"NFT," the abbreviation of "non-fungible token," has been named Word of the Year by dictionary publisher Collins, beating "crypto" and "cheugy" to the top spot.
An NFT is "a unique digital certificate, registered in a blockchain, that is used to record ownership of an asset such as an artwork or a collectible," according to a blog post from Collins, published Wednesday.
Acting like virtual signatures, NFTs prove the authenticity of an artwork as the blockchain serves as incorruptible proof of ownership, meaning that "original" artworks and their owners can always be identified via the blockchain, even if an image or video is widely replicated.
They also provide scarcity, and as a result the digital art market has been booming.
In March, a digital artwork named "Everydays: The First 5000 days" sold for $69.3 million via Christie's, making its creator, graphic designer Mike Winkelmann, better known as Beeple, one of the art market's most valuable living artists.
The idea of a digital revolution is also captured in another of the dictionary's candidates for Word of the Year: "crypto," short for "cryptocurrency," digital money that is challenging traditional forms of money, according to Collins.
It also named "metaverse" in its blog post, following Facebook's announcement that it would change its corporate name to Meta.
Other selected words reflect the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, with "double-vaxxed" and "hybrid working" making the shortlist.
"Climate anxiety" reflects growing concern about the damage humans are doing to the planet, while "neopronoun" is a way of referring to a person without using their name or traditional markers of gender, such as "he" and "she." Collins gives "xe," "ze" and "ve" as examples of neopronouns.
Rounding out the shortlist are "Regencycore," which is defined as a fashion aesthetic inspired by the Georgian-era clothing seen in the Netflix show "Bridgerton," and "cheugy," which is used to say that something is out of date or uncool.
In 2020, Collins named "lockdown" its Word of the Year, for obvious reasons, and, earlier this month, Oxford Languages made "vax" its pick for 2021.
Defined as "a colloquialism meaning either vaccine or vaccination as a noun and vaccinate as a verb," vax was relatively rare until this year, the company, which publishes the Oxford English Dictionary, said.
In September, vax appeared more than 72 times more frequently than the year before, said Oxford Languages, which analyzes news content to track changes in the English language.
All parliamentary sessions will be made available across all 24 European languages
CHALFONT ST PETER, England, November 24, 2021--(BUSINESS WIRE)--RWS, the world’s leading provider of technology-enabled language, content management and intellectual property services, together with a consortium of partners, has won a highly competitive tender to provide real-time, AI-powered transcription and translation services to the European Parliament.
The solution, designed by CEDAT85, will automatically transcribe and translate all parliamentary debates into the 24 official European languages used by the institution. Parliamentary members – including those with hearing impairments – will now be able to follow debates and discussions in real-time on-screen. Transcriptions will also be made available online.
"Winning such a competitive tender is a fantastic result and testament to the team’s commitment," said Thomas Labarthe, President of RWS’s Language Services and Technology division. "Our end-to-end solution sets a new innovation benchmark for public sector organizations looking to digitize their multilingual processes."
The consortium includes RWS, CEDAT85 and Bertin IT. The combination of RWS’s machine translation solution, Language Weaver, CEDAT85’s speech-to-text voice recognition platform and Bertin IT’s expertise in voice intelligence ranked first throughout the 18 month competitive evaluation period.
"We are extremely proud of this result which is down to the hard work of our team, alongside our consortium partners, who worked day and night to overcome the significant challenges involved in such an innovative initiative," said Enrico Giannotti, Managing Director of CEDAT85.
The consortium now aims to develop the solution concept for wider commercial use, including live translation of audio for web conferences, remote live interpretation platforms and web technical training, in an effort to reduce the dependency on human interpreters and reshape remote working.
Language Weaver is a secure, adaptable machine translation platform that processes high volumes of content. It instantly, and securely, translates content across 3,000 language combinations. CEDAT85’s speech recognition and speech-to-text technologies have been developed over the past 35 years and are used by some of the globe’s largest brands to transcribe conversations instantly for analysis and collaboration. The combination of these technologies provides one of the most powerful solutions to increase the inclusion and participation of event attendees that speak multiple languages.
About RWS
RWS Holdings plc is the world’s leading provider of technology-enabled language, content management and intellectual property services. We help our customers to connect with and bring new ideas to people globally by communicating business critical content at scale and enabling the protection and realisation of their innovations.
Our vision is to help organisations interact effectively with people anywhere in the world by solving their language, content and market access challenges through our collective global intelligence, deep expertise and smart technology.
Customers include 90 of the globe’s top 100 brands, the top 10 pharmaceutical companies and approximately half of the top 20 patent filers worldwide. Our client base spans Europe, Asia Pacific, and North and South America across the technology, pharmaceutical, medical, legal, chemical, automotive, government and telecommunications sectors, which we serve from offices across five continents.
Founded in 1958, RWS is headquartered in the UK and publicly listed on AIM, the London Stock Exchange regulated market (RWS.L).
For further information, please visit: www.rws.com
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PHILADELPHIA (AP) – Philadelphia parents who don’t speak English said they’ve long been excluded from parts of their children’s education because of language barriers, an issue that’s only been exacerbated by the pandemic and the return to in-person learning.
Parents told The Associated Press stories of students being used as translators despite federal prohibitions, incorrect telephone translations or poor communication when their children were being bullied. Experts said Philadelphia is not alone, noting that many school districts have lagged in creating systems that treat non-English speakers equally rather than responding to complaints.
Philadelphia school district officials said the district has made a lot of progress in recent years, including sending communication in parents’ languages and hiring dozens of additional in-school interpreters called bilingual cultural assistants (BCAs). They said the district has policies against using children as translators and robust guidance on how to request language help.
Still, problems persist.
Mandy, who asked the AP not to use her last name, has a 10-year-old son with special needs. She struggled with whether to return him to in-person schooling, but ultimately decided the virtual option didn’t offer enough support for parents who don’t speak English.
Mandy said her biggest struggle with language access has been during special education meetings at her son’s previous school. Even though things have improved since she transferred him to another school in 2020, she still spends hours translating documents into Mandarin because the district provides very few fully translated documents.
Student teacher Olivia leading students through their morning meeting at the Eliza B Kirkbride School. PHOTO: AP
ABOVE & BELOW: Olivia Ponce; and Mandy
During one meeting, a telephone translator said she didn’t know anything about special education and refused to translate, so Mandy started bringing a bilingual friend as a backup. Another time, a translator told Mandy the district was going to teach her son to “eat meat”, which her friend quickly corrected, explaining the specialist was talking instead about goals for feeding therapy.
“It sounds like a comical incident, but it was really frustrating,” Mandy said in Mandarin through a translator. “It feels like immigrant parents are deliberately excluded and pushed to the margins.”
Deputy Chief of the district’s Office of Family and Community Engagement Jenna Monley said the office has issued guidance to school and district staff to transition to in-person interpreters for individualised education plan meetings when possible.
The Philadelphia school district saw an increase to more than 16,500 English learners in 2020 from around 12,000 in 2013, and Census numbers show nearly a quarter of people in Philadelphia older than five speak a language other than English at home.
Philadelphia City Councilmember Helen Gym, who has spent years advocating for education and immigration issues, said she wants interpreters in every school every day, as well as more multilingual staff including counsellors and nurses.
“We have a long way to go to enforce the language access mandates that are clearly in the legal books and were in fact the source of many different lawsuits and consent decrees,” she said.
Gym said immigrant families often seem like an afterthought.
“This was a city a decade ago that was on the brink of walking away from its public schools.
And that would have been devastating for immigrant communities,” she said, referring to deep budget cuts around 2011 after changes to the state’s education funding formula.
She said the district closed nearly 30 schools and barely escaped financial crisis, but the number of BCAs – which are the district’s main resource for parents who speak languages other than English – was cut in half.
Monley said the district has 101 BCAs after hiring about 45 over the last few school years.
She said they serve in 108 schools with the greatest needs for language help out of about 220 total schools. Many BCAs float between multiple schools every week.
Even with the hiring, the district has close to the same number of BCAs it had a decade ago for thousands more students and families, Gym said.
Olivia Ponce said she was frustrated by a language barrier when both her children, who are nearly a decade apart in age, were in school. The 46-year-old single mother recalled trying to talk to a school counsellor when her daughter, Olivia Vazquez, was hit by another student.
An interpreter was only available once a week, so the counsellor pulled a student out of class to translate. Ponce said the student wasn’t translating accurately, and she became so frustrated she shouted, then kept her daughter home for a week.
Experts said many districts, not just in urban areas, have seen increases in students and parents who speak languages other than English. Educational justice researcher Dominic J Ledesma said many districts try to provide what’s necessary under the law without thinking about making schools an inclusive place for immigrant families.
“Legal compliance and civil rights compliance are just as important as the equity issues at stake. Those issues are really pervasive and systemic in nature and not limited to Philadelphia. It’s everywhere,” said Ledesma. “In an equitable system… it’s the administrators who are accountable to all parents.”
Do you know what your name means? Have you ever looked up its definition to see if the meaning matches your personality? If you did deep enough, you’ll find that many names have multiple meanings. If you peruse through Urban Dictionary, you’ll find that some of those meanings can get very … weird.
Urban dictionary is lying to some of you
— Zainab (@itsjustzainab) November 23, 2021
This particular search is what’s currently trending, particularly on Instagram. People are looking up their names on Urban Dictionary and taking to the app’s “Add Yours” Sticker feature to share the outrageous (or what they to believe to be spot-on) definitions they find. Urban Dictionary is best known for defining slang words and explicit phrases, so things are getting a bit awkward for people. You’re looking up your name up now, aren’t you?
Since anyone can define words at Urban Dictionary, definitions, including those for people’s names, can range from thoughtful to hilarious to highly offensive. Here are some of the most popular names within Latin America with the quoted definitions straight from Urban Dictionary (so, don’t @ us), so you can get a sense of what people are finding. If your name is not listed here and you go looking, be careful with what you find. We warned you.
José
“A guy that every girl dreams of. He cares about no one but you” OR “a man whose legs are so hairy, he looks like the half boy/half beast creature from Narnia.”
Famous Josés: José Ferrer,José Feliciano, J Balvin
Jesús
“The best person you will ever meet. He loves to talk to anyone who is feeling down and will comfort you when you need it.” One user also pointed out that saying “Jesús” backwards sounds like “sausage.”
Famous Jesúses:Jesús Adrián Romero, Jesús Salvador Treviño, Jesús of Nazareth
María
“A person who can always make you smile in any way. She is a funny sweet girl who always knows how to put you in a good mood” OR “the definition of Satan.”
Famous Marias: María Conchita Alonso, María Félix, María Celeste Arrarás
Camila
“The most fashionable and beautiful person you’ll ever meet” OR someone who is “shy but at the same time a savage.”
Famous Camilas: Camila Cabello, Camila Mendes, Camila Morrone
Carlos
“The perfect male specimen. He’s smart, funny, charming and quite the sexual deviant” OR “Your local drug dealer. He’s got everything you need.”
Famous Carloses: Carlos Santana, Carlos Mencia, Carlos Beltrán
Juan
“A super delicious male humanoid” OR someone who “looks crispy and crunchy like nachos because he’s Mexican.”
Famous Juans: Juan Perón, Juan José Campanella, Juan Pablo Raba
Gloria
“The perfect friend you need in your life” OR “a crazy girl who likes to watch you sleep alone and feeds off souls.”
Famous Glorias: Gloria Estefan, Gloria Trevi, Gloria Laino
