A National Security Adviser Lost in Translation in Nigeria - IDN InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters - Translation

Viewpoint by Azu Ishiekwene

The writer is the Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief of The Interview magazine based in Abuja, Nigeria.

ABUJA (IDN) — Last week, Nigeria’s National Security Adviser, Mohammed Babagana Monguno, stripped the government bare in public only to try hiding the ugly sight with fig leaves shortly after. The pathetic damage control didn’t work. Monguno, a retired major general, told the BBC Hausa Service in an interview that billions of naira voted by Buhari’s government to fight insurgency could not be accounted for.

Stopping short of naming names, Monguno pointed a finger at the last service chiefs who after overstaying their tenure as insecurity worsened, still earned promotion as ambassadors. They now join the ranks of ambassadors still waiting to be posted, most of them, one year after their appointments were announced.

Given the sheer amount of drivel on WhatsApp, I initially dismissed the message credited to Monguno as fake news. It read: “It seems the money released to former service chiefs by President Buhari to buy weapons to fight terrorism, banditry and kidnapping, is missing. Because the new service chiefs have confirmed to us (sic) they didn’t see where the new weapons were purchased in their handing over. Apparently, the money is missing, and we must investigate it.”

I advised the forwarder to be careful what he shares, only for me to double-check shortly afterwards and find that Monguno said the words, as we say, with his own mouth.

Of course, he tried to walk it back, in a long-winding statement that took the combination of tailors, carpenters and bricklayers to improvise. But like Humpty Dumpty, the damage had been done. Neither all the king’s horses nor all the king’s men could repair it.

It’s not the first time. In February last year, he leaked a memo showing how infighting among the military services was undermining the war on insurgency and blaming former Chief of Staff and civilian, Abba Kyari, for hijacking control. It was as surreal as it was unprecedented, but the Presidency did not deny it.

This time, however, it has denied Monguno’s claim of missing funds, but the messy trail and chaotic aftermath are a sad reflection of the current state of affairs.

Before the national security adviser finds a microphone for his next bombshell, it might be useful to remind him that one of the main reasons the government he serves was elected was to end the national slide into chaos.

Insecurity was so rampant before Buhari’s election in 2015 that Boko Haram claimed territories in Nigeria the size of Northern Ireland. The group planted its flag in several parts of the North, launched deadly attacks on places of worship and markets, abducted hundreds of schoolgirls from their dormitories, and later carried its attacks to the high-profile targets inside Abuja.

Our soldiers tried to fight back but there was not much they could do. Their superiors, we were told, had stolen the monies meant for food, essential supplies and weapons and left the men to fight a deadly enemy with bare hands.

The toll was not only in the broken morale of bereft soldiers. According to the US Council for Foreign Relations, Boko Haram had killed about 12,000 people between 2006 and 2014. Thousands more were maimed or uprooted from their homes, leaving Nigeria today with over a 2.9million internally displaced persons – a horrific legacy with unfolding consequences.

Before 2015, General Muhammadu Buhari, as he then was, and presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), called President Goodluck Jonathan incompetent and asked him to resign. How could a government whose primary responsibility is to protect citizens fail so miserably and still want to continue in office?

Rooting out Boko Haram

Jonathan lost re-election and Buhari won on the promise that he would root out Boko Haram and make the country safe again. But there was no way he could do that without first cleaning up the military high command, which had been swallowed whole by corruption.

And so, began a tortuous investigation into how the office of Monguno’s predecessor, Sambo Dasuki, managed $2billion; an investigation with tentacles so long it left no nook or cranny untouched and so deep the dramatis personae are yet to recover from its impact.

For Monguno to suggest as he clearly did that nothing has changed - indeed that the pre-Buhari era might have been the golden era - is a poor verdict on his appointor. The hemming and hawing in his interview and the so-called retraction, however elegantly expressed, cannot repair the damage.

Monguno thought he was doing Buhari a favour by saying he thought the President had “done his best by approving huge sums of money for arms purchase”.

But whether he said it in Hausa, Fufulde or Fula, it comes down to this: that the nation’s top spy thinks that the President’s job ends at signing off over $1billion so far for arms purchase; while he, the spymaster-in-chief, stars in this tragi-comedy as part-time whistleblower and part-time loose cannon.

That can’t be right. There’s something from Buhari’s past that we know, that Monguno may also know about, that hinted at a man from whom much more could be expected.

It’s back in the day when Buhari was GOC of the 3rd Armoured Division, Jos, a little over four decades ago. Bandits from Chad had invaded parts of Borno and it fell on Buhari as the GOC to repel them. He flushed them out and chased them, tail between their legs, beyond the Nigerian border, well into Chadian territory.

Even after the Chadian President at the time promised to intervene and Shehu Shagari who was then Nigeria’s president asked Buhari to stand down, he demurred, pulling out later, almost at the risk of his commission. In a number of interviews later, Buhari reportedly said he had no regret and if he had to do it again, he would happily chase the bandits to hell and back, to secure Nigerian lives and territory.

Mis-translation

It was that Buhari, tough as nails and the nemesis of Chadian bandits and Maitatsine outlaw, that Nigerians thought they voted into office six years ago. But Monguno, confirming one of the biggest concerns in many circles, suggested that Nigerians might have got a pig in a poke. Buhari is present to sign off over $1billion to buy arms, but absent to follow through execution? Where is his promise to keep Nigerians safe?

Monguno can argue about mistranslation. He can also say, as he did most unconvincingly, that his statement was taken out of context. But he’s damned if he was translated correctly and damned if he was mistranslated. His subsequent disclaimer, that, “Mr. President has provided enormous resources for arms procurement, but the orders were either inadequate or yet to be delivered,” was even worse than his interview.

What he said, in plain English, which was more appalling than the Hausa version – in or out of context – is that there is still no connection between payments made for arms under Buhari and value received. Heart-wrenching news couldn’t get starker.

Public officials are human and subject to occasional mistakes. But what we’re dealing with is not a slip. It’s a man caught in the trap of his own loose tongue. You could look the other way if the consequence was only self-inflicted damage. Sadly, it’s not.

The single biggest concern in the country today is insecurity. Up and down the country people live in fear of attacks by Boko Haram or any of its many franchises —bandits, herdsmen, kidnappers, gunmen, name it. And as lives are being lost and families shattered, all we get for billions of dollars spent in arms purchase is government officials speaking in tongues.

The last thing anyone wants to hear from a national security adviser at this time—a national security adviser whose government made the investigation of monies for arms by a previous government the centrepiece of its housecleaning exercise —is that funds supposed to be used by the same government to keep the people safe cannot be accounted for.

That cannot be a joke, a mistranslation or a casual slip up. And coming after the tenure of the last service chiefs, it makes you wonder why this late and what else has been left unsaid.

Yet, what is said already raises serious questions about the national security adviser’s continued fitness for office. Monguno’s position is no longer tenable. He should resign or be removed. [IDN-InDepthNews – 18 March 2021]

Photo: Nigeria’s National Security Adviser, Mohammed Babagana Monguno. Credit: thecable.ng

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Dead Sea Scrolls Discovery Reveals New Details Ab... - ChristianityToday.com - Translation

Israeli researchers and archaeologists unveiled this week several groundbreaking discoveries, including dozens of biblical scroll fragments that represent the first newly uncovered Dead Sea Scrolls in more than half a century.

The Dead Sea Scrolls contain some of the earliest known Jewish religious documents, including biblical texts, dated from the third century B.C. to the second century A.D. The manuscripts were first unearthed in the immediate aftermath of World War II in the caves near Qumran and the Judean Desert.

Even an initial review of the new fragments—which will be analyzed and scrutinized for years to come—offers some exciting findings about how the earliest biblical texts were translated and adapted in ways like our own.

The discovery comes at a time when demand for antiquities has skyrocketed, spurring looting and forgeries over the past several years as wealthy collectors hope to acquire any remaining scraps of the priceless scrolls.

Starting around 2002, a number of widely publicized “Dead Sea Scroll” fragments emerged with questionable origin stories. After a series of illegal attempts to acquire artifacts and scrolls, Israeli Antiquities Authority conducted a series of archaeological surveys to reexamine the interiors of the caves along the cliffs of the Judean Desert.

Beginning in 2017, its researchers uncovered two dozen scroll pieces, each measuring only a few centimeters across, from the so-called Cave of Horror near the western shore of the Dead Sea. It’s a site where insurgents were believed to have hidden during the uprising led by Simon bar Kokhba against the Roman empire in A.D. 133–136. It gets its name from the discovery of 40 bodies during initial excavations decades before.

Unlike most of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were written in Hebrew and Aramaic, the fragments from the Cave of Horror contain Greek letters. Scholars determined they came from a Greek translation of the Book of the Twelve in Hebrew, what many Christians call the Minor Prophets.

The job of reconstructing the original document is akin to trying to assemble a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle with only a handful of pieces. The largest fragment contains portions of Zechariah 8:16–17, and some smaller bits are identified as Nahum 1:5–6. These pieces appear to be connected to other previously discovered fragments from the same cave along the ancient gorge of Nahal Hever and were part of a single large scroll including all of the minor prophets.

The text comes from the oldest physical scroll of the Greek Bible we have, but it likely represents a development or revision of the standard Greek translation—often referred to as the Septuagint, LXX, or Old Greek.

Two characteristics found for the first time in this ancient Greek translation correspond in remarkable ways to our modern English Bibles.

First, the newly discovered pieces show a special treatment for the four letters of God’s name, the Tetragrammaton (see Exodus 3:14–15). Instead of rendering the name in typical fashion with the Greek word Kyrios, the name of God is represented in Hebrew letters written right to left. It would be similar to us using the Hebrew letters יהוה (YHWH) or possibly the Latin DOMINUS in the middle of an English sentence.

This representation is significant because using specialized characters for the divine name has carried through to our modern Bibles. Most English Bibles represent the name as “the LORD” with small capital letters, rather than representing its supposed pronunciation Yahweh, as many scholars suggest. This substitution follows the ancient tradition of reading Adonai, a Hebrew word meaning “Lord,” or even HaShem “The Name,” in place of representing God’s name according to its sound.

Article continues below

Moreover, the lettering for God’s name is not typical of most of the other Dead Sea Scroll Hebrew manuscripts. It is an even older script, sometimes called paleo-Hebrew, which was mostly abandoned in everyday writing during the second temple period. Think of it as the difference between our modern Latin lettering and the calligraphic Fraktur or Gothic script, or possibly even like Greek letters. Putting these representations into a translated text provides both a foreignness to the writing and a type of reverence for the name’s uniqueness.

The second correlation we find in the new fragments is evidence of changing words to try to improve a new translation. The Minor Prophets scroll represents a revision of an older Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. The original version was used widely by Greek-speaking Jews in the first century throughout the Mediterranean world, but at some point, a new translation became warranted.

For Zechariah 8:17, the Old Greek translated the first word in the Hebrew text (אִישׁ) as a distributive term meaning “each other, another,” which put at the end, similar to every major English version. For example, the NIV reads, “Do not plot evil against each other.”

In the new fragment, the same term is translated by a different Greek word at the beginning. Using an interlinear approach—finding a corresponding word without accounting for the context of its use—the verse starts by representing the same Hebrew word as “man.” It forms an overliteral translation: “As for a man, do not plot evil against his neighbor in your heart.”

It would seem that the efforts to render the Bible accurately into common languages date back to our earliest textual evidence of the Scriptures. Yet this difference anticipates the various modern opinions about how best to represent God’s word in our vernaculars.

These texts will undoubtably launch an array of research in years to come, with other features possibly revealed through multispectral imaging and digital magnification. As a biblical scholar, I can imagine these ancient readers striving to translate the Hebrew Scriptures that we read today and then carrying these meaningful texts into the darkest moments of their history to help them better understand God and their world.

Our connection to these people through this ancient text—now brought forward in tiny pieces, bit by bit—demonstrates the profound human desire to seek God especially in our moments of greatest trial and uncertainty.

Chip Hardy is associate professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and the author of Exegetical Gems from Biblical Hebrew: A Refreshing Guide to Grammar and Interpretation.

Ambassador Cui Tiankai Takes an Interview in Anchorage (English Translation of the Transcript) - MFA China - Translation

On March 17 2021, Ambassador Cui Tiankai took a joint interview with Xinhua News Agency, CGTN and Phoenix TV on the high-level strategic dialogue between China and the United States in Anchorage. The interview was done in Chinese, and here is the English translation of the transcript:

CGTN: The high-level strategic dialogue between China and the U.S. is about to take place and the world is paying high attention. In the past few years, China-U.S. relations have dropped to the lowest point since the establishment of diplomatic ties, and this dialogue is the first face-to-face engagement between senior officials of the two countries since the inauguration of the Biden administration. What expectations does the Chinese side have for the meeting?

Ambassador Cui: The high-level strategic dialogue in Anchorage is indeed the first face-to-face communication between officials of this level since the Biden administration took office. I believe that both sides place high importance on the dialogue. We have made a lot of preparations in the past few days.

Of course, we do not expect that one dialogue can resolve all the issues between China and the U.S, so we do not have unrealistic expectations or illusions on it. But I hope that it will become a beginning and that the two sides will start a candid, constructive and rational process of dialogue and communication. If this can be achieved, then the dialogue is successful. In short, I hope that the two sides will come with good will and leave with better mutual understanding.

Xinhua: Just before the dialogue, the U.S. State Department senior official chose Japan and the Republic of Korea as the destinations of his first foreign visit. The U.S., Japan, India and Australia held a video summit. There is an opinion that the U.S. is enlisting its allies to confront China from a "position of strength" in the strategic dialogue. What is your comment?

Ambassador Cui: Countries always have issues to talk about. For such communication, you need to talk to the country directly involved and focus on your issues. Of course, if the U.S. wants to develop its relations with some other countries, it is up to themselves. We only hope that any such bilateral activities do not target or harm the interests of a third country.

Some people may think that by talking to other countries before meeting with China, they can give out their voice and show their strength. This is unnecessary, and may not work. It is just like when people walk alone at night, they may sing to dispel their fears, which may not be useful. If you have issues to talk about with China, do it, face to face.

I also believe that there are some big question marks in the minds of the global community, including some U.S. allies, some of them Asian countries: First, Will the U.S. be a responsible stakeholder in global affairs? Second, will the U.S. come back with sustained commitment and contributions to multilateral cooperation? Third, will the U.S. be ready and willing to respect other countries' interests and listen to their voice? Many countries, including U.S. allies, have such questions. Some just don't say it in public. It is hoped that the U.S. will understand other countries' concerns.

Phoenix: Yesterday, the U.S. Department of State announced sanctions on 24 Chinese officials due to what is happening in Hong Kong. In his visit to Japan, the U.S. senior official also gave negative remarks and even criticisms on China. Will these moves dampen the atmosphere of the dialogue? Will China lower its expectations?

Ambassador Cui: This is not the first time the U.S. did things that hurt China's sovereignty and China-U.S. relations. Our position is very clear: we are firmly opposed to it and will take necessary counter-measures. This time will be no exception. We will clearly state our position in this dialogue. We will not give in or make any compromise on these matters just to create some "atmosphere". Never!

CGTN: According to what the U.S. has announced, it will mention issues concerning Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Taiwan in the dialogue, and such communication will continue only if this meeting has met the expectations of the U.S. side. How does the Chinese side respond? Will it make any compromise on any issue?

Ambassador Cui: For any dialogue between countries, a basic prerequisite is that both sides should have the spirit of equality and mutual respect. All the matters you mentioned concern China's sovereignty, territorial integrity and national reunification. When its core interests are involved, China has no room to back down. This position will also be clearly articulated in the dialogue. If people assume that applying pressure unilaterally or closing ranks with allies will make China bow, if they assume that China will say yes to any unilateral demands from any side just for some "outcomes" from the dialogue, I advise them to give up such illusions. These assumptions will only lead to a dead end.

To be honest, my colleagues in Beijing have made a lot of preparations for the dialogue, including on the topics and for COVID-19 prevention. They have taken the most comprehensive and stringent measures for COVID-19 prevention, including getting vaccinated and doing all kinds of tests. They have put in great efforts. If anyone believes that the Chinese delegation travels to Alaska, still freezingly cold, and goes to such lengths with great sincerity, just to give in and make compromises, then I would suggest my colleagues in Beijing cancel their trip. Why bother coming? I hope people with such a belief will discard their illusion.

Phoenix: Ambassador, you mentioned "counter-measures". What specific measures will the Chinese side take?

Ambassador Cui: We have taken some. As the situation evolves, we will do what is necessary.

Media: Thank you, Ambassador.

Ambassador Cui: Thank you all.

Lost in Translation: US-Russian Discourse Escalates Further - Jamestown - The Jamestown Foundation - Translation

Moscow announced, on March 17, that it is recalling “for consultations” its ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, after United States President Joseph Biden’s strong words against his Russian counterpart. In a pre-taped interview for ABC News, when asked by anchor George Stephanopoulos, “You know Vladimir Putin; do you think he’s a killer?” Biden replied, “Mmm hmm, I do,” before adding, “the price he’s going to pay, you’ll see shortly” (Kommersant, March 18).

This was taken in Moscow as an outrageous affront warranting the recall of an ambassador. The damage was further aggravated by problems with translation. The word “killer,” which has various connotations in modern English, especially in modern argot, was translated into Russian as “ubiytsa” which in Russian actually means “murderer.” The front-page story on the matter in Kommersant, in fact, stated that neither Biden nor Stephanopoulos specified what particular “murder” Putin was being accused of (Kommersant, March 18). The word “killer” actually exist in modern Russian, alongside the word “ubiytsa,” as a loan word—meaning a hardened, mob-connected contract hitman—also damaging, but not as bad as “murderer.”

The reaction of Russian officialdom to Biden’s ABC interview was swift and outspoken. Russian State Duma (lower chamber of parliament) Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin described the US president’s televised remarks as “unacceptable,” maligning not only Putin but the citizens of Russia and the entire nation. “No other US president ever slandered any Russian leaders in such a way, not even Joseph Stalin,” implied Volodin, adding “Nobody is allowed to talk like that about our head of state. This is hysteria that comes from impotence.” The secretary of the General Council of the ruling United Russia party, Andrey Turchak, and the official government daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta described Biden as “senile,” “muttering” and suffering from “dementia” (Rossiyskaya Gazeta, March 17). Former close aide to Putin and powerful Kremlin insider Vladislav Surkov cursed Biden in writing in English: “Old chap Joe is a mothafu**a” (Vzglyad, March 18).

Putin replied to the ABC interview with a well-known Russian saying: “He who calls others names is himself what he calls them” (“Kto obzivayetsa, tot sam tak nazivayetsa”). The Russian leader followed this up by listing the United States’ historical sins—slavery, the genocide of Native American populations, using nuclear weapons against Japan—which, he asserted, formed the “killer” (murderous) character of the US ruling class; so Biden could not help himself when resorting to slander. Putin wished Biden good health, apparently implying his lack of such because of old age (Interfax, March 18).

Vladimir Putin is known to have a thin skin and to hold extended grudges against people he perceives to have wronged him. The Biden/Stephanopoulos interview seems to have enraged the Kremlin leader; and the entire Russian ruling elite, including all Duma faction leaders, hurried to publicly demonstrate their solidarity with the Russian president by slandering Biden as much as possible (Interfax, March 18). Only Senator Konstantin Kosachev, who chairs the Federation Council (upper chamber of parliament) Foreign Affairs Committee, implied Washington still had a way to wiggle out of the escalating crisis: “Maybe Biden was too focused on his domestic agenda and, due to old age, did not fully understand what Stephanopoulos was asking.” Washington must find a way, according to Kosachev, to walk back the ABC interview and apologize because “if they do not, the consequences will be terrible.” The next step after the recalling of Ambassador Antonov may be the severing of diplomatic relations (Interfax, March 18).

Recalling an ambassador “for consultations” is unprecedented in Russo-US relations. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and United States several times stood on the verge of all-out war. US and Soviet soldiers skirmished and killed each other in proxy wars in Korea, Vietnam and the Middle East, though these encounters were not officially recognized as such at the time in order to avoid an all-out nuclear holocaust. But the military and intelligence communities on both sides knew well what was happening. Still, Washington’s and Moscow’s ambassadors were never recalled “for consultations” at any of those times since this would have signaled the first step in downgrading and possibly severing diplomatic relations. In today’s diplomatic etiquette, the severing of diplomatic relations is more or less equivalent to declaring war. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov described US-Russian relations after the Biden/Stephanopoulos interview as “very bad” and the interview itself as “unprecedented.” The US president, Peskov charged, “Definitely does not want to improve relations with our nation. In the future, we will act from that assumption” (Interfax, March 18).

Apparently, the Russian side believes only a full-hearted personal apology by the White House would suffice to somewhat undo the damage caused by the Biden/Stephanopoulos interview. But most likely, instead of that there will be more US sanctions and restrictions coming. Russia will be punished for allegedly interfering in the US 2020 elections and for its alleged cyber/hacker attacks. Punishment is also on the horizon for Moscow allegedly using the nerve agent “Novichok” to poison opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Tomsk in August 2020 and, before that, on March 4, 2018, to try to assassinate former double agent and military intelligence (GRU) Colonel Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, England. Areas of possible cooperation, like in outer space, are contracting out of existence as export control regimes governing US high technology and components become more rigid in accordance with the US’s 1991 Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act. US-Russian space cooperation is now almost exclusively limited to the International Space Station (ISS), which is leaking air from the Russian section and may soon be either abandoned or broken up into separately floating national stations (Militarynews.ru, March 18).

As relations enter a freefall, the aggressiveness of buzz-by encounters and intercepts between US and Russian ships and jets may increase. Actual skirmishes may begin to occur on the high seas, in the air or in Syria between US and Russian militaries. The possibility of hot proxy wars will grow, in particularly in southern Ukraine, where the Kremlin may believe it must move to push back the US and its “proxies” away from northern Crimea and the Sea of Azov (see EDM, March 11). All that just because of a stray question, an “Mmm hmm” reply and a dubious translation.

600+ new words added to online dictionary - KTNV Las Vegas - Dictionary

The online dictionary has added 600 new words. Two of which are "supposably" and "finna."

The site defines "finna" as a contraction of "fixing to" meaning "getting ready to do something."

Dictionary.com defines "supposably" as "maybe assumed, imagined, or supposed."

According to MerriamWebster.com, "supposably" is often used when the speaker intends to use "supposedly," which usually means "allegedly."

Anima Biotech and Takeda Enter Collab to Target mRNA Translation with Small Molecules - BioSpace - Translation

Yochi Slonim, co-founder and CEO of Anima Biotech.

Anima Biotech’s strategic collaboration with Takeda Pharmaceutical, just announced today, uses its novel platform for discovery of mRNA translation modulators to discover and develop a new class of therapies for neurological diseases.

The preclinical research collaboration initially includes Anima’s early-stage Huntington’s disease program against the HTT target, selectively inhibiting the mutated protein with small molecules. Two additional targets in the neurological disease space will be named by Takeda later.

This is Anima’s second major pharmaceutical industry partnership and is worth a potential $1.2 billion. The deal is structured for $120 million in upfront and preclinical research milestone payments, and up to $1.1 billion in clinical and commercial milestones.

Tiered royalties on net sales of the resulting products and a limited-time option to expand the collaboration with up to three additional targets are also on the table, which could add up to another $1.2 billion and bring the collaboration to a total of $2.4 billion in total if all the programs are successful.

The parties will work jointly to advance the molecules to clinical candidates, which Takeda has the exclusive rights to develop and commercialize.

“We’re seeking to build a true collaboration rather than conduct a research program and hand it over,” said Yochi Slonim, co-founder and CEO of Anima Biotech.

Anima and Takeda structured their agreement in a way that builds off the best aspects of each partner.

“Takeda is extremely experienced in neurological diseases so, for example, we can leverage its assays and cellular environments and direct the research by maximizing the strengths of both parties,” Slonim said.

Anima, for its part, is among the first to pursue small molecule mRNA interventions with a proprietary technology platform and a differentiated approach.

“We are experts in translational control,” Slonim said.

Unlike other companies that chose mRNA as the target of their small molecules, Anima’s approach focuses on modulating the biology around mRNA translation. Its small molecules target the novel, highly selective cellular mechanisms employed by cells to regulate protein translation.

“Our Translation Control Therapeutics platform addresses targets that can’t be drugged conventionally,” Slonim told BioSpace. “In the oncology space, KRAS and c-Myc are examples.”

Anima’s unique approach has a major advantage in its selectivity.

“We’re not going after the mRNA as the target,” he pointed out. “If a particular mRNA exists in many different tissues, small molecules would hit it everywhere, potentially leading to systemic side effects.” In the past several years, researchers have shown that “cells use selective mechanism to regulate the translation of mRNA into protein. In some cases, the regulation is even tissue-specific.”

“For example,” Slonim continued, “in our lung fibrosis program we identified selective small molecule inhibitors of collagen I. They stop collagen I accumulation in the lungs, but are inactive in the liver, kidney, tendons and bones…That’s remarkable because Collagen is the most abundant protein in the human’s body, yet this small molecule can be active only where is disease, acting like a guided missile.”

Unlike transcription, translation acts fast, so it requires higher selectivity.

In contrast, “For about the past 30 years, companies have worked with the idea of knocking down mRNAs and thus the expression of protein, using RNAi. That technology has delivery challenges that limit its potential,” Slonim explained.

Meanwhile, traditional small molecules can have systemic side effects.

“With small molecules, selectivity is very important, and this is what our approach is all about,” he said.

“It’s exciting to think small molecules can do what RNAi can do – and so much more,” he continued. “Conceptually, by modulating the translation of mRNA, we not only can decrease, but also can increase production of a protein. The approach also can treat diseases caused by mutated proteins – as demonstrated in Anima’s Huntington’s disease program – in which the molecules inhibit the translation of the mutated protein without affecting the normal protein. Thus, we potentially can address the widest range of diseases.”

A key advantage of Anima’s approach, Slonim said, is that from the very beginning, it screens in live cells – not in vitro. In the case of Huntington’s disease, that means screening for molecules that inhibit the mutant protein in the same live cells that are expressing that protein as well as all others in their natural biological system.

“This has big implications because when we find a molecule that works, we already have something with the desired biological outcome,” he said.

Then Anima seeks to determine mechanism of action. Rather than “fishing in the dark” for the targets, Slonim compares its approach to “hunting for a lion in the desert.”

Anima’s Compass technology identifies hit compounds’ mechanism of action and highlights their eventual molecular targets by an automated process of guided elimination involving biology and software.

“In our two leading programs, we had three different clusters of molecules coming out of the screening campaign as validated and selective hits. It took us less than one year to identify the mechanism of action for all six molecules. This is unheard of with traditional phenotypic screening,” he said.

“Takeda was looking for a complete strategy to address a range of neurological diseases with hard or undruggable targets, rather than a narrow, tactical partnership,” Slonim said.

Taking a small molecule approach to mRNA translation allows Anima and Takeda to leverage well-established infrastructure and expertise for drug development and commercialization and provides an easy administration for patients.

One of the greatest challenges Anima faces is simply the novelty of its approach. Anima’s collaboration with Lilly in 2018 and now this much larger collaboration with Takeda lends credibility and reinforces Anima’s leadership position in small molecules that target mRNA biology. With strong partners backing the approach, the novelty barrier gradually is being eliminated.

“If you can do what RNAi does, but with small molecules, there is huge potential,” Slonim said.

Three ages of incertitude - Thailand's struggles to protect translation rights for foreign literary works- Episode 2 - Lexology - Translation

The Second Age (1978 – 1994): A Spider Caught in Its Own Web

In 1978, the Copyright Act B.E. 2521 (A.D. 1978) came into force, with the following provision:

Section 42: Works protected by copyright under the laws of a country which is party to a convention on protection of copyright to which Thailand is also a party, given that the laws of such country also grant copyright protection to works protected by copyright under the laws of other countries party to the same convention, are granted copyright protection under this Act, subject to conditions which may be established through ‘Royal Decree’.

For five years, no Royal Decree was issued, giving the impression that Thai law finally granted identical extent of protection to works of domestic and foreign origins. This impression proved false when the Royal Decree Establishing Conditions for Protection of Foreign Copyright B.E. 2526 (A.D. 1983) was issued, whose Article 5 Paragraph 2 imposed temporal limitations on translation rights of foreign works. Wordings of the previous 1931 Act and the 1983 Royal Decree are compared below:

Under the 1983 Royal Decree, if a copyright-protected work of foreign origin were not translated or authorized to be translated into Thai within the ten years following the original work’s first publication date, its author would lose her/his right to stop people from:

• Copying the Thai translations of her/his work
• Adapting (including re-translating) the Thai translations of her/his work
• Publishing the Thai translations of her/his work.

The right to create (or authorize the creation of) Thai translations, however, no longer suffered the same temporal limitation. Apart from this small difference, the 1983 Royal Decree’s Art.5 Para.2 is almost identical to the 1931 Act’s s.29(B).

For all we know, the 1983 Royal Decree’s liberation from time limits of the right to create Thai translation of a foreign copyright-protected was not serendipitous. S.29(B) of the 1931 Act aimed at widening the Thai population’s access to international works by cutting short the protection period for translation rights of foreign works to only ten years after publication of the original work, and the 1983 Royal Decree – issued over five decades later to regulate the same issue – should be assessed in light of the same public policy. The 1931 Act allowed Thai publishers to create, reproduce and disseminate masses of Thai translations of foreign works without needing to seek permission from their original authors for over fifty years. During that time, a sufficient body of sensibilities subsisting in foreign literary works had been transposed into the Thai intellectual culture, tuning the nation’s collective thoughts to the international melody – no more copyright-protected foreign works were urgently needed to be translated into Thai. By 1978, the need for modernization no longer justified limiting translation rights in foreign works. Thus, the Thai legislature in 1978 deliberately chose to let the exclusive right to create or authorize Thai translation of a foreign copyright-protected work continue to the full term of the copyright itself.

However, reproduction and distribution of Thai translations made under the exception of the 1931 Act’s s.29(B) is a different issue. By allowing Thai publishers to easily create and exploit Thai translations of foreign copyright-protected works, the 1931 Act’s limitation of translation rights had caused Thai publishers to become economically reliant on the work products made under s.29(B)’s exception. Were they suddenly prevented from publishing and selling the Thai translations created under such exception, collapse of the Thai publishing sector would ensue. Thus, the 1983 Decree, by allowing publishers to continue copying and publishing Thai translations created under the 1931 Act, while barring new translations to be created without the original authors’ permission, was a transitional measure aimed at ensuring survival of the domestic publishing sector while propelling Thailand towards a more complete protection of foreign authors’ translation rights.

So far, so good…

The Thai Supreme Court’s groundbreaking Decision number 3797/2548 (A.D. 2005) involved the Claimant, Agatha Christie Limited, bringing a copyright infringement case against the Defendant, a Thai publisher, alleging that the Defendant had infringed its translation rights by creating, reproducing and selling copies of unauthorized Thai translations of no less than 28 literary works authored by Agatha Christie. The Supreme Court held that the Thai translations of most of these works did not constitute infringement of the Claimant’s translation rights. The reasoning was that the Claimant’s right to prevent others from creating Thai translations of its foreign copyright-protected works had expired since it had not created or authorized Thai translations thereof within ten years following the first publication date of each work, so the unauthorized Thai translations made between 1978 and 1993 (when the 1983 Royal Decree was repealed) did not constitute infringement of the Claimant’s copyright. The Decision shows the Supreme Court assuming that the 1931 Act’s s.29(B) and Art.5 Para.2 of the 1983 Decree were identical in effect and overlooking the small difference between two. Even a superficial interpretation of Art.5 Para.2 would render such assumption untenable.

Had the difference between the 1931 Act’s s.29(B) and the 1983 Decree’s Art.5 Para.2 been discerned, the conclusion should be that all Thai translations created after 1978 of foreign copyright-protected works constituted infringement of the original authors’ translation rights. Surprisingly, the Supreme Court took the opposite view. What’s more? The Court also held that each Thai translation constituted a copyright-protected work of its respective translator because it had been created without infringing the original author’s translation rights! Consequently, the Defendant, (1) having legally obtained copyright from the relevant translators or (2) having no intention to commit a criminal copyright infringement, could freely publish and sell copies of the Thai translations until the copyright term for each one expires.

To this day, a Thai publisher facing allegations of translation right infringement would evoke the “Agatha Christie Decision” to claim that the Thai translation it publishes and sells was created under the exceptions of the1978 Act (supplemented by the 1983 Decree), which gets them instantly off the hook. The Decision has created a seemingly irrefutable norm favoring Thai publishers at the expense of foreign authors – in a manner apparently inconsistent with the legislature’s intent for progress.

In this Episode, we argue that Thailand’s good intentions in updating its laws on translation right protection in 1978 and 1983 have been defeated by judicial interpretation and misunderstood by the publishing sector. The result is cataclysmic for foreign copyright holders. But it gets better, as we discuss the Light at the End of the Tunnel post-1994 in Episode 3.