Dominican sister helps with work on new translation of Book of Revelation - Crux Now - Translation

NASHVILLE — For the past five years, Sister Mary Dominic Pitts, of the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia Congregation in Nashville, has been deep in study of the Book of Revelation.

She and 250 others are working on a new translation of the last book of the Bible in a project known as “Le Bible et ses traditions” (“the Bible and its traditions”), or the French abbreviation BEST.

The project is sponsored by École Biblique, the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem.

“École Biblique is a center of research, translation and study of Scripture and archaeology. It is best known for its publication of the Jerusalem Bible,” Pitts explained.

The school was founded in 1890 in Jerusalem by Father Marie-Joseph Lagrange, a French Dominican priest, who was a Scripture scholar and pioneer in biblical exegesis. Its administration and much of its teachings are still in French.

Pitts had already spent two years writing notes on the Book of Revelation when Dominican Father Anthony Giambrone, vice director of École Biblique, called on her to do more in October 2019.

He said it was up to her to translate all five original languages of the book — the Latin Vulgate, the Syriac Peshitta and the three versions of the Greek New Testament — into English, as well as write notes on interesting grammar, words and more.

“Father Giambrone stressed the fact that they ‘needed a linguist’ to comment on the language-related aspects of the project. I think that my skill set with a doctorate in linguistics and in-depth study of the analysis of languages was what suggested my participation on the project,” Pitts said.

“It helps that I am an experienced editor, which helps keep the footnotes well written but short,” she told the Tennessee Register, diocesan newspaper of Nashville.

Pitts’s knowledge of the three languages came from years of study. In 2001, she studied Syriac with one of the world’s experts in the language, Dominican Father Stephen Ryan, during a summer course at Providence College in Rhode Island.

“That was an accidental acquisition,” she said, noting that she “signed up just for fun, never guessing that I would actually use it 16 years later.”

She learned Greek at Providence College as well, a requirement for her master’s degree in biblical studies. “I’ve tried to keep it up since then,” she said. “I have good dictionaries and grammar (books) to work with all these languages.”

She also has been studying Latin since high school and has continued her studies during her time at the convent.

Pitts spends roughly a month translating each chapter.

“I translate them myself a verse at a time from all five versions to insert into the BEST platform in English,” she said. “The texts that I translate are the original ancient languages in their own spellings and alphabets.

“Any significant variants are ‘stacked’ vertically in the text over the word or phrase where they actually occur, one language on top of another for ease of comparison.”

She said the five versions “are translated as literally as possible to ‘stay true to the text’ especially from Syriac, a language not known as well as Greek or Latin.”

Extensive footnotes at the end of each chapter also are part of the translation.

“They are keyed to cover the verses and cover many linguistic and sociocultural facts never before commented on, including grammatical features, derivations and meanings of words, figures of speech, historical or other contextual facts, and Jewish and Christian tradition,” Pitts said.

Quoting the project’s website, she said the purpose of the translation is to “create the most extensive and helpful set of notes for the entire Bible, with information of interest both to biblical scholars and casual readers.”

As she continues to work on the translations, Pitts said, she expects to complete the project by mid-fall and has high hopes for what it will contribute to  the church.

“Pope Leo XIII and Pope Pius XII issued encyclicals inviting modern study of the Bible so that Scriptures would be opened up to the faithful in the same methods that Father Lagrange pioneered at the École Biblique,” Pitts said.

“The BEST approach contributes to the richness of Scripture in, for example, ‘biblical polyphony’ resulting from the different versions and will restore the Catholic feel and appreciation of God’s many voices in Scripture,” she added.

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Editors note: For more information about the BEST project, visit https://ift.tt/HlV2kNo.

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Peterson is on the staff of the Tennessee Register, newspaper of the Diocese of Nashville.

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Henry Louis Gates Jr. Will Guide Oxford University Press Over New African American English Dictionary - Black Enterprise - Dictionary

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Director of the Hutchins Center for African and American Research at Harvard University, will provide editorial direction to Oxford University Press as it devises a dictionary that will exclusively be dedicated to “African-American Vernacular English,” according to the Washington Times.

Mellon and Wagner Foundations provided grants for the undertaking. The Oxford Dictionary of African American English (ODAAE) is a seminal erudite initiative focused on documenting the evolution of the vast and historical influential lexicon of AAVE and compiling it into a dictionary, the Oxford English reports.

 “African American English has had a profound impact on the world’s most widely spoken language, yet much of it has been obscured. The ODAAE seeks to acknowledge this contribution more fully and formally and, in doing so, create a powerful tool for a new generation of researchers, students, and scholars to build a more accurate picture of how African American life has influenced how we speak, and therefore who we are,” Casper Grathwohl, President of Oxford Languages at Oxford University Press, said in a released statement.

The glossary will contain “quotations taken from real examples of language in use,” in conjunction with meanings, pronunciation, spelling, proper usage, and the historical context of each word within the Oxford dictionary notations, as mentioned by the Oxford English Dictionary. 

Gates will lead a group of researchers and editors recruited from Oxford and Harvard, the Washington Times reports.

Gates explained, “Every speaker of American English borrows heavily from words invented by African Americans, whether they know it or not. Words with African origins such as ”goober’, ‘gumbo’ and ‘okra’ survived the Middle Passage along with our African ancestors. And words that we take for granted today, such as ‘cool’ and ‘crib,’ ‘hokum’ and ‘diss,’ ‘hip’ and ‘hep,’ ‘bad,’ meaning ‘good,’ and ‘dig,’ meaning ‘to understand’—these are just a tiny fraction of the words that have come into American English from African American speakers, neologisms that emerged out of the Black Experience in this country, over the last few hundred years.”

The dictionary will be available in 2025.

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Lil Nas X Wants 'Bussy' Added to the Dictionary For Pride Month - Out Magazine - Dictionary

Lil Nas X Wants 'Bussy' Added to the Dictionary For Pride Month

Pride Month 2022 is all about the bussy!

That’s the message Grammy-winning artist Lil Nas X is sending, at least, and we are on board 100 percent! Over the weekend, the "Industry Baby" rapper and singer tweeted that “for Pride Month it’s really important that our government finally takes a stand and adds bussy to the dictionary.” We couldn’t agree more!

Now, Dictionary.com has decided to step up and be a true ally, replying “we added WAP to the dictionary, so anything’s possible.” Happy Pride indeed!!!

If you’re not familiar, “bussy” is a portmanteau of the words “boy” and “p*ssy” used to describe the anus. The first time the word was used online goes way back to 2007 where an Urban Dictionary user uploaded the definition “Slang term used by gay men to connote Boy-P*ssy. In reference to their anus. Bussy has been used for at least 15 years by gay men to describe their man hole of love!”

While the phrase has been popular in gay and trans communities for years, it reached widespread audiences in 2019 when Taron Egerton did a video for BuzzFeed entitled “Taron Egerton Reads Thirst Tweets.”

One of the tweets he read in the video said “Taron Egerton is a white boy that I trust to destroy my bussy.” After he read it, Egerton asked, “What does that mean?”

Now the word has become so ubiquitous that cis, straight people are misusing it. But don’t worry, Lil Nas X is here to save us and make sure the word is used correctly. He even uses the word in an upcoming song.

There are still about two weeks left in Pride Month, so that’s plenty of time for the dictionary to officially add bussy.

RELATED | 34 Pride Collections That Actually Benefit the LGBTQ+ Community

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Web3 Dictionary for Musicians: Explaining gas, DAO, hot wallet, KYC, rug pull, more - hypebot.com - Dictionary

Get up to date on one of the biggest players of the future of the music industry-Web3, with this Glossary of artists you must know.

by Janelle Borg from AmplifyYou

If you’re confused about the web3-related terms that pop up on Twitter or Instagram, you’re not alone. Web3 has led to a lexicon of new words that are quickly becoming part of the jargon of several industries – including the music industry. So if you want to stay ahead of the curb, here’s a simple web3 glossary to get you started!

A – Address

A string of characters representing a crypto wallet. These characters are randomly generated and are essential when it comes to sending or receiving digital assets.

B – Blockchain

A digital ledger system that makes it impossible to change or hack information. It is a form of distributed database that records all transactions.

C – Crypto

Short for cryptocurrency, it is a digital currency secured by cryptography. Cryptocurrencies are different from “normal” currencies, in that they are not regulated by central or third-party authorities and run on the blockchain.

D – DAO

Stands for Decentralized Autonomous Organization. DAOs are blockchain-based organisations that are community-led and do not have a central authority. They are governed by members who decide on the current and future direction of the DAO.

E – Ethereum

Ethereum is a decentralized, open-source blockchain with smart contract functionality. Its native cryptocurrency, Ether, is the token most commonly used in the Ethereum blockchain network.

F – Fiat money

This refers to government-issued, “traditional” currencies such as dollars, pounds and euros. Fiat money is largely controlled by central authorities, such as banks and governments.

G – Gas

Gas is the fee required to make a transaction on the Ethereum network. The exact price of the gas fee depends on demand and supply.

H – Hot wallet

A hot wallet is a wallet connected to the internet. It enables holders to send, receive and store tokens. Hot wallets are secured by public and private keys that facilitate transactions.

I – Interoperability

This refers to techniques that enable different blockchains to work together and transfer assets to each other for maximum functionality. Interoperability is one of the building blocks of web3 as it leads to inter-industry collaboration.

K – KYC

Know Your Customer (KYC) refers to a set of standards in financial services used to verify customers. In crypto, it is the process of verifying identities before allowing users to use a crypto exchange.

L – Liquidity

This refers to the speed with which an asset can be converted into standard cash without affecting the market price. Essentially, liquidity is how quickly you can get cash in your hands.

M – Metaverse

The metaverse refers to a shared virtual environment that can be accessed using technologies such as virtual reality and augmented reality. One of the main tenets of the metaverse is social connection. Therefore, the concept refers to a future iteration of the Internet that is universal and more like an immersive virtual world than it is today.

N – NFT

NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token. An NFT is a digital asset that exists on the blockchain. Since NFTs are secured by cryptography, they are totally unique and therefore cannot be replicated.

P – P2P

P2P or peer-to-peer refers to a direct exchange of an asset between individuals, without the involvement of third parties. Unlike traditional online transactions, P2P transactions are safeguarded by being recorded on every peer’s network.

R – Rug Pull

A rug pull is a common scam in the crypto and NFT spaces. This is when a project owner promotes a new project to investors, hypes it up, and then abandons it after taking all the funds.

S – Smart Contract

A smart contract is a transaction protocol in the form of code that runs when certain conditions are met. Smart contracts automate the execution of a workflow so that the individuals involved know what the outcome is going to be.

T – Token

A token is a representation of an asset that is held, traded, or staked to earn interest. Technically, it’s just another word for crypto. However, it is mostly used when referring to cryptocurrencies other than Ethereum and Bitcoin. “Token” is also used to refer to digital assets or collectibles.

V – Virtual Reality

Virtual reality or VR is a simulated experience that can be accessed using headsets or multi-projected environments. VR is computer-generated and can be interacted with in a “real” way via specialised equipment.

W – Web3

The impending iteration of the Internet, which is based on blockchain technology, token-based economics and interoperability. Coined in 2014 by Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood, web3 gained a lot of popularity from 2020 as blockchain technology and crypto became mainstream.

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Between the leaves: How translation sets a book truly free - The Hindu - Translation

For to read deeply is to appreciate how the book has come to be, in its entirety. | Photo Credit: Getty Images

You have to sympathise with the Finnish translator working on Catch-22 back in 1962 who wrote to Heller, “Would you please explain me one thing: What means Catch-22?” The gentleman had looked up dictionaries, he had sought out the help of the U.S. air attaché in Helsinki. But remained clueless

The dictionary loaded on my laptop defines Catch-22 as “a dilemma or difficult circumstance from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting or dependent conditions”. It also adds the origin of the phrase: “1960s: title of a novel by Joseph Heller (1961), in which the main character feigns madness in order to avoid dangerous combat missions, but his desire to avoid them is taken to prove his sanity.”

So, you have to sympathise with the Finnish translator working on the book back in 1962 who wrote to Heller, “Would you please explain to me one thing: What means Catch-22?” The gentleman had looked up dictionaries, he had sought out the help of the U.S. air attaché in Helsinki. But remained clueless. The meaning we now derive from the phrase drawn from the book; the book came first, then the popular interpretation of the phrase. As Rebecca Lee recounts this incident in  How Words Get Good: The Story of Making a Book (Profile Books, ₹1,220 Kindle edition), Heller concluded, “I think in Finland the book will lose a great deal in translation.” We can only hope that wasn’t the case, and the Finnish translator found a way around his bafflement, which was, in effect, the entire point of the phrase.

Lee, an editorial manager at Penguin Random House with two decades in publishing, provides a detailed, witty overview of not just how a book proceeds from an idea to the volume in the reader’s hand — the commissioning of the book, editing, etc. She also makes a solid case for understanding how we read. For to read deeply, is to appreciate how the book has come to be, in its entirety.

As we are seeing currently with Geetanjali Shree sharing the International Booker Prize for  Tomb of Sand with Daisy Rockwell, who translated it from the Hindi original, Ret Samadhi, the process of translation specifically is rightfully in the news.

Freedom deepened by persuasion

In this, it’s interesting to see translation as part of a package that Lee calls, in the last third of her book, “how words get free”. Translation allows a book to find readers outside of the subset defined by the language of the original. This freedom, she argues, is also deepened by persuasion: through blurbs and covers that interest readers, through typography, footnotes (Lee adores them), margins, typeface. Each aspect has its experts, its history, and its fascinating anecdotes.

On the blurb, for instance. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, writes Lee, when bookstores opened after the first lockdown, many discouraged browsers from picking up books they were not seriously considering buying. So instead of displaying books by their covers, they turned the books around, so the customers saw the back covers. Browsers got to judge a book by its blurb, as it were. That restriction, thankfully, did not last. But it does bring to Lee’s mind J.D. Salinger’s book contracts that only the title and his name be on the cover, “absolutely no images... quotes, blurb or biography”. And it also makes you wonder at the dilemma that would have been faced by adherents of Marshall McLuhan’s reported rule of the thumb — mentioned elsewhere by Lee — that if you are not sure whether to buy a book, turn to page 69, and judge the book by it.

In the end, unsurprisingly, Lee makes a case for the physical book. Should she like a book she’s read on an e-reader, she goes and buys a physical copy too, for she invests “more meaning and value in the printed word”. And she warns that books downloaded on e-readers are never really yours hereafter: “On an e-reader, you can only license and hire words.” Under specific circumstances, you may lose access to them.

There are yet greater threats to always guard against. Lee’s citation of the horrific Nazi book burning of 25,000 volumes deemed “un-German” in May 1933 frames the case for protecting and appreciating the book-making process beyond getting the printed copy into the reader’s hands. At the site of that crime, in Berlin, this quote by Heinrich Heine is engraved: “Where they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings too.”

mini.kapoor@thehindu.co.in

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Illini Union Bookstore issues apology after incorrect translation on international t-shirts - wcia.com - Translation

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Illini Union Bookstore issues apology after incorrect translation on international t-shirts  wcia.com

Oxford announces 'African American English' dictionary, Harvard's Gates to oversee 3-year project - Washington Times - Dictionary

Oxford University Press has announced it will produce a new dictionary of “African American English,” which will include slang ranging from “hip” to “diss.”

Black Harvard literary critic Henry Louis Gates Jr. will oversee the three-year project for Oxford Languages to compile the “Oxford Dictionary of African American English,” the publisher said in a news release Thursday.

The new book will include “quotations taken from real examples of language in use,” alongside the usual Oxford dictionary notations on the meaning, pronunciation, spelling, usage and history of each word.

“This will serve to acknowledge the contributions of African-American writers, thinkers, and artists, as well as everyday African Americans, to the evolution of the English lexicon,” Oxford University Press said in the release. “Evidence will be gathered from such diverse sources as novels, academic research papers, newspapers and magazines, song lyrics, recipes, social media and more.”

Mr. Gates, director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, will oversee a team of researchers and editors from Oxford and Harvard.

“Every speaker of American English borrows heavily from words invented by African Americans, whether they know it or not,” Mr. Gates said.

He cited the words “goober,” “gumbo,” “okra,” “cool,” “crib,” “hokum,” “diss,” “hip,” “hep,” “bad” (meaning good) and “dig” (meaning to understand) as examples.

“The editing of the Oxford Dictionary of African American English will realize a dream I’ve nurtured since I first studied the pages of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language: to research and compile fully and systematically the richness of African American English,” he said.

The professor said his team will solicit “crowd-sourced contributions” to the dictionary from Black Americans to give the most accurate snapshot of African American English and its contributions to the English language. The three-year research project is being funded partly by grants from the Mellon and Wagner Foundations.

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