French dictionary le Petit Larousse has added 170 new words to its new 2022 edition, including English words such as ‘batch cooking’, and terms "immersed in the pandemic" such as réa and quatorzaine.
The 2022 edition will include the new words and definitions, which have been chosen to reflect current changes and trends in society.
They include a number of terms derived from English, including:
Batch cooking – From the English meaning ‘cooking in bulk’. Refers to the increasingly-common practice of planning your weekly food and cooking it in one kitchen session in advance. Intended to help save time overall and help users to eat more healthily.
Click and collect – From the English for buying a product online and then going to pick it up from a depot or shop without having to go inside to buy or pay separately. Yet, the dictionary says this term is "not advised", and recommends the French term cliqué-retiré instead.
Mocktail – From the English ‘mock’ meaning imitation, to refer to a non-alcoholic cocktail drink.
There are also many terms that relate to the Covid-19 pandemic, including:
Cluster – From the English word, meaning ‘contagion outbreak’.
Réa – A shortened, colloquial way to say réanimation, or intensive care.
Coronapiste – A bike riding route, especially in towns, used during Covid-19 lockdown periods, that allows people to cycle while still respecting physical distancing.
Quatorzaine – Isolation period of 14 days (but can relate to isolation periods of other durations) required by someone who has Covid, or contacts of someone who does. Related to the word ‘quarantine’.
Télétravailler – Working from home.
Nasopharyngé – Relating to the nasopharynx (the upper part of the throat behind the nose). Used in the context of taking cell samples using a nose swab.
Zéro – As in ‘patient zero’, the first person to have been contaminated, with or without symptoms, in an epidemic context.
Read more: Improve your French: The mixed meaning of 'quarantine'
Le Covid or La Covid?
The new edition also includes Covid-19, with a discussion around its gender. It describes the term as both feminine and masculine, and says that “while the Académie Française recommends saying ‘la’ Covid-19, the use of the masculine [‘le’] is common”.
In Québec, Covid has emerged as feminine (la Covid) whereas in France, it has tended to be referred to as masculine (le Covid), despite the recommendations of the Académie, Larousse said.
Read more: Coronavirus is officially feminine
The new list also includes the term SARS-CoV-2, which it defines as an “English acronym of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2”.
Record-breaking pandemic edition
Normally, around 150 words on average enter a new edition. This year’s 170 new words is considered record-breaking.
Bernard Cerquiglini, dictionary advisor and former vice-president of the Conseil supérieur de la langue française, told Le Figaro: “This year was rich in terms of meaning change. There have never been so many.”
One example is couvre-feu (curfew) which used to mean simply ‘covering the flames’ after a fire and then later was usually used in military contexts, whereas now it refers to staying at home.
Similarly, confinement used to have criminal connotations, as it previously only applied to “baddies”; Mr Cerquiglini said, and déconfinement had hardly ever been used before – he had found one reference related to a nuclear power station – he said.
These have, of course, since come to describe the changing states of Covid-19 lockdown.
Carine Girac-Marinier, director of the dictionaries and encyclopedias department at Larousse, said: "This is obviously an edition completely immersed in the pandemic. Each vintage has a particular flavour linked to the changes in society. The French language and Le Petit Larousse reflect this evolution.
“And what is fascinating, is that during this health crisis, language has been extraordinarily dynamic. There have been very few anglicisms, and a lot of new words. This is the first time that we have, to this extent, new words linked either to the medical sphere or to medical consequences in our society.”
In particular, the French use of the word confinement is proof of the language’s tenacity, compared to, say, Italian, which uses the English word ‘lockdown’ with no real Italian equivalent, Mr Cerquiglini said.
Mr Cerquiglini said: “In any period of crisis, language moves. We saw this during the French Revolution or the Second World War, for example.
“But since March 2020, it has been even more spectacular. There has been a [real] movement in the language, which can be seen in the arrival of new words in usage and in the dictionary.”
Other notable words in the 2022 edition include émoji – an electronic, graphic representation used to express an emotion, from Japanese; and nounounerie – a colloquial, informal way to describe something silly or stupid, from Québec.
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CAIRO – 4 May 2021: The National Center for Translation announced the extension of the application for the two Tharwat Okasha Prizes for translating arts from and to the Arabic language until May 20.
The Tharwat Okasha Prize for translating arts from Arabic and the Tharwat Okasha Prize for translating arts into Arabic offers a prize of L.E 50,000 and L.E 30,000 respectively, in addition to a commemorative shield and a certificate of appreciation.
Works submitted by individuals, as well as from scientific and cultural bodies, translators and publishers are accepted, bearing in mind that the value of the award is given in full to the translator.
Last week, as India’s daily count of new COVID-19 cases had been over 300,000 (at least) for more than a week, Xi Jinping offered a gesture of goodwill despite abiding economic and diplomatic rivalries between the two nations. Chinese state media reported that in a personal message to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Xi expressed his concern and desire to offer additional assistance: “Mankind is a community of common destiny sharing weal and woe and only through unity and cooperation can the nations of the world ultimately overcome the pandemic.” Xi also offered his optimism that under New Delhi’s leadership “the people of India will certainly overcome the pandemic.”
However, not everyone in the Party appeared to have embraced the message of compassionate neighborly outreach voiced by its “core leader.” On May 1, the day after Xi’s personal message to Modi—and as India’s official daily COVID-19 case count was breaking 400,000—the CCP Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, China’s top law enforcement authority, posted a brutal comparison on Weibo. The post compared a photo of the mass funeral pyres reportedly being used in New Delhi as crematoriums are overwhelmed to that of the unmanned module for China’s Tianhe space station that was successfully launched last week. The post sparked an immediate backlash both in China and abroad.
CDT has translated an essay by WeChat public account @十分正经研究所 further describing the offending post in the context of a recent wave of angry online nationalism and a belligerent “wolf warrior” style of official diplomacy. The essay castigates the official account for the comparison, and offers an apology to the people of India. The essay has since been deleted, while CDT Chinese editors note that more recent posts critiquing the official post have remained online.
An Apology to the People of India
“China Peace Net,” the online presence of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, posted to Weibo at 1:24 p.m. today.
The post said “ignition in China vs. ignition in India, #400ThousandNewCasesIn1DayInIndia#.” Below the text were two photos: one of China launching a rocket, the other of healthcare workers in India building funeral pyres for the latest victims of COVID-19.
“China Peace Net” did not invent this. Virtually the same Weibo post is all over social media: “China lights a fire, India lights a fire, both are sending people up to heaven.” You can’t blame them for their mockery. After all, there are as many value systems as there are people. You can’t demand that everyone think the same, that everyone be equally empathetic to the victims of the pandemic.
But the same snide remark coming from China Peace Net is grossly inappropriate. This is the news site of the Central Political and Legal Committee. It represents the official voice of China. Its derision of India’s situation, its mockery of the suffering of the Indian people, its profaning of India’s dead, will also be seen as the official voice of China.
Every single victim of the pandemic had a full and vibrant life, and each is worthy of respect. When COVIDfirst hit Wuhan and the city was short on medical equipment, in that hopeless moment when patients couldn’t be saved in time, other countries reached out to China. Japan said, “We are in different lands, but we share the same sky,” touching countless Chinese people. As India is being ravaged by COVID, the most basic sympathy for those suffering as we did is fundamentally human—it has nothing to do with patriotism, it is basic decency.
The pandemic isn’t a competition. “Winning or losing” both stand on enormous individual sacrifice. China’s success at quelling the pandemic came through strict management and control, social lockdown, coordination among the masses, economic backsliding, and international aid. Every individual, and society as a whole, paid a heavy price.
No man is an island.The pandemic is raging, the virus is mutating, it could come back at us any time. We can’t pat ourselves on the back for our one-time victory, or rub in our success with such cruel mockery.
Yesterday, April 30, President Xi Jinping sent a message of sympathy to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on behalf of the Chinese government and the Chinese people, and personally offered his condolences to the Indian government and people.
President Xi said that humanity is a community of shared destiny, and that only when the world stands united will we defeat COVID once and for all; that China wants to cooperate further with India in the fight against the pandemic, and to offer support and aid; and that he believes that, under the leadership of the Indian government, the Indian people will defeat COVID.
With yesterday’s message still ringing in our ears, today an official Weibo account has placed itself outside of this “community,” ruthlessly taunting another country. It’s hard to understand.
As the ancients said, “When there are mourning rites in his neighborhood, one should not accompany his pestle with his voice. When there is a body shrouded and coffined in his village, one should not sing in the lanes.” Our technology and civilization are far more advanced, but why on this point are we more primitive than the ancients?
Some people will say, “You’re not Chinese, you’re a traitor.” Excuse me, I am Chinese. I hope that every Chinese person will be humane and courteous, have a sense of shame and know the difference between right and wrong. Even as we bitterly fight with our opponents, even as we encounter unjust treatment, we can still hold fast to these most basic threads of human decency.
I would like here to personally apologize to the Indian people. China Peace Net’s Weibo post does not represent me. We share the same planet. Differences of culture and national conditions have caused the pandemic to spread in your country. We are suffering along with you.
While we have our territorial disputes, today COVID is our common enemy. We are with you. We hope you are able to control the virus soon and return to everyday life. [Chinese]
A report from the Hindustan Times notes that their attempt to obtain comment from China’s foreign ministry yielded the disingenuous note “we currently cannot find it on the relevant Weibo account,” and directed the paper toward official messaging: “It is hoped that the Indian side will pay attention to the Chinese government and mainstream public opinion supporting India’s stance in fighting the epidemic.”
As Manya Koetse notes at What’s on Weibo, @十分正经研究所 wasn’t the only Chinese web user disgusted by the official post.
A popular legal account with over 390.000 followers (@王鹏律师) posted: “Such an inappropriate comparison, show some respect for life. Every country encounters disasters! Not to mention that in times of [this] pandemic, every country is involved.”
“I don’t know what is wrong with the online editor of China Chang’an today, from the propaganda point of view this is a classic case of propaganda failure,” one Weibo commenter said.
“This is so inappropriate for an official account,” others wrote.
“That post gave me chills. I know some people have a very low bottom line, but I could’ve never expected it would be so low, so low that they can openly sneer at the passing of life, so low that they are devoid of conscience and proud of it,” another blogger wrote. “It’s inhumane,” others said. [Source]
The Hindustan Times’ coverage notes that China’s official media has a record of mocking India at times of diplomatic tension:
During the Doklam standoff near the Sikkim border in 2017, news agency Xinhua had released a video with racist overtones that had mocked and parodied Indians.
The video in English ran a little more than three minutes and was titled “7 Sins of India: It’s time for India to confess its seven sins”.
It featured a man with a turban and a fake beard – an apparent attempt at mocking at an Indian Sikh person – speaking in English in the way in which Indians are perceived to speak the language. [Source]
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.
“Despite the latest technological advances in the field of ML, finding high-quality, domain-specific language data in as many language pairs as possible remains to be a challenge to achieve optimal results”, says Jaap van der Meer, Director of TAUS. “With TAUS Data Services, we generate tailor-fit datasets to be used in the training of machine translation models. Together with SYSTRAN, we are able to address both ends of the MT training problem: strong training models and high-quality language data meeting project requirements.”
About SYSTRAN:
With more than 50 years of experience in translation technologies, SYSTRAN has pioneered the greatest innovations in the field, including the first web-based translation portals and the first neural translation engines combining artificial intelligence and neural networks for businesses and public organizations.
SYSTRAN provides business users with advanced and secure automated translation solutions in various areas such as: global collaboration, multilingual content production, customer support, electronic investigation, Big Data analysis, e-commerce, etc.
SYSTRAN offers a tailor-made solution with an open and scalable architecture that enables seamless integration into existing third-party applications and IT infrastructures.
For more information, visit https://www.systransoft.com/
About TAUS:
TAUS was founded in 2005 as a think tank with a mission to automate and innovate translation. Ideas transformed into actions. TAUS became the language data network offering the largest industry-shared repository of data, deep know-how in language engineering and a network of Human Language Project workers around the globe.
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.
