Metaglossia: The Translation World

"Wordly Passes 3Mn User Milestone for AI Translation, Captions Solution

PRNEWSWIRE3 days ago Comments Offon Wordly Passes 3Mn User Milestone for AI Translation, Captions Solution

 

Wordly, the leading provider of live AI translation and captions, announced surpassing several major user milestones as demand for high quality / affordable language services continues to rise exponentially. The user growth has fueled 100%+ year over year sales growth and the new AI milestones include:

• 3 Million+ AI Translation Users
• 80 Thousand+ AI Translation Sessions
• 400 Million+ AI Translation Minutes

Continuous Product Innovation

Wordly created the live AI translation and caption market when it launched in 2019, and has been the leader in product innovation, quality, and market share ever since. The platform provides real-time translation into 50+ languages, including recent additions of Icelandic, Tagalog, and Ukrainian. To meet growing demand to globalize videos and on-demand content, Wordly released a new API which makes it easier for customers to upload files and create subtitles in dozens of languages. Other recent updates include mobile app upgrades to make it easier to capture audio input, and ongoing infrastructure enhancements to meet enterprise security protection standards and support the growing number of translation users.

“We set out to make it easy and affordable for organizations of all sizes to offer ubiquitous language access to all of their meetings and events, and these user milestones are proof that our solution is meeting customer needs,” said Lakshman Rathnam, CEO Wordly. “And we are just beginning – we have ambitious plans to continue adding more languages, advanced features, and integration partners; while further increasing translation quality and ease of use.”

Growing Global Demand

Wordly continues to scale its infrastructure and team to meet growing global demand, and now has over 1,500 customers in 60+ countries. Customers include technology, financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, non-profit, local government, and religious services organizations.

Wordly partners with many of the largest organizations in the events industry to help make their conferences more inclusive and accessible – as well as showcase their AI technology to event professionals around the world. Recent and upcoming global events using Wordly include:

• AIPC – International Association of Convention Centres (Costa Rica)
• ASAE – American Society of Association Executives (Washington, DC)
• GBTA – Global Business Travel Association (Toronto)
• IIMC – International Institute of Municipal Clerks (Calgary)
• IMEX – Worldwide Exhibition for Incentive Travel, Meetings, and Events (Frankfurt)
• MPI WEC – Meeting Planners International (Louisville)
• PCMA – Professional Convention Management Association (Singapore)"

#metaglossia_mundus

"The Secret Master: On Translating the Forgotten Argentine Writer Ángel Bonomini

Jordan Landsman Remembers the Writer Admired by Jorge Luis Borges, Alberto Manguel, and Others

By Jordan Landsman

 

May 16, 2024

 

I started translating the title novella in Ángel Bonomini’s first collection of short stories in 2016, before I’d finished reading it. I was twenty-six, and I’d been living in Buenos Aires for three years.

I’d come across “The Novices of Lerna” in an out-of-print anthology of twentieth century Argentine fantastic literature that also included tales by Bonomini’s more famous contemporaries Jorge Luis Borges, Silvina Ocampo, Julio Cortazar, and Adolfo Bioy Casares. The anthology, which I’d purchased in a used book store across the street from my first apartment in San Telmo, had cost me three pesos in 2013, when the peso was five to a dollar. Now it’s 876.

“The Novices of Lerna” is narrated by a young, unambitious lawyer, Ramón Beltra, who is summoned from Argentina to the fictional town of Lerna, Switzerland for a mysterious fellowship. The invitation is baffling, since Beltra has done nothing to deserve it, and disconcerting, because in order to qualify, he’s asked to photograph his body “partially and totally and from every angle imaginable.” The mawkish tone of the letters from Lerna rub Beltra the wrong way, but the benefits of accepting are too numerous to ignore.

Still, Beltra is loath to leave his daily routines in Buenos Aires. He has no higher calling, no drive to better his lot in life. “I know full well that it’s best to limit oneself to a tiny position in order to live in peace,” he says. “To become the registrar, the manager, the chief is to make the same deal as the toad who traded his eyes for a tail; goodbye to drinking two glasses too many, goodbye to staying up late reading, goodbye to friends, goodbye to women.”

This is about as far as I read before I started translating. This was eight years ago now, and the exact when and why of it all is a little fuzzy. All I know is that I immediately liked Beltra’s voice, and fresh out of a relationship and working an isolating remote job, I’m sure I identified with his ambivalence towards monogamy and gainful employment.

Considering how much time I ended up putting into this translation, it’s funny to me now that I started it on a whim.

Considering how much time I ended up putting into this translation, it’s funny to me now that I started it on a whim. In 2016, most of my energy was going towards performing stand-up in Spanish and English. Most weeks, I was hosting The BA Comedy Lab, which is still running, and performing in another show called Limones, which is not. Before Bonomini, the only person I’d translated was myself.

If I’m being honest, part of me also started working on “The Novices of Lerna” as a way of tricking myself into finishing it. I love reading in Spanish, but as an English major I was trained to look up every word, and that takes a long time when it’s not your first language and the writer has a good vocabulary. Thankfully, as I translated, the plot thickened in ways that delighted me.

After a brief dalliance with a flight attendant, Beltra arrives at Lerna and discovers something shocking: there are twenty-three other fellows from around the world there, and they all look exactly like him. The university has convened them for a “secret project” that involves recording them surreptitiously while they study and interact with one another. Beltra has a hard time adjusting to the university’s bizarre and seemingly arbitrary rules, but then one by one, his doppelgangers start dying, and if I told you any more, I’d be giving too much away.

Around this time, I started asking my well-read Argentine friends if they’d ever heard of or read Ángel Bonomini. Their answer, almost invariably, was “Who?” Although he wrote almost a hundred and twenty stories across six dazzling collections, Bonomini is practically forgotten in Argentina. The few people I spoke to who did recognize his name seemed to remember him as a poet; in addition to the stories, Bonomini published seven books of verse, including one, when he was twenty-two, with his then-girlfriend, Maria Elena Walsh.

And although his original books are out-of-print in Argentina, I’m not the only foreigner who felt Bonomini deserved a wider audience. In 2015, the Valencia-based publishing house Pre-Textos republished a collection of his poetry, and in 2017 they released a thick volume of his collected short stories, which includes a terrific appreciation of Bonomini by the Columbian writer Dario Jaramillo Agudelo.

In 2018, I reached out to the Argentine writer Alberto Manguel, who edited the anthology where I’d found “The Novices of Lerna,” and was encouraged by his description of Bonomini as “a great writer, unjustly forgotten.” Bonomini’s, however, is not a case of someone only getting their flowers once they’ve started in pushing them.

In his lifetime, Bonomini won numerous awards and a Fulbright. “The Novices of Lerna” was admired by his contemporaries, Bioy Casares and Borges, and the latter selected his story “Iniciación del miedo” in a contest out of 2,700 applicants. (I don’t know how Borges found the time to evaluate twenty-seven hundred stories, but then again, the man really loved to read). Nevertheless, when Bonomini died in 1994 at the age of sixty-seven, his friend and mentee Marcelo Moreno wrote in a homage that he was a “secret master,” perhaps already sensing his fall into obscurity.

Even if my translation were to somehow succeed in making Bonomini a household name, “secret master” would still be a fitting title for him. There are secrets (and confessions) in nearly every one of the stories in The Novices of Lerna, and transmogrifying death is always around the corner. The narrator of “The Fire,” surveying the destruction he’s brought upon the church where he used to work, says “an ash-colored light rises from the river and my secret is sweet to me.”

In “By the Word”, an unnamed character wakes up one day trapped in a cube with “atrocious growths” that multiply every time he speaks. Nevertheless, he won’t stop talking: “He said a friend’s name. He said ‘carpenter’s bench’ because those were what he built for a living. He said ‘blue eyes’ for reasons that were secret.”

Even if my translation were to somehow succeed in making Bonomini a household name, “secret master” would still be a fitting title for him.

I love Bonomini’s stories because they are truth-obsessed, and obsession-obsessed. There is a “too-muchness” to some of them (especially, “The Singer,” his stream-of-consciousness reflection on the death of the tango singer Carlos Gardel) that fits their subjects perfectly, but if I, at times made them torturous to translate. Sentence by desperate sentence, his stories can be overwhelming, and thematically, they keep circling back to murder, suicide, madness, and isolation.

This would have been too much for me, I think, if Bonomini’s stories weren’t also mordant and deeply moving, and if I hadn’t been helped and encouraged by so many friends and colleagues. Allison deFreese, whose translation workshop I attended in 2020, championed this project at every step of the way, and was extremely generous with her time.

I am eternally grateful to Adam Levy at Transit Books for taking a chance on this book. Having a good excuse to move back to Buenos Aires at the end of 2022 for a few months to work on it was a dream come true, and being able to share The Novices of Lerna with readers is another one.

______________________________

 

The Novices of Lerna by Ángel Bonomini translated by Jordan Landsman is available via Transit Books."

#metaglossia_mundus

"ECOWAS Commission, through the Directorate of Conference and Protocol (DCP), organized a beginner edition of its upgrade and mentorship program for prospective interpreters and translators. The six (6) day program was held in Niger State, Nigeria from 8th – 13th May 2024, which included a practical workshop themed, Consecutive Interpreting for Absolute Beginners. 

The program focused on the foundations of professional Conference Interpretation and exposed participants to exercises needed to progress in self-learning, with practical mentorship sessions for prospective interpreters and translators for inclusion in its roster of freelance language service providers.

Following the workshop, participants were evaluated on beginner Consecutive Interpreting practice and Simultaneous Interpreting (SI) for those who had minor exposure to SI, received STIT guidance, and expressed an interest in being evaluated.

After successful assessment, The Beginner’s Edition added 4 new entrants to its trainee list. It is expected that with further mentoring, these new mentees will be included in the roster of freelance language service providers. "

#metaglossia_mundus

"Using crowdsourcing, we collected more than 10,000 URL pairs (parallel top page pairs) of bilingual websites that contain parallel documents and created a Japanese-Chinese parallel corpus of 4.6M sentence pairs from these websites. We used a Japanese-Chinese bilingual dictionary of 160K word pairs for document and sentence alignment. We then used high-quality 1.2M Japanese-Chinese sentence pairs to train a parallel corpus filter based on statistical language models and word translation probabilities. We compared the translation accuracy of the model trained on these 4.6M sentence pairs with that of the model trained on Japanese-Chinese sentence pairs from CCMatrix (12.4M), a parallel corpus from global web mining. Although our corpus is only one-third the size of CCMatrix, we found that the accuracy of the two models was comparable and confirmed that it is feasible to use crowdsourcing for web mining of parallel data..."

#metaglossia_mundus

"Le nom « tchip » et le verbe « tchiper » intègrent les colonnes du fameux dictionnaire de la langue française. Un signe de modernité et d’intégration continue de l’inventivité francophone africaine.
Damien Glez
Dessinateur et éditorialiste franco-burkinabè.
Publié le 14 mai 2024
Sujets de nombreux débats, à l’approche de la cérémonie d’ouverture des Jeux olympiques de Paris, le phrasé et le vocabulaire de la chanteuse Aya Nakamura n’incarnent finalement pas tant qu’on le pense l’authenticité linguistique des nouvelles générations – pas plus celles des « quartiers » périphériques de France que celles des maquis de Bamako, la capitale du Mali à laquelle une certaine droite souhaite scotcher l’artiste. D’un côté ou de l’autre de la Méditerranée, on n’entend guère « tchouffer », « tchop, tchop, tchop » ou « en catchana »…

L’apport de l’Afrique à la langue française se trouve davantage dans l’édition 2025 du Petit Robert, à paraître le 16 mai prochain. Dans cette version abrégée du dictionnaire alphabétique et analogique de la langue française – Le Grand Robert -, on trouve notamment les termes « tchip » et « tchiper », effectivement très employés par une certaine jeunesse de France… et du Mali.

Un mot et un comportement
Plus qu’un mot, « tchip » consacre une onomatopée, ce qui constitue une nouvelle victoire de l’oralité, en droite ligne de la pop-culture issue des comics. Elle désigne également une attitude, dont le son est une expression non-verbale aux allures de couperet, héritage indiscutable de la communication africaine et antillaise, parente des « tchourou » ivoiriens, « msourou » sénégalais ou encore « sourou » malien.

« Fait d’émettre un bruit de succion en signe de désapprobation ou de mépris », définit Le Petit Robert. Et les tenants de la « reconquête » franco-française par la traque des prénoms à consonance « étrangère » n’ont qu’à bien se tenir. Même sans « grand remplacement », l’Afrique infuse chez l’ancien colon. Elle infuse d’ailleurs bien au-delà, le « tchipage » existant aujourd’hui dans les sphères métissées francophones, anglophones et néerlandophones.

Pour désigner la pratique du tchip, les Afro-Américains utilisent l’expression « to suck one’s teeth », littéralement « sucer ses dents ». Et la technique s’identifie aussi bien au Brésil qu’au Bahamas, au Surnima ou à Trinité-et-Tobago.

Francophonies de tous les pays…
Pour peu que l’usage enfonce le clou de la curiosité militante, la langue française, singulièrement ses supports comme Le Petit Robert, intègre sans rechigner les apports d’une francophonie jadis considérée comme excentrée.

Aux côtés des nouveaux mots venus d’Afrique fleurit le patrimoine linguistique québécois comme, cette année dans Le Petit Robert, l’expression « boss des bécosses » (« personne qui fait preuve d’une autorité prétentieuse ») ou l’impératif « Déguédine ! », qui signifie « Fais de l’air, je t’ai assez vu ». Les mots africains ne devraient pas déguédiner de sitôt des pages des dictionnaires français."
#metaglossia_mundus: https://www.jeuneafrique.com/1567872/societe/nouvelle-edition-du-petit-robert-permis-de-tchiper/

"BIBLE Translation Association chairman Ganjiki Wayne says the National Cultural Commission (NCC) should consider translating the Bible into 800 languages as part of preservation. “The NCC is more focused with the preservation of artefacts and not languages."

#metaglossia_mundus

"In these dark and messy portrayals, translators aren't the servants of an author or a neat metaphor for bridging cPhoto by Lucas George Wendt on Unsplash

MAY 15, 2024

ARIELLE BURGDORF

 

Translators are an incredibly vital part of the literary ecosystem—not only because they carry books from one language into another, but also because they are generally the ones who find and champion writers in other languages. They contribute to the circulation of ideas and narratives, as well as the formation of what we call “world literature.” Despite all this, translators are often underpaid, their names do not appear on the front covers of books, and their work is largely, as Lawrence Venuti wrote, invisible. 

The protagonist of my debut novella, Prétend, is a young literary translator who goes by the names Jean, Jeanne, and John. Aside from engaging in translation, she herself is a translation, navigating multiple identities as she transgresses borders, genders, and languages. She translates poetry for her abusive husband, a very extreme example of an unhealthy translator-author relationship. Later, she starts to translate for another writer named M., who represents more experimental and liberated possibilities for translation. In writing this book, I was interested in dark and messy portrayals of translators, stories where the translator isn’t a servant of the author or a neat metaphor for bridging cultural gaps. Here are seven examples of literary translators in fiction that will give you a better appreciation and understanding of the art of translation.

Mauve Desert by Nicole Brossard, translated by Suzanne de Lotbinière-Harwood

Originally written in French and translated by the brilliant Suzanne de Lotbinière-Harwood, this is the novel that got me thinking deeply about translation and language. Mauve Desert is about Maude Laures, a professor from Québec who decides to translate a story she finds in a used bookstore. The novel is technically three books in one: the original Mauve Desert, a magical story of a teenage girl named Mélanie who is obsessed with driving her mother’s car around the Arizona desert, lesbians who work at a motel, and a villain named Longman who is also possibly Oppenheimer, Laures’ notes in preparation for the translation, including interviews with all the characters, and then finally, her translation of the story, allowing the reader to observe the differences from the original. Any one of the three parts would be worth a book in and of itself, but altogether they offer a queer, sensual, and immersive portrayal of the act of translation.

The Extinction of Irena Rey by Jennifer Croft

Croft is the translator of the award-winning Polish author Olga Tokarczuk, and a major public advocate for literary translators. Her second novel tells the story of celebrated author Irena Rey (she may or may not be based on Tokarczuk), who disappears in her home, the Białowieża Forest, a primeval forest stretching between Poland and Belarus. Eight of Rey’s adoring translators, referred to initially only by their mother tongues, go searching for her. Croft weaves translation together with topics like climate change, slime molds, and mythology to make a modern fairytale. Extinction highlights the power imbalances in published languages (especially the domination of English), and whether or not a translation stands on its own as a piece of art, playing with notions of authorship through the use of footnotes and multiple narratives. All in all, the book is a thought-provoking look at literary translation from one of the most talented living translators.

The Partition by Don Lee

The Partition tells the story of Ingrid, a queer Korean American adoptee whose bid for tenure at her liberal arts college is interrupted when a translation she published of a novel by the mysterious South Korean writer Yoo Sun-mi is called into question. When Sun-mi arrives in the United States to confront Ingrid face to face, we get a look at a very chaotic translator-author relationship, similar to the one in Prétend. The story raises important questions about who has the right to translate, the weight of identity and language expertise in translation, and the role of translators in helping authors get recognition and literary prizes.

My Husband by Maud Ventura, translated by Emma Ramadan

It makes perfect sense to me that the narrator of this novella, a woman whose immense love and passion for her husband teeters on the brink of hatred, is an English-to-French translator. She considers her words carefully, putting tremendous thought into every sentence. Like all writers, she has certain phrases she favors, as we see in her compulsive repetition of “my husband.” The narrator approaches translation the way she does everything in the novel, with an all-consuming fervor, and a need to maintain control. Reflecting on her translation of a young Irish novelist, she writes, “I entered into her mind and adopted her logic until the mechanics of the whole were revealed to me.” This is a woman with no boundaries between life and work; in a wildly unethical move, she even has her students practice translating transcriptions of private conversations with her husband. Make sure to read the epilogue, which, like a good translator’s note, throws everything into a different light.

Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou

This dizzying, hilarious novel is the story of Ingrid, a Taiwanese American Ph.D. student who finds out the subject of her dissertation is actually a white man in yellowface pretending to be a Chinese poet named Xiaou-Wen Chou. We get a wickedly funny portrayal of a translator in Ingrid’s boyfriend, Stephen, the white American translator of the trendy Japanese author Azumi Kasuya. At first, Ingrid sees nothing wrong with Stephen translating Azumi’s work, beyond the fact that she is jealous of their proximity. But as she grows more politically and socially aware, Ingrid begins to take issue with Stephen’s history of only dating Asian women and his supposed authority on Japanese literature. Disorientation is not a subtle satire, but it never feels didactic because Chou expertly wields humor to make her point. When Ingrid starts asking questions about the prevalence of white translators in the Asian literary world, the reader is right there with her. As Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda put it in her essay, The Geopolitics of Japanese Literary Translation: “I am not saying the solution is for all white people to stop translating Japanese. But I am asking why it is that only white people are translating Japanese, still, today, and whether there are historical and structural reasons for that.” 

Nevermore by Cécile Wajsbrot, translated by by Tess Lewis

Nevermore is the story of a woman who is consumed by grief, travels to Dresden, and decides to translate the section “Time Passes” from Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. The narrator finds resonances between different abandoned places where nature has reclaimed the land, such as the ruins of Chernobyl, the French village of Fleury, and the Scottish island Hirta, and the High Line in New York City. Wajsbrot showcases how the mind of the translator works, offering several possibilities for each sentence. As a whole her portrayal of translation is beautiful, treating it as a kind of healing. It’s also rooted in experience—Wajsbrot herself translated Woolf’s The Waves. Currently, the book is only available in French and German, but luckily for English readers, a translation by Tess Lewis is coming in November 2024.

Revenge of the Translator by Brice Matthieussent, translated by Emma Ramadan

In this madcap, meta novel by French translator Brice Matthieussent, a translator named Trad starts to take over and rewrite the novel, N.d.T, that he is supposed to be translating. Initially, he is limited to commentary in the footnotes, but slowly he breaks out of that barrier and the footnotes rise to include the entire page. Trad’s actions beg the question: at what point does translation become creative writing? The book becomes a layered power struggle between Trad, the author Abel Prote, and Prote’s characters, David Grey, also a translator, and Doris, a secretary. Emma Ramadan, who translated the book into English, put it best: “The book is an ode to translation in its unraveling, exploiting, and exploding of all existing tropes about translations and their translators.” Revenge will definitely make you rethink translation and in particular, the agency of the translator. 

About the Author

Arielle Burgdorf is a translator, novelist, and PhD student at University of California, Santa Cruz in the Literature department. Their writing and translations have appeared in Lambda Literary, Broken Pencil Magazine, Amsterdam Review, Full Stop, Maximum Rocknroll, and elsewhere.Their research concerns French-Canadian feminist and queer experimental writing and translation."

#metaglossia_mundus

"L’expatriation est une aventure humaine et culturelle qui transcende les frontières géographiques. Dans ce contexte, les Sénégalais ont embrassé cette expérience en se lançant dans divers pays asiatiques, attirés par des opportunités d’études, de travail, d’entrepreneuriat, ou simplement par une curiosité intrépide. Cette migration transcontinentale témoigne non seulement d’une quête personnelle, mais aussi d’une rencontre fructueuse entre deux mondes, créant ainsi des ponts entre l’Afrique et l’Asie.

Publié le 15 mai 2024  

Les motivations de l’expatriation :

Les Sénégalais s’établissant en Asie sont motivés par une diversité de facteurs. Certains sont attirés par les possibilités d’éducation de qualité offertes par des institutions renommées dans des pays comme le Japon, la Chine ou la Corée du Sud. D’autres voient dans les économies dynamiques de la région des opportunités de carrière prometteuses, notamment dans les domaines de la technologie, de la finance et du commerce. En outre, l’entrepreneuriat joue un rôle crucial, où la fusion des cultures africaine et asiatique donne naissance à des entreprises uniques, allant de salons de coiffure à des restaurants fusion, créant ainsi des espaces où les deux cultures se rencontrent et s’enrichissent mutuellement.

Les valeurs communes entre les cultures :

Au-delà des différences apparentes, les Sénégalais expatriés en Asie découvrent des valeurs communes qui facilitent leur intégration. La notion de respect, de communauté et de famille est profondément enracinée dans les deux cultures. La convivialité, la générosité et l’hospitalité sont des traits partagés, facilitant les interactions sociales et renforçant les liens interculturels. De plus, la spiritualité joue un rôle central, avec une croyance partagée en la force de l’esprit et de la détermination pour surmonter les défis de la vie.

Les défis de l’intégration :

Malgré les similitudes culturelles, l’intégration des Sénégalais en Asie n’est pas sans obstacles. La barrière linguistique peut constituer un défi initial, bien que de nombreux expatriés apprennent rapidement la langue locale pour faciliter leur interaction avec la communauté. Les différences sociales et les normes culturelles peuvent également poser des défis, nécessitant une adaptation et une compréhension mutuelle. De plus, les stéréotypes et les préjugés peuvent parfois entraver l’intégration, exigeant des efforts supplémentaires pour établir des relations authentiques et briser les barrières culturelles.

Josephine Taylor"

#metaglossia_mundus

"There are many translations of the Bible ranging from the most literal translations to quite paraphrased versions. There is a necessity for them all.

There are many translations of the Bible ranging from the most literal translations to quite paraphrased versions. There is a necessity for them all.

May 15, 2024 • By Joshua Witworth, BA English Literature, 

When going to church on Sundays, it is extremely common for the pastor to read a Bible verse in one specific translation — such as the New International Version or The Message — then use a different Bible translation, such as King James Version or American Standard Version for a different verse. This can lead to some confusion for the congregation because there are so many different versions of the same book. This is a common issue that scholars have dealt with for many years. The differences boil down to whether the translation of the Bible is a literal word-for-word translation or a paraphrased thought-for-thought translation.

 

Why Isn’t There Just One Translation of the Bible?

Brandon Farris is a content creator who has a YouTube series in which he searches for a random recipe online and uses Google Translate to translate it into a different language. Then he takes that new translation and brings it back to English. He continues this process five or six times and then tries to follow the new recipe, which, as you may suspect, results in a complete mess of a dish. One time, he ended up sautéing water.

 

 

 

Although this is a silly explanation, it illustrates the point perfectly: Translating from one language to another is a VERY difficult process and can result in contextual errors.

 

It is also extremely difficult for people to read the same text and draw the same conclusions. In the United States, there are wildly differing opinions on the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, which is written in the native language of the majority of Americans.

 

It’s easy to see how a text that dates back 2700 years in places and began as an oral tradition, could be interpreted differently. Scholars are not known for being the most agreeable type either.

 

To give an example, Marcus Aurelius’ journal was published as a book called The Meditations and has been translated numerous times. Here are three separate translations of the same passage, as pointed out by Ryan Holiday in his Daily Stoic email, and sent out on November 13, 2023:

 

Gregory Hays: “What’s left for us to prize? I think it’s this: to do (and not do) what we were designed for. That’s the goal of all trades, all arts, and what each of them aims at: that the thing they create should do what it was designed to do…And teaching and education…So that’s what we should prize. ”

 

 

 

Robin Waterfield: “What’s left to value? This, in my opinion: acting or refraining from action as dictated by the way we’re made. And here our occupations and crafts show the way, since it’s the aim of every craft that what it makes should fit the purpose for which it was made…And what else is it that tutors and teachers strive for? So that’s where value lies.”

 

Meric Casaubon: “What is there remaining that should be dear unto thee? This I think: that in all thy motions and actions thou be moved, and restrained according to thine own true natural constitution and Construction only. And to this even ordinary arts and professions do lead us. For it is that which every art doth aim at, that whatsoever it is, that is by art effected and prepared, may be fit for that work that it is prepared for…What else doth the education of children, and all learned professions tend unto? Certainly then it is that, which should be dear unto us also.”

 

These are all the exact same words, written in the exact same language, but translated very differently. Yet, they all draw on the same idea and hit the same general thought. They were writing at different times, so they wrote for a different audience in terms of language.

This is the exact issue that has affected the Bible. Without even getting into the logistics of who decided what is and isn’t scripture, there is an interpretation issue. As Greg Gilbert points out on Crossway.org, the major conflict comes from how literal the interpretation needs to be. There are some translators that vote for a more “word-for-word” translation as the best option to get the most accurate Bible; whereas, others posit that a more “thought-for-thought” translation is better suited to the modern people due to its readability.

 

Difficulties with a Literal Translation of the Bible

 

Languages are beautiful. The only problem is that they are culturally variant. The United States doesn’t have a national language but is known to predominantly speak English because the nation was founded by Great Britain, where they also speak English.

 

 

 

Both countries speak English but have variances for the same words. In the United States, we don’t have the letter “u” in the word “color.” This specific instance is due to the United States trying to separate the nation from the perceived oppressive Monarchy of ruling Britain.

 

It gets more intense than that though. Even within the United States, you will get specific verbiage directly related to geographic location. People in New York City will say words that don’t necessarily mean the same thing in Alabama, and the inverse is true too. It’s not often a New Yorker will say “y’all” or an Alabaman will say “schlep.”

 

Although contextual clues will ensure these people will be able to understand each other, there are broader examples of words that don’t directly translate. Even though Spanish is also a Romantic, or Latin-based, language, the word “sombremesa” doesn’t have a direct translation into English. This word isn’t necessarily needed in English due to differences in cultures. It can be translated to mean “the time spent after a meal just leisurely hanging out and chatting.” But in Britain and the United States, this isn’t a cultural norm, so that’s not a word that’s needed.

 

 

2 Timothy 3:16-17 in the NIV says, “(16) All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, (17) so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work,” which is often interpreted to mean that the Bible in and of itself, is, at a minimum, divinely inspired. The New International Version, is often cited as a middle-of-the-road translation.

 

If you read the same verse in the 21st century King James Version it says, “(16) All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, (17) that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly equipped for all good works.”

 

 

 

The 21st-century King James Version is an updated version of the original King James Version that was published in 1611. It’s been distilled from the original language to be as readable as possible — and it’s a much less accurate word-for-word translation of the Bible.

 

Dr. Peter J. Glurry wrote in a short blog post for the Text & Canon Institute of Phoenix Seminary, “The simple answer is that we have errors in our manuscripts because God never promised to keep them out.” Dr. Glurry is saying that the initial words or text may have been divinely inspired, but the scribes who interpreted and translated these words may not have been as precise. Which, in turn, means there may be some errors along the way.

 

 

Additionally, when it comes to literal translations of the Bible, there are new archeological discoveries and other contextual clues that may give us a whole new meaning to what was originally stated. A perfect example of this is the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah laid out in Genesis 19:1-22 when the mob is threatening to assault two Angels. This is commonly referred to as a tale in contention of homosexuality.

 

However, if you take into context the later account in Judges 19:22-26, where a similar situation happens and someone’s home is surrounded by a mob, you end up with a different understanding of the story. In the Genesis account, Lot offers up his daughters to protect himself. In the Judges account, a concubine is offered, and she is sexually assaulted and left for dead.

 

If you take both of these accounts into consideration, you learn that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was not directed at this single occurrence, but multiple wicked acts, including the attempted assault on someone’s guest.

 

 

To add to all of these difficulties, you have to take into consideration the continual evolution of language. This is something that has happened throughout history, and we can see it today. After all, what is a “yeet”? And how does “bet” mean “ok cool” or “hot” mean attractive?

 

Technology and the evolution of sociology naturally lead to the development of new phrases. It’s difficult to track the emergence of new terms and phrases because, although it’s always changing, the purpose of a dictionary isn’t to tell you the direct definition of a word but to report on the common usage over time.

 

Some words are extremely difficult to define, yet everyone knows what they mean. The quickest example is to have a layperson attempt to define “apple” or “furniture.” Some things in a language everyone knows because they’re basic, but when you try to attach a definition to them, it gets too complex.

 

 

 

If you look at the Dictionary.com definition for furniture, it reads “the movable articles, as tables, chairs, desks or cabinets, required for use or ornament in a house, office, or the like.” This means, that the definition also includes vases or the empty cup on your desk branded with the college you went to that you keep pens in.

 

It makes so much sense that scholars disagree and argue about the inherent definition of words. So if a word-for-word translation is so bad, is a thought-for-thought look better?

 

Problems with Thought-for-Thought Translations of the Bible
The First Translation of the Bible into English (Wycliffe Reading His Translation of the New Testament to His Protector, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, in the Presence of Chaucer and Gower, his Retainers), by Ford Madox Brown, 1847, Source: Artsdot.com

 

 

 

On the opposite side of the spectrum from the literal word-for-word translation of the Bible is the thought-for-thought translation. The best-known are The Message and the 21st-century King James Version. They are considerably distilled versions of original Hebrew and Greek texts.

 

As highlighted by Biblica.com, a word-for-word translation is extremely valuable for individual study, but it doesn’t lend itself to broader worship. There are those that believe the broader thought translation is better as it is much easier to understand and results in a larger group of people comprehending the meaning.

 

This idea is furthered by writer Don Stewart in his piece on translations of the Bible. Stewart says that the variance in interpretations and translations ultimately helps legitimize the Bible because they all are saying the same basic thing. The fact that there are so many copies of the same documents reporting the same stories adds to the credibility.

 

Titivillus, patron demon of scribes, who introduced errors into their work, 14th century, Source: Wikiwand

 

 

 

The opposite goes for when a person tweets something on X (formerly Twitter) about some obscure movie fact that they heard from their cousin’s friend who was an assistant to the set designer for the film, it doesn’t seem very legit. However, if this person says this, then an actor in the film says the same thing in an interview with a big magazine such as Cosmopolitan, then it’s going to have a lot more credibility.

 

But if that actor isn’t a very credible person and is known for spouting off nonsense, then it won’t have much backing. But if that noncredible actor says it, and it gets backed up by more people who also worked on the film and the director comes in and says it happened on the commentary of the film, then it’s considered true.

 

 

 

The likelihood of every person recounting this fictional fact in the same manner is slim to none. Each person will have their own take on the event. But it doesn’t make it untrue if Tim on the set remembers that there was a lucky cat on set with orange fur, while Sarah the actor in the film knows that it was mainly white with orange on it. That doesn’t mean either person is wrong, just that they had different experiences and the film had a lucky cat on set. What matters most about the fact is that it happened. It didn’t have to happen in a specific way to be “more accurate.”

 

The Gospel of Luke, from Codex Alexandrinus, 5th century CE, Source: Wikimedia Commons

 

 

 

Part of the difficulty in deciding the word-for-word translation is that there are multiple manuscripts out there. The translator will have to decide which manuscript they will use and then justify why they’re doing that.

 

For the Bible, translators have had to decide between Byzantine manuscripts and Alexandrian manuscripts. Byzantine texts take the majority of the original texts and create a cohesive interpretation of what the majority says. Alexandrian texts, on the other hand, used the texts written within a specific timeframe. The issue of doing this is in the determination of the legitimacy of the text it creates. This area is where a word-for-word translation has the advantage.

 

East of Eden, by John Steinbeck, first edition cover, 1952, Source: Wikimedia Commons

 

 

 

While doing this determination and distillation of the text you may end up with massive differences such as those outlined in John Steinbeck’s magnum opus East of Eden. In the novel there is a pivotal scene where the characters are discussing the Bible and one of them says he went to the original language to interpret a single word.

 

The specific quote discusses the different translations of the Bible when Lee says,  “Don’t you see? . . . The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in ‘Thou shalt,’ meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’—that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open.”

 

 

 

The thought-for-thought translations can lead to some confusion as to what the correct intention of the author was. With the idea that the entirety of the Bible is the “Word of God,” it’s important to get it right. Otherwise, you’re preaching a falsity.

 

In the scene laid out by John Steinbeck, the speaker is giving people a choice and establishing free will rather than predestination. This is a major point of contention in theological debate and it’s difficult, if not impossible, to come to a conclusion on it.

 

The Sermon, by Gari Melchers, 1886, Source: The Smithsonian American Art Museum

 

 

 

Another difficulty in doing a thought-for-thought translation of the Bible based on the multiple genres that make up the Bible. As explained by Minister Orpheus Heyward, the multiple genres of the Bible matter when trying to glean the desired understanding of a passage.

 

In terms of the thought-for-thought translation, some of the context will be lost due to the genre needing different readings. Some things in the Bible are meant to be read as songs (Psalms), metaphors, proverbs, and literal history. Sometimes these different genres don’t translate well into other languages and may become too confusing when trying to do a thought-for-thought translation. It may cause the translation to lose its impact.

 

Considerations for a Proper Translation of the Bible
Jesus preaching to a crowd, woodcut, by Hans Wechtlin the Elder, 1508, Source: The Welcome Collection

 

 

 

As you can see, there are a lot of difficulties when working on proper translations of the Bible. The translator will have to figure out which one best fits their goal.

 

New Testament scholar Dr. Gurry was interviewed by Dr. Brian Arnold on the Faith Seeking Understanding podcast created by the Phoenix Seminary. In it, Dr Gurry lays out five important questions that translators must consider when they’re doing their translation. He also gives a little information on how the answers to these questions affect the outcome of the translation itself.

 

The first question to consider is, “Who is the intended audience?” The translator must consider who they are trying to translate for in terms of age and maturity. That maturity is not just a literal maturity, but a spiritual maturity too. Education level is also of prime importance.

 

 

 

This all matters in terms of how the Bible will be translated. For example, are they translating for a Spanish child or a Biblical scholar from England? These sorts of questions will determine how in-depth the translation must be, as a thought-for-thought translation would likely work better for the child whereas, the Bible scholar would likely prefer a more literal word-for-word translation of the Bible.

 

The second question to be considered is: “Will this be a fresh translation or a revision of a former translation?” This will alter the translation significantly. For example, a translation of the original Greek and Hebrew text will have to set itself apart by having a different translation or take on specific words than other current in-print translations.

 

King James I, by John de Critz, 1605, Source: Museo Del Prado

 

 

 

On the other hand, a revision can maintain the integrity of the already completed translation but make it more readable or else interpret it for the desired intent. A translation of the original King James Version from 1611 may be done to make the words more understandable to a modern audience while keeping the beauty of the original.

 

Thirdly, what text will the translators translate? Someone may want to go all the way back to Tyndale’s translation or Martin Luther’s translation in German. Regardless of the choice, it will matter for the end result.

 

It could be a translation of a newly discovered text that they want to add to the Bible, which would naturally result in a very different understanding. By adding in, say, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the context of another book in the Bible might be wildly different.

 

Fourth, how do you handle culturally specific terms? Early in this article, a reference was made to how even within the United States there are cultural differences in how people talk and the words they use.

 

Printing Books, by Philipe Gale, 1590-3, Source: The National Gallery of Art

 

With that in mind, it makes sense that there would be some difficulty in deciding how to handle situations that don’t really translate well. These need to be handled in a specific way to get to the desired goal of being understood correctly by the target audience.

 

The final consideration for a translator is how much will the translation explain. This is important for the sake of footnotes. Will the translation just say the word-for-word translation or will it dig into what it means? Are there going to be notes added to it explaining what’s going on?

 

 

 

These are important considerations to get to the most effective translation of the Bible possible. People need to know what they’re reading and what it means in a more modern context. That way, to harken back to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, people don’t assume that Lot offering up his daughters was done maliciously.

 

Which Is the Best Translation of the Bible?
The Title Page for the Coverdale Bible, by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1535, via Wikimedia Commons

 

 

 

It’s been hinted at throughout the article, but a common follow-up question people have as to why there are so many different translations is “which one is best?” Hopefully, it has been conveyed well enough that there isn’t really a “best” translation. They each serve a specific purpose and are useful in their own way. But there is a “best” when speaking in more specific terms.

 

The kind of cheating answer, but nonetheless the absolute truth, is that the “best” is going to vary depending on the goal you’re trying to achieve. If you go to a modern church service, the general guidelines offered for a well-written sermon are: Include a main headline with three points and one to three subpoints to back up the initial point.

 

To help support their argument, pastors will often use multiple translations of the Bible for a single sermon. They will utilize the one that is written in the most comprehensive way to support their point. Sometimes the New International Version will word a verse more befitting the end goal than say the King James Version. Or maybe even the readability of The Message will help illustrate the point the best.

 

New International Version of the Bible, by Hoshie, Source: Wikimedia Commons

 

 

 

All of this really boils down to achieving the desired outcome. If you’re interested in a general overview of the Bible, you may want to turn The Message or an NIV translation. But if you’re trying to dig deep, then you will likely want the American Standard Version to get a more literal translation and to support you digging deeper into the original language the specific verse was written in. Doing this might result in a greater understanding of the author’s intent and, depending on your religious beliefs, a more clear understanding of what God truly believes.

 

That said, collect as many or as few translations as you want. After all, you can likely find every single version for free online."

#metaglossia_mundus

May 15, 2024 Tamar Kassarjian Literary Corner, Reflections "My journey with my first book, The Secret Language Method, over the past year has been nothing short of transformative, both for myself and for the countless individuals I’ve had the privilege of connecting with along the way. From the launch of my book on April 4, 2023, to the culmination of an inspiring book tour spanning from October 2023 to April 2024, this experience has shaped my understanding of the power of education and the beauty of linguistic exploration.

The Secret Language Method isn’t just a book—it’s a philosophy and methodology that seeks to redefine how we approach teaching language. Grounded in practical techniques and an appreciation for cognitive processes, this method motivates young readers to use their mother language in different scenarios, making it enjoyable and effective.

One of the most rewarding aspects of the tour was the diversity of experiences and perspectives I encountered. Whether I was in sunny Florida, vibrant New York City, windy Illinois, snowy Canada or mountainous California, I witnessed a common thread of a shared passion for speaking Armenian and loving our language.

 

At the heart of The Secret Language Method is a call to embrace one’s mother language as a tool to build confidence and express emotions effectively. For me, that language is Armenian, a rich and expressive language that holds deep cultural significance.

 

Concurrent with this book tour, I’ve been pursuing my master’s degree in healthcare administration. Balancing the demands of academia with book tours and school visits has been a challenging yet rewarding experience, reinforcing my belief in the importance of lifelong learning and personal growth.

I vividly recall being urged by my grandmother from a young age to speak Armenian consistently to preserve our heritage. However, this directive often felt more like an obligation than a choice, because I was unaware of its importance at a young age. This experience fueled my motivation to create this book—to make speaking Armenian enjoyable and appealing for children. Additionally, while teaching at the local Armenian school in Florida, I try to raise awareness about the evolving nature of Armenian identity in the diaspora. As we embrace multicultural experiences, it becomes increasingly vital to maintain our language and cultural roots.

Through my book and tours, I’ve encouraged individuals to use their mother languages more often, not only for practical communication but also to connect with their heritage and express their true selves. My goal has been to inspire young people to incorporate their native languages into daily communication.

 

The journey began with the excitement of introducing The Secret Language Method to the world. As I embarked on my book tour, visiting 38 locations across 13 states and Canada, I was met with enthusiasm and curiosity. From bustling classrooms to intimate book signings, each stop reinforced my belief in the transformative impact of education. Interacting with students and educators was a highlight, and it was inspiring to see students embrace their mother language and grow in confidence as they expressed themselves more freely.

One memorable moment was visiting Sipan Armenian School in New Jersey in late October. I was in awe that the event was held on a Friday night after a long day of regular school. I was so proud of the students and their love for attending Armenian school and making memories with friends on a Friday night. At the end of my reading, I met a sweet boy named Vicken. He wanted to purchase a book to take home and read to his little sister. Vicken mentioned that his mom’s name is Narine, which is the book’s main character’s name. During my tour in New Jersey, I also attended the AYF’s 90th Anniversary Gala. I desperately needed a makeup artist, so I searched on Instagram to find someone local. I came across a lovely lady named Narine. After chatting, I discovered that she was little Vicken’s mother! She mentioned how inspired Vicken was after I visited his school, so much so that he asked her how to say specific phrases in Armenian in order to DIY a book himself.  

Another memorable moment took place back in November 2023. I was working with a group from the ANCA to prepare for a rally during the Miami Republican debate. I connected with member Nerses Semerjian from Philadelphia to discuss the details. We realized that I had met Nerses’ son, Harout, while on tour visiting the Armenian Sisters’ Academy in Philadelphia. After the rally, Nerses sent me a sweet video of Harout introducing himself and reading my book’s first couple of pages so proudly. It was heartwarming to hear a little voice read my book.  

One last memory was on my recent tour to California. I traveled over an hour from where I was staying in Glendale to visit the Ari Guigos Minassian Armenian School in Orange County. This day was the first anniversary of publishing my book. After I read to more than 50 students, to my surprise they began to sing “Happy Birthday” for the book’s first anniversary. It was a goosebumps feeling. At every school I visited in California for my “anniversary tour,” I passed my reading book around for students to sign as a memento.  

As I look to the future, I’m already hard at work on my next book, eager to delve deeper into the theme of cultural identity. For schools and institutions interested in hosting me or learning more about my books, I encourage emailing tamarkassarjian@gmail.com. My Instagram account, @tamarkassarjian, offers a glimpse into my journey, showcasing the places I’ve visited and the incredible individuals I’ve had the honor of meeting. Education is a lifelong journey, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to share my passion with the younger generation. 

Reflecting on the past year of adventures, lessons and connections, I’m grateful for the support and encouragement that have fueled this journey. What a journey it’s been in Florida, New York, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Boston, Providence, Montreal, Detroit, Chicago, California and Texas. I wanted to give a huge thank you to three individuals who supported me every step of the way: my mother Lara, my morkour Sose and my best friend Francesca. Without you three, my tours would have been impossible. As they say, it takes a village, but it’s not only about raising a family – it’s everything in life. I would like to also extend my deepest gratitude to the principals, educators, ARF/ARS/AYF/ABGU members, parents, family and friends who helped make all my tours possible. Also, thanks to my employer for working with all my days off. This book is dedicated to my Dede, who passed away when I was 16. I hope everything I’ve been able to do with this book has put a smile on his face as he watches over me. Together, we’re shaping a future where language is not just a means of communication but a bridge to cultural understanding, self-confidence and authentic expression. Here’s to a beautiful summer and the next tour!

Tamar Kassarjian

Tamar Kassarjian is a native Floridian and currently working toward her masters in healthcare administration. She serves on the executive of the ARS "Sosseh" Chapter, where she’s been a member for nine years. She also serves as the secretary for the AYF South Florida “Arev” Chapter, where she has been a member for five years. Tamar is active in her local Armenian community as an Armenian dance teacher at Arevig Dance Ensemble and an Armenian language kindergarten teacher at the local Sunday school."

#metaglossia_mundus

"Le Thi Van Anh

2nd year at the Faculty of Global Management
International Student from Vietnam
Enrollment in: April 2023

Desire to acquire wide and practical knowledge for my future career

  I believe studying abroad enlarges my global perspectives and provides an unparalleled networking opportunity that works for my future career. Many students in south-eastern Asia wish to work in their home country after graduating but I thought studying and working in Japan would work for my future career. That is why I decided to study in Japan.

  Before coming to Japan, I studied the basics of Japanese hard to start my life in Japan smoothly. I became able to communicate and have daily conversations in Japanese, especially through the preparation study for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT). Plus, I looked up beforehand how international students adapted to different cultures and what kind of culture shocks they have experienced, along with understanding Japanese customs and courtesy to know how international students should behave. In my case, I came to Japan with my sister and entered the Japanese school together. My sister who works at a Japanese financial firm now supports my university tuition. I really appreciate her support and I would like to do the same for my sisters and brothers in Vietnam when they grow up.

  Chuo University is one of the well-known universities in Japan boasting its long history and tradition. A famous university is fairly evaluated globally so learning at such a school will help me build certain trust when choosing my future path. There are three reasons for me choosing the Faculty of Global Management; a) the curriculum provided at the Faculty is highly evaluated, b) it is possible to earn practical knowledge of business in a broad sense, and c) there should be plenty of opportunities to learn in English. I think there are not many places in Japan where we can take such good courses in English. I believe what I learned here will become a firm foundation for my future career.

Drastically Improved Japanese Skill at the Faculty of Global Management

I have been studying hard on macroeconomics and microeconomics since entering Chuo University. Macroeconomics is a basic area of economics teaching the economies of nations and regions as a whole. On the other hand, microeconomics focuses on the economies of small units such as companies and markets. I learned the economic structure and trends through these two areas. In addition, I am studying investment evaluation methods for financial products such as stocks and bonds in the “investment appraisal” class. This includes a discount cash flow system and a risk assessment etc.  

  There are many international students from all over the world studying at the Faculty of Global Management. I also made new Japanese friends thanks to the opportunities to interact with Japanese students. At first, I was confused when talking with Japanese friends since they tend not to say things straightforward, however, I enriched my human relationships by getting along with friends with diverse backgrounds and sharing different perspectives and experiences with them. I can also tell that my language skills are improving drastically alongside the increase of opportunities to speak Japanese that is to say in daily conversation and class discussions etc.  

  Furthermore, thanks to the kind faculty members here, I can study feeling secure. Some professors have an experience of studying abroad and some are experts in overseas. Among them, Associate Professor, Dumayas Arianne Dela Rosa of the Faculty of Global Management is the one who studied at Chuo University as an international student when she was a university student. Although we are not from the same country, she cares about me for being the same south-eastern Asia nationality which is a great reassurance to me.  

  I have come to love Japanese food since I came here. My favorite now is the Izakaya menu which means dishes served at the bar. I especially like takoyaki and okonomiyaki which are unique to Japan. I sometimes cook kara-age (fried chicken), gyu-don (sauteed beef topped on rice), omu-rice (rice omelet) for myself with the help of an online recipe. I go to the Hilltop ’78 (a little bit far from the Faculty of Global Management) for lunch when I have classes. Curry rice and Ramen are cheap and the bakery here is the best.  

  Besides my life at Chuo, I work at the restaurant as a part-timer. There, I became friends with the nationalities of Sri Lanka and Nepal which I didn’t get to meet at the University. I am earning money for my living expenses and tuition. I also like to hang around urban cities and local areas to discover Japan. Traveling around new places will make your studying abroad experience more exciting. I wish to visit Okinawa and Hokkaido during a university student.

What a challenge to adapt oneself to a different culture and language!

I do have difficult times when studying abroad. I feel lonely for being alone in the first-ever place absence from the support of my parents or relatives. I sometimes get stressed out with a miscommunication arises from a cultural difference or being unable to communicate properly. On top of these, I need to work on household tasks and everyday difficulties. A daily shopping, cooking, washing and cleaning, everyday scheduling of classes, and a part-time job. Every single thing has to be done all by myself. I need to be independent in a real sense.

  However, it is challenging to adapt oneself to different cultures and languages. Under a new environment, we can gain self-sustainable competency although it may take time to get used to different living styles. I separated from my sister and started to live by myself this spring. I will do my best with the belief that facing and overcoming difficulties will improve my problem-solving ability and flexibility, as well as being capable in controlling stress effectively and gaining strength to tackle challenges.

  After graduating from Chuo, I wish to work at a foreign-affiliated accounting firm. These leading firms are well-recognized globally and require employees to possess high professionalism which means I can further brush up my specialized skills. To make my wish come true, I will do my best while in Chuo to absorb expert knowledge from professional teachers.

 

 

  Studying abroad offers you an incredible experience, and the opportunities it brings are immeasurable. Give your best effort while you're young, and savor every moment. The future holds a plethora of chances for you.

  Chuo University is a fantastic place where you can meet numerous friends and lay the foundation for your career. The bonds with friends and experiences in the academic community here will be invaluable assets in your future.

Contact

International Center

• 742-1 Higashinakano, Hachioji-shi, Tokyo
  192-0393 Japan
• +81-42-674-2211, 2212
• +81-42-674-2214"

 

#metaglossia_mundus

"The state is assembling a plan to tackle the looming ASL interpreter shortage. Meanwhile, unfilled requests for the service from the Deaf community are growing. 

By Jessie Van Berkel Star Tribune

 

MAY 17, 2024 — 7:00AM

Mai Vang communicates with hundreds of students using ASL while Danielle Gournaris and Kari Sween look on during a panel discussing professions using ASL, living as a deaf person and other relevant topics at Prior Lake High School in Savage on Tuesday.

Deaf Minnesotans made a pitch from the auditorium stage at Prior Lake High School to an audience of about 325 students studying sign language: We need you.

American Sign Language interpreters are an essential part of life for thousands of Minnesotans. They are there when someone is diagnosed with cancer or if they end up in court. They attend weddings, family reunions and funerals.

But the pool of interpreters is shrinking in Minnesota and across the nation. A survey of Minnesota interpreters in 2021 found nearly 40% expected to leave the profession within five years. Leaders of two interpreting agencies in Minnesota said they are seeing service requests rising and more of those asks are going unmet.

Meanwhile, the three Minnesota colleges with interpreter training programs have seen participation drop.

"We're afraid for our quality of life. We're afraid we're losing our access to communication. We're afraid to be pushed aside," said Darlene Zangara, executive director Minnesota Commission of the Deaf, DeafBlind & Hard of Hearing.

 

Darlene Zangara communicates with hundreds of students using American Sign Language (ASL) during a panel discussion on ASL professions, living as a Deaf person and other relevant topics at Prior Lake High School in Savage on Tuesday.

The commission launched an "Interpreting Forward 2030″ effort and has gathered ideas from around the state on how to shore up the interpreter workforce and ensure people get high-quality services. The input doesn't point to one simple solution. Zangara said the commission will create a website this summer highlighting a long list of issues, and those will be narrowed into a plan.

One of the first problems, many people said, is too few people consider an ASL interpreting career.

 

So a panel of Deaf leaders, a child of deaf adults and an interpreter assembled Tuesday in the auditorium of Prior Lake High School, which has seen an explosion of student interest in ASL classes in recent years. Students signed questions about the visitors' lives and the panelists ended the conversation by stressing the need for more interpreters.

Joe Klug, who started learning ASL in high school and now works as a freelance interpreter, sees the high demand for the service daily. He checked his phone after an hour of talking to students and had received numerous work requests.

Klug tried to spark interest among the young ASL learners. He shared his story of getting paid to work on a Caribbean cruise and the biggest celebrity he has interpreted for: Bill Nye.

"I completely sat up in my chair and I was paying attention," said Nikhil Gajria, a junior who was one of several students in the crowd who said they are considering an interpreting career. "He traveled on a cruise for eight days and he met Bill Nye? I'm like, OK, I am able to be an interpreter and contribute to the ASL community — but I also get to meet crazy people that I may not even realize was a possibility."

A difficult professional path

People in the field and those who use interpreters said they often provide a service at key moments in someone's life.

 

"We get to see births and we get to be there when people pass," said Bridget Sabatke, an interpreter and assistant professor at St. Catherine University.

Many colleges and universities offer American Sign Language classes, but St. Catherine is one of the few with an interpreting program. ASL is a language and a culture, Sabatke said, but interpreting programs teach ethics and how to listen and talk at the same time.

Their interpreter class size dropped from 16 people before COVID-19 to seven, Sabatke said. At North Central University, assistant professor Sydney Groven said their graduating class in ASL interpreting has fallen from nine people to one this year.

Educators and interpreters said broad demographic and workforce factors are contributing to the looming shortage, including the decline in college enrollment and baby boomer retirements. And fewer colleges are requiring foreign language classes, Groven said, so not as many people are exposed to ASL.

There are also industry-specific issues, like getting people to stick in a profession that involves a number of expensive hurdles post-college.

 

Once someone gets their degree they can provide the type of interpreting services Klug does. They often work at community, corporate or college events and provide video relay services, which allow people with hearing disabilities to have telephone conversations.

But interpreters need to score well on a specialized assessment to work in educational settings. Those who want to become court or medical interpreters must get additional training and usually have to earn their national certification — widely considered the gold standard for interpreters — which involves challenging tests. It can take years for someone to achieve that certification, which interpreters said allows them to earn higher pay.

Interpreters' income varies. Some school district job postings offer around $30 an hour while the Minnesota Judicial System pays up to $86 an hour.

The certification process should be less expensive and easier to pass, said Kathleen Smith, president of Minnesota Association of Deaf Citizens. She said that in the past people could request an interpreter a day or two ahead of an appointment, but with the growing shortage they now need to reach out at least a week in advance.

Getting the right interpreter

There's a delicate balance between making it easier to become an interpreter and ensuring people are highly qualified, many people said. The Interpreting Forward 2030 initiative started with talks about additional interpreter regulations, Zangara said, but broadened as they learned about the shortage.

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The nonprofit Minnesota Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf conducted the 2021 Minnesota interpreter census that exposed the scale of the looming shortfall. It found more than 500 people were working as interpreters in Minnesota. There are likely a couple hundred more people doing ASL interpreting who weren't reflected in the count, said Tarra Grammenos, past president of the nonprofit.

But she said that's far from enough. There is not an exact count of how many deaf, deafblind and hard of hearing Minnesotans use ASL, but national organizations estimate there are roughly 50 people who use ASL in the U.S. for every one interpreter.

"The number of interpreters are dwindling but our number of Deaf community members are growing," Grammenos said. "Close to 1,000, I think, would cover what we need. We don't have that."

The survey also showed only 6% of interpreters identify as people of color. Cultural nuance is often lost when someone of a different race or ethnicity interprets, several deaf Minnesotans said.

"We need BIPOC interpreters, people who match me," St. Paul and Minneapolis Black Deaf Advocates President Cookie J. Brand told Prior Lake High School students. "How many times do I see a Black interpreter? Very, very few times."

 

Nuance is also lost when hospitals lean on virtual technology for interpreting services, people noted. The technology often freezes and Zangara, who is a cancer survivor, said it's difficult to concentrate on a small screen when you are in pain.

Deaf patients sometimes delay medical treatment because no one is available to interpret, Grammenos added.

"Lives could be threatened if they cannot get interpreters," she said.

 

Hundreds of students listen to a panel discussing professions using ASL, living as a Deaf person and other relevant topics at Prior Lake High School in Savage on Tuesday.

 

Jessie Van Berkel is the Star Tribune’s social services reporter. She writes about Minnesota’s most vulnerable populations and the systems and policies that affect them. Topics she covers include disability services, mental health, addiction, poverty, elder care and child protection.

jessie.vanberkel@startribune.com"

#metaglossia_mundus

"Generative AI is trained on just a few of the world’s 7,000 languages. Here’s why that’s a problem – and what’s being done about it

May 17, 2024

Companies are embedding more languages in their AI models.

Madeleine North

Senior Writer, Forum Agenda

• Generative AI is mainly trained on the English language, leading to bias and, in some cases, errors with serious consequences.
• Companies and governments are taking action and creating their own AI models to ensure more of the world’s 7,000 languages are embedded in the technology.
• Preserving cultural heritage is one of the suggested actions put forward in the World Economic Forum’s Presidio Recommendations on Responsible Generative AI.

"Ka pai te AI Whakaputanga i ngā reo?"

According to ChatGPT – and hopefully anyone Māori – the above sentence means, “Is Generative AI good at languages?”.

The answer: yes and no.

With the majority of large language models (LLMs) trained on English text, if you are, say, a student in Odisha, India, using AI to analyze a research paper in your native Odia language, the likes of ChatGPT, Claude and Google Bard may let you down.

This may have serious consequences in some cases. A translator in the US told Reuters Context that four in ten of their Afghan asylum cases derailed in 2023 due to inaccurate AI-driven translation apps.

So what is going on here? There are over 7,000 languages spoken in the world, yet most AI chatbots are trained on around 100 of them. And English, despite being spoken by less than 20% of the world’s population, accounts for almost two-thirds of websites and is the main driver of LLMs, says the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT).

The English language dominates the internet, and therefore generative AI models too.Image: Reuters Context

Generative AI and its language bias

Inevitably, this linguistic imbalance is leading to issues.

The “insane mistakes” spotted by the asylum application translators included names becoming months, crucial details missing, even immigration sentences being reversed. "The machines themselves are not operating with even a fraction of the quality they need to be able to do casework that's acceptable for someone in a high-stakes situation," Ariel Koren, founder of Respond Crisis Translation, told Reuters Context.

It’s a view shared by CDT’s Gabriel Nicholas and Aliya Bhatia, who point out that, despite the gradual emergence of Multilingual Language Models (MLMs), they “are still usually trained disproportionately on English language text and thus end up transferring values and assumptions encoded in English into other language contexts where they may not belong”. They give the example of the word “dove”, which an MLM might interpret in various languages as being associated with peace, but the Basque equivalent (“uso”) is in fact an insult.

What’s needed is the development of non-English Natural Language Processing (NLP) applications, say experts, to help reduce the language bias in generative AI and “preserve cultural heritage”. The latter is one of 30 suggested actions put forward in the World Economic Forum’s Presidio Recommendations on Responsible Generative AI. “Public and private sector should invest in creating curated datasets and developing language models for underrepresented languages, leveraging the expertise of local communities and researchers and making them available,” it says.

Addressing the AI language bias

There are signs that governments, the tech community and even individuals are taking steps to resolve the AI language issue.

The Indian government is building Bhashini, an AI translation system trained on local languages. There are 22 official ones, but few are currently captured by NLP applications. Indian tech firm Karya is also trying to redress the balance by building datasets for firms like Microsoft and Google to use in AI models. It’s a painstaking process, involving people reading words in their native language into an app.

Launched in the UAE in 2023, Jais AI is an Arabic language model capable of generating high-quality text in Arabic, including regional dialects, says Digital Watch. The developers, G42, next plan to bring out the world’s first Arabic robot assistant.

In New Zealand, local broadcaster Te Hiku Media is harnessing AI to aid the “preservation, promotion and revitalization of te reo Māori,” its chief technology officer told Nvidia, which helped create the automatic speech recognition models it says can transcribe te reo with 92% accuracy.

In a similar endeavour, grassroots organization Masakhane is working to “strengthen and spur NLP research in African languages”. There are around 2,000 languages spoken across Africa, yet they are “barely represented in technology”, it says.

Nigeria's government is also taking action, recently launching its first multilingual LLM. “The LLM will be trained on five low-resource languages and accented English to ensure stronger language representation in existing datasets for the development of artificial intelligence solutions,” Dr 'Bosun Tijani, the Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, announced on LinkedIn.

In the Brazilian Amazon, 300 languages are spoken by indigenous people, but only a few of the major ones are recognized by LLMs.

After being unable to communicate with the Amazonian community he was living and working with, Turkish artist Refik Anadol – who co-created the indigenous digital artwork Winds of Yawanawa – turned his frustration into action. Anadol has spearheaded the creation of an open-source AI tool “for any indigenous people” to “preserve their language with technology”, he told the World Economic Forum at this year’s Annual Meeting in Davos.

“How on Earth can we create an AI that doesn’t know the whole of humanity?” he asked.

With a language “disappearing” at a rate of one every fortnight, according to UNESCO, generative AI could prove to be the death knell, or the saviour, of many of them."

#metaglossia_mundus

Zayna Abdel-Rahim, Opinions Contributor May 16, 2024 Jarell Carr

"As globalization continues to reshape society, proficiency in critical languages becomes an asset for students nationwide. Yet, Texas State’s continued emphasis on mainstream languages like Spanish obscures its students’ professional and educational potential.

While the World Languages and Literatures Department (WLLD) does provide courses for multiple critical languages, including Russian, Arabic, Japanese and Chinese, with minors in the latter three, enrollment in these languages is low.

However, this wouldn’t necessarily be the case if students were more adequately informed about the incentives of studying one of these languages.

Texas State students are overwhelmingly enrolled in and minoring in Spanish. As of fall 2023, only 75 students had minors in Japanese, 20 in Chinese and 12 in Arabic. Spanish, however, had over 264 minors, meaning there were more than double the number of Spanish minors than all of our critical language minors combined.

On one hand, Texas State is a Hispanic-serving institution, and in that lies the responsibility to maintain a strong Spanish program. That being said, this is not a call for a weaker or defunded Spanish program; it is a call for better-funded and well-advertised critical languages.

The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) categorizes Arabic, Japanese and Chinese as “Category V” languages, meaning it usually takes 88 weeks to reach near fluency. Russian is just one level below that.

Because of this fact, many are shocked to find out at Texas State, Arabic is taught exclusively online and under only one instructor. Chinese and Russian also have only one instructor each, providing little variety to students who may not learn best from the teaching styles of the singular professor they are provided with.

“Your language professor could make or break your learning experience… Being able to understand what they say and how they teach is very important to the success of the student,” Joshua Egwaikhide, a computer science junior with a minor in Arabic said.

The WLLD should consider adding professors to each language and better advertising the funding opportunities that come with them, especially those sponsored by the State Department.

To encourage students to learn these languages, the State Department offers an array of scholarships, including the Critical Language Scholarship (CLS), the Gilman International Scholarship and the Boren Scholarship.

Like thousands of others at Texas State, my Pell Grant recipient status made me eligible for the Gilman International Scholarship which granted me $6,000 to study Arabic in Morocco. This is an extraordinary opportunity to study a critical language.

If 1 in 4 applicants receive the Gilman International Scholarship, why don’t we discuss it more?

If more students could be informed about such grants, they would have more opportunities to advance their degrees, study abroad and do so at no expense to the WLLD.

When asked about promoting such opportunities, Gabriel Medina, an international relations senior who was awarded the CLS to Taiwan, supported the idea of promotion.

“I think it’s important that these opportunities are told to the students somehow, so it might be helpful to have a [Department-wide] newsletter,” Medina said.

A great model for the potential changes needed in Arabic, Chinese and Russian could be our very own Japanese program.

At Texas State, Japanese has three professors, offers primarily in-person classes and has the highest percentage of minors out of all critical languages.

If a similar approach could be implemented throughout the WLLD, we could see great improvements in opportunities for our critical language programs and its students.

Enhancing our critical language education means making brighter and more competitive students when it’s time to face the job market. Recognizing the importance of this knowledge is just the first step in the right direction.

-Zayna Abdel-Rahim is an international relations senior

The University Star welcomes Letters to the Editor from its readers. All submissions are reviewed and considered by the Editor in Chief and Opinions Editor for publication. Not all letters are guaranteed for publication."

#metaglossia_mundus

"The VUB has been researching the language habits and knowledge of people in Brussels for 25 years. Its fifth Taalbarometer, presented this week, confirms that language diversity is increasing in the capital. While 72 languages were spoken in the first study in 2000, the latest survey counts 107.

While French remains the most widely spoken language in Brussels, its popularity is declining, according to a major study by the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. English takes second place, followed by Dutch, but the number of people who don’t speak any of the three languages is rising, BRUZZ reports.

Sally Tipper

Thu 16 May  15:39

The VUB has been researching the language habits and knowledge of people in Brussels for 25 years. Its fifth Taalbarometer, presented this week, confirms that language diversity is increasing in the capital. While 72 languages were spoken in the first study in 2000, the latest survey counts 107. The researchers believe this number is likely to be an underestimate.

English is gaining in importance, with 47% of people saying they speak English, up from 33% in 2000. While in the first language barometer almost every resident spoke some French, that has fallen to 81%, meaning almost one in five doesn’t speak French.

Knowledge of Dutch has declined since the first study, from 33% in 2000 to 22% today, but researchers say they are now seeing a turnaround. In 2018, the figure was only 16%. This growth is partly attributable to the fact that many Dutch-speakers move from Flanders to Brussels and to the popularity of Dutch-language education. 

 

We need to be aware of this richness and strengthen it even more, although not at the expense of Dutch

The multilingualism of Brussels is rising, with many people using several languages interchangeably to communicate. The number of people speaking all three major languages has doubled since the previous language barometer and the number of those who speak only French has fallen.

At the same time, the number of people who speak no Dutch, French or English has increased, to 10.5% from 3% in 2000, and is most common among non-EU nationals. A quarter of that group say they do not speak any of the three languages.

Social exclusion

“Should this trend continue, this poses a substantial challenge for the future of Brussels,” the researchers say, warning of the risk of social exclusion. “This group will most likely experience barriers in contact with public and private services.”

For Flemish Brussels minister Benjamin Dalle, of Christian democrats CD&V, who funded the study, there are encouraging figures, such as the relative stability of Dutch alongside multilingualism. “We need to be aware of this richness and strengthen it even more, although not at the expense of Dutch,” he told BRUZZ."

#metaglossia_mundus

"Natasha Rivas ’24 to teach in Japan May 16, 2024

By Laurel McLaughlin

For most students in the U.S., studying another language or living abroad isn’t something they experience until college. But Natasha Rivas’s educational journey was unique. By the time she was eleven, she had already lived and attended school in two countries. Rivas was born in Worcester, spent first and second grades in the Dominican Republic, then traveled to Okinawa, Japan, for grades four and five. She returned to Worcester for middle school and her high school offered a Spanish bilingual education program.

This experience instilled a commitment in her to further her understanding of different languages and bridge cultural divides. Studying Japanese in Clark’s Department of Language, Literature, and Culture, she’s been able to achieve more than she thought possible. “The faculty there have dedicated their lives to sharing another culture,” she says. “They’ve helped me get to my goals every day.”

“I believe in the power of language to create more empathy, to drive progress, and connect our world together.”

 

Rivas deepened her skills even further during a semester abroad in Osaka, Japan, funded through a prestigious Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship. She studied Japanese language and culture alongside students from around the world and served as an intern at a Japanese elementary school through the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) program. “For many of the students, it was their first contact with foreigners,” she says.

Rivas found that while many people speak English, learning Japanese made her interactions with the people there more meaningful. “Showing people you’ve made a commitment of time to learn their language is a way to show you respect their culture,” she says. It also gave her insight into different ways of being in the world. “In Japanese, so much is conveyed through mannerisms, such as humming and nodding,” she explains. “There are specific phrases linked to arriving and leaving someone’s home, and actions that accompany words.”

Learning a new language requires time, but Rivas emphasizes the value for students. In her role as a tutor in the Office of Student Success, she encouraged her peers beginning a new language to immerse themselves through things they like, such as music, film, or other aspects of youth culture. “That effort you go through will always stick,” she says.

Rivas, a combined languages major with a minor in Asian studies, will return to Japan after graduation to work as an assistant language teacher for Japanese students through the JET Program. Eventually, she’d like to study Japanese youth culture at the graduate level. “I want to use language and artistic expression as a means to foster understanding and empathy across cultures,” she says. “I believe in the power of language to create more empathy, to drive progress, and connect our world together.”"

#metaglossia_mundus

"Poste de doctorant.e en représentations paratextuelles de traducteurs en littératures francophones

Publié le 17 Mai 2024 par Vincent Ferré (Source : https://www.ugent.be/en/work/scientific/phd-student-45)

Description du poste

Cette offre d'emploi concerne un projet de doctorat à temps plein qui sera mené au département de traduction, d'interprétation et de communication de l'université de Gand, en Belgique. Cette recherche doctorale s'inscrit dans un projet plus large portant sur les traductions et les paratextes. Plus précisément, le candidat retenu étudiera les représentations paratextuelles des traducteurs dans les littératures francophones. L'objectif principal de la recherche est d'explorer la manière dont les traducteurs sont représentés, à la fois par eux-mêmes et par d'autres acteurs (auteurs, éditeurs, critiques, etc.) à la fois dans les péritextes (par exemple les préfaces et les postfaces) et dans les épitextes (par exemple les comptes rendus, interviews, sites web, etc.) La question centrale de la recherche est la suivante : comment les traducteurs construisent-ils, combinent-ils et/ou se voient-ils attribuer des rôles et des identités multiples dans plusieurs types de discours ? La recherche se concentrera principalement sur la période moderne (du 19e siècle à nos jours), le français étant la langue source ou la langue cible. Dans ce cadre linguistique et temporel, le candidat aura une grande flexibilité quant au choix des auteurs, des traducteurs et des textes à analyser. En outre, si vous étudiez un corpus d'œuvres contemporaines, la recherche peut inclure des entretiens avec des auteurs, des traducteurs, des éditeurs et d'autres agents littéraires. 

Votre recherche sera intégrée dans les activités du groupe de recherche TRACE-CLIV. L'équipe est principalement basée à Gand et travaille en étroite collaboration avec d'autres groupes de recherche, tant à l'intérieur qu'à l'extérieur de l'Université de Gand (CCROC, CERES, CETRA, TRICS, CIRTI). Bien que les recherches de ses membres couvrent un large éventail de sujets, elles se situent généralement à l'intersection des études littéraires et de la traductologie.

Vos responsabilités :

• Sur une période de quatre ans, vous préparerez une thèse de doctorat portant sur les représentations paratextuelles des traducteurs dans les littératures francophones.
• Vous partagerez et diffuserez vos idées et les résultats intermédiaires de vos recherches par le biais de publications de qualité dans des revues ou des ouvrages spécialisés, ainsi que par des présentations lors de conférences ou d'ateliers internationaux.
• Vous êtes prêt à contribuer à des initiatives visant à partager vos recherches avec un public plus large.
• Vous êtes ouvert à la collaboration avec d'autres doctorants à l'intérieur et à l'extérieur de l'Université de Gand qui travaillent sur des projets de recherche parallèles et complémentaires.

 En plus de vos tâches de recherche principales, vous contribuerez activement à la mission éducative de notre institution en apportant un soutien (limité) aux cours dans le domaine des études de traduction (littéraire). En outre, vous aurez l'occasion de jouer un rôle de mentor en supervisant des mémoires de master en rapport avec le sujet de votre doctorat.

Offre d’emploi

Nous offrons la possibilité de mener cette recherche dans un environnement international et stimulant. L'université de Gand se classe parmi les 100 meilleures universités du monde. Située au cœur de l'Europe, Gand est une ville belle et accueillante qui offre une multitude d'activités culturelles et de loisirs.

• Vous travaillerez sous la supervision du professeur Francis Mus. Vos horaires de travail sont flexibles, et le travail à domicile est possible.
• Votre contexte de recherche immédiat est constitué par les groupes de recherche TRACE et CLIV. Vous rencontrerez également des collègues appartenant à d'autres groupes de recherche, tant à l'intérieur qu'à l'extérieur de l'université de Gand. Tout au long de votre parcours, vous pouvez compter sur les conseils d'un comité doctoral.
• Sur le plan administratif, vous ferez partie de la section française du département, qui est responsable de l'enseignement des matières françaises dans les programmes de bachelier et de master du département.
• Votre contrat devrait idéalement débuter le 1er septembre 2024, bien qu'une autre date de début puisse être arrangée après consultation.
• Dans un premier temps, le candidat retenu se verra proposer un contrat d'un an, suivi d'une évaluation. Après une évaluation positive, le contrat sera prolongé de trois ans.
• Votre allocation mensuelle à temps plein est calculée en fonction des conditions d'emploi des boursiers de doctorat dans les barèmes pour le personnel académique spécial. Pour plus d'informations sur les barèmes salariaux de l'Université de Gand, voir https://www.ugent.be/nl/vacatures/salaryscales
• Le candidat retenu bénéficiera de certains avantages offerts par l'Université de Gand (tels qu'un large éventail de cours, le remboursement de vos trajets et des ecochèques). Pour un aperçu complet des avantages sociaux à l'Université de Gand, voir https://www.ugent.be/nl/jobs/personeelsvoordelen.htm  ;

 Profil du poste

Nous recherchons un.e doctorant.e créatif.ve et motivé.e possédant les qualifications et compétences suivantes :

• Vous possédez (ou obtiendrez avant la date de début, c'est-à-dire quelques mois après la candidature) un master (européen) en rapport avec le projet de recherche (par exemple, langues, littérature, traduction, études culturelles) avec d'excellentes notes (niveau "honours").
• Vous connaissez les principales méthodologies et références théoriques des études de traduction littéraire et de littérature comparée.
• Vous possédez de solides compétences analytiques pour interpréter le matériel de recherche.
• Vous êtes capable de travailler de manière autonome, vous possédez des qualités d'organisation et vous avez l'esprit d'équipe.
• Vous avez une bonne/excellente maitrise de l'anglais et du français, tant à l'oral qu'à l'écrit. La maîtrise du néerlandais sera considérée comme un atout, en particulier à des fins de collaboration pratique.

Comment postuler

Envoyez votre candidature par courriel au prof. Francis Mus (francis.mus@ugent.be), avec pour objet "Candidature : Doctorat paratexte".

Les candidatures (un seul fichier pdf) doivent comprendre

• Une lettre de motivation en néerlandais, français ou anglais, expliquant pourquoi vous pensez être un candidat approprié pour ce projet de doctorat et pourquoi vous voulez ce poste;
• Un curriculum vitae académique/professionnel, y compris une transcription de vos résultats d'études;
• Un bref aperçu décrivant vos travaux de recherche antérieurs (par exemple, articles scientifiques, thèse de maîtrise, rapport sur le travail de projet, etc.). Remarque : cette description peut s'écarter du thème du poste à pourvoir ;
• Un exemple de texte écrit dans le cadre de votre recherche académique jusqu'à présent (par exemple, un article, un chapitre de votre mémoire de maîtrise, etc.)
• Au moins deux contacts de référence.

 Après une première sélection, les candidats retenus seront invités à un entretien (en personne ou à distance via MS Teams).

 Date limite de dépôt des candidatures :  30 juin 2024. 

Début de la recherche doctorale :  Septembre-octobre 2024

• Responsable :
  Francis Mus
• Url de référence :
  https://www.ugent.be/en/work/scientific/phd-student-45"

#metaglossia_mundus

"Du 5 Juin 2024 au 6 Juin 2024Publié le 16 Mai 2024 par Marc Escola (Source : Stéphanie Bertrand)

Colloque

LIRE ET ÉCRIRE AVEC LA BIBLE

Postérité de la Bible nouvelle traduction dite « des écrivains »

Université de Lorraine - Metz

Campus Saulcy - UFR ALL - Salle A208

—

Mercredi 5 juin

13h30 : Accueil des participants

Modération : Frédérique Rey

14h00 : Table ronde. La parole aux exégètes (Jean-Jacques Lavoie, UQAM, Jean-Marie Auwers, Université catholique de Louvain)

Session 1 : de la théorie à la pratique

Modération : Anthony Feneuil

15h45 : Grégoire Laurent-Huyghues-Beaufond (Université de Lorraine)
La Bible nouvelle traduction : un singulier collectif

16h30 : Jean-Jacques Lavoie (Université du Québec à Montréal)
Le vocabulaire anthropologique à l’épreuve des traductions. Quelques réflexions à partir du livre de Ben Sira

18h30, Hôtel de ville

Table ronde avec Frédéric Boyer et Olivier Cadiot 
Discutants : Grégoire Laurent-Huyghues-Beaufond, Stéphanie Bertrand

—

Jeudi 6 juin

Session 2 : Usages et réceptions de la BNT

Modération : Jean-Marie Auwers

09h00 : Louis-Jean Tissot (Sorbonne Université / Université de Fribourg)
L’intérêt des choix originaux de la Bible Nouvelle Traduction pour la traduction des textes chrétiens de l’Antiquité

09h45 : Edith Maillot (Université catholique de Lyon)
Faire entendre Elle et Lui : la mise en voix de la traduction du Cantique des cantiques

10h30 : Philippe François (docteur en théologie, pasteur)
Un usage liturgique luthéro-réformé des Psaumes dans la traduction Cadiot/Sevin pour les cultes d’enterrement

Session 3 : de la traduction à l’écriture : les traces de la BNT chez les écrivains français

Modération : Stéphanie Bertrand

11h30 : Margaux Coquelle-Roëhm (Université de Poitiers)
Traduction et mise en espace dans les traductions auxquelles collabore Jacques Roubaud

Modération : Margaux Coquelle-Roëhm

14h00 : Claire Placial (Université de Lorraine)
De la BnT aux Évangiles, le parcours de traducteur de Frédéric Boyer

14h45 : Tour de table conclusif avec la participation de Pierre Lassave (EHESS)

15h00 : Table ronde de clôture

Pauline Bruley (Université d’Angers) et Florence Delay (traductrice, écrivaine, membre de l’Académie française)

Entretien autour de la participation de Florence Delay à la BnT

—

Organisation :

Stéphanie Bertrand (UL, ECRITURES)

Claire Placial (UL, ECRITURES)"

#metaglossia_mundus

"L’Impact commercial de DeepL Translator selon une étude indépendante de Forrester Consulting

Le 17 mai 2024, par Marie-Claude Benoit.

DeepL, entreprise technologique basée en Allemagne, un des leaders mondiaux dans le domaine de l’IA linguistique, a récemment publié les résultats d’une étude réalisée par Forrester Consulting, mettant en lumière l’impact commercial positif de son outil de traduction IA, DeepL Translator.

Basée à Cologne, DeepL a été fondée en 2009 par Jaroslaw Kutylowski et a commencé à travailler en 2016 sur la première version de DeepL Translator. En 2020, le système de traduction intègre ses nombreuses avancées en matière d’IA, notamment dans le domaine de l’architecture des réseaux neuronaux, améliorant la qualité des traductions.

Continuellement évalué et amélioré pour garantir une qualité optimale, il offre aux entreprises la possibilité de communiquer efficacement à l’échelle internationale, sans les obstacles des barrières linguistiques.

L’étude “The Total Economic Impact™ of DeepL”

Afin de savoir quel était son impact sur les résultats de ses clients, DeepL a demandé à Forrester Consulting d’interroger des multinationales pour connaître le rôle de son outil de traduction sur leur activité.

Pour analyser de manière plus approfondie les avantages, les risques, les coûts et la flexibilité de l’utilisation de DeepL Translator dans un contexte réel et représentatif, Forrester Consulting a choisi quatre entreprises représentatives de différents secteurs (énergie, services financiers, services juridiques, et secteur pharmaceutique).

Basées aux États‑Unis ou en Europe, ces organisations, qui comptent entre 1 600 et 40 000 salariés, se déploient ou font du commerce à l’international et génèrent entre 365 millions et 33,7 milliards d’euros de revenus.

Les principaux résultats de l’étude

L’étude met non seulement en évidence l’impact commercial positif des outils de traduction IA de DeepL, tous secteurs d’activité confondus, mais démontre également que la traduction est l’un des domaines les plus stratégiques de la mise en œuvre de l’IA pour les entreprises qui cherchent à augmenter leur chiffre d’affaires et à pénétrer plus rapidement de nouveaux marchés.

Les chiffres de l’étude parlent d’eux‑mêmes : les traductions IA de DeepL ont permis aux organisations interrogées de faire de précieuses économies (en temps et en ressources), et de dégager un retour sur investissement très positif.

Les principaux bénéfices rapportés sont :

• Une réduction de 90 % du temps de traduction des documents internes ;
• Un retour sur investissement (ROI) de 345 % sur trois ans ;
• Une réduction de 50 % de la charge de travail de traduction ;
• Des économies de 227 430 euros sur trois ans dans le domaine des flux de travail ;
• Des économies d’efficacité de 2,8 millions d’euros sur trois ans.

Ces résultats soulignent l’efficacité de l’IA linguistique de DeepL et ses avantages tangibles en termes de réduction des coûts, d’amélioration de l’efficacité opérationnelle et de création de valeur pour les entreprises."

#metaglossia_mundus

"By Becca Roberts Last updated May 17, 2024 Affective computing, which involves the combination of various computational devices and algorithms to automatically identify, understand, and compute features related to human emotions, has become a research hotspot in cognitive science. Text-based emotional computing has aso been widely applied in fields such as social media and e-commerce platforms. Conducting sentiment analysis on the massive textual data generated on these platforms can help governments and businesses conveniently grasp public opinion trends and emotional changes towards specific events or products, leading to significant social and economic benefits. As a result, it has received considerable attention from researchers and has become an important branch of the current field of natural language processing.

In recent years, scholars have integrated emotional computing methods into the field of literature, thereby introducing a new dimension of quantitative literary research (Kim and Klinger, 2021). Despite the prolonged history of metric literature studies, initial attempts emerging in the late 19th century (Mendenhall, 1887), the analytical focus has predominantly rested on linguistic models, regrettably neglecting the significant dimension of emotion. In contrast, within the realm of interpretive-critical analyses, emotional examination of texts has proven to be a valuable research avenue. Notably, in narratology, emotion is recognized as an intimately linked element with narrative structure, prompting the formation of “affective narratology”, an interdisciplinary narrative theory. Consequently, the advent of emotional computing can be viewed as a pivotal development bridging a crucial gap in metric literature research, while also facilitating the construction of a more advanced computational critical theory that transcends traditional linguistic models.

These methods can be classified into two main categories: straightforward approaches utilizing sentiment dictionaries or bag-of-words models, and algorithms such as machine learning or deep learning to create effective predictive models. The latter, in most cases, requires supervised training and relies on extensively pre-annotated corpus data.

In commercial applications and linguistic research, textual data annotation often takes advantage of crowdsourcing platforms, where numerous third-party annotators collaborate to complete annotation tasks. However, for corpus annotation in literary research, the qualifications of annotators tend to be higher, making it challenging to delegate tasks to ordinary individuals. For instance, in a corpus specifically designed for sentiment analysis in literary texts, the annotators are linguistics postgraduate students who engage in regular discussions with experts to address annotation-related issues (Kim and Klinger, 2018). The annotation process is time-consuming, tedious, and demanding due to the highly diverse nature of emotional expressions, the potential usage of metaphorical language in fiction, and the general interconnectedness of preceding and subsequent text. In some cases, the annotators are not ideally aligned with each other (Schmidt et al., 2018). The multitude of interpretations regarding the emotions conveyed in the text underscores its subjective nature, introducing an additional layer of complexity to the annotation process.

In contrast to computational linguistics, researchers in the field of literary computation adopt a different approach by focusing on specific works or collections of works to address particular problems. For instance, a study examining the computation and classification of emotions in the poetry of Francisco de Quevedo, a Spanish writer and poet, utilized four groups of emotion-evoking words in English (Barros et al., 2013). By utilizing an “English-Spanish” translation dictionary, a substantial number of words associated with these four types of emotions were obtained. To calculate the frequencies, the researchers simply searched for these words in the text of the corresponding poems, converting each poem into a four-dimensional array. While the lexicon employed in this study was limited and constructed for this specific task, it proved sufficiently effective for the literary computing project at hand.

Considering the absence of sentiment-annotated corpora for literary texts, the majority of current studies focused on sentiment analysis in literary works continue to rely on sentiment lexicons. This approach, as opposed to the alternative method that relies on extensively annotated corpora, offers several advantages. Firstly, it is simpler and more feasible, allowing for greater flexibility in its application. Additionally, this lexicon-based approach enables a more transparent and interpretable algorithmic framework, thereby allowing sufficient room for literary interpretation and criticism to take place alongside computational analyses.

When it comes to sentiment analysis of Chinese text, several widely used sentiment dictionaries come into play. These dictionaries include the Hownet Sentiment Dictionary, the BosonNLP Sentiment Dictionary, the Chinese Polarity Sentiment Dictionary created by the Natural Language Laboratory of National Taiwan University, and the Chinese Sentiment Vocabulary Ontology Library (CSVOL) constructed by the Dalian University of Technology. For the purpose of this study, we utilized CSVOL as the foundation for emotion computation. This lexicon encompasses over 20,000 distinct words or colloquial expressions, each annotated with its corresponding emotion polarity and emotion classification. Refer to Table 1 for further details:

Table 1 Example of CSVOL.

The table provides information on the part of speech, emotional classification, polarity, and intensity for each word. As an illustration, the word “脏乱(dirty)” is classified as an adjective (adj), with an effective classification of NN (derogatory) and a polarity of 2 (pejorative). The lexicon categorizes sentiment intensity into five grades: 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9, where 9 represents the highest intensity and 1 indicates the lowest. In this case, “脏乱“ corresponds to an intensity of 7, indicating a strong emotional impact among pejorative words. It is important to note that the lexicon further divides polarity into 0 (neutral) and 3 (both positive and negative), in addition to 1 (positive) and 2 (negative). The table also differentiates words with multiple meanings, providing sentiment values for each distinct meaning. For example, the word “好事(good deeds)” has a positive connotation with an intensity of 5 in one sense, but a negative connotation with the same intensity in another sense.

The emotions in this lexicon are classified based on Paul Ekman’s theory of basic emotions (Ekman, 1992). According to this theory, certain emotions are considered more “basic” compared to others. Ekman, along with other researchers, established specific criteria to differentiate basic emotions from other emotions. As a result, the dictionary follows a classification that includes six basic emotions: anger, fear, sadness, enjoyment, disgust and surprise. While adhering to this general classification, the compilers of the dictionary made a refinement within the “enjoyment” category. They divided it into “pleasure” and “goodness”, expanding the classification to include seven emotional categories: pleasure, goodness, anger, sadness, fear, disgust, and surprise. Each of these categories is further subdivided into 21 subcategories, as represented by abbreviations such as PH, PA, and NC in the table (Xu et al., 2008).

The process of emotional computation using lexicons is straightforward and transparent. Initially, the original text is segmented by a commonly used segmentation program “Jieba”, as there is no innate word boundary in Chinese. Next, emotion words within the text are extracted and tallied, and subsequently matched with the lexicon to determine the polarity, intensity, or classification of each word’s emotion. Finally, algebraic operations such as addition and subtraction are performed based on the corresponding values. The specific formula employed is as follows:

$$Sleft(M,kright)=frac{{sum }_{win M,win k}{P}_{w}}{{N}_{M}},$$

where (Sleft(M,kright)) represents the sentiment value corresponding to emotion k in part M, w denotes the emotion word identified within the text, and Pw signifies the sentiment intensity associated with this word. Additionally, NM indicates the length of the text corresponding to part M. The division of the summation term by the text length aims to facilitate comparisons between texts of varying lengths.

Another prevalent method for sentiment analysis involves classifying emotions into positive and negative categories (Anderson and McMaster, 1982). By subtracting the positive sentiment value from the negative sentiment value within a given text, a polarized value can be obtained. In this paper, we also calculate the polarity sentiment value using the following formula:

$$Sleft(Mright)=frac{{sum }_{win M}{left(-1right)}^{i}{P}_{w}}{{N}_{M}}.$$

When w belongs to the positive category of emotions, i = 0, and when w belongs to the negative category of emotions, i = 1.

The traditional perspectives on the characteristics of women’s emotional narratives, as outlined in the “Introduction” section, can be broadly categorized into two levels. One pertains to the belief that women’s works often encompass a broader range of emotional elements including love, affection, friendship, jealousy, hatred, and more. These emotional elements are intricately woven into the narrative, consistently evolving alongside the storyline. The second relates to the perception that women’s works exhibit a greater degree of delicacy and sensitivity in their portrayal of emotions. Sensitivity implies a propensity for emotional fickleness, wherein the characters’ emotional states undergo significant fluctuations as the narrative progresses. Consequently, the emotional state of the characters in these works often experiences pronounced shifts throughout the story.

To quantitatively describe these qualities, we constructed two characteristic quantities based on emotional arcs. These quantities aim to capture the richness and interconnectivity of emotional elements as well as the variability and fluctuations in the characters’ emotional states throughout the narrative.

Firstly, we simply add up the emotional values of different sequences and moods of a piece to characterize the emotional richness of the piece as a whole, using the following formula:

$$R=mathop{sum}limits_{M,,k}Sleft(M,kright).$$

In essence, it provides a general description of the quantity and intensity of emotional words present in the stories. A higher richness indicates a greater number of emotional words from different general categories in the text, along with higher emotional intensity, suggesting that the author has adopted a more direct and impassioned approach to expressing emotions in their creation. Conversely, lower richness implies a more calm and restrained emotional narrative by the author.

It is important to note that the definition of “Richness” used here differs from the previously mentioned emotional polarity. In the latter, the values of positive and negative emotions partially cancel each other out in the calculation, potentially resulting in a low final value for texts that express complex emotional entanglements, such as love-hate relationships. In addition, the difficulty of the emotion attribution process may lead to the mixing of different characters’ emotional states with each other in the calculation, resulting in mediocre results. Therefore, in the process of calculating Richness, the intensity values of all emotions are aggregated in a positive state in order to avoid the cancellation of values between different emotions and characters, thus maximizing the extraction of all emotions present in the text.

Richness describes the story as a whole. As a result of the summation process, we lose information about the distribution of emotion values in each section, making it impossible to track and assess how emotion changes as the narrative progresses. To quantitatively measure the extent of emotional change within a work, we have introduced a novel characteristic quantity termed “Twistiness”. We can anticipate that as a story character experiences significant emotional fluctuations throughout the narrative, there will be noticeable variations in emotional intensity between adjacent sections of the text. Portraying an emotionally sensitive character or employing a subtle style of emotional writing can lead to shifts in the character’s emotions as the narrative unfolds, consequently producing marked emotional differences between neighboring sections. By aggregating these variances, we can derive a quantitative measure of the subtlety of emotional writing. Specifically, this metric is computed by taking the absolute difference between emotional values of adjacent sequences and subsequently summing them. The calculation formula is:

$$T=mathop{sum}limits_{Mne 5,,k}left|Sleft(M,kright)-Sleft(M+1,kright)right|$$

Put simply, an emotional arc with greater fluctuation results in a higher degree of Twistiness, whereas a smaller Twistiness indicates a smoother emotional arc.

The approach we have adopted for calculating Twistiness at a fixed total number of sequences may not be the most ideal method, because different works exhibit varying degrees of shifts in emotional tone, and the distribution of these shifts within the text is not uniform. However, it is nearly impractical to precisely divide text chunks based on the actual position and number of emotional shifts using unsupervised algorithms. Such an endeavor would require a substantial amount of manual labeling, resulting in an unacceptable level of difficulty and workload. Hence, despite its limitations, our method represents a pragmatic compromise that allows for the quantitative assessment of emotional changes in a wide range of texts.

In summary, Richness defines the author’s emotional narrative features primarily at the level of textual choices, while Twistiness is mainly concerned with the construction of the storyline and characterization. Combined, these two indicators reflect the author’s emotional narrative style from different perspectives, enabling us to quantitatively compare different authors and works within a cohesive coordinate system."

#metaglossia_mundus

"Aligarh, May 17 (TNA) Cross-cultural communication specialists, ELT experts, linguists and faculty members explored the areas of study in interdisciplinary context such as English language teaching methodologies, constructive approaches to teaching, inclusivity, cross-cultural communication, AI generated teachings and methods, pedagogies related to methodologies, cultures, regions, and needs, knowledge systems, appropriate pedagogy and assessment, and addressing learning crisis, during the three-day international conference, organized by the Department of English, Aligarh Muslim University (AMU).

The conference entitled “appropriate teaching methodologies in interdisciplinary context: mapping the sociolinguistics diversity”, was sponsored by ICSSR, New Delhi. During the valedictory session, Prof Imtiaz Hasnain, Chair- Professor, MANUU, Hyderabad, talked about “linguistic entrepreneurship, ethno-linguistics identity, and neo-liberal imagination”. Prof Hasnain also focused upon how the English language has been developed as a language of bread and butter, and hence there is more demand for English language teaching programs. The session was chaired by Prof Mohammad Asim Siddiqui, Department of English, AMU.

A round table discussion on the topic “methodological diversity in classroom: contexts and perspectives”, by Prof A.R. Kidwai, (Director, K.A. Nizami Centre for Quranic Studies, AMU and Former Professor, Department of English, AMU), along with Prof Imtiaz Hasnain, Prof M.E. Veda Sharan (EFLU, Hyderabad), and Prof Shobha Satyanath (Former Professor, Department of Linguistics, University of Delhi) brought to focus the methods, linguistic and cultural diversities, and the role of teachers in teaching in the multilingual discourse community.

The discussants spoke about the content subjects; how content has a kind of connectivity with methodology, scale of diversity at the level of teaching and teacher, language learning, and at the level of language culture. Delivering a plenary lecture, on the topic “New World Englishes: what’s the fuss all about”, Prof Shobha Satyanath discussed the internal diversity of Englishes which is often overlooked by the dominant discourses.

Prof M.E. Veda Sharan, spoke on the topic “The Bitzer in the Classroom: imaginative ways out of hard times”, where he constructed the comparison between literature and language. Professor Chris Anson, Department of English, North California State University, USA, spoke on “writing across the curriculum: strategies for language development and deep learning.” In his Valedictory address, Prof Avinash Kumar Singh, Head, Department of Educational Policy, NIEPA, New Delhi, said that such conferences act as a driving force in the realm of interdisciplinary studies.

While talking about the “Socio-linguistic polarity in education of the disadvantaged: policy perspectives and practices”, he expressed the concern of learning disadvantages as in the case of remote tribal language areas, they cannot access the home language because it’s not the medium of instruction. In such cases, the dropout rate is very high, as suggested by the World Bank reports.

Discussing the idea of equity and justice, Prof Mirza Asmer Beg, Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, explained the relevance of the idea of multiculturalism. The conference had 61 offline and 120 online paper reading sessions, and more than 130 research papers were presented at the Conference on topics ranging from multiculturalism, sociolinguistic diversity, AI and English Language Teaching, sociology, and second language acquisition, among others."

#metaglossia_mundus

EXCLUSIF SENEPLUS - Desserrer l’hégémonie conceptuelle de l’Occident impérialiste sur nos sociétés nécessite l’officialisation profonde des langues africaines et leur pratique généralisée

Youssouf Mbargane Guissé  |   Publication 15/05/2024

« Leur dépendance caractéristique a toujours empêché l’oligarchie et la bourgeoisie de se constituer une doctrine propre… Et, sur le plan idéologique, elles n’ont jamais produit un « corps d’idées » qui légitiment leur action politique. Elles étaient (et sont encore) des bourgeoisies incomplètes, doctrinairement castrées. Il n’est donc pas étonnant qu’elles aient toujours été à l’avant de la docilité dans le domaine de la pensée. Car comme elles ne produisent pas leurs propres concepts, elles reprennent à leur compte les concepts élaborés par les intellectuels (bourgeois) étrangers » - Edgar Monteil, philosophe et sociologue péruvien.

Depuis ces dernières années, des changements importants sont apparus dans le champ intellectuel africain au moment où la géopolitique mondiale est en train de basculer vers une nouvelle reconfiguration des rapports de forces. On assiste à une remise en cause de la volonté de l’occident impérialiste de soumettre son modèle aux Etats et nations de la planète. Ces changements marquent une étape majeure dans le processus de libération de l’étau conceptuel du monde occidental sur nos sociétés. Cette question capitale de la souveraineté de la pensée, condition de la libération définitive de l’aliénation, de la dépersonnalisation et de la dépendance a été la préoccupation de nombreux intellectuels de toutes disciplines sur le continent. C’est particulièrement à la fin de la première guerre mondiale, dans le contexte de ce qu’on a appelé « La question nègre », que s’est développe le réveil des colonies à l’indépendance, de même que les mouvements d’affirmation noirs aux Etats Unis d’Amérique et dans les Caraïbes.

Alors que se déroulaient sur le terrain révoltes, résistances et mouvements de libération, des intellectuels de ces communautés exploraient autour de la Revue « Présence Africaine » en France, les voies et moyens intellectuels de la souveraineté culturelle et politique dont témoignent les deux grands Congrès des Intellectuels, écrivains et artistes noirs, tenus à Paris en 1956, puis à Rome en 1959. Parmi les fortes productions intellectuelles alternatives de l’époque et celles après les indépendances, on peut en citer quatre fort marquantes : « Nations nègres et culture » de Cheikh Anta Diop,[1]« Les damnés de la terre » de Frantz Fanon,[2] « L’Afrique doit s’unir » de Kwame Nkrumah,[3]« L’accumulation à l’échelle mondiale » de Samir Amin,[4]« L’arme de la théorie » et « La pratique des armes » de Amilcar Cabral.[5]

Mais la consolidation des régimes répressifs dans les nouveaux Etats sous domination néocoloniale a vu le reflux de la résistance intellectuelle et culturelle qui cependant, n’a jamais cessé ni dans les académies, ni sur le terrain de par les luttes nationales et sociales des syndicats, de la jeunesse et des masses.

Cette période d’opacité de la réalité néocoloniale est en train de s’estomper progressivement, d’une part du fait de l’échec patent des politiques économiques libérales et de l’immense désastre causé sur le continent dont la pauvreté, l’insécurité et le désarroi,[6] d’autre part du fait de l’éveil de conscience et des affirmations identitaires nés de la pluralité culturelle ouverte par la mondialisation. Mais surtout le contexte est celui de l’émergence d’une nouvelle génération de chercheurs et savants « armés de sciences jusqu’aux dents » ainsi que d’artistes et créateurs de talent ayant repris le flambeau. Cette nouvelle période ouverte offre désormais l’opportunité de « la remise en cause des anciennes hégémonies et d’émergences de nouvelles légitimités ». En effet se dessine une reconfiguration dans l’armature intellectuelle jusqu’ici dominée par les traditions académiques universalistes occidentales dans leurs objets, méthodes et finalités. La pensée et les savoirs endogènes interviennent désormais avec une approche holistique des réalités vues sous leurs connexions multiples. La production des connaissances sur les dynamiques de transformations sociales, politiques et culturelles, doit désormais intégrer les dimensions des écologies, des héritages, de la symbolique et des pratiques anthropologiques. Une telle nouveauté introduit un renversement des paradigmes, visions et interprétations et met en scène l’intervention d’autres acteurs intellectuels de la tradition que le mode colonial de production des sciences avait jusqu’ici mis à l’écart de façon délibérée.

La rupture épistémologique qui s’enclenche  porte sur la question essentielle de la souveraineté culturelle car les Africains doivent reconceptualiser de manière autonome et en toute responsabilité leur destin existentiel par la sélection des éléments constitutifs de leur propre futur.[7]La déconstruction de l’appareil idéologique d’hégémonie conceptuelle du capitalisme libéral a été menée de manière vigoureuse et savante par la première génération d’intellectuels africains dans les différentes disciplines académiques, mais aussi antérieurement dans la puissante littérature arabo islamique de résistance anti coloniale au 19e siècle, au sein des confréries soufi et aussi par des penseurs libres. Cette remise en cause se poursuit en de nouveaux termes au sein des générations actuelles qui se donnent la main dans les réseaux et nouvelles plateformes scientifiques, artistiques et culturelles.[8]Il s’agit dans ces nouveaux espaces de solidarité et de coopération intellectuelle et esthétique, d’inventer de nouveaux paradigmes d’un développement endogène intégral. Une nouvelle vision critique, prospective, opérationnelle se fortifie, fondée sur le potentiel créateur et subversif des héritages politiques et intellectuels africains et des enseignements des luttes des peuples pour la démocratisation et l’humanisation du monde encore si tardives.

En effet cette rupture épistémologique est une remise en cause du modèle universaliste de développement capitaliste imposé. Elle oblige de sortir définitivement du courant hégémoniste de la modernisation occidentale, de ses chiffres, mythes et falsifications. La rupture bouscule certaines traditions académiques figées et remet en cause le formatage intellectuel dû aux formations reçues. Elle implique un renouvèlement nécessaire des problématiques, des méthodes et approches, nécessitant la réévaluation des académies de recherche, d’enseignement et de formation et leur réadaptation conforme aux besoins du projet essentiel de la modernité africaine. La rupture trouve ses ressorts dans l’appropriation des multiples avancées artistiques, écologiques, philosophiques réalisées par les générations successives d’Africains de sources culturelles et de traditions intellectuelles diverses.  Elle s’enrichit particulièrement des résultats probants issus de la coopération fructueuse entre disciplines au sein des équipes, réseaux et plateformes africains et internationaux. Mais ce processus d’élaboration conceptuelle trouve sa substance historique, sa force et sa légitimité politique lorsqu’il puise sa sève nourricière de l’expérience sociale et culturelle des masses et contribue de manière décisive à la rénovation de la pensée sociale.

L’approche totalisante fournie par l’économie politique et l’anthropologie culturelle permet alors aux chercheurs des différentes disciplines fragmentées de se rejoindre au carrefour de la transdisciplinarité et d’appréhender la dimension globale et intégrée des dynamiques au sein des sociétés. Elle doit mettre en lumière au sein de celles-ci, l’exploitation sociale fondamentale de classe, la base économique et les intérêts financiers qui fondent les alliances avec le capitalisme international dominant. Elle édifie sur l’existence d’un bloc hégémonique d’Etat compradore et sur les idéologies justificatrices de la domination et de la servitude.

Mais desserrer l’hégémonie conceptuelle de l’Occident impérialiste sur nos sociétés nécessite l’officialisation profonde des langues africaines et leur pratique généralisée dans l’éducation, les académies, l’administration, la vie économique et politique. Il s’agit de consacrer de manière irréversible et féconde la liaison de l’école à la vie, de la science et des innovations technologiques aux systèmes productifs, de fonder la gouvernance sur l’éthique. Seul en effet, ce nouveau paradigme de l’usage des langues africaines peut assurer la participation populaire libre, faisant désormais de l’espace politique, le foyer pacifié et véridique de la délibération, de la transparence, de la redevabilité. En réalité, la question linguistique, au-delà de son caractère pédagogique et de communication, constitue le cœur existentiel de l’identité, des appartenances sociales, des liens avec la nature et la Transcendance. La langue est en réalité le carrefour des temps et des espaces. Elle reproduit l’individu et les communautés en tant qu’histoire, mémoire, réponses et possibilités. La langue est donc le terreau fertile d’où germe l’esprit sacré d’insoumission et de révolte pour la reprise collective de l’initiative historique. La révolution conceptuelle repose ainsi sur les trois piliers suivants : la langue, la pratique sociale et l’esprit critique. Ces trois éléments sont porteurs de la rupture. Ils constituent le processus dialectique par lequel la pensée se régénère et l’homme s’affirme debout et résolu face aux défis.

C’est donc à travers les luttes sociales patriotiques et révolutionnaires que les individus et les communautés actent la désaliénation, valorisent leurs cultures et affirment leur identité africaine. C’est le « retour de soi à soi à un niveau supérieur », selon la belle formule de Joseph Ki Zerbo. Une telle perspective historique est déjà ouverte sur le continent et dans la Diaspora par l’action des intellectuels, savants et artistes, des partis politiques révolutionnaires et par les mobilisations des mouvements des jeunes, des femmes et des organisations citoyennes de veille. Désormais ces forces organisées prennent place sur l’échiquier politique africain tandis qu’émergent de nouveaux « dirigeants spirituels de la révolution », incarnation pour la jeunesse et les masses des modèles de courage et d’abnégation que furent les héros et les martyrs de la libération du continent. La tâche historique sans précédent est à présent de réveiller le génie culturel africain et de manière irréversible, « faire basculer l’Afrique sur la pente de son destin fédéral ».[9]

Les productions intellectuelles doivent pour cela éclairer le difficile chemin des luttes de classe anticapitalistes et des combats anti-impérialistes, démocratiques et citoyens en cours, mais aussi analyser les transitions complexes qui se dessinent dans la géopolitique mondiale, dans l’économie, la politique et la culture dans nos pays. Les avant-gardes révolutionnaires sur le continent devront à partir de là, élaborer et coordonner les stratégies unitaires libératrices qui s’imposent pour mettre fin définitivement à l’abject « néocolonialisme vivant »[10] qui ronge encore l’Afrique et ses enfants. Les prochaines saisons historiques verront alors s’ouvrir pour les peuples réunis, le vaste horizon de la paix, de la prospérité et du renouveau.

[1] Cheikh Anta Diop (1965). Nation nègre et culture. Paris : Présence Africaine

[2] Frantz Fanon (1975). Les Damnés de la terre. Paris : éd. Maspero.

[3] Kwame Nkrumah (1964). L’Afrique doit s’unir. Paris, Payot.

[4] Samir Amin (1971). L’Accumulation à l’échelle mondiale. Paris : éd. Anthropos.

[5] Amilcar Cabral (1975).  I. L’arme de la Théorie, II. La pratique des armes. Paris : éd. Maspero.

[6] Voir Samir Amin (1989). La faillite du développement en Afrique. Paris : éd. L’Harmattan.

[7] Ndongo Samba Sylla (2014). (dir.) Pour une autre Afrique. Eléments de réflexion pour sortir de l’impasse. Paris : L’Harmattan. Felwine Sarr (2016.). Afrotopia. Paris, éditions Philippe Rey

[8] Voir parmi les nombreuses initiatives, les travaux et publications remarquables du groupe des samedis de l’économie : Déconstruire le discours néolibéral T1 (2014) - T2 (2015). (Sous la direction) Demba Moussa Dembélé, Ndongo Samba Sylla, Henriette Faye). Dakar : éditions Arcade-Fondation Luxembourg. Voir également les travaux, publications de l’Institut Panafricain de Stratégies sur les questions importantes de la sécurité et de la Paix sur le continent

[9] Cheikh Anta Diop (1965).

[10] Abdoulaye Ly. (1981). L’émergence du néocolonialisme au Sénégal. Dakar : éd. Xamlé.<"

#metaglossia_mundus

"L'Ecole Supérieure Roi fahd de Traduction de Tanger organise le colloque international sous le thème: "Traduction et Intelligence artificielle: enjeux de la théorisation et de la pratique", et cela les 12 et 13 novembre 2024. Dates importantes: - Date butoir de soumission des propositions: 15 juin 2024.

Dates importantes:

- Date butoir de soumission des propositions: 15 juin 2024

- Notification aux participants: 30 juin 2024

- Dates de la manifestation: 12 et 13 novembre 2024

Pour plus d'informations: https://ptt.esrft.ma/"

#metaglossia_mundus: https://www.uae.ac.ma/evenements/recherche-developpement/colloque-international-sous-le-theme-traduction-et-intelligence

 

"Après avoir publié la traduction en français de l'ouvrage « Le divan du Tamarit / Diván del Tamarit » de Federico García Lorca, Monique-Marie Ihry a traduit et publie un autre recueil de poésie du même et grand auteur Federico García Lorca intitulé : « Sonnets de l'amour obscur / Sonetos del amor obscuro ».

Federico García Lorca a été torturé en 1936 de façon ignoble, de toute évidence et principalement pour son homosexualité. Il fut exécuté peu de temps après le commencement de la Guerre civile espagnole. Il n'avait que 38 ans. L'édition de cet ouvrage entend rendre hommage à ce grand poète dont l'œuvre avortée, mais conséquente, figure au panthéon des plus illustres poètes.

L'ouvrage « Sonnets de l'amour obscur » est composé de 11 sonnets écrits entre 1935 et 1936, à un moment où le poète déclarait lors d'une interview la nécessité de revenir au classicisme. Pablo Neruda écrira en 1968 au sujet des « Sonnets de l'amour obscur » qu'ils « sont d'une ineffable beauté ». La mélancolie, la souffrance sont de mise. L'œuvre est dominée par l'« obscur » d'une relation amoureuse délicate, car « hors norme », plongeant le poète dans une angoisse existentielle vraisemblablement sans issue.

À la richesse du style se mêle l'émotion, rajoutant au charme intemporel de ces poèmes d'amour dominés par l'ombre de l'impossible. Cap de l'Étang Édition publie cet ouvrage avec le concours de la Fondation Lorca de Grenade. Ce livre contient des images des dessins exécutés par Federico García Lorca fournis en exclusivité pour les éditions Cap de l'Étang par la fondation.

Monique-Marie Ihry a été récompensée par des grands prix de poésie, dont le Grand Prix des Poètes Lorrains, le Prix des Jeux Floraux Méditerranéens, le Prix Yolaine et Stefen Blanchard, Le Prix Jacques Raphaël-Leygues, le prix Jean Cocteau et le prix de traduction François-Victor Hugo de la Société des Poètes français.

Le livre

« Sonnets de l'amour obscur / Sonetos del amor oscuro « de Federico García Lorca, traduction en français de Monique-Marie Ihry, Cap de l'Étang Éditions,

L'éditeur 

Cap de l'Étang Éditions, 25 rue Porte de Monsieur, 43270 ALLEGRE

https://www.capdeletang.com

Tel : 06 08 75 61 08

Mail : direction@capdeletang.com"

#metaglossia_mundus

"Lundi 13 mai 2024, l’écrivaine Esmée Dubois s’est vue attribuer le prestigieux Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire 2024 dans la catégorie nouvelle francophone pour son œuvre « Traduction vers le rose ». Une récompense « encourageante » pour cette Lorientaise de 36 ans.

L’autrice lorientaise Esmée Dubois remporte le Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire 2024

Article réservé aux abonnés

Le 15 mai 2024 à 18h30

Lundi 13 mai 2024, l’écrivaine Esmée Dubois s’est vue attribuer le prestigieux Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire 2024 dans la catégorie nouvelle francophone pour son œuvre « Traduction vers le rose ». Une récompense « encourageante » pour cette Lorientaise de 36 ans.

Comment doit-on vous appeler poétesse, romancière ou autrice ?

Je suis avant tout une autrice. « Traduction vers le rose » est mon premier, un livre dans le genre fantasy. Mais j’ai également publié, sous un autre pseudonyme, de la poésie : « Grammaire pour cesser d’exister ». J’ai mille projets. Disons que j’aime écrire de manière générale. J’ai envie de m’essayer à plein de genres différents et en cela, le qualificatif d’autrice répond à mon identité..."

#metaglossia_mundus