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"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 This article is brought to you thanks to the collaboration of The European Sting with the World Economic Forum. Author: 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). 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. Discover How is the World Economic Forum creating guardrails for Artificial Intelligence? In response to the uncertainties surrounding generative AI and the need for robust AI governance frameworks to ensure responsible and beneficial outcomes for all, the Forum’s Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR) has launched the AI Governance Alliance. The Alliance will unite industry leaders, governments, academic institutions, and civil society organizations to champion responsible global design and release of transparent and inclusive AI systems. 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
"Explore the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in diverse linguistic and cultural contexts, the challenges of data diversity, and the innovations driving inclusive technology. Learn how AI can bridge the digital divide and empower global communities. MAY 20, 2024 The foundation for a truly global AI landscape rests on using the diversity of our languages and the inclusivity of our technologies. Source: Open AI’s Dall-E In a rapidly evolving global landscape, the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is expanding across diverse linguistic and cultural contexts. The latest Large Language Models (LLMs) can give passable answers to questions on everything from nuclear physics to Stoic philosophy, but mainly in English. This is because LLMs are primarily trained on data scraped from the internet, where English predominates. The Conundrum of Data: Structured vs. Unstructured AI thrives on data, which comes in two main flavors: structured and unstructured. Structured data, neatly organized and often numerical, is easily ingested by traditional, narrow AI systems designed for specific tasks- imagine a chess-playing AI that knows every possible move. However, life is seldom so neatly arranged, which is where generative AI comes into play. Generative AI excels in handling the messy, unstructured data of everyday life—text, images, and sounds—much like navigating a bustling marketplace full of diverse voices and activities. At the recent World Bank Global Digital Summit, experts emphasized the potential of generative AI to mimic human-like behavior, underscoring the crucial need for technologies, particularly in developing regions. However, the development of these technologies is often uneven and imbalanced: it typically favors high-income economies and remains concentrated within a few large technology corporations. Despite the linguistic diversity in Africa, where over 2000 languages are spoken, popular virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant are yet to support any native African language. Moreover, AI model development in languages with non-alphabetic scripts, such as Arabic or Devanagari, which have more complicated structures, is also more expensive. Voices from the Ground: Emerging Market Innovations In emerging economies, non-text data, such as voice, becomes a pivotal element. Initiatives such as Mozilla's Common Voice invite global participation to contribute voice data in various languages, helping to build voice recognition systems that reflect the world’s true linguistic diversity. This open-source initiative democratizes AI development, allowing for broader participation and fostering AI that understands accents and dialects from Jakarta to Johannesburg. Another illustration is Bharat GPT, a powerful example of the nuanced application of AI in multilingual contexts like India. Supporting over 14 Indian languages, this LLM taps into the country's rich linguistic tapestry, providing access across video, voice, and text mediums. It has successfully engaged users nationwide by catering to multiple local languages, spurring broader AI adoption in diverse settings from urban to rural areas. Despite its successes, the quality of language generation and the inclusion of more dialects remain challenging. Nevertheless, Bharat GPT represents a significant stride toward creating AI that resonates with local cultural and linguistic nuances. With this in mind, we have three key takeaways: - Collecting Diverse Datasets: Collecting datasets that embrace the richness of language—including dialects, idioms, and cultural nuances—is essential for ensuring equitable access and meaningful adoption. This diversity in data helps AI serve not just as a technological tool but as a bridge across cultural divides. Local ecosystems, including community-driven projects and regional tech hubs, play a crucial role in driving this progress.
- Bridging the Digital Divide: To ensure AI's effectiveness, citizens should be able to access tools in multiple ways. This ensures that everyone, regardless of their level of digital access or literacy, can benefit. This strategy broadens access and fosters deeper, more meaningful engagement with technology across different segments of society.
- Prioritizing Local Needs and Contexts: While global solutions provide valuable frameworks, AI applications must fit specific community needs and contexts to ensure their effectiveness and sustainability. Training AI systems in local languages, incorporating region-specific knowledge into AI models, and adapting interfaces to local customs are crucial steps. By prioritizing these local dimensions, AI becomes a more powerful tool for empowerment and development.
Looking to the future As AI technologies evolve, their potential to adjust and shape cultural aspects of human interaction grows. The challenge, however, is ensuring these technologies are developed inclusively, respecting the linguistic and cultural diversity of users worldwide. This requires a concerted effort to meaningfully collect and leverage data, embracing the richness of languages, dialects, and cultural nuances. At the World Bank, we are working with governments to support the entire AI value chain, from the infrastructure to the data and the protocols used to govern them. The digital divide is more than a technological gap - it's a linguistic and cultural chasm. As we stand on the brink of a generative AI revolution, we must ask: Are we creating technologies that understand us all, or are we coding a new tower of Babel? The future of AI should not be about who it excludes but who it embraces, using the diversity of our languages and the inclusivity of our technologies as the foundation for a truly global AI landscape." #metaglossia_mundus
"One year after introducing KiSwahili as an elective course at UCT and students are loving it. 20 MAY 2024 | To preserve indigenous African languages, UCT announced in 2022 that KiSwahili would be taught as an elective course in the School of Languages and Literatures in the Faculty of Humanities. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, a Kenyan author and academic, once said: “Language, any language, has a dual character: it is both a means of communication and a carrier of culture.” In realising this and to preserve indigenous African languages, the University of Cape Town (UCT) announced in 2022 that KiSwahili would be taught as an elective course in the School of Languages and Literatures in the Faculty of Humanities. It’s been 12 months, and it’s safe to say that students are loving it. This Africa Month, as the continent celebrates the 61st anniversary of the formation of the Organisation of African Unity, it would be remiss not to celebrate the introduction of KiSwahili at UCT – a significant step towards further diversifying the university’s African languages offering. The roll-out was made possible by a collaboration between UCT and the Institute of KiSwahili Studies at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM). “It was important to introduce this course … to add a major transnational African language as a dynamic and meaningful complement to the rich pedagogical offering at our school, spanning from national to international languages,” said Associate Professor Markus Arnold, the director of UCT’s School of Languages and Literatures. Commitment to multilingualism Introducing KiSwahili at UCT has been a proud moment for the school because it demonstrates the university’s commitment to multilingualism. Importantly, Associate Professor Arnold said, it also resonates with the Africa-focus and transformative agenda of UCT’s Vision 2030 and offers a unique opportunity for students to build connections with academics from east Africa, which, in turn, opens professional avenues in the southern and eastern African region. And students have embraced the course and the new cultural experience that comes with it. The linguistic market in east African countries, mainly in Tanzania, where KiSwahili is the national language and medium of instruction, have added to its appeal. “Their enthusiasm stems from a multitude of opportunities associated with the KiSwahili language.” “Their enthusiasm stems from the multitude of opportunities associated with the KiSwahili language, especially given its status as the official language of the African Union and the working language within the Southern African Development Community (SADC),” Arnold said. “It also holds official language status in Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya, which means its widespread use widens the scope for fluent speakers to compete in various sectors.” The course in a nutshell The course is housed in the school’s African Languages and Literatures section headed by Dr Rethabile Possa-Mogoera. It gives students access to a diverse learning experience, including both oral (listening and speaking) and written (reading and writing) competencies. It takes students from zero knowledge of the language to a good, basic competency. They gain foundational insight and an understanding into the language structure and learn important cultural and social elements associated with KiSwahili-speaking countries. A course of this kind also helps to improve students’ general communication, as well as their cognitive, intellectual and intercultural skills, which benefit their overall university learning experience. As with other beginner-language courses at the school, Arnold emphasised that students encounter an intense but exciting programme that offers a steep learning curve. And while the course is conducted face to face, it encourages a blended learning approach via Amathuba – UCT’s digital learning platform. To enable this learning methodology, materials are regularly uploaded by Dr Eliza Mahenge, the Tanzanian course lecturer, as well as her teaching team, to facilitate student interaction. “At the end of this communication course, students are expected to have gained basic pronunciation and vocabulary, and should be able to greet, self-introduce and talk about various activities in the past, present and future tense,” said Arnold. Learning opportunity Teaching KiSwahili at UCT has also sprouted a unique partnership between the institution and UDSM. To assist with its introduction, Dr Mahenge from UDSM’s Institute of KiSwahili Studies has been seconded to UCT to kickstart the course as a beginner and communication elective, with the prospect of developing it into a major over the next few years. This, he added, will be the fruit of a collaborative effort involving a variety of stakeholders, including the school, the faculty, both universities, and many other collaborators across campus. In addition, since witnessing its success and the appetite among students, UDSM has created a master’s scholarship programme aimed at non-Tanzanian students from UCT. The scholarship covers tuition, accommodation, research costs and a limited subsistence allowance for an 18-month study period. Alongside the development of KiSwahili, the school has been tasked with finding suitable candidates to support them for this study-abroad project. “This will be a fantastic learning opportunity for our students, and we are thrilled that UCT’s initial collaboration with UDSM has opened these wonderful doors of learning. We have heard with gratitude the commitment of our Tanzanian colleagues during the official launch of KiSwahili in October 2023. This certainly is the start of something great and we are excited for what’s to come as we continue to work with UDSM to consolidate and develop this important transnational African language,” Arnold said. A meaningful addendum While introducing the language carries great benefits for students and the university, it’s been rewarding on a much broader, national level as well. It contributes towards raising much-needed awareness about the need to invest in Africa and sends a positive message within the South African higher education landscape: to add value to important cultural and linguistic realities underrepresented in academia today. “KiSwahili is an exciting and meaningful addendum to South Africa’s exceptionally rich multilingual landscape.” “KiSwahili is an exciting and meaningful addendum to South Africa’s exceptionally rich multilingual landscape, and it will further shift our gaze towards the south, but with a transnational and truly inclusive perspective,” Arnold said. “With its international and continental outreach, UCT is a perfect testing ground for this, timely opening up to this major linguistic and cultural transnational African reality.”" #metaglossia_mundus
""People just inherently assume that a translation is inferior to the original, and I don’t like that assumption,” Cohen said. How Jessica Cohen became the go-to English translator of contemporary Israeli literature
BY ANDREW ESENSTEN MAY 20, 2024 7:32 AM
Jessica Cohen has translated more than 30 books and dozens of shorter works by some of the most renowned Israeli writers. (Graphic: Andrew Esensten; Photo: Soona) (J. Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — Anyone who has read any books or essays by contemporary Israeli writers has probably encountered the words of Jessica Cohen. That’s because Cohen is the most in-demand Hebrew-to-English translator working today. In the past year alone, four of her translations have been published: “Professor Schiff’s Guilt,” a novel by Agur Schiff; “Stockholm: A Novel,” by Noa Yedlin; “Every Wrinkle Has a Story,” a children’s book by David Grossman; and “The Hebrew Teacher,” a collection of novellas by Maya Arad. Cohen also translated Grossman’s op-ed on the Israel-Hamas war, titled “Israel is Falling Into an Abyss,” that was published in the New York Times in March. Over the past 25 years, she has translated more than 30 books and dozens of shorter works by some of the most renowned Israeli writers, including Amos Oz, Etgar Keret, Dorit Rabinyan, Ronit Matalon and Nir Baram. In 2017, she shared the Man Booker International Prize with Grossman for “A Horse Walks Into a Bar,” and four years later, she was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship.
How did Cohen, whose website is thehebrewtranslator.com, become the go-to translator for Israeli literature?
“I think it’s a combination of good connections and luck,” she said in a recent Zoom interview from Denver, where she has lived since 2008. Another key factor: She is completely bilingual in Hebrew and English.
Hebrew translator Jessica Cohen, left, brought her friend and writer Maya Arad’s writing to English-language audiences for the first time in 2024. (Courtesy Cohen)
“Many translators are not bilingual, and it’s certainly not a requirement. But for me, I do feel like it’s very helpful,” she said. “I have both a pretty deep and instinctive understanding of the source language and culture, and I’m translating into my native language.” Cohen, 51, was born in England and immigrated to Israel with her parents when she was 7. She learned Hebrew at school while continuing to speak and read books in English at home. She studied English literature at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and upon graduating in 1997 moved to the United States with her American-born boyfriend. “Like so many Israelis, we came intending to stay here for a few years and go back, and 27 years later here, here we still are,” she said. She would go on to marry that boyfriend; they are now divorced and co-parenting their teenage daughter. Cohen found work doing commercial translation and took up literary translation as a hobby. “I was reading things coming out of Israel that I enjoyed and wished they were in English,” she said. “I thought, well, maybe I could write them in English.” Meanwhile, she pursued a master’s degree in Near Eastern languages and culture at Indiana University in Bloomington. There, she met Breon Mitchell, a German translator of works by Franz Kafka and Gunter Grass, among others. Mitchell mentored Cohen and published her first translations — poems by Yehonatan Geffen — in 2000 in a now-defunct journal called Beacons. “I feel privileged to have been present at the earliest stages of Jessica Cohen’s career,” Mitchell said in an email. “I still remember our weekly sessions, discussing her drafts of those poems. They remain among my fondest memories.” Eager for more work, Cohen contacted Deborah Harris, the literary agent who represents some of Israel’s top writers abroad. Harris liked Cohen’s samples and set her up to translate “Bliss,” an edgy novel about an Israeli woman who has an affair with a Palestinian man by the late Ronit Matalon. “She was one of Israel’s most critically acclaimed and interesting writers, and in retrospect it was an incredibly difficult book to translate as my first experience,” Cohen said. The translation came out in 2003 and led to an invitation to translate “Her Body Knows” by Grossman, a literary superstar in Israel who is also represented by Harris. “That was the biggest door-opener for me, and I’ve translated all his work since,” Cohen said, including “To the End of the Land,” his bestselling 2008 novel that was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. There are only a half dozen professional Hebrew-to-English literary translators, Cohen said. Arad, who is close with Cohen, said by email that Cohen’s unique skill set distinguishes her from other translators with whom Arad has worked. In addition to being bilingual, “she has a super sensitive ear for the texts she translates, and she strives to find the right English words and the right register for each book,” Arad said. She also “makes sure every tiny detail is right until the text is perfect.” For a typical book project, Cohen produces at least three drafts. The first is very rough. While working on the second, she jots down questions about vocabulary or style to send to the author by email. Then she does another round or two of polishing. “Some writers like to be very, very involved and will really read the entire thing and comment on it,” she said. “Most don’t because they either don’t have the time, or their English isn’t good enough, or they’ve moved on to other things, or they trust me.” Cohen’s translations often become the urtexts for translations of Israeli books into other languages, rather the original Hebrew versions, she said. She is currently working on Arad’s “Happy New Years,” which was a hit when it came out in Israel last year. She is also plugging away at Lea Aini’s 2009 novel “Rose of Lebanon.” “It’s one of the best works of Hebrew literature to my mind,” she said. Is there any kind of book she would decline to translate? “I would say that I know my strengths, and poetry is not one of them,” she said. “Most poetry translators are poets themselves. I’m not a poet. It’s just not the way my mind works.” And don’t get her started on the expression “lost in translation.” “People just inherently assume that a translation is inferior to the original, and I don’t like that assumption,” she said. “A translation is never going to be the same as the original. It’s different, by definition. And there are things that can be gained in a translation. Sometimes there are fortuitous parts of a text that in the translation can gain a whole different level of meaning.” In addition to her translating work, Cohen advocates for the rights of translators as a member of the Authors Guild. She helped conduct a 2022 survey of literary translators that found that 63.5% of respondents made less than $10,000 per year from translating work and that only 11.5% earned 100% of their income from such work. “One component of the work that my colleagues and I do is to try to make more translators aware of their rights,” she said. “Pay is obviously the big thing, but there are other issues, like getting royalties and getting proper credit, including having the translators’ names on the cover.” Despite living in the United States for more than two decades, Cohen said she doesn’t really feel at home here. She grew up in a “very, very secular” family and is not involved in the Denver Jewish community. She stays connected to Israel by reading Haaretz every day and listening to Israeli radio. “I never have enough time to read everything I would like to, but people send me a lot of books to read that they would like me to translate,” she said. “I try to stay on top of the important things coming out.” Cohen said she was rattled by the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and their aftermath. In 2017, she donated half of her Booker Prize winnings to the Jerusalem-based nonprofit B’Tselem, which documents human rights violations against Palestinians living in the West Bank. She said the situation now is “so much worse now than in 2017” and called the current war between Israel and Hamas “very dispiriting and horrifying.” (It has also ensnared another prominent Israeli translator, Joanna Chen, whose coexistence essay drew criticism and then was retracted by a literary magazine.) Cohen believes that Americans, including American Jews, do not read enough books in translation. They can’t possibly understand the complex Israeli story, she said, if they ignore books by Israeli authors. “I think a lot of people do not have a really full multidimensional understanding of what that country and what that society is,” she said, “and one of the ways to get that bigger picture is through reading.” This story originally appeared in J. Jewish News of Northern California and is republished with permission." #metaglossia_mundus
"Dès les XVIe et XVIIe siècles, des traductrices comme Marie de Cotteblanche et Anne Dacier ont commencé à utiliser leur vrai nom, mettant fin à l'anonymat. Historiquement sous-représentées, elles trouvent aujourd'hui reconnaissance sur Wikipédia pour leurs contributions à la traduction et leur engagement dans les problématiques sociales de leur époque..." #metaglossia_mundus
Microsoft Edge va se doter de nouvelles fonctionnalités toujours plus impressionnantes grâce à l'intelligence artificielle (IA) Copilot. C'est ainsi que le navigateur internet de Windows sera capable de traduire et de doubler vocalement les vidéos YouTube. #metaglossia_mundus
"Besoin de traduire un texte ? Explorez notre sélection des meilleurs sites en ligne pour une traduction rapide et précise. Idéal pour tous vos besoins linguistiques en 2024. Par Gwen
Publié 20 mai 2024
Découvrez les meilleurs outils en ligne pour traduire vos textes rapidement et efficacement, et trouvez celui qui correspond le mieux à vos besoins linguistiques ! Sommaire
#1 – DeepL
#2 – Google Traduction
#3 – Reverso
#4 – Linguee
#5- Systran
En conclusion
Points clés : DeepL : Le champion de la traduction avec une interface intuitive et des traductions précises dans 7 langues, mais il en offre moins que ses concurrents.
Google Traduction : La référence incontestée avec plus de 100 langues disponibles, simple d’utilisation et même disponible en réalité augmentée pour les traductions en temps réel.
Reverso : Un outil sérieux offrant des traductions précises et des exemples d’utilisation pour mieux contextualiser le texte, avec une large gamme de langues prises en charge.
Linguee : Pratique et fiable, il propose des exemples d’utilisation pour chaque traduction, mais son choix de langues est plus restreint que Google Traduction.
Systran : Non seulement un traducteur en ligne gratuit, mais aussi un éditeur de logiciels de traduction professionnel, offrant des traductions dans près de 14 langues différentes.
#1 – DeepL
DeepL est un outil de traduction récent lancé en 2017, considéré comme le plus performant des sites de traduction. Il faut savoir que ce site a été créé par l’équipe professionnelle du site internet de traduction Linguee. Ce dernier est inscrit dans le top 5. Notre seul regret : DeepL ne propose que 7 langues étrangères : le français, l’anglais, l’allemand, l’espagnol, l’italien, le néerlandais ainsi que le polonais. Comment traduire plus rapidement avec l’application #DEEPL pour #Windows
#2 – Google Traduction
Comme pour beaucoup d’autres choses, Google gagne haut la main, une fois de plus, grâce à ce service gratuit de traduction. Ce qui lui confère encore d’être connu et reconnu. Ce service est d’une grande simplicité : il vous suffit de copier et coller le texte que vous souhaitez traduire et de faire votre choix dans la grande liste de langues, proposée par Google Traduction. En effet, à contrario de DeepL, plus d’une centaine de langues étrangères sont répertoriées au sein de ce service. Si vous utilisez l’application smartphone, vous pouvez même traduire en temps réels des textes à l’aide de la réalité augmentée : à mourir de rire sur une bouteille de shampoing head&shoulders D'autres articles à consulter
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#3 – Reverso
Très réputé aussi pour sa capacité à reconnaître et traduire correctement les termes étrangers, Reverso est un outil sérieux, qui appuie notamment ses traductions à l’aide d’exemples d’utilisation, aidant ainsi à contextualiser le texte ou la phrase traduite. Les langues qu’il répertorie ? Reverso traduit du français vers l’anglais, l’allemand, l’espagnol, le chinois, l’italien, le néerlandais, le russe, l’arabe, le portugais, l’hébreu ainsi que le japonais. Théo Hoffenberg (Reverso) : Le traducteur Reverso désormais disponible sous Windows et MacOS
#4 – Linguee
Auparavant évoqué dans l’article, rappelez-vous qu’il s’agit des mêmes professionnels créateurs que DeepL. Quelle différence alors entre les deux ? Le site internet de traduction Linguee est l’un des outils gratuit le plus pratique. De plus, à contrario des traducteurs automatiques traditionnels, celui-ci propose, tout comme Reverso, plusieurs exemples d’utilisation avec différents contextes, vous permettant ainsi de trouver la traduction la plus fidèle à votre recherche. La solution pour la traduction anglais/français
#5- Systran
Il faut savoir que le site internet Systran n’est pas seulement un traducteur en ligne gratuit, mais il est aussi un éditeur de logiciels de traduction professionnel, gage de sérieux. De l’anglais à la langue coréenne en passant par le suédois, Systran détient pas loin de 14 langues, de quoi vous satisfaire de bien nombreuses traductions à lui seul. Systran, un traducteur efficace
En conclusion
Explorez ces outils de traduction gratuits et choisissez celui qui répond le mieux à vos besoins. N’oubliez pas de partager vos retours d’expérience et de découvrir d’autres services similaires !" #metaglossia_mundus
"Découvrez dans quelles langues Google Traduction excelle le plus. Analysez ses performances pour les langues romanes, germaniques, slaves et asiatiques, et comprenez les facteurs influençant la qualité des traductions. By Matthieu CHARRIER 20/05/2024 Google Traduction est efficace pour certaines langues grâce à des données riches et des modèles avancés. Les traductions entre l’anglais et les langues romanes sont particulièrement précises, mais la qualité varie selon la langue et la complexité du texte.
Google Traduction est un outil largement utilisé pour ses capacités de traduction automatique. Cependant, la qualité des traductions varie considérablement selon les langues. Certaines paires de langues bénéficient d’une qualité de traduction supérieure grâce à la disponibilité de vastes quantités de données et à des modèles linguistiques plus robustes.
Voici un aperçu des langues dans lesquelles Google Traduction excelle.
Les langues romanes : un terrain favorable
De l’anglais aux langues romanes
La traduction de l’anglais vers les langues romanes telles que l’espagnol, le français, l’italien et le portugais est l’une des spécialités de Google Traduction. La raison principale réside dans la richesse des données disponibles pour ces langues. Google a accès à une abondance de textes parallèles, ce qui permet d’affiner ses algorithmes de traduction.
A lire également : Comment faire pour que Google soit toujours traduit en français ?
En conséquence, les traductions sont souvent précises et fluides, rendant cet outil particulièrement fiable pour ces paires de langues. Entre langues romanes
Les langues romanes partagent de nombreuses similarités grammaticales et lexicales, facilitant ainsi les traductions entre elles. Par exemple, traduire de l’espagnol vers l’italien ou du portugais vers le français donne généralement des résultats de haute qualité. La structure similaire de ces langues permet à Google Traduction de produire des traductions plus cohérentes et exactes.
Les langues germaniques : une solide performance
Google Traduction montre également de bonnes performances pour les langues germaniques. Les traductions entre l’allemand, le néerlandais et les langues scandinaves (danois, suédois, norvégien) sont souvent précises. Cette efficacité est due à la présence de nombreuses données textuelles disponibles pour ces langues, ainsi qu’à des structures grammaticales relativement bien comprises par les algorithmes de traduction.
Les langues slaves : une qualité correcte
Pour les langues slaves, comme le russe, le polonais, le tchèque et le croate, la qualité des traductions est généralement correcte. Cependant, elle peut être moins précise comparée aux langues romanes et germaniques. Cela s’explique par des différences linguistiques plus prononcées et parfois par une moindre disponibilité de données textuelles de haute qualité. Néanmoins, pour des textes simples, Google Traduction offre des résultats acceptables. Les langues asiatiques : des progrès significatifs
Google Traduction a fait des progrès notables dans la traduction des langues asiatiques, telles que le chinois, le japonais et le coréen. La qualité des traductions est cependant variable. Les traductions du chinois vers l’anglais, par exemple, sont souvent bonnes en raison de l’abondance de données disponibles. Pour des langues moins couramment parlées ou présentant des structures grammaticales très différentes, la qualité peut être plus inégale. A lire également : Comment insérer Google Translate sur son site Web ?
Facteurs influençant la qualité des traductions
Il est crucial de noter que la qualité des traductions de Google Traduction peut varier en fonction du contexte et de la complexité du texte. Voici quelques facteurs clés : Disponibilité des données linguistiques : Plus il y a de données disponibles pour une paire de langues, meilleure sera la traduction.
Complexité grammaticale : Les langues avec des structures grammaticales complexes ou peu similaires peuvent entraîner des erreurs de traduction.
Contextualisation : La capacité de Google Traduction à comprendre et traduire le contexte d’une phrase peut être limitée, surtout pour des textes spécialisés ou littéraires.
Comparaison avec d’autres outils de traduction
Plusieurs études et comparaisons montrent que Google Traduction n’est pas le seul outil performant sur le marché. Par exemple, DeepL est souvent cité comme une alternative offrant des traductions de haute qualité pour certaines langues européennes. Des comparaisons détaillées entre DeepL et Google Traduction montrent que, dans certains cas, DeepL peut surpasser Google Traduction en termes de fluidité et de précision. Témoignage d’utilisateur
Jean Dupont, traducteur professionnel, partage son expérience : « J’utilise Google Traduction principalement pour des traductions rapides et simples. Pour des textes plus complexes, je préfère DeepL ou des traducteurs humains. La différence de qualité est notable, surtout pour les langues avec moins de données disponibles. » FAQ
Quels sont les avantages de Google Traduction ?
Google Traduction est rapide, accessible et couvre plus de 100 langues. Il est particulièrement utile pour des traductions simples et rapides. Quelles sont les limites de Google Traduction ?
La qualité peut varier selon les langues et le contexte. Il peut rencontrer des difficultés avec des textes complexes ou spécialisés. A lire également : 10 fonctions de Google Translate que vous devriez utiliser
Comment améliorer la qualité des traductions ?
Pour des traductions de haute qualité, utilisez des outils spécialisés comme DeepL pour certaines langues ou consultez des traducteurs professionnels pour des textes complexes." #metaglossia_mundus
"«L'Église masculinise l'image de Dieu» «L’égalité des sexes dans l’Eglise restera difficile aussi longtemps que l’image de Dieu sera purement masculine», souligne Annette Jantzen. La théologienne allemande décrypte l’articulation du «genre» de Dieu dans la Bible et dans le christianisme. Jacqueline Straub, kath.ch/traduction et adaptation: Raphaël Zbinden Annette Jantzen (46 ans) est docteure en théologie et agente pastorale dans le domaine des femmes dans le diocèse d’Aix-la-Chapelle (ouest de l’Allemagne). Elle a écrit plusieurs livres sur la spiritualité féminine et tient le blog www.gotteswort-weiblich.de. Le lundi de Pentecôte, 20 mai 2024, elle tient une conférence sur le thème «Dieu est tellement plus que le Seigneur» dans le cadre de la journée Junia au centre paroissial de Speicher, dans le canton d’Appenzell Rhodes-Extérieures. Quel est le sujet de votre exposé à la journée Junia?
Annette Jantzen: Il s’agit des images de Dieu dans la Bible. Souvent, nous en avons une représentation masculine. La Bible déploie un large delta en ce qui concerne les divers noms donnés à Dieu. En revanche, notre langage ecclésiastique est un canal étroit. Lorsque les traditions sont rapportées, elles se retrouvent naturellement plus indifférenciées et simplifiées. Ce n’est pas grave en soi. Mais cela devient problématique lorsque le canal prétend représenter le tout. Pensez-vous que la tradition catholique ait une image appauvrie de Dieu?
Absolument. En ce sens, il peut être très instructif de jeter un coup d’œil dans la Bible. Elle nous montre la réalité du passé dans ce domaine, et révèle également que le problème de la représentation féminine existe déjà depuis longtemps. Les passages qui parlent de Dieu et des hommes d’une manière allant à l’encontre des représentations patriarcales de l’époque sont des aspects particuliers. Ils demandent une subtilité de traduction. Malheureusement, les traductions actuelles lissent souvent les éléments qui ne correspondent pas aux représentations traditionnelles. Il arrive qu’une image féminine de Dieu dans un demi-verset soit supprimée dans l’optique d’une lecture plus ecclésiastique. «Plus les écrits sont tardifs, plus l’image de Dieu ‘Père’ est fréquente et exclusive» Où se situe la principale difficulté?
Les textes ont été écrits dans un contexte patriarcal. La Bible devient plus patriarcale au gré des changements d’époque. Les temps bibliques étaient rudes pour les femmes. Et il est malheureux pour nous que les écrits chrétiens du Nouveau Testament aient été rédigés dans cet esprit de l’époque. Il est rare de trouver dans des textes issus d’une société patriarcale une image de Dieu féminisée traitée comme une réalité réellement positive. Mais lorsque c’est le cas, cela doit être relevé et célébré. C’est un aspect des Ecritures qui révèle le sacré. Et il n’est pas correct de vouloir l’effacer. Vous avez parlé de passages «lissés». Avez-vous un exemple?
Dans le Nouveau Testament, le mot «extase» est traduit de différentes façons: pour les hommes, ce terme est associé à l’enthousiasme, pour les femmes à la crainte. Or, l’extase conjugue ces deux aspects. Il existe de nombreux exemples de traductions guidées par des préjugés. Quelles sont les représentations de Dieu dans le Nouveau Testament?
Jésus parle de Dieu de manière très variée. Plus les écrits sont tardifs, plus l’image de Dieu «Père» est fréquente et exclusive. Ce n’est que dans l’évangile de Jean que l’image du père est aussi dominante. C’est une expression de la repatriarcalisation du christianisme. Et dans l’Ancien Testament?
On trouve bien sûr Dieu en tant que roi, juge, mais aussi en tant que mère vautour qui apprend à ses petits à voler. «Les images de Dieu dans la Bible doivent être traduites avec soin» Mais, dans la traduction actuelle, il s’agit d’un aigle – donc à nouveau d’un terme masculin. Il n’y a plus d’allusion à un animal femelle.
C’est vrai. C’est dans la Septante, la première traduction grecque de la Bible hébraïque, que le mot a été modifié. Les Grecs trouvaient en effet les vautours dégoûtants et les aigles formidables, et nous les avons repris tels quels. En cela, la pensée sémitique est différente. Le vautour est un animal qui se trouve à la frontière de la vie et de la mort, c’est pourquoi il est une bonne représentation de Dieu. Quelles sont les autres images féminines?
La mère ours, par exemple, ou la mère humaine. Dans le psaume 131, il est dit que l’enfant sevré vient se blottir. Il ne vient plus vers sa mère parce qu’il doit être allaité, mais parce que son âme trouve le repos auprès de Dieu, sa mère. Je trouve également passionnante l’image de la déesse de la terre dans le psaume 139. Les anciens Israélites savaient bien sûr que les enfants ne grandissent pas dans la terre. Il existe aussi des images cosmiques et non visuelles pour Dieu. On trouve en effet également le nom de Dieu ‘Yahvé’, qui se traduit par «Je suis celui qui suis».
Ce qui est particulièrement passionnant, c’est que le récit qui explique le nom de Dieu travaille avec un jeu de mots qui est neutre en hébreu. Si à un endroit aussi central, dans une langue aussi contrastée, apparaît un mot non contrasté, que l’on peut alors traduire par «je suis celui que je suis», «je suis celle que je suis» ou «je suis ce que je suis», c’est aussi très significatif. Comment peut-on redécouvrir ces images très diverses de Dieu?
Tout d’abord, elles doivent être traduites avec soin. Celui qui a l’occasion d’apprendre une langue si ancienne et qui peut aussi s’approprier ces textes dans leur version originale a le devoir de les traiter de manière appropriée. Je suis désormais très sensible aux coupures de textes motivés par l’intérêt. «Il y a certainement des textes de la Bible qu’il serait adéquat de ne plus lire pendant les célébrations» Les images de Dieu peuvent-elles révolutionner quelque chose?
Elles peuvent être des facteurs très forts d’autonomisation. C’est en effet une affaire entre nous et Dieu, et non entre nous et l’Église. Je peux donc m’imaginer que cela accélère encore les processus d’érosion de l’Eglise, même si je ne l’espère pas. Je pense néanmoins que l’égalité des sexes dans l’Église restera difficile tant que l’image de Dieu sera purement masculine, car elle préfigure une prédominance du masculin. L’Église masculinise l’image de Dieu. Le masculin devient ainsi une norme invisible. Qu’est-ce qui change lorsque l’image de Dieu n’est plus vue et prêchée de manière purement masculine?
La manière dont nous parlons de Dieu détermine aussi la manière dont nous nous considérons en tant qu’êtres humains. Et cela signifie qu’il y a soudain une place pour une véritable égalité. Tous les hommes n’approuvent pas cela. Quand on est privilégié, l’égalité ressemble à un désavantage. Mais c’est un passage obligé pour les hommes, et plus largement pour les êtres humains. Avez-vous l’espoir que les diverses images de Dieu dans la Bible aient la force de briser le patriarcat dans l’Église?
Oui, je le pense. Il y a des points sur lesquels on ne peut plus revenir. Les personnes vont plus loin avec ce qu’elles peuvent s’approprier. Il y a certainement des textes de la Bible qu’il serait aujourd’hui adéquat de ne plus lire pendant les célébrations. Par exemple, le passage de l’épître aux Ephésiens où il est dit que les femmes doivent se soumettre à leur mari. «Nous assistons à une montée du patriarcat dans le monde entier» On pourrait penser que c’est de la censure. Mais jusqu’à présent, personne n’a parlé de censure du fait que le Cantique des cantiques n’apparaisse jamais dans les lectures dominicales. J’espère que nous en viendrons à une telle approche réfléchie des textes bibliques dans les célébrations. Mais j’ai toutefois des inquiétudes. Lesquelles?
Les courants fondamentalistes au sein de l’Église catholique, mais aussi au sein d’autres confessions, ont beaucoup de succès. Nous assistons à une montée du patriarcat dans le monde entier, souvent liée à des mouvements d’extrême droite. C’est sur ce terrain que l’on peut espèrer que la diversité des images de Dieu apportent une victoire. (cath.ch/kath/js/rz)" #metaglossia_mundus
13:40 - May 20, 2024 Code de l'info: 3488581 "IQNA-Le Dr Ahmad al-Mansour qui a un doctorat de l'Université d'Hiroshima et a enseigné comme professeur assistant, à l'Université d'Hiroshima, est actuellement professeur au département de langue arabe de l'université de Keio de Tokyo et enseigne en même temps, à temps partiel, à la faculté d'économie de l'université de Senshu. Il est également chargé du cours d'études islamiques à l'Université de Senshu et superviseur du département d'études islamiques à l'Université de Keio. Concernant ses activités auprès des musulmans japonais, Al-Mansour a déclaré : « Dès le début de mon séjour au Japon, j'ai essayé de connaître la communauté musulmane et j'avais hâte de participer aux activités islamiques. C'est pourquoi, dès la première année de mon séjour au Japon, j'ai commencé à lire les sermons de la prière du vendredi, à l'Université d'Ibaraki, et ce travail s'est poursuivi tout au long de mes études, c'est-à-dire pendant les années 1990 à 1992. Durant cette période, j'ai essayé d’unifier la minorité musulmane et j'ai créé à cet effet, une salle de prière permanente pour les musulmans. J’ai prononcé des sermons du vendredi à l'université d'Hiroshima de 1992 à 1997, et j’ai été nommé responsable du groupe d'étudiants musulmans de cette université. Ma première conférence en japonais, sur l'Islam, s’est déroulée à l'Université d'Hiroshima ». Ses autres activités incluent la participation au comité de révision de la traduction du Coran en japonais, et la gestion de l'Institut islamique de la Grande Mosquée de Tokyo. Al-Mansour a réalisé le projet de traduction du Coran en japonais, à la demande du Département des Affaires Religieuses de Turquie. Un comité était composé de sept personnes pour corriger la traduction du Coran : Mme Nishida Kyoko (japonaise) (traductrice en anglais), Adel Hirofumi Aoki (japonais), Ahmad Al Mansour (syrien), Ahmad Naoki Maino (japonais), Mme Migumi Maha Kenjo (japonaise) et Hani Abdul Hadi (japonais), membre du comité de révision, et Abdul Karim et Shigro Shimoyama (superviseurs de la langue cible). Al-Mansour a déclaré : « La traduction était principalement faite à partir de l’anglais, et notre tâche était de comparer la traduction avec le texte arabe du Coran. Nous avons tenu de nombreuses réunions pour évaluer les différentes opinions sur la traduction de certains versets, et prêté beaucoup d'attention aux versets similaires et au concept de l'infaillibilité des prophètes. La première édition de la traduction du Coran a été réalisée en 2021 à Ankara, à un tirage de 5 000 exemplaires. Cette traduction a été publiée sous deux formes, une traduction japonaise sans le texte du Coran, et une traduction japonaise avec le texte du Coran. L'une de mes autres tâches consistait à écrire un livre sur le Hajj et l’Omra en trois langues, arabe, japonais et anglais, qui a été distribué par voie électronique aux pèlerins, au cours du dernier pèlerinage. Mais mon projet de traduction le plus important a été la participation à la correction de la traduction du Coran en japonais, publiée par le Département turc des affaires religieuses. Je suis en train de traduire le livre «لاتحزن» (Ne sois pas triste) du Cheikh A’ez Al-Qarni, dont 75% a été traduit et complété par de nombreuses notes nécessaires à la compréhension du lecteur japonais. Ce livre a été réalisé avec mon élève, le Dr Maha Migumi Kanju. Le livre «العقیدة الاسلامیة» ( les croyances islamiques) publié par le Dar Al-Afta de Jordanie est l'une de mes traductions en japonais, réalisée à la demande du Dar Al-Afta. Dans ce travail, je collabore avec Maha Migumi Kenjo et Hani Abdolhadi, tous deux musulmans japonais et parlant couramment l'arabe, qui sont mes étudiants. Le livre : «المُتَلازِمَاتُ اللَّفْظِيَّةُ الشَّائِعَةُ لِلنَّاطِقينَ بِغَيرِ العَرَبِيَّةِ مُرَتَّبَةٌ حَسْبَ المُسْتَوَيَاتِ» d’Abdul Qadir al-Khalaf, a aussi été traduit avec la coopération du Dr Maha Megumi Kanjo et du Dr Hani Abdul Hadi ». Ce traducteur syrien est aussi l’auteur de six traductions du Coran en japonais, des traductions des livres ایها الولد» » et « بدایة الهدایة » de l'Imam Abi Hamid Al-Ghazali, du Sahih Bukhari et du Sahih Muslim. Au sujet des six traductions du Coran en japonais, il a expliqué : « Les anciennes traductions utilisaient des termes difficiles et anciens, nous avons donc essayé de choisir des termes plus simples dans les nouvelles traductions. Pour atteindre cet objectif, nous avons utilisé des commentaires importants et j'ai personnellement préféré le commentaire de l'Allameh Saboni. La traduction des concepts du Coran étant pratiquement une traduction d’interprétations, je ne vois pas d'obstacle au nombre de traductions qui est proportionnel au nombre d'interprétations. La difficulté des termes arabes et de leur traduction en japonais, est l'un des défis les plus importants auxquels nous sommes confrontés chaque jour dans le travail de traduction. Il faudrait créer un comité permanent pour la traduction des termes islamiques et vérifier leur traduction, car il existe de nombreuses différences et jusqu'à présent, il n'y a pas de coordination entre les termes japonais et les autres langues »." #metaglossia_mundus
L’intelligence artificielle met-elle en péril les métiers de la traduction? Le point avec le vice-doyen de la Faculté de traduction et d’interprétation de l’UNIGE, le professeur Kilian Seeber. #metaglossia_mundus
"Microsoft and Google have revealed small language models for customers this year, as the cost and energy to train AI continues to grow.Are AI companies shifting to small language models? Both Microsoft and Google have revealed lightweight AI options for customers this year, while some experts are pushing for the efficiency and lower cost of small language models. While the recent advances in AI have created many exciting prospects for the tech sector, it has also created a growing problem in terms of both cost and energy use. The capabilities of large language models – the foundation of many generative AI services – have surged in recent years. But the resources required to make these systems a reality has grown at a similar exponential rate. This year’s AI Index – an independent initiative at Stanford University – claimed OpenAI’s GPT-4 used an estimated $78m worth of compute to train, while Google’s Gemini Ultra cost $191m million for compute. This marks a dramatic increase to previous years – the report estimates it cost Google only $12m to train its PaLM model in 2022. Meanwhile, there are reports that AI models, cryptocurrency and data centres together are expected to use as much energy as a small country in the next few years. Combine these issues with a more competitive market and it makes sense that leading AI companies are making a push towards ‘small’ language models. The rise of smaller models Google and Microsoft – two of the biggest players in the AI sector currently – have both made moves towards more lightweight AI options for their customers this year. Microsoft recently unveiled Phi-3, its series of small language models that are designed to offer similar functions as large language models but in a more compact format and with less training data. The company claims that large language models serve an important function but that they require significant computing resources to operate. It added that small language models are designed to perform simpler tasks, to be more accessible for smaller organisations and can be “fine-tuned” to meet specific needs. “What we’re going to start to see is not a shift from large to small, but a shift from a singular category of models to a portfolio of models where customers get the ability to make a decision on what is the best model for their scenario,” said Sonali Yadav, Microsoft’s principal product manager for generative AI. In February, Google revealed a series of lightweight AI models called Gemma and claimed these models can run on laptops and desktops, while surpassing the capabilities of some larger models. At the time, Victor Botev, the CTO of Iris.ai, said Gemma was a sign of the “fast-growing capabilities” of smaller language models and that practical application is more important than massive parameter counts – “especially when considering the huge costs involved with many large language models”. Will this trend continue? As more companies and users begin to adopt AI – and as tech giants push AI into their various offerings – it seems inevitable that the cost of AI will continue. Simon Bain, the CEO and founder of the data platform OmniIndex, claims generative AI is an “unrefined and chaotic beast” that is forcing data centres to find ways to “cope with the extraordinary and explosive demands of today’s AI boom”. “AI developers without Google’s resources behind them will find themselves with a mountain to climb in a matter of weeks,” Bain said. “As the technology matures, we will hopefully begin to see more tamed versions of AI which do not require the energy consumption of 1,000 US homes to train and that offer users a more precise, efficient and useful service.” Bain argues that small language models will offer a “more accurate result at a much lower cost” for businesses and that they will be trained on “much more precise and controlled data sets” to improve accuracy – an issue that exists in various AI models.
"Researchers studied music and speech in 55 languages. They discovered that songs were slower and more stable in pitch than speech. 05-20-2024 Similar patterns in music and language found across all cultures BySanjana Gajbhiye
Earth.com staff writer
Is music truly a universal language? Do the melodies we hum and the rhythms we tap our feet to resonate with a deeper connection that transcends cultural boundaries?
An ambitious new study aimed to unravel this mystery. It embarked on a global journey, uniting 75 researchers from 46 countries. Each researcher contributed their unique musical heritage. Together, they created a harmonious pattern of human expression. World’s musical traditions
This unprecedented collaboration brought together experts from diverse fields, including ethnomusicology, music psychology, linguistics, and evolutionary biology. Researchers from all over the world recorded themselves singing, playing instruments, and reciting lyrics in their native languages. They created an impressive collection of 55 distinct musical traditions. The study captured a rich and varied soundscape. It showcased the rhythmic drumming of Senegal’s Latyr Sy and also highlighted the soulful melodies of Hindustani classical singer Dr. Shantala Hegde. Overall, the researchers’ musical repertoire included well-known tunes like “Scarborough Fair” and “Bella Ciao” as well as lesser-known gems such as the Japanese folk song “Ōmori Jinku” and the Māori love song “Pōkarekare Ana.” This diverse collection of musical expressions provided valuable insights into the universal nature of musical traditions and their role in human societies. Patterns in music’s language
Through meticulous analysis of the audio recordings, the researchers discovered striking similarities across the diverse musical samples. In general, songs and instrumental melodies tended to have slower rhythms than speech, while their pitches were consistently higher and more stable. These findings provide compelling evidence for the existence of cross-cultural regularities in music, suggesting that certain musical patterns may be deeply ingrained in the human psyche. Dr. Patrick Savage, a psychologist and musicologist at the University of Auckland and senior author of the study, believes that these regularities could be linked to the social function of music. “Slow, regular, predictable melodies make it easier for us to sing together in large groups,” Dr. Savage explains. “Music may have evolved as a way to strengthen social bonds and promote group cohesion.” Music as a social glue
This hypothesis aligns with our understanding of music’s ability to unite people. Throughout history, music has played a central role in fostering social connections and creating a sense of shared identity. From ancient tribal rituals to modern-day concerts, music has always been a powerful tool for bringing people together. The study’s findings suggest that this power may partly stem from the predictable patterns in music, making it easy to synchronize with and participate in. These patterns facilitate collective activities like singing and dancing, which are crucial for social bonding. When we engage in these musical activities, we tap into a fundamental instinct for connecting with others. This process helps reinforce our sense of belonging to a larger community, making music a vital element in social cohesion. Future directions for music’s language
While the study’s findings are undoubtedly significant, the researchers acknowledge that there is still much to learn about the universal language of music. They hope their work will inspire further research into the cultural and biological factors that shape our musical preferences and behaviors. Future studies could explore the specific ways in which music facilitates social bonding in different cultures. Understanding these cultural practices could reveal how music strengthens community ties and fosters a sense of belonging. Additionally, researchers could investigate the neural mechanisms underlying our ability to perceive and respond to musical patterns. This exploration could provide insights into how our brains process music and why certain patterns resonate with us universally. Celebrating the power of music
The study’s video showcases researchers singing, speaking, and playing instruments from their diverse cultures. This highlights the unifying power of music. It reminds us that music remains a vital source of cultural expression. Even in our interconnected world, music fosters social connection. Whether singing along to a favorite pop song or swaying to a traditional dance, we engage in a global chorus. Even tapping our toes to a catchy beat unites us. This musical participation transcends borders. It brings us together in our shared humanity. This research shows how music fosters a sense of community and belonging. It bridges cultural differences and brings people together through a shared love of musical expression. The study and its visual representation highlight music’s enduring importance. Music helps maintain cultural identity and promotes social cohesion in our diverse and interconnected world. “We’re trying to shed light on the cultural and biological evolution of two systems that make us human: music and language,” Dr. Savage notes. The study’s findings offer a tantalizing glimpse into the intricate relationship between these two fundamental aspects of human communication, paving the way for a deeper understanding of what it means to be human. The study is published in the journal Science Advances." #metaglossia_mundus
"Learn about the challenges faced by indigenous individuals in Chiapas, Mexico, who are deprived of their liberty due to a lack of access to interpreters and translators. Discover the impact on legal proceedings and the efforts being made to improve translation services. For Chiapas Indigenous, Justice Gets Lost Without Translation
In Chiapas, 42% of indigenous people who were arrested did not receive the assistance of an interpreter in any part of their legal proceedings. Today, they serve their sentences without understanding what was said during their trials.
May 20, 2024
SAN CRISTÓBAL DE LAS CASAS — At 10 o’clock on a Sunday morning, people line up to visit their imprisoned relatives. It’s a visiting day at Centro Estatal de Reinserción Social para Sentenciados No. 5, better known as CERSS 5. At a concrete table beneath a canopy of palm fronds sit Petrona Hernández Pérez and Lucía Pérez, the spouses, respectively, of Agustín Pérez Domínguez and Juan Velasco Aguilar, from the neighborhood of K’a’ni’ in San Juan Cancuc. Both men are being held at CERSS 5. The women, accompanied by some of their children, have brought bean tamalitos, along with other items they managed to carry for the monthly visit. “Our family on the outside is suffering because we can’t take care of them,” Pérez Domínguez says. He was detained in K’a’ni’ in May 2022, together with Velasco Aguilar and Manuel Sántiz Cruz, accused of the homicide of a local police officer. Two additional men, one of whom is Pérez Domínguez’s brother, were arrested outside CERSS 5 three days later, after having testified in favor of the accused men. One thing they have in common, besides being speakers of Tseltal, is that none of them knows how to communicate in Spanish, the only exception being Pérez Domínguez, who only speaks a little of it. In May 2023, the men were sentenced to 25 years in prison.
This followed a legal process they say contained inconsistencies due to a lack of translation and interpretation into their language because the person assigned to provide those services did not produce a certificate or other document accrediting his knowledge of Tseltal. No access to an interpreter
According to data from various organizations, a significant number of people who speak indigenous languages and who have been deprived of their liberty do not have access to an interpreter. In Chiapas, whose indigenous presence is one of the highest in Mexico, the situation puts the state’s indigenous population at a disadvantage — despite Articles 6 and 7 of the local constitution, which recognize the right to a public defender and interpreter who speaks the defendant’s language. In a 2017 report, ASILEGAL, an organization that defends and promotes the human rights of people deprived of their liberty, showed that 42% of the indigenous people surveyed in Chiapas did not have an interpreter or translator. Meanwhile, 45% of those who did have access to this service said they could not understand the interpreter or translator provided to them, which often occurs because the interpreter and defendant speak different variants of an indigenous language, based on the report. General recommendation 45/2021 of the National Human Rights Commission, which addresses the right of indigenous people subject to criminal proceedings to be assisted by interpreters, translators and defense counsel who have knowledge of their language and culture, states that “9 out of every 10 people in detention do not receive the assistance of an interpreter or translator during their detention process, nor [do they receive it] while criminal proceedings are being conducted.” In Chiapas, nearly 30% of people above the age of 3 speak at least one of the 12 indigenous languages officially recognized by the state constitution.
By contrast, data from the National Institute of Indigenous Languages shows that in Chiapas, there are only 13 registered interpreters specializing in law who are trained to provide interpretation services in the fields of law enforcement and justice administration. Friends and relatives form a line to visit people detained at CERSS 5, a prison in San Cristóbal de Las Casas.MARISSA REVILLA/GPJ MEXICO
A need for statewide translation
Juan Pablo Nava, a member of Grupo de Trabajo No Estamos Todxs, a collective in the state of Chiapas that works to free political prisoners, says 99% of detained people who come from an indigenous community did not speak Spanish nor were they bilingual at the time of their detention. “This leaves them in a vacuum. They do not understand what’s happening … and it can lead to them being sentenced, to the process taking longer and often to hearings being suspended because there is no interpreter. Or [there are] other cases in which our colleagues who do speak Spanish, or who at least understand it for the most part, have noticed that the translator is not translating correctly,” Nava says. Susana de la Cruz Ruiz is a member of two organizations: Colectivo de Familiares de Ex Presos en Lucha and Organización de Familias Unidas contra la Tortura y en Defensa de los Derechos Humanos. She says that in her experience as a family member and advocate, she has witnessed instances in which there are no specialists to translate and interpret when the people who are being detained make their initial appearance before an authority, when they have confrontation hearings or in any hearing when interpretation is needed between the defendant and the defense counsel, authority, judge or attorneys present. Or if they do have them, they work in another language. “For example, the colleagues from Cancuc are Tseltal, and a Ch’ol translator/interpreter arrives, or they do not appear at the hearings because they said there were no translators and they were postponed,” de la Cruz Ruiz says. Mariano López Pérez, head of the Chiapas State Attorney General’s Office for Indigenous Justice, which is responsible for handling crimes with connections to indigenous communities, says the office always meets translation and interpretation needs and provides help in this area to the offices of other attorneys general. However, he recognizes there is also a real need for a statewide translation and interpretation body, adding that the primary obstacle is that there is no funding to hire such professionals. A better trained team
In response, both authorities and social organizations have made efforts to build up a larger and better trained team to meet translation and interpretation needs. Sebastián Patishtán Méndez, director of CELALI, says lack of training is one of the greatest problems facing translators and interpreters and prevents them from explaining certain concepts.
López Pérez says the attorney general’s office seeks support from such entities as Centro Estatal de Lenguas, Arte y Literatura Indígenas (CELALI), a center for the promotion of indigenous culture; Secretaría para el Desarrollo Sustentable de los Pueblos Indígenas, the government ministry in charge of conduction policy with and for the state’s indigenous people; and the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples. “The group of translators that the attorney general’s office has is in the two-year diploma course being taught by CELALI,” he says. CELALI recently wrapped up a diploma course for interpreters. As part of a project to improve the translation and interpretation system in Chiapas’ justice administration, 31 interpreters were trained in five of the state’s 12 officially recognized indigenous languages for the state justice system. Participants hailed from the state attorney general’s office; Instituto de Elecciones y Participación Ciudadana, the local elections authority; the State Commission on Human Rights; the Intercultural University of Chiapas; and the judiciary. Sebastián Patishtán Méndez, director of CELALI, says lack of training is one of the greatest problems facing translators and interpreters and prevents them from explaining certain concepts. “First,” he says, “we have to do a thorough analysis and translate the concept from legalese to a common Spanish that everyone can understand.” Family members of five men from San Juan Cancuc imprisoned at CERSS 5 attend a Mass for peace at Iglesia de Guadalupe, in San Cristóbal de Las Casas.MARISSA REVILLA/GPJ MEXICO
Sentence overturned
The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention investigates cases of detention imposed arbitrarily or incompatible with the international standards put forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or in the international legal tools accepted by stakeholder governments. It is also one of the entities that has pointed out the effects that a lack of translation and interpretation services has on the legal procedures of speakers of indigenous languages. In 2021, it published opinion 43/2021, regarding Adrián Gómez, Germán López, Abraham López, Juan de la Cruz and Marcelino Ruiz, all of whom are Mexicans who speak indigenous languages. They were accused of crimes ranging from kidnapping to homicide, which were alleged to have occurred in different places and in different years. And they were freed following years during which their families and multiple organizations reported violations of their rights in their legal proceedings. They were not afforded due process by not having adequate Tseltal translation.
The document concludes, “The Working Group is not convinced those detained were provided medical attention, a translator or professional legal counsel” and that “in their handling of indigenous persons who have not mastered the Spanish language, the authorities, in their failure to provide an interpreter, placed those detained at a disadvantage when facing detention and when seeking to exercise their human rights as they pertain to questioning the legality of the detention, adequate legal defense and due process of law.” In the case of the five Tseltal men, the High Court of Justice of the State of Chiapas overturned their sentence in August 2023, on the basis that they were not afforded due process by not having adequate Tseltal translation. Jorge Gómez Hernández, defense counsel for the accused parties and an attorney with Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Center for Human Rights, a civic organization in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, says some of the hearings had to be postponed because there was no interpreter, and those that had been assigned to them spoke a different variant of Tseltal than the defendants. Nothing is clear
With the sentence overturned, the next step should be the reinstatement of the last stage of the criminal proceedings: the oral trial, in which evidence from witnesses, experts and police is presented, Gómez Hernández says. However, López Pérez says the reinstatement depends on a court decision over whether the translation and interpretation claim is substantiated or if the sentence will be upheld. The prosecutor’s office argues that there was no deficiency in the translation and interpretation services, nor in the availability of those providing them, López Pérez says. “If the repeal goes through, we will make the corrections they want, find out what the issue was with the translator without the need to reinstate the whole trial. We are subject to it. Although, it’s not that there was no translator,” López Pérez says. Hernández Pérez, the spouse of Pérez Domínguez, with whom she has six children, defends his innocence through an interpreter from her community. She says she saw the now-deceased police officer come out alive from the location where he and the defendants crossed paths. “I am not afraid to say it because I am not a liar. It’s just that I have to say it in Tseltal because I don’t know Spanish,” she says. “If I speak in my language, everything comes out. I saw with my own eyes that the police officer was fine when he left. Nothing is clear, and that’s why I’m worried.”" #metaglossia_mundus
"Kafka expert Mark Harman, translator of a new collection of the writer's stories, discusses many aspects of his work, including his distinctive style and sense of humour. Translator Mark Harman: Kafka’s imagination anticipated the world in which we live Translator Mark Harman: Kafka’s imagination anticipated the world in which we live Just ahead of the centenary of Franz Kafka’s death, new translations of short stories by the Prague German-language writer come out this week. Entitled Selected Stories, the collection is the work of Mark Harman, an Irish-born, US-resident academic who has been described as “the finest living Kafka translator” into English. From his home in Pennsylvania, Professor Harman discussed many aspects of the author’s work, including his distinctive style, his sense of humour and where he stands in the literary pantheon. The novelist John Banville, no less, has called you the greatest living Kafka translator. How did your connection to Kafka begin in the first place? “I used to hate the question ‘What brought you to Kafka?’ It was a rather defensive response. When people would ask me the exact same question you just asked me I would say, Well, there are scholarly, literary reasons – it’s none of your, beeswax, in a way [laughs]. “But I was denying my personal attraction to Kafka and his writing, and the reasons for it. “The first piece of writing of his that I read was The Castle, which was kind of ironic, as that was the one I started off translating. “I found it mesmerizing, the way the protagonist, K, keeps interpreting everything obsessively. He can spend pages dissecting a brief note from a minor castle official. “2024 is a Kafka year, so it’s perhaps time for reading his stories afresh.” “I had a similar tendency as a youth, so I completely identified with K and over-sympathised with him. “In a way I fell into a kind of Kafka narrative trap, because he’s not necessarily on the protagonist’s side; he can easily lull us into seeing the usually male protagonists as victims. “In The Castle K might seem to be the victim of an opaque, unjust bureaucracy, but later in the story Kafka drops numerous hints that K is on the wrong track, that he doesn’t get the joke, that he’s incapable of learning. “And these are all things I didn’t understand at the time, because even though I was attracted to Kafka I was kind of misreading him, in a way.” Kafka’s stories have of course already been available in translation in English for a long time. Why did you feel the time was right for your new translation? “The fact that the book is appearing just a couple of weeks before the centenary of Kafka’s death is more by happenstance than by design; it just so happened that I sent in the book in time for it to be published this year. “However, 2024 is a Kafka year, so it’s perhaps time for setting aside some myths about Kafka and his work and for reading his stories afresh.” You must know all the stories backwards, for decades, before you sat down to render them in English yourself. Had you already translated them to some extent in your head over the years? “Of course I’m big into German. I learned German as a child really. I’m not sure I was actually translating them. “Although I did encounter them first in the Muirs’ translation. The Muirs were – funnily enough – were in Prague, learning Czech, when Kafka was in the countryside writing the novel The Castle in German.” They were a married couple, is that correct? “The Muirs were were in Prague, learning Czech, when Kafka was in the countryside writing the novel The Castle in German.” “Yes, they were a married couple. He was a well-known poet and literary critic. “She actually did the heavy lifting in the translating, which is why I always refer to them as Willa and Edwin Muir, rather than the other way around.” Do you think that English requires a new translation of Kafka so many years later? Because if they were translating him not so long, I presume, after he wrote his works maybe English has evolved since then? “Yes, English has evolved. And also our sense of Kafka’s style. “I really admired their writing, and they introduced me to Kafka; I didn’t read The Castle in German as an undergraduate, I read it first in English. So I really admired their translation. “Sometimes people say that I’ve criticised the Muirs. Well, only to the degree that I feel that there was a need for new translations. And there was a kind of monopoly of the Muirs for many years, especially in the United States. “I admired what they did as pioneers. On the other hand, they were reading Kafka, especially Edwin, from a 19th century perspective. And he was not really big into the modernists; he didn’t like Joyce, for instance, at all. “So perhaps he was reading in it qualities that may be there, to some extent, but we see more the modern qualities.” Kafka’s best known story probably is usually known as The Metamorphosis. Why have you gone with the title The Transformation in your translation? “You could say, Oh well, this is just pedanticism, thinking that it’s more accurate, or tonally more apt. But actually the original English title give in it by the Muirs was not The Metamorphosis; they called it Transformation. “It was only in subsequent editions that they then switched to The Metamorphosis. Why did they do that? It could be, as Borges suggested in the case of the Spanish translation, La metamorfosis, that the Spanish translator chose it because of the prestige of the French translation. “The French translation went with La Métamorphose, so it’s possible that the Muirs reversed their initial decision because of the decision by the French translator. “It’s difficult to change something that is so established and embedded in English by now. “But I think it’s important, not only because of the greater accuracy of The Transformation – what I hope from this book is that it will somehow show that transformation is a central concept in the web of metaphors through which the biographical Kafka contemplated his lived experience, and in his creative process as a writer. “So it’s not just this one story. It also connects with the numerous transformations in his work: hybrid animal figures that were half-human and half-animal, and so on and so forth.” Is it his greatest piece? When I was re-reading it, or reading your translation for the first time, I hadn’t read that story for decades. And once again, like previously, it just blew my mind. It’s such a powerful story – is it his best? “It’s certainly his most deliberately crafted story, and one of his longest stories. Yes, it’s a masterpiece. “I’m also very fond of The Judgment. He’s a modernist, but also there’s a kind of classical side to Kafka, and a romantic side. “You can see the romantic side in The Judgment. He wrote that story without knowing what he was going to write about. He sat down in the evening and when he had got up he had finished the story, in one night. “It’s a remarkable, kind of Mozartian, feat to write something of that complexity, in one night, without knowing what you’re going to write about.” What about Kafka’s style? Obviously I’m no expert, but to me he has always seemed so distinctive, a kind of one-off. But did he have discernible influences, would you say? “Like all first-rate writers that I know of, Kafka was first a voracious reader. Voracious and not bound by any sense of literary hierarchy. For instance, he read more biographies and auto-biographies than he did fiction. “By and large the stylistic influences on him are extremely hard to detect. “The stylistic influences on him are extremely hard to detect.” “One of the few exceptions is the Prussian writer Heinrich von Kleist, one of his self-described four blood relatives. The other three were Dostoevsky, Flaubert and the Austrian writer and playwright Franz Grillparzer. “He revered Goethe, but he was also ambivalent about his impact. He wrote ‘Goethe probably retards the development of the German language by force of his writing’.” You suggest also, which I found very fascinating, that his sometimes dry style may have been influenced that he wrote as a lawyer for the insurance company that he worked for. “Yes. Perhaps in the selection it’s probably most notable in the story In the Penal Colony, where he’s describing a horrific torture machine, which he does with such precision. “And this is a precision that he honed in his reports for the insurance company in Prague, where he was describing the heavy equipment that damaged the limbs of the workers for whom he advocated.” There’s one line in The Penal Colony about a character “suffering only pain”. That really tickled my funny-bone, the idea of suffering only pain. How much do you feel that Kafka was trying to be humorous in his writing? “He had a deadpan sense of humour. It’s understated – it’s not rolling the aisles kind of humour, but it emerges. And the more you read him, the more of that humour you detect. “He had a deadpan sense of humour. It’s understated.” “People often become so involved with the characters, and the fate of the characters, that they don’t see the little interjections by the narrator, which is where they humour comes in. “Because the character is often too involved in his own fate to really it funny. But the narrator does, and behind him Kafka does, and so can the reader – especially when the prose is read aloud.” One of the most striking stories I found in the book was A Country Doctor, which is really abstract and kind of like a bad dream. It made wonder if there was some influence of psychoanalysis on the work of Kafka? It’s so strange and uncanny – as I say, reminiscent of a bad dream. “Yes, it’s good that you’re bringing that up. Because one of the things I’ve tried to do in this selection is to kind of give readers at least hints of how Kafka’s writing in the notebooks was a kind of editor’s nightmare. “Max Brod is often blamed for distorting Kafka, but any editor would be at wit’s end, because it’s just a stream of all kinds of writing. “Everything went in there, so it’s not just fragments of stories, there are complete stories, diary entries, everything but shopping lists basically. Excerpts from his reading, drafts of letters.” It sometimes seems that Kafka has gone beyond the world of writing. For example, everybody knows the painting The Scream by Munch. Is Kafka today also a kind of shorthand for something, where people maybe don’t know the original but it still has some kind of instant significance to say something is “Kafkaesque”? “Yes, and maybe he has why he has become an adjective too. What he describes in his work is something that we recognise in the world around us. “He anticipated the world in which we live, so unlike many writers of his age, his work hasn’t dated at all. “And if I may just read the first story in the book. It’s extremely short and the title is Wish to Become an Indian. ‘If only one were an Indian, ready right away, and on the running
horse, aslant in the air, briefly shaking again and again over the
shaking ground, until one dropped the spurs for there were no
spurs, until one cast off the reins for there were no reins, and one
could hardly see the land ahead as a smoothly cropped heath,
now without the horse’s neck and head.’ “That’s the entire text.” It’s really like a poem almost. I read this recently in your book and also I spoke to a friend about it. He was a fan, saying this short story was very filmic. Isn’t it like a poem? “Yes. You know, it’s not lyrical in any traditional sense. But it’s got the succinctness and the power of poetry. “Kafka said of The Judgment that it was more like a poem than anything else, even though it’s not lyrical in a very traditional sense at all.” Probably you’re quite biased, but how should we assess Kafka’s place in the history of modern literature? Is he really one of the very greatest? “Well you’re right of course – I am rather biased. “He’s often called the quintessential modern writer. On the one hand he is a writer’s writer. Gabriel Garcia Marquez describes the transformative impact of reading The Transformation this way: “‘I thought to myself that I didn’t know anyone was allowed to write things like that. If I had known, I would have started writing a long time ago. So I immediately started writing stories.’ “You can’t have a stronger writer’s testimonial than that. “We’ve touched on this before, but Kafka is also a writer whose imagination anticipated the world in which we live. “Unlike the work of many writers of his era, his work has not aged, as the short samples from the book that I’ve read have, I hope, suggested.” Selected Stories: Franz Kafka, translated and edited by Mark Harman, comes out on May 21. The book, which includes a lengthy and highly illuminating introduction, is published by the Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press. -
Franz Kafka was born in Prague, but where specifically did the world-famous writer grow up? Where did he draw inspiration, or even go on holiday?" #metaglossia_mundus
"English has never had its own Académie Française or Real Academia Española. Here’s why it shouldn’t. MARTIN EAYRS MAY 20, 2024 Authorities in many countries have had a misguided belief that the best way to protect their language was to place it in the care of an academy. Italy’s Accademia della Crusca was founded as early as 1582, Richelieu established the Académie Française in 1635, and, closer to home, the Real Academia Española was founded in 1713. The idea of these organizations, and of many more which were to spring up over the years has been to “protect” the language and its grammar. Grammar, in the words of Cardinal Richelieu, is “the art of speaking and writing correctly […] it describes good usage and defends this from all causes of corruption“. (My bold letters, and I shall return to the theme in a moment). Now this never happened in England or the United States. But proposals for an English Academy were made in the 17th Century, supported by such literary stalwarts as Daniel Defoe and John Dryden, and again by Jonathan Swift in 1712 in his Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue. In that proposal, Swift complained that “our language is extremely imperfect; that its daily improvements are by no means in proportion to its daily corruptions; that the pretenders to polish and refine it have chiefly multiplied abuses and absurdities; and that in many instances it offends against every part of grammar.” But one of the earliest recorded writers in English to complain about language change was William Caxton. He was born in approximately 1422 and died in 1491: when the language spoken in England was only just recognizably the English language we use today. There had recently been a major shift in pronunciation, the near-total pruning of Anglo-Saxon inflections, and an enormous influx of new words, mainly from the French brought over by the Norman conquerors who ruled court and country. Caxton lamented that English had changed from his youth when you could call a spade a spade — or eggs “eyren.” I have kept his spelling but modernized his punctuation for the sake of clarity: A mercer, came in to an hows and axed for mete, and specyally he axyd after ‘eggys’. And the good wyf answerde that she coude speke no Frenshe. And the merchaunt was angry, for he also coude speke no Frenshe, but wold have hadde egges, and she understode hym not. And thenne at last a nother sayd that he wolde have ‘eyren’. Then the good wyf sayd that she understode hym wel. Loo! What sholde a man in thyse dayes now wryte, ‘egges’ or ‘eyren’ ? Certaynly, it is harde to playse every man by cause of dyversite & chaunge of langage. (Preface to Enydos , 1490). If nothing else, the passage serves as a graphic example of just how much language changes. Many think that contemporary language is decaying as never before, but as Caxton proves, every generation seems to have believed this. A book published in 1863, The Queen’s English, (the Queen in question being Victoria), deals with such hoary chestnuts as “It’s me” vs. “It’s I,” and tautologies like “very unique.” Similar matters regularly crop up in modern-day complaints from linguistic reactionaries who fail to understand that usage is dynamic rather than static. English people observing the Academies in other European countries were concluding that nothing was being done to stem the flood of change. But as Dr. Samuel Johnson writes in the preface to his first Dictionary (1755): When we see men grow old and die at a certain time one after another, century after century, we laugh at the elixir that promises to prolong life to a thousand years; and with equal justice may the lexicographer be derided, who being able to produce no example of a nation that has preserved their words and phrases from immutability, shall imagine that his dictionary can embalm his language, and secure it from corruption, and decay, that it is in his power to change sublunary nature, or clear the world at once from folly, vanity, and affection. On top of that laughably ossifying effect is the fact that applying Latin case grammar to English was a very ill-fitting coat by the time it was established as the academic language in England. Prescriptive grammars can in any case only describe a language as it was, and, in the case of English, were often being used to describe the language as it never had been! Although the idea is still occasionally mooted, there has never been an English academy. There has, on the other hand, been an ever-increasing flow of unique grammars, dictionaries, thesauri, and style manuals in all parts of the English-speaking world. Myriad books delve into different aspects of the English language today. Computer concordances are now shedding new light on how language is actually used, rather than how lexicographers and grammarians have thought it was used. I quoted Richelieu above as having said that grammar “describes good usage and defends this from all causes of corruption.” But language is organic. It changes because society changes. It is inevitable and also unpredictable. This does not mean that we cannot teach a common standard — of course we can — but at the same time we should recognize the existence, indeed the immense variety of different language types. There is nothing teleological about language change — it merely happens. In the same way that the tide comes and goes, so language changes, but the tide never gets anywhere, never stops, it just ebbs and flows. So, in its way, does language. You may also be interested in: Translation troubles: the truth of the milanesa" #metaglossia_mundus
Future Trans Sets the Stage for AI Excellence, Exploring Ai-IoT Integration, Ethical AI for Seamless Global Connectivity Showcasing The Pinnacle of AI Innovation at the AI World Congress 2024 In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, Future Trans, a leader in translation and localization services, is set to showcase its expertise at the AI World Congress 2024 in London. This prestigious event will gather industry giants, innovators, and thought leaders to discuss cutting-edge artificial intelligence technologies and their applications across various sectors. AI World Congress 2024: A Hub for Technological Advancements The AI World Congress is renowned for its focus on the integration of AI technologies with the Internet of Things (IoT). This year’s congress promises to highlight advancements in smart cities, healthcare systems, automotive technology, and more. Attendees can expect a robust agenda filled with keynote addresses, interactive panels, and hands-on workshops. Week’s Top Read Insight: CUBE Acquires Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence (RegTech) Future Trans: Bridging Global Communication Gaps Future Trans will be represented by Regional Business Development Manager, Sherif Adnan, and Senior Sales Manager, Marta Debasa. Their participation underscores Future Trans’ commitment to bridging language barriers through innovative AI language translation services. By leveraging AI solutions, Future Trans provides culturally nuanced and linguistically accurate content that meets the dynamic needs of the global tech industry. AI ML News: Apromore and Soroco Announce Strategic Partnership to Transform Process Optimization Through AI Highlights of Future Trans’ Participation - AI and IoT Integration: Showcasing how AI enhances IoT solutions for smarter ecosystems in various industries.
- Ethical AI: Discussing the ethical considerations of AI deployment, including privacy, bias, and transparency.
- AI-Powered Cybersecurity: Exploring how AI is utilized to enhance cybersecurity measures and respond to cyber threats.
Join Future Trans at AI World Congress 2024 to discover how their AI services can help your business achieve seamless global expansion and connectivity. Future Trans is an ISO-certified leader in translation and localization services, with over 30 years of expertise. Specializing in AI language translation, they provide end-to-end solutions that enable businesses in the technology sector to connect with global audiences. #metaglossia_mundus
05/20/2024 03:14 PM Tokyo, May 20 (CNA) "The Japanese translation of Taiwanese novel "Chizuko and Chizuru's Taiwan Travelogue" (臺灣漫遊錄) by Yang Shuang-zi (楊双子) and translated by Yuko Miura has received Japan's "Best Translation Award," becoming the first Taiwanese work to receive the honor, the award board announced Sunday. The novel, set in late 1930s Taiwan, follows a Japanese writer and her Taiwanese interpreter's trip along Taiwan's railway. They enjoy local foods while providing a perspective into the lives and experiences of Taiwanese women living under Japanese colonial rule. The novel was published by Springhill Publishing in Taiwan in 2020 and Chuokukonron-Shinsha Inc. in Japan in 2023, with tai-tai books acting as the book's agent in Japan. Yang congratulated Miura in a Sunday Facebook post, attributing the award to the work of the translator. She also quoted and echoed the sentiment of her Taiwanese publisher, who said working on the book was an incredible journey, containing countless surprises and moments of deep joy. Yang Shuang-zi was originally a shared pseudonym for twin sisters Yang Jo-tzu (楊若慈) and Yang Jo-hui (楊若暉). The elder sister Jo-tzu was responsible for creating works while the younger did the historical research and Japanese translations. Shuang-zi in Japanese Kanji means twins. After her younger sister died from cancer in 2015, Yang Jo-hui continued with the pseudonym to honor her bond with her sister. Another recipient of this year's award is "Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route" by American writer Saidiya Hartman and translated by Sora Enomoto. The award ceremony will take place at Tokyo's Digital Hollywood University on July 6, according to the award website. The award, now in its 10th year, was established in 2014 and accepted submissions of translated works from Dec. 1 to Dec. 31 the next year. This year, the award's longlist consists of 15 books in total, 10 of which are chosen out of works nominated by readers. The other five are chosen from books anonymously nominated by the jurors themselves. Then, a shortlist of five books is chosen. From those, the jurors then select the one or two works that will be given the "Best" award. Previous Taiwanese works that made the shortlist include Wu Ming-yi's (吳明益) "The Illusionist on the Sidewalk and other stories" in the second year and "The Stolen Bicycle" in the fifth year. Both works were translated by Kentaro Amano. (By Tai Ya-chen, Wang Pao-er and Wu Kuan-hsien) Enditem/kb" #metaglossia_mundus
- Date Tuesday 21 May 2024
- Time 16:15 - 17:30
- Location
- Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 1.47
On May 21, the French Language and Culture program will host a public lecture on creole languages. The lecture will be given by Prof. dr. Marlyse Baptista, professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a leading expert on creole languages. She is in Leiden in connection with a workshop on creole languages that will take place one day later (WoCL). We are very pleased that she has agreed to also give a lecture for a general audience. Creole languages, such as Sranan, Papiamentu and Kréyol Matinik, mostly originated in a colonial context, where lack of language rights was accompanied by an extreme situation of language contact. Often the lexicon of creoles contains many words borrowed from Western languages, such as English, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish or French. An example is the following proverb from Kréyol Matinik, a French based creole language spoken in Martinique: Kréyol Matinik: Sé grenn diri ka fè sak diri
Frans: c’est graine riz présent faire sac riz
English: it.is grain rice present make bag rice
Translation: ‘Grains of rice make a bag of rice.’ The grains of rice symbolize all the little tasks we have to do. Together, these ultimately make that there is (too) much work to be done. The example illustrates that many of the words of Kréyol Matinik come from French, while the grammatical form of the sentence is quite different. Kréyol really is another language, which speakers of French cannot understand without learning it first. Something similar applies to Sranan, a creole that is widely spoken in Surinam. Much of its vocabulary comes originally from English and Dutch, but the language cannot be understood by someone who speaks both English and Dutch. In her lecture Marlyse Baptista uses the Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures to explore the diversity of creole languages from across the world. She will also examine a number of theories that explain how languages change and how they influence each other, and, as in the case of creole languages, how new languages can emerge. The lecture will be in English, but questions can also be asked in French. Day en time: 21 May, 16.15-17.30
Place: Lipsius, room 1.47, Cleveringplaats 1, Leiden Even though we understand that this lecture is yet another ‘grenn diri’, we hope to welcome you in Leiden on the 21st of May. There is no entrance fee, but please register via this link. #metaglossia_mundus
"Author and translator Jennifer Croft discusses the difference between translation and writing her first novel, finding balance with work and family, and breaking down the boundaries of genre. You published your novel The Extinction of Irena Rey in March [2024]. As an acclaimed literary translator, you’re not unfamiliar with being interviewed by the book sections of newspapers. But how is the press run now that you’re in the author role? It’s been really nice. I’m grateful to my publicist in particular who has been holding my hand throughout this entire process. I’m going to keep writing books so I can continue having her send me a schedule every day with everything I’m supposed to do. I published what I thought was a novel before, Homesick, which is called a memoir in the U.S. It was with Unnamed Press, a small press in L.A., and I did a tour but I didn’t do as much publicity and marketing. As Olga Tokarczuk’s translator, for a long time I was desperately trying to get people to read her. And then we won the Booker and she won the Nobel Prize, and all of a sudden we were in the spotlight. I always hated public speaking and things like that but I got a little bit used to it. What do you think about the marketing of a memoir versus a novel? I’ve never resolved that question. I mostly read novels and I haven’t really read that much memoir, so I was surprised to learn that I might have written one. I think there’s a lot of discomfort, maybe specifically in the US, around defining what is strictly true about someone’s life and there’s a push to force them to acknowledge that truth or untruth. In other places I translate from, like Argentina, it’s totally fine to write the classic semi-autobiographical novel. And I don’t think people call into question your authenticity just because you say that it’s a novel. I think readers should call anything anything, and probably authors should get to choose how they label their own book. I recently read Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors, and in it a character says, “I don’t like novels, I like books.” I mean, whatever works. My preference is for breaking down those kinds of boundaries. I like prose poetry, I like multimedia and experimental works. And that’s kind of the direction that literature is heading in. The Extinction of Irena Rey is definitely blending the real and the imagined. It’s about a famous Polish author and her translators, told from the perspective of one of them and “translated” by her fictional colleague. And it’s in this very surreal woodland setting. What was your research and development process like? I went to the Białowieża Forest in 2017, which is when the book is set. I had heard about what was happening in the forest, which was that the Polish government had started logging in the national park and there was widespread concern that habitats were being destroyed in a way that had never really happened before. The trees themselves were being taken out of the forest and what was being planted in their stead was just oaks, which is a Polish national symbol but not historically or naturally the predominant tree in the forest. So there was just a lot going on, and I wanted to see it with my own eyes. I was in the reserve part of the park, talking to a park worker who mentioned in passing this fungus that was growing on a diseased tree. And I thought the look of the fungus was so striking. It looked like a horse’s hoof, it was huge and hard, like a disembodied thing from an animal that was sort of floating on a tree. And he told me this whole story about amadou, which was for a very long time the title of my novel. And I got really, really fascinated by it, in itself and as a metaphor for translation. I saw both the incredible power of translation to regenerate a cultural ecosystem, and the potentially darker side of translation that involves erasure and destruction along the way to that regeneration. Obviously, all of my work as a translator played into that, and my getting to know other translators of Olga. But it was really the image of this fascinating little creature that I wanted to have as the underpinning of the whole book. That does feel like the distillation of the essence of the story, which it takes time to get to. I was so distracted by the characters before I started to see the bigger picture. They could be a whole sitcom cast. Definitely some of the inspiration comes from TV. Alexis is kind of based on Alexis Rose from Schitt’s Creek. They do all represent some version of things I’ve thought about translation at some point over the course of my career. The two main heroines of the book, Alexis and Emelia, represent the stereotypical opposite poles of translation philosophy. Emi is super faithful, obsessively so. Alexis, who is of course the U.S. translator, is a little bit more… I mean the nice way of saying it would be that she’s a “freer” translator and potentially a criticism that could be leveled at her is that she is arrogant and feels like she has every right to change whatever she wants. I don’t know any translator who is as extreme as either of them. When I started out as a translator, I was probably closer to Emi: very devoted, a bit more cautious. Now I wrestle with the temptation, especially with writers I’ve been working with for longer, to buy into the idea that this is a collaboration maybe a bit too much. I find myself wanting to rewrite certain things or even be tempted to make certain cuts. Writing Alexis was probably a way of working that out in my mind and trying to restrain myself a little bit more. Some of the other characters I wrote purely because I thought they’d be a great person to have around in this situation. Freddy the Swedish translator is straight out of a sitcom. Sorry, I had to sacrifice the Swedish language for the sake of humor. Did you come out on the other side of the writing feeling like your thoughts about translation had been clarified in some way? I hope to keep consistently reflecting on my own cultural preconceived notions about style. What do you think about the novel as a format for ideas? You could have written a long essay about translation. What does fiction allow you to do that nonfiction does not? The goal is to reach a wider readership. If I were to write a long essay or a book to be published by an academic press, I would just be preaching to the choir. What would be the point? What I want to do is advocate on behalf of translator visibility, but also visibility for the original language and for collaboration in general. These are goals that I see as being important in cultural and environmental terms. I don’t want to work hard for years to publish something for a dozen people who I already know and who already agree with me. The fictional plot allows the reader to inhabit some of these questions about translation philosophy, to see them getting dramatized to the absurd extreme. I decided to make it a structural part of the book, too, to have the story be told supposedly by Emi in Polish, which is not her native language, and then translated into English by her arch nemesis. Because the translator is constantly interjecting through the footnotes, the reader is forced to always question what they’re hearing. When you are reading a book that’s been translated, every single word that you’re reading was chosen and written not by the author whose name is on the cover, but by the translator. Really thoughtful and wonderful readers of a lot of international literature might not have stopped to reflect on that particular question before.
You have been an advocate for putting translators’ names on the covers of books, and your refusal to take on a translation project without the promise of adequate credit has inspired thousands of others. You wrote an open letter addressing this in 2021; how does it feel a few years on? I definitely have seen a shift in publishing towards crediting the translator more. I don’t know if it impacted my own career hugely, but I just feel like the field of translation is very clearly expanding in really healthy ways. There are some editors who are keeping up with all of these shifts, and the remaining thing we need to do is to help bring on the others who are not yet on board. Then finally we might reach a really wonderful place where international literature is more commonly mixed with U.S. literature. I want true diversity in literature, like biodiversity in a forest, as well as a celebration of difference formally. That would be so beneficial to readers, future writers, and society at large. What is your approach to collaboration and your opinion about being on different ends of it? My editor, Daniel Loedel, who’s an amazing novelist himself, pushed me hard between the draft of Irena Rey that he bought and the next, more polished one. I completely overhauled a lot of elements of the plot and the timeline. I was forced to think in a way I don’t think I’ve ever done. I spent a month deeply rethinking, and that was really hard. I had newborn twins at the time. But it was all so magical and rewarding once it felt like things were falling into place. That is the kind of editing collaboration that you cannot have when you are the translator—at least not in a traditional publication process—because you wouldn’t rethink how a character is depicted, or whether or not this scene should occur in this place. In general, you don’t even get asked to make cuts, even when you can see that the editor might prefer that the book be a little bit shorter, which seems like it’s often the case. There’s also a flip side. I didn’t have a buddy to work with, that other team member or partner in crime. I think that resulted in me feeling more dependent on the characters themselves. Obviously I recognized that they were fictional! I wrote my first draft when I was at a residency in Switzerland, in the middle of nowhere and mostly not talking to other human beings because it was the fall of 2020. That allowed me to immerse myself in the world and have weird conversations with my characters, which made it feel collaborative even though it was just me collaborating with me. Did suddenly becoming a person with twins impact your writing? I was in this immersive writing state and then I did the opposite, where I couldn’t write for more than three minutes without somebody screaming. The main concern that came between the first and second drafts was that there were whole sections that could only be clear to me what was going on, because I was so in it. Being a person with a three-minute time limit forced me to clarify a lot of things about the work to myself and hopefully to other people. The other impact of my twins is that I probably won’t write another book for a few years. What does balance look like for you? I am obsessed with my children and it feels like nobody wants to hear that when I’m speaking in professional contexts. But I find my kids so fascinating. Conveniently for me, as someone who’s really interested in language, they’re at this point where they’re experimenting not just with words but grammar. You can actually see the wheels turning. And that’s actually all I care about at the moment. I’m not doing as many translations. I also didn’t have an academic job in the past, which meant that I had to earn money as a freelancer, which means working triply hard to get commissions outside of doing the assignment itself. I do have a translation coming out in the fall, The Plains by Federico Falco, an experimental novel about grief that I’m really excited about. Some people want to pretend that their work is the only thing in their life, and I so appreciate you acknowledging that it’s not the case. What is your ideal work setup, with kids or without? I do really need isolation. I’m so jealous of my husband. You could literally put him on the ground outside and he would be perfectly productive, would have no idea that cars were driving by. I need an assurance that I won’t be interrupted. If it’s just a room, that’s fine as long as I can close the door. That’s why I love residencies. I mean, I love them for other reasons. I’ve made really great friends, met artists that I wouldn’t have otherwise. But the ideal space would be this luxury treehouse, at the Jan Michalski Foundation. That’s literally the ideal for most people, I would think. Anything that has a little bit of access to nature so that you can take a walk when you need a break. You’re married to another translator, right? The dynamic is very interesting to me as a writer dating another writer. I never dated writers and I used to swear I never would date a writer. Then my husband came along. I think translators are nicer people than writers in the sense that they’re not quite so precious about their egos and not quite so competitive. That’s been my experience, anyway. I translate from Polish and he translates mostly Ukrainian writers from Russia. They’re close enough that we can ask each other questions. I’ve studied Russian, he studied Polish, we’ve both studied Ukrainian. But our preferences in terms of what we translate and what we read are different. I like contemporary women’s prose, especially fiction, and he’s interested in formal poetry above all else and early-20th-century writers. It never feels suffocating. We live our own creative lives, then eventually give each other something to read.
"Microsoft Edge is getting a new AI video translation feature that works on sites like YouTube, LinkedIn, Coursera, and more. It will also support AI dubbing and subtitles on LinkedIn, Coursera, Bloomberg, and more. By Emma Roth, a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO. May 21, 2024, 4:30 PM GMT+1 Microsoft Edge will soon offer real-time video translation on sites like YouTube, LinkedIn, Coursera, and more. As part of this year’s Build event, Microsoft announced that the new AI-powered feature will be able to translate spoken content through both dubbing and subtitles live as you’re watching it. So far, the feature supports the translation of Spanish into English as well as the translation of English to German, Hindi, Italian, Russian, and Spanish. In addition to offering a neat way to translate videos into a user’s native tongue, Edge’s new AI feature should also make videos more accessible to those who are deaf or hard of hearing. Edge will also support real-time translation for videos on news sites such as Reuters, CNBC, and Bloomberg. Microsoft plans on adding more languages and supported websites in the future.
"Guided by the conflict face-negotiation theory and the culturally based romantic relationship model, this study employed in-depth interviews with twelve intercultural couples (n = 24) to explore relational dynamics and nuances of couples handling conflicts and developing dyadic cultural affinity through their conflict management experiences. Aligning with extant literature, our findings uncovered five conflict management styles employed by intercultural couples: avoiding, competing, compromising, yielding, and emotional expression. Additionally, three primary relational outcomes emerged from the data: reaching temporary satisfaction, recognizing positive changes, and identifying recurrent problems. The findings further demonstrated how intercultural romantic partners developed dyadic cultural affinity by progressively gaining deeper mutual understanding through their conflict interactions, building consensus, and consequently nurturing a shared sense of cultural affinity as a couple. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed." #metaglossia_mundus
"The conference was titled as 'appropriate teaching methodologies in interdisciplinary context: mapping the sociolinguistics diversity'. Aligarh: English is the language of the world, whoever and in whichever part it is to be taught, it has to be taught in the way they speak the language, said Professor Suresh Canagarajah, Department of Applied Linguistics and English, Penn State University, USA, while sharing his experiences of language teaching and learning at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). At a conference titled ‘appropriate teaching methodologies in interdisciplinary context: mapping the sociolinguistics diversity’, he further shared the third narrative that embodied communicative practices. He also talked about the colonial language ideologies, throwing the light on Macaulay's minutes. The three-day event organised by the Department of English witnessed cross-cultural communication specialists, ELT experts, linguists and faculty members, exploring 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 valedictory session, Prof Imtiaz Hasnain of Maulana Azad National University (MANUU), Hyderabad, talked about linguistic entrepreneurship, ethno-linguistics identity and neo-liberal imagination. He also focused upon how the English language has been developed as a language of bread and butter. At a round table discussion on the topic ‘methodological diversity in classroom: contexts and perspectives, the academicians brought to focus the methods, linguistic and cultural diversities and the role of teachers in teaching the multilingual discourse community. During her lecture titled ‘New World Englishes: What’s the Fuss All About”, Professor Shobha Satyanath discussed the internal diversity of the language, which is often overlooked by the dominant discourses. Professor Avinash Kumar Singh, head of the Department of Educational Policy, NIEPA, New Delhi, expressed the concern of learning disadvantages as in the case of remote tribal language areas. He said they cannot access the home language because it is not the medium of instruction. In such cases, he said, the dropout rate is very high. Discussing the idea of equity and justice, Professor Mirza Asmer Beg, dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, explained the relevance of the idea of multiculturalism." #metaglossia_mundus
Caroline Montpetit Publié le 18 mai "Enlevez un « f » aux difficultés, enlevez un « h » et un « m » aux hommes, et vous obtiendrez… une orthographe française simplifiée, accessible au plus grand nombre. C’est en tout cas les conclusions du groupe de recherche EROFA (Études pour la rationalisation de l’orthographe française d’aujourd’hui), qui présentait ses résultats jeudi à l’Acfas. Dans le cadre de ses travaux, on étudie la suppression des consonnes doubles, comme dans « charrette » (alors qu’on écrit aussi « chariot »), celle de la terminaison du pluriel des mots en « x » (genou, pou, etc.), la disparition des lettres grecques (comme le « h » des hommes), mais aussi, et peut-être surtout, l’épineuse réforme des accords des participes passés. Les fautes dans l’accord des participes passés arrivent en deuxième dans la liste des erreurs d’orthographe que font les étudiants d’université, selon une étude effectuée par Mireille Elchacar, de l’Université TELUQ, et Amélie-Hélène Rheault, de l’Université de Sherbrooke. L’une des suggestions avancées pour rendre cette règle grammaticale plus simple, est de supprimer tous les accords avec le verbe avoir. Cela réduirait d’un seul coup les « 14 pages » consacrées à l’usage des participes passés dans les grammaires utilisées en classe, relève Mme Elchacar. Par ailleurs, les fautes les plus courantes relevées dans cette étude sont celles de l’accord du pluriel, qui commande que l’on ajoute un « s » muet à la fin du mot. Cet usage du « s » muet est un reliquat d’une langue française qui n’a pas été réformée adéquatement depuis des siècles, explique Mireille Elchacar en entrevue. « Il y a des centaines d’années, le “s” du pluriel en français se prononçait », dit-elle. C’est d’ailleurs toujours le cas en anglais, réputé pour être une langue plus accessible que le français. Aujourd’hui, Mireille Elchacar souhaiterait qu’on remplace les 80 heures passées en milieu scolaire à enseigner les règles complexes du participe passé par 80 heures passées plutôt à étudier l’histoire de la langue.
Une langue écrite élitiste
Pour elle, la langue française écrite, par sa complexité, est élitiste. Ses complexités enchantent les initiés, qui trouvent, dans la maîtrise de l’orthographe, une certaine confirmation de leur statut social. Les autres n’y voient que des embûches, souvent jugées superflues, particulièrement chez les tenants d’une réforme en profondeur.
Alors que les autres langues ont mis leur orthographe à jour pour la coller au plus près de la langue orale, le français écrit est resté anormalement figé dans le temps, poursuit Mireille Elchacar. « L’orthographe est censée s’adapter constamment à l’oral. Toutes les langues du monde mettent constamment leur orthographe à jour, sauf le français. C’est un problème. Parce que l’oral s’éloigne de plus en plus de l’écrit, et ça nous donne aussi l’impression que l’orthographe n’est pas censée bouger, ce qui n’est pas le cas. » Dans la présentation des travaux de recherches de l’EROFA, Annie Desnoyers, de l’Université de Montréal, et Danièle Cogis, de l’Université Paris Ouest, démontrent comment des langues comme l’espagnol et l’italien sont restées au plus près de la langue orale. Ainsi, une « analyse », dont le nom en français a conservé la lettre grecque « y », s’écrit « analisis » en espagnol, « analisi » en italien, et « análise » en portugais. Toutes ces langues ont aussi supprimé le « h » contenu dans le mot français « arithmétique », par exemple. Dans la réforme de l’orthographe proposée en 1990, déjà on avait ouvert la voie à la suppression des accents de certains mots, certaines consonnes doubles, les traits d’union, le pluriel des mots composés. Mais cette réforme n’allait pas assez loin, selon des experts, et elle était aussi inefficace. « C’est très ciblé sur quelques mots, poursuit Mireille Elchacar. Les changements proposés sont très imparfaits, ils sont très incomplets et ils comptent beaucoup d’exceptions. » L’esthétique de la langue
Si minimes qu’ils soient, les changements proposés en 1990 ont quand même provoqué un tollé. L’animateur Bernard Pivot, décédé récemment, avait accepté toute la réforme à l’exception de la suppression de l’accent circonflexe. « Si vous vous mettez à supprimer les circonflexes, les deux points, les accents aigus, etc., vous allez complètement changer l’esthétique de la langue. Les grammairiens qui avaient proposé cela n’étaient pas du tout sensibles à cet aspect », disait-il au Magazine littéraire en 2019. Également présente au colloque, la chercheuse Cléo Mathieu, chargée de cours à l’Université McGill, a présenté les résultats d’un sondage mené autour de la question de la réforme de l’usage des participes passés. Curieusement, les 16 à 19 ans qu’elle a interrogés ont montré une aussi forte résistance aux changements de grammaire que les aînés de plus de 55 ans. « C’est moins étonnant que des personnes plus âgées soient réticentes à changer leurs habitudes. Mais ça m’a étonné de la part des témoins de 16 à 19 ans. Je croyais que, comme ils sont encore aux prises avec les difficultés de l’accord du participe passé, ils voudraient le réformer. Mais en réalité, on se retrouvait avec de plus forts taux de résistance. Certaines affirmations indiquaient qu’ils avaient peur de perdre leurs acquis », dit-elle. De façon générale, 39,2 % des répondants à son enquête étaient plutôt en désaccord avec une réforme des participes passés, et 41,7 % étaient plutôt en accord : des résultats serrés. De façon générale, son échantillon portait sur des gens plus instruits que la moyenne. Coûts sociaux
Pour Mireille Elchacar, les difficultés de la langue française écrite génèrent des coûts sociaux énormes mésestimés. Ce sont bien sûr les gens moins instruits, souvent au bas de l’échelle sociale, qui sont davantage pénalisés par les difficultés de la langue française écrite. « On se retrouve avec un système qui, malheureusement, cause beaucoup de problèmes sociaux, dit-elle. On peut aller à l’école pendant très longtemps et encore faire beaucoup de fautes. Ça peut causer du découragement, de l’insécurité linguistique, voire du décrochage scolaire. Ça n’est pas un problème anodin. Il y a aussi les nouveaux arrivants. La francisation des nouveaux arrivants, c’est très compliqué. Il y a beaucoup d’étudiants qui espèrent faire leur vie en allant à l’université. Et ils semblent bloqués parce qu’ils ne réussissent pas les tests de classement pour entrer à l’université. »" #metaglossia_mundus
"Slowing down can be a faster way to achieve your goals. Fighting our urge to live fast can lead to clearer thinking, deeper connections, and better mental health. Hustle culture uses speed as a measure of performance. How fast can you ship a new feature? How many prospective clients can you call in an hour? How much of your day can you devote to work? If you’re not fast, are you even being productive? This harmful mindset results in burnout, poor decision-making, and bad communication. It may seem counterintuitive, but slowing down can be a faster way to achieve your goals. Fighting our urge to live and work faster can lead to clearer thinking, deeper connections, and better mental health. Slowing down to go further The illusory imperative to keep up with everyone else is hurting us. Faster is not always better — far from it. By slowing down, you can build three key pillars to rely on in your life and work. - Intentionality. When we focus on speed, we may blindly follow a path that may not be the most efficient one to reach our goals — whether it’s a path dictated by others, or one that seems the most obvious. Slowing down allows us to be more intentional when making decisions and executing our plans.
- Quality. Being fast allows us to do more. But “doing more” does not equal “doing what’s best”. Doing things slower means we can increase the quality of the output, and even sometimes of the experience itself. Would you design a more polished feature if you had two days, or if you had two weeks? Would you enjoy a landscape better if you are driving over the speed limit, or if you are taking a leisurely walk? Would you learn more about a friend if you had a quick chat, or a long conversation? Of course, we may not always have the luxury of slowness, but we should make a conscious effort to question artificial time constraints.
- Sustainability. Consistent effort over time is more sustainable than pushing your limits to work as fast as possible. To do our best work, we need mental downtime, space for self-reflection, and a realistic schedule we can actually keep up with.
Overall, slowing down will help you make better decisions, connect deeper with people, have more meaningful experiences, all while improving your mental well-being by avoiding burnout. You may go slower, but you will go further. Injecting slowness in all areas of your life There are many areas of our lives where we could benefit from slowing down, some more obvious than others. - Food. Numerous studies suggest that eating fast is linked to obesity. For instance, a survey of more than 50,000 in China showed that fast eating children were more likely to be obese, and to have a higher energy intake from fast food. On the other hand, eating slowly has been associated with lower hunger and lower calorie intake in healthy people. 腹八分目 (pronounced hara hachi bun me which translates to “eat until your belly is 80% full” ) is a common practice in Okinawa, which has the world’s highest proportion of centenarians. Since your brain takes around 20 minutes to register that you’re full, you can only do this if you eat slowly. Practice mindful eating by chewing chewing more, drinking sips of water, and paying attention to the taste and texture of your food.
- Communication. In his book The Stress Solution, clinical psychologist Arthur Ciaramicoli explains: “We learn to become more empathic when we slow down, become present, and are fully committed to understanding another person’s uniqueness.”
- Fashion. It may not immediately come to mind, but your closet is another place where you can inject more slowness. Professor Hazel Clark from the Parsons School of Design defines slow fashion as “the valuing of local resources and distributed economies; transparent production systems with less intermediation between producer and consumer; and sustainable and sensorial products that have a longer usable life and are more highly valued than typical consumables.” Slow fashion is more ethical and more sustainable. Shop less often, focus on timeless designs, and take your time to buy better quality garments that will last longer.
- Exercise. While high-intensity exercise is all the craze, research suggests moderate-intensity, low-impact activity (such as yoga and walking) is just as effective as high-impact activity (such as running) in lowering the risk of heart disease. If you already exercise regularly, make sure to slow down from time to time and to take days off so your body can rest. And don’t beat yourself up if you’re not into jumping jacks and sprinting, there are plenty of slower exercises that can benefit your health.
- Decision-making. Rushed thinking may lead to bad decisions. Slowing down allows us to be more deliberate when considering our options. As Eknath Easwaran puts it: “By slowing down, we can train the mind to focus completely in the present. Then we will find that we can function well whatever the difficulties. That is what it means to be stress-proof: not avoiding stress but being at our best under pressure, calm, cool, and creative in the midst of the storm.”
Whatever area of your life you are targeting, making space for self-reflection is crucial. Helpful methods to slow down include journaling, meditation, and taking breaks. Speed may sometimes be a goal in and of itself, but it should be an intentional goal rather than an automatic need to “keep up” with others. An easy trick to slow down is to ask: “Why the rush?” and to take a step back. Is speed really adding to the quality of the output? Again, in some rare cases, it may be the case. For instance, if you work as a journalist for an outlet, it makes sense to work as fast as possible for breaking news announcements. However, you will find that many goals would be better achieved by being more intentional." #metaglossia_mundus: https://nesslabs.com/the-benefits-of-slowing-down
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