Translation efforts of Jehovah's Witnesses reach Alabama residents in the language of their Hearts - Elmore Autauga News - Translation

From Jehovah’s Witnesses of the United States of America Organization

‘Straight to the Heart’: Unprecedented Translation Work brings Words to Life for Millions

Jin Gim (pronounced Kim) joined his family in the United States when he was 28 years old. Montgomery resident Gim was born and raised in Seoul, South Korea and did not speak English. However, prior to his arrival, he had been baptized as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. The organization first began publishing the Watchtower and Awake! magazines in the Korean language in 1952. Today, in the Republic of Korea there are 1,270 congregations. However, in Alabama, there is only one.

Says Gim, “I knew very few words of English when I first came to the U.S., and it’s still hard for me. It’s really awesome and fantastic that I can attend meetings and study Christian publications in my own language.”

Why do Jehovah’s Witnesses put so much effort into translation, including for some smaller language groups?

“We understand that a region’s official language may not be the language of a person’s heart,” said Robert Hendriks, the U.S. spokesperson for Jehovah’s Witnesses.

In the United States alone, some 67 million residents speak a language other than English at home.

According to UNESCO, education based on the language one speaks at home results in better quality learning, fosters respect and helps preserve cultural and traditional heritage. “The inclusion of languages in the digital world and the creation of inclusive learning content is vital,” according to its website.

That’s true for all ages and for all types of education.

“Translating spiritually uplifting material into over 1,000 languages takes a considerable amount of time and resources,” said Hendriks, “but we know that reaching a person’s heart with the Bible’s comforting message can only be accomplished if they fully understand it.”

Gim and others in the Korean-language congregation regularly reach out to their Korean-speaking neighbors in Montgomery. Although the door-to-door work of Jehovah’s Witnesses has been suspended since March 2020, they continue their ministry by writing letters and making telephone calls. Before the pandemic, Gim recalls engaging in the door-to-door work and one resident, who had recently arrived from Korea, remarked, “Oh, my! The Witnesses are here, too!”

Before moving to Alabama, Gim had also assisted Korean-speaking Witnesses in

California, North Carolina, and Georgia.

“No matter where I live, my fellow Christian friends are always there to help me,” says Gim. “My family and I have always been welcomed and we know that as Jehovah’s Witnesses, we are all one.”

To learn more about the translation work of Jehovah’s Witnesses visit

https://ift.tt/lHR8MSK

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“Turnovers” was the only word in the Celtics’ Game 3 dictionary - Celtics Blog - Dictionary

The Boston Celtics gave away Game 3 against the Miami Heat. Literally.

Their 24 turnovers tied the most in a playoff game this season by any team. The only other squad to record that number of giveaways in a game was the Philadelphia 76ers in Round 1 against the Toronto Raptors. The big difference is, the Sixers won their game.

Boston recorded at least five turnovers in every single quarter of the contest. They had five in the first, six in the second, seven in the third, and five in the fourth. It was a truly incredible feat that prevented them from mounting one of the most improbable comeback victories in postseason franchise history.

Head coach Ime Udoka spoke about the turnovers and said that while the Celtics were able to climb all the way back, they dug themselves in too big of a hole to overcome.

You turn the ball over 24 times and gift them 33 points out of that, you dig yourself a hole. Credit, we fought back and got into a one-point game, they made some mistakes and some more turnovers, but you dig yourself in that big of a hole due to playing in the crowd.

While the Heat managed to produce 33 points off of Boston’s turnovers, the Celtics only scrounged up nine points on nine Miami turnovers. That’s a 24-point difference in a game that was decided by just six points. Big man Al Horford commented on this as well, stating that “it seemed like every time we put ourselves in a position, we turned it over.”

The Celtics’ carelessness also helped the Heat set a new franchise record. Their 19 steals were the most ever in a playoff game for Miami. It was a team effort, too, as three different players had four steals (Kyle Lowry, Bam Adebayo, and Victory Oladipo), and four others had at least one.

Notching 24 turnovers took a team effort, but Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown led the way. The star duo combined for 13 giveaways, as Brown had seven and Tatum six. Brown owned up to his ball-handling issues and explaining what he needs to do better.

Did a s*** job today of taking care of the basketball. But, just being stronger, you know. Driving, I’m gonna keep being aggressive, I’m gonna keep getting to the basket, I’m gonna keep doing what I do, but be stronger when I get in there.

Brown has had issues dribbling in traffic for most of the postseason, and those problems caught up with him again on Saturday night. Of his seven turnovers, six of them came while he was trying to make a move toward the hoop. The other was an errant pass where he attempted to get the ball to Grant Williams down low.

This play is emblematic of Brown’s struggles. His handle is extremely loose, and even when he gets past an initial defender, he loses control and gives up possession, allowing Miami to get an easy bucket on the other end.

Tatum also talked about the turnovers during his post-game interview. He said that his performance was “unacceptable” and that he left the team hanging with how poorly he played.

Obviously, they played well from the beginning. But you know, six turnovers and no field goals in the second half, that is unacceptable. I gotta play better. I feel like I left the guys hanging tonight. That’s on me. I acknowledge that.

While Brown mainly struggled with his handle, Tatum’s turnovers usually occur in a wider variety of ways. However, they can be boiled down to three problems: bad passes, losing the ball in traffic at the rim, and offensive fouls. Below is an example of each one.

The poor passing decisions were a carry-over from Game 1 when Tatum recorded six turnovers by himself in the third quarter. He’s improved as a playmaker a lot this season, but his lazy passes have killed the Celtics in this series.

During his drives into traffic, Tatum just has to make decisions quicker. Miami’s defense is tough, and once he gets too far into the trees, he’s trapped. And as far as his offensive fouls go, Tatum just has to stop extending his arm. He gets called for that constantly, and defenders are able to look for it now, especially smart defenders like P.J. Tucker.

After a rocky start, Boston turned things around in a big way, but the turnovers persisted. As Horford stated, they just gave the ball away whenever they got close. They’ll have an opportunity to bounce back in Game 4, as they have all season, and taking care of the basketball will undoubtedly be the top priority.

Game 4 is set to tip off on Monday night at 8:30 p.m. EST.

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Matthew McConaughey believes a word should be removed from dictionary - KFOR Oklahoma City - Dictionary

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Matthew McConaughey believes a word should be removed from dictionary  KFOR Oklahoma City

Matthew McConaughey Wants His 'Least Favourite Word' Wiped From The Dictionary - LADbible - Dictionary

Matthew McConaughey is a mesmerising storyteller, and he's made a living captivating audiences down the decades. But there's one word you won't catch the actor uttering. Watch here:

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In a video posted on social media, the Magic Mike star decried the word 'unbelievable'.

Now, for a lot of people that's a pretty inoffensive word. In fact, many people - such as Chris Kamara and Gary Neville - seem to like it quite a lot. Not McConaughey, though.

"Unbelievable - it's my least favourite word," he said.

"I think we should wipe it out of the dictionary."

So, why on Earth does the 52-year-old find this word so offensive that he wants it expunged from the English language?

"What's so unbelievable about tragedy, about triumph, about people that raise us up or let us down?" he asked. "It happens every single day.

"We shouldn't think that the most beautiful sunset, or the greatest play, or the greatest love of our life, or the greatest moment of euphoria is unbelievable - believe it. It's happening right in front of you in you.

"We shouldn't feel like the greatest tragedy, or death, or earthquakes, or natural disasters, or loss is unbelievable. It's part of life too, believe it. We see it happen every day.

"So, unbelievable, I don't buy. Awesome, horrible, incredible. I believe those. That's a good way to explain things, but unbelievable. Nah, it just happened. Believe it."

McConaughey doesn't find anything unbelievable. Credit: Alamy

Fair dos Matthew, you've convinced me - though with that charisma he could convince me of just about anything.

In fact, he recently did convince me of a pretty unbelievable story, or hard to believe story, I should say.

As you can see, for a bloke in his fifties McConaughey sports an enviable head of hair, even though he'd started thinning before the turn of the millennium.

Indeed, as he recounts in his memoir Greenlights, the hair loss got so bad that he decided to shave his head.

But somehow - without hair transplants - it grew back.

"I get this topical ointment and I rub it into my scalp, once a day for 10 minutes," he told LADbible.

"I was fully committed, I was fully committed to it - no Propecia, no nothing, it was just manual labour.

"All I can tell you is it came back. I have more hair now than I had in 1999."

Astonishing. Dumbfounding. Unreal... But not unbelievable.

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Retired Gonzaga professor pens ‘The Routledge Dictionary of Nonverbal Communication’ - The Spokesman Review - Dictionary

The pin on your lapel.

A slight shoulder shrug.

The way you clasp your hands.

Human beings communicate in myriad ways without ever saying a word, and that has fascinated David Givens for 60 years.

He majored in anthropology at San Diego State and then received his doctorate from the University of Washington.

“Nonverbal communication is everything apart from the spoken word or manually signed words,” Givens said. “It gives us information and evolved as a way for humans to say ‘See me, I am here.’ ”

While at UW, Givens videotaped conversations between students.

“I broke them (the conversations) down into all the nonverbal signs and came up with 200 nonverbal signs for my dissertation.”

That early work eventually became the basis for the online Nonverbal Dictionary, which Givens created when he launched the Center for Nonverbal Studies in 1997.

The center’s mission is to advance the study of human communication in all its forms apart from language.

“I wanted to address some profound questions,” he said. “I wanted to do something to help people understand what it means to be human. The online dictionary is a free resource that’s used around the world.”

During the pandemic, he partnered with a colleague in Ireland to publish a print version of his online dictionary, “The Routledge Dictionary of Nonverbal Communication” (Routledge, 2021).

The book is presented as a series of chapters with alphabetical entries, ranging from attractiveness to zeitgeist, and aims to provide the reader with a clear understanding of some of the relevant discourse on particular topics while also making it practical and easy to read.

Prior to launching the Center for Nonverbal Studies, Givens taught at UW and also served as Anthropologist in Residence at the American Anthropological Association in Washington, D.C., for 12 years.

After moving to Spokane in 1997, he taught at Gonzaga University, taking hiatus for research before returning to teach online. He retired from GU in January.

Givens said what set his research apart from other anthropologists is that he studied the roles of neurology, psychology and psychiatry in nonverbal communication.

For instance, the shoulder shrug.

“It can be voluntary or involuntary and can convey uncertainty,” he explained.

The neuromuscular action gives observers a look into the brain.

“Words themselves, like court transcripts, are devoid of emotion, but add body movement, eye contact,” he said. “Lips, hands, shoulders and eyes give us a look inside at emotional cues.”

Gestures aren’t the only types of nonverbal communication,

“Take our flag,” he said. “It’s colorful and symbolic and communicates nonverbal information.”

Givens has worked with the legal system, the FBI and businesses to help decode the mysteries of nonverbal communication in various settings.

“The battleground I studied most was the board table,” he said. “With legs and torso underneath the table, it becomes a stage for hands. Hand movements reveal a lot.”

He used palm up as an example, explaining uplifted palms suggest a vulnerable or nonaggressive pose that appeals to listeners as allies rather than as rivals or foes.

When his co-author, John White, reached out to him from Dublin City University and broached the idea of compiling the online dictionary into a book, Givens was excited.

“I’m working on a second book with John,” he said. “We communicate almost every day. He’s in his 50s, so I’m slowly handing everything over to him. I’m 77, and I don’t want all this to die.”

His goal in compiling decades of research into the intricacies of nonverbal communication into book form is that readers will use it to enrich their lives.

“Understanding nonverbal communication adds color and depth,” Givens said. “You’ll see things that you’ve never seen before, and that makes life more fun.”

For more information, go to routledge.com.

Cindy Hval can be reached at dchval@juno.com.

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What’s so great about Google’s ‘translation glasses’? - Computerworld - Translation

Google teased translation glasses at last week's Google I/O developer conference, holding out the promise that you can one day talk with someone speaking in a foreign language, and see the English translation in your glasses.

Company execs demonstrated the glasses in a video; it showed not only “closed captioning” — real-time text spelling out in the same language what another person is saying — but also translation to and from English and Mandarin or Spanish, enabling people speaking two different languages to carry on a conversation while also letting hearing-impaired users see what others are saying to them.

As Google Translate hardware, the glasses would solve a major pain point with using Google Translate, which is: If you use audio translation, the translation audio steps on the real-time conversation. By presenting translation visually, you could follow conversations much more easily and naturally.

Unlike Google Glass, the translation-glasses prototype is augmented reality (AR), too. Let me explain what I mean.

Augmented reality happens when a device captures data from the world and, based on its recognition of what that data means, adds information to it that’s available to the user.

Google Glass was not augmented reality — it was a heads-up display. The only contextual or environmental awareness it could deal with was location. Based on location, it could give turn-by-turn directions or location-based reminders. But it couldn’t normally harvest visual or audio data, then return to the user information about what they were seeing or hearing.

Google’s translation glasses are, in fact, AR by essentially taking audio data from the environment and returning to the user a transcript of what’s being said in the language of choice.

Audience members and the tech press reported on the translation function as the exclusive application for these glasses without any analytical or critical exploration, as far as I could tell. The most glaring fact that should have been mentioned in every report is that translation is just an arbitrary choice for processing audio data in the cloud. There's so much more the glasses could do!

They could easily process any audio for any application and return any text or any audio to be consumed by the wearer. Isn’t that obvious?

In reality, the hardware sends noise to the cloud, and displays whatever text the cloud sends back. That’s all the glasses do. Send noise. Receive and display text.

The applications for processing audio and returning actionable or informational contextual information are practically unlimited. The glasses could send any noise, and then display any text returned from the remote application.

The noise could even be encoded, like an old-time modem. A noise-generating device or smartphone app could send R2D2-like beeps and whistles, which could be processed in the cloud like an audio QR code which, once interpreted by servers, could return any information to be displayed on the glasses. This text could be instructions for operating equipment. It could be information about a specific artifact in a museum. It could be information about a specific product in a store.

These are the kinds of applications we’ll be waiting for visual AR to deliver in five years or more. In the interim, most of it could be done with audio.

One obviously powerful use for Google’s “translation glasses” would be to use them with Google Assistant. It would be just like using a smart display with Google Assistant — a home appliance that delivers visual data, along with the normal audio data, from Google Assistant queries. But that visual data would be available in your glasses, hands-free, no matter where you are. (That would be a heads-up display application, rather than AR.)

But imagine if the “translation glasses” were paired with a smartphone. With permission granted by others, Bluetooth transmissions of contact data could display (on the glasses) who you’re talking to at a business event, and also your history with them.

Why the tech press broke Google Glass

Google Glass critics slammed the product, mainly for two reasons. First, a forward-facing camera mounted on the headset made people uncomfortable. If you were talking to a Google Glass wearer, the camera was pointed right at you, making you wonder if you were being recorded. (Google didn’t say whether their “translation glasses” would have a camera, but the prototype didn’t have one.)

Second, the excessive and conspicuous hardware made wearers look like cyborgs.

The combination of these two hardware transgressions led critics to assert that Google Glass was simply not socially acceptable in polite company.

Google’s “translation glasses,” on the other hand, neither have a camera nor do they look like cyborg implants — they look pretty much like ordinary glasses. And the text visible to the wearer is not visible to the person they’re talking to. It just looks like they’re making eye contact.

The sole remaining point of social unacceptability for Google’s “translation glasses” hardware is the fact that Google would be essentially “recording” the words of others without permission, uploading them to the cloud for translation, and presumably retaining those recordings as it does with other voice-related products.

Still, the fact is that augmented reality and even heads-up displays are super compelling, if only makers can get the feature set right. Someday, we’ll have full visual AR in ordinary-looking glasses. In the meantime, the right AR glasses would have the following features:

1. They look like regular glasses.
2. They can accept prescription lenses.
3. They have no camera.
4. They process audio with AI and return data via text.
5. and they offer assistant functionality, returning results with text.

To date, there is no such product. But Google demonstrated it has the technology to do it.

While language captioning and translation might be the most compelling feature, it is — or should be — just a Trojan Horse for many other compelling business applications as well.

Google hasn’t announced when — or even if — “translate glasses” will ship as a commercial product. But if Google doesn’t make them, someone else will, and it will prove a killer category for business users.

The ability for ordinary glasses to give you access to the visual results of AI interpretation of whom and what you hear, plus visual and audio results of assistant queries, would be a total game changer.

We’re in an awkward period in the development of technology where AR applications mainly exist as smartphone apps (where they don’t belong) while we wait for mobile, socially acceptable AR glasses that are many years in the future.

In the interim, the solution is clear: We need audio-centric AR glasses that capture sound and display words.

That's just what Google demonstrated.

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How the SZBA Fosters Arabic Translation - Publishers Weekly - Translation

The tradition of literary translation from Arabic is not long. It was only in 1966, when Al-Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North was published, that a contemporary Arabic-language title attracted international attention when it appeared in English just three years later as part of the legendary Heinemann African Writers series in a translation by Denys Johnson-Davies—who was himself the winner of the very first Sheikh Zayed Book Award for translation in 2007. In 1973, the General Assembly of the United Nations approved Arabic as an official UN language. Then, in 1988, Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz was the first Arabic-language writer to win the Nobel Prize.

These are all significant milestones. But they show just how much road there is left to travel. After all, Arabic is the fifth most-spoken language in the world, with some 370 million users, yet Mahfouz still the only Arabic-language writer to win the Nobel.

Much of this has to do with translation, Mark Linz, the trailblazing director of the American University in Cairo Press, who died in 2013, was instrumental in bringing Mahfouz to English-language readers for the first time – and was a regular visitor to the Sheikh Zayed Book Awards and the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair. English, being a gateway language, Linz helped introduce Mahfouz, and scores of other authors Linz published in translation, to the world. It was Linz who became Denys Johnson-Davies’ publisher of record late in his life. (Mahfouz was responsible his own SZBA, when in 2015 that Hanawa Haruo won the SZBA for translating Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy into Japanese.

Today, according to the latest UNESCO Index Translation Statistics, while Arabic is only 29th on the top 50 list of "target languages", which considers translation of titles into specific languages, it is significantly stronger in translations from Arabic to other languages, where it ranks 17th on the list of "original language translation.”

What changed? When considering the production of Arabic language books, one needs to take in the entirety of the Arab-speaking world, which includes 22 countries of the Arab league: Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, KSA, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, UAE, Yemen. While accurate statistics are difficult to come by, the online bookseller Neelwafurat has estimated the production of new Arabic books at between 15,000 and 18,000 titles per year, of which 20% are translations from other languages. That means that foreign publishers have a minimum of 12,000 new titles per year to choose from.

In the United States, 321 books were translated and published by mainstream trade houses from 2008 until the end of 2021, according to Publishers Weekly's Translation Database. It is clear that Arabic language books are garnering more and more international attention as well. To wit: the awarding of the 2019 International Booker Prize to Celestial Bodies, a book about a trio of Omani sisters who take different paths in life by Jokha Alharthi, in a translation from Arabic by Marilyn Booth. It was published in Sandstone Press.

The Sheikh Zayed Book Awards are contributing to this wave of change. Not only does it offer awards to writers translating from Arabic, it offers awards to support, facilitate and foster the additional translation of books from Arabic into other languages. The program—the Sheikh Zayed Book Award Translation Grants—was introduced in 2018 and introduced a translation grant program to help support the translation of SZBA-winning Arabic language books and their publication around the world. Sixteen books have been translated into multiple languages since the launch of the grant, including English, German, French, Italian, Greek, Georgian and Ukrainian.

This year, five international publishers were awarded translation grants, resulting in six translations of SZBA-winning titles. Among these titles are 2017 winner Hatless by Kuwaiti author Lateefah Buti, which is being translated into English by Nancy Roberts in collaboration with Darf Publishers; 2020 winner Lilac Girl by Palestinian-American author Ibtisam Barakat, translated into German by Suleman Taufiq to be published by Germany’s Sujet Verlag; and 2014 winner Thirty Poems for Children by Lebanese poet Jawdat Fakhreddine, translated into French by Leila Tahir and into English by Huda Fakhreddine with Bookland Press.

From the Literature category, 2018 winner Remorse Test by Syrian author Khalil Sweileh has been translated into German by Suleman Taufiq to be published by Sujet Verlag. Lastly, the 2015 winner The Madmen of Bethlehem by Palestinian author Osama Alaysa, was translated into Georgian by Darejan Gardavadze to bepublished by Intelekti Publishing.

Through the SZBA Translation Grants it becomes clear that Arabic-language literature resonates around the world, even in times of crisis. This year two Ukrainian publishers Eleonora Simonova of Nora-Druk Publishers and Anetta Antonenko of her eponymous imprint discovered books by acclaimed Lebanese and Syrian authors for translation. They note the opportunities for cultural exchange supported by the SZBA translation grant, which comes at a time when it is essential to support Ukrainian translators and publishers. In this way, the SZBA is having an impact far from home and where it can have the greatest cultural impact.

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