Business applications training and adoption vendor ClickLearn announced a new partnership with Andovar, a provider of international translation and localization services.
Andovar will provide professional training translation solutions to ClickLearn's customers. ClickLearn offers templated translations of all user actions, chapters, and notes, but any content that customers create requires added translation, the company explained.
The translations provided by Andovar are not automated, so probably a little slower than AI in terms of raw speed, but they say they are still very fast while also being accurate and affordable. Andovar works with over 5,000 translators around the world and its clients include Spotify, NetSuite, Uber, and Travelocity.
I started making these lists because it’s harder than it should be to track down books in translation. That became especially apparent as I tried to find books in translation from Central Africa. The region has a storied literary history, and I had a long, long list of novels to read. Except…I couldn’t find them. There were a host of books that have not yet been translated into English despite their importance to their country’s literary history, works by authors such as Pepetela and Inongo-vi-Makome that I wanted to include but couldn’t.
I am using the definition of Central Africa that consists of Angola, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and São Tomé and Principe. I will be listing the language that each book was translated from; the colonial and imperialist histories of these countries has influenced the main languages that authors are writing in and using.
Particularly, there is a dearth of books by Central African women that have been translated into English. This is always especially painful because I can see that the books exist, I can read about books I would love to read myself, but I can’t access them, and so can’t include them. Just as examples, I was frustrated by the inability to read works by Olinda Beja, Nadia Origo, Calixthe Beyala, Marie Claire Matip, and María Nsué Angüe. Many of the introductions and forwards to the books I was able to access referred to this issue as the “empty canon”: while there is an established canon of works by African women authors, they tend to be unreferenced, ignored, and untranslated, creating the illusion of a lack of texts.
But despite all the frustrating online searching, library hold attempts, and bookshelf wanderings, I did in fact manage to put a fantastic list of book recommendations together. Here, I have given you 12 books in translation that hail from Central Africa.
Please note that while I took great care to list content warnings where I could, sometimes things fall through the cracks. Please do additional research on the recommended titles if needed.
Awu’s Story by Justine Mintsa, Translated from French by Cheryl Toman
In a small village of Gabon, the driven, loving Awu marries Obame Afane, the local schoolteacher, after his first wife is unable to grant him any children. In this short but epic novel, Mintsa digs into the toxic, hypocritical sexism that permeates Awu’s world, populating a complex and fascinating cast of female characters, mothers, and friendships. She refuses the binary of pitting tradition and progress against one another, showing how both, on their own, can bring heartbreak. It is a beautifully written book that feels much longer (in a good way!) than its 111 pages, and the introduction by the translator and forward by Thérèse Kuoh-Moukoury allow readers to dig deep into the fabric of the text.
Content warnings for infertility, sex shaming, torture, sexual assault and coercion, and colorism.
Black Moses by Alan Mabanckou, Translated from French by Helen Stevenson
Mabanckou is one of the most prolific contemporary writers of Francophone African literature. In his novel, young Moses grows up at an orphanage on the edge of Pointe-Noire, as a revolution changes the world outside. In a thread of absurd authoritarian figures and the long life stories that people find themselves sharing with young Moses, he learns of the injustice and sadness packed behind the People’s Republic of Congo’s stories. And he begins to wonder if there’s justice to be found. This tragicomic is compelling and strange, a boy growing up in the 1970s who is trying to find out if he can serve some sort of justice after all.
Content warnings for ethnicity-based prejudice, infanticide, colorism, grooming, rape, necrophilia, animal cruelty, deportation, and use of the R-slur.
La Bastarda by Trifonia Melibea Obono, Translated from Spanish by Lawrence Schimel
La Bastarda features Okomo, a teen girl struggling under the weight of Fang cultural norms. When drawn into a gang of “indecent” girls, she stumbles on to a world of queerness, nonconformity, and acceptance — a world that includes her “man-woman” uncle Marcelo. This short read is the first novel by an Equatorial Guinean woman to be translated into English — but because this fantastic novel is queer, it is actually banned in Equatorial Guinea. Obono, a bisexual journalist, academic, political scientist, and queer activist, has written another book that I wish I could include here but that is not available in translation: Yo No Quería Ser Madre: Vidas Forzadas de Mujeres Fuera de la Norma, in which she interviews 30 women from her country, the majority of whom are gay or gender-nonconforming, about their experiences.
Content warnings for sexual assault, homophobia, and corrective rape.
Tram 83 by Fiston Mwanza Mujila, Translated from French by Roland Glasser
A writer named Lucien, fleeing violent censorship, arrives in this African city in secession from its country, ready to find refuge. But the place is not what he expected, and he finds that his childhood friend and new roommate, Requiem, isn’t what he expected either — he’s become a respected gangster in the city, swindling others to survive. Tram 83 is a club that is a cacophony of noise, the center of this city, a lawless place where children are exploited for prostitution, music plays, and fights break out, where the miners come to forget their troubles after long days of trying to find big payloads.
Content warnings for rape, sexual assault of minors, blackmail, false accusations, suicide mentions, violence.
Essential Encounters by Thérèse Kuoh-Moukoury, Translated from French by Cheryl Toman
This 1969 novel is considered a crucial text in the “empty canon,” but the book by Francophone author Kouh-Moukoury of Cameroon was not translated into English until 2002. It features a woman struggling with infertility, and how it tears her marriage apart — their struggles expose all kinds of problems in the changing landscape of Cameroon, from the way women are shamed for being unable to produce children, to issues of polygamy, interracial relationships and ethnic groups, sexism, and other social issues, all through the lens of this one couple.
Content warnings for infertility and prejudice against infertile women.
Transparent City by Ondjaki, Translated from Portuguese by Stephen Henighan
An epic cast of characters populates the Luanda apartment block at the center of this novel — from Odonato, who appears to be turning transparent, to the Mailman, always sending letters to government officials to try and get a motorized vehicle, to the Seashell Seller, all living in their world of corruption and money changing hands. It’s a poetic, chaotic web of a book, hilarious and touching, written in a compelling run-on narrative, flowing and sensory. It has a wide scope and won’t be for the faint of heart, but those willing to take the leap will happily swim through the rushing current of this strange, dark comedy, with its tender characters and bizarre tales.
Content warnings for drug addiction, anti-Asian sentiment, animal cruelty, homophobic language, shooting, violence.
Dark Heart of the Night by Léonora Miano, Translated from French by Tamsin Black
Ayané returns to her town after years of studying abroad, in order to visit her dying mother. When a militia forces villagers into a horrific ceremony, she becomes a witness. It is a compelling, dark novel about fear, complicity, and how larger structures normalize violence — about trauma, silence, and what people will do in order to survive. The scars of imperialism pit villagers against one another, and force Ayané into a toxic internalized racism, judging the silence of the villagers through her own privileged lens of having been away and apart from their way of life.
*Readers should skip the introduction by Terese Svoboda if their edition includes it, as the author is firmly opposed to its conclusions and does not consider it at all representative of her text.
Content warnings for stillbirth, racism, imperialism, rape, body horror, suicide, violence, cannibalism.
Johnny Mad Dog by Emmanuel Dongala, Translated from French by Maria Louise Ascher
Lao is a young woman who wants to become an engineer, but today she is preoccupied with survival: pushing her mother in a wheelbarrow, carrying their valuables in her pagne, and keeping an eye on her little brother as they flee from an incoming clash of military forces. Meanwhile, Matiti Mabé is a fighter working to help his side win. The book is a dark and painful satire of war, of its absurdity, of the thoughtlessness and blindness of violence and the posturing of power, of the so-often performative actions of journalists, foreign nationals, and organizations like the Red Cross.
Content warnings for torture, shooting, violence, graphically depicted rape, use of the R-slur.
Co-Wives, Co-Widows by Adrienne Yabouza, Translated from French by Rachael McGill
This witty novella is about two widows, Ndongo Passy and Grekpoubou, who find themselves fighting over what’s important to them after their husband dies unexpectedly — even though their dilemma is serious, Yabouza’s dry humor makes the book an entertaining book that U.S. readers will be thrilled to find finally available in English. McGill’s translation won an English PEN translation award in 2019, although the book can still be hard to track down. Yabouza herself is self-taught — she was born in Central African Republic, found asylum in France with her five children during the civil war, and later returned to the country of her birth. She writes fiction in Sango, Yakoma, Lingala, and French.
A General Theory of Oblivion by José Eduardo Agualusa, Translated from Portuguese by Daniel Hahn
An agoraphobic woman named Ludo moves to the city of Luanda with her sister and brother-in-law. When they disappear in the midst of fighting, she walls herself into her apartment, forging a careful existence for herself and her dog Phantom. It’s a poetic, compelling novel that dips into a variety of stories to combine for a series of coincidences, a vaguely surreal tale that tells a small history of the city. It’s a beautiful collage, Ludo piecing together stories from her terrace, the reader and narration filling in the rest, all of it eventually coming together. Agualusa also has The Book of Chameleons available in translation.
Content warnings for agoraphobia, trauma and PTSD, rape and shame, violence, death, animal death.
Mr. Fix It by Richard Ali A Mutu, Translated from Lingala by Bienvenu Sene Mongaba
Ebamba (whose name means “mender,” hence the title) is a hell of a frustrating protagonist. The nearly 40-year-old man living in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is trying to scrounge up the money to fulfill the ambitious dowry demanded by his fiancé’s family. But it’s awfully hard to do so when he keeps being manipulated into tough situations, and can’t seem to get a job. The star of the show — other than your embarrassed sympathy for Ebamba as he stumbles from mishap to mishap — is the city of Kinshasa and its music. It is the first novel to be translated into English from Lingala, a Bantu language used by more than 8 million people.
Content warnings for homophobia, suicide, and sexual harassment, coercion, and assault.
The Fury and Cries of Women by Angèle Rawiri, Translated from French by Sara Hanaburgh
Emilienne’s marriage is falling apart. She’s a career-oriented woman who makes more than her husband; they married despite parental opposition. Now, she’s dealing with multiple miscarriages, a hateful mother-in-law, and an adulterous husband; then her only daughter, Rékia, is unexpectedly murdered. Emilienne is a disobedient woman, and she at once tries to refuse the sexist pressures imposed on her, and desperately wants motherhood and to keep her marriage together at all costs. This book explores queerness, internalized sexism, and the struggle to have children. Rawiri is considered the first novelist of any gender from the country of Gabon, and this is the only one of her novels I could track down in English translation.
Content warnings for fatphobia, infertility and prejudice against infertile women, tribalism, miscarriage depiction, child’s death, AIDS fear, disordered eating, alcoholism, homophobia.
Want more books in translation content? I have lists for you of books in translation from Catalonia, Argentina, France, and Mexico. If you have recommendations or requests for future lists of books in translation, or if you want me to know about a book I might have missed, let me know on Twitter.
Lydia Davis learned German after being plopped into a classroom in Graz, Austria, at the age of 7. Her immersion began at home with breakfast: If she woke early, she received Schokolade mit Schlag (hot chocolate with whipped cream), and if she slept late she got Schokolade ohne Schlag (no whipped cream). After moving back to the United States not long after, she studied French, Latin and Italian. A lifetime of work as a translator (and novelist and short story writer and essayist) has followed.
Her new book, “Essays Two,” is organized around translation. As Davis points out in a preface, the book is more focused in its material than was her previous collection, “Essays One.” With “Two,” it helps to have a pre-existing interest in translation, or at least a general curiosity about language, whereas to enjoy the earlier collection you needed only a pre-existing interest in “stuff.” But whatever the topic, Davis is always superb company: erudite, adventurous, surprising.
In addition to translating Proust and Flaubert, she has tackled “books of all degrees of excellence and nonexcellence, of interest and no interest” — among them a sentimental biography of Marie Curie, art catalogs, travel essays and histories of China. Whatever the source, Davis finds innumerable joys in its conversion. The first essay here enumerates 21 of these pleasures. Translation, she notes, puts a person in intimate communion with an author, removes the anxiety of invention that attends most writing work and presents eternal (but often solvable) riddles. It also offers a form of hard-core armchair travel: To puzzle through “Madame Bovary” is to shoot through a wormhole from America of the 21st century into France of the 19th.
In an essay about translating Proust’s letters, Davis voyages to the apartment where he wrote much of “In Search of Lost Time.” The apartment has not been maintained as Proust left it, with his furniture and artifacts intact, but has instead become the location of a bank. Davis receives a tour of the writer’s former apartment from an employee who occasionally has to run off and deal with banking questions. Client meetings are held in Proust’s bedroom, and the bank’s waiting room is where the writer once warehoused an unruly pile of inherited possessions. “An imaginative financier with a little information might be haunted, sitting next to the lone potted plant, by the lingering ghostly presence of a crowded accumulation of heavy fin de siècle furniture and bric-a-brac, imbued with Proust’s personal associations,” Davis writes.
Although she learned German by immersion, Davis’s preferred method of language acquisition is quite different, and, to an outside observer, demonically challenging: She finds a book published in a language that she does not fully or even partially understand and then tries to figure out what it means.
Lydia DavisTheo Cote
To improve her Spanish, she digs into a copy of “Las Aventuras de Tom Sawyer.” In some cases the decryption proves easy. Words like “plan” are the same in English and Spanish. In other cases she inductively reasons the meaning of a word after noticing it in different contexts. Hoja initially stumps her when it pops up in the phrase hoja de papel — “hoja of paper.” Later in the book, it occurs in the context of a tree. Finally, Huck wraps a dry hoja around something to make a cigarette, and Davis realizes that only one meaning would work as well with paper as with a tree or a cigarette: “leaf.” Of course, it would be possible to solve the hoja enigma in two seconds by plugging the word into Google, but that would destroy the fun.
Norwegian is a tougher case. For this, Davis selects a perversely difficult family saga by the writer Dag Solstad. At 426 pages, the novel consists of “almost unbroken blocks, with no chapters and few paragraph breaks.” Davis reads at a snail’s speed with a sharp pencil in hand, scribbling lists of vocabulary. The word sarkastisk (sarcastic) provides her with a trick for unlocking others: If she mentally replaces the k’s with c’s, Davis finds, certain foreign words become more easily deciphered: kusine is now legible as “cousin,” and kom as “come.”
Trying to learn a language from scratch by reading a book is like trying to write a complicated cake recipe by sitting and staring at the finished cake for several hundred hours. Is it the most efficient form of pedagogy? No, but Davis extracts endless thrills from the painstaking process. Her essays do a beautiful job of transmitting that satisfaction to the reader, although I was occasionally tempted to exercise my skimming muscles in places where she dove deep into the weeds. Skimming, however, would be the wrong move in a book that contains an incredible amount of life-enhancing morsels, such as the fact that the sound of a sneeze in Norwegian is spelled atsjoo.
In a piece about the French city of Arles, we learn that Arles not only receives the icy northwesterly mistral wind that is rumored to drive people insane, but that there are old diagrams called “wind roses” that include up to 32 named winds, each blowing from a specific direction. Unless you are a person whose activities heavily involve wind — mariner, surfer, kite enthusiast — it is unlikely that you will have considered such nuances of air movement in your daily life. “Never too soon to start!” you might think, considering whether you might be able to chart a wind rose tailored to your own neighborhood.
Davis’s essays are packed with these windows of opportunity to think more deeply — or at all — about many subjects. Others include paving stones, Gascon folk tales, parataxis, punctuation, cognates, medieval architecture and sheepdogs.
I enjoyed the book’s plenitude so much that I wasn’t distracted by its squat physical shape, which is adorable to hold but designed in such a way that the book tries to flip itself shut as you read. No amount of violent spine-cracking would break the object’s resistance, and around Page 300 I turned a corner and became charmed by its antagonistic construction. I will read you and you will like it, I warned my copy of “Essays Two.” And lo, I liked it, too.
James P. Allison, PhD, discusses his research on reverse translation in cancer.
James P. Allison, PhD, chair, Immunology, executive director, Immunotherapy Platform, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and a recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, discusses his research on reverse translation in cancer.
Reverse translation, which is largely clinical trial–based, involves collecting specimens from patients on trials and observing the mechanisms for insight into new combination therapies, according to Allison. Previous research has demonstrated the components of a good signal, including T cells, myeloid cells, and fibroblasts, and this research aims to dissect that further, Allison adds.
Once the critical observations have been made with the samples in the laboratory, mouse experiments are used to test hypotheses before the process is repeated with an iteration of change, Allison continues. Progress has been made with this method, particularly in genitourinary cancers, Allison says. This strategy is also being examined in pancreatic cancer and glioblastoma multiforme with the goal of making therapies work better, Allison concludes.
Washington (AFP) – The American dictionary of reference Merriam-Webster on Monday revealed "vaccine" to be its word of the year for 2021, reflecting both the hopes and deep divisions sparked by vaccination as the world wrestled with year two of the Covid-19 pandemic.
"The word vaccine was about much more than medicine in 2021," the dictionary -- which based its decision on surging interest in the term's definition -- said in a post on its website.
"For many, the word symbolized a possible return to the lives we led before the pandemic. But it was also at the center of debates about personal choice, political affiliation, professional regulations, school safety, healthcare inequality, and so much more."
Merriam-Webster said the development of messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines required it to expand its definition of the word "vaccine," because the technology triggers an immune response by telling human cells to create antigens, versus classic vaccines, which inject a neutralized form of a virus or antigens.
The word "vaccine" saw a 601 percent increase in definition lookups over the year, compared to 2020.
But "the prominence of the word vaccine in our lives... becomes even more starkly clear when we compare 2021 to 2019, a period in which lookups for the word increased 1048%," Merriam-Webster said.
Vaccines are back in the spotlight once again after the discovery of a new Covid-19 variant, prompting renewed appeals for people in the developed world to get vaccinated or boosted against the virus -- and for vaccines to be made more widely available across the developing world.
The World Health Organization has listed the Omicron strain as a "variant of concern," and countries around the world are now restricting travel from southern Africa, where the new strain was first detected, and taking other new precautions.
In the United States, top government scientist Anthony Fauci on Monday urged everyone eligible to get a Covid-19 vaccine to help protect against severe disease.
"A variant like this, although there's a lot we don't know about it, one thing we do know is that vaccinated people do much, much better than unvaccinated people," he said. "I would strongly suggest you get boosted now."
“In the prologue of the [first Spanish] dictionary, there's this extended metaphor about when you open the dictionary, it's like you're entering this cave,” Boyle said. “I’ve done a lot of thinking about the project of making that dictionary, and also all of the kinds of definitions that it contains, which are just fabulously poetic and kind of surprising and counter a lot of our modern ideas about what it means to create these collections.”
Both professors shared their curiosity about the future of the dictionary, as well as the evolution of national culture through vocabulary.
“You have Urban Dictionary and all this other pseudo-dictionaries that are actually as used as many of the real dictionaries are—a lot of people go to Urban Dictionary all the time,” said Stavans. “Urban Dictionary is a democratic dictionary: for the people, by the people. There will come a time when no one will have objects, because the dictionary is a web page.”
“[With an online dictionary,] you don't have to page through the actual volume; you don't need to worry about alphabetical order—and there's a kind of efficiency to that, and we can all appreciate it,” Boyle added. “But, then, we may be nostalgic for the object of the dictionary and what it means to hold it.”
NEW YORK (AP) — With an expanded definition to reflect the times, Merriam-Webster has declared an omnipresent truth as its 2021 word of the year: vaccine.
“This was a word that was extremely high in our data every single day in 2021,” Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor-at-large, told The Associated Press ahead of Monday’s announcement.
“It really represents two different stories. One is the science story, which is this remarkable speed with which the vaccines were developed. But there’s also the debates regarding policy, politics and political affiliation. It’s one word that carries these two huge stories,” he said.
WATCH: How the COVAX vaccine program is faring, and what challenges developing nations still face
The selection follows “vax” as word of the year from the folks who publish the Oxford English Dictionary. And it comes after Merriam-Webster chose “pandemic” as tops in lookups last year on its online site.
“The pandemic was the gun going off and now we have the aftereffects,” Sokolowski said.
At Merriam-Webster, lookups for “vaccine” increased 601% over 2020, when the first U.S. shot was administered in New York in December after quick development, and months of speculation and discussion over efficacy. The world’s first jab occurred earlier that month in the UK.
Compared to 2019, when there was little urgency or chatter about vaccines, Merriam-Webster logged an increase of 1,048% in lookups this year. Debates over inequitable distribution, vaccine mandates and boosters kept interest high, Sokolowski said. So did vaccine hesitancy and friction over vaccine passports.
The word “vaccine” wasn’t birthed in a day, or due to a single pandemic. The first known use stretches back to 1882 but references pop up earlier related to fluid from cowpox pustules used in inoculations, Sokolowski said.
It was borrowed from the New Latin “vaccina,” which goes back to Latin’s feminine “vaccinus,” meaning “of or from a cow.” The Latin for cow is “vacca,” a word that might be akin to the Sanskrit “vasa,” according to Merriam-Webster.
Inoculation, on the other hand, dates to 1714, in one sense referring to the act of injecting an “inoculum.”
Earlier this year, Merriam-Webster added to its online entry for “vaccine” to cover all the talk of mRNA vaccines, or messenger vaccines such as those for COVID-19 developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.
While other dictionary companies choose words of the year by committee, Merriam-Webster bases its selection on lookup data, paying close attention to spikes and, more recently, year-over-year increases in searches after weeding out evergreens. The company has been declaring a word of the year since 2008. Among its runners-up in the word biography of 2021:
INSURRECTION: Interest was driven by the deadly Jan. 6 siege on the U.S. Capitol. Arrests continue, as do congressional hearings over the attack by supporters of President Donald Trump. Some of Trump’s allies have resisted subpoenas, including Steve Bannon.
Searches for the word increased by 61,000% over 2020, Sokolowksi said.
INFRASTRUCTURE: President Joe Biden was able to deliver what Trump often spoke of but never achieved: A bipartisan infrastructure bill signed into law. When Biden proposed help with broadband access, eldercare and preschool, conversation changed from not only roads and bridges but “figurative infrastructure,” Sokolowski said.
“Many people asked, what is infrastructure if it’s not made out of steel or concrete? Infrastructure, in Latin, means underneath the structure,” he said.
PERSEVERANCE: It’s the name of NASA’s latest Mars rover. It landed Feb. 18, 2021. “Perseverance is the most sophisticated rover NASA has ever sent to the Red Planet, with a name that embodies NASA’s passion, and our nation’s capability, to take on and overcome challenges,” the space agency said.
The name was thought up by Alexander Mather, a 14-year-old seventh-grader at Lake Braddock Secondary School in Burke, Virginia. He participated in an essay contest organized by NASA. He was one of 28,000 K-12 students to submit entries.
NOMAD: The word had its moment with the 2020 release of the film “Nomadland.” It went on to win three Oscars in April 2021, including best picture, director (Chloé Zhao) and actress (Frances McDormand). Zhao became the first woman of color to win best director.
The AP’s film writer Jake Coyle called the indie success “a plain-spoken meditation on solitude, grief and grit. He wrote that it “struck a chord in a pandemic-ravaged year. It made for an unlikely Oscar champ: A film about people who gravitate to the margins took center stage.”
Other words in Merriam-Webster’s Top 10: Cicada (we had an invasion), guardian (the Cleveland Indians became the Cleveland Guardians), meta (the lofty new name of Facebook’s parent company), cisgender (a gender identity that corresponds to one’s sex assigned at birth), woke (charged with politics and political correctness) and murraya (a tropical tree and the word that won the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee for 14-year-old Zaila Avant-garde).
TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--EISYS, inc. has launched a new service, Translators Unite, that allows anyone to translate privately-made manga with permission from the author.
With Translators Unite, translators who have registered to the service can translate works on the web.
The proceeds from the sales of translated works will be distributed to the authors and translators.
As of November 9, recruitment for translators who can translate Japanese manga into English, Chinese (traditional and simplified), and Korean has begun.
DLsite is one of Japan's largest services for 2D content, launched in 1996. More than 440 thousand manga, indie games, voice dramas, ASMR works, and more are available digitally through the site. DLsite has over 7 million registered members.
2D content from Japan is beloved by fans all over the world, and 1.23 million of our users are international (users who use a language other than Japanese on a daily basis). Our amount of users increases by the tens of thousands every month, and that number is expected to increase in the future.
Translators Unite was created to meet the ever-increasing needs of our international users, and to provide a platform for enthusiastic fans who want to share what they love and support their favorite creators.
Recruitment has begun for translators who can translate Japanese manga to English, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), and Korean.
Special software is not required for the translation and typesetting process, which can be done easily online.
The proceeds from the sales of the translated work will be distributed to both the author and the translator.
In addition, translators can choose to work for free as a volunteer and not receive proceeds.
Over 3,000 works are already waiting to be translated.
Through Translators Unite, DLsite aims to curb the spread of pirated works and create a world where authors, translators, and everyone who enjoys their work can be happier.
If you are interested in translating exciting Japanese manga and more, please check out the dedicated website.
Katsuaki Tsuji, EISYS, inc. International Section Manager
“We want to create a world where anyone can read works from all over the world in many different languages.
That is why we are working on this project.
Translators Unite has attracted a lot of attention from Japanese creators, and in the first 30 days of releasing the service, we have received permission to translate over 3,000 works.
With Translators Unite, we aim to create a world where creators, translators, and readers can all be happy!
We thank you for your continued cooperation.”
EISYS, inc. https://ift.tt/3pbxAoe
Representative Manager: Mr. Kousaku Akashi
Address: 300-12F, Kandaneribeicho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo,101-0022 Japan
Established 1994.
EISYS, inc. is involved in multiple online services and businesses related to 2D content, including DLsite, one of Japan's largest download shops.
TOKYO, November 29, 2021--(BUSINESS WIRE)--EISYS, inc. has launched a new service, Translators Unite, that allows anyone to translate privately-made manga with permission from the author.
With Translators Unite, translators who have registered to the service can translate works on the web.
The proceeds from the sales of translated works will be distributed to the authors and translators.
As of November 9, recruitment for translators who can translate Japanese manga into English, Chinese (traditional and simplified), and Korean has begun.
DLsite is one of Japan's largest services for 2D content, launched in 1996. More than 440 thousand manga, indie games, voice dramas, ASMR works, and more are available digitally through the site. DLsite has over 7 million registered members.
2D content from Japan is beloved by fans all over the world, and 1.23 million of our users are international (users who use a language other than Japanese on a daily basis). Our amount of users increases by the tens of thousands every month, and that number is expected to increase in the future.
Translators Unite was created to meet the ever-increasing needs of our international users, and to provide a platform for enthusiastic fans who want to share what they love and support their favorite creators.
Recruitment has begun for translators who can translate Japanese manga to English, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), and Korean.
Special software is not required for the translation and typesetting process, which can be done easily online.
The proceeds from the sales of the translated work will be distributed to both the author and the translator.
In addition, translators can choose to work for free as a volunteer and not receive proceeds.
Over 3,000 works are already waiting to be translated.
Through Translators Unite, DLsite aims to curb the spread of pirated works and create a world where authors, translators, and everyone who enjoys their work can be happier.
If you are interested in translating exciting Japanese manga and more, please check out the dedicated website.
Katsuaki Tsuji, EISYS, inc. International Section Manager
"We want to create a world where anyone can read works from all over the world in many different languages.
That is why we are working on this project.
Translators Unite has attracted a lot of attention from Japanese creators, and in the first 30 days of releasing the service, we have received permission to translate over 3,000 works.
With Translators Unite, we aim to create a world where creators, translators, and readers can all be happy!
We thank you for your continued cooperation."
EISYS, inc. https://ift.tt/3pbxAoe
Representative Manager: Mr. Kousaku Akashi
Address: 300-12F, Kandaneribeicho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo,101-0022 Japan
Established 1994.
EISYS, inc. is involved in multiple online services and businesses related to 2D content, including DLsite, one of Japan's largest download shops.
View source version on businesswire.com:https://ift.tt/32AFBLT
Contacts
Yuko Minatani
EISYS, inc.
+81-3-5829-4613
international_pr@eisys.co.jp
Eight Texans rewrote the Bible, but in a good way.
The New Revised Standard Version, one of the most popular translations of the Bible ever published, got an update recently. The NRSVUE (updated edition) was released to publishers Nov. 16, according to Religion News Service. Print editions should start hitting shelves next year.
The NRSV is curated by Friendship Press, a subsidiary of the National Council of Churches, which includes dozens of denominations representing 30 million church members.
Bible translations are typically done by committees of scholars with expertise in ancient languages. This update was conducted by seven general editors and 56 book editors over a span of two years, according to the Friendship Press website.
One of those scholars was Deirdre Fulton, associate professor of Hebrew Bible at Baylor University. Fulton is an expert on the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. She has written extensively on those works and is currently working on a commentary. She said it was “just an amazing experience” to work on the update, both because she enjoys working with ancient texts but also because of the importance of her task.
“You just don’t take it lightly,” she said.
Throughout history, new Bible translations have been fairly rare, but they exploded in the 20th century. Now, the popular YouVersion smart phone app includes 67 English translations. But updates to a major version don’t happen often. These are translations of sacred texts, after all. Not iPhones. The NRSV arrived in 1989 as an update to the Revised Standard Version which was published in 1946.
The NRSVUE was created with consideration for “modern sensibilities” that identify people less by their circumstances. For instance, “slave woman” is now rendered “enslaved woman.” And “demoniacs, epileptics and paralytics,” now reads “people possessed by demons or having epilepsy or afflicted with paralysis.” It is also informed by recent scholarship and the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Fulton told us the process for proposing updates was stringent. To suggest the change of a single word, she would write a multipage argument using many scholarly sources. And many of those arguments were rejected by the project’s editorial committee.
Eight of the scholars who worked on this update are Texans, representing Baylor, Southern Methodist University, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Rice University, Texas Christian University and Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.
“We have amazing biblical scholars in Texas,” Fulton said. “The I-35 corridor is just awesome.”
If you’re looking for a flashy, headline-grabbing bunch, scholars in ancient languages are not a good place to start. But we’re glad Texas scholars are among those doing this sensitive and important work that will impact generations to come.
Image Description: a number of dictionaries on a book shelf.
ATIK:see ‘Park End’
Brookes:the ones you swipe left on on dating apps.
“Brookes not books / 6’1 and that’s 2 separate measurements xx 😉”
Crewdate:only if a courageous ally orchestrates a highly targeted ABC will the prospective romantic walk away with an actual date from this; the majority will leave the cheap curry house of choice £15 out of pocket and with nothing to show for it except extreme inebriation. (see also: ‘daylight robbery’)
Drama:
Student theatre; most students will end up attending some slightly strange play in the BT Studio that a close/unknown friend has dragged them along to.
Targeted bitching on Oxfess; irrelevant.
Essays:reasons to moan/complain. (see also: ‘problem sheets’)
Facebook: sadly the app to which all Oxford students must resign their souls if they want to actually get involved with university events. Jamie’s proposed evacuation to Discord will only happen if the gaming community becomes more prominent within the student body; the existence of a dedicated ‘Gaming section’ within this very paper is misleading in this regard.
G&D’s:a conspiracy invented by the University to get students addicted to ice cream in Freshers’ Week.
Hacks:
People who are way too invested in student politics/societies
Your future Prime Ministers, unfortunately
I:the nominative singular pronoun, used by a speaker in referring to himself or herself.
JCR:democratic representatives of the undergraduate student body; a committee of harmonious concord where no drama ever happens and everyone definitely does their jobs.
Kebab vans:an Oxford addiction. (see also ‘Hassan’s Tesla’)
Library:favoured location for procrastination and nursing hangovers; occasionally used for work.
Material Science:no definition available; meaning and purpose of degree still unknown.
Newspaper (student):a respected extra-curricular university activity, provided you’re working for the OxStu; its writers are known as ‘journalists’ to themselves, and ‘try-hards’ by others.
Oxford Union, the:you already know what this is.
“Did you vote in the Union elections this week?”
“What, you mean the Student Union? The SU?”
“… We have an SU?”
Park End:see ‘ATIK’
Q:you try and think of something that’s both Oxford-related and mildly amusing that starts with Q. I’ll wait.
Rowing: a cult.
Student political society, any: Something to avoid, unless betrayal, intrigue, and incurring the general hostility of the University at large interests you. (see also: ‘Christ Church’)
Tescalator:a fun novelty, until it isn’t.
“Oh God, I had the most awkward encounter today. I saw my Tinder match on the Tescalator.”
University of Oxford, the:the best university in the world, according The Guardian, although looking around at the caliber of some of your peers this is often difficult to believe.
Varsity Club, the: can’t fill the nightlife hole left by Fever Fridays, no matter how hard it tries.
Wolfson College: ???? (see also ‘Kellogg College’, ‘St Cross College’, ‘Nuffield College’)
eXistential crisis:occurs with soothing regularity every 5th Week.
oxYou: despite the stupid name, still the University’s best, by virtue of being its only, newspaper satire section.
“Which section of the OxStu do you write for?”
“OxYou.”
“Wow! You must be really fit and funny…”
Zzzzz:something Oxford students could always use more of; the sound of a lecture hall the morning after Bridge Thursdays.
Image Credit: John Keough via Flickr
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The Pixel 6 is a phone loaded with tons of helpful features, and one of the most impressive is Live Translate. Google had a lot riding on the Pixel 6. After years of lackluster smartphones and respective sales, the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro were supposed to turn things around for the company. They were marketed with flashy designs, impressive spec sheets, and low prices.
Thankfully for Google, all of that hard work paid off. The $599 Pixel 6 is now one of the best smartphone values on the market. It has a great display, excellent cameras, and comes in at a price that undercuts much of its competition. Then there's the Pixel 6 Pro. It adds an excellent telephoto camera and an even brighter/smoother display — all for just $899. Regardless of which model someone buys, the software is one of the main draws to the Pixel 6 series. Both phones ship with Android 12 out of the box, are promised three years of major OS updates, and come with an array of exclusive features not offered by other manufacturers.
Related: Google Pixel 6 Review
One such feature is something called 'Live Translate.' Should you find yourself texting someone who speaks another language, Live Translate makes talking to them considerably easier. You get to text in your own language, but Live Translate automatically converts and sends it in the language spoken by the person on the other end. Additionally, any messages the other person sends are translated to your language. To enable Live Translate on the Pixel 6/6 Pro, do the following: Open the Settings app, tap 'System,' tap 'Live Translate,' and make sure 'Use Live Translate' is toggled on. It should already be enabled by default, but it doesn't hurt to double-check. On the Live Translate page, tap 'Add a language' and select any language you expect to be conversing in. The Pixel 6 can automatically detect a new language and recommend adding it to Live Translate, but languages need to be downloaded locally on the Pixel 6 in order to work.
Tips For Using Live Translate On The Pixel 6
Once Live Translate is set up and ready to go, using the feature is dead simple. When looking at a text conversation in another language, the Pixel 6 automatically shows a translation shortcut. Tap the 'Translate to' shortcut at the top of the screen, and just like that, all messages are translated to your preferred language. Tapping the drop-down arrow shows additional settings for the feature, such as changing the language preferences or temporarily hiding Live Translate. When you go to send a message, the Pixel 6 shows the message you're typing along with the live translation being created in real-time. Compose your message, press send, and it's converted right away. This feature is primarily advertised with Google Messages, but it works with other messaging apps as well. Whether someone's texting in WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, or another messaging app, Live Translate should work exactly the same.
While text translations are the main marketing push for Live Translate, the feature has some other tricks up its sleeve as well — such as translating things in the real world. Let's say someone is in another country and finds a street sign, menu, or another item with text in a foreign language. Live Translate can help in these situations, too. Open the Camera app, tap 'Modes,' tap 'Lens,' tap 'Translate,' hold the camera in front of the foreign text, tap and hold on the text, and tap 'Translate.'
Last but not least, Live Translate can also be used to translate foreign videos and phone calls into your native language. While a video is playing or you're speaking to someone in another language, press the Pixel 6's volume button and tap the Live Caption icon (the circle one below the volume indicator). The Pixel 6 then shows a floating captions window with a live translation of the foreign language into your preferred one. If it's not translating things correctly, tap the caption window, tap the three dots, tap 'Live Caption settings,' and tap 'Languages & translations.'
Next: Quick Tap Or Another Pixel 6 Feature Not Working? Try This
Source: Google
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About The Author
Joe Maring (1051 Articles Published)
Joe has been actively writing and talking about consumer tech since 2012. His biggest passion lies with smartphones, but he's happy to talk your ear off about just about anything with a CPU. He lives in Kalamazoo, MI with his wife, two cats, and pit bull/boxer mix.
China’s “zero-Covid” policy relies heavily on mobile phone apps that display a health code in one of three “traffic light” colors: red, yellow, or green. Users install the apps via WeChat or Alipay, enter their personal, medical and travel information, and the apps generate a color code that informs users whether they are at low risk and can travel freely (green), are at medium risk and need to self-isolate for 7-14 days and be tested (yellow), or are at high risk and need to self-isolate or quarantine for 14 days and be tested (red).
An individual’s health app color code can change over time, depending on his or her travel history, contact history, biometric data, and local conditions. An analysis by The New York Times found that the Alipay health code app was also capable of sending individuals’ locations, city names and identifying code numbers to the police.
The recent expansion of yellow codes based on “spatial-temporal proximity” has turned daily life upside-down, forcing thousands into lockdown simply for being within 800 meters of someone whose health code is anything but green.
In this translated WeChat post, which appears to have leaked from a private account, “Gentle Moss” (温良的青苔) chronicles how all the caution in the world could not save him from a yellow health code, and why standing in line to get tested may be a fate worse than quarantine:
Since returning to Xi’an from Tibet on September 3, the majority of my movement has been limited to a radius of a few hundred meters from my apartment. I go downstairs for mixian, then come right back up and continue writing. On rare occasions I might pick up a package along the way. The farthest I go is to see my dad. That requires a subway ride and a walk. Whenever I go, I maintain social distance and wear a mask, and I always walk all the way down to the first subway car. I do all this out of habit. Plus, my sleep schedule is the opposite of most people’s. When everyone else is working, I’m sleeping, and vice versa, so I’m never out during rush hour.
With all this precaution, I didn’t take a single COVID-19 test for this trip to Tibet. I made it through every inspection point thanks to my green health code, my travel code, and a little sweet-talking. Saying the right things to the inspectors always helps, as well. They just took my temperature and let me go.
I was really careful. During the day, I was on my motorcycle, so of course I didn’t come into contact with anyone, and I put my mask on before going into my hotel at night. They only let me stay after I’d gone through strict COVID-19 protocols.
In spite of all this, a few days ago my health code turned yellow. I also got two text messages, informing me that I had passed through a high-risk area and was now required to quarantine at home. The last sentences really caught my attention: “Your health code will be continuously updated as pandemic conditions change. Please stay tuned for updates.”
I live in Xi’an’s Yanta District, just a few kilometers from Ci’en Temple (Giant Wild Goose Pagoda) where Master Xuanzang translated the Buddhist scriptures. It just so happened that those tourists from Shanghai—the ones who made pandemonium in northwest China—had visited Giant Wild Goose Pagoda. All of a sudden, the people of Yanta became China’s biggest pariahs. All around Xi’an, if you had a Shaanxi license plate, the traffic police would turn you away—“Go wherever you want, just not here.”
Just like having a Hubei plate last year.
This was a huge blow to me personally, because I have to leave my apartment complex in order to eat. But if I did, I wouldn’t be able to get back in. One look at my yellow health code, and security would stop me. There was absolutely nothing I could do.
The texts were sent from a number that was not a cell phone number. I couldn’t text it or call back. After my code turned yellow, all the stuff that used to be there, like the government services portal, neighborhood services, COVID-19 testing site information…they were all gone. There was just a big “code yellow” icon and some generic safety messages.
It didn’t make any sense to me. They should have at least left the testing site portal, no?
At any rate, that barren screen and those stern warnings made me feel like I’d been whisked away to a desert island. Sure, outside my window cars whizzed by and the hustle and bustle of normal life continued. But those people were all green. They could go wherever they pleased. Me? I was stuck. I couldn’t go to the grocery store, restaurants, movie theaters. I couldn’t ride the subway or any public transportation. And if I left my apartment, I wouldn’t even be allowed back in…
But that wasn’t even the biggest issue. My biggest issue was that when I told my family and friends that I wouldn’t be able to get back home if I went to the get-together we had planned for the following Monday, they all begged me to go get tested.
I didn’t want to go.
Of course, my reasoning was based on the fact that I had complete knowledge of my travel history, my strong sense of self-discipline, and the prevention measures I followed. Never in a million years would I allow myself to be running around if I wasn’t feeling well. One of my biggest fears is causing trouble for my family, friends, and the people around me. I never ask favors if I don’t absolutely have to.
Plus, the notice was clear: I was to remain quarantined at home. Fine, then, just let me stay at my office and eat takeout every day…
I believe testing is an important epidemic control measure, a necessary one. But I’m really confused about who should be getting tested and how the tests are done.
The free tests are run in batches of ten. That is, ten throat swabs (or nasal swabs) are put into the same machine, and if anyone in the group tests positive, then all ten people will be notified or tracked down, and measures will be taken.
You can also pay for a test. They cost 60 yuan (in the Chang’an District). The line for those is so long, you can’t see where it begins or ends.
When I asked one of the hundreds of people in line, it turned out that they all had yellow health codes. They had no choice. But everyone was crowded together. What happened to social distancing? If someone in line was positive, how many people would they infect?
That scene filled me with dread. I only spoke with the very last person in line, and only from a few steps away. As soon as I got my answer, I walked around them and left.
Terrifying.
This was a big reason why I didn’t want to get tested. My goal was to prove that I’m healthy, but in the process of attaining that proof, I could get infected.
Since I know that I personally am safe, I intuitively disagree with compulsory, universal testing.
It’s a feeling that comes from deep within. Perhaps this is what people call “civil disobedience.” Of course, I know I’m nothing but a lowly “denizen” (but I’ve always considered myself a citizen, at least a citizen of the world).
This is just my personal feeling. It’s really not a wise thing to write about in today’s China, but the feeling is real.
When friends and family all tell you to follow orders from the authorities, it’s a tremendous amount of pressure. (Only three people in my life supported my decision to follow my own thinking. Thank you to Brother Nian for being the most resolute supporter of them all.)
When compliance becomes a collective choice, when it affects all aspects of your life, and non-compliance introduces an immense amount of real, practical challenges, the dynamic becomes one of great power disparity, like trying to prop up a mountain with a twig.
I know the people in my life just want what’s best for me, honestly. They know I’m a staunch liberalist and a nonconformist, so they worry these problems I’ve brought on myself might break my spirit, that my inner torment will bring me all kinds of real-world strife.
So they plead with me to compromise. “It’s not like they’re asking you to get a shot,” they say. “Just go get it done, and it will be over. And once you do, you’ll be able to go wherever you want. Don’t make yourself suffer like this.” These words are really persuasive.
I actually did plan to give in, at first.
I’m a living, breathing human, after all. I need to eat and drink. I need to see my family and friends, go to the movies, go to the book store—and no one would let me in. I’d have a breakdown. I just can’t imagine how a normal, healthy individual could be labeled a threat by “big data” for nothing more than living in an area that a COVID-positive person once passed through. It’s like the plot from a sci-fi film I saw years ago, now becoming my reality.
I can’t just stop visiting my dad. But if they don’t let me into his complex, what am I going to do, force my way in? Security would kick me right out. The police would put me in a black cell. I can’t beat them. Actually, the moment my health code turned yellow, my ability to go to the supermarket or the theater wasn’t the first thing on my mind. I was worried the authorities would give me a call, then come and take me away.
Reality justified my worries. Yesterday afternoon I read that your code will turn red if you fail to get tested after two notices. You can imagine the consequences.
So, why not go get tested, I thought to myself. Otherwise, then what?
Yesterday morning, I turned on my motorcycle, took out my phone, and clicked the link Brother Dao sent me to find the closest testing site. I let my bike idle for a full three minutes as I paced back and forth in the late autumn morning air, thinking to myself, “You always tell people to stay strong and not give in, to be themselves. How could you let yourself give up so quickly? Is this really as far as you’re able to go?”
After five or six minutes of pacing, I turned the bike off and went back upstairs.
Sitting on my balcony looking out the window, I thought of my friends in the civil service: If I was under this much pressure for this small matter, they’d probably lose their jobs if they made the same decision as me. Their entire futures would be affected. Then what would they do?
In that moment, I really felt for them: You all have it rough. Really. When your survival depends on it, how could you choose anything but surrender?
But even if I got tested, would it really solve all my problems? The way I see it, not necessarily.
A good friend of mine, Youcai (pseudonym), drove to a certain city in the north yesterday. The traffic police saw his Shaanxi license plate and turned him away. Youcai explained that he’d been tested, but the police didn’t accept his test, which was from five days ago. The police told him the test had to be taken within 48 hours (the government standard is 15 days) and told him he had to go back. “Why didn’t you post this information online?” Youcai asked. “I’ve driven hundreds of kilometers.”
The officer was very polite. “Apologies,” he replied, “We just enforce the rules. We don’t control what gets posted online.”
I suspect the reason they don’t post it is because, according to the government, test results are valid for 15 days. But as is often the case when central government regulations get enforced at the local level, those 15 days became 48 hours. This is institutional inertia: as information travels through the bureaucracy, from the center down to the grassroots, recommendations become mandatory.
And for what?
It may seem like they’re just strictly enforcing the rules, but each local government acts like “the railway police—each in charge of one section,” so to speak.
Youcai had no choice but to turn around. On the way back, coming through a certain city to the west, the situation was much different. Not once was he stopped and asked to show his test results.
“If I really was a carrier,” Youcai said, “I could have just waltzed right in, you know?”
So you see, it’s either overreaction, or negligence. This is how things stand.
A few days ago, China Central Television’s official Douyin account reported that as of November 9, South Korea will officially adopt a policy of “living with COVID-19,” meaning they will treat it like the flu or any other infectious disease. An army of idiots mocked South Korea in the comments. It saddened me to see it—over 100 years, and not an inch of progress.
Should we be fighting the pandemic? Of course we should. We actually did a great job of it early on, when physical distancing drove infection numbers down. Of course, there were also a lot of infuriating situations, like barring people’s doors and apartment units. That’s why we had the Gong Lady’s performance.
But as the pandemic evolves around the world, a lot of initially hard-hit countries have begun to normalize. At Euro 2020 this summer, Chinese gazed in awe not only at the matches, but also at the seas of people allowed to gather at such huge events—during a global pandemic. And not only that, after the competition ended, there were no large-scale outbreaks. It proved Zhang Wenhong’s earlier prediction correct:
Our success in the fight against the pandemic has been achieved mainly through non-medical measures, i.e., administrative measures: centralization, isolation, lockdowns. These measures stifle production and distribution. We risk falling behind as other countries achieve success through medical means. Our administrative measures are unsustainable.
The Euros were held without a hitch. And yet here, any time we discover a few sporadic cases, it’s as if the world is coming to an end: people are forced to line up for testing; buses, trains, and airports shut down; roadblocks go up and shops are closed.
Can there be a balance between administrative and medical measures, while also taking people’s livelihoods into account? After all, the reason we are fighting the pandemic in the first place is to be productive and live our lives. But too much suppression adversely affects production, you know how our government works: The top issues an order, and the bottom does all it can to save its own skin. As for the lives of everyday people, how many officials actually care?
For three days, I constantly worried that agents would come and take me away, or that my health code would turn red. Every day, I woke up, anxiously checked my health code status, and settled in to staring at the walls. I wanted to duck out, but I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get back in. And even if I stayed home, I worried about getting taken away. Plus, I saw all the news, like the murder of that entire family in Wuhan yesterday. I couldn’t sleep, and I was exhausted.
But today there’s good news. My health code turned back to green all on its own. Perhaps they were monitoring me and saw I hadn’t left the apartment. Or maybe the situation on the ground has improved. At any rate, I’m free to move around again. Today I made a special trip to the next village over, just to walk around and get some fresh air. I took a video I’ll share with you all here:
Compared to when the pandemic first broke out, the situation has improved some, but we obviously cannot rest on our laurels now. I still support strict prevention measures, especially in crowded areas and transportation hubs. But the important thing is this: Can we face this pandemic the right way? Can local authorities refrain from leveraging this to expand their power over people’s lives? And can private enterprises stop themselves from profiting off the pandemic?
What’s the right thing to do? Take strict precautions, but don’t panic. Don’t live like it’s doomsday. Do what you have to do. If you have to quarantine, quarantine. If you have to do business, do business. If you have to go somewhere, go there. If you have to travel, travel.
If you’re sick, get treated. If you’re not, live your life. It’s as simple as that. OK? [Chinese]
Muv-Luv publisher anchor provided an update about the localization of the visual novel Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse.
Translation has been completed and editing is in progress, confirming the winter release that was initially announced. The lack of delays is certainly a rather rare occurrence for the franchise, so fans have reason to celebrate.
If you’re unfamiliar with Total Eclipse, its story is set in Alaska, in a similar timeframe as Muv-Luv Alternative and it’s one of the most broadly known parts of the multifaceted Muv-Luv universe.
Besides the original light novel series from 2007 and the visual novel that is now coming west (launched in 2013 for PS3 and Xbox 360 and in 2014 for PC), it was the subject of the first Muv-Luv anime series, aired in 2012.
You can find the announcement below. The game will release on Steam.
Speaking of Muv-Luv, all the visual novels published in English are currently 50% off on Steam until December 1. There has never been a better time to jump into the franchise. A new action game titled Project Mikhail has also just been released in early access, while the Muv-Luv Alternative anime is currently airing.
If you’re interested in the Muv-Luv franchise in general, during the latest event we learned that the original Muv-Luv Trilogy (including Alternative) is coming to iOS and Android. We also got to enjoy the reveal of the official title and new gameplay for Immortal: Muv-Luv Alternative.
For additional information, you should definitely read our interview with the series’ creator Kouki Yoshimune and producer Kazutoshi Matsumura, alongside our semi-recent chat with Kitakuou about Immortal: Muv-Luv Alternative.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Muv-Luv franchise, you can read my extensive article explaining all you need to know to get into one of the best visual novel series of all time.
A number of Chinese netizens complained on Friday night that Google Translate wrongly translates "AIDS" as "Communist Party of China Central Committee," or "AIDS patients" as "Wuhan residents," as some posts of screenshots of the problematic translation showed. Google China later said in an email to the Global Times that it is working on a fix.
An official Sina Weibo account of the Chinese Communist Youth League's branch in East China's Anhui listed some screenshots of Google Translate showing that when a user types "AIDS" in Chinese and uses the English to Chinese translation, the words "CPC Central Committee" in Chinese show up. If the user types in the word "AIDS virus" then the equivalent words for "CPC virus" show up.
The same situation occurs when the user types the word "AIDS patient" in the English to Chinese translating function - the result turns out to be "Wuhan resident" in Chinese.
The Weibo post, which was posted at around 7 pm, attracted more than 2,000 comments within about three hours, with some netizens calling on the US search engine to apologize for such an insult to the CPC and Chinese people.
"We are aware of an issue with Google Translate and are working on a fix," read a statement sent by Google China to the Global Times.
In another updated statement, Google said “the issue is now fixed.”
Google Translate is an automatic translator, using patterns from millions of existing translations to help decide on the best translation for our users, the company continued. “Unfortunately, some of those patterns can lead to incorrect translations. As soon as we were made aware of the issue, we worked quickly to fix it,” the search engine said in an email sent to the Global Times on Friday night.
Google pulled out of the Chinese mainland and moved its servers to Hong Kong in 2010 after it refused to comply with China's regulations to filter search terms. Users on the mainland cannot access google.com.hk either.
Around 10:30 pm, the official account of the Chinese Communist Youth League’s branch in Anhui said Google responded to the issue, which has been fixed. “We hope that the company can learn a lesson from it and enhance the technical management and netizens could take a rational attitude. An insult on Chinese people can’t be tolerated,” the youth league’s branch said.
Of all the things that Indigenous culture is rich in, apart from the universally treasured area of visual art, language holds an honourable place. There are a veritable kaleidoscope of Indigenous languages – an estimated 250 at the time of colonisation – and they’re not always separated by area.
Northern Australia is a “hotspot” for language diversity. Members of St Matthews Anglican Church at Ngukurr, in southern Arnhem Land, speak seven different languages. The small community of Maningrida in northern Arnhem Land is one of the most linguistically diverse places on earth, with 15 languages spoken by about 2000 people.
One of the reasons for this diversity is that children tend to inherit two or more languages through the kinship system, not only from their parents but also from their grandparents and great-grandparents.
So as much as Indigenous Christians long to have the Bible in their own heart language, two questions have to be asked: How many languages are there? and How many have already been done?
Unfortunately, there’s no straightforward answer to those questions.
While Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Christians may dream of all Indigenous languages having their own Bibles one day, the reality is that this may never be achieved. And the reasons are multi-dimensional.
Interestingly, not only is the work not finished but in some cases, it is just starting! There is a need for more workers to join a project started by Louise Macdonald, the Uniting Church’s Coordinate resource worker, and Rachel Shipp – an Australian Society for Indigenous Languages (AuSIL) worker based in Maningrida. They are collaborating on transcribing a language from Jabiru, a township in Kakadu National Park, that doesn’t even have a name yet!
But even if one could compile a Master List of languages and start ticking them off, these translations refuse to stay ticked. We know this is so from our own experience of modern English Bible translations, which need to be updated every few decades to make them accessible to the younger generations.
“Languages are living things and always changing. Sometimes the change (or loss) is rapid and by the time a translation is complete, the younger people are speaking a different form,” writes Melody Kube in an article called Standing Armies, published by AuSIL, for which she is the Darwin-based publicist.
One example she cites is Warlpiri, a Western Desert language of the Northern Territory, which is one of the largest in Australia by the number of speakers. A Shorter Bible (New Testament plus some Old Testament books) was published in 2001. But 20 years later, that translation is reportedly usable only by people over 50 years old. The younger folk struggle to understand it because they continually innovate in their use of Warlpiri, mixing it with other languages they also speak, forming what has been called light Warlpiri.
Similar stories are heard among Tiwi, Garrwa, Gurindji, and many other communities. In fact, it’s possible that their flexibility to change may have contributed to the survival of Australia’s ancient languages.
When I visited the library in Nungalinya College recently, I was blown away by how many Indigenous languages were represented – maybe 30 or so. But my enthusiasm was tempered when I realised that one of these – Meriam Mir, a Torres Strait Island language – had a single translation dating from 1905! Imagine the changes in usage in the intervening century!
My Bible Society colleague Louise Sherman took a folder from the shelf that contained Bible portions in the Yanyawa and Karrwa (Garrwa) language. As she gingerly peeled the pages apart, the typescript from one page left an imprint on the preceding page, and we realised that this binder hadn’t been opened for very many years. This Bible version urgently needs digitising but it’s a huge job – and who is there to do it?
“Sometimes God is strangely ‘unstrategic’ (in our view), lavishing his love and attention on people groups whose language may be labelled ‘unviable’.” – Melody Kube
But rather than panic that the box of Indigenous Bible translation can never be ticked, Melody contends that Bible translators must avoid trying to measure success in terms of what they leave behind – because it may not outlast them.
“Does that mean we’ve failed? Not at all! We should instead look for results in the fruit that is ready right now, and more importantly, focus on our obedience in the present. We should be willing to serve without understanding what God may do with the big picture. The boxes, and the Master List itself, are up to Him,” she writes.
“Sometimes God is strangely ‘unstrategic’ (in our view), lavishing his love and attention on people groups whose language may be labelled ‘unviable’, or whose population is shrinking, showing again that He is nearer to the broken-hearted, preserving the crushed reed. It is not ours to know what criteria God uses in assigning his servants to the tasks he deems worthy.”
The more fruitful way forward, she suggests, is considering updates and revisions as part of the perpetual process of Bible translation rather than a chore or a criticism of what has been accomplished. In fact, revisions should be welcomed because a Bible translator gets better over time.
(On this note, a revision of Gumatj New Testament – the first New Testament to be published in a Yolngu language in 1995 – is to be launched in a few weeks.)
Melody writes: “David Blackman, who has been working for many years on the Alyawarr Bible translation, comments that by the time someone has translated several books of the Bible, their translations improve, become more readable, and are a better communication of the originals.”
“By the time someone has translated several books of the Bible, their translations improve, become more readable, and are a better communication of the originals.”
In the absence of perfectionism, the best solution is to publish frequently, in small volumes.
“The mini-Bible is a homegrown AuSIL concept. It’s a publication of whatever books of the Bible have been translated, released and made usable to the community, even while translation continues,” writes Melody.
“We can also publish individual books or even smaller portions. What if just one chapter whets a community’s appetite for more? And we can consider more ways to distribute the word of God than only traditional print options.”
The book of Daniel is Pitjantjatjara is a good example. Translators completed this book as part of the Old Testament Translation Project, but rather than wait until the whole Old Testament was ready – which could be 10 to 15 years in the future – the translated book was published as a single volume and distributed across the APY Lands.
Interestingly, the Pitjantjatjara Shorter Bible which was completed in 2002, was revised and reprinted in 2019. Also, the published in 2007 Kriol Bible was significantly revised and published in 2018.
We know that it’s the norm in modern English translations for perpetual revision, with committees continually considering improvements to their versions as English changes along with better translation techniques and greater resources. These are matters to be grateful for as we seek to understand God’s big story from generation to generation.
The situation is obviously different for minority language groups, who may only dream of having the resources available to modern English translations.
“We hope that the Pitjantjatjara team will stay strong, and become the standing army that their translation will need.” – Melody Kube
With the Pitjantjatjara Bible Translation Project set to be the second Australian Aboriginal language group to have a translation of the whole Bible, supporters want to know when the project will reach its goal?
But despite this natural human desire for completion, maybe it’s more edifying to value the work of translation, and the discipleship that goes along with it, rather than just its completion.
“We hope that the Pitjantjatjara team will stay strong, and become the standing army that their translation will need, even after they complete the Old Testament project. In surprisingly little time the ongoing work of revision will begin, prompted by the certainty of language change and the fact that translations can almost always be improved on each pass through,” writes Melody.
It started with earning calls. A tally of transcripts showed that utterances of “supply chain” began hitting new highs in 2020 and swelled to a 10-year peak this quarter—S&P 500 firms logged a record 342 mentions (pdf) between Sept. 15 and Nov. 15—as shipments limped toward Black Friday and Christmas. In recent months, the phrase has figured in an Onion headline, a New Yorker cartoon, and in flurries of Tweets and TikToks from people who have nothing to do with logistics.
If a good supply chain is one you never talk about, as the industry saying goes, in 2021, we’re finding out that a supply chain in crisis gets memed. Chaos in the global supply chain has developed alongside the pandemic and is now reverberating across everyday life, causing shipping delays and shortages from wine bottles to Thanksgiving pies. As the White House put it on Nov. 3, in the first blog post it promises will be a twice a month update on the topic, “’Supply chains,’ a term once reserved for business logistics teams, has now become a household phrase.”
Terms like “supply chain” remain in the realm of jargon when their utility is limited to a small group of people, in this case, logistics professionals, explained Emily Brewster a lexicographer at Merriam-Webster, the dictionary company.
“It stops being jargon, when it has utility beyond that. That’s what we’re seeing with ‘supply chain,'” said Brewster. “We all need to talk about where our cat food is, or why we can’t buy bookshelves or why things are costing so much. And so it ceases to be jargon and moves into the territory of everyday language.”
For actual supply chain people, the experience of becoming embedded in pop culture is novel, to say the least.
Zachary Rogers, an assistant professor of supply chain management at Colorado State University, has been amused by laypeople’s new enthusiasm for his area of study. “When I used to tell people what I do, half the time I could tell they weren’t quite sure what supply chain was,” Rogers said. As a shorthand, he’d invoke Amazon. Now, even his 92-year-old grandmother is hitting him up to chat about supply chain issues.
The bottlenecks of pandemic life
As supply chain awareness became part of everyday life, the discourse has moved from using the term to talk about issues directly attributable to it, like out-of-stock toys and delayed Halloween costumes, to express a deeper vein of frustration among people who have found that, like the supply chain, they too are strained from the relentless, wearying demands of a global pandemic, and not as productive as they used to be.
On Twitter, the supply chain has been blamed for: getting nothing done, disappointed children, an excess of camouflage pajama pants, hungry dogs, insomnia, and everything. There are frantic reports on TikTok and Reddit of bare grocery store shelves. One TikTokker devoted a 7-part series to explaining the supply chain crisis, nestled in a feed made up of makeup tutorials, cat voiceovers and dating advice. In other signs of the phrase’s new centrality in daily life, NPR’s comedy quiz show, Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me spun a three-and-a-half minute bit on the supply chain and The New York Times assigned a reporter to a previously unmanned logistics beat.
In another measure of how relatable the supply chain’s inability to execute the basic tasks of its existence has become, Vanity Fair writer Delia Cai’s supply chain joke hit more than 70,000 likes and 9,000 retweets, then was further memed on Instagram.
Variations on the theme include blaming delays on stuff “being on a ship somewhere.”
Meanwhile, a headline in The Onion pondered a potential consequence of the crisis: “White House Warns Supply Chain Shortages Could Lead Americans To Discover True Meaning Of Christmas.” Over in the New Yorker, a concerned Cookie Monster strolls with a friend in a recent cartoon, asking: “What me want to know is: What are the implications of supply-chain crisis for cookie?”
The dictionary definition of “supply chain”
Last year, the word covid-19 made it into the dictionary at record speed—34 days since the name was announced by the World Health Organization, said Brewster of Merriam-Webster. A slew of other words related to the pandemic followed in its wake, like “PPE” and “patient zero.” As the phase of the pandemic shifted from medical concerns to economic impacts, so did the new words in the dictionary, which included terms related to things like remote work in its most recent release on Nov. 3. Brewster said that Merriam-Webster is now considering “supply chain” for the dictionary’s next release, in about six months.
“The definition is in the works,” Brewster said. “As a rule we do not promise that any particular term is going to get in to the dictionary, but I can tell you that its chances are very good.”
To assess the merit of a new entry into the Merriam-Webster dictionary, its lexicographers look at how a term is being used in the language, combing through sources like newspapers, academic journals and Tweets. While the dictionary has been watching the term “supply chain” since the late 1980s, Brewster said that “because it has not really been a terribly popular word in the language, we’ve considered it self explanatory.” If a reader knew the words “chain” and “supply,” they could pretty much work out what “supply chain” meant, and for a relatively obscure term, that was adequate by the dictionary’s standards.
The extreme dysfunction of 2021 has changed that. As publications with wide readerships began using the term “supply chain” under the assumption that the audience would understand it, it spurred Merriam-Webster to see “supply chain” in a new light. Burnished by chaos and awash in attention, “supply chain” is poised to get its moment in the dictionary, and be anointed, as Brewster put it, as “an established member of the language.”
More importantly, the attention could lead to the structural improvements the system badly needs.
“Having more people thinking about any problem almost always leads to better solutions,” Rogers, the supply chain professor said. “In the end, I believe that the increased attention on how we’re connected to the rest of the globe will help us to make these systems more effective in a way that can benefit people all over the world.”
Business applications training and adoption vendor ClickLearn announced a new partnership with Andovar, a provider of international translation and localization services.
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