UM professor helps with, introduces students to new Bible translation - Alabama Baptist - Translation

Professor Doug Wilson has had many students complete his classes at the University of Mobile and become pastors, worship leaders, chaplains, missionaries and professionals who use their work to further the gospel.

He’s grateful and humbled when he thinks of every single one.

But Wilson’s got a specific prayer he has prayed in recent years — that God would call students in his classes to go and translate the Bible for people groups who don’t have the word of God in their language.

He knows at least one student who has gone on to do that, and he’s praying for more.

But he’s not stopping there — he’s putting Bible translation in front of his students all the time.

“I’ve been introducing students to biblical Hebrew and teaching Old Testament at UM since 2003, and I recently developed courses about Bible translation history and theory,” said Wilson, who serves as dean of UM’s Center for Christian Calling.

Wilson recently was invited to serve on the Old Testament translation committee for the New Tyndale Version, so he’ll be showing them what the process looks like in real time as he works on a project himself.

Wilson will translate three books and serve as a sectional editor for a portion of the Old Testament.

500th anniversary

The idea behind the NTV is to honor the process that William Tyndale used to print the first full Bible in English in 1526.

Tyndale translated his version into English from the original Greek and Hebrew, which is what the NTV team will do too. But they will also have access to manuscripts that Tyndale did not.

“We honor Tyndale’s legacy while utilizing documents which were unknown 500 years ago,” he said.

“These discoveries include texts from Codex Sinaiticus (1844), Codex Leningradensis (1863), the Cairo Geniza (1896) and the Dead Sea Scrolls (1947), among others.”

The publication of the multiyear project will coincide with the 500th anniversary of the Tyndale Bible.

“William Tyndale joined men like Jan Hus and Martin Luther who risked their lives to translate the Bible into the language of their people so that it could be read in their mother tongue, their heart language,” Wilson said, noting that Tyndale was martyred 10 years later for his work.

Wilson’s role in the NTV will be to translate his assigned portions “word by word, verse by verse and chapter by chapter.”

Textual history

“We must be aware of textual history, interpretive issues and translational challenges in the Hebrew and Aramaic sections within our assigned books,” said Wilson, who has taught biblical languages, biblical studies and intercultural coursework for the past 25 years.

He studied Old Testament languages and literature, including several Ancient Near East languages, with longtime NIV Bible translator Larry Walker.

“Dr. Walker taught me translation theory and trained me how to translate Hebrew and related Semitic languages,” Wilson said. “My work on this project carries on the legacy of Dr. Walker in his service to the Lord as a Bible translator.”

Honoring mentors

A colleague who also studied under Walker asked Wilson to be a part of the NTV translation team.

In addition to honoring Tyndale, Wilson said his work on the team also honors his dad, who taught history for 25 years. And it builds on his own mission of exposing students to Bible translation and helping them catch a vision for that type of ministry.

“My prayer is that our experience and training on this project will be a spark to ignite the passion of other UM students to take up the mantle of Bible translation, particularly into languages in which there is no previous translation,” he said.

Wilson asked for prayer for those serving on the NTV translation team. He also asked for prayer “for the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers to unreached and unengaged people groups … for men and women who will dedicate their lives to translate the Bible into the languages of those people.”

Azerbaijani translation of poems attributed to Imam Ali (AS) published - Tehran Times - Translation

TEHRAN – An Azerbaijani translation of a collection of poems attributed to Imam Ali (AS), the first Imam of the Shia, has recently been published.

Published by Osweh Publications, “Divan of Imam Ali (AS)” will be introduced during a meeting with a limited number of guests at the Khayyam Hall of Tehran’s Omid Cultural Center at 4 p.m. on Wednesday.

Translator Hossein Mohammadzadeh Sediq and scholars Khalil Parvini and Morteza Majdfar are scheduled to attend the meeting. 

According to some historical documents, the followers and devotees of Imam Ali (AS) began accumulating poems and mimesis attributed to the Imam in a collection three centuries after his martyrdom. Some historical records suggest that Imam Ali (AS) had great skill in composing poems.  

Parla, an Iranian Ashiqlar music band, will give a performance during the meeting, which will also be live on @lib.emamkhomeini, the Instagram of the Imam Khomeini Library of the center.
 
Photo: A poster for a meeting, which is scheduled to introduce “Divan of Imam Ali (AS)” at Tehran’s Omid Cultural Center. 

MAQ/MMS/YAW

AI could make African languages more accessible with machine translation — but people need to make it happen - Daily Maverick - Translation

(Image: Adobe Stock)

Machine translation benchmarks were recently set for more than 30 African languages, classified in the Natural Language Processing space as the ‘The Left-Behinds’. The benchmarks are the first advances for some of the 2,000-odd living African languages and present a case for information accessibility through language technology.

If there was a perfect Machine Translation system for African languages it would mean that all the existing knowledge found on the Internet could be translated into someone’s home language. 

For example, the number of Xitsonga articles on the global encyclopaedia Wikipedia is tiny. “If we had a perfect [Machine Translation] system… you can take the whole Wikipedia and translate that into someone’s language, then you give them direct access to basically all of knowledge. That’s a little bit amazing,” said Dr Herman Kamper of Stellenbosch University’s Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering.

Machine Translation is automated translation of one language into another, performed by a computer.  

Kamper was one of about 40 scholars and more than 400 participants who have been teaming up since 2019 to solve speech and language problems in Africa. 

At the end of 2020, the volunteer community was able to set the first benchmarks for 30-plus African languages in Machine Translation, a first for the African languages in Machine Translation.

Researchers used Natural Language Processing (NLP), a branch of artificial intelligence that helps computers understand, interpret and manipulate human language. 

Their research paper, Participatory Research for Low-resourced Machine Translation: A Case Study in African Languages, coming out of the collaborative work went on to win the 2020 Wikimedia Foundation Research Award and some members of the community have since gone on to tackle other NLP tasks. 

According to Kamper, the benchmarks are a mere starting point for the languages, since the systems are not yet as good as an English-to-French system, for example, that Google makes use of.

The benchmarks are evaluation sets to test the Machine Translation systems.  

If a big tech company like Google wanted to, it could create Machine Translation systems for all the languages, stated Kamper, who focuses particularly on speech recognition. 

But, if you don’t have the native speakers on the ground, it is difficult to account for the long-tail languages, Kamper said. 

At the moment, what is needed are people who are native speakers of languages — like those that were accounted for in the benchmarks, namely Khoekhoegowab, Igbo, Sepedi and Setswana — and who know that Google won’t easily work on these Machine Translation systems. 

Most NLP research fails to have on-the-ground expertise of low-resourced languages. 

You need people who will say, “I am going to do it”. 

That was the scheme of the group of thinkers who gathered in 2019 to discuss NLP at a Deep Learning Indaba, held in Kenya. 

At that 2019 teaching event, it was established that, “we want to do this thing, to build MT systems for all the languages that we possibly can”, Kamper said. 

“In that room, there were already a whole bunch of people from all over Africa speaking different languages. That was where it started.” 

The community of creators, translators, curators, language technologists and evaluators called their initiative the Masakhane (meaning “we build together”) project. 

A year later the group, spearheaded by machine learning engineer Jade Abbott, were able to accomplish some of the first movements in NLP for African languages.

From Nigeria, volunteers are translating their own writings, including personal religious stories and undergraduate theses, into Yoruba and Igbo. This is in an effort to ensure that accessible and representative data of their culture are used to train models. 

“But there is still a lot of work to be done,” Kamper pointed out, adding that the community still continues to work and meet on a weekly basis. 

“The systems [or benchmarks] are focused on a relatively small domain, meaning that the systems were trained and tested on a specific style of language. They won’t necessarily do well on other types of texts,” said Kamper. 

More data would need to be collected to cover more diverse styles or domains for it to work across multiple domains, he said. 

The Left-Behinds 

While Machine Translation systems for high-resourced languages like English and German work efficiently, the same systems do not work seamlessly for languages that are considered “low-resourced” languages.

There is a big discussion around what defines a low-resourced language and definitions vary, Kamper said. According to him, most African languages are considered “low-resource” because it is either difficult to procure data or there is not enough labelled audio-speech or parallel translation between the different languages, he said.

This means that it is difficult to procure datasets– a sentence in one language alongside its equivalent translated into another language, and then thousands others like these — for the systems. 

And, out of the about 7,000 spoken languages in the world, most are further considered endangered languages, with small numbers of speakers, said Kamper. 

At the same time, there are some languages, like most South African languages, that are spoken by millions of people, but it remains difficult to get labelled data.

According to their paper, most of the 2,000-odd living languages in Africa are considered “The Left-Behinds” and some “The Rising Stars” in NLP research.

“For me [a language technologist], to build a Machine Translation system for a language that I don’t speak is actually quite hard,” said Kamper, who helped create the systems for Afrikaans and a bit of isiXhosa system. 

“The beauty of this project is that we got people, there on the ground, speaking the language,” Kamper said. “Then, the initiative was to quickly upskill [those working on the Machine Translation systems] to build these first systems.” 

“We are basically trying to equip people all over Africa to fix the problems in their own communities,” said Kamper. 

Kamper pointed out that in the greater scheme of things his contribution was small — just three days devoted to working on the system. 

“But the cool thing about it is that 40-something people made a tiny contribution like this, and it turned out to be a big thing,” Kamper said. “If you didn’t have native speakers or languages, and people who sacrificed just a few moments of their time, then that wouldn’t have happened.” DM

Rebecca Pitt

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Microsoft Edge Canary brings back dictionary tool to all webpages - Windows Central - Dictionary

Source: Daniel Rubino / Windows Central

Microsoft Edge Canary has a new feature that lets you look up the definition of selected text on any webpage. This functionality was available on the legacy version of Edge but is now making its way to the Chromium-based Edge browser. The new dictionary feature is found in the mini context menu that appears when you select text. It was spotted by Leopeva64-2 on Reddit.

To enable the feature, you need to open the Appearance section within Edge's settings. You can then toggle an option to "Show mini menu when selecting text." A similar option appears on the production version of the Chromium-based Microsoft Edge, but it only works for PDFs.

VPN Deals: Lifetime license for $16, monthly plans at $1 & more

When enabled, an icon for a mini menu will appear whenever you select text on a webpage. If you hover over that icon, you'll see a menu with a few options, including defining the selected text. The interface for this mini menu is a bit rough at the moment. The icon that appears when you select text looks like it should be clicked, but you actually just need to hover over it. Clicking it dismisses the icon.

The new mini menu is in testing, so some inconsistencies and odd behaviors are to be expected. Once it's refined, it will make it easier to access more information on Edge.

We may earn a commission for purchases using our links. Learn more.

Old toys with new tricks

Destiny 2 Vault of Glass: All raid weapons, perks, and mods

The Vault of Glass has made its way to Destiny 2, and with it comes plenty of returning raid weapons with new perks as well as special raid mods. Here's a look at all of the loot you can obtain from the returning raid.

Rotarians Donate Dictionaries to Fourth Graders – The Warwick Valley Dispatch - wvdispatch.com - Dictionary

Photo provided 

Fourth-grade students at Park Avenue Elementary School enjoy dictionaries provided by the Warwick Valley Rotary. Pictured (standing, from the left: are: Principal Bill Biniaris & Rotarians – President Edward M. Lynch, Vice President Neil Sinclair & Event Coordinator Ryan O’Leary. Every fourth-grader in the Warwick School District was given a dictionary courtesy of the Rotary Club, & in the event, the Club reviewed the importance of community service.

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Transportation and Translation: An Unlikely but Powerful Duo - WorkersCompensation.com - Translation

Transportation and Translation: An Unlikely but Powerful Duo

• 05/24/21
• The Sounding Board

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Recently, the Sounding Board sat down with Jim Begg, Vice President of National Accounts for Apricus, to talk about transportation and translation services (T&T). We wanted to know more about these types of offerings, seeing that specialty networks like Apricus frequently manage such requests.

SB: Jim, we often see transportation and translation services mentioned in specialty network RFPs, usually grouped together. They are completely different offerings, yet it seems like specialty network requests for proposals often ask about T&T services in combination.

Jim: That's right. They're among the most commonly requested services. We get multiple requests for T&T every day.

SB: So T&T is a pretty big piece of the specialty network pie?

Jim: Definitely. By some estimates, specialty services like T&T, durable medical equipment, and home health make up roughly 20 percent of workers' comp medical spending, with T&T accounting for a good chunk of that. Some vendors focus exclusively on T&T. Given their widespread use, they can make a huge difference in injured workers' recoveries.

SB: Understood. So let's dig into each of these areas. Tell us more about transportation. What exactly does it entail? Are we transporting people in ambulances, private cars, vans?

Jim: Transportation can take many forms, depending on the injured worker's needs. It runs the gamut from individual ambulance rides to private “black car” services to air ambulances with nursing care. It's important to partner with all kinds of transportation vendors because you'll see so many different scenarios.

SB: And where are injured workers being transported? Home from the hospital?

Jim: Sure, we get referrals to take someone to or from the hospital, but also to rehabilitation therapy, to doctors' visits, to diagnostic testing, and other places like that. Transportation generally has a recovery or medical component to it, but we also have been asked to help them with shopping and errands. If the injured worker needs to get somewhere and the adjuster approves, we'll arrange it.

SB: How do rideshare companies come into play?

Jim: Some vendors promote ridesharing, but we tend to shy away from them. And, of course, by ridesharing we mean vans that transport multiple patients. That's not to be confused with popular ride-hailing services like Uber or Lyft. In our case, we prefer single-passenger partners and feel they have stronger credibility and history with us. There's also an element of the unknown when sharing rides, which could have an adverse impact on the injured worker. Many drivers work for more than one transportation company, so we go with our preferred vendors. Additionally, when we need assistance with an injured worker getting to the vehicle, or if a party is late, we cannot guarantee the rideshare companies can be relied upon to assist or to wait.

SB: What can you tell us about translation?

Jim: Translation is usually in two forms — rewriting documents into a given dialect and translating a live call or office visit. Our vendors can translate over the phone, in person, or offline if there's a document that needs it. We can also arrange a video conference call if needed, such as for sign-language translation. It's an efficiency component that helps the claims or medical process when those services are not readily available.

SB: So if an injured worker needs translation for repeated visits, do we pair them up with a consistent translator so that a relationship is established? I guess that could apply to transportation, too.

Jim: Right. If we have an injured worker with multiple requests, we try to use the same provider from a continuity perspective. Familiarity breeds success.

SB: What do you think readers would most want to know about our transportation and translation services that we might not have asked?

Jim: These are necessary services that are some of the most requested and used—and for good reason. They're often critical to workers' recoveries. These services also have more moving parts than most of the other service lines. Many of the drivers work for most of the providers, many times during the same day and subsequent trips. We can tailor the types of request for individual customers surrounding pickup times, where to pick them up, or whether we are going to wait or drop them off somewhere and come back. Likewise, requests for translation require a fair amount of coordination, especially as more people are involved. Getting everybody scheduled to meet at the same time can be tricky. And there's often an essential time component with T&T, because the injured worker's treatment can depend on receiving services promptly. They need to get to that appointment. They need to be able to talk to their caregivers and vice versa.

SB: Jim, thank you so much. This has been enlightening. We look forward to sitting down with you again soon to talk more about specialty network services.

Courtesy of Coventry's The Sounding Board

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Disclaimer: WorkersCompensation.com publishes independently generated writings from a variety of workers' compensation industry stakeholders. The opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of WorkersCompensation.com.

OPINION: 'Ramp up' has many meanings - Arkansas Online - Dictionary

I bring you two other news cliches.

Ramp up is a popular news phrase. It means to speed up or increase or expand. But maybe people think it sounds a bit cooler than its synonyms.

Ramp on its own has three other definitions I hadn't heard. The first is to stand or advance menacingly with forelegs or arms raised. I assume the forelegs reference means a four-legged animal is doing the advancing. The Cowardly Lion from "The Wizard of Oz" immediately comes to mind. He's moving in with a "Put 'em up! Put 'em up!"

It also means to move or act furiously, which is nearly the same as the first definition.

And, third, it means to creep up — used especially of plants. Well, that one is going to give me nightmares. I have plants on the deck outside my bedroom. I don't want them creeping up on me as I sleep.

But back to ramp up. I found examples in The Washington Post:

"Officials say they would need to ramp up testing if the number of tests declined as the number of positive infections grew."

"German carmakers were slower to develop all-electric models until tougher environmental regulations and sales lost to California-based Tesla pushed them to ramp up their efforts."

One person uses the phrase as a noun, which is dismaying:

"Ramp-up is going to have to be extremely significant to be able to reach their goals," said Airfinity senior analyst Matt Linley.

I learned from The American Heritage Dictionary that ramp down is a phrase also. It means to decrease in volume, amount or rate.

But, at least in a quick search of The Washington Post website, ramp up is far more popular. I found almost 11,000 uses of that phrase.

Ramp down had only 112 results.

"Trump will huddle Wednesday in Washington with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in what Europeans are calling a last-minute bid to ramp down transatlantic tensions."

The second cliche is tamp down. (A distant relative to ramp down because of the -amp maybe?)

To tamp is to drive in or down by a succession of light or medium blows.

Tamp down means to a put a check on or reduce.

From The Washington Post, though the idea of tamping down noise just seems like it would be noisier:

"The town has been trying for decades to tamp down excess noise from street performers and others."

Also from The Post:

"Millbridge Elementary School hosted a webinar last fall for teachers to explain math expectations to parents and tamp down pressure for perfection with homework."

Tamping down pressure does not sound safe.

Recently, I heard someone use tamp back. That has to be tricky. How do you unhammer something or take back a tapping? I think one needs a hammer claw or pliers.

COMITY

Comity is a great word. It means harmony or agreement or a friendly relationship.

Sadly, I've seen the word primarily in stories describing the lack of comity in Congress.

It has two other main definitions. One was normal, and one was obscure.

The first was the informal and voluntary recognition by courts of one jurisdiction of the laws and judicial decisions of another.

The obscure (to me) definition is from The Free Dictionary. From theology, comity is the policy whereby one religious denomination refrains from proselytizing the members of another.

Though it's a great word, it makes me think twice when I hear someone on TV say it. At times, I think the person has said comedy, which is far different.

GO SOUTH

The expression go south is amusing in that it rarely describes a person heading in a southerly direction. It has taken on a few other meanings.

To go south can mean to disappear or escape.

I can remember an episode of the ubiquitous "Law & Order" in which police go to pick up a suspect. When they arrive, they report that the suspect has "gone south."

The Online Etymology Dictionary uses one of my favorite words to describe go south: abscond. It says it's American English from the 1920s, probably from the mid-19th-century notion of disappearing south to Mexico or Texas to escape pursuit or responsibility.

Before that educational "Law & Order" episode, I thought to go south meant to die.

And it does mean that, too.

One site reported: "The American Dictionary of Regional English suggests the term is derived from the Native American belief that go south means to die. In fact, a Harper's Magazine article in 1894 reported: 'To go south is, among the Sioux, the favorite euphemism for death.'"

I didn't read Harper's Magazine back in 1894, but I believe what was said.

The phrase also means to go downhill.

From The Post:

"More equity in homes ... leaves [homeowners] in a much better position to weather a downturn and less likely to walk away from their homes when things go south."

"Gulf oystermen bracing for livelihoods to go south."

I'll add this tidbit I found even though I wasn't looking for it.

In Britain, go west means nearly the same things as go south does in the U.S. Like go south, it means to be lost, to be destroyed, to vanish or to end in failure.

But Horace Greeley popularized go west in the 19th-century United States, with a different definition. The phrase is often linked to Greeley, but it was first used by John Babson Lane Soule in an editorial: "Go West, young man, go West." Greeley changed it a little to: "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country," which apparently inspired many people to settle in the West after the Civil War.

I guess that's what you'd call powerful words. (But I'm sure he's glad he didn't use that phrase in Britain.)

Sources include Merriam-Webster, The American Heritage Dictionary, The Free Dictionary, Word Histories, The Courant, Encyclopedia.com, Online Etymology Dictionary. Reach Bernadette at

bkwordmonger@gmail.com