The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation has created an online Umatilla language dictionary. Modesta Minthorn is the director of education for the confederated tribes and Thomas Morning Owl is the General Council interpreter. They join us to reflect on the importance of the online dictionary and how it can be used to support the language.
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CONVEYING INFORMATION—Sebastian Pacheco, right, offers translation services during a May 15 vaccine clinic in the Las Casitas neighborhood of Newbury Park. The 19-year-old grew up on Warwick Avenue and now works for CRPD and Amazon. Courtesy photo
Sebastian Pacheco spent his childhood translating for his parents. Growing up in a Spanish speaking household on Warwick Avenue in Thousand Oaks, it was Pacheco’s duty when he was still in high school to translate medical paperwork, rental agreements and legal documents into simple Spanish terms so his mother and father could understand them.
Now 19, Pacheco is still translating, but not just for his parents. On May 15, he spent hours interpreting for vaccine seekers at a pop-up clinic in the underserved Las Casitas neighborhood of Newbury Park.
He greeted each vaccine recipient with “Buenos días” before he provided information and answered questions about the shots at what was the second vaccine clinic hosted by Safe Passage, a gang-deterrent program, in the low-income and heavily immigrant neighborhood north of the 101 Freeway. The first clinic took place April 24.
Between assisting patients, Pacheco told the Acorn he attended Safe Passage as a child and viewed his language assistance as a way to help the community he loves. Many of the vaccine recipients, some of whom arrived with small children in tow, are family friends.
“These types of neighborhoods often get overlooked. They feel like they’re not a priority, but they’re always grateful for everything they get,” he said. “A lot of the people here are moms I grew up with. It feels good because a lot of them are saying I’m turning out to be a positive person.”
Nearly 1,000 vaccine doses were administered by Ventura County Public Health staff over the course of the two vaccine clinics. Safe Passage is a collaboration between the T.O. Police Department, Conejo Rec and Park District, Art Trek, Kiwanis Club of T.O. and Los Robles Health System.
Pacheco now works for CRPD in addition to a job working the graveyard shift at a local Amazon warehouse. While he has two jobs, not everyone in the two high-risk neighborhoods served by Safe Passage has been so lucky over the past year.
Julian Espinoza, founder of the nonprofit Leaving the Nest and a Safe Passage volunteer, said that after the pandemic triggered economic closures, there was an 80% unemployment rate in the neighborhoods served by the program.
Now that the economy is reopening, Espinoza said, it is vital to make sure that these workers are protected. The clinic did more than hand out vaccines. It also provided free groceries and hot meals from Chick-fil-A to those who attended. Espinoza said that during the pandemic Safe Passage has been focused on food security, COVID testing and rent relief to support families who otherwise would be vulnerable to the influences of gangs and drugs.
“This community is our farmworkers. They’re our maids, they’re our servers, they’re our gardeners, they’re our construction workers. It’s our truck drivers, it’s our trashmen,” he said. “It’s the blue-collar workers who make this city what it is. The city is as pretty and as nice as it is because we have them, day in and day out.”
While volunteers handed out food and administered vaccines, children rode bikes and scooters through the makeshift clinic. Some played soccer.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently approved the Pfizer vaccine for patients between the ages of 12 and 15. Socorro Alamilla, 15, and her sister, Rosa, 14, were among the first in that age category to get their first doses at the clinic.
Socorro, a Thousand Oaks High freshman, said her family has been very cautious regarding COVID prevention measures because her mother works in child care, so they missed out on celebrating Christmas with extended family members in Los Angeles during the height of the pandemic this winter. The girls’ vaccination opens the door to resuming family visits.
“This means we’re going to be OK,” Socorro told the Acorn.
Dina Rodriguez, who works in a cosmetics factory, said she’s happy her daughter, 12-year-old Sindy Juarez, is protected now. The best part, she said, was that the clinic was across from her house.
Chuck Huffer, a CRPD director, said watching volunteers hand out lifesaving vaccines under green shade structures with the CRPD logo on it was “just wonderful.”
“To be able to help a little bit is important and heartwarming,” he said.
While Pacheco was helping translate for people who were getting their shots, AmeriCorps volunteer and Cal Lutheran sophomore Martha Juarez helped check in families and tend to patients after their shots. The 19-year-old biochemistry major said that, like Pacheco, she always had to translate for her parents growing up, so this work was within her wheelhouse.
“Being here means I can help others from my community,” she said.
Pacheco’s work did not go unrewarded. The TOHS grad got his second dose of the COVID vaccine Saturday morning.
“I’ve got my card here,” he said. “My mom got her vaccine, too, so she said it’s pretty good that I’m just helping in a pandemic like this, that I’m not just sitting on the sidelines.”
Pacheco said he is grateful and proud to be bilingual because it means he can help give a voice to a community that otherwise wouldn’t be heard.
The stories present, to a large extent, the dark worlds of lonely characters experiencing varying degrees of tragedy, depicted through a bleak and straightforward language.
Gracy’s Baby Doll: Stories is an exemplary affair with loneliness; and an arduous lockdown read. Translated from the Malayalam by Fathima EV, they present, to a large extent, the dark worlds of lonely characters experiencing varying degrees of tragedy, depicted through a bleak and straightforward language. Written across three decades of her career and arranged chronologically, they present loneliness as an abiding force, one that can often result in mental instability. For instance, in Arundhati’s Dream, the protagonist is afraid of falling asleep because of her vivid, terrifying dreams. In Cat, the narrator is convinced that his wife, who has cat-eyes, is a cat herself and has been impregnated by the tabby hanging around outside their house. And in Panchali, Krishna learns that her husband enacts the five Pandavas each night in the bedroom until she decides that like with Draupadi, instead of her husband, someone else must come to her rescue.
Instead of allowing empathy between women, the mother-daughter relationships are also often strained. “You have vengeful mothers and daughters who refuse to forget what has been done to them,” says Fathima. An example of this is the story Illusory Visions where a woman sees coffins and on opening them, speaks with her deceased parents. The conversation steers into bickering and fighting until her mother curses her: “Just wait, you will pay for this.” And soon after, a car arrives with her husband’s body. In What Mother Ought to Know, a woman’s rebellion lies in wearing a bright red sari to her mother’s funeral. “In a Gracy stories, life seems to be horrendous even for children in most cases,” adds Fathima. A prime example is the titular story, where the daughter, who loves dolls, is lured away by her neighbour into his bedroom in exchange for a living doll.
“These are all intimate portraits of people. She’s talking about lonely people caught in the web of deceit and adultery, complex human dynamics, and familial and marital problems,” says Fathima. Sometimes it seems as though she’s about to embark on a new strand of thought, like alternative sexualities and the undercurrents of a homosexual relationship in Parting with Parvathi. But such routes are never fully developed, and the reader continues to exist within the same, flustering world, where "there are no comforting things to fall back on".
The sense of loneliness pervading the book’s pages is aided by her use of language. Gracy, says Fathima, often “adopts a conscious distance and indifference” in her writing, a language that’s used strongly to create an atmosphere.
Everything is laid down clearly in front of the reader and emotion stems from the lack of escape from the characters’ stifling private worlds.
Complementing this use of language is often a dark or acerbic humour, another common thread through much of her writing. At other times, her writing can also employ a “disarmingly playful” tone and create spunky characters like Orotha in ‘Orotha and the Ghosts’ who talks easily with the ghosts hanging around and awakened by the wind. And while there are constant references to Hindu folklore and mythology, Gracy’s stories also "draw upon a strong Christian ethos".
While thematically the stories present several strands, from loneliness to religion and from mental health to the intrinsic nature of human beings, Gracy is recognised largely for her depiction of women. In the early days, she attracted attention and controversy because of her candid portrayal of sexuality and female desire, especially when she was connected with Pennezhuthu, the women’s movement. They foregrounded writing about women and female desire, and discussed fundamental issues like gendered perceptions, patriarchal ideologies, and "the rampant misogyny which is there in Kerala’s cultural fabric". After the movement slowed down, Gracy preferred to stay away, not really aligning with any other movement or collective. “It was an isolated path that she preferred.” But her concerns remained the same, largely reflecting the issues that society around her is tackling. “Because the situation has not changed fundamentally, Gracy still continues to write about those things, so of course there’s some repetition.” However, in other ways, “Kerala’s social fabric is changing, and Gracy’s recent stories reflect the concerns of the changing demographic, accommodating migrant workers and other marginalised characters into her fictional terrain.”
With a range of themes and characters between the covers of the book, Fathima successfully challenges the assumption that Gracy only writes about women, it being her primary goal in undertaking the translation. “Of course, in any translation there are going to be semantic and cultural difficulties. But I’ve read a lot of her stories and she’s been really generous with her help,” says Fathima about the process. When translating, while ensuring clarity was most important for English language readers, in some instances, especially where an atmosphere is strongly evoked, Fathima found a deliberate lack of clarity. Translating then meant working closely with Gracy so she could clarify things where needed, the translating process becoming an intimate collaboration between the two. “Translation is like an extended authorship. It’s a collaborative act between the reader, translator, and writer,” says Fathima, who’s previously also co-translated Delhi: A Soliloquy.
“I think translation offers a chance for writers to revisit their work, edit and reassess it, and give editing another go,” she adds. However, this opportunity for reassessment is lost with the recent trend of publishing translations with or soon after the book is published in one language, among the recent trends she’s noticing across the Malayali literary landscape. “Once upon a time we had an incubation period. The book would get to the reading public and establish itself before requiring or demanding a translation.” Now, it’s the writers who demand translations. “Is there a selection process involved? I don’t know.” With no incubation period and more accessibility to translators, more books are coming out in multiple languages. Whether that’s better or worse for Malayali literature is yet to be seen, “though the focus on translation by publishers and readers certainly bodes well for Malayalam.”
The winners of two large UK public sector contracts for translation and interpreting have been announced. HealthTrust Europe (HTE) awarded a “Total Language Solutions” contract worth up to GBP 250m (USD 353m), while the NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS) named the winning bidders of an Interpretation and Translation Services tender valued at GBP 125m (USD 177m).
Typically, these amounts are spend ceilings and only indicative of actual amounts spent during the term.
An award notice published on May 7, 2021 shows the HTE establishing a framework agreement with 17 language service providers (LSPs). As covered by Slator, the HTE had issued a call to tender on behalf of University Hospitals of Coventry and the Warwickshire NHS Trust in September 2020.
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The new HTE contract, which runs for three years with a possible 12-month extension, is divided into two lots. Lot 1, worth GBP 200m (USD 283m), relates to translation, interpreting, and transcription for spoken languages. Lot 2, worth GBP 50m (USD 70.7m), covers services for non-spoken languages (e.g., British Sign Language). The award criteria gave a weighting of 65% to quality and 35% to price.
NHS Shared Business Services
Meanwhile, the NHS SBS contract worth USD 177m for translation and interpreting was awarded on May 13, 2021. The framework agreement is a joint venture between the Department of Health and Sopra Steria, a Paris-based consulting and digital services company.
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The contract is divided into seven lots, each valued at GBP 20.83m.
Lot 1 – face-to-face interpreting (F2F Interpreting)
Lot 2 – British Sign Language services (BSL)
Lot 3 – telephone interpreting (OPI)
Lot 4 – document translation (Translation)
Lot 5 – video interpretation (VRI)
Lot 6 – a “one-stop-shop” for the provision of the full range of translation and interpreting services (One-Stop-Shop)
A seventh lot, Lot P – for the provision of products to aid translation and interpretation (Products)
In total, 31 different LSPs were awarded one or more lot. With the exception of Lot P, each lot received 16–20 proposals and was awarded to 15–17 LSPs. Lot P was awarded to the only company to submit a tender, UK software development company Aprobrium (Lexacom).
Nine LSPs struck big, and were awarded a spot on all six lots. These were Absolute Interpreting and Translations, DA Languages, Global Translation Services, ITL (North East), Language Connect International (rebranded to THG Fluently), Language Empire, ONCALL Interpreters, Silent Sounds Communications, and thebigword.
The ad world is laser-focused on data. Brands are trying to identify the data at their fingertips while also determining how much data will be available for their ad campaigns in the future. This is especially true in the digital space, where looming changes could lead to pain points. However, many brands are stuck at the beginning. They are having trouble organizing and mining their data, not only for digital, but across all channels. One key question that keeps popping up is: “Where do we start?”
Fortunately, the answer is simple: start with your data dictionaries.
“OK... but what if we don’t have a data dictionary?”
Well, then you need to create one. The optimal time is now. Data dictionaries will become increasingly important in the post-cookie future of audience building and ad targeting.
So, what is a data dictionary?
Let’s review the basics. A data dictionary is a centralized repository of metadata. It’s data about data and it offers information based on how and where the data was collected.
Organizations have many sources of data, from web and e-commerce data, in-store shopper data and loyalty data, to customer service data and promotion response data. With such variety across industry and business models, each data dictionary’s contents will differ from brand to brand. You may find you need different dictionaries for different data sources or systems, but there are some common components that can be included within a useful data dictionary format.
This information includes:
Field names contained in all the organization’s databases
Where the data is stored
How data is used
Data types including integer, real and character
Description of what each database field means
Source of the data for each database field
Relationship between fields within the databases and with other data
Which departments and people can access the data (data security requirements)?
Data integrity parameters
Why are data dictionaries so important?
Whether expanding an existing dictionary or starting from scratch, a data dictionary can be revelatory in unveiling what data is available and how the data can be applied and used within the organization. A data dictionary will allow your team to get a unified view into the data your company has, and that data can be used to create personas and customer profiles. The marketing team is a great place to champion the creation of a data dictionary, as the increased visibility and knowledge will help drive a more stable long-term data-driven marketing strategy in the face of rapid change.
This is important amid the current rush to catalog first-party data, because the exercise of building out a data dictionary may identify new kinds of data that the marketing organization was previously unaware of. It may also find that some things that the organization thought of as the bedrock of their data strategy aren’t quite up to snuff, and need to be cleaned and organized in order to be effective. This may include identifying the proper use of datasets based on permissions, or flagged data that needs to be compliant with state and federal regulations.
The exercise may also identify accurate linkages of personally identifiable information (PII) or Customer IDs, which can then be used to consolidate duplicative records. While it seems obvious that brands should streamline their data to define a unified customer view, having multiple consumer IDs across data sources wreaks havoc for many brands.
Ultimately, data dictionaries serve as a roadmap to painting a clear picture of your audience and what you know about those in your database. The roadmap will drive marketing decisions and serve as the foundation of effective communication, better customer experiences and a competitive advantage.
A data dictionary may also serve as the foundation for expanded metadata management programs – especially important for organizations with extremely complicated and overlapping tools and data systems. Beyond your organization, a data dictionary will also help you more efficiently identify and execute on partner data that can add value to your first-party data.
Creating or updating a consolidated data dictionary
With the spotlight on first-party data, every brand’s goal is to pull disparate datasets together to make them useful and accurate, and gain insights that can be used for marketing and sales purposes.
To create a data dictionary, start by answering the following questions:
Who needs to be involved in the dictionary creation process, and who currently has access to first-party data?
What first-party data does our organization have access to? How regularly is it updated and how long do we keep it?
What privacy or security concerns apply to our data and use of that data?
Do we understand the fields of data and what they mean?
Armed with answers to these questions, a brand can then move into figuring out how to organize the data. A data dictionary is a key component in getting the biggest bang for your buck. Since you already have a collection of data, understanding the data sources and analyzing the data to gain insight will benefit the organization as a whole.
Before you can even think about what to do within the marketplace and how ad targeting will be changed in the future, you need to know everything about the data you already have in your pocket. A data dictionary will be the first draft of your roadmap to keeping pace with change, but maintaining an accurate data dictionary will never go out of style and guarantees an invaluable asset to face unpredicted changes that may lie ahead.
Donna Hamilton is senior vice-president of data acquisition and activation at Alliant.
In 2021, the story behind a 120-year-old Icelandic version of the classic novel “Dracula” captured the imaginations of social media users, who enthusiastically shared the following summary, originally posted by the Twitter account @ihmerst:
“Someone translated Dracula into Icelandic and it took over 100 years for anyone to point out he just made a fanfic-rewrite of what he wanted the story to be.”
“Dracula,” written by Irish novelist Bram Stoker and first published in 1897, has come to be regarded as a classic work in the genres of horror and Gothic fiction and helped popularize vampire folklore in the English-speaking world. It has also inspired a vibrant field of academic research into the social and cultural themes upon which the novel touches, as well as the life of Stoker and the origins of “Dracula.”
One particularly fascinating point of interest involves the existence of alternative versions of the novel, published in Icelandic and Swedish around the turn of the 20th century. The description posted by @ihmerst contained a measure of truth, but oversimplified what is a complicated and unfinished area of research.
‘Powers of Darkness’
The photograph contained in @ihmerst’s tweet showed a snapshot of the introduction to Hans Corneel de Roos’ 2017 English translation of “Makt Myrkranna” (“Powers of Darkness”), the Icelandic book in question. It was written by journalist Valdimar Ásmundsson, first serialized in his newspaper Fjallkonan in 1900, and later published as a book which, remarkably, included a preface attributed to Stoker himself.
A more clearly legible version of de Roos’ introduction can be viewed below:
Up until the 2010s, “Makt Myrkranna” remained untranslated from Icelandic and was presumed to be simply a shortened translation of Stoker’s original English text. However, de Roos discovered that the plot of the book differed drastically from that of “Dracula,” including new characters, more explicit sexual themes and imagery, and a significant shift in style away from the epistolary (letter-writing) format of the original.
In 2014, de Roos described “Makt Myrkranna” as the first translation of “Dracula” and speculated that, in light of elements contained in Stoker’s preface, the Irish writer himself may have endorsed “Makt Myrkranna” or even collaborated with Ásmundsson on it.
De Roos’ findings made waves in the world of “Dracula” scholarship, and when he published the English translation of “Makt Myrkranna” in 2017, it attracted mainstream news coverage around the world.
However, the publicity surrounding de Roos’ findings prompted yet another plot twist, as it were. In 2017, the Swedish fantasy writer Rickard Berghorn recognized in the title of the Icelandic text, “Makt Myrkranna,” a clear similarity with the title of a Swedish translation of Stoker’s novel — “Mörkrets makter,” which also translates as “Powers of Darkness.”
Berghorn made two startling discoveries: first, that serialized versions of “Mörkrets makter” had been published in Swedish newspapers beginning in 1899 (that is, before the Icelandic text was published); and second, that the Swedish versions also constituted a radical departure from Stoker’s 1897 novel, rather than a straightforward translation.
Since 2017, something of a consensus has emerged that, rather than constituting a modified and embellished version of “Dracula,” based on the original English text, Ásmundsson’s Icelandic text was in fact a modified translation of earlier Swedish texts. As a result, @ihmerst’s claim that “someone translated ‘Dracula’ into Icelandic” should now be regarded as outdated and inaccurate.
However, some key questions remain. Who wrote the preface to “Powers of Darkness,” which was included in both the Swedish and Icelandic texts and attributed, perhaps fraudulently, to Stoker? Was Stoker even aware in advance of the Swedish text (and subsequent Icelandic text), much less involved in its creation? What was the identity of the unnamed Swedish newspaper editor responsible for “Mörkrets makter”? Was the Swedish text simply “fan fiction” — an unauthorized alternative version of “Dracula” masquerading as a translation — or could it have been based on a much earlier draft of Stoker’s own novel?
Jarlath Killeen, head of the School of English at Trinity College Dublin (which Stoker himself attended), and an expert in Gothic and Victorian Irish and British literature, has edited and written several books and articles on Stoker and “Dracula.” He told Snopes that scholars were continuing to research and debate those questions and others, but the precise origins of the Nordic texts remained “very unclear and very murky,” for now.
