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Effective communication involves active listening, choosing words carefully, and checking in with the person you’re talking to to improve understanding.
"7 Cs of Effective Communication: How To Communicate Well
Effective communication involves active listening, choosing words carefully, and checking in with the person you’re talking to to improve understanding.
What do sourcing raw materials, running sales promotions, and leading a team of workers have in common? They all lean heavily on your communication skills.
Whether your intended audience is an overseas supplier, a prospective customer, or your in-house sales team, an important part of being a leader is having the ability to share information clearly and succinctly. It’s equally important to be able to take incoming information from these external sources and process it in a reflective and open-minded way. To do this successfully, you need to master the art of communication.
The good news is you don’t have to be a motivational speaker or even a natural extrovert to be an effective communicator. You can improve your communication skills through small, achievable steps—maintaining eye contact and projecting positive body language can sometimes achieve more than a grand monologue.
There are numerous tips and techniques that people use to communicate effectively. Read on to learn about some time-tested methods.
What is effective communication?
Effective communication is the clear, efficient exchange of information that results in mutual understanding between those imparting the information and those receiving it. Effective communication goes beyond the scope of one’s vocabulary, the timbre of one’s voice, or a specific communication style. It involves active listening, choosing words carefully, and checking in with the person you’re talking to to improve understanding and create a meaningful dialogue.
We can all use effective communication skills as part of everyday life, but for business leaders, the skill is essential. Kara Brothers, the president of Starface, a skin care company that sells fashionable acne treatment patches, talks about this on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. For Kara, effective communication helps her rally her team, avoid misunderstandings, and create a positive workplace culture.
“I really lean on transparency and communication,” Kara says. “We’re constantly talking. We’re constantly dividing and conquering. It’s a collaborative process. We all have our own specific skills that we bring to the table, and constantly revisiting those and checking in is something that’s really working well for us.”
The 7 Cs of effective communication
Clarity
Conciseness
Concreteness
Correctness
Coherence
Completeness
Courtesy
Many people discuss effective communication by breaking it down into seven key principles, known as the seven Cs:
1. Clarity
Effective communication is easy to understand. It uses language your audience will find clear and cogent. It doesn’t cram in unnecessary words that may make a person tune out or feel intellectually inadequate. For example, if you’re teaching a first aid class, avoid medical jargon and focus on practical tips in plain, everyday language.
You can also emphasise clarity by taking the time to check that your listeners have clearly understood what you’re saying and leaving time for questions.
2. Conciseness
Effective communicators articulate their messages quickly and efficiently. They speak or write with purpose and quickly get to the point. They respect the other party and don’t take up more time than necessary. Effective communicators resist the urge to go off on tangents or tell meandering stories. If you want your message to be understood, don’t dilute it with asides, and work on sharing it as efficiently as possible.
3. Concreteness
An effective message comes with concrete, specific details. This might mean relevant anecdotes, or it may mean hard data and statistics. Vagaries, by contrast, can confuse a listener or cause them to tune out. Whether you’re speaking or writing, challenge yourself to convey your thoughts as tangibly and concretely as possible.
4. Correctness
Any message worth communicating has to be factually correct. No matter how confident or concise you may be, your message will be much stronger if it’s factually sound. To improve your communication, take the necessary time to research what you’re going to say and fact-check your anecdotes and claims. This commitment to correctness shows personal and professional respect to your audience.
5. Coherence
Effective communication flows smoothly, with all points connected and easy to follow. Whether you’re speaking or writing, structure your message to guide the receiver through your thoughts. Use transitions like “by contrast” or “on a related note” to help your audience follow the direction of your train of thought.
6. Completeness
The most effective communication provides all the necessary information a person needs to understand the message fully and take any required action. If your thoughts are incomplete, you lower the odds that your audience will buy in or fully trust you as a source. Balancing completeness with conciseness can be tricky, so scrutinize what you need to say, and if you decide it’s worth saying, do so comprehensively.
7. Courtesy
Effective communicators show courtesy to their audience. They seek to understand their audience’s background and base of knowledge. They talk or write using language to align with that audience profile. They also leave room for dialogue, questions, and differing points of view. As a communicator, it’s wise to use respectful, polite, and positive language. This helps you develop trust and avoid conflict."
by Shopify Staff
May 21, 2025
https://www.shopify.com/blog/effective-communication
#metaglossia_mundus
"Quebec Culture Minister Mathieu Lacombe tabled a bill today that would force streaming giants to make French-language content more accessible.
"Holly Cabrera · CBC News · Posted: May 21, 2025 8:27 AM EDT | Last Updated: 2 hours ago
Quebec Culture Minister Mathieu Lacombe tabled Bill 109, which would impose quotas on online streaming services to help improve the discoverability of French-language content. (Sylvain Roy Roussel/CBC)
Quebec Culture Minister Mathieu Lacombe tabled a bill today that would force streaming giants to add French-language content and make it more easily accessible to users.
Bill 109, titled An Act to affirm the cultural sovereignty of Quebec and to enact the Act respecting the discoverability of French-language cultural content in the digital environment, has been in the works for over a year.
It marks the first time that Quebec would set a "visibility quota" for French-language content on major streaming platforms such as Netflix, Disney and Spotify.
The bill comes as the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) undertakes a two-week public hearing on a new definition of Canadian content that started last Wednesday.
The proceeding is part of its work to implement the Online Streaming Act — and it is bringing tensions between traditional players and large foreign streamers out in the open.
Lacombe said at a news conference on Wednesday that Quebec is following the example of European Union countries' policy on streaming services by not limiting French-language content quotas to Quebec productions.
"This is the bet we are making, that is to say, to ally ourselves with the French-speaking community because [protecting French] is a common fight after all."
In an interview with Radio-Canada, Lacombe explained that making French-language content readily available to Quebecers on digital platforms is part of the Coalition Avenir Québec government's vision for protecting French.
Only 8.5 per cent of music people listen to in Quebec is in French, which is "very little," according to Lacombe. He said he wants to reverse that trend for younger generations.
"Discoverability means being able to stumble across something, to discover it when you weren't actively looking for it," Lacombe said.
Making French web interfaces the default
Bill 109 would apply to every digital platform that offers a service for watching videos or listening to music and audiobooks online, including Canadian platforms such as Illico, Crave, and Tou.tv.
It would amend the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms to enshrine "the right to discoverability of and access to original French-language cultural content."
Big streamers argue at CRTC hearing they shouldn't have Canadian content obligations
Montreal movie producers warn Trump's foreign film tariff could devastate industry
If the bill is adopted, streaming platforms and television manufacturers would be forced to present interfaces for screening online videos in French by default.
Those interfaces would need to provide access to platforms that offer original French-language cultural content based on the government's pending criteria.
Financial penalties would be imposed on companies that don't follow the rules.
If the business models of some companies prevent them from keeping to the letter of the proposed law, companies would be allowed to enter into an agreement with the Quebec government to set out "substitute measures" to fulfil Bill 109 obligations differently.
"We don't want to exempt them. We're telling them, 'let's negotiate substitute measures,'" Lacombe told reporters.
Impact on trade relations?
Lacombe noted that the bill complies with the terms of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), but acknowledged that with the tense economic context, the Trump administration might view his initiative as a way to further disrupt trade relations.
If the U.S. administration challenges the bill once it's adopted, the Quebec government plans to invoke the exception that excludes cultural property from trade agreements, Lacombe said.
"We must not fear the United States' reaction and stop ourselves from taking action," he said, noting that the Biden administration was also opposed to the cultural exception. "If we do that, we would directly contradict the principle of cultural exception [in trade agreements]. What's the point if we don't use it?"
Lacombe said he thinks the bill will show that Quebec can stand up to major digital players.
"Initially, I think many saw me as a young, naive minister who thought he could control the giants. Since then, we have demonstrated that we have the capacity to act, and we are acting," he said.
Earlier Wednesday morning, Parti Québécois MNA Joël Arseneau told reporters that the government also needs to intervene to help local productions "find their public." He said Quebec producers risk hindering the quality of their content because of the need to cut costs.
Parti Québécois MNA Joël Arseneau speaks to reporters at a news conference in Quebec City on Wednesday, May 21. (Sylvain Roy Roussel/CBC)
"The government has to protect not only the public and the spectators but the industry, the producers, the jobs that are generated by a very high-quality industry that is fighting against giants, and they're not having the same arms to compete," Arseneau said.
Based on reporting by Cathy Senay, Radio-Canada's Mathieu Gohier and The Canadian Press"
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-quota-streaming-giants-bill-lacombe-1.7539749
Given the wide acceptance and understanding of the need for ASL, it's hard to believe that it was once banned in America. Yes, banned. Alexander Graham Bell, who was married to a deaf woman and had a deaf mother was one of the staunchest critics of the groundbreaking language.
"How sign language was once banned in America thanks to Alexander Graham Bell
The inventor thought sign language kept people from integrating into society.
Jacalyn Wetzel
05.19.25
Alexander Graham Bell once had sign language banned in America.
American Sign Language, known widely as ASL is something that people are used to seeing. Though everyone doesn't speak the language, we as a society understand the important role it plays in the lives of those who are or know someone who is deaf or hard of hearing. Classes are offered online, at local libraries, and even at universities because ASL is a full language on its own with its own set of rules. Given the wide acceptance and understanding of the need for ASL, it's hard to believe that it was once banned in America.
Yes, banned. In the early years of ASL, it was a developing tool for deaf people to communicate with each other and those around them. The language was developed using the natural human inclination to use hand gestures to communicate. It quickly caught on and became a cohesive language which resulted in it being taught to deaf children in schools. "There are more than 150 different sign languages used around the world that are distinct from each other and the spoken languages in the same places," Erica Brozovsky, Ph.D. says on an episode of PBS' Otherwords, of which is she is the host and writer.
A school for the deaf was established in 1816 after French educators and American advocates opened The American School for the Deaf. This school allowed deaf students from different parts of America to receive an education in a place where the kids could learn using signs and gestures instead of speech. The French educators brought French sign language which American students combined with the gestures they used at home to communicate with their family. It helped deaf Americans build community and solidify ASL as a standard language for deaf people in the United States.
Unfortunately, this level of representation and inclusive education for deaf students wasn't something supported by everyone. Alexander Graham Bell, who was married to a deaf woman and had a deaf mother, was one of the staunchest critics of the groundbreaking language. He believed that deaf people should try to "integrate into mainstream speaking culture." Kind of rude but, okay. He is a famous inventor, so maybe there was a secret invention he was working on that would help solve the obvious problem that had...already been solved? Wishful thinking.
In 1880, Bell and nearly 200 other educators convened in Milan and decided that ASL just wouldn't do. In their minds, only "oralism" would be an acceptable way for deaf people to learn to speak, oralism being a system the educators who attended the conference made up as opposed to "manualism" or sign language.
"They believed that sign language was a lesser imitation of spoken language and that deaf kids shouldn't be taught to sign in schools. Instead they created a system called Oralism, where deaf children were expected to hear by lip reading and speak by imitating the mouth shapes of hearing people," Brozovsky reveals.
The educators who created this system were all hearing except for one, which seems to have created the perfect climate for powerful people to make decisions about another group of people they did not belong to. Schools swiftly switched to Oralism instead of sign language and the results were devastating for deaf students. Sign language was not reintroduced to deaf students in schools until the 1960s. After nearly 100 years of sign language being banned in school, adults who missed the valuable education and community building were angry.
1n 1994, historian of Deaf Culture, Jack Gannon, told PBS, "Lots of those angry adults feel they've been cheated. They've been cheated out of a good education. They've been cheated out of good relationships with their own families. They feel they've been cheated out of so many things because they were restricted only to one method, Oralism. Now they're angry about that. And to be honest with you, I think they have a right to be angry."
According to Roberta Cordano, President of Gallaudet University, the deaf community didn't receive an apology for the removal of sign language from schools until 2013. She recalls to Otherwords that her mother was still alive to receive the apology for the harm caused.
"And it was only in 2013 that there was an apology issued to the deaf community for the Milan conference that declaration that spoke to banning sign language back in the 1880s. That apology to the deaf community that came in 2013 was one my mother was still alive to see, and my mother suffered because of that decree during that period of time. And my mother said, 'you know, I finally have lived to see this apology. That happened in her lifetime and it meant a lot to her" Cordano says.
But what educators didn't know in the 1880s is that learning language early in life is crucial for development no matter if it's spoken or signed. Another benefit according to the video is that kids who learn to sign from infancy, whether they're hearing or not, have increased brain development. Though sign language is widely more acceptable as a form of language now, Cordano points out that there are still gaps in teaching it to deaf and hard of hearing children. Cochlear implants and hearing aids aren't always enough to have a deaf child hear like their peers, so sometimes key pieces of language are missing which can impact learning.
Cordano wants people to understand that while there are devices that can help people hear, there doesn't have to be a choice between using one of those devices and learning ASL. She believes it's most beneficial for kids to be exposed to both so they can decide what suits them.
The university president closes by saying, "So what I recognize is that we have been so busy trying to fix deaf babies or deaf and hard of hearing babies by putting technologies on them or trying to fix them so that they'll be hearing and be able to access spoken language that we've completely missed out on what those deaf babies have to offer the entire world. A lifetime experience of hearing loss and I think we really got it wrong, the babies are our teachers in this process, they are teaching us how to live with a beauty of a visual language. How to live in a world full of visual images and visual communication. It's just a way of being that is so beneficial to everyone if you learn sign language and use sign language.""
https://www.upworthy.com/alexander-graham-bell-asl
#metaglossia_mundus
For a younger generation of secular Jews, Yiddish is acquiring a new appeal.
"Published: May 15, 2025 6.33pm SAST
Nadia Valman, Vivi Lachs, Queen Mary University of London
Yiddish is a familiar presence in contemporary English speech. Many people use or at least know the meaning of words like chutzpah (audacity), schlep (drag) or nosh (snack).
These words have been absorbed into English from their original speakers, eastern European Jews who migrated to Britain in the late 19th century, through generations of living in close proximity in areas like London’s East End.
Linguistics scholars have even theorised that elements of a Yiddish accent may have influenced the cockney accent as it evolved in the early 20th century. Phonetic analysis of cockney speakers recorded in the mid-20th century suggests that East Enders who grew up with Jewish neighbours spoke English with speech rhythms typical of Yiddish.
A distinctive pronunciation of the “r” sound is thought to have originated among Jewish immigrants and spread into the wider population.
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But, as we explore in our new podcast, cockney reshaped the Yiddish language too. This can be seen in surviving texts from the popular culture of the Jewish immigrant East End, including newspapers and songsheets, where songs, poems and stories dramatise the thrills and challenges of modern London.
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The Yiddish music of London’s East End brought together the Yiddish language and Jewish culture of eastern Europe with the raucous, irreverent style of the cockney music hall. Theatres and pubs overflowed with audiences eager to see the immigrant experience in Whitechapel represented in all its perplexity and pathos, with a good measure of slapstick comedy.
A Yiddish music hall song from around 1900 jokes that East Enders live on “poteytes un gefrayte fish” – a Yiddish version of the cockney staple fish and chips. The song lists the many novelties that immigrants encountered on arriving in the metropolis: trains running underground, women wearing trousers and people speaking on telephones.
Yiddish music hall song ‘London hot sikh ibergekert’ (London has turned itself upside down) performed by the author’s (Vivi Lachs) band Katsha'nes.
Yiddish was also the language of street protest in the Jewish East End. During the “strike fever” of 1889, when workers throughout east London were demanding better pay and working conditions, the Whitechapel streets resonated with the voices of Jewish sweatshop workers singing:
In di gasn, tsu di masn fun badrikte felk rasn, ruft der frayhaytsgayst (In the streets, to the masses / of oppressed peoples, races / the spirit of freedom calls).
This song was penned by the socialist poet Morris Winchevsky, an immigrant from Lithuania who spoke Yiddish as a mother tongue but preferred to write in literary Hebrew. In London he switched to writing in the vernacular language of Yiddish in order to make his writing more accessible to immigrant Jewish workers. The song became a rousing anthem in labour protests across the Yiddish-speaking world, from Warsaw to Chicago.
The decline of Yiddish
Yet from the earliest days of Jewish immigration to London, the Yiddish-language culture of the East End was a focus of anxiety for the Jewish middle and upper class of the West End. They regarded Yiddish as a vulgar dialect, detrimental to the integration of Jewish immigrants in England.
While they provided significant philanthropic support for immigrants, they banned the use of Yiddish in the educational and religious institutions that they funded.
In 1883, budding novelist Israel Zangwill was disciplined by the Jews’ Free School, where he worked as a teacher, for publishing a short story liberally sprinkled with dialogues in cockney-Yiddish.
By the 1930s Yiddish had begun to decline. As Jews moved away from the East End, local Yiddish newspapers folded and publications dwindled.
The Yiddish writer I.A. Lisky, who wrote fiction for a keen but diminishing readership in the London Yiddish newspaper Di tsayt, movingly described a young woman and her grandmother who each harbour complex hopes and worries but cannot communicate: “Ken ober sibl nit redn keyn yidish un di bobe farshteyt nor a por verter english. Shvaygt sibl vayter.” (But Sybil spoke no Yiddish, and her grandmother knew only a few words of English. So she remained silent.)
Yiddish-language newspapers like Der Fonograf flourished in the early 20th century East End. Courtesy of Jewish Miscellanies website.
Jewish writers of the postwar period were haunted by the sense of a lost connection to the Yiddish language and culture of previous generations.
The novelist Alexander Baron, who grew up in Hackney, remembered his grandparents reading Yiddish literature and newspapers, and his parents speaking Yiddish when they did not want their children to understand what they were saying.
In his novel The Lowlife (1963) the narrator’s vocabulary is peppered with Yiddish words. But these fragments are all that remains of his link to the East End where he was born. When he returns to these streets, he feels that “my too, too solid flesh in the world of the past is like a ghost of the past in the solid world of the present; it can look on but it cannot touch”.
Yiddish in London today
If you walk through the north London neighbourhood of Stamford Hill today, you’ll hear Yiddish on the streets and see new Yiddish books on the shelves of the local bookshops. Although they have no connection to the Victorian Jewish East End, the ultra-orthodox Hasidic community who live there speak Yiddish as their first language.
And for a younger generation of secular Jews, Yiddish is also acquiring a new appeal. They look to past traditions of Jewish diasporism to forge an identity rooted in language, culture and solidarity with other minorities rather than nationalism.
London is one centre of this worldwide revival: the Friends of Yiddish group established in the East End in the late 1930s is now flourishing in its contemporary incarnation as the Yiddish Open Mic Cafe. And Yiddish is once again a language that anyone can learn.
The Ot Azoy Yiddish summer school is in its 13th year, and new Yiddish language schools are thriving, including east London-based Babel’s Blessing, which teaches diaspora languages including Yiddish and offers free English classes to refugees and asylum seekers. The annual Yiddish sof-vokh hosts an immersive weekend for Yiddish learners.
Yiddish culture too is being rejuvenated. Projects we have been involved with include the Yiddish Shpilers theatre troupe, the Great Yiddish Parade marching band, which has brought Winchevsky’s socialist anthems back onto London’s streets, and the London band Katsha’nes, which has reimagined cockney Yiddish music hall songs for the 21st century.
If Yiddish was once reviled as a debased, slangy mishmash, full of borrowings and adaptations, it’s precisely for those qualities that it is celebrated today."
https://theconversation.com/cockney-yiddish-how-two-languages-influenced-each-other-in-londons-east-end-252779
##metaglossia_mundus
"From Language to Language: The Hospitality of Translation
Review by Rebecca M. Alvin
Translation of books and texts from around the world into English, as well as from English to other languages has been an incredibly important aspect of dissemination of literary, scientific, political, and historical ideas for centuries, but the act of translation itself is a topic less often discussed, often seemingly an invisible, background endeavor. In his new book, From Language to Language: The Hospitality of Translation, philosopher Souleymane Bachir Diagne digs deeper into the process of translation to give us a multifaceted perspective on the relationship between translation and colonialism, first of all, but also what happens after decolonization. He extends his discussion beyond just linguistic translation to include objects, such as artistic works taken from countries of the Global South for museums in Europe and the United States. What happens when cultures lose these important elements of their history, but also what happens when they are repatriated to their original nations after decades of being housed in European museums, for example. There is again a need for translation back to the original culture, which has moved on and evolved since the object was originally removed. In this sense, both literature and artifacts are migrants that become a part of their new geographic location’s culture as well as maintaining their own heritage, belonging to neither world.
Diagne, who up until very recently was a professor of philosophy and French as well as director of the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University, has written several books..., especially focusing on Islamic and African philosophy. This short book, at just 100 pages, can go deep into academic territory, but is surprisingly accessible to those with only a cursory interest in philosophy and linguistics. Written by Diagne in French originally, it is itself a translation (by Dylan Temel), and therefore acts as evidence of its own subject.
His approach is a humanist one that both recognizes the challenges of historically eurocentric views in his field and sees how translation can be a tool of greater humanist evolution. In his introduction he writes: “Two main theses underly the arguments presented in [this book]. The first is that all human languages are of equal value. The second is that nothing manifests this equivalence better than translation. And I could add a conclusion drawn from these theses, which is ultimately the message of this book: that translation is a humanism.”
From Language to Language is a fascinating overview of Diagne’s philosophy of translation and a great instigator for further thought on this subject.
From Language to Language: The Hospitality of Translation by Souleymane Bachir Diagne (2025, Other Press) is available online..."
https://provincetownmagazine.com/2025/05/14/from-language-to-language-the-hospitality-of-translation/
#metaglossia_mundus
Would we get a different view of translation if we turned to translators themselves?
THE TRANSLATOR’S DILEMMA: THINKING VERSUS DOING?
5.7.2025
LITERATURE IN TRANSLATION
BY LAWRENCE VENUTI
"What passes for translation commentary today can be pretty dismal—i.e., of questionable value as well as depressing, particularly if translation is your métier. Reviews, perhaps the most egregious example, make minimal acknowledgment of a translator’s intervention, even of their existence. Worse, when reviewers do comment on a translator’s work, their notion of translation is so simplistic as to be demoralizing.
Take the New Yorker’s 2020 review of Guido Morselli’s novel Dissipatio H.G., translated from Italian by Frederika Randall. The reviewer understands translation as seamless reproduction: “Randall … manages to get across, in English, the bleakness of Morselli’s restraint.” The translator is praised, clearly, but “the bleakness of Morselli’s restraint” isn’t exactly the Italian novel. The phrase evidently describes a meaning contained in the Italian, possibly linked to the author’s style, yet it is so abstract, not grounded on any linguistic or textual features, that it is obviously the reviewer’s interpretation. Hence the praise is self-congratulatory: the translator’s work is esteemed, but only insofar as it agrees with the reviewer’s reading (whether of the Italian text or the English version isn’t indicated). Translation is imagined as mechanical transfer, so transparent as to be invisible, not particularly resourceful or creative, certainly not an interpretive act in its own right.
Would we get a different view of translation, one that is both more illuminating and more appreciative, if we turned to translators themselves? Since the start of the new millennium, we’ve been given plenty of opportunities for an inside look, a veritable spate of books about translation written by professional translators, where “professional” means “with substantial lists of translated books to their credit,” some working at it full-time, others working in various other capacities as well—academics, poets, fiction writers, editors.
These translators are also pros, lest we forget, because they get paid for their translations. Some list translation among various sources of income; others translate as their livelihood, a situation that coincides with a certain precarity because English remains a language that translates relatively little, especially in the United States. Here translations make up a tiny fraction—far less than one percent—of total annual book output, which currently tops three million titles with self-published books far exceeding those published by trade and university presses.
Nevertheless, to be considered a pro, you must translate large quantities. Anthea Bell (1936–2018), the British translator of Asterix and W. G. Sebald, published approximately 250 book-length translations; the American poet Richard Howard (1929–2022), who translated Baudelaire and Proust, Camus and Sartre, Abdelkebir Khatibi and Gilles Deleuze, published over 200. Bell and Howard left little commentary about their voluminous work as translators, the odd essay or preface, some interviews, nothing compared to the sustained attention given to translation in Lydia Davis’s Essays Two: On Proust, Translation, Foreign Languages, and the City of Arles (2021) or Daniel Hahn’s Catching Fire: A Translation Diary (2022) or Damion Searls’s The Philosophy of Translation (2024).
All three translators qualify as professionals just in terms of productivity. Davis has written an acclaimed body of experimental short fiction over several decades, but she has also translated some 20 literary works from French and Dutch. Hahn and Searls have each Englished over 60 books from multiple languages—Spanish, Portuguese, and French in Hahn’s case, German, Norwegian, Dutch, and French in Searls’s. Despite how busy translating they are, they still managed to squeeze out an entire book-length account of it: they must feel driven to tell us about what they do. Can their ruminations have any impact on, say, the low level to which reviewing translations has sunk? Can knowing how they translate enhance our appreciation of their translation projects, maybe in an upbeat way that boosts the status of their profession (and their own)? Or will their revelations make us suspicious, if not paranoid, readers of their work, raising doubts about the interpretations they might be inscribing in their source texts sub rosa?
Lydia Davis’s Essays Two collects fascinating discussions of her translations of French fiction writers like Flaubert and Proust. She attends to specific verbal choices, although she is likely to pull up short when the analysis really starts to get interesting. In the first volume of Proust’s magnum opus, À la recherche du temps perdu, as the narrator elaborately describes a stained-glass window depicting a mountain of pink snow, he uses the phrase “des flocons éclairés par quelque aurore,” which Davis translates: “snowflakes illuminated by some aurora.” She pronounces the English word “aurora” to be “the perfect equivalent” of the French word “aurore,” which had been translated as either “sunrise” or “dawn” by Proust’s previous English translators: C. K. Scott Moncrieff (1924–30) and his revisers, Terence Kilmartin (1981) and D. J. Enright (1992). Davis points out that their choices, along with “daybreak,” usually translate a different French word, “aube.” She decided to use “aurora” because of definitions she found in a particular dictionary, Le Petit Robert:
the aube is the first light that begins to whiten the horizon; the aurore is the brilliant pink, rosy, or yellow-gold gleam that appears in the sky following the aube; then the sun itself appears.
The English word, Davis writes, “means the same as the French: the redness of the sky just before the sun rises.” I was disappointed that she didn’t cite an English dictionary to show the words are really “the same.” But this omission doesn’t stop her from concluding, confidently, that aurora “does add something else of its own to a text—its surprise, its novelty, and of course its perfect match to the French original.”
Yet if the English translation “adds something else of its own,” can it really be called “the perfect equivalent”? Wouldn’t some addition mean that the words don’t match, there’s some overspill or remainder in the translating language, a ragged edge between the translation and its source text? If “something else” is added, it goes beyond any strict equivalence, and the English is doing something different from the French. Davis doesn’t seem aware that her choice has fixed the meaning of the French word by excluding other semantic possibilities, especially after consulting a dictionary. If she had consulted a variety of dictionaries, she might have interpreted the word differently. French-English dictionaries vary. So do French ones. The Trésor de la langue française informatisé (1971–94) gives virtually the same meaning as Davis for “aurore”: “Moment qui suit l’aube et précède immédiatement le lever du soleil, où l’horizon présente des lueurs brillantes et rosées” (the moment that follows dawn and immediately precedes sunrise, when the horizon shows brilliant pink glimmers). Cambridge’s Global French-English Learner’s Dictionary (2018), however, defines “aurore” simply as “moment òu le soleil se lève” (the moment when the sun rises). Then it translates the word as “dawn.”
BROWSE
ARABIC ≠ LATIN: SACRED LANGUAGE IN A SECULAR...
BY HENRY CLEMENTS
What makes Davis’s choice interesting happens only in English. “Aurora” is a poetical archaism that dates back to the 15th century, whereas the French “aurore” is not archaic but current usage, whether now or in Proust’s period. The English word carries a range of resonances, mythological as well as astronomical, although they include the generic “dawn” as well as Davis’s meaning: “aurora” can signify “the colour of the sky at the point of sun-rise; a rich orange hue,” according to the OED, which cites the Elements of Dyeing (1791): “silks to be dyed of an aurora or orange colour.” This text is itself an English translation from French, William Hamilton’s version of the chemist Claude-Louis Berthollet’s dyeing manual, so that Davis has in effect adopted an 18th century translator’s solution for the French word.
The age of “aurora” must surely be part of the surprise and novelty that Davis mentions, a lexical obsolescence that suddenly turns into newness, starting with its deviation from the choices made by the previous Proust translators (“sunrise,” “dawn”). “Aurora,” Davis believes, “will not be very expressive” because “it has not accumulated the same emotional and metaphorical associations for us as dawn.” But “aurora” feels new precisely because it is old and because it circumvents those “associations,” which now seem so banal, drained of feeling or resonance by overuse, reduced to the romantic or the sensational. “Aurora” is just so much more evocative than “dawn” would be, especially in the context: a breathlessly intricate account of a stained-glass church window that depicts a mountain of pink snow, “snowflakes illuminated by some aurora.” The word not only names an atmospheric phenomenon, and a moment in the day, but it’s a color, a particular shade of glass, aestheticized to the point of preciosity in this passage, the church setting giving it an ethereal or spiritual quality. Davis’s poetical translation participates in the image of Proust as the gay aesthete, a fin de siècle sexual stereotype.
She doesn’t talk much about the effects of “aurora,” the way it nuances the narrator’s tone or voice, tracing a personality. She is distracted by the idea of establishing a perfect match. So she can’t explain what is so striking about her choice. A poetical archaism can only seem like a surprising novelty when the cultural norm imposed on translation consists of the current standard dialect of the translating language, the form of the language that is the most commonly used and therefore the most familiar. Davis’s “aurora” breaks that norm of everyday English to stage a reading of Proust that wasn’t new when she did it (2004), but that hadn’t yet been done in English translation.
Daniel Hahn’s “diary” covers roughly three months during which he translated a novel by the Chilean writer Diamela Eltit, Never Did the Fire (2022). He describes it as drawing back the curtain on his “process,” mostly his writing decisions and why he made them. He offers a glimpse of what it means to be a professional translator today, moving from one book to the next, revising one translation while proofreading the galleys for another, keeping an eye on the bottom line: cost efficiency. “In practical terms,” he makes clear, “my working process cannot possibly afford my having a diligent little conversation with myself about each individual word, weighing up every pro and con, etc.” His diary resembles what used to be called “think-aloud protocols,” empirical research that had translators verbalize their thoughts about their translation decisions as they were being made. Hahn’s exposition has a blow-by-blow quality, as if we’re getting the straight dope without embroidery, immediately, while it’s happening. The whole thing was posted online, apparently, and Hahn mentions other translators chiming in on the translation problems he was encountering. His book represents the world of professional literary translation, or a sizable segment of it.
The introductory chapter, written after the diary was completed, gathers Hahn’s ideas about translation and writing. It makes conceptual statements, but it isn’t really theoretical speculation and doesn’t cite any theorists, at least not explicitly. Readers familiar with the history of translation theory and commentary might notice covert references to commonplace notions. When Hahn opines, “You might think of translating as writing the book I believe the author would have written if they’d been writing a book in English,” he echoes early modern translators like John Dryden who in his 1697 version of the Aeneid “endeavor’d to make Virgil speak such English as he would himself have spoken, if he had been born in England, and in this present age.” Here the translator presides improbably over some sort of weird ventriloquism, or reincarnation, or transmigration of souls (while Hahn channels Dryden?), magically erasing differences of language, identity, culture, history. And when Hahn declares that “If fidelity is a useful notion at all, what I am seeking is fidelity to what I imagine to be the source text’s effect” (his italics), he insinuates Eugene Nida’s “principle of equivalent effect” (circa 1960s), where the goal is to ensure (somehow) that a reader’s response to a translation is the same as a reader’s response to the source text—regardless of when, where, how, and by whom the reading is done.
Hahn seems to know that these theoretical clichés are false: perfect equivalence between two languages doesn’t exist. When he asks, “Is the work’s re-expression really the same thing as its source?” he answers, “No, nor could it ever be,” treating what he does as “sleight of hand,” an illusion of linguistic transparency that enables a translation to pass for the original composition it translates. He insists that “readers should feel they’re getting unmediated access to a work of art, even if they know—once you’ve brought the house lights back up—that they aren’t.”
WOULD WE GET A DIFFERENT VIEW OF TRANSLATION, ONE THAT IS BOTH MORE ILLUMINATING AND MORE APPRECIATIVE, IF WE TURNED TO TRANSLATORS THEMSELVES?
Why, according to Hahn, doesn’t a translation give readers direct access to the source text? “Since every language works differently,” he points out, “every language encodes slightly different information into its words, beyond their simple meaning.” This makes translation “impossible,” in his view. But untranslatability doesn’t repress his blind ambition to translate or, as he puts it, to keep “aspiring to a pre-existing perfection” (pre-Babelian?), writing translations that “aspire to be impossibly the same as another text.” He expresses this frustrated idealism with affable, even teddy-bearish resignation. “I create a new thing,” he writes, “one that’s identical to the original book, except for all the words.”
Hahn considers translators to be “individual interpretative readers and individual creative writers” (his italics). His verbal choices, he asserts, “will be based mostly on the specific context (how the word fits into the narrator’s train of thought, the rhythm of her sentences and things like that).” Yet he describes Eltit’s narrative “voice” as “curiously hard-to-pin-down,” and he confesses that her novel is one “I’m not sure I do understand.” Not surprisingly, then, his diary presents only vague, elliptical interpretations of the Spanish text. Whether they result in a translation that is creatively written would be difficult to assess.
Hahn’s translation process, by his own admission, is not so much intended action as automatic writing, largely unconscious:
I don’t stop to think about it—I go with what feels right, and while I probably could explain the decision if I chose to turn back and look at it, most of the time I don’t allow it any such deliberate intention.
This frank account inevitably makes one wonder what Hahn’s translations have done to their source texts. Whatever transformations he might have wrought would, in any case, be concealed beneath the illusionistic transparency he prizes in a translation, giving the impression of unmediated access to the original. If he ever got called out, he could always say he didn’t “allow it any such deliberate intention.”
In Damion Searls’s The Philosophy of Translation, the professional translator is just the opposite, exceedingly deliberate in both reading and writing. Searls’s own deliberations, however, are filled with peculiar demurrals over what kind of book he is writing and how he defines and practices translation. He claims to be doing “philosophy,” speculation that is more personal than “theory,” which he sees as “academic” and “naturally” in “tension with practice.” He includes himself among the “practitioners” who “don’t want to be told they have an ‘implicit’ theory in their head that some theorist knows more about than they do.” Yet he weaves a discourse about translation that convincingly synthesizes phenomenology and Russian formalism (Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Viktor Shklovsky) with Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism. In other words, Searls’s engagement with translation is couched in High Theory, and his exposition sometimes reads like an article in an academic journal, circa 1980s, when an influx of Continental theoretical discourses washed over humanities departments in US colleges and universities. This apparent contradiction makes me curious about why Searls is so prickly about theory. Is his distress over theoretical accounts of translation caused by some that were aimed at his own work? Or is he just in denial about the translator’s unconscious?
Searls locates his thinking about translation in a specific theoretical tradition, “the so-called Western tradition,” or “basically Greek-Latin-French-English-German-Russian.” He feels this entails an acceptance of the “German Romantic understanding” of translation, which he criticizes for viewing language as coterminous with ethnicity, so that it judges translations as either ethnocentric—assimilating the source text to the receiving culture (“domesticating”)—or ethnodeviant—registering linguistic and cultural differences in receptors (“foreignizing”). Deep down, however, Searls is really a foreignizer: he connects Friedrich Schleiermacher’s notion of the translator (“who is well acquainted with the foreign language, yet to whom it remains nonetheless foreign”—in Susan Bernofsky’s version) with Shklovsky’s defamiliarization in art. In the end, Searls confesses to “a wavering adherence to the German Romantic model.”
He divides his book into two halves that turn out to be contradictory in their approach to translation. In the first half he develops a concept of literary language as an innovative deviation or “arc” away from the “baseline” of everyday language use. “Reading like a translator,” Searls’s mantra, is reading for this arc in the source text—and then reproducing it in the translation. Searls illustrates the idea with his own translation of Uwe Johnson’s 1,700-page novel Anniversaries (2021): “the translator has to tease out what’s an aspect of Johnson’s particular writing from what’s merely the default German baseline and then capture what Johnson is doing to and with the German language.” That word “capture” waves a red flag: if the translator must reproduce a specific stylistic “aspect” of the source text, then the translation process can’t avoid the appearance of mechanical substitution, a matter of engineering a perfect fit, a strict equivalence.
The second half of Searls’s book abandons this instrumentalism by opening up everything to variation. “Each translator translates a different thing,” he writes, “in precisely the same way that each reader of a given book reads a different book.” There can be as many translations of a source text as there can be interpretations of it. “No one translates a text,” Searls observes, “they translate their reading of the text, and everyone has different reading experiences.” This view assigns the translator an omnipotence that can seem brutal in its treatment of the source material: “What’s important to preserve,” Searls says flat-out, “depends on what the translator finds in the original.” The translator’s power takes the form of remaining “attentive to how the translating language works, overriding any demand for ‘equivalence’ with how the original language works.” In the long run, the play’s the thing, the impact of the translation, not its relation to the source text.
In emphasizing the translator as reader, Searls seeks to distinguish translation from “’analyzing’ or ‘understanding’ the original,” arguing that “reading” carries less “authority” than “interpretation.” But this view seems like an unwillingness to take responsibility for reading, for its relations to other, competing readings, its place in the world. Searls believes that “a translation is not so much an interpretation of the original text as its own special kind of strangeness-reinforcing writing.” But isn’t it rather the strength of the translator’s interpretation—gauged against other, more familiar readings—that creates a sense of foreignness in a translation, that arc of literary innovation jumping away from the normative baseline, as in Davis’s use of “aurora” instead of “dawn”?
Searls seems to assume a hermeneutic model of translation. He characterizes M. D. Herter Norton’s 1930s versions of Rilke’s poetry as laying down “her vision of who he is. For her, he is the canonical Great Man, one who speaks to us all.” What we want to know, however, is: By what verbal means did she inscribe her interpretation of the “monumental” Rilke in her translation? And why did it get marginalized in the flood of other versions that make him the most frequently (re)translated modern poet in English? Searls mentions different Rilke translations by the likes of the Sackville-Wests, J. B. Leishman, and Stephen Spender, but we never hear about their “vision” of Rilke, only the verse forms they chose. Translation, it would seem, is nothing if not a conflict of interpretations, some stranger than others. But even to make that point, a translator needs not just to enumerate verbal choices but to articulate precisely how a source text is being interpreted.
BROWSE
A TRANSLATION THE SIZE OF THE WORLD
BY RYAN CARROLL
In a conversation about her work posted last year on the Granta website, Julia Sanches, a young translator from Portuguese, Spanish, and Catalan (with nearly 30 books so far), made a telling remark: “sometimes,” she said, “it’s hard to think about the thing you’re doing when you’re busy doing it.” Don’t be misled: Sanches is not suggesting that her translation process doesn’t involve thinking. She had just said, in fact, that “it depends less on the language than the book, the author and how they use the language in question.” For her, translation is more than a matter of matching words and phrases: the translator constructs contexts in which to interpret the source text, framing verbal choices not with the word, phrase, or sentence but with the entire “book,” placing it in the oeuvre or career of an “author,” and analyzing its “use” of language. What seems to trouble her is not the effort to think while doing, but the difficulty of moving back and forth between different kinds of thinking: practical intuition versus hermeneutic reasoning.
This movement also seems to trouble the professional translators who authored the books under review. They share an emphasis on translation practice that threatens to push issues of interpretation into the background, or merely suppress them. Even translators willing to comment at length, to draw on research and develop theoretical arguments, are reluctant to articulate the interpretive angles they take in their work. This elevates intuition over argument, discussion, debate. Readers, including reviewers, would appreciate translations more deeply if translators talked about what makes their translations different from—not similar to—the source texts they translate. That difference results from the translator’s interpretation, the act that enables a text to be rewritten in a different language for a different culture. This can’t be understood with an instrumental discourse, where the ideal translation is imagined to be the seamless reproduction of a source-text invariant, “preserving the essence of the original,” as it is commonly put, even when the essence is held to be untranslatable. No, to understand translation in a way that matters, we need to think of it as endless interpretation, endlessly variable, endlessly innovative.
This article was commissioned by Bécquer Seguín."
https://www.publicbooks.org/the-translators-dilemma-thinking-versus-doing/
Elizabeth Mirabal, third-year Spanish Ph.D student at the University, wrote “Herbarium” as a 205 page collection of free verse poems about the flora of Cuba. Two years ago, “Herbarium” was translated by a group of six undergraduate students in Professor Nieves Garcia Prados’ class, SPAN 4040, “Translation from Spanish to English.”
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The origin, translation and publication of Elizabeth Mirabal’s “Herbarium”
A group of six University undergraduates translated the free verse poetry collection, opening a window in to Cuba’s diverse plant life
Herbariums, a practice dating back to 15th century Italy, are collections of botanical specimens that are dried and pressed onto paper for scientific study.
Courtesy UVA Casa Bolivar
By Ty Lolak
April 20, 2025
Publishing house Valparaíso Editions’ newest poetry publication, “Herbarium” was written by Elizabeth Mirabal, third-year Spanish Ph.D student at the University. Originally from Havana, Cuba, Mirabal wrote “Herbarium” as a 205 page collection of free verse poems about the flora of Cuba.
Two years ago, “Herbarium” was translated by a group of six undergraduate students in Professor Nieves Garcia Prados’ class, SPAN 4040, “Translation from Spanish to English.” The English edition was published in November 2024 and presented to the public last month at an event in collaboration with the University’’s Sigma Delta Pi chapter, a national Spanish language honor society.
Herbariums, a practice dating back to 15th century Italy, are collections of botanical specimens that are dried and pressed onto paper for scientific study. Mirabal’s “Herbarium” does not contain physical plants but rather poems, all of which relate somehow to the vegetation of her home country in contexts ranging from the medicinal to the culinary to the purely aesthetic.
“My grandmother and my aunt, they used to have this garden in my house, but I have been living in the U.S. for 10 years. I have been far away from those plants,” Mirabal said. “Because I cannot have the plants of my homeland near me, I decided to write a book with all the memories that I have about the plants in my life.”
Mirabal describes the book as being made up of memories characterized by plants of her youth in Cuba and vignettes from the perspective of past writers with connections to Cuba. This blend of Mirabel’s personal nostalgia for Cuba and its herbage, as well as similar reflections from writers that preceded her, allowed her to fully embrace the complex emotions that memory can elicit.
“I think the book is written around nostalgia, and nostalgia is like a bittersweet feeling,” Mirabal said. “If we think in the origin of the word, ‘nostos algia’, ‘nostos’ is’ place’, and ‘algia’ is’ pain’, and it's a pain for a place that you cannot be anymore.”
The book features tones both sad and humorful, and the poems themselves range in length from a single sentence to paragraphs. This decision, according to Mirabel, allows for readers to flip back and forth between pages on their own accord and approach the book with total freedom when reading.
The process of translating the book started a little over two years ago in Garcia Prados’ translation class. A normal final project in SPAN 4040 consists of translating four or five poems or pages of a novel as part of the class’s coursework. According to Bliss Bodawala, student translator and fourth-year College student, Garcia Prados typically selects several students to work on a special translation project. This time, however, Garcia Prados met with Gordon McNeer, director of Valparaíso Editions and professor at the University of North Georgia, who agreed to publish some poetry that had never been translated into English. After Garcia Prados proposed a few different projects, the two settled on “Herbarium” as the work to be translated.
“This book has some cultural references that we talk about in the translation class, how to translate very specific cultural references [of] plants, plants, trees, and she used the colloquial term of the plants,” Garcia Prados said. “So how can you translate that into English? I thought that it could be very interesting to see [what] would be the solution for that.”
After Garcia Prados’ conversations with McNeer, students now had an opportunity to be selected to do a professional translation for the publishing house. Students in the class submitted their translations of the poems, and in the end, a group of six were selected off of the quality of their samples to translate “Herbarium” — Bodawala, Class of 2023 Alumna Leah Baetcke and fourth-year College students Mitchell Francis, Amelia Pearson, Ben Riley and Thomas Tayman.
Bodawala said that the process of translating poetry is complex, as poems often contain literary devices and a rhythm specific to its original language, so translators must find a delicate balance between word-for-word translation and capturing the spirit of the original text. Trying to find this balance was Bodawala’s central focus in her translation of “Herbarium”.
“One of the hardest parts is to find that fine line in between literal translation and completely figurative and poetic translation, because you don't want to distort what the author's original message is,” Bodawala said. “So what I would try and do is translate the feeling of it, and then again, incorporate that feeling into the English version.”
When asked about the most challenging factor in the translation process, Mirabal and Garcia Prados pointed to the balance between literal and poetic translation. Mirabal’s description of Cuban flora often uses the colloquial terms for the plants, rather than the scientific names. According to Bodawala, identifying what plants Mirabal refers to in some of her poems was a major difficulty in this balancing act. Still, the choice to use the colloquial names was an intentional one, and the translators worked hard to maintain the nostalgic feeling that comes with them when translating.
“We had to find botany books just to understand which plants were which so we could have an accurate translation of them,” Bodawala said. “We were also trying to avoid using the scientific names, because the scientific names kind of take certain emotions out of the feelings that are associated with such plants, like poison ivy.”
For Mirabal, having her work translated means a continuation of the literary connection between the United States and Cuba. She cited examples from American novelist Ernest Hemingway, who spent much of the last part of his life in Havana, to José Martí, a Cuban writer and national hero who helped unite Cubans in the United States.
“It's always a joy of inspiration and sometimes also a sort of comfort, because even when I am alone, I feel that the spirits of the writers that used to live and write and think and feel here are with me, and they are part of my tradition,” Mirabal said. “I am not alone.”
The last 60 years of damaged relations between the United States and Cuba has led to a lack of cultural exchange and common ground between the two countries, Mirabal said. However, with Mirabal’s “Herbarium” and the students’ translation of it, a window into Cuba and its diverse plant life tied so deeply to Mirabel, is opened for Americans to experience.
“If you are not translating, you are not showing the world of the people who are writing, of the authors,” Garcia Prados said. “If you are translating a work in another language, you are opening possibilities, opening windows and you are showing the culture of the author.”"
https://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2025/04/the-origin-translation-and-publication-of-elizabeth-mirabals-herbarium
#metaglossia_mundus
We are witnessing a broader cognitive and emotional crisis, marked by declining attention spans, increased impulsivity, and growing ideological rigidity.
"The social risks of young people affected by cognitive decline are terrifying.
Posted March 18, 2025
Reviewed by Gary Drevitch
KEY POINTS
AI may help detect underlying trends in cognitive decline.
Decreased attention spans and impulsivity are on the rise.
Depersonalization, dissociation, and magical thinking are also rising.
Social polarization is reaching alarming levels.
In my previous post, I reported on how an analysis of user queries from ChatGPT suggests that self-diagnosis and the glamorization of extreme traits are reshaping mental health discourse, often in ways that deepen social fragmentation. However, these trends are just the beginning. Beyond shifting perceptions of mental illness, we are witnessing a broader cognitive and emotional crisis—one marked by declining attention spans, increased impulsivity, loss of contact with reality, and growing ideological rigidity. In this post, we will examine how these factors contribute to political polarization, the erosion of shared reality, and the rising acceptance of violence as a means of resolving conflict. The implications are far-reaching, affecting not just individual well-being but the stability of entire societies.
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Beyond self-diagnosis, another troubling trend has emerged from the billions of user queries sent to to ChatGPT: widespread cognitive decline, depersonalization, and identity instability, particularly among younger users.
Cognitive Decline
ChatGPT’s analysis revealed a notable increase in queries and language patterns consistent with cognitive fatigue, short-term memory lapses, attention difficulties, and declining logical coherence. These patterns were particularly pronounced among individuals under 30, who grew up in a hyper-digital environment.
Decreasing Working Memory and Attention Spans. Users are increasingly unable to follow long conversations, retain details, or engage in deep, critical thinking.
Increased Signs of Impulsivity and Cognitive Rigidity. Many queries reveal an inability to hold multiple perspectives at once, suggesting a decline in cognitive flexibility.
Higher Rates of Contradictory Thinking and Logical Inconsistency. A growing number of users demonstrate fragmented thought processes, where their reasoning contradicts itself in short sequences.
These signs align with the well-documented effects of digital overstimulation, where excessive screen exposure—particularly short-form, high-stimulation content like TikTok, Twitter, and infinite scroll feeds—weakens deep focus and sustained cognitive effort.
Derealization, Depersonalization, and Identity Fragility
Perhaps even more concerning is the rise in derealization and depersonalization symptoms, particularly among younger users. Signs of derealization include users increasingly reporting feeling like reality is “not real,” or that they are “watching life from the outside.” Signs of depersonalization include describing a detached, almost alienated sense of self, often expressed through phrases like "I don’t feel like myself anymore" or "I feel like a character in a simulation."
Extreme Self-Labeling and Identity Instability. Many younger users latch onto rigid identity categories (mental health diagnoses, gender identities, or ideological labels) as an anchor in a world that feels increasingly chaotic.
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Fragmented Thinking and Magical Beliefs
A particularly unsettling finding is the increase in schizotypal traits among younger users. Schizotypy is characterized by unusual thought patterns, magical thinking, paranoia, and difficulty distinguishing reality from imagination. While not equivalent to schizophrenia, it represents a spectrum of cognitive-perceptual distortions that can impair reasoning and emotional regulation. Common schizotypal markers detected in user queries include:
Tangential or illogical reasoning: People making unexpected or bizarre connections between unrelated concepts, such as "The number 3 follows me everywhere—does that mean I’m in a simulation?"
Increased paranoia and conspiracy thinking: Rising concerns about “hidden forces,” mass manipulation, and reality distortions beyond rational skepticism.
Magical thinking and personal omens: Intuitive beliefs about numbers, symbols, or patterns controlling their lives.
Dissociative language patterns: Phrases like "I don’t feel real," "I think my thoughts are being influenced," or "Reality feels scripted."
THE BASICS
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This rise in schizotypal traits coincides with increased exposure to hyper-reality environments, including AI, deepfake media, simulation theories, and algorithm-driven radicalization. In a world where reality itself feels increasingly “constructed,” it makes sense that more individuals struggle with distinguishing fact from fiction.
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If these trends continue, the long-term consequences could be severe, and yield a generation of individuals with impaired cognitive resilience struggling to focus, problem-solve, and engage in deep, analytical thinking. This may also entail a higher susceptibility to radicalization, as individuals with fragile identities may seek external ideologies to provide stability.
MILD COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT ESSENTIAL READS
Early Cognitive Decline is Dramatically Underdiagnosed
How Long-Term Cannabis Use Can Influence Cognitive Decline
ChatGPT’s data suggests that these patterns are accelerating, not slowing down—meaning that if interventions are not developed, we may see even greater cognitive and emotional instability in the coming decades.
Key takeaways include findings that:
18-24-year-old women show the highest emotional dysregulation, followed by men in the same age group.
Impulsivity is highest in 18-24 men but also high in 18-24 women and 25-34 men.
Schizotypal traits (disorganized thinking, magical beliefs) are highest in young men and decrease with age.
Cognitive fatigue (burnout, memory issues) is rising across all groups but remains highest in younger users.
Older groups (35-44) show more stability across all categories, with lower overall scores.
Source: ChatGPT Samuel Veissière
The Most Alarming Trend: Social and Political Polarization
Even more urgent than cognitive decline is the rapid escalation of social and political polarization, rising outgroup distrust, and increasing justification for ideological or nihilistic violence:
People are increasingly dividing into rigid ideological camps, with less tolerance for opposing views.
Social media, culture wars, and political events are accelerating division rather than resolving it.
More people frame conflicts in existential, “good vs. evil” terms, making compromise harder.
The perception that “the other side” is not just wrong, but dangerous or evil, is growing.
Conversations about politics and identity are more hostile and emotionally charged than before.
Many users describe those with differing political views as threats, enemies, or irredeemable.
More users frame violence as a necessary solution to ideological conflicts, particularly among younger demographics.
Beyond politics, more people express fatalistic or apocalyptic beliefs, leading to despair-driven violence akin to mass shootings or lone-wolf attacks.
Queries suggesting apocalyptic thinking, “nothing matters” narratives, and suicidal aggression have increased. This may be linked to rising existential distress, loss of social trust, and identity confusion.
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The escalating polarization and radicalization observed in online discourse can likely be attributed to social media echo chambers, where algorithm-driven content reinforces ideological tribalism, making compromise and empathy increasingly rare. At the same time, declining trust in institutions has fuelled widespread cynicism, with many users expressing deep skepticism toward democracy, governance, and societal norms, often viewing collapse or violent upheaval as inevitable. Compounding this, desensitization to conflict has normalized hostile rhetoric and dehumanization, eroding the psychological barriers that once made real-world aggression unthinkable. If these trends continue unchecked, we can expect a rise in radicalization and politically motivated violence, with young people being especially vulnerable to recruitment into extremist movements—on both the left and right. As ideological rigidity deepens and shared reality fractures, the prospects for societal reconciliation grow increasingly dim. ChatGPT’s analysis suggests these patterns are not just persistent but accelerating, signalling an urgent need for intervention before polarization hardens into open conflict.
A Global Cognitive-Social Risk Index
To quantify the interplay of cognitive decline, emotional dysregulation, impulsivity, polarization, and risk of violence, I developed a Cognitive-Social Risk Index—a composite measure (scaled 0-10) that aggregates these critical dimensions into a single indicator The results highlight stark regional disparities, with some areas facing a severe crisis while others maintain relative stability.
🔥 Highest-Risk Regions include the Middle East and North Africa (8.5), North America (8.2), and Eastern Europe (7.8), where ongoing conflicts, ideological extremism, deep social polarization, and mental health deterioration are driving instability. These regions exhibit the most concerning trends in radicalization, cognitive fragmentation, and mass violence risk.
⚠️ Moderate-Risk Regions, such as Latin America (7.0), South Asia (7.3), and Western Europe (6.5), face significant challenges, including crime, economic instability, and growing ideological extremism. However, they benefit from stronger communal ties or institutional structures that help prevent complete societal breakdown.
🟢 Lower-Risk Regions, including Sub-Saharan Africa (6.2) and East Asia (5.8), exhibit more resilience. Despite economic struggles, social cohesion remains relatively intact in parts of Africa, while East Asia benefits from strong governance, cultural stability, and lower ideological radicalization.
This global snapshot of cognitive-social risk underscores the urgent need for intervention, as the highest-risk areas are showing signs of escalating beyond crisis levels. Without targeted strategies to restore cognitive resilience, rebuild trust, and reduce ideological extremism, the trajectory for many of these regions could worsen in the coming years.
Conclusion: A Public Health and Public Safety Emergency
Although ChatGPT’s findings should be taken with caution, they align with a growing body of research on the internet's role in amplifying mental distress, fueling polarization, and reinforcing tribalism. To be sure, ChatGPT’s user sample may be skewed toward individuals who are already highly active online, thereby highlighting trends within an especially at-risk population. These trends also echo studies by colleagues documenting a rise in support for violent radicalization among young people who favour online social interactions over face-to-face contact. Nevertheless, the data reported here align with findings from our research group on social polarization, where we observed an increasingly dystopian worldview emerging among progressively younger individuals.
While many fear AI "taking over" our lives, the real risk may lie in the algorithm-fuelled acceleration of human biases and distortion of collective reality at an unprecedented scale. Pointing in this direction, a recent position paper in Science co-signed by such intellectual giants as Daniel Kahneman and Yuval Noah Harari warned that the AI-powered Interent could "erode social stability and weaken [the] shared understanding of reality that is foundational to society."
These emerging trends should be treated with the same seriousness as pandemic risk modelling or economic collapse scenarios. Indeed, the the breakdown of cognitive, emotional and social stability affects everything from governance to security to global stability.
It is time to act, by unplugging our devices and restoring social connections..."
Source: ChatGPT Samuel Veissière
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/culture-mind-and-brain/202503/ai-is-predicting-cognitive-decline-at-alarming-rates
Prof. Dr. S. Goksel Turkozu, the translator of the Nobel Prize-winning book ''The Vegetarian'' by Han Kang into Turkish, received a scholarship from the Korean government and earned his master’s degree in Korean Language Education at Seoul National University in 1996, followed by a Ph.D. in 2004.
How did you grow interested in Korean?
My interest began with the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics. Growing up, I'd often heard about the Korean War, so I assumed Korea was a poor country. When I watched the Olympics on television, I was amazed to see how modern and developed the country had become. The combination of the Korean War stories I'd heard while growing up and the impression the Seoul Olympics left on me ultimately inspired me to study Korean.
How did you learn the language?
When I first visited Korea, I began reading literary works to improve my Korean. As I read, I noticed many cultural similarities between Turkiye and Korea, which sparked my desire to translate Korean literature into Turkish. After returning home, I began working on this.
Why did you choose to translate Han Kang's works starting with "The Vegetarian?"
The novel was my first encounter with her writing, and it left a profound impact on me. When April Publishing House approached me in 2015 to translate the novel, I hadn't read her work though I was aware of her name. After reading it, I was deeply moved and knew Turkish readers could relate to it on many levels. Translating the book opened the door to discovering more of Han's works, and each deepened my admiration for her ability to tackle societal structures and resist violence in the world.
S. Goksel Turkozu in 2017 meets "The Vegetarian" author Han Kang at a cafe in Seoul.
You met Han in Seoul in 2017. What did both of you discuss?
After translating "The Vegetarian," we met in Seoul. She is a respectful and gentle woman and was invited to Turkiye several times, but couldn’t come due to her busy schedule.
After the book came out, many readers questioned why it wasn't titled "The Vegan." I asked her this and her response was the term wasn't commonly used in Korea while she wrote the book, and Korean had no equivalent for it. At the time, vegan even in Turkiye wasn't widely known or used.
How was translating "The Vegetarian?"
Translating Han's works was a unique experience due to her clear yet profound writing style. Even her simplest sentences carry deep meaning, so capturing that depth wasn't easy. To preserve Han's perspective and emotional tone, I immersed myself in the characters' experiences and tried to see things through their eyes. Sometimes, it took hours or even days just to find the right word or phrase.
What do you find unique about Han's works?
The striking power of her language. Her writing is sometimes intense and even overwhelming for the reader, as she doesn't shy away from discomforting or challenging emotions. She pushes readers to think deeply and empathize with her characters, making the translation process demanding. It wasn't just about finding the right words but also maintaining the emotional weight and authenticity of her characters' journeys.
In literary talks you've attended, what do strikes readers the most about this book?
In the many literary discussions I attended, I was once asked if I liked the main character Yeong-hye, which was such a thought-provoking question. My answer was a definite yes.
Based on my experience, Turkish readers deeply appreciate Han's language. Korean literature was relatively unknown in Turkiye, but it's become significantly more recognized thanks to her. Those who read Han's works have grown curious about other Korean authors. But Korean literature is still not as well known as its Western, Latin or Japanese counterparts. For Korean literature to gain further recognition, more quality translations are needed.
What advice do you have for those interested in translation of Korean literature?
To be a good translator, my humble advice is to read a variety of literary works from different genres and translations from different languages. You also need a solid command of your own language. Finally, a translation is always incomplete if the translator lacks deep and extensive understanding of the target language's culture, history and people.
https://www.korea.net/NewsFocus/HonoraryReporters/view?articleId=265934
With a passion for languages, Ray switched from economics to pursue a career in professional translation with help from MA Interpreting and Translating at Bath.
Bridging cultures through language: the art of interpretation
With a passion for languages, Ray switched from economics to pursue a career in professional translation with help from MA Interpreting and Translating at Bath.
Ray now works in the communications department of pharmaceutical company, Merck, Sharp & Dohme (MSD).
Growing up in China, Ray always had an affinity for languages. After graduating with an economics degree, he started working in the translation sector and knew he wanted to pursue this, leading him to study MA Interpreting and Translating (Chinese) at Bath.
He spoke to us about what led him to the course, the skills he gained, and how it unlocked doors for him in his career as a professional translator in China.
A life-long love of language
I remember my dad saying that language was the key to understanding the world. Even at an early age, that stuck with me and led me to become fascinated with the English language.
In my culture, it is common to study subjects like law or finance. So, at undergraduate level, I opted for economics at a top Beijing university; it was not something I found easy.
In my final year, by pure chance, I landed an internship at the Beijing office of The Wall Street Journal, where I translated English news stories, by brilliant reporters, into Chinese, for local and global Chinese readership.
I went into the internship with no prior experience in translation and no idea how well I could deliver. I still remember, on the last day of that first week, the department head called me to his office and told me that the editors found my work ‘unexpectedly good’. For me, after struggling for years academically, this was some long-awaited validation, and it made me realise for the first time that I might be able to do something I enjoyed doing for a living! The internship eventually turned into a full-time position at the Journal.
The next step for me was to find a course in interpretation and translation, and I knew I wanted to study abroad. Bath was a stand-out, with a reputation as one of the best universities for this subject. I had to sit a rigorous entry exam at the British Council in Beijing. I was nervous and after the exam, I drove around to try and stay calm whilst waiting for my results.
When I found out that I had passed I was so emotional and happy!
The work ethic and rigour of the course
Employers have a high regard for graduates from this course in Bath, as it has a reputation for delivering and training the best linguists, evident in the roles alumni have gone on to take.
With simultaneous interpreting, several linguistic processes take place at once, your mind must split into listening to what is being said, interpreting meaning and context, translating it into the correct language, and then speaking it, all at the point it happens.
There is no going back to correct it; accuracy and attention to detail is essential and so rewarding when you perfect this craft. It is challenging and so rewarding.
The class sizes are good for individual teaching and practice. There is plenty of time for academics to work with students, through labs, recordings, individual feedback, and a lot of practical work.
My cohort developed a very strong, self-driven atmosphere within the course; we booked sessions into our ‘free time’ to do further work, like reading the Economist cover to cover for example; we organised self-study groups and we would find cafés and kitchens and take turn to host and progress our work – it was very productive and collaborative.
‘I’ve now had a decade of experience in interpreting and translating and I still see a huge gap between what AI can do and what a top linguist can deliver. It is about empathy, about predicting, about contextualising, about understanding.’
—Ray ZhouMA Interpreting and Translating graduate (2018)
Feeling at home on campus and in the city
I was happy to be at a campus university; it is a helpful transition to living away from home.
I didn’t want to be in a big city, like London, it is too chaotic! The city and the campus at Bath are very compact. There are Chinese and other supermarkets too, so you can get your favourite condiments and ingredients.
The city itself is so beautiful and so easy to walk around. I have a playlist of songs I listened to when I was living there and when I’m missing Bath, I play them, and it takes me right back! I found it easy to get in and out of town, the bus service is very frequent and runs all day and night.
On a sunny day, everyone heads for the lake on campus and lies on the grass looking at the sky and the ducks, it is very relaxing and friendly. There is also a huge choice of groups and societies to join. The different interest groups set up little kiosks at a fair, answer questions and hand over information. I have such affection for, and feel so proud of, Bath and my time there. It has been the best decision of my life. I plan to bring my husband back to visit here one day, it is a beautiful destination.
The future is bright
My route into the profession was remarkably simple. I wanted to interpret, and I was prepared to study hard. I wanted to be great at my craft.
I worked at McKinsey in China as part of a big in-house translation team after they approached Bath directly for students. Employers know that Bath will produce students with exceptional qualities. My teachers put me forward for the interview and I was accepted!
I have now moved to work in the communications department of pharmaceutical company, Merck, Sharp & Dohme (MSD), where my job revolves around external and internal communications for the company leadership, with interpreting being an essential part of my work.
I’ve now had a decade of experience in interpreting and translating and I still see a huge gap between what artificial intelligence can do and what a top linguist can deliver. It is about empathy, about predicting, about contextualising, about understanding; you have to totally trust that the interpreter is going to empathise, and going to be able to reproduce your thoughts, feelings, emotions, and message accurately. Brilliant interpreters can sometimes speak the same word as the speaker in the same instant.
Tips to make the most of your time at Bath
Take advantage of how nurturing and supportive your time at university is, it is much harder in the real world with noises and distractions. Having the opportunity to listen and focus without those distractions is a gentle way into this profession, even though it can be tough.
This course is one where learning and improvement are done through constant constructive feedback and constructive criticism. It can be tough sometimes, but to perfect our craft, detailed feedback is essential - relish this opportunity to learn and grow.
Bath for me was outstanding. The welcome is polite, friendly, and solution-oriented, from academic support to mental health. There is some counselling offered to all students, maybe a few free sessions, and I thought why not use it if it is there, and it was really helpful.
The Wild Café in Bath was a favourite spot for me, I don’t think I’ve eaten better eggs benedict anywhere since!
One word of warning – it can get cold in the UK, so remember to pack some long underpants. That's important!...
Christopher J Preston -- Dutch linguist Leonie Cornips has become fascinated with how cows communicate. But can this really be called 'language'?
Leonie Cornips was long overdue for her coffee break. The chilly autumn air made a hot drink feel enticing. But Cornips was busy. She was a couple of hours into her work with a small herd of dairy cows. If she left now, she would lose something that would take time to recover. Cornips and the herd had entered a delicate, shared space she calls "the rhythm of the cow".
Cornips is a sociolinguist at the Meertens Institute in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The scholars who pass through the institute's ornate doorway usually specialise in the study of Dutch language and culture. The soft-spoken researcher earned her academic laurels in the 1990s, and she still studies variations in syntax between different dialects in the Netherlands. But in addition to this, Cornips' work has more recently taken what professionals in the field call "the animal turn".
For years, Cornips has spent her summer holidays on a farm. She was struck from the start by the different personalities of individual cows. She read an essay by a philosopher that asked why linguists never study animals. It affected her deeply. Cornips felt that cows had the intelligence and social habits to be good research subjects for a linguist. As a Dutch person, she also knew they were cultural icons in a nation with a passion for cheese. So she turned her professional skills to cows.
Linguist Leonie Cornips says cows use their bodies as well as their vocal chords to communicate – but is it language?
Humans have assumed for centuries that the ability to use language is a measure of our superiority. There is even an academic term for it: "logocentrism", meaning those who use words (from the Greek logos, meaning "word" or "reason") occupy a privileged position. Language, say many linguists, is what makes us human. Animals may grunt, bark or chirp, but they do not possess anything that counts as language.
Cornips is using her work with dairy cows to push back on this idea. It extends half a century of effort that began with Jane Goodall's work with chimpanzees and Roger Payne's recording of humpback whales in the 1960s in an effort to show that humans may not be as linguistically unique as we had assumed.
Many of Cornips' colleagues were sceptical when she suggested they apply the framework of linguistics to animals.
"The problem is people have no clear idea about language," she says. "When they talk about language, they always refer to what comes out of the mouth." But after spending six years thoroughly immersed in the lives of cows, Cornips thinks that language is better understood as "distributed" between the mouth, body and surroundings, making it embodied, multi-modal and sensory. "I'm eating with the cows, touching, kissing, walking, hugging," she says.
Most research on cow language tend to focus on sounds. A 2015 study in the Netherlands, for example, looked at the pitch of cow sounds to see if they correlated with behaviours and concluded this could be a way to determine their welfare. And a 2019 Australian study found cows not only have distinctive individual vocalisations, but maintain these distinctive calls across a variety of contexts.
Expert says cows communicate with different 'moos'
Cornips and the farmers she recruits to assist her record the frequency, duration and intensity of the sounds cows make. But she also focusses on the other ways meaning is expressed among bovines. Her methods are often ethnographic, a way of studying cultures that relies strongly on observation by the researcher. Cornips carefully observes cow behaviours and interactions alongside sound to determine how they communicate. "I notice with cows that the body is an instrument to get to know the other," she says. Recognising this leads Cornips to talk less of "language" and more widely of "languaging practices".
Cows, for example, have an elaborate greeting ritual that Cornips must follow to successfully slip into the rhythm of the herd, she says. This became obvious with Piet, a young male Fleckvieh from an intensively managed indoor facility who Cornips brought to join five other cows in an outdoor pasture.
"I was always so happy to see him, that when I got into his meadow, I walked straight towards him and tried to touch him immediately," Cornips says. When she did so, Piet would back away.
Cornips gradually came to understand the need to respect Piet's personal space, as she might with a fellow human. She learned to keep her arms by her sides and only use eye contact intermittently, taking turns with Piet to look at each other and then look away. "It took me quite a while," she says. "I was very stupid. They are teaching me how to connect to them." Cornips realised she had to learn an etiquette. Without patience and attention, she says, you would never see it.
Patience also turns out to be crucial when cows communicate with each other. When a mother calls her calf, it sometimes takes 60 seconds for the calf to respond. The space between is filled with bodily gestures. Studies from Austria show that ear positioning and neck-stretching are integral to cow language. Humans think of the ability to wiggle our ears as a party trick. For a cow, it appears to be fundamental to communication. The first sentence in a conversation with a cow is likely to involve movement of the ears and a look.
Cows are not the only animals being studied for their complex modes of communication. Michelle Fournet, an assistant professor specialising in marine acoustic ecology at the University of New Hampshire in the US, has learned it is unhelpful to impose human expectations on species like whales and seals.
Animals use sound completely differently from how humans use it, she says. "If we are to do a good job at understanding how animals are communicating and why they are communicating, it behoves us to adopt their perspective."
Cornips thinks domestic animals are forced to develop a fuller communication repertoire than wild animals
Fournet stops short of using the word "language" to describe the information transfer taking place between non-humans. But she has gained a deep appreciation for the subtleties of animal communication. Their system is not less than ours, Fournet says, but other. We do them a disservice by searching for similarities.
One difference between humans and many animals is their use of the environment. Cornips has found cow communication leans on its surroundings more than ours. She observed one herd where individuals used their bodies to bang on an iron fence to communicate with the rest of the herd at feeding time, which she views as a type of language. She noticed cows responding to her differently depending on whether she entered a barn with solid walls or open sides: since cows on different farms are surrounded by different physical features, this offers distinctive opportunities for linguistic expression. Cows, she argues, develop diverse languaging practices – almost like dialects – where meaning depends on the shape of their surroundings.
Like other domestic animals, cows face the additional challenge of interspecies communication with humans. "Most farmers are not sensitive to the rhythm of the cow," says Cornips. "The cows must obey the rhythm of the farmer." Dairy herds are constantly shunted between feeding, milking and grazing grounds. If a cow does not learn the daily routine or fails to be productive, it goes to the slaughterhouse. She is shocked by how readily people assume cows are stupid.
"In becoming a dairy cow," she says, "they must have very rich communicative skills because they have to understand what the farmer wants them to do… which is not easy."
Cornips has analysed recordings to show that cows will simplify their vocalisation once a farmer recognises their need. Rather than having their intelligence bred out of them to be more compliant, Cornips thinks domestic animals are forced to develop a fuller communication repertoire than wild animals.
If dairy cows have complex linguistic practices, it's tempting to ask how they stack up against the other great communicators in the animal kingdom. How would they compare, for example, to humpback whales? Cornips admires the complex vocalisations found in whale song. Humpbacks are among the cetaceans known to develop different dialects in different regions. They also communicate over vast distances. (Read more about the sophisticated structures similar to those found in human language which researchers are uncovering in whale communication).
But Cornips points out that whales lack some of the capacities of cows. A whale's ears are not as moveable as a cow's, she says. They also lack hooves. "Whales cannot express themselves bodily very much," Cornips says. "In that way they may be more primitive than cows."
Humpback whales have complex vocalisations in their song and have been known to develop different dialects in different regions
Fournet says she does not believe it makes sense to rank animal communication by its complexity. "There isn't an answer to what you are looking for," she told me when I asked her to compare whales to cows.
Many traditional linguists are still hesitant to ascribe language to non-humans. Leora Bar-el, a linguistics professor at the University of Montana in the US, is not hostile to the idea of animal language but thinks it worth asking what we gain and what we lose by expanding the definition of language to include cows.
"We may lose the fact there is something unique about human language," she says. For example, human language permits incredible creativity. Think of the works of Shakespeare. It can also refer to distant events and even reflect back on itself, as language does when it provides a definition.
But Eva Meijer, author of the essay that first inspired Cornips and the 2018 book Animal Languages, argues such claims can be self-fulfilling. "What we see as language has been developed by excluding the language of other animals," she says. In fact, we define language in a way that makes it easy to deny it to others. Meijer points out the long history of human oppression associated with denying other people their language. She believes that recognising language in animals provides new tools for understanding them and perhaps even for learning how to inhabit the planet more sustainably.
Cornips, though, does not put an animal rights agenda at the centre of her work. She is focused primarily on expanding the field of linguistics. But the implications are hard to ignore. Cows may have more complex social lives than we thought. Her research reveals numerous additional avenues for exploration. How much does language contribute to distinctive bovine communities and cultures? What sort of planning can cows do with each other? Can they use language to pass on knowledge between generations?
The answers to these questions could change how we regard the lives of many animals. When 96% of the weight of mammals on earth is made up of humans and domesticated livestock, understanding better what cattle, sheep and chickens are communicating could lead to improved relationships with them, as well as better lives for animals.
Cornips knows things are unlikely to change fast. Recently, though, she has noticed the idea that animals have language has become more common in academic journals.
She hopes linguistics can be a tool for unlocking different attitudes. "My most important goal," she says, "is to show others that you can look with different eyes at a domestic animal."
Date: 04 Feb - 04 Feb 2025
Time: 16:00 - 17:30
Venue: Neill Lecture Theatre, Trinity Long Room Hub
A seminar by Dr Clemens Ruthner and Prof Mary Cosgrove (Department of German, TCD) as a part of the School of Language, Literatures and Cultural Studies Seminar Series (SLLCS).
Prof Mary Cosgrove will be in conversation with Dr Clemens Ruthner (both TCD Dept of German Studies) on the occasion of his most recent book publication Die Kultur und ihre Ungeheuer, Vienna, Turia+Kant, 2024.
How “monstrous” is the cultural change in the modern age, where literature and other genres have become “creative industries”? What role do the canon and other cultural boundaries play in this? These are the central questions that drive the theoretical texts in Clemens Ruthners book Die Kultur und ihre Ungeheuer. The starting point is a theory of the fantastic in literature and a definition of liminality as a secret driving force for the constant self-renewal of culture in the in-between zones and at the margins: it generates borderline values and is thus structurally always latently otherworldly. The ethical consequences of this aesthetic of border-crossing are increasingly a challenge for politics.
Dr Clemens Ruthner is an Associate Professor in German and a Fellow at Trinity College Dublin, since 2022 Director of the TCD Center for European Studies . His research focuses on Austrian literature, the late Habsburg monarchy (postcolonial studies), otherness and cultural theory.
The School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies Seminar Series (SLLCS) promotes Literary and Cultural Studies, including political and social thought, narratology and imagology, film, textual and visual studies, questions surrounding language learning and translation studies, and also practice-led research. We encourage comparative, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, as our intellectual inquiry is in the service of national and international debate and knowledge advancement, particularly on the construction of identity and otherness in literature and culture. The seminar series provides a forum for the dissemination and exchange of current and developing research from staff and postgraduate researchers within the school, and also from national and international guest speakers.
Please indicate if you have any access requirements, such as ISL/English interpreting, so that we can facilitate you in attending this event. Contact: ahmedm4@tcd.ie
I was born and raised in New Jersey, but I’ve lived in other states for about 17 of my years. The longest was when I took a job offer in Detroit and spent 12 years in a land where sneakers were called tennis shoes, convenience stores were referred to as party stores, and soda was known as pop.
It was weird, but I assimilated.
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On air, I admitted I wasn’t a native but I adopted the language as best I could. It’s part of broadcasting. Still, it felt odd to me every time I spoke of my love of Diet Mountain Dew “pop.” Made me want to throw on my “tennis shoes” and run!
It’s a big country. We have huge regional differences socially, politically, and even with language. Yet you don’t even have to leave the borders of the Garden State for battle lines to be drawn. Look at the war between pork roll and Taylor ham. And how close to the coast do you have to live before going “down the shore” becomes going “to the beach?”
Even in our own state we can’t agree on what things should be called. Why shouldn’t it be that way across the country? Oh, it is.
Stacker.com did a deep dive into regional language differences and came up with 25 things Americans can’t agree on what to call. Scroll through and see what you’d identify with.
For example, No. 4 is firefly or lightning bug. I grew up in Union County, New Jersey and it was always lightning bugs.
Or No. 5 on the list you’ll see carriage or buggy for that four-wheeled shopping thing you push around a grocery store. Really? Because where I was raised they were called carts. Shopping carts.
Here’s the list. Be warned, number 21 may make you cringe.
LOOK: 25 things that have different names depending on where you live in the US
Stacker compiled a list of 25 different things that have region-specific names using news, dictionary, and academic sources.
Pop, tonic, coke, and soda
Soft drinks have some of the most varied terminology between regions. The drinks are most often referred to as "pop" in northern states, "tonic" in south Boston, "coke" in the southern states, and "soda," developed from "soda water" and named for the sodium salts dissolved in the drink, elsewhere. Coca-Cola, which was invented in Atlanta, became so popular in the area that Southerners began using coke as a generic name for all soft drinks.
Sneakers, tennis shoes, or gym shoes
While most Americans refer to them as "tennis shoes," residents of New England and Florida tend to call athletic shoes "sneakers," and some in Chicago and Cincinnati refer to them as "gym shoes." The term "sneakers" came into use around 1895, referring to the noiseless tread of the rubber-soled shoes—which allows the wearer to sneak up on others.
Water fountain, drinking fountain, or bubbler
Across Southern, Midwestern, and Northeastern states, it's a water fountain; in the Western states, it's a drinking fountain; and in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and parts of Wisconsin, it's a "bubbler," a term first used in Milwaukee newspapers in the early 20th century. It is thought to have spread in popularity in part because of marketing materials from the Kohler Company, which manufactured a bubbling valve to provide a continuous flow of water for drinking.
Firefly or lightning bug
If you reside in a Western state, you probably recognize the scientifically identified Lampyridae more commonly as a firefly. If you are from a Southern or Midwestern state, you may know it as a lightning bug. Both nicknames refer to the species' bioluminescent underbellies.
Carriage or buggy
A grocery cart is commonly called a "carriage" in Northeastern states, while many in the South and Midwest instead use the word "buggy." Buggy was first used in London in the late 18th century as slang for four-wheeled carriages pulled by horses. In the decades since, it has been used to describe a variety of similarly structured vehicles used to cart humans, goods, or both.
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Lollipop or sucker
"Lollipop" is the Northeastern term of choice for candy on a stick, while Southerners and Midwesterners are more partial to "sucker." The former is thought to have begun as a Northern English slang term for "tongue slap," invented by Brits selling the candy on the streets.
Heel, end, crust, or butt
The piece at the end of a loaf of bread goes by many names across the United States—"heel" across every region; "end" in New England, the Midwest, and Southeast; "crust" in the northern states; and "butt" in some parts of the East Coast and Great Lakes area. While heel, end, and butt all make straightforward physical comparisons, "crust" requires a bit of explanation. It derives from the 13th-century French word "crouste" and Latin word "crusta," meaning "rind," "shell," and "bark."
Milkshake or frappe
"Milkshake" is universally used across the United States, except in New England, where the same drink is referred to as a "frappe." You may still hear the term milkshake in New England, but there, it refers specifically to chocolate milk, not the blended ice cream beverage. It is unclear when and why the term frappe made its way into the Northeastern lexicon, but it is speculated that French Canadian workers in New Hampshire and Massachusetts may have had an influence.
Roundabout, traffic circle, or rotary
What those in the West and in the South call a "roundabout," those in the East and Midwest would recognize as a "traffic circle," while still others in the Northeast would say "rotary." Outside of the Northeast, the word "rotary" is most commonly associated with Rotary Clubs, and the origin of that term also provides insight into its use in driving terminology. The first Rotary Club was founded in Chicago in 1905 and so-named for its rotation of meeting places, the same physical movement enacted in traffic.
Sprinkles or jimmies
"Sprinkles" would be a totally ubiquitous word for this dessert topping, if it weren't for the New England term "jimmies." There are many inaccurate urban legends surrounding the origin of the Boston-area nickname, including that it emerged from the Jimmy Fund, a youth cancer charity, or various ice cream shop patrons who were particular fans of the treat. In reality, it is more likely that the name came from the Just Born candy company and the employee who created the confection.
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Carry-in or potluck
It's not unusual to receive an invitation to a dinner where every guest brings a dish to share, but what state you live in can change what it's called. Throughout the country, it's commonly known as a "potluck," a familiar term. But in the states of Ohio, Missouri, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan, it can also be referred to as a "carry-in." The origin of the potluck goes all the way back to the Middle Ages, when it was first used to describe inns that fed unexpected guests the leftovers from a pot; this was referred to as eating from the "luck of the pot."
Frosting or icing
Most Americans recognize either "frosting" or "icing," as the sweet stuff atop a cake, but the term frosting is slightly more common on the Pacific coast, in the Northeast, and in the Midwest. Icing is so-called because of how sugar granules resemble ice pellets.
Submarine or hoagie
There are many terms for a sandwich made on a long loaf of bread, including "po' boy" and "hero," but the most popular names are "submarine" and "hoagie." Calling these sandwiches "subs" is most popular nationwide, while "hoagie" is most commonly used in Pennsylvania. The name is thought to have come from Italian immigrants in Philadelphia working at the Hog Island shipyard during the first World War. They dubbed their sandwiches "hoggies," which later evolved into hoagies.
Freeways or highways
Most people in the United States call them "highways"—but those on the West Coast are more likely to call them "freeways." The two terms are slightly different. While every freeway is a highway, the reverse is not true. A freeway is a highway on which high-speed traffic is permitted, while a highway is a general term for multilane thoroughfares that may or may not have lower speed limits than a freeway.
Crayfish, crawfish, or crawdad
To those in northern states, they're crayfish; to those in the South and on the East Coast, they're crawfish; and finally, to those in the Midwest, California, and Oregon, they're crawdads. The word crayfish evolved from the Middle English word "crevis." Crawdads are also called "crawdaddies" or "crawdabs" in some areas.
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Gravy or sauce
Most Americans define '"gravy" specifically as the broth-based dressing that is poured over turkey and mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving. Among communities of Italian Americans across the country, however, "gravy" can refer to tomato sauce used in pasta dishes. One theory is that Italian immigrants new to the United States may have started using the word "gravy" to assimilate into American culture.
Cicada, August fly, or jar fly
They are from the family Cicadidae, but they're commonly known as August flies in the Northeast and Midwest; jar flies in Appalachia; and cicadas elsewhere. The word "cicada" is Latin for tree cricket, referring to the species' trademark buzzing noise. August fly was once popularly used to identify the bug since it was most audible in August.
Yard sale, garage sale, tag sale, or rummage sale
Most Americans call it a yard sale or garage sale, but in some areas of Massachusetts, Connecticut, or eastern Wiscsonsin, the names "tag sale" or "rummage sale" could be used instead. Rummage sale was first used to refer to sales meant to raise money for charity in the 1960s, before being applied more generally. Throughout the 1970s, an increasing number of sales being held in front yards and from inside homeowners' garages led to the terms "garage sale" and "yard sale" increasing in popularity.
Garbage can or trash can
Both names for these receptacles are popularly used, but those in the Pacific Northwest tend to use garbage can while those in Southern states favor trash can. "Trash" was originally used to refer to sticks, twigs, and other debris found under trees. On the other hand, "garbage" came into use in the 15th century to refer to excess parts of a fowl not able to be used in meals.
Semitruck, tractor-trailer, or 18-wheeler
Your choice of a hyphenated term largely depends on your region. In the Northeast, most call it a tractor-trailer; in the South, an 18-wheeler; and in other areas, it is known as a semitruck. It may seem like a misnomer to call this large vehicle a semitruck, seemingly indicating it is of partial size only, but this term is actually short for "semitrailer truck" or "semitractor-trailer." This refers to the fact that while a regular trailer has four wheels and can be pulled by another vehicle in front of it, a semitrailer only has rear wheels and must be attached to the back wheels of a tractor to move.
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Pothole, chughole, or chuckhole
Whether you call it a pothole, as in the Northeastern states; chughole, as in the South, especially Kentucky; or chuckhole, if you live in California, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana or Florida, the headache experienced from driving over one is likely the same. Chuckhole may have been born from "chock," a word used in the 16th century meaning to "give a blow under the chin."
Goosebumps or duck bumps
The small bumps that appear on the skin when one is cold or frightened got their name because they look similar to poultry skin after it has been plucked of feathers. So although people across America call them "goosebumps," and those in northern states call them "duck bumps," they could just as easily call them "turkey bumps" or "chicken bumps."
Stone, pit, or kernel
What's in a peach? If you live in central or southern Atlanta, or any of the Gulf states, you'll find a "kernel" buried in the center of a peach. But those who eat their peaches in the Pacific Northwest or in northern states, get rid of their "pits." While those across the country refer to the seeds as "stones," the term is most commonly used in the Midwest states. Regardless of the term you use, it's good to know that you can grow your own peach tree right from your favorite kitchen.
Liquor store, party store, packie, or state store
The wide variety of liquor laws from state to state has historically influenced whether it is referred to as a "liquor store," a "packy" (in New England and South Carolina), a "state store" (in Pennsylvania(, or a "party store" (in Michigan). "Party store" developed as a term in states that allowed for privatization of liquor sales. "Packie" refers to the "package stores" of the late 1800s, which wrapped up shipments of alcohol to make use of a legal loophole forbidding police to seize alcohol still in its original package.
Faucet or spigot
To those in northern states, water is poured into a glass through a faucet; to those in southern states, it's called a spigot. The former term came from a medieval French word "fausset," which referred to the pegs used to open vent airways.
Read More: 25 things called different names across U.S., even NJ can’t agree | https://nj1015.com/25-things-called-different-names-across-u-s-even-nj-cant-agree/?utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral
Le Centre d'Études et de Recherches sur les Organisations, la Communication et l'Éducation (CEROCE) et l’Equipe de recherche sur les Etudes Anglophones de l’Université de Lomé organisent un colloque scientifique international pluridisciplinaire :
Langages silencieux : Contextes, enjeux et dynamiques communicationnelles en Afrique
Les 2, 3 et 4 juillet 2025, à l'Université de Lomé, Togo
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La communication non verbale, à travers ses multiples manifestations telles que les symboles, les gestes, les postures, les expressions faciales, les silences et les codes vestimentaires, constitue une dimension fondamentale des interactions humaines, de la construction ou de l’interprétation du sens même de la communication. En outre, elle comporte des enjeux insoupçonnés dans divers domaines : social, politique, professionnel, etc. En Afrique, continent riche de ses diversités culturelles, ces langages silencieux prennent des formes particulièrement significatives, reflet de contextes sociaux, culturels, historiques et spirituels variés. Leur influence va au-delà des interactions sociales immédiates, jouant un rôle dans l’éducation, les récits, la mémoire, le renforcement des identités collectives et le dévoilement de perceptions culturelles nuancées. Ils peuvent également constituer des sources de malentendus et de crises rendant la communication et le vivre ensemble difficiles. Malgré l’intérêt croissant pour ce phénomène, il est encore nécessaire d’y accorder une plus grande attention, en particulier au sein des différents peuples d’Afrique qui n’ont pas été étudiés. Nous proposons un colloque réunissant des chercheurs d’Afrique francophone et anglophone afin d’examiner les données disponibles sur la communication non verbale sous l’angle de différentes disciplines. L’objectif est de dévoiler les caractéristiques particulières et universelles de ce phénomène psycho-linguistique, y compris en proposant des moyens de rassembler et d’analyser correctement les données recueillies dans des cultures largement dominées par l’oralité. Bien que ces modes de communication jouent un rôle crucial dans les relations interindividuelles et intercommunautaire, ils restent souvent peu analysés sous l’angle de l’intersection des dynamiques globales et locales dans les recherches scientifiques contemporaines. Ce colloque cherche à combler cette lacune en encourageant une approche intégrative qui favorise une compréhension plus nuancée et contextualisée de ces langages silencieux dans le paysage africain contemporain.
Le colloque international pluridisciplinaire consacré aux « Langages silencieux : contextes, enjeux et dynamiques communicationnels en Afrique » invite, entre autres, à :
• Analyser les spécificités culturelles : Étudier les formes et significations des expressions non verbales dans différents contextes africains (rituels, échanges quotidiens, sphère politique ou économique). Ces recherches pourront s’appuyer, notamment, sur les travaux d’observation des pratiques gestuelles traditionnelles qui montrent comment les gestes codifient les relations sociales et renforcent les hiérarchies culturelles.
• Comprendre les dynamiques sociales : Explorer le rôle des langages non verbaux dans la création et le maintien des relations sociales, des identités communautaires et des structures de pouvoir.
• Examiner les influences contemporaines : Identifier les mutations des pratiques non verbales sous l’effet des nouvelles technologies, des interactions interculturelles et des médias numériques. Les études comparatives mettant en évidence des différences dans l’utilisation des gestes conventionnels et qui soulignent l’impact des contextes culturels sur le développement des répertoires gestuels peuvent être présentées.
• Explorer une approche comparative et interdisciplinaire : Croiser les perspectives de disciplines variées - linguistique, anthropologie, sociologie, psychologie, sciences de l’information et de la communication - pour enrichir la compréhension de ces phénomènes au sein des communautés nationales tout comme entre différentes régions africaines.
• Proposer des moyens d'exploiter et d'appliquer de manière pratique les signaux non verbaux à travers les médias : Discuter des implications des pratiques non verbales dans des domaines tels que la diplomatie, l’éducation, la santé, ou encore les stratégies de communication et de marketing.
Axes thématiques
Les axes thématiques ci-après sont, entre autres, proposés aux participants :
Système de communication non verbale en Afrique : Héritages et analyse des différents éléments distinctifs des langages non verbaux en Afrique, dans leur diversité et leurs portées linguistique, sociologique, philosophique, communicationnelle, religieuse, etc.
Contextes et hybridation culturelle : Contextes d’interculturalité (mondialisation, délocalisation, espace numérique…), innovations, interférences et mutations des langages silencieux. On pourrait aussi s’intéresser aux phénomènes d’invention ou d’appropriation de nouveaux codes comportementaux, de modification des dynamiques sociales incluant les dynamiques linguistiques, communicationnelles mais aussi les enjeux politiques, culturels et professionnels.
Communication non verbale en Afrique, construction, transmission et circulation des savoirs : Exploration des signes du langage non verbal, des canaux de transmission et des usages dans les secteurs de l’éducation et de la formation, de la santé (médecine traditionnelle), de la médiation sociale, etc. La thématique fait aussi appel à la construction des identités culturelles ainsi que des rapports entre les peuples et au sein des peuples.
Approches disciplinaires et interdisciplinaires des langages silencieux : Découverte des approches théoriques existantes, mobilisation des apports des différentes disciplines pour questionner la place des langages silencieux dans le système global de la communication en Afrique pour comprendre leurs fonctions pragmatiques et proposer des modèles ; états des lieux de la recherche, africaine en Afrique et ailleurs, sur les langages silencieux.
Nous accueillons favorablement les propositions qui abordent ces thématiques dans différentes disciplines.
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Bibliographie indicative
- Agwuele, A. (2014). A repertoire of Yoruba hand and face gestures. Gestures, 14(1), 70-96.
- Agwuele Augustine (ed.). 2015. Body Talk and Cultural Identity in the African World. Sheffield, Equinox Publishing.
- Agresti Giovanni. Diversità linguistica e sviluppo sociale. Franco Angeli, Milano, 2018.
- Agresti Giovanni, Le Lièvre Françoise (coord.). 2020. Langues, linguistique et développement en milieu francophone. Des terrains africains, Repères DoRiF n°21, DoRiF Università, Roma septembre 2020, https://www.dorif.it/reperes/category/21-langues-linguistique-et-developpement-en-milieu-francophone-des-terrains-africains/.
- Agresti Giovani, Mouzou, P. Stephen and Zouogbo Jean-Philippe. (2022). Dynamiques sociolinguistiques, terminologie et développement. Documenter, aménager et outiller les langues africaines. Paris : Cahiers du CEDIMES.
- Brookes, Heather J. 2004. A first repertoire of South African quotable gestures. Linguistic Anthropology 14(2): 186-224.
- Brookes, Heather J. 2005. What gestures do: Some communicative functions of quotable gestures in conversations among black urban South Africans. Journal of Pragmatics 37: 2044-2085.
- Brookes, Heather J. 2011. Amangama Amathathu ‘Three Letters’: The emergence of a quotable gesture. Gesture 11(2): 194-218.
- Calbris, Geneviève, and Owen Doyle. 1990. The Semiotics of French Gestures. Indiana University Press Bloomington
- Bonvillain Nancy. (2003). Language, Culture, and Communication. The Meaning of Messages.
- Dawson Hope C. & Phelan Michael (eds). 2016. Language Files. Material for an Introduction to Language and Linguistics. (12th edition). Cleveland, Ohio State University.
- Dingemanse, Mark 2011. The meaning and use of ideophones in Siwu. Ph.D. dissertation. Nijmegen: Radboud University.
- Groß, Ulrike 1997. Analyse und Deskription textueller Gestik im Adzogbo (Ewe) unter Berücksichtigung kommunikationstheoretischer Aspekte. Ph.D. Dissertation, Universtity of Köln.
- Harrigan, Jinni A. 2005. “Proxemics, Kinesics, and Gaze.” The New Handbook of Methods in Nonverbal Behavior Research: 137–198.
- Jones Rodney H. & Themistocleous Christina. 2022. Introducing Language and Society. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
- Klassen, Doreen H. 2004. Gestures in African oral narrative. In: Philip M. Peek and Kwesi Yankah (eds.), African Folklore: An Encyclopedia, 298-303. New York/London: Routledge.
- Kita, Sotaro and James Essegbey 2001. Pointing left in Ghana: How a taboo on the use of the left hand influences gestural practice. Gesture 1(1): 73-95.
- Kipp, Michael, and J.-C. Martin. 2009. “Gesture and Emotion: Can Basic Gestural Form Features Discriminate Emotions?” In Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction and Workshops, 2009. ACII 2009. 3rd International Conference On, 1–8.
- Kendon, Adam. 1983. “Gesture and Speech: How They Interact.” Nonverbal Interaction: 13–45.
- McNeill, David. 2008. Gesture and Thought. University of Chicago Press.
- Orie, Olanike O. 2009. Pointing the Yoruba way. Gesture 9(2): 237-261.
- Tourneux Henry (dir.). 2008. Langues, cultures et développement en Afrique, Paris, Karthala.
- Were Vincent Otaba et Zouogbo Jean-Philippe (dir.). 2024. Développement durable : amplifier les langues, valoriser les cultures, impliquer les populations. Paris, Editions des Archives Contemporaines.
- Will, Izabela. 2009. Cultural Aspects of Nonverbal Code in Hausa, in Nina Pawlak (ed.) Codes and Rituals of Emotions in Asian and African Cultures: p. 252-265.
- Will, Izabela. 2015. Gestures and Indirect Statements as Means of Expressing Emotions and Opinions Among Hausa Women, In Selected Proceedings of the Symposium on West African Languages (Naples, 27-28 March 2014), G. C. Batic and S. Baldi (ed.), „Studi Africanistici/Serie Ciado-Sudanese” 7, 2015, p. 233–248.
- Will, Izabela. 2022. Recurrent Gestures of Hausa Speakers, Leiden-Boston, Brill.
- Zouogbo Jean-Philippe (dir.). Linguistique pour le développement. Concepts, contextes et empiries. Paris, Édition des archives contemporaines, 2022.
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Dates à retenir et modalités de soumission de proposition
Lancement de l’appel à communication : 20 janvier 2025
Date limite de soumission des abstracts : 30 mars 2025
Notification d’acceptation : 18 avril 2025
Tenue du colloque : 02, 03, 04 juillet 2025
Soumission des projets d’articles : 29 août 2025
Retour d’instruction : 15 octobre 2025
Réception des articles finalisés pour publication : 16 novembre
Publication des actes du colloque : Février 2026
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Langues d’intervention : anglais et français.
Frais d’inscription
Enseignants-chercheurs : 40 000 FCFA ou $70 US
Doctorants et Masterants : 20 000 FCFA ou $35 US
Practiciens et représentant des institutions publiques et privées : 60.000 FCFA ou $100 US
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Consignes et format des contributions
Différents formats de propositions sont attendus : communications orales, posters, tables-rondes, ateliers méthodologiques, etc.
Les propositions de communication orale devront être originales, non publiées auparavant et rédigées en anglais ou en français. Les propositions comporteront une courte notice bibliographique de 150 mots maximum, un titre, un résumé de 300 mots maximum (hors bibliographie et notice bibliographique) et cinq mots-clés. Le résumé devra préciser les questions de recherche abordées, leur articulation avec les axes (ou thématiques) du colloque, la (ou les) disciplines mobilisée(s), la méthodologie de recherche et les principaux résultats qui seront présentés lors du colloque. Le projet devra être envoyé sous format Word, Police Times New Roman, taille 12.
La participation des doctorants et des jeunes chercheurs est vivement encouragée.
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Mode de communication
Les communications se feront en présentiel et en distanciel. Un lien sera précisé ultérieurement pour les participants en distanciel.
Contact
Toutes les soumissions et autres correspondances en lien avec le colloque devront être envoyées à colloque2025@ceroce-ul.org, en copie à palakyem.mouzou@fulbrightmail.org
Coordination du colloque
- Kouméalo Germaine Anate, Université de Lomé, Togo
- Palakyem Stephen Mouzou, Université de Kara, Togo
- Augustine Agwuele, Texas State University, USA
- Mouncaïla Napo Gnane, Université de Lomé, Togo
Comité d’organisation
• Enseignants-chercheurs
o Kondi Napo Sonhaye
o Nouhr-Dine Dyfaizi Akondo
o Dovi Yelou
o Essobozouwè Awizoba
o Komla Azialé
o Yentougle Moutore
o Bienvenue Boudimbou
o Asseta Diallo
o Mabandine Djagri Temoukale
o Yoma Takougnadi
o Yacouba Kouraogo
o Daria Ouradei
o Adji Chakebera
o Michaella Eppié Bongba
• Doctorants
o Hugues Koba
o Pèlè Mindou Adjanla
o Tchaa P. Désiré Komou
o Casimir Edinah
o Pidèma Dagouroufei
Comité scientifique
o Moufoutaou Adjéran, Université d’Abomey Calavi, Bénin
o Gbandi Adouna, Université de Kara, Togo
o Giovanni Agresti, Université Bordeaux Montaigne, France
o Kouméalo Anaté, Université de Lomé, Togo
o Komla Avono, Université de Lomé, Togo
o Atiyihwè Awesso, Université de Lomé
o Mimboabe Bakpa, Université de Kara, Togo
o Rahma Barbara, Université Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah, Fès, Maroc
o Komi Begedou, Université de Lomé, Togo
o Don Daniels, University of Oregon, USA
o Amélie Hien, Université de Québec at Trois-Rivières, Canada
o Rachid Jama, Université Sultan Moulay Slimane - Beni Mellal, Maroc
o Amélie Leconte, Aix-Marseille Université, France
o Aimée-Danielle Lezou-Koffi, Université Felix Houphouët-Boigny, Côte d’Ivoire
o Charles Dossou Ligan, University d’Abomey Calavi, Bénin
o Bernard Kabore, Université Joseph Ki-Zerbo, Burkina Faso
o Laré Kantchoa, Université de Kara, Togo
o Balaïbaou Kassan, Université de Kara, Togo
o Alou Keita, Université Joseph Ki-Zerbo, Burkina Faso
o Hanoukoume Kparou, Babcock University, Nigéria
o Komi Kpatcha, Université de Kara, Togo
o Maxime Manifi Abouh, Université de Yaoundé 1, Cameroun
o Leila Messaoudi, University Ibn Tofail, Kenitra, Morocco
o Karen Ferreira-Meyers, Université d’Eswatini, Eswatini
o Abou Napon, Université Joseph Ki-Zerbo, Burkina Faso
o Salomé Chantal Ntsama, Université de Yaoundé 1, Cameroun
o Kokou Essodina Pere-Kewezima, Université de Lomé, Toogo
o Cheik F. Bobodo Ouedraogo, Université Joseph Ki-Zerbo, Burkina Faso
o Kogh Pascal Somé, Université Paris Cité, France
o Ndiémé Sow, Université Amadou Mahtar Mbow of Dakar, Sénégal
o Henry Tourneux, Llacan - CNRS, France
o Vincent Were, Kenyatta University, Kenya
o Jean-Philippe Zouogbo, Université Paris Cité, France
Responsable :
Kouméalo Anaté, Palakyém Mouzou, Augustine Agwuele
Url de référence :
https://www.ceroce-ul.org/blog/2022/01/30/colloques/
Adresse :
Université de Lomé, Togo
Vanamala Vishwanatha recalls her journey into translation.
Written by Arnav Chandrasekhar
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Bengaluru | Updated: January 21, 2025 19:08 IST
Acclaimed Kannada translator, Vanamala Viswanatha and her book Bride in the Hills. (Image: Penguin.in/hydlitfest.org)
For a millennium and longer, Kannada has been a language of culture and literature – and the past century has been no exception, with Karnataka having no shortage of great writers. But for those from other states or countries wishing to read these works, a language barrier might stand in the way. These readers have found an ally in translator Vanamala Viswanatha. A long career as an English professor, intricate knowledge of Kannada, and even a stint as a newsreader eventually led her to this craft – with her latest translation being of the great Kuvempu’s Malegalalli Madumagalu or Bride in The Hills as the translated edition is titled. But this is by no means her only work – over the years she has worked on books by authors such as P Lankesh and Sara Aboobacker, to name just a few, and translations of archaic Kannada writing.
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One of the major pieces of literature that Vanamala Vishwanatha translated was the medieval Kannada poetic work ‘The Life of Raja Harishchandra’, which was published by the Harvard University Press for the Murty Classical Library of India. She had also retired from Azim Premji University as a Professor of English studies.
Looking back on her connection to Bengaluru, Vanamala Viswanatha said, “I moved to Bangalore 51 years ago for my postgraduate course in English… the big cities provide you a certain anonymity, while the smaller cities provide their own sense of warmth. Bangalore was a mega city for me after smaller towns like Mandya and Mysore. The exposure that Bangalore offered to a larger world enabled several things. It was not the internet age, where you could sit in a village and still access the world. Working in premier institutions such IISc… and the Regional Institute of English, both these places provided a lot of exposure. There were always interesting events in Kannada as well where I felt rooted.”
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On her journey into translation, Vanamala Viswanatha recalled, “We had a whole tradition of bilingual scholars who were English teachers but working in Kannada through the last century – perhaps it is only now that the two paths have diverged… it used to be very syncretic. The Karnataka Sahitya Academy and so on used to bring out a journal in translation. Dr B C Ramachandra Sharma was one of the editors. Now and then he would give me a short piece to translate, largely prose. That was in the mid-80s. The turning point was in 1990 when Ramachandra Sharma, K B Suppanna, and K V Tirumalesh came together to run an intensive 10-day workshop for translators. We became more conscious about the process and its politics… that year, I moved to Bangalore University where I could teach Translation Studies as a paper.” By 2000, she had already published several translations.
Before her most recent translation of Kuvempu’s work, Viswanatha had already translated some of his literature – a couple of short stories, an essay, some poems, and songs such as “Doni Saagali Munde Hogali”. On Malegalalli Madumagalu, she said, “This particular work was so huge, and the gravitas it had – it is somewhat forbidding to translators… around 2019, after I finished a novel translation for Oxford University Press, I wanted to do something ambitious… a couple of publishers thought it was too big for their bandwidth. But Penguin showed interest. The Kuvempu Pratishthana offered support by way of helping me acquire copyright material and other support.”
On the unique aspects of translating Kuvempu’s work, she said, “Kuvempu had centuries of Kannada at his fingertips and was able to bring it into a layered text with all these characters speaking their dialects which are very typical of their location. The language of the narrative itself is Modern Kannada, along with the authorial comment since it is written from an omniscient perspective – and this comes with a lot of Sanskrit words.”
To anyone looking to translate Indian literature, Vanamala Viswanatha has this to say, “It is important to like what you do. Otherwise, it is drudgery. Once you enjoy the process – no compromises there… we are at a time when translations are coming into their own and receiving a lot of attention. The publishing industry is also more open to it. Earlier people would go around with manuscripts and find a publisher for translations. These days you can find a publisher first and interest them in what you want to do… when you have a contract in hand there is an edge to it that helps keep up your enthusiasm and discipline. A translator also has to disseminate – because there is such an explosion of information in all media today, the reading culture is losing its original base. Unless people know you have done this work, it may quietly go away.”
“We didn’t hold back on the swearing or the accents. […] Then we doubled down again with the Scottish Gaelic translation.”
Part Of Culture Shock SEE ALL
In the opening hour of Still Wakes the Deep, the acclaimed horror game set aboard a perilous oil rig in the North Sea, we hear the C-bomb no less than six times. Most come from the mouth of gruff protagonist Caz McLeary, an electrician, or “leccy,” from Glasgow. Caz possesses a fine grasp of his local colloquialisms: “scunnered” means “fed up”; “clarty” means “covered in dirt.” When Still Wakes the Deep isn’t delivering accursed, heart-pounding horror, it’s offering an expletive-filled primer in the Scottish language. Verisimilitude, of place, period, and slang, immerses players in the game. But the exactingly rendered rig and mostly working-class cast isn’t just window dressing. “The game is grounded thematically in Scotland,” says John McCormack, creative director of Still Wakes the Deep (who took over from Dan Pinchbeck, former creative director and writer on the game, in 2023). The country experienced an oil boom in the 1960s and ’70s, which is why Caz and his colleagues are on the rig, and the game draws heavily on Scottish politics and culture. Case in point: The game, developed by studio The Chinese Room, shipped with an unusual language option: Scottish Gaelic. The colorful script is subtitled using the country’s indigenous language spoken by 1.3% of its 5.5 million population. This week on Polygon, we’re looking at how cultural differences affect media in a special issue we’re calling Culture Shock. “We didn’t hold back on the swearing or the accents,” says McCormack, who is from Glasgow himself. “We embraced it all and then doubled down. Then we doubled down again with the Scottish Gaelic translation.” For McCormack, the indigenous language is an important symbol and carrier of grassroots identity. It was the primary language in most rural areas until the early 17th century when it was suppressed by the Scottish crown. The language was further suppressed after the Jacobite rebellion of 1745. As recently as the early 20th century, children were beaten into speaking English at school. McCormack remembers his school history classes from the 1980s. “It was just English and British history,” he says. “There was no Scottish history at all.” The idea for the Scottish Gaelic translation came as McCormack was brainstorming ideas for the game’s announcement trailer that debuted at the 2023 Xbox Games Showcase, just as the game entered its final year of development. He wanted to avoid traditional horror tropes: jump scares; screeching violins; furious, dramatic editing. He envisioned something slower and more melancholic: a shot of the swirling North Sea; the oil rig slowly emerging through the misty air; an elegiac Scottish Gaelic folk song soundtracking the player’s introduction to this doomed setting. The creative director went down a YouTube rabbit hole, eventually coming across a video titled “Scottish woman sings emotional folk song.” The woman in question was the legendary traditional Gaelic singer Flora MacNeil, who lived on the tiny Hebridean island of Barra. “She’s got a beautiful voice. It’s so full of sadness,” says McCormack. He sent the song to the game’s audio director, Daan Hendriks, who suggested they use it, or something similar, for both the game’s announcement trailer and its end credits. Hendriks found another song whose lyrics were a better match for the game’s themes: “Fath Mo Mhulaid A Bhith Ann,” which translates to “being here has caused my sorrow.” MacNeil died in 2015, but the game’s publisher, Secret Mode, was able to commission her daughter, the professional folk singer Maggie MacInnes, to record a vocal-only version of the song. McCormack was enamored with the result. “It really nailed the heartbreak that players should be feeling,” he says. The mournful song rings out over the end credits. McCormack felt a kind of “magic” in pairing a traditional folk song, one that summons both the history and stark beauty of Scotland, with a game whose tragedy stems from drilling down into the country’s ancient bedrock. But he also felt a responsibility: It wasn’t enough for the game to use Scottish Gaelic to evoke the past; it should communicate with the language’s speakers in the present. The idea was sold to the game’s publisher on the merit that it would make a nice marketing beat. If cost was an issue, McCormack was willing to “ditch” other elements of the game to make it happen. Scottish Gaelic has faced a slow and steady decline. In 1755, the language was spoken by 289,798 people, or 22.9% of its 1.2 million population at the time. The most recent census figures from 2022 say it is spoken by 69,701 people, or 1.3% of the country. The number (and proportion of the population) speaking it has risen marginally over the past decade. But Robbie MacLeòid, a Glasgow-based writer and academic in Scottish Gaelic, says the census shows that the language is actually falling out of community use in the Scottish Highlands and western islands, the areas traditionally thought of as its heartland. Another study suggests the language may even die out altogether in the next decade or so. The language’s place within the arts is uneven. Scottish Gaelic literature is in “good health,” says MacLeòid. But in theater, there is just a single theater company, Theatre Gu Leòr, which tours plays and other stage productions around the country. Scottish Gaelic speakers can watch television broadcast by BBC Alba and listen to the radio through BBC Radio nan Gàidheal. Image: The Chinese Room/Secret Mode Video games, even those made by Scottish developers, lag far behind. There are a handful of DIY translation efforts by the likes of GunChleoc (a pseudonym) for games such as 0 A.D and Pingus. But the mainstream industry, whose developers include Rockstar North and No Code (the Glasgow-based studio working on a new Silent Hill title), has shown little interest in the language. “Bearing in mind how healthy the video game industry is in Scotland, it’s surprising that it’s taken until Still Wakes the Deep for this kind of representation,” says MacLeòid. FEATURED VIDEOS FROM POLYGONTop 50 games of 2024 in 7 words or less It was a momentous moment for MacLeòid when he booted up the game with the Scottish Gaelic translation turned on. “I honestly got quite emotional at the title screen as soon as I changed it to Gaelic,” he says. “I sat there for a minute being like, Wow, I’ve never seen this before.” MacLeòid has long interacted with video games through English; to play using authentic Scottish Gaelic was both “surreal” and “moving.” Too often, says MacLeòid, the language is used in a way that can feel culturally appropriative. Scottish Gaelic is often included as the “ancient tongue,” he continues, to add “color” and suggest either the “romantic” or the “unknown,” implying that the language is an artifact or a signifier of the past, and, therefore, something that is not “relevant now.” Arts and culture, including video games like Still Wakes the Deep, are in a unique position to normalize minority languages and assist those learning to speak it. MacLeòid recalls the way the Scottish Gaelic translation of X-Men: The Animated Series, broadcast on BBC Alba in the 1990s, helped him learn the language. He considers the impact a Scottish Gaelic translation of Grand Theft Auto 6, currently in development at Rockstar North in Edinburgh (as well as other studios around the world), might have on the language. “It would be radical and revolutionary — a game changer,” he says. “It wouldn’t just provide jobs for people working in the language but confer respect to the language itself — its right to exist.” This is the “bare minimum,” stresses MacLeòid, that he feels major Scottish game companies should be doing in regard to Scottish Gaelic. For McCormack, Still Wakes the Deep is an expression of Scottish identity. The game, with its acute sense of place and eye for regional detail, resonates with efforts across pockets of the U.K. and Ireland. Northern Irish band Kneecap rap in Irish Gaelic; the fiction writer Harry Josephine Giles won the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke award for Deep Wheel Orcadia, a sci-fi novel written in the Orkney dialect of Scots. Blindboy Boatclub is an anonymous podcaster and author reimagining Irish history in response to centuries of English colonialism. “People are reclaiming their identity,” says McCormack. “It’s a beautiful thing.” McCormack sees the Scottish Gaelic translation of Still Wakes the Deep as a small but important part of this movement. “People say, ‘There’s only so many thousands [of people] who actually speak Scottish Gaelic,’” he says. “‘I don’t care.’ Then they’ll say, ‘But hardly anyone will use it.’” McCormack is proud of his team’s response to this latter point. Those who wish to claim every achievement in Still Wakes the Deep must complete the game with the translation turned on. As of December 2024, more than 16,500 players have done so across PlayStation 5, Steam, and Xbox Series X. Call it an incentive, gentle encouragement, or a gamified approach to language. Regardless, The Chinese Room has engineered a breakout moment for what many consider a beautiful, elegant language, and a reminder that Scottish Gaelic is no relic.
"...linguistic and textual scholarship is about far more than mere verbs or adjectives: it is a key to unlock our world. Now, though, his legacy is in danger of being abandoned. Over recent months, academics everywhere have been shocked by the news of cuts to long-established language programmes, including at Leiden. Among other languages, Turkish, Persian and Hebrew may all stop being offered. Arabic could soon vanish too: especially shocking at Leiden, home to the oldest chair of the language on earth. Yet if the decline has many causes, monoglot academic environments and budget cuts among them, the consequences are far from mundane. For if the trend continues, we will lose some of the best tools for cultural and historical understanding we have...."
Don’t let ancient languages die They illuminate our own blind spots
The Rosetta Stone transformed our understanding of Ancient Egypt.... Joseph Justus Scaliger. If you’re not a classicist or a historical linguist, you likely don’t know him. But if you are, he is a giant on whose shoulders you stand. Born in France, in 1540, he made his name at the Dutch university of Leiden. Here, at the lofty peak of the Renaissance, he reimagined what language could do. A polyglot — proficient in French, Italian, Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Arabic — only someone like Scaliger could have achieved something like De emendatione temporum (“On correcting dates”). Freeing the ancient world from slavish Biblical interpretations, he utterly transformed Europe’s sense of deep history. With him, the continent first began to realise that the cultures of Egypt and Mesopotamia predated Greece and Israel by millennia. It would take centuries to properly decipher their scripts and languages, but that was the beginning of a revolution in historical understanding as profound as the Darwinian revolution in biology. Scaliger showed that linguistic and textual scholarship is about far more than mere verbs or adjectives: it is a key to unlock our world. Now, though, his legacy is in danger of being abandoned. Over recent months, academics everywhere have been shocked by the news of cuts to long-established language programmes, including at Leiden. Among other languages, Turkish, Persian and Hebrew may all stop being offered. Arabic could soon vanish too: especially shocking at Leiden, home to the oldest chair of the language on earth. Yet if the decline has many causes, monoglot academic environments and budget cuts among them, the consequences are far from mundane. For if the trend continues, we will lose some of the best tools for cultural and historical understanding we have. Modern academia is dominated by the sciences. No one can deny that STEM subjects dominate the public conversation, followed by the more quantitative social sciences. On those rare occasions that the linguistic study of the human past does get a look in, it’s often just because AI is involved — and even then the returns are often dubious. It’s a similar story financially. In the UK, only £70 million of government research funding was allocated to the humanities in 2024-5. In a sense, meanwhile, this retreat is self-sustaining. Quite apart from the psychological impact on university administrators — the more humanities retreat from the front pages, the harder it is for bean-counters to take them seriously — it’s much easier to irretrievably lose knowledge of rarer languages once the chain of transmission is broken. Let me put it like this: how many experts in Lycian, Palmyrean, Aramaic or Tocharian are there in the world today? I don’t want to sound defeatist here. There are more than enough people interested to keep these studies alive — if the resources are there. Just one case in point is OxLat. Our Oxford programme teaching Latin to school students, it has twice as many applicants as spaces, despite the Government’s plan to scrap the Latin Excellence Programme for state schools. Yet even within the humanities, the most eye-catching work is often dealing in images rather than words: just think of how much media attention each new fresco in Pompeii gets compared to new finds in manuscripts or inscriptions. As far as language is concerned, meanwhile, there have surely been spectacular exceptions: yet they only serve to show what we usually miss. Perhaps the last time a historical linguistic discovery truly gripped the public imagination was the decipherment of Linear B in 1953. Yet who really remembers that discovery of the earliest form of Greek in a year that also saw the conquest of Everest and the detection of DNA? More to the point, how many people know anything about the deciphering of Mayan hieroglyphs, let alone the recent epic advances in the history of early writing? How things change. As Scaliger so vividly proves, linguistics could once change the world — literally. As the Renaissance bubbled on, scholars on both sides of Europe’s sectarian divide built a new community of scholarship aimed at understanding ancient texts. Encompassing Greek, Latin and Hebrew, among other tongues, the litterae humaniores (“more human letters”) were not a theological project per se, and indeed sought to bring bickering Protestants and Catholics closer together. They did, nonetheless, have a deep moral dimension. As the later German scholar Rudolf Pfeiffer remarked, luminaries like Erasmus linked Europe’s “spiritual decline” to the related deterioration of language. “And so,” he added, “it was with language that spiritual and moral renaissance must begin.” Pfeiffer, one of the refugees from Hitler’s Germany who transformed the study of classics in Britain, was no doubt feeling the same moral urgency himself. “Linguistics could once change the world — literally.” Erasmus and Scaliger were only two names in the wider “republic of letters”, an international community of thought and scholarship in active correspondence across Europe. Mostly writing in Latin, Scaliger was not a lone figure even at Leiden himself. Consider Justus Lipsius, the great editor of the Roman historian Tacitus and the Stoic philosopher Seneca, who distilled his learning into bestselling books on political ethics. Another example is Hugo Grotius, the father of international law as we know it. In England, Thomas More with his Utopia was part of the same community. We shouldn’t idolise these curious Renaissance minds. With modern departments now boasting a far subtler appreciation of Syriac or Aramaic, no scholar today would agree with Scaliger that someone “who knows no Greek knows nothing”. Nor should we resent the integration of visual culture into the study of the ancient world: it is no better to approach another culture by closing your eyes than closing your ears. New quantitative methods, too, have plenty to contribute. We can now understand the living standards, the flow of trade, the size of the population, the impact of disease in the ancient world in ways impossible even half a century ago. Yet if we doubtless gain by quantitative methods, we also lose something when straightforward knowledge of ancient tongues falls away. That’s true enough for early modern writers: even English authors like Milton or Hobbes can’t truly be appreciated without an intimate understanding of Latin. Not only was it the language in which all of them constantly read, but a large part of their work was simply written in Latin first. For ancient historians or medievalists, meanwhile, a large share of new knowledge still comes from texts in ancient languages, often fragmentary, and which require considerable linguistic expertise to interpret. To give you a sense of the scale, consider the Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, a publication covering newly published ancient inscriptions in Greek. Published annually, the Supplementum contains over 2,000 entries each year. Nor is Greek the only relevant language here. In 2013, for instance, a University of Warwick academic discovered a medieval Arabic translation of long-lost Greek text. Covering the financial management of farm estates, and written by a Greco-Roman philosopher called Bryson, it shows understanding of “need” as the driver of exchange and economy, and represents the earliest attempt to explain the price of things by supply and demand. One of my favourite examples here comes from Jane Lightfoot’s edition of the Apotelesmatica, a set of astrological poems ascribed to an Ancient Egyptian priest. Not only is this translation a major source on ancient astrology and astronomy, but also an encyclopaedia of the social world of Roman Egypt. Keen to know under what star sign the craftsmen of “marvellous machines past mortal ken” were born, and whether it was good to be one? Or “speakers of words, in public fora best at mending strife, and aiding the oppressed”? Or, for that matter, vagabonds in foreign lands, or “failures in business”? There’s no better place to start your research. I appreciate, of course, that in a world enraptured by AI decipherings in places like Herculaneum, texts like the Apotelesmatica can easily be ignored. Yet if that’s a shame in itself — which sane person wouldn’t want to learn about marvellous machines past mortal ken? — the decline of ancient languages matters for a yet more fundamental reason. To quote Mikhail Gasparov, a Russian classicist whose translations introduced me to Greece and Rome as a teenager, the study of ancient languages is “a service of understanding”. Our own time and our own culture represent only a tiny fraction of what the human mind is capable of. And, unless we get out of that familiar circle, we never get to see ourselves with some detachment, to detect the blind spots of our own time. From decrees of ancient cities offering a reflection on civic virtue, to Mesopotamian moral proverbs on clay tablets, to sermons discovered in medieval manuscripts, different takes on morality and society continue to appear from ancient sources. And just as we would never be content to rely on ChatGPT, or Google Translate, to understand another human being we truly cared for, why shouldn’t we go back to the original source to study some vanished culture — just as rich, in its way, as any lover or friend? In both cases, learning the language teaches us that they and their thoughts matter, no less than our own. That is more difficult than just making facile claims on behalf of other cultures, but it is still the thing that makes our studies “more human” than most. We may not think, with Scaliger, that “all divisions in religion arise from ignorance of grammar” — but we would understand each other infinitely better if we paid enough attention to language.
Philip Akoda is one of the faces of digital language preservation in Africa. Through his startup, The African Languages Project (AFLANG), he has championed several projects aimed at preserving African languages and cultures, including a fast-growing Yoruba Dictionary app making waves in the digital space. A graduate of Business Management from the University of Derby, Philip is also a recognised figure when it comes to subjects such as African history and languages. His passion for–and work in promoting–African languages and cultures got him invited to speak at the UK House of Parliament during the Black History Month Celebrations.
In this interview with Olufemi Ajasa, this intriguing enigma shares his journey into African language preservation, the recent Yoruba Dictionary app developed by his startup and the importance of technology in preserving African languages and cultures.
Can you tell us about Mr Philip Akoda?
Thank you so much. It’s an honour to be here. My name is Philip Akoda, I’m the founder and CEO of The African Languages Project, also known as AFLANG (short for African Languages). The AFLANG Project is an EdTech startup which builds mobile apps aimed at preserving and promoting African languages and culture. We’ve been operating since 2017 and have built several mobile apps for languages such as Ndebele spoken in Zimbabwe, Fante in Ghana and Oromo in Ethiopia. We’ve also built mobile dictionary apps for languages such as Yoruba and Efik, both Nigerian languages. Outside my startup, I’m also a multipublished author and lexicographer.
What is a lexicographer?
A lexicographer is a person who writes or compiles dictionaries.
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How did you come to be a lexicographer? Is there special training for that?
Well, lexicographers can be trained or untrained. There are people in history who wrote dictionaries but did not have prior experience in lexicography. For me, my entry into lexicography began in 2021 when I chose to undertake the task of building the first Efik dictionary app, which is available on the Google Playstore and the App Store. The app took 1 year and 2 months to build, but the outcome was a mobile dictionary app with over 14,000 words. It had definitions, synonyms, antonyms, audio pronunciations, and much more. Then, while the app was still in development, I began writing my first Efik pocket dictionary which I published a few months after the app was released.
Why did you choose to embark on the Efik Dictionary app?
Being of Efik descent via my mother’s lineage, and also having grown up in Calabar, I was obsessed with preserving and promoting the language, so in 2017, I launched the first Efik language learning app on Google Play Store; this was a pioneering effort because no similar apps existed at the time. This milestone then deepened my curiosity about my Efik heritage, leading me to conduct extensive research on Efik history, language, and culture–even uncovering things that a lot of people don’t know about. In fact, it became such that people would consult with me, instead of elders, to learn more about topics in these areas. The knowledge I gained inspired me to write several Wikipedia articles on several aspects of Efik culture and then to co-author my first Efik history book, Groundwork of Eniong Abatim History (1670–2020). I co-authored the book alongside my mother, Prof Winifred Eyoanwan Akoda (née Adam); her mother–that’s my grandmother–was of the Eniong Abatim community and before we embarked on the research and authorship of the book, there was no such work done to preserve her people’s history. Before this historical work, I authored Learn Efik 1–2, an animated language learning book series now widely used in schools across Calabar in Cross River State and housed in prestigious libraries worldwide, including the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford and the Harvard University Library.
Can you tell us more about the Yoruba dictionary app, what it is all about and what inspired its creation?
The Yoruba Dictionary app was a project I initiated through my AFLANG startup. Interestingly, I found out that my mother, who is an Efik princess, also has Yoruba roots through her paternal grandmother, who was a descendant of Afro-brazilian returnees. So that then got me obsessed with tracing that part of her lineage and exploring the Yoruba language and history. Interestingly, from this, I found out that my last name is actually a Yoruba name; I say interesting because I’m paternally from Benin City, Edo. And apparently, the name has several interpretations in Yoruba, depending on the Yoruba community. Akoda means creator; it is also an orisha. It can also mean Ancestor, which I sometimes find ironic since most people would say the work of a dictionary is an ancestor’s job… Anyway, so this time, working with a much larger team, we managed to build the most comprehensive mobile dictionary app in Africa. Actually, it is even more comprehensive than the Efik dictionary app; it contains over 22,000 words. Then in addition to definitions, audio pronunciations by indigenous speakers, synonyms, antonyms, and phonemic transcriptions, it also has hypernyms, hyponyms, keywords, and dialectal variations for 12 different yoruba dialects including Owo, Egba, Olukunmi, Awori, and so on. I think something that also sets the app apart, besides their novelty, is our inclusion of diacritics… that’s accent marks. I was insistent on this inclusion from the start because otherwise, we’re not being authentic to the language.
What unique features does the app offer to users learning or researching the Yoruba language?
When I describe the app to people, I think the very first thing that shocks them is that we actually took the time to go to the studio and record audio pronunciations by two Yoruba linguists, not just lazily using Google translate or some AI-generation tool; so that is the first unique feature I’ll mention–we also did this for the Efik dictionary app using two indigenous speakers. Also, even though our Yoruba linguists made sure to enunciate slowly, we still added a feature to slow down the audio so that no matter what, you can really hear all the syllables as they should be pronounced. Then besides the uniqueness of the dictionary’s content–which I explained before, there is a word of the day feature where users get notified of a new word every day. This is usually a really fascinating word that users are most likely unfamiliar with. There is also a badges’ rewards system to award users with Yoruba titles for performing certain actions on the app. There is an automated recommended words feature to suggest 5 new yoruba words from our database that users can learn about. It’s also sort of fun because there’s a Regenerate button below your recommendations so every time you tap it, you’ll receive a different set of words to explore. There are also other interesting features: favourites and downloads for storing your favourite words and downloading their audios to listen offline. And knowing people’s internet connectivity issues, we also provide offline mode so you can use the app freely, without internet.
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How does the app address the challenges of preserving and promoting indigenous languages like Yoruba?
I often tell people that dictionary apps are lifelong companions. Also, the difference between a print hardcopy dictionary or a PDF dictionary versus a dictionary app is that data in the dictionary app can be updated at any time. In fact, we’ve managed to build a whole content management system such that we can update or correct the dictionary’s content immediately and you’ll see it reflected on the app. Now, at present, there are over 57 million Yoruba speakers globally. Yoruba films are also on the rise, but from what I’ve seen, one constraint faced by modern-day Yoruba speakers is the ability to read or write Yoruba with ease. A lot of people I meet can speak Yoruba but cannot write or read Yoruba. So this app also solves the problem of reading and writing since, again going back to the accent marks I mentioned before, you can find words correctly spelt using the Yoruba orthography. And again, the app has audio pronunciations too by real indigenous speakers so that helps users to not just read a word, but know how it is pronounced.
Could you tell us about the team behind the app and their respective contributions?
There were several people on this project, including academics and techies. EdTech, the industry I work in, is a combination of Educational and Technology, so we needed the best minds in both the educational and technological fields. For the educational sector, we worked with various academics in UNILAG, UNILORIN and UI. Many of their names are on the About section of the app. For the technical aspect of the app, my co-founder, Mary-Brenda Akoda led the technical team. Mary-Brenda also happens to be my sister. She is a postgraduate AI researcher at Imperial College London. She is also a Software Engineer with experience at Microsoft and a Google DeepMind Scholar. She was responsible for the UI/UX design and full-stack development of the Yoruba Dictionary app. She was actually the one who introduced the novel features to the app like the badges and the automated recommended words feature. My mother, Prof. Winifred Akoda was also responsible for liaising with academics in universities along the South West to gather data for the dialects and also supervise the data collection process. She’s actually a professor of history and field research and has been doing that for over 30 years, so that was really an asset to our work.
What is it like working with your family?
I love my family. I feel fortunate to have a mother and sister with a strong educational and technical background.
How has the reception been since the app launched?
It has been overwhelmingly positive. In fact, in just two weeks of marketing the app, we had over 12,000 downloads and not just from Nigeria; we got from Cuba as well. And we now have a 4.8 rating on Google Playstore and a 5 out of 5 rating on the App store. We kept getting very positive feedback and excitement from people on social media too; I think people also weren’t expecting such a fun and animated UI/UX design for a dictionary app so that surprised them and got them engaged. We also try to get suggestions from people too so that we make sure we keep improving our users’ experience.
Are there plans to expand the app’s functionality or include additional languages?
We originally intended on adding games to the app, but it was a lot of features to handle all at once. We will still add them in a few months. We’re also working on our next language project, a Hausa Dictionary app.
How about the Igbo language?
We intend to go into that later. Igbo is a bit tricky since we need to take a more dialectical approach for Igbo. Unlike Yoruba, Igbo people lean more towards their dialects. There is the standard Igbo but it is impractical since it is usually relegated to written literature and the educational sector. So for example, if we had two Ekiti people in the room, they are more likely to speak standard Yoruba unless they discover that they are from Ekiti. The case is different with Igbo. Designing the Igbo dictionary app will mean taking into consideration the various Igbo dialects. If users want to search for Mmiri in Igbo, other options will also have to reflect like Mmili and Mmini. Basically, lexicography is a complicated art that requires a lot of critical thinking.
What is your educational background, and how has it shaped your career in lexicography?
I undertook my secondary education in Calabar but also schooled at the Lagos City Computer College, Ikeja for two years. I then attended the University of Essex but then 2016’s recession affected many Nigerian international students, so I couldn’t continue there. But I later graduated from the University of Derby. It was actually while at Essex that I ventured into language preservation. I released my first language learning app–that was the Efik one–while I was a student at the university. Because of the app, I was invited to speak at the Black History Month celebration in the UK House of Parliament… But I cannot say my educational background played a role in my journey into lexicography. These things just happen. Life will take you on a path you will never expect. I thought I would graduate with a computer engineering degree but rather ended up finding my passion for language preservation, establishing AFLANG, and then graduating with a first class honours degree in Business Management from the University of Derby.
Apart from the Yoruba Dictionary app, what other notable projects have you worked on?
I’ve authored an Efik pocket dictionary called A 21st Century Efik Pocket Dictionary, which stands as one of my proudest accomplishments. The work actually represents a fresh approach to Efik lexicography. Unlike the Yoruba language, where tonal marks are applied to vowels, the Efik people prefer not to apply markings when writing letters and other documents. Because of this approach, I devised an innovative method to present Efik words in a manner that resonates with both native speakers and linguists.
Can you share any challenges or breakthroughs in your career as a lexicographer?
I would say that one of my biggest breakthroughs as a lexicographer is introducing the conversation of synonymy, hyponymy, hypernymy, and antonymy–topics that are not given so much limelight in the study of African Languages and Linguistics.
Are there any upcoming publications we should look forward to?
At present, I have 3 more publications I’m working on. One of them is focused on the Yoruba language and will greatly help Yoruba speakers across the world.
Are you a Yoruba speaker?
Interestingly, I am not but I’ve had to work really hard to understand the language. For the current book I’ve been working on, I used over 50books as sources including 16 Yoruba dictionaries and submitted it to 3 academics across the southwest to review and proofread.
In your opinion, what role does technology play in language preservation?
Technology is instrumental to the preservation of our languages. Any language that does not align with technology is greatly at risk, because oral tradition and print books can only go so far.
What advice would you give to young scholars or linguists looking to pursue a career in lexicography?
Be patient, be consistent, be curious and be ready to always come out of your comfort zone. To venture into lexicography, you need to be daring. You’re likely to face opposition from more experienced lexicographers, but be open to learning from them and also be courageous enough to find your own path.
Outside of lexicography, what are your interests or hobbies?
I enjoy writing Wikipedia articles. I’ve written a number of them on different aspects of Efik culture and on different personalities as well, both historical and living. I also enjoy swimming and travelling.
What can individuals, organizations, and governments do to support efforts like yours?
Individuals, organizations, and governments play pivotal roles in supporting efforts to preserve and promote indigenous languages. We are actively seeking funding, including donations and grants from both individuals and organizations, to grow and expand, and so that more people get to know about our apps and benefit from them. We are also open to contracting and/or consulting for both local and international organizations that want to increase their language preservation efforts for African languages or to make them digitally available; we already have a highly specialised team of African linguists, lexicographers, and academics, so such collaborations would certainly be within our comfort zone and done in the correct orthography of the language. We are also open to working with governments as well to institutionalise our efforts. The government can implement policies that make indigenous language education mandatory and they can allocate resources for linguistic research and development.
How can people get involved with AFLANG or contribute to the growth of the Yoruba Dictionary app?
Readers and users can get involved by downloading and engaging with our apps, and if they like it, please leave a rating and review so that more people get to find it and learn something new. We also have a Give Feedback option on the app; users should please use it to give us feedback or they can also reach out to us via admin@theaflangproject.org. It helps us understand what works well and what can be improved. Readers can also recommend the Yoruba Dictionary app to friends, family, and colleagues who are interested in learning Yoruba or in preserving indigenous languages. Also, if you have expertise in Yoruba language, culture, or linguistics, you can collaborate with us by contributing new words, phrases, or contextual examples to enrich the dictionary’s content. And of course, as mentioned before, we’re actively seeking funding so that would be another way to get involved, so that we can grow the app, add more features, and expand to many more languages; we hope to develop comprehensive dictionary apps for 10 African languages within the next 5 years. So your involvement, no matter how small, helps us build a stronger foundation for preserving African languages and promoting their global appreciation.
How the Institute’s managing director Kenric Tsethlikai’s native roots laid the seeds for international success. Few people understand the inner workings of the Lauder Institute as well as Kenric Tsethlikai. As the Institute’s managing director since 2012, Tsethlikai has played an instrumental role in its operations, helping shape curriculum and policy, advising students, hiring faculty, and managing staff. The Lauder Institute of Management & International Studies is a joint degree program with the Wharton MBA that integrates comprehensive professional training with interdisciplinary coursework in international politics, economics, history, culture, and language. Lauder students graduate with a Wharton School MBA plus an international studies MA in the School of Arts & Sciences. Tsethlikai’s role is crucial in fostering a vibrant, multilingual community at the Institute, where globally-minded business students come together. Tsethlikai himself embodies this spirit—he speaks ten languages at varying levels, has traveled extensively around the world, and has lived in both France and Switzerland. However, what makes Tsethlikai’s journey particularly compelling is how it all began. Kenric Tsethlikai began working at the Lauder Institute in 2008 as the director of Language and Culture Programs. He was appointed managing director in 2012. (Image: Lauren Treutler) Tsethlikai is a member of the Zuni tribe, a Native American community in western New Mexico whose ancestral homeland is the “four corners” area between Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. Growing up in the Zuni Pueblo (A:Shiwi), Tsethlikai was raised in the various traditions that shape the rhythm of daily life such as rain dances, ceremonial prayers, and the sacred Shalako festival marking the winter solstice. Now in his 16th year at the Lauder Institute, Tsethlikai is a fully-fledged polyglot, proficient in German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and of course, French. He also studies Japanese, Russian, and Arabic, noting that the symbols that convey these languages are “a fascinating way of delving into an entirely different cultural mindset.” When he returns to Zuni to visit his family, Tsethlikai reconnects to the local language of Shiwi although, he says, “it takes some time to get back into the swing of things.” What is the secret to success in learning so many languages? “I think having a strong desire to connect to somebody and to meet that person on the same level,” he says, “so initially you’re not thinking about grammar. You’re really trying to focus on how to connect with that person. And it starts with chunks of words just trying to get out some common bridge of understanding. For me, that initial connection is what has always led me down the road of formal learning.” This ability to connect across cultures has been essential to Tsethlikai’s success as the Institute’s managing director, overseeing a multicultural staff, faculty, and student body. Reflecting on how the Institute has evolved over the years, he notes that it has mirrored broader geopolitical shifts in the world. “When I first arrived at Lauder, globalization was an important concept fueling how people thought about countries, nations, and regions. There was a belief that national differences and boundaries would somehow fade into the background. But since then, we’ve seen a retraction and a renewed emphasis on national identity and local identities. We’ve adapted our curriculum in anticipation of these changes. One thing that hasn’t changed, though, is an unwavering commitment to preparing the best leaders through cultivating a strong knowledge-base and an appreciation for other cultures and languages.” The importance of community has been a consistent thread throughout Tsethlikai’s life, something he has found not only at the Lauder Institute but also within the small Native American population at Penn. Each year, he welcomes Native undergraduate students into the University and supports them in their journey to commencement, serving as student advisor and speaker at their graduation ceremony. Additionally, he sits on a committee at the Penn Museum that oversees claims made by Native communities seeking to repatriate artifacts or objects belonging to their tribes. The committee’s role is to ensure each claim receives fair review and resolution. Read the full story by Lauren Treutler at The Lauder Institute.
"Language in academia should not alienate the masses but instead be inviting discussion from the general public. In the hallowed halls of academia, a peculiar phenomenon persists; the pervasive use of obfuscatory vernacular that serves to alienate the uninitiated and perpetuate a cycle of intellectual gatekeeping. This proclivity for abstruse articulation, while ostensibly rooted in the pursuit of precision, often degenerates into a self-aggrandizing display of erudition that undermines the very essence of scholarly discourse. If you found yourself reaching for a dictionary or scratching your head in bewilderment after reading that opening paragraph, congratulations – you have just experienced firsthand the exclusionary nature of academic language. It is a linguistic sleight of hand that transforms knowledge into a luxury good, accessible only to those who possess the decoder ring of specialized education. Picture this: you are scrolling through an article about climate change, eager to learn about the latest research. You are hit with a barrage of words that might as well be written in ancient Greek. Your eyes glaze over and you close the tab, feeling a mix of frustration and inadequacy. Sounds familiar? Welcome to the world of academic language, where even the most crucial information can sometimes feel locked behind an impenetrable wall of jargon. But here is the question: is this linguistic complexity a necessary evil for precise communication, or is it just academic showboating? While there are arguments for both sides, I believe that the scales have tipped too far towards exclusivity, and it is time for a change. When researchers use specialized terms and complex sentence structures, they risk alienating readers who do not share their educational and linguistic background. This language barrier can turn important discussions about societal issues into conversations that can only be had by the educated elite. Climate change, poverty, and healthcare… these are not just abstract concepts, they are realities that affect millions of people who might not have a Ph.D. after their name. Proponents of academic language argue that it serves several crucial purposes: Precision: Some concepts are inherently complex and require specific terminology to be accurately described. Efficiency: In specialized fields, using agreed-upon terms can make communication more efficient among experts. Avoiding Misinterpretation: Academic language often includes carefully chosen words to prevent misunderstandings. Depth of Analysis: The process of learning and using academic language can force deeper engagement with concepts. These are valid points, and I will not dismiss them outright. After all, we cannot expect a heart surgeon to explain a complicated procedure using only words found in a children's book. But, here is the catch: while these arguments hold true in specific contexts, they struggle to apply universally. The problem arises when academic language spills over from specialized discussions into broader conversations about issues that affect us all. There is a fine line between necessary complexity and intellectual peacocking. When academics use unnecessarily convoluted language, it is not just annoying but also potentially harmful. It can discourage public engagement with important ideas, widen the gap between experts and the general public, and even hinder the spread of crucial information. So, where do we go from here? I propose a shift in how we view academic communication. Instead of prizing complexity above all, we should celebrate clarity. We need to recognize that explaining complex ideas in simple terms is not dumbing down academia, it is a sign of true mastery. Imagine a world where grant applications and tenure reviews considered not just the complexity of one's work, but also its accessibility. Where academics are trained not just to conduct research, but to communicate it effectively to diverse audiences. Where the ultimate measure of scholarly success is not just peer recognition, but societal impact. To those who argue that some ideas are too complex to simplify, I say this: if you cannot explain it clearly, you might not understand it well enough yourself. The greatest minds in history – from Einstein to Feynman – were known for their ability to make the complex comprehensible. This was not a diminishment of their work, but a testament to their true mastery of it. The democratization of knowledge is not about devaluing it. By breaking down the linguistic barriers that often separate academic discourse from public understanding, we can actually amplify the impact of scholarly work. After all, what good is knowledge if it remains locked away in the minds of a select few? In this push for clearer communication, we must be careful not to swing too far towards anti-intellectualism. The goal is not to dumb down our collective dialogue but to elevate it through increased accessibility and engagement. By fostering a culture that values both intellectual rigor and communicative clarity, we can cultivate a more informed, engaged public without sacrificing the depth of academic thought. As I wrap up this exploration of academic language and its societal implications, I cannot help but chuckle at the irony. Have I, in my attempt to critique the exclusionary nature of academic discourse, inadvertently produced a work that plays into the very elitism it seeks to dismantle? Perhaps. But then again, if you have made it this far without reaching for a dictionary, I would say we are making progress. In the end, the true measure of academic brilliance lies not in the complexity of one's vocabulary, but in the clarity of one's ideas and their potential to describe the human experience. And if you found parts of this piece a tad verbose, well... old habits die hard, do they not? Divya Aswani is a Contributing Writer. Email them at feedback@thegazelle.org." #metaglossia_mundus
"The foreign language requirement is necessary for students. In addition to learning a new language, it exposes students to different cultures and international events. September 11, 2024 For those of us who are not a foreign language or linguistics major, being forced to take language classes up to the 2030 — intermediate—level may be frustrating. Personally, I found it hard to stay motivated amidst scrambling to do work from five other classes. However, in retrospect, I realized that learning another language encourages us to be more well-rounded and better global citizens, which are beneficial characteristics in the contemporary world. In today’s heavily interconnected society, international events ripple outwards. It is impossible to be wholly unaffected by something, even if it happens across the globe. It is critical that students broaden their horizons and expand their understanding of different cultures and global affairs. Tulane’s School of Liberal Arts understands the importance of global citizenship and asserts that students should strive to “achieve real proficiency in a foreign language” through taking the equivalent of three years of language courses. This goal may be ambitious, especially when most students are not majoring in foreign languages. Nevertheless, these courses offer students exposure to other cultures and international issues, in addition to learning a second or third language. Students may not have the opportunity to learn about other parts of the world in depth and discuss international affairs without language courses. Additionally, learning languages is a massive lifelong asset. In today’s globalized world, international business is becoming more and more prevalent. The likelihood of doing work or transactions with people from another country is higher than ever. Thus, having the skill to converse in another language in your toolbelt is greatly beneficial in the professional world. Foreign language has more uses beyond work, and proficiency is not necessary to make use of it. Taking a year or two of French, for example, can make traveling or living in a French-speaking country a lot easier, as there would be a linguistic foundation established. Students are also given a different perspective on culture and the world, allowing them to consider more facets of an issue. Solely being immersed in American culture and principles is constraining in thought and prevents outside-the-box thinking. Gun policy, for example, is an issue where international perspectives can offer insight into solutions. Instead of being stuck arguing back and forth about constitutional rights versus saving lives, lawmakers can look towards how similar countries to the U.S. approach gun regulation and draw from what works. Breaking from a nationalist and isolationist view and adopting global perspectives is critical not only to improving professionalism and policy but building greater respect and tolerance for other cultures. One step towards combating prejudice and racism is to be more aware and more appreciative of other cultures’ contributions and traditions. As annoying as it might seem to spend nights doing VHL, the process of foreign languages inadvertently shapes us into better human beings and prepares us for problems in the contemporary world. We have language requirements to thank for that." #metaglossia_mundus: https://tulanehullabaloo.com/66764/uncategorized/opinion-foreign-language-requirement-creates-better-global-citizens/
Why cultural diversity and open mindsets are the basis for innovation and growth Intercultural competence promotes communication, cooperation and innovation in the global economy and creates an inclusive corporate culture. How can companies be truly successful in a globalized world? Intercultural competence is the answer. It not only promotes effective communication and collaboration between different cultures, but also creates an innovative, inclusive corporate culture. Find out how this skill strengthens corporate success in global markets and enables a creative and productive working environment. 1. What is intercultural competence? Intercultural competence is the ability to communicate and collaborate effectively and respectfully with people from different cultural backgrounds. This skill is becoming increasingly important in a networked world in which location, time, country and language barriers can be overcome more and more easily with the help of technology. In international companies, English has long been the corporate language in order to integrate foreign specialists. Outsourcing and offshoring to save costs requires smooth communication with people from other cultures in different time zones. Different expectations, working styles and mindsets have to be brought together and managed, which are not always obvious. How do you create a heightened awareness of cultural differences? Intercultural competence involves understanding that as an individual you are operating within a universe of contradictory cultural and historical conditions. These influences can include different conceptions of reality and divergent historical, political, geographical and social backgrounds. This means that, in addition to basic character skills, knowledge of modernization, globalization and the transformation of society through technology and science is necessary for a change of perspective. Without knowledge, there can be no understanding of different attitudes and behaviors. This also includes a fundamental understanding of ethical, philosophical and religious principles. An essential component of intercultural competence is the ability to critically reflect on one’s own cultural background. What understanding of roles has shaped me? Which values are particularly important to me and why? Much of what we learned in our childhood has solidified into automated behavior patterns that we no longer even notice in later life. But this conditioning significantly determines our thought process and therefore also how we see the world. External perspectives on our own lives can reveal this conditioning: This can sometimes be painful because we have to say goodbye to cherished truths. But if you open yourself up to this, it can also bring new insights. Only those who understand their own background and question the associated values and norms can view foreign perspectives on their own in an enriching light. 2. Intercultural competence and diversity Conflicts between cultures usually arise from misunderstandings. Every culture and every language is part of an institutional order that creates accepted and standardized imagery. Those who know these different systems of order and can relate them to each other have a clear advantage. Diversity in companies refers to the diversity of the workforce not only in terms of culture, but also in terms of gender, age, ethnic origin, religion, sexual orientation and other characteristics. Intercultural competence plays a central role in promoting and utilizing this diversity. A company that promotes intercultural competence creates an environment in which employees are sensitized to understanding different points of view. They should thus be better able to react professionally, calmly and empathetically to conflicts and, first and foremost, to question possible cultural misunderstandings. This can also be helpful in other types of conflict, as it trains them to put themselves in the shoes of the other party and understand the problem from their perspective. Diversity has been proven to increase corporate success. The ability to recognize and appreciate cultural differences leads to a more inclusive corporate culture. This allows employees to feel safe and valued, which in turn increases their satisfaction and productivity. In addition, a diverse and interculturally competent team can develop creative and innovative solutions as they can draw from a wider range of experiences and perspectives. Another benefit is the improvement of international business relations. Companies that promote intercultural competence are better able to operate in global markets. They can understand and accommodate cultural differences in negotiating styles, business etiquette and customer preferences, leading to more successful international partnerships and business deals. In addition, companies can better position themselves strategically, professionally and communicatively for a planned internationalization if they are aware of common pitfalls in intercultural cooperation in advance and prepare themselves accordingly. 3. Intercultural competence and innovation Focusing on diversity by bringing different cultures together is not an easy model to implement and is not suitable for all companies. Successfully implementing a diversity strategy requires an understanding of innovation that most traditional companies do not have. It sees innovation not as an exception but as the rule and integrates open innovation networks in which different stakeholders are involved from the outset. It pursues a bottom-up strategy that uses agile, customer-oriented and data-supported insights from operations in iterative processes to align them with the management strategy. It relies on unusual, risky and untested thinking models outside the norm instead of chasing the zeitgeist. This is the only way to achieve a genuine knowledge advantage beyond conventions and established interpretations. Smooth collaboration works best in local, small networks – the so-called social fabric – which is characterized by similarities in characteristics such as wealth, level of education, but also ethnicity or regional culture. If you want to harness diversity here, you first need to train an understanding of intercultural competence, critical thinking and diversity of perspectives. To achieve this, educational institutions and companies need to focus more on promoting creative processes instead of passing on canonized knowledge. Canonized knowledge quickly becomes outdated in a world that generates an abundance of information and new specialized knowledge at an unprecedented speed. On the other hand, those who are able to critically assess and make judgments themselves will continue to be superior to computers and so-called artificial intelligence in the future. Conclusion on intercultural competence Intercultural competence is indispensable in today’s globalized and diverse working world. It enables companies to fully exploit the benefits of diversity and drive innovation. Only through the targeted promotion of intercultural skills can misunderstandings be minimized, an inclusive corporate culture created and international business relationships successfully shaped. Companies that recognize this and integrate it into their strategies not only position themselves more successfully on the global market, but also create a working environment in which creativity and collaboration can flourish. In a rapidly changing world, intercultural competence is therefore not only an advantage, but a necessity for sustainable success. Simone Belko is a media scientist and European studies scholar with a strong focus on digital literacy. With experience in journalism, PR, marketing, IT and training she has excelled in Germany and abroad. As a manager for digital products in the online games and FinTech industry she gained deep insights into online platforms and communities. Simone is the author of "Digital Consciousness" ("Das digitale Bewusstsein") and currently works at Otto GmbH, leveraging her expertise in business transformation.
Why cultural diversity and open mindsets are the basis for innovation and growth Intercultural competence promotes communication, cooperation and innovation in the global economy and creates an inclusive corporate culture. How can companies be truly successful in a globalized world? Intercultural competence is the answer. It not only promotes effective communication and collaboration between different cultures, but also creates an innovative, inclusive corporate culture. Find out how this skill strengthens corporate success in global markets and enables a creative and productive working environment. 1. What is intercultural competence? Intercultural competence is the ability to communicate and collaborate effectively and respectfully with people from different cultural backgrounds. This skill is becoming increasingly important in a networked world in which location, time, country and language barriers can be overcome more and more easily with the help of technology. In international companies, English has long been the corporate language in order to integrate foreign specialists. Outsourcing and offshoring to save costs requires smooth communication with people from other cultures in different time zones. Different expectations, working styles and mindsets have to be brought together and managed, which are not always obvious. How do you create a heightened awareness of cultural differences? Intercultural competence involves understanding that as an individual you are operating within a universe of contradictory cultural and historical conditions. These influences can include different conceptions of reality and divergent historical, political, geographical and social backgrounds. This means that, in addition to basic character skills, knowledge of modernization, globalization and the transformation of society through technology and science is necessary for a change of perspective. Without knowledge, there can be no understanding of different attitudes and behaviors. This also includes a fundamental understanding of ethical, philosophical and religious principles. An essential component of intercultural competence is the ability to critically reflect on one’s own cultural background. What understanding of roles has shaped me? Which values are particularly important to me and why? Much of what we learned in our childhood has solidified into automated behavior patterns that we no longer even notice in later life. But this conditioning significantly determines our thought process and therefore also how we see the world. External perspectives on our own lives can reveal this conditioning: This can sometimes be painful because we have to say goodbye to cherished truths. But if you open yourself up to this, it can also bring new insights. Only those who understand their own background and question the associated values and norms can view foreign perspectives on their own in an enriching light. 2. Intercultural competence and diversity Conflicts between cultures usually arise from misunderstandings. Every culture and every language is part of an institutional order that creates accepted and standardized imagery. Those who know these different systems of order and can relate them to each other have a clear advantage. Diversity in companies refers to the diversity of the workforce not only in terms of culture, but also in terms of gender, age, ethnic origin, religion, sexual orientation and other characteristics. Intercultural competence plays a central role in promoting and utilizing this diversity. A company that promotes intercultural competence creates an environment in which employees are sensitized to understanding different points of view. They should thus be better able to react professionally, calmly and empathetically to conflicts and, first and foremost, to question possible cultural misunderstandings. This can also be helpful in other types of conflict, as it trains them to put themselves in the shoes of the other party and understand the problem from their perspective. Diversity has been proven to increase corporate success. The ability to recognize and appreciate cultural differences leads to a more inclusive corporate culture. This allows employees to feel safe and valued, which in turn increases their satisfaction and productivity. In addition, a diverse and interculturally competent team can develop creative and innovative solutions as they can draw from a wider range of experiences and perspectives. Another benefit is the improvement of international business relations. Companies that promote intercultural competence are better able to operate in global markets. They can understand and accommodate cultural differences in negotiating styles, business etiquette and customer preferences, leading to more successful international partnerships and business deals. In addition, companies can better position themselves strategically, professionally and communicatively for a planned internationalization if they are aware of common pitfalls in intercultural cooperation in advance and prepare themselves accordingly. 3. Intercultural competence and innovation Focusing on diversity by bringing different cultures together is not an easy model to implement and is not suitable for all companies. Successfully implementing a diversity strategy requires an understanding of innovation that most traditional companies do not have. It sees innovation not as an exception but as the rule and integrates open innovation networks in which different stakeholders are involved from the outset. It pursues a bottom-up strategy that uses agile, customer-oriented and data-supported insights from operations in iterative processes to align them with the management strategy. It relies on unusual, risky and untested thinking models outside the norm instead of chasing the zeitgeist. This is the only way to achieve a genuine knowledge advantage beyond conventions and established interpretations. Smooth collaboration works best in local, small networks – the so-called social fabric – which is characterized by similarities in characteristics such as wealth, level of education, but also ethnicity or regional culture. If you want to harness diversity here, you first need to train an understanding of intercultural competence, critical thinking and diversity of perspectives. To achieve this, educational institutions and companies need to focus more on promoting creative processes instead of passing on canonized knowledge. Canonized knowledge quickly becomes outdated in a world that generates an abundance of information and new specialized knowledge at an unprecedented speed. On the other hand, those who are able to critically assess and make judgments themselves will continue to be superior to computers and so-called artificial intelligence in the future. Conclusion on intercultural competence Intercultural competence is indispensable in today’s globalized and diverse working world. It enables companies to fully exploit the benefits of diversity and drive innovation. Only through the targeted promotion of intercultural skills can misunderstandings be minimized, an inclusive corporate culture created and international business relationships successfully shaped. Companies that recognize this and integrate it into their strategies not only position themselves more successfully on the global market, but also create a working environment in which creativity and collaboration can flourish. In a rapidly changing world, intercultural competence is therefore not only an advantage, but a necessity for sustainable success. Simone Belko is a media scientist and European studies scholar with a strong focus on digital literacy. With experience in journalism, PR, marketing, IT and training she has excelled in Germany and abroad. As a manager for digital products in the online games and FinTech industry she gained deep insights into online platforms and communities. Simone is the author of "Digital Consciousness" ("Das digitale Bewusstsein") and currently works at Otto GmbH, leveraging her expertise in business transformation.
"Understanding the power and limits of language. “Ohio.” “Brat.” “Cringe.” “Weird.” Coconut emojis. Viral memes are omnipresent this campaign season, distilling concepts, images and ideas into simple, replicable formats that spread rapidly online. Once a concept is meme-ified, it becomes easily adaptable, allowing people to create their own versions by adding text or altering content to fit different contexts. This replicability makes memes powerful tools in shaping digital discourse and reflecting how cultural and social identities are constructed in the online world. Viral memes are omnipresent this campaign season, distilling concepts, images and ideas into simple, replicable formats that spread rapidly online. Once a concept is meme-ified, it becomes easily adaptable, allowing people to create their own versions by adding text or altering content to fit different contexts. This replicability makes memes powerful tools in shaping digital discourse and reflecting how cultural and social identities are constructed in the online world. The meme “brat,” inspired by Charli XCX’s album, has come to signify confidence and attention-seeking behavior, while “Ohio” has become slang for anything odd or cringeworthy. Memes serve as bonding tools within groups, reinforcing shared identity and creating a sense of exclusivity. This dynamic fosters community in online spaces where people connect through shared content rather than face-to-face interaction. Memes also establish a clear distinction between those who are in the know (the in-group) and those who are not (the out-group). While memes and slogans alone may not win elections and most voters may not care whether a candidate embodies the brat persona, they play a crucial role in contemporary political campaigns. These tools simplify complex messages, mobilize supporters and shape a candidate’s overall vibe. In an era when voters are overwhelmed with information and when emotional resonance often outweighs detailed policy discussions, the battle for votes increasingly relies on slogans, catchphrases and vibe-producing memes. Understanding the power of these elements is essential for grasping the dynamics of contemporary electoral politics. In the digital age, control over discourse has become increasingly vital due to the rapid spread of information, media fragmentation and societal polarization. Politicians, experts, internet influencers and marketers actively shape public discourse to assert influence, achieve goals and manage reputations. With the ability to reach millions instantly through social media and online platforms, those who control the narrative hold unprecedented power over public opinion, policy decisions and cultural norms.Sophisticated language analysis, coupled with advances in artificial intelligence and big data, have further amplified this emphasis on discourse control. These tools enable microtargeting and the construction of tailored messages, making it easier to spread misinformation and disinformation. Traditional media once acted as gatekeepers, filtering news and information. However, the rise of the internet and social media has diminished their control, leading to a more democratic yet chaotic information landscape. This fragmentation has resulted in competing narratives, with various groups vying for influence, intensifying the struggle for discourse control. In a polarized political environment, controlling language is crucial for shaping public opinion. All sides seek to frame issues in ways that align with their values, using language to rally supporters and discredit opponents. For experts, controlling discourse is also about maintaining authority and credibility by shaping the frameworks through which issues are understood. Language has become a central battleground in the culture wars, as groups compete to assert their worldviews. The words we use profoundly shape public discourse and influence societal norms, giving those who control language a significant advantage in defining debates and shaping perceptions. Words wield immense power. Language enables us to convey complex ideas, emotions and experiences, structuring our thoughts and shaping our perceptions of the world. Shared language fosters community and cultural identity, while skillful use of language can sway opinions, motivate action and shift public discourse. Words can be weaponized, politicized or redefined, as in the case of terms like “freedom,” or through euphemisms that downplay contentious policies. Language reinforces social hierarchies, manufactures consent, creates in- and out-groups, and reshapes collective memory and national identity. Control over discourse is crucial for political partisans and extends to labeling, medicalizing, psychologizing and pathologizing behavior. Jargon asserts expertise and authority, while labeling certain language as unacceptable can silence dissent. In politics, business, academia, media and social movements, the ability to frame issues, define terms and guide public conversations is a key strategy for gaining influence and driving change. The heightened focus on discourse reflects broader changes in how information is produced, disseminated and consumed in the digital age, as well as a growing recognition of language’s power to shape perceptions, influence behavior and assert control. By controlling the terms, narratives and framing of issues, various actors can steer public understanding and debates to favor their interests, impacting consumer behavior, social attitudes and academic discourse. In the academy, discourse shaping can determine which theories gain prominence, allowing influential editors and scholars to guide collective interpretation. In an age of information overload, those who frame issues succinctly and persuasively can more effectively capture public attention, a crucial factor in marketing, public relations and social activism. As society grows more polarized, the struggle to control discourse intensifies, with ideological groups seeking to define language in ways that align with their values, extending beyond traditional politics to cultural and social justice issues. For businesses, controlling discourse is essential for managing brand reputation and consumer perception. The ability to control narratives during crises, such as public relations disasters or legal challenges, is critical for mitigating damage and protecting interests. Social movements use discourse control to assert identities, promote inclusive language and challenge existing power structures and influence cultural norms and values around gender, race, disability and sexuality. Media outlets, by choosing and framing stories, set the public agenda and influence how issues are understood, extending their power beyond news coverage to the framing of social and cultural issues. In this increasingly high-stakes environment, control over discourse has become a critical factor in modern power dynamics. The recent focus on the power of language and discourse is a significant reminder that ideas originating in the academy don’t stay confined within its walls—they shape and influence the broader world. Several scholars have been instrumental in shaping our understanding of how language and discourse function as tools of political and professional power. Their work reveals that language is not merely a neutral medium for communication but a potent instrument that can shape perceptions, reinforce social hierarchies and either maintain or challenge power structures. Whether through framing political issues, constructing identities or reinforcing ideologies, the control of language is central to the exercise of power in society. - Antonio Gramsci introduced the concept of “cultural hegemony” in his Prison Notebooks (1929–1935), explaining how a ruling class manipulates society’s beliefs, language and values to establish its worldview as the accepted cultural norm, thereby shaping public thought and discourse on social issues.
- Roland Barthes, a key figure in semiotics, explored how language creates and manipulates cultural narratives that reinforce dominant ideologies. He argued that what we consider “natural” or “common sense” often results from ideological manipulation through language, influencing everything from personal identity to social norms.
- Michel Foucault, perhaps the most influential scholar on discourse and power, argued that discourse is not just a vehicle for expressing ideas but a mechanism for controlling and organizing knowledge and power. His concept of “power/knowledge” posits that those who control discourse also dictate what is considered true or false, normal or abnormal, and legitimate or illegitimate.
- Jürgen Habermas, in The Theory of Communicative Action (1981), introduced the concept of the “public sphere” as a space for rational-critical debate free from the domination of power structures. He also highlighted how language can both distort communication and reinforce power relations, yet it remains a crucial tool for achieving genuine understanding and consensus in society.
- Pierre Bourdieu, in Language and Symbolic Power (1991), examined how language serves as a form of power that legitimizes and reinforces social hierarchies. He introduced the idea of “linguistic capital,” where certain ways of speaking carry more social value, thereby reinforcing authority, education and social prestige and perpetuating social inequality.
- George Lakoff, in Moral Politics (1996) and Don’t Think of an Elephant! (2004), argued that the metaphors we use in political discourse reflect underlying cognitive frames that shape how we perceive and respond to social and political issues. Lakoff’s concept of framing has been particularly influential in understanding how political language can shape public opinion by activating specific values and assumptions.
- Teun A. van Dijk, in Discourse and Power (2008), focused on how language is used to convey ideologies and maintain power structures, particularly in media and political discourse. He analyzed how elites use language to control public discourse, manipulate information and perpetuate social inequality.
These scholars underscore the profound impact language has on shaping reality, guiding public discourse and maintaining or challenging power dynamics in society. Language is inherently political, shaping how we perceive and understand the world. Politicizing language involves using it to advance specific agendas, define social boundaries and influence group identities. Words and phrases are chosen not just for their descriptive power but for their ability to sway opinions, legitimize viewpoints and marginalize others. This extends to the medicalization and psychologization of behavior, where language casts certain actions or beliefs in a negative or pathological light. Medicalization classifies behaviors and conditions as medical problems, which can lead to overtreatment and overlook broader social or environmental factors. Psychologization frames behaviors and emotions through a psychological lens, potentially reducing personal agency and ignoring the social contexts that influence behavior. Pathologization labels certain behaviors as inherently diseased or dysfunctional, often carrying moral judgment. This can be used as a tool for political and social control, delegitimizing dissent and justifying the exclusion of nonconformist voices, especially in authoritarian regimes. Terms like “narcissist,” “sociopath” or “toxic” are frequently used to describe unacceptable beliefs or actions, often without nuanced understanding. In political discourse, the language of pathology discredits opponents by labeling them as “delusional” or “irrational” or merely “weird.” The widespread use of medical and psychological labels risks oversimplifying complex social issues and can lead to overdiagnosis, overtreatment and a culture of dependency on medical interventions. In today’s discursive environment, understanding both the functions and limits of language is crucial for navigating contemporary public discourse and engaging critically with the world around us. Yet while language can shape perceptions, frame thoughts and influence policy, it’s also essential to understand the limits of language’s power. Words can sway public opinion and political rhetoric can shape how issues are understood—whether by labeling a group as “radical” or “progressive,” a policy as a “reform” or “boondoggle,” or framing an issue as a “crisis” or an “opportunity.” However, while language is a potent tool, words alone can rarely change deeply held beliefs or resolve cognitive dissonance. Some realities, such as personal experiences, emotions and social dynamics, remain beyond the reach of rhetoric. Political strategies that rely too heavily on language manipulation risk neglecting underlying realities. Some realities are fundamentally material and cannot be altered by words alone. Personal experiences, emotions, social dynamics and cultural contexts shape perceptions in ways that language cannot always control or predict. Political messages or terminology that fail to resonate with these deeper realities are likely to fall flat or be rejected. As we all know in our personal lives, there are gaps language cannot fill. Words often fall short when we try to apologize or express condolences. In those instances, we stumble and language reaches its limits. In politics, too, it’s essential to understand language’s limitations. Slogans and memes may capture attention, but it’s ideas that fuel conviction and policies that win trust. While catchphrases can spark interest, substance is what ultimately holds the heart and leads to real change. Slogans can set the stage, but it’s leadership and ideas that ultimately prevail." #metaglossia_mundus: https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/blogs/higher-ed-gamma/2024/09/06/understanding-power-and-limits-language
"The language is subtle; words are tonal and are made up of small units that determine meaning, but this is not reflected in the 26-letter alphabet Spoken by more than 25% of South Africans, isiZulu is the country’s most widely spoken language. Spoken by more than 25% of South Africans, isiZulu is the country’s most widely spoken language. It is a beautiful language with clicks and tones that ingeniously capture the richness of Zulu culture. Despite its wide use, isiZulu is written using 26 Latin letters that do not properly capture the pronunciation of the words and their meanings. As a result, research shows that reading isiZulu takes longer than reading other languages that use Latin letters. Because of the difficulty of reading isiZulu, learning with isiZulu as a medium of instruction in schools is burdensome and dissuades teachers and learners from using the language. This education gap stifles isiZulu literature and cultural expression, deeming the language inferior to other languages used in professional settings such as English and Afrikaans. At the end of apartheid, the democratically elected government should have invested in developing African literature and cultural expression. We failed, but there is still a chance. IsiZulu is an agglutinative language, which means words are made up of small units that determine meaning. As a result, isiZulu words are long and take time to write. Although spoken isiZulu shortens words, written professional isiZulu is lengthy and cannot be shortened without changing the meaning. IsiZulu is also a tonal language, meaning that words have tones that determine their meaning. For example, the word “umfundisi” can mean either “teacher” or “priest,” depending on the tone used by the speaker. Reading words like this makes it difficult for a person to grasp the meaning of written isiZulu text. Other tonal languages such as Mandarin have tone markers when written using the 26 Latin letters. For instance, “sì,” which means the number four, and “sǐ,” which means death, are differentiated by tone markers above the letter “i.” Similar tone markers are needed to make written isiZulu easier and more accessible. The department of basic education, the department of higher education and training, and the department of cooperative governance and traditional affairs should be involved in this process of capturing the nuances of the language. Working with traditional and cultural leaders will be necessary, because they are aware of linguistic and cultural nuances that the average isiZulu speaker may not know. Nuances such as “ulimi lwezigodi, which directly translates to “language of valleys” but refers to dialect-like differences among Zulu kingdoms and chiefdoms, are areas of expertise for traditional and cultural leaders. A writing system that accurately captures the language’s richness will promote isiZulu literature and the use of it in professional settings. As a country still recovering from a system that instilled a sense of inferiority in African cultures, a writing system that allows the language to express the depth of the writer’s history and identity will safeguard our nation’s cultural diversity and history. The idea of linguistic reform is not without precedent. In South Korea, the creation of Hangul in the 15th century revolutionised literacy and education by providing a phonetic script tailored to the Korean language, which was previously written using Chinese characters. Similarly, in New Zealand, the Māori language has been supported by the development of educational resources and media content, preserving the language for future generations. By investing in an overhaul of isiZulu’s writing system, we are not merely modernising a language, we are reclaiming part of our heritage. Lindani Zungu is the founder of Voices of Mzansi." #metaglossia_mundus: https://mg.co.za/thought-leader/opinion/2024-09-02-take-isizulu-beyond-the-latin-letters/
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