The Crookston Rotary Club’s annual youth dictionary project made its return in 2021 after a pause in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The project benefits local third grade students in each of Crookston’s elementary schools, Highland, Cathedral and Our Savior’s Lutheran School, and, this school year, the club caught up with last year’s third graders, now fourth graders, to gift them their dictionaries as well.
Dictionary project lead Mary Cavalier said while pandemic-related restrictions didn’t allow her to hand-deliver each dictionary to the students, she was happy they could be dropped off to the student’s classrooms.
The Dictionary Project is an international program whose goal is to give a dictionary to every third grader in the U.S. and other parts of the world while also promoting literacy and forging connections with young people.
“For some children, this may be the very first book that they have owned,” said the Dictionary Project in a letter thanking the club for their donation of dictionaries. “You are truly making a difference in their lives by giving them such an important reference tool.”
NEW YORK - Today, the New York State Senate unanimously passed legislation (S.4716-A/A.6215-A) to require state agency websites to provide translation into the top 12 languages spoken by New York State residents, sponsored by State Senator Brad Hoylman (D/WF-Manhattan) and Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou (D/WF-Manhattan). The bill requires state agencies to provide translation services for all COVID-19 information within 30 days, and all state agency websites within 90 days. The legislation is especially important for immigrant communities who have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 crisis..
Senator Hoylman said: “Every single New Yorker should be able to access information about COVID-19, negotiate housing information, and utilize government services related to pandemic recovery, but right now if you can’t read English you are out of luck. More than five million New Yorkers live in households where the primary language isn’t English. That’s why we can’t let language be a barrier to life-saving information, especially during this pandemic. New York’s immigrant communities have suffered enough the last 14 months, we must make sure non-English speakers have full access to all parts of our state’s robust recovery plan. I’m proud to partner with Assemblymember Niou on this important legislation and grateful that Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart Cousins is prioritizing this effort to make government sites easier to navigate for millions of our neighbors.”
Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou said: “Language assistance services are the difference between existing in a place and truly feeling that you belong. With this bill, Senator Hoylman has sent a message to the 4 million New Yorkers who speak one of the top 12 world languages: you belong here. That should be our goal in everything we do as lawmakers, and this legislation embodies those values."
Carlyn Cowen, Chief Policy and Public Affairs Officer of Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC) said: “CPC is thrilled that the State Agency Website Translation Access bill has passed in the State Senate. Language accessible materials have been crucial and remain to be more essential than ever during the COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout this health crisis, we have seen first hand from our community members that linguistically isolated households do not receive COVID-19 updates, CDC guidelines, and social distancing recommendations in a timely manner, which has led to a higher COVID-19 exposure risk in immigrant neighborhoods, and now a uneven vaccine rollout. We are grateful for the efforts of Senator Hoylman and Assemblymember Niou to pass this important bill and look forward to seeing this bill be passed in the Assembly.”
Assemblymember Niou and Senator Hoylman’s legislation would require State agency websites to provide translation into the 12 most common non-English languages spoken by New Yorkers. Under the bill, state agencies would have 30 days to translate all COVID-19 related websites and 90 days for all other websites.
More than 5.6 million New Yorkers live in households where English is not the primary language; many of them are part of communities that have been disproportionately hit by the COVID-19 crisis, including new immigrants and people of color. Many New Yorkers lack access to critical services, and the language barrier prevents them from accessing the necessary information to apply for unemployment insurance, find food distribution centers, and access life-saving human services. This bill will greatly increase the accessibility of our agency websites to better support and reflect the diverse, inclusive communities of New York State.
Thirty years ago, Guan County, Shandong Province launched the “Hundred Childless Days” campaign under the aegis of national family planning, known in the West as the “one-child policy.” The birthplace of the “Boxers” was deemed to have too high a birth rate by the provincial government. County officials sought to correct this by ensuring that not a single baby was born between May 1 and August 10, 1991. As local accounts attest, authorities in the area went to extraordinarily inhumane lengths to be the “best” at reproducing the least.
In what some locals called “the slaughter of the lambs,” women across Guan County were rounded up for forced abortions or induction of labor; one local official claims that these “procedures” were sometimes no more than a kick in the stomach from an out-of-town mercenary. Children who did make it into the world were reportedly strangled, and their bodies tossed into open pits. The families of pregnant women were publicly shamed in reprises of the Cultural Revolution.
Under the one-child policy, local officials in China were responsible for implementing broad guidelines from the central government about family planning quotas, leaving little oversight of how localities reached their target birth rates. In some extreme cases, such as in Guan County, this led to gruesome abuses. While the “one-child policy” was loosened to a two-child policy in 2015, its lingering effects will only be felt more acutely in the coming years. As China’s population ages and may be shrinking, the economic and social repercussions wrought by a generation of curtailed births are only just beginning to sting.
These testimonies were posted by @无逸说 (Wuyishuo) to their WeChat public account on March 15, but have since been censored for “violating regulations.” The provenance of these accounts is unclear, but their details are consistent with information found elsewhere. The Phoenix TV documentary mentioned in the piece below is no longer available online but the transcript is archived. The accounts seem to date back about 20 years, but they were completely new to Wuyishuo, as the post author explained in a brief preface. The post is translated in full below:
Screengrab of Phoenix TV documentary
My first response to this documentary was that it was all a rumor. But when I started to look for refutations, lo and behold, I found none.
Perhaps, I thought, this was due to relevant departments’ habit of “refutation through deletion.” However, when I came across several audio recordings, a Phoenix TV interview with a family planning official who did not deny it, and Guan County online forum where no one refuted it (and indeed several provided first-hand evidence), I knew I had to set the record straight in the hope of providing future generations a more rigorous understanding of what really happened.
Witness I, Part 1
Banners filled the streets with recycled slogans: “Better to stop the family line and put the Party at ease,” “A rope to hang yourself, a bottle to drug yourself,” “Better to miscarry than to give birth,” “Be resolute in carrying out policy, absolutely no more children.”
Tents lined the thoroughfares of the county seat, and inside every tent were pregnant women about to go into labor. At the time people with a rural hukou were prohibited from having children, regardless of their individual circumstances. If word of the policy reached you late and your child was already born, it still didn’t matter. Hardly any children survived. To the west of the county hospital was a garbage dump with two wells several meters deep, practically overflowing because so many bodies were thrown in every day.
It all started on April 26 of that year during a meeting of the county Party committee. It was only my third day as secretary of my village Party committee. Just as I was about to get off work, Young Zhao, the courier, said to me: “Secretary Zhang, tomorrow morning the county Party committee will convene an all-hands meeting in the guesthouse. All village and town deputy Party secretaries and above have to go.” This was the first time since joining the government I had heard of such a thing, a meeting of every official who held real power. Maybe the new Party head was trying to shake things up a bit? But my first day on the job, the former county Party secretary had been demoted because he hadn’t done enough for the family planning program. It couldn’t be because of this!
At the guesthouse, an official explained how the county’s family planning program was going. In short, our county was in last place out of the entire province and had been put under special management. The county committee had been officially warned that if the situation did not improve, the lot would be forced to resign. The county secretary shouted himself hoarse, he was so furious: “I’ve already given the municipal committee its marching orders. If we do not go from last to first within a year, I’m willing to face the Party discipline committee without complaint. We can’t turn our county around if we keep doing the same old thing. If we are to succeed, we’ll have to make painful decisions. We must take extraordinary measures, put forth extraordinary effort, do extraordinary things, and render extraordinary service. That is to say, I don’t care what you do in your village or town, the birth rate must drop. Today is the swearing-in ceremony for this new effort. I’ll give you five minutes to think about it. You’ll have to give it your all to succeed. If you don’t think you’re up to the task, I call on you to immediately step aside and give way to those comrades who are willing to go the extra mile.”
The secretary finished speaking and the entire hall fell deathly silent. Then a chatter arose. From the podium, you couldn’t tell who was saying what.
After five minutes were up, the 22 local Party secretaries declared where they each stood. The county secretary called roll from front to back. I don’t know if it was because they weren’t prepared or what, but there were two deputy county secretaries who said they wouldn’t be able to complete the task in the time allotted. The reasons they gave were the ideological deficiencies of the masses, the sloppy work ethic of local cadres, poor-quality propaganda, concerns about unresolvable consequences, and so on. The county Party secretary replied with a snicker: “Look at you two genuine cadres, speaking so honestly! Good for you!” He then turned and yelled, “Guards!” Four guards came forth, one to each side of the unfortunate deputy secretaries. “Cuff them and lock them up!” The entire hall was mortified! The two didn’t even know what hit them as they were brought to the holding cells.
“People like them think that just because they’re the big boss back at home they can trade barbs with the county committee! We’re going to detain them for half a month, then let the Party discipline committee and the prosecutor see if they haven’t broken any rules!”
After a lull, the Party secretary continued in a more relaxed tone. “Some say I’m arbitrary, that I do as I please, that I like to play the despot. But if I don’t, how will our work ever get done? I was born to a military family, and I know by heart that “it takes a thousand days to raise an army and only an instant to use it.” Why has the nation invested so much in us cadres? It is because we are here to solve her problems and take on her burdens. What is family planning? It is national policy. What are national policies? They are the most fundamental policies of our country. Our county has utterly failed in carrying out this policy. Otherwise, why would we be sitting here now? If you hide from problems and shirk your duty, what use are you as a Party member and official?”
I thought that this campaign wouldn’t be too difficult, since we had the backing of the county Party committee. But I was in for a surprise. I was the first to start getting my fellow cadres in line, since nothing could get done without them. But when I imitated the county secretary in a meeting by asking who was up for the job, about half of my cadres immediately asked to be transfered! Despite making arrangements with the police, when I called on them to detain two troublemakers among my ranks, they laughed and nervously dragged their feet. I was so angry that I abruptly adjourned the meeting, admonishing everyone to go home and think about whether they could get with the program.
Later, I called the police chief into my office to ask why they hadn’t detained the two troublemakers. But before I could open my mouth, he scurried over and hurriedly explained: “Our work here in the village is different from the county. We’re all locals here, so you can’t really expect us to stir the pot. In fact, arbitrarily detaining this or that person is illegal, so it would be hypocritical for us to break the law we’re sworn to uphold! What you should do is detain only key people. With them out of the way, your work will be a whole lot easier.” This guy was telling me how to do my job, and it was obvious he was trying to intimidate me, the new Party secretary. If I couldn’t even get the police to cooperate, it would only be an uphill battle ahead.
Our county secretary, now there was someone who could sympathize with his subordinates! He knew I was a novice and that I would be vexed by the magnitude of my task. Before I could even report back to him about the mobilization meeting, he already knew the situation in my village like it was his own! The next day, he personally came to reassign the entire panel of local leaders, demoting that arrogant police chief to officer and moving him to another village. Serves him right! Did he really think he could embarrass me and get away with it?
And so with utmost ferver the village set out to address illegal births. Ultimate responsibility rested with me, as it did with the secretary of every village and town. In our village we lead by example: We started with ourselves, our own households, the people around us, our own families. Without exception, anyone who was pregnant had to have an abortion, and all pregnancy permits were annulled.
Witness I, Part 2
If the Chinese Revolution has taught us anything, it’s that political power—stable political power— grows out of the barrel of a gun. For every grassroot cadre, this principle holds the same, even in times of peace. You have to have a “gun” of your own, and you have to hold it steady in your own hand. The military belongs to the Party, so we couldn’t use it even if we wanted to. But a local Party secretary should have the people’s militias and the local police. To get something done and to get it done right, you have to have the people’s militias and police obey you. If you don’t have force backing you up, you don’t deserve to be Party secretary. You’ll get nothing done.
In accordance with County Secretary Zeng’s order, cadres serving in the police force, family planning office, and village committees were screened to root out anyone who might affect the success of the campaign. The overarching goal for our village remained the same: to not hold the county back by ensuring that no child was born for the hundred days between May 1 and August 10.
In a meeting with the village cadres, I parroted my prepared notes: “To complete the family planning work assigned to us by the county committee, we must ensure that, within the hundred days between May 1 and August 10, not one child is born in our village ….” I had just finished speaking when the entire audience erupted, with a few shocked individuals standing up to blurt out: “So if a child is born, what are we supposed to do?” Never before had I seen such uncouth cadres as these. What could we do? What the hell could I even do? These are county orders, and they dare ask me what can be done. Fortunately, my assistant was able to reply faster than I was: “If a child is born then strangle it to death!” And with those few words the entire hall went silent.
My secretary and I had both been political cadres in the military, so we went over everything thoroughly before presenting it at village meetings. But let’s talk about how I got things done. I ingeniously used Deng’s famous “White Cat, Black Cat” theory to indicate that what makes a good comrade is one who ensures the success of our family planning campaign. Only they would be promoted to positions of power, where they could make full use of their talents. Regardless of background or experience, regardless of whatever unscrupulous things you got up to, if you had talent, you’d get the position. However, I realized this approach simply wouldn’t work for the campaign, because everyone was from the same village—if someone wasn’t a family member, they were at least a relative. They’d be looking out for each other, and then there’d be nothing I could do.
Our great County Secretary Zeng, now there was someone who knew how to get things done. He foresaw the hurdles we would encounter. When faced with a task of major importance, such as demolishing homes or arresting people, he’d seldom use armed force, instead bringing in outsiders from other counties. Outsiders don’t know anybody local and don’t get caught up in nepotism, and so in our case they did their work with brutal efficiency. They had no qualms about kicking you right in the stomach—they were saving you the trouble of that abortion you were so reluctant to get. One fell swoop and the floor would be covered in blood. Ha ha! And that’s how we got things done. There were slim chances to save the baby—and even if we wanted to, if you arrived at the county hospital, they would induce you. Who would dare do a personal favor during such a delicate political campaign as this?
As for my hardworking family planning enforcement team, I did all in my power to make things easier for them. A weapon was needed for this kind of work, so they were given two-meter-long ropes and 1.4-meter-long poles. I even had them wear matching police uniforms, which other villages didn’t even provide. It really struck awe into people when they saw them coming. Salaries were of course pretty good. Each person made ten yuan a day. You may think ten yuan is nothing, but in 1991 ten yuan was like 100 yuan today. A village level Party secretary made 130 yuan a month at most. Informers all received a commission of 5%, meaning they could earn over 100 yuan for every person they informed on. You can’t beat that! As for political reward, I instituted a quota system: if someone did a good job, they would be prioritized for Party membership and promotion to village-level cadre. With these measures in place there wasn’t a single person who wouldn’t work their ass off for me, ha ha!
My job got a lot easier once everything was in place. Unlike other village secretaries, I didn’t have to brave the front lines and appeal directly to the masses. Whenever something came up, I simply said the word, and my cadres got to it! Not only did I avoid the firing line of public anger, but in an instant I became one of the best cadres in the county. In those days I was often entreated by other officials to share my experience and expertise. But in truth what expertise did I have? I was simply implementing the great ideas of our county secretary!
Induce it, abort it, just don’t have it!
Witness II
I was talking about it again on Monday on the bus to Guan County. It was the Year of the Sheep, and among the locals the campaign was called “the slaughter of the lambs.” I’m afraid there is no one from Guan County today above the age of 40 who doesn’t know about it!
The actual name of that brutal, heartless campaign was the “Hundred Childless Days.” I was in middle school at the time, and from the way my politics teacher described it, it was horrifying.
1991 was the Year of the Sheep, of the lamb, and I had just started elementary school. I can remember seeing a lot of peasants who had had a birth in the family being paraded around on tractors. They were tied up and had signs hanging around their necks. Though I was little at the time and didn’t really read the signs, the tractors had speakers broadcasting the family planning policies, and it sounded so severe.
During the “Hundred Childless Days,” it didn’t matter if your pregnancy was planned or not, if it was your first child or not, or if you had only just been able to have a child after struggling with infertility. Women were rounded up and forced to have an abortion. After being detained by the family planning unit they were sent to an abortion center, and I heard that if anyone gave birth on the way (I suspect those pregnant with their first child), the child would simply be strangled to death ….
I also heard that there were quite a few shacks built along Spring Road in Guanyi to detain women and abort their pregnancies or induce labor. Many were sent to hospitals in neighboring counties, as our county hospital couldn’t handle all of the operations. Some said that children born in those shacks were strangled to death. The county dug massive holes to bury them. All those innocent little lives didn’t get to enjoy even one day of happiness. They were just discarded in those wretched holes.
What a tragedy. A lot of people who were carrying their first child were left barren.
It was the Year of the Lamb, and yet in Guan County the children were so few! If you try to find people who were born in Guan County in 1991, there are hardly any compared to other years!
The old folks say that the campaign took place when the corn was growing. With nowhere else to run, some women hid in the corn to give birth. Then they’d move to a shack and never come out, and only just escape capture! The county secretary, Zeng Zhaoqi, was quickly promoted, trampling on countless lonely infant spirits on his way to the top.
Witness III
In 1991, Guan and Xin counties launched the “Hundred Childless Days” campaign. Guan County Secretary Zeng Zhaoqi issued the order that no children were to be born between May 1 and August 10. Because it was the Year of the Sheep, locals referred to the campaign as the “slaughter of the lambs.” Family planning was national policy, and we all had to abide by it. But the “Hundred Childless Days” campaign flew in the face of national policy! It was horrendous!
The first time I saw a trending post about Guan County, my old home, was when the internet cafes there were forced to close [in 2009] as punishment for some issues with the family planning program. When I returned this November to visit family, I almost couldn’t recognize my hometown. It’s changed beyond belief. Guan County today is still strict about family planning. I suppose this is how the local government is doing “good deeds” for the country. As I think back on what happened over ten years ago, it was a very Leftist operation. I think it was called the “year without children.” I was studying outside the province and so didn’t see the campaign unfold with my own eyes. But in summer … no, probably in winter, when I returned home for vacation, every one of my friends and relatives was talking about the campaign. No matter how many months pregnant you were, as long as you hadn’t yet given birth, you were induced. The cruelty with which this national policy was executed in my hometown was simply unprecedented.
I heard from relatives that several pregnant women in our village were sent to shacks built by the side of the county hospital. They described one woman who was very pregnant who went screaming and crying. There was also a college student in Xinji Village who didn’t accept what was happening and had a breakdown, cursing the program. She was strung up on an electricity pole for all the village to see (according to my relatives in Xinji). A lot of families that were about to have a child fled. But, as they say, the monk can’t outrun the monastery. Their homes were destroyed and their relatives captured in retaliation. I know for a fact that my wife’s sister-in-law ran away and hid with a relative. Then her entire family went into hiding. Her uncle was captured and paraded around town. It almost felt like they wanted to wipe out her entire family.
That campaign is one for the history books. Like the Great Leap Forward, it spawned a series of enduring institutions and practices: for example, the rule that once a family gives birth to a male son then they can’t have another child. Or if the first born is a female, you’re allowed to have a second child, but then you can’t give birth ever again, regardless of the sex. At the time, extreme measures were explained by social exigency. But so many years later, we’re still taking extreme measures. [Chinese]
TAUS and SYSTRAN announce that they have formed a strategic alliance. Both companies operate in the market of automated translation, but each of them brings a unique perspective and solution. TAUS specializes in language data that is needed to train and customize the translation engines, whereas SYSTRAN specializes in machine translation technology for professional users. By combining the expertise of the two, translation users will access a unique solution on the market.
This strategic alliance with TAUS gives SYSTRAN access to large volumes of domain-specific language data, the TAUS Matching Data Service and Data Library and the specialized TAUS corpus cleaning, crawling, clustering and curation services. TAUS and SYSTRAN also agreed to integrate their marketplaces, providing an end-to-end solution for their customers.
“Generic translation available online offers a quality that fits well in a general context. However, it does not meet the needs for a ready-to-use accurate translation in every language pair or in specific domains,” says Jean Senellart, CEO of SYSTRAN. “We want to bring tailored translation quality to everyone and this requires high-quality, clean data matching in use case. By joining forces with TAUS, we trust that we will be able to strengthen our machine translation offer with a larger scope of languages and domains while ensuring optimal quality.”
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TAUS and SYSTRAN have both launched marketplaces with the intention to give the growing number of machine translation users faster and easier access to the technology and services. SYSTRAN’s Marketplace is a catalog of domain-specific translation models that gives language experts in the global translation industry more autonomy in training and selling their own customized translation engines. The TAUS Data Marketplace addresses the phase prior to the model training: the collection of clean, high-quality, domain-specific language data. It is a central resource for all operators in the global publishing and translation industries to clean, curate, cluster, anonymize and possibly also monetize their language data and legacy translation memories.
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Our mission today is to empower global enterprises and their service and technology providers with data solutions that help them to communicate in all languages, faster, better and more efficiently.
Language is perhaps the most defining factor of humankind. What makes humans different from other animals on the planet is our ability to speak out and communicate via framed words and sentences. The language of a population is one of the most defining factors across countries and nationalities, regions, and cultures. It can define the history, sociocultural situation, and even geographic diversity.
From ancient times, there has been a trend for people to understand the language of one another. History traces back to Greeks and Romans traveling all across the world to discover, decipher and translate languages to find out the cultural, political, and social situations from one era to another. This made it possible for the histories of various countries to be written down, and in such a way, the first written records of man were preserved. These records later went on to define civilizations across the globe.
The Glorious Days of Translation
This ancient art of translating languages became more sophisticated and advanced with time. In a modern world, translation of languages became one of the most important professions. Translators were considered as invaluable assets for every country. The highest political, cultural, and diplomatic connections between people from different countries were established only because translators were present.
Times have changed. The digital wave swept over the world, so language is no longer a barrier. The technology present today has developed methods to translate everything to the user’s desired languages. This is why the big industry of translation is slowly being shifted to the background.
AI and Languages
As high-tech tools for translation purposes became more accessible to the general population, the language translation process became easier. And finally, with Artificial Intelligence, a.k.a. AI, being introduced to most translation services and websites, the need for human interference became close to none.
But was it really the case? Let us see some of the greatest impacts AI has on the translation industry in the present-day scenario.
1. Dramatic Reduction of Manpower
Perhaps one of the many downsides and one of the biggest challenges of AI being introduced in the translation industry is the loss of jobs. In most cases, AI has replaced humans in the translation process.
This has made the translation services and individual language experts lose their worth in terms of their profession. Though the process of machine translating is more accessible and easy, it does put a number of translators out of their jobs.
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2. Creates Inclusivity
This is a great positive change that AI has brought into the translation industry. The study of languages, translation, and building a vocabulary for new language learners has been made way easier than it was earlier.
Learning a new language was quite an exclusive affair, which is also a reason why the number of people going into translation was limited. But with AI making it possible for anyone to pick up words and phrases of more than one language easily, that environment has been almost eliminated.
3. Change in the Academic Scenario
In many academic curricula, learning a new language is encouraged. This helps students to become culturally diverse. They can also add this as an extra skill to their profile. With AI-based apps entering the internet, it has become a very easy task to start a new lesson from anywhere.
Outside the classroom, students have a great chance to refer to these apps rather than going to a teacher at every point. While it is a good thing that it has enabled students to become their own teachers, it has also decreased the value of a professional. A number of people in the translation industry who would choose teaching as a second career option may sometimes be discouraged, considering the circumstances.
We can observe that the impact of AI on the translation industry is more negative than positive. But if we look at it from another side, there are certain things we clearly notice. These are:
● The Missing Link
As mentioned earlier, language is the one factor that makes us differ from every other species of the animal kingdom. Therefore, no matter how powerful an AI is being used for translation, it will never have the same impact as a person explaining themselves from one language to another.
A great example to explain this would be dialects. All around the world, there can be hundreds of different dialects of a single language that define the local population. It makes them distinct and the linguistic differences have to be kept in mind while communicating with them. And a machine translation system cannot always keep track of these as any human translator can.
● The Contextual Problem
The words we use and the way we speak make sense in the context of a conversation. A machine cannot necessarily always pick up the context and this leads to misinterpretations of a language. This is where translation services become more important.
For instance, this difference can be best understood when someone requires literary pieces to be translated rather than a regular conversation or paragraph. When it comes to translating a piece of literature, a person would always pick some of the best translation service as their options rather than the app on their phone. Literary translation requires remaining true to the original work while creating a completely unique piece that evokes the same responses as the original piece.
● Human Connections
Languages are an integral part of the culture of a place. The number of languages people speak, and the influences of other languages in it define cultural diversity. And when it comes to an intangible entity like culture, machines do not come into use.
It is only human interaction and connection that defines the importance of cultures. Culture becomes a defining element in studying the geographical and social importance of the place as well.
From the points mentioned above, one thing can be concluded. That though there may have been many changes in terms of language translation with the advent of technology, it can never remove the human element from its place.
A Brighter Future Ahead
When we think about the future, we imagine a well-connected world where people are able to communicate in a clear and easy manner. This became possible only because we saw how easy life has become with the advent of machines and digital technology. When it comes to a language, translation is no longer seen as a barrier to communication. It is just the medium through which people can communicate and come closer, from any part of the whole wide world.
For the future of companies involved in translation and language studies, it may seem like they have a threat from the increasing demand for machine translation. However, if we come to think about it, there may be a silver lining after all. Once the process of translation with AI is made more efficient, it is the translation companies that have the opportunity to train these machines and make them more diverse and intelligent. We might go as far as to say that one day, machines and human translators can be next to each other, working in unison to make this world closer in terms of language.
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Top LeadingCompanies of Global Machine Translation Market is Google LLC, Yandex N.V., Systran International Co. Ltd., Welocalize Inc., AppTek Partners LLC, SDL PLC, Microsoft Corporation, Cloudwords Inc., Smart Communications Inc., Omniscien Technologies Inc., Lingotek Inc., PROMT Ltd, IBM Corporation, Lionbridge Technologies Inc., RWS Holdings PLC and others.
On the Basis of Product, the 2020-2025 Global Machine Translation Market Report – Production and Consumption Professional Analysis (Impact of COVID-19) Market Is Primarily Split Into
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Automotive
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Regional Outlook of Machine Translation Market report includes the following geographic areas such as: North America, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, India and ROW.
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Influence of the 2020-2025 Global Machine Translation Market Report – Production and Consumption Professional Analysis (Impact of COVID-19) market report:
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Detailed study of business strategies for growth of the Machine Translation market-leading players.
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Key Strategic Developments: The study also includes the key strategic developments of the market, comprising R&D, new product launch, M&A, agreements, collaborations, partnerships, joint ventures, and regional growth of the leading competitors operating in the market on a global and regional scale.
Analytical Tools: The Global Machine Translation Market Report includes the accurately studied and assessed data of the key industry players and their scope in the market by means of a number of analytical tools. The analytical tools such as Porter’s five forces analysis, SWOT analysis, feasibility study, and investment return analysis have been used to analyze the growth of the key players operating in the market.
Key Market Features: The report evaluated key market features, including revenue, price, capacity, capacity utilization rate, gross, production, production rate, consumption, import/export, supply/demand, cost, market share, CAGR, and gross margin. In addition, the study offers a comprehensive study of the key market dynamics and their latest trends, along with pertinent market segments and sub-segments.
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If you’ve been following along with our year-long reading challenge, the FART challenge, you’ll know that the May theme is to read a book in translation. Since May is also Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we picked six books in translation originally written in languages from Asia and the Pacific Islands.
The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh – Translated from Vietnamese
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The Sorrow of War is a heart-wrenching story from Bao Ninh, a former North Vietnamese soldier, who writes about how the Vietnam War impacted his life, his country, and his people. Kien is the only member of the Vietcong’s Glorious 27th Youth Brigade. In the years after the war, he revisits the sites of some of the battles and reflects both on what happened and what his life has become. As he struggles with flashbacks and alcoholism, he attempts to take it all and turn it into a piece of writing. The Sorrow of War was originally published against the wishes of the Vietnamese government but has since become an international bestseller.
The Original Dream by Nukila Amal – Translated from Indonesian
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Told as a lyrical narrative that blends the dream world with the real world, The Original Dream is the story of Maya, a young and independent Indonesian woman who is seeking her place in the world, society, and family. Maya receives guidance from her friends and families and a newborn baby imbued with the knowledge of elders, moving from caring for guests at the hotel where she works to flying through the night sky with a dragon. As she floats between multiple realities and tries to find what is real, she begins to wonder whether that distinction even matters.
Winter Pasture by Li Juan – Translated from Chinese
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Blending together memoir and nature writing, Winter Pasture offers a glimpse into the remote world of Kazakh herders in Northwestern China. Li Juan and her mother own a convenience store in the Altai Mountains. One winter, she surprises all her neighbors by deciding to accompany a family of Kazakh herders as they head into a remote region with their herd for the winter. Offering harsh and beautiful imagery of the natural world that is balanced by Juan’s self-deprecating humor, Winter Pasture brings a view of this lifestyle to English language readers for the first time.
Island of Shattered Dreams by Chantal Spitz – Translated from Tahitian
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Island of Shattered Dreams is the first-ever novel written by an indigenous Tahitian author. Lyrically written, the novel follows the story of a family and a pair of lovers. Behind it all is the story of French Polynesia in the period before the nuclear tests took place. Island of Shattered Dreams was very polarizing when first published since it was very critical of the French government.
Hikikomori: Adolescence Without End by Saito Tamaki – Translated from Japanese
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A controversial bestseller at the time of publication, Hikikomori examines the phenomenon of near-complete withdrawal of adolescents and young adults from general society. These are young people who live with their parents and have retreated to their rooms for months, or even years, at a time. Drawing on his clinical experiences with Hikikomori patients, Saito takes a closer look at the condition and explains how it develops. Examining a phenomenon that occurs the world over, Hikikomori takes a non-judgemental, non-moralizing look at the causes and offers a look at the ways in which these people can be supported and helped toward recovery.
The Missing King by Moetai Brotherson – Translated from Tahitian
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Who is the missing king? And how will his people reclaim their past when their stories are entwined with the stories of others? Moetai Brotherson asks these questions and others in his witty novel, The Missing King. Told from the perspective of two men – a gifted, mute, Marquesan chess player, and Phillipe, a French psychologist – The Missing King is both funny and serious.
Reading books in translation can give us a unique look into the cultures and perspectives of people from different backgrounds than our own. Let us know what book you pick for this month of the FART challenge, and make sure to tag us in any posts. Don’t forget to use the hashtags #AYearofMagic and #FARTchallenge (Twitter) or #FARTReadingChallenge (Facebook and Instagram) to keep the conversation going!
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