Syracuse grad tries to get ‘orbisculate,’ a word invented in CNY, added to dictionary - syracuse.com - Dictionary

A Syracuse University alumnus and his family are trying to get a word invented in Central New York added to the dictionary.

Jonathan Krieger, who graduated from SU’s Newhouse School in 2007, knows it’s not an easy task. But it’s an important one, as he seeks to honor his father, Neil Krieger, who died of complications from Covid-19 last year.

Neil Krieger created the word “orbisculate” for a class assignment while he was a student at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., during the late 1950s. According to the official website orbisculate.com, it’s primarily a verb, with two definitions:

• To accidentally squirt juice and/or pulp into one’s eye, as from a grapefruit when using a spoon to scoop out a section for eating. (Example: ”The grapefruit I was eating just orbisculated into my eye.”)
• To accidentally squirt the inner content from fruits, vegetables and other foods onto one’s face, body or clothing, or onto that of a person nearby. (“I made a mistake dressing up before I ate a grapefruit. It ended up orbisculating on my shirt and now I have to change,” Jonathan Krieger told CNN as an example last month.)

There’s also a related noun, “orbisculation,” which describes the fruit juice itself: “Hey, you have something on your shirt.” “Oh no! That must be from the orbisculation of the orange I had earlier.”

Neil Krieger, who taught neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard medical schools and later started a biotech consulting company, loved the word and used it his whole life. His own children, Jonathan and Hilary, heard it so often they thought it was a real word.

Jonathan Krieger said he doesn’t know exactly when he learned it was a made-up word, but Hilary, a Cornell alum who works as an opinion editor at NBC News, remembers losing a $5 bet with a college friend over whether or not it was in the dictionary.

Neil Krieger had chronic kidney disease and was undergoing dialysis when he tested positive for the coronavirus in late March 2020. He was hospitalized for a month, dying of respiratory failure and complications due to Covid-19, according to medical records, on April 29. He was 78.

Jonathan Krieger and his sister launched their efforts to get “orbisculate” in the dictionary as a way of both grieving and celebrating their father.

“It’s just fun, it’s light, and that’s something that I think people could use right now, as opposed to something that gets a bit more serious,” he told CNN last month.

A petition seeks to add the word to English-language dictionaries in future editions. More than 5,700 people have signed as of Wednesday night, Krieger told syracuse.com.

Krieger, 35, lives in Brookline, Massachusetts, and runs the virtual events company Long Distance Trivia. He published a book about his varied career in 2018, titled “Odd Jobs: One Man’s Life Working Every Gig He Could Find, from Bathroom Attendant to Bikini Model.”

He and Hilary also created a list of 50 goals to popularize the word, which is the most important step in getting in the dictionary. (”Orbisculate” is already on UrbanDictionary.com, but Merriam-Webster and other major publications are harder to crack.)

Of those goals, they’ve already achieved nine, including getting the word in a crossword puzzle, engraved on a grapefruit spoon, and said in a podcast. They also hope to get it in a song (preferably by “Hamilton” star Lin-Manuel Miranda) or used by a celebrity with a fruit-y name, like “CNN anchor Don Lemon, fictional ’30 Rock’ character Liz Lemon, or Syracuse University mascot Otto the Orange.”

Jonathan Krieger is aware that Otto doesn’t talk, but the anthropomorphic orange is active on social media and could always tweet about orbisculate or hold up a sign with the word on it.

Krieger’s girlfriend, Megan O’Hara, also designed a logo and t-shirts featuring a cartoon citrus to help spread the word.

“She’s a really talented artist that can hopefully get more people on board,” Krieger said.

Sales from the shirts are all going to charity. More than $2,500 has been raised to benefit Carson’s Village, a Dallas non-profit that helps families after the loss of a loved one.

“...It feels fitting to honor our dad in a way that’s unique, that captures his humor and creativity and shares those attributes with the world,” Jonathan and Hilary wrote. “We suspect that the mission we’re embarking on may take years; if we’re being honest, we realize we may never accomplish our goal. But life has always been more about the journey than the destination. We know, because our dad taught us that.”

For more information or to sign the petition, visit orbisculate.com.

‘The Translation of Letters and Ideas in Cuba’s Republic’: Symposium looks at translation practices in Cuban history - UConn Daily Campus - Translation

Men playing instruments in Cuba. On Thursday, a four part symposium titled "The Translation of Letters and Ideas in Cuba's Republic" was held virtually, and focused on the usage of translation of major Cuban publications during the Republic Period (1902-1959). Photo by Dimitri Dim on Pexels.com

“The Translation of Letters and Ideas in Cuba’s Republic,” a four-part symposium co-sponsored by the University of Connecticut’s Department of Literatures, Cultures & Languages, the UConn Humanities Institute, El Instituto Seed Grant, the John. N Plank Lecture Series and Global Affairs took place virtually Thursday, and focused on the usage of translation in major Cuban publications during the Republic Period (1902-1959). 

The first half of Thursday’s event was a discussion on “Philosophies, Geopolitics, and Translation” moderated by Samuel Martinez, a UConn professor in the anthropology department and the director of El Instituto, the Institute for Latina/o, Caribbean and Latin American Studies. Four panelists presented lectures focusing on different aspects of the overall topic of translation in Cuba, followed by a Q&A session with the audience. 

The panelists included César Salgado, an associate professor in the department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Texas at Austin; Reynaldo Lastre, a graduate assistant in the department of literatures, cultures and languages at UConn and a co-organizer of the symposium; Rachel Price, an associate professor in the department of Spanish and Portuguese at Princeton University and Anke Birkenmaier, a professor in the department of Spanish and Portuguese at Indiana University, Bloomington. Presentations and discussions took place in a mix of English and Spanish. 

Each presenter discussed different publications. Lastre, for example, focused on “Bohemia,” Cuba’s oldest general consumer magazine, while Birkenmaier talked about “Gaceta del Caribe,” which chronicled the cultural politics of the mid-1940s not just in Cuba but in the entire Caribbean diaspora. 

The common thread amongst all the presentations was the way in which translation allowed for international solidarity and multicultural movements to take root in Cuba. For example, Price explained how “The Negro World,” a publication that began in 1921 in New York, started a Spanish language section in order to explain pan-African movements around the world at the encouragement of its Cuban readership. 

“The common thread amongst all the presentations was the way in which translation allowed for international solidarity and multicultural movements to take root in Cuba.”

The second half of the event was a keynote speech given by Rafael Rojas, a professor at the Centro de Estudios Históricos at El Colegio de México, entitled “Tres políticas de traducción en la ideología cubana de los 60” (“Three translation policies in Cuban ideology of the 1960s”). Rojas was introduced by Jacqueline Loss, a professor in the department of literatures, cultures, and languages at UConn and a co-organizer of the symposium, and Lastre. 

Image of weekly supplement of “Lunes de Revolucion”. (Translation: Revolution Monday) was a weekly literary supplement to the magazine, Revolucion. The magazine reflected strong nationalistic and anti-imperialistic views that existed in Cuba during those times. Photo courtesy of Internet Archives.

Rojas discussed three Cuban publications specifically in his keynote speech: “Lunes de Revolución,” “Cuba Socialista” and “Pensamiento Crítico.” Each was in print during the revolutionary period and approached the Cuban Revolution in different ways, whether focusing on industrialization, intellectualism, Latin American guerrilla or the relationship between Cuba and the Soviet Union. 

Just as the other speakers noted, Rojas explained how the translation policies of each of these periodicals led to a more interconnected and international feeling of solidarity, not only between Cuba and the rest of Latin America but also between Cuba and the rest of the world. For example, Rojas mentioned how “Lunes de Revolución” discussed the African American struggle for equality in the U.S. One of the major purposes of “Cuba Socialista,” meanwhile, was to showcase the experience of the Cuban Revolution to the rest of the world. 

Rojas’ lecture concluded with a Q&A portion. 

Rojas studied philosophy at the Universidad de La Habana in Havana, Cuba and earned his doctorate in history at El Colegio de México. His areas of expertise include the intellectual, political and diplomatic history of Latin America in the 19th and 20th centuries.  

Loss shared some insight on the genesis of the symposium. 

“When I published my English translation of Jorge Mañach’s ‘An Inquiry into Choteo,’ which began as a collaborative assignment in a senior seminar several years back, Reynaldo suggested we come together in one form or another to interrogate not just Mañach and translation, a small and seemingly manageable field, but the significance of translation during Cuba’s Republic,” Loss said. “From that question, we began navigating the different figures who participated in translation and who are themselves translators. We are as much interested in the practices that occurred after Cuba’s independence until Castro’s Revolution, as we are with the ways that those practices continue to influence the present day.” 

Photo of Fidel Castro. During the event, Reynaldo Lastre explains that “We are as much interested in the practices that occurred after Cuba’s independence until Castro’s Revolution, as we are with the ways that those practices continue to influence the present day.” Photo courtesy of MROnline.

While the symposium’s main focus is translation, the event touched on much more. 

“We are eager to implement the concept of translation as a vehicle to investigate the racial, gender and post-colonial constructions put into practice in the Republican period, thus contributing to studies of translation in Cuba,” Loss said. 

“it shows that it is a field closely connected to ethics, both inside and outside of translations. For me, it was work but also learning from all this.”

Rastre, who referred to working with Loss as “an honor and a privilege,” agreed with the complex nature of translation. 

“I think the symposium highlights different ways of approaching the concept of translation in Cuba,” Rastre said. “In addition, it shows that it is a field closely connected to ethics, both inside and outside of translations. For me, it was work but also learning from all this.” 

The fourth and final part of the symposium will take place Friday, March 5 from 1-3:30 p.m. For more information or to register, look at the UConn events calendar.  

20 Must-Read Queer Books in Translation from Around the World - Book Riot - Translation

At the beginning of 2020, I set out to read more books in translation. My goal was to read 20 translated books, around 10% of my total reading for the year. But once I discovered what I had been missing — once I began to delve into lists of books in translation, especially women in translation — I soon found that I had opened a floodgate. I dove farther, and the more I uncovered, the more I discovered.

I found lists and guides, and friends and followers began sending me recommendations. By the end of 2020, a full 20% of my reading was books in translation. And I wasn’t at all finished: my to-read list of books in translation had grown exponentially. Which, truly, was fantastic: it means I’d carry this goal of reading books in translation long into the years to come.

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This list focuses in particular on queer books in translation: whether that mean novels that feature a queer protagonist, novels that focus on queerness, or both. My main restriction as I searched, unfortunately, was simply availability. There is already a limited amount of queer literature in some countries due to censorship, fear, homophobia, and laws against homosexuality. Add onto that the small ratio of books that are translated into English each year, and consider how many of those translations will be queer literature, and then consider how many volumes are still in print, and availability even of those translated works of queer lit can be low. I found many gems that were on backorder or unavailable.

But I persevered, because I wanted to find a global list of must-read queer books in translation. I wanted to discover queer literature from all around the world, written in languages different from my own — from Marathi to French to Icelandic. I have read every book on this list, and worked hard to make a list that will allow us as readers to hear from queer authors all around the world.

Homophobia is a common content warning for many of these books, and so I have not listed it individually for each one. Please note that while I took great care to list content warnings, sometimes things fall through the cracks. Please do additional research on the recommended titles if needed.

Cobalt Blue by Sachin Kundalkar, Translated from Marathi by Jerry Pinto

Translated from its original Marathi, this book features a brother and sister in Pune, India, who both fall for the art student renting a room from their family. Tanay struggles as a gay man in India, while Anuja wants to break free of gender expectations and norms. The novel is split between them. They both feel repressed, suffering in their respective roles and relationships with the art student, and the novel is a quick read centered around longing and difference.

Content warnings for issues of sexual assault and suicidal thoughts.

Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was by Sjón, Translated by Victoria Cribb

Sjón, a novelist, poet, and longtime collaborator with Björk, authors this trippy Icelandic novel about a gay teen and cinephile in Reykjavík in the moment when the Spanish flu begins to sweep over the city. The writing is surreal and twisting, and goes by quickly; young Máni’s narrative sweeps through the pages, as he tries to survive the global pandemic and rising paranoia while also exploring his queer identity and ensuring the well-being of the grandmother who adopted him years ago.

Content warnings for issues of homophobic language, laws, and violence.

Amatka by Karin Tidbeck, Translated by the Author

I recommend not reading the blurb on the back of Amatka by Karin Tidbeck: the story, with Tidbeck’s superb prose, will unravel better that way, as will the subtleties of her world. We open with Vanja, a woman on her way to do market research in the colony of Amatka. She lives in a grim dystopia of sorts, where every item must be “marked” often, or named, to keep it what it is: you must call your desk a desk, your suitcase a suitcase, to ensure it remains that way. Glimmers of how this world came to be peek through the cracks as Vanja falls for housemate Nina and makes tentative friends with retired doctor Ulla and the local librarian. It’s a spectacular work of speculative fiction reminiscent of Jeff VanderMeer’s work, and I devoured it in a day.

Content warnings for reproductive restriction, suppression, depression, suicide.

Beijing Comrades by Bei Tong, Translated by Scott E. Myers

Pseudonymous Bei Tong first published the erotic love story Beijing Comrades online. Since then, there have been various published versions — some edited, some with the erotic details suppressed. Scott E. Myers has taken these versions and combined them, then translated them into English. It’s a remarkable story in which an arrogant playboy businessman falls for a working-class student named Lan Yu, and slowly confronts his internalized homophobia, sexism, and fear. Beijing Comrades not only portrays a same-sex relationship in China in the late 1980s, as well as explicit sex scenes, but is also rare for writing directly about the Tian’anmen Square protests and government repression. It is emotional, sexy, and engrossing.

Content warnings for violence, homophobic repression and language, internalized homophobia, sudden death, and grief.

We All Loved Cowboys by Carol Bensimon, Translated by Beth Fowler

In Bensimon’s lyrical story, Cora and Julia, two old friends, finally go off on the road trip they dreamt up as young twentysomethings — back before their falling out. When they were still hooking up, that is. As they drive from town to town in Brazil, they have to figure what they’re seeking in each other and from their adventures, before reserved, quiet Julia heads back to Canada and bisexual fashion student Cora heads back to Paris. This vivid road trip novel translated from Portuguese is a fantastic coming-of-age story soaked through with nostalgia, longing, rebellion, and the uncertainty of being young and being uncertain of what you want.

Last Night in Nuuk by Niviaq Korneliussen, Translated by Anna Halager

This novel by young female author Korneliussen was originally published in 2014 in Danish and in Greenlandic, an Eskimo-Aleut language with about 57,000 speakers, mostly Greenlandic Inuit people in Greenland. Emotionally blunt and utilizing text messages and letters to make its points, Last Night in Nuuk provides a glimpse into the complicated emotions and interconnected quandaries of five young queer Greenlandic protagonists. The story of Ivik, who struggles with touch aversion she can’t seem to explain, is particularly compelling.

Content warnings for alcoholism, homophobia, someone publicly outed, mention of parental sexual abuse, difficult coming out stories, depression, and gender dysphoria.

The End of Eddy by Édouard Louis, Translated by Michael Lucey

A young boy struggles amidst a whirl of homophobia, poverty, and toxic masculinity in a small French town: coming of age constantly bullied for being gay, Eddy is determined to prove, somehow, that he too is a “tough guy,” a boy growing into a man worthy of respect according to the gender roles prescribed. Eddy’s story speaks powerfully to the cycles of poverty, to the way it has eroded at his family and at the people who live elsewhere in town.

Content warnings for homophobic violence and language, internalized homophobia, racist language, parental and domestic abuse, animal cruelty, and ableism.

Disoriental by Négar Djavadi, Translated from French by Tina Kover

This epic family saga, intermixed with Iranian history, is told from the point of view of Kimiâ, a sapphic woman in the waiting room of a Parisian fertility clinic. It is an autobiographical novel, and features a version of Djavadi’s own story of growing up as the child of intellectuals who opposed the Shah and Khomeini’s regimes, and of her family’s escape from Iran. It is an artful, sweeping tale, narrated by a queer, punk rock–loving protagonist who is hoping to become a parent.

Content warnings for violence, racism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia.

Nine Moons by Gabriela Wiener, Translated by Jessica Powell

This blunt, darkly humorous book about pregnancy and its peculiarities, physicality, and anxieties, is by Gabriela Wiener, a Peruvian writer who in her afterword discusses being in a polyamorous relationship, and the experience she had with her child coming out as trans nonbinary (she also reflects there on the absurd focus she had as a pregnant mother on gender). This book was a vividly honest and snarky take on pregnancy that seems too rare, unafraid to mess with the awful parts, the way every decision becomes exaggerated in importance. It engages with the physical symptoms from hormonal spikes to feeling sick, as well as the misinformation and the lack of real information to prepare women for what they’re about to go through.

Content warnings for excessive focus on gender binary, later corrected in afterword.

Fair Play by Tove Jansson, Translated by Thomas Teal

Early in her career, the bio of Tove Jansson said she lived alone. But this wasn’t the case. Jansson, best known as creator and illustrator of the Moomins, had a lifelong sapphic partnership with Tuulikki Pietilä, a graphic artist. The two of them lived for many years in neighboring buildings connected by an attic, just like the protagonists of Fair Play, and would spend summers at an island home. In a series of vignettes, this book describes the close relationship of Mia and Jonna, revealing a quiet but tremendous love story in which each gives the other the space and independence they need, about how they understand each other’s idiosyncrasies, about the quiet ways they argue and make peace. Meanwhile, all in these short tales, the book plays with the ideas of art, creation, and process in fascinating ways.

Mauve Desert by Nicole Brossard, Translated by Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood

Mauve Desert is itself about translation: it first presents the story to be translated, then gives us Maude Laures and her attempt to capture the book and its characters, its themes and landscapes, and their true meanings, as she looks to complete our final chapter: the translated work. The novel-within-this-novel is about a young queer girl bursting to be free, in love with the desert and its horizon. It is a postmodernist twisting strange novel by Brossard, a feminist author based in Montreal, Quebec. Mauve Desert was first published in 1987.

Lie with Me by Philippe Besson, Translated by Molly Ringwald

When the protagonist stumbles on a young man who looks just like his first love, he is pushed back into his own memories, recalling his secretive, hidden affair with a boy named Thomas. While they fall for each other, Thomas continues to be withdrawn, certain that someday Philippe will leave him and their French town behind. There is a devastating lyricism to Besson’s writing. This is a book of longing, grief, and the pain of staying hidden.

Content warnings for homophobic language and suicide.

Notes of a Crocodile by Qiu Miaojin, Translated by Bonnie Huie

Qiu Miaojin has become a countercultural queer icon in Taiwan following her loss to suicide at the age of 26. Her strange, twisting novel Notes of a Crocodile was published after her death. It depicts a lesbian named Lazi struggling with her sapphic relationships — she tends to both fall hard and also maintain fierce distance — and forming a circle of strange, floundering queer friends. There is a deep sadness in this book, but it stands alongside satiric vignettes of “the crocodile,” a figure who wears human skin and who the media is obsessed with finding and exposing.

Content warnings for violence, abuse, suicidal thoughts and actions, self-harm.

Infidels by Abdellah Taïa, Translated by Alison Strayer

Abellah Taïa made history when he came out in Morocco, where homosexuality is illegal, and he has tried, in his literature and interviews, to show how Islamic faith and homosexuality can coexist. In this novel, Taïa writes of young Jallal, the son of a prostitute in Salé, Morocco, and his coming-of-age and eventual radicalization leading to his entry into global terror. Jallal’s mother is a strong woman of faith who idolizes Marilyn Monroe. The book is epic yet short, Taïa’s writing lyrical and vivid. Taïa roots his book in love and shares a small glimpse of the way that anger and the concepts of brotherhood can be warped into radicalization, revealing the complex humanity behind terrorism and extremism.

Content warnings for rape, torture, radicalization.

The Tree and the Vine by Dola de Jong, Translated by Kristen Gehrman

In Amsterdam in the years leading up to the Nazi occupation, Bea and Erica become roommates after a chance encounter at the house of a mutual friend named Wies. As they delicately split the space and Bea grows used to Erica’s habits, she begins to grow ever closer to her impulsive, often careless roommate. But when she realizes that Erica is interested in women, she has an internal crisis about her feelings for Bea that she struggles to grapple with. This short book about two complex sapphic women and their often strained relationship was first published in 1954, and recently underwent a new translation into English from its original Dutch.

Content warnings for antisemitism and Nazism.

Tentacle by Rita Indiana, Translated by Achy Abejas

In this strange, twisting novel, former sex worker Acilde is working as a maid in order to save up for Rainbow Brite, a drug that will change his sex and allow him to transition into a man. But he doesn’t realize that he is at the core of a strange Santería prophecy that puts him in a position to save the climate disaster–ridden world. This book switches between the Dominican Republic in several different eras, and can be confusing at times, but overall is a trippy tale of one person’s determination to save the oceans and its reefs and life.

Strong content warnings for sexual violence, rape, and abuse, as well as homophobic and racist language.

Amora: Stories by Natalia Borges Polesso, Translated by Julia Sanches

Natalia Borges Polesso is a rising Brazilian writer who deserves to be on all your lists. This newly translated collection features 33 short stories capturing a wide variety of stories all about women who love women — women longing after women, loving women, missing women, grieving women, dealing with their identity of loving women, discovering family members who are gay. I was enchanted with these tales at every turn, from “Como Te Extraño, Clara,” about a woman sleeping with a woman behind her husband’s back; to “Flor,” about a young girl who is told by her mother that the neighbor has a strange disease; to “Catch the Heart Red-Handed,” which mixes the protagonist’s heart trouble with the surges of passion.

Content warnings for suicide, overdose, homophobic language, self-harm, BDSM, a person being outed.

Sphinx by Anne Garréta, Translated by Emma Ramadan

Anne Garréta is part of the Oulipo, a French workshop that experiments with language to stretch what it can do (such as the novel that never once used the letter “E”). In this short book, Garréta — and her translator — take on the challenge of writing a book that never uses pronouns for its protagonist or the lover. It’s a powerful experiment that argues that gender neutrality is certainly possible, even in gendered languages. And the novel itself is compelling, telling the story of a DJ in love with a dancer, and centering this tale in a world of clubbing, music, and parties that is both freeing and isolating, addictive and pulsing.

Content warnings for death, and racism from side characters.

The Remainder by Alia Trabucco Zerán, Translated by Sophie Hughes

Felipe and Iquela live in the aftermath of Chile’s dictatorship, burdened with their parents’ trauma, heavy with the weight of what came before them, damaged by their parents’ insistence that they hold it within them — and desperate to shake it off. Paloma, a childhood friend and crush of Iquela, comes back to Santiago to bury her mother, but when her mother’s body is lost in transit, the three of them set out to Mendoza to try and find it. The Remainder is a compelling book about pain, history, and generational trauma. Felipe is obsessed with numbers, possessed with a fanatical desperation to make them balance, between the missing and unaccounted for bodies of the dictatorship and the ones dying, being disinterred, being discovered or named. Iquela and Paloma are trapped in the grip of their mothers and their mothers’ stories of militant resistance. This novel was shortlisted for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize.

Content warnings for animal cruelty, self-harm, reckless drug use.

The Route of Ice & Salt by José Luis Zárate, Translated by David Bowles

This cult vampire novel became available for the first time in English translation thanks to an IndieGoGo campaign led by Innsmouth Free Press, a micro-press owned and operated by World Fantasy Award–winning author Silvia Moreno-García. Originally published in 1998, The Route of Ice & Salt is the story of the ship that carried Dracula to England, told from the point of view of the ship’s captain. Zárate writes a gothic novel that features classic gothic horror, queer desire and its repression, musing on the ways that the labeling and destroying of monsters can be applied to the real-world horrors of homophobia and persecution.

Content warning: homophobic violence, body horror, gothic horror, self-harm, suicide, internalized homophobia, sexual assault.

La Bastarda by Trifonia Melibea Obono, Translated from Spanish by Lawrence Schimel

This short read is the first novel by an Equatorial Guinean woman to be translated into English. It features Okomo, a teen girl living in the controlling rule of her grandmother and the expectations of Fang cultural norms. Drawn into a gang of “indecent” girls, Okomo begins to discover a different world that includes her “man-woman” uncle Marcelo — a world of queerness, nonconformity, and open-mindedness.

Content warnings for sexual assault and corrective rape.

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For more books in translation, check out the In Translation archives! To find more LGBTQ books, try the LGBTQ category.

XTM CEO Bob Willans on Raising Capital and the Future of Translation Pricing - Slator - Translation

2 hours ago

XTM CEO Bob Willans joins SlatorPod to discuss the journey of the company he co-founded back in 2002. Bob talks about growing XTM with little outside funding to become a USD 11m SaaS company in 2021.

He tells us about XTM’s decision and search to bring on financial backers in 2021, which culminated in XTM’s majority sale to US-based investment firm K1 Investment Management in January 2021.

Bob shares his views on the TMS funding and investment boom in 2020, which he says had little to do with Covid (for the record), and unpacks the landmark shifts in translation management technology over the past two decades — from the advent of the cloud to the integration of neural machine translation (NMT) and AI more broadly.

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Bob also talks about milestone developments in XTM’s product, including totally rewriting their translation editor at one stage, and discusses how the company balances out feature requests and customization for enterprise clients against general product enhancements.

First up, Florian and Esther run through the week’s language industry news, kicking off with some key stats from the Slator 2021 Language Service Provider Index (LSPI), which features more than 175 companies on its launch in early March 2021.

The two also talk about the Language Industry Job Index (LIJI), which climbed nearly 10 points in March 2021 to match pre-Covid levels, while Florian discusses the underwhelming consumer reaction to the Apple Translate app.

Subscribe to SlatorPod on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts.

Stream Slator webinars, workshops, and conferences on the Slator Video-on-Demand channel.

Book set to contribute to field of translation - Hurriyet Daily News - Translation

ANKARA

A translator’s guide, a public affairs term bank and a dictionary of public institutions, has been prepared by the Communications Directorate as a roadmap for public translation.

Presidential Communications Director Fahrettin Altun announced the completion of the book, formulated to contribute to the field of translation.

Writing the foreword of the Translator’s Reference Book, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan emphasized that Turkey has been an indispensable actor in the region recently.

“I believe that the Public Term Bank and Translator’s Reference Book will fill an important gap in explaining the country’s thesis, our view of the world, the struggle of our nation and state for humanity, and the work we do for world peace,” Erdoğan said.

In his post shared on his social media account, Altun said, “We believe it will make valuable contributions to the field of translation in public institutions from a holistic perspective.”

The publications are available online on the Communications Directorate’s website.

Translation: Detention of Takeout Driver Advocate Highlights Digital-era Labor Abuses - China Digital Times - Translation

Amid the ongoing pandemic, the services provided by food delivery platforms have become a lifeline for many shut-in or socially distanced consumers, in China and elsewhere. Despite the newfound essentiality of delivery drivers and the relative viral risk they now assume globally, an increasing number of them are struggling to make ends meet as overworked freelancers in the gig economy. In China, the revelation of recent labor abuses by deliver app companies and the detention of an anonymous online labor advocate has served to highlight the plight facing these workers.

Citing two March 1 entries on China Labour Bulletin’s Strike Map of food delivery app workers’ strikes in Shenzhen and Tongxiang, Radio Free Asia reports that the recent detention of an unofficial industry labor leader—along with the low pay and poor working conditions he had been speaking publicly about—contributed in leading the workers to protest. From Xiaoshan Huang and Han Qing, who quote other workers’ claims that the strike campaign is ongoing and spreading:

The strike comes after Xiong Yan, who headed an unofficial union formed by workers for the food delivery app Ele.me and other services, was detained in Beijing last month. His whereabouts are still unknown.

According to several people familiar with the situation, Ele.me workers have been on a go-slow or refusing to work at all since Xiong’s “disappearance,” resulting in a sharp rise in timed-out orders.

A person familiar with the situation who gave only a surname, Zhang, said Ele.me riders are considering a nationwide strike on Monday to protest the platform’s treatment of riders and Xiong’s presumed detention.

[…] Another person close to the situation, Hong Tao, said more riders were taking part in the “sabotage” campaign on Wednesday, but that it was hard to estimate the scale of the action.

[…] According to a post on WeChat Moments by a Beijing-based delivery rider surnamed He, as many as 10,000 delivery riders in more than a dozen groups were involved in the campaign. [Source]

Last month, the Los Angeles Times’ Alice Su reported the story of a disgruntled Taizhou-based Ele.me delivery driver’s lunch hour protest by self-immolation, and the lackluster gig economy labor conditions that, combined with eroding spaces for expression, advocacy, and protest in China, led him to stage the grisly public demonstration. The report also mentioned the online advocacy of the driver who would be detained on February 25:

That act of protest and desperation was filmed by bystanders and went viral online. It drew attention to the harsh lives of delivery drivers at the bottom of a highly competitive gig economy. China has made an impressive recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, but the man’s self-immolation was a reminder of how difficult the past year has been, especially for blue-collar workers, many of whom are rural migrants who have restricted access to urban social services.

[…] “For food delivery workers, protests basically disappeared,” said Aidan Chau, a researcher at China Labour Bulletin, a rights group that found a dramatic decline in protests by food delivery workers, from 57 in 2018 to 45 in 2019 to only three in 2020. “Nobody is going to strike now, because if you protest you will just be sacked and a bunch of workers will replace you instantly.”

[…] Some drivers have begun advocating for themselves. One Ele.me driver recently started posting videos explaining drivers’ problems. He has started an informal coalition of takeout drivers called the Jianghu Knights of Takeout Alliance, a reference to ancient Chinese martial arts novels in which wandering vigilante “knights,” usually from lower social classes, fight for justice.

“What we delivery drivers need is not your pity or sympathy,” he said in one selfie video, filmed as he walked along a canal in his blue helmet and delivery uniform. He gave no name, referring to himself only by his “alliance leader” username. “This is just how the world is. No work is easy. But we should get the respect and fair, rational treatment that we deserve.” [Source]

In addition to evoking the chivalrous and righteous wandering martial artists of wuxia stories, “Jianghu Knights of Takeout Alliance” (外送江湖骑士联盟) may also be a reference to the movement’s national ambition (jiānghú 江湖, literally “rivers and lakes,” often means “all corners of the land” or nationwide).

On March 1, Chinese news outlets reported on the February 25 detention of a pseudonymous Chinese takeout delivery driver who had been vocally advocating on behalf of his fellow delivery workers online. RFA’s Chinese coverage reported that the driver, who they referred to as Xiong Yan, was detained in Beijing. According to a now deleted (but accessible via Google cache) report from mainland outlet Lanjing TMT, a driver going by “Chen Sheng” was detained with several other organizers of an informal labor advocacy group, and that two others detained had been released. In the article, Chen is quoted discussing his advocacy work at an earlier press conference:

Currently, Chen Sheng’s Weibo, Kuaishou, and Douyin accounts haven’t been updated for several days. Reporters’ attempts to contact Chen on WeChat have yielded no responses.

In a recent interview with Lanjing TMT and other media, he said that he currently has 16 WeChat groups in Beijing and over 14,000 friends on the platform, comprised of 99.99% drivers—including some people who are either about to become or used to be a driver. Reporters note that he has 45,000 fans on Douyin and 72,000 on Kuaishou.

“What I’ve said basically represents the opinion of 70% of us takeout brothers,” Chen explained. “And it isn’t because I have this or that ability, I don’t think so. It’s because they tend to trust me, I’ve been fighting for reasonable demands for us all on the internet, for the interests of drivers as a collective. So, they are more willing to trust me.”

In Chen’s view, few are able to express the true voice of takeout drivers, and even if a few try to it quickly disappears in the crowd. “Nobody pays attention to you.” […]

Currently, Chen Sheng is responsible for all operations of the self-media accounts, including filming, editing, etc., asnd is receiving an income of between 1,000 and 2,000 yuan. According to [the account] description, his video content is made to convey the drivers’ voice to the outside world and express their demands.

“I hope that someday, drivers and executives of the takeout platforms can stand together, talk to each other openly and frankly about their problems, and discuss how the relationship between driver and platform can become more appropriate, more reasonable,” Chen said. [Chinese]

The report also noted that chat records from February 24—the day before his detention—indicated that “Chen” expected to soon be dealing with authorities: “If I say nothing tomorrow, take that as proof that something is wrong. If I can speak, all is well.”

Coverage of “Chen’s” detention from Protocol points to a February 17 video he posted detailing Alibaba-owned Ele.me’s efforts to thwart paying out a promised holiday overtime bonus scheme aimed to discourage workers from returning home for the Lunar New Year. On February 19, the company issued an apology that was widely seen as insincere. Phoebe Zhang reported last month for the South China Morning Post:

Under its system of incentives, the company offered rewards for completing a set number of deliveries over seven different phases starting on January 11 and running until the end of the month. Drivers receive extra cash if they hit the target for three of the seven-day periods and could make 8,200 yuan ($1,264) if they complete the full set.

[…] “You need to complete 380 deliveries, but I only got 23 deliveries in more than eight hours,” [a driver] said. [to Beijing News].

[…M]any web users did not buy into Ele.me’s apology and expressed scepticism that it would improve working conditions for the couriers.

“For you, 8,200 yuan may be half a month’s salary, but for the couriers, they had to earn it with massive deliveries at the expense of not going home this year,” one comment said. “This is disgusting.”

“Why can’t you just raise their compensation in general during the holidays?” another asked. [Source]

Electronic Dictionary Market 2021 Is Booming Across the Globe | Explored in Latest Research – NeighborWebSJ - NeighborWebSJ - Dictionary

The Global Electronic Dictionary Market report provides information by Top Players, Geography, End users, Applications, Competitor analysis, Sales, Revenue, Price, Gross Margin, Market Share, Import-Export, Trends and Forecast 2021-2026.

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• Casio
• Ectaco
• Franklin
• Seiko
• MEIJIN
• INSTANT DICT
• Sharp
• Noah
• OZing
• BBK
• WQX
• Besta
• KYD
• COMET

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• Company Overview
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Electronic Dictionary Market Segmentation:

The global market for Electronic Dictionary is set to find a segmentation in the report that would be based on type and application. These segments have a better acceptance of various factors that can be taken into consideration to understand how the market can chart the future path.

Electronic Dictionary Market Breakdown based on Product Type

• Below 2.8 Inch
• Between 3.0-3.5 Inch
• Between 4.3-5.2 Inch
• Above 5.5 Inch

Electronic Dictionary Market Breakdown based on Application

• Business Use
• Educational Purpose
• Personal Use

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Major Points in Table of Content of Electronic Dictionary Market:

Chapter 1. Research Objective

Chapter 2. Executive Summary

Chapter 3. Strategic Analysis

Chapter 4. Market Dynamics

Chapter 5. Segmentation & Statistics

• Global Electronic Dictionary Market by Product Type 2019 – 2026
  • Below 2.8 Inch
  • Between 3.0-3.5 Inch
  • Between 4.3-5.2 Inch
  • Above 5.5 Inch
• Global Electronic Dictionary Market by Application 2019 – 2026
  • Business Use
  • Educational Purpose
  • Personal Use

Chapter 6. Market Use case studies

Chapter 7. KOL Recommendations

Chapter 8. Investment Landscape

Chapter 9. Electronic Dictionary Market – Competitive Intelligence

Chapter 10. Company Profiles

Chapter 11. Appendix

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