Words With Friends Adds 'Orbisculate' to In-game Dictionary in Remembrance and Celebration of Neil Krieger - Business Wire - Dictionary

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, Zynga Inc. (Nasdaq: ZNGA) a global leader in interactive entertainment, announced that it has officially added the word ‘orbisculate’ to the in-game dictionary of its hit mobile game, Words With Friends. Coined by scholar, language enthusiast and loving father Neil Krieger, Zynga’s popular word game has joined the Krieger family’s mission to gain the word’s entry into the official English language dictionary after Neil’s passing from COVID-19.

During his studies at Cornell University, Neil Krieger created the word ‘orbisculate’ as part of a school assignment. Meaning ‘to accidentally squirt juice and/or pulp into one's eye, as from a grapefruit, when eating,’ Neil’s word defined a universal experience, but also captured his unique creativity and humor. From its inception, Krieger used the word with such casual frequency that his children Hilary and Jonathan thought it was a regular word when they were growing up. It was only later that they discovered it could not be found in the dictionary.

After Neil Krieger became one of the more than 555,000 Americans to succumb to COVID-19, his children were eager to memorialize his well-lived life in a personal way that represented his personality. To honor their father’s life, Hilary and Jonathan are on a mission to popularize the word and secure its entry into the official English language dictionary. To help them reach their goal, Zynga recently made ‘orbisculate’ the Words With Friends ‘Word of the Day’ and has now officially entered their special word into the in-game dictionary. Players can now view the full etymology of the word on its ‘Definition’ page and are encouraged to visit www.orbisculate.com to sign the Kriegers’ petition and help support their efforts.

“The word ‘orbisculate’ is so whimsical, but the story behind it resonates with people. Making it the ‘Word of the Day’ in Words With Friends is a very personal tribute to our father, but also to all families who have been affected by COVID-19,” said Hilary Krieger. “Our dad would have gotten a huge kick out of his creation being played in Words With Friends. Being part of a game that’s played by millions will help add our father’s word to the vernacular, and ultimately, the English language dictionary,” added Jonathan Krieger.

“Over the past year, through initiatives like #PlayApartTogether, we’ve seen the gaming community come together again and again to support each other,” said Bernard Kim, President of Publishing at Zynga. “In getting to know the Kriegers through their campaign, we’ve been inspired by the spirit of this initiative and so admire the life and legacy of their father. Let’s help them achieve their goal.”

Launched in 2009, Words With Friends has grown from popular mobile game to global pop culture sensation. Since then, the game has expanded to new platforms like Facebook Messenger, launched a hit sequel with Words With Friends 2 and brought innovative new ways to play to people around the world. The game’s success through this decade-long journey has been powered by player connections made through quick and clever wordplay that has become a touchstone in fans’ lives.

For supporting still and video assets, visit: http://bit.ly/WWF_Orbisculate

To keep up to date with the latest news, follow Words With Friends on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

About Zynga

Zynga is a global leader in interactive entertainment with a mission to connect the world through games. To date, more than one billion people have played Zynga’s franchises including CSR Racing™, Empires & Puzzles™, Merge Dragons!™ Merge Magic!™, Toon Blast™, Toy Blast™, Words With Friends™ and Zynga Poker™. Zynga’s games are available in more than 150 countries and are playable across social platforms and mobile devices worldwide. Founded in 2007, the company is headquartered in San Francisco with locations in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Ireland, India, Turkey and Finland. For more information, visit www.zynga.com or follow Zynga on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or the Zynga blog.

Stagnation of lexicographic work caused him concern - The Hindu - Dictionary

G. Venkatasubbaiah was nagged by one concern during his last days: work on the monumental eight-part dictionary put together over five decades by two generation of lexicographers, including himself, had stopped in 1994. It has neither been revised nor updated, while the language had changed tremendously.

Every two or three decades, at least 10% new words get added to a language, he opined, and advocated that the dictionary needs to be revised, like the Oxford English Dictionary. At his centenary celebrations in 2012, he appealed for the lexicon branch of the Kannada Sahitya Parishat (KSP) to be reopened.

“Hire a dozen young lexicographers and work on updating the dictionary and creating new bilingual and trilingual dictionaries,” he said, even offering to train them. While the then Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar had expressed support for the project, nothing has come of it till date. The dictionary is yet to even be digitised in an accessible manner.

Though proud of his work to create the authoritative dictionary, GV, being an erudite lexicographer, was aware of its limitations too. The dictionary was created exclusively after going through 1,750 works of literature and not the spoken word. He had called for a linguistic survey of Kannada-speaking areas to fill this gap, which never happened till date. “None of the politicians are interested in such projects these days,” GV often lamented.

Noted Kannada linguist K.V. Narayana, while acknowledging the towering contributions of GV, said though he identified the new challenges, he did not address them, for which age could have been a reason. “The Kannada-Kannada dictionary suffers from exclusion of the spoken word, sticking to a standard shishta Kannada and a bias towards the language spoken in the Old Mysore region,” he said.

Prof. Narayana said a true tribute to GV would be to take his work forward, update it. “Probably his was the last major lexicographical work in Kannada. While there have been individual efforts like a dictionary of Kundapra Kannada, Morasunadu Kannada, Persian words in Kannada that have come out, there has been no institutional effort to build a dictionary on modern Kannada,” he said.

There has been a corpus of nearly 10 million Kannada word entries created at the Central Institute of Indian Languages, which can be the base for such an effort, but has sadly remained inaccessible to Kannada scholars, Prof. Narayana lamented.

Google translation AI botches legal terms 'enjoin,' 'garnish' -research - WSAU News - Translation

By Paresh Dave

(Reuters) - Translation tools from Alphabet Inc's Google and other companies could be contributing to significant misunderstanding of legal terms with conflicting meanings such as "enjoin," according to research due to be presented at an academic workshop on Monday.

Google's translation software turns an English sentence about a court enjoining violence, or banning it, into one in the Indian language of Kannada that implies the court ordered violence, according to the new study https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKRpiMBlu40.

"Enjoin" can refer to either promoting or restraining an action. Mistranslations also arise with other contronyms, or words with contradictory meanings depending on context, including "all over," "eventual" and "garnish," the paper said.

Google said machine translation is "is still just a complement to specialized professional translation" and that it is "continually researching improvements, from better handling ambiguous language, to mitigating bias, to making large quality gains for under-resourced languages."

The study's findings add to scrutiny of automated translations generated by artificial intelligence software. Researchers previously have found programs that learn translations by studying non-diverse text perpetuate historical gender biases, such as associating "doctor" with "he."

The new paper raises concerns about a popular method companies use to broaden the vocabulary of their translation software. They translate foreign text into English and then back into the foreign language, aiming to teach the software to associate similar ways of saying the same phrase.

Known as back translation, this process struggles with contronyms, said Vinay Prabhu, chief scientist at authentication startup UnifyID and one of the paper's authors.

When they translated a sentence about a court enjoining violence into 109 languages supported by Google's software, most results erred. When spun back to English, 88 back translations said the court called for violence and only 10 properly said the court prohibited it. The remainder generated other issues.

Another researcher, Abubakar Abid, tweeted in December that he found possible bias in back translation through Turkish. Using Google, short phrases with "enjoin" translated to "people" and "Muslims" ordering violence but the "government" and "CIA" outlawing it.

The new paper said translation issues could lead to severe consequences as more businesses use AI to generate or translate legal text. One example in the paper is a news headline about nonlethal domestic violence turning "hit" into "killed" during translation, a potentially true but problematic association.

Authors also expressed concern about the lack of warnings and confidence scores in tools from Google and others. Google in support materials warns it may not have the best solution "for specialized translation in your own fields."

(Reporting by Paresh Dave in Oakland, Calif.; Editing by Matthew Lewis)

Android 12 could add a recycle bin and automatic app translation - TechRadar - Translation

What treats does Android 12 have in store for us when it launches later this year? Code spotted in early, unreleased versions of the mobile operating system suggest that both a recycle bin and automatic app translation could be on the way.

XDA Developers did some diligent digging to find the recycle bin or trash folder option, which works exactly as you would expect – deleted files aren't fully erased right away, just in case they need to be restored.

It's actually a feature that's already available in Android 11, although you can't really get at it. The way that the Android recycle bin works at the moment is that specific apps can restore specific types of file if they have the right permissions, so it doesn't work in the same way as you might expect if you've used the Windows recycle bin or the trash folder on macOS.

The new code suggests the Android 12 recycle bin is going to be system-wide, and accessible through the Google Files app – so anything that you delete in any app can be brought back from the digital grave if you've made a mistake in erasing it.

Speaking your language

Another intriguing feature spotted by XDA Developers in an as-yet-unreleased build of Android 12 is automatic app translation: so Android will actually translate apps into your local language, without developers having to write the translations themselves.

That could be hugely useful for anyone using Android in a language other than English, and it looks as though the "translation service" might use Google Translate or even be open to third-party translation apps if you have a different preference.

It looks as though the feature would work in a similar way to Google Translate on the web, or the way that Google Lens can translate words in images – the translated text would appear almost instantly, as if it was coded into the apps themselves. Android itself already supports a host of different languages in terms of the OS menus and settings.

As always with these sneak previews of Android, there's no guarantee that Google will keep either of these features around for the finished version of Android 12 – but we hope that they make the cut. The developer preview of Android 12 is out now, and we're also expecting a beta release before the final version arrives at some point later in the year.

German translation, cultural adaptation and validation of the unidimensional self-efficacy scale for multiple sclerosis - DocWire News - Translation

This article was originally published here

BMC Neurol. 2021 Apr 17;21(1):163. doi: 10.1186/s12883-021-02183-y.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Self-efficacy concerns individuals’ beliefs in their capability to exercise control in specific situations and complete tasks successfully. In people with multiple sclerosis (PwMS), self-efficacy has been associated with physical activity levels and quality of life. As a validated German language self-efficacy scale for PwMS is missing the aims of this study were to translate the Unidimensional Self-Efficacy Scale for Multiple Sclerosis (USE-MS) into German, establish face and content validity and cultural adaptation of the German version for PwMS in Austria. A further aim was to validate the German USE-MS (USE-MS-G) in PwMS.

METHODS: Permission to translate and validate the USE-MS was received from the scale developers. Following guidelines for translation and validation of questionnaires and applying Bandura’s concept of self-efficacy, the USE-MS was forward-backward translated with content and face validity established. Cultural adaptation for Austria was performed using cognitive patient interviews. Reliability was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha, Person separation index and Lin’s concordance correlation coefficient. Rasch analysis was employed to assess construct validity. Comparison was made to scales for resilience, general self-efficacy, anxiety and depression, multiple sclerosis fatigue and health-related quality of life. Data were also pooled with an historic English dataset to compare the English and German language versions.

RESULTS: The translation and cultural adaptation were successfully performed in the adaptation process of the USE-MS-G. Pretesting was conducted in 30 PwMS, the validation of the final USE-MS-G involved 309 PwMS with minimal to severe disability. The USE-MS-G was found to be valid against the Rasch model when fitting scale data using a bifactor solution of two super-items. It was shown to be unidimensional, free from differential item functioning and well targeted to the study population. Excellent convergent and known-groups validity, internal consistency, person separation reliability and test-retest reliability were shown for the USE-MS-G. Pooling of the English and German datasets confirmed invariance of item difficulties between languages.

CONCLUSION: The USE-MS-G is a robust, valid and reliable scale to assess self-efficacy in PwMS and can generate interval level data on an equivalent metric to the UK version.

TRIAL REGISTRATION: ISRCTN Registry; ISRCTN14843579 ; prospectively registered on 02. 01. 2019.

PMID:33865337 | DOI:10.1186/s12883-021-02183-y

OPINION: 'Sourdough' finally gets its own entry in online dictionary - Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette - Dictionary

I'm always a bit puzzled when I learn that a certain dictionary is adding words that I don't know.

Dictionary.com recently did its regular update of words and phrases. I always zoom in first on the ones I don't know.

First was bio break. This is a trip to a restroom or bathroom, especially a pause for this during a meeting or other group activity.

The phrase came from the world of gambling, which I hear involves hours of unbroken concentration. Still, nature calls. Bio is short for biology.

You might have heard it because this year of the pandemic required numerous Zoom meetings and other video calls for work. Still, are the people in meetings so delicate that they can't handle the phrase “bathroom break”?

Next was deepfake. I am familiar with the concept, but I didn't know what it was called: a fake, digitally manipulated video or audio file produced by using deep learning, an advanced type of machine learning, and typically featuring a person's likeness and voice in a situation that did not actually occur.

I found a disturbing deepfake story recently in The Washington Post. Here's the ominous lead:

"An anonymous cyberbully in Pennsylvania seemed to have one goal in mind: Force a trio of cheerleaders off their formidable local team, the Victory Vipers."

Later in the story:

"The bizarre saga of cyber harassment is notable for the use of deepfake technology and for what Bucks County District Attorney Matthew Weintraub called the 'unlevel playing field.'"

(Spoiler alert: A woman whose daughter was on the team was charged with misdemeanor counts of cyber harassment.)

I think something that's deepfake could just as easily be called fake. Maybe manipulated would be more clear, even though it's a longer word.

And then I learned about "twice exceptional." The entry defines this as relating to or noting a person, especially a child or student, who is considered gifted and also has a diagnosed disability, such as a learner with a high IQ and dyslexia.

I'm not sure what to say about this one. It's jargon. If someone said it, I'd just have to ask for a clarification. Does using the term save time? Will it really become something that's in widespread usage? Am I just being grumpy?

But enough about things I didn't know.

The additions included more timely coronavirus terms. One was "acute respiratory distress syndrome," or ARDS. This is medical jargon, to be sure. Maybe it was added because people hear the initialism and wonder what it means. Also added were variants and strains, names for the variations on covid-19 cases.

The editors added at least two words based on Black vernacular.

This first is finna (fin-uh).

Finna is a phonetic spelling representing the African American Vernacular English variant of "fixing to," a phrase commonly used in Southern U.S. dialects to mark the immediate future while indicating preparation or planning already in progress.

"Oh, no, she finna break his heart!"

Well, I guess I wasn't done with things I didn't know. I had never heard this word before.

But I have heard chile. This isn't a word from the pepper world. This one is pronounced "chahyl." It's a phonetic spelling of child, representing dialectal speech of the Southern United States or African American Vernacular English.

"Oh, chile, you do not want to test me!"

John Kelly, managing editor at Dictionary.com, said this update included a significant change involving the word slave:

"[One] significant decision was to remove the noun slave when referring to people, instead using the adjective enslaved or referring to the institution of slavery. This is part of our ongoing efforts to ensure we represent people on Dictionary.com with due dignity and humanity."

This dictionary's website elaborates on this decision:

"It is painfully clear that referring to enslaved people as slaves has the effect of dehumanizing those subjected to chattel slavery. Use of the noun slave in this way also obscures the responsibility of those who upheld and benefited from such an institution."

Another addition is BIPOC, which stands for "Black, indigenous (and) people of color." Before this, POC was a common initialism for "people of color." The Dictionary.com definition explains the distinction: "Used as a unifying identity label for people of color that also emphasizes the unique racial experiences of Black people and indigenous people."

A couple of entries apply to marginalized communities, the editors said. They define marginalized as placed in a position of little or no importance, influence or power.

An enby is a person who doesn't identify as either male or female. The site says it's a person whose gender identity is nonbinary. The n and b become enby.

Do not confuse this with NB, an abbreviation for the Latin phrase nota bene, or note well.

And neurodivergent means showing atypical neurological behavior and development, as in autism spectrum disorder or dyslexia.

I usually find a word whose mention in the new entries make me laugh.

Dictionary.com decided to add an entry for sourdough.

It's fermented dough retained from one baking and used as leaven, rather than fresh yeast, to start the next.

Baking sourdough bread has become almost a cliché for a hobby that people have been taking up during the pandemic. I can't know whether sourdough has already been in this dictionary. But doesn't it seem like it should have been?

I also learned that sourdough is a nickname for a prospector or pioneer, especially in Alaska or Canada. Supposedly, those people would make and eat sourdough. I wonder whether the Pillsbury Doughboy (whose name is Poppin' Fresh, by the way) had a Canadian cousin named Sourdoughboy.

Sources include Dictionary.com, CNN, Merriam-Webster, The American Heritage Dictionary, Pillsbury. Reach Bernadette at

[email protected]

When Diplomacy Is Lost in Translation - Sixth Tone - Translation

When diplomats from China and the United States met in Alaska for the first high-level bilateral talks of the Biden administration, few expected the translators to steal the spotlight. In China, Zhang Jing won praise for her calm and fluent translation of the Chinese representatives’ remarks, while Zhang’s American counterpart was criticized for amplifying the U.S. delegation’s already strident language.

The famous Chinese comparativist writer Qian Zhongshu once cited an Italian proverb to describe the work of a translator: traduttore traditore — “translator, traitor.” And it’s true: The wording chosen by a translator is always more or less “traitorous” to the original, but Qian wasn’t entirely fair in his assessment. Many linguistic betrayals are often the result of a translator’s loyalty, if not to the language used, then to established diplomatic protocols and speech. Take Zhang, for example. Tasked with translating a catchphrase used by one of the Chinese representatives — “We Chinese Aren’t Buying It!” — she chose to paraphrase, translating it as “This is not the way to deal with the Chinese people.” These adjustments become exponentially more fraught, however, in times of geopolitical upheaval.

Looking back at the history of Sino-international diplomatic relations, there’s a long tradition of “loyal betrayals.” For example, the famous Macartney Mission to China in 1793 was defined by the supposedly arrogant reply of the Qianlong Emperor to King George III’s entreaties to establish formal diplomatic relations. The resulting diplomatic snafu is frequently cited as evidence of the Qing dynasty’s self-imposed isolation. But Lawrence Wang-Chi Wong, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, has argued that how Qianlong replied may have boiled down to decisions made, not by any diplomat, but by the man who translated King George III’s letter of state: likely José Bernardo de Almeida, a Jesuit priest living in Beijing.

The translator’s reasons for ‘betraying’ the original wording are understandable.

- Wu Jingjian, researcher

In translation, the British crown’s attempt to establish equal diplomatic relations with China became a humble request to become a tributary of the Qing court. The original letter describes diplomat George Macartney’s purpose in conducting the mission according to European convention: “We have the happiness of being at peace with all the world, no time can be as propitious for extending the bounds of friendship and benevolence, and for proposing to communicate and receive those benefits which must result from an unreserved and amicable intercourse, between such great and civilized Nations as China and Great Britain.”

The Chinese version reads differently: “Now that our country is at peace with all places, we must take advantage of this time to pay tribute to the Great Emperor of China, in the hope of gaining some benefit.”

At the end of the original letter, King George III makes his expectations of the relationship clear. “And it will give us the utmost satisfaction to learn that our wishes in that respect have been amply complied with and that we are brethren in sovereignty, so may a brotherly affection ever subsist between us,” it reads. The translation is far more toadying: “The envoys have been instructed in detail to be careful and respectful before the Great Emperor, and to appear sincere, and to be liked by the Great Emperor, for that is my heart’s desire.”

The translator’s reasons for “betraying” the original wording are understandable. He was uncertain about the possible consequences of a completely truthful translation — especially for himself, a foreign missionary who was already walking on thin ice in the Qing capital. For him, it was safer to follow the established protocols of Chinese tributary diplomacy in his translation, even if it meant “betraying” the language of the original letter.

A painting of Keying's visit to Hong Kong, November 1845. From Hong Kong’s Public Records Office

A similar kind of “loyal betrayal” also occurred during the first formal diplomatic encounter between China and the United States. In 1844, half a century after the Macartney Mission, the U.S. sent its own first mission to China. Like the Macartney Mission, the Cushing Mission presented the ruling Daoguang Emperor a personal letter from then-U.S. President John Tyler. In his new book, not yet translated into English, University of Delaware professor Wang Yuanchong provides a fascinating analysis of how the letter was altered before being delivered. Wang argues that Keying, one of China’s de facto top diplomats, modified the translation of Tyler’s letter in ways that “made this state document look very much like a tableau of a tributary state that admired Chinese civilization and affluence.”

Take for example a paragraph describing the geographical locations of China and the U.S.: “The rising sun looks upon the great mountains and great rivers of China. When he sets, he looks upon rivers and mountains equally large in the United States.” The original wording emphasizes that China and the U.S. are located in eastern and western hemispheres, and there is no superior or inferior. But in the Chinese translation, China’s “great mountains and great rivers” are rendered as “imperial lands,” while America’s “rivers and mountains equally large” are translated as “humble places” — making inequality between China and America immediately apparent. At other points, Keying softens Tyler’s phrasing: “We doubt not that you will be pleased that our messenger of peace, with this letter in his hand, shall come to Pekin (Beijing), and there deliver it” becomes, in Chinese translation, “I am sending an envoy to Pekin to present a letter to you, with the intention of peace, and I hope that the Great Emperor will not be displeased by it.” The effect is to make diplomat Caleb Cushing look more like a tributary’s envoy than a representative of an equal nation.

Concerning accuracy, Keying’s adjustments were undoubtedly a “betrayal,” even if they were loyal to the established diplomatic system of the Qing dynasty. It is not surprising that after reading President Tyler’s letter, the Daoguang Emperor’s only reply was the word “read.”

Since the late Qing, China’s interactions with the West have become more frequent, but the instinct, conscious or otherwise, toward “translation as betrayal” has not diminished. Interestingly, however, as speakers gained exposure to Western culture and languages, they were sometimes able to detect the “betrayals” of their translators. In August 1946, near the start of the civil war between the Communists and the Kuomintang government, the American journalist Anna Louise Strong sat down with Mao Zedong in the Communist stronghold of Yan’an. When she asked Mao what his views were on the possible use of the atomic bomb by the Kuomintang’s American allies, Mao was dismissive. “The atomic bomb is a paper tiger used by the American reactionaries to scare people; it looks scary, but in reality, it is not,” he replied.

Anna Louise Strong in Federal Court, U.S., 1949. Art Whittaker/New York Daily News Archive via People Visual

Searching for an idiomatic translation of zhi laohu, or “paper tiger,” Mao’s elite school-educated and English-savvy minister of propaganda, Lu Dingyi, landed on the more familiar American word “scarecrow.” It was a term Strong would know, but it weakened the more profound criticism of Mao’s original statement.

Only Strong’s lack of reaction alerted Mao that something had been lost in translation, and he made a point of stopping the conversation to ask her if she had really understood what he meant.

Strong ventured it was something put in a rice paddy to scare birds away.

“No,” Mao said, switching to heavily accented English. “It is a paper tiger.”

Translator: Matt Turner; editors: Cai Yineng and Kilian O’Donnell.

(Header image: Zhang Jing interprets at a press conference in Beijing, March 6, 2019. IC)