Metaglossia: The Translation World

After fighting a long war with his enemies, the lion Talhan could establish his government in the jungle. One day he invited all the animals of the jungle so that he could address them and also explain the rules of his politics to them.
The animals of the forest gathered to listen to their new king, Talhan.
Talhan sat on high ground and made a powerful show of his power in front of the animals who had gathered to listen to him. He began his speech with these words: “I just want to take care of your issues and problems. After having established a just system of governance among you, I would focus on the external threats that our territory is facing. And….”
After the end of his speech to the animals, a donkey, who was in the audience, said, “This is the king who we have been looking and waiting for long.” A monkey who was there asked the donkey, “why?”
“Didn’t you listen to his speech? He promised truth and justice for all,” the donkey said.
“It is very easy to make promises. What is important is the fulfilment of those promises,” said the monkey.
“Don’t be a pessimist. I am satisfied with the speech of the king,” said the donkey to the monkey.
“Don’t rush to conclusion. His policies of governance will prove him right or wrong,” said the monkey to the donkey.
“How?” asked the donkey.
“Just see the animals whom he takes as his advisors, helpers, and supporters in running the affairs of the jungle, then you will come to know,” he elaborated.
Some days after this meeting with the animals, the new king of the jungle announced that he had decided to appoint the wolf as his chief administrator, who would be managing and controlling all the affairs of the jungle on his behalf.
Upon hearing the announcement, a giraffe said to a deer who was her friend, “Wolf Tamaan has become the chief administrator of the jungle. The same wolf Tamaan who is responsible for kidnapping animals and killing their children. This is, indeed, a tragedy. Who would we complain to when we would face any injustice and our food is stolen or our children are killed? He has now become more powerful.”
She further elaborated, “The old king of the jungle would check him and would even decide against him. But now he would be doing all sorts of injustices and crimes in the name of the new king.”
One day, the wolf had a meeting with the other wolves of the jungle wherein he said, “The days of hunger and bereavement are over now. Whatever anyone of you can steal now from other animals and whosoever animal you would be able to kill and eat, you are free to do that.”
The other wolves present in the meeting said to him, “How would the new king of the forest respond to such behaviour?”
“The new king, lion Talhan, will participate in our bounty of fresh and sweet food from the flesh of animals and if any of the animals would object to our action, its flesh would be permissible for all of us,” said the wolf.
“How would that be possible?” asked the other wolves.
“We would complain to the king that such and such animal does not like him and would further complain that such and such animal is in correspondence with the old king, lion Salhan.”
All the wolves laughed while their mouths were watering at the prospects awaiting them. All of them said “Good bye to hunger and lack of food!” They even said, “Long live lion Talhan!”
The environment of the jungle changed. All the animals feared for the lives of their younger ones upon seeing the oppression and crimes of wolves.
The animals, with the passage of time, stopped approaching the wolf, Tamaan, and the king, lion Talhan, for the redress of their grievances. Every one amongst them tried to settle things with whatever power they had.
One day a monkey went to an elephant called Fahman and said to him, “Why don’t you, sir, advise the new king Talhan as you were doing to the old king, Talhan?”
“He never asks me for it. But even if he ever would, I would now offer it to him,” said the elephant to the monkey. He further said, “I alone cannot change the things. All those animals who surround the new king and advise him are the worst lot of animals who would never allow him to go for any change in policies.”
“What is the solution?” asked the monkey.
“The solution is that a group of animals should visit the new king and brief him about the realities,” said the elephant.
“Doesn’t he know the truth? He is himself a partner in the crimes of wolves. He has crossed all limits of the misuse of his power,” said the monkey.
There were no rains after some time in the forest. The forest dried up. There was shortage of water in every corner of the jungle.
The wolves controlled all the wells of water where they drank to the content of their hearts and also played with the water, but they would not allow the other thirsty animals to approach these wells.
The donkey said to the monkey, “Now I understand what you had said that day. The new king Talhan does not bother about the fact that the animals of the jungle are dying of thirst while he and his close associates enjoy.”
One morning, all the animals of the jungle went to a well for drinking water but they were shocked to see that the wolves were already guarding it. They had to return without quenching their thirst.
The thirst among the elderly animals intensified and their younger ones started crying. As a result of their growing anger, they one day started an uprising against the wolves. There was a fierce battle between the animals and the wolves. A huge number of wolves were killed. The new king Talhan was scared and he publicly expressed his anger against the wolf. He, in fact, suspended him from the assignment of being his chief administrator.
Upon seeing this change, the elephant said to the king, “O king, the problem is not with wolf Tamaan.”
“Where does the problem lie then?” asked the king.
“The problem lies in your politics and your method of governance, as you are the one who appointed the wolf as chief administrator when you knew that he is a thief and a bad listener as well,” said the elephant.
“I have suspended him and expelled him from the jungle also,” said the king.
“You too must leave the jungle now,” said the elephant to the king.
“Who would rule the jungle then?” asked the king.
“Lion Salhan would return as the king of the jungle,” replied the elephant.
“I would never allow it to happen,” threatened the king.
“But that is going to happen,” said the elephant.
The elephant Fahman proceeded towards lion Talhan and there started a fierce battle between the two. Lion Talhan was seriously injured in the fight between the two. Upon seeing the king injured, the animals of the forest came out and pounced upon the lion and killed him.
The elephant Fahman sent a message to lion Salhan and requested him to return as the king of the jungle.
The monkey said to the donkey, “What is your opinion, now?”
“I feel the jungle would be full of blessings now by the return of lion Salhan,” said the donkey. “But I am surprised by one thing.”
“What is that?” asked the donkey.
“Lion Salhan returned as the king of the jungle without any apparent power on his side and lion Talhan lost his power and got killed despite having the brutal force of wolves at his disposal,” explained the monkey.
Here the monkey said something very amazing to the donkey, “Truth is the most powerful thing in the world, even though the whole world be against it.”

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RIYADH: A 10-day writing retreat organized by the Literature, Translation and Publishing Commission, in collaboration with the Soudah Development Company, kicked off on Thursday in Soudah, Asir region, with the participation of a number of writers from Saudi Arabia and various countries around the world.

The commission noted that the retreat features training workshops provided by specialized guides, panel discussions, tours in selected areas, and working and writing sessions.

The writing retreat in Soudah complements those launched by the Ministry of Culture in the Qassim region in 2019.

The commission is seeking to organize several such retreats before the end of the year, with the aim of exchanging experiences between local and international writers and achieving international cultural communication by bringing together different literary cultures that will pave the way for a stimulating writing and creative environment.

"When are you going to have babies?", "You've put on a bit of weight!", "Don't be so touchy!". In Russia, many people encounter dozens of intrusions into their personal space and privacy almost daily. What is it - a lack of manners or a cultural characteristic?

It often happens in an ordinary queue at the checkout in a store: Despite the pandemic, someone is bound to be breathing straight down your neck or pushing you with their bag. Many people even today are put under pressure within their own families, with their parents or relatives inundating them with questions such as "When's the wedding?" or "When are the babies coming?". Or they even try to exert influence on the everyday lives of their adult children - from their choice of profession or partner to the tidiness of their flats or their lifestyle.

Born in the USSR

There is a well-known joke in Russia: "Why can't you have sex on Red Square? Because you will be inundated with advice". A legacy of the "Land of the Soviets" is unsolicited advice [in Russian, the noun "soviet" denotes a local, regional or national council, but it can also mean a "piece of advice"], while a legacy of socialism is that everyone pokes their nose into everyone else's affairs.

'Heart of the dog' novel and movie is exactly about how the low class became the ruling gone

Vladimir Bortko/Lenfilm, 1988

"During Soviet times, the culture of the bulk of the population - i.e. workers and peasants - became dominant. And the characteristic behaviour of these classes became the norm," explains Natalya Tikhonova, a chief research fellow at the Center for Stratification Studies at the National Research University Higher School of Economics. "For them, a person's earnings or intra-family relations were not a taboo subject."

The phenomenon of Soviet communal apartments completely deprived people of the opportunity to get away from other people and to keep their personal lives private. After the Revolution luxurious aristocratic apartments and mansions were "compacted" - each room had a different tenant or even a whole family living in it. It was part of the struggle against social injustice, except that the shower, toilet and kitchen had to be shared with the other tenants.

A common kitchen in a Soviet communal apartment

Oleg Ivanov/TASS

Therefore, when in the 1950s families started to be allocated individual accommodation en masse, everyone was delighted to have a separate flat, albeit small and modest.

Also, there was a citizens' oversight system in the USSR. An unfaithful or heavy-drinking individual, male or female, could easily end up being summoned to a "comrades' court" at work or be expelled from the Communist Party. Those who didn't perform well at school or university could be compulsorily put under the supervision of the best students.

As a result of many years of intrusion into people's private lives, which became effectively non-existent, there was essentially no notion of privacy in Russia. And this state of affairs still persists today.

There is no word in Russian for 'privacy'

"I won't miss people breathing down your neck in the pharmacy line, asking why you picked out such expensive medicine. (There is no word in Russian for "privacy")," American journalist Julia Ioffe wrote when she returned to the U.S. after several years working in Russia.

Moscow metro passengers

Sergei Bobylev/TASS

The dictionaries give the meaning of the English word "privacy" as "being alone and undisturbed: the right to this freedom from intrusion or public attention", in other words the right to avoid intrusive attention from others. According to linguists, the word really doesn't have an exact equivalent in the Russian language. Depending on the context, it can be translated with the help of terms such as "private", "personal" or "confidential", but these words do not fully reflect all its shades of meaning.

Linguist Tatiana Larina proposes the notion of "avtonomiya lichnosti" [individual autonomy] as an equivalent. In the English language, this right to be alone is an important cultural phenomenon since there is even a saying "my home is my castle". But in Russian culture this notion is not widespread because frequently it is only lawyers who know about the inviolability of private life in Russia.

Disrespect for personal space

In spite of the pandemic, many people in Russia fail to observe social distancing. This happens very frequently in queues where people of the older generation squeeze up against those standing in front of them until they are almost touching.

A line for rubber boots

Vadim Zhernov/TASS

"Recently I even asked a woman to keep her distance, but you should have seen what she snorted angrily at me in response," says Elena, an accountant from Moscow. "Many people think - it seems to be a legacy of Soviet times - that if you stand more than a meter behind the person in front of you, someone is bound to push in and steal your place in the queue. It's the same on the roads with drivers."

Another ordeal for people sensitive to privacy is posed by public transport. In any mass transit system in the world in the rush hour there is going to be a crowd of people all squeezed up against one another and all feeling exactly the same way (hemmed in).

In a suburb train

Pavel Smertin/TASS

At the same time, even in these situations it should be possible to observe certain rules of decorum. "I was once sitting in the Metro and a woman standing in front of me kept brushing against me with her large and not particularly clean carrier bag. I asked her to take care with her bag, to which she responded by launching into an angry tirade to the effect that she had nowhere to put her bag, and if I didn't like it here I should travel in my own car and that I wasn't the only person here..." says Alexandra, a pensioner from Moscow.

A shock to foreigners

Whereas Russians have by and large got used to having their personal boundaries violated, foreigners in Russia are sometimes genuinely shocked by behavior they find tactless. Lucia from Italy lived in Russia for a number of years and encountered such things on more than one occasion. The woman in charge of monitoring the floor of residence at the Russian State University for the Humanities where she was a student would come into her room without warning or knocking and discover her draped in a towel or wearing her nightwear - and would not be the least bit abashed. "My friends explained that in Soviet times there was no concept of privacy as we understand it nowadays, and her behavior was just part of that mentality," Lucia says.

Foreign students in a dorm of the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia

Ruslan Krivobok/Sputnik

Frenchman Erwann has lived in various Russian cities and experienced for himself this same "cultural peculiarity" of Russians so frequently that he has even stopped being surprised. The most striking example happened to him in Nizhny Novgorod. Erwann was a student there for a whole year and rented a flat near the university, and his landlord treated him as a son from the outset... and in a fatherly fashion started coming over without warning early in the morning every Sunday, and could remain chatting for the whole day. According to Erwann, in France people at the very least give prior warning that they are going to drop in, and more often than not arrange meetings in good time.

An inevitable ordeal for foreigners is also posed by personal questions from people they don't know well. "I don't know how many times I've been asked "Are you married?" within a minute of meeting someone," Erwann says, laughing. Lucia says she was initially irritated by excessively personal questions from people she did not know well: How much did she earn? Did she plan to marry and have children? But then she also got used to it and stopped being surprised or embarrassed.

"Russians don't really have a concept or understanding of "boundaries". It is absolutely common for strangers to start asking you personal questions and offering advice (that they were never asked to provide...). Even when I go to the doctor in Russia, the female doctors will ask if I have children and when I say I don't, they'll ask why not," says Mariya, who is Russian but grew up in America and has lived in a number of different countries. She does not advise people to interpret it as a negative trait or as a lack of manners, however. "I don't think it should be taken the wrong way. Russians are genuinely curious, open and helpful people so many of them are not consciously trying to invade your privacy or be too nosy or make you uncomfortable. It's just a national trait, if you will, so I've learned to live with it and not let it bother me."

The fashion for privacy

Still, in a small section of the population, privacy has always existed. Before the 1917 Revolution it was the privilege of the nobility and in Soviet times it existed in the milieu of the educated intelligentsia. For them, there were questions that were inappropriate to ask and there was an idea of personal space.

"[Of late] psychotherapists are frequently approached by people experiencing problems to do with separation from, and the creation of boundaries with, their loved ones," says psychologist Galina Laysheva from the YouTalk service. "Many people feel that their parents are overly controlling or that they continue to preoccupy them psychologically even when they have moved out of the parental home."

Also, according to the psychologist, the idea of working through your feelings and developing your emotional intelligence in general is now becoming popular and even fashionable.

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The dictionary in Kaaps, English and Afrikaans, holds the promise of being a powerful democratic resource. Kaaps or Afrikaaps is a language created in settler-colonial South Africa, developed in the 1500s.

“Today, Kaaps is most commonly used by largely working-class speakers on the Cape Flats, an area in Cape Town where many disenfranchised people were forcibly moved by the apartheid government.” This is what Professor Adam Haupt, the director of the Centre for Film & Media Studies at the University of Cape Town (UCT) who was involved in the project says as he reflects on the recent launch of the first-ever Afrikaaps dictionary.

According to The Conversation, Haupt indicated that the language has been in existence since the 1500s but the Kaaps language, synonymous with Cape Town in South Africa, has never had a dictionary until now.

Haupt says the Trilingual Dictionary of Kaaps has been launched by a collective of academic and community stakeholders – the Centre for Multilingualism and Diversities Research at the University of the Western Cape along with the hip hop-driven community NGO, Heal the Hood Project.

“The dictionary in Kaaps, English and Afrikaans, holds the promise of being a powerful democratic resource. Kaaps or Afrikaaps is a language created in settler-colonial South Africa, developed by the 1500s. It took shape as a language during encounters between indigenous African (Khoi and San), South-East Asian, Dutch, Portuguese and English people.”

Haupt adds that it could be argued that Kaaps predates the emergence of an early form of Kaaps-Hollands (the South African variety of Dutch that would help shape Afrikaans), however, the dictionary will validate it as a language in its own right.

“When people think about Kaaps, they often think about it as ‘mixed’ or ‘impure’ (‘onsuiwer’). This relates to the ways in which they think about ‘racial’ identity. They often think about coloured identity as ‘mixed’, which implies that black and white identities are ‘pure’ and bounded that they only become ‘mixed’ in ‘inter-racial’ sexual encounters. This mode of thinking is biologically essentialist,” Haupt maintains.

Meanwhile, dictionary will also have an impact on educational institutions and will be useful to journalists, publishers and editors who are keen to learn more about how to engage with Kaaps speakers.

Dr Františka Schormová was awarded Charles University’s highest academic accolade this spring for her dissertation titled “African American Poets Abroad: Black and Red Allegiances in Early Cold War Czechoslovakia”. The young literary scholar and translator is now working on turning it into a book, which will trace the circulation of African American leftist poetry on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

In part, Dr Schormová plans to trace that development by following the story of Abraham Chapman, a US communist who fled his homeland and lived under an alias in Prague, where he found work at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences and edited an anthology of Black Diaspora poetry.

Dr Schormová’s main field is African American literature, especially in the Cold War/ decolonization period of the 1950s and 1960s, but she is also fascinated by the ways culture travels in general, including the issue of translation.

Her award-winning dissertation focuses on artistic contacts between the United States and Czechoslovakia early in the Cold War, what it meant for African American authors to publish east of the Iron Curtain, and what happened to their works in Czech translation.

The mysterious American leftist Abraham Chapman is not so much a central figure to her research as a vehicle to propel the complex narrative forward, she says.

“Abraham Chapman was a US communist who came here in 1951 with his whole family and then left in 1963. He was interesting because of his journey from the Western to the Eastern side of the Iron Curtain and also because he kind of hid here under a different name – Abe Čapek.

“Gradually, he came to work here as an expert on US literature, and he also worked for the [Czechoslovak] Academy of Sciences, for their world literatures department there. And his story allowed me to explore all these different dynamics that it would otherwise be so hard to follow narratively.”

Dr Schormová first came across Chapman’s name – or rather that of his alias – after picking up a book published in Czech whose title translates as Black Poetry: A World Anthology [Černošská poezie: světová antologie].

A decade later, she later discovered, Chapman, by then back in the United States, had edited a similar collection under the title ‘Black Voices – An Anthology of African-American Literature’.

Photo: University of Georgia Press Photo: University of Georgia Press
Chapman worked on two anthologies, one in Czechoslovakia published in 1958, the other in the US ten years later, and [in your dissertation], you have compared and contrasted those two. What were your findings? What differed from what he edited here and there?

“The most obvious difference is that there’s a different name on the cover – the Czech one was written under the name of Abe Čapek and the US one under his real name. It was interesting to see that for his works published in the US and later academic career in the US, it was as if the Prague period of his life never happened.

“I found it [his time in Czechoslovakia] mentioned in one celebratory speech given on some occasion about Chapman, which made it seem like he only went to central or eastern Europe only to get his degree in US literature – which sounded a bit absurd, but that’s how he put it. I guess it was strategically important not to draw attention to his stay on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

“So, at first glance, you wouldn’t know that these [anthologies of African-American literature] were put together by the same person. But more importantly, about the content. It’s kind of the Black Diaspora aspect that disappears in Chapman’s later work – meaning he only focuses on the poets living in the US.

“But it’s also the women, the female poets, who disappear. In his later anthology Black Poets, there aren’t nearly as many female poets as in the Czech one, which I also find interesting. So it’s not just the post-colonial [poets] – the framework that paid attention to these African and Asian countries gaining independence but also the gender aspect.”

Forced to flee

Abraham Chapman and his wife Belle, both members of the American Communist Party, hastily packed their bags one spring night in 1951, left their home in Queens, New York City, and vanished along with their two young daughters, eventually surfacing in Prague.

The family arrived as the two-year-old Communist Government began a campaign of terror and purges, culminating in the infamous trial and execution of Rudolph Slansky and 13 aides, most of them Jews, as was Abraham Chapman.

Photo: Naše Vojsko Photo: Naše Vojsko
It was Slánský himself had promised to find Chapman a suitable job in Prague, his younger daughter Ann Kimmage wrote in a 1996 memoir about the family’s 13-year exile, during which time she was given a new identity – Ana Čapková.

“Chapman’s daughter, Ann Kimmage, wrote a memoir about her time in Prague. It’s called An Un-American Childhood: A Young Woman's Secret Life Behind the Iron Curtain. And she talks about how all of their paperwork was destroyed, and how they had to sever ties with their family and never contacted them.

“But we still don’t know why the Chapmans had to flee the US at that specific time. There were different stories of people who came to the eastern side of the Iron Curtain, different trajectories. But for the Chapmans, it seems that secrecy was of the utmost importance.

“So, I would say that not many people in Czechoslovakia knew that he was ‘Abraham Chapman’ – and then when he was back in the US, not many people knew that he was also ‘Abe Čapek’.

“Which for a Czech speaker – you know ‘Chapman’ and ‘Čapek’ is not such a huge difference. It looks different on paper, but for me it’s not such a great secret identity. But who am I to judge.”

I’m wondering about the cover story – he was obviously not Czech, so how exactly was he introduced? As a second- or third-generation …

“That I don’t know, and Kimmage doesn’t really talk about this. They weren’t the only US family living in Prague at that time, but they would certainly draw attention speaking in English on the tram or on the street. So, how that worked, what he told the others…

“I hope to unravel this more, uncover more, when I get the file that the FBI kept on him. It’s a very thick file – it has about 400 pages. I applied for this but, but there’s an extremely long waiting list, which has been made even longer due to the [coronavirus] pandemic, so I’m still waiting.

“Maybe new information will be revealed. What we know now is that he was supposed to appear before the McCarthy committee [the House Committee on Un-American Activities created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities] but instead fled the country with the whole family, via Mexico, and I think then the Netherlands and then to Prague.

“And Prague – this is interesting, I think – often served as this crossroads of people. Many stayed here before their fate was decided. So, many went on to Moscow, to East Germany or other places, but the Chapmans stayed.”

Why do you think that is – that Prague was a ‘crossroads’? Is it as simple as the country being the most western point of the Eastern Bloc?

“Partly. Actually, this is one of my main theses, that Prague was this international and internationalist centre. It was a place where congresses took place, concerts, international meeting took place that – if they were held in Moscow, that would have seemed much more suspicious.

“In Prague, it would seem much less conspicuous – you could still frame it as this internationalist meeting, you know, world fighters for peace came here, Latin American writers stayed at the Dobříš Chateau south of Prague for years, actually. You had all these people coming here. Some stayed for longer, others were just passing through.

“And it wasn’t just about geography. Prague already had this infrastructure that allowed for this, but also there were these international networks, and making Prague one of the centres was much more strategic than for everything taking place in Moscow. Especially at this point.

“Moscow of the 1930s was maybe more internationalist, but by the 1950s, other places took on that role, so you could have French leftists as well as these Latin American writers, as well as US communists that travelled for these meetings or relocated there.”

Chapman vs. Škvorecký

Chapman was among the US communists who relocated to the Czechoslovak capital. As noted earlier, in he edited a book published in Czech in 1958 whose title translates as Black Poetry: A World Anthology.

In her dissertation, Dr Františka Schormová writes that he clashed with some “Czechoslovak intermediaries of US culture” over competing versions of African-American poetry, including the celebrated dissident writer Josef Škvorecký, who co-founded 68 Publishers in Canada, where he fled to after the Soviet-led invasion. I asked her what was behind the conflict.

“The project of this anthology was originally Josef Škvorecký’s. But then Chapman appeared, and Škvorecký was supposed to collaborate with him, also partly because Chapman was this officially sanctioned US communist guy who was right for such a project from the perspective of official structures.

Richard Wright in 1939 | Photo: Carl Van Vechten, Library of Congress/Wikimedia Commons, public domain Richard Wright in 1939|Photo: Carl Van Vechten, Library of Congress/Wikimedia Commons, public domain
“Also, he was an expert on African-American literature. Especially in his youth, he spent time in Chicago and New York and was a great friend of Richard Wright, the African-American writer, they corresponded a lot. So, from that perspective, he was an ideal candidate as an editor of such an anthology.

“But Josef Škvorecký had the idea first and had a very specific idea of what to include. And Chapman came with this – from my point of view – amazing concept of including poets from other parts of the Black Diaspora, from Brazil, different African countries, basically all over the world, which Škvorecký didn’t like. Basically, he refused to collaborate with Chapman and backed out of the project completely.”

I understand that Chapman was also at loggerheads with other ‘Czechoslovak intermediaries of US culture’, as you wrote – musicologist Lubomír Dorůžka and the writer Jan Zábrana. What happened there?

“It’s hard to frame this as a conflict – it was more that Chapman represented someone that these culture intermediaries resented. At that point, in the 1950s, I mean this was the generation that was, as Jan Zábrana puts it ‘dying on the vine’.

“They were restricted in their studies and in their publication options. They had all these amazing projects that included things like jazz poetry and US writers, and these projects were frequently crushed.

“There was a jazz anthology by Dorůžka and Škvorecký that was already printed but then something happened and had to be destroyed. So, obviously, they were kind of resentful of this American who was a communist also and had all these official channels open for him, worked as an expert in African-American literature at the Academy of Sciences, had these official posts, was this official representative.

“The conflict, possible conflict, would be also based on Chapman’s idea of what African-American literature should be and how it should be framed was very different from theirs. He was also kind of a danger to them because Chapman was trying to push through these works.

“He would saying maybe they should include these other poets, or focus on the leftist-leaning poets as well. So, then it would be more difficult for Škvorecký and his crew, let’s say, to push through the poets that they were interested in.”

Quite a few African-American artists were invited to visit Czechoslovakia, and one of the earliest invited was not a poet but a singer, Paul Robeson, and when you talking about Škvorecký, I remember that he was particularly –

“Anti-Robeson, yeah.”

– anti-Robeson, and basically Škvorecký said he hoped that he hoped that he honestly believed in communism and hadn’t just sold out.

“Yeah, there’s this famous quote by Škvorecký that Robeson was singing here while the Czech poets were put on gallows, I think that’s the quote, and he repeatedly calls him things like ‘the Black Stalin’ and the ‘Black apostle of Stalin’. Škvorecký could be very venomous when he chose to, and Chapman and Robeson were people who he really hated.”

The 'Black apostle of Stalin'

Paul Robeson, famous for his baritone singing voice, was also a writer and civil rights activist. He wore his sympathies with the communist regimes of the Eastern Bloc on his sleeve, and visited the Czechoslovak capital numerous times. Here is a clip from his adrres at an international left-wing congress in 1959:

“Jak se máte? [How are you?] It is a great privilege and pleasure to be here with you again in Prague, to greet my dear friends, the people of Czechoslovakia and to great you, many friends from many lands.

“My deepest thanks for your concerns over many years, for your help, for your encouragement. And this is true not only of myself, but of many of us in America, who have consistently struggled for peace and friendship with you and with all the peoples of the lands of socialism.”

In that speech, Robeson went on to argue that great art comes from the people, citing a couple of Czech examples: the composer Leoš Janáček, who wove rhythms of natural speech into his music, and then Antonín Dvořák, who famously took inspiration from African American music for his Symphony From the New World.

“Your great Dvořák came to our land and heard the beautiful songs of my folk, and pointed out to us in America that here was the basis of a great musical art, springing from a people who had been torn from Africa and brought in slavery to the lands of America.

Langston Hughes in 1936 | Photo: Carl Van Vechten, Library of Congress/Wikimedia Commons, public domain Langston Hughes in 1936|Photo: Carl Van Vechten, Library of Congress/Wikimedia Commons, public domain
“Your great composer came there and pointed out that this was the base and could be the base of great music, and proved it by a great symphony and by string quartets. His influence still has great importance in America today.”

Under communism, many students from Africa [and post-colonial countries elsewhere] came to study in Czechoslovakia, but apart from Paul Robeson, were many other Black American communists and cultural figures invited?

“They were invited, yes, but none of them stayed permanently. There were several reasons. There were travel restrictions put in place in the early 1950s that aimed to prevent Black intellectuals from travelling all over the world and criticising US policies, US racial policies.

“In 1951 and 1952, there were these legislative changes, the Smith Act and one more, that prevented not just Black intellectuals but communists, other people who were complaining about US racial relations outside of the country, because the story of race was supposed to be only in national terms and presented as a story of progress.

“Because this was a time when you had allow of these countries gaining or fighting for independence, and they were looking at these global superpowers [the USSR and the US], and asking themselves how racial relations worked there – and obviously the US had a horrible history of racial relations, so this is something that the official structures actively wanted to make better, especially in the 1950s.”

“But the Czechoslovak official structures were trying to invited people like Langston Hughes, who was invited several times – also to the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival; I found this invitation in Hughes’ archive at Yale University, which is such a small detail, but it was nice to see.

“Robeson came several times, and was invited for the Prague Spring music festival every year, but his passport was taken away and so he couldn’t come. And [the sociologist W. E. B.] Du Bois was here as well – he got an honorary degree from Charles University, and the lawyer and activist William Patterson came here in the early ‘50s, and he spoke here about the situation of African-Americans – he gave several lectures and had articles published.

“So, there were people coming here, but they didn’t stay.”

The Czech National Revival and the Harlem Renaissance
American writer and philosopher Alain LeRoy Locke in 1946 | Photo: Alfred Eisenstaedt, Wikimedia Commons, Fair Use American writer and philosopher Alain LeRoy Locke in 1946|Photo: Alfred Eisenstaedt, Wikimedia Commons, Fair Use
You mentioned Langston Hughes. I came across an article about the mutual influence of the Czech National Revival and the Harlem Renaissance. Was that something that –

“I know the paper you’re referring to. It’s Charles Sabatos’ ‘A Long Way from Prague [The Harlem Renaissance and Czechoslovakia]’. It’s an amazing piece of research, and I was inspired by that and quoted from that as well.

“I think that this research is really interesting in that it shows the African-American community and Czechoslovakia weren’t just a Cold War phenomenon, but pre-dated that, and in the Harlem Renaissance movement, they were inspired by Czechoslovakia as an example of self-determination that was done through culture, that was done non-violently.

“So, it was this cultural accomplishment that they admired, and Czechoslovakia and Prague are mentioned several times – even in the seminal work of the Harlem Renaissance, which is the anthology put together by Alain Locke, The New Negro – he mentions this in his forward.

[In the forward to The New Negro, published in 1925, Alain Locke wrote that ‘Harlem has the same role to play for the New Negro as Dublin has had for the New Ireland, or Prague for the New Czechoslovakia’.]

“But Langston Hughes also mentions Czechoslovak topics and Prague in his poems… So, these contacts pre-dated the Cold War. But then the Cold War shaped them profoundly.”

Author:
Brian Kenety

TextShuttle, the Swiss artificial intelligence (AI) specialists for secure, customisable machine translation, today announced that Lucas Seiler was appointed as their new CEO.

The strides in globalisation have provoked insecurities in our linguistic cultures. Their expressions have become shriller, more chauvinistic and narrower than envisioned
Published: 04th September 2021 12:00 AM | Last Updated: 03rd September 2021 11:48 PM |
language languages translation(Express Illustration: Amit Bandre)
By Sugata Srinivasaraju
A private foundation funded by a tech billionaire in Bengaluru recently announced that it would offer sumptuous fellowships to translate non-fiction texts written (from 1850 onwards) in 10 Indian languages into English. The foundation’s intent is laudable and the possibilities are rich. The project will presumably ensure new facts, alternate world-views and uncommon thought processes available in regional tongues to illuminate the vibrant political and cultural discourses already taking place in English, the language of global influence and power.

Even as we compliment the translation project, we must recognise that it essentially enriches the English language. The regional languages, which would function like informants here, gain very little from this generous philanthropic investment. Some may dismiss this as needless quarrel and argue that the project offers a bigger stage for ideas tucked away in forgotten corners and neglected phonetic scripts. This may be true, but the point is that while the project helps widen the stream of knowledge in English, it does next to nothing to the cultures of the source languages. It does not help the primary users of these languages in their perceptions and engagements today.

There are other questions pertaining to the politics of translation but that is not the enquiry here. A purposeful speculation that one would like to indulge in is by asking the following: What if this translation project had been inverted? What if the foundation had funded non-fiction translations from 10 languages of the world into 10 Indian languages? What would have the impact been?

To ask this question is important because there is a divide in India between those who primarily access knowledge through English and those who operate basically in their regional languages. It is obvious that the former is in a minority while the latter is a diverse majority. There may be smaller subsets of those who may be bilingual or trilingual, but we are obviously looking at big categories. Here too, there is a qualitative difference as well as a class element between people who are bilinguals handling their regional tongue and English and those who happily glide between one regional tongue and another at various geographical intersections in India.

There is no definitive assessment available about the health of our regional languages in the last quarter century in terms of the nature of content offered to its speakers and readers via books, periodicals, newspapers, cinema, social media, television and OTT platforms. But we do know that the strides of globalisation and technology have provoked anxieties and insecurities in these linguistic cultures. It may not be inaccurate to say that this has resulted in their expressions becoming shriller, more chauvinistic and narrower than the grand liberal traditions imagined for them at the beginning of the 20th century, when their modern characters were being shaped. They had kept their windows wide open then; now they seem to have nearly shut them. A translation project that infused a fresh flow of diverse liberal content into these languages would have introduced readers into bigger and brighter ideas and naturally helped them recover their expanse and reconnect with the world. It would have helped partially stave off fundamentalist and exclusive ideologies that seem to have gripped everything local these days.

At the threshold of the 20th century, linguistic identities that eventually led to linguistic states were being crafted. Alongside imagining a new nation through the freedom movement, we were simultaneously fostering sub-nations and their nationalisms in our mind. People writing in the regional tongues at this historic juncture were furiously mixing the local with the universal to create a broad modern outlook. The influence of English and European languages was there, but as Kannada writer U R Ananthamurthy loved to put it, we were able to digest these influences to create something that was uniquely our own. The proportion and percentage of this influence was a constant source of debate but there was no question of shutting off the world.

The irony, however, is that as technology and commerce shrunk the world around the millennial bend, the regional tongues were attracted to regressive postures. There is yet another confusion that we have witnessed since, which is that the distinct agenda of the linguistic states have gradually allowed echoes of conservative nationalistic agenda. That is, the idea of a federation of independent states with a calculus of its own is slowly turning into one nation with assumed common cultural denominators. This has made diversity look like a curse and a sin and has severely jolted the rooted cosmopolitan traditions of regional languages.

In what may seem incredible today, one of the most popular prayers in Kannada (Karunalu Baa Belake) is a transcreation of an English hymn (Lead, Kindly Light) by John Henry Newman. The cultural markers in this poem are so original that generations of Kannada speakers have sung it without realising that it is a translation. This prayer was part of an anthology (published in 1926) called English Geetegalu (English Songs) by B M Srikantaiah, a revered figure of Kannada nationalism and modernity. Interestingly, the dedication in this anthology reads as follows: “To my students in the University of Mysore who believe in the blending of the souls of India and England these verses are affectionately inscribed.” The colonial context and its curriculum apart, the words ‘believe’ and ‘blending’ are so significantly placed that both need to be reassessed today. Later too in Kannada, modern sensibilities were shaped when thousands of pages of modern Bengali literature were translated from the original by people like Ahobala Shankara, who considered it not an act of literary authorship but as a service to the language and its new nation. The stories are similar in the other Indian languages.

In this backdrop and with the peculiar exigencies of our time, the private foundation’s translation project would have been visionary had it reversed its objective to help recover the liberal impulses of Indian languages.

Sugata Srinivasaraju
Senior journalist and author
(sugata@sugataraju.in)

The coverage of this week's event on the Euronews website appears to have been mangled by a translation tool
The Journal’s annual celebration of the region’s cultural and artistic sector - the North East Culture Awards - has received international coverage...but with some unusual results.
The Euronews website appears to have used an online translation tool to transcribe The Journal’s coverage of Thursday night’s event at Durham Cathedral into a foreign language and then back into English.
The result is some rather strange language, saying, for example, that the event was “an opportunity to get pleasure from reside efficiency once more, in addition to to rejoice the work of the previous 12 months.”
Read more: go here for more North East culture coverage
While the original Journal coverage of the event mentions Durham County Council ’s bid to become UK City of Culture, the Euronews story says that the council wants to become “UK Metropolis of Tradition 2025”.
Some of the prize categories are also translated slightly awkwardly, with the award for Performance of the Year being dubbed “Efficiency of the Year” while the artist Narbi Price - a nominee in the Visual Artist of the year category - is re-named “Narbi Value”.
The Culture Awards, which were taking place in their 14th year after being cancelled last year due to the pandemic, were held this week, with Arts Council chief executive Darren Henley hailing the event as “ample evidence that in the North East culture has done much more than merely survive.

And after a successful night, the Euronews coverage has amused many people on the region’s artistic scene.

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Bill Vince, from Arts Council England, was the first to spot the article, saying: “Fantastic night at the Journal Culture Awards last night. Hearty congrats to all winners, nominees and performers. But I am curious about this article, which I found this morning, which appears to have been machine translated into English from another language.”

Keith Merrin, director of Tyne and Wear Museums, replied: “This is brilliant”.

Exploring the relationship between untranslatable words and positive psychology can allow us to explore new mental spaces

If you are in search of some idle online linguistic browsing guaranteed to boost morale, take a deep dive into the magnificent “positive lexicography” project curated by Dr Tim Lomas. This is a collection of untranslatable words related specifically to wellbeing, highlighting the relationship between untranslatable words and positive psychology.

In a TedX talk describing the project, Lomas begins with a question: “If words label and even create our world, what does it mean to lack a particular word in our own language?” This line of enquiry goes back to period Lomas spent teaching English in China, where he was drawn to the concepts of Taoism and Buddhism and began reflecting on lexical items that lack a direct equivalent in English.

The philosophy or spiritual tradition underlying Taoism is itself dependent on a concept that English struggles to articulate. Lomas describes “Tao” as relating to the “entire warp and weft of reality, both being and becoming, form and function” but ultimately concludes that it is “ineffable”. Wikipedia opts for the more prosaic “source, pattern and substance of everything that exists”; at any rate, this is clearly something that lacks a succinct summary in English but is fundamental to a whole way of life for adherents of Taoism.

Having had his eyes opened to English’s lexical lacunae, when Lomas subsequently specialised in the study of psychology, he realised how this field has been shaped and potentially limited by being conducted mostly in English. A conference on “positive psychology” (the scientific study of wellbeing) then drew his attention to another lexical gap in English. A speaker at the conference described the Finnish concept of “sisu”, which is roughly akin to extraordinary courage, particularly in the face of adversity and, most importantly of all, is regarded by many Finns as central to their national identity.

And thus, the idea was sparked to start a collection of similar words, not just as a source of linguistic oddities but with a view to enhancing our understanding of the mind and maybe expanding our horizons. Initial research threw up a couple of hundred such words, which were published in the journal Positive Pscychology in 2016. This prompted other people to get in touch with suggestions in their own language, and the lexicon has now grown to well over 1000 items (although Lomas notes that only 100 languages are represented, so there is plenty of untapped potential).

Some of the entries describe a familiar concept, even if you do not have a precise word for it. The French joie de vivre is a good example and has been officially adopted in English for good reason. As Lomas puts it in his book The Happiness Dictionary, you can imagine one of our English forbears exclaiming “That’s exactly how I feel! How handy to have a word for it.”

Other lexical entries are more remote and strange, describing concepts that are difficult to comprehend even once they have been explained several times. These words are more intriguing as they tap into our suspicion that our conceptual framework is constrained by the limits of our vocabulary. Lomas talks about the concept of “Wu wei” in Taoism, meaning something akin to “doing by not doing”, a concept that is antithetical to the action-focused mindset of many of us in the Western World.

The project and accompanying TEDx talk are a reminder of the power words have “to uplift and transform our reality in many positive ways.” These words teach us about other people, but also shed light on our own existence by showing the relationship between untranslatable words and positive psychology.

Sources

https://www.drtimlomas.com/lexicography

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_mLsucNMVY

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taoism

https://hifisamurai.github.io/lexicography/

.

It has been a quiet week. Apart from the nuclear warning siren, of course.

The distinctive and impressively noisy wail advising me of my imminent vaporisation sounded at 12:15pm on Wednesday. It may have sent those of a nervous disposition into a fluster but not me. I am made of sterner stuff. I knew exactly what to do.

I closed the window.

That a WWII-style air raid siren should blast its way through the suburban calm of lunchtime on the first Wednesday of the month comes as no surprise. It does this at lunchtime every first Wednesday of the month.

It's a French thing. They've been doing it every first Wednesday for the last 75 years or so, across cities and towns alike, nationwide. It's supposed to be a disaster signal, letting citizens know when they are drowning in a flood or being swept away by fire, in case they were unaware of it.

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The authorities test the siren on first-Wednesdays nominally to make sure the system still works but also to keep us on our civic toes. Occasionally they "accidentally" allow the siren to sound on the wrong day and at the wrong time, rather like the definitely-not-a-drill-yes-OK-it's-a-drill fire alarm tricks that your office manager used to play on you.

Whenever this happens, I like to imagine that a certain class of citizen is sprinting to their personal underground bunker for safety. And since nobody bothers to call or knock on your door to tell you it's OK to stop whitewashing the inside of your windows, I wonder how long some of these bunkerbums remain curled up below the surface turf with not even a 4G signal to comfort them.

The last time this happened, the only mention about the incident was a small news-in-brief piece in the next day's local paper quoting the bemused mayor saying the unplanned siren call was a "technical error" – the usual euphemism meaning a cock-up in the Siren Button Room that nobody will ever own up to.

How many copies of the local newspaper do you think get delivered to nuclear fallout bunkers?

If you think nuclear bunkers are a thing of the past, I draw your attention to this current Zoopla property ad. It's a lot of money for a 50 sq m two-bed flat, even in London EC1. But the 150 sq m underground double bunker that comes with it, complete with radiators, air conditioning and six-handle submarine-style metal doors, is deliciously tempting. Come on, don't deny it.

Luckily for me this week, I was not working. When I am at work on the first Wednesday of any month, I book out 12 noon to 12:30 pm on my agenda as "unavailable." Besides, it's bloody lunchtime, n’est-ce pas?

I learnt my lesson last year during first lockdown. It's one thing to have the siren going off in the middle of a phone call: at least you can yell into the mouthpiece that you'll call them later, hang up and send a text to confirm. It's quite another thing when you are speaking live to camera during a webinar.

Attendees think it's cute when kids wander into your office to ask where mummy is and who that other lady is snoring in your bed. They go ahhhhhh when your cat jumps onto the desk and bites through your audio cable. But when you're about to speak and the siren goes off…

A bit like this.

No actors were harmed in the making of this reconstruction. The audio is genuine, by the way: it's my own recording of the local siren, captured from inside my office with the windows shut.

Such an experience is also a reminder, as if we needed one, why voice recognition still hasn't overtaken keyboard input.

Don't get me wrong, automated voice transcription is almost impossibly good these days, and at the risk of goading animal protectionists, I am an Otter-lover. But voice recognition as a means of entering essential data and operating your computer? Keep your Echoes and Assistants. They are not for me.

I had enough of this during my last city office contract, when wags on the helpdesk would creep up from behind and murmur over my shoulder "Edit Select-All Delete Yes" into my headset mic. Then they'd saunter over to the open plan kitchen, the noise of the boiling kettle barely masking the strains of me screaming "Undo! Undo!"

The answer ought to be mind-control. If I can't rely on audio – whether due to bored colleagues or French sirens – perhaps some boffins have come up with a brainwave on the old, er, brainwave front, no?

Well, no. Articles earlier this year in Nature and IEEE Spectrum tend to put the kibosh on such speculation. While it has been demonstrated that it is possible to use brain-power to move a cursor around a virtual keyboard and type messages, it is painfully slow, achieving about eight words a minute maximum. This compares to the 23 words per minute achieved by able-bodied people texting on their smartphones, or the 40 words per minute of a two-finger keyboard typist.

Researchers at Stanford University then found that a paralysed man willing to have an electrode array implanted into his brain was able to achieve about 18 words per minute not by thinking about typing onto a keyboard but about imagining writing the words.

I miss writing recognition. I know it’s really very accurate now on tablets and big smartphones but the modern form factor defeats me. I can do it but the hardware is too big and clumsy, my handwriting occasionally foxes the system and my progress is slow.

This is in sharp contrast to 20 years ago. Back when handwriting recognition was still pants, I used to tear through work on-the-go (while travelling, that is, not in the bathroom) using what we used to call palmtops. I owned several Palm Pilots and their successors, and although you had to learn its simplified, proprietary glyph alphabet, for me they have never been bettered as a handwriting input device.

Maybe I just have an overly rosy recollection of those days but the form factor must have been significant. I tried Apple’s abortive Newton and didn’t like it at all. I’m scared of trying a Samsung Note because, well, their last pre-smartphone handset was possibly the worst electronic device ever conceived – yes, even worse than the Gateway 2000 10th Anniversary PC – and it put me off for life.

Until someone makes a desktop trackpad I can properly scribble on, I’ll hang on my keyboards for a while yet. Voice? Not a chance, pal.

If you see me buying even a voice operated smart speaker, sound the sirens.

As reported by BBC in 2018, the words in the language are not clear and there is no exact pattern.
The boys usually grow up speaking the female language until they turn 10 and then they start learning the male language.
LAST UPDATED:
SEPTEMBER 03, 2021, 11:44 IST
In the farming commmunity of Ubang village in southern Nigeria, men and women speak different languages. And the people of Ubang are extremely proud of this uniqueness and consider this difference as a blessing from their God.

The boys usually grow up speaking the female language till they are 10 because they spend most of their childhoods with their mothers but after that, they learn to speak the language of men.

For instance, Nigeria’s staple foods yam has a different word in the male and female language. It’s “irui” for females and “itong” for males. Simultaneously, the word for clothing, its “nki" for men and “ariga" for women.

As reported by BBC in 2018, the words in the language are not clear and there is no exact pattern.

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Speaking about the unique difference, Chief Oliver Ibang said that there is a stage the male will reach and he will become aware that he is not using his rightful language. Nobody from his family or neighbourhood will tell him that he is not using the right language and when he starts speaking the male language after attaining certain age you will see the signs of maturity in the boy. Chief Ubang further said that if a boy does not move to his correct language by a certain age, then he is considered as “abnormal” in the community.

Anthropologist Chi-Chi Undie has studied the community thoroughly. In the BBC report, he said, “There are a lot of words that men and women share in common, but there are based on your sex, which doesn’t sound alike, don’t have the same letters, and are completely different worlds," he further added.

The Linguistic Association of Nigeria said that 50 of Nigeria’s 500 regional languages could vanish in the coming years if steps towards it are not taken timely. Igbo, Yoruba, and Hausa are Nigeria’s major languages. English is also spoken by people to foster unity among numerous ethnic groups.

By Chad Plein
Published: Sep. 3, 2021 at 4:28 PM GMT+1|Updated: 11 hours ago
MONETT, Mo. (KY3) - You can gain so much by going to a park. Fresh air, relaxation, maybe a soccer player or two...

That’s what happened a four years ago for Monett soccer coach Cristobal Villa. During a high school soccer practice he saw a couple of young men playing around a neighboring field.

“I said, ‘hey, I want you to be part of our team,” Villa said to the boys. “And at first, they were kind of confused, like, ‘what are you talking about?”

Two of those teenagers were Mu Ku and Moo Say. Both were born in Thailand and eventually took Villa up on his offer.

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“Happy to be with this team,” Mu Ku said, “to be able to play with this team.”

“I look at the team,” Moo say said, “I like (the) soccer team. And I saw the players. I joined like, yes, ‘this for me, too.”

Moo Say a senior, and Mu Ku a junior, are entering their third year playing for Monett.

“I see soccer in a little different ways every single year,” Villa said. “And I just see how much important this game is to a lot of these kids and how it brings a lot of cultures together.”

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English is a second language for Mu and Moo and that’s something they have in common with many on the team. Villa says the Cubs have a total of six different languages spoken on their roster. That said, communication is not problem.

“We all communicate and we all talk and we all get to know each other’s culture,” Villa said. “So it’s amazing. It’s amazing. It’s an experience that a lot of kids out there, don’t get to have. You know, they missed a little bit of that.”

It’s the culture and culture shock Villa was describing when he first approached Moo Say and Mu Ku four years ago. Young men, kids really, thrown into a new community not sure exactly where they belonged.

For Villa, it’s like looking in the mirror and seeing himself as a 7-year-old moving to the United States from Mexico.

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“I could relate to them,” Villa said. “Because, you know, obviously, we’re here for opportunities, freedom, better life. That’s the reason why our parents got us here.”

“First generation parents are working hard every single day to provide food to the table,” Villa continued, “to make sure you have clothing to wear. So to (the parents), that was the support they were giving us. Not knowing that, ‘hey, take me to practice’ or to here or there. Sometimes they didn’t have time to come into the parent-teacher conferences. They were expecting us to make good decisions because they were so busy.”

Teenagers can gain self esteem, learn how to work as a team, and maybe for their first time in their lives achieve success playing sports.

Sometimes a coach might learn a little something too. Villa explains, when you understand someone’s culture that helps explain why a person does something that seems odd or frustrating to others.

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“We need to have a little more of an open mind about where some of these kids come from,” Villa said. “And get to know kids and get to know people, because sometimes we judge without even knowing.”

To report a correction or typo, please email digitalnews@ky3.com

TOKYO -- SoftBank will start providing an AI-based sign language translation service as soon as 2024 using a smartphone app that can turn 5,000 signs into Japanese text in one second or less, Nikkei has learned. 

There are more than 300,000 people with hearing or speech impairments in Japan. SoftBank hopes the sign language translation service can promote smooth communication between hearing people who do not understand sign language and those with hearing impairments.

The system employs artificial intelligence to detect sign language and translate it into Japanese during a video conversation. The AI also adds postpositional particles to make full sentences. When a hearing person speaks, the AI automatically converts the speaker's words to text on screen. The people having the conversation do not have to type, which allows them to enjoy communicating and to see each other's facial expressions.

SoftBank in 2017 began basic research on the system with Tokyo's University of Electro-Communications. It has also collaborated with a Tokyo-based AI startup Abeja, in which Google invests.

Abeja had the AI learn from 50,000 sign language videos, which enabled it to detect the characteristic movements of each signed word. SoftBank aims to develop the service in multiple languages in the future.

The Japanese telecom company is offering the service on a trial basis to organizations for disabled people in Tokyo and Fukushima Prefecture since April, and a total of nine municipalities and organizations have started using the service.

SoftBank will begin offering the service to health care facilities and public transportation companies within two years. It will roll out the service to the general public free of charge as early as 2024.

The company is now focused on improving the accuracy of the system. As with spoken language, people who communicate using sign language talk at varying speeds. The position of their hands and arms also varies. The AI can translate signs with more than 90% accuracy, but if the system is insufficiently trained, accuracy can fall to less than 50%. To raise the rate of sign recognition, it is necessary to read the movements of more than 100 people per word.

SoftBank in July began offering an app through which anybody can register samples of sign language. Tokyo-based AI company Preferred Networks provided the technology to automatically generate computer graphics as a sample from sign language videos. By showing the sample, the company is now calling for more people who do not understand sign language to register the samples as volunteers.

Learn how to translate Morse code using free software, app, online tool, or through command-line interface in Windows 11/10.

Translator's anguish as dad granted UK resettlement but left behind in Kabul
Jamal Barak was an interpreter with the British Army for eight years, and his father, Shista Gul, worked as a gardener on the military base in Helmand Province

Jamal Barak, who worked as an interpreter for the British Army for eight years
The son of an Afghan man who served with the British military has spoken of his anguish at his father being 'left behind' in Kabul.

Jamal Barak is an Afghan citizen who came to Coventry six years ago on the Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy (ARAP) scheme.

He was an interpreter with the British Army for eight years, and his father, Shista Gul, worked as a gardener on the military base in Helmand Province, Coventry Live reports.

Last month, it emerged Mr Barak feared for his father's safety, after his application to seek refuge in the UK was rejected by the Ministry of Defence for not having "sufficient enough evidence."

The family's case was subsequently raised in Parliament by Zarah Sultana, MP for Coventry South, and Mr Barak's father was then granted UK resettlement on August 23.

Shista Gul
Shista Gul worked as a gardener for the British army in the military compound in Helmand Province for seven years
Once Mr Barak's father heard the good news of being granted resettlement, he and the family packed up their belongings and made the 14-hour journey from Helmand Province to Kabul airport.

But chaos awaited, and despite having eligible papers to come to the UK, the family could not make it through the gates of Kabul airport.

They spent a total of four days trying to show officials their paperwork and board a plane to safety.

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The last UK plane evacuating people from Afghanistan took off on Saturday with Boris Johnson saying that the "overwhelming majority" of those eligible to come to the UK had been evacuated.

But that did not include Mr Barak's father and his family, who despite being eligible to come to the UK, were left behind in Kabul.

The evacuation centre has now closed, and Mr Barak's family are currently in hiding, fearing for their lives until they can find a safe route out of the country.

Jamal Barak, who worked as an interpreter for the British Army for eight years
Jamal Barak came to Coventry under the Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy
Mr Barak said: "It's got more worse than before. About 1,100 people were left behind when the evacuation centre was closed, so my father has still got the eligibility, but has been left behind with no flights.

"Now there are loads of Government officials telling people that these people will be evacuated from a third country that could be probably Pakistan or other countries - we don't know yet."

His father was a gardener on the military base in Helmand Province and won many awards.

Mr Barak said his father's goal was always to make beautiful surroundings in the desert for soldiers living away from home.

After being shot at twice by the Taliban while out on a mission with British troops, Mr Barak himself fled to Coventry in 2015, and says he will not rest until his father and their family lands on British soil.

People’s Daily, China's biggest Chinese-language online news website, has joined a long list of international media organizations broadcasting and publishing news content in Swahili language.

People’s Daily, China’s biggest Chinese-language online news website, has joined a long list of international media organizations broadcasting and publishing news content in Swahili language.

The Chinese state-owned media giant headquartered in Beijing launched the Swahili version of its website – swahili.people.cn. Also unveiled alongside the Swahili website by the company are the Italian and Kazakh online news platforms.

This, according to the Chinese media outlet, is part of a continuing ‘effort to expand its worldwide programming to target new regions, groups, and content categories.’

The Swahili online news website is expected to provide speakers of this language with information about China’s politics, economy, society, culture, science, and education, among other subjects, and will also facilitate exchanges between Chinese people and people in these regions.

A national language in East Africa, Swahili is spoken in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The language, considered Bantu, is also spoken in parts of Malawi and Mozambique, besides other countries that have introduced its teaching in schools such as in South Africa.

Chinese engagements in these countries have been growing in recent times.

China already has news organizations publishing and broadcasting their content in Swahili language such as China Radio International and Xinhua News Agency, and the People’s Daily expands this list.

Apart from the media, a number of Chinese Universities are teaching the Swahili subject. In fact, the number of Chinese natives speaking Swahili within China itself has grown significantly in the last couple of years.

The latest move by People’s Daily Online further lays a foundation to build a multi-language, multi-terminal, all-media, full-coverage, world-class news outlet that is global in scope.

“The launch of the three new versions is an important step by People’s Daily Online to further bolster and improve its international communications capacity, which always strives to adopt communication methods targeting audiences from different regions, countries, and groups, in this way better telling China’s stories, and presenting a true, multi-dimensional and panoramic view of China to the world.” The company said

The development immediately received praise from the Director-General of the Department of African Affairs at China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Wu Peng who expressed hope that the website will enhance ongoing relations between China and development partners in Africa

“Swahili is one of the most spoken languages in Africa. I believe it will promote exchanges between China and Africa. Expect more African languages versions!” He said

The People’s Daily Online is now available in 12 foreign languages including English, Japanese, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Korean, German, Portuguese, Italian, Kazakh and Swahili.

This thesis explores the importance of diplomatic language, persuasive rhetoric and translation in international diplomacy. The hypothesis here is that diplomatic language is changing and that this change affects both our understanding and use of language and linguistic devices. In order to exemplify this trend, a case study analyses President Donald Trump’s controversial rhetoric and its translatability. The thesis provides, first, a close reading of texts that illustrate the pervasive power of a politician’s style, rhetoric and persuasiveness. Second, it considers the translation challenges raised by President Trump’s novel communication style. Accordingly, examples of diplomats and heads of state and government increasingly using social media, demonstrate the emergence of a new linguistic style in international diplomacy.

L’École de Traduction Littéraire (ETL) ouvrira sa huitième promotion en janvier 2022. Les candidatures sont ouvertes jusqu’au 15 octobre 2021. Issue d’un partenariat entre le Centre National du Livre et l’Asfored et pilotée par Olivier Mannoni, l’École est la première à offrir aux jeunes traducteurs et traductrices, ayant déjà publié au moins une traduction chez un éditeur, une formation complète d’un an (150 heures, un samedi sur deux).
PUBLIÉ LE :
03/09/2021 à 15:24
Fondée sur un enseignement de la traduction en ateliers multilingues pilotés par des traducteurs chevronnés, la formation est complétée par des interventions de représentants de tous les métiers du livre, de la fabrication à l’éditeur.

L’École, qui a formé en dix ans plus d’une centaine de stagiaires, qui ont obtenu pendant leur stage et par la suite plus d’une vingtaine de prix, est ouverte aux traducteurs et traductrices de toutes langues et notamment à ceux et celles de langues rares.

La formation peut être prise en charge par l’AFDAS si le candidat ou la candidate répond aux critères de cet organisme. D’autres prises en charge sont possibles.

Des possibilités de suivi à distance, en duplex sur Internet, seront de nouveau offertes cette année aux candidats vivant loin de Paris, où se déroulent les séances.

Pour télécharger le dossier d’inscription et tout savoir sur l’ETL, c'est ici. Pour tout renseignement supplémentaire, c’est par ici : etl-cnl@asfored.org

Date limite de dépôt des dossiers : 15 octobre 2021.

Le chercheur a été récompensé pour sa traduction française de l’ouvrage «Sur les traces d’Enayat Zayyat», de l’auteure égyptienne Iman Mersal.

Le 2 septembre 2021, Richard Jacquemond a remporté le Prix de la traduction littéraire et en sciences humaines Ibn Khaldoun-Senghor, du français vers l’arabe et de l’arabe vers le français. Il a été officiellement récompensé pour sa traduction de l’arabe vers le français de l’ouvrage «Sur les traces d’Enayat Zayyat» de l’auteure égyptienne Iman Mersal, parue chez Actes Sud en 2021.

À découvrir
Evènement numérique du Figaro littéraire : « Comment se faire publier ? Dans le secret des maisons d’édition »
Passionné de jeux de lettres ? Découvrez l'appli Figaro jeux
Le jury était invité par l’Organisation arabe pour l’éducation, la culture et les sciences (ALECSO) et l’Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), dispositif institutionnel voué à promouvoir le français dans le monde.

La traduction: un acte de communication interculturelle
Dans un communiqué de l’OIF, la Présidente du Jury, Mme Fayza El Qasem, explique que «le texte original présentait plusieurs défis tant au niveau de la forme que du contenu. Revêtant la forme d’une enquête, il mêle l’histoire collective à l’histoire individuelle et entreprend une relecture de l’Égypte du temps du nassérisme. Le traducteur, Richard Jacquemond, a perçu l’inventivité du texte, saisi les nuances en situation afin de capter ce qui est dit en dehors des mots et a reproduit avec succès les multiples registres de langue. Il affirme ainsi le rôle de la traduction comme acte de communication interculturelle et nous donne à lire un ouvrage qui a été distingué dans le monde arabe».

Richard Jacquemond est professeur (CE) de langue et littérature arabes modernes, Département d’Études Moyen-Orientales, UFR Arts, Lettres, Langues et Sciences Humaines, Université d’Aix-Marseille. Il est également Directeur de l’Institut d’études et de recherches sur les mondes arabes et musulmans (IREMAM), Maison méditerranéenne des sciences de l’homme, à Aix-en-Provence.

Un prix qui s’adresse aux traducteurs et aux universités
Créé en 2007, le Prix Ibn Khaldoun - Léopold Sédar Senghor est le fruit d’une coopération entre l’OIF et l’ALECSO. Il encourage la promotion de la diversité culturelle et linguistique ainsi que toutes formes d’échanges culturels entre le monde arabe et l’espace francophone. Son objectif est de récompenser la traduction d’un ouvrage littéraire ou de sciences humaines de l’arabe vers le français.

La récompense s’adresse aux traducteurs, aux universités, aux instituts d’enseignement supérieur et aux centres d’études et de recherches, aux associations et aux unions nationales, ainsi qu’aux maisons d’édition du monde arabe et de l’espace francophone. Le Prix, doté de 10 000 euros sera remis au lauréat le 23 septembre prochain à Tunis, à l’occasion des États généraux du livre en langue française dont l’OIF est partenaire.

Le jury était composé de personnalités issues de pays francophones . Parmi elles: Bassam Baraké, Secrétaire général de l’Union des Traducteurs arabes (Liban), Zahida Darwiche-Jabbour, Professeur de littérature française et traductrice (Liban), Fayza El Qasem, Professeur émérite, École supérieure de traducteurs et interprètes (France), Mohammed Mahjoub, philosophe, traducteur et écrivain (Tunisie), et enfin Hana Subhi, traductrice et professeur de littérature française à l’Université Paris-Sorbonne d’Abu Dhabi (France et Irak).

Descubre cómo puedes traducir un texto en iOS 15 con tu iPhone y una interesante función que te permite usar la cámara, llamada LIve Text OCR.

La cámara de los iPhone, como el resto de los teléfonos móviles, ya no solo sirven para hacer fotos o vídeos. Con el paso del tiempo, la inteligencia artificial permite destinarla a otras aplicaciones, como la de reconocer textos y objetos. De ahí que puedas traducir un texto en iOS 15 sin necesidad de escribirlo, simplemente a través de al cámara.

Vamos a explicarte cómo usar una función propia de esta actualización en el sistema operativo que sirve para ese cometido. Te permitirá sacarle todo el provecho a la cámara de tu iPhone para detectar textos en imágenes y traducirlos al idioma que quieras, aunque solo podrás ponerlo en práctica con terminales que tengan iOS 15.

Qué es Live Text en iPhone

Así se llama la función que te va a permitir extraer palabras y frases de imágenes y pasarlas a formato de texto para hacer varias cosas. Entre ellas, podrás copiarlo y traducirlo a otro idioma, lo que facilita mucho la comprensión de imágenes que estén en otra lengua.

Esta versión de iOS ha incluido esta novedad porque la cámara es uno de los pilares de iOS 15, que se centra en mejorar las prestaciones y la productividad de la misma. Lo cierto es que su rival directo llevaba adelanto en este campo con Google Assistant, con Google Lens y su función OCR (Reconocimiento Óptico de Caracteres).

Apple ha seguido los pasos de Google Lens y la ha integrado dentro del sistema operativo, por lo que no debes recurrir a una app externa. Por lo tanto, se convierte en una herramienta rápida, muy sencilla de usar y óptima para transcribir.

La función en sí es una de las más destacadas de todas las novedades de iOS 15, ya que facilita la vida al usuario y funciona realmente bien. De hecho, de la comparativa entre Live Text y Google Lens que hemos realizado, sacamos varias conclusiones. En resumidas cuentas, Live Text cuenta con mejor reconocimiento de textos en las distintas superficies, mientras que la extracción y traducción de los mismos son buenas, aunque un escalón por debajo de Lens.

El funcionamiento es más que correcto, por no decir casi perfecto. En la prueba de iPadizate, la función de Live Text trabajó eficientemente, cometiendo solamente un fallo y un par de imperfecciones en la traducción del texto. El error más relevante fue la extracción de puntos de referencia en la búsqueda visual, como el puente Tolerance de Dubai.

Cómo traducir un texto con la cámara del iPhone en iOS 15

Si te interesa esta función para traducir textos y cumples el primordial requisito de tener actualizado tu iPhone a iOS 15, entonces puedes seguir los siguientes pasos para usar esta interesante función:

1. Cuando te encuentres un texto que quieras traducir, abre la cámara de tu iPhone y apunta hacia ese texto, ya sea de un folleto, un cartel o cualquier otro impreso.
2. Verás que la cámara enmarca el texto entre cuatro esquinas naranjas. Por el contrario, si no te aparece dicho cuadro, intenta enfocarlo desde más cerca, o bien que quede enmarcado el texto por completo, sin que queden letras fuera de la imagen.
3. Una vez aparezcan esas esquinas naranjas alrededor del texto, verás que automáticamente tendrás un icono a la derecha de los botones del zoom, en forma de cuatro líneas horizontales rodeadas de un cuadrado. En la imagen sale mucho más claro.
4. La cámara podrá capturar en ese momento el texto al que has apuntado, que se mostrará en un menú que ya puedes manejar tú mismo. El mismo te permite seleccionar la porción del texto que quieres copiar o traducir, bien arrastrando con el dedo o seleccionando el texto al completo para aplicarle las opciones.
5. Elijas todo el texto o solo una parte, lo que puedes hacer es copiar la transcripción, realizar una búsqueda en la web con «Consultar«, traducirla o compartirla en otras aplicaciones.
6. Si pulsas en «Traducir«, Live Text detectará de manera automática el idioma que buscas, mostrándote su traducción en pantalla. No obstante, en ese menú contextual podrás cambiar al idioma que quieras.

Ya tendrías lista la traducción de tu texto en iOS 15 y a través de esta función tan aprovechable. Si quieres hacer lo propio en una imagen de la galería, tienes que seguir los mismos pasos para extraer el texto y traducirlo. Es así de sencillo, puesto que te aparecerá el mismo icono de las cuatro líneas horizontales en la esquina inferior derecha.

Ten en cuenta que tanto para realizar búsquedas en la web como para traducir, necesitas conexión a internet. En cambio, para detectar el texto y seleccionarlo, puedes estar sin red móvil o Wi-Fi, por si te encuentras en un lugar con difícil cobertura. Live Text es una función que seguro te va a encantar si tienes iOS 15, por su integración en el sistema y su óptimo funcionamiento.

Over the past year, I’ve watched a variety of terms go from tiny propositions to subjects of huge discourse that are regularly utilized by everyday people and mass corporations alike.

You are likely familiar with some of these terms —“folx,” “womxn,” “Latinx,” “houseless,” “BIPOC” and many more. They clog up our Instagram feeds, fill up Twitter threads and even pop up in official emails from our university.

A new language has been formed, one created and used with the belief that it constructs a more understanding, safe and welcoming environment for the people it claims to serve. However, this language has a plethora of issues, beginning with one that we see on social media almost every day: It has — perhaps inadvertently — created a sect of people who see this terminology as the ultimate factor in determining whether or not the people, organizations, companies and governments in their lives are “woke.”

More often than not, the people who use this terminology are those who identify as liberals or whose views fall into the realm of liberalism, and once they have this language, they use it as a litmus test to determine whether those around them are serious about social causes.

This is a real shame, exemplified in terms like “BIPOC” (Black, Indigenous, People of Color). Attempts at explaining “BIPOC” to my Japanese relatives ends with them simply blinking at me in confusion. My aunties were raised in an era where they were described as “colored” or “Oriental.” They’ve barely begun to grasp the new label of “POC” (People of Color). But would you look these 60-year-old women in the eyes and tell them they are wrong for not understanding and immediately applying the term “BIPOC”? Language evolves so quickly that it is a mistake to shun people simply because they fail to use a fleeting term, especially those with valuable insight to share, like my aunties, whose lived experiences in post-WWII America have shaped my understanding of racism.

Additionally, many of the people who belong to these minority groups are entirely averse to this language.

For example, the term “womxn” was proposed with the intention of including trans and genderqueer women. However, trans women are quick to point out that adding the “x” to women simply further alienates them by denying that they are true women after all. Rather than calling them by their deserved title, “women,” the term “womxn” relegates trans women to being a sort of woman-tangent, never a “true” woman.

Language evolves so quickly that it is a mistake to shun people simply because they fail to use a fleeting term, especially those with valuable insight to share, like my aunties, whose lived experiences in post-WWII America have shaped my understanding of racism.

And perhaps the most glaring problem with terminology like this is that the effort to stand up for trans women, people of color, homeless people, etc., often ends at this utilization of inclusive language.

Rather than taking a further step to fight injustice within laws and community spaces or to support local organizations that fight these problems, people seem to think that using this language is enough — that they can stop there and then it puts them beyond racism, beyond sexism, beyond cancellation. Surely someone so woke as to refer to homeless people as their “houseless neighbors” could never do any wrong.

One prime example of this is a recent comment from President Joe Biden (which was, in my opinion, a deeply telling moment as far as Biden’s understanding of human rights goes). In a July press conference discussing the importance of adults getting vaccinated, Biden was quoted as saying, “It’s awful hard, as well, to get Latinx vaccinated as well. Why? They’re worried that they’ll be vaccinated and deported.”

Is there anything that sums up misguided American politics more than those few sentences? Those phrases utterly stereotype and demean an entire group of people in mere seconds.

But one cannot deny that Biden really thought he did something. He took his inclusion of “woke” terminology to mean that he was above racism — that everyone would accept his statement as truth, or at least as harmless, because he had done the unthinkable! The brave Biden had integrated the internet-speak term “Latinx” into a real press conference, broadcasting it to millions of American households that would now be exposed to a new idea.

He did not even realize that he really has no right to use this terminology. As Biden has little experience within the Latin American community and no real background in social advocacy, this usage of the term does not feel earnest in the slightest. And, when used in tandem with overt prejudice, his words take a condescending tone. Whether intentional or not, Biden has now seemingly weaponized a term whose original purpose was to uplift and empower.

That’s the very problem with this language.

Because he utilized a fun little “woke” term, Biden felt no pressure to amend his statements or confront his racist way of explaining vaccination issues in the United States. He believed that he had provided an excellent answer to questions about U.S. vaccination statistics. He didn’t think about examining how these communities statistically have less access to vaccines or mentioning how misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine is rampant throughout the U.S. 

No, he instead blamed it on a racist and inflammatory thought that the famously faulty Biden brain machine cooked up (amongst many other great ideas, like voting in favor of using force in Iraq in 2002, relentlessly bombing Syria in February of 2021 and authorizing the notorious 1994 crime bill that perpetuated mass incarceration).

Finally, it’s worth noting that these terms often originated in small communities who had extremely specific purposes for them. Unfortunately, these definitions have been significantly altered over time, largely due to the spreading of misinformation on the internet. For example, a 2020 article from Shape defined the term “folx” as being “used to specifically display inclusion of gender-queer, transgender and agender folks.” 

However, back in 2014, the term “folx” was mainly utilized by grassroots organizations to designate “People organizing and theorizing in queer, trans, and other people of color.” This term has gone from highlighting community organization to being thrown around as a replacement for the already-genderless term “folks” in an effort to highlight one’s “wokeness.”

The danger with this vocabulary is not merely that it needlessly excludes those who do not utilize it or that it excuses people from internal examination — it is that it robs the communities it claims to protect of language that was special to them. In making it mainstream, the internet has corrupted its meaning.

This terminology is dangerous. It excuses people from examining their own possibly racist internal biases. It creates infighting within the left as people disagree about the value and usage of this new vocabulary. And much of its mainstream use is only a shallow imitation of its original purpose.

Rather than falling into the trap of obsessing over the language of liberalism, the left needs to come together and focus on what has always been the most important thing: improving the quality of life for people around us with strong action. Settling for words alone is, frankly, dangerous.

Syd Haupt couldn’t care less about the term “BIPOC” and seriously thinks everyone’s efforts would be better put towards donating to J-TOWN Action and Solidarity.

A version of this article appeared on p. 20 of the Aug. 26, 2021 print edition of the Daily Nexus.