Translation Center's Trailblazing Efforts to Improve Language Access Services in Schools - UMass News and Media Relations - Translation

In early May, the Translation Center’s assistant director Lara Matta hosted celebrations to honor 75 bilingual school staff who completed two different workshop series to improve language access services in schools. Thanks to the support of the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), this opportunity was made available to staff from 26 districts, representing 16 languages: Arabic, Cantonese, Cape Verdean, English, French, Haitian Creole, Khmer, Kiche, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Twi and Vietnamese.

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Participants from the Interpreting for Special Education Workshop Series celebrate receipt of their certificates with assistant director Lara Matta, graduate students Irina Lifszyc and Aitor Bouso Gavin, and workshop leader Laurence Ibrahim Aibo.

In the Interpreter and Translator in Education Workshop Series (WS1), participants learn about the standards and procedures of interpreting and translation in addition to the larger context of language access in schools. The Translation Center awarded 54 certificates of completion. Another certificate celebration honored 21 participants who completed the Interpreting for Special Education Workshop Series (ISE), which prepares bilingual school staff to interpret in special education settings.

The May celebrations continue the Translation Center’s previous work with bilingual school staff. In March, the Translation Center awarded certificates of completion to 45 WS1 participants and 20 ISE participants from 23 districts, representing eight languages. During the event, the invited speaker Jennifer Love, Supervisor of Language Access and Engagement for Prince George’s County Public Schools, reminded the group to “..., continue to be a visionary, in the same spirit in which you were drawn to this program …, it is not enough to know that you’re going somewhere, but always keep in the forefront– what will you do when you get there?”

The workshops are led by faculty and language access professionals. The Translation Center hires graduate students to support workshop leaders and participants offering them practical experience in one of the wealthiest and fastest-growing industries in the world. Their participation also gives them exposure to non-academic career paths, a noteworthy experience given the lack of academic departments of translation and interpretation at U.S. universities. Staff and language experts from the deep roster of translators and interpreters at the Translation Center also support the workshops.

Regina Galasso, director of the Translation Center and associate professor in the Spanish and Portuguese Studies Program, is the designer of the structure of the workshop series in consultation with DESE, school staff, and individuals with experience leading language access services in schools. Her vision is inspired by the plurality of the workshop participants, who come together from different districts, positions, languages, backgrounds, and experiences. In most cases, each workshop in a series has a different leader to highlight the range of execution and articulation of translation and interpretation, thus inviting participants to build confidence to bring their own style to the practice while upholding professional standards and ethics. She also insists on the use of the term workshop to honor the participants’ contributions since many have already been providing these language services with little formal training. There is currently no certification for school interpreters as there is for medical and legal interpreters.  

Galasso is grateful to Stephen Zrike, who first approached the Translation Center in 2018 while receiver/superintendent of Holyoke Public Schools, to develop a series for the district. Zrike continues to dialogue with Galasso about initiatives to improve language access in schools as the current superintendent of Salem Public Schools.

To date, the Translation Center has awarded certificates to about 400 individuals who participated in DESE-sponsored or district-specific workshop series and looks forward to future collaborations with schools near and far. Since not every school district is the same, the Translation Center works to understand each district’s profile when designing a workshop series. The workshops are one example of the language access support services that the Translation Center offers to schools.

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Google's New Glasses Can Translate Speech in Real Time - IoT World Today - Translation

The latest offering from Google’s parent company Alphabet comes 10 years after its first eyewear product

Google has unveiled a new product at its I/O developer conference this month; a level up from its Google Glass automated eyewear that was launched a decade ago. Instead of acting like a wearable computer, Alphabet Inc’s new augmented reality (AR) glasses can automatically translate speech in real time. 

Harnessing Google Translate, the glasses can listen to speech in different languages, or detect American Sign Language, and project a translation in front of a user’s eyes – like real-time subtitling. Not only could this be applied to people wishing to speak to someone from another country, but it could also prove a valuable tool to deaf or hard-of-hearing users in cases where they do not or cannot wear hearing aids. 

While the glasses remain in the prototype phase, and the company hasn’t provided any information on when it may be ready for commercialization, it is nonetheless expected to provide an indication of where the AR device market is heading. 

Alphabet’s first foray into Google glasses encountered some backlash, with the integrated camera causing privacy concerns and the high price causing some consumers to balk. Details on the new translation glasses remain sparse, and it is unclear how the company has changed its approach since its first automated glasses product, though in design alone they mark a departure; shifting from a more sci-fi look to traditional glasses.

The new device was one of many products unveiled by Alphabet at the conference, all of which reportedly have the intention of more holistically connecting Google services with real-world activities using AI. 

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Jhumpa Lahiri on how she fell in love with translating and how it shapes her writing - KALW - Translation

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

The writer Jhumpa Lahiri is known for her stories about the immigrant experience, books like "Interpreter Of Maladies" and "The Namesake," rich fictional stories from and of two worlds. Lahiri is less known for the other kind of writing she does - translation. For the last several years, the author and Princeton professor has been translating works from Italian to English, including her own work. And in a new essay collection titled "Translating Myself And Others," Lahiri explores what draws her to translation. She joins me now. Jhumpa Lahiri, welcome back to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm glad to speak with you again.

JHUMPA LAHIRI: Thank you so much.

KELLY: Clear the air, if you would, on something that I gather annoys you, which is the notion that translation is somehow a lesser form of writing than creative writing.

LAHIRI: Yes. It annoys me because what I've come to realize is that translation is nothing but a form of writing. If anything, it's more of a pure form of writing, if you will, because it's language that is at the center of every choice that's being made. And there's so much creativity and imagination that goes into arriving at the best solution from the translator's point of view.

KELLY: Although, take on the critics who will be listening and saying, but hold on, it's - there's got to be less creativity, less imagination involved. You can't just change the story whole cloth if you're trying to be truthful to the original.

LAHIRI: Well, that is sort of another layer, if you will, another dimension of what a text is, right? I mean, it has the - if we're talking about fiction, we're talking about the characters, the plot, the details. The choices that the author makes is governed by language, right? So language is actually at the center of the text and translation is making that extremely clear.

KELLY: It's kind of like the words are all you've got, which is true of writing in any event. But other choices melt away. And it's just - you're just wrestling with the language, pure and simple. Is that something close to it?

LAHIRI: Yes, it is. And I would say that when you're just wrestling, just, I would say, you know...

KELLY: There's a lot in that just, yeah.

LAHIRI: Yes, there's a lot in that just, but when we're wrestling with language, we realize how infinite the playing field is.

KELLY: I mean, I can hear both that you enjoy it and that it's hard, that it's demanding. And having done some translation myself, that has certainly been my experience. Do you find it makes you a better writer in both languages that you're grappling with?

LAHIRI: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that my experience translating Italian literature made me a better writer in Italian because it exposed me to ways of constructing sentences, words, rhythms, turns of phrase, what have you that I was only getting by virtue of translating amazing authors such as Domenico Starnone or Calvino or whomever. Translation embeds you inside of the text, and so you also learn things about all of these other aspects of fiction writing.

KELLY: So I want to apply all this to your novel, "Whereabouts," which I got to interview you about when it came out last year, when it came out in English, I should say, because you wrote it in Italian. The Italian title was "Dove Mi Trovo." And then you translated it from Italian into English, which I know you were really resisting. Why?

LAHIRI: Well, I resisted it many years ago when my first Italian book came out, in other words, in English, because in that moment, I felt that I had to remain absolutely disciplined inside of English and sort of create the false notion that I only had one language, which, of course I didn't and I never have. But I wanted all of the energy I had to remain inside of thinking, reading and writing in Italian. By the time I wrote "Dove Mi Trovo," my relationship to Italian had changed. You know, the roots were deeper. I trusted it more. And I felt that working in English was not going to somehow unravel the Italian that I was building and cultivating in my system, in my brain, in my life.

KELLY: So you now have the original Italian. You have the work that you have translated that is in English that I read. You've now gone back and made changes - what? - an updated Italian version. Does it like three separate books? How do you think of it?

LAHIRI: They were very subtle changes, but they are there, so I don't think of it as a different book at all. But I do think of it as a, you know, that it went through another round of - in the edit cycle. And I think what translating myself opened up was the fact that - and I feel this very keenly now with my new book, which I've just finished in Italian - that self-translation is now for me the most rigorous and effective form of editing.

KELLY: Well, and I suppose it circles us back to where we began, which is your strong view that the act of translation makes you a better writer of fiction. You know, to go back to "Whereabouts," you're on version three of self-editing, and you feel like it's getting better. It's helping it.

LAHIRI: Yes, exactly. I mean, it's just constantly moving it toward the book you want it to be. It's very heady stuff, you know. I mean, but it's also destabilizing because, you know, one would like to think, OK, I wrote the book. It's done. It's out. It's in the bookstore. It's done. Let's forget about it. But that's kind of a myth in a way, you know. I mean, of course, we can always go back, and we can always question why we structured a sentence a certain way, why we chose one adjective as opposed to another. You know, and I think that self-translation insists on the fact that writing is really very open-ended. And what I think is really wonderful about the art and craft of translation is that it calls for other translations. And, I mean, every time someone translates something, it's almost like an invitation or even a challenge to say, you, too, could translate this. Let's see what you could do with this. There's simply no such thing as a definitive translation.

KELLY: I love that way of thinking about it. Well, may I wish you many more translations of this book and your others - that would be perfect - by the time you're on version 17?

LAHIRI: Thank you. Yeah. It's a hall of mirrors. But it's a new way of thinking about the literary enterprise, it really is.

KELLY: Well, Jhumpa Lahiri, this has been yet again a pleasure. Thanks so much for talking to us.

LAHIRI: It was my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

KELLY: That is the author and translator Jhumpa Lahiri. Her new essay collection is "Translating Myself And Others." Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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Matthew McConaughey believes a word should be removed from dictionary - MyWabashValley.com - Dictionary

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Matthew McConaughey believes a word should be removed from dictionary  MyWabashValley.com

Matthew McConaughey believes a word should be removed from dictionary - KMID - Local 2 News - Dictionary

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Matthew McConaughey believes a word should be removed from dictionary  KMID - Local 2 News

Matthew McConaughey believes a word should be removed from dictionary - WHNT News 19 - Dictionary

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Matthew McConaughey believes a word should be removed from dictionary  WHNT News 19

Noobs Should Embrace This New PlayStation ‘Gamer Dictionary’ - Lifehacker - Dictionary

Photo: Roman Kosolapov (Shutterstock)

I strongly believe console and PC gaming is for everyone, but let’s be honest: the jargony way people talk about video games can make it difficult to get into the hobby.

Unless you’re enmeshed in the video game world, a sentence like “the latest patch nerfed HP scaling on end-game mobs but made aggro proc OP” will make zero sense, but lots of gamers talk that way all the time. And it’s hard to get into a new game when every guide, article, YouTube video, or in-game chat message is full of words you don’t understand, from “roguelike” to “metroidvania.”

Thankfully, the folks at PlayStation have recognized this issue and created a “Gamer Dictionary” to help noobs parse all that jargon. Definitely bookmark the dictionary if you’re a new player, or if you’re trying to help someone get into games for the first time.

Screenshot: Brendan Hesse

The dictionary contains an alphabetical sorting of over 100 gaming-specific words, phrases, and acronyms, and they’re all surprisingly helpful, even if you aren’t a total beginner. Some include explanations of technical terms like “Hit Box,” “Judder,” and “I-Frames”; slang phrases such as “gank” or “noob”; and acronyms like “GPU,” “K/D,” “OP,” and more. There are also simple explanations for common video game genres, so you’ll know the difference between an ARPG, a CRPG, and a JRPG.

It’s nice to have a one-stop resource where you can learn what it means to “git gud” or memorize ABCs of the RPG genre, but the list is missing explanations for several popular subgenres with annoyingly obtuse names like the aforementioned “metroidvania,” “roguelike,” and “soulslike.” Luckily, we have a guide that can help demystify these unhelpful video game genre descriptors.

I hope PlayStation continues to add to its Gamer Dictionary, but it’s already a helpful and necessary resource and I’m glad it exists. Recent NPD estimates show that three out of every four people in the United States play video games of some kind. While these figures include mobile and casual gaming, more people than ever are also playing on consoles or PCs, which inevitably means more people will be curious enough to try bigger, more immersive, and more exciting video games for themselves, too.

I’m excited to see companies take steps to make console and PC gaming more approachable—whether that’s Sony’s new gamer dictionary, Microsoft’s commitment to accessibility options, or Nintendo’s ever-broadening appeal via games like Nintendo Switch Sports, Animal Crossing, and Ring Fit Adventure.

[GameSpot]

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