Metaglossia: The Translation World

"Wilson, a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, has polarised the classics world for almost a decade. Her translation – the first complete English version of the Odyssey by a woman – is cast in strict iambic pentameter. Its foundation is academically rigorous, yet its language is boldly modernised. Some greeted it as a radical poetic feat. Others accused her of heresy, criticising her colloquial register and political inflection.

Among Wilson’s most distinguished peers, Edith Hall spoke for many in predicting, in these pages, that Wilson would “win a place in [the] roll-call of the most significant translations of the poem in history”. Daniel Mendelsohn, an Odyssey translator himself, on the other hand, has contended that Wilson “strips away many of the subtleties of the original”, pointing to a claim that a third of Homer’s text has been lost in her version.

Among armchair classicists on X, however, reactions have been almost uniformly hostile. Wilson has been accused of “wokery”, and of the “DEI-fication” of Homer. A post from May 2026 is representative: “The Emily Wilson translation… is basically the Odyssey for people who thought Homer needed to be run through a modern accessibility filter.”

What does Wilson herself think? Speaking on Zoom from her sunny Philadelphia home, she says she’s paying little attention to the online kerfuffle. “I avoid Twitter [now X] these days… I find it depressing.

“It would be nice to think that this was a serious dialogue about literature, poetry, translation and the study of Ancient Greek. I would love that. But I think this is about people latching on to particular ways to reinforce the very limited and toxic positions that they already have. I don’t think it’s about learning anything – and that just seems sad to me.”

Wilson’s frustration points to a broader truth: the Odyssey controversy is less about philological complexities than about the culture wars. As she writes in her new book, Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: Journeys Through Ancient Literature, Homer’s poem is now “ultra-canonical, and often viewed as a wellspring of ‘Western civilisation’.” That’s clearer than ever in contemporary US politics. In a eulogy delivered last year after the murder of the activist Charlie Kirk, Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff, invoked a civilisational lineage from antiquity to modern-day America: “Our lineage and our legacy hails back to Athens, to Rome, to Philadelphia, to Monticello. Our ancestors built the cities. They produced the art and architecture. They built the industry.”

“I think it’s extremely dangerous,” Wilson says of this narrative. “Of course, it’s true that figures like Thomas Jefferson did study both the constitution of Athens and Rome, and ancient Carthage, and other ancient societies. It’s not that there’s absolutely zero germ of history there.

“And yet this misleading, simplistic, historically [inaccurate] and extremely toxic stew of ideas is presented as if there were a completely hardwired through-line from antiquity to ‘we are the heirs of the ancient Athenians’. Of course that’s bogus.”

If you’ve been conditioned to have a glorified view of ancient Greek and Roman civilisations, it can be discombobulating to hear, in Wilson’s Odyssey, phrases such as “canapé”, “pep talk” and “you must be joking” uttered by heroes and gods. But Wilson is adamant that archaic language is nothing more than a stylistic conceit, one that falsely equates grandiosity with erudition and authority. “My Homer,” she writes in the preface to her translation, “does not speak in your grandparents’ English, since that language is no closer to the wine-dark sea than your own.”

Wilson fell in love with the ancient world as a child. Born in Britain in 1971, the daughter of the late academic Katherine Duncan-Jones and the critic AN Wilson, she played Athena in a primary school production of the Odyssey. She went on to study Latin and Greek, then read Classics at Oxford. She moved to America in 1996 to pursue a PhD at Yale.

Wilson was the first woman to publish a complete English version of the Odyssey  Credit: Dan Callister for The Telegraph
Her penchant for the dramatic has only grown with age. She has become known for her electrifying readings of Homer, in which she brings the epic’s characters to life through vividly imagined voices, expressive gestures – at times you worry she will literally tear her hair out – and frequent quotations from the ancient Greek. “People very often clap when I do a bit of ancient Greek,” she says, “and I think it’s so lovely that people are excited to hear it.”

Wilson’s dedication to the Homeric world is even manifest on her body in the form of a series of tattoos. “I have a spear and a bow on my legs for the Iliad and Odyssey, representing Athena and Odysseus. I have an octopus representing Odysseus, changeability and multiplicity, then the horses of Achilles on my other arm – the immortal horses that tell Achilles he will die… A tattoo is a permanent thing. What is permanent for me is Homer.”

Still, she stresses the need to “rethink everything” about translating classical texts. For some, the mention of Classics conjures images of dusty Loebs and crusty professors. Not for Wilson. Among the “20 Rules of Translation” in her Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea is: “If nobody objects to any choice you make, your choices are too timid.”

That might have been the advice given to Christopher Nolan, judging by the furore his Odyssey film is already causing. His decision to cast the Kenyan-Mexican actress Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy, for instance, has drawn fierce criticism from figures including Elon Musk, who declared that “Chris Nolan is p---ing on Homer’s grave.” (My fellow Greeks, meanwhile, are complaining that they are barely represented among the cast, who largely speak in American accents.)

Nolan’s script is said to draw heavily on Wilson’s translation. Though, she says, Nolan hasn’t directly asked her for help, she’s optimistic about the film. “I think it’s going to be fun… I hope it will bring more people to the original IP.” For one thing, she points out, Homer’s poem sits well with Nolan’s work to date. “It’s the same tropes that we’ve seen in almost every film that he has already produced – the themes of the lone man on a quest with a female character waiting for him.”

Matt Damon, who’s playing Odysseus, wouldn’t have been her first pick. “But his part in The Talented Mr Ripley was the best warm-up… he showed he can be a schemer.” Her ideal lead, in truth, would have been Samuel L Jackson. “He’s able to convey being very smart and wily and funny and command a room.”

Wilson’s next step is ambitious but not surprising, given her dedication to Homer. “I’m actually redoing the Odyssey all over again. In the last stages of doing my 2017 translation, I started to feel that the line-for-line constraint was just a little bit too tight. And that if I had just had a few more syllables, I could do a little bit more. And so I’m redoing it all.

“I think it’s going to be good.”

Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea is published by Profile at £12.99. The Odyssey is in cinemas July 17"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/emily-wilson-translation-interview-odyssey-wine-dark-sea/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

" Dictionaries as Limits and Potentialities of Thought
The Power of Words: Dictionaries as Limits and Potentialities of Thought
The author explores how lexicon shapes our reality and proposes the term 'lexical idiom' for untranslatable words.

The author reflects on how language, specifically dictionary lexicon, limits and expands our capacity for thought and emotion, proposing a new term for unique cultural words.

Human thought and our life experiences are intrinsically linked to the words we have at our disposal. Following Joan Fuster's observation, dictionaries not only collect a language's lexicon but also indicate the limits and potentialities of the life we can live within that language. As Ludwig Wittgenstein stated, 'the limits of my language mean the limits of my world,' an idea underscoring how vocabulary defines our knowledge, imagination, and emotions.
Therefore, the author finds pleasure in exploring dictionaries of various languages, seeking words that conceptualize reality in alternative ways. This linguistic exploration allows for the discovery of new perspectives and the finding of terms that lack direct equivalents in other languages. These words, which coin unique concepts, are the focus of the article.
"Cada matís —de color, de so, d’idea— demana una paraula pròpia, i els diccionaris no són tan generosos."

Examples of Japanese words are presented, such as komorebi (sunlight filtering through leaves), wabi-sabi (the appreciation of imperfect, transient beauty), tsundoku (the act of buying books and letting them pile up unread), ikigai (that which gives meaning to life), shinrin-yoku (forest bathing), or mottainai (regret over wasting something useful). These words illustrate how each culture develops its own lexicon to describe particular aspects of the human experience.
Faced with the difficulty of finding a suitable term for these unique cultural words, the author proposes the concept of 'lexical idiom.' This term, derived from the Greek idiōtismós, emphasizes the particularity and inherent character of a language, distinguishing it from other concepts like 'xenism' or 'idiom' (in the sense of a fixed expression).
The reflection on 'lexical idiom' is unexpectedly connected to an anecdote about statements made by the President of the United States, Donald Trump, regarding the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni. This situation highlights the polysemy and potential for ambiguity in language, recalling Fuster's idea about the need for unique words for each nuance.
Ultimately, the author expresses a preference for the 'lexical idioms' of languages, like Japanese, which enrich our understanding of the world, over the ambiguous use of the term in contexts of diplomatic misunderstandings. The contemplation of light filtering through leaves, evoked by the word komorebi, becomes a symbol of the beauty and nostalgia that language can preserve."
27/06/26 - 09:33
https://diarivalencia.cat/en/la-ribera-baixa/general/the-power-of-words-dictionaries-as-limits-and-potentialities-of-thought
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"What does a translator bring to a text apart from their competence in the languages they translate from and into? How do their life experiences shape their literary contributions? To what extent can we separate their skill from their worldview? These questions are worth pondering over as publishers explore translation tools powered by Artificial Intelligence to cut costs and save time.

Navdeep Suri, whose English translation of Nanak Singh’s Punjabi novel Agg Di Khed (1948) as A Game of Fire (2024) received the Jury’s Special Commendation at the Muse India-GSP Rao Translation Awards 2025, spoke at length about his practice as a translator from a social and political lens in this conversation with Scroll at The Sacred Amritsar cultural festival.

His other translated books include those written by his grandfather, Nanak Singh, such as Khooni Vaisakhi, Khoon De Sohile and Pavitra Paapi. He is also involved with the Nanak Singh Literary Foundation, which was established to preserve the writer’s literary legacy.

Suri also served in the Indian Foreign Service from 1983 to 2019. He was India’s Consul General in Johannesburg, Former Ambassador of India to the UAE and Egypt, and High Commissioner to Australia. He headed the West Africa and Public Diplomacy departments at the Ministry of External Affairs.

Do you consider translation to be a political act? To what extent does the current relevance of an older text guide you when you sit down and think about what to translate?
When I translated Khooni Vaisakhi, a 900-line poem written by my grandfather Nanak Singh after surviving the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, its publication coincided with the centenary of the massacre. The massacre took place in 1919, and my translation was published by HarperCollins in 2019. The timing was significant; it became a useful device to remind readers of the egregious nature of that massacre from the narrative viewpoint of a survivor. The massacre was certainly a turning point in India’s freedom struggle.

When I picked my grandfather’s Partition novels – Khoon De Sohile (Hymns in Blood) and Agg Di Khed (A Game of Fire) – to translate, those were conscious selections from within the vast repertoire of literature that he left us with. Those two novels ground you; they remind you of the price that was paid for India’s independence, in terms of the Partition of 1947 and what it led to.

In the foreword to Hymns in Blood, my grandfather asks some very pertinent questions. He says that we knew of the British policy of divide and rule for about 200 years. What did we do with that knowledge? What happened to us in 1947? What made us turn against each other?

He is not willing to take the convenient escape route of blaming the British alone. He asks us to look deep within and examine what really happened, why, and how. He points out that our own political leaders, religious leaders and media must take responsibility. This novel was published in 1948 but these points remain relevant even today. Whether you look at polarisation in India, the United States or Israel, the same elements are exacerbating divisions between people.

My grandfather wrote about how people were oppressed under British rule, and every pore of his being sought India’s independence. He went to jail for it. Yet, as the flagpoles were being erected to hoist the Indian flag on August 15, 1947, he wondered if losing our humanity was a price worth paying to gain our independence. When you translate texts written by a man who asked all these questions, yes, it is a political act. You are saying that his words need to be remembered.

The responsibility to bear witness seems like an inheritance that you have received from your grandfather. Earlier this year, you spoke out against the genocide in Gaza at the Jaipur Literature Festival and at Majha House in Amritsar. How does your grandfather’s writing help you empathise with people suffering elsewhere in the world?
Translating Khoon De Sohile and Agg Di Khed, both set during the Partition, brought home to me his message of humanity, and in a very powerful way. The pain and trauma that he felt when he saw neighbour turn against neighbour hit me in the gut. He wrote them towards the end of 1947, while witnessing those horrors sitting in Amritsar. They were published in 1948.

His writing forces us to confront the fact that many of us have heard only one side of the Partition story, which is the story of the violence inflicted by Muslims upon Hindu and Sikh communities in places like Rawalpindi, where the characters come from. We cannot afford to overlook the other side of the story, which is the story of the violence inflicted on the Muslims of Amritsar by Sikhs and Hindus. According to the 1941 census, 46% of Amritsar’s population was Muslim. Yet I grew up in an Amritsar where there were hardly any Muslims.

My grandfather’s willingness to confront the actions of his own community was a remarkable demonstration of intellectual and moral courage. In the process of translating his books, I was able to discover a bit of that courage in myself. I draw so much inspiration from him.

As a professional diplomat for 36 years, I had to walk the straight and narrow path. When you take up a job, you have to be disciplined. But since I retired from the Indian Foreign Service, I have had much greater latitude to express my own views on whatever subject we are discussing.

The issue of Israel and Palestine happens to be one that I have closely engaged with for several years. My first overseas assignment was in Egypt; that’s where I learnt Arabic. My second diplomatic assignment was in Damascus. Then I went back as an Indian ambassador to Cairo and Abu Dhabi. I have seen the evolution of the crisis in Palestine. I feel that the power of institutions like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the control of media by sections of the Jewish community result in a suppression of the Palestinian message.

Forget the aspirations of the Palestinians; even their voices do not find expression. And that is why I admire people like Sanjoy K Roy and William Dalrymple for the platform that they have tried to provide for the Palestinian perspective. Because of this, when a session at the Jaipur Literature Festival was titled “The Gaza Genocide”, I had absolutely no problem while moderating it. Calling it a genocide is not simply a matter of public perception. The International Court of Justice calls it a genocide. Holocaust survivors are calling it a genocide.

When you go through the United Nations Genocide Convention of 1948, the core idea is “never again”. And that is why it is heartbreaking for me to see sections of a great community like the Jewish community, which has suffered and endured so much over centuries – not just under Hitler and the Nazis, but also under the Spanish Inquisition and pogroms in Russia and Ukraine – now inflict pain on other people. I think that we have an obligation to speak about it.

Among the foremost critics of the state of Israel are Jewish people who reject the idea that Zionism is synonymous with Judaism. While Israel has been conflating the two, these people and organisations like Jewish Voice for Peace have been opposing such attempts, exposing Zionism as a colonial ideology. What are your thoughts on this?
Because the current government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been so extreme in its interpretation of Zionism, the lines have blurred over the last few years. One is the line separating Judaism from Zionism; the other is the line between anti-Semitism and legitimate criticism of the actions of the Israeli government. I have thought deeply about this because I have had the pleasure of meeting many Jewish people and making Jewish friends.

Any criticism of Prime Minister Netanyahu or his government by any foreigner attracts a knee-jerk reaction in the form of anti-Semitism allegations. When the critics are Arabs, they are justified in saying, “Hey, excuse me, we are Semites! How can we be anti-Semitic?”

The conflation that you mention constrains valid criticism. When you put your actions above any reproach, you may be able to suppress reactions, but my fear and my worry is that this kind of suppression makes Jewish communities less secure. It pains me that such intelligent, smart people don’t realise or recognise that the real long-term security will come through living in peace with neighbours, not through the antagonistic relationships they have established.

After reading Holocaust literature and Partition literature, have we still not learned how to be human? It makes me sad and makes me wonder, what then is the function of literature?

Teachers, parents and librarians often push young people to cultivate a reading habit, based on the claim that literature helps us become better human beings; it helps us understand the lives of those who are different from us, and empathise with them. As a translator, how do you feel when literature is perhaps not doing what it was supposed to?
I think the impact of good literature is post-facto. It may take years before people recognise the greatness of what becomes a classic. My grandfather’s Partition novels in Punjabi are considered classics now. They have gone through several print runs and are still being widely read. But I don’t think that they attracted much attention when they were written because everybody was busy with the rebuilding of their lives after the trauma of the Partition. Khooni Vaisakhi, on the other hand, was banned by the British Empire soon after it came out.

We live in an age where the most overpowering influence on people’s minds is coming from the information and disinformation being unleashed at them through news channels, social media, podcasts, and YouTube. How many people take a step back to reflect on the authenticity of what is being thrown at them, or even pause to think about where this is leading us? We keep talking about how social media traps us in echo chambers where we are only listening to people like us. But what are we doing to seek alternative views to combat the polarisation we are seeing?

As someone whose family lived through the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre and the Partition, what do you make of the scholarly discourse around intergenerational trauma? Though there is scholarship on intergenerational resilience as well, I don’t see it being discussed as widely. You, for instance, haven’t let your ancestors’ suffering make you hateful. You are eager, instead, to call out violence in other parts of the world because you do not want history to keep repeating itself. How do you process what I’m saying?
I think that the centenary of the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre and the 75th anniversary of the Partition gave many scholars, writers, and researchers an opportunity to discuss the long-term impact of these events. I would like to mention Aanchal Malhotra and Kavita Puri’s work in particular. Some of it does reflect what intergenerational trauma does to people, and the unwillingness to speak about the horrors that were witnessed. There seems to be this almost subconscious effort from survivors to bury those memories and not discuss them with children.

I was born in Amritsar and moved back three years ago. What I find remarkable is that, if you talk to the average person, there is remarkably little rancour against Pakistan or Muslims in India. And I say this very carefully because Amritsar witnessed not just the Partition but also the wars between India and Pakistan in 1965 and 1975, and Operation Sindoor most recently. Almost every house, every village in Punjab, has somebody in the army, almost as part of our tradition.

Lahore is only 50 kilometres from Amritsar, and the border is only 30 kilometres from here. If you are looking for a place with a peaceful constituency, look at Amritsar. This is intergenerational resilience, isn’t it? We must recognise that ties of language and culture can sometimes be stronger than a physical border or a political relationship. And there is an economic dimension that very few people reflect on these days. Amritsar was on the Silk Route. This was the wholesale market from where commodities were pushed into Afghanistan, Central Asia, and other places. Amritsar was where dry fruit from Afghanistan came in, and travelled elsewhere.

The absence of a dialogue with Pakistan and the kind of relationship we have is worth reflecting on. I am not exonerating Pakistan from its actions that have brought us to this situation today, including its continued support of terrorist groups. But at the popular level, the cost of a fraught political relationship is borne by people living in Amritsar and neighbouring villages. Their lands have to be sacrificed. When economic linkages get disrupted, it is the ordinary person who suffers. There should be a greater recognition of the local costs of larger political decisions.

With the profusion of literature and music festivals in both India and Pakistan, it is tragic that we do not have authors travelling frequently across the border to interact with their readers. Why don’t we have such cultural exchanges any longer?
I believe very strongly that, by breaking all links, we are feeding into the othering of the neighbour. We are deepening the polarisation that already exists. I know that there is a very significant constituency in Pakistan that seeks normal relations with India. There are many Pakistanis who look up to India for the progress that we have made as a country. There are many who look up to us as a democracy because they know that their country is in shambles right now.

We may not have Pakistani authors speaking at Indian literature festivals but many of them work with Indian publishing houses and Indian literary agencies. English language publishing in Pakistan is still quite nascent compared to India. What economic opportunities lie unexplored when we close off dialogue?
You are right. This is a discussion that we need to have. I remember the times when the Jaipur Literature Festival would have writers from Pakistan come and speak. My feeling is that saying no to dialogue until terrorism stops is not the best policy option for us. We have to find a way of de-linking the two because the need for dialogue is greater in a difficult relationship.

Isn’t this reluctance to engage in dialogue extending to sports as well?
Yes, that is one more channel closed. It is almost like we are systematically shutting off contact. And honestly, I find this a bit ridiculous because, when you go to Dubai or London or the United States, you always find Indians and Pakistanis living happily with each other.

When I was posted in Abu Dhabi as India’s Ambassador to the UAE, my Pakistani counterpart was a Punjabi from Lahore. We would meet every month for the Asian diplomats’ lunch, even when relations between India and Pakistan were going through a difficult phase. It used to be amusing for the other diplomats to see that we might be at each other's throats professionally, but that did stop us from sharing a joke in Punjabi over a meal. Civility in discourse is useful.

People-to-people contact creates safety valves. When we close off dialogue, we end up allowing the most extreme elements in both countries to hold the rest of us hostage to their agenda. The hateful continue to speak anyway. The ones being silenced, on both sides, are the peaceful ones.

How have the teachings of Guru Nanak inspired you to be an upstander rather than a bystander? After moving back to Amritsar, have you been thinking about this?
Let me say upfront, I am a very agnostic person when it comes to religion. But if there is one religious figure that I would look up to, it would be Guru Nanak because of his conscious effort to put humanity above religion. He forces you to question blind faith.

He insisted on stress-testing your beliefs. When he visited Mecca, he was scolded for sleeping with his feet pointing towards the Kaaba. He said, “Well, please turn my feet and point them in the direction where God is not.” He also went to Haridwar and contested the rituals of the pandits there. Guru Nanak put a lot of emphasis on rationality. I value that a lot.

The decline of a civilisation begins when you stop questioning dogma. Guru Nanak reminds me to maintain a healthy degree of scepticism when somebody claims to give the truth on a platter. Even the Quran urges Muslims to question in order to get rid of their own ignorance.

Last year, the Amritsar Pride March was cancelled by the organisers, fearing safety concerns, after objections were raised by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) and other Sikh groups in the city. What are your thoughts on this?
The SGPC is only one of various conservative groups. You have the same reaction from conservative groups in Islam and Christianity. I have a lot of issues with the SGPC, and this is only one of them. I think we need institutions that are fit for the 21st century and follow a minimum degree of accountability. The LGBT+ community is an easy whipping boy for any conservative religious group, and this is highly regrettable. What if someone from the SGPC has a child who is from that community? It’s a facade that they maintain, though they are aware of the reality. This unwillingness to accept what we know to be true is seen across religious groups.

Sikhism places a lot of emphasis on seva. Have you ever wondered if bearing witness to injustice through one’s words is also a form of service to humanity?
If you can tell stories in a way that my grandfather did, I’d say yes. For him, storytelling was an instrument for social reform. He realised that a character well-crafted and a story well-told can perhaps leave a greater impact on a person than just a lesson being given out or a law being made. Human beings relate to stories. I don’t think I have the gift that my grandfather had, so the next best thing that I can do is to translate his stories and bring them to a wider audience. In the process, I hope I’m able to address prejudices, change mindsets, and also implicitly acknowledge that the issues he was combating are still around – economic oppression, caste-based discrimination, the wretchedness of those in power, and how they treat others. Many of these ailments are still prevalent in our society. We say this is Naya Bharat, but not much has changed.

Chintan Girish Modi is a writer with a background in peacebuilding.

https://amp.scroll.in/article/1093625/ties-of-language-and-culture-are-stronger-than-political-borders-punjabi-translator-navdeep-suri
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"English translation brings Filipino novel 'Lumbay ng Dila' to new readers

As Philippine literature slowly gains international visibility, a pressing question emerges: How do stories rooted in specific places travel beyond the archipelago without losing their soul?

For Filipino author and literary scholar Genevieve Asenjo, that journey is taking shape through "Lumbay ng Dila" ("The Melancholy of the Tongue"), her award-winning novel originally written in Filipino and now being translated into English through a Dutch publication initiative.

The project is more than an expansion of readership. It is an opportunity to bring regional Filipino histories into global conversations without stripping away their complexity.

At a time when international audiences are increasingly curious about Philippine literature, Asenjo's work offers an important reminder: there is no singular Filipino story waiting to be discovered. There are many Philippines, each shaped by its own language, geography, and memory.

"Lumbay ng Dila" follows Sadyah Zapanta Lopez, a 28-year-old teacher in Manila whose life is disrupted by a headline from home. Her grandfather, former assemblyman Marcelo Nones Lopez, has been acquitted after a 21-year trial linked to the 1984 Guinsang-an Bridge Massacre.

The verdict revives a question that has haunted her since childhood: What happened to her mother, Teresa Zapanta Lopez, known in the movement as Kumander Rafflesia, who disappeared after the violence and the years of fear that followed?

Drawn back to Barasanan in Dao, Antique, Sadyah attempts to rebuild a life among kin and memory while opening Balay Sugidanun, a home for stories. Her journey takes her between the province and the city, and eventually to Bangkok with her lover, Priya Iyer. Along the way, she assembles documents, testimonies, and fragments of a fractured past.

What begins as a daughter's search for answers gradually expands into a meditation on inheritance and collective memory. The novel asks what happens when communities carry unresolved histories across generations and whether remembering can become a form of repair.

For Philippine literature, translation has never been a purely technical exercise.

The English translation of "Lumbay ng Dila" allows readers outside the Philippines to encounter a story deeply embedded in Antique's cultural landscape while preserving the textures that make it distinct.

Yet every act of translation carries difficult questions. How do you preserve emotional weight when languages hold different histories? How do you translate political memory without reducing its complexity? How do you retain rhythms and voices that belong to a particular place?

For Asenjo, these tensions are part of the process.

"My first thought was that the novel had found another tongue and reader. It is a given that something is lost in translation; at the same time, something is also gained. I was less worried about individual words than about rhythm, voice, context, and the layered coexistence of Kinaray-a, Hiligaynon, Filipino, and English within the novel. Yet these are the very things that make translation exciting," she said.

Her response reframes translation not as a compromise but as a creative encounter. The challenge is not to reproduce every word exactly but to preserve a way of seeing the world.

Throughout her career, Asenjo has advocated for the visibility of regional voices within Philippine literature.

Although "Lumbay ng Dila" was written in Filipino, its worldview is deeply informed by Western Visayas and Kinaray-a culture. Rather than presenting a singular version of the nation, the novel embraces the many identities that coexist within the archipelago.

Its themes of loss, displacement, inheritance, and longing resonate far beyond Antique while remaining faithful to the communities that inspired them.

The task of translation, therefore, is not to make the novel less local. It is to allow its locality to travel.

The Dutch publication initiative signals a broader shift in how Philippine literature circulates internationally.

For decades, only a limited number of Filipino literary voices reached foreign audiences. Today, works grounded in regional histories are beginning to find new pathways abroad.

That shift matters because it changes how the Philippines is understood internationally.

The country cannot be represented by a single language, a single historical narrative, or a single literary tradition. Works like "Lumbay ng Dila" reveal a Philippines that is multilingual, layered, and constantly negotiating its own past.

Beyond translation: Why Filipino stories are finding global readers
Still, Asenjo is careful not to place impossible expectations on literature.

"I do not expect readers to finish the novel understanding the Philippines. I am not sure any single book can do that. But I hope they meet Sadyah and, in following her search through family histories, political histories, and matters of the heart, recognize a familiar human predicament: none of us begins our story at the beginning, yet all of us must somehow continue."

The journey of The "Melancholy of the Tongue" will soon move beyond the page and into a shared literary space in Barcelona.

On June 27, readers will gather at The Philippine Club in Plaza Reial for an intimate presentation of the novel and a rare opportunity to meet Asenjo in person.

Through readings and a question-and-answer session, Asenjo will discuss the creative process behind the novel.

For those unable to attend in person, a Facebook livestream will make the event accessible to audiences around the world."
https://www.abs-cbn.com/lifestyle/people-culture-events/2026/6/24/english-translation-brings-filipino-novel-lumbay-ng-dila-to-new-readers-1659
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Never before have translators faced such immense pressure to become obsolete as they do today. AI tools capable of translating tens of thousands of words in just a few seconds at virtually no cost have significantly altered the landscape of the translation market.

In the context of globalization, translated literature serves as a bridge connecting the finest aspects of human knowledge to domestic readers, while simultaneously paving the way for local culture to reach the world . However, with the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and the pressures of the market economy, this field is facing numerous challenges.

Translator Pham Duc Hung edited the manuscript.
That impact is evident right here in Thai Nguyen . German translator Pham Duc Hung, a member of the Thai Nguyen Provincial Union of Literature and Arts Associations, a member of the Vietnam Writers Association since 2018, and the only German translator in the 10th term of the Literary Translation Council, has had to make the decision to close his reputable personal translation center in 2025 after many years of operation.

That story reflects a thought-provoking reality: Amidst a vibrant market for translated books, translators cannot make a living from their profession. Limited compensation hinders professional development in this field. Many people with strong foreign language skills are shifting to commercial or legal translation to earn a more stable income.

However, it is precisely under such pressure that the inviolable boundary between humans and machines is affirmed. Translator Pham Duc Hung points out a reality: AI can only translate documents, but literary translation requires human emotion and sensitivity. Idioms, proverbs, dialects, or the layers of cultural meaning hidden behind words are things that machines find difficult to fully convey.

Having ventured into translation in 2005, he has quietly amassed a considerable body of work with 8 published books on literature and skills (The Buried Candle, The Deruga Case, The Child of the Age, Outstanding Short Stories from Around the World, The Wheel of Fate, Money is Useless...) along with hundreds of short stories and poems by many German authors published in central and local newspapers and magazines.

A Harvard professor and a Vietnamese poet are working together on a project to translate The Tale of Kieu into English.
The successful translation also yielded positive results when the novel *The Deruga Affair* was honored with the Thai Nguyen Provincial Literature and Arts Award for the period 2017-2021.

However, producing such valuable translations requires a team of translators with a deep understanding of the language, culture, and literature. In Thai Nguyen, despite possessing a wealth of language experts from universities, the field of literary translation in the locality remains relatively quiet and largely spontaneous.

Preserving the essence of Vietnamese literature in the face of algorithms is difficult enough; figuring out how to perform the "reverse translation" task, bringing the indigenous literary and cultural resources of the Tea region to the world in the digital age, is an even greater concern.

Associate Professor Tran Thi Viet Trung (Critical and Critical Studies Branch, Union of Literature and Arts Associations of Thai Nguyen Province) believes that: To develop translation resources and bring the literature and culture of the tea-growing region to the world, there needs to be a mechanism for commissioning translations from the State, while also encouraging foreign students learning Vietnamese to participate in translating works into their languages.

Clearly, promoting local culture internationally cannot rely solely on the dedication and resources of translators. For local literary works to reach international readers, support in terms of mechanisms, publishing partnerships, and large-scale promotion is necessary.

This also includes training a team of translators, developing specialized translation models linked to universities, and implementing policies to encourage international students and researchers to participate in translating Vietnamese works into their own languages."
Báo Thái Nguyên
21/06/2026
https://www.vietnam.vn/en/van-hoc-dich-va-nhung-noi-niem-tran-tro
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"7 reasons to read the Odyssey
The new Catalan translation, by Pau Sabaté, claims the strength and validity of the classic, which tells the adventures of Odysseus and the longed-for return to Ithaca

This is how the new Catalan version of Homer's Odyssey begins, one of the foundational epic poems in the history of literature, translated by Pau Sabaté and just published by Bernat Metge Universal, a label from Abacus. The classic tells the journey of the heroic and cunning Odysseus (or Ulysses, depending on the version), after the Trojan War – an episode dealt with in the Iliad, Homer's other literary monument–, with the aim of reaching the island of Ithaca, reuniting with his wife and son, Penelope and Telemachus, and reclaiming his throne. It is one of the books "most known and influential, subject to countless readings, rewrites and interpretations," comments the editor in the preface of the volume, Roger Aluja. Why does it continue to amaze readers and motivate new adaptations, such as the one that filmmaker Christopher Nolan is about to premiere, almost three thousand years after its conception?

1.
A foundational and enigmatic text
"Homer is the great child poet. The world is born and Homer sings it. He is the bird of that dawn". These words by Victor Weber in the first chapter of his essay William Shakespeare (1864) serve to illustrate the foundational element of the Odyssey. Composed and recited orally since the 9th century BC and fixed in writing during the 8th century BC, it is one of the first epic poems in the Western literary canon. Divided into 24 cantos and comprising more than 12,000 hexameters, it has been praised by writers as diverse as Dante Alighieri, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce –who offered a very personal reinterpretation in Ulysses–, Mercè Rodoreda, Jorge Luis Borges, and Margaret Atwood. "Whether the Odyssey is Homer's work or not adds a mist of mystery that seems secondary to me. What is important is that we have two great poems attributed to this name", comments Roger Aluja.

In the essay The Scar of Ulysses, included in Mimesis (1946) and recently recovered by Acantilado in Spanish, Erich Auerbach (1892-1957) praised "the joy of sensory existence that becomes present" when reading the Odyssey: "We don't care to know if it's a legend, if it's all lies – he adds–. Homer doesn't need to insist on the historical truth of his narrative, his reality is solid enough. Homer seduces us, traps us in the reality he describes, and that's enough for him. In that real world, which exists in itself, and to which we as readers have been brought as if by magic, there is nothing else. The Homeric poems hide nothing, they contain no teaching or secret second meaning".

Cargando
2.
Resonates in the past of any reader
Classics can be fascinating on a personal level – and end up in the "unforgettable" books drawer – or blend into the collective unconscious, as Italo Calvino recalled in Why Read the Classics (1981; in Catalan at Edicions 62). Youthful readings are so important, for Calvino, that he recommends rereading them at least once in a lifetime. “As we grow older, we change and our encounter with texts is totally different,” he writes: every rereading of a classic is, in reality, a reading as initiatory and surprising as the first.The love for Pau Sabaté and Roger Aluja's Odyssey

began in adolescence and has been transforming. "The first time I read it, I was 15 years old – Sabaté recalls. We had the second translation by Carles Riba at home [published between 1947 and 1948]. It amazed me. When you overcome the barrier of the splendid language it uses, it becomes very seductive and interesting." Homer influenced Sabaté in his decision to study Greek and, later, classical philology at the University of Barcelona (UB). In 2019, he inaugurated the lavish Bernat Metge Universal collection with his translation of the Iliad, and six years later he repeats with the Odyssey. His editor, Roger Aluja, was also captivated by the same book as Sabaté when he was in high school. "My research project consisted of comparing various versions of the sixth canto – he explains. Riba's, which was the first I read, but also the one in prose by Joan Alberich [La Magrana, 1998], and a couple or three in Spanish." When he was studying classical philology at the UB, Aluja coincided in the classroom with the Hellenist Jaume Pòrtulas: "He is one of the foremost specialists in the world in Homeric poetry. Professor Pòrtulas ended up directing my doctoral thesis, which is an aesthetic commentary on the eleventh canto of the Odyssey".

Pau Sabaté and Roger Aluja, translator and editor of Homer's 'Odyssey', during the interview at Casa Abacus, on Peu de la Creu street in Barcelona.XAVIER BERTRAL
Cargando
3.
It goes beyond being an adventure book
"TheOdyssey" is a book of travels, without travels –assures Dolors Miquel in the epilogue of the new edition of the Bernat Metge Universal–. A tale that a shepherd or a peasant would tell by a fire or on a summer evening. Or someone from distant lands. It would seem that the author is telling us that the only great and possible journey is that of the logos, that the most penetrating Odyssey of all is that of the imagination."

It is Odysseus himself who, transformed within the work into an aede –a term that designated Greek rhapsode poets–, is in charge of narrating his adventures, among which are the deception of the cyclops Polyphemus, the song of the Sirens –who have the head of a woman and the body of a bird–, the sacrifice of the Sun's cows, and his relationships with Nausicaa, Circe, and Calypso. "Although Calypso offers him immortality if he stays with her on the island where she lives, Odysseus prefers to return to Ithaca to reunite with Penelope and his son Telemachus –says Sabaté–. At first glance, the most striking and attractive part of the Odyssey is the adventures, but the cantos that take place in Ithaca are fundamental. For the adult reader, perhaps they are even more interesting." In relation to highlighting the adventures in the epic poem, Carles Riba considered it, in the prologue to his second translation, an attempt to bring the classic "to the marketplace," and added: "To snatch the Odyssey" from the monopoly of more or less learned Hellenists, all right; but as much as delivering it to the insensitivity and banality of mere novel devourers [...] it is difficult to resign oneself to it".

4.
Allows rediscovering a different hero
Odysseus represents "a type of heroism different from that of Achilles, the great protagonist of the Iliad", says Aluja. He shares with Achilles skill on the battlefield, but unlike him, "he does not give up other war tactics, such as ambushes, camouflage, or the use of the bow, which for warriors of strength is the weapon of cowards".

Cargando
"Odysseus is a master of dissimulation and deception", comments Sabaté. The fact that he is a man "of great cunning" –according to Riba–, "of a thousand faces" –in the translation by Joan F. Mira in 2011 for Proa– or "very versatile" –in Sabaté's version– allows him to overcome all obstacles, human and divine, during the ten years that separate him from the end of the Trojan War and his arrival in Ithaca. "When he wakes up on the beach of Ithaca, Athena [or Athena], his protector, transforms him into a miserable beggar, so that he remains unnoticed by everyone, friends and enemies alike –writes Jaume Pòrtulas in the prologue to the latest reissue of the Odyssey translated by Carles Riba in the Bernat Metge Essencial in 2019–. Finally, already at home and among his own, the man who had been [...] No one will manage to recover, thanks to a series of measured and successive recognitions, the different facets of his personal and social self. He thus returns to the fullness of himself. We could say that he rebuilds himself: he rebuilds himself as the father of Telemachus, as the husband of Penelope, as the son of Laertes, and also as the king of Ithaca".

Detail of Odysseus's route map that leads him from Troy to Ithaca, included in the Proa edition of the book.Proa
5.
The excellence of Catalan translations
There are three versions of the Odyssey by Carles Riba: between the first, published by Editorial Catalana in 1919, and the last, by Alpha – from the Col·lecció Bernat Metge – in 1953, more than three decades passed. "The mark it has left on contemporary Catalan literature has been important, although perhaps more in the realm of poets, translators, and other writers than for the average reader," admits Jaume Pòrtulas. When Joan F. Mira published his Odyssey in 2011 with Proa, he aimed "not to embellish the text, nor to try to improve it, nor to pretend to make it more poetic and more elevated". Like Riba and Sabaté, but unlike Joan Alberich's version, he translated it in verse. "Translating Homer in prose is entirely respectable, but it can never be read, perceived, or felt like a translation in verse – Mira argued at the time –. Never, in any way. And translating Homer in verse means, if it is materially possible (in some languages it certainly is not), reproducing the hexameters of the original".

Cargando
Pau Sabaté has wanted to follow "Riba's path": "I have tried to capture the passion for genuineness. Riba is sometimes even colloquial. He also has the aspiration to be very literal, to convey the strangeness of the original Greek text, which sometimes seems like an incantation. I have tried not to emphasize this point". The translator has avoided "modernizing the language of the Odyssey to the extreme". The reader interested in a sound prose version – made from the English adaptation by Samuel Butler, author of Erewhon, in 1900 – can turn to the recent edition by Blackie Books, which features the translation by Xavier Pàmies.

6.
A poem full of women that announces patriarchy
As Dolors Miquel points out in her epilogue, the Dolors Miquel points out in her epilogue, the Odyssey opens and closes with the goddess Athena. Throughout the poem, women have "a more relevant role than in the Iliad", says Aluja. "Although Calypso wants to keep Odysseus on the island, she eventually lets him go, and it is Circe who explains all the obstacles he must overcome to reach Ithaca — she adds—. Penelope awaits him there, who has managed to postpone the decision to choose a suitor with the cunning of undoing at night what she weaves during the day. Until the work is finished, she will not remarry." Miquel explains that beneath this female presence beats "the beginning of a phallocentric truth obsessed with hiding what is mysterious, what is feminine, uterine and unique". She recalls that Greek thought, appealing to the philosopher and psychoanalyst Luce Irigaray, transmits a "world that man has constructed to supplant adhesion to the maternal world, to assert himself against the mother, against participation in her world". In the Odyssey

7.
It will allow you to go down to hell and come back
In addition to proposing a journey through various Greek islands and allowing the reader to learn about their fauna, the Odyssey is a poem rich in mentions of trees and plants. "The names of animals and plants are always a thorny issue when translating ancient literature –comments Pau Sabaté–. The flora and fauna of the eastern Mediterranean, even if not radically different from ours, do not entirely correspond to that of the western shores either. A second problem is that the temporal distance and the limited nature of the sources have made certain denominations confusing." Wracking his brains, Sabaté has reached the conclusion that the "double thicket" under which Ulysses shelters on the island of the Phaeacians is formed by a part of olive tree and another that, instead of being broom or wild olive, must be oleaster. "A wild olive and an olive tree growing together do not quite make a "}double thicket" –he adds–. The usual cultivation technique for olive trees was to graft them onto oleasters to make them fruit faster.

Cargando
One of the riskiest adventures posed by the epic poem is the journey to Hades, the name by which hell was known in ancient Greece. "Odysseus goes there twice. The first time is explained in the eleventh canto, and among the most memorable passages is the reunion with Achilles, the hero of the Iliad", recalls the translator. Achilles laments having had to pay the price of death to achieve glory among the living: "Do not try to console me about death, Odysseus, do not comfort me! / I would much rather earn a day's wage on earth / by hiring myself out to a man without inheritance or much to live on / than be the king of all the dead, of those who have finished." Odysseus learns his lesson and ends up returning home."
Jordi Nopca
12/06/2026
https://en.ara.cat/culture/7-reasons-to-read-the-odyssey_130_5767086.amp.html
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"How Soviet prisons spread a secret 'language of thieves' now spoken by millions

The tricks of the jail jargon Fenya were once used to bewilder guards in Stalin's Gulags. Now they are being used by Russian cyber-criminals.

When would you hide in a raspberry? Why don't you want to be a sixer? And what does it mean to go to the akademiya?

Russian often takes slang to complex levels, such as through Mat, its linguistic system for obscenities. But even a "matershchinnik" (a well-practiced master of swearing) might find the above phrases nonsensical – unless, of course, they are familiar with Fenya, the language of Russia's colossal prison system.

This language of criminals has been deployed by underworld figures for centuries to puzzle and evade. But during the 20th Century, its curious mixture of double entendre and loan words ballooned in Soviet prisons.

With German, Greek and Yiddish influences, Fenya is brimming with confusing hidden meanings. In Russian, "babki" literally means "grandmas", but in Fenya, it also means "money". "Varezhka" means a "mitten" but also a "mouth, while "khalyava", derived from the Hebrew for "milk", is a "freebie" or "giveaway".

A single word in Fenya can contain hidden codes known only to speakers of the slang. And just as it once bewildered prison camp guards, its language tricks are now being being used online, obscuring the intent of cyber-criminals and confusing authorities.

For instance, while the Russian words мусор or musor normally translate to "trash", its Fenya equivalent today means a cop who may have infiltrated the dark-web forums where cyber-attacks are organised.

With Russian cyber-crime booming, investigators must now familiarise themselves with this jargon if they want to get the drop on perpetrators. Even with advances in artificial intelligence, though, machines can struggle to pick up Fenya's constantly evolving nuances.

So how did we get here? While Fenya was muttered on the streets of Tsarist Russia for centuries, it was a series of decisions taken by the Soviet justice system that resulted in its explosion into the mainstream – and ultimately onto the internet too.

Clandestine beginnings
Broadly speaking, Fenya is a type of cryptolect – a camouflaged language often used to confuse others. Today, it has burrowed into broader Russian culture to the degree that some may be unaware of words' original ties to the underworld.

Fenya's origins are shrouded in mystery. One intriguing (though disputed) theory suggests it began with nomadic salesmen called Ofeni who travelled on foot across Russia selling religious knick-knacks. A 17th-Century church schism, the theory goes, declared their wares items heretical, so wayfaring merchants adopted their own unique modes of speech.

Fuel Russian Criminal Tattoo Archive
The king of clubs was known as "St Nicholas" in fenya, while "to hold a suit" means having authority over a community of thieves (Credit: Fuel Russian Criminal Tattoo Archive)

More is known about how Fenya spread. The vocabulary is thought to have started expanding in the 19th Century, writes Mark Galeotti, an expert in modern Russia, intelligence consultant and honorary professor at University College London, in his 2018 book The Vory: Russia's Super Mafia. It was then, he says, that street urchins and criminals started to place "fe" and "nye" sounds in the middle of words.

These particular tics, redolent of an underworld pig-Latin, were eventually dropped, writes Galeotti. But not before gangs of pickpockets and street scammers adopted Fenya. Initiations into their crews counted on a basic understanding of it. Words and phrases were documented at length in an 1863 dictionary of living Russian,which attempted to categorise Russian as it was lived and spoken.

In Fenya, hierarchies are expressed through card-game jargon, with suits and clubs symbolising bona fide thieves. Animals take on secret double-lives as objects, so speakers know that a monkey is a mirror and a fox is a folding-knife. Altogether, Fenya's vocabulary is thought to comprise between 10,000 and 27,000 words.

Among the intelligentsia of the late Tsarist period, the tantalising suggestion of a shadow criminal society fascinated literary figures and inspired so-called vagabond music – where performers sang in Fenya and romanticised slum life.

But it was the enormous social upheaval of wars and revolution to come that really cemented Fenya's rise.

Fenya's explosion
After winning the Russian civil war and creating the USSR in 1922, the Bolsheviks experimented with expanding the country's prison camps. In these forerunners to the notorious Gulag system, all sorts of people would mix with petty criminals – giving everyone from peasants to the intelligentsia a first-hand taste of Fenya.

Alamy
In Soviet Gulags, everyone from peasants to the intelligentsia mixed with petty criminals, giving them a first-hand taste of Fenya (Credit: Alamy)

When Stalin took power, millions more were incarcerated, leading the enigmatic vocabulary to spread among even more prisoners and become standardised among criminals, eventually evolving into a kind of prison-camp vocabulary with whole new terms.

"Language became a kind of communicative survival tool," says Martin Puchner, professor of English and comparative literature at Harvard University in the US, and author of The Language of Thieves: The Story of Rotwelsch and One Family's Secret History.

In the prisons, professional criminals formalised Fenya into the "vorovskoy zakon", or thieves' code, a Mafioso-style set of laws that signalled status: those familiar with its rules, and the commoners or "muzhik" (peasants) who would only ever be their marks.

Fenya and cyber-crime lingo are almost like a form of convergent evolution – Roman Sannikov
Meanwhile, Stalin attempted to crush criminality, along with anything he associated with it – like Fenya. As early as 1930, official Soviet magazines decried "thieves songs" as a dangerous affront to proletarian culture.

Popular artists reinvented themselves in more ideologically acceptable directions. The famous Soviet estrada singer Leonid Utesov – whose jaunty thieves' song From The Odessa Gaol was once a crowd-pleaser – began performing for the military instead, converting his style into what one historian called a "Soviet product cleansed of decadence".

Leaving the prisons
The days following Stalin's death in 1953 brought another twist to the tale of Fenya.

A mass amnesty of more than a million prisoners meant petty criminals left the Gulags in droves. They returned home, bringing Fenya with them. "Blatnaya pesnya" – thieves' songs – broke out in taverns across the country.

"[At this time] there was a sense that criminal culture was a folk culture, suppressed by the official party," says Svetlana Stephenson, professor of sociology at London Metropolitan University and author of Gangs of Russia: From the Streets to the Corridors of Power. "There was a flirtation with this world among the intelligentsia."

Cryptolects

Many other communities around the world have developed secret languages, or "cryptolects". Examples include:

• The Kali-worshipping Thuggees of India talked in Ramaseeana from the 1700s

• London's 1800s "demimonde" chittered in Flash, famously spoken by the Artful Dodger when he utters: "Hullo, my covey! What's the row?"

• In the 1900s, US carnival workers talked in Ciazarn, the secret language of "carnies", with some words still used in professional wrestling today

• During Brazil's military dictatorship, the travesti (a distinct LGBTQ community) created the Pajubá language, adopting Yoruba words into Portuguese, as protection from government persecution

• Before the UK decriminalised homosexuality in 1967, some gay men would use Polari to communicate in secret

• Some twins invent entirely new languages – spoken only by two

Attempts to suppress thieves' songs only boosted their popularity. As the USSR intensified its censorship, enterprising citizens bootlegged music, cutting cheap X-ray sheets into disc shapes with scissors and printing sounds on them using home-made lathes. Known as "jazz on bones", these were playable on gramophones. The burgeoning black market in these sheets allowed people to trade music from denounced Russian émigrés as well as record their own songs, which was otherwise impossible.

Home recordings of thieves' songs circulated widely. Later, with the advent of the cassette tape, the rowdy sounds of underground artists like Arkady Severny and emigrant singer Dina Vierny – with their bawdy tales of sex, robberies, violence and gulags – thundered through the USSR.

By the time the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, Fenya's folkloric status was cemented, despite the best efforts of the state. Yet speaking Fenya in polite society was still unthinkable.

At the turn of the millennium, however, it entered a surprising new era of acceptability. Russian political elites including Vladimir Putin began to use Fenya in their official communiques, says Larissa Ryazanova-Clarke, professor of Russian and sociolinguistics at the University of Edinburgh in the UK. This "period of linguistic turmoil" was due to the "landslide of the norm", she says, reflecting the dramatic changes of the time.

Officials probably used this language to lend them a populist appeal, says Stephenson, who has described the trend as "Kremlovskaya Fenya" – Kremlin Fenya. "I think it expresses the culture of violence, which has penetrated to the very top of Russian society," she says. Paradoxically, officials banned speaking Fenya in Russian prisons but continued to speak it themselves.

Obfuscating the web
​As Fenya burrowed into everyday language at the turn of the 21st Century, it also began to evolve in a new arena: the digital revolution.

In 1999 on the early Russian internet (or "RuNet"), a user on the FidoNet bulletin board published a "Manifesto of Anti-Literacy", writes academic Larisa Morkoborodova. This railed against "the so-called spelling correctness on the Net" and urged "all masters of the Russian word" to "challenge the killing of our live language by soulless automatons!".

Check Point Research
An apparently nonsense output from an automated translation tool of Fenya words (Credit: Check Point Research)
Their deliberate misspellings and punny inventions evolved into new slang known as padonki, also ironically named olbanian. Millions per month speak in padonki online, writes Morkoborodova, and it has seeped into broader society. It means many Russians are familiar with padonki – only a subset of them criminals. Still, its creative semantics can cause headaches for cyber investigators.

The lingo deliberately breaks Russian language conventions, emphasising double consonants and phonetically written words, with loanwords from English that deviate from their original meanings.

For example, Russian speakers might write "email" as "mylo" – literally "soap dish" – because at the dawn of digital culture in Russia there was simply no word for email, says Roman Sannikov, a cyber-security expert who's worked as a linguist for the FBI. The Russian word for soap dish sounded phonetically close enough. "If you're using machine translation, sometimes you'll get 'soap' instead of an 'email'," he adds.

With Cyrillic (Russian) keyboards rare at the time, some web users also deployed the numerical "4" as shorthand for a "ch" sound, because "four" is "chetyre" in Russian. 

"A lot of it came from English, because the words just did not exist in Russian," Sannikov says. "A hard drive was frequently called a 'winch', because many of them were branded 'Winchester'."

'Cyber-Fenya'
"Most of the people that created cyber-slang were kids or young people," says Sannikov – rather different from the Fenya-uttering vory (thieves) of the past.

So when Fenya words do crop up, says Fyodor Yarochkin, a researcher at the cyber security company Trend Micro, they might speak to a rarer sort of cross-pollination: traditional crooks who've entered the realm of white-collar cyber-criminals, perhaps to discuss more physical kinds of lawbreaking.

More like this:

• The lost medieval pronouns of English intimacy

• Listen to the lost languages of ancient stone-age humans

• What's the best way to learn a new language?

Or, having learned phrases from gangster movies, they might just be trying to impress their associates and look tough, he suggests, using Fenya as a status symbol or cultural signifier rather than evasion.

Still, when chat logs from the Russian cyber-crime gang Conti leaked in 2022, among the logistics, obscenities and general blather were words that can be traced back to Fenya.

Researchers at global cyber-security firm Check Point noted that some of the chat logs appeared impossible to understand, with machine translation failing when they said phrases to each other such as: "My soaps don't bathe. I've been warming them up for months." What the criminals were really talking about was avoiding email blacklists.

Forums for "initial access brokers" – the insider threats at organisations who open the doors to cyber-attackers – also often speak in a mixture of Fenya and Mat, helping to disguise what they're up to.

"Fenya and cyber-crime lingo are almost like a form of convergent evolution," says Sannikov – together forming an intricate semantic tapestry that's hard to unpick. You could call the jumble of online criminal lingo "cyber-Fenya", he adds.

This internet usage is just the latest example of how criminal argot continues to be diluted, changed and occasionally absorbed into Russian. And Fenya's reach today is ultimately thanks to Stalin and the Gulags, which turned it into one of the most widespread covert languages in the world.

Many of the prisoners there could have told you that a raspberry was a secret lair, a "sixer" was at the very bottom of the criminal hierarchy, and that the "akademiya", or prison, is where you never wanted to end up – though it certainly would have given you a good education in Fenya."
Tamlin Magee
Alamy
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260611-fenya-how-cyber-criminals-adopted-russias-secret-language-of-thieves
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Lost in translation
Attempting to understand the lives and thought of our ancestors can teach us about ourselves

Emily Wilson opens Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: Journeys Through Ancient Literature with a quote from Louis MacNeice’s 1938 poem Autumn Journal, written in the looming shadow of the Second World War. Wilson highlights MacNeice’s meditations on the value of looking back to antiquity in such dark times — or, perhaps, at the futility of such an endeavour.

Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: Journeys through Ancient Literature, Emily Wilson, Profile Books, £10.99
MacNeice’s poem contrasts the difference between viscerally imagining the ancient world, and teaching it within the constraints of the 1930s educational system, as well as contemplating the prejudices and idealisations through which we may view the past. Despite the unimaginable gap in time, Wilson believes there are elements of the ancient world that she can clearly imagine. How a translator can bring alive this tension between the strangeness of the complex human beings and alien cultural practices from millennia ago and their strange familiarity is the core question that runs through her book. Is it possible to do so without projecting ideas from our time and place, and even the translator’s own personal experience? Can their words be brought back to life in a new language — or must the dead stay dead?

The book is a collection of Wilson’s essays she has unwoven and re-weaved, before stitching together as a coherent whole, so each chapter that explores a different aspect of ancient literature and culture and its journey into the present, adds to our understanding of the translator’s challenges. The chapters include a skewering of the modern “watered-down form” of Stoicism (it is a spiritual path for people who want to hold on to their sense of self and their own power: a fancy, rationalised form of egoism), a reminder of the invective and eroticism of Catullus, the fight over ownership of fragments of Sappho and fascinating essays on the comedies of Aristophanes and Terence, and the tragedies of Aeschylus and Euripides. Wilson also traces how Ancient Greek and Roman literature assumed its revered place in Western culture (in the US, Wilson claims this is in large part down to the work of Edith Hamiliton, whose stylistic “highly Americanised, vaguely Christianised” translations remain popular almost one hundred years after first being published and contribute to the belief in the continuity of a Western cultural superiority from Greece to modern-day America).

The last, longest essay, is the most fascinating. Wilson compares single phrases from the Odyssey across several translations. The different choices of not just words and phrases, but style and structure, each translator makes, shows the rich variety of options translators have. Wilson believes it is important to also translate the musical rhythms of ancient metrical verse. Many modern translations ignore this challenge and translate into English free verse or prose (Wilson’s version uses iambic pentameter). Wilson feels that by failing to do so you do not convey the artfulness of the originals, which is a major component of their strangeness for the modern reader. In both this book and her translations Wilson makes a strong case for this to be so. Through sharing the anguished and long debate Wilson had with herself in how to translate a single Greek word — polytropos — she draws back the veil on how a brilliant scholar approaches her work. After many twists and turns Wilson translates it as “complicated.” Others have used “man of many ways” (Richmond Lattimore), “that man skilled in all ways of contending” (Robert Fitzgerald), “man of many twists and turns” (Robert Fagles), and “resourceful man” (E. V. Rieu). Wilson describes the process that took “many hours, days and weeks” to eliminate countless other options before landing on “complicated” for a combination of syntactical and semantical reasons (from the number of syllables to liking the concept of complexity as a positive quality in the world of the poem).

Wilson states that the, “juxtaposition of ancient and modern languages, literatures and lives reminds us that it is through our words that we are remembered and understood, long after our deaths, and that even the most minute differences of language or phrasing may make all the difference.” With the increasing use of artificial intelligence applications and models to craft communications, this is a timely point to make. Many are now speaking through translators, when they outline the gist of what they want to say leaving technology to select specific words. Wilson’s explanation of her choice of “complicated” is an insight into the thought processes involved in translating and a reminder of the importance of what we are relinquishing to technology. It is also a justification for her deeply thought out choice.

Wilson’s 2017 translation of the Odyssey was the first by a woman into English. Inevitably, as the first woman, some critics argued that her approach at times distorted the original text by overlaying modern feminist ideas that would have been alien to those in Homer’s time. Her choice of “complicated” was the focus of some of that criticism. Supporters praised her for removing archaic, “imported” misogyny and challenging established interpretations. Wilson recognises that, “Language is never a neutral tool by which we represent the world: every word and phrase carries with it a tangle of cultural assumptions and connotations.” If Wilson is guilty of overlaying modern ideas, have not all previous translators been guilty of similar?

George Chapman, the first man to complete a full translation of the Odyssey and Iliad into English (published together in 1616 after decades of working on them), claimed that he was visited by the ghost of Homer. This, he believed, gave him unique insight into the poet’s true intentions. More believably, his interpretation of Homer would have been influenced by the philosophical currents of the Elizabethan Golden Age. In the introduction to her translation Wilson notes that Chapman transformed Odysseus into “a true soldier and a gentleman, a proto-Christian and a proto-Stoic, whose greatest virtue is his ability to endure suffering”. In translating the Greek into English, he translated Odysseus’ characteristics into those of a hero of his day. Whole passages of Aristophanes and Catullus were omitted by prudish Victorian translators, due to the moralities of their era.

In the same introduction Wilson announces that, “I try to avoid importing contemporary types of sexism into this ancient poem, instead shining a light on the particular forms of sexism and patriarchy that do exist in the text, which are only partly familiar from our world.” Wilson discusses the scene where Telemachus hangs the slaves (others have translated dmōai less literally as “maids” or “maidservants” which subtly suggests they would have had more agency in an elite household of that time than they would have). Most translations introduce derogatory language that suggests these women are justifiably punished due to their sexual digressions, yet original Greek does not contain such language. Their punishment is as likely motivated by wider dynamics of honour and the loss of face caused by the suitors’ breaches of etiquettes of hospitality (xenia) as for their promiscuity.

Wilson is not the first to challenge the orthodoxy of established translations or to use comparative analysis across multiple translations of Homer to do so. Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges in 1932’s The Homeric Versions conducted a similar exercise. The heart of the essay is a close reading of a single passage of the conversation between Odysseus and Achilles’ ghost, about his son Neoptolemus, across six English translations; “Buckley (literal prose), Butcher & Lang (literal but archaicizing), Cowper (1791, Miltonic blank verse), Pope (1725, heroic couplets with lavish amplification), Chapman (1614, vigorous and idiosyncratic), and Butler (1900, ironic bourgeois prose).”

Borges treats them as equally legitimate “perspectives on a mutable fact”. He asks and answers, “Which of these many translations is faithful? my reader will want to know. I repeat: none or all of them.” For Borges there is no “definitive text”: the concept corresponds only to “religion or exhaustion.” He argues that every text, including Homer’s, is mutable; what we take to be fixed and sacred is merely the product of familiarity and habit. He goes further and claims that translations are not inherently inferior to originals. A good text seems invariable only because we have read it many times; we mistake repetition for necessity. In his 1936 essay The Translators of The Thousand and One Nights, he declared: “The original is unfaithful to the translation.”

In The Homeric Versions, Borges discusses the famous 1861–62 exchange between Francis Newman (who advocated literal translation) and Matthew Arnold (who advocated eliminating distracting details in favour of Homer’s essential qualities: syntactical simplicity, flowing rapidity, and loftiness). Borges argues that both positions are valid. Wilson has also engaged with this debate on several occasions. Whilst acknowledging Arnold’s snobbery towards “poor Newman”, she has described his translation as unreadable, and in conversation about her Iliad translation, stated that she feels, “fairly directly inspired by Matthew Arnold’s discussion of what a Homeric translation should aim for — rapidity, plainness of thought and diction, and nobility.” Today, the debate is also between those who believe a good translator should be invisible, creating work as easily accessible as if it was not originally in a different language, and those who believe a translation should embody the strangeness of the original language and culture, not disguise it. The latter believing the former “colonises” texts into English creating a false kind of homogeneity. Wilson believes that the creation of a more reader-friendly translation does not necessarily imply a desire to appropriate or “colonise” the foreign original, but wants the shock and surprise of a foreign text to be preserved as much as possible. 

In life sometimes literal translations are essential. In his translation of the Odyssey, Alexander Pope interprets Odysseus’ single black ship as a fleet. In Afghanistan, the interpreters I worked with needed to be more precise in the numbers of foreign fighters or IEDs on the road ahead. Errors in basic vocabulary could lead to the targeting of a wedding party over Taliban jirga. The coalition used service personnel who had often only been through less than a year’s worth of language training for the roles that required access to sensitive conversations, and for many other roles hired urban, Dari-speakers from the north to serve as interpreters in the rural, Pashtun-dominated south. The former would not be able to untangle the cultural assumptions and connotations and communicate past the words to the meaning of what each was trying to say. The latter often possessed marginal English skills and would fail to do the same in the reverse direction. Consequently, conversations between politicians, leaders, soldiers and elders were reduced to a dialogue conducted on the level of children pointing and naming when trying to navigate sensitive and complex cultural issues.

A tragicomic example was provided during the 2006 siege of Musa Qala in Helmand Province. British forces were using an interpreter who had been raised in Birmingham, UK. The local soldiers working alongside the British suspected that he was adding his own words and interpretations to the dialogue between them. Concern over mistranslations escalated into a physical confrontation, with the local soldiers chasing the interpreter around the compound. A British officer had to draw his pistol to stop the chase. In Afghanistan, at times the gulf between allies and enemies; between Western notions of democracy, liberalism and individualism and those of tribal loyalty and the values of the Pashtunwali honour code, felt as vast as that between the modern West and Homer’s Greece. We did not have interpreters with the depth of knowledge, eloquence and intellectual rigour as Wilson and her fellow translators of Homer. Even if we did, would we have understood the heroic code of the Pashtunwali as well as Odysseus might have?

Borges shows us that the reader is also complicit in the act of constant reinterpretation. In his 1939’s Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, Menard sets out to immerse himself so thoroughly in Cervantes’ masterpiece, Don Quixote, that he can spontaneously “re-create” it, word for word, in the original seventeenth-century Spanish. (Initially, he considers achieving this by becoming Cervantes through learning Spanish, returning to the Catholic faith, fighting against the Moors, and forgetting the history of Europe 1602-1918. He ultimately rejects this approach as too easy). At the time of his death, Menard had successfully produced the ninth and thirty-eighth chapters of the first part of Don Quixote, along with a fragment of chapter twenty-two. The narrator compares a passage from Cervantes’s text with the identical passage from Menard’s text. Despite the words being exactly the same, the narrator argues that Menard’s version is infinitely richer, more subtle, and more complex because it was written by a modern man with the weight of three centuries of history behind him. Menard’s achievement is not that he wrote the same book again but that he wrote another book.

Anticipating post-structuralism, Borges implies that the meaning of literary works depends on the historical and social contexts in which they are read. The act of reading becomes the primary site of meaning creation. Each generation rewrites the classics by reading them through the lens of their own contemporary experiences as much as each translator does. We did not arrive in Afghanistan as blank slates, but as the products of a civilisation that traced itself back to Ancient Greece on a mission to convert those we found there to the pinnacle of a superior culture and way of being: western liberal democracy. Unable to think outside of our own paradigm, we could not understand that even if we could deliver what we were claiming we were going to (without the resolve and resources to do so) it was what few wanted. Afghanistan was not a military failure; it was a failure of translation. 

These ancient texts can help us to see the air we breathe and the water in which we swim

In the challenge, though, there is also opportunity. Wilson claims that it can be as difficult for us to see the cultural assumptions of our own time as for a bird to see air, or fish water. Yet, these ancient texts can help us to see the air we breathe and the water in which we swim. Reading translations of both past and present foreign works can help us see that some of what is normal to us is alien to others. They can give us a sense that another way of being is possible. The evidence of this can be found in the smallest nuance of one translated word in the changing layers of translations over time. As Wilson states “it is more valuable than ever to remember that the world has not always been as it is now.” We are living through a time of social, geopolitical and technological transition.

MacNeice’s Autumn Journal is both a panorama of his era — capturing the anxieties of the Munich crisis, the Spanish Civil War and the looming shadow of another global conflict, as well as the disintegration of his personal life — and a situating of his time against the people and thinkers of the past. As MacNeice did in his time of uncertainty, we should meditate on the flux of the present, the fleeting moment between past and future, and try to imagine ourselves amongst those so unimaginably different yet strangely familiar. Their anxieties were not our anxieties, but also not wholly different. We cannot simply mirror their solutions but understanding them may help open us up to the possibilities of our complicated times, and knowing that they endured should give us comfort that we may too.

Wilson’s book is a timely reminder that that selection of words and phrases is key to the richness of human interaction and explaining what we really mean. We may not ever be able to fully understand the dead, but in trying to do so we may understand ourselves a little better."
Artillery Row 8 June, 2026
Andy Owen
https://thecritic.co.uk/lost-in-translation-2/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Subs, dubs, and AI flubs: Lost in film translation
Culture

When I travel, I like to think I am not like the other British tourists. I try my best to blend in with the locals – attempting (and sometimes failing) to remain nonchalant on complicated metro systems, eating local cuisine, and avoiding ‘loud’ clothing. On a recent solo trip to Stockholm, however, my expectations were challenged by what I believed to be a given: English. I had been to Italy, where English captions accompany pretty much everything, and France, where the same is true, though it is offered with more reluctance. In my ignorance, I had not bothered to learn any Swedish beyond a measly ‘engelska?’, which became problematic as I quickly discovered that my bleached-blonde hair made me look like a Scandi girl to the locals.

I should experience some local culture, immerse myself in the arts scene, I thought as I settled into my hotel. Checking the programme of the capital’s Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, or ‘city theatre’, the single showing with English subtitles was the Austrian film How to Be Normal and the Oddness of the Other World, directed by Florian Pochlatko. Sure, it wasn’t Swedish at all, but how else would I understand the story, if it wasn’t for English subtitles? As I hurriedly approached the Kulturhuset, one Ryanair flight and a frenzy through the Stockholm metro behind me, I was suddenly informed that there would be no subtitles at all.

How hard could it be to watch an entire film in German when I could not even introduce myself in the language? Quite hard, it turns out. Sure, body language and visual effects went a long way, and I felt the beautiful serendipity of discovering a Swedish review on Letterboxd from a local at the same screening, but I missed almost every joke, and felt myself growing increasingly bored as the film progressed. The biggest surprise for me in Stockholm was just how English-less it was, from road signs to price tags to food labels – I had to open Google Translate in the middle of 7/11 to work out if I could eat my halloumi wrap cold.

I do not expect sympathy at all, as my own ignorance led to this situation. But the experience did make me reflect on the relationship between native English speakers and subtitling in film. My not-so-Swedish encounter was certainly extreme, with no subtitles, or even a warning, beforehand – but I was not so turned off by the experience so as to never do it again. It made me wonder, are sole English speakers reliant on subtitles? Do they add or detract from the viewing experience?

Subtitles themselves are in many ways crucial, so that we may broaden our tastes and learn about other cultures. After accepting the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film in 2020, Parasite director Bong Joon Ho famously stated that “once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films”. I do believe that progress is already well underway in the globalisation of film, as what was once potentially a pursuit of only the avant-garde film student is now available to the masses. This is particularly thanks to the rise of Letterboxd, where international arthouse cinema is compiled into digestible lists.

The art of translating subtitles is also, perhaps surprisingly, one of the few language-based jobs not being ravaged by advancements in AI. Despite the now infamous case of Duolingo replacing much of its staff with AI, translator vacancies continue to grow, owing to the simple fact that AI is not currently capable of the quality control and idiomatic knowledge possessed by a human. Have you ever tried to translate complicated Swedish halloumi wrap instructions with Google Translate? In regard to film, it is vital that translated subtitles do actually convey the meaning of the scene, which is why the role of humans is still absolutely necessary.

Yet, anxieties concerning AI continue to plague the translation industry, and may result in changes to subtitling in the future. Hollywood actresses Demi Moore and Reese Witherspoon have both come out in favour of AI, with the latter even stating that “it’s so, so important that women are involved in AI because it will be the future of filmmaking”. AI tools continue to improve, and it is difficult to predict the accuracy of both Witherspoon’s statement and the concerns felt by translators, but the reality is that AI usage is already commonplace in filmmaking, from editing to script-writing and more. AI dubbing is also prevalent, with new software able to move actors’ mouths to fit speech in other languages. Controversy arose last year when generative AI was found to have been used to translate speech from English to Hungarian in The Brutalist – I, for one, am pleased that the Academy has since cracked down on AI-generated content in film, but I do worry about the future opportunities for translators in film, as well as for actors who do actually speak foreign languages.

While it is easier than ever to watch films entirely in English, are we missing something by neglecting their original languages? I think that it is important to note that my choice of film in Stockholm was heavily influenced by which ones had English subtitles listed as available. I do not think that cinemas in other countries should bow down to the English language at all, but English speakers may be surprised to realise just how much they can understand without subtitles, and how thought-provoking the result may be. Maybe if I had the guts for it at the time, I would have complemented my Swedish journey with a piece of local culture, and learned something beyond ‘engelska’.

Far from wanting to sound pretentious, I want you to understand that subtitles – both their existence and a lack of them – do not have to be a barrier to a good cinematic experience. It could be fun, even enriching, to actively try to watch film in a different way, such as by watching a colour film in black and white, or without sound. It almost feels like a reinvention of the creativity that comes with watching a silent film in the present day, where a chosen musical accompaniment can completely change our perspective. Watching Murnau’s silent Nosferatu on Wikipedia (yes, you can do that) was a very different experience from, say, the live organ accompaniment to the Oxford Festival of the Arts’ screening of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari at Magdalen Chapel.

There may be limits to this approach, however. Maybe the screenplay of How to Be Normal and the Oddness of the Other World did a lot of heavy lifting, with psychedelic visuals conveying the psychological focus of the film – although the Ed Sheeran poster on main character Pia’s wall completely threw me off, and made me worry more about the state of British cultural exports than her deteriorating mental condition. Ginger singers aside, my point still stands that even without subtitles, foreign-language films can be thoroughly enjoyed."
By
Emma Heagney
26th May 2026
https://cherwell.org/2026/05/26/subs-dubs-and-ai-flubs-lost-in-film-translation/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

Expanding the reach of global literature through translation, a grant program and a literary award are open for submissions. 

"Translation is an incredibly important part of the global publishing industry. Two opportunities – a grant and an award – are currently open for submissions.

PEN Presents x SALT

 

PEN Presents is a grant program created by English PEN that seeks to expand the landscape of translated literature by supporting sample translations, funding the unpaid work of creating samples, and giving publishers in the UK access to titles from underrepresented languages and regions.

 

This year’s PEN Presents is a partnership between English PEN and the South Asian Literature in Translation project (SALT). The deadline for submissions for the next session of PEN x Salt are closing May 31, 2026.

 

The grant is open to translators anywhere in the world in any stage of their career who have written in any official or unofficial languages of South Asia; whose authors are citizens of a South Asian country; resident in South Asia or of south Asian heritage; and for work of any form, genre, style and era. The work must also not have an English translation published in any territory.

 

A shortlist of 24 applicants will receive grants of £500 to create 5,000-word sample translations of their proposed works, with a final selection of 12 samples.

 

In April, the last round of winners was announced.

 

“These projects brought together an expert panel and gave them the delightful challenge of selecting winners from numerous brilliant projects across a range of languages, many of which are hugely underrepresented in English translation,” said Preti Taneja, English PEN Translation Advisory co-chair.

 

“The writing we present here has great potential to open readers’ minds to the richness of South Asian storytelling, poetry and nonfiction. This is politically urgent, humanely thought-provoking, lyrical, and even profoundly humorous work. Agents and editors now have the wonderful task of taking these samples forward to full publication, and I could not be more excited to see what comes next for these works, their authors and their translators.”

 

For more information on the program or submission guidelines, visit the website here

 

Sheikh Zayed Book Award

 

Earlier this year, one of the most prestigious literary awards in the Arab world celebrated its 20th anniversary.

 

The Sheikh Zayed Book Award, which is organized by the Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre (ALC) under the auspices of the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi), looks to further Arabic literature and culture around the world.

 

Since its founding, the award has received more than 33,000 submissions and honored 144 laureates. The Translation Grant, which was founded in 2018, has also supported the translation of over 48 titles into 12 languages.

 

The 21st submission cycle marks a defining milestone as the Sheikh Zayed Book Award enters its third decade and continues to play a pivotal role in advancing the global reception of Arab culture.

 

The Award includes ten categories, five of which are open to non-Arabic books – Arabic Culture in Other Languages; Translation; Publishing and Technology; Manuscripts, Encyclopedia, and the Lexicon; and the Cultural Personality of the Year.

 

“Marking twenty years of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award is not only a moment to reflect on its legacy, but also an opportunity to look ahead to its next chapter. As the Award enters its third decade, we invite authors, scholars, translators and publishers from around the world to contribute to a renewed era of literary and intellectual excellence,” said His Excellency Dr Ali Bin Tamim, Secretary-General of the SZBA and Chairman of the ALC.

 

“Through its international reach, the Award continues to serve as a global platform for distinguished voices across generations, strengthening the presence of Arabic literature and culture on the world stage.”"

By Erin L. Cox, Publisher | @erinlcox

https://publishingperspectives.com/2026/05/politically-urgent-humanely-thought-provoking-furthering-translation-projects-around-the-world/

#metaglossia 

#metaglossia_mundus 

"By Eurasia Review

A medieval ophthalmologist who translated Greek works by Galen, Hippocrates, and Plato into Arabic played a pivotal role in shaping Western medical scholarship, according to a recent study published in the journal Cogent Arts and Humanities.

x

In the study, authors affiliated with the University of Sharjah transcribe and translate into English the Arabic text of an original manuscript by Hunayn ibn Ishaq titled In the Eye, Two Hundred and Seven Issues. The ninth-century treatise is an innovative work in ophthalmology that corrected medieval misconceptions and significantly influenced the development of medical knowledge.

Written in a question-and-answer format, the treatise supplements ten other original essays by Hunayn that together are regarded as a landmark in both Islamic and Western medical history. In these works, he provides detailed analyses of eye anatomy, including the layers of the eye and the optic nerves, demonstrating the advances that made lasting contributions to Arabic and Western medicine alike.

“In the field of ophthalmology, Hunayn ibn Ishaq demonstrated his scientific prowess, providing evidence-based explanations and proving that disagreements about the number of eye layers were merely terminological and not substantive,” said the study’s lead author Dalal H. Al-Zubi, a doctoral candidate. “He clarified that the eye consists of seven layers, with only one responsible for vision, while the others support its function.” Hunayn also meticulously described the role of each layer, including its starting and ending points.

The study further highlights Hunayn’s explanation of the muscles controlling eye movement, noting his clarification that the brain governs these muscles via the nerve connecting it to the eye. His work ‘In the Eye, Two Hundred and Seven Issues’ provides clear evidence of the distinctiveness of his methodology in this field,” added Al-Zubi.

Enduring influence
Beyond his medical contributions, the study emphasizes Hunayn’s influence as a translator. As Al-Zubi notes, he enriched the Arabic language by introducing precise medical terminology, including terms for the retina and cornea. Rather than relying on literal translation, Hunayn employed descriptive and analogous renderings and metaphors, producing Arabized terms that conveyed meaning while remaining linguistically natural in Arabic.

A Syriac Christian polymath and member of the then prosperous and far-reaching Church of the East, Hunayn (known in the West as Johannitius) earned the epithet “Sheikh of the Translators.” He played a pivotal role as both a scholar and translator at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad. His translations, often based on original Syriac and Greek manuscripts, were instrumental in preserving Greek scientific knowledge and later transmitting it to Europe.

The study examines Hunayn’s contributions to advancing the translation movement during the early Abbasid period, highlighting how he pioneered the translation paradigm that prioritized rendering the full meaning of the source text rather than adhering to the prevailing practice of word-for-word translation.

While this research marks the first time Hunayn’s Arabic manuscript In the Eye, Two Hundred and Seven Issues, has been translated into English, several of his treatises had earlier reached the West through Latin and other European translations. “Hunayn ibn Ishaq’s writings or translations were largely recognized in the West and were translated into Latin or other European languages. In fact, the medical advances brought about by the publication of Ishaq’s treatises on ophthalmology were significant,” Al-Zubi explained.

The ophthalmologist and medical historian Max Meyerhof, for example, cites Hunayn’s Kitab al-Ashr Maqalat fil-Ayn (The Ten Treatises on the Eye), noting that it represents the earliest known systemic treatment of ophthalmology. Meyerhof mentions that the text was likely used in both Islamic and Western medical schools of the period.

The research further illustrates how Hunayn developed and refined his scientific expertise in medicine. The authors observe that he possessed exceptional mastery of the Arabic language and that his translations enriched scientific and medical nomenclature. “He frequently relied on metaphorical expression, as evidenced by the Arabic term ‘al-Ankabutiyya’ for the arachnoid, explaining that it refers to a spider’s web in the original source language from which the term was derived,” Al-Zubi stated.

She added, “In other instances, he Arabized foreign terms that had no equivalents in Arabic, as he did with al-Shabakiyya for the retina and al-Multahima for the conjunctiva. He was known for coining Arabic terms for their Greek counterparts that reflected an associative relationship between the signified and the signifier. This is particularly evident in his rendering of the retina into الشبكية al-Shabakiyya, chosen because its structure resembles a fisherman’s net, given the dense interweaving of veins and arteries intertwined within it, akin to a fishing net.”

Another reason for Hunayn’s mastery of translation, according to Al-Zubi, was his careful attention to the original coinage and semantic range of Greek terms. Many of his Arabic medical designations, still in use today, were deliberately crafted to align with denotations of the source language. A case in point is Herophilus’ term ‘Amphiblēsteroeidēs,’ a Latinized form derived from ancient Greek medical terminology describing the interwoven vessels of the retina, likened to the mesh of a hoisted fishing net.

A bridge between civilizations
Hunayn’s ophthalmological treatises attest to a level of scientific sophistication that was almost unrivaled in the Middle Ages. In their study, the authors credit him with “providing evidence-based explanations and proving that disagreements about the number of eye layers were merely terminological and not substantive.”

They note that Hunayn’s anatomical analysis identified which of the eye’s seven layers was responsible for vision. He also explained “the number of muscles controlling eye movement and clarified that the brain governs these muscles through the nerve connecting it to the eye. The findings in his manuscript In the Eye: Two Hundred and Seven Questions stand as a testament to the remarkable progress of ophthalmology during the early Abbasid era.”

Asked to assess Hunayn’s place in medical history, Maamoun Saleh Abdulkarim, professor of archaeology and history at the University of Sharjah, described him as a figure of lasting significance: “Hunayn ibn Ishaq significantly influenced the development of Western medicine. He played a crucial role in translating Greek medical texts into Arabic, particularly those of Galen and Hippocrates, refining and explaining them with remarkable scholarly precision.”

Prof. Abdulkarim, who is also among the study’s co-authors, added that “these Arabic translations later served as the foundation for Latin translations used in European universities during the Middle Ages. In this way, Hunayn ibn Ishaq functioned as a vital intellectual bridge between ancient Greek medicine and the medical science that later emerged in medieval European universities.”

In academic literature, Hunayn is widely regarded as a central figure in the transmission of ancient Greek medicine to the Islamic world and in the subsequent diffusion of this knowledge to Europe. As Mesut Idriz, professor of Islamic civilization at the University of Sharjah, has noted, “Hunayn ibn Ishaq’s translations and original writings exerted influence not only within the Islamic world but also in medieval Europe.”

Prof. Idriz, also one of the co-authors, pointed out that medical historians pay particular attention to Hunayn’s work titled al-Masāʾil fī al-Tibb(Questions on Medicine for Students), which was translated into Latin under the title Isagoge (Johannitius). “This text served for centuries as an introductory medical manual in European universities,” he said. “Its wide circulation in the Latin scholarly world illustrates the important role that Islamic medical scholarship played in shaping the foundations of medical education in medieval Europe.”

Prof. Abdulkarim likewise described al-Masāʾil fī al-Tibb as a seminal work, calling it “one of the earliest and most influential didactic texts in Islamic medical history, written in a unique question-and-answer format that shaped medical education for centuries.” He emphasized that Hunayn was “not merely a transmitter of Greek medicine; he was one of the most significant intellectual bridges connecting classical knowledge with medieval European medicine.”

Hunayn’s legacy, Prof. Abdulkarim concluded, is a reminder that scientific progress has historically arisen from dialogue between civilizations rather than from the achievement of any single culture. “It demonstrates that the history of medicine is not solely the narrative of one civilization,” he said, “but rather the story of knowledge traveling across cultures and shaping global science.”

Eurasia Review
Eurasia Review is an independent Journal that provides a venue for analysts and experts to publish content on a wide-range of subjects that are often overlooked or under-represented by Western dominated media.
https://www.eurasiareview.com/06042026-how-an-eye-physician-who-translated-classical-greek-medicine-into-arabic-helped-form-western-medical-thought/

 

 

"Premium search service Kagi has launched a humorous AI translation tool that converts everyday English into the distinctive self-promotional language commonly found on LinkedIn.

Mashable reports that Kagi, a paid search service that positions itself as an ad-free, privacy-focused alternative to Google, has introduced an English-to-LinkedIn translator as part of its free AI-based language translation offerings. The tool, launched on Wednesday, has gained significant attention on social media for its ability to transform ordinary statements into the earnest, jargon-heavy posts typical of the professional networking platform.

The translator is part of a broader collection of humorous internet subculture language options Kagi has added to its service. Other available translations include Reddit speak, which incorporates phrases like “weird-ass,” “cringe,” and “banana for scale,” as well as Pirate Speak and fictional languages such as Klingon. However, the LinkedIn translator has resonated particularly strongly with users, touching a nerve about the proliferation of artificial-sounding corporate speak in digital communication.

The translation service works in both directions. Users can convert plain English into LinkedIn-style language or decode lengthy LinkedIn posts back into straightforward English. For example, spending an afternoon in bed becomes “decided to prioritize a strategic recharge to optimize cognitive performance and long-term productivity” in LinkedIn speak. The tool can even transform critical feedback into professionally palatable language, converting “I hated this and I am dumber for reading it” into “While I’m always looking for ways to challenge my current mindset, this particular content reminded me of the importance of being intentional with the information we consume. Grateful for the learning opportunity!”

The translator serves as both entertainment and practical utility. It lampoons the tendency of LinkedIn users to frame every minor career development in hyperbolic, buzzword-laden language while simultaneously offering a genuine service for those who need to navigate or create content in this particular communication style.

The LinkedIn translator’s popularity reflects broader concerns about authentic human communication in an era increasingly dominated by AI-generated content. The tool connects with similar cultural commentary, including the “Your AI Slop Bores Me” phenomenon, which criticizes generic AI-generated text that lacks genuine human perspective or value.

LinkedIn’s distinctive communication style has long been a source of commentary and parody. The platform has developed its own vocabulary filled with terms like “thought leaders,” “growth mindset,” “personal branding,” and “hustle culture.” Users frequently celebrate minor professional achievements with earnest posts that employ specific linguistic patterns and hashtags, creating a recognizable dialect that the Kagi translator successfully mimics.

The game-like quality of the translator invites experimentation. Users have tested whether any human activity, no matter how mundane or inappropriate, can be reframed in positive LinkedIn language. The results suggest that the platform’s communication style can theoretically transform any scenario into an opportunity for professional growth and learning.

Wynton Hall, author of the new book Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI, argues that it is vital for conservatives to avoid “cognitive offloading,” by handing over all thinking to AI. The fact that people are utilizing AI to poke fun at the peculiar language of LinkedIn, which itself is filled with AI slop posts, is an encouraging sign.

Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who was named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in AI, praised CODE RED as a “must-read.” She added: “Few understand our conservative fight against Big Tech as Hall does,” making him “uniquely qualified to examine how we can best utilize AI’s enormous potential, while ensuring it does not exploit kids, creators, and conservatives.”  Award-winning investigative journalist and Public founder Michael Shellenberger calls CODE RED “illuminating,” ”alarming,” and describes the book as “an essential conversation-starter for those hoping to subvert Big Tech’s autocratic plans before it’s too late.”

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship."
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2026/03/22/learn-to-speak-corporate-ai-translator-converts-english-into-satirical-linkedin-jargon/
#metaglossia #metaglossia_mundus

"Theorizing “Global Criticality” and the Politics of Just Translation

07 May 2026 18:00 to 19:30

Bush House, Strand Campus, London

07

May

 

Professor Emily Apter is giving the keynote lecture at the annual conference of the Department of Interdisciplinary Humanities, King's College London. This lecture is open to the public.

 

"Translation and justice, the focus of my book What is Just Translation? Changing Languages in the Political Present, engages Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s notion of “global criticality” as a rubric for a vision of language politics that straddles the fields of law, global language policy, non-monolingual pedagogies and reparations applied to forms of linguistic injustice and cultural appropriationism. I associate “global criticality” with translational workarounds - ways of working micropolitically with language and intermedial forms of expression. These microforms stand in contradistinction to one-size-fits-all paradigms or “isms” that are anchored in colonial Euro-chronology and beholden to reductive bipolarities between major and minor, metropole and periphery, written and performative. As a micropolitics of language, “global criticality” flows into Spivak’s notion of “living translation:” a triple play on living with translation, living life in translation, and “live” translation, which vivifies life itself."

 

About the speaker

Professor Emily Apter is Julius Silver Professor of Comparative Literature and French Literature, Thought and Culture at New York University. Her books include: Unexceptional Politics: On Obstruction, Impasse and the Impolitic (Verso, 2018); Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability (2013); Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon (co-edited with Barbara Cassin, Jacques Lezra and Michael Wood) (2014); and The Translation Zone: A New Comparative Literature (2006). Since 2000 she has edited the book series Translation/Transnation with Princeton University Press. Essays have appeared in New Literary History, October, Public Culture, Crisis and Critique, History and Theory, Diacritics, PMLA, Comparative Literature, Critique, Les Temps qui Restent, Representations, Art Journal, Third Text, Paragraph, boundary 2, Artforum, Esprit Créateur and Critical Inquiry. In 2019 she was the Daimler Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. In 2017–18 she served as President of the American Comparative Literature Association. In fall 2014 she was a Humanities Council Fellow at Princeton University and in 2003–2004 she was a Guggenheim Fellowship recipient. In 2022 she co-edited and introduced Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s Living Translation, a collection of Spivak’s contributions to translation theory. Her book What is Just Translation? Changing Languages in the Political Present is nearing completion. Her next book project, on the conceptualization of the unborn (or “prepersons”) is provisionally titled Conception: The Laws."

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/events/theorizing-global-criticality-and-the-politics-of-just-translation

#metaglossia 

#metaglossia_mundus 

"Philly has a cozy community of translators who translate from many different languages, opening up texts from other countries and cultures for English speakers.

 

Philly literary translators are trying to increase awareness in the field. (Courtesy Paul Dry Books)

Love Philly? So do we. Let’s be friends. The Billy Penn newsletter keeps you informed about everything Philly, with a quirky vibe of healthy skepticism and persistent optimism. Join us and sign up today.

 

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Marianna Suleymanova’s skills as a translator were put to use translating an anti-war journal called “Roar Review.” 

 

“I thought, ‘well, I think I can help people here understand a little bit of what’s going on,” she said.

 

Now, she’s one part of a group of Philly-based translators who turn literature from other languages and cultures into English. 

 

Suleymanova’s skills stem from her time growing up in Tashkent, Uzbekistan when it was still a part of the Soviet Union, where she spoke Russian and English. She moved to the United States at 16 and eventually went to work.

 

“I translated at NASA, and I translated for other industries,” she said. 

 

Suleymanova practices literary translation in addition to her full-time career. Despite this, she says this is her true passion – allowing her to uplift the voices of Russian-language writers to English speakers. 

 

“I think it’s important to have this alliance across languages,” she said. “Russian speakers are not who I do this for. It’s for Americans and English speakers that I do this for, wherever they may be, whether it’s in Australia. People can read my pieces anywhere they’re on the internet.” 

 

And Suleymanova is not alone. Philly’s literary translating community is vast.

 

 

“It will continue to be important”

Literary translation is different from literal translation – authors who are literary translators tend to try and preserve the original voice and tone of the text across languages. 

 

Many popular American books are also translated – including The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (translated from the original Swedish written by Stieg Larsson) and Pinocchio (translated from Carlo Collodi’s original Italian). 

 

And literary translation has been around for a long time, said Emily Hunsberger, a Philly translator who translates from Spanish. 

 

“Work has been translated in so many languages,” she said. “It’s kind of conduit for us to read each other’s stories and learn from each other and see what’s universal among us and what things challenge our understanding because it’s so different from the culture that we’re used to.”

 

Despite this, Hunsberger said there hasn’t been as much visibility and awareness around literary translation in the U.S. 

 

“I took a world literature course when I was in high school, many years ago, and all the books we read were translated works,” she said. “But never once did we learn the names of the translators. Never once did we talk about what translation is, or theories or challenges or dissecting what the act of translation is.” 

 

She said this is part of what inspired her to get into the field. Hunsberger owns a multilingual translation company. She helps to translate content from Spanish and Portuguese to English or from English to Spanish. 

 

She explained that this piqued her interest in literary translation. 

 

“I had always thought that I’d love to do literary translation,” she said. “In my younger years, I did a lot of creative writing, and I took a translation course when I was in undergrad, but I had left it on the back burner. I knew how to translate, but I didn’t really know about the publishing industry or how it worked.” 

 

She entered into the field after moving to Philly in 2020. She said she quickly recognized the value it brought to the city 

 

 

“Philadelphia has so many eclectic, unique spaces for art,” she said. “And I feel like I’ve talked to a lot of people in different disciplines of art who feel like Philadelphia is a place where you can practice your art, and so I feel like literary translation is just another one of those disciplines where this is a great place to be based, to be doing your art.” 

 

And beyond its artistic impact, literary translation is important to open others up to different worldviews, said Stephanie Schechner, a retired teacher from Widener University who translates from French. 

 

“Because Americans don’t study languages as much as other parts of the world, translation becomes an essential way for Americans to get access to voices that represent other points of view,” she said. “That helps open the world to people who cannot read things in the original text.” 

 

Schechner’s work focuses on a lesbian, working class French author, who goes by Mireille Best. 

 

Schechner said she felt like translating works from an author like this would be important, as it can show Americans who are feeling like their voices aren’t heard that there are models for their experiences around the world. 

 

“I think knowing that there were people ahead of us in the past who were fighting for their right to be individuals can give young people some hope,” she said. 

 

Philly’s literary translation community

Philly’s literary translation community is small, but dedicated. 

 

Hunsberger explained that Philly has an informal collective of translators called Transversal, which has helped connect Philly-area translators. 

 

“Transversal does not have any formal or nonprofit status,” she said. “We don’t have a board or anything, everything is just very organic and informal, and anyone who’s part of the collective can organize a gathering or anything they want to.”

 

Transversal was started by UPenn graduate students Liz Rose, Hilah Kohen and Kate Meng Brassel several years ago. 

 

The group now holds in-person meetups and co-working sessions, allowing for connection between members. 

 

Schechner said the group has employed creative strategies to facilitate connection between translators in different languages – including structured work sessions. 

 

“We do what’s called a Pomodoro,” she said. “You work for 25 minutes and we set a timer, then we take a five minute break in the middle, and say hello to each other. Then, we work for 25 more minutes, and then chat briefly at the end and then we leave. We’re just creating a space and an accountability where people could sit with each other and be in community.” 

 

Sean Gasper Bye has worked in literary translation for many years, including time as the interim executive director at the American Literary Translator’s Association – the only national organization in the U.S. dedicated to supporting literary translators. 

 

He said he initially got into the Philly literary translation community after moving back to the area from New York City. 

 

“I had always thought that Philly had the makings of a great translation town, because it has such strong cultural infrastructure,” he said. “I feel like people in Philly are very worldly, are very interested in culture and are readers.” 

 

He said with the creation of Transversal and conversations with other translators, a solid community was formed. He said local collaborators, like bookshops, have also been receptive to events and partnerships. 

 

Suleymanova emphasized that the morale of Philly’s translation community helps to keep her motivated.

 

“To look across the table and see people that are as hell bent as you are about bringing these stories across borders and languages, it could feel like you have a team in this, even if somebody’s working from entirely a different language,” she said. 

 

Hunsberger said she is excited to see community partnerships and interest around the topic growing, and hopes to continue with the momentum. 

 

“We want to continue, this year, with doing more of that kind of community outreach and bringing in the people interested in translation, or who are already involved in literary translation in Philadelphia who we haven’t managed to meet up with yet, and doing more things with these other organizations that are doing important work in the community,” she said. 

 

‘It’s quite solitary’

There are obstacles literary translators have to face. 

 

“What we do is very niche,” Suleymanova said. “There’s not a lot of spotlight on it. It’s quite solitary. It takes years for this work to see the light of day.” 

 

Philly’s literary translators try to get together to combat these issues and offer each other support. There are even events different translators will often host. 

 

Hunsberger said there have been bigger events the community has put together as well – including a Literary Translation Workshop she hosted late last year.

 

💌 Love Philly? Sign up for the free Billy Penn daily newsletter and stay in the know

 

“We co-sponsored the practical literary translation workshop that I led at The Head & The Hand Books last November,” she said. “It was called the ‘Translingual Remix,’ and it was meant to be small, because if you’re going to have it was a two hour time block, and if you’re going to have translators working on a piece, reading, and sharing, you you can’t have too many people in the room,” she said. 

 

“So it was intended to be a small workshop, but it was really, really cool, because the languages that people were bringing of who signed up was Hungarian, Ukrainian, Bangla, Yiddish, Italian and Spanish.” 

 

Schencher said it can also be hard to find time for literary translation, as it often doesn’t pay enough to be a primary career.

 

“Many translators are otherwise employed to pay their bills, or they’re in school, and carving out translation time for almost all of us is tricky,” she said. 

 

There can also be a lack of recognition for translators and the effort it takes to rewrite books into English, said Mahmud Rahman, a translator who translates from Bengali. 

 

“We want translators to be more recognized, and some of us feel that the name of the translator should go on the cover of the book,” he said. “Some publishers do that. Many do not, and it’s a constant tug of war, because essentially, when you’re translating a book into a language, you’re essentially recreating it, and it’s more your work.”

 

Rahman emphasized Philly’s literary community oftentimes does not get recognition compared to other big cities like New York. 

 

Bye explained there is also a lot of thought that goes into literary translating – work he says cannot be replicated by a machine. 

 

“It’s easy to think that we’re just kind of walking dictionaries who sort or swap one word in for another, and that it can be done quite mechanically,” he said. “And that’s really not the case.

 

While artificial intelligence is a concern, Hunsberger said that the machines can’t replicate much of literary translation. 

 

“The point that machines can’t really get at this point in time when it comes to literature or translation itself, is that what you would get from one translator would be different than what you get from another translator,” she said. “Because there’s also an artistic component.” 

 

“Communication and connection”

Despite these challenges, Hunsberger said Philly’s literary translation community is special. 

 

“I think it’s almost like an infinite well of conversation and connection,” she said.

 

Bye said practicing literary translation also helps to challenge our traditional ways of thinking. 

 

“Something that is really special about translation, is that you have access to these works that came up in a different cultural context, a different historical context, a different literary context, and you can see them breaking our rules or not paying attention to our rules, because those aren’t the rules over there,” he said.

 

He said that Polish writing, for example, oftentimes focuses less on the genre of story and more on the writing quality – which he says may not be the same in America. 

 

If you are interested in literary translation or joining Philly’s Transversal group, you can send them an email at transversalphl@gmail.com."

by Violet Comber-Wilen

March 3, 2026

https://billypenn.com/2026/03/03/literary-translation-services-philadelphia-language-translation/

#Metaglossia 

#metaglossia_mundus 

#métaglossie 

An international team proposes replacing Hockett’s feature checklist with a model of language as a dynamic, multimodal, and socially evolving system.

"The End of Language As We Know It? Scientists Challenge 60 Years of Linguistic Research

A new interdisciplinary study argues that one of linguistics’ most influential frameworks needs a major update. Drawing on research in sign languages, animal communication, cultural evolution, and artificial intelligence, the authors challenge the idea of language as a static set of uniquely human design features.

An international team proposes replacing Hockett’s feature checklist with a model of language as a dynamic, multimodal, and socially evolving system.

For more than sixty years, Charles Hockett’s ‘design features’ have been widely used as a framework for defining what distinguishes human language from other forms of communication. These features were long treated as a checklist of properties that set language apart.

However, a new study published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences argues that this traditional view is no longer sufficient. The researchers contend that language cannot be captured by a fixed inventory of traits, but is better understood as a flexible system shaped by social interaction, situational context, and human creativity.

Paradigm shift for language science
In a new reassessment of Hockett’s classic “design features” of language—ideas such as arbitrariness, duality of patterning, and displacement—an international team of linguists and cognitive scientists argues that current research requires a fundamental rethink of what language is and how it evolved.

Their central claim is clear: language is not merely a spoken code. Instead, it is a dynamic, multimodal, socially grounded system shaped through interaction, culture, and shared meaning.

Over the last several decades, scientific discoveries have dramatically expanded our understanding of communication. Language is no longer viewed as something confined to speech. Sign languages used by deaf communities are fully developed linguistic systems, and tactile systems such as Protactile—used by DeafBlind signers in the northwest USA—demonstrate that language can also be conveyed through touch.

Research has also reshaped views of animal communication. Dolphins use distinctive signature whistles, birds produce songs with syntax-like organization, and apes communicate intentionally through context-sensitive gestures. At the same time, the emergence of generative AI has raised new questions about whether language is limited to biological minds at all.

“This isn’t about discarding Hockett,” says Dr. Michael Pleyer, lead author and researcher at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. “It’s about updating him. His framework was revolutionary in 1960 – but science has moved on. Today, we see that features once thought uniquely human—like productivity (the ability to create an infinite number of sentences), displacement (the ability to talk about things not in the here and now), and even recursive structure (the ability to embed sentences within sentences)—are also found to some extent in animal communication. The real story isn’t about what separates us from other species. It’s about how language, in all its complexity, connects us.”

The interdisciplinary team Pleyer, Perlman, Lupyan, de Reus, and Raviv (2025) proposes a new direction for language science. Rather than treating language as a checklist of defining traits, they describe it as a living, adaptive system shaped by multimodality, social interaction, and cultural evolution.

Credit: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
Beyond the List: A New Vision of Language
The researchers highlight three major developments that are reshaping linguistic theory and moving it beyond a static feature list.

1. Multimodality and semiotic diversity

Language is not restricted to spoken words. Signed languages function on equal footing with spoken languages, and gestures and facial expressions are integral to everyday communication rather than secondary additions. Furthermore, language is not purely arbitrary.

Iconicity—where form resembles meaning—plays an essential role. Examples include imitative gestures, sound-symbolic words such as ‘buzz’ and ‘crash’, a stretched pronunciation like ‘slooooow’, and even emoji in digital text. This flexibility allows humans to transform almost any behavior into a communicative signal.

2. Language as social and functional
Communication is not simply the transfer of coded information. It involves people building shared meaning within specific contexts. A phrase such as ‘Isn’t that Tom’s bike?’ might signal ‘Let’s meet here’ or ‘Let’s avoid this place,’ depending on shared history and relationships.

Language also conveys identity, sometimes unintentionally, through features such as accent or dialect. It can foster solidarity or create distance. At the same time, language influences cognition; for instance, acquiring a new color term can sharpen a person’s ability to distinguish shades.

3. Language as an adaptive, evolving system

Key properties of language, including productivity and compositional structure, do not simply exist in isolation. They emerge through repeated social interaction and cultural transmission across different timescales, from moment-to-moment exchanges to changes unfolding across generations.

Languages adapt to their social environments, and variations in community structure contribute to the remarkable diversity seen across the world’s languages.

Societal relevance
These insights arrive at a time of major change. Sign languages are increasingly recognized as fully complex languages equal to spoken ones. Animal communication research continues to reveal structured signaling systems involving context, intention, and innovation across birds, dolphins, primates, and even insects. Meanwhile, generative AI systems challenge assumptions about who or what can produce language.

Co-author Dr. Marcus Perlman from the University of Birmingham explains, “The last few decades have been an exciting time for linguistics, especially for those of us interested in the origins of human language. Language scientists today know about lots of stuff that was mostly obscure to scientists back then – for example, huge advances in our understanding of sign languages and now tactile signing systems, and recently, the advent of large language models like ChatGPT. It makes sense that linguistic theory would require a major update.”

The study also carries clear implications for society and education. In particular, it:

Questions traditional textbook accounts that reduce language to spoken words.
Recognizes sign languages and non-speech forms of communication as fully legitimate linguistic systems, supporting greater inclusion and equity.
Provides teachers and educators with an updated framework for discussing language evolution, communication, and cognition in the classroom.
“Language is not a static thing,” adds senior author Dr. Limor Raviv from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. “It’s a dynamic, embodied, and deeply social act, which is flexible in form, function, and evolution. When we accept that, we see not just what makes us human—but how we are in fact connected to the wider story of animal communication.”

About the study
The research draws together decades of work from linguistics, cognitive science, animal behavior, and neuroscience. It builds on prior analyses, including a 2022 study showing that Hockett’s design features continue to dominate introductory textbooks, even though growing empirical evidence suggests they no longer provide a complete account of language."
By Max Planck Institute for PsycholinguisticsFebruary 26, 2026
https://scitechdaily.com/the-end-of-language-as-we-know-it-scientists-challenge-60-years-of-linguistic-research/
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
#métaglossie

"Interpreters from across Canada work daily to preserve Indigenous languages.

As February marks Indigenous Languages Month, NNSL Media spoke with six interpreters at the NWT Legislative Assembly who make politics understandable in Inuinnaqtun, Inuktitut, Dene Suline, Sahtuot’ine and Dene Zhatie.

Necessity

Many found themselves interpreting out of necessity.

Tuppittia Qitsualik, a speaker of Inuinnaqtun, said that without her mother, she felt compelled to rise to the responsibility of interpreting for her unilingual father.

Dennis Drygeese, a speaker of Dene Suline Yatie, recalls that while growing up, his mother, a teacher, would travel often. As a result, he often stayed with his grandparents, who “didn’t speak a word of English.” If ever they needed help speaking to the Co-op manager, or to social services, Drygeese would be there to translate on their behalf.

Sarah Cleary, who is fluent in Sahtuot’ine Yati, began her translation in a similar way, saying, “When I was young, the Elders in my community always asked me to interpret, and I’d do my best. Sometimes I’d have to use sign language.”

Suzie Napayok-Short, an Inuktitut speaker, said, “As I was growing up, the Qallunaat — that’s the white man — had authority in pretty much everything our parents had to do, and as I grew I realized they really need to know exactly what is being said here.”

Preservation

Preservation of identity and culture are at the heart of many of the interpreters’ work.

Mary Jane Cazon, a speaker of Dene Zhatie, recalls her parents telling her that retaining her language and her culture would lead her into the future.

Drygeese shared a similar sentiment, stating: “My grandmother told me, ‘Hang on to your words, my boy, because one day it’s going to be really useful to you,’ so here I am.”

Regarding the importance of preserving one’s language, Joe Ototkiak, a speaker of Inuinnaqtun, said, “Language is a cornerstone. Without language, there’s really no identity.” He added, “I just hope and pray that Inuinnaqtun keeps thriving, it’s a language that was at the brink of disappearing.”

Information

Some translators the value that their work has in ensuring unilingual Elders fully understand the ways of western politics.

Otokiak said, “It’s about making sure our Elders have some idea of what’s going on around them, and informing them of new things on the horizon.”

Cleary recalled a time when her father, being a seasonal worker, was denied ration money. Sarah went to the local church with the goal of calling Yellowknife for assistance, but the church’s priest, on Sarah’s behalf, went and spoke with the agent that had denied her father the money for food. Sarah’s interpreting was able to help feed her family that winter.

Napayok-Short recalls that as a child, many of her community members didn’t fully understand the settler-imposed rules. She saw that as her opportunity to help her people and decided to take up the task of interpreting.

“I thought, ‘I can get really good at these languages if I keep listening and learning, so that’s what I’m gonna do — that’s going to be my way of helping my family.’”

Revitalization

Many interpreters remain hopeful and optimistic that their languages will be preserved, and even adopted more widely.

Cazon noted that she and her husband are both fluent in their mother tongue. They make an effort to speak the language in their home and around their grandchildren.

“One day, hopefully, they’ll really be able to pick it up and be able to be fluent, just like us,” she said.

Cleary envisions a future where, due to the officialization of so many Indigenous languages within the NWT, youth in Indigenous communities will be able to be educated in their mother tongue. “If they wanted to go south and enter a university, because our language is official, they would have their entrance requirement,” she said.

NWT News/North"
https://www.pentictonherald.ca/spare_news/article_30c6349e-06bb-5a33-8c56-c52e27823a6f.html
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
#métaglossie

"Pedro the Vast, the debut novel from Chilean writer Simón López Trujillo, was translated into English from Spanish by Robin Myers. The novel has been called “mind-blowing” by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara and follows a eucalyptus farm worker who survives a deadly fungal outbreak and becomes the focus of scientific obsession and religious fervor, while his abandoned children struggle to interpret his transformation as their separate reckonings collide in an unforgettable, catastrophic end.

In our latest interview series, “Writer/Translator,” we ask a writer and their translator to interview each other about their work. Below, Trujillo and Myer discuss rewriting, intertextuality, and the role of politics in translation.

Robin Myers: I always love hearing about the path from the book a person intends to write and the book they end up writing. What was the novel you imagined writing when you started work on Pedro the Vast, and what surprised you most about what happened along the way?

Simón Lopez Trujillo: In a way, this novel was a major lesson in what to make with the intentions I have when I’m writing a book. I started working on Pedro the Vast in 2018 and the first draft was completed in early 2019, but the main editing process took place between 2020 and 2021. In the meantime, not only the Covid-19 pandemic happened, but also – and more importantly – the social outburst of October 2019 in Chile. That context, marked both by intense violence and police brutality, but also by a new effervescence that opened the possibility of a new social change, pushed me to transform the novel into a sort of “protest novel” (novela de denuncia). During the hiatus between the first and second draft, I did a lot of research on big forest companies in Chile, their dependency on decree-laws and the dispossession of peasant land in the south of Chile during Pinochet’s dictatorship, and social leaders such as Rodrigo Cisterna (a forestry worker killed by the police in 2007, to whom the novel is dedicated). All this research resulted in an extra 100 pages or so, mainly of information that I wanted the reader to have in mind while reading the novel. But when my editor finally had the chance to revise this second draft, she told me: “Look, why don’t we go back to the previous draft?” I immediately said: “What? But this involved so much work and research…” And she replied: “Yes, but you’re losing your tone.” Then, I went back to the original draft and realized that she was right. I had unwittingly given up the very thing that had led me to write the novel in the first place: a strangeness in the language and story fleshed out by voices and characters that I wasn’t in absolute control of, but which I wanted to follow. And it was this curiosity that made the book feel like a novel, and not a mere device for my own personal political intentions or beliefs. This does not mean that I don’t believe in “political literature” or anything like that – of course I do. But I also believe that nowadays, in times of complex political turmoil and an excessive velocity in the circulation of discourse (where authorship seems reduced to a mere authorial image, and literary content to what “content” means in social media), we must be especially aware of what the actual pace of literature is. Because I don’t believe it moves as fast as we think. Reading, writing, and translating literature are still silent, slow, mostly solitary experiences. And maybe that’s why a good book affects us so deeply: because we feel its language is related to our own private experience. Because we can hear it as if it belonged to us, in a way, and we process it at the speed of abstraction. I’m talking about a slow, deep sense of hearing/reading, something akin to what Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht calls “the production of presence” –which is precisely what the mere meaning or content of a novel cannot convey. A strange intimacy, more connected to the mystery of human sensibility than to our intelligence, and more proximate to the realm of political imagination than of political discourse.

RM: One of the things I most admire about Pedro the Vast (and one of the parts I most enjoyed wrestling with as a translator) is the wide (wild!) range of voices: human and non-human, first person and third, with all kinds of different registers in the mix. Was there one of these voices that came to you first?

SLT: ​​I think it probably was the voice of Pedro’s sermons. For me, it’s no accident that the novel opens with that voice, that lyrical and mystical tone, italicized precisely because we don’t know (as readers but also me as writer) its true origin. He begins by confessing precisely this confusion: “If that’s what looking is—you know? I don’t know what I saw, but I saw so much.” It was important for me to work with that feeling of having seen something that you then can’t describe, because that is a way of talking about a certain form of reading, one that usually happens when I’m reading poetry. It’s a strange experience of being carried through a field of images and music, where sense is more a movement than an arrival at a specific point of meaning. In a way, all the main voices of this novel (Pedro’s, Patricio’s, Giovanna’s) are marked by this sort of poetic expansion, because my writing was very much inspired by the language of others: Juan Rulfo, scientific papers on fungi and biology, the testimonies of farmers and forest workers persecuted and killed by Pinochet’s dictatorship, Cristina Rivera Garza, Juan Emar, and “two Spinozas”: Baruch Spinoza, the God-intoxicated rationalist philosopher, and Juan de Espinosa Medrano, a Peruvian poet, priest, and preacher. Both lived and worked during the 17th century and in very different ways: Spinoza’s Ethics is written in extremely dry, heavy logical-mathematical language, while Espinosa Medrano’s La novena maravilla is profoundly baroque, brimming with metaphors and symbols. Every fragment of Pedro’s sermons was written by taking fragments of these “Spinozian” texts and rewriting them until that mystical italicized voice appeared. It’s a voice that seems both above and beneath the surface of the text. That, for me, is the fungal function in the novel: a metaphor for intertextuality. Pedro the Vast is profoundly inspired by that concept and, specifically, by that of rewriting (reescritura): the idea of writing through and with the voices of others. This notion was fundamental for me when I was mainly a writer of poetry, and it’s also a feature of the works of some of my favorite poets, who also tend to be translators: for example, Soledad Fariña, Rosmarie Waldrop, Mirta Rosenberg, and Leónidas Lamborghini, who write or wrote with a language profoundly marked by the experience of translation. As if what they saw and felt (and also had to wrestle with) in the fertile darkness of the in-between were a more intense way of approaching the poetic voice than the more traditional notion of the lyrical “I”: some kind of homogenous subjectivity that simply speaks, without worrying about whether what he says is the “right” choice because he (thinks he) is the sole “owner” of its language.

But while I was writing Pedro I was interested in the very opposite: a language whose speaker is not his owner. In fact, I wanted to advance in the direction of a “disappropriated, ownerless writing,” as explored by Rivera Garza in The Restless Dead. This, for me, is the case of Pedro after he gets infected. I truly think that his voice was also very much inspired by my own experience as a translator. Because that’s the thing with translation: you are not the owner, and you have to choose. For each word in the foreign language, there are multiple options in the language you are writing in, and you’re always responsible for making the right choice. Besides, since everybody wants to shoot the messenger, I think the task is to achieve the sense of something final, indisputable where words are free from objection. For me, this is the only way, as a translator, to become invisible, to survive, but also to mimic the most fundamental feature of writing literature: that is, to feel the language, the written word, as a sort of destiny. To enter the text not as a contingent fact but, instead, as the definitive path for what lies beyond the words. And this, for me, is linked to the metaphoric, to language employed as a vessel for seeing more than what one can see. Donald Davidson once wrote that “metaphor is the dreamwork of language,” whose grace lies not in what the metaphor means (which is actually more the task of metonymy), but in what it makes us “see.” In traversing this expanded field of countless associations where things are no longer identical to themselves. I sincerely think that this aspiration intoxicated much of the spirit of the novel: poetic language employed not as mere figurative speech, but as radical world-making. An opening, a bursting out of the experience of the self.

RM: Could you talk a bit about some of the other writers and works (or other artists and works of art) that influenced you in Pedro the Vast?

SLT: For this novel, I was very influenced by the work of Chilean and Latin American writers who explore the rural territory and rural consciousness not with a folk or naturalistic approach, but with some sense of the visionary, the poetic, and even the hallucinatory. In this sense, Juan Emar’s Ten (recently translated into English by Megan McDowell) was a sort of lighthouse. He goes to the rural land, pushes through it, reinvents it, and manages to find, as a result, a new sort of avant-garde language and vision of things. In this same vein, the writings of José María Arguedas, Marta Brunet, Carlos Droguett, and Manuel Rojas were of major importance to me, as well as more contemporary authors such as Samanta Schweblin (Fever Dream), Marina Closs (The Depopulation), and Juan Cárdenas (The Devil of the Provinces). Nevertheless, my main influence was, without a doubt, Juan Rulfo. Personally, the naming of my protagonist as Pedro is a Platonic gesture in his direction: Pedro Páramoconceived as the perfect, pure, and ideal model from which Pedro the Vast sprouts out as a contingent, humble, imperfect copy. Of course, these are two completely different characters, but Rulfo’s sense of space, time, image and language were a sort of distant murmur that enveloped and followed the contours of my own writing.

I also did a lot of research on subjects like fungi, Spinoza, the history of timber companies in Chile, and their relationship with Pinochet’s dictatorship. Here, works like Anna Tsing-Lowenhaupt’s The Mushroom at the End of the World, Marilena de Souza Chaui’s La nervadura de lo real: imaginación y razón en Spinoza, Manuel Acuña Asenjo’s La rebelión de los trabajadores forestales,and Thomas Miller Klublock’s La Frontera: Forest and Ecological Conflict in Chile’s Frontier Territory were fundamental.

Simón Lopez Trujillo: There’s a beautiful short poem in your book Having that says: “How will I know/ which voice/ was mine?”. It made me wonder: do you think translation has affected, influenced or shaped your own experience as a poet and a writer? Does it have some similarities or points of contact with the experience of living abroad, considering that you have lived in different parts of Latin America?

Robin Myers: Translation has affected me and my writing in more ways than I’m even fully conscious of, I think. I mean, some ways are pretty clear: as I explore other writers’ styles, registers, resources, and approaches, and as I do my best to inhabit them as a translator, I’m constantly reminded of what’s possible – and I feel pushed to explore, in turn, what I might otherwise assume is my “natural” voice. In this sense, translation is also a perennial reminder that every voice is learned: it’s from listening to others (reading others) that we come to speak (and write) however we speak (and write). Every voice can change. I love how your question also probes at what it means to live somewhere else. For me, this living-elsewhere – mostly in Mexico and more recently in Argentina – means an experience of continual, generative discomfort, even and perhaps especially when you start to feel comfortable where you are. To paraphrase my poet-translator friend Adalber Salas Hernández, migration means having one foot in one place and another foot in no place at all. You’re always learning to walk, and you can’t take any ground entirely for granted. There’s both melancholy and wonder in the vertigo of it all. I aspire to this wondrous discomfort, and to this neverending beginner’s-mind, as both a poet and a translator.

Going back to the first part of your question, though, I’ll also say that translation has made me a less anxious writer. I’m far less nervous about not writing than I used to be: about the fallow periods themselves, and about the sense of loneliness that can come from feeling unable to write for a while. Because when you translate, you are writing, but you’re never alone.

SLT: Perhaps this is too simple a question, but when and why did you start translating literature? And did you have or still have any role models, any literary translators that serve as inspirations for your own work?

RM: It’s not too simple a question at all! I started translating in earnest when I moved to Mexico City in 2011. I’d translated a handful of poems before, but it was then and there that I began to translate the work of young writers (mostly poets at first) I met on arrival, poets who became my friends. Beyond any more abstract interest I had in translation, though, these early experiences gave me a new way of being where I was – in a city that beguiled and challenged and stimulated me; in the company of people I admired and came to love. I translated in hopes of being more there, if that makes sense. Gradually, translation evolved into more of a practice, as well as a livelihood: for many years, I translated non-literary texts for income, and I also started translating more literary prose, which is now the bulk of my work. As for role models, there are so many translators I look up to that I couldn’t possibly name them all here! But to mention a few, Sophie Hughes and Katherine Silver have been among my lodestars for many years. More recently, I’ve gotten to know Julia Sanches and Rosalind Harvey, and I revere them both as translators and as organizers for translatorly rights and labor conditions.

SLT: In our complex times, when we’re constantly confronting horrors we thought were a thing of the past, when everything seems beholden to a nonnegotiable urgency, what do you think the political role of translation is or remains?

RM: To answer this question, I’d like to share some words from other translators I admire.

Johannes Göransson: “Translation brings in alternate canons and texts, and in so doing it also opens up alternative models of authorship. Rather than the singular great author, translation foregrounds the collaborative element of writing as well as the cultural issues and contexts at play in both the creation and transmission of the text… A poetry [or literature in general] that is profoundly engaged with foreign poetry is a poetry that is aware that nations are not homogenous, that while the institutions of literature are almost always hierarchical, writing itself is not.”

Jen/Eleana Hofer: “For years I’ve been thinking and writing through ideas around the ways translation can generate empathetic not-understanding as an alternative to simplistic and often essentializing or assimilationist ideas around the way texts in translation can provide a ‘window’ into other cultures… At its most radically politicized, translation can function to interrogate and destabilize our ideas about how language functions to make meaning, and can therefore invite us into an awareness of how our own modes of perception are configured, encouraging us to use the tools language offers — as the daily currency of thought, experience and communication — to reconstruct the very foundations on which our currently distressing world rests.”

Olivia Lott: “The reason I translate is to use my position within the United States and my native tongue subversively, to contribute to the dismantling of the imperialist vision of Latin America and to express my allyship with this struggle.”

Jeremy Tiang: “Perhaps if the dominant anglophone culture actually acknowledged itself to be part of the world, rather than treating ‘world literature’ as a spice rack to save itself from total blandness, more than three percent of books published in the United States would be in translation?”"
January 13, 2026
by Adam
https://debutiful.net/2026/01/13/writer-translator-simon-lopez-trujillo-and-robin-myer-pedro-the-vast/
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
#métaglossie

"Translator hopes to turn Cherokee speakers into readers, writers
BY CHAD HUNTER Senior Reporter

TAHLEQUAH – Cherokee is Dennis Sixkiller’s first spoken language, but it wasn’t until the early 2000s that he learned to read and write it.

Now, the 72-year-old translation specialist is determined to teach that rare and time-consuming skill to fellow first-language speakers.

“I’ve got my syllabary, and we’re working on it,” said fluent speaker Charles Levi, 77, of Coweta, Oklahoma. “It’s a long, long, you might say, event, to be a speaker and a writer. It hasn’t been that prevalent in our near past. It’s because they think maybe there’s no use for it. So, many people just swing right on over to English. We’re all guilty of that.”

Cherokee speakers began routinely gathering in 2007 to simply visit and talk in their ancestral language. But as the monthly “speakers’ bureau meetings” evolved, Sixkiller saw a need to include the written word via the Cherokee syllabary.

“Now, I try to teach them how to read and write Cherokee because the majority of them that are speakers, they don’t read and write,” he said. “I was in that category for many years, but I learned it. Actually, I think a lot of them were like I was at one time – there’s 86 characters in Cherokee, and they thought it might be too hard to learn. A lot of them do want to but sometimes it takes a little time.”

Fluent Cherokee speakers share a meal Jan. 8 at the Durbin Feeling Language Center during a monthly get-together.

Sixkiller, from Jay, grew up with Cherokee as his first spoken language and wasn’t exposed to English until grade school. He later learned to read and write the Cherokee syllabary in 2001 through classes with Cherokee linguist Durbin Feeling.

Named after Feeling, who died in 2020, the largest language investment in Cherokee history began six years ago with passage of the Durbin Feeling Language Act. Since then, nearly $70 million has been invested in language-related capital projects.

Children are taught Cherokee at the Immersion School inside the language center; a middle school for grades four through eight is being constructed nearby. And through the tribe’s 10-year-old Master Apprentice Program, a steady stream of second-language Cherokee learners has been flowing.

“There are some that really want to learn,” Sixkiller said. “I want people to learn. I really do.”

For his fellow first-language speakers, Sixkiller, a Cherokee National Treasure, is intent on teaching them to also read and write in Cherokee.

“That’s my goal. I’ve been teaching off and on throughout the years … but starting today, I’m really going to teach them how to read and write,” he said. “I’m going to take it real slow and make sure they’re learning. They’d be amazed what they can do with the language if they learn how to read and write.”

The latest Cherokee Language Speakers Bureau, held Jan. 8 at the Cherokee Nation Durbin Feeling Language Center in Tahlequah, saw speakers – mostly elders – singing and chatting in their language.

“We get together once a month and just share and talk so we won’t forget our language,” said Tribal Councilor Melvina Shotpouch, a first-language Cherokee speaker. “It’s so good to be able to converse with those that are still first speakers. There’s not many of them left.”

The Cherokee Nation Language Department estimates there are fewer than 1,500 first-language, fluent Cherokee speakers. Sixkiller, a Cherokee Nation translation specialist, has moderated the monthly meetings since 2007, noting that “there are many, many” Cherokee speakers who have passed on since then.

In August, CN Deputy Secretary of State Canaan Duncan called the Cherokee Language Speakers Bureau “a powerful bridge connecting our ancestral culture to the future of our people.”

“The work the group does is more than just preservation,” he added. “It’s also about fostering fellowship among our elders, exchanging ideas and nurturing connections when many speakers are separated by time and distance.”

Fluent speakers also meet routinely with language custodians from the other two federally-recognized Cherokee tribes to compose words for objects and concepts historically unknown to Cherokees.

“We probably have about 3,000, 4,000 words that we’ve translated to modern terms,” Sixkiller said. “Some of the words we don’t have. We didn’t have one for pizza in Cherokee, so we put it ga-du as-ti-tla-nv-i, like bread with something on it or mixed within bread, if you want to literally say it in Cherokee. That’s the way we do a lot of other words – computer, that sort of stuff.”

In addition to teaching the language, Sixkiller has promoted it over the airwaves for more than two decades on the tribe’s weekly radio show called “Cherokee Voices, Cherokee Sounds.” Primarily broadcast in the Cherokee language, the weekly program features songs, language lessons, news, traditional stories and one-on-one interviews with Cherokee elders."
https://www.cherokeephoenix.org/culture/translator-hopes-to-turn-cherokee-speakers-into-readers-writers/article_3f25395b-5ee1-40a6-9d0a-a14d4502867d.html
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
#métaglossie

Imagining ourselves in the shoes of the other affords necessary perspective for effective verbal, written, or physical communication exchange.

 

"E. Paul Zehr Ph.D.

 

Updated January 10, 2026

 

 Reviewed by Monica Vilhauer Ph.D.

 

 

 

 

Key points

 

Communication spans everything from words to physical actions.

 

Effective communication requires understanding the perspective and intention of those we interact with.

 

Translation of words, concepts, and actions requires functional interpretation, not literal representation.

 

Putting ourselves in the shoes of the other affords necessary perspective for effective communication.

 

Led Zeppelin warned us about the perils of misunderstood communications in relationships. Failing to translate what we are trying to say or do so that someone else gets it is the root of so many problems. But translation is a fantastic find when it goes right. Here are some things I've learned about translating meaning from a lifetime of speaking numerous languages, practicing a wide array of martial arts, and communicating science.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meaning or intention?

 

"Das ist nicht mein Bier" is an expression I learned while taking German 101 in 1988 as an undergraduate. We were taught it was a Bavarian colloquialism meaning "that's not my problem." Literally, the words say, "That is not my beer." This trivial expression was something I have kept in mind ever since. It was a game-changer for how I thought about communication and translation. It's about meaning and context and understanding culture, not just about words. Keeping this in mind has served me very well when trying to communicate and navigate cultures, especially during interactions with Japanese colleagues and martial artists. It's always about what the intention is, not just what was said, asked, or stated.

 

 

 

 

Translating intention

 

I have studied a variety of martial arts in my lifetime, dabbling in about 9 traditions and diving more deeply into 6 martial arts from Japan, Okinawa, and China. I am fascinated by how similar concepts are expressed in different martial arts. It's about movement, not words, but it really is an issue of translation and communication. It's just that instead of translating a question like "what train are you trying to catch" it becomes one of "how are you going to defend against this punch coming at your face"? It is all about functional representation and how this is maintained in different forms across cultures and traditions.

 

 

 

 

Also the language used to describe physical actions needs nuance. Martial arts (Kung Fu) spread from China to strongly influence Okinawan (Toudi) and Japanese (Karate) traditions. But key core concepts seem to have been dropped along the way. For instance, total body power is a critical variable in the mastery of martial arts. In Japanese Karate, and subsequently most North American and European representations, there is a fixation on "the hips," which at first glance seems to hark back to recommendations from Chinese martial arts. Yet as I tried to reconcile teachings in Okinawan and Japanese Karate with my more recent experiences with Chinese Bagua Zhang, Xing Yi Chuan and Wing Chun Kuen, I discovered a disconnect. We blithely say "hips" which is actually meant to be "waist". And in many Chinese writings and teachings, "waist" means from just below the ribs to just above the knees. This hugely alters teaching and training and renders them much more functional. It comes down to shifting from asking "what was said" to the more useful "what was meant".

 

 

 

 

It's a matter of perspective

 

 

 

 

An interpretation of simultaneous attack and defense in Wing Chun Kung Fu.Source: Courtesy of Mike Goldsworthy

 

Over the years I have done a pretty extensive amount of science communication in blog posts, podcasts, interviews, and books. Science communication at its core is about taking concepts many find difficult to understand and rephrasing them in such a way that they are engaging and accessible. I think the key to that is making sure people are interested in a bridging metaphor, which is why so much of my writing has focused on using superheroes as vehicles for transfer and science translation. But a key thing I had to learn when I wrote a young adult book was to avoid the trap of just simplifing language instead of trying to understand a very different perspective. When I give talks about science communication, I illustrate this point by literally walking into the audience seating area, turning around and sitting there. This is the perspective you have to adopt if you want to be on the other side effectively sharing knowledge.

 

 

 

 

If we really want to be understood, we have to authentically appreciate and engage with the perspective of those we are trying to reach. This is why simple language translation like that found in "Google Translate" and the like fail so often. They provide literal translations that miss the subtlety of context and functional meaning.

 

 

 

 

The main take away here is that if we truly want people to understand us, we must try to understand them and communicate in a way that they respect, appreciate, and understand. If we do that, our meaning truly won't get lost in translation and we will gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and those we are hoping to reach."

 

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/black-belt-brain/202510/dont-get-lost-in-translation

 

#Metaglossia 

 

#metaglossia_mundus 

Idioms are an often invisible barrier to understanding and inclusion for second-language speakers because their meanings rely on shared culture as well as language.

 

"Being a linguist — and someone who has tried to learn several languages (including English) in addition to my mother tongue (Flemish Dutch) — I have an annoying habit: instead of paying attention to what people are saying, I often get distracted by how they are saying it. The other day, this happened again in a meeting with colleagues.

 

 

 

 

I started writing down some of the expressions my colleagues were using to communicate their ideas that may be puzzling for users of English as a second or additional language.

 

 

 

 

In a span of about five minutes, I heard “it’s a no-brainer,” “to second something,” “being on the same page,” “to bring people up to speed,” “how you see fit,” “to table something” and “to have it out with someone.”

 

 

 

 

These are all expressions whose meanings do not follow straightforwardly from their lexical makeup — they’re called idioms by lexicologists.

 

 

 

 

Idioms are part of daily communication. But this anecdote also suggests that we take it for granted that such expressions are readily understood by members of the same community. However, when it comes to people who are new to said community, nothing could be further from the truth.

 

 

 

 

Idioms and the limits of language proficiency

 

Research conducted at the University of Birmingham several years ago revealed that international students for whom English is an additional language often misunderstand lecture content because they misinterpret their lecturers’ metaphorical phrases, including figurative idioms.

 

 

 

 

More recent research confirms that English idioms can remain elusive to second-language learners even if the expressions are intentionally embedded in transparent contexts.

 

 

 

 

One of my own recent studies, conducted with international students at Western University in Canada, also found that students incorrectly interpreted idioms and struggled to recall the actual meanings later on after being corrected.

 

 

 

 

This shows just how persistently confusing these expressions can be.

 

 

 

 

It’s worth mentioning that we’re talking about students who obtained high enough scores on standardized English proficiency tests to be admitted to English-medium universities. Knowledge of idioms appears to lag behind other facets of language.

 

 

 

 

When literal meanings get in the way

 

The challenge posed by idioms is not unique to English. All languages have large stocks of idioms, many of which second-language learners will find puzzling if the expressions do not have obvious counterparts in their mother tongue.

 

 

 

 

There are various obstacles to comprehending idioms, and recognizing these obstacles can help us empathize with those who are new to a community. For one thing, an idiom will inevitably be hard to understand if it includes a word that the learner does not know at all.

 

 

 

 

Members of a community need to have greater empathy for newcomers who are not yet familiar with the many hundreds of potentially confusing idioms that are used so spontaneously in everyday life. (Unsplash)

 

However, even if all the constituent words of an expression look familiar, the first meaning that comes to a learner’s mind can be misleading. For example, as a younger learner of English, I was convinced that the expression “to jump the gun” referred to an act of bravery because, to me, the phrase evoked an image of someone being held at gunpoint and who makes a sudden move to disarm an adversary.

 

 

 

 

I only realized that this idiom means “to act too soon” when I was told that the gun in this phrase does not allude to a firearm but to the pistol used to signal the start of a race.

 

 

 

 

I also used to think that to “follow suit” meant taking orders from someone in a position of authority because I thought “suit” alluded to business attire. Its actual meaning — “to do the same thing as someone else” — became clear only when I learned the other meaning of suit in card games such as bridge.

 

 

 

 

The idea that idioms prompt a literal interpretation may seem counter-intuitive to readers who have not learned a second language because we normally bypass such literal interpretations when we hear idioms in our first language. However, research suggests that second-language learners do tend to use literal meanings as they try to make sense of idioms.

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately, when language learners use a literal reading of an idiom to guess its figurative meaning, they are very often misled by ambiguous words. For example, they will almost inevitably misunderstand “limb” in the idiom “to go out on a limb” — meaning “to take a serious risk” — as a body part rather than a branch of a tree.

 

 

 

 

Recognizing the origin of an idiomatic expression can also be difficult because the domains of life from which certain idioms stem are not necessarily shared across cultures. For example, learners may struggle to understand English idioms derived from horse racing (“to win hands down”), golf (“par for the course”), rowing (“pull your weight”) and baseball (“cover your bases”), if these sports are uncommon in the communities in which they grew up.

 

 

 

 

A language’s stock of idioms provides a window into a community’s culture and history.

 

 

 

 

Same language, same idioms? Not exactly

 

Idiom repertoires vary across communities — whether defined regionally, demographically or otherwise — even when those communities share the same general language.

 

 

 

 

For example, if an Aussie were to criticize an anglophone Canadian for making a fuss by saying “you’re carrying on like a pork chop,” they may be lost in translation, even if there isn’t much of one. At least, linguistically that is.

 

 

 

 

Although people may have learned a handful of idioms in an English-language course taken in their home country, those particular idioms may not be the ones they will encounter later as international students or immigrants.

 

 

 

 

The moral is simple: be aware that expressions you consider perfectly transparent because you grew up with them may be puzzling to others. We need to have more empathy for people who are not yet familiar with the many hundreds of potentially confusing phrases that we use so spontaneously." 

 

By Frank Boers, 

 

Western University

 

December 16, 2025

 

https://theconversation.com/the-trouble-with-idioms-how-they-can-leave-even-fluent-english-speakers-behind-271681

 

#Metaglossia 

 

#metaglossia_mundus 

"Redefining AI for underserved cultures and languages

THE rapid evolution of large language models has achieved grammatical correctness across major languages, yet this represents marketing inclusivity rather than true linguistic equality. While today’s AI can construct sentences in Tagalog, Swahili or Mongolian, the output remains inconsistent and inferior to English performance. Worse, the proliferation of wrapper applications without proper localization amplifies these deficiencies, potentially causing more harm than having no AI support at all.

Our experience building Egune AI in Mongolia revealed that perfect grammar is merely the starting point. The deeper challenge is not making AI speak every language; it is making AI think in every culture. When children grow up interacting with AI that fundamentally operates in English thought patterns, they gradually adopt linear, analytical reasoning, losing the circular, contextual cognition that characterizes many Asian and Indigenous languages. This represents cognitive homogenization disguised as technological progress.

The implications extend far beyond individual users. When governments process documents through foreign AI systems, health care providers rely on AI trained on different medical traditions, and educational institutions deploy AI that misunderstands local pedagogical approaches, entire nations become digitally dependent. They participate in the AI revolution as data providers rather than value creators, feeding sensitive information into systems that extract economic benefit without proportional return.

‌
Digital sovereignty has become essential for nations serious about their technological future. This transcends data localization requirements, though those are important. It is about controlling the AI systems that increasingly mediate citizen interactions with essential services. When critical infrastructure depends on foreign entities subject to external laws and priorities, true independence becomes impossible.

Building AI for languages with limited digital presence requires fundamental rethinking. Mongolian, spoken by three million people, represents less than 0.01 percent of internet content. Web scraping yields mostly translated content reflecting foreign thought patterns rather than authentic expression. We discovered that a million translated sentences teach less about genuine Mongolian thinking than a thousand authentic native conversations.

Our solution involved building dedicated data teams to create quality datasets. We digitized books, transcribed audio and video content, collected academic writing, and manually cleaned and corrected everything. While major AI systems train on trillions of tokens of varying quality, we focused on millions of carefully curated, culturally authentic examples. Every piece underwent native-speaker verification for natural expression. This approach took longer and cost more, but the results justified the investment: our AI understands not just Mongolian words but Mongolian thinking patterns.

Sovereign AI development enables capabilities impossible with foreign systems. During Mongolia’s harsh winters, we immediately update models with emergency protocols. When legislation changes, government agencies integrate updates within days rather than months. This agility becomes impossible when dependent on global release cycles prioritizing larger markets.

Local development ensures consistent alignment with national priorities. Security vulnerabilities specific to local infrastructure receive immediate attention. Critical bugs affecting local users receive priority treatment rather than languishing in global backlogs. Most importantly, economic value from AI development remains domestic, creating jobs and building expertise rather than extracting value abroad.

Our recent launch of Egune Chat on iOS and Android platforms demonstrates practical sovereign AI implementation. Users select their geographic region, accessing AI trained on specific cultural and administrative contexts. Rural Mongolians receive responses that consider traditional practices and limited infrastructure. Urban professionals get advice relevant to modern city resources. This is not translation; it is fundamentally different training for different realities...

Building national AI capabilities no longer requires competing with trillion-parameter models. Focused, culturally optimized systems serve specific populations better than generic global solutions while requiring a fraction of the resources. A $50 million investment in sovereign AI creates more local value than $500 million spent on foreign AI subscriptions.

International collaboration need not conflict with digital sovereignty. Nations can share open-source frameworks and methodologies while maintaining control over implementations. Mongolia’s experience can inform efforts in the Philippines, while Filipino innovations in multi-dialect processing might benefit Indonesia. This creates a network of diverse, interoperable AI systems rather than monolithic global platforms.

The future of inclusive AI requires recognizing that each culture offers unique problem-solving patterns worth preserving in the digital age. True inclusivity demands AI systems that understand local context, respect sovereignty, and serve actual population needs rather than assuming universal solutions exist..."
By Badral Sanlag
December 28, 2025
https://www.manilatimes.net/2025/12/28/business/sunday-business-it/inclusive-ai-from-the-ground-up-redefining-ai-for-underserved-cultures-and-languages/2249949
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"Decolonising the Mind: The Politics Of Language In African Literature

 Mehnaz Ali Jan

 

“Every language has a right to be spoken, even if only five people speak it, because it is democratic and a human right.” (Ngugi wa Thiong’o)

 

The book “Decolonising the mind: the politics of language in African literature” is written by a Kenyan writer, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, who was born in January 5, 1938. He is one of the most influential writers, novelists, playwrights, essayists and a post-colonial theorists. He firmly upholds writing in African native language such as his own Gikuyu rather than colonial languages. His various publications include Weep Not Child, The River Between, A Grain Of Wheat, Petals Of Blood, Devil On The Cross, Homecoming and many more.

 

The book debated book contains 114-120 pages, written in English and has been translated into several languages including French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Arabic and some African and Asian languages and got published in 1986.

 

Furthermore, to fully grasp the book’s title, one must first understand the concept of colonisation.

 

Colonisation refers to the subjugation (process of bringing something under control) of one country or nation by the other militarily advanced and a powerful country or nation. The colonizer usually rule over the weak nations, form colonies and exploit their resources for its own benefits. And the colonized countries or nations undergo various changes such as political, economic, cultural and social changes in the subjugated country.

 

Decolonisation is its opposite which is the process by which colonies become independent of the colonizing country. It is about cultural, economic and psychological freedom of the native people with the achievement of national sovereignty.

 

Moreover, the book is the combination of essays regarding language and its constructive role in national development, culture, history and identity. The book is a collection of four essays namely:

 

1- The Language Of African Literature

 

2- The Language Of African Theatre

 

3- The Language Of African Fiction

 

4- The Quest For Relevance

 

1. The Language of African Literature:

 

In this essay, the writer argues that language is deeply tied to culture and identity. He explains how colonial education system pushed African writers to use European languages, which gradually distanced them from their own people and traditions. Ngugi believes that writing in colonial languages reinforces mental domination, while using African languages helps reclaim cultural pride and restore a true African perspective in literature.

 

2. The Language of African Theatre:

 

The author focuses on theatre as a communal art form that directly engages the people. He describes his experience with community theatre in Kenya, where performances were done in local languages and reflected real social issues. This essay shows how African theatre could become a powerful tool of resistance and education when it speaks the language of the people, rather than the language of the colonizers.

 

3. The Language of African Fiction:

 

Here, Ngugi examines African novels written in European languages and questions whom these works truly serve. He argues that when African stories are told in foreign languages, they often cater more to international audiences than local readers. By advocating for African languages in fiction, Ngugi emphasizes the importance of authenticity, accessibility, and preserving indigenous storytelling traditions.

 

4. The Quest for Relevance:

 

This essay discusses the responsibility of African writers and intellectuals in post-colonial societies. Ngugi stresses that literature should not exist in isolation but should address the real struggles of ordinary people, such as oppression, inequality, and cultural loss. He calls on writers to remain relevant by engaging with their communities and contributing to social change rather than seeking approval from Western institutions.

 

However, the main arguments of the book cover:

 

•Language as a tool of colonial domination

 

• Colonial Alienation

 

• Reclaiming identity through indigenous (native) languages

 

Language as a Tool of Colonial Domination:

 

Ngugi argues that colonial powers didn’t just occupy land but they also used language to shape thought and identity. He mentions that when African intellectuals write in European languages (English, French, Portuguese), they are participating in a continuation of colonial influence because these languages carry the worldviews and values of the colonizers.

 

Colonial Alienation:

 

He introduces the idea of “colonial alienation” that the psychological estrangement that occurs when a people’s native languages and cultural frames are displaced by colonial languages. This alienation, he claims, leads to a loss of cultural grounding and self understanding.

 

Reclaiming Identity Through Indigenous Languages:

 

Ngugi passionately defends the use of African languages in literature, education, and culture, arguing that they are essential for genuine cultural expression and liberation. Language, for him, is not neutral instead it’s deeply political and tied to a people’s history, memory, and resistance.

 

Apart from this, this book talks about the implementation of English as the official language by the British in the colonized countries like Africa, and its impacts as this broadens the gap between the use of mother tongue Gikuyu and English. He started writing his works in Gikuyu since 1977. Since then he was confronted with a question, particularly, in Europe about the reason for his writing in Gikuyu language. His writing in mother tongue was perceived as an abnormal act. He shares incidents of humiliating experiences undergone by the Gikuyu speaking children in school and different types of punishments were given.

 

This reflects how colonialism shaped African thinking through language and that colonial rule didn’t end with political independence as it survived in people’s minds – especially through education system that dominated European languages and cultures over African ones. For him, language is not merely a means of communication but also it carries culture, identity, memory and history. To decolonise the minds, therefore, means reclaiming African language using them to tell stories.

 

In short, Ngugi believes his writing in his native language is a part of the anti imperialistic struggles of Africans, especially Kenyan people. He does not want to see the future generation, specifically, school children growing up in the imperialistic tradition. He desires to see Kenyan national languages having a literature which reflects the rhythms of the languages as well as the native social nature, plus their struggle with nature and culture. Because it will benefit the future generations of Kenya to live in harmony; they can learn other languages and could enjoy revolutionary elements in the other languages without any complex about their mother tongue, environment and themselves.

 

Thus, “Decolonising the Mind” is a must-read for students, writers, scholars, political workers and others who are interested in understanding the lasting effects of colonialism on language and culture. We can touch it with the ongoing crises in Balochistan as well."

https://www.thebalochnews.com/2025/12/29/decolonising-the-mind-the-politics-of-language-in-african-literature/?amp=1

#Metaglossia 

#metaglossia_mundus 

Interview with Yair Frank on how the Bible Society in Israel modernized the Hebrew Bible into contemporary Hebrew while preserving meaning and literary depth.

 

"From Hebrew to Hebrew: How the Bible got a new language in Israel

Bridging the gap: Modernizing the Hebrew Bible's ancient text for today’s Israeli readers – An interview with Yair Frank, the project leader

 

Izraelinfo Staff | Published: December 20, 2025

 

What does it mean to "understand" the Bible in Israel today? The Bible Society in Israel has worked for five years to make the text of the Hebrew Bible speak in modern Hebrew – without losing its meaning, its layering, or its cultural weight.

 

We spoke with Yair Frank, the project leader, about where the line lies between translation and interpretation, why the new text did not end up as "street language," and why this edition could be crucial even for those who haven’t opened the Bible since their high school final exams.

 

Interview by Judit Kónya, Izraelinfo:

 

Could you introduce yourself in a few words? What do you do?

 

I have been working at the Bible Society in Israel for over eleven years; currently, I manage the Society's larger projects. For the past five years, our most important work has been the modernization of the Hebrew Bible – that is, transplanting the text into today's modern Hebrew language.

 

Previously, I led the revision of the Hebrew translation of the New Testament. That is a completely different field: there, we had to translate ancient Koine Greek text into Hebrew. In summary, I manage all projects at the Society that are directly related to the text of the Bible.

 

My professional background: I studied Tanakh – at is, the Hebrew Bible – and the History of the Jewish People at the Hebrew University.

 

In the name of the Bible Society, does "kitvei ha-kodesh" – "holy scriptures" – refer to the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament together?

 

Yes. The Bible Society in Israel was established in 1948, the year the state was founded. Before the establishment of the State of Israel, during the British Mandate, the British and Foreign Bible Society operated an office here, which became an independent, local society in parallel with the founding of the state.

 

Which religion or church is the organization affiliated with?

 

Just as in other countries around the world, the Bible Society in Israel is not tied to any single church or denomination. The Society's goal is to disseminate the Bible, meaning to make the biblical text accessible to everyone regardless of linguistic, cultural, or religious background.

 

At the same time, the historical background is clearly rooted in Christianity: the international movement of Bible Societies originated from that sphere. We make the Bible – both the Old and New Testaments – equally available.

 

The staff of today's Bible Society in Israel are local Jews, the majority of whom are Messianic Jews. Accordingly, we accept both the Old Testament and the New Testament as holy scripture.

 

There are Bible Societies in most countries of the world, but where is the "head" of the organization? Who coordinates the operations of the local societies?

 

There is no "head." One of the most interesting features of the system is that it is not built hierarchically, but operates like a network. For example, I know some staff members of the organization in Hungary, I know who works there, but beyond that, there is no institutional connection between us. Every local society is completely autonomous and independent, makes its own decisions, and operates with its own responsibility.

 

This year, in December 2025, the Bible Society in Israel published the text of the Bible transposed into modern Hebrew. This is a "bilingual" edition, correct?

 

Not exactly. The volume is monolingual, but it contains two texts. The Masoretic text based on the Leningrad Codex appears in one column, and on the same page, the version transposed into modern Hebrew can be read.

 

So, the text of the Hebrew Bible and its modernized version stand side by side – meaning you translated the Hebrew Bible into Hebrew.

 

Actually, this is not a classic translation, but an intra-lingual modernization.

 

Who worked on the project?

 

At least twelve people participated in the work with varying degrees of intensity.

 

Are they all Israelis and Messianic believers?

 

Not everyone. For instance, the linguistic editor of the modern Hebrew text is not a Messianic believer: he is an atheist Jew who also works with the Academy of the Hebrew Language (*HaAkademia LaLashon HaIvrit*), and he participated in this project with great joy.

 

Can the contributors be named?

 

A decision was made within the Bible Society that the names of the contributors would not appear in the publication. The book contains neither my name nor anyone else's – only the text. If this decision changes, the names may be published later. My role is known regardless of this.

 

What was your specific task?

 

Coordinating the work of the entire team. In the first phase of the work, we transposed the biblical text into modern Hebrew. This was followed by a second, research phase: we examined the finished text verse by verse and checked, using philological tools, how faithful the modernized version was to the original meaning, and to what extent the translators followed the source text.

 

I participated actively in this phase myself.

 

Did the translators have linguistic competence to interpret Greek, Latin, and other Bible translations?

 

The translators are professional translators who have been working in the profession for twenty to thirty years. They translate from other languages into Hebrew; Hebrew is their mother tongue. Furthermore, they have all read the biblical Hebrew text for many years, know it well, and use it on a daily basis.

 

So they do not have a background in biblical studies.

 

No. Biblical studies is not their field of expertise.

 

But they know biblical Hebrew deeply.

 

Yes. They grew up on it, they read it, and they use it every day.

 

Is that why the second phase was necessary?

 

Exactly. That is why it was important that in the second phase of the work, experts who are researchers in various fields of biblical studies worked on the text. They went through the translated text verse by verse, and where the translators misunderstood the text, they corrected the translation.

 

Every translation is actually an interpretation, and here it is worth discussing the Christian background of the project again. Interpreting the text of the Bible is a theologian's task. To what extent do you consider this modernized text to be theologically thought-out?

 

Indeed, every translation is interpretation. Therefore, one of the basic principles of the project was to approach the text with the greatest possible philological fidelity. We consciously had no prior theological goal or direction that would have influenced the translation.

 

We performed philological work: we tried to reproduce the meaning of the text accurately in modern Hebrew without "conveying" any theological message. We paid special attention to this during the work.

 

I looked at a few biblical passages on the Bible Society's website – for example, the psalm beginning "By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept..." [Ps. 137:1], and the Song of Songs – and I see that the changes are primarily lexical. You intervened in the text where a Hebrew word is now unintelligible or its meaning has changed over time. For example, in the modernized version of the cited psalm, they do not hang a "kinor" [Heb., in modern sense: "violin"] on the willow tree, but a lyre [Heb. lira]. Was this the goal?

 

Yes. It was a fundamental criterion for us to preserve the original meaning of the biblical text while making it accessible in modern Hebrew. To do this, we often had to swap words, but the sentence structure also differs fundamentally in biblical Hebrew, so we had to change almost every sentence. If the meaning of a word has become obscured or changed by today, we had to use a different expression so that the reader truly understands what the text originally meant.

 

Like in the case of "kinor," the meaning of which has changed in the meantime.

 

Yes.

 

I found another interesting example in the Song of Songs [Song of Songs 1:5]: the tent cloth [Heb. yeriot] of Solomon's tents appears as curtains – vilonot – in the modernized text. What justified this solution? The word yeriot is indeed difficult to understand today, but how did you arrive at the interpretation of vilonot?

 

We strove to find the most accepted interpretation of rare words – or even hapax legomena, expressions that occur only once in the Bible – one that the majority of biblical scholars also accept.

 

In this case, based on the historical context, the text refers more to the interior spaces and curtains of Solomon's palace, not to tent cloths. That is why we chose the term vilonot.

 

Here, the role of Greek, Latin, and other translations comes in as well. But then, is the source text for the modernization not only the Hebrew Bible but also these translations?

 

No, because it was a fundamental stipulation for us that the source text be exclusively the Leningrad Codex.

 

At the same time, other translations and commentaries are still needed to interpret the text, aren't they?

 

Of course, but this [the Codex] was the base, with all its faults. The Leningrad Codex does have clear textual problems.

 

Are you referring to errors stemming from text copying?

 

Yes. We translated these errors as well, but where it was clearly visible that the text was damaged or problematic, we indicated in a footnote, for example, that "the Septuagint translates it this way," or we indicated other text variants, such as the different readings of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

 

However, the translation itself is consistently based on the text of the Leningrad Codex.

 

What provided the most work: the lexical, syntactic, or stylistic changes?

 

All of them, but perhaps the lexical questions took up the most time. We worked for long months, even years, to find the right words. Additionally, however, the text had to be stylized. When the modernized Hebrew version was completed, it was an important criterion that it should not sound like street language, but rather high-level, literary Hebrew.

 

For example, you kept the word hinne [Heb. "behold"].

 

Yes. You can feel that you are reading a carefully formulated, understandable text that also has literary value.

 

What kind of reader did you imagine?

 

We didn't think of a single, well-defined reader. The goal was for the text to be understandable to as many readers as possible. To readers for whom Hebrew is their mother tongue and who have finished elementary school – so that even a teenager could understand the text.

 

Israeli society is extremely complex, with many new immigrants whose Hebrew language skills are not necessarily at a high level. We knew that for them, this text might still pose a challenge because we placed the linguistic standard above their level. We tried to set this standard so that the text reaches as many people as possible, while also being aware that it is impossible to speak to everyone at once.

 

So you are providing a text of literary value that is nonetheless accessible. Where is the modernized Bible available? Are you distributing it in book form as well?

 

The printed volumes arrived from the press about a week or a week and a half ago. The text is also available online, and the book can be purchased at the Bible Society's three local bookstores – in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem.

 

In addition, we are already working on getting the edition to major book distributors as well.

 

So there is an intention for the text to be physically present before people.

 

Definitely. The goal is for it to become common knowledge in Israeli society: a modernized text exists.

 

Have there been reactions to the text yet?

 

Yes, there is feedback, and so far it is specifically enthusiastic. Those who have a principled problem with us touching the text of the Bible won't pick up the book in the first place.

 

It is quite certain that there will be negative reactions as well. At the same time, it is important to see that we did not invent the idea of modernizing the Hebrew Bible. The necessity of this work is self-evident, as the Bible is a collection of books that are more than two thousand years old.

 

Already in the early 2000s, a similar initiative was born: the Yediot Aharonot publishing house launched the Tanakh Ram project (תנ”ך רם), in which they transposed the Torah and the Early Prophets into modern Hebrew. However, the work was left unfinished, partly due to professional criticism. The translation was the work of a Bible teacher, but professionally it did not stand up to scrutiny.

 

They also started from the premise that there is a need to modernize the biblical Hebrew text.

 

They reached a point – the narrative books are relatively easier to transpose – but the truly difficult parts are the prophetic books, wisdom literature, and similar texts.

 

Has your relationship with the Bible changed during these five years? Am I right to think that dealing with the text took up most of your workday?

 

Absolutely. I grew up on the Bible and it is no coincidence that I studied this at university as well. I taught Bible and history for a few years, but when I embarked on this project, from then on, I literally woke up and went to bed with it. Day in and day out, I dealt only with the text. One learns an enormous amount this way; newer and newer layers of the text are revealed.

 

You now know the Bible as few do.

 

Yes, that is true.

 

Was your connection to it not as close before, or am I mistaken?

 

My connection was always very close. I read it continuously, I dealt with the text constantly. I moved to Israel at the age of sixteen, learned Hebrew, and barely a year later I already had to take my matriculation exam (*Bagrut*) in Tanakh. It was then that I decided I would no longer read the Bible in Hungarian. I already knew the Hungarian translation well, but I was increasingly interested in what was in the original text. From then on, I dealt with this continuously; I know and love the text. In this sense, my relationship hasn't changed, only deepened: for the past five years, I have dealt with this eight hours a day.

 

Is distribution also your task, meaning does it also depend on you how this text – on which twelve people worked for five years – reaches as many readers as possible? This is a work of huge volume.

 

This is not a one-person task, but the work of the entire Bible Society. Naturally, I have influence on how we do it, but the whole thing does not rest on my shoulders.

 

With what feeling would you go to your university professors with this volume? What would you say to them?

 

Just earlier this week I was at the Hebrew University, and I went in to see one of my former lecturers. I gave him the book, told him I worked on it – and he even asked for a dedication.

 

He was very curious; we leafed through the book and looked at a few specific translation decisions, precisely in the topic he was writing an article about at the time. The initial reaction was specifically positive.

 

At the same time, I am sure there will be critical feedback as well. I await with curiosity how academic circles will react and whether they will point out places where they think it could have been translated better.

 

The text can always be revised.

 

So you are waiting for the criticism?

 

Of course. I welcome it. Let them show the errors, and if we indeed made mistakes, we will change them. The main thing is that the translation is finished and is laid on the table.

 

What is the most important thing for you in this project?

 

When the thought of modernizing the Hebrew Bible first arose within the Society, I was the only one who received it with reservations. Precisely because I love the text of the Bible very much: it is extremely layered, rich, and beautiful, and not all the treasures and subtleties of the original text can be fully preserved in a modernized version.

 

For a long time, I argued that perhaps there is no need for this. Then I realized that yes, there is. Because the vast majority of people do not understand the text on first reading and cannot enjoy reading it.

 

The Hebrew Bible is not just a religious text, but in a cultural sense, it is the foundational text, the charter of the Jewish people – the text upon which we stand as a people and as a nation. Zionism, which brought us back to this land and made the founding of the state possible, is also deeply rooted in the Bible. If this text is not accessible to modern Hebrew speakers, then there is a serious deficiency there that must be corrected.

 

We cannot expect people to invest years in mastering the biblical language just so they can read without problems the book upon which this entire culture is built. I taught Bible in high school, and I saw with my own eyes how difficult it is for modern Hebrew-speaking students – young and old alike – to interpret, or even simply enjoy, the text.

 

That was when I understood that I had to put aside my own reservations, and yes, the text must be transposed into modern Hebrew. Knowing as well that the Masoretic text is not disappearing: it stays here with us, anyone can learn it, can delve into it. But regardless, there is a need for an accessible, modern text of literary quality that faithfully returns the original meaning.

 

And since the original text, the Hebrew Bible, is also included in the edition, it is conceivable that some readers will encounter it for the first time in this very way.

 

In Israel, everyone takes matriculation exams in the Bible, but after the exams, most put it aside and never look at it again because a large part of the text is unintelligible to them.

 

They still get it in the army, right?

 

Yes. They receive it for the swearing-in ceremony.

 

But not so they actually read it.

 

No. Even though it is a beautiful, extremely rich text. Independent of questions of religion and faith, it is of enormous value in a cultural sense, one of the foundational works of Jewish culture, which everyone should read at least once. The modernized Hebrew Bible provides an opportunity for exactly this.

 

The interview was first published here and is republished with permission.

 

The text of the Contemporary Hebrew Bible is available on the website..."

An interview with Yair Frank, the project leader

Izraelinfo Staff | Published: December 20, 2025

https://allisraelnews.com/from-hebrew-to-hebrew-how-the-bible-got-a-new-language-in-israel

#Metaglossia

#metaglossia_mundus

"Digital health tools hold enormous promise. For pregnant women and new mothers navigating the physical and emotional challenges of the perinatal period, websites and apps offer the potential for instant support, accessible information, and a vital connection to care. In theory, these resources should break down barriers, providing a lifeline to women anytime, anywhere.

However, for many migrant women, this digital promise is not being met. Instead of building bridges, these tools can inadvertently erect new walls, reinforcing feelings of isolation and exclusion at a time when support is most critical. These failures are not just about cultural missteps; they are symptoms of a digital health ecosystem that overlooks the complex social and structural realities—from digital literacy gaps to the profound need for privacy—that shape a migrant mother's life.

New research led by Monash University researchers including Dr. Areni Altun, Dr. Rochelle Hine, Professor Andred Deussens, Dr Levita D'Souza, Professor Helen Skouteris and Associate Professor Jacqueline A. Boyle, reveals significant systemic barriers limiting the uptake of digital mental health tools among migrant women.  The qualitative study of Chinese, Arabic, and Indian-language speaking mothers in Australia provides powerful, and often surprising, insights into why. By listening to their lived experiences, we can see exactly where well- intentioned digital design goes wrong. Here are the top five most impactful takeaways from their stories.

Takeaway 1: By the Time Help Arrives, It's Already Too Late
One of the most consistent findings was a critical mismatch in timing. Digital mental health resources are typically introduced to women postpartum, a period when new mothers are physically exhausted, emotionally overwhelmed, and consumed with caring for a newborn. Compounding this, many participants noted that after childbirth, the healthcare system’s focus shifts almost exclusively to the infant, leaving their own wellbeing unaddressed.

One mother articulated this frustrating reality perfectly:

"Because after delivery you’re not going to actually use those [websites], you really don’t have the time. I guess when you’re pregnant, I remember I had a good pregnancy, if I was given those resources at that time, I would have sat and read. I would have gone through those websites, I would have at least known.” (Indian Focus Group C).

This is a profound "missed opportunity" in the healthcare system. The ideal time to introduce these resources is during pregnancy, when women are actively seeking information and have more capacity to engage. By waiting until after birth, the system fails to provide support when it is most likely to be effective.

Takeaway 2: Language Access Is Often an Illusion
While some digital health platforms offer translated content, participants revealed that this access is frequently an illusion. The good intention is to offer multilingual support. The reality is a design that makes this support functionally invisible, rendering the intention meaningless. Language selection tools are often hidden behind unintuitive icons or buried in menus, making them nearly impossible to find for someone who cannot already read English.

A participant described the design failure on one prominent website:

“This website …my observation is about the language selection. It's not obvious to select Chinese language and you have to find this icon, that looks like a globe... But for someone who does not understand English we cannot read or speak English, it’s very difficult or inconvenient to find the language selection menu. It could feel inaccessible or too complex.” (Chinese Focus Group B).

This isn't a minor UX issue; it is a gatekeeping mechanism that locks out vulnerable users before they even begin. The consequences are significant: the study found that when faced with inaccessible local resources, women often default to health websites from their home countries, driving them toward information that may be irrelevant to the Australian healthcare context. It is a failure of digital hospitality at the most fundamental level.

Takeaway 3: "Inclusive" Imagery Can Feel Tokenistic and Erode Trust
Authentic representation is crucial for building trust, yet the well-intentioned goal of ‘inclusive’ marketing often backfires when it relies on tokenism. Participants observed a stark contrast between the "relatable, like someone next door" Caucasian women and the inauthentic depiction of women from their own backgrounds.

This powerful quote highlights the disconnect:

“The Caucasian women look relatable, like someone next door. The CALD women don’t always feel authentic. When they use faces of CALD women... they use supermodels... not relatable” (Indian Individual Interview).

But the problem runs deeper than unrelatable faces. Participants expressed a desire for imagery that demystifies an unfamiliar system, showing what help actually looks like, who provides it, and where it happens. This failure in representation sends a clear message that users are not truly seen or understood. To foster a genuine connection, digital resources must use imagery that reflects the reality of everyday mothers and visually explains how to access care.

Takeaway 4: When 'Professional' Design Feels Like a Funeral
This study uncovered a surprising and critical insight: seemingly neutral design choices can carry deeply negative cultural associations. A clean, "clinical" colour palette of grey and white, often used to convey professionalism, was perceived very differently by some participants from a Chinese background.

As one woman explained, the colours evoked a powerful and unintended negative feeling:

“...if you’re looking at black and white, sometime in Chinese culture, we use black and white in funerals. So … it’s not very culturally sensitive to us because when I was looking at that I was thinking about a negative thought.” (Chinese Focus Group A).

This finding underscores the vital importance of cultural humility in design. What is considered calming or professional in one cultural context may be stressful, inappropriate, or even frightening in another. Without deep cultural understanding, even the most well-intentioned design can inadvertently alienate the very people it is meant to support.

Takeaway 5: The Smartphone Is More Than a Convenience—It's a Safe Space
For many migrant women, the primary value of using a smartphone to access health information is not just convenience—it is privacy and emotional safety. Phones offer a discreet way to learn about sensitive topics like mental health, which is crucial in cultural contexts where stigma may be high or within shared family homes where privacy is limited.

The power of this discretion was summed up perfectly by one participant:

“Mobile is... more discreet. Just hit the button and the screen is black” (Chinese Individual Interview).

This insight reframes mobile-first design from a technical choice to a vital feature for user safety and empowerment. However, this safe space is not available to everyone. The study makes it clear that owning a device does not equate to being connected or confident. Significant barriers related to the cost of data, inconsistent internet access, and varying levels of digital literacy prevent many women from benefiting at all, potentially widening the equity gap for the most marginalized mothers.

Conclusion: Building Digital Bridges, Not Just Websites
The experiences of these women reveal a clear and consistent theme: good intentions are not enough. The evidence is clear: designing for migrant mothers cannot be an afterthought. It requires a fundamental shift from ‘translate and tolerate’ to ‘co-design and celebrate.’ Creating effective digital health tools demands deep cultural understanding, genuine community partnership, and thoughtful integration into trusted healthcare pathways.

We must demand that digital health equity becomes a non-negotiable metric of success for any tool that claims to support maternal health. As digital tools become central to healthcare, how can we ensure they are built not just to be looked at, but to be truly seen by every mother they are meant to serve?"
https://www.monash.edu/medicine/news/latest/2025-articles/beyond-translation-why-digital-health-tools-are-failing-new-migrant-mums
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus

"The Tokyo bookstore where translated Korean literature sparks ‘conversation across borders’
Since 2015, publisher Kim Seung-bok has used her shop Chekccori to connect Japanese readers with top Korean authors ‘in the right way’

On a quiet street in Jimbocho, a Tokyo neighbourhood known for its second-hand bookshops and publishing houses, one shop stands out: Chekccori. The store’s shelves are lined with Korean literature translated into Japanese, as well as works in the original language. It has become a gathering place for readers eager to cross cultural borders one page at a time. The name Chekccori means “a celebration after finishing a book” in Korean. The store was founded in 2015 by Tokyo-based South Korean publisher Kim Seung-bok. In recent years, it has seen a surge in young women drawn by their love of K-pop, as well as middle-aged men who have discovered the charm of Korean novels after Han Kang won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2024.

Ayano Tachibana visited the shop in late August to find books for her coming trip to Seoul. She said she first encountered Korean literature through friends who loved K-pop and later studied Korean at university. “I loved The White Book by Han Kang,” 23-year-old Tachibana said, referring to the author’s poetic exploration of grief and fragility through reflections on white objects such as ice and paper.

“Reading it with classmates, guided by a professor who was a fan, made me realise literature could be a conversation across borders.”

Chekccori stocks around 4,000 books, including titles from Kim’s own publishing company. Kim founded Cuon in 2007 to bring more Korean literature to Japanese readers, at a time when few bookstores stocked such works. Cuon’s first release was Han’s The Vegetarian, a novel that won the 2016 Man Booker International Prize, bringing her international acclaim. The novel, which tells the story of a woman whose decision to stop eating meat provokes a violent backlash from her ignorant husband and authoritarian father, has been acclaimed for its haunting portrayal of repression, desire and the struggle for autonomy.

Kim said that while not an easy read, it is the kind of work that serious readers will recognise as extraordinary. “I wanted to establish a reputation for publishing works of real literary achievement,” said Kim, who has been in Japan since the early 1990s, when she came to study literary criticism after learning creative writing at a university in Seoul. Originally from South Jeolla province on the southern tip of South Korea, Kim witnessed how Japanese culture flowed into the country in the 1980s through magazines such as Non-no and novels by Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto.
“So I thought, literature could also flow the other way,” she said. After working in advertising, Kim launched Cuon in Tokyo but struggled to promote Korean titles because most bookstores had no dedicated section for them. “The category of ‘Korean Literature’ did not exist, making it hard to find shelf space. Rather than feeling disappointed, I instead decided to create that space myself,” she said.

That led to Kim opening Chekccori in 2015.

Over the past decade, the number of Korean books translated into Japanese has increased dramatically. Kim estimates that 300 to 400 South Korean titles are now published annually in Japan, compared to only about 20 per year around 2010. The trend was fuelled in part by the success of Cho Nam-joo’s Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, which sold 290,000 copies in Japan after its 2018 release by publisher Chikuma Shobo. The novel, about a woman facing systemic misogyny in a patriarchal society, resonated deeply with readers.

Kim credits this popularity to the rise of social media, which has allowed ideas and movements – including feminism – to spread rapidly across borders. The feminist movement in South Korea gained momentum after a 2016 murder case in Seoul, followed by the global #MeToo movement in 2017. Kim’s publisher has released many feminist-themed books, including a collection of essays titled “#Living as a woman who speaks up” by author and lawyer Jeong So-yeon. Now celebrating its 10th anniversary, Chekccori has set a new goal to introduce more Korean poetry, a genre still relatively under-represented in translation. The bookstore held events for Korean poet Shin Mina, who was in Tokyo for two months earlier this year under a writer-in-residence programme.
Interest in Korean poetry is growing. Yukinori Ebihara visited Chekccori for the first time after hearing Mariko Saito, translator of Han’s novels and many other works, read Korean poems on the radio. “Even without understanding the words, the sound was beautiful. It made me want to hear more, to feel that resonance,” the 74-year-old said. Today, Kim’s focus has shifted from growth to sustainability. After recovering from cancer a few years ago, she hopes to ensure that Chekccori continues connecting readers and writers for years to come.
“What I’d like to do is to return to the basics – the craft of choosing excellent books, creating them with care, and placing them in the hands of readers in the right way,” she said."
Kyodo
Published: 5:15pm, 4 Nov 2025
https://amp.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/3331461/tokyo-bookstore-where-translated-korean-literature-sparks-conversation-across-borders
#Metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus