Years of efforts to preserve Hoocąk, the language spoken by the Ho-Chunk Nation, have yielded a new online dictionary that gives the public access to thousands of words and phrases recorded from native speakers.
Sarah Volpenhein reports for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the Hoocąk-English dictionary launched last month under a team led by Henning Garvin, who studied linguistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and whose father is a native speaker of Hoocąk. It collects more than 11,000 words and phrases, including recordings from elders, and that number is likely to grow.
Hundreds of years of violent, discriminatory policies by the US government have left many Indigenous languages in jeopardy. Indigenous children were long abused for speaking their languages in school, from the residential school system—a project to forcibly erase the culture of Indigenous tribes by kidnapping children and incarcerating them in boarding schools, where they would be punished for displaying their culture—to the public school system.
With between 50 and 200 native speakers of Hoocąk remaining (according to various estimates), the hope is that the dictionary can serve as a tool for their descendants. “We consider it a gift from all of these people to future generations,” Adrienne Thunder, program manager of the Ho-Chunk Nation’s language division, told Volpenhein. “While we may not have them for a long time into the future, we will have this gift that they left us.”
ST. PAUL, Minn. (CNS) — Holding a wooden flute, Larry Martin stood during a recent Mass and welcomed the congregation to join the responsorial psalm. He began: “Aw ge-chi-twaaa-wen-daa-go-zid, Gi-gi-zhe-ma-ni-doo-mi-nann.”
The language was Ojibwe, and the words translated to “Our God is one who is glorious,” taken from Psalm 19.
Martin, a 79-year-old director emeritus of American Indian Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, worked with another language expert to convert the English to Ojibwe, the traditional language of many of the American Indian Catholics who worship at Gichitwaa Kateri in south Minneapolis, Martin’s parish.
Most of them can’t speak their ancestors’ language, but it’s meaningful to pray in it, he said. “It helps them give voice to their Indian identity,” he said.
Gichitwaa Kateri is home of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis’ Office of Indian Ministry. Since 2018, Martin and fellow parishioner Rick Gresczyk have translated into Ojibwe most of the responsorial psalms used in the church’s three-year Sunday Mass cycle. Their work built on a project they began years earlier to translate popular hymns such as “Ode to Joy,” “Hail, Holy Queen” and “How Can I Keep from Singing?”
Their accomplishments caught the attention of Catholics planning Pope Francis’ visit to Canada this July. At the request of the visit’s organizers, Martin submitted a few hymns for consideration, including “Wezhitooyan Gakina Go” and “Hymn for Kateri Tekakwitha.”
The first, an Ojibwe creation song Martin and Gresczyk composed, was inspired by three sources: an Old English creation hymn, an Ojibwe creation story and a hymn attributed to Pope St. Gregory the Great.
The second hymn was created by Father Jan Michael Joncas, a well-known liturgical composer and recently retired priest of the archdiocese. In 2012, he collaborated with the Gitchitwaa Kateri community to craft a hymn to celebrate the canonization of the parish’s namesake.
Although the hymns he submitted were not ultimately used during the papal visit, Martin thinks that might be partly due to regional difference: The Ojibwe dialect spoken in Canada differs from the dialect Martin and Gresczyk use, he said. He feels it was an honor for the hymns to even be considered.
In addition to translating popular Catholic hymns and psalms, the two men have set to music Ojibwe-language prayers of Bishop Frederic Baraga, the first bishop of Marquette, Michigan.
Like elements of Pope Francis’ Canadian pilgrimage, Martin and Gresczyk’s translation initiative is tied to culture reclamation efforts underway in the U.S. and Canada, in response to the Indian boarding school era, where American Indian and Indigenous children were removed from their homes and sent to government-funded schools, some run by Catholic religious orders and dioceses, where they were often not allowed to speak their native languages or express their cultures.
“The church is responsible for damage to language, so we thought we should do something about bringing it back,” said Martin, who is Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe.
For the translations, Martin credits Gresczyk’s deep knowledge of Ojibwe. Martin doesn’t consider himself fluent, but says he can tweak grammar and align Gresczyk’s translations with the chosen melodies.
Gresczyk now lives in northern Minnesota, so the two mostly collaborate by phone.
Shawn Phillips, director of the archdiocese’s Office of Indian Ministry and pastoral minister at Gichitwaa Kateri, said the translations help parishioners pray and learn more about their culture and heritage. He hopes one day there will be a similar effort to translate prayers into Dakota, so both of the primary Native American cultures in Minnesota would be represented, he said.
The translation effort is important, Phillips said, because “God will speak to them in their own language.”
“That was the Pentecost message,” he said. “It wasn’t that the Gospel be in Greek or in Roman, but … all of these people could understand it. It’s that God cares about us and speaks to us in our own language and knows us intimately.”
– – –
Wiering is editor of The Catholic Spirit, newspaper of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
The Sony Walkman and virtual reality headsets are not just prominent examples of personal technology. In the hands of Paul Roquet, they’re also vehicles for learning more about Japan, the U.S., global technology trends — and ourselves.
Roquet is an associate professor in MIT’s program in Comparative Media Studies/Writing, and his forte is analyzing how new consumer technologies change the way people interact with their environments. His focus in this effort has been Japan, an early adopter of many postwar trends in personal tech.
For instance, in his 2016 book “Ambient Media: Japanese Atmospheres of Self” (University of Minnesota Press), Roquet examines how music, film, and other media have been deployed in Japan to create soothing, relaxing individual atmospheres for people. That gives people a feeling of control, even though their moods are now mediated by the products they consume.
In his 2022 book, “The Immersive Enclosure: Virtual Reality in Japan” (Columbia University Press), Roquet explored the impact of VR technologies on users, understanding these devices as tools for both closing off the outside world and interacting with others in networked settings. Roquet also detailed the cross-cultural trajectories of VR, which in the U.S. emerged out of military and aviation applications, but in Japan has been centered around forms of escapist entertainment.
As Roquet puts it, his work is steadily focused on “the relationship between media technologies and environmental perception, and how this relationship plays out differently in different cultural contexts.”
He adds: “There’s a lot to be gained by trying to think through the same questions in different parts of the world.”
Those different cultures are connected, to be sure: In Japan, for example, the English musician Brian Eno was a significant influence in the understanding of ambient media. The translation of VR technologies from the U.S. to Japan happened, in part, via technologists and innovators with MIT links. Meanwhile, Japan gave the world the Sony Walkman, a sonic enclosure of its own.
As such, Roquet’s work is innovative, pulling together cultural trends across different media and tracing them around the globe, through the history, present, and future of technology. For his research and teaching, Roquet was granted tenure at MIT earlier this year.
Exchange program pays off
Roquet grew up in California, where his family moved around to a few different towns while he was a kid. As a high school student learning Japanese in Davis, he enrolled in an exchange program with Japan, the California-Japan Scholars program, enabling him to see the country up close. It was the first time Roquet had been outside of the U.S., and the trip had a lasting impact.
Roquet kept studying Japanese language and culture while an undergraduate at Pomona College; he earned his BA in 2003, in Asian studies and media studies. Roquet also indulged his growing fascination with atmospheric media by hosting a college radio show featuring often-experimental forms of ambient music. Soon Roquet discovered, to his bemusement, that his show was being played — with unknown effects on customers — at a local car dealership.
Japanese film was still another source of Roquet’s emergent intellectual interests, due to the differences he perceived with mainstream U.S. cinema.
“The storytelling would often function very differently,” Roquet says. “I found myself drawn to films where there was less of an emphasis on plot, and more emphasis on atmosphere and space.”
After college, Roquet won a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship and immediately spent a year on an ambitious research project, investigating what the local soundscape meant to residents across the Asia-Pacific region — including Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, the Cook Islands — as well as Canada.
“It made me aware of how different people’s relationship to the soundscape can be from one place to another, and how history, politics, and culture shape the sensory environment,” Roquet says.
He then earned his MA in 2007 from the University of California at Berkeley, and ultimately his PhD from Berkeley in 2012, with a focus on Japan Studies and a Designated Emphasis in Film Studies. His dissertation formed the basis of his “Ambient Media” book.
Following three years as an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities, at Stanford University, and one as a postdoc in global media at Brown University, Roquet joined the MIT faculty in 2016. He has remained at the Institute since, producing his second book, as well as a range of essays on VR and other forms of environmental media.
Willingness to explore
MIT has been an excellent fit, Roquet says, given his varied interests in the relationship between technology and culture.
“One thing I love about MIT is there’s a real willingness to explore newly emerging ideas and practices, even if they may not be situated in an established disciplinary context yet,” Roquet says. “MIT allows that interdisciplinary conversation to take place because you have this location that ties everything together.”
Roquet has also taught a wide range of undergraduate classes, including introductions to media studies and to Japanese culture; a course on Japanese and Korean cinema; another on Japanese literature and cinema; and a course on digital media in Japan and Korea. This semester he is teaching a new course on critical approaches to immersive media studies.
Of MIT’s undergraduates, Roquet notes, “They have a remarkable range of interests, and this means class discussions shift from year to year in really interesting ways.
Whatever sparks their curiosity, they are always ready to dig deep.”
When it comes to his ongoing research, Roquet is exploring how the increasing use of immersive media works to transform a society’s relationship with the existing physical landscape.
“These kinds of questions are not asked nearly enough,” Roquet says. “There’s a lot of emphasis on what virtual spaces offer to the consumer, but there are always environmental and social impacts created by inserting new layers of mediation between a person and their surrounding world. Not to mention by manufacturing headsets that often become obsolete within a couple years.”
Wherever his work takes him, Roquet will still be engaging in a career-long project of exploring the cultural and historical differences among countries in order to expand our understanding of media and technology.
“I don’t want to make the argument that Japan is radically different from the U.S. These histories are very intertwined, and there’s a lot of back and forth [between the countries],” Roquet says. “But also, when you pay close attention to local contexts you can uncover critical differences in how media technologies are understood and put to use. These can teach us a lot, and challenge our assumptions.”
Law firms that provide services in multiple languages should offer multilingual website content. But is it really possible to achieve a high-quality result with an automated translation service like Google Translate? What is the best strategy for crafting a multilingual website?
Your firm has two basic options when it comes to providing a multilingual online experience: 1) Use an automated translation service that translates on-demand, or 2) Publish a dedicated site (or pages on a site) with static translated content.
In this article, we explain the basics of automated translation, the pros and cons of using Google Translate, and a recommended approach for multilingual law firm websites.
What is automated translation?
Automated translation tools such as Google Translate use machines to translate content in real time with a single click of a button. There is no human touch or manual review involved in automated translation.
By clicking on the embedded website widget, a user can see the existing web content replaced with a live-translated version in their language of choice. However, original formatting doesn’t always carry over and grammar mistakes are common.
Pros of Google Translate
Google Translate can be valuable for both users and law firms. Let’s consider three pros of Google Translate.
1. Google Translate is easy to install and low-cost. The Translation API is very easy to install. Depending on how much traffic your website receives, your Cloud Translation fee could be nominal.
2. Google Translate empowers the user. This tool is not just limited to common languages like English and Spanish. It allows users to pick their own language, which can give you greater reach.
3. Maintenance is minimal. You don’t need to worry about maintaining different versions of your content. Because Google Translation uses exactly what is published on your webpage, you only need to update your English copy—the automated translation takes care of the rest.
Cons of Google Translate
While it’s easy to install and maintain Google Translate, there are some serious drawbacks to using automated translation. Here are three cons of Google Translate.
1. Google’s translations are imperfect—and mistakes can erode a user’s trust. Although Google has gotten much smarter in recent years, its translations are nowhere close to perfect. Without manual review from a fluent speaker, mistakes are guaranteed. Visitors may begin to distrust your website, associating your brand with Google’s translation errors.
2. Translations may give unrealistic expectations. If you don’t have anyone in your office who can speak all 133 of Google’s languages, the widget may give off an inaccurate impression of your firm’s capabilities.
3. SEO may be negatively impacted. This may surprise you, as most people think that Google favors its own tool. However, search engines favor high-quality content that delivers value to users. Acknowledging the shortcomings of automated translation services, leaders from Google have said that because these tools can result in low-quality content, sites that use Google Translate may not rank as well.
Recommended approach for effective multilingual websites
If your top priority is maximizing reach, then Google Translate could help people from all over the world engage with your content—but this approach can only accomplish so much.
The most effective long-term strategy is to create a website with valuable, high-quality, and accurate content to build trust and set clear expectations with your users. For most firms, professionally translated content on dedicated pages is the right solution.
In creating a multilingual website, consider the full user journey. When a visitor submits a web form, will the confirmation message be translated correctly? Do you offer a newsletter in these other languages?
Remember, it’s all about serving your user. You must establish credibility early on, starting with accurate and useful content.
Review and next steps
Google Translate is an affordable automatic translation tool that is easy to install. However, translation mistakes are common. Plus, the widget’s wide range of languages could set up unrealistic expectations for the linguistic capabilities of your team.
All in all, we cannot recommend Google Translate as a tool for creating a multilingual website.
Instead of losing a potential client’s trust due to error-ridden copy generated by automatic translators, it is better to develop web pages in the languages that you can provide service.
Edna Ahgeak Paniattaaq MacLean smiled when her granddaughter Sirroun carried a thick tome with two hands and put it carefully on the table before her.
"I had some young people or teenagers tell me, 'We're trying to learn Inupiaq but it's so heavy!'" linguist and educator MacLean laughed, looking at the Inupiaq dictionary she wrote.
In June, MacLean and two Yup'ik web developers, Christopher Egalaaq Liu and Lonny Alaskuk Strunk, completed an online Inupiaq dictionary and word-building app, available at inupiaqonline.com.
The project is based on MacLean's Inupiaq dictionary and aims to make learning the language in school and at home faster, easier and more accessible, even in rural areas.
"It'll work," MacLean said. "People are excited about it."
The Inupiaq Online website - launched by the Arctic Slope Community Foundation - is the first of its kind for the North Slope dialect of Inupiaq and features a dictionary, a word-building function and an audio library to hear the way words are pronounced.
"It was designed for everyone," Liu said. "We have it so that people can just look up words quickly. We made it so that they can look up the underlying grammatical information if they want to."
So far, about 1,200 unique viewers have visited the website, Liu said. Visitors can look up how to translate a word, see the plural form of the word, change the tense of a verb or add an adjective to a noun.
"The computer has been taught to create new words for the user based on the morphological rules," MacLean said.
This is how it works: A learner might want to say, "I want to eat," and type the word "eat" into the dictionary. The verb "to eat" has nigi as the stem - the part that helps drive the meaning of the phrase. To build out the full phrase, additional words are translated into different phrase components - postbases, endings and suffixes - that are then attached to the stem.
Using the website, a learner can pick a postbase - in this case, "I want to" - then choose the correct case for "I" and see the result as "nigisuktuna," or "I want to eat."
In the same way, by looking up the word "truck," learners can end up with the sentence, "It is a big truck," or "qamutiqpauruq," by adding other elements to the original noun.
"This is just the first stage," MacLean said. "There are over 400 suffixes or postbases, and we've worked only on 10."
Starting as soon as in September, linguists plan to start improving the algorithms for the website to include more complex elements - for example, connective verb phrases for complex sentences - as well as conversational phrases.
"We are planning to make updates to the website and include more sentence types," Liu said, "and also just like, bringing in maybe more dialogue, or conversational-centered speech. ... Over the next year, you can expect to see updates to the website."
For now, learners can use the current version of the website and enjoy the featured artwork created by the late Inupiaq sculptor, silversmith and woodcarver, Ronald Senungetuk.
Inupiaq Online is not the first language project that linguists Liu and Strunk have worked on together. A few years ago, they built a similar website for the Yugtun language and presented it at the 2018 AFN Convention. The website received overwhelmingly positive feedback, especially on the translation function of the website, Liu said.
The decision to build an online tool for Inupiaq followed naturally: Both Yugtun and Inupiaq languages do not have many irregularities; they follow a defined structure, making word- and sentence-building more predictable, Strunk said.
"Learning about the mathematical consistency of the language - all these rules can be formed to create complete words - was very interesting to me," he said. "I could see the there would be applications for more exciting language tools."
To create Inupiaq Online, MacLean, Liu and Strunk met weekly via Zoom. MacLean would look at the website design and give developers feedback. Learning from MacLean's insights was a highlight of the project for Liu.
"She wrote the grammar books. She compiled the dictionary. She's Inupiaq herself and the speaker of the language," he said. "It is incredible because a lot of Native resources, language resources, are often not written by their own people."
In her Utqiagvik house a few steps from the famous whale bone arch, MacLean was cutting muktuk on a foggy afternoon in late June. The 77-year-old linguist lives in Anchorage but regularly visits her home village. This time she came for Nalukataq, to celebrate the whale her brother landed.
Utqiagvik is where MacLean's passion for language took shape.
MacLean grew up at a time when parents were asked to speak English to their children, but her father Joseph Ahgeak refused to follow the rule. In third grade, a particularly strict teacher caught MacLean speaking Inupiaq and punished her.
"I was caught once so she pulled my ear," MacLean said, "and I screamed the heck out of pain."
The young MacLean came home for lunch that day, wearing her hood up. Her mother Maria Ahgeak made her take off her parka before eating, and learned what happened after she saw her daughter's bright red ears.
"She got totally mad," MacLean said. "She put on one of my brothers' parkas ... and stormed across the lagoon. It was frozen so she stormed across the lagoon and ran into my teacher's classroom and grabbed her by the arm. 'I am taking you to the principal's and there, I'm going to pull your ear!'"
MacLean's relationship with her teacher improved after that, and MacLean felt even more passionate about speaking her native language no matter what.
"I was one of the people that was punished for speaking Inupiaq, and I got mad, and my mother got mad," she said. "So we just kind of said, 'OK, we're going to do it anyway.' So I've kept up that interest."
Fluent from the time she was a child, MacLean didn't become literate in Inupiaq until she was in her 20s and worked with her mentor, Michael E. Krauss, a linguist and founder of the Alaska Native Language Center. Then MacLean taught Inupiaq at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and immersed herself in the study of the language.
She wrote two Inupiaq grammar books and published her latest dictionary in 2014 - which took years of work. First, MacLean wrote down every word she knew. When she would run across a word she didn't know, she would call her parents and ask them to explain it to her. And if her parents didn't know that word either, she asked elders, hunters and other longtime Inupiaq speakers.
MacLean's "life's work was to translate the Inupiat language - which had been an oral tradition," - at a time when roughly 5% of Inupiaq speakers are fluent, said Ryan Cope, director of grant programs with the Arctic Slope Community Foundation.
While tools like dictionaries and apps can make learning easier, MacLean said that one of the most effective ways to preserve Inupiaq in the community is to create immersion programs that allow students to study the language on a deeper level and for longer periods of time.
"That's the next step that we need to do," she said. "In the schools, they have Inupiaq language programs, but it's not producing speakers. They are teaching it in segments, and they don't have a true immersion environment for the children, especially the preschoolers, to learn it quickly. The immersion method seems to be the only way that works."
Linguists are continuing to work on Inupiaq Online to make it as useful as possible, Liu said, while keeping in mind that a website can't be a full educational resource for the language.
"You can't really learn everything through an app or through a website," Liu said. "You have to also practice and engage with people."
Alena Naiden writes about communities in the North Slope and Northwest Arctic regions for the Arctic Sounder and ADN. Contact her at anaiden@adn.com.
Many slice-of-life anime are known for centering around niche pastimes and interests, such as shogi in March Comes in Like a Lion, ramen in Ms. Koizumi Loves Ramen Noodles or babysitting in School Babysitters. These series handle topics that may be uninteresting at first glance, yet their stories keep viewers enthralled. While The Great Passage, an anime about compiling a Japanese dictionary, revolves around potentially one of the dullest subjects, its story is truly compelling.
Commonly known by its Japanese title, Fune wo Amu, this 2016 slice-of-life anime follows introverted and awkward Mitsuya Majime as he is recruited to work with the dictionary editing staff in compiling a new dictionary. His love of words and perseverance allow him to flourish in this role, forming strong friendships and finding love along the way. A love letter to the art of words and dictionary making, The Great Passage presents its story with a soft beauty that pricks and warms the hearts of its viewers.
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Perhaps the most captivating aspect of The Great Passage is its intriguing characters. From Majime's clumsy social skills to Nishioka's charisma, each character is well-defined and fleshed out, their personalities establishing a fun dynamic. Viewers easily become invested in the characters, cheering for them both in their efforts to complete the dictionary and in their personal lives. While the characters may encounter setbacks or anxiety, the actual drama is subtle. The series' personalities and situations are not overly exaggerated, allowing for characters that viewers can empathize with. The characters' love of words is also contagious, the poetic contemplations adding further beauty to the series and sparking viewers' curiosity.
Not only will viewers find the characters themselves endearing, but they will also enjoy watching the strong bonds of friendship develop between Majime and the members of the dictionary editing staff. Awkward and lonesome at the beginning of the series, Majime slowly opens up to those he works with over the course of the series, becoming comfortable in his role and around his coworkers. Majime's friendship with Nishioka is especially heartwarming. While Nishioka is initially annoyed by Majime's social ineptness, he grows fond of him as he comes to understand him better. The portrayal of Majime's friendships highlights his growing confidence in himself, with those around him and in his calling.
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The Great Passage may not primarily be a love story, but its soft development of Majime's romance with his landlord's granddaughter Kaguya only endears the characters to viewers even more. While not dramatic, Majime's confession to Kaguya is perhaps one of the most profound romantic scenes in a slice-of-life anime. Its quiet tone artfully conveys their budding feelings while staying true to their personalities. Majime and Kaguya's relationship does not take center stage, but its subtle presence emphasizes the emotional resonance of the series.
Although bibliophiles and vocabulary enthusiasts will certainly enjoy The Great Passage for its subject matter, it is not simply an anime about compiling a dictionary. Instead, it is the story of passionate people working toward something they love, supporting one another in their calling. Viewers will enjoy rooting for the characters and may find a greater appreciation in words and their meanings along the way.
Law firms that provide services in multiple languages should offer multilingual website content. But is it really possible to achieve a high-quality result with an automated translation service like Google Translate? What is the best strategy for crafting a multilingual website?
Your firm has two basic options when it comes to providing a multilingual online experience: 1) Use an automated translation service that translates on-demand, or 2) Publish a dedicated site (or pages on a site) with static translated content.
In this article, we explain the basics of automated translation, the pros and cons of using Google Translate, and a recommended approach for multilingual law firm websites.
What is automated translation?
Automated translation tools such as Google Translate use machines to translate content in real time with a single click of a button. There is no human touch or manual review involved in automated translation.
By clicking on the embedded website widget, a user can see the existing web content replaced with a live-translated version in their language of choice. However, original formatting doesn’t always carry over and grammar mistakes are common.
Pros of Google Translate
Google Translate can be valuable for both users and law firms. Let’s consider three pros of Google Translate.
1. Google Translate is easy to install and low-cost. The Translation API is very easy to install. Depending on how much traffic your website receives, your Cloud Translation fee could be nominal.
2. Google Translate empowers the user. This tool is not just limited to common languages like English and Spanish. It allows users to pick their own language, which can give you greater reach.
3. Maintenance is minimal. You don’t need to worry about maintaining different versions of your content. Because Google Translation uses exactly what is published on your webpage, you only need to update your English copy—the automated translation takes care of the rest.
Cons of Google Translate
While it’s easy to install and maintain Google Translate, there are some serious drawbacks to using automated translation. Here are three cons of Google Translate.
1. Google’s translations are imperfect—and mistakes can erode a user’s trust. Although Google has gotten much smarter in recent years, its translations are nowhere close to perfect. Without manual review from a fluent speaker, mistakes are guaranteed. Visitors may begin to distrust your website, associating your brand with Google’s translation errors.
2. Translations may give unrealistic expectations. If you don’t have anyone in your office who can speak all 133 of Google’s languages, the widget may give off an inaccurate impression of your firm’s capabilities.
3. SEO may be negatively impacted. This may surprise you, as most people think that Google favors its own tool. However, search engines favor high-quality content that delivers value to users. Acknowledging the shortcomings of automated translation services, leaders from Google have said that because these tools can result in low-quality content, sites that use Google Translate may not rank as well.
Recommended approach for effective multilingual websites
If your top priority is maximizing reach, then Google Translate could help people from all over the world engage with your content—but this approach can only accomplish so much.
The most effective long-term strategy is to create a website with valuable, high-quality, and accurate content to build trust and set clear expectations with your users. For most firms, professionally translated content on dedicated pages is the right solution.
In creating a multilingual website, consider the full user journey. When a visitor submits a web form, will the confirmation message be translated correctly? Do you offer a newsletter in these other languages?
Remember, it’s all about serving your user. You must establish credibility early on, starting with accurate and useful content.
Review and next steps
Google Translate is an affordable automatic translation tool that is easy to install. However, translation mistakes are common. Plus, the widget’s wide range of languages could set up unrealistic expectations for the linguistic capabilities of your team.
All in all, we cannot recommend Google Translate as a tool for creating a multilingual website.
Instead of losing a potential client’s trust due to error-ridden copy generated by automatic translators, it is better to develop web pages in the languages that you can provide service.
Linguists have begun compiling the Oxford Dictionary of African American English. We speak with a linguist from Washington University in St. Louis about the effort, why it’s important, what makes Black English unique and inventive, and what misconceptions people might have about it.
Disclosure: Our goal is to feature products and services that we think you'll find interesting and useful. If you purchase them, Entrepreneur may get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our commerce partners.
After an extended hiatus, business travel has resumed again — both for people going to the office every day and for digital nomads exploring the world while working. It seems like everybody is traveling, which is part of the reason why air travel has been such a nightmare recently.
Mymanu
But once you've reached your destination, you'll want to reduce the travel stresses as much as possible. If you're going to a foreign country, that means being able to navigate in a language you don't understand. Rather than take the time to learn a new language, the Mymanu CLIK S earbuds offer an elegant solution to translating foreign languages instantly.
These true wireless earbuds offer real-time speech-to-speech translation in 37 languages, allowing you to speak to more than two billion people around the world. The proprietary system also offers both speech-to-text and text-to-speech translation so you can get fast translations of the world around you to fully understand what people are saying, how to read signs, and more. You can save frequent phrases in a phrasebook for easy access later and use the clipboard to see all translations in text form. And, of course, you can translate one-on-one or group conversations into text in real-time.
In addition to translation, the dual-sided CLIK buttons give you the convenience of the leading true wireless earbuds. You can enjoy your music in HD clarity, answer calls, and read notifications at your leisure for up to 30 hours on a single charge. The memory foam ear tips come in multiple sizes to fit all ears so you can listen comfortably for extended periods of time.
Find out why the Mymanu CLIK S earbuds have earned awards from Red Dot Design and CES. Right now, you can get a pair for just $99 (reg. $220) when you use promo code CLIK at checkout.
Major language translation device market participants include Sourcenext Inc., Jarvisen (iFLYTEK), Cheetah Mobile, Inc., Vasco Electronics LLC, Waverly Labs Inc., and Timekettle.
SELBYVILLE, Del., Aug. 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The language translation device market is expected to reach a valuation of USD 2.5 billion by 2030, as reported in a research study by Global Market Insights Inc. The report cites surging number of tourists in Europe as a prominent driver for language translation device industry growth. This can be attributed to stringent EU-wide requirements and regulations on medical procedures. Furthermore, medical specialists are being trained and educated to accommodate the needs of patients from various cultures, thereby fostering the demand for translating devices. This ensures that patients receive equally high-standard medical care throughout Europe, in clinics providing specialized and innovative treatments.
Language Translation Device Market
Growing importance of long-term emission advantages in HCV to drive industry growth
The heavy commercial vehicle (HCV) segment is predicted to exhibit a growth rate of around 20% through 2030. This growth is accredited to the growing need for long-term emission advantages among HCVs and the subsequent rise in demand for translating devices.
Request for a sample of this research report @ https://ift.tt/EXtkmbP
Integration of AI and IoT technologies will bolster language translation device market demand
The wearable segment is anticipated to depict more than 14% gains through 2030 led by increasing adoption of AI and IoT technologies along with a rise in global tourism. Increasing emphasis on innovations in wearable translators by prominent device manufacturers will also influence segmental growth.
Increasing tourism in remote areas to surge the adoption of offline translation
The offline translation segment is poised to attain approximately 10% gains till 2030 owing to increased tourism in remote areas.
Growing interest in outbound travel will augment translating device sales in retail stores
The retail stores segment of the language translation device market is projected to observe above 10% growth rate between 2022 and 2030, due to the rapid rise in travel activities across regions with multilingual populations.
The consumer application will hold nearly 10% of the language translation device market revenue share by 2030 propelled by the growing preference for vacations and leisure traveling, which may expand the usage of personal devices like voice translators.
Rising disposable incomes in MEA to increase the adoption of voice translating devices
The Middle East & Africa region is slated to register 5% CAGR through 2030 impelled by increasing disposable income coupled with the growing tourism industry in countries like the UAE, which is emerging as a global hub for leisure, shopping, and family entertainment.
Major companies operating in the language translation device market are Sourcenext Inc. (Pocketalk), Jarvisen (iFLYTEK), Cheetah Mobile, Inc., Vasco Electronics LLC, Waverly Labs Inc., and Timekettle. Many key players are focusing on new product launches to strengthen their market position.
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Partial chapters of report table of contents (TOC):
Chapter 2 Executive Summary
2.1 Language translation device industry 3600 synopsis, 2018 - 2030
2.2 Business trends
2.3 Regional trends
2.4 Product trends
2.5 Type trends
2.6 Distribution channel trends
2.7 Application trends
Chapter 3 Language Translation Device Industry Insights
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Impact analysis of coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic
3.3 Ukraine-Russia war impact
3.4 Industry ecosystem analysis
3.5 Technology and innovation landscape
3.6 News
3.7 Regulatory landscape
3.8 Industry impact forces
3.8.1 Growth drivers
3.8.2 Industry pitfalls & challenges
3.9 Price trend analysis
3.10 Growth potential analysis
3.11 Porter's analysis
3.12 PESTEL analysis
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There are still many terms from classic SF that remain unresearched, and, as new resources are put online, the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction will be updated. Boing Boing is syndicating new entries from the HDSF on a regular basis.
Today's new entries are a pair of words of related meanings, but very different backgrounds. While the heyday of science-fictional interest in paranormal mental powers was the 1950s, it has always been an important part of the genre. Telepathize 'to transmit (a message, image, etc.) by telepathy; (also) to communicate with (a person) by telepathy' originates outside of science-fiction, in the late-Victorian interest in psychic phenomena. It makes it into SF proper by the 1930s, used by notable authors such as John W. Campbell, Jr. and Eando Binder (a pseudonym for the brothers Earl and Otto Binder, who used the name together and independently), and remains in use in current writings.
The noun mind control shares a similar origin, first appearing in the early 20th century, but our new verb mind-control is much more recent, first showing up in Lin Carter's 1970 novel Star Rogue. (There is earlier evidence for the adjectives mind-controlled and mind-controlling, in slightly different senses, which we hope to publish very soon.) If it seems genuinely newish, it's probably because verbing a compound noun just has that feeling to it.
[To see all the new Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction entries, bookmark the HDSF tag]
A school district in southwestern Florida has made headlines for rejecting a donation of dictionaries because of a freeze on new books in its libraries and classrooms.
That freeze is temporarily in place while officials navigate a new state law that gives parents more control over the selection of reading and instructional materials in schools.
HB 1467 took effect at the start of July, several months after it was approved by state lawmakers. Among other provisions, it revises selection requirements for school reading materials and places term limits on school board members. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has characterized it as part of his effort to fight "indoctrination" in schools, while Democratic critics decry it as censorship and unconstitutional.
The changing guidance is posing a logistical challenge for school districts, many of which have already begun the new school year and are scrambling to sort out compliance and new best practices.
That's been the case in Sarasota, where the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports that hundreds of dictionaries are gathering dust after district officials declined a Venice Rotary Club's donation.
The club has donated more than 4,000 dictionaries to Sarasota elementary schools for nearly 15 consecutive years in partnership with a nonprofit called the Dictionary Project, member Gar Reese told the newspaper. This was the first year that they were declined.
Reese said when the new law took effect, the club's president checked with school principals to make sure there wouldn't be any issue with the donations — and was referred to the district, which said it would have to wait until January.
That's at least in part because the law requires all reading material in schools — regardless of whether it is purchased or donated — to be "selected" by a certified education media specialist, and the district doesn't currently have any working in its schools.
Kelsey Whealy, a media relations specialist for Sarasota County Schools, told NPR over email that the school board has already approved the district media specialist job description, though said the temporary freeze will last until at least January 2023.
She said the district is "hopeful" that allow for enough time to hire the new media specialists, review existing items and receive updated guidance from the Florida Department of Education and the district's curriculum team about how to interpret the legislation.
Meanwhile, Reese told the newspaper that if the district doesn't accept the club's dictionaries, it may approach private schools or else hold off on donations this year entirely.
While the stalled dictionary donation may have catapulted the district into the national spotlight, it's just one of the complications posed by the new law.
Whealy shared guidance from district officials that book fairs, Scholastic Book Orders and read-alouds can continue this fall as scheduled, with some caveats.
Scholastic orders must be reviewed by parents in advance and taken home by students, for example, and teachers have been told to communicate with administrators and parents about which books they intend to read out loud to younger students.
The district is aiming to provide maximum support to teachers while complying with the new law, she explained.
"Once we receive guidance from our legal team and receive direction from the FDOE, we will reach out to our education & community partners with updates," Whealy said. "We value their support and don't wish to jeopardize the wonderful relationships we have in place."
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
A local Rotary Club and nonprofit have given dictionaries to Sarasota, Fla., schools for over a decade. The district declined this year amidst amidst a book freeze while it navigates a new state law.
Wycliffe Bible Translators commemorates 80 years of Bible translation work this month.
Founded in 1942, Wycliffe completed its first Bible translation in 1951. The 500th translation was completed in 2000.
Wycliffe estimates there are more than 7,300 spoken or signed languages in use throughout the world today, but only 717 have a complete translated Bible, leaving more than 1.5 billion people who don’t have the full Bible available in their language.
For more information on Wycliffe’s Bible translation efforts, go to wycliffe.org.
Linguist Edna Ahgeak MacLean worked with web developers to launch an online Iñupiaq dictionary and sentence building app. The project is based on McLean’s Iñupiaq dictionary and aims to make learning the language faster and easier. Photographed on June 28, 2022. (Marc Lester / ADN)
UTQIAĠVIK — Edna Ahgeak Paniattaaq MacLean smiled when her granddaughter Sirroun carried a thick tome with two hands and put it carefully on the table before her.
“I had some young people or teenagers tell me, ‘We’re trying to learn Iñupiaq but it’s so heavy!’” linguist and educator MacLean laughed, looking at the Iñupiaq dictionary she wrote.
In June, MacLean and two Yup’ik web developers, Christopher Egalaaq Liu and Lonny Alaskuk Strunk, completed an online Iñupiaq dictionary and word-building app, available at inupiaqonline.com. The project is based on MacLean’s Iñupiaq dictionary and aims to make learning the language in school and at home faster, easier and more accessible, even in rural areas.
“It’ll work,” MacLean said. “People are excited about it.”
Her life’s work has been to study, translate and preserve Iñupiaq — a language with an extensive oral tradition but limited written practice. The linguist’s efforts come at a time when only about 5% of Iñupiaq speakers are fluent, and the need for language-learning tools, as well as comprehensive educational programs, is growing.
The Iñupiaq Online website — launched by the Arctic Slope Community Foundation — is the first of its kind for the North Slope dialect of Iñupiaq and features a dictionary, a word-building function and an audio library to hear the way words are pronounced.
“It was designed for everyone,” Liu said. “We have it so that people can just look up words quickly. … We made it so that they can look up the underlying grammatical information if they want to.”
So far, about 1,200 unique viewers have visited the website, Liu said. Visitors can look up how to translate a word, see the plural form of the word, change the tense of a verb or add an adjective to a noun.
“The computer has been taught to create new words for the user based on the morphological rules,” MacLean said.
Iñupiaq linguist Edna Maclean and two Yup’ik web developers, Christopher Egalaaq Liu and Lonny Alaskuk Strunk, built an online Iñupiaq dictionary and word-building app based on MacLean’s Iñupiaq dictionary. (Screengrab of inupiaqonline.com)
This is how the word-building tool works: A learner might want to say, “I want to eat,” and type the word “eat” into the dictionary. The verb “to eat” has niġi as the stem, which is the part that helps drive the meaning of the phrase. To build out the full phrase, additional words are translated into different phrase components — postbases, endings and suffixes — that are then attached to the stem.
Using the website, a learner can pick a postbase — in this case, “I want to” — then choose the correct case for “I” and see the result as “niġisuktuŋa,” or “I want to eat.”
In the same way, by looking up the word “truck,” learners can end up with the sentence, “It is a big truck,” or “qamutiqpauruq,” by adding other elements to the original noun.
“This is just the first stage,” MacLean said. “There are over 400 suffixes or postbases, and we’ve worked only on 10.”
The Iñupiaq dictionary and sentence-building app – launched by the Arctic Slope Community Foundation in June, 2022 – features a dictionary, a word-building function and an audio library to hear the way the words are pronounced. (Screengrab of inupiaqonline.com)
Starting as soon as September, linguists plan to start improving the algorithms for the website to include more complex elements — for example, connective verb phrases for complex sentences — as well as conversational phrases.
“We are planning to make updates to the website and include more sentence types,” Liu said, “and also just like, bringing in maybe more dialogue, or conversational-centered speech. ... Over the next year, you can expect to see updates to the website.”
For now, learners can use the current version of the website and enjoy featured artwork created by the late Iñupiaq sculptor, silversmith and woodcarver, Ronald Senungetuk.
Iñupiaq Online is not the first language project that linguists Liu and Strunk have worked on together. A few years ago, they built a similar website for the Yugtun language and presented it at the 2018 AFN Convention. The website received overwhelmingly positive feedback, especially on the translation function of the website, Liu said.
The decision to build an online tool for Iñupiaq followed naturally: Both the Yugtun and Iñupiaq languages do not have many irregularities, and they follow a defined structure, making word- and sentence-building more predictable, Strunk said.
“Learning about the mathematical consistency of the language — all these rules can be formed to create complete words — was very interesting to me,” he said. “I could see the there would be applications for … more exciting language tools.”
The project was originally funded through an $82,609 grant from the federal Administration for Children and Families last year and will soon receive additional funding through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, said Ryan Cope, director of grant programs with the Arctic Slope Community Foundation.
To create Inupiaq Online, MacLean, Liu and Strunk met weekly via Zoom. MacLean would look at the website design and give developers feedback. Learning from MacLean’s insights was a highlight of the project for Liu.
“She wrote the grammar books. She compiled the dictionary. She’s Iñupiaq herself and the speaker of the language,” he said. “It is incredible because a lot of Native resources, language resources, are often not written by their own people.”
Linguist Edna Ahgeak MacLean cuts bowhead whale for storage in Utqiagvik in June. MacLean worked with web developers to launch an online Iñupiaq dictionary and sentence building app. The project is based on McLean’s Iñupiaq dictionary and aims to make learning the language faster and easier. Photographed on June 28, 2022. (Marc Lester / ADN)
In her Utqiaġvik house a few steps from the famous whale bone arch, MacLean was cutting muktuk on a foggy afternoon in late June. The 77-year-old linguist lives in Anchorage but regularly visits her home village. This time she came for Nalukataq, to celebrate the whale her brother landed.
Utqiaġvik is where MacLean’s passion for language took shape.
MacLean grew up at a time when parents were asked to speak English to their children, but her father Joseph Ahgeak refused to follow the rule. In third grade, a particularly strict teacher caught MacLean speaking Iñupiaq and punished her.
“I was caught once so she pulled my ear,” MacLean said, “and I screamed the heck out of pain.”
The young MacLean came home for lunch that day, wearing her hood up. Her mother Maria Ahgeak made her take off her parka before eating, and learned what happened after she saw her daughter’s bright red ears.
“She got totally mad,” MacLean said. “She put on one of my brothers’ parkas ... and stormed across the lagoon. It was frozen so she stormed across the lagoon and ran into my teacher’s classroom and grabbed her by the arm. ‘I am taking you to the principal’s and there, I’m going to pull your ear!’ ”
MacLean’s relationship with her teacher improved after that, and MacLean felt even more passionate about speaking her native language no matter what.
“I was one of the people that was punished for speaking Iñupiaq, and I got mad, and my mother got mad,” she said. “So we just kind of said, ‘OK, we’re going to do it anyway.’ So I’ve kept up that interest.”
Fluent from the time she was a child, MacLean didn’t become literate in Iñupiaq until she was in her 20s and worked with her mentor, Michael E. Krauss, a linguist and founder of the Alaska Native Language Center. Then MacLean taught Iñupiaq at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and immersed herself in the study of the language.
She wrote two Iñupiaq grammar books and published her latest dictionary in 2014, which took years of work. First, MacLean wrote down every word she knew. When she would run across a word she didn’t know, she would call her parents and ask them to explain it to her. And if her parents didn’t know that word either, she asked elders, hunters and other longtime Iñupiaq speakers.
Inupiaq to English Dictionary, by Edna Ahgeak MacLean. (Marc Lester / ADN)
While tools like dictionaries and apps can make learning easier, MacLean said that one of the most effective ways to preserve Iñupiaq in the community is to create immersion programs that allow students to study the language on a deeper level and for longer periods of time.
“That’s the next step that we need to do,” she said. “In the schools, they have Iñupiaq language programs, but it’s not producing speakers. They are teaching it in segments, and they don’t have a true immersion environment for the children, especially the preschoolers, to learn it quickly. … The immersion method seems to be the only way that works.”
Linguists are continuing to work on Iñupiaq Online to make it as useful as possible, Liu said, while keeping in mind that a website can’t be a full educational resource for the language.
“You can’t really learn everything through an app or through a website,” Liu said. “You have to also practice and engage with people.”
Would you be offended if somebody called you a sexagenarian? Whoa there, no insult offended. At first glance, you might feel like it is an X-rated word. It isn’t. Neither are the words septuagenarian, octogenarian and nonagenarian. Actually they are age-rated. Maybe you knew that sexagenarian means somebody between 60 and 69 years old. Septuagenarian means someone who is between 70 and 79, and octogenarian means someone who is between 80 and 89 years old. Nonagenarian describes someone who is between 90 and 99 years old.
Some years ago, I blew a gift certificate from my son on the purchase of the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. Along with that bound book, I also received a dictionary and thesaurus for my computer. I ran upon the above definitions when I paused on the word age and found myself headed in various directions. I discovered that in the United Kingdom the words grey pound mean the amount of money old people as a group has to spend. If you are referred to as an OAP it means you receive in England an old age pension from the state. If you are considered old there, somebody might say you are wrinkly, a crock (which could also mean an old car), or long in the tooth. We have all heard the expression “old as the hills” in referring to the elderly, but I was pleased to find that the word ancient cannot be suitably used in referring to an old person because it means hundreds or thousand years old.
I learned that if people in England want advice, they write to an “agony aunt” in a newspaper or magazine who pens an agony column, Come to think of it, if you follow any of the advice columns in our own country, you might agree that a lot of times that title can fit them as well.
Once you complete your dinner, you might be invited to sit down for afters, which simply means sweet food after a meal or what we call dessert.
Years ago in conversation with a lovely English lady who was married to a distant cousin of mine, she told me that the English refer to diapers as nappies. A picture in the dictionary I referred to showed me that the fender of a car is called a wing.
Besides all those wonderful definitions, there are study pages in the dictionary for those who want to brush up on grammar and punctuation. It tackles such as when to use who, which and that and the difference between effect and affect.
I have not finished A in the dictionary yet, so I have a long way to go in exploring some fascinating words, expressions and facts. Since I have pushed it aside for some other interest, it is time to push them aside and return to my dictionary lessons.
Walter Byongsok Chon, Associate Professor of Dramaturgy and Theatre Studies (SMTD), is awarded the 2022 Grant for the Translation of Korean Literary Works from the Daesan Foundation.
With this grant, he will translate into English four plays by South Korean playwright Myung-Wha Kim. The plays include The Wind’s Desire, The Birds Don’t Cross the Crosswalk, Oedipus: The Fate of the Story, and The Sound of the Moon. He will complete the translation with dramaturg Anne Hamilton, who will serve as a translation consultant.
https://ift.tt/t9qwl1k
Bio of the Playwright:
Myung-Wha Kim(Playwright) is a playwright and director. She made her debut as a playwright with Birds Do Not Cross the Crosswalk, which won the Samsung Literary Award for Best Play in 1997. Her plays include First Birthday, The Wind’s Desire, Redolence, and The End of the Royal Palace Dining Hall, among others. She won numerous awards including the Cha Beom-Seok Theater Award, Daesan Literary Award, Dong-A Theater Award, the Grand Prize in the Asahi Shimbun Theatrical Arts Award, and Yeo Seok-Gi Theater Critic Award. She founded Nanhee Theatre Company in 2018, which became The Nanhee in 2020, and took up directing. The Nanhee’s productions include Mimaji!, Dionysus Under the Magnolia, and Cold Noodles.
A school district in Florida could not accept a donation of dictionaries amid a new state law aimed at combating "wokeness" in classrooms.
The Venice Suncoast Rotary Club was prepared to give its annual donation of dictionaries to the Sarasota County Schools ahead of the new school year. But the district stopped all donations and purchases of books for school libraries until at least next year.
This came after HB 1467 took effect in July. The law requires school districts to have all reading and instructional materials reviewed by a district employee with a "valid educational media specialist certificate."
Sarasota County Schools does not currently have certified media specialists working in its schools and, therefore, has put a temporary freeze on book purchases and donations until January 2023, the district said.
This allows time for hiring and working through existing materials. It also allows time for the Florida Department of Education to provide rules and the district's curriculum team to provide interpretation and additional guidance on the legislation, the district told Newsweek.
Once this happens, the district said it will reach out to its education and community partners with updates.
"We value their support and don't wish to jeopardize the wonderful relationships we have in place," the district told Newsweek.
In a stock image, a large book is pictured open on a desk. A Florida school district denied a donation of dictionaries amid a recently enacted state law that puts new requirements on transparency with reading materials.bee32/iStock/Getty Images Plus
The Venice Suncoast Rotary Club told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune that they have donated about 300 dictionaries a year. After donating a total of 4,000 dictionaries to date, this is the first time they were denied.
The Rotary Club partners with the Dictionary Project to send dictionaries to schools. Mary French of the the Dictionary Project told Newsweek that she sent the dictionaries to the schools at the request of the Rotary Club. She was told by the Rotary Club that there was nothing apparently wrong with the dictionaries, but the school district just needed time to conduct its review of all reading materials, in accordance with the new law.
The district confirmed two of its schools were recently approached by a local organization looking to donate dictionaries, but neither school was able to accept the donations due to the freeze.
These reviews from schools come as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis continues his efforts to keep "wokeness" out of schools and allow parents to have more of a say in their children's education.
HB 1467 also sets term limits for school board members and requires districts to make materials public. The Department of Education is required to publish a list of materials that were removed by school boards.
According to guidance the district sent to its schools, all books and materials must be age and grade-level appropriate. The required reading, outside textbooks, must support lesson objectives and be aligned with state standards. The reading must also be included on the course syllabus given to parents, and parents must be allowed to request an alternative text for any reason.
The bill I signed today provides protections for parents by ensuring curriculum transparency in schools.
In Florida, we are empowering parents. pic.twitter.com/nj4GSxZWEq
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) March 25, 2022
DeSantis said the new law "ensures curriculum transparency" in schools so parents can be involved in education.
"In Florida, our parents have every right to be involved in their child's education," DeSantis said in a statement following the signing of HB 1467 in March. "We are not going to let politicians deny parents the right to know what is being taught in our schools."
Earlier this year, the governor passed the Parental Rights in Education Act that prohibits schools from discussing sexual orientation or gender identify with students from kindergarten to third grade.
Today, I signed HB 1557, the Parental Rights in Education Act, into law.
It ensures parents can send their kids to kindergarten without gender ideology being injected into instruction and they will be notified and have the right to decline healthcare services offered at schools. pic.twitter.com/OLnW2GLrJl
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) March 28, 2022
A judge recently partially blocked the Individual Freedom Act (IFA), also know as the "Stop WOKE Act," that would expand anti-discrimination laws to prevent schools and companies from engaging in training that would place blame on students or employees based on their race, sex or national origin.
Newsweek has asked DeSantis' office and the Rotary Club for comment.
A school district in Florida could not accept a donation of dictionaries amid a new state law aimed at combating "wokeness" in classrooms.
The Venice Suncoast Rotary Club was prepared to give its annual donation of dictionaries to the Sarasota County Schools ahead of the new school year. But the district stopped all donations and purchases of books for school libraries until at least next year.
This came after HB 1467 took effect in July. The law requires school districts to have all reading and instructional materials reviewed by a district employee with a "valid educational media specialist certificate."
Sarasota County Schools does not currently have certified media specialists working in its schools and, therefore, has put a temporary freeze on book purchases and donations until January 2023, the district said.
This allows time for hiring and working through existing materials. It also allows time for the Florida Department of Education to provide rules and the district's curriculum team to provide interpretation and additional guidance on the legislation, the district told Newsweek.
Once this happens, the district said it will reach out to its education and community partners with updates.
"We value their support and don't wish to jeopardize the wonderful relationships we have in place," the district told Newsweek.
In a stock image, a large book is pictured open on a desk. A Florida school district denied a donation of dictionaries amid a recently enacted state law that puts new requirements on transparency with reading materials.bee32/iStock/Getty Images Plus
The Venice Suncoast Rotary Club told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune that they have donated about 300 dictionaries a year. After donating a total of 4,000 dictionaries to date, this is the first time they were denied.
The Rotary Club partners with the Dictionary Project to send dictionaries to schools. Mary French of the the Dictionary Project told Newsweek that she sent the dictionaries to the schools at the request of the Rotary Club. She was told by the Rotary Club that there was nothing apparently wrong with the dictionaries, but the school district just needed time to conduct its review of all reading materials, in accordance with the new law.
The district confirmed two of its schools were recently approached by a local organization looking to donate dictionaries, but neither school was able to accept the donations due to the freeze.
These reviews from schools come as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis continues his efforts to keep "wokeness" out of schools and allow parents to have more of a say in their children's education.
HB 1467 also sets term limits for school board members and requires districts to make materials public. The Department of Education is required to publish a list of materials that were removed by school boards.
According to guidance the district sent to its schools, all books and materials must be age and grade-level appropriate. The required reading, outside textbooks, must support lesson objectives and be aligned with state standards. The reading must also be included on the course syllabus given to parents, and parents must be allowed to request an alternative text for any reason.
The bill I signed today provides protections for parents by ensuring curriculum transparency in schools.
In Florida, we are empowering parents. pic.twitter.com/nj4GSxZWEq
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) March 25, 2022
DeSantis said the new law "ensures curriculum transparency" in schools so parents can be involved in education.
"In Florida, our parents have every right to be involved in their child's education," DeSantis said in a statement following the signing of HB 1467 in March. "We are not going to let politicians deny parents the right to know what is being taught in our schools."
Earlier this year, the governor passed the Parental Rights in Education Act that prohibits schools from discussing sexual orientation or gender identify with students from kindergarten to third grade.
Today, I signed HB 1557, the Parental Rights in Education Act, into law.
It ensures parents can send their kids to kindergarten without gender ideology being injected into instruction and they will be notified and have the right to decline healthcare services offered at schools. pic.twitter.com/OLnW2GLrJl
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) March 28, 2022
A judge recently partially blocked the Individual Freedom Act (IFA), also know as the "Stop WOKE Act," that would expand anti-discrimination laws to prevent schools and companies from engaging in training that would place blame on students or employees based on their race, sex or national origin.
Newsweek has asked DeSantis' office and the Rotary Club for comment.
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