exploitation in creative circles. From shame over her father’s career to recognition of its importance, the author’s project exposes the invisible labor that sustains artistic production while also reconciling her family legacy. With archival documentation and access to a group of historically exploited industry experts, many of whom launched rockstar careers, Bateman brings an analytical framework to what could otherwise be merely nostalgic. As the author notes, many key witnesses are aging or deceased making their voices a crucial archive. This book will fill a genuine gap in music industry literature by centering the experiences of those who made the record business function yet rarely received recognition or fair compensation for the joy they brought to millions.

Anja Aronowsky Cronberg, To Kill A Child

To Kill a Child by Anja Aronowsky Cronberg brings forward a subject that many of us might prefer to avoid. And yet, as Cronberg argues, the fact that filicide is not an uncommon occurrence should be reason enough for us to attempt an understanding, of both the crime and of those who commit it. A mother herself, Cronberg sits with a number of incarcerated women convicted of killing their own children. Contextualized alongside interviews of family and myriad professionals, we learn of lives lived before the crimes, and come to see just how seamlessly a “normal life” can ultimately turn to the deeply abnormal. While educated in Design History & Theory, Cronberg’s oral history project illustrates a practiced and empathetic interviewing style along with some incredibly literary writing. This will be a hard read for many, but in the end can speak to the humanity in all of us.

PEN/Phyllis Naylor Grant For Children’s And Young Adult Novelists ($5,000)

The PEN/Phyllis Naylor Grant for Children’s and Young Adult Novelists is offered annually to an author of children’s or young adult fiction for a novel-in-progress. The grant is made possible by a substantial contribution from PEN America Member and prolific author, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. The award was developed to help writers whose work is of high literary caliber and assist in the novel’s completion. The author of the winning manuscript is selected blindly by judges and will receive a $5,000 grant.

Judges: Chris Grabenstein, Lesa Cline-Ransome, Padma Venkatraman

Emily Whitman, The Fire Cub

This middle grade fantasy showcases excellent writing, sensory descriptions, and world building. The author’s decision to employ multiple points of view adds interest and the readers are provided with insights into the characters’ failings and humanity.

Mima, a 12-year-old orphan, lives with her aunt and uncle, who warn her to stay away from “Dreadwood”  – a forest that borders their farm. But something about Dreadwood calls out to Mima and she sneaks in whenever she can. Surrounded by the bushes and trees, watching the woodpeckers and worms, Mima feels safe there – until one day when she hears something roaring near the riverbank in Dreadwood. Like all intrepid adventurers, Mima isn’t scared away; instead she goes closer to investigate the source of the roar – and discovers a tiny treasure chest. She opens the chest – and sparks fly out. Unknown to her, one of the sparks enters her pocket… and out of her pocket emerges a lion cub with wings! Lonely Mima bonds instantly with this magical creature, and as it grows into a full-fledged lion, so does Mima’s courage and her ability to question the tales she has been told all her life about Dreadwood and the world beyond. Will she someday be so bold as to defy not only her uncle and aunt but also her king and country by escaping into the unknown on the back of her winged lion, in pursuit of freedom?

With language that sparkles, a feisty female protagonist whose character springs to life, a three-dimensional supporting cast and ambitious storytelling structure, The Fire Cub is a fantasy novel that we hope will enchant middle grade readers for many years to come.

PEN/Bare Life Review Grants ($5,000)

The PEN/Bare Life Review Grants support literary works in progress by immigrant and refugee writers, recognizing that the literature of migration is of inherent and manifest value. As of the 2024 grant conferral, PEN America confers two PEN/Bare Life Review Grants of $5,000 each.

The grants are made possible by a substantial contribution from The Bare Life Review, which celebrates world literature and has been a champion for migrant and diasporic arts.

Judges: Maria Kuznetsova, Rania Mamoun,Novuyo Tshuma

Simha Surendranathan, Annual Rings

Annual Rings is an impressive collection of powerful, moving poems. With a refined sensitivity to language, Surendranathan juxtaposes the daily brutalities of incarceration with the unbounded landscapes of the psyche. Here, thinking, feeling and dreaming become profound acts of freedom. Language becomes a mighty tool, metaphor and symbolism bringing into stark focus the human figure caged in the American prison cell. The prose is precise and sensuous, urgent and languid. Surendranathan takes us on epic migrations, from places private where language weaves delicate dreamscapes, to the prison block where public humiliations bludgeon the tongue. These poems move; they travel across cultures and languages—from Urdu to Malayalam to America’s various lexicons—excavating the ravages of confinement on the lofty human spirit. Here, poetry becomes a lifeline for the incarcerated subject, as life-giving as water. Through capturing life behind prison walls in such an exquisite register, Surendranathan invites us into a profound witnessing—at times a profound weeping—choosing life, life, life, at every turn.

Minerva Laveaga Luna, Reasons Why I’m Late to Places

Reasons Why I’m Late to Places is a memoir-in-essays that follows a Mexican-American author through her childhood during the devastating 1985 earthquake in Mexico City to her adulthood in America, where she navigates the challenges of immigration, premature menopause, misdiagnosis, and the way that women, especially immigrants, are often ignored or not heard correctly when they are suffering physically and emotionally. Through the themes of the passage of time, living out of time, and being late to places, the author not only tells her own story in a gripping, experimental, and unflinching way, but she also shares the narrative of any person who is struggling to be heard and truly known. Through her sensitive and life-affirming narrative, Luna demonstrates that we shouldn’t be sorry about being late to places–rather, we should celebrate that we have shown up at all.

PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants ($4,000)

Now in their 23rd year, the PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants promote the publication and reception of translated world literature into English. Established by a gift from Priscilla and Michael Henry Heim in response to the dismayingly low number of literary translations appearing in English, the fund has supported more than 200 projects since its inception.

For the 2026 cycle, the judges reviewed applications from a wide array of languages of origin, genres, and time periods. Selected from this vast field of applicants are 10 projects, including Indonesian, Wolof, Kven, Brazilian Portuguese,  Chinese, and more. Each translator will receive a grant of $2,000-4,000 to support the translation’s completion.

Judges: Elvira Blanco, Ezra Fitz, Denise Kripper, Elizabeth Lowe, Jenny McPhee, Mario Pereira, Shuchi Saraswat, Declan Spring

Dominica Chang’s translation from the French of Among the Dunes by Louis Camara

Among the Dunes is a novel by the Senegalese author Louis Camara narrated by Nestor, a stray dog in Saint-Louis who recounts his life and that of his master, offering sharp, satirical, yet compassionate critiques of human society and behavior. From a novel as polyphonic as this—written in French, rooted in Senegalese culture, and layered with traditional Wolof oral idioms—Dominica Chang has produced a pitch-perfect translation, one that retells the story in English while hitting all the right notes. A challenging task expertly handled with a keen ear and a deft hand. Fans of canine characters from Garth Stein’s Enzo to Graciliano Ramos’ Baleia will find, in her attentive rendering, much to love and reflect on.

Milena Sanabria Contreras and Allison Stickley’s translation from the Spanish of A Brief History of Failure by Fátima Villalta

Fátima Villalta was born in Nicaragua in 1994 and currently lives in exile in Mexico. Breve Historia del Fracaso (A Brief History of Failure) is a collection of short stories that takes the reader through one hundred years of Nicaraguan history, beginning in a not-too-distant future and ending with a story set in the early 1900s. This will be Villalta’s first publication to be translated into another language. Milena Sanabria Contreras and Allison Stickley’s translation is remarkable for how it renders the voices of the everyday Nicaraguans populating these stories—foot soldiers, small bureaucrats, young people, and artists. While retaining the intimacy of the stories, Contreras and Stickley deftly put forward a history that isn’t as well known in the anglophone world. Their absorbing translation will find new resonances in our politically unstable times.

Robin Driver’s translation from the Brazilian Portuguese of Aquarium Fish by Rafaela Tavares Kawasaki

Aquarium Fish (original title: Peixes de Aquário), a debut novel by Rafaela Tavares Kawasaki is a contemplative, female-focused family saga about the lives of Japanese immigrants and their descendants in the Brazilian state of São Paulo. Published in 2021, the book was shortlisted for Brazil’s Prêmio Mix Literário, a prize focused on literary works that deal with subjects related to the LGBTQ+ community, later the same year. Translator Robin Driver deftly captures the elegiac, but never too sentimental, tone of Kawasaki’s lyrical prose. The English translation will bring an important work of Japanese-Brazilian fiction to the English-speaking world, which has little knowledge of this overlooked community.

Eirill Alvilde Falck’s translation from the Kven and Norwegian of The Heart of the Forest by M. Seppola Simonsen

The Heart of the Forest is an award-winning poetry collection written in both Norwegian and Kven— the Kven people are a Finnic ethnic minority in northern Norway whose language is spoken by fewer than 10,000 people. M. Seppola Simonsen, a nonbinary poet, is from the Norwegian island of Senja, and their exquisite, short poems explore the Kven heritage and the intersection of identity, language, and geography. Eirill Alvilde Falck’s translations have appeared widely in anthologies and literary magazines. Her translations vividly capture Simonsen’s imagery and their ability to render the power and complexity of nature and humanity’s place in it.

Marissa Grunes’ translation from the Spanish of Antarctica by Fabián Espejel

Antarctica by Mexican poet and translator Fabián Espejel, winner of the Aguascalientes Fine Arts Award in Poetry, takes us on a geographical and imaginative journey that inversely mirrors the expeditions of Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, joining the long legacy of cultural fascination with Antarctica in the global south, and taking the reader through scenes of desire, loss, and the wild delight of language. This award will support an emerging translator bringing a new voice in Spanish-language poetry into English. Marissa Grunes’s translation is as musical and lyrical as it is experimental and bold and, above all, urgent. 

Eliza Marciniak’s translation from the Polish of The Secret of the Looking-Glass by Deotyma (pen name of Jadwiga Łuszczewska)

This visionary work of speculative fiction by 19th-century Polish female writer, poet and early feminist Jadwiga Łuszczewska (writing as Deotyma) combines elements of science fiction, Gothic horror, adventure story, and philosophical dialogue to address numerous issues still current today such as the dangers of technology and the boundaries between genius and madness. Eliza Marciniak’s translations of Polish authors have won various awards and been widely published. Her translation here successfully brings across the sparkling prose, the impeccably crafted narrative, and the erudite nature of the discussions between this novel’s forward-thinking characters.

Tímea Sipos’ translation from the Hungarian of Crybaby by Krisztián Marton

Krisztián Marton’s autobiographical debut novel, Crybaby, follows Marci, a biracial gay man growing up in the extremely homogenous society of Szeged in southern Hungary during the 1990s. In this raw and moving coming-of-age story, Marci navigates racial identity, fatherlessness, queerness, and complex relationships. In her translation, Tímea Sipos, a Hungarian-American writer and translator originally from Budapest, captures the tenderness, honesty, and nuances of this urgent narrative of identity, belonging, and emotional survival. With a sensitivity to the specificities of the Hungarian social and linguistic context pervading Marton’s novel, Sipos brings readers this candid exploration of race, masculinity, vulnerability, and LGBTQ+ experiences.

Annie Tucker’s translation from the Indonesian of Suspicious Days by Dea Anugrah

Suspicious Days is a sharp, funny, and self-aware novel that follows a young, directionless writer in Yogyakarta who stumbles into a literary mystery–and a violent quest for revenge–while searching for a missing poet. In a voice that shifts effortlessly between irreverent humor, cultural critique, and genuine yearning, Dea Anugrah offers a portrait of Indonesia’s contemporary literary and political landscape, filtered through the eyes of a disaffected youth. Annie Tucker’s clear and assured translation captures the novel’s fast-paced blend of autofiction, metafiction, and cultural commentary without losing its specificity to Indonesia’s literary world. With extensive experience translating contemporary Indonesian literature, Tucker brings both deep linguistic skill and cultural understanding to this project. Her work delivers the full force of Anugrah’s voice to English-language readers, introducing a fresh and fearless talent in contemporary Indonesian fiction.

Quentin Véron’s translation from the French of Solitude of a Python in Paris by Romain Gary (writing as Émile Ajar)

Romain Gary’s Gros-Câlin, first published in 1974 under the pseudonym Émile Ajar, occupies a unique and fascinating place in French literary history. When the author’s true identity was revealed after his death, it was hailed as one of the great literary revelations of the century––unmasking the only writer ever to win the prestigious Prix Goncourt twice. Gros-Câlin (“Big Hug” in English) tells the story of Michel Cousin, a lonely and eccentric Parisian statistician who adopts an eight-foot python in his quest for affection. With sensitivity, wit, and creative daring, Quentin Véron recreates in English the puzzling “foreign” language that a bored Cousin invents for himself, through which themes of affection, alienation, and rebirth take on renewed resonance. Navigating the “deluge of amusing malapropisms, puns, literary allusions, and warmly pathetic situational comedy” (translator’s words) of Gary’s signature “Ajarism,” Véron deftly renders the novel’s humor, pathos, and linguistic playfulness without losing its peculiar absurdity and tenderness.

Yě Yě’s translation from the Chinese of All of Our Homecomings Are Feted as Yi New Year by Jike Ayou

Jike Ayou, born in Puge county of Sichuan province, is the first migrant worker poet of Yi ethnicity and one of six poets featured in The Verse of Us, a documentary film on Chinese migrant worker poets. His collection of poems All of Our Homecomings Are Feted as Yi New Year was published in Chinese by Taibai Literature and Art Publishing House in 2019. His works have appeared in publications such as Selected Poems, Liangshan Literature, Workers’ Daily, and China Youth News. Like the ancient Chinese poets, Jike Ayou writes beautifully about Shanshui (landscapes) to lament his personal and political struggles. Translator Yě Yě carefully distills his delicate lines into terse English verse that echoes the lived experience of millions of migrant workers in China.

PEN Grant For The English Translation Of Italian Literature ($5,000)

Administered under and judged alongside the PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants, the PEN Grant for the English Translation of Italian Literature honors a translator for a book-length translation of narrative prose and seeks to promote the publication of Italian literature into English. The winner will receive a $5,000 grant to aid in the project’s completion.

Lauren Green’s translation from the Italian of Adoration by Alice Urciuolo

Adoration is a fierce and absorbing novel set in the reclaimed marshlands south of Rome, where five teenagers struggle to make sense of a friend’s murder and the suffocating models of masculinity and desire that surround them. With shifting points of view and a keen eye for the rituals and violences that shape adolescence, Alice Urciuolo explores how a place saturated with Fascist history and patriarchal norms produces its own forms of rebellion as well as complicity.

Lauren Aliza Green’s translation reflects the urgency and intimacy of Urciuolo’s prose, capturing the novel’s polyphonic voices and its precise rendering of place, class, and coming of age. A novelist and poet herself, Green is well equipped to convey both the emotional range and the structural ambition of this compelling novel. Green’s English version delivers the novel’s full force: a clear-eyed and unsettling portrait of contemporary Italian youth, and the cultural legacies they inherit and resist."
https://pen.org/announcing-the-2026-pen-america-grant-winners/
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

They write that "they have been made aware that due to the acoustic conditions, the speaker's words were not of a quality that could be interpreted".

"Statement defending interpreter criticized for translation errors in Moscow issued by association

Days after the Hungarian delegation's trip to Moscow, the Hungarian Association of Translators and Interpreters (MFTE) issued a statement in response to criticism of their member's interpretation. The statement sent to Telex began by saying that their colleague has nearly three decades of experience as a high-level interpreter. She has been interpreting at the government level for a long time and has always performed excellently.

 

They write that the quality of an interpreter's work is not only influenced by their abilities, but also by several factors beyond their control, including acute health problems arising during the flight, exhaustion, their ears being clogged up due to flying, the lack of an in-ear monitor, or the fact that the person being interpreted for is not speaking audibly, or perhaps the acoustics of the room are not ideal.

 

They also noted that the protocol and security measures in place during such meetings are very strict – it is unclear what the consequences would have been if their colleague had jumped up to indicate that she could not hear.

 

“This is what occurred in the situation in question too. We understand that due to the acoustic conditions, the speaker's words were not of a quality that could be interpreted. This is confirmed by the fact that our colleague later performed excellently during the negotiations that followed the press conference.”

 

The statement also pointed out that some members of the delegation, including Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said that they would not hold the interpreter responsible.

 

"The MFTE presidency stands by our colleague and repeatedly emphasizes that she meets all the professional requirements that can be expected in such situations."

 

At the end of the statement, they mentioned that they had wanted to publish it earlier, but due to the resignation of the organization's president on Tuesday, their time was taken up with organizational issues.

 

The Hungarian Prime Minister held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Russian capital on Friday. Ahead of the negotiations, Orbán and Putin spoke briefly in front of the cameras. Beyond the usual polite greetings, in this part of the talks, there could always be things said that predict the mood of the negotiations. Despite its significance, Orbán was given a rather superficial Hungarian translation of Putin's statement by the interpreter, who mistranslated almost the entire greeting of the Russian President. We detailed exactly what Putin said and how it sounded in Hungarian in this article..."

English

December 03. 2025. – 03:35 PM

Iván-Nagy Szilvia

Andrea Horváth Kávai (translation)

👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿

https://telex.hu/english/2025/12/03/statement-defending-interpreter-criticized-for-translation-errors-in-moscow-issued-by-association

#Metaglossia 

#metaglossia_mundus 

"The Rada Removes the Russian Language From Ukraine’s Translation of the European Charter The Decision Is Largely Symbolic, as the Constitution Guarantees Protection for Any Language Spoken by at Least 40% of Citizens

 

The Verkhovna Rada has backed a bill revising the Ukrainian translation of the European Charter and removing Russian and Moldovan from its list of protected languages, while adding Urum, Rumeic, Romani, Czech, Krymchak, Karaim and Yiddish. The document was adopted in its entirety and formally strips Russian of the protection envisaged by the Charter.

 

What Does the European Charter Actually Regulate?

The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages is designed to safeguard languages that are in the minority within specific territories. Several Ukrainian experts note that Ukraine has long relied on an inaccurate translation of the Charter’s title, creating the impression that it concerns the protection of “national minorities.” In fact, the Charter is aimed at preserving languages at risk of extinction as part of Europe’s cultural heritage.

 

Why Is the Rada’s Decision Largely Symbolic?

 

Analysts argue that the Rada’s decision is symbolic and will not produce practical effects. The Ukrainian state does not provide systematic support to any of the listed languages, and the removal of Russian may be seen as a gesture ill-suited to Russian-speaking citizens and potentially advantageous to Kremlin propaganda. The widespread claim that the Russian language is supposedly losing legal protection is, experts say, absurd—it is guaranteed by Article 10 of Ukraine’s Constitution, where it is mentioned alongside other minority languages. Various estimates suggest that at least 40% of Ukraine’s population considers Russian their native language, though precise data are unavailable or not publicised..."

https://sfg.media/en/a/rada-removes-russian-language-from-european-charter-translation/

#Metaglossia 

#metaglossia_mundus 

"When thinking of ancient Greek philosophers, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle will likely spring to mind, but only Plato and Aristotle left written works behind them that survive to this day thanks to the painstaking work of those who over the millennia copied and translated their texts. It is somewhat surprising that a philosopher as famous as Aristotle, who was also Alexander the Great’s teacher, should only be known through only a few of his treatises, but thankfully for scholars and philosophy enthusiasts, a new edition of his works is now available.

 

‘Aristotle: Complete Works’, edited by C. D. C. Reeve, the ΔΚΕ Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Pavlos Kontos, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Patras, and published by Hackett in December 2025, is a monumental achievement, the first new English-language translation of the Aristotelian corpus since 1954. This edition reconfirms that Aristotle’s philosophy is both a cornerstone of history and an integral part of contemporary Western thought and culture, bringing Aristotle to life and making his works accessible for today’s readers.

 

For the first time ever, Greek scholars, mostly from the University of Patras, played a critical role, either as editors or readers. Such significant contribution by contemporary Greek scholars to an Anglophone edition of ancient Greek philosophical texts is unprecedented.

 

‘Aristotle: Complete Works’ is presented in two volumes and makes an excellent gift. The first volume includes his logic, biology, physics, natural sciences, and psychology. The second volume contains his metaphysics, ethics, politics, rhetoric, and poetics, a translation of the ‘Fragments’, the slightly dubious work ‘Magna Moralia’, and one work not by Aristotle, but probably from his school, the Athenian Constitution. It also contains an informative long Introduction, an elaborate Index with the numerous people and places mentioned by Aristotle, and an extensive, detailed Glossary of Aristotle’s key terms in Greek and English, accompanied by translation comments and references to pertinent passages. The Glossary allows readers to navigate the entire corpus on their own.

 

A distinguished group of scholars from Europe and the United States contributed translations of the Aristotelian treatises in which they specialize.

 

Professor Pavlos Kontos spoke with The National Herald about the impressive achievement. When asked how long the editing process took on such a monumental project, Prof. Kontos told TNH: “This is a nice question, but it’s difficult to answer! The whole thing started in 2012, when C. D. C. Reeve was translating Aristotle’s ‘Nicomachean Ethics’ for Hackett and asked me to serve as a line-by-line reader. I then urged him to re-translate Aristotle’s ‘Politics’, which he did. After that, he translated Aristotle’s ‘Metaphysics’, ‘Physics’, and other shorter treatises. I served as a line-by-line reader for all of these as well. Only after this did David have the ‘crazy’ idea that we edit an English translation of the entire corpus by commissioning the translation of certain treatises to other scholars. Final approval from Hackett was not received until as late as 2021! Thus, at least in my view, the correct way to calculate the timeline is from 2012: about 13 years.”

 

Prof. Kontos added that translating an Aristotelian text “requires mastery of Ancient Greek and English, expertise in Aristotle’s philosophy (and, in particular, in specific areas of his thought), knowledge of French and German (to allow comparison with the best available translations in those languages), and long experience in translation, so that one develops a distinctive ‘style.’”

 

“Our ‘Aristotle: Complete Works’ is, as far as we know, the only consistent translation of the entire corpus in any language, for though the translators are many, they all generously agreed to follow our choices (David’s and mine) in the translation of Aristotle’s key terms,” Prof. Kontos said.

 

More information is available online"

 

https://www.thenationalherald.com/this-centurys-monumental-translation-of-aristotles-complete-works/

#Metaglossia 

#metaglossia_mundus 

"Colloque national:"Les parcours du traducteur-interprète officiel : questionnements cognitifs et expériences personnelles"
Dans le cadre du mouvement scientifique du département de traduction, un colloque national a été organisé sur le thème : "Les parcours du traducteur-interprète officiel : questionnements cognitifs et expériences"

Cette rencontre a réuni des représentants de plusieurs bureaux nationaux de traduction officielle. La présence du vice-recteur, Pr. BACHIR Redouane, du doyen de la faculté des lettres et des langues, Pr. KHERBOUCHE Abderrahmane , de Pr. MOUROU Wassila, chargée de la gestion de la faculté des langues étrangères, ainsi que du président de la Chambre nationale des traducteurs-interprètes officiels et de sa délégation, a joué un rôle important dans le bon déroulement des activités du sixième colloque national."
https://www.univ-tlemcen.dz/fr/actualites/4124/colloque-national-les-parcours-du-traducteur-interpr-te-officiel-questionnements-cognitifs-et-exp-riences-personnelles
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Le Matin : Vous avez publié aux éditions internationales Al-Bouraq un ouvrage de traduction et d’exégèse en langue française du Coran que l’on peut qualifier d’œuvre grandiose. Est-ce que vous pourriez nous décrire ce travail ?

Abdelhak Azzouzi : Oui, le travail est composé de trois volumes et 3.200 pages. Il ne s’agit pas d’une simple traduction littérale, mais d’une entreprise d’exégèse complète qui allie clarté linguistique, profondeur herméneutique et respect absolu de la sacralité du texte coranique. J’ai mené ce travail avec la double exigence du linguiste et du croyant. Mon objectif était d’offrir au lecteur francophone une version du Coran qui restitue toute la puissance du message divin sans en trahir ni la beauté, ni la profondeur. Je me suis appuyé sur les grands ouvrages classiques du «tafsīr» tout en y apportant ma propre lecture contemporaine. En ne retenant que les interprétations compatibles avec la raison et les fondements de la foi, j’ai essayé d’apporter un équilibre entre attachement au texte et effort d’«ijtihād». Loin d’une approche figée, j’ai inscrit ma démarche dans la dynamique du renouveau intellectuel islamique, adaptée aux questionnements spirituels et sociaux de notre époque.

Le Pr Abdelhak Azzouzi signe une traduction et exégèse de référence du Coran en français

Le professeur Abdelhak Azzouzi, universitaire marocain, vient de signer une traduction et une exégèse du Coran en français qui s'annonce comme une référence incontournable. Publié aux éditions Al-Bouraq, cet ouvrage de trois volumes et 3.200 pages est le fruit de plus d'une décennie de travail acharné. Loin de se limiter à une simple traduction littérale, cette œuvre allie, selon-lui, rigueur académique, fidélité au texte sacré et accessibilité pour le lectorat francophone, musulman ou en quête de spiritualité.

Eugène Delacroix, qui fut épris du Maroc dès qu’il foula sa terre, formula à juste titre cette proposition : «Le beau est le fruit d’une inspiration persévérante qui n’est qu’une suite de labeurs obstinés». J’en ai fait une conviction et je peux en témoigner aujourd’hui, car ce travail m’aura pris dix ans d’efforts assidus. On comprendra qu’il ne s’agit donc pas d’un ouvrage ou d’un opuscule ordinaire, mais de connaissances approfondies du Coran, du Livre sacré des Musulmans.

Est-ce que vous pourriez nous parler de votre méthode ?

Chaque sourate est située, explorée et explicitée dans son contexte global, en tenant compte de ses intentions principales, avant d’être déclinée en unités thématiques cohérentes. La traduction n’est pas compartimentée selon des versets traités chacun isolément, mais s’opère plutôt par réseaux de signification en vue de favoriser une appréhension plus pertinente en prenant en charge le maillage structurant les idées et la dynamique narrative intrinsèque au texte sacré.

Je me suis aussi appuyé sur la science des circonstances de la révélation (asbāb an-nuzūl) pour replacer chaque verset dans son cadre temporel et événementiel. Cette approche restitue la cohérence du message divin et permet au lecteur de saisir la sagesse des commandements, leur lien avec les réalités humaines et la continuité spirituelle qu’ils incarnent. En intégrant ces données historiques et philologiques à mon commentaire, j’ai essayé de renouveler la compréhension du Coran tout en rappelant sa vocation intemporelle : être une source de paix intérieure, de justice et de bien universel. Mon œuvre ne se limite donc pas à un travail savant : elle constitue une passerelle entre les cultures, un dialogue vivant entre la foi et la raison, entre la révélation et le monde contemporain.

Je passe au peigne fin tout ce qui a trait à la grammaire arabe (i’râb), aux fleurs de la rhétorique et aux subtilités sémantiques qui servent de matériaux et de joyaux à la singulière magnificence coranique. Je n’omets pas, à juste titre d’ailleurs, de convoquer en renfort les apports des sciences modernes – physique, biologie, médecine – pour mettre en exergue les divers signes de Dieu dans l’univers, soulignant ainsi le trait d’union, marquant le rapport consubstantiel entre la Révélation et la Création.

Le travail est le fruit d’une longue et passionnante fréquentation du Texte coranique et de ses exégèses. J’ai essayé de le mener avec conviction et efficacité, car je crois que dans la lecture approfondie de ce Texte il y a possibilité de penser autrement notre monde et son destin : c’est-à-dire dans une perspective de paix et de triomphe du bien contre le mal. J’ai recherché avec passion, je traquais l’exactitude dans le commentaire, la justesse dans le mot à traduire, la portée féconde du sens à rendre. Je me suis efforcé de ne trahir ni l’arabe, ni le français, ni le contenu des termes d’une si grande richesse du Texte coranique. J’ai essayé en quelque sorte de faire passer la vraie langue du Texte original dans la vraie langue de la traduction. J’ai eu le constant souci de traduire non seulement à partir de la langue arabe, mais encore de l’arabe et d’écrire non seulement en langue française, mais encore en français.

Il y a lieu de signaler que vous avez publié deux versions de l’œuvre ?

Oui, en effet, cette publication se décline en deux éditions distinctes, fondées sur les deux lectures coraniques les plus répandues dans le monde musulman. La lecture de Warsh, que nous lisons au Maroc, et qui est largement diffusée en Afrique du Nord et en Afrique de l’Ouest. Chaque lecture est répartie en trois tomes distincts. Ce double choix est fort judicieux puisqu’il répond à un souci de conformité à la pluralité des traditions de récitation, et à inscrire cette entreprise dans la portée universelle censée être la sienne."
https://lematin.ma/nation/azzouzi-traduire-le-coran-cest-unir-la-foi-la-langue-et-la-raison/310959
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Translators produce translations via consistent contact with at least two languages. Contact with different languages is a main factor influencing language changes at all levels. However, quantitative exploration of syntactic variation in translation as a language contact event remains underexplored. This study explains translation changes through the lens of language contact and quantifies the influence of language contact on translation syntax in fiction and non-fiction genres. Univariate and multivariate analyses were conducted to examine linguistic variations at the syntactic level in Chinese-English translations by two groups of undergraduate student translators (Grade 4, with a higher degree of language contact; and Grade 3, with a lower degree), with expert translations serving as a benchmark for acceptable language changes. The results reveal four primary dimensions of syntactic variation: 1) structure diversity, 2) production length, 3) sentence complexity, and 4) information fragmentation. Genre-specific effects were observed, with translations in both genres exhibiting statistically significant syntactic changes across four dimensions, while fiction translation insignificant regarding the dimension of structure diversity. The findings imply that contact-induced linguistic changes amplify simplification and explicitation in translation, and manifest more prominently in genres oriented towards information transfer than in those prioritizing stylistic distinctiveness and immersive storytelling. These findings suggest that language contact offers a valuable lens for understanding linguistic changes in translation and imply that genre and language change mechanism are important factors in this perspective."
Translation as language contact: a multidimensional perspective of syntactic variation
Yanmeng Liu*
Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, China
The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/language-sciences/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1712405/abstract
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Outgoing NYC mayor orders agencies to use translation apps

(The Center Square) – As he prepares to step down, Mayor Eric Adams is making a high-tech push to help New York City become one of the most “language-friendly” cities in the world.

The ... Democrat signed an executive order Monday setting into motion a plan that will require city agencies and the NYPD to use Google Translate, Apple’s built-in Translate app and other programs to make city services more accessible to non-English speaking New Yorkers. Adams said the move will help eliminate language barriers in the nation’s most populous city.

“This is a global city, and we’re going to ensure we communicate as a global city,” Adams, who steps down on Jan. 1, said in remarks Monday. “We want every New Yorker, every agency to evaluate how they can further incorporate translation technologies into their day-to-day interaction with the public.”

Adams said the city’s Office of Technology and Innovation and the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs have been testing translation apps to determine which programs will work best and acknowledged that the technology is “not perfect” and “clearly evolving” and will require additional review before it’s implemented.

“But it’s a far cry from having to wait only on the Language Line to be able to communicate with over 140 different languages here in the city,” he said.

Under the plan, the city plans to install language applications on more than 100,000 city-owned electronic devices and implement a new program in the public school system that will allow for translations of the top 12 languages spoken by students and their families, according to the Adams administration.

Meanwhile, the New York City Police Department’s Patrol Guide Policy is being updated to allow officers to use translation apps while interacting with the public, the administration said.

NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who was tapped by Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani to lead the agency for his administration, said she supports the program.

She said NYPD officers speak 109 different languages and come from more than 140 different countries. But in a city that speaks nearly 200 distinct languages, “even our officers might need some help talking to their neighbors.”

“Clear communication is essential to public safety,” Tisch said in remarks Monday. “Our officers interact with New Yorkers who speak dozens of different languages, often in situations where time and understanding matter. Expanding access to real-time translation tools helps officers communicate more clearly, respond more effectively, and better serve the people who need help.”"
Mon, December 8, 2025 by The Center Square
https://www.myhometowntoday.com/news/new-york/outgoing-nyc-mayor-orders-agencies-to-use-translation-apps/
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"This PhD project investigates how literary translators and journalists react and respond to machine-translated metaphors and what the repercussions for professional practice are.

Duration

2025 - 2029

Contact

Mayra Nas

 

Machine translation (MT) has been part of the translation industry for many years, but the emergence of large language models (LLMs) has truly turned the field upside down. Unlike earlier translation systems, LLMs such as ChatGPT can generate fluent and stylistically adaptable translations. Combined with tools like Google Translate and DeepL, the work of translators and journalists has changed, as MT is increasingly integrated into their daily practice. Today, MT is used in a wide range of contexts; from casual communication to professional, medical, and legal settings.

However, the translation of metaphors remains a major challenge. Metaphors are figurative by nature and often culturally specific, making them vulnerable to amusing but also potentially serious mistranslations. Although MT quality has improved greatly in the past years, even the most advanced systems still make mistakes or invent information. At present, no systematic research identifies which metaphors become problematic in MT and how mistranslations affect understanding.

The Machine-Translation Metaphor (MTM) project investigates which metaphors cause problems in MT, why these issues arise and under which circumstances, and how they affect users and society. It examines metaphors as simultaneously linguistic, cognitive, and cultural phenomena, and studies MT from three perspectives: the Machine, the Professional User, and the Non-expert Reader. The PhD project focuses on the second perspective, exploring how professional users, i.e. literary translators and journalists, revise and reflect on machine-translated metaphors and how this shapes their practice."

https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/research/research-projects/humanities/professional-users-perspectives-on-metaphors-in-machine-translation

#Metaglossia 

#metaglossia_mundus 

"L’ACEP s’inquiète du fait que le Bureau de la traduction abaisse les critères de qualité pour l’interprétation et compromette la qualité des services en français

Déc 9, 2025

OTTAWA – L’Association canadienne des employés professionnels (ACEP) s’inquiète d’une énième décision du Bureau de la traduction qui compromet l’intégrité des langues officielles au Canada. Le syndicat a été informé d’une récente décision visant à restructurer le comité d’accréditation des interprètes parlementaires pigistes. Cette décision affaiblira un processus qui garantit la qualité de l’interprétation dans les institutions fédérales, un service indispensable aux député·es et à des millions de Canadiennes et Canadiens. On ne peut que s’alarmer davantage quant à l’incapacité de ce gouvernement à protéger et à préserver les langues officielles au Canada et en particulier le français.

 

Le Bureau de la traduction a décidé d’intégrer dans le comité un consultant externe qui n’a pas l’accréditation nécessaire pour travailler au Parlement; c’est pourtant cette accréditation qui garantit que les nouvelles et nouveaux interprètes parlementaires pigistes répondent aux normes élevées requises pour ce type de travail. Le Bureau cède donc une partie importante du pouvoir décisionnel à une personne qui ne répond pas elle-même aux normes de la profession. Le consultant nommé siégera au comité d’accréditation avec le groupe habituel d’interprètes permanent·es qualifié·es et chevronné·es, mais il détiendra un pouvoir immense, puisque ses décisions compteront pour 50 % dans la sélection des futur·es interprètes. En cas d’égalité des voix, c’est un·e cadre supérieur·e du Bureau de la traduction qui tranche.

 

« C’est une décision préoccupante et irresponsable, mais qui correspond malheureusement à la tendance que nous observons, déclare Antoine Hersberger, vice-président du groupe TR de l’ACEP, qui comprend les interprètes permanents. En conférant un pouvoir déterminant à quelqu’un qui n’est pas accrédité pour le travail parlementaire, le Bureau de la traduction ne tient pas compte de son expertise interne, abaisse la barre et affaiblit les normes mêmes qui protègent les langues officielles dans ce pays, ce qui aura des répercussions disproportionnées sur la population francophone canadienne. » 

 

Il est à noter que l’accréditation est obligatoire pour les interprètes qui souhaitent travailler sur la Colline du Parlement. Le Bureau de la traduction présente l’accréditation comme la garantie de qualité des services d’interprétation qu’il fournit, et elle est reconnue mondialement comme l’une des normes les plus élevées en interprétation. Cependant, depuis quelques années, le Bureau mine sa propre réputation et cette décision risque de la ternir davantage. Comme ce sont surtout les francophones canadiens, et en particulier les député·es francophones, qui utilisent les services de traduction et d’interprétation pour comprendre et se faire comprendre, toute baisse de qualité a des conséquences graves pour ces personnes. 

 

L’ACEP exhorte le Bureau de la traduction à rétablir immédiatement la composition antérieure du comité et le processus standard, qui garantissaient que toutes les décisions relatives à l’accréditation étaient prises par des professionnelles et professionnels qualifiés, et à relancer le processus d’accréditation actuel dans cette optique. Le syndicat invite également tous les leaders des organismes de défense des droits en matière de langues officielles, ainsi que les partis fédéraux et les gouvernements provinciaux, à prêter une attention particulière à l’érosion croissante des langues officielles causée par la négligence du gouvernement à l’égard du Bureau de la traduction et le sous-investissement dans ses services, et à reconnaître cette décision comme une menace grave et urgente pour l’égalité linguistique au Canada. Ce qui se passe au Bureau de la traduction nous met clairement en garde contre ce qui pourrait se produire ailleurs au gouvernement fédéral si l’on ne rétablit pas la vigilance à cet égard."

https://www.acep-cape.ca/fr/actualites/lacep-sinquiete-du-fait-que-le-bureau-de-la-traduction-abaisse-les-criteres-de-qualite

#Metaglossia 

#metaglossia_mundus 

"La théorie du linguiste américain John McWhorter sur l’origine des langues créoles
Écrit par : Robert Berrouët-Oriol, 09/12/250 77
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Le linguiste américain John McWhorter a publié, dans The New York Times du 13 novembre 2025, un article qui a eu un écho considérable dans les milieux académiques haïtiens, « One Horror of Slavery That Until Recently Could Not Be Told » [Une horreur de l'esclavage qui, jusqu'à récemment, ne pouvait être racontée]. Nous reproduisons ci-après la version française de cet article établie par Sandra Cadet, traductrice professionnelle.

Auteur de plus d’une vingtaine d’ouvrages spécialisés, John McWhorter est professeur agrégé de linguistique à l'Université Columbia. Sa thèse de doctorat portait sur le saramaccan, le créole parlé au Suriname par environ 58 000 personnes d'origine ouest-africaine. Il est l’auteur, entre autres, de « Towards a New Model of Creole Genesis » (1997), « The Missing Spanish Creoles : Recovering the Birth of Plantation Contact Languages » (2000), « Defining Creole » (2005), « A Grammar of Saramaccan Creole » (2012, co-écrit avec Jeff Good), « The Creole Debate » (2018).

Depuis nombre d’années, l’origine des créoles est sujet à des controverses, à des débats nourris de théories différentes et de prises de position parfois virulentes. Ainsi, certains auteurs défendent la théorie monogénétique, qui soutient que les créoles ont une origine commune. D’autres défendent la théorie polygénétique, qui suggère que les créoles se sont développés de manière indépendante dans divers contextes sociohistoriques. L'approche substratique met en avant l'influence des langues africaines sur la grammaire et le vocabulaire des créoles, tandis que l’approche superstratique iniste sur le rôle dominant des langues européennes, notamment le français, dans la formation des créoles.

Plusieurs linguistes de premier plan, connus et reconnus pour la haute rigueur de leurs travaux scientifiques, ont abordé la complexe question de l’origine des créoles.

PREMIER EXEMPLE -- Albert Valdman (Creole Institute, Indiana University). Auteur de nombreux articles de référence sur le créole haïtien parus dans des revues spécialisées et rédacteur de plusieurs rigoureux dictionnaires anglais-créole, ce linguiste-lexicographe a publié entre autres « Haitian Creole – Structure, Variation, Status, Origin » (Equinox Publishing Ltd, 2015). Le chapitre 13 de cet ouvrage s’intitule « The Genesis and Development of Haitian Creole » et il comprend les sous-chapitres suivants : « Theories about Creole Genesis », « The Genesis of French-Based Creoles », « The Role of Substrate Transfers in the Genesis and Development of Haitian Creole ».

Le livre du linguiste-lexicographe Albert Valdman --« Le créole : structure, statut et origine » (Institut d'études et de recherches interethniques et interculturelles, Université de Nice et Éditions Klincksieck, Paris, 1978)--, consigne l’information suivante :

« Il n'est plus besoin d'affirmer aujourd'hui que l'étude des langues créoles n'est plus une vogue passagère ou un champ d'investigation en friche abandonné aux philologues friands de curiosités linguistiques. En effet, de récentes recherches ont démontré que ces langues et leurs congénères, les pidgins, constituent un terrain d'enquête privilégié pour certains domaines des sciences du langage. Plus variables que les autres langues naturelles les créoles sont notoirement réfractaires aux modèles descriptifs statiques. Ainsi les nouvelles approches dynamiques, telles les échelles implicationnelles de D. DeCamp et l'analyse polylectale de C.-J. Bailey et de D. Bickerton ont-elles été conçues pour tenter de décrire la gamme de variabilité continue reliant les créoles dérivés de l'anglais aux variétés standards de cet idiome ; la notion de règle variable formulée par W. Labov et ses disciples a été élaborée grâce à son application à certains problèmes morphophonologiques du Non-Standard Black English, une forme d'anglais américain que certains spécialistes rattacheraient à un ancien stade créolisé ou pidginisé.

Les notions de monogenèse et de polygenèse au centre des discussions sur la genèse des créoles font leur réapparition dans le contexte plus large de l'acquisition d'une langue seconde en situation naturelle. L'apprentissage sommaire de la langue de la communauté « d'accueil » de la part des travailleurs immigrés, en République fédérale allemande et en France notamment, constitue un cas particulièrement intéressant de ce type d'acquisition. Il s'apparente à certains égards à celui des esclaves importés dans les plantations coloniales où naquirent les créoles : statut socio-économique déprécié des apprenants, isolement socio-culturel relatif. Pour de nombreux chercheurs l'acquisition d'une langue seconde, sur les plans syntaxique et sémantique surtout, s'explique moins par l'interférence des structures de la langue cible --notion reliée à la monogenèse-- que par des processus créatifs universels qui se manifesteraient d'une façon plus claire dans la genèse et le développement des créoles.

La langue vernaculaire d'environ huit millions de personnes, répandue sur deux vastes aires géographiques séparées par des milliers de kilomètres, le créole --ou, plus précisément, les parlers franco-créoles ou parlers créoles à base lexicale française-- représente la plus importante des langues créoles, non seulement du point de vue du nombre des locuteurs, mais aussi parce qu'elle témoigne d'un haut niveau d'élaboration. Langue à part entière le créole est pourvu d'une structure cohérente, d'un riche lexique et d'une large gamme de variabilité polylectale. Si les études dont nous disposons sur les parlers franco-créoles ne reflètent pas toujours les approches méthodologiques les plus récentes et les théories linguistiques de pointe, elles contiennent néanmoins la masse de données descriptives la plus abondante et la plus fiable dont disposent les créolistes. Toutefois, cette riche moisson est difficilement accessible, tant au spécialiste qu'au lecteur généraliste. À l'exception de l'excellente thèse comparative de M. Goodman (Creole French Dialects), les ouvrages portant sur les parlers franco-créoles prennent la forme de monographies dont la plupart sont des thèses doctorales à diffusion réduite. Bien que le créole, à l'exception des parlers des Petites Antilles à influence britannique, coexiste avec le français, un grand nombre d'études, et des plus marquantes, sont rédigées dans une langue autre que le français. Cet état de choses contribue à rendre le phénomène créole mal connu dans les pays de langue française, y compris dans les régions créolophones elles-mêmes où des actions lancées pour rehausser le niveau de l'instruction primaire exigent, pour être efficaces, une connaissance approfondie des réalités linguistiques. » [Le souligné en italiques et gras est de RBO]

DEUXIÈME EXEMPLE -- Georges Daniel Véronique (Université d’Aix-Marseille) a consacré plusieurs articles au créole et il a notamment publié « Créole, créoles français et théories de la créolisation » (revue L’information grammaticale numéro 85, 2000). Dans cet article l’auteur étudie « Les conditions sociales d'émergence des langues créoles : l'exemple des « créoles français », « Les procès linguistiques de la pidginisation et de la créolisation : grammaticalisation, réanalyse et évolution », « Qu'est-ce qu'un créole ? », Quelques théories de la créolisation ». Auteur de nombreux articles scientifiques sur le créole, le linguiste Georges Daniel Véronique est également co-rédacteur du livre collectif de référence « La didactisation du créole au cœur de l’aménagement linguistique en Haïti » (par Robert Berrouët-Oriol et alii, Éditions Zémès et Éditions du Cidihca, 2021). Dans cet ouvrage il présente une étude au long cours –« Créolisation et créoles »--, qui fournit un ample et systématique éclairage analytique sur l’origine des créoles et les créoles à base lexicale française dans leur inscription socio-historique, les conditions de leur apparition dans le système colonial, leur mode de développement, etc.

Au creux de cette étude, Georges Daniel Véronique nous enseigne –à la section « Le développement des langues créoles--, que « La formation des langues créoles est déterminée par la création des colonies, des forts et des comptoirs et par les navigations inter-îles dans le Pacifique, et par les contacts sociaux qui s’y nouent. Ce sont les seules langues dont on connaisse le point de départ, le terminus a quo. Différents auteurs ont identifié les situations sociales prototypiques de leur naissance. Chaudenson (1992) évoque des créoles exogènes, qui se développent dans des territoires vierges de tout parler (les îles du Cap-Vert, Maurice et la Réunion, etc.), et des créoles endogènes apparus dans un environnement dominé par d’autres langues (le kriyol de Guinée Bissau par exemple). L’on doit donc postuler plusieurs matrices sociales d’émergence des langues créoles. J’examinerai ici celles qui ont donné naissance aux créoles de plantation, aux créoles des comptoirs fortifiés (l’exemple guinéen) et des missions (le cas du Tayo). » [Le souligné en italiques et gras est de RBO]

À la section « La matrice des créoles exogènes » l’auteur précise que « Chaudenson (1979) et Kihm (2005) se sont penchés sur cette matrice sociale, souvent insulaire, actualisée dans la Caraïbe et dans l’Océan Indien, qui donne naissance aux créoles de plantation. »

Georges-Daniel Véronique est l’auteur de l’article « Créolisation et créoles . Sociolinguistique du contact » édité par Jacky Simonin et Sylvie Wharton (ENS Éditions, 2013). Il nous enseigne que « Ce chapitre est consacré aux processus de développement des langues créoles et à quelques-unes de leurs particularités. Les langues dont il sera question ici sont apparentées, au moins sur le plan lexical, à l’anglais, au portugais, à l’espagnol, au néerlandais ou au français, qui sont souvent désignés comme leurs langues lexificatrices (lexifier language), formule contestée par certains auteurs (Mufwene, 2005, par exemple). Ces langues sont également nommées créoles anglais (le créole de la Jamaïque ou de Saint-Vincent, par exemple), créoles espagnols (le papiamento / papiamentu d’Aruba, Bonnaire et Curaçao et le chabacano des Philippines, par exemple), créoles portugais (le kriyol de Guinée-Bissau, le créole du Cap-Vert, les créoles du golfe de Guinée par exemple), créoles hollandais (le berbice dutch et le skepi dutch de Guyana) ou créoles français, suivant l’origine dominante de leur lexique. L’ensemble « créoles français » comprend des créoles atlantiques et india-océaniques et un créole pacifique, tandis que les créoles anglais se retrouvent dans la Caraïbe, en Afrique et dans le Pacifique. On évoque aussi l’existence de créoles à base lexicale arabe (par exemple, le juba arabic ou le kinubi du Soudan) ou de langues africaines (le fanakalo d’Afrique du Sud, le kituba du Congo etc.). Dans le cadre de ce texte, je restreindrai la désignation « créole » aux seules langues apparues lors de l’expansion coloniale européenne des siècles passés, celles à qui le terme fut initialement appliqué. Ces langues partagent d’éventuelles affinités linguistiques qu’il conviendra d’évoquer. Les circonstances de leur émergence sont sans doute proches, à certains égards, de celles observées dans d’autres situations de contacts de langues, d’où certaines similitudes structurelles avec les langues qui en sont issues (kinubi, kituba, sango, etc. ; voir Kihm, 2011).
Les langues créoles sont donc apparues, essentiellement à partir du XVIIe siècle, dans le sillage de l’expansion européenne. Cependant, il convient de relever l’existence d’un texte en lingua de Preto (langue des noirs), aussi appelé falar Guiné (parler Guinée), publié en 1516 au Portugal, soixante ans après la découverte des îles du Cap-Vert en 1456. D’autres textes ultérieurs attestent également l’existence d’un créole portugais (proto-kriolu) à cette période. On a postulé que ce premier créole (lui-même peut-être dérivé de la lingua franca méditerranéenne) était à l’origine des langues créoles qui se sont développées par la suite dans les comptoirs européens en Afrique. C’est la théorie de la monogenèse des créoles : ils seraient tous nés d’une source portugaise par un processus de modification lexicale, de relexification et de dissémination. Cette hypothèse est aujourd’hui abandonnée (Migge, 2003). » [Le souligné en italiques et gras est de RBO]

TROISIÈME EXEMPLE -- La linguiste Marie-Christine Hazaël-Massieux (Université de Provence) est responsable du Groupe européen de recherches en langues créoles. L’essentiel de ses publications (nombreux articles et ouvrages) portent sur les créoles français. Elle a publié, entre autres, l’étude intitulée « Théories de la genèse ou histoire des créoles : l'exemple du développement des créoles de la Caraïbe » (revue Éla. Études de linguistique appliquée, 2006/3 no 143). L’« Avant-propos - Au sujet de la définition des langues créoles », est suivi de l’article « Et si l'on parlait des créoles dans les territoires créolophones ? ». L’auteure nous enseigne qu’« Il existe diverses théories concernant la genèse des créoles. Un numéro récent de la revue Études créoles proposait un bilan de ces hypothèses concernant la créolisation et mettait à jour des tendances différentes : certaines qu’on qualifie de " sociohistoriques ", d’autres qui sont axées davantage sur la " typologie "... Ces théories sont toutes des hypothèses, fondées sur des scénarios plus ou moins vraisemblables : ainsi certains linguistes qui les défendent se fondent sur l’étude des populations de bateaux négriers, d’autres insistent sur l’importance de la colonisation portugaise, certains soulignent que le temps passé dans les ports avant l’embarquement permettait aux esclaves de commencer à forger un medium commun, certains encore sont sensibles au fait que l’Afrique, qui a laissé des traces si importantes dans le " type " physique des populations, a bien dû aussi modeler la langue résultant des contacts, etc. Les théories varient, certes, mais si les faits historiques sont sûrs, le passage de données statistiques, historiques, géographiques, politiques ou économiques aux faits linguistiques se révèle très souvent délicat (et donc aventuré). Effectivement, la présence de nombreux esclaves originaires d’un pays à un moment donné de la colonisation n’implique pas :

— qu’ils parlaient tous la même langue ;

— que la parlant, ils l’utilisaient pour leurs échanges ;

— que l’utilisation de cette langue par une population d’esclaves ait eu des conséquences directes sur le créole : celui-ci pouvait être déjà en partie constitué quand ils sont arrivés aux îles ; les relations de travail pouvaient impliquer le recours préférentiel à une autre langue, etc.

Conclure que des données historiques ont des conséquences automatiques sur la langue de communication et qu’elles expliquent les structures linguistiques est audacieux, et c’est pour cela que nous parlons d’hypothèses : les situations de multilinguismes n’ont pas fini de révéler leurs mystères, et la question de la domination d’une langue sur une autre ou plusieurs autres implique de nombreux facteurs, et il faut bien se garder de suggérer des solutions simples.

C’est pourquoi, il nous semble indispensable de proposer aussi des analyses linguistiques fondées sur les textes rédigés en créole au cours de la courte histoire des mondes créoles. Cela ne signifie pas que l’on méprise les hypothèses élaborées par certains avec beaucoup de talent, mais correspond au désir de pousser le plus loin possible l’étude des évolutions linguistiques qui peuvent, à terme, permettre de vérifier ou falsifier telle ou telle hypothèse. »

QUATRIÈME EXEMPLE -- Docteur en linguistique, Renauld Govain a présenté le 1er juin 2022 –à l’Université Paris 8 Vincennes – Saint-Denis / UFR Sciences du langage / UMR 7023, SFL/CNRS--, son remarquable « Mémoire de synthèse » en vue de l’obtention de « L’habilitation à diriger des recherches ». Ce mémoire post-doctoral a pour titre « La question linguistique haïtienne : histoire, usages et description ».

Le chapitre 3 de cet exceptionnel « Mémoire de synthèse » s’intitule « Le créole haïtien entre le temps et l’espace ». L’auteur nous enseigne ceci : 

« La formation des créoles à base lexicale française remonte aux XVIIe -XVIIIe siècles, au contact du FR [français] et de langues des esclaves provenant d’Afrique de l’Ouest dans le cadre de la colonisation française. Les premiers balbutiements du CH [créole haïtien] remontent à la fin du XVIIIe siècle, à la suite de la signature du traité de Ryswick le 25 septembre 1697 cédant à la France la partie occidentale de l’île d’Haïti baptisée Saint-Domingue par les colons, qui va devenir la République d’Haïti où va se développer le CH [créole haïtien]. Et l’Espagne a gardé la partie orientale occupant les deux tiers de l’île, aujourd’hui la RD [République dominicaine]. Ce traité de Ryswick est signé 12 ans après l’adoption du Code noir connu sous le nom de l'Ordonnance ou Édit de mars 1685 sur les esclaves des îles de l'Amérique signée par le roi Louis XIV en 1685 en vue de réglementer la condition des esclaves noirs de Saint-Domingue. L’importation d’esclaves d’Afrique à Saint-Domingue débute à peu près à cette même période. La colonie française de Saint-Domingue officialise son entrée dans la Traite négrière avec l’ordonnance de 1685, bien que la naissance de la Traite remonte à la fin de la première moitié du XVe siècle, en 1441 avec les Portugais (Botte, 1991) ».

« Le CH [créole haïtien] s’est ainsi développé dans un contexte transactionnel entre le FR [français] et des langues africaines des esclaves arrachés d’Afrique et transportés à Saint-Domingue. C’est dans cette logique que se situe la théorie africaniste de l’émergence du CH [créole haïtien] à savoir qu’il est une langue africaine à vocabulaire français (Sylvain, 1936). Les traces des langues indigènes d’avant les colonisations (espagnole puis française) ne sont guère aussi visibles que celles du FR [français] et des langues africaines en ce que les autochtones ont été assez rapidement décimés pour avoir été contraints de travailler très durement à l’extraction de métaux précieux, expériences dont ils n’avaient pas l’habitude, un acte génocidaire dont l’histoire occidentale classique a très peu parlé. Les langues indigènes avaient été digérées parce que la colonisation française était glottophage (dans le sens de Calvet, 1974), linguicide, voire glottophobe (dans le sens de Blanchet, 2016), d’autant que les colons ne toléraient que le FR [français] comme langue de communication dans la colonie. » [Le souligné en italiques et gras est de RBO]

« Cette hégémonie du FR [français] a traversé le temps et l’espace et perdure. Cette pratique glottophobe est encore actuelle : en France même, seule est valorisée la langue normée (Blanchet, 2016) ; en Haïti, elle a pour conséquence une minoration du CH [créole haïtien] et une majoration du FR [français] et, dans le contexte d’enseignement / apprentissage, une infériorisation d’apprenants ne connaissant pas le FR [français]. Avant l’importation massive d’esclaves, les Français étaient majoritaires. Ces langues indigènes auront laissé peu de traces sur le CH [créole haïtien]. Le FR [français] avait certes seul droit de cité dans la colonie mais, ce n’était pas encore une langue unifiée. Il s’est notamment agi de la variété d’oïl pratiquée dans le nord-ouest de la France du XVIIe siècle et qui comportait des variantes telles que l’intercompréhension n’était guère garantie. Ces variantes vont se trouver au contact de diverses langues africaines à Saint-Domingue, même si on ne peut pas préciser ces langues. Mais les langues du groupe kwa (dont principalement les langues gbés) étaient à un certain moment majoritaires considérant l’origine géographique de la majorité des esclaves au moment de l’émergence de la langue. »

« Les peuples de la Côte d’Or et de la Côte des Esclaves (Ghana, Haute-Volta, Togo, Dahomey, Nigeria occidental) fournissaient, après ceux des côtes du Congo et de l’Angola, le plus grand nombre de captifs aux plantations de Saint-Domingue Les Aradas, dénomination commune des captifs de nations diverses traités sur la Côte d’Or et de la Côte des Esclaves, avaient des croyances religieuses apparentées et une compréhension commune de l’ewe, langue de liaison de la région. (Midy, 2006 : 182). Lefebvre (1998), dans sa théorie de la relexification en référence à la genèse du CH [créole haïtien] soutient que celui-ci proviendrait de deux langues sources : le FR [français] et le fongbé pratiqué sur la Côte d’Or, en particulier sur les côtes du Bénin. À partir de 1750, les négriers français s’approvisionnaient à grande échelle au sud du Bénin (Midy, 2006). »

« On peut placer la naissance du CH [créole haïtien] dans le cadre d’une certaine mondialisation où s’étaient rencontrés sur un même espace géographique des locuteurs de langues, origines, cultures, nationalités, pays différents. Cette mondialisation forcée caractérisée par un violent déracinement suivi de la déportation massive d’Afrique dans la Caraïbe de locuteurs d’origines linguistiques diverses a créé une situation de contact de langues qui va redessiner l’identité linguistique de la région. Cette mondialisation est différente de celle d’aujourd’hui qui est une panacée socioéconomique, culturelle et politique traversant les États, les communautés, les cultures, voire les langues et qui est davantage profitable à l’anglais qu’elle promeut à travers les systèmes sociopolitiques, les organisations internationales, la technique ou la recherche. Le globalais (l’anglais-langue-du-monde) est une conséquence de cette mondialisation qui se présente comme un passage obligé en ce qu’elle développe des liens d’interdépendance entre les êtres humains, les activités humaines et les systèmes politiques à l’échelle de la planète » (Godinot, 2008 : 337). » [Le souligné en italiques et gras est de RBO]

Article du linguiste John McWhorter

« One Horror of Slavery That Until Recently Could Not Be Told »

The New York Times, 13 novembre 2025

Traduction française : Sandra Cadet

« Une horreur de l’esclavage qui, jusqu’à récemment, ne pouvait être racontée »

Lorsque le navire négrier connu sous le nom de Zorg quitta ce qui est aujourd'hui la côte ghanéenne en 1781, il se dirigea vers la Jamaïque, avec 442 Africains impitoyablement entassés dans l'espace destiné à environ 250 personnes. En chemin, il dévia de sa trajectoire, et la déshydratation ainsi que le scorbut eurent raison de l'équipage et de la cargaison. Le capitaine, gravement malade, nomma comme remplaçant un vaurien égoïste, un gouverneur colonial récemment congédié. Navigateur incompétent, il navigua au-delà de la Jamaïque.

Après trois mois en mer, lui et les deux autres hommes blancs aux commandes jetèrent environ 125 Africains réduits en esclavage par-dessus bord pour les noyer ou les faire dévorer par des requins.

De retour en Angleterre, le propriétaire du Zorg demanda une indemnisation d'assurance pour la perte. Lors du procès, il affirma que les réserves d'eau étaient si basses que l'envoi des Africains à la mort était la seule façon de garder les autres esclaves et eux-mêmes en vie. Lors d'un second procès, cependant — convoqué en réponse à un éditorial enflammé d'un abolitionniste outré — il s’avéra que le Zorg avait en fait beaucoup d'eau. Pourquoi, alors, les esclaves furent-ils jetés par-dessus bord? Parce que le capitaine avait déterminé que, dans leur état affaibli, ils auraient plus de valeur en tant que réclamation d'assurance que comme marchandise de vente aux enchères. Personne ne fut accusé de ce crime.

Siddharth Kara donne vie à ces événements répugnants, ainsi qu'à leurs répercussions conséquentes, dans le nouveau livre saisissant « The Zorg : A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery ». Parmi ses nombreuses révélations — y compris une description du Passage du Milieu aussi viscérale que le récit de la vie dans les plantations dans « James » de Percival Everett — figure la dure réalité du fait que d'autres Africains aient été vendus comme esclaves par d'autres Africains. Pas seulement quelques-uns d'entre eux. Selon les historiens John Thornton et Linda Heywood, dans leur étude sur la traite des esclaves au début des années 1600, environ 90% des Africains noirs vendus comme esclaves en Amérique du Nord anglaise et néerlandaise durant cette période avaient d'abord été capturés lors de guerres par d'autres Africains noirs. Les captifs étaient vendus à des commerçants blancs contre de l'or et des armes, puis nourris dans la gueule affamée de l'économie des plantations de l'autre côté de l'océan.

« The Zorg », fascinant en soi, arrive à un moment intéressant. L'histoire de l'implication des Noirs dans la traite des esclaves a souvent été considérée comme interdite — au mieux gênante et carrément calomnieuse, au pire. Mais elle a gagné en popularité ces dernières années. J'ai été heureux d’en voir la mention au Musée national d'histoire et de culture afro-américaines (bien que j'aurais souhaité un traitement plus approfondi) et fasciné de voir qu'il s'agit d'un thème important de l'exposition actuelle des peintures de Kerry James Marshall à la Royal Academy of  Art.

Kara décrit comment les esclaves étaient souvent capturés à des centaines de kilomètres à l'intérieur des terres et forcés de marcher jusqu'à la côte, enchaînés, cheville contre cheville, dans un « cercle » pouvant contenir plus de 100 âmes malheureuses. Le voyage pouvait durer six mois ou plus, et jusqu'à un tiers d'entre eux mouraient en chemin, laissés à pourrir sur le bord de la route. Les captifs furent vendus par des marchands haoussa à des commerçants ashantis, qui les revendaient ensuite à des membres de la tribu Fante, qui à leur tour les revendaient aux fonctionnaires blancs qui géraient les châteaux de traite d'esclaves sur la côte. Là, ils furent emprisonnés pendant des mois supplémentaires dans le donjon sombre et fétide du château, attendant d’être achetés par les capitaines de navires négriers. De là, ils passèrent par la « porte du non-retour » et entrèrent dans les cales de navires comme le Zorg.

Certains de ces châteaux de traite d'esclaves existent encore. Ma famille et moi en avons visité un en 1987, sur l'île de Gorée au Sénégal. Nous avons tenu dans nos mains les chaînes qui immobilisaient d'innombrables milliers de personnes innocentes. En regardant l'océan, j'ai essayé d'imaginer ce que ça faisait d'être entassé dans le plus grand navire qu'on ait probablement jamais vu et d’être emmené vers un destin dont on ne savait rien, parce que personne n'était jamais revenu pour raconter l'histoire.

Depuis, j'ai lu tout ce que j'ai pu sur ce que ces châteaux étaient. Le récit de Kara est le plus accessible que j'ai rencontré. Il explique l'anatomie du château de Cape Coast, un écosystème complexe comprenant des administrateurs blancs, des soldats, des artisans, des ouvriers, des comptables et un aumônier, ainsi qu'un grand nombre d'« esclaves du château » qui vivaient dans un village séparé. Ils travaillaient par équipes et par degrés de bondage : certains étaient des habitants qui recevaient un salaire; d'autres étaient des esclaves prêtés par les rois locaux. Quelques-uns parmi eux se sont retrouvés plus tard dans les colonies.

Depuis les châteaux, les captifs furent transportés en canot jusqu'au navire négrier sur des vagues terrifiantes, une autre torture, puis livrés dans la cale négrière. Même les diagrammes que vous avez peut-être vus montrant la coupe transversale d'un navire négrier, avec des corps humains empilés comme du bois de chauffage, ne rendent pas pleinement compte de l'horreur du Passage du Milieu. Les esclaves étaient coincés dans ce qui était essentiellement des étagères, d'un peu plus de deux pieds de hauteur. Quand le navire tanguait, les planches de bois contre lesquelles ils étaient coincés pouvaient arracher de larges morceaux de chair. L'odeur des personnes mourantes ou déjà mortes était presque insupportable. Sur le Zorg, une femme a accouché — et a été jetée par-dessus bord avec son bébé.

Comme l'a écrit le professeur d'études afro-américaines Henry Louis Gates Jr ., et comme je l'ai vécu, les gens sont souvent mal à l'aise d'apprendre que les Africains se sont vendus les uns les autres dans cet enfer vivant. Une objection fréquente est que les Africains n'avaient aucun moyen de savoir dans quelles conditions leurs captifs se retrouveraient. Mais ils ont vu ces captifs être conduits presque à mort, vendus comme des animaux et enfermés dans un château d'esclaves. Les trafiquants d'esclaves africains noirs disposaient de suffisamment d'informations pour comprendre l'immoralité fondamentale de cette entreprise. Si les Blancs avaient vu seulement ce que les Africains ont vu, nous n'hésiterions pas à les juger comme des impardonnables complices du péché. [Le souligné en italiques et gras est de RBO]

Une leçon de « The Zorg » est que l'histoire et les gens sont complexes. La vision, récemment à la mode, de l'histoire américaine (ou occidentale) comme un long règlement de comptes, où le Blanc est toujours l'oppresseur et les personnes de couleur toujours les subalternes, est au fond une tentation enfantine qui nous dispense de nous engager dans les détails et la nuance. Les humains de toutes les couleurs de peau ont souvent été horribles les uns envers les autres. Notre travail est de lutter contre cette tendance, pas de faire semblant qu'elle n'existe pas. Et de célébrer ceux qui le surmontent, quelle que soit leur race. L'abolitionnisme — une réussite occidentale anglophone dont Kara parle dans un dernier chapitre — était un exemple clé de cet effort, et « The Zorg » est un enseignement précieux sur ce qui l'a rendu si important.

D'ailleurs, une des raisons pour lesquelles ces châteaux me fascinent autant, c'est à cause de mon travail de linguiste. Ces sites de tant de cruauté et de mort étaient, selon mes recherches, aussi le berceau de nombreuses langues créoles du Nouveau Monde. Le patois jamaïcain, le gullah de la Caroline du Sud, le « créole » de la Guyane et bien d'autres ont commencé là. Les esclaves qui travaillaient dans le château trouvaient des moyens de communiquer avec les Blancs qui les avaient achetés. Si les esclaves du château ont ensuite été envoyés de l'autre côté de l'Atlantique, la lingua franca est partie avec eux et est devenue la langue commune des personnes réduites en esclavage qui travaillaient dans les plantations. [Le souligné en italiques et gras est de RBO]

Les esclaves ont disparu depuis longtemps, mais les langues qu'ils ont créées sont toujours bien vivantes et indiquent une naissance spécifique sur la côte ghanéenne, dans des châteaux de traite d'esclaves. L'histoire est là dans pratiquement chaque phrase. Les esclaves étaient capturés sur une vaste étendue de la côte nord-ouest de l'Afrique, du Sénégal au Ghana jusqu'à l'Angola, des régions où les langues diffèrent autant que le français, le japonais et l'arabe. Pourtant, toutes les variétés de « patois » des Caraïbes ont des structures grammaticales basées sur les langues parlées dans un seul endroit : les régions du Ghana actuel où se trouvaient les châteaux d'esclaves. Il y a autre chose qui les lie : tous utilisent des variantes de « unu », un pronom à la deuxième personne du pluriel que l'on retrouve uniquement dans la langue igbo du Nigeria, parlée sur cette même côte. (Ici en Amérique, les locuteurs du Gullah disent « hunnuh ».) [Le souligné en italiques et gras est de RBO]

Il n'est pas logique que le même pronom soit cohérent dans une trentaine de patois caribéens différents, créés par des locuteurs d'une bonne douzaine de langues — à moins que « unu » ne soit entré dans leur ADN par l’intermédiaire de l’unique créole ancestral en Afrique et ait ensuite été diffusé dans toute la région.

Un membre de l'équipage du Zorg a écrit dans son journal qu'un esclave a déclaré que lui et les autres préféraient mourir de faim plutôt que d'être jetés par-dessus bord. Il a fait sa demande en anglais, ce que Kara suggère qu’il a habilement appris de ce qu'il pouvait entendre alors qu'il était enchaîné dans la soute. C'est une histoire vivante, mais ce n'est pas ainsi que les humains acquièrent une langue. Selon moi, il semble plus probable que l'homme ait appris un peu d'anglais pendant qu'il était enfermé comme esclave dans un château.

Robert Berrouët-Oriol

Linguiste-terminologue"
https://www.lenational.org/post_article.php?cul=2934
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"Lawyer takes Government to court over delay in translation of employment codes

 

 

Harare – based labour law expert, Adv Caleb Mucheche, has approached the High Court seeking an order to compel the Government to translate employment codes of conduct into all 14 constitutionally recognised vernacular languages and sign language...

 

Adv Mucheche, the first president of Zimbabwe African Labour Society for Labour Practitioners in Zimbabwe, argues that their failure to ensure translations constitutes an act of “constitutional perfidy” and systemic discrimination against workers not fluent in English.

 

He describes the current system as one that “weaponises the disciplinary process against workers” and denies the majority of Zimbabwean workers meaningful access to justice.

 

Currently, employment codes of conduct, including the National Code of Conduct (S.I. 15 of 2006) and public service regulations, are only required to be translated into Shona and Ndebele, leaving out other official languages such as Tonga, Kalanga, and sign language.

 

Adv Mucheche argues that this selective approach violates the constitutional mandate of inclusivity and equality.

 

“This omission obliterates the right to fair labour practice, turning due process into a punitive administrative formality,” he states.

 

Citing Section 6 (1) of the Constitution, Adv Mucheche underscores that all 16 official languages of Zimbabwe – including sign language-enjoy equal status and must be treated as such in labour regulations.

 

He asserts that the Registrar of Labour’s continued certification of English-only codes is not only unlawful but also an affront to the principle of constitutional supremacy.

 

“This is systemic linguistic discrimination that renders the ‘equal benefit’ of the law a legal fiction,” he argues.

 

The application seeks declaratory and mandamus orders to compel the respondents to enforce mandatory translation of all workplace codes within three months.

 

Adv Mucheche further requests that the Labour Code Regulations of 1990 be amended to explicitly require translations into all official languages.

 

He maintains that this omission is not a mere oversight but a deliberate failure to uphold constitutional obligations.

 

“The failure to immediately amend the regulations to incorporate all official languages is a breach of the constitutional mandate,” he declares.

 

This case is a direct challenge to what Adv Mucheche calls “institutional violence” against workers who are linguistically disenfranchised.

 

He emphasises that the Constitution mandates the state to ensure all citizens can access legal frameworks in their own languages. The current situation, he says, creates a legal vacuum.

 

 

“The inaccessible code of conduct leaves workers legally naked and susceptible to merciless employer action.”

 

Adv Mucheche concludes his affidavit by urging the court to intervene, describing the issue as one of fundamental human rights.

 

“This is not a matter of minor administrative detail; it is a critical intervention to secure linguistic justice and the supremacy of the Constitution.”

 

This move is rooted in the supreme law and labour laws of Zimbabwe, which demand inclusivity and accessibility for all citizens.

 

More than a decade after the enactment of the 2013 Constitution of Zimbabwe, the Government has yet to fulfill its legal obligation.

 

The Constitution explicitly requires the Ministry to facilitate the translation of these critical documents from English into the diverse local languages of the nation. The respondents are yet to respond to the application."

December 5, 2025

Fidelis Munyoro

Chief Court Reporter

https://www.heraldonline.co.zw/lawyer-takes-government-to-court-over-delay-in-translation-of-employment-codes/

#Metaglossia 

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