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"Taiwan Travelogue by Taiwanese author Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated into English by Lin King, won the 2026 International Booker Prize. The winner was announced May 19, 2026, at Tate Modern, London. The novel is framed as a translation of a rediscovered manuscript by a Japanese writer traveling through Taiwan under Japanese colonial rule in the 1930s. At its center is a love story between two women, set against questions of empire, identity, and what gets lost—or altered—in translation. It was the first book by a Taiwanese author to win the prize. The book was originally published in Mandarin in 2020. Yáng is also the winner of the 2021 Golden Tripod Award, one of Taiwan’s most prestigious literary honors. She is a writer of fiction and pop culture criticism. King, who holds both Taiwanese and U.S. citizenship, won the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers in 2018. Her 2024 translation of Taiwan Travelogue also won the U.S. National Book Award for Translated Literature..."
👇🏿
https://www.britannica.com/question/Who-won-the-2026-International-Booker-Prize
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"...An upcoming live-translation tool from T-Mobile will require no new software or even a phone that can do anything more than connect to that carrier’s 5G network. But it may demand a little more trust in the network and the humans behind it.
That’s because the Live Translation service that T-Mobile announced Wednesday employs an agentic AI platform hosted on its “5G Advanced” network to serve as a real-time interpreter of 50-plus languages. In fewer words: The network is the computer, or in this case the protocol droid.
“When language gets in the way, the network gets reduced to just a signal—and that’s not who we are,” T-Mobile CEO Srini Gopalan said in a statement.
To use Live Translation, one person on a call needs to be on T-Mobile’s 5G network and then press or tap 87 to activate it. That service-code interface preserves compatibility with feature phones; it also doesn’t risk having a voice-driven interface detect a wake word that nobody actually said, a problem that Amazon, Apple, and Google have run into with smart speakers and personal-assistant apps."
https://uk.pcmag.com/ai/163098/tmobile-debuts-ai-backed-live-language-translation-beta-no-app-needed
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"What challenges have there been in Stockholm in reaching out to groups whose first language is not Swedish with information about COVID-19 and vaccination?
The Covid-19 pandemic brought the need for broadly inclusive health information into sharp focus. It became clear early on that people with a migrant background and a low level of integration into Swedish society were over-represented among those infected and those who died. Shortcomings in how official information has been adapted to the needs and living conditions of these target groups have been highlighted as a contributing factor to why they have been particularly hard hit by the pandemic.
The project is based on the premise that there is a need to ground health and crisis communication in an ongoing dialogue with the various target groups, in order to identify their specific needs for information that is relevant and comprehensible. What challenges have there been in Stockholm in reaching out with information about COVID-19 and vaccination to groups whose first language is not Swedish? What experiences do residents and civil society organisations in the multicultural areas of Järva and Södertälje have of information about COVID-19 and vaccination?
In a research project funded by the Swedish Research Council, researchers at the Transcultural Centre and Uppsala University have, since 2022, been monitoring and analysing how Region Stockholm, in collaboration with a range of other societal actors, worked to disseminate up-to-date and target-group-specific health and crisis information during the COVID-19 pandemic. The project is based on focus group interviews and in-depth individual interviews with staff who have been involved at various levels in the region’s health communication work and strategy, representatives of civil society, and residents of Järva and Södertälje.
The authors of the policy brief are Mattias Strand, Senior Consultant at the Transcultural Centre and Associate Professor at Karolinska Institutet, Sofie Bäärnhielm, associate professor, registered doctor, specialist in psychiatry, Baidar Al-Ammari, Health Communicator at the Transcultural Centre and Soorej Jose Puthoopparambil, Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor at the Department of Women’s and Children’s Health; International Child Health and Nutrition.
The policy brief is expected to be published in autumn 2026."
https://www.delmi.se/en/ongoing/intercultural-health-and-crisis-communication-lessons-from-the-covid-19-pandemic/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
It’s not clear to me on what moral basis I would refuse publication in Putin’s Russia while signing gratefully for Trump’s America
Sarah Moss
"...Some writers refuse to be translated into the languages of people whose state representatives they disdain. This works better for national than regional or global languages. If a writer for some reason believed that the people of, say, Hungary had set themselves beyond the bounds of decency (I don’t), it would be straightforward to decline Hungarian translation and thereby deprive monolingual Hungarians of a book.
But what if you’re happy with the electorate of Spain but object to the government of Argentina? More people speak French in West Africa than in Europe, so if a writer were to refuse French translation on some political grounds (I’m sure someone has reasons) the readers of Senegal would suffer as much. Languages, like other art forms, travel.
I am skirting the issue of English, because what I decided in the end is that if I’m okay with being published in the US – and I am more than okay with that, delighted and, like many Irish households, to some extent dependent on the American market – it’s not clear to me on what moral basis I would refuse publication in Putin’s Russia while signing gratefully for Trump’s America.
I read translated literature partly because it shows me the world through windows I’ll never see. Translation invites readers to new points of view and the understanding of ideas and perspectives we don’t encounter in daily life. We might say that literary translation is by definition an act of resistance to repression and autocracy, and by depriving ourselves and others of such acts of resistance we decline an opportunity to make a (tiny) difference.
If I thought my books tended to support acts of war and nationalist expansion, I would be right not to want them in the hands of people already that way inclined, or living under the rule of leaders that way inclined. Since I don’t think that, since I think that when I write I pay attention to the love of our shared world, I don’t fear that my books will buttress oppression or justify violence into whoever’s hands they may fall.
I dislike the politics of many world leaders, including those of the nations to which I might assert belonging, and so in all likelihood do most of my readers, anglophone and otherwise.
I don’t think that power-crazed old men running big countries are likely to read literary fiction by a European woman, but if they were to do so I’m confident that it wouldn’t make them worse. I don’t think it very likely that people who already support power-crazed old men will read my books either, though if they did, maybe their minds would be just fractionally changed. It’s much more likely that the (few) people who buy and read my work in Russia are, like the happily-not-so-few who buy and read my work in the US, dismayed by and ashamed of their leaders, reading for all the reasons people read fiction – which include resistance to corrupt reality.
The answer to dangerous bigotry is more art and more communication, not less..
https://www.irishtimes.com/life-style/people/2026/05/18/some-writers-refuse-to-be-translated-into-the-languages-of-states-they-disdain-not-me/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"Now in its fourth year, the Education Scorecard (a collaboration between the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University, the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University, and faculty at Dartmouth College) provides a mixed picture of American education: a post-pandemic math rebound and early signals that comprehensive literacy reforms are beginning to pay off, but signs that middle-income districts are lagging behind.
In its assessment of literacy scores, the report found that Science of Reading reforms are making a difference––but not everywhere. The recovery in reading appears to be related to state early-literacy reforms. All of the states which improved in reading between 2022 and 2025 were implementing comprehensive science of reading reforms (DC, IN, KY, MD, MN, MS, LA, and TN).
None of the states which had delayed literacy reforms as of January 2024 improved in reading between 2022 and 2025 (CA, GA, HI, MA, NH, NJ, RI, SD, WA, and WI). Nevertheless, many states which were implementing multiple elements of Science of Reading reforms have yet to turn around (e.g., AZ, FL, and NE). Evidence-based reading reform may be a necessary but insufficient path to improvement.
“The pandemic was the mudslide that followed seven years of erosion in student achievement,” said Professor Tom Kane, faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University. “The ‘learning recession’ started a decade ago, after policymakers switched off the early warning system of test-based accountability and social media took over children’s lives. In this report, we highlight the work of a small group of state leaders who have started digging out by changing how students learn to read, and 108 local school districts that are finding ways to get students learning again. The recovery of U.S. education has begun. But it’s up to the rest of us to spread it.”
Professor Sean Reardon, faculty director of the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University and developer of the Stanford Education Data Archive, said, “From the early 1990s through 2013, public elementary and middle school students’ math and reading skills improved dramatically––by more than two grade levels in math, for example––and racial/ethnic achievement disparities narrowed. That shows that we can improve our public schools and equalize educational opportunity. But we haven’t been doing much of that for the last decade. It’s time now to make our public schools once again the engine of the American Dream.”"
https://languagemagazine.com/2026/05/20/science-of-reading-linked-to-improvements/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"La filière bretonne de l’école de L’immaculée se maintient
Les élèves de la filière breton à l’école de L’Immaculée. | ÉCOLE DE L’IMMACULÉE
Ouest-France
Publié le 15/05/2026 à 05h25
Il y a six ans, l’école de L’Immaculée inaugurait sa filière en langue bretonne. Pour un apprentissage cohérent du breton, nous avions fait le choix de ne prendre que deux classes, petites et moyennes sections. Nous faisions le pari de ne pas affaiblir la filière monolingue pour la filière bilingue. Pari réussi , se réjouit le chef d’établissement, François Thiébaut. Et cette année, les élèves de la première classe arrivent au terme de leur cycle, en classe de CM2.
« Les élèves de cette filière ont un esprit coopératif »
Les familles des enfants inscrits dans cette filière ne parlent pas breton. Elles sont attachées à la région et considèrent cet enseignement comme une richesse culturelle , constate Samuel Le Pottier, parent d’élève et président de l’antenne locale de l’association Divaskell. Laquelle soutient la filière bretonne et pourvoit ses besoins spécifiques (animation, matériel pédagogique…). Une réflexion est en cours avec le chef d’établissement du collège Saint-Yves pour poursuivre dès l’entrée au collège , envisage-t-il.
Pour ces élèves, 50 % du temps scolaire est en breton, réparti tout au long de la semaine, en matinée ou après-midi selon l’enseignant. Cette pédagogie implique une gestion différente de celle pour des classes multiniveaux. C’est à la fois une force, liée à la compétence des enseignants, et une difficulté, pour la gestion des emplois du temps, explique le directeur de l’école. Nous constatons que les élèves de cette filière ont un esprit coopératif, ont créé du lien entre eux. L’apprentissage facilité des langues se double d’une dimension humaine.
Soixante-trois enfants sont actuellement inscrits soit quarante-deux familles. La volonté actuelle est de maintenir une filière équilibrée avec trois classes, soit une classe par cycle... "
https://www.ouest-france.fr/bretagne/mordelles-35310/mordelles-la-filiere-bretonne-de-lecole-de-limmaculee-se-maintient-126c2120-2cd9-4198-b915-3a72937f4a11
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"Kenyan startup will this week attempt to run production-grade artificial intelligence on a US$5 server, one of several homegrown ventures competing for investor attention as East Africa’s largest technology event opens in Nairobi on Tuesday.
AI EVERYTHING KENYA X GITEX KENYA 2026 runs 20–21 May at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre, drawing more than 100 investors from over 20 countries managing a combined US$50 billion in assets. The event arrives as Kenya recorded US$1.04 billion in technology investment in 2025, a 72 percent increase year-on-year.
Among the exhibitors, Aphorion Labs will demonstrate HeatherDB, billed as the world’s first natively intelligent database, running on a Raspberry Pi and a US$5 server, a direct challenge to the assumption that competitive AI requires expensive GPU infrastructure. Founder Edwin Nguthiru said the company is positioning Africa as a producer, not just a consumer, of foundational AI systems.
Signvrse, which has developed an AI-powered sign language accessibility platform using 3D avatar technology, will also exhibit. The Kenyan startup combines speech recognition, natural language processing, and generative AI to help Deaf and hard-of-hearing communities access healthcare, government, and education services. It was selected into Google.org’s Generative AI Accelerator cohort in 2025."
Startups Bring US$5 Server Intelligence and Sign Language Tech to GITEX Nairobi https://techtrendske.co.ke/2026/05/19/startups-bring-us5-server-intelligence-and-sign-language-tech-to-gitex-nairobi/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
The new translation feature on officer body cameras would help remove language barriers, officials said.
"A new AI tech is bringing real time language translation to Stockton body cameras, an upgrade officials say would help bridge language barriers between officers and residents.
On Tuesday, the Stockton Police Department announced the integration of a new, real-time translation feature into the more than 300 body cameras issued to in-the-field officers. The new tool, said Stockton Police Chief Stanley McFadden during a morning news conference, would eliminate delays in providing accurate and immediate on-scene translations.
“Communication barriers have historically slowed emergency responses,” McFadden said. “Officers often have to rely on hand gestures, assumptions or wait for a translator — all while trying to assist someone in distress. When seconds matter, delays can change outcomes.”...
https://stocktonia.org/news/public-safety/2026/05/19/stockton-police-roll-out-live-ai-language-translation-software-for-body-cameras/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"Prominent Irish novelist Sally Rooney will publish a Hebrew translation of her fourth and most recent novel, “Intermezzo,” with an Israeli publisher that aligns with the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, after refusing an offer to translate her third novel into the language due to her support for BDS.
Rooney, a vocal opponent of Israel, had published her first two mega hit novels, “Conversations with Friends” and “Normal People,” with Modan Publishing House. But she made waves in 2021 when she declined Modan’s offer to translate her third book, “Beautiful World, Where Are You,” because she supports the cultural boycott of Israel.
For “Intermezzo,” however, she has found an Israeli publisher, November Books, that is compliant with the BDS movement, the Guardian reports. The publisher has also translated other books by prominent critics of Israel.
“Next month, we will be publishing Rooney’s latest novel, ‘Intermezzo,’ in Hebrew, in a way that honors the principles of the boycott and stands in solidarity with the Palestinian demand for freedom, equality, and justice,” reads the article.
It says the book is available for preorder “only for readers in Israel-Palestine, with the exception of West Bank settlements.”
“For me, the act of translation is in itself a beautiful ideal,” Rooney says, according to the Guardian. “Though my refusal to work with complicit Israeli publishing houses made the contractual side of things more complex, I was, of course, never boycotting the Hebrew language or any language.”
On its website, November Books calls itself “an ideological publishing house that aims to present alternative voices that do not gain sufficient exposure in the Israeli public sphere.”
It continues, “We are committed to the idea, in line with Palestinian and democratic voices in Israel, that Israel should not be a Jewish state but rather a state of all its citizens and recognize the right of return as it was accepted by the UN. We strongly oppose any form of inequality and apartheid.”
The right of return refers to the idea that Palestinians be able to gain citizenship in Israel, something that supporters of Israel generally see as a recipe for the end of the country’s Jewish character.
November Books director Ishai Menuchin says in a statement to the Guardian that “publishing books by authors associated with the boycott movement demonstrates to Israeli readers that opposition to occupation, apartheid and genocide is what lies at the heart of the boycott – a clearly legitimate form of political protest.""
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/sally-rooney-to-publish-hebrew-translation-of-novel-with-bds-aligned-israeli-publisher-report/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"Cameroon’s sacred and royal animals: could literature and futures thinking help save them?
In the grasslands and highlands of western Cameroon, some animals are believed to be sacred. Within the region’s indigenous kingdoms (fondoms), many of these animals are also considered to be royal. They include wild cats (like cheetahs, leopards, lions), buffaloes, elephants, porcupines, cowries (sea snails), and a brightly coloured bird called the Bannerman’s turaco.
These species carry deep cultural and spiritual significance. They are, for example, often used to decorate royals (kings, queens and queen mothers) or to award royal distinctions to deserving individuals. Their body parts can be used to make crowns, bedding, footstools, bangles or necklaces for royalty. Red feathers from the Bannerman’s turaco are used to distinguish warriors and hunters.
Here, indigenous cultural practices can both sustain and decimate biodiversity. The names of some of these animals, especially wild cats, are used as praise names for kings. But custom dictates that when these animals are found, they must be killed and taken to the palace as a tribute.
Most are either locally extinct or critically endangered. Except for cowries and porcupines, all these animals are included on the red list of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
Biodiversity loss caused by humans is accelerating at alarming rates around the world. This includes biodiversity hotspots like the Congo Basin in central Africa, which Cameroon is part of. Thousands of species have been identified in the basin, 30% of which are endemic (native).
Read more: Nuer people have a sacred connection to birds – it can guide conservation in Ethiopia and South Sudan
I am a scholar who works across disciplines. These include the arts, literature and cultural studies; environmental humanities; sustainability science; anticipatory governance and future generations; strategic foresight and futures studies.
In a recent study, I explored how literary creativity combined with foresight workshops might help change how people view these animals. Could they offer more hopeful futures for these unique species?
The role of literature
Literary texts like plays, poems and novels offer insights into dealing with climate and ecological challenges in the Congo Basin. (Even in the case of less popular but highly important species such as insects.)
This is the case in many works by anglophone Cameroonian authors, like Athanasius Nsahlai, Kenjo Jumbam, J.K. Bannavti, and John Nkengasong.
Read more: ‘A healthy earth may be ugly’: How literary art can help us value insect conservation
Their stories have the potential to warn against the destruction of royal and sacred animals. They can also help shape new visions for the future of biodiversity conservation.
I draw on postcolonial ecocriticism (the relationship between literature, culture, the environment and history) and narrative foresight (what stories can reveal about the future) in my study. I analyse how these books engage with royal and sacred animals in ways that challenge environmentally unfriendly cultural practices, and how they propose new forms of relations between humans and other animals.
Jumbam’s novella, Lukong and the Leopard, for instance, tells the story of a young man called Lukong. The son of an outcast from the Nso kingdom, he helps capture a lion. Surprisingly the king demands it be brought to his palace alive. Just as Lukong is to be decorated by the king, his father sneaks in. Fearing for his son’s life, he sets the lion free.
In a sense, the story challenges the old cultural practice of killing royal animals. It invites readers to change how they see and relate with these animals in order to protect them.
Workshops
Stories like this can then be taken into foresight workshop sessions. Narrative foresight meets group participation to create what is called participatory foresight. Participants and stakeholders from diverse backgrounds are brought together to explore future scenarios, the challenges that shape them and what can drive change.
As part of my research, I organised a day of participatory foresight workshops on #CongoBasinFutures and #RoyalAnimalsFutures in Yaoundé, Cameroon.
Over 30 participants across a range of ages, genders and interests were brought together. They included teachers, researchers, environmentalists, farmers, nurses, writers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, students, civil society workers, policymakers, and indigenous kings (fons).
Using foresight tools, participants were asked to discuss motivations as well as historical barriers while envisioning more hopeful futures for royal and sacred animals. The workshops were designed to include literary narratives on the plight of these animals.
They drew on current trends and signals of change, like climate change, biodiversity loss and indigenous cultural practices. They imagined new futures and then collectively proposed several policy interventions that could be practical solutions.
Shaping better policies
Cameroon does have environmental laws aimed at protecting biodiversity, but they are not effectively implemented. My study – and our workshop – seeks to complement these laws and contribute to their effective use in practice. Ideas coming out of the workshop include:
Creative arts and education should be used to help raise awareness about protecting royal animals and biodiversity. This could include programmes like our workshop, creative competitions and updating educational curricula.
Instead of decorating those who kill, local hunters should be rewarded when they spot and report the presence of royal animals for monitoring and preservation. The use of artificial animal parts for traditional ceremonies should be encouraged.
Policy should encourage research into the controlled breeding of endangered royal and sacred animals and the promotion of ecotourism around these animals. Special parks and reserves could combine arts and royal animals to attract tourists. Revenue could improve livelihoods, sustain cultures, and promote environmental conservation.
Environmental regulation should be strengthened through collaboration with all stakeholders, including indigenous authorities and local communities. Hunting of certain animals could be regulated. Hunting seasons and quotas for certain species could be in place. Indigenous leaders and communities could be engaged to adapt and modernise cultural practices in an era of environmental collapse.
Read more: Literature from the Congo Basin offers ways to address the climate crisis
But we must move from recommendations into action. Otherwise, ideas from studies like this will remain good on paper only, like most environmental laws in Cameroon. If so, royal animals and other species will continue to be threatened by extinction."
Published: May 10, 2026 9.41am SAST
https://theconversation.com/cameroons-sacred-and-royal-animals-could-literature-and-futures-thinking-help-save-them-281160
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
...Exploring how Scripture has been translated, transmitted, and treasured throughout history.
"with Tim Wildsmith
Sep 12, 2026. 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM EDT
Join author and content creator Tim Wildsmith for this year's Bible Craftsmanship event at Museum of the Bible exploring how Scripture has been translated, transmitted, and treasured throughout history. Through two engaging sessions, Tim will guide guests through the story behind the English Bibles we read today, helping demystify translation philosophies, textual traditions, and what makes each version unique.
The event also includes a curated tour of the museum’s History of the Bible Floor—an experience full of significant artifacts and rare Bibles, offering attendees a rich, immersive encounter with the history of the Bible. Whether you're a pastor, student, or simply curious about how the Bible came to us, this is a one-of-a-kind opportunity to learn from one of today’s most exciting voices on modern Bible craftsmanship and translation.
Directions
CONTACT
400 4th St. SW
Washington, DC 20024
United States
General Admission in Person: $39.99
Members in Person: $22.99
Students in Person: $29.99
General Admission Virtual: $19.99
Member & Students Virtual: $14.99
https://washington.org/event/engaging-history-bible-translations
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"‘Weird, delightful, refreshing’: Anupama Raju on translating writer Paul Zacharia’s ‘imagination’
‘I had to ensure readers around the world got a peek into his bizarre, but entertaining, universe.’
Anupama Raju
Discovering Paul Zacharia’s writing, thanks to the Katha translation series that was very popular in the 1990s, was like being thrown into an alternate universe. Gods, biblical characters, supernatural beings, politicians, drunkards, lustful men and women, co-existed without complaint in this universe. It was immensely educational as it was entertaining. I found Zacharia’s imagination weird, delightful and refreshing. And very different from that of his contemporaries.
As a Malayalee growing up in Chennai, I started reading Malayalam literature in English translation. The brilliance of writers like Ayyappa Paniker, Lalithambika Antharjanam, Paul Zacharia, OV Vijayan, MT Vasudevan Nair and Mukundan held me spellbound.
Years passed, and I moved away from Zacharia’s universe, only to be thrown back into it when I moved to Thiruvananthapuram, the city he lives in. I was already writing and publishing poetry in English by then. And perhaps because of my unfamiliarity with the Keralite imagination and culture, I felt like an outsider in Kerala. That I’d not studied Malayalam, the language of my parents, fanned this awkwardness. I was fluent only in spoken Malayalam. Hence, translating literature from Malayalam into English appeared as a lifeline to Malayalam, Kerala, and my roots.
A matter of trust
When I got an opportunity to translate Zacharia’s short fiction, I was thrilled. Though he was approachable and down-to-earth, I was always conscious of his stature in Indian literature.
The first of Zacharia’s stories I translated was “The Sixty-Watt Sun”, first published in Malayalam in 2009. He was brave to let me – a novice who hadn’t studied Malayalam – translate it. There were trusted translators like Gita Krishnankutty and AJ Thomas who were already translating his stories. Yet, he chose to have faith in me. For that, I shall remain grateful to him: Zacharia to the Malayalam world. Paul to the Anglophone literary world. And “sir” to me.
“The Sixty Watt Sun” was an exercise in hard work, patience and resilience. It was a story that had many surreal elements. Zacharia’s characteristic dark humour, the manner in which he exposed human nature and its absurdities and the brilliance with which he depicted contemporary trends made the story special. I would spend weeks reading each sentence aloud, piecing words together and referring to the Shabdatharavali, the imposing Malayalam thesaurus. I would also discuss meanings and nuances with a grand-aunt or an uncle, who tolerated my ignorance. Over countless drafts and discussions with Zacharia, the translation was finally done. The story went on to be published in 2011 in Pratilipi, a bilingual journal that featured literature from Indian languages.
More stories followed: “The Death and Funeral of Sister Alphonsa”, an endearing look at Kerala’s venerated saint, and “The Bar”, whose smoke-filled, absurd interiors were strange and characteristically Zacharia. Spending more time in his universe, I slowly grew confident in my skills as a translator. As I have noted elsewhere, translation is always a collaboration when one has access to the writer. I could not imagine translating in isolation. Zacharia and I would review the drafts, sometimes over a simple lunch of rice, moru curry and vegetables in his home. He would chip in with suggestions, some of which I was bold enough to turn down with time. A freedom he afforded me as our partnership evolved into friendship.
Loyalty to imagination
And then 2020 came into our lives. The pandemic struck. Life was unreal. It was around the same time that I started translating more stories of his, such as “Rani”, “Kanyakumari”, “By the Water Lily Pond”, “Black Magic”, and others. They offered much-needed respite from the anxiety of what was happening around. I would break into giggles and loud laughter at my desk, as I worked with his wacky protagonists. We would discuss the drafts over video calls. Our conversations also veered into other favourite topics like old Hindi film songs or cats. But luckily, the translations were done.
All along, I was writing too. I was invested in my poetry and in my first experimental novel. But whenever I translated Zacharia, I was always aware of the boundaries and the profound responsibility I shouldered. I was a translator first and a writer second. Can one separate the two, you ask? I think I did. My loyalty as a translator was to Zacharia’s imagination. I had to ensure readers around the world got a peek into his bizarre, but entertaining, universe.
More than 15 years have passed since I translated “The Sixty Watt Sun”. Now there is 50 Stories, a collection that brings together some of his best stories in translation. And I’m proud to have contributed to it. Zacharia and I speak from time to time. There may be no moru curry and rice. But there’s always laughter and respect.
Anupama Raju is a poet, novelist, literary translator and communications professional."
https://amp.scroll.in/article/1092614/weird-delightful-refreshing-anupama-raju-on-translating-writer-paul-zacharias-imagination
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
‘Being human helps’: despite rise of AI is there still hope for Europe’s translators?
Philip Oltermann European culture editor
9 May 2026
In February 2022, while he was plugging away at rendering the US writer Dana Spiotta’s novel Wayward into French, the literary translator Yoann Gentric decided he needed a bit of light relief. He would test whether AI could put him out of work.
Gentric had been grappling with a short non-verbal sentence that described the book’s protagonist’s feelings upon opening a window: “Bright, sharp night air, bracing.” He put the prompt into DeepL, a neuralnetwork-powered machine translation engine that regularly outperforms Google Translate in accuracy assessments.
The proposed translation was reassuring, with his job security in mind: L’air de la nuit, vif et vif, était vivifiant (The night air, lively and lively, was enlivening.) AI had translated the sentence’s meaning but was seemingly unaware that the repetitions rendered the line absurd. It was far inferior to his own translation that would be published in the book a year later: L’air pur et piquant de la nuit, vivifiant.
When Gentric repeated his experiment this spring, however, the outcome made him feel less at ease: L’air nocturne était vif, pur et vivifiant, DeepL suggested this time. The online translator still lost the sentence’s stylistic trait by adding a verb, but it had learned to use three different words that even had a musical ring to them. “I don’t know if it’s just chance or a fine-tuned algorithm at work, but nocturne and pur is not bad,” said Gentric.
Chatbots running on large language models (LLMs) - neural networks trained on vast amounts of text to generate naturalsounding language - are rapidly infiltrating every aspect of our work and leisure lives. But few professional sectors are being disrupted by the technology as rapidly as the translation industry in Europe, home to more than 200 languages and a booming tech sector.
According to a recent joint survey by the French authors’ societies ADAGP and the Société des Gens de Lettres, 79% of translators believe the rise of AI “poses a threat of replacing all or part of their work”. In Britain, a 2025 survey found that 84% of translators questioned expected lower demand for human translation, resulting in lower pay.
Those fears concern the future, but for many translators the nature of their work has already changed. Laura Radosh, a Berlinbased German-to-English
translator, used to get about four job requests per month from clients including universities, professors and museums. Last year, the number of offers dropped to one each month.
Many of them were “postediting” jobs, which required her to correct texts that had already been run through a machinetranslation engine. “Post-editing took me as much time as translating from scratch,” said Radosh.
Far less creatively fulfilling than translating from scratch, post-editing is also less well-paid:
usually compensated by the hour rather than by the page or by the book, it is paid “at unacceptable rates considering the work involved”, according to the French translators’ association. In Germany, publishers have been found to offer typical rates of two to eight euros per page - a quarter of the average pay for translating a page from scratch.
But rates for regular technical translations have tumbled too. “I got offered a job at 60 cent[s] a line,” said Radosh. “Before then, 80 cent[s] was the lowest rate I had ever come across.”
Even before the advent of LLMs, translation was a precarious profession: a recent survey by the German translators association VdÜ found that the average income for literary translators - traditionally at the lower-paid end of the sector - was as little as €20,363 euros per annum before tax. But the latest changes in the industry mean that for many translators, the numbers no longer stack up - Radosh recently took a part-time job doing book-keeping for an NGO.
Marco Trombetti, the cofounder and CEO of the machine translation company Translated, said: “Without help, the human brain basically is able to produce about 3,000 words a day of translation. Beginners will manage about 1,500, the best translator in the world may manage 6,000, but the variation is not that big.”
The cost of human translation, he argued, had until now been defined by the number of neurons we have in the brain. “That’s around 100bn,” Trombetti said. “But if we change that, then we change the unit economics of translation.”
Yet the speed of technological change is also revealing what human translators still do best.
For one, many machine translators still struggle with context. The German-British academic publisher Springer Nature offers its authors the option to have their books autotranslated into other languages for free, but in spite of assurances of subsequent “human checks”, this process has in the past led to comical results.
In 2024, Springer Nature machine-translated into German an English-language book by a group of Indian academics called ‘Capital’ in the East: Reflections on Marx. In the chapter headings, however, the machine translator DeepL had rendered “capital” not as Kapital in the intended sense, but Hauptstadt, meaning “capital city”.
A spokesperson for Springer Nature said in a statement: “Our AI-supported translation is human-led and reviewed by professional editors. Errors like this are rare and regrettable, and this instance relates to a limited pilot that has since ended.”
Jörn Cambreleng, the director of Atlas, a French organisation promoting literary translation, said: “Machine translation is not creative. These systems are built to produce sentences that are generic, sentences that have been said before or sound like they have been said before. Whereas good human translators strive to put into words something that has never been said before.”
One of the ironies of the upheaval is that literary translation now appears to be a comparatively safer career choice than its technical counterpart.
The HarperCollins-owned imprint Harlequin France has confirmed that it is working with a French communications agency, Fluent Planet, to produce translations that are generated by AI software and then post-edited by humans, although for now such trial runs are confined to the pulpier reaches of the market:
Harlequin’s titles include A Mistress’s Confession and The Embrace of a Prince.
In Germany, where the total number of new published books has been gradually declining year on year, literature in translation has held up remarkably well, with 8,765 books in translation published in 2024 making up a historically high 15% of the overall output. Increasingly, authors are also contractually obliging their publishers not to use AI in the translation process, said Marieke Heimburger, a Danish-to-German translator who chairs VdÜ.
“AI really cannot do dialogue,” said Katy Derbyshire, a Berlinbased translator who has rendered into English novels by Clemens Meyer, Christa Wolf and others. “When you are translating from scratch, you learn to understand the characters and their motivations, and you’re constantly adjusting them in your head - to individual situations, but also to genre. The dialogue that AI came up with just didn’t suit the character description at all.”
Being human helped the translation process, she added. “My body has experienced all the pain and the joy that literature strives to convey. I understand what someone might scream when they hit their toe on the bed frame - an algorithm doesn’t.”
Fernando Prieto Ramos, of the University of Geneva’s faculty of translation and interpreting, said his centre had noticed a drop in applications to translation courses three years ago, when the rise of generative AI fuelled the hype around machine translation. “But the trend is gradually reverting again with a more diversified training offer,” he said.
Even people who develop machine translation software concede there are tasks that remain beyond their product’s reach. “If in Italian I say Solo tre parole: non sei solo, then a literal translation into English would be ‘Just three words: you are not alone,’” said Trombetti, who founded Translated in 1999. “But you’ve ended up with four words, not three. That’s something that machine translation still struggles with.”
Heimburger said: “I am not really scared of AI, because I know it cannot do what I can do. What I am afraid of is the people who think that AI can do my job.”
https://www.pressreader.com/usa/the-guardian-usa/20260509/282501485254320
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"It can all go horribly wrong. Or the translation can be spot-on — or even better than the original! It all depends on the film, the culture, the actual words themselves, the complexity of meaning and the nuance. The World’s Gerry Hadden takes a global look at funny, brilliant and sometimes terrible film translations, and why it can be so hard to get it right.
May 8, 2026
Gerry Hadden
https://theworld.org/segments/2026/05/08/translating-a-films-title-is-harder-than-it-seems
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
AI will make language barriers disappear – and diminish our understanding of other cultures
Diego Marani
Machines may soon translate every conversation flawlessly. But language is more than information – it is curiosity, intimacy and cultural discovery
Sat 9 May 2026 05.00 BST
One of my earliest assignments as a young interpreter was to provide simultaneous interpretation for the proceedings of an ecumenical council that brought together all Christian denominations. As my homework, I dutifully read scripture, the gospels, papal encyclicals and the conclusion of the first council of Nicaea.
There was, however, one thing I had not foreseen. Mass was held not in the conference hall, but in the church itself, where there were no booths and the interpreter was required to stand discreetly at the altar. Here, translation alone would not suffice – the interpreter had to perform the part of the priest, with his unmistakable clerical timbre, the arms outstretched then folded in prayer, the gaze repeatedly lifted towards heaven.
My childhood experience as an altar boy helped, as did that innate instinct for the theatrical that seems always to come naturally to Italians. My performance was so flawless that when a telegram arrived from Pope John Paul II wishing the council well, I was entrusted with translating his Latin. The temptation to give it a Polish accent was strong, but I restrained myself.
With AI, the process of conquest through knowledge will be lost
Whether the latest developments in artificial intelligence and voice-to-voice interpretation will include a “priestly voice” setting and the whimsical option of a specific accent, I cannot say. Should they do so, future participants in ecumenical councils will be spared a most curious spectacle – and, I venture to think, deprived of a certain charm.
Live voice-to-voice interpretation, which the Cologne-based AI translation company DeepL unveiled earlier this month, marks the crossing of a frontier in artificial intelligence and in the realm of language from which there will be no turning back. The age of the interpreter is over: that ambiguous figure poised between the shrewd mediator who averts conflict and the scapegoat, who made communication possible not only between speakers of different tongues, but between different worlds and different ways of apprehending reality.
The machine will perform this task far better – cleanly, without siding with one party or another – and the economic savings will undoubtedly be considerable. The transformation in human communication will be profound. But are we certain it will be progress? Will the crossing of this frontier truly enhance communication and mutual understanding among people of different cultures and languages?
The first effect of the AI translation revolution will be to render the study and learning of languages superfluous for individuals. It will be enough to turn to our phones to understand whoever speaks to us and to translate our own speech into any language. Eventually, we shall be able to read information in every language, to write texts that can be read from one end of the world to the other. Yet knowledge – true understanding of others, of their cultures and customs, of the cast of mind of another country – will not thereby become ours. This body of knowledge will reside in AI systems, not in us.
If no one studies other languages and cultures any longer, we shall know nothing about the person to whom we are speaking. Until now, to study a language was also to enter its culture. And to learn language and culture one must love them, become passionate about them, feel a kind of infatuation with that country and its world. One always learns something because one loves it; only thus does one truly learn it. With AI, this process of conquest through knowledge will be lost. The passion for knowing and discovering another people will disappear. Languages will become for us mere codes to be deciphered, and we risk knowing nothing at all about the people who speak them.
Nor is it certain that AI systems will prove infallible in translation. However thoroughly they may be supplied with every possible piece of information about a country and its culture, they will always lack the capacity to judge the situation – the moment in which an encounter takes place and translation becomes necessary.
After my brilliant debut at the ecumenical council, my career as an interpreter continued with more prosaic assignments. I was once hired to provide simultaneous interpretation of lectures delivered by a group of Neapolitan engineers to a group of technicians from several French-speaking Arab countries, on site at a production facility in southern Italy. But my work did not end in the classroom. It continued in the evenings, over dinner and in conversations between the engineers on both sides.
The Neapolitan engineers were very curious to know how many wives their Arab colleagues had. Clearly, their knowledge of the Arab world went no further than a distorted vision drawn from the Arabian Nights, tinged with a rather backward attitude towards women that was then still common among southern Italian men. It was obvious that I could not ask such a question. So instead I asked the north African technicians how many children they had. Out came figures that satisfied the Neapolitans: at least two, but often three, even five. The Neapolitans widened their eyes, offered congratulations, slapped their colleagues on the back; the north Africans, in turn, basked in what they took to be praise of their reproductive prowess. Everyone was pleased, and my false translation served the good cause of understanding and conviviality.
It may be that the AI of the future will learn to master the particular fixations of future Neapolitan engineers. But there is a poetry, and even a certain nobility, in attempting to speak – however imperfectly – another language, even at the cost of provoking laughter through an error or a misunderstanding. It is, in the end, a form of courtesy to try to learn another’s language, a sign of interest and regard, a tribute to their culture. With AI translation, the humanity, the sense of wonder, and the emotional reshaping that comes with discovering people different from ourselves risk being lost for ever.
Diego Marani is an Italian novelist and former interpreter at the European Commission and the Council of the European Union
https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2026/may/09/ai-interpretation-diego-marani?CMP=share_btn_url
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
Le paysage éducatif camerounais s’enrichit d’un nouvel outil numérique. La plateforme digitale andjeun.com a été officiellement lancée ce 6 mai 2026 à Douala, avec l’ambition de démocratiser l’accès au savoir grâce au digital.
" une bibliothèque numérique de 4 000 ouvrages
Raphaël Cheugeu Mai 07
Le paysage éducatif camerounais s’enrichit d’un nouvel outil numérique. La plateforme digitale andjeun.com a été officiellement lancée ce 6 mai 2026 à Douala, avec l’ambition de démocratiser l’accès au savoir grâce au digital.
La plateforme andjeun.com, développée par ITGstore, est une bibliothèque numérique qui donne accès à plus de 4 000 ouvrages consultables en ligne, sans contrainte géographique. Pour son promoteur, Gabriel Fopa, cette initiative répond à une nécessité celle de reconnecter la jeunesse africaine à la connaissance et valoriser les solutions locales à travers le digital. «C’est une plateforme digitale qui porte plus de 4000 livres aujourd’hui. En réalité cette bibliothèque participe de ce que nous devons poser comme action pour défaire toutes choses qui font que la jeunesse croit que c’est à l’extérieur que la solution existe », explique-t-il.
Savoir-être et savoir-faire
Cette bibliothèque numérique s’articule autour de deux grands volets. Le premier, consacré au savoir-être, regroupe des contenus liés à l’histoire, la littérature, la philosophie, la spiritualité ou encore la science. Le second est orienté vers le savoir-faire, avec des formations pratiques portant notamment sur l’apiculture, la pisciculture, la culture du champignon et plusieurs autres activités génératrices de revenus. Selon Gabriel Fopa, l’objectif est de créer un équilibre entre développement intellectuel et acquisition de compétences pratiques.
À travers cette plateforme, les concepteurs entendent également inscrire l’Afrique dans la dynamique des révolutions technologiques actuelles. «Nous avons juste profité du digital qui articule la 3e et la 4e révolution pour dire que ce récit ne doit pas appartenir aux autres. Alors, Andjeun est cette révolution-là», affirme Gabriel Fopa.
Sur le plan technique, les développeurs ont misé sur une accessibilité simplifiée. La plateforme fonctionne directement via un navigateur web et propose plusieurs formules d’abonnement adaptées aux moyens des utilisateurs.
Le lancement a réuni plusieurs personnalités du monde intellectuel et scientifique, parmi lesquelles Dr Essoh Ngome Hilaire, Dr Yves Ekoué ainsi qu’Olga Patricia Ndinga, intervenue depuis l’Europe par visioconférence.
«Andjeun.com est une plateforme web accessible à travers un navigateur google chrome ou internet explorer, il suffit de taper simplement le lien du site. Il y’a une partie gratuite et une payante. l’utilisateur peut prendre un abonnement en fonction de ses moyens», précise AYEE Ronald, développeur de la plateforme.
Déjà intégrée à la carte biométrique jeune au Cameroun, la bibliothèque numérique prévoit une extension progressive à Yaoundé dès le 28 mai prochain, avant un déploiement à plus grande échelle sur le continent africain..."
Raphaël Cheugeu 07 mai 2026
https://teleasu.tv/digitalisation-andjeun-com-une-bibliotheque-numerique-de-4-000-ouvrages/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"Les modèles gèrent le raisonnement en direct, la traduction vocale dans plus de 70 langues et la transcription en temps réel via l'API Realtime.
By Colleen Cabili
OpenAI ajoute trois modèles vocaux à son API en temps réel, offrant aux développeurs des outils pour le raisonnement en direct, la traduction vocale et la transcription en streaming, a déclaré la société.
Le premier modèle, GPT-Realtime-2, apporte un raisonnement de classe GPT-5 aux interactions vocales en direct. OpenAI affirme que le modèle est conçu pour que les conversations vocales restent fluides même lorsqu'il traite des demandes complexes, gère les appels d'outils et s'adapte aux interruptions sur le moment. Il est tarifé à 32 $ pour 1 million de jetons d'entrée audio — ou 0,40 $ pour les jetons d'entrée mis en cache — et 64 $ pour 1 million de jetons de sortie audio.
La traduction vocale en direct est au cœur du deuxième modèle, GPT-Realtime-Translate, qui prend en charge l'entrée de plus de 70 langues et fournit une sortie dans 13, sans ralentir le rythme naturel d'une conversation. Il est tarifé à 0,034 $ par minute.
Complétant le trio, GPT-Realtime-Whisper est un modèle qui convertit l'audio parlé en texte en temps réel, en privilégiant une faible latence pour que la transcription suive les locuteurs pendant qu'ils parlent. OpenAI a cité des cas d'utilisation tels que les sous-titres à l'écran et les notes de réunion générées automatiquement comme exemples d'utilisation du modèle. Il est tarifé à 0,017 $ par minute.
Les trois modèles sont disponibles via l'API en temps réel d'OpenAI. Les développeurs peuvent les tester dans le Playground d'OpenAI."
https://fr.qz.com/modles-de-voix-en-temps-rel-openai-dveloppeurs-050726
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"Avec l'essor de la traduction automatique par IA, des milliers de langues risquent de disparaître.
La technologie de traduction automatique facilite la communication, mais elle soulève des inquiétudes quant à la disparition de nombreuses langues, l'UNESCO avertissant que des milliers de voix pourraient disparaître.
Selon le correspondant de l'agence de presse vietnamienne en France, le développement rapide de la technologie de traduction automatique basée sur l'IA suscite des inquiétudes quant à la tendance à l'« homogénéisation » des langues mondiales, dans le contexte du renforcement des initiatives de l'Organisation des Nations Unies pour l'éducation , la science et la culture (UNESCO) visant à protéger la diversité culturelle et linguistique.
Les dispositifs de traduction en temps réel, tels que les casques intelligents dotés d'intelligence artificielle, permettent aux utilisateurs de communiquer directement dans leur langue maternelle sans avoir à apprendre une langue étrangère, grâce à leur capacité à convertir instantanément le langage parlé et écrit.
Cette technologie associe le traitement des données embarqué à un système de capture audio directionnelle, séparant la parole du bruit ambiant pour une traduction quasi simultanée. Certains appareils prennent désormais en charge plusieurs langues courantes telles que l'anglais, l'espagnol, le français, l'allemand et l'italien, et la prise en charge des langues asiatiques s'étend progressivement.
Cependant, les experts avertissent que cette caractéristique pourrait nuire à la motivation à apprendre les langues étrangères, accélérant ainsi la simplification de la grammaire et la réduction du vocabulaire dans de nombreuses langues.
Le linguiste américain John McWhorter affirme qu'à l'ère de la communication de masse, les langues capables de relier un grand nombre de personnes, comme l'anglais et l'espagnol, domineront. Il prédit que d'ici 2100, le nombre de langues encore parlées pourrait diminuer pour atteindre environ 600, contre plus de 7 000 aujourd'hui.
Selon l'UNESCO, près de 3 000 langues dans le monde sont menacées de disparition, tandis que plus de 200 langues ne sont plus parlées depuis 1950 faute de locuteurs.
Colette Grinevald, spécialiste des langues moins étudiées, affirme que le rythme de leur déclin est très rapide. En Amérique du Nord, le nombre de langues autochtones a chuté de façon dramatique en quelques décennies seulement, et nombre d'entre elles ne sont plus parlées que par un nombre très restreint de personnes.
Les prévisions indiquent également que, dans les prochaines décennies, les langues qui se prêtent bien au commerce, à la science et à la diplomatie continueront de se développer.
Selon la plateforme d'apprentissage des langues Preply, le chinois (mandarin) pourrait compter environ 1,2 milliard de locuteurs natifs d'ici 2050, suivi par l'espagnol, l'anglais et l'hindi. Parallèlement, le français devrait conserver son influence territoriale et diplomatique, notamment en Afrique."
Báo Tuổi Trẻ
06/05/2026
https://www.vietnam.vn/fr/ai-dich-thuat-bung-no-hang-ngan-ngon-ngu-doi-mat-nguy-co-bien-mat
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
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