After years of effort, the first Chinese-Arabic Dictionary of Basic Terms and Specifications for Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been published, breaking language barriers to help bring TCM culture to the Arabic world.
The dictionary was edited by Li Jinli, a professor at Qinghai Minzu University and vice president of the Hui Ethnic Medicine Research Institute, who spent more than two years translating and editing, the China News Service reported on Wednesday.
According to the report, the dictionary has eight sections that cover content such as professional terms in TCM, pathology, names of Chinese medicines and acupuncture. The dictionary boasts more than 6,000 entries.
Li told media that TCM is the quintessence of Chinese culture, recording the rich experience and theoretical knowledge of the Chinese people in their fight against disease over thousands of years.
Li pointed out that over the years, various versions of the dictionary have mainly been translated into English, French, German, Russian and Japanese, while other languages have been left out in the cold for the most part.
"Now some foreigners are attracted by the effectiveness of TCM, and our medicine's influence in international society has been increasing," a doctor at a TCM Department of a hospital in North China's Shanxi Province told the Global Times on Thursday.
The doctor added that he believes that translations of the dictionary will help people in other countries further understand TCM and therefore increase its effectiveness.
"TCM can also be beneficial to Arabic people," he said.
Tan Qilong, head of the Hui Ethnic Medicine Research Institute, praised the dictionary for opening another window for TCM to reach the rest of the world and allow more people benefit from the curative effect of simple and convenient TCM.
The Chinese-English dictionary of TCM Basic Terms was published in 2008 and a Chinese-German version was published in 2017. These versions were edited with cooperation from overseas institutes.
The Chinese-German version was worked on by the World Federation of Chinese Medicine Societies and Technische Universität München and covers 6,526 entries. Each entry includes Chinese pinyin and corresponding terms in German, while entries are arranged according to the academic system of TCM.
Many doctors have said they believe that TCM can play a bigger role in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. During the outbreak in Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province, in May and June, among the 166 local cases in hospitals, 118 were treated solely with TCM therapy, accounting for 71 percent of total treatment. TCM helped 57 patients who were vulnerable to severe illness from experiencing such severe symptoms, Zhang Zhongde, deputy head of the COVID-19 Response Group led by the National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, said at a press conference held in December.
The international influence of TCM is expanding. International students from the China University of Petroleum attended classes about TCM culture at the TCM Cultural Base at the Traditional Chinese Medical Hospital in Qingdao, East China's Shandong Province, in April 2021.
It pays to compare like with like. Credit: Shutterstock
According to collective intelligence evangelist and journalist James Surowiecki, groups are much better at making predictions than the individuals who belong to those groups, be they novices or leading experts.
To illustrate this theory, Surowiecki shares a story in his 2004 book, "The Wisdom of Crowds," about Sir Francis Galton, a British statistician who made an astonishing discovery while attending a country fair at the turn of the 20th century.
During the fair, there was a contest in which participants were asked to guess the weight of an ox. There were 787 entries, which Galton analyzed upon returning home.
He was surprised to find that the median of all the entries was not only more accurate than the individual estimates of the butchers and farmers, who were supposed to have a keen eye for this kind of estimating, but also that this median was just a single pound off the animal's exact weight.
Galton would go on to publish his findings in the journal Nature, explaining the idea of vox populi: the best decisions are often those made by large groups.
Strength in numbers
Let's compare Francis Galton's anecdote to university courses for professional translators, in which participants have the opportunity to share their insights and clever finds, which they dissect, discuss, and critique as a group.
They arrange the best solutions into a final version, an ensemble of each individual contributor's most inspired ideas. This translation, a team effort, will invariably be higher quality than participants' individual work, no matter how talented they might be.
By extension, we might ask ourselves: might machine translation, whose statistical model more or less mimics the collective intelligence formula, replace real-life human translators? In the era of artificial intelligence, might we leverage our strength in numbers to translate, as if the Internet were a massive classroom, an enormous group project, our very own dream team with millions of members, a place where every translated text could serve as inspiration?
While seemingly brilliant on paper, I must start by disappointing automation evangelists.
The Internet is full of specialists, but they are but a drop in an ocean of generalists who also have something to say about how a given text should be translated. AI tries its best to put the sources it identifies as reliable (say, major organizations or reputable companies) at the top. But instead of asking for the truth, it asks for the opinion of the entire planet, indeed anyone who has written and published anything online.
If we continue to use the country fair analogy, this would be like not only asking everyone on earth for their opinion, for better and for worse, it would almost be like if everyone were also guessing without even identifying the creature they're looking at, since computers can't assign meaning to the solutions they find. They would certainly have a statistical idea of what animal it is, based on the features the machine detects, but not an exact match.
So, in addition to guesses about cattle breeds, you could potentially also get guesses about every animal on Earth, from fleas to blue whales, with all of the inconsistencies that would cause.
Finally, and most importantly, collaborative human translations are always subject to a certain amount of shepherding, whether by the professor or presenter, who guides the group and makes the final call. In other words, a higher power sorts through the solutions from the critical mass of translators and provides the guardrails that keep the process on track. When using machine translation without human intervention, these guardrails aren't there.
Mr Shithole goes to jumpsuit
There are, of course, a few safeguards that keep machine translation in check. The words themselves are usually a good indicator of the likely meaning of a sentence. Next, there's the context, which neural technologies now account for, narrowing the range of possible words to certain large families.
In our cattle example, the search would be corralled by the most basic engines to include large barnyard animals and by the most sophisticated ones to just bovine breeds. Nevertheless, given the difference between a small Angus calf and a big Charolais bull, the margin of error could still be high.
It's no wonder, then, that otherwise fluent-sounding sentences might omit meaningful information or be peppered with offensive errors, words that crop up out of nowhere, or gender bias.
Sometimes, the meaning might be completely flipped: since translation engines are unable to "understand" what sentences mean, they opt for the statistically likeliest solution, which could be the opposite of what the original says.
In this study, the headline, "UK car industry in brace position ahead of Brexit deadline," was translated as "L'industrie automobile britannique en position de force avant l'échéance du Brexit." The original English sentence means the UK car industry is fearing the worst (and placing itself in a defensive position, like passengers on a plane before a crash). Conversely, the French translation says the opposite: that the UK car is in a position of power (en position de force).
In other words, proceed with caution, because no matter how fluent the suggested translation appears, these types of errors (incorrect terminology, omissions, mistranslations) abound in machine translation output.
My colleague Ben Karl has shared a few examples on his website, including one where Mexico's official tourism website (automatically) translated the name of the upscale beachside resort town of Tulum as "jumpsuit."
Another incredible gem: the name of the president of the People's Republic of China being elegantly translated from Burmese to English as Mr. Shithole.
Normalization and leveling out
Another issue with machine translation which people may be less aware of is a process known as normalization. If new translations are only ever made using existing ones, over time, the process can stifle inventiveness, creativity, and originality, as several scientific studies have demonstrated.
Scholars also talk about "algorithmic bias": where machines are more likely to suggest a given term the more it is used to translate a certain word. The result is that less frequent (and therefore more creative) translations are blotted out.
Machines don't try to make texts sound pretty or play with the poetry of the words—simply conveying the meaning will suffice. This leveling out, a sort of homogenisation, be it cultural, stylistic or ideological, can be a particular problem for literary texts, which by their very nature deviate from the norm and develop a distinct linguistic flavor.
An excellent article on leveling out by translator Françoise Wuilmart, written more than a decade before the emergence of neural machine translation, sounds particularly prescient today: "Leveling out hits at the very core of what makes literary translation so hard. To level out or 'normalize' a text is to dull or dampen it, flatten its natural relief, lob off its pointy bits, fill in its grooves, and iron out all the wrinkles that make it a literary text in the first place."
This is precisely what machine translation does, whether intentionally or not. The tecnhology creates a vicious circle that, over time, leads to language impoverishment: the machine produces increasingly standardized texts, which are then used as the input to train other engines, which further level out the texts, and so on.
Studies have shown that machine-translated texts are less lexically rich. Exposing ourselves to increasingly homogenous language means hobbling our ability to express ourselves, and therefore our thoughts.
Human expertise in indispensable
Everyone in the translation industry today recognizes that it is undergoing a technological shift. Machine translation is clearly being used more and more, and its raw output is becoming increasingly usable.
However, too many users forget that automatically translated content has the potential to be rife with all kinds of errors, and that mistakes can be lurking everywhere among seemingly fluent and coherent sentences.
Expert translation professionals are uniquely equipped to assess the quality of this raw output. Only real-life humans can decide whether to use machine translation or not, like photographers picking the best camera for the conditions or accountants choosing the data entry method best suited to how they work.
Translation, like all professions, can't escape a certain amount of automation. We could in fact be excited about this change, which can help professionals let their expertise shine, avoid repetitive tasks, and focus on where they can add the most value.
But caution is more important than ever, and indiscriminate use of machine translation should be avoided.
Real professionals will choose the best way to work with you depending on your priorities and the famous time—budget—quality trio. As your savvy linguistic and cultural consultants, they will be the key to ensuring flawless multilingual communication.
Like the butcher who actually won the contest at the country fair in Plymouth in 1906 would undoubtedly have said, human expertise is the only way you can be sure to hit the bullseye every single time.
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Lindy Hop dancer LaTasha Barnes is upholding the traditions of the dance that originated in Harlem in the 1920s. Cassidy Araiza for NPR
Cassidy Araiza for NPR
When she thinks about being a tradition-bearer through dance, LaTasha Barnes goes back to her family.
Barnes grew up in a multigenerational household in Winterpock, Va. Her great-grandmother, Elizabeth Harris, was one of the few Black cooks to run her own kitchen in the city of Richmond. At home in the farmhouse, she'd often cook to the sounds of Louis Armstrong.
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A family photo of Barnes's great grandmother, Elizabeth Harris. Cassidy Araiza for NPR
Cassidy Araiza for NPR
The way Barnes remembers her childhood, there was always music and dancing in the house. Cousins came to visit from Washington, D.C. and New York, bringing the latest dance trends. Barnes grew up watching her parents rehearse their entrances to the social clubs, where they would enter dance contests.
One Sunday afternoon, when she was about 4 years old, her great-grandmother took her hand and led her into a swing out. Barnes still remembers the feeling of being pushed and pulled by her great-grandmother's hand. It was the same "in and out motion" that she saw in the dancing that her aunts and uncles did at parties.
"It was a baseline groove that everybody had. And then I felt like I could see it in their individual movements as well," she said.
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Barnes holds a family photo of her dancing with her father, Thomas Barnes. There was always music and dancing in her childhood. Cassidy Araiza for NPR
Cassidy Araiza for NPR
She now realizes that afternoon with her great-grandmother was the first time she danced Lindy Hop.
Lindy Hop is a jazz dance that originated in Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s and has since gained a following across the world, with large communities in Sweden and South Korea. It's an African American social dance. To Barnes and her great-grandmother, it was just called "fast dancing."
By the time she was 31 years old, Barnes had become a world champion in House, a dance style that surfaced out of underground music clubs in Chicago and New York. As she developed her dance practice, she felt a growing need to understand the jazz roots of the street dances for which she was becoming well-known.
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"When I first re-encountered Lindy Hop, it was presented as this thing that white people do at weddings," Barnes says. "It wasn't presented as a Black cultural art form."
Barnes wanted to go beyond this perception. She went to the Library of Congress to watch reel-to-reel archival films and worked closely with knowledgeable Lindy Hoppers. This was the beginning of her journey to reconnect with the sense of movement she had experienced while dancing with her great-grandmother.
Her research and dedication led her to the originators of Lindy Hop. In 2016, she was invited to perform with the luminaries–affectionately called the "elders"–of Lindy Hop. Chester Whitmore, Barbara Billups, Sugar Sullivan, and Norma Miller, known as the "Queen of Swing," were all there. Barnes recalls a moment between dances when it suddenly seemed as if all the white dancers had left the room.
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American Lindy Hop dancer Norma Miller and her long time dance partner, Billy Ricker, perform in Chicago circa 1940. Known as the "Queen of Swing", Miller later formed her own dance troupe. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
"And I became a magnet somehow. I was just sitting on the couch next to Miss Norma," she said. "And I looked up and she made a gesture. And all of them descended upon me."
It felt like a sign. There was a moment of recognition. And laughter.
"And Chester leaned over to me [and said], "Are you ready? 'Cause you know this is on you now," she said. "And from then on the level of responsibility absolutely shifted."
Barnes remembers this as the night she was declared a tradition-bearer of Lindy Hop by some of the dance's most important practitioners.
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Barnes dances with students at Arizona State University in November. Caitlin O'Hara for NPR
Caitlin O'Hara for NPR
This past fall, Barnes joined the faculty of Arizona State University's School of Music, Dance and Theatre, where she mentors young dancers and teaches courses on Black American dance forms and what she calls "the jazz continuum."
When Barnes teaches and performs Lindy Hop today, she says she's reaching for the joy she felt dancing with her great-grandmother. It is in this spirit that she carries the responsibility of being a tradition-bearer of a nearly 100 year-old dance. That's what she brings to the dance floor, whether she's improvising with friends in the studio or performing onstage.
"Each time you make a connection and you make a move happen, just off the basis of being together, it ignites joy," she said. "And just this exchange of energy gives you something to hold onto and something to celebrate."
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A Lindy Hop Starter Pack
Here's some of LaTasha's favorite songs to dance to:
Chicken An' Dumplings (Live), by Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers
Lavender Coffin, by Lionel Hampton
Wailing Interval, by Duke Ellington
Sister Sadie, by Horace Silver
Harlem, Harlem, Harlem, by Charles Turner & Uptown Swing
You Can't Pull the Wool Over My Eyes, by Catherine Russell
Jersey Bounce, by Ella Fitzgerald
Pickin' the Cabbage, by Cab Calloway
Listen to Snatch & Grab It, by Julia Lee.
Watch the spectacular Lindy Hop sequence in the 1941 film Hellzapoppin.
Watch Frankie Manning talk in 2006 about his life and career.
Watch LaTasha and Felix Berghäll dance at the 2019 International Lindy Hop Championships.
Learn more about the Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program.
Listen to Rough Translation wherever you get your podcasts, including NPR One, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Spotify, and RSS.
“Writers make national literature, while translators make universal literature.” - José Saramago
In Canada, copyright arises automatically on creation of “every original literary, artistic, musical, and dramatic work”, which also includes translations of written and audiovisual works, such as books and movies. A translation is generally a derivation of an original work, and is also a copyright-protected work pursuant to Sections 2 and 13 of the Copyright Act (the “Act”), provided it is an original work meeting the skill and judgment requirements set out in CCH Canadian Ltd v Law Society of Upper Canada (LSUC), 2004 SCC 13. The process of translating from one language to another is often referred to as a subjective, artistic process. Providing that a translation is more than a reproduction of the underlying work in another language, it will be protected by copyright. While a translation may be the proper subject matter for copyright protection, there are the twin issues of ownership of the copyright in the translation: 1) whether authorized or unauthorized; and 2) the moral rights therein. In the case of both authorized and unauthorized translations, moral rights will be retained by the translator unless waived in writing, in favour of the person or party seeking the waiver.
Copyright in Translations
Pursuant to Section 3(1)(a) of the Act, the author and owner of copyright in a work owns and controls the right to translate, produce, and reproduce their work. Furthermore, they have the right to license (exclusively and non-exclusively) and/or assign any of their rights to another person or entity. Any written, audio, and audiovisual work can be translated from one language to another. Presuming a translator has copyright protection in their translation, the author and owner of the underlying work needs to know what copyright protection and rights they have when it comes to both authorized and unauthorized translations.
Authorized Translations
Authorized translations occur when the copyright owner of a work allows another person to translate their work into another language. Copyright ownership in an authorized translation of an underlying work is clear: the translator will be the first owner of the copyright in the translation. However, ss. 13(3) of the Act provides for an exception if the translation was made during the course of employment: the copyright will be owned by the employer. Where the translator is engaged as an independent contractor, the services agreement between the copyright owner of the underlying work and the translator should govern who owns the copyright in the translation. In some cases, the translator will be permitted to retain copyright ownership in the translation, and in others, the copyright will be assigned to the copyright owner of the original work.
Unauthorized Translations
A translator creates an unauthorized translation when they do not obtain consent of the copyright owner of the original work - such a translation infringes up the copyright in the underlying work. The law regarding the copyright protection of an unauthorized translation is unsettled: both jurisprudence and academic sources suggest that an unauthorized translation should attract its own copyright protection, even where it is an infringing work, provided that the translation meets the necessary originality requirements. In this context, the original author is likely to maintain their right to claim both equitable relief (e.g., injunction) and monetary damages for the copyright infringement of their work. This copyright ownership conundrum occurs because the translator is not the author (and likely not the copyright owner) of the underlying work. While an author and owner of copyright in the original work may request a court order to have the unauthorized work destroyed, they themselves may not reproduce and publish that work, as the translator would retain the sole right to do so. It may be reasonable to assume that an employer will be considered the first owner of an unauthorized translation that is made in the course of the translator’s employment. As the status of unauthorized translations is unsettled, this determination will likely be a factual inquiry.
Moral Rights
It is important to note that in the case of both authorized and unauthorized translations, whether made during the course of employment or as an independent contractor, the translator will have moral rights in the translation. Pursuant to ss.14.1(2) of the Act, moral rights can only be waived in writing. In light of this, the copyright owner should always seek a moral rights waiver from the translator to ensure they can modify the work or associate it with any cause, institution, or organization. Furthermore, the waiver of moral rights will enable the copyright owner to choose whether the translator’s name is connected with the work.
Confirming Copyright Ownership of Translated Works
It’s good practice for a copyright owner of a work and the translator to enter into a written agreement that governs the services and copyright ownership of the translation. Where there is no services agreement, the copyright owner of the underlying work could negotiate with the translator for an assignment of copyright ownership in the translation. All copyright assignments must be in writing and signed by the copyright owner per ss.13(4) of the Act. The same is true of exclusive copyright licenses.
In the absence of a written agreement granting the right to translate, the translator would be both the author and copyright owner of the translation, even where the translation was not authorized. In the case of a verbal agreement, moral rights would not be waived by either the author of the underlying work or the translator (ss.14.1(2)).This limits the translator’s ability to make any changes to the original work, so as to prejudice the author of the underlying work, and requires the translator to give attribution to said author. In the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Apple Computer, Inc. v. Mackintosh Computers Ltd.; Apple Computer, Inc. v. 115778 Canada Inc., [1990] 2 S.C.R. 209 (“Apple”), the Court made clear that the translator’s ability to exploit their rights in the translation is subject to the rights of the author and copyright owner in the underlying work. For example, the translator would be able to put their name on the translation but could not prevent the author of the original work from receiving acknowledgment as the author thereof. Therefore, disputes over the quality of the translation will be resolved in light of the original owner’s prevailing copyrights. While fortune favours the bold, a translation services agreement favours certainty for the parties and their copyright ownership in the translation.
Best Practices
We recommend that the author and copyright owner in an original work always enter into a translation services agreement with the translator to ensure both parties’ interests are spelled out. This may not always be the practice in a given industry, so it is important to speak with a competent lawyer to determine what makes sense in each case. For example, it is publishing industry practice for translators of literary works (whether fiction or non-fiction) to: (a) retain copyright ownership of the translation; (b) be paid a flat fee; and (c) receive royalty payments for the sale of the translation, rather than simply receiving a flat fee only for the services rendered.
The following is a non-exhaustive list of issues to consider when drafting an agreement for translation services:
Non-exclusive vs. exclusive license in the underlying work: With a non-exclusive license, the copyright owner of the underlying work is free to grant an unlimited number of non-exclusive licenses to third parties to translate the work. Whereas an exclusive license limits the copyright owner’s ability to grant the same rights to someone else – including to the owner itself. The license grant must be carefully drafted with consideration of the underlying work’s copyright owner’s interests.
Look and feel of the translation: This concept relates to the amount of control that the author/copyright owner of the underlying work can expect to maintain with respect to the look and feel of the translations. For example, a “look and feel” provision may address changes to the overall format, images, drawings, graphs, or approval rights over the translation.
Copyright assignment: Inclusion of an assignment grant from the translator to the author and copyright owner of the original work addresses the latter party’s interest in owning copyrights in the translation.
Waiver of moral rights: A translator retains moral rights in their translation unless such rights are formally waived in writing. If not waived, the translator retains the following rights:
the right to attribution (to be named as the author of the translation);
the right of integrity (to not have it be edited, mutilated, or destroyed); and
the right of association (to not have their work associated with a cause, organization, or institution).
Remuneration: You need to determine if the translator is being paid a flat fee and/or royalties from sales of the translation. Be aware that standards will vary based on the nature (e.g., fiction, non-fiction) and genre of work.
Credit: The nature of the credit given to the translator is negotiated by the parties in the context of industry norms. Issues of size, font, and placement of the credit on the physical work should be considered.
Translator in the business of translations — trained, insured, and bonded: The translator should be an expert in providing translation services, licensed (if applicable), insured, and bonded, or have professional liability coverage. This can determine the nature of the policy, and the extent of the translator’s coverage. The author may require evidence of the translator’s insurance obligations in addition to a waiver of any claims against the authors own insurance policies.
The substance and form of a translation services agreement will vary based on the specific context. Establishing the scope of the parties’ copyright ownership in advance will help ensure that intentions are not “lost in translation”. While fortune favours the bold, a translation services agreement favours certainty for the parties and their copyright ownership in the translation.
Press Release from the Hessen State Government from 17 DEC 2021
Courtesy Translation: Nadine Bower, Public Affairs Specialist
Hotspot areas and cities will be listed in Corona bulletin in the future
Starting Sunday, Dec. 19, 2021, districts and independent cities may be affected by this automatism and the associated stricter measures for the first time.
With the Coronavirus Protection Ordinance, which came into force on Dec. 16, 2021, the state government has implemented the decision of the Minister-Presidents' Conference and introduced a hotspot regulation. Starting Sunday, Dec. 19, 2021, districts and independent cities may be affected by this automatism and the associated stricter measures for the first time. For which districts or district-free cities this applies, is shown in the Corona Bulletin published daily, starting Sunday, on the homepage of the Hessen Ministry of Social Affairs at hessenlink.de/HMSI208.
"In cities or counties where the incidence is above 350 for three consecutive days, stricter regulations will go into effect automatically on the next day. There is no need for a general decree of the affected municipality," says Hessen's Minister of Health Kai Klose.
The hotspot regulation expires as soon as the incidence value drops below the 350 threshold for five consecutive days. Then, the affected district-free city or district automatically will no longer be a hotspot on the following day.
The following stricter regulations apply in the hotspots:
- Prohibition of alcohol in busy areas and places determined by the municipalities.
- Mask requirement in pedestrian zones, shopping malls or similar areas. The exact locations are determined by the municipalities.
- For events (more than ten people) as well as in the cultural, sports and leisure area (sports field, gym, movie theater, theater, etc.) and in restaurants, as well as for tourist overnight stays: Inside: 2G-Plus; outside: 2G.
- Christmas Markets: Access only for vaccinated and recovered individuals (2G). The municipalities can also enact an alcohol ban within the 2G area.
- 3,000 participants and above, the 2G Plus rule also applies at outdoor events. The mask requirement remains.
- Limit on the number of people at private parties and gatherings to 50 indoors, 200 outside.
- Closure of dance halls, clubs and discotheques as well as prostitution venues.
Source: https://ift.tt/3qg1kAO
Date Taken:
12.20.2021
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A Halifax publisher has released a Gaelic translation of Anne of Green Gables, bringing the much loved book into a language many Prince Edward Islanders spoke generations ago.
It's been published in more than 30 languages, but never Gaelic — one of the traditional languages of P.E.I.
"Some people would say that it's a foreign language translation, but I would actually say it's a Canadian language translation," said Emily McEwan, the founder of Bradan Press, a company that specializes in Gaelic publications.
The book is called Anna Ruadh which means "Red-haired Anne," in Gaelic.
"It's kind of like coming full circle because Gaelic was like a heritage language for L.M. Montgomery and her family," she said.
Emily McEwan got the idea to translate Anne of Green Gables from a bookstore owner in Halifax. (Submitted by Emily McEwan)
Montgomery married Ewan MacDonald, a native Gaelic speaker, in 1911.
McEwan worked alongside a Gaelic translator for years, researching the language, even inventing words that hadn't before existed in Gaelic.
"She did a lot of research into the flowers and plants, you know, because a few didn't have names in Scottish Gaelic because they're native to North America."
'A cast of thousands'
McEwan and the translator used the current Gaelic dictionary, but also looked into older editions and Latin dictionaries in the creation of new words, she said.
The original English version of the book has over 100,000 words. McEwan said the Gaelic translation added about 20,000 more.
The idea for the translation came from a bookstore owner in Halifax who told McEwan she should go for it.
The translation into Gaelic added about 20,000 additional words to the book. (Bradan Press)
"That kind of planted the seed," McEwan said.
She financed the book through grants and crowd-funded $17,000 from donors around the world.
"It's been a cast of thousands and several years, but it all goes back to that special day."
Deep roots in Atlantic Canada
Shamus MacDonald, an assistant professor of Celtic studies at St. Francis Xavier University, started speaking Gaelic as a university student and said the release of new Gaelic literature helps revitalize the language.
"Its an uplifting feeling when you see a book published in this language because you know that there are people out there that are interested," MacDonald said.
"There's also a sense that there's a community of readers, people who are going to look at this book, read it, enjoy it."
Gaelic came to the shores of Atlantic Canada around 1770. The next year, a large group of Gaelic speakers from Scotland arrived on P.E.I. — known as the Glenaladale settlers, MacDonald said.
Prof. Shamus MacDonald has also written his own book in Gaelic, alongside a native speaker of the language. The book is called Luran and the Mermaid. (Submitted by Shamus MacDonald)
Over time, a push to educate children in English slowly extinguished the Gaelic language in Atlantic Canada, he said.
"You have many stories of people who had very little if any English and they arrive at the school house and everything is in English."
An idea crept in over time that Gaelic was the language of rural areas and people who were not educated, he said, the same thing that kills minority languages all around the world.
Many of the last native Gaelic speakers in Canada have died over the last 25 years, MacDonald said, but the numbers aren't all going down.
There are a few thousand people learning the language around Atlantic Canada.
And, he said, there's a community of Gaelic speakers around the world who find great enjoyment in learning the language.
"You don't have to be a MacDonald or a Campbell or a MacIsaac," he said.
2021 is at its end. This year we saw several words getting added to our vocabulary. However, as per the five leading dictionaries, the five words that stood out the most were; vax, vaccine, perseverance, NFT, and allyship.
Here are the words that were chosen by leading dictionaries, like Oxford, Cambridge Dictionaries, Merriam Webster, Collins dictionary, and Dictionary.com.
Oxford Languages
Oxford Languages has chosen 'vax' as the word of the year for 2021.
'Vax' was chosen as the word of the year by the Oxford Languages due to the sheer amount of times that it was used.
According to a report published by Oxford Languages, the usage of this word increased by 72 times by September 2021 in comparison to the usage at the same time last year.
Definition: The Oxford Languages report defined Vax as, "a colloquialism meaning either vaccine or vaccination as a noun and vaccinate as a verb."
Merriam Webster
Merriam Webster has chosen 'vaccine' as the word of the year for 2021.
The word 'vaccine' was chosen as the word of the year by Merriam Webster, while the dictionary also stated that interest in the word has been high ever since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to Merriam Webster, the word vaccine saw a rise of 601% year-over-year from 2020.
Merriam Webster has also revised the definition of the word which previously read,"a preparation of killed microorganisms, living attenuated organisms, or living fully virulent organisms that is administered to produce or artificially increase immunity to a particular disease."
Definition: Merriam Webster describes vaccine as a preparation that is administered to stimulate the body's immune response against a specific infectious agent or disease, such as an antigenic preparation of a typically inactivated or attenuated pathogenic agent or one of its components or products.
Collins Dictionary
Collins Dictionary has chosen 'NFT' as the word of the year for 2021.
The word 'NFT', an abbreviation for 'non-fungible token', was chosen by the Collins dictionary as the word of the year for 2021.
'NFT' is also amongst the three tech-based words chosen by the dictionary as words of the year for 2021.
Definition: The Collins dictionary describes NFT as, "the unique digital identifier that records ownership of a digital asset."
Cambridge Dictionary
The Cambridge dictionary has chosen 'perseverance' as the word of the year for 2021.
The Cambridge dictionary has chosen the word 'perseverance' as the word of the year 2021 due to a spike recorded in the usage of the word since NASA's Perseverance Rover landed on Mars.
According to the dictionary, the word wasn't looked up online as much before the year 2021 but it was looked up more than 243,000 times globally this year.
Definition: The Cambridge dictionary defines the word as the continued effort to do or achieve something, even when this is difficult or takes a long time.
Dictionary.com
Dictionary.com has chosen 'allyship' as the word of the year for 2021.
The word 'allyship' was chosen as the word of the year for 2021 by Dictionary.com amongst various shortlisted words like 'critical race theory', 'burnout', and 'vaccine'.
The decision to choose 'allyship' also marks the first time that a word new to the dictionary was chosen as the Word of the Year.
Definition: Dictionary.com defines the word as 'the status or role of a person who advocates and actively works for the inclusion of a marginalized or politicized group in all areas of society, not as a member of that group but in solidarity with its struggle and point of view and under its leadership.'
READ: 'Vax' chosen as Word of the Year 2021 by the Oxford Dictionary
READ: ‘Pandemic’ chosen as Word of the Year 2020 by Dictionary.com
