Medical Translation Without Trust - The Nation - Translation

A health professional and a patient discuss the patient's issues. (SDI Productions / Getty)

Adriana sat quietly looking at the floor with her young son, Pablo, beside he. She looked tired. The two had come in for a follow-up appointment for advice on Pablo’s autism medication. The clinician in the room did not speak Spanish, this family’s mother tongue, so they waited in a polite, mildly uncomfortable silence as a translator dialed in over the phone. The visit commenced. Questions were asked, answered in monosyllables; rinse, repeat. Finally, the young patient lifted his head: “Where’s Pilar?”

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Dr. Pilar Trelles, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the Icahn School of Mount Sinai, is a physician whose native language is shared by many of her patients. Born and raised in Peru, she immigrated to the United States after medical school to begin clinical practice. Twice a week, she leads the psychiatric service in a developmental disability clinic that treats patients on Medicaid. The majority of patients who come to this clinic are newly minted immigrants, many of whom speak little, if any, English, with Spanish and Bengali featuring as two of the most commonly spoken languages among families. Although translation services are readily available, they are not always ideal.

Translation in medical settings has long been problematic. Elderly patients can get confused by the presence of a third party via phone or video device, while other individuals cannot hear very well. In one unfortunate incident, an interpreter mistranslated one word, leading doctors to choose an incorrect treatment plan, ultimately leaving the patient quadriplegic. Even beyond these concerns, there’s the base element of connection. “Families are inviting us into their lives, to share intimate details and troubles that they go through,” Trelles says. “There has to be a trust component, and sometimes it’s very difficult to have that when you cannot speak directly to someone.”

Around 24 million people in the United States have a primary language other than English and have limited English proficiency. During the pandemic, there has been a rise in the use of translators who “dial in” over the phone, but many nuanced forms of language, including expressions and body language, are missed. As a result, mistranslation runs rampant—though it is severely underreported. Not only does this hurt the quality of medical care that patients who do not speak English receive, but it also reinforces a barrier between clinician and patient, as many people do not feel comfortable sharing more than the bare minimum for fear of being misunderstood or stereotyped.

Patients with limited English proficiency have often immigrated to the United States from other countries to get specialized medical attention. Many of them have already been failed by the US system—a child with autism denied proper services, another with emotional disability brought to the emergency room in handcuffs—so when a doctor comes in who relies on a third party to understand the patient, they shut down. The spread of coronavirus has exacerbated these issues of trust and translation, since the virus has ravaged immigrant communities in particular, where more people have had to work outside of the home despite risk and where health care resources may be more scarce.

But as the pandemic continues to prevent the presence of in-person translators, what can be done? “I have a lot of families that I treat where I do not speak the same language as they do and will [be forced to] use an interpreter,” Trelles answers. “But then I make it a point to get to know them. I will spend time hearing about their lives and about their families and where they come from, opening those doors even through an interpreter.”

Yet working in the health care system makes it hard. “There’s so much pressure to be fast and treat only what has to be treated, but this requires more time and effort. I just don’t know if the health care system recognizes that. We try, but we need more support.”

While immigrants are disproportionately affected by subpar translation services, those from small communities who speak particular dialects suffer the most. “We have a family who comes to the clinic from a region in Africa where the official language is French but the language that this family speaks is a dialect that is particular to their area, and there are very few people who speak it,” says Trelles. In fact, no interpreters were readily available to translate. “In the beginning, it was so hard, we actually had to track down the social worker that was working with this family and have them come to the clinic to translate.” While this social worker was kind enough to accommodate the situation, this is not always feasible.

Ultimately, medical mistranslation and the lack of appropriate interpretation services further systemic racist and classist practices in hospital settings, with underrepresented patients bearing the brunt of poor outcomes. While this is particularly relevant during the coronavirus pandemic, inadequate medical care and stunted trust at the hands of improper translation will remain important for years to come.

“When I’m translating, I make an effort to not just speak directly with the families while excluding everyone else in the room,” Trelles says. “I talk to the provider as well, to make sure everyone’s on the same page and understands what’s going on, which makes a difference. It may feel a little broken but taking that extra time does help, because then when I’m not around, the other provider will still have that relationship with the patient.”

Since in-person translators are not always an option, the same effort can be made by video translators. Both providers and interpreters have expressed a preference for video translators over dial-in ones, with patients agreeing that it is important that interpreters see them and vice versa. Of note, doctor visits that use interpreters over the phone are correlated with the shortest visit times. Perhaps a solution, though an imperfect one, is to emphasize the use of video by dial-in translators. Video interpretation has been shown to facilitate and enable patient confidentiality more than over-the-phone translators. While this may not be the cornerstone of trust, it can certainly be a foundation to build on.

Finally the door opened and Trelles entered. She beamed as she saw Pablo and greeted him affectionately, embracing both him and his mother. “Pablito, you’re so big now! Did you know you’ve gotten so big? Mom, how are you? You look good!” Adriana smiled faintly but uncrossed her legs and began to speak, sharing what had been happening in her life, her son’s, their extended family’s, and Trelles kept up, firing back questions about other family members not present at the visit. Meanwhile, Pablo ran over to Trelles and hugged her tightly, with no appearance of letting go. The clinical air faded at last and warmth flooded in.

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Magento 2 Translation: How Internationalization Works - SitePoint - Translation

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One of the most important features of creating ecommerce websites with Magento 2 is the ability to add multiple languages to your store. In this tutorial, we’ll cover the following Magento 2 translation topics:

• what internationalization is, and why it’s important
• how we can add more languages in Magento 2
• how to translate CMS content, including pages
• how to internationalize modules and themes including adding translations, changing assets and making changes to the styles of the module or theme

Magento 2 is one of the most popular ecommerce platforms currently available. It offers tons of out-of-the-box features and tight security. Other than the built-in modules, with Magento 2 you can create your own modules and themes to create custom functionalities and design that fits your or your client’s needs.

This tutorial assumes you already have Magento 2 installed and working. If not, please follow the guideline from Magento 2’s official documentation.

Why Internationalization

Internationalization (often abbreviated as i18n) includes both translating your website and changing the design or style of the website based on the language chosen. Depending on your project and the programming language or framework you work with, it can be done in various ways, but there are always tools to make it easier.

Internationalization attracts more users to your website, as adding different languages caters to users of different nationalities or different parts of the world.

This is especially important with ecommerce. One way to make sure your store understands its users and is able to convert them to customers is to provide more languages, making the store available globally.

Magento 2 Website Structure

Before we get into how we can add a language in Magento 2, let’s go over how a Magento 2 website is structured first.

In Magento 2, you need at least one website. In that website, you can create several stores but you also need at least one. Then, inside each store you need at least one store view.

By default, every Magento 2 installation will have a website, a store in the website, and a store view in that store.

The website is only used to organize multiple stores under the same website. Think of it as a group.

The store is used to specify which categories are sold in the store, which ultimately means which products are sold in the store. For example, you can have one website split into two stores — one for men’s clothes and one for women’s clothes.

And finally, we have the store view which belongs to a store. Store views are what a user actually sees. Store views can have their own theme, pages, products, and more.

With this structure, you are able to separate your ecommerce website into different sections or even different websites. For example, you can have all your products in the same Magento instance, but split these products into different websites, or different stores inside the website.

This separation also allows you to set different settings for different websites, stores or store views in your Magento instance. You can change settings for an entire website, which will affect all of the stores in it and subsequently all store views in these stores.

You can also change settings for a store inside a website, which will change the settings for only this store and its store views, without affecting other stores or the main website.

Alternatively, you can change settings for store views, which would not affect their parent store or parent website.

Adding Languages in Magento 2

Languages are dependent on store views. Each store view can have its own language. So, when you want to add a new language, you actually need to add a new store view having a different language.

The store view can have the same settings as its parent store or website. So there’s no need for extra configuration unless you need to have different settings for that language.

Adding a Store View

In this section, we’ll see how to add a new store view in Magento 2 using the Admin panel, and how we can choose the language of that store view.

Add a New Store View

First, go to your Magento 2 admin portal. The URL path should start with /admin_. However, it will probably have a different suffix which you’ve set during installation.

Once you’ve gone to the admin panel and logged in, choose Stores from the sidebar, then All Stores.

In this page, click on Create Store View.

You’ll then see a form to fill in. You’ll first have to choose the store this store view belongs to if you have multiple stores.

Then, you need to enter the name of the store. Please note that the name is what the user will see on the front end of your website when choosing between stores. So, you can name it based on the language you’re adding.

You also need to add the code for the new store. You can choose any code you want, but it would be helpful to set the code based on the language. For example, en for English.

Finally, you’ll need to change the Status to Enabled to make sure the users see the store view.

You can also choose the sort order. This is helpful if you’re adding a new language, but you want that language to be the default language a user sees when they go to your website. If so, you can change the sort order here by setting a number, with the lowest (meaning the highest in order) being 0.

Once you’re done, click on Save Store View, and your store view will be added.

You might need to clear the cache at this point. You can do that by clicking on Stores in the sidebar, then Cache Management.

Then, choose Select All from the dropdown and click on Submit. This will clear the cache.

Now, go to your website. Depending on your theme, you should see a dropdown in the header of the website allowing you to switch between store views.

Please note that this will look different based on your theme. The theme in the screenshot in Magento’s Luma theme, which comes installed by default in Magento 2.

Choose a language for the store view

Next, we’ll choose the language of the store view. To do that, on the admin panel click on Stores in the sidebar, then Configuration.

Please note that on the admin portal, you’ll see a dropdown at the top left of almost every page with the label Scope that allows you to change the website, store, or store view. You use this when you want to change settings to a specific website, store, or store view rather than the default settings that will apply to all websites, stores, and store views.

So, on the Configuration page, choose the store view you just created from the dropdown. You’ll be asked to confirm your action. Click OK in the pop up.

Then, choose General tab under the General section in the sidebar if it’s not already chosen. Open the collapsible with the title Locale Options. Under the collapsible, uncheck Use Website on the right of the first field, which should be Locale, then choose from the dropdown the language you’re adding.

In this tutorial, we’re adding the Arabic language.

Once you’re done, click Save Config at the top right. This will change your website’s language. However, you’ll notice that nothing has changed when you open the store you just added. This is because we still need to add translations to the language we added, as well as change styling if necessary.

Install Magento 2 Language Packs

Other than the strings and text you might add yourself in your own module, because strings in Magento 2 are common, there are free and open-source Magento 2 language packs that allow you to easily add translations to your Magento 2 website.

You can find language packs on Magento’s Marketplace, although most of them are not free.

Mageplaza offers a wide set of language packs you can install that are free and open source. They have 55 Magento 2 language packs that you can use for free.

In this tutorial, we’ll install their Arabic Language pack. You can choose any language pack; the process is the same for any language pack regardless of the language.

If you choose a Magento 2 language pack from a different provider, the steps should also be the same unless your provider states different steps.

Open your terminal and switch to the Magento project’s root directory. In that directory, run the following command:

composer require mageplaza/magento-2-<LANGUAGE>-language-pack:dev-master mageplaza/module-smtp 

Please note that you should replace <LANGUAGE> with the language you’re installing. In our case, it will be arabic. You can also find the name of the package by going to the GitHub page of the language (if you are downloading from Mageplaza) and checking the name of the repository.

After that’s done, you can go on your website, choose your new language if it’s not already chosen, and you’ll see that the page is translated to that language.

If the page isn’t translated, or there’s a problem with the styles of the page, then do the following.

Run the following command to generate the static content for the new language added:

php bin/magento setup:static-content:deploy ar_SA

Make sure to replace ar_SA with the language you’re adding. You’ll also need to add the option -f if your Magento 2 instance is set to developer mode.

After that, execute the following commands to trigger reindexing and clear the cache:

php bin/magento indexer:reindex
php bin/magento cache:clean
php bin/magento cache:flush

Magento 2 Translation of CMS Content

In Magento 2, CMS pages and blocks can be included in specific store views rather than the entire website. This means that the page can be translated into many languages based on the store it’s in.

In this section, we’ll see how to translate the same page to different languages and add the page to the store view of the desired language.

Currently, we have the default home page, which just says “CMS homepage content goes here”. This home page will show for both store views regardless of what the language is.

We’ll first change the store view this page appears in. In the admin panel, click on Content in the side panel, then click on Pages.

You’ll see a grid of all the pages in your website. Look for the Home page, then click on the Select dropdown in the Action column, then Edit.

Then, scroll down to the Page in Websites collapsible, expand it, and choose the website you want this page to appear in. As this is the default page and it’s in English, we’ll choose to keep it in the English store.

Once you’re done, click Save.

Now, the previous Home page just appears on the English store. We’ll create a new one to appear on the Arabic store.

Go back to Pages and click on Add New Page.

First, enter the title of the page and the content you want under Content.

Then, open the collapsed section Search Engine Optimization and in the URL Key field enter home. This is essential for the Home page, as the home page is determined by the URL key home.

After that, scroll down to the Page in Websites collapsible and choose the new store view you added.

Once you’re done, click Save. Then, go to your website. You should see different content on the home page based on the language you choose.

Internationalizing Modules and Themes

In this section, we’ll see how to internationalize the custom modules and themes that we create. This includes translating the strings in the modules and theme, and changing CSS styles based on the locale.

This section assumes you already have a module or a theme created. If you need more info on that, you can check Magento 2’s documentation on how to create a module, and how to create a theme.

Using Magento 2 Translation Functions

There are a few Magento 2 translation functions or methods that you can use based on the programming language of the file. These functions will translate the strings passed as parameters to the current store view’s language.

PHP and PHTML

In PHP and PHTML template files, you can use the __() function to translate strings. For example:

__('Hello');

This will translate the string based on the language of the current store view.

You can also pass a parameter that you don’t want to be translated:

__('Hello, %1', $name);

JavaScript

In JavaScript files, you first need to add the 'mage/translate' library:

require(['jquery', 'mage/translate'], function ($, $t) {...});

Then, in your code, you can translate a string as follows:

$.mage.__('Hello');

Alternatively, you can use $t, which is available after you add the mage/translate library:

$t('Hello');

To pass a parameter, you need to use the JavaScript replace function:

$t('Hello, %1').replace('%1', name);

Email Templates

To translate strings in email templates you can use the trans directive. For example:

You can also pass a parameter:

Templates of UI Components

To translate templates of UI Components, which are .html files, you can use i18n:

<p data-bind="i18n: 'Hello'"></p>

Alternatively, you can use Knockout comments:

Or you can use the translate directive:

<translate args="Hello" />

UI Component Layouts

To translate strings in UI component layouts, you can add the translate attribute to any element and set it to true. For example:

<item name="label" xsi:type="string" translate="true">Hello</item>

Adding Magento 2 translation dictionaries

Both modules and themes can have translation dictionaries. These Magento 2 translation dictionaries are similar to language packs. You can use them to translate your own module or modify and override translations from other modules or language packs.

In a module’s structure, there are different directories for each part of the module. The Magento 2 translation dictionary resides in the directory i18n. This directory is an optional directory for a module.

Similarly, in a theme’s structure, the translation dictionaries also reside in the directory i18n.

Inside that directory reside CSV files for each language you want to translate the module or theme to. So, for example, if we want to translate a module of our own to Arabic since we’ve added the Arabic language, we add the CSV file ar_SA.csv inside the i18n directory in our module.

After adding new translations, you’ll probably need to clear Magento’s cache. You can either do that with the command line:

php bin/magento cache:clean
php bin/magento cache:flush

You can also do it from the Admin panel, by going to System then Cache Management and clearing it from there like we did earlier.

Creating the dictionary with Magento’s i18n tool

One way to create a dictionary is to use Magento’s i18n tool. However, this requires you to have already made use of the Magento 2 translation functions before you use the tool. So, make sure to do that before you use this tool, as it extracts strings from your code that uses translation functions.

To use the tool, run the following command:

php bin/magento i18n:collect-phrases -o="<PATH>/i18n/<LANGUAGE>.csv" <TRANSLATE_PATH>

Here, <PATH> is the path that leads to your module or theme starting from the root of the Magento 2 project; <LANGUAGE> is the language you’re translating to, which in our example will be ar_SA; and <TRANSLATE_PATH> is the path we’re translating and the path that the strings should be extracted from, which can be the path to the module, the theme, or just the entirety of Magento if you want to translate everything yourself.

Please note that this tool doesn’t do the translation for you; it just accumulates all the strings that are inside Magento 2 translation functions in your module and puts them in a CSV file ready for you to translate.

Manually creating the dictionary

Alternatively, you can create your dictionary manually. You just need to create the language CSV file in the i18n directory in your module or theme. As mentioned above, the name of the file should be based on the language the file is for. So, if you’re translating to Arabic, it will be ar_SA.csv.

Then, inside the file, you need to add on each line the string and its translation separated by a comma. For example:

"Hello","مرحبا"

Each string should be on a new line.

Changing assets based on locale

In your modules and themes, you can also change assets based on locale. Assets are all files inside your module inside the directory views/<AREA>/web, where <AREA> can be frontend or adminhtml, or inside your theme inside the directory web.

For example, let’s say you have an image that you want to show when the store is in English, and you have its equivalent in other languages. Magento allows you to easily specify an alternative for that image for different locales.

Inside views/<AREA>/web in your module or web in your theme, you just need to add the directory i18n. Then, inside i18n you’ll need to add a directory with the name of the locale you want to make changes for.

So, in our example, if we have an image at views/frontend/web/images/test.png in our module and we want to add a replacement for it in Arabic, we’ll need to create the directory i18n inside views/frontend/web. Then, inside i18n we create the directory ar_SA.

Inside each locale directory (in this example, ar_SA) the structure should be similar to views/frontend/web when adding replacements.

So, in this example, to replace views/frontend/web/images/test.png in the Arabic store view, we’ll add views/frontend/web/i18n/ar_SA/images/test.png which will be the replacement.

Then, to retrieve the image in a template phtml file, we can do the following:

<img src="<?= $block->getViewFileUrl('VENDOR_MODULE::images/test.png') ?>" />

Here, VENDOR_MODULE is the name of the module and its vendor.

So, when the locale is the default (in our example, English), the image at views/frontend/web/images/test.png inside the module will be used. However, when the locale is Arabic, the image at views/frontend/web/i18n/ar_SA/images/test.png will be used.

This works for not only images, but also all files inside web. So, it can work for CSS, JavaScript, or HTML files as well.

Best Practice for Magento Themes with Different Script Directions

When internationalizing your website to support two languages, and one of them is left-to-right (LTR) or right-to-left (RTL), the best practice would be to first create a main theme that provides styling based on the main language.

So, if the main language is LTR, then you create a theme to support that with all the styling required for the website.

Then, to support RTL, you create another theme that extends the main theme. Inside this new child theme, you can add any changes to styling necessary.

This removes the need to redundantly repeat changes in two CSS files — as long as you use the method detailed in the previous section about changing assets based on locales.

Given that, in most cases, your website will look the same for both languages, but might have minor differences, it’s best to have both share the common styles, then override the changes in your child theme.

After creating these two themes, for each store view you can assign the theme that supports its locale and text direction from the Admin panel.

Conclusion

With Magento 2, you can have many features ready for your ecommerce store out of the box. This makes it an extremely helpful ecommerce framework.

One of its strong assets is providing many languages for your users to attract more of them from different languages and countries. Magento 2 makes it easy to manage different content for each of the languages, as well as add Magento 2 translation dictionaries, change assets and styling based on locale.

You can still do more to internationalize your Magento 2 store, like translating product descriptions or changing names of categories based on locale, and more. Be sure to check out the Magento 2 translation documentation for more info.

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Media Advisory: UB lecturer to discuss publication of her translation of Albert Camus' “The Plague” - UB News Center - Translation

BUFFALO, N.Y. – Laura Marris, an adjunct lecturer in the University at Buffalo Department of English, will begin a series of events in the coming weeks to discuss her translation of Albert Camus’ “The Plague,” the first new translation of the iconic French novel published in the United States in more than 70 years.

Marris will join Camus biographer Alice Kaplan and book critic Adam Dalva at 6:30 p.m. on Nov. 9 for a virtual discussion from Brooklyn’s Community Bookstore. The talk is co-presented by the National Book Critics Circle.

An in-person Buffalo book launch party and reading will also take place at 7 p.m. on Nov. 11 at Fitz Books, 433 Ellicott St., Buffalo, co-sponsored by the UB Poetics Program. That will be followed by a virtual lecture on the translation craft at 1 p.m. Nov. 12, presented as part of the UB English department’s Juxtapositions lecture series.

Reservations are not required for the reading at Fitz Books. Guests can register for the virtual presentations at the links above. These early events were arranged before supply chain disruptions pushed the book’s publication to Nov. 16. Readers can still pre-order copies, and an excerpt from Marris' translation is available on the Penguin Random House website.

“It was an honor to work on this text, though I could never have predicted that I’d be doing so during the pandemic,” says Marris. “I hope new readers, especially students, will feel closer to the text now that a new translation is available.”

Mention of Marris’ translation coming as the world begins looking toward its off ramp from the COVID-19 pandemic seems inevitable. But that apparent coordination of art and life is actually coincidental. The Camus estate and literary scholars have for years been interested in an updated translation of the novel.

Having secured the translator’s role from the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, which also published Gilbert Stuart’s 1948 edition of the book, the only other translation intended for an American audience, Marris began work late in 2019, a few months before public health officials had even identified the coronavirus.

The collision of fiction and reality, while not a motivation for the project, echoes in a collection of essays inspired by that timing. Marris and Kaplan have collaborated on an essay collection about the experience of working with Camus’ original text during the pandemic, essays that explore the author’s portrayal of illness and quarantine, and other moments when the reality of COVID-19 met with the novel’s text.

In fact, since Marris’ research started before pandemic travel restrictions were in place, she was able to visit the French Algerian city of Oran, where Camus sets his story, as well as other significant locations in the novel like the cliff road, the opera house and the cemetery.

“Though contemporary Oran is nothing like it was under French settler-colonial rule, it was helpful to see the scale of the city and to speak with experts who know the stories behind the landmarks Camus describes in the book,” says Marris.

And just as the backdrops have changed with time, so too have Marris’ perceptions of the novel since she started the first of several drafts that led to her final translation of an author whose work she has always admired.

“For me, the practice of translation is actually one of deep reading, and what emerges from that work is always surprising,” she says. “This time around, I was struck by Camus’ ecological imagination, particularly his sense of the ocean, the weather, and the interconnectedness of humans and animals.”

More information on Marris’ tour dates is available online.

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Merriam-Webster Adds Fluffernutter to the Dictionary - The New York Times - Dictionary

What has prompted Merriam-Webster to add the longstanding term for a mostly regional sandwich to the dictionary?

New England is where Marshmallow Fluff was created more than 100 years ago, and is still made and largely consumed — often by children in a peanut butter and Marshmallow Fluff sandwich.

It is also where Merriam-Webster, the oldest dictionary publisher in the United States, was founded and still operates. And last week, the company announced that the common name for the sandwich, “fluffernutter,” was among the 455 new terms added to its pages.

New Englanders rejoiced. But why admit such a long-lived word to the lexicon now?

Fluffernutter, defined by the dictionary as “a sandwich made with peanut butter and marshmallow crème between two slices of white sandwich bread,” stood out among newer phrases like “vaccine passport” and “dad bod.” Even I, a New Englander who packed fluffernutters in her childhood lunchbox, had not thought much about the sandwich lately.

Marshmallow Fluff, the brand of crème typically used in a fluffernutter, has been around since at least 1917, when a man named Archibald Query first sold it door to door in Somerville, Mass. Soon after, two friends named H. Allen Durkee and Fred L. Mower bought his formula for $500 and first marketed it as Toot Sweet Marshmallow Fluff.

In the following decades, Fluff’s popularity spread. Its manufacturer, the Durkee Mower Company in Lynn, Mass., now pumps out about eight million pounds of the product each year, according to Jonathan Mower, the Durkee Mower president and the co-founder’s grandson. (A traditional plastic tub of Fluff contains one pound, but Fluff is also sold in a 7.5-ounce glass jar.)

“I grew up eating these,” said Kathi Reinstein, a former Massachusetts legislator who had petitioned several times, unsuccessfully, to make fluffernutters the official state sandwich. “There are some things you can create and they make you think of all the warm and fuzzy stuff that mattered to you. And one of those is the fluffernutter.”

The treat is so beloved that Somerville is home to an annual What the Fluff? festival, where tens of thousands of people celebrate every possible use of the concoction, a mixture of corn syrup, sugar, egg white and vanillin.

Peter Sokolowski, editor at large at Merriam-Webster in Springfield, Mass., said the local enthusiasm for Fluff did not influence the dictionary’s decision-making. “We are not the dictionary of New England English,” he said.

“There is no advocacy,” he added, and a word’s currency is not necessarily a function of novelty. “We watch to see, is this word’s use growing or is it falling? If the word is growing — even incrementally, even slowly, like fluffernutter — then it belongs in the dictionary.”

He added, “Every word has its own pace.”

The “evidence of first use” for fluffernutter occurred in The Daily Freeman newspaper in Kingston, N.Y., on Nov. 20, 1961, Mr. Sokolowski said. But over the years, the word remained mostly spoken and rarely printed, so it lacked the criteria for inclusion in the dictionary.

In 2006, a political kerfuffle began to change that. A state senator in Massachusetts, upset that his son wanted Fluff after eating a fluffernutter at school, sought to limit how many times a school could serve the sandwiches each week, as part of a bill to improve nutrition. (The New York Times reported at the time that fluffernutters met nutritional guidelines in the son’s school district; Fluff has fewer sugars per serving — six grams per two tablespoons — than many jellies.)

In response, Ms. Reinstein filed legislation to make the fluffernutter the state sandwich. She recalled constituents’ yelling, “Fight for Fluff! Fight for Fluff!”

Both the senator’s and Ms. Reinstein’s efforts languished, but Mr. Sokolowski said the resulting national media coverage helped put the word on a trajectory to eventually join the dictionary. Merriam-Webster chose “fluffernutter” — one word, lowercase — because publications mostly styled the term this way, though the entry offers an uppercase variant, Mr. Sokolowski said.

“It’s very cool, there’s no question about it,” said Mr. Mower, whose company makes Marshmallow Fluff. “We were out walking the dog, and I saw a number of neighbors and friends on the walk. And they’re all saying, ‘Hey, we saw the news about the dictionary!’”

New Englanders also seem to agree on another key fluffernutter element.

Mimi Graney founded the Fluff festival and documented the history of the ingredient in her book “Fluff: The Sticky Sweet Story of an American Icon.”

Like others interviewed, she said: “If you’re going to put Fluff on a sandwich, it’s got to have the Teddie peanut butter, which is another New England brand.”

But just as the word is recorded for posterity, the actual sandwich may be waning in popularity. Outside New England, it is fairly rare, with Fluff not as widely available west of the Mississippi River (though Kraft sells a similar product called Jet-Puffed Marshmallow Creme). And as schools nationwide move toward nut-free policies to protect children with allergies, students may be more likely to run across “fluffernutter” in the dictionary than a fluffernutter in the lunchroom.

Follow NYT Food on Twitter and NYT Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest. Get regular updates from NYT Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice.

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What is a SPAC and why was it just added to the dictionary? - Marketplace - Dictionary

Some of us might have other metrics for fame, but when it comes to language, you know a term has “made it” when it’s been added to the dictionary. 

Merriam-Webster added 455 new words in October, including “dad bod,” “fluffernutter,” “copypasta” and “blank check company,” also known as a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. 

The term is defined as “a corporate shell set up by investors for the sole purpose of raising money through an initial public offering to acquire another business yet to be determined.”

These shell companies, complete with shareholders and a board, look for companies that want to go public more quickly and cheaply than via a traditional initial public stock offering. It’s supposed to be a mutually beneficial relationship. 

SPACs usually have up to 24 months to acquire and merge with a company. If they can’t, the investors’ money must be returned.  

The term SPAC has been getting a lot of attention this year, with celebrities and sports stars such as Jay-Z, Serena Williams and Steph Curry involved in some form or another with these financial entities. At one point this year, the Securities and Exchange Commission even had to issue an alert telling investors not to make decisions “based solely on celebrity involvement.” 

Adam Lashinsky, a columnist for Business Insider, told Marketplace host David Brancaccio that when he was writing about SPACs decades ago, “they were kind of this sordid, dirty, dark corner of the finance world.” Now, their appeal has skyrocketed. In 2009, one SPAC went public, according to SPACInsider. In 2021, there were more than 500 SPACs.

Merriam-Webster explained that when it decides to add a new word to the dictionary, it looks for three criteria: “frequent use, widespread use and meaningful use.”

Peter Sokolowski, editor at large for Merriam-Webster, said terms like SPAC — or words from other fields, like medicine, sports and politics — are initially used by practitioners or lawmakers. Then by the journalists who cover them. 

“It goes from the specialized journals to the specialized press, like The Economist, for example. And then finally, to a place like The New York Times or The Atlantic, which is no longer a specialized press. That’s when we strike,” he said. 

With a word like SPAC, Sokolowski explained this is the point when the dictionary says: “OK, this term has left the jargon of a field and has become part of our national vocabulary for finance and economics.” 

Companies that have gone public through SPACs include the online real estate platform Opendoor Technologies, Richard Branson’s space flight venture Virgin Galactic and the shared-workspace company WeWork, which failed to go public the traditional way back in 2019.

Lashinksy said that the low-interest rate environment has helped fuel the SPAC craze, since investors can’t reap good returns on anything other than equity investments. 

Goldman Sachs echoed that explanation in a recent research report, stating that “in a world where 10-year Treasury notes yield 1.3% and junk bonds yield 2.8%, some SPACs provide an attractive and low-risk return to redemption.”

Aloke Gupte, a top banker for JPMorgan Chase, told Marketplace that typically companies that are well-established and with “huge” revenues will likely always go the IPO route. SPACs are more beneficial for those early stage companies without a solid “proof of concept,” he explained. 

But some of those early stage companies still need to prove themselves. Lashinsky said some of the companies that have merged with SPACs have yet to sell any products and have “no track record whatsoever,” like the flying taxi manufacturers Archer Aviation and Joby Aviation.

Some thorny issues have also arisen as the leaders of nascent companies attempt to go this route. Former President Donald Trump announced just a couple of weeks ago that he had plans to launch a new company called Trump Media & Technology Group, which he would merge with a SPAC called Digital World Acquisition Corp. But experts say the $300 million deal may have sidestepped securities laws, according to The New York Times. 

The Times reported that even though SPACs aren’t supposed to have mergers planned when they go public, DWAC’s CEO had been discussing a deal with Trump beforehand. 

And Hometown International, a company that owns a single New Jersey-based deli, raised eyebrows after reaching a market capitalization of more than $100 million earlier this year. Maso Capital Investments Ltd., a Hong Kong-based fund that is one of Hometown’s biggest shareholders, said it had plans for Hometown to merge with another company. In an interview with the Financial Times, Maso’s co-chief investment officer Manoj Jain likened Hometown to “a mini-SPAC.”

“When you execute the merger, the name changes, the ticker changes, the board changes, the management changes, everything changes,” Jain said.

But Columbia University law professor John Coffee told the Financial Times that “[this] is a self-parody of a SPAC.” 

The inclusion of these words in the dictionary tell us a story of our culture and shifting habits. For example, as the COVID-19 crisis ramped up in the U.S., WFH (the abbreviation for “working from home”) entered the Merriam-Webster dictionary. 

Sokolowski said it’s important for business and financial terms to be added to the dictionary for consumers, especially because many people are now controlling their own money and own investments (if they’re lucky enough to have them, he added). He said that when he started working about 30 years ago, understanding a 401(k) was a bit of a stretch for him. 

The do-it-yourself retirement plan, which was created under the Revenue Act of 1978, forced Americans to make a choice between spending their paychecks or taking employer matches and saving part of their money. We’re also seeing the rise of apps like Robinhood grant easier access to the stock market for ordinary people. 

“We need these names, we need these categories, we need these terms,” Sokolowski said. “This is no longer the language of the professional, it’s the language of the consumer.” 

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84000 Buddhist translation initiative launches mobile app to study Buddhist scripture - Lion's Roar - Translation

84000’s new mobile app, The Words of the Buddha, allows users to deepen their study of sutras from the Tibetan Buddhist Canon.

84000, a non-profit Buddhist translation initiative, has released a new mobile app that houses an interactive collection of translated Buddhist text and teachings for users to view. The app, titled The Words of the Buddha, is designed to help users deepen their dharma practice and Buddhist study while providing contextual information regarding original Buddhist texts.

84000’s goal is to translate the 231,000 pages of the Tibetan Buddhist Canon and make them free to access. The new mobile application builds on their currently available resources to help practitioners engage with the texts even further. The app includes features such as sūtra-specific introductions and socio-historical context, interactive reading tools including pop-up definitions of key terms, a search function to look for characters, places, or philosophical concepts, and the ability to read bilingually or to compare translations.

84000 believes that interlinking technology and dharma practice can be beneficial for practitioners’ accessibility and understanding.

“Our online Reading Room creates all sorts of interesting  ways for people to explore the sūtras, from interactive glossary features to e-Kangyur integrations, and  our mobile app — developed pro bono by XMind — now builds upon that technology to make it even easier  for the entire world, from its most far-flung corners, to access the Buddha’s words with the click of a finger,” said executive director Huang Jing Rui in an announcement from 84000.

The application is available for download for Android and iOS on 84000’s website.

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How to Translate Your Design Certificates and Degrees? - State-Journal.com - Translation

Making a career in design often starts at an early age as you first become interested in sketching or drawing. Then, as you grow older, you go through school, university, or courses to get all the skills you need to get into this occupation. 

Many young designers want to work abroad, so they are faced with the issue of translating their diplomas, certificates, and other documents in order to confirm their qualifications internationally. Today we will discuss how one should go about translating their degrees.

Do You Need a Degree in Design?

The immediate post-education stage is particularly challenging for such occupations as design, mainly because such workers are often needed on a gig basis. This means that employers often search for freelancers that can complete only one project for them. So, to gain experience and broaden your portfolio, you really need to discipline yourself and work a lot on both your hard and soft skills. This often seems like an extremely hard task to complete for beginners, and largely discourages them. Yet, things are far from being hard and there is an important shortcut some might overlook.

Although freelancing largely emphasizes the actual skills of experts, certificates and diplomas serve as a huge plus to the portfolio, showcasing those skills. In fact, they become the only source of confirmation in cases when employers don’t find the portfolio convincing enough. On top of that, in case you want to work as a designer for a big company, showing your certificate or diploma may even be a must. 

Steps of Design Certificates and Degrees Translation

If you want to work for a company in a different country and even live there, you’ll likely need to get your vital educational documents translated. That might sound a bit confusing and challenging, yet in reality, it’s quite an easy task to complete and can be done by following these four steps.

• Retrieve your documents from your school. Whether you’ve got your diploma at the university, or you have completed a special course in design, the document confirming that you have your education completed can only be retrieved from that organization. In most cases, there is a special department that issues such documents. Universities often do that for free, and private organizations might even issue a valid digital copy. The document, however, will likely have to be translated to be valid in another country or for an employer who speaks a different language.

• Address a good language service provider. Translating documents is not a big deal nowadays, yet it’s still important to choose a great translation company. The thing about translating documents is that they are essential for your career, so there’s no way you can mess up the translation when it comes to international employment. Consider taking a look through the business translation services before you pick the one that will be working on your certification document. Remember that price doesn’t always correspond to the quality you’ll get in the end, so choose the translation agency carefully and according to your needs.

• Double-check the translated documents. Even if you pick the best language service providers on the market, you should still double-check the result they provide. Sometimes, mistakes are made not because the translator is incompetent or inattentive. Clients can miss something too. So, make sure you’re as attentive as possible as you give the instructions, and after you get your task back.

• Legalize the translation. This might not be obligatory in all cases, yet some countries require for the translated document to be validated by a legal professional such as a notary or lawyer. This is to ensure that the translation has been performed correctly in terms of another country’s regulation and can be accepted as a legal document that is as powerful as the original one. Just as with the translation, the legalization of the translated document can only be performed by a professional. So, make sure to pick one wisely as well in order for the final result to be as neat as possible.

Making Steps Toward Your International Career

 

Translating a design diploma or certificate may seem hard on the surface, yet it mostly requires your patience and attention. There are only a few steps to make your formal education work for you, so you won’t miss anything essential, for sure. Yet, you must be very particular about your requirements when it comes to document translation. Make sure to provide all the necessary details to the language specialist in order to get your document translated quickly enough and not to pay for any additional revisions. This is the kind of attentiveness you need in this regard, and it can start the career of your life.

Traveling a lot and working hard, Barbara Fielder is not only a professional author but also a keen adventurer. Sometimes, she might get an idea to write an article about a subject she’s not very familiar with. That, however, will not stop Barbara, for she will research it until she knows everything she needs to know to write her new masterpiece.

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