Guess what? It's World Translation Day! - Omniscience - Translation

World Translation Day is an opportunity to look back at the various online translation sites. Even if none of them are 100% efficient and accurate, they are still very useful for a quick decoding!

Most scientific articles are written in English. If it is convenient to have a universal language, it becomes less convenient when that language is not mastered. Despite that, more often than not, we stumble across articles written in really other languages, in Italian, Russian, Chinese,... And here’s where, reading the article becomes really difficult... The dictionary is of no help, when you don't know the language at all. And anyway, let's be honest, who uses dictionaries anymore...

Fortunately, there are online translation sites! You must have heard of them, and you must have been told off by your language teachers, because they are not 100% reliable and contain many errors. This is true of course, but when you are not looking for a perfect translation, and you just want to understand the context, it can be very efficient!

So, for you, we have tested different online translator sites in order to offer you the most reliable ones for your (non) scientific translations!

Deepl

Deepl is an automatic translation site that’s been around since August 28, 2017. Currently, 26 languages are available for translation. It is extremely efficient for translating scientific documents, and offers good accuracy and great variations in its translations. Watch out though! It is not efficient enough for a perfect translation! Its main drawback at this stage is the fact that it only translates up to 5000 characters, including spaces so brace yourself to make a couple of translation trips back and forth.

Yandex translate

Very similar to Deepl, Yandex translate is a  translation system  based on the analysis of millions of texts. The advantage over the previous one is that it is possible to translate an entire document in one go, without any character problems. Moreover, this tool has no less than 94 different languages. It is also possible to listen to the pronunciation of the translation (like deepl and google trad too). However, the aesthetics leave something to be desired, and the texts sometimes overlap, making it difficult to read.

Google traduction

The biggest advantage of google translation is that it is the first to appear in the search bar. It can translate texts in 109 different languages, which makes it the big winner in this selection when it comes to language availability. But the number of characters that can be translated at once is limited to 3900, and the translation is a far cry from reliability During a translation test, this service translated the exact opposite of what the text said, forgetting the negation. Beware!

Reverso

Everyone knows reverso! It can act as an automatic translator, like Deepl and Yandex translate, but with a maximum of 800 characters, which is much lower than Deepl. It is also less precise in the form of its sentences. However, it has the advantage of offering synonyms and spelling and grammar corrections. In short, it offers a bit of   everything, and has been doing so for the past 20 years.

Translator

A real discovery, this site offers, among other things, the option to translate entire PDF documents (like deepl), then to download them, with a rather fine translation. The test was conclusive, and few errors were found in the text. The PDF had font problems, with the writing sometimes so small that you had to zoom in to read it. Other than that, don't hesitate to use it!

Linguee

Unlike Deepl and Yandex Translate, Linguee is not an automatic translator. It is an online dictionary that allows you to find words and expressions, offering several possibilities, from the most to the least reliable. It is therefore ideal for fine-tuning a text and correcting any remaining errors!

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OPINION | Context, human connection and the issue with online translation apps - News24 - Translation

The fact that we live in a globalised and digital world affects the way in which interpreters and translators work to connect people to each other, writes Kim Wallmach and Susan Lotz.

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All over the world, professional translators and interpreters celebrate International Translation Day on 30 September. This date is also the feast day of the great Bible translator St Jerome, the patron saint of translators.

Two personal admissions are in order at this point: (i) We do need a saint watching over us, particularly when we toil during the late hours of the night, which is often the fate of a translator, and (ii) Translation Day stands out in the calendars of translators and interpreters, since it is a day for recognising and celebrating the work we do – work that usually happens behind the scenes, and more often than not goes unrecognised. We are indeed grateful for an observance day that draws attention to the role of professional translation in connecting nations and fostering peace, understanding and development. 

After more than a year of Covid-19 keeping us physically apart, the theme for this year's International Translation Day, 'United in translation', seems particularly apt – to translators, interpreters and the beneficiaries of our work.

Even though we may still feel unrecognised at times when under work pressure (particularly in the middle of the night, typing away, or when interpreting high-level meetings from home), much has been done to unify translators and interpreters and professionalise our community of practice.

Universities across the country (e.g. Stellenbosch University, the universities of the Free State, Pretoria, Johannesburg and the Witwatersrand) offer training programmes in translation and interpreting, and we also have an active professional body in the South African Translators' Institute.

Spoken or written?

When people speak of translation in a broad sense, they often mean interpreting too. Although both translation and interpreting are about transferring meaning from one language to another, the difference lies in the way the meaning is presented. Translation is a written endeavour, whereas interpreting is either spoken or signed. 

Interpreting can happen in different ways.

It could be delivered consecutively, which involves the speaker speaking first and the interpreter delivering the message in another language afterwards or at intervals in between the conversation or speech. Or the interpreting could be delivered simultaneously – almost at the same time as the speaker delivers the message.

An example of simultaneous interpreting (into South African Sign Language) that would be familiar to us all is the interpreting available on our screens when we attend the 'family meetings' with President Ramaphosa that have become part of our current reality.   

How technology helps us transfer meaning

Increasingly, the fact that we live in a globalised and digital world affects the way in which interpreters and translators work to connect people to each other. Translators can now use computer-aided translation tools to produce more consistent translations faster and more efficiently for clients across the globe, whereas interpreters can now also work remotely. 

The pandemic has been revolutionary, particularly for interpreting. Remote simultaneous interpreting has been used in South Africa for sittings in Parliament and at some provincial legislatures for some time, enabling interpreters to connect with their audience in another venue using information and communications technology.

However, since Covid-19 hit the country in March 2020, online platforms such as Skype, MS Teams and Zoom have been harnessed for remote conference and educational interpreting more readily. For example, over the past year and a half, academics at many universities have had to move their lectures online.

At Stellenbosch University, lecturers and students also gained first-hand experience of how simultaneous educational interpreting could be facilitated during online lectures: as the lecture happens, in real time, on MS Teams or Zoom. We have also been able to move educational interpreting in South African Sign Language online. Technology has indeed enabled us to keep going and stay connected to each other, even when we could no longer be in physical contact during the pandemic.

Context in online translation

But even real-time online contact cannot replace the rounded experience of being in someone else's presence, in part because we simply do not share the same physical context when we are apart. Context is also an essential aspect to consider when using online translation applications such as Google Translate.

The immediate nature of Google Translate might cause us to be overconfident about the ability of technology to bridge all of our language barriers. While Google Translate might give us an immediate sense that we understand something about a text in another language, we should remember that machine translation cannot factor in one crucial aspect of connection: context. The context of the words we feed into the system and the context that contributes to the words' meaning once they have been translated are given automatic consideration in machine translation. 

Context informs translation choices for human translators, so when we choose to use automated output, we need to keep in mind the inability of machine translation to incorporate context.

If the system we use has been trained with similar texts to the one we get translated, our chances of getting better quality output are indeed higher. With Google Translate we simply do not know what texts were used to train those wondrously intricate neural networks that make Google Translate what it is.

If we do choose to use machine translation, we will undoubtedly still need human intervention (post-editing) to ensure that our translation is fit for purpose – that it really connects with and engages the intended audience.

As with technology in any field, the secret to harnessing it effectively is to understand what it can and cannot do and manage it accordingly. And if one wishes to communicate a message effectively using plain language, there is also still no replacement for a professional language service that integrates quality assurance and qualified staff with communication design. 

In a country with eleven official languages, there are significant challenges to and equally great opportunities for promoting multilingualism and common understanding between people. We choose to recognise and delight in the role that translation and interpreting can play in this regard by connecting people from diverse linguistic backgrounds.

We would like to invite you to celebrate International Translation Day with us, wherever you are, and expand your awareness of how the transfer of meaning between languages connects people. 

- Dr Kim Wallmach is the Director of the Stellenbosch University Language Centre. 

- Susan Lotz is a language practitioner and content coordinator at the same centre.

To receive Opinions Weekly, sign up for the newsletter here. 

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*Want to respond to the columnist? Send your letter or article to opinions@news24.com with your name and town or province. You are welcome to also send a profile picture. We encourage a diversity of voices and views in our readers' submissions and reserve the right not to publish any and all submissions received.

Disclaimer: News24 encourages freedom of speech and the expression of diverse views. The views of columnists published on News24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of News24.

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International Translation Day Quotes, Wishes, WhatsApp Status, Messages, History, Significance - Sambad English - Translation

Bhubaneswar: International Translation Day is celebrated on September 30, every year to pay tribute to the work of language professionals, which plays an important role in bringing nations together, facilitating dialogue, understanding and cooperation, contributing to development and strengthening world peace and security.

On 24 May 2017, the General Assembly adopted resolution 71/288 on the role of language professionals in connecting nations and fostering peace, understanding and development, and declared 30 September as International Translation Day.

September 30 celebrates the feast of St. Jerome, the Bible translator, who is considered the patron saint of translators.

On the occasion, here are some Quotes and Wishes that you can share with others.

• “Without translation I would be limited to the borders of my own country. The translator is my most important ally. He introduces me to the world.” – Italo Calvino”
• Translators are the shadow heroes of literature, the often forgotten instruments that make it possible for different cultures to talk to one another, who have enabled us to understand that we all, from every part of the world, live in one world.”- Paul Auster
• Translating from one language to another is the most delicate of intellectual exercises; compared to translation, all other puzzles, from bridge to crosswords, seem trivial and vulgar. To take a piece of Greek and put it in English without spilling a drop; what a nice skill! – Cyril Connolly

Happy translation day to all translation lovers. I hope you all are happy and busy translating.

I would like to take this moment on this beautiful day to tell you all that you have been doing an excellent job. Thank you for all the keen translations.

It is no less than a more significant achievement to know more than one language, and the most important part is it is because of you people we get to know some of the most important concepts. We wish you all a happy translation day.

You all are doing a great job by translating the contents into different languages and making it accessible to many readers and learners and sending good wishes to all of you on this beautiful day.

I, on this beautiful day, would like to thank all the translators for sparing their valuable time to translate the contents for all of us. Happy translation day to you all.

Translating is such an art, where one’s content must give the same meaning as it is in the other language. All our translators have been doing an excellent job wishing you all a happy translation day.

You are doing a great job by translating to many things which would otherwise would have been limited to limited people…. Warm wishes on International Translation Day.

It really requires a lot of focus and hold on languages to be able to understand and translate content…. Wishing a very Happy International Translation Day.

Sending warm greetings on International Translation Day to you….. You are going a great job by translating content into different languages to make it accessible to many people.

The occasion of International Translation Day will always remind us that we have many talented translators doing excellent job of translating content to help us reach content of other languages.

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4 Amazing Perks Of Hiring A Translation Agency ⋆ The Costa Rica News - The Costa Rica News - Translation

Businesses and educational institutions have to ensure that they reach out to audiences across countries. Translating important documents and content into foreign languages is the best way of reaching your organizational goals. 

The three available translation solutions available in the market are 1)building an in-house translation department, 2) relying on AI for translation, and 3)hiring a translation. An in-house translation is a costly option that requires time and effort to build. AI isn’t reliable as of now. The best option you have is hiring a translation agency. 

TIP: Get our latest content by joining our newsletter. Don't miss out on news that matter in Costa Rica. Click here.

Translation services are the most affordable option that you can avail of for the success of your business. Here in this article, we will show you why you should work with a translation agency – keep reading! 

Costa Rica Announces Purchase Of Anticovid Vaccines For Children And Third Doses

1. Professional Expertise

Professionalism is the most important thing you have to look for in an agency. Gone are the days when you had to rely on one or two service providers. There is a wide variety of services and agencies that you can hire if you are not satisfied with the results of an agency. 

Working with a professional translation agency like JK Translate helps you benefit from the best professional expertise. Their translators are native speakers of a language and ensure that the content they translate resonates with the people in their country. 

The ability to work with professionals of a language helps you identify your target audience. With a proper audience of what your audience demands and how they communicate, you can build custom products and solutions for a geographic audience that will sell like hotcakes! It gets easier for you to build a buyer persona. 

2. Focus On Quality

Quality is the most important metric for the better reach of your message. If the translated content is not readable by your target audience and native speakers find problems, it will become difficult for you to get your message across. 

Poorly translated marketing material will show to your target audience that your company doesn’t focus on proper research. It will leave a bad impression about your company and what you offer. Not building authority among your audience will lose the trust you’ve built in the industry. 

Therefore, you have to ensure that your content is translated by professionals who focus on quality. Working with a skilled agency is the only way of achieving this goal. 

Canada Will Reactivate Air Operations To Costa Rica In October

3. Human Touch

There are several AI-based translation services in the market that you can try. The biggest downside of such services is that they lack a human touch. Their translated content reads like a Ph.D. thesis and is devoid of any emotional value. 

Although there’s no doubt about the progress of such AI translation solutions, and they might become usable in the future, they currently don’t provide you the quality and value you want. The only reliable option is hiring an agency that knows the importance of proper translation and can provide amazing results all the time – enabling you to build a connection with your audience. 

4. Reliable Professionals

Working with a professional agency doesn’t mean that they are reliable too. Many agencies have hired skilled professionals for translation services but damage their clients by leaking their business credentials and information. 

The agency you choose for translation should be reliable. Checking out the reviews of a translation agency is the only way of ensuring if you can trust them or not. An agency’s portfolio speaks volumes about their expertise and the type of clients they have worked for in the past. If an agency has worked with Fortune 500 companies, then it shows that their translation solutions must be trusted in the industry. 

SP

https://gnosiscr.com/

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Google Meet is testing a live translation feature » Stuff - Stuff Magazines - Translation

Live transcription features are becoming increasingly saturated across most of the platforms we use — Facebook, YouTube, and even video conferencing platforms like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Google Meet. While most of ‘em only feature English live transcriptions, Google is upping the ante by testing a live translation feature. 

Google Meet in jou taal

Currently a beta feature, the live translation option will allow for real-time translated captions in a video conference in a meeting. It’s being tested with English to Spanish, French, Portuguese, and German. 

The way the feature currently works, it’ll only be available to a few key Meet user groups: Google Workspace Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Plus, and Teaching & Learning Upgrade users. If you’re keen, administrators will have to apply for access through their corresponding Google Suite package. 

Once that’s done, it’ll be available as a toggle in the settings, under Captions. There you’ll be able to choose one of the translated languages.

“Translated captions helps Google Meet video calls to be more global, inclusive, and effective by removing language ability as a barrier to collaboration. By helping users consume the content in a preferred language, you can help equalize information sharing, learning, and collaboration, and make sure your meetings are as effective as possible,” Google’s announcement reads

Of course, we’ll have to wait an undisclosed amount of time until the feature supports any African languages. We guess business meetings in Europe are deemed more important? Still, the tech could open up international borders in terms of employment and education if applied correctly. 

Source: Engadget

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Fall Literature In Translation Roundup - NPR - Translation

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NPR

The author and translator Jennifer Croft recently wrote an op-ed setting out the reasons why translators should be named on book covers. I could not agree with Croft more; I agree so much, in fact, that reading the op-ed infuriated me, for the simple reason that Croft shouldn't have needed to write it at all.

From my vantage point as both a translator and a book critic who frequently reviews translated works, putting the translator's name on the cover is as vital — and as logical — as putting the writer's name there. I want to know whose words the book holds. Often, in fact, I choose to read a translated book precisely because I admire the translator's previous work, as is the case with all three books below. Take Annie McDermott, who translates, among others, the cult-favorite Uruguayan novelist Mario Levrero. I have been a Levrero fan since I began reading him in Spanish over a decade ago. McDermott's translation of his novel Empty Words still amazed me. It showed me bits of the text I had missed in Spanish, while capturing the charmingly oddball Levrero spirit I love. Naturally, then, I rushed to read McDermott's newest Levrero translation. The moment I saw her name on the cover, I knew I was in good hands.

The Luminous Novel, by Mario Levrero, translated by Annie McDermott

And Other Stories

Let me get the comparison out of the way: if you like Karl Øve Knausgaard's My Struggle, then you will love Levrero's Luminous Novel. The book, which is generally considered his masterwork, is split into two entirely unequal parts: The first 400 pages are Levrero's diary of how he spent his time after being awarded a Guggenheim grant in 2000, and the final 100 are the first chapters of the incomplete, autobiographical "luminous novel" that he was meant to finish with his Guggenheim-financed time. In the diary, which is at once mundane, endearing, and shockingly relaxing to read, Levrero — or a character based on Levrero — describes his daily routines and obsessions: a dead pigeon decomposing on a neighboring roof, his efforts to make Microsoft Word work better, his quest to buy his first-ever air conditioner. Every so often, he writes a hilarious, apologetic letter to Mr. Guggenheim, promising to resume work on the novel soon; sometimes he thinks sadly, "I wonder what I have been doing all this time"; occasionally, he has moments of pure triumph, as when he installs his air-conditioning unit and exults, "HA HA HA! I have defeated summer!"

Translating a novel powered entirely by the narrator's self-deprecating charm cannot be easy, but McDermott does an exceptional job. Levrero, at one point, worries that he has become addicted to the "trance states" of playing online card games and reprogramming Word; his concern is fair, but it also highlights the fact that reading The Luminous Novel can itself induce a trance state. McDermott's prose is quietly rhythmic, highly entertaining, and extremely easy to settle into. After 500 pages, I was still disappointed that the book had to end.

Kaya Days, by Carl de Souza, translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman

Two Lines Press

In 1999, the Mauritian singer Kaya, who invented the musical genre known as seggae, died in police custody after getting arrested for smoking marijuana onstage. His death led to days of unrest, which the Mauritian novelist Carl de Souza captures beautifully in his tense, urgent novella Kaya Days. Rather than center his story on the protests, though, de Souza weaves in and out of them as his protagonist, Santee, searches for her runaway brother Ram. In the novella's first chapters, Santee is shy and sheltered; she wanders into a brothel without realizing it, and fails to recognize a predatory sexual advance until it is quite close to too late. To Santee, the city is "Ram's world" — as, indeed, is everywhere else. "At the village, at Ma's," she thinks, "Ram was the center of the universe." In Kaya Days, though, Santee is the center. She learns to navigate male attention; she joins in looting; she goes swiftly from awestruck at the sight of a ravine to herself striking awe in her suitor and guide. By the novella's end, Santee has stepped into a confident, adult version of herself.

De Souza's prose, which includes significant amounts of Kreol in addition to French, mirrors his protagonist's transformation: his sentences, in Jeffrey Zuckerman's excellent, language-mixing translation, are compelling at the book's start, but become downright hypnotic by its end. Kaya Days is a novella designed to be read in one gulp, and Zuckerman's prose is propulsive enough to make the book nearly impossible to put down. In his translator's note, he writes that "finding an English to mirror the frenetic energy of [de Souza's] French and Kreol has been both a mind-bending challenge, and a delightful opportunity to revitalize English." His prose here is vital in both senses of the word: full of life, and unmissable.

Life Sciences, by Joy Sorman, translated by Lara Vergnaud

Restless Books

Ninon Moise, the teenage protagonist of French novelist and journalist Joy Sorman's Life Sciences, is the lone daughter of a mother whose family has a centuries-old legacy of bizarre female illnesses. Ninon's mother Esther cherishes this dark heritage; she tells Ninon stories of their ancestors' seizures, injuries, and addictions, describing them with "dramatic glee and theatricality." Ninon can tell her mom is waiting for her to get sick — but when the skin on Ninon's arms suddenly becomes painfully sensitive, rendering even the brush of a sheet agonizing, her relationship with Esther instantly falls apart. Alone, Ninon navigates years of medical disbelief and bafflement; often, she feels as if her skin itself has "become a hallucination."

Sorman uses her protagonist's suffering to critique the medical establishment, with its massive imbalance of power between doctor and patient; by the time Ninon turns from doctors to Paris's odd host of shamans, it seems clear that to Sorman, the two are barely distinguishable. Her detached tone, which Lara Vergnaud makes crisp and stylized, adds to the sense of novel-as-critique: often, Sorman's narrator seems to be speaking in voiceover, as if Ninon were the subject of a documentary. This strategy serves to alienate the reader from Ninon, precisely as Ninon's pain alienates her from her mother and from her peers. Life Sciences is a lonely book — and, for that reason, an effective one. Unsympathetic as Sorman's style may feel, it forces the reader to reckon with what Ninon is going through.

Lily Meyer is a writer and translator living in Cincinnati, Ohio.

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Lost in translation? Not for this La Salle professor - La Salle University - Translation

Vincent Kling, Ph.D., explains the nuance behind translating to English a 1951 novel written in German.

Translating a 1951 novel from Austrian German to English requires more than sleeplessness. It’s also necessitated a comfortable pair of shoes.

“Truth be told? A third of my time was spent staring at a screen or walking the floors of my home, thinking, ‘OK, what do I do now?’” said Vincent Kling, ’68, Ph.D., a languages scholar at La Salle University and professor of German and French. “How many hours has this taken? The simple answer is I don’t know.”

That’s partly because Kling began translating Heimito von Doderer’s The Strudlhof Steps a quarter-century ago. For context: The cohort of first-year students who started at La Salle in 1996, the year Kling embarked on this effort, are now two decades into their professional careers. The project remained dormant for a dozen or so years, Kling said, before New York Review Books reengaged him on it.

A Fulbright Scholar after his undergraduate tenure at La Salle, Kling is the first to translate The Strudlhof Steps into English. (One reviewer called Kling’s translation “a monumental achievement.”) The novel is available for pre-order now and in paperback in December.

We spoke with Kling about the novel and the art of literary translation:

“That took me blood, sweat, tears,
and plenty of ranting and raving,
to translate what is going on in
that sentence.”
—Vincent Kling, ’68, Ph.D.,
on his latest literary translation

In the simplest terms, what exactly is ‘literary translation’?
Kling: “Language is used in such an unusual way. Every region and dialect offers something unique. In my work, you see that Austrian German is almost like the English that’s spoken in Ireland, Scotland, India, or even the Deep South of the U.S. It’s very much it’s own language. I’ve seen instances in Vienna where Germans have to ask what a word means. Literary translation is being alert to and understanding of the kind of very colorful, brilliant, and playful language that’s intended by an author in one language as you are attempting to translate it into another.”

Just how nuanced is this process? On the surface, and based solely on its name, literary translation would seem pretty intuitive, right?
Kling: “Literature—unlike a newspaper report, or statistical measures—is not an account of facts. Literature is reading for an experience rather than for information, meaning there are different shades to account for, as well as word plays and irony. I’ll offer an example: In this novel, two characters meet up after 10 years. They were supposed to go on a date. Neither showed up and here they are, meeting up again. They’re trying to avoid the subject of standing each other up. The narrator says this, ‘People never converse as vivaciously as when they set out to offset whatever set them off at the outset.’ That’s one of the gems. That took me blood, sweat, tears, and plenty of ranting and raving, to translate what is going on in that sentence.”

Why is this novel such a critically important piece of literature?
Kling: “The Strudlhof Steps was published in 1951. That was a great period of deprivation and loss in war. Vienna was a drab, bombed-out city. The novel offers two time periods, both of which could create great nostalgia. Part one is 1908–1910; the other is 1923–1925. The readers could look back with a tremendous amount of identification with what was lost. In the early period, for example, is the old Austrian-Hungarian Empire, and, in the second part, there are the early years of Austrian Republic. The novel offers a real look backward on ways of life and vanished institutions. The book features the most-vivid descriptions of a city, its surrounding countryside, suburbs, restaurants, cafes, schools, and architecture. You cannot help but feel you are right in the midst of Vienna. It, too, encompasses every type of character—from the lowest of the low to aristocracy and royalty with a lot of intriguing side plots.”

For any aspirant literary translators, what goes into being good at this craft?
Kling: “What goes into a decent literary translation—well, a lot of people who are not looking for the play in language would not see that’s going on. That’s essential. I have a colleague in Vienna who is laudatory and says not only do I understand what language is saying, but I understand what’s going on behind the scenes and the words that are being played with. A recognition sense of irony, sarcasm, and what’s lying underneath the words, to me, is an important skill.”

—Christopher A. Vito

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Google Meet could break down language barriers thanks to new live translation captions - Tom's Guide - Translation

Google Meet now offers a live translated captions feature. This enables the video-chat platform to translate foreign languages in real-time, which could make international calls and business meetings much easier. 

The beta feature was announced this week via a Google Workspace Update and is currently only available to select Google Meet users. Although, like most new beta features it’s expected that once it’s been thoroughly tested it will be rolled out to all. However, Google hasn’t announced when the feature will leave beta just yet.  

Live translated captions turn spoken Spanish, French, Portuguese, and German into fully translated English subtitles in real-time during a Google Meet. Currently, the feature is only able to translate into English from the four languages listed above, although Google may expand these capabilities further down the line.

(Image credit: Google)

This is a pretty significant upgrade from Google Meet’s pre-existing live captions feature. The platform has been able to turn spoken word into captions for quite a while now, but translating foreign languages is a very welcome expansion of the functionality. 

Google explained that the live translated captions allow “Google Meet video calls to be more global, inclusive and effective by removing language ability as a barrier to collaboration. 

"By helping users consume the content in a preferred language, you can help equalize information sharing, learning, and collaboration, and make sure your meetings are as effective as possible.” 

The tech giant also pointed out that live translated captions could be extremely useful in an educational setting. The feature has the potential to allow teachers to communicate with a wider variety of students who may not speak the same language, as well as increase inclusivity among parents from diverse backgrounds. 

In its beta form, the feature is only available for meetings organized by Google Workspace Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Plus and Teaching & Learning Upgrade users. If you meet the criteria, you apply for access to the feature right now.  

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Localization, translation and interpretation - The Signpost - Translation

Language translation and interpretation is a $50 billion industry, which Weber State University, in conjunction with the Department of Foreign Languages, will pay homage to during the week of Sept. 27 through Oct. 1 during the 3rd annual Translation Week.

Professor of Spanish and Department Chair of Foreign Languages Isabel Asensio said she first started talking about translation classes to her colleagues and teaching them to her students about 10 years ago. She knew there needed to be a major or a minor for translation and interpretation at Weber State.

“Many students are not aware of this field,” Asensio said. “They just think you study languages just to be a teacher, but that’s not true. That’s not the only career path.”

Once the major started to take shape, Asensio knew the department needed a main event to help students become aware of the new opportunity. Asensio figured that International Translation Day, which is Sept. 30, would be the ideal time to host the event.

Students play multi-language scrabble at Translation Week in 2019. Photo courtesy of Aubrey Jones from the Foreign Language Department Photo credit: Aubrey Jones

According to the Department of Foreign Languages website, events for Translation Week started on Sept. 27 with Bilingual Readings, where students and faculty will read aloud their work. Asensio will read a short story she translated from Spanish to English.

WSU student Austin Vaughn will read one of his works in Japanese, with the English to follow.

“It’s more localizing them instead of translating them, and I think that’s a pretty important part of translating, so I’m looking forward to showing people that,” Vaughn said.

The readings are open to all who wish to attend. Asensio said this part of Translation Week is new this year, and she is looking forward to it.

Students will also have the opportunity to learn about internships from a panel on Sept. 28. Asensio, along with Amelia Williams, assistant director of programming for Career Services, will moderate the event.

Asensio said they like to focus these panels on career opportunities for students so they can see what it is like in the field for interpreters or translators.

Isabel Asensio, from the Department of Foreign Languages, helped to get WSU on the map for language translation and interpretation. Photo credit: Weber State University

There will be three virtual lecture Q&A sessions. The first is on Sept. 29 and will be with Marta Chapado Sánchez, coordinator of the master’s program in Audiovisual Translation from ISTRAD and the University of Cadiz. Sánchez will speak about the field of AVT and job opportunities.

A lecture with Vicent Montalt i Resurrecció, who is an associate professor in the Department of Translation and Communication at Universitat Jaume I in Castelló, Spain, will feature topics about translation in the medical field and the current trends. This will take place on Sept. 30.

The final lecture will be on Oct. 1 and will feature members of the ALC Bridge committee speaking about the jobs and career opportunities that students can find in the language service industry.

WSU is the only public university in Utah to have degrees in interpretation and translation. This puts WSU on the map and gives students a bigger opportunity, according to Asensio.

Youn Soo Kim Goldstein, Ambrose Amos Shaw Assistant Professor of Localization and Translation, said, “I hope that students and others on campus are able to see the different ways that translation is an integral part of our world, that students are able to think beyond the language classrooms to see the different career opportunities they would be able to pursue with the different programs offered by the Department of Foreign Languages.”

During Translation Week, there will also be a “Bad Translations” contest where students can submit photos they find around Utah of bad translations. Asensio said this is a problem because translators and interpreters don’t get the credit they deserve.

“They assume anyone who speaks a language can translate something, and then miscommunication happens,” Asensio said.

Asensio said she wants Translation Week to bring awareness and respect to the industry.

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Dialect: An Open-Source Translation App for Linux - It's FOSS - Translation

Brief: Dialect is a straightforward app that lets you translate between languages using web services. To explore more, let us take a closer look.

While you can launch the web browser and directly use any translation service to get the job done, a desktop app can sometimes come in handy.

Dialect is a simple translation app that utilizes web services to translate while giving you some extra abilities.

Open-Source Translation App with Google Translate & LibreTranslate

Dialect is primarily an app tailored for GNOME desktops, but it should work fine with other desktop environments.

It lets you quickly translate languages along with a few extra options.

At its core, it lets you choose between Google Translate or LibreTranslate as the translation service.

Even though LibreTranslate cannot come close to Google Translate’s accuracy, featuring it as an option to switch is an excellent addition. At least, for some basic usage, if a user does not want to utilize Google’s services, you have an alternative ready on your desktop.

Features of Dialect

Along with the ability to switch translation services, you get a few more tweaks:

• Pronunciation
• Text to Speech functionality (Google)
• Dark mode
• Translation shortcut
• Live Translation
• Clipboard buttons to quickly copy/paste
• Translation history (undo/redo)

As you can notice in the screenshot, the live translation feature may get your IP addressed banned from using the service because of API abuse.

I tried using LibreTranslate (as shown in the image above) and Google Translate with the live translation feature enabled, and it worked fine.

Maybe if you rely on translations quite often, you may want to avoid the feature. But, for my quick usage, the services didn’t ban by IP address for quite a few test runs.

It is important to note that you can specify a custom LibreTranslate instance if you want. By default, it uses “translate.astian.org” as the instance.

You may not find a separate translation history section, but the arrow buttons in the top-left corner of the window will let you see your previous translations and the translation settings as well.

So, it works as a redo/undo feature as well.

Installing Dialect in Linux

Dialect is available as a Flatpak. So, you should be able to install it on any Linux distro of your choice. If you are new to this, you might want to check out our Flatpak guide for help.

First, add Flathub repo:

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

And then install the application:

flatpak install flathub com.github.gi_lom.dialect

Once installed, look for it in the system menu and start it from there.

You can also explore its GitHub page for more information.

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How To Become A Translator - Forbes - Translation

For National Translation Month, I interviewed three freelance translators who work in various languages: Jennifer Croft, who translates from Polish, Ukrainian and Argentine Spanish, Anton Hur, who translates in Korean and English, and Arunava Sinha, who translates in Bengali and English.* They discussed their education in languages, how they get work as translators, and how they approach their translating work. See part two on what makes a good translation, translator royalties, receiving credit on book covers, and issues within the publishing related to the treatment of translators.

How to break into translating

Some translators, such as Hur and Sinha, grew up speaking two languages, so were poised to be adept at the translation process due to their fluency. Hur, who specializes in translating Korean fiction into English, has done ten translation (some awaiting publication). He grew up translating for his mother, who speaks Korean, and learned both English and Korean formally in Korean and international schools. Similarly, Sinha grew up speaking Bengali and English, and said, “I’d say I live in both languages, so there was no formal study other than at school.”

Sinha, who has done 72 translations, developed an interest in translation in college, where he majored in English literature, after realizing that Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude “was in fact a translation. So what all of us in India were reading and marveling over were Gregory Rabassa’s words, which we accepted as Garcia Marquez'’. This in turn led to trying my hand at it myself.”

While Hur said there’s virtually no formal education required to become a translator, “Translators tend to be highly educated, but many of the older translators for example don’t have college degrees and they’re great at their jobs and very successful.” Now that his profile has risen within the publishing industry, publishers and agents also approach him, but he said, “it took years to build that level of trust.”

Croft, whose memoir Serpientes y escaleras, written in Argentine Spanish details her career path (Homesick is the English-language version), grew up in a monolingual family, double-majored in Russian and English and did a minor in Creative Writing in college, followed by an MFA in Literary Translation. Croft said, “Being a translator requires a particular sensitivity not only to language, but also to people. I think you have to really be interested in other authors’ voices, in their obsessions and desires, and you have to want to dedicate a lot of time and energy to inhabiting their worlds, kind of like how actors work. And as with acting, you don’t need any special educational background, but I do think you need the time and space to practice your craft.” Croft recommends doing a fully funded MFA in Literary Translation for those looking to break into the field as “a wonderful way to continue your language studies (if you need to) and get feedback from peers and professors while not having to work a full-time job to support yourself” or for those already working, mentorships through the American Literary Translators’ Association or similar organizations.

How translators get jobs

All three translators I interviewed are proactive about seeking out translation projects for books they’re interested in. Of acquiring translation jobs, Hur said, “If I find a book I want to translate, I get permission from the Korean rights holder to submit a sample and proposal to English publishers, and if that gets accepted, I negotiate the translator contract.” Sinha is either approached by publishers or authors, or similarly pitches books he wants to translate to publishers.

Croft said that “so far I have found the authors I want to translate by reading widely in my languages and getting in touch with the people whose books I fall in love with.” This was the case with her translation of the Flights by Olga Tokarczuk, which won the won the 2018 Man Booker International Prize (now called the International Booker Prize), the largest prize for translated literature in the world; the book went on to win the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature and was a National Book Award finalist. She shopped her book report and partial translation of Flights around until UK-based Fitzcarraldo Editions finally acquired it, and then Fitzcarraldo sold U.S. rights to Riverhead Books.

But getting the book translated was an uphill battle for Croft, who says she “spent ten years trying to find a publisher for Flights,” but “editor after editor told me they didn’t think the book would ever sell,” a process which “illustrates one of the hardest parts” of the profession. Croft said that even winning the Booker “hasn’t really made it easier to get editors to take on new projects I propose. So much of literary translation is unpaid work: submissions, proposals, meetings, social media, and so on.”

The translation process

The translators said the length of time for each translation depends on the project. Hur’s shortest full-length prose translation took a month, while the longest, with hundreds of thousands of words, took a little under a year. As for how to approach the translation, Hur said he’s “not really given any instruction. I’ve found that editors are more interested in what we come up with than what they imagine the book to be. They like being pleasantly surprised, like any other genuine reader.”

As for how they approach the job, Hur said, “Triangulating the voice is the trickiest part. You’re never going to sound like the author in their source language so you have to figure out how they’re going to sound like in the target language.”

Sinha said of his translation process that he’s “led closely by the text. I do not try to guess the author’s intentions, or consciously interpret the text. I read it closely as a reader, and then try to make sure the reader in the new language will read the same text that I did. I do not explain, or improve, or in any way meddle with the text. Some references do need additional research. Sometimes, when the geography of a place is involved, I use the satellite view of Google Maps, to make sure I’m not distorting anything.” If the author is alive and the context is ambiguous, Sinha may consult them; however, that “can cut both ways, as some authors can slow you down with a flurry of suggestions.”

Croft told The Paris Review that she reads the entire book before approaching the translation, which some translators avoid in order to “preserve the sense of suspense that a reader will have.” In that interview Croft said that, by contrast, she believes in immersing herself “in the whole of the work along with some other knowledge of the writer, whether that’s personal knowledge from having interacted with them in real life or knowledge of their other books or anything else that is informing my overall vision. I just pretend like I’m swimming in the work.” Croft told me she always know the authors she works with and is in touch with them, though they are not always collaborating on the translation, as she did with author Frederico Falco on his short story collection A Perfect Cemetery, for which he read each translation draft.

While Hur and Sinha work on one translation at a time, combined with other non-translation work, including editing previous translations, Croft said she only works on one translation project per day, but may juggle multiple translations during a given time period. All three also work on projects outside of translation.

*Hur is an acquaintance.

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10 of the most common Italian translation fails - The Local Italy - Translation

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10 of the most common Italian translation fails  The Local Italy

3 Translators On Good Translations, Royalties, Book Cover Credit And The Business Of Translation - Forbes - Translation

For National Translation Month, I interviewed three freelance translators who work in various languages: Jennifer Croft, who translates from Polish, Ukrainian and Argentine Spanish, Anton Hur, who translates in Korean and English, and Arunava Sinha, who translates in Bengali and English.* They discussed what makes a good translation, translator royalties, receiving credit on book covers, and issues within the publishing related to the treatment of translators. See part one on their education in languages, how they get work as translators, and how they approach their translating work.

What makes a good translation

Asked what makes for a good translation, the translators had varying definitions. For Sinha, a good translation “leaves the reader with the same affect, the same possibilities, as the original work does. It achieves fidelity in terms of meaning, voice, music, sound, rhythm, silence, smoothness (or the lack of it), and several other parameters. It is, in short, the same book, in a different language, not domesticated into culture of the language into which is translated, but standing as a work that both belongs and does not belong to it.” Sinha praised Anthea Bell's translations of the Asterix comics, Ann Goldstein's translations of Elena Ferranto and Alessandro Baricco, Daniel Hahn's translations of José Eduardo Agualusa, Srinath Perur's translation of Vivek Shanbhag, and Jerry Pinto's translation of Sachin Kundalkar.s

Croft, who prefers “translations with strong styles,” such as Damion Searls’ translations of Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, said she likes “when the translator takes liberties with the text, but in order for it to work, it has to be a good match. Otherwise it’s like casting Meryl Streep in a Mad Max movie. It’s jarring, and the situation isn’t good for either the translator or the author. A translation is always going to be a different book from the original, but you want it to be different in a good way, in a way that complements the original and even enhances it somehow. Not in a way that flattens it, tries to ‘correct’ it, or just talks over it because it lacks that ability to listen closely.”

Hur said that “Korean academics and journalists have this weird idea that good translations are those where translators are as ‘invisible’ as possible, and this attitude has enabled some truly flat and unreadably tedious prose in translations created by soulless linguistics nerds and professor-wannabes. I think a translation that actually sounds like someone is a good translation. A recent great example is No Presents Please by Jayant Kaikini and translated by Tejaswini Niranjana (Catapult, Tilted Axis Press). The prose is deceptively simple but there is a lot of subtle glossing and evocative underpainting going on. And all the people, including the narrator, sound like people.” As for how to achieve this ideal, Hur said, "The new voice has to be a combination of the author, yourself, and the two different literary traditions you are working in if you want the voice of the translation to work."

The business of translation

Hur said sometimes he’s paid a flat fee, and in other cases he gets royalties or an advance on royalties, and sometimes a combination of all three. Croft said she’s always paid a fee, and has received royalties for every title except Flights, and “had to fight very hard to receive them” for another Tokarzcuk translation, The Books of Jacob, which her agent helped to secure. Sinha is usually paid royalties, and an advance against royalty payments, but no translation fees, with Indian publishers. When dealing with other countries, sometimes he’s paid a fee, and sometimes royalties, depending on whether the book has already been published in India and the publisher in another country is buying the rights from the publisher in India.

Advocating for translators

While all the translators I interviewed relish their work, they expressed dismay at the treatment translators sometimes receive within the publishing industry. Hur said, “Rightsholders on the Korean side often treat translators like dirt, using rude and unprofessional language as well as demanding unrealistic terms in the pitching process. There are Korean publishers I flat out refuse to work with at this point because of how unprofessional they are. On the English side, you come across racist publishers who have never or almost never published an Asian translation or a translation by a non-white translator—to them, translated literature is European literature. It’s demoralizing to be a person of color in any industry, and it’s no different in publishing.”

Croft wrote recently in The Guardian that translators don’t always receive royalties (she didn’t for the U.S. translation of Flights) and that “a surprising number of publishers do not credit translators on the covers of their books.” Croft argued that being transparent about who the translator is on covers is an “urgent” issue, writing, “What tends to encourage a reader to pick up an unfamiliar book is the thrilling feeling that they are about to embark upon an interesting journey with a qualified guide. In the case of translation, they get two for the price of one[.]”

Dream projects

Asked what their dream translation project would be, Sinha said, “I would like to translate a monumental graphic novel, as iconic as, say, Maus, into another language. Every night I go to bed with the hope a Bengali language publisher will decide to publish such a graphic novel in Bengali and ask me to translate it.” For Hur, a dream project would be “to participate in a big group project that takes years to finish, like the new Proust translation from Penguin.” Croft said she “would love to continue in the direction of creative collaboration, like with Federico Falco, and potentially co-write a book. I think the more interaction there is between translator and writer, the more interesting the end result could be.”

*Hur is an acquaintance.

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INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC CALL FOR TENDERS FOR THE PROVISION OF TRANSLATION SERVICES IN NON-OFFICIAL LANGUAGUES 2021/AO/55 - Council of Europe - Translation

The Council of Europe is looking for highly qualified, experienced and specialised translation service providers. The services to be provided consist mainly of revised and reviewed translations but may also include the revision and review of texts already translated, plus amendments to be translated, revised, reviewed and added to existing documents.

The tender file can accessed by clicking on the following link: https://bit.ly/3EJ9JTT. 

Tenders must be sent to the Council of Europe electronically via the procurement platform only before the deadline.

The deadline for the submission of tenders in the platform is 21 October 2021.

N.B.: Once connected to the procurement platform (https://bit.ly/3EJ9JTT) tenderers should click on “Access opportunity” on the bottom right hand corner to register for the tender procedure and to have access to the call.

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Alexander: Protection against 'brute force' and 'dictionary' attacks - Minneapolis Star Tribune - Dictionary

Q: Many password-protected websites give you a few chances to type in your password correctly, then lock you out if you type the wrong thing. You then must type in a code or answer a "secret question" to prove who you are.

So why do I see TV shows in which smart criminals use a computer to test, say, 10,000 passwords a minute until they get the right one to break into a website? Why aren't the criminals locked out after a few wrong passwords?

JERRY ROVENTINI, Lakeland, Fla.

A: The TV shows are less far-fetched than you might think.

The scenario you're describing is called a "brute force" attack. A computer connects to a web server and rapidly tries a long list of possible passwords until it hits the right one. A real brute force attack would require about two hours to crack an eight-character password composed of letters (upper and lower case), numbers and special characters (see tinyurl.com/4r2debx3).

How would the attackers avoid being locked out during those two hours? Sophisticated hackers could disable the server's "intrusion detection system," or its automatic "password attempt limit" (which normally locks a person out after a few wrong tries).

But because brute force attacks require some expertise, they're less common than a simpler threat called a "dictionary attack." The "dictionary" is a short list of common passwords that a computer can try in much less than two hours. These attacks succeed when people use simple passwords, such as "password" and "123456," which take fractions of a second to crack.

While it's hard to believe that people still use such vulnerable passwords, here's an interesting fact: The 2019 attack on Texas IT company SolarWinds, which allowed hackers to spy on the federal government, may have been caused by an employee who used the server password "solarwinds123." And, based on information from other data breaches, here's a list of the most common passwords of 2020, how often they were hacked and how little time it took (see tinyurl.com/zu2ekpdt). The password list includes "abc123," "111111" and "iloveyou."

The best defense against brute force and dictionary attacks is to use a password that is a long combination of letters, numbers and symbols that would be meaningless to anyone but you. These so-called "nonpredictable passwords" are far more difficult to hack.

Q: I keep getting a Windows 10 message that's supposed to be from Microsoft — but I wonder if it's a scam. It reads: "We need to fix your Microsoft account (most likely your password changed). Select here to fix it in shared experiences settings." Are you familiar with this?

PIERRE GIRARD, Golden Valley

A: It's a legitimate Microsoft warning, but it's being triggered by a Windows 10 error. Several fixes have been suggested:

• Disable your PC's "share across devices" feature, which makes it easy to exchange data with other computers and phones. (See the "settings app" method at tinyurl.com/3dknadj3.)
• If you are logging into Windows 10 with your online Microsoft account password, switch to a "local" account that doesn't depend on your online identity (see tinyurl.com/act82bu4).
• Make sure your PC is a "trusted device" that's listed in your Microsoft account (see tinyurl.com/sykz6wzk).

E-mail tech questions to steve.j.alexander@gmail.com or writer to Tech Q&A, 650 3rd Av. S., Suite 1300, Minneapolis, MN 55488. Include name, city and telephone number.

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2021 Fu Lei Translation and Publishing award reveals finalists in Beijing - Global Times - Translation

Ten books as the finalists of the 13th Fu Lei Translation and Publishing award. Photo: Courtesy for French Embassy in China

The 13th Fu Lei Translation and Publishing award, an event that focuses on Chinese-French literature translations revealed its 10 finalists at the Institute Francais in Beijing on Saturday.  

The 10 finalists were five works in the social science category and another five in the literature category. 

Work Retour à Reims, authored by French intellectual Didier Eribon and translated by Wang Xian, is one of the highlighted works included in the social science category. 

"As a fan of many French thinkers' works such as Didier Eribon's and Pierre Bourdieu's class theory, I'm so glad to learn that such continental works have been translated into Chinese, which will be really helpful for Chinese readers like me. There are a lot of us who study cultural sociological theories that need the help of Chinese text for such works," Pang Fei, a sociology researcher, told the Global Times on Saturday.     

Finalists are also published literary works such as Tendres Stocks by Paul Morand and translated by Duan Huimin and Le Livre des Questions (I et II) by Edmond Jabès, a French writer and poet, and translated by Liu Nanqi. 

The 2021 event received a total of 47 entries, including 35 translated works in the social science and another 12 in the literature. 

Gao Ming, minister counselor for Cultural, Educational and Scientific Affairs of the French Embassy in China at the event conference Photo: Courtesy of French Embassy in China

Gao Ming, minister counselor for Cultural, Educational and Scientific Affairs of the French Embassy in China; Dong Qiang, chairman of the Organizing Committee of the Fu Lei Translation and Publishing Award; and Wu Jialin, chairman of the 13th Fu Lei Translation and Publishing Award Committee attended the Saturday event. 

Established in 2009 by the French Embassy in China, the Fu Lei Translation and Publishing award has become even more focused on encouraging young Chinese translators to bring creativity and diversity to Chinese-French literature translation. 

China is a major importer of French books, and Chinese has been a popular language for copyright transfer in French publishing circles for the past eight years.

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Crossing frontiers with translations - Deccan Herald - Translation

Although we live in an ‘always already translated world’, translators are sometimes treated as second order citizens in the republic of literary creativity.

They are like the builders of bridges, connecting us to domains which would remain inaccessible but for their self-effacing hard labour.  

And the translations themselves remain invisible and anonymous, as though lacking in originality. 

We are hardly aware that our everyday life is surrounded by translations, from sales brochures to Leo Tolstoy, from a health manual to the Indian Constitution — we negotiate with polyglot material through translations. Especially in the contemporary age of globalised knowledge we owe our existence to translations who, like the god Hermes in Greek mythology, are constantly crossing borders of languages and cultures which are bound to the languages. 

The Sahitya Akademi deserves all praise for instituting awards for translations from other languages into any of the 23 official Indian languages.

An award is also given to the best translation of a bhasha work into English. S Nataraju Budalu’s translation of the great Buddhist scholar Sarahapada’s work and Srinath Perur’s translation of Vivek Shanbhag’s Ghachar Ghochar into English are among the awards for 2020. 

Equally reassuring for Kannada is that among the 24 awards, four are for translating from original Kannada works, testifying to the significance of Kannada writing in Indian literature.

Cross-linguistic negotiations

Premodern India was a land of mind-boggling polyglot cultures. Apart from Sanskrit and Prakrit, a competent writer would know at least two other languages and considered himself free to translate, transcreate and rewrite from a huge repertoire of poetry, tales, myths and genres from many languages and cultures.  

Like all literary traditions, Kannada literature is a product of such cross-linguistic negotiations through translations. 

Kavirajamargam (850 CE), the first extant work on poetics (in any language in the world, according to Sheldon Pollock) is mostly a translation of the Sanskrit works by Bhamah and Dandin.

But this doesn’t prevent it from being a highly original work that authoritatively maps Kannada culture, its territory and the cultural profile of its denizens.  

It sets up a framework for Kannada literature’s negotiation with Sanskrit on its own terms.  

Pampa, the archetypal poet, self-consciously retold Vyasa’s Mahabharatha but also allegorised the regional history of the land in his epic narrative Vikramarjuna Vijaya (932 CE).  

Almost all the great Kannada works of the ancient and medieval period are translations and transcreations. If we keep aside our modern notions of copyrights, authorship and originality, we begin to see how a vibrant literary culture drew on diverse linguistic resources to deal with the complex world of dominant religions, varna caste and gender hierarchies and a politics of empires and vernacular polities.  

Surely, ‘Kannadaness’ has always been a cosmopolitan phenomenon constructed with the endless process of translation. In other words, Kannada literature has always been Indian in its cultural and intellectual plurality.

Literary renaissance

A quantum leap to the Indian renaissance in the nineteenth century brings us close to Navodaya, the Kannada literary renaissance which was also energised by translations.  

From the last decades of the nineteenth century to the early decades of the twentieth, translations of fiction from Bengali, Marathi, Telugu and English introduced not just a powerful literary form but also the themes modernity: nationalism, renegotiation with tradition, questions of gender and social reform.  

Soon, we have writers like B Venkatacharya learning Bengali to translate nearly seventy Bengali works into Kannada, including most of Bankimchandra and Sharathchandra. 

Galaganatha freely translates the Marathi novelist H N Apte to popularise the historical romance.  

By 1920, B M Shrikanthaiah was translating English poetry to be collected in English Geethegalu (1921), heralding modern Kannada poetry. He declared that Kannada now had to reinvigorate itself, drawing sustenance from English and not Sanskrit. 

It is remarkable that the Kannada renaissance which produced Bendre, Kuvempu, Karanth, Masti and many others should have been initiated with a marvelous work of translations. 

Hybrid traditions, new forms

Translation is always a transgressive act, hybridising literary and cultural traditions and destabilising accepted norms. How else could a Christian hymn by J H Newman be reborn as Karunaalu ba belake in Kannada, to be rendered as a prayer in every school and college in the state?

The navya phase of literary modernism began in the late 1950s and early 1960s with yet another negotiation — this time with European and Anglo-American high modernist writings.  

Interestingly, translations of modernist works happened after writers like B C Ramachandra Sharma and Gopalakrishna Adiga had radically transformed Kannada poetry by responding to literary modernity. 

Girish Karnad acknowledged his debt to Jean Anouilh and Albert Camus while his predecessor Sriranga had made an original response to Ibsen and Bernard Shaw. 

Translations of Mohan Rakesh, Badal Sarkar, Utpal Dutt played a seminal role in reorienting Kannada drama and theatre.

Unfortunately, for a long time, poor translation theories led to the proliferation of colonial distortions of ‘influence’, ‘imitation’, ‘fidelity’ and ‘authenticity’.  

Thankfully we agree now that translation is not across languages but across cultures; that uncontaminated original tradition is a myth created by insecure minds; that the world we live in is ‘incorrigibly plural’.

It is not just the domain of literature that translations bring paradigm shifts. Modern Kannada prose had to refashion itself in the colonial period to become a vehicle of contemporary knowledge.

The last decade has seen a flood of translations into Kannada of writings by most leading social scientists and thinkers.

D D Kosambi, Ramachandra Guha, Uma Chakravarti, Chimamanda Adichie, Umberto Eco, Noam Chomsky, are now accessible to the Kannada reader. Such translations have helped the democratisation of knowledge because linguistic politics and social injustice have created a large monolingual community who need to acquire global knowledge through Kannada.

What we now need is to digitise the Kannada world to which translating can contribute in a big way.

(The writer is a literary and cultural critic based in Shivamogga)

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