Clario Selects TransPerfect Technology to Reduce Translation Turnaround Times by 30% - Business Wire - Translation

NEW YORK & PHILADELPHIA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--TransPerfect, the world’s largest provider of language and technology solutions for global business, today announced that its GlobalLink Applanga technology has been selected by Clario to streamline translation processes.

Clario is a healthcare technology company that delivers the leading endpoint technology solutions for decentralized (DCT), hybrid, and site-based clinical trials. Clario’s Translation Workbench is used to streamline the localization process, including managing multilingual content for licensed scales and data collecting material, as well as ensuring on-screen accuracy. Managing around 150 studies at a time, with each study averaging 20 languages and eight assessments, Clario needed technology that offered them the automation to speed up the eCOA study kick-off process.

GlobalLink Applanga is a cloud-based translation management system with features developed specifically for web-based applications, including handheld devices and clinical apps, enabling Clario to more effectively address app localization requirements.

By connecting with Applanga via API, the Clario Translation Workbench initiates the localization process and streamlines screenshot review and approval. Screenshot capture is automated for each assessment, pulling text and pushing screenshots with minimal effort.

As a result of implementing Applanga, Clario experienced lessened turnaround times by 30%. These reductions were achieved by decreasing time spent in communication between TransPerfect and Clario, eliminating manual work necessary to generate accurate screenshots and translations on eCOA applications, and minimizing defects and human errors, which reduced the burden on quality assurance staff.

“Our clients need to deploy studies in multiple countries and ensure patients have access to accurate and timely translations of their electronic, clinical outcomes assessments. Without these, pharma and biopharma clients face delays in getting new medicines to patients, and patients could be unable to provide vital information about their health. With Clario's global reach and TransPerfect's technology, we can help increase patient access and speed up overall study set-up times,” said Terry Burke, EVP eCOA.

TransPerfect President and CEO Phil Shawe remarked, “Clario has integrated Applanga in a way that has enabled them to improve quality and efficiency. We are pleased that our technology has helped them reduce risk, cut costs, and succeed in their mission to get treatments to market safely and quickly.”

About Clario
Clario is a leading technology company that generates the richest clinical evidence in the industry for our pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device partners. Across decentralized and site-based trials, our deep scientific expertise, global scale and the broadest endpoint technology platform in the industry allow our partners to transform lives. Clario’s Trial Anywhere™ solutions have been powering hybrid and decentralized clinical trials (DCT) for over 20 years, enabling sponsors to collect high-quality endpoint data from any modality or location, all while improving patient experience and diversity. Clario has the only technology platform that combines eCOA, cardiac safety, medical imaging, precision motion and respiratory endpoints. With 30 facilities in nine countries, Clario’s global team of science, technology and operational experts has helped deliver over 19,000 trials and 870 regulatory approvals for over 5m patients in 120 countries. Our innovation has been transforming clinical trials for 50 years.

About TransPerfect
TransPerfect is the world’s largest provider of language and technology solutions for global business. From offices in over 100 cities on six continents, TransPerfect offers a full range of services in 200+ languages to clients worldwide. More than 6,000 global organizations employ TransPerfect’s GlobalLink^® technology to simplify management of multilingual content. With an unparalleled commitment to quality and client service, TransPerfect is fully ISO 9001 and ISO 17100 certified. TransPerfect has global headquarters in New York, with regional headquarters in London and Hong Kong. For more information, please visit our website at www.transperfect.com.

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Remind launches new human translation to increase meaningful engagement with multilingual families - Yahoo Finance - Translation

The new partnership with Alboum Translation Services is the latest enhancement to the Remind platform's translation capabilities, which include automatic two-way translation into families' preferred languages.

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 31, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Remind, the communication platform that reaches students and families where they are, today announced a partnership with Alboum Translation Services to make high-quality human translation services available as an option for schools and districts using the platform.

Remind Logo (PRNewsfoto/Remind)

The partnership with Alboum, which specializes in translation for K-12 education, represents Remind's most recent investment in enhanced translation to help schools and districts engage meaningfully with multilingual families.

Along with providing automatic two-way translation for over 100 languages so families can communicate seamlessly in their home languages, including via text and smartphone app, the Remind platform allows messages to be edited if schools and districts have translators or native speakers on staff. For organizations without this support, the partnership with Alboum now allows them to augment their resources with human translation well-versed in the educational context.

"With 5 million English learners in US schools, it's crucial to make sure that schools and districts have the tools they need to reach and engage with multilingual families," said Quenton Cook, CEO of Remind. "Remind took a huge step forward last year by introducing automatic translation into families' preferred languages, but we recognize that human translation is especially helpful for languages that don't use Latin script. The partnership between Remind and Alboum demonstrates our continued commitment to providing educators with equitable, meaningful ways to engage with families."

Alboum translation services are available for a discounted Remind partnership rate for schools and districts with Remind Hub. To learn more about Remind Hub for school and district engagement, visit www.remind.com/hub.

About Remind: Remind is a communication platform that reaches students and families where they are. We believe that relationships drive success in education, and we're building a platform that supports learning wherever it happens. Today, the Remind platform is home to one of the largest free services in education, a school communication business that supports millions of students, and an online tutoring solution that provides help outside the classroom. Founded in 2011, Remind is backed by GSV Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Owl Ventures, and Social Capital. For more information, visit www.remind.com.

Contact: press@remind.com

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SOURCE Remind

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Clario Selects TransPerfect Technology to Reduce Translation Turnaround Times by 30% - PR Newswire - Translation

GlobalLink Applanga Solution Reduces eCOA Study Start-up Times and Increases Global Patient Access to Clinical Trials

NEW YORK and PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 31, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- TransPerfect, the world's largest provider of language and technology solutions for global business, today announced that its GlobalLink Applanga technology has been selected by Clario to streamline translation processes.

Clario is a healthcare technology company that delivers the leading endpoint technology solutions for decentralized (DCT), hybrid, and site-based clinical trials. Clario's Translation Workbench is used to streamline the localization process, including managing multilingual content for licensed scales and data collecting material, as well as ensuring on-screen accuracy. Managing around 150 studies at a time, with each study averaging 20 languages and eight assessments, Clario needed technology that offered them the automation to speed up the eCOA study kick-off process.

GlobalLink Applanga is a cloud-based translation management system with features developed specifically for web-based applications, including handheld devices and clinical apps, enabling Clario to more effectively address app localization requirements.

By connecting with Applanga via API, the Clario Translation Workbench initiates the localization process and streamlines screenshot review and approval. Screenshot capture is automated for each assessment, pulling text and pushing screenshots with minimal effort.

As a result of implementing Applanga, Clario experienced lessened turnaround times by 30%. These reductions were achieved by decreasing time spent in communication between TransPerfect and Clario, eliminating manual work necessary to generate accurate screenshots and translations on eCOA applications, and minimizing defects and human errors, which reduced the burden on quality assurance staff.

"Our clients need to deploy studies in multiple countries and ensure patients have access to accurate and timely translations of their electronic, clinical outcomes assessments. Without these, pharma and biopharma clients face delays in getting new medicines to patients, and patients could be unable to provide vital information about their health. With Clario's global reach and TransPerfect's technology, we can help increase patient access and speed up overall study set-up times," said Terry Burke, EVP eCOA.

TransPerfect President and CEO Phil Shawe remarked, "Clario has integrated Applanga in a way that has enabled them to improve quality and efficiency. We are pleased that our technology has helped them reduce risk, cut costs, and succeed in their mission to get treatments to market safely and quickly."

About Clario

Clario is a leading technology company that generates the richest clinical evidence in the industry for our pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device partners. Across decentralized and site-based trials, our deep scientific expertise, global scale and the broadest endpoint technology platform in the industry allow our partners to transform lives. Clario's Trial Anywhere^™ solutions have been powering hybrid and decentralized clinical trials (DCT) for over 20 years, enabling sponsors to collect high-quality endpoint data from any modality or location, all while improving patient experience and diversity. Clario has the only technology platform that combines eCOA, cardiac safety, medical imaging, precision motion and respiratory endpoints. With 30 facilities in nine countries, Clario's global team of science, technology and operational experts has helped deliver over 19,000 trials and 870 regulatory approvals for over 5m patients in 120 countries. Our innovation has been transforming clinical trials for 50 years.

About TransPerfect

TransPerfect is the world's largest provider of language and technology solutions for global business. From offices in over 100 cities on six continents, TransPerfect offers a full range of services in 200+ languages to clients worldwide. More than 6,000 global organizations employ TransPerfect's GlobalLink^® technology to simplify management of multilingual content. With an unparalleled commitment to quality and client service, TransPerfect is fully ISO 9001 and ISO 17100 certified. TransPerfect has global headquarters in New York, with regional headquarters in London and Hong Kong. For more information, please visit our website at www.transperfect.com.

SOURCE TransPerfect

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Expand Your Vocabulary With These 6 Dictionary Apps for Android and iPhone - MUO - MakeUseOf - Dictionary

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Expand Your Vocabulary With These 6 Dictionary Apps for Android and iPhone  MUO - MakeUseOf

Meta Demonstrates AI-Powered Speech-to-Speech Translation System - VOA Learning English - Translation

Facebook parent company Meta has built a technology tool designed to directly translate spoken speech from one language to another.

Meta recently released a video that demonstrated how the artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tool can translate between English and the Hokkien language.

In the video, Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg explained that the project required different, unusual development methods. That is because Hokkien is mainly a spoken language. It does not have a widely used written form.

Generally, developers of translation systems train AI models on very large amounts of written text in the target languages. This arms the system with many different language examples and combinations in an effort to produce the most correct results.

In general, AI-powered translation systems have improved greatly in recent years. It is now easier than ever to get translation help online or on devices to make international communication better.

But one problem with such systems is that there are delays linked to the translation process. For example, when the system records spoken speech, the words are first converted into text and then translated by an AI system. Then, the translated words are converted back into speech so they can be heard.

The unusual part of the Meta project is that the development team did not have large amounts of Hokkien language text to feed into the AI system.

Hokkien is a version, or dialect, of Chinese. It is spoken by millions of people in the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian. It is also spoken by many people in Taiwan and some communities in Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines. The language is generally passed down through generations of families.

Meta notes that Hokkien is one of nearly 3,500 living languages that are mainly spoken and do not have a widely used writing system. The company says its AI developers are aiming to create speech-to-speech translation tools that would cover most of the world’s languages.

Earlier this year, Meta announced two new AI projects. One is called No Language Left Behind. Zuckerberg said in a video that effort is designed to create translation systems to cover “hundreds” of world languages.

The other is called the Universal Speech Translator. The goal of that project is to build a system that can produce “speech-to-speech translation across all languages,” the company said in a statement. Meta’s latest system involving Hokkien was developed as part of its Universal Speech Translator project.

“The ability to communicate with anyone in any language — that’s a superpower people have dreamed of forever, and AI is going to deliver that within our lifetimes,” Zuckerberg said.

Meta said it used several different methods to create the new system to translate to and from Hokkien and English. The team trained its AI models on written text examples from another version of Chinese, Mandarin, which is similar to Hokkien.

In addition, Meta developers used an encoding tool designed to compare spoken Hokkien to similar English text. The team also worked closely with Hokkien speakers to make sure the results were correct.

Meta said it aims to use the same methods used for Hokkien to create speech-to-speech translation systems for many more languages in the future.

The company said, however, that its Hokkien translation model “is still a work in progress.” It noted that the system is currently only able to translate one full sentence at a time.

I’m Bryan Lynn.

Bryan Lynn wrote this story for VOA Learning English, based on reports from Facebook, Google and the South China Morning Post.

Quiz - Meta Demonstrates AI-Powered Speech-to-Speech Translation System

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_________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

translate – v. to change words from one language into another

artificial intelligence – n. the development of computer systems with the ability to perform work that normally requires human intelligence

text – n. written words

convert – adj. to change the appearance, form or purpose of something

encode – v. to represent complex information in a simple or short way

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Rotary Club presents dictionaries to St. Louis 3rd graders – WRBI Radio - Country 103.9 WRBI - Dictionary

St. Louis School 3rd graders (left to right) Kaleb Hardebeck, Simon Brelage, and JJ Hountz look up words in dictionaries given to students by the Rotary Club of Batesville. (Provided Photo)

Batesville, IN — Thursday, Oct. 20 was an exciting day for St. Louis School third graders when the Rotary Club of Batesville stopped by with a wonderful gift for each student: their very own dictionary!

These books have inspired St. Louis students to discover new words and have been a great help in learning how to spell difficult words.

The students are excited to find a word they do not understand or do not know how to spell so they can look it up in their personal dictionary.

Each day brings new discoveries on how helpful a dictionary can be.

Many thanks to the Rotary Club of Batesville for giving us this wonderful resource.

St. Louis School 3rd graders (left to right) Luke Enneking, Lesley Nunez, and Quinn Richardson look up words in dictionaries given to students by the Rotary Club of Batesville. (Provided Photo)

(Submitted by St. Louis School 3rd grade teacher Mary Beth Linville)

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Rotarians hand out dictionaries for 15th year | People | huntingdondailynews.com - huntingdondailynews.com - Dictionary

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Rotarians hand out dictionaries for 15th year | People | huntingdondailynews.com  huntingdondailynews.com

3 books in translation that ask a lot — and allow the reader to ask a lot in return - Valley Public Radio - Translation

Subtlety gets a lot of praise in the realm of literature.

Many readers, critics, and editors see delicacy, especially on the thematic front, as a sign of quality and challenge, which it frequently is. But gentle, subtle novels are far more common than ones that take the opposite tactic, announcing their difficulty or their defiance from the very first page — a brave strategy, and one that creates a uniquely exciting relationship between author and audience. When a book declares itself a challenge right away, its readers get to make the conscious choice to rise to the occasion. Doing so generates a sense of investment; it also heightens our expectations. If an author asks a lot of us, we get to ask a lot of that author, too.

None of the novels below pretend for a moment to be easy. Kim Hye-jin's Concerning My Daughter, translated from the Korean by Jamie Chang, demands a taxing quantity of empathy from its readers and protagonist alike; the Brazilian literary master João Gilberto Noll's erotic odyssey Hugs and Cuddles, translated from by Edgar Garbelotto, shatters any prudery or sexual squeamishness readers may bring to the book; and the Cuban writer Jorge Enrique Lage's cyberpunk Freeway: La Movie, translated by Lourdes Molina, is so disorienting that it stretches our ideas of narrative. All three books are tough — and all three are completely consuming. They demand our full attention, and then they earn it.

Concerning My Daughter

Concerning My Daughter is a tiny, blunt book. Its twin subjects are homophobia and class disadvantage, which Kim Hye-jin links on nearly every page. Kim's nameless narrator, a middle-aged widow barely supporting herself by temping in awful conditions as a nursing-home aide, cannot bear that her adult daughter, Green, is gay; indeed, just hearing her daughter say the word lesbian makes her feel like a "cornered animal." Often, the narrator's prejudice — which, Kim is quite clear, is informed both by a desire for her daughter not to be discriminated against and by real revulsion at the idea of lesbian sex — is nearly unbearable to read. Yet Kim is equally clear that Green's mother, repellent as she can be, deserves empathy. Her financial straits have driven her into a constricting survival mode: she avoids intimacy and friendship, is terrified to stand up for herself or her patients at work, and allows Green and her girlfriend Lane to move in with her rather than sell a house she can't afford, but sees as the "only thing over which I can claim control and exercise ownership."

Concerning My Daughter is often didactic, privileging message over plot. Kim lets both Green and Lane deliver monologues about their right to acceptance; she also lets the narrator monologue, if only to the reader, about the precarity of her life. None of these passages are lectures, though: Kim gives them such emotional heft that they can only be pleas. Jamie Chang's translation, which is plain yet highly precise, amplifies this effect. She leaves no ambiguity in the text, which means the reader cannot hide from the intensity of the narrator's feelings. Ultimately, Concerning My Daughter turns into a confrontation — not just between Green and her mother, but also between Green's mother and the reader. Understanding, in this book, has to come from all sides.

Hugs and Cuddles

If you were to casually leaf through João Gilberto Noll's Hugs and Cuddles, not knowing much about Noll's work, you'd assume it was erotica. (And it could be!) Noll, a highly influential Brazilian postmodernist who died in 2017, wrote frequently about queerness, defiance, and the freedom that can come from life outside mainstream society's confines. It's a theme that's quite literal in Hugs and Cuddles, which gets moving after the middle-aged narrator's great unrequited love, known as "my engineer friend," invites him to a gay orgy on a decommissioned Nazi submarine. Underwater, the narrator is shy, but after disembarking, he enters his own personal "orgiastic age," which includes bathroom-stall sex, sex with a goat, and some surprising sex with his wife. Still, he yearns for a "love affair between two mature men." When this affair finally manifests, the narrator does something that, by Noll's standards, is shocking: He moves to the jungle with the engineer, now his partner, and tries to transform himself psychologically into "the wife [the engineer] had always dreamed of." (Although, granted, he remains a "horny stud" by night.)

Hugs and Cuddles laughs at gender, but takes sex seriously. It is both prurient and philosophical, gleefully dirty and wrenchingly serious. (Except its plot, which is consciously absurd.) Edgar Garbelotto, Noll's translator, does the novel a bit of a disservice by opting not to adapt its prose to the rhythms of the English language, a decision that sometimes stalls its momentum, but Noll's portrait of a man ruled by desire is too interesting to look away from. Hugs and Cuddles intertwines its narrator's longings for sex, submission, novelty, and comfort so seamlessly that, after reading it, you may well wonder if those desires are separable at all.

Freeway: La Movie

In some ways, Jorge Enrique Lage's satirical Freeway: La Movie is perfectly recognizable. It's a picaresque buddy comedy, one of the oldest literary forms: its narrator (who, like Noll and Kim's narrators, is nameless) and his sidekick, El Autista, roam a dystopian Cuba, just like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza roamed 16th-century Spain. But while Miguel de Cervantes grounds readers in Don Quixote's setting, Lage disorients us totally. Starting Freeway: La Movie is confusing in the way the first scenes of action films often are. Events come quickly, with context lagging so behind that readers simply cannot interpret what's happening. Each chapter is a separate, surreal adventure, linked only by narrator and setting: a construction site that turns into a gigantic highway linking Cuba to the United States.

Lage delights in mockery, and Freeway: La Movie is best when he's funniest.

Sometimes his humor is absurdist, as in a chapter in which the protagonist encounters a genie who not only lives in a Coke bottle, but was once Coca-Cola's brilliant, misunderstood chief scientist. (His name, which translator Lourdes Molina smartly leaves in Spanish, is El Genio, which means both genius and genie.) But more often, Lage's jokes are political and pitch-black. His willingness to laugh at serious matters — genocide against indigenous tribes; the prison at Guantánamo Bay; highway builders' tendency to destroy poor neighborhoods — gives Freeway: La Movie an angry energy that will carry willing readers past their disorientation. Of course, Lage also mocks his readers, if only by defying our idea that narratives should make sense. Freeway: La Movie has no real storyline, just a nameless, displaced narrator who's just trying to act as "the only witness to whatever is happening." At some point, aren't we all?

Lily Meyer is a writer, translator, and critic. Her first novel, Short War, is forthcoming from A Strange Object in 2024.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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BTS's RM confirmed to be the MC of tvN's 'The Mysterious Dictionary of Useless Miscellaneous Human Knowledge' - allkpop - Dictionary

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BTS's RM confirmed to be the MC of tvN's 'The Mysterious Dictionary of Useless Miscellaneous Human Knowledge'  allkpop

3 books in translation that ask a lot — and allow the reader to ask a lot in return - KSFR - Translation

Subtlety gets a lot of praise in the realm of literature.

Many readers, critics, and editors see delicacy, especially on the thematic front, as a sign of quality and challenge, which it frequently is. But gentle, subtle novels are far more common than ones that take the opposite tactic, announcing their difficulty or their defiance from the very first page — a brave strategy, and one that creates a uniquely exciting relationship between author and audience. When a book declares itself a challenge right away, its readers get to make the conscious choice to rise to the occasion. Doing so generates a sense of investment; it also heightens our expectations. If an author asks a lot of us, we get to ask a lot of that author, too.

None of the novels below pretend for a moment to be easy. Kim Hye-jin's Concerning My Daughter, translated from the Korean by Jamie Chang, demands a taxing quantity of empathy from its readers and protagonist alike; the Brazilian literary master João Gilberto Noll's erotic odyssey Hugs and Cuddles, translated from by Edgar Garbelotto, shatters any prudery or sexual squeamishness readers may bring to the book; and the Cuban writer Jorge Enrique Lage's cyberpunk Freeway: La Movie, translated by Lourdes Molina, is so disorienting that it stretches our ideas of narrative. All three books are tough — and all three are completely consuming. They demand our full attention, and then they earn it.

Concerning My Daughter

Concerning My Daughter is a tiny, blunt book. Its twin subjects are homophobia and class disadvantage, which Kim Hye-jin links on nearly every page. Kim's nameless narrator, a middle-aged widow barely supporting herself by temping in awful conditions as a nursing-home aide, cannot bear that her adult daughter, Green, is gay; indeed, just hearing her daughter say the word lesbian makes her feel like a "cornered animal." Often, the narrator's prejudice — which, Kim is quite clear, is informed both by a desire for her daughter not to be discriminated against and by real revulsion at the idea of lesbian sex — is nearly unbearable to read. Yet Kim is equally clear that Green's mother, repellent as she can be, deserves empathy. Her financial straits have driven her into a constricting survival mode: she avoids intimacy and friendship, is terrified to stand up for herself or her patients at work, and allows Green and her girlfriend Lane to move in with her rather than sell a house she can't afford, but sees as the "only thing over which I can claim control and exercise ownership."

Concerning My Daughter is often didactic, privileging message over plot. Kim lets both Green and Lane deliver monologues about their right to acceptance; she also lets the narrator monologue, if only to the reader, about the precarity of her life. None of these passages are lectures, though: Kim gives them such emotional heft that they can only be pleas. Jamie Chang's translation, which is plain yet highly precise, amplifies this effect. She leaves no ambiguity in the text, which means the reader cannot hide from the intensity of the narrator's feelings. Ultimately, Concerning My Daughter turns into a confrontation — not just between Green and her mother, but also between Green's mother and the reader. Understanding, in this book, has to come from all sides.

Hugs and Cuddles

If you were to casually leaf through João Gilberto Noll's Hugs and Cuddles, not knowing much about Noll's work, you'd assume it was erotica. (And it could be!) Noll, a highly influential Brazilian postmodernist who died in 2017, wrote frequently about queerness, defiance, and the freedom that can come from life outside mainstream society's confines. It's a theme that's quite literal in Hugs and Cuddles, which gets moving after the middle-aged narrator's great unrequited love, known as "my engineer friend," invites him to a gay orgy on a decommissioned Nazi submarine. Underwater, the narrator is shy, but after disembarking, he enters his own personal "orgiastic age," which includes bathroom-stall sex, sex with a goat, and some surprising sex with his wife. Still, he yearns for a "love affair between two mature men." When this affair finally manifests, the narrator does something that, by Noll's standards, is shocking: He moves to the jungle with the engineer, now his partner, and tries to transform himself psychologically into "the wife [the engineer] had always dreamed of." (Although, granted, he remains a "horny stud" by night.)

Hugs and Cuddles laughs at gender, but takes sex seriously. It is both prurient and philosophical, gleefully dirty and wrenchingly serious. (Except its plot, which is consciously absurd.) Edgar Garbelotto, Noll's translator, does the novel a bit of a disservice by opting not to adapt its prose to the rhythms of the English language, a decision that sometimes stalls its momentum, but Noll's portrait of a man ruled by desire is too interesting to look away from. Hugs and Cuddles intertwines its narrator's longings for sex, submission, novelty, and comfort so seamlessly that, after reading it, you may well wonder if those desires are separable at all.

Freeway: La Movie

In some ways, Jorge Enrique Lage's satirical Freeway: La Movie is perfectly recognizable. It's a picaresque buddy comedy, one of the oldest literary forms: its narrator (who, like Noll and Kim's narrators, is nameless) and his sidekick, El Autista, roam a dystopian Cuba, just like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza roamed 16th-century Spain. But while Miguel de Cervantes grounds readers in Don Quixote's setting, Lage disorients us totally. Starting Freeway: La Movie is confusing in the way the first scenes of action films often are. Events come quickly, with context lagging so behind that readers simply cannot interpret what's happening. Each chapter is a separate, surreal adventure, linked only by narrator and setting: a construction site that turns into a gigantic highway linking Cuba to the United States.

Lage delights in mockery, and Freeway: La Movie is best when he's funniest.

Sometimes his humor is absurdist, as in a chapter in which the protagonist encounters a genie who not only lives in a Coke bottle, but was once Coca-Cola's brilliant, misunderstood chief scientist. (His name, which translator Lourdes Molina smartly leaves in Spanish, is El Genio, which means both genius and genie.) But more often, Lage's jokes are political and pitch-black. His willingness to laugh at serious matters — genocide against indigenous tribes; the prison at Guantánamo Bay; highway builders' tendency to destroy poor neighborhoods — gives Freeway: La Movie an angry energy that will carry willing readers past their disorientation. Of course, Lage also mocks his readers, if only by defying our idea that narratives should make sense. Freeway: La Movie has no real storyline, just a nameless, displaced narrator who's just trying to act as "the only witness to whatever is happening." At some point, aren't we all?

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

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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Scratching my bald head (part 6): Comms pros – consult the dictionary of life - PR Week - Dictionary

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Scratching my bald head (part 6): Comms pros – consult the dictionary of life  PR Week

The Intimate Art of Translation - The Imaginative Conservative - Translation

It is an intimate art, the translation business. But it is the art of creatures like we humans, who live always on the border of matter and spirit, trying to marry together the infinite and the finite, the spiritual and the earthly, the eternal and the temporal.

On January 11, 1940, the Italian writer and translator Cesare Pavese wrote in his diary: “Periods of great productivity in literature are preceded by a generation of intensely active translators. The closer history approaches our own era, the more the fusion of civilizations takes place, not by flesh and blood, but on paper. Instead of invasions, we have translations.”

It’s odd to read that “instead of invasions” line when World War II was already raging when he wrote, even if all the countries that would eventually take part had not yet joined it. But I think it plain to see what he means: The fusion of civilizations that takes place in invasions often ends up being more defined by death—a heap of corpses intermingled—than a marriage with the resulting life. Even if the invaders don’t blow up all the buildings or burn the art, they quite often handle them roughly, not knowing what to do with the treasures of a civilization. And due to the situation, those being invaded are quite often unable to share what they have (even assuming they would want to share it with the present enemy) because all the attention is dedicated to the question of survival.

Not so with translations. Today they are, I suppose, labeled by the woke as acts of “cultural appropriation” or “colonization” or some such other nonsense, which can only be said if one considers the rather squishy groupings of humans according to race more important than the one grouping that follows both the science and the theology: the human race. But for those of us who subscribe to the latter term—by which I mean all sane people—translation is a fusion that reminds us of marriage.

Like marriage, translation brings together two distinct and different but similar things united by their humanity. And while some translations, like some marriages, are marked by faithfulness and beauty, some are unfaithful and ugly. Still others can be marked by an ugly faithfulness and others by a beauty tinged by infidelity. The old Italian saying traduttore, traditore means that the translator, perhaps every translator, is a traitor in some way. But the possibility of betrayal only exists because of that marriage-like intimacy of the act.

I wish I had come up with that last thought myself, but alas I appropriated it from Michial Farmer, a teacher and writer who translated a play written by the French Catholic philosopher Gabriel Marcel. He was one of four participants on a panel dealing with the art of translation at the fourth Catholic Imagination Conference, which was held at the University of Dallas at the end of September. As moderator for the panel, I was intrigued by how the speakers thought about this particular art.

Jeanine Pitras, a translator of Latin American poetry, talked about translation as the solving of a mystery, that of bringing one language and culture into another. That too sounded like marriage talk.  Jason Baxter, who is currently translating Dante’s Commedia, talked about the need of the translator to convey the impressions given not just by denotations but also by the types of language used. He described the “high/low diglossism” of Dante—a fancy way of saying that sometimes the poet uses the exalted language of philosophers and theologians and sometimes the language of the streets. Figuring out how to get not only the right meaning but the right vibe to the translation is key. Should I translate the word as “devour” or “gulp”? I wondered if this tendency to use both levels in a work is intrinsically Catholic and Christian? After all, the Incarnation is the supreme mixture of high and low. God the Father translates the fullness of his mysteries to us by writing the Word in the rather humorously loopy font of human nature.

Translation, you might say, is revelation all the way up because it is revelation all the way down. It is one of the most difficult and ubiquitous acts of human beings. It’s not just that the world or the airport or even your town is filled with people of different languages. Even when we speak the same variant of the same language, we often find ourselves like the people of the biblical Babel, who were very clear on the project—make a name for ourselves in the heavens—but fell to incoherence by the time it was completed. I often have to ask one of my kids, “What does Mom’s message to me mean?” More often she is asking the kids what mine means, but this is the point.

Teaching is clearly an act of translating. So too writing. Frederick Turner, a translator of central European poetry, went off the rails in his presentation at the end by advocating for a new religion based on the scientific method. August Comte, call your office. But before he did, he made the very interesting point that “Every poet, to be a poet, is a translator.” He described the process of writing poetry as that of taking an “internal language” and translating it into “the written one.” It’s not just poets. I find myself that almost any worthwhile essay starts as a very vivid internal set of words and impressions for which I must struggle to find the prose to convey what I am trying to say.

The process can be tough, for I often discover that what was there in my internal language was partly right and partly wrong. But even when I still think I am right, getting the words to convey what I mean to others is hard. I have often quoted the sportswriter Red Smith, who observed, “Writing is easy. All you have to do is open up a vein and bleed.” The blood, along with the sweat, tears, and often coffee, that is shed is shed in service of trying to avoid being a traitor to the fullness of meaning that one feels is a gift one wants to share, a marriage one wants to make. It involves a great deal of knowledge and also a heart that listens to both sides and struggles mightily to bring truth from another realm into the one in which I live so that others might see it and be glad.

It is an intimate art, this translation business. But it is the art of creatures like we humans, who live always on the border of matter and spirit, trying to marry together the infinite and the finite, the spiritual and the earthly, the eternal and the temporal.

The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.

The featured image is “Scholar Sharpening His Quill” (1633) by Gerrit Dou, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

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Best Practices for the Translation of Official and Legal Documents - JD Supra - Translation

Based on 2018 census data, 67.3 million U.S. residents, both immigrants and native-born, speak a language other than English at home. As we near 2023, it’s safe to say that number has likely grown. Stats like this underscore the need for services that support language translation, including the ability to translate official and legal documents.

With legal proceedings ramping up again post-pandemic, and more immigrants and foreign visitors entering the U.S. than ever before, the demand for legal document translation services has been on the rise.

If you find yourself in need of a document translation service, it’s important to understand why and when the translation of official documents is required before you move forward. Here are some points to keep in mind.

When Translation of Official and Legal Documents is Required

Translation refers primarily to written documentation. Any legal case going through the discovery process, which includes a client or witness that speaks a foreign language, will have documents that require translation for use in depositions or as exhibits in court. In addition, given the complexity of legal verbiage itself, courts require translation to be provided if an individual is not completely fluent in English.

Any type of document or written text considered pertinent to a case can be translated for legal purposes. Depending on the type of law involved, this could include text messages, WhatsApp conversations, social posts, emails, accident claims, business agreements, birth certificates, contracts, sales forms, divorce papers, prenups from another country, or prenups written here and translated into the language of the spouse.

If it’s in written form, and intended for use in a legal proceeding, it must be translated, submitted, and filed. It must have a certificate of accuracy. Certified translation services demonstrate that the translator understood the language of the original document and translated it to the best of their ability.

In terms of the types of organizations that require official document translation, it runs the gamut. Any organization that works with clients in other countries, or with clients who are not fluent in English within the U.S., will have a need for this service. The majority, however, are legal firms and the attorneys who work for them, including any firm that has an office outside of the U.S. or that deals with cases pertaining to foreign individuals or entities.

How to Translate Official Documents

When it comes to the act of translating official documents, there are two primary methods used depending on the circumstance:

AI Document Translation

AI, or machine-based, translation is used primarily when there are mass volumes of documents during the discovery phase. For example, if a client has a patent case with thousands of written pages and needs to translate them to determine which documents should be submitted as evidence.

At this volume, machine translation comes in at a lower cost than human document translation, but with an accuracy rate of only about 80%-90%. For this reason, and because it does not involve a human being, it cannot have a certificate of accuracy associated with it or be submitted into court proceedings. As a rule, AI document translation is considered ideal when fast turnaround times and lower costs, rather than accuracy, are a priority.

Human Document Translation

Once AI translation has determined which specific pages or documents should be used, a human translator must officially translate each document and ensure that a certificate of accuracy accompanies the court submission.

When the highest level of accuracy is required, human translation is the only option. In addition to meeting legal standards, human translation provides greater familiarity with dialects, nuances of languages, and legal terminology compared to literal AI translations that lack the ability to detect slang or double meaning within a phrase.

Considerations for Selecting an Official Document Translation Provider

When the time comes to select an official document translation company, keep these considerations in mind:

• Providers who only offer AI document translation cannot provide a certificate of accuracy, so if you move forward with filing those documents in court, you risk legal repercussions.
• Those who solely provide AI translation will put forth a literal translation of a document, which could go against your case depending on what you’re trying to prove.

• Make sure any provider that offers AI-based document translation uses an SOC Type 2-compliant platform with robust security measures.
• Select a provider with strong adherence to security protocols, including two-factor authentication and secure sharing practices vs. using Gmail or another unprotected avenue.
• Look for a provider that is familiar with many languages and dialects, and how phrases can differ in meaning from one country to another.
• Find a provider with experience in technical cases and legal terminology. For example, the fifth amendment is a legal concept that exists in the U.S., but not other countries. It’s important to be able to translate a word that may not exist in the language it’s being translated into.

One final consideration: If you choose to not use a professional legal translation provider, and instead opt for an AI-based online program, keep in mind that many of the more commonly used programs are free. This means they are widely available and that, once a document has been translated, that information remains accessible on the internet to anyone determined enough to look for it. This is a crucial issue, given legal documents and their contents are highly sensitive and private. If an attorney runs his or her documents through these platforms, they open themselves up to possible security threats and breaches, and further liabilities.

Closing Arguments for Using Official Document Translation Services

There are 7,151 languages spoken worldwide today. Around 422 of those languages are currently spoken in the United States. Given this, it’s not surprising that the global legal translation services market is expected to grow at a rate of 2.37% CAGR from 2021-2027, reaching nearly $45 Billion by 2027.

This rise in demand reflects what I’ve experienced in the legal document translation arena, with the need for these services rising dramatically from when I started in the industry nearly 20 years ago.

Given those legal proceedings are official and binding, it’s of the greatest importance to ensure you and all parties fully understand the contents of every document involved in a legal case. Using an experienced professional translation services provider puts you in the best position to understand, and act on, legal filings.

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Lost in translation: St. John's airport admits its French needs work - CBC.ca - Translation

The St. John's International Airport says it needs to do better, after Radio-Canada documented a series of poorly translated signs and messages months after the airport was fined thousands for violating official language requirements.

Lisa Bragg, the airport's vice-president of business development and marketing, acknowledged the airport authority has work to do.

"We make mistakes and all kinds of ways we're going to own them and we're going to fix them as best we can," said Bragg. "It's not that you meant to do it, but there's going to be episodic errors that occur from time to time, and we're not immune to that."

Radio-Canada, the CBC's French-language broadcaster, presented the airport authority with a number of examples of crude translations at the airport, including posters and the airport's website and social media posts. Located in a provincial capital and welcoming more than 1.5 million passengers a year before the pandemic, the airport is required by law to provide both English and French language services to travellers.

In the case of one poster in a bathroom, the play on words "If you're happy and you know it wash your hands" became "Si tu es content et vous le savez, lavez-vous les mains" in French. The joke doesn't make sense in French and the sentence is grammatically incorrect, containing both formal and informal verb tenses.

A poorly worded poster in a bathroom at St. John's International Airport directly translates an English play on words that doesn't make sense in French. There are also grammatical errors. (Patrick Butler/Radio-Canada)

Another poster read "Regardez-vous, arborant ce masque!", a cringe-worthy translation of, "Look at you, rocking that mask!"

A French tweet from the airport described a new "non-stop road to Toronto-Pearson" ("route sans escale vers Toronto-Pearson"). Another wished passengers a happy Thanksgiving by writing "Joyeux Action de Grâces" instead of "Joyeuse Action de grâces."

A poorly translated tweet from St. John's International Airport. In French, the word 'route' isn't used to describe a flight path. (Twitter)

'We're trying to be much more conscious'

Bragg said several posters have already been removed, although some tweets hadn't been deleted Tuesday morning. She said the airport authority is "not a huge organization" and that it relies on Halifax-based firm Text in Context for most of its translation. However, in certain cases a library of pre-translated phrases was also used for smaller translation jobs, which led to errors.

"That is, at times, where we've introduced some errors. So we're trying to be much more conscious to make sure and double-check and verify anything where we have," Bragg said. "I'll put it this way: anything where we have to spend money for a sign, for example, that is going to live for a while, we will make sure that the translation is the best it can be."

Another poorly translated poster in a bathroom at St. John's Airport. (Patrick Butler/Radio-Canada)

Bragg said there were fewer travellers in the airport during the pandemic and one of the poorly translated posters was up for more than a year before anyone complained. 

"When it came to our attention, we fixed it immediately. But that also kind of speaks to the fact that we've had less traffic and we have less French-speaking passengers," Bragg said.

"If someone notices something, reach out to the airport. We would be happy, more than happy. We would actually welcome the feedback."

A misspelled French tweet from St. John's International Airport. In French, 'Happy Thanksgiving' is spelled 'Joyeuse Action de grâce' or 'Joyeuse Action de grâces.' (Twitter)

Airport authority fined $11K in April

Radio-Canada documented the bad translations months after the airport authority was ordered to pay $11,000 for violating official language requirements. A Federal Court judge found last April the airport had adopted a too-narrow interpretation of its language obligations by not translating most of its social media posts, as well as its annual reports and press releases. 

The airport authority is appealing the decision, which it feels would expand requirements far beyond their intended purpose.

French not at 'acceptable level'

In a statement, the head of the Newfoundland and Labrador's Francophone federation said bilingual services were "all but absent" a few years ago and that it's important to highlight the major progress made since. But Gaël Cobineau, executive director of the Fédération des francophones de Terre-Neuve et du Labrador, said the airport "has very clear official language obligations and there is still some way to go."

"In the past, we have tried to contact the airport's communications department to discuss this informally and constructively, but we have never heard back from them," said Corbineau.

"In the absence of any direct dialogue, we now report any errors we find by filing complaints with the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages, which is quite effective. Many errors have since been corrected, but there are still some and new ones appear over time."

Corbineau said the airport needs to realize it "lacks capacity internally" to communicate in French at an "acceptable level," pointing to several boutiques and restaurants where service in French is often unavailable.

Read more from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador

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SheaMoisture Launches Textured Hair Dictionary - HYPEBAE - Dictionary

SheaMoistureUK, in collaboration with beauty expert Ateh Jewel, has joined forces to launch an online human glossary of afro and textured hair terms to empower more open communication of these words outside of the Black community and in mainstream culture.

The free resource features standard terms such as durag, bonnet, coils and Bantu knots and includes their correct definitions. Within the beauty industry, most everyday cultural language and terms relating to Black haircare can’t be found in image libraries, dictionaries, or stores and are often negative in tone. Research by SheaMoisture revealed that lack of awareness around the correct terminology to describe afro and textured hair negatively impacts 52% of individuals who identify as Black and mixed race in the UK. 69% of other individuals reported seeing their hair as part of their identity but rarely seeing it represented in mainstream culture. “By working with SheaMoisture, I hope to drive further awareness and education on these terms, so people can see they are the center and they are enough, which is a vital step in achieving social equality for those with afro and textured hair.” Ateh Jewel states in a press release.

“Language shapes the world and how we see it, and when it comes to the positive language around maintaining, caring, and styling afro and textured hair our research shows there is still a huge void,” Senior Brand Manager at SheaMoisture, Genevieve Appiagyei states. We hope our dictionary boosts awareness of the expansive vocabulary around Black hair and encourages others to feel more empowered to communicate these terms.”

You can view SheaMoisture’s online human glossary here and stay updated with the brand’s progress.

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SheaMoisture Launches Online Dictionary Dedicated to Understanding Afro and Textured Hair - Yahoo Entertainment - Dictionary

SheaMoistureUK, in collaboration with beauty expert Ateh Jewel, has joined forces to launch an online dictionary of afro and textured hair terms to empower more open communication of these words outside of the Black community and in mainstream culture.

The free resource features standard terms such as durag, bonnet, coils and Bantu knots and includes their correct definitions. Within the beauty industry, most everyday cultural language and terms relating to Black haircare can't be found in image libraries, dictionaries, or stores and are often negative in tone. Research by SheaMoisture revealed that lack of awareness around the correct terminology to describe afro and textured hair negatively impacts 52% of individuals who identify as Black and mixed race in the UK. 69% of other individuals reported seeing their hair as part of their identity but rarely seeing it represented in mainstream culture. "By working with SheaMoisture, I hope to drive further awareness and education on these terms, so people can see they are the center and they are enough, which is a vital step in achieving social equality for those with afro and textured hair." Ateh Jewel states in a press release.

"Language shapes the world and how we see it, and when it comes to the positive language around maintaining, caring, and styling afro and textured hair our research shows there is still a huge void," Senior Brand Manager at SheaMoisture, Genevieve Appiagyei states. We hope our dictionary boosts awareness of the expansive vocabulary around Black hair and encourages others to feel more empowered to communicate these terms."

You can view SheaMoisture's online dictionary here and stay updated with the brand's progress.

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Mountain Valley Elementary hosted 2022 Dictionary Project - Lootpress - Dictionary

BLUEFIELD, WV (LOOTPRESS) – Mountain Valley Elementary School had some special visitors bringing very special gifts for 3rd graders.

Concord University, Bluefield State University and Rotary Clubs of Bluefield and Princeton donated a dictionary to every 3rd grade student in Mercer County as part of the Dictionary Project, something they have participated in for over a decade.

Those in attendance were Concord University President, Dr. Kendra Boggess;  Bluefield State University’s Assistant Director of Student Activities, Jake Laney; Bluefield Rotary member, Zach Luttrell;  Princeton Rotary member, Rick Allen; Mountain Valley’s Principal, Ms. Teresa Guill;  and Concord University’s mascot, ROAR.  Mercer County Schools’ Dr. Ashley Vaughn emceed the event, and 3rd grade students Emberly Bailey and Evangeline Mitchell accepted the dictionaries on behalf of all 3rd graders in Mercer County. The third graders performed “The Addams Family” song directed by Ms. Jordan Stadvec.

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Literary Notes: Little-known Pakistani language Shina gets a bilingual dictionary - DAWN.com - Dictionary

PAKISTAN is a linguistic paradise from a linguist’s point of view as in just two of its regions — Gilgit-Baltistan and Chitral — some 30 languages are spoken.

There are over 75 languages and dialects spoken in Pakistan and many of them are not only little-known but also endangered: some of them may become extinct pretty soon. These endangered languages include Badeshi, also known as Badakhshani, believed to be spoken by hardly a few hundred native speakers and some experts put the figure much below — as low as less than 100.

What perturbs one is the fact that research on these Pakistani languages is being carried out mostly by foreigners and many Pakistanis do not know even the names of many languages that their fellow Pakistanis speak. It is a fact that research on languages spoken in Pakistan’s north and adjoining areas was initiated by some western scholars much before creation of Pakistan, in an era when these areas were almost inaccessible.

For instance, Alexander Cunningham (1814-1893), a British army engineer who later on became archaeological surveyor of India — as mentioned by C. E. Buckland in his Dictionary of Indian Biography — wrote a book on Ladakh, describing historical and physical facts about Ladakh and the adjoining areas. In this book, titled Ladak: Physical, Statistical, Historical with Notices of the Surrounding Countries (1854), Cunningham described the basic facts about languages spoken in Hunza and Nagar, including Burushaski. He has also given a select vocabulary of some languages of the regions.

Linguistic Survey of India, a monumental work by George Abraham Grierson (1851-1941) in 19 volumes recorded some 175 languages and over 500 dialects spoken in the British India. Working on these languages between 1898 and 1928, Grierson gave, in part II of volume VIII, details of languages known as Dardic or Pisacha languages, a group of languages closely related to Indo-Aryan family of languages spoken in what is today’s North and North-West Pakistan, Kashmir and some parts of Afghanistan.

Another scholar, who single-handedly worked on many languages spoken in the northern parts of British India, was D. L. R. Lorimer (1876-1962). Though an officer in British Indian army, Lorimer was a linguist and served as political agent at Gilgit between 1920 and 1924. He knew several local languages and carried out research on Pashto, Khwaar, Wakhi, Shina, Burushaski, Domaki and Badakhshani. His work on Burushaski’s history, grammar and vocabulary is in three volumes and was published from Oslo in 1935.

Other scholars from the west who have carried out research on Pakistani languages include: Henry George Raverty whose work on Pashto is well-known; Hermann Berger who is known for his research on Burushaski; Max Arthur Macauliffe’s work on Punjabi, especially Sikh scriptures, is appreciated; Mansel Longworth Dames did some pioneering work on the Balochi language and poetry; and Ernest Trumpp’s work on Sindhi language and literature, especially Shah Jo Rislao, are but a few examples of how these western scholars devoted their time and efforts for local languages.

Shina is among those little-known Pakistani languages that have attracted attention of some foreign scholars and Ruth Laila Schmidt has worked on it. Shina is also called Shinaki. It is an Indo-Aryan language and, according to Ethnologue (www.ethnologue.com), Shina is spoken in Gilgit, Diamer, Chilas, Haramosh, Lower Hunza, Astore, Kharmang, Kachura, Satpara, some scattered villages in Yasin and some other areas of Gilgit-Baltistan.

In Kashmir, Shina is spoken in Neelam district of Azad Kashmir and in Kargil in India-held Kashmir. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, it is spoken in Kohistan and Sazin areas. But some scholars have mentioned some other areas as well where Shina or its dialects are spoken, such as, Chitral, Swat and Dir. Shina’s dialects are: Gilgiti, Astori and Chilasi Kohistani. Some believe Gilgiti is the standard dialect.

Shina is a Dardic language and Dardic languages do not have a very long history of written texts. Until recently, Shina, too, did not have a script and its orthographic system was conceived a few decades ago. It is written in Arabic script and since 1960s different suggestions for representing Shina phonology in Arabic script have been under consideration. However, native speakers of Shina have been working on the task and Muhammad Amin Zia published in Urdu script Shina Qaida Aur Grammar. Zia also compiled a Shina Lughat (Shina dictionary) with a phonetic scheme.

Now Abdul Khaliq Taj, a writer and scholar of Shina and an office-bearer of Halqa-i-Arbab-i-Zauq, Gilgit, has published Taj-ul-Lughaat, a Shina-Urdu dictionary. Shina words are written in Shina script (naskh) and Urdu equivalents are given in Urdu script (nasta’leeq).

This may work as a catalyst for further research on Shina and may encourage other scholars to work for preservation and promotion of the language.

drraufparekh@yahoo.com

Published in Dawn, October 24th, 2022

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How AI could help translate extreme weather alerts - Axios - Translation

Illustration: Gabriella Turrisi/Axios

A startup that provides AI-powered translation is working with the National Weather Service to improve language translations of extreme weather alerts across the U.S.

The big picture: Gaps in language access to emergency alerts during extreme weather events have led to missed evacuations, injuries and loss of life for non-English speakers. Machine learning could mitigate that.

Driving the news: AI-translation service Lilt has recently started working on a pilot project with the weather service to help produce more comprehensive weather warnings.

How it works: Incorporating a mix of software and human translators, the service learns from linguists in real time using a neural network, or a computer system modeled loosely on the brain — which gets smarter with each use.

• The team behind Lilt, which earlier this year raised a $55 million Series C, markets its speed of translation at the rate of at least three times the speed of other translation services, while also picking up slang and regional dialects.
• The software gets used by human forecasters at the NWS forecasting office, with the AI engine suggesting translation for the translators to work with, while actively storing all of their input.

What they're saying: Phil Stiefel, solutions lead at Lilt, told Axios there is a longstanding need for better translation at the weather service.

• "If there's a translation error in a translated weather report, and somebody takes the wrong action based on that missed translation, then somebody could get hurt or even killed because of that," Stiefel told Axios.
• According to data by the Migration Policy Institute, in 2019, 22% of U.S. residents over the age of five spoke a language other than English at home.

The backstory: Past translation problems during floods, wildfires and tornadoes point to a legacy of language barriers within federal, state and local emergency weather alerting systems.

• In 2017, nearly all of the people in New York City to die from flash flooding from the remnants of Hurricane Ida were Asian and spoke limited English or Spanish, which the New York Times reported may have led to those residents not receiving warnings to evacuate.
• Seven members of a Guatemalan family in Oklahoma died from flash floods in 2013 after leaving their home to seek shelter in a storm drain upon hearing a tornado warning. NBC News reported "they hadn't heard or understood there had also been storm and flood warnings."
• And a 2020 study found that emergency warnings during California's 2017-18 Thomas Fire were initially only available in English. As a result, Latino residents living in the two most heavily impacted counties missed information about evacuation areas, road closures, unsafe air and boil water notices.

The intrigue: This isn't the only way the NWS is working to improve translation issues in the alert system.

• A 2021 research article published in the American Meteorological Society looked at issues in English-to-Spanish translation of weather alerts that didn't account for dialects, which led to "inconsistent risk messaging," in Spanish-language alerts.
• The NWS/NOAA has since updated the language it uses in hazardous weather communication, adopting "dialect-neutral" terminology suggested by the study authors, as reported by Noticias Telemundo.

The bottom line: Monica Bozeman, the automated language translation lead at the NWS Office of Central Processing, told Axios in an email that the agency has developed experimental pilot projects looking to introduce automation to translation — Lilt being one of them.

• "From these projects, we hope to learn the feasibility of applying automation to gain efficiency with translation turnaround times while reducing the burden of translation on our personnel, especially during critical hazardous weather events," Bozeman wrote.

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Rotary dictionary donation | Education | thecentralvirginian.com - The Central Virginian - Dictionary

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Rotary dictionary donation | Education | thecentralvirginian.com  The Central Virginian

Mandla App Introduces Dictionary to Transliterate African Languages, Revives Near-Extinct Languages - StreetInsider.com - Dictionary

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As part of its plans to leverage technology to preserve African languages, Mandla dictionary translates words into 100 languages for a start

New York, New York--(Newsfile Corp. - October 20, 2022) - Mandla is pleased to announce the introduction of the Mandla Dictionary, the first multilingual, multidialectal, multiscriptual, and audio-supported online parallel dictionary for African languages.

Mandla

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:
https://ift.tt/SsADy9M

Mandla dictionary is designed to revive disused African scripts like the Adlam, Bamum, N'ko, and Osmanya, one at a time starting with N'ko. This includes giving life to once-dead African writing systems like Nsibidi, Tifinagh, Kassena logograms, and Meroitic.

It also provides users with the translation of African languages as well as the transliteration of these languages from Latin and English through the use of writing scripts, voice recognition, and pictorial representation.

The Mandla Dictionary uses data sourced openly which is made available to users for free. It features definitions in each language both in a chosen native language and Latin scripts as well as English.

Mandla gives users free membership in the platform with the option of allowing members to add new words and examples to the dictionary, including suggesting edits to existing words and examples. Updates are sent to members on the status of words they contributed via email.

As part of its all-inclusive plan of African languages, the Mandla Dictionary currently translates words from 100 languages including Igbo, Yoruba, Zulu, Xhosa, Twi, Akan, Amharic, Moore, and many others, highlighting even some dying languages in its mission of digital preservation to avoid language extinction shortly.

Since the younger generation of Africans has lost touch with their mother, and some others struggle to find a platform that's all out to teach these languages, Mandla App has taken the lead in making learning these languages easier for them.

It also encourages people of non-African descent, especially tourists to the African continent to take advantage of the app and learn how to communicate fluently with locals. The Mandla Dictionary simplifies words and adds the origin of such words.

"While this is just the beginning, we hope to by the end of 2022 have the largest existing dictionary dataset for every major African language with transliterations of N'ko script as well as each language's native script," concluded Wenitte Apiou, CEO and Founder of Mandla.

The Mandla Dictionary is available at https://ift.tt/rLAShyW

Wenitte Apiou, CEO and Founder of Mandla

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About Mandla Dictionary

The Mandla Dictionary is an online word-translating platform that allows users to find out the original spelling, pronunciation, and tonation of 100 African languages by digitizing these words in incorruptible format with the use of the internet. Since its inception, it has grown to include contributors from different regions in Africa as well as Africans in the diaspora.

Mandla dictionary has revived the use of ancient writing scripts and systems in Africa with ongoing efforts to revive more.

About Wenitte Apiou

Wenitte Apiou is the CEO and Founder of Mandla. His mission to help other Africans who seek to know and learn their original languages inspired the birth of his company, Mandla. For two years, he has researched and worked with ten other members of his team to digitize dying languages, especially in Africa for future generations.

Media Contact

Company name: Mandla
Contact person: Wenitte Apiou
Email: [email protected]
Country: United States
Website: https://mandla.ai

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://ift.tt/nTvb72K

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Meta's New AI-Powered Speech Translation System Pioneers a New Approach For Unwritten Languages - Analytics India Magazine - Translation

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Until today, AI translation has primarily focused on written languages. Yet around half of the world’s 7,000+ living languages are mainly oral – without a standard or widely used writing system. Thus, it’s impossible to build machine translation tools using standard techniques requiring large amounts of written text to train an AI model. 

To address this challenge, Meta has built the first AI-powered translation system for a primarily oral language – Hokkien – which is widely spoken within the Chinese diaspora. Meta’s technology allows Hokkien speakers to hold conversations with English speakers as the language lacks a standard written form. 

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The open-sourced AI translation system is part of Meta’s Universal Speech Translator (UST) project, which is developing new AI methods that would eventually allow real-time speech-to-speech translation across all extant languages, including primarily spoken ones. The company believes that spoken communication can help break down barriers and bring people together wherever they are – even if located in the metaverse.

Source: Meta 

To develop the new system, Meta’s AI researchers had to overcome many complex challenges from traditional machine translation systems, including model design, data gathering, and evaluation. The blog reads, “We have much work ahead to extend UST to more languages. But the ability to speak effortlessly to people in any language is a long-sought dream, and we’re pleased to be one step closer to achieving it. We’re open-sourcing not just our Hokkien translation models but also the evaluation datasets and research papers, so that others can reproduce and build on our work.”
Moreover, the techniques can be further extended to many other written and unwritten languages. Meta is also releasing SpeechMatrix – a large corpus of speech-to-speech translations – mined with the data mining technique, called LASER. Researchers will then be able to create their own speech-to-speech translation (S2ST) systems and build on the Meta’s work.

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