Sunday, March 19, 2023

RSS chief launches Urdu translation of Samaveda; filmmaker Durrani says ‘Aurangzeb haar gaya, Modi ji jeet gay - Times Now - Translation

Mohan Bhagwat

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat launches Urdu translation of Samaveda

Photo : IANS

Filmmaker Iqbal Durrani, who translated the Samaveda, said, ‘Aurangzeb haar gaya, Modi ji jeet gaye’.

Dara Shikoh translated Upanishads and wanted to translate Vedas but Aurangzeb got him killed. After 400 years, that dream has been fulfilled by me under the leadership of PM Modi, Durrani said.

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The filmmaker said that Samaveda should be included as prayer at schools and madrassas.

The event comes days after the annual meeting of the Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha (ABPS), the RSS’s most important body, concluded. Addressing a press conference, Sarkaryavah Dattatreya Hosabale, emphasised that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the entire society will continue to work to remove all the obstacles coming in the way of the nation's resurgence.

In the meeting it was decided that the Sangh will aim to focus on social harmony, family values, ecological conservation, Swadeshi (bharatiya) conduct, and civic duty.

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Hosabale categorically stated that untouchability is a disgrace to the society, and that the RSS is committed to eradicating it

Meanwhile, Telangana Prant Karyavah Kacham Ramesh Though said that some people may accuse the Sangh of promoting communalism, but people who understand the organisation would appreciate its work.

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Saturday, March 18, 2023

New literary and translation prizes select winners to find fresh voices in Korean literature - The Korea Herald - Translation

Bora Jin (left) and Jenny Jisun Kim (Na Hye-in, Doi Kim/Charm Agency)

Bora Jin (left) and Jenny Jisun Kim (Na Hye-in, Doi Kim/Charm Agency)

A newly established series of literary and translation prizes, which aims to discover emerging talent in Korean literature and Korean-English translation, has completed its selection of inaugural winners with an announcement of its translation winner earlier this week, according to the series organizer, Charm Agency, this week.

On Tuesday, Jenny Jisun Kim, a US-based translator and visual artist, was named the winner of the New Translator Prize for her translation of Dolki Min’s “Settled and Solid," a short story about a rock -- a solid but reassuring companion -- that also pays attention to the fluidity of rocks and minerals. Dolki Min is the author's pen name.

In 2022, Charm, a literary agency based in Seoul, together with New York-based Barbara J. Zitwer Agency launched the New Korean Voice Prize and the New Translator Prize.

The winner of the former literature prize was announced in November in cooperation with EunHaengNaMu Publishing as a partner.

For the New Korean Voice Prize, the winning title, Bora Jin’s “A Prescription for You from Memory Care” (working English title) is a dystopian story set in a new future where a “memory care” system has been introduced to erase people's traumas to promote social stability after a collapse. The story follows Bom, who works at a pharmaceutical company that produces memory care drugs.

The judges said the novel addresses pressing contemporary concerns about memory and trauma while exploring the theme of family attachment, which resonates with readers of all backgrounds. The book skillfully weaves together genre elements, examining powerful themes such as how aggressive marketing can destroy individuals and relationships within a hierarchically structured and closed society.

The novel is set to be published in Korean by EunHaengNaMu Publishing in May.

The translation contest was overseen by Anton Hur, the two-time longlisted and shortlisted translator for the International Booker Prize in 2022, who served as the chief of the jury.

Hur said the translation matches “the verve and wit of the source text,” adding that while the translation is a bit raw, it works well with the source text’s form and premise.

By Hwang Dong-hee (hwangdh@heraldcorp.com)

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‘One aatma, one destination,’ says Bhagwat at launch of Urdu translation of Samaveda - ThePrint - Translation

New Delhi: Everyone should respect the way another community worships, said Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat Friday. He was speaking at a function organised at Red Fort ground to launch the first-ever Urdu translation of Samaveda, one of the four Vedas.

Evoking Swami Vivekananda, he added that their paths may be different but the destination of all Indians is the same.

The event saw participation of members of Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu communities. Flanked by Imam Umer Ahmed Ilyasi, chief Imam of All India Imam Organization (AIIO) and Iqbal Durrani, who has translated Samaveda, Bhagwat said, “We keep saying that the other person’s path is wrong, while only ours is the correct one. But it is not true. Our aatma  is one, and so is our destination. We should change from inside to realise this.”

Later, Durrani and Bhagwat read a few lines from the scriptures. While Bhagwat chanted the lines in Sanskrit, Durrani followed him in Urdu.

Addressing the gathering, Durrani said, “This is the time that my community should wake up. They should see the history. Dara Shikoh is the only author who attempted to translate Samaveda in Urdu. But under Shahjahan’s rule, who built the Red Fort, Aurangzeb executed him.”

“Today at the Red Fort ground under Narendra Modi’s rule, I completed his unfinished work for our people to read the ancient Vedas and understand them,” he added.

Apart from Hindu seers and Muslim clerics, celebrities like singer Anup Jalota and actor Sunil Shetty were also in attendance.

Even though senior RSS functionaries said there is no special attempt to make any Muslim outreach, they see the series of meetings between Bhagwat and Muslim intellectuals, clerics followed by his visit to the AIIO office housed inside a mosque and the adjacent madrasa as a ‘systemic outreach’ to the community.

Outreach or response to ‘positive approach’ 

At the event, Bhagwat mentioned that he was invited by Durrani to attend the launch and release his book. In September 2022, senior Muslim intellectuals including former election commissioner S.Y. Quraishi and former Delhi lieutenant governor Najeeb Jung met him. Since then, there have been a series of meetings between senior RSS functionaries and Muslim intellectuals.

After the Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha (ABPS) that concluded Tuesday, talking about the Sangh’s Muslim outreach programme, Dattatreya Hosabale, RSS general secretary said to reporters, “We are getting invitations from them, and are responding . It is not about making any new outreach but responding to some positive approach taken by their (Muslim) organisations and communities.”

A senior RSS functionary said to ThePrint that there was nothing much about the semantics, but about the ‘positive approach’. “Do not look at it in the way of who calls first. For Sangh, the most important part is that a dialogue has been initiated and it is continuing. RSS did not make any special effort for an outreach. They have always welcomed everyone, including Muslims and Christians.”

“Though there were misconceptions (initially) we are seeing a positive approach now. Rather, the outreach is systemically happening from the other side and we are responding to it,” he added.

(Edited by Smriti Sinha)


Also read: RSS backs govt on same-sex unions, says ‘marriage can only be between man and woman’


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Friday, March 17, 2023

Chance cross-cultural unicorn concepts lost in translation - Phys.org - Translation

After 225 year search, unicorns found in South Africa
One-horned antelope shown from various perspectives at a site southeast of Molteno. The necks of the two animals in the top left corner are turned, confirming that each head has one horn only. Note the yellow and white serpent. Credit: Cambridge Archaeological Journal (2023). DOI: 10.1017/S0959774323000045

There is a reason you have not come across a unicorn fossil in a museum exhibit, let alone seen one in a zoo or heard an iconic grandfatherly voice detail their daily trepidations in a BBC documentary. The reason being—spoiler alert—we have not yet managed to capture one. However, it hasn't been for lack of trying. as documented by a research article in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal, Europeans went looking for unicorns as far away as South Africa, where they found the creature depicted in rock art paintings alongside other better documented wildlife of the region.

In the article, "Revisiting the South African Unicorn: Rock Art, Natural History and Colonial Misunderstandings of Indigenous Realities," David M. Witelson of the Rock Art Research Institute School of Geography at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, details the by chance cross-cultural translation of culturally distinct unicorn concepts and connects stories of Indigenous oral tradition to literal interpretations by colonists.

Locals must have noticed something interesting about the British when they first arrived. They wore symbols on their uniforms of familiar animals, the lion and the unicorn. The British were likely amazed that the locals were aware of unicorns, and could even describe them in detail. Then the discovery by colonists of ancient rock art—depictions of unicorns as commonplace animals—caused imaginations to race. What followed were concerted search efforts fueled by a desire to capture a creature of both biblical importance and interest to natural history scientists. It was biblical passages that led to the unicorn being adopted as a royal symbol, and any question of the creature's reality was, especially in light of new evidence, necessarily so.

Over the past few hundred years, the reasons for the unicorn rock art and ensuing failure to find the creature have been assigned multiple causes. Some claim outright fraud by the initial discoverers of the rock art, claiming they made it up to create an excuse to fund frivolous search campaigns. Others have pointed to overzealous interpretations of poorly rendered representation by the rock artists, failing to depict both horns of an antelope in profile. And of course, there is the possibility that the world's best known unicorn impersonator, the rhinoceros, is to blame for the confusion.

However, there are many depictions of unicorns in South African rock art, so it was unlikely that anyone was making up the discovery of rock art. When antelope are represented, they are always painted with both horns, as most artistic renderings of local animals are accurately detailed. While it may be an accurate confusion in some other historical contexts, the rhinoceros theory seems out of place in rock art that does represent the rhino accurately and distinctly from unicorn paintings.

What has been lost in previous chronicling of the European pursuit of a European-style unicorn in southern Africa, according to Witelson, is the actual representation and meaning of unicorns to the local San people. Witelson details the existence of a cultural myth among the San people of a rain creature, a manifestation of water that takes the form of a one-horned beast—a creature that just happens to resemble the European vision of a unicorn.

In collecting and retranslating recorded oral traditions, a central theme began to emerge to Witelson. The lands where the wild and savage rain animals live in legend were the mountains to the north where the rains go as they pass. Stories of rain and water animals, at times described as one-horned creatures, matched descriptions given to early colonists of unicorns with stripes or black fur. In one story, a terrible one-horned creature, distinct from a rhinoceros, is blamed for destroying homes, while a similar creature is used as the embodiment of severe thunderstorms in another. In Witelson's assessment, the one-horned antelope of the San stories is a form taken by the rain, and their depictions in rock art are connected to these stories.

In describing the African unicorn to colonists, the San people may have left out certain aspects of the story. They might have learned of the creature as a children's story, or casually as a metaphor for rain, or even believed it to be the physical embodiment of a critical resource—a spirit or god. They might not have mentioned that it was a mythical creature if they did not think of it as such. Some records of the time merely note that the locals were aware of such a creature but add no further context. Regardless of what the San people in these conversations believed or attempted to convey, the result was a literal interpretation.

Witelson writes in the article, "…the search for the unicorn in South Africa is an early precursor of the colonial science that later emerged in the Cape Colony in the mid-nineteenth century: while unicorns and the Indigenous inhabitants of southern Africa could be accommodated in European natural history, local customs and beliefs had no such place."

More information: David M. Witelson, Revisiting the South African Unicorn: Rock Art, Natural History and Colonial Misunderstandings of Indigenous Realities, Cambridge Archaeological Journal (2023). DOI: 10.1017/S0959774323000045

© 2023 Science X Network

Citation: Chance cross-cultural unicorn concepts lost in translation (2023, March 16) retrieved 17 March 2023 from https://ift.tt/SQsuD9b

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.

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Kia ora e hoa: dozens of New Zealand and Māori words added to Oxford English Dictionary - The Guardian - Dictionary

New Zealanders will now see the common and casual te reo Māori greeting Kia ora e hoa! – meaning “hi mate” – in their Oxford English Dictionaries, as the institution moves to recognise the “profound and lasting impact” the Indigenous tongue has had on New Zealand’s language.

E hoa, or friend, is one of 47 New Zealand English words or expressions added to the dictionary in its latest update – most of them in te reo Māori, which is an official language of New Zealand. The OED describes itself as the definitive record of the English language.

While some te reo words already appear in the volume, the change reflects “the substantial number of Māori words that have become part of the vocabulary of both Māori and Pākehā (non-Māori) English speakers,” according to a statement from Oxford University Press, the dictionary’s publisher.

Newly added words that New Zealanders might hear or use in daily life include koha – a gift or offering – and kōrero, meaning a conversation or chat (the dictionary does not spell Māori words with macrons, which are commonly used in New Zealand English and signify double vowel sounds).

Other new offerings include words that encapsulate Māori concepts and do not have an easy English equivalent, such as whenua – land, in particular a Māori person’s native land – and rāhui, which is defined as a formal or ritualised prohibition against entering an area or undertaking an activity, typically enacted temporarily in order to protect a resource.

Te reo Māori (reo, or language, is a new word for the OED too) is experiencing a renaissance in Aotearoa (New Zealand), the result of campaigns by language and political activists since the 1970s.

Phrases such as “kia ora e hoa” are frequently used by non-Māori, and are increasingly common in shops or businesses, or to answer phone calls or emails.

Dictionary editors “scoured the archives, novels, newspapers and even Twitter” for examples of each word, the publisher’s statement said, searching for illustrations of their use and development.

“The fact that we have more and more Māori words appearing, which is what the OED changes are reflecting, captures the shifts in national and social identity in New Zealand and who we are as a nation,” said John Macalister, a professor of applied linguistics at Victoria University of Wellington and the dictionary’s consultant on the etymology of Māori.

Not all of the linguistic debuts are in Māori; New Zealanders might also attend an after-ball (perhaps unsurprisingly, a party held after a ball), proceed with something flat stick (as quickly as possible), or greet or thank a friend using the single syllable chur (similar to cheers, but in practice a sort of all-purpose positive acknowledgment).

One of the new additions – taihoa, a request for someone to be patient or wait – captures an inventive combination of English and Māori linguistic sensibilities. Many New Zealanders pronounce the word “tie-ho” – and many might not have known until recent years that they were using a Māori word.

“That’s a great example of something that can only have meaning in New Zealand, can only be created in New Zealand,” Macalister said. “I love it because it brings a history of this country and this society, and people use it without knowing where it comes from.”

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Baidu’s ChatGPT alternative gets positive reviews for Chinese translations - South China Morning Post - Translation

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Baidu’s ChatGPT alternative gets positive reviews for Chinese translations  South China Morning Post

Thursday, March 16, 2023

Chance cross-cultural unicorn concepts lost in translation - Phys.org - Translation

After 225 year search, unicorns found in South Africa
One-horned antelope shown from various perspectives at a site southeast of Molteno. The necks of the two animals in the top left corner are turned, confirming that each head has one horn only. Note the yellow and white serpent. Credit: Cambridge Archaeological Journal (2023). DOI: 10.1017/S0959774323000045

There is a reason you have not come across a unicorn fossil in a museum exhibit, let alone seen one in a zoo or heard an iconic grandfatherly voice detail their daily trepidations in a BBC documentary. The reason being—spoiler alert—we have not yet managed to capture one. However, it hasn't been for lack of trying. as documented by a research article in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal, Europeans went looking for unicorns as far away as South Africa, where they found the creature depicted in rock art paintings alongside other better documented wildlife of the region.

In the article, "Revisiting the South African Unicorn: Rock Art, Natural History and Colonial Misunderstandings of Indigenous Realities," David M. Witelson of the Rock Art Research Institute School of Geography at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, details the by chance cross-cultural translation of culturally distinct unicorn concepts and connects stories of Indigenous oral tradition to literal interpretations by colonists.

Locals must have noticed something interesting about the British when they first arrived. They wore symbols on their uniforms of familiar animals, the lion and the unicorn. The British were likely amazed that the locals were aware of unicorns, and could even describe them in detail. Then the discovery by colonists of ancient rock art—depictions of unicorns as commonplace animals—caused imaginations to race. What followed were concerted search efforts fueled by a desire to capture a creature of both biblical importance and interest to natural history scientists. It was biblical passages that led to the unicorn being adopted as a royal symbol, and any question of the creature's reality was, especially in light of new evidence, necessarily so.

Over the past few hundred years, the reasons for the unicorn rock art and ensuing failure to find the creature have been assigned multiple causes. Some claim outright fraud by the initial discoverers of the rock art, claiming they made it up to create an excuse to fund frivolous search campaigns. Others have pointed to overzealous interpretations of poorly rendered representation by the rock artists, failing to depict both horns of an antelope in profile. And of course, there is the possibility that the world's best known unicorn impersonator, the rhinoceros, is to blame for the confusion.

However, there are many depictions of unicorns in South African rock art, so it was unlikely that anyone was making up the discovery of rock art. When antelope are represented, they are always painted with both horns, as most artistic renderings of local animals are accurately detailed. While it may be an accurate confusion in some other historical contexts, the rhinoceros theory seems out of place in rock art that does represent the rhino accurately and distinctly from unicorn paintings.

What has been lost in previous chronicling of the European pursuit of a European-style unicorn in southern Africa, according to Witelson, is the actual representation and meaning of unicorns to the local San people. Witelson details the existence of a cultural myth among the San people of a rain creature, a manifestation of water that takes the form of a one-horned beast—a creature that just happens to resemble the European vision of a unicorn.

In collecting and retranslating recorded oral traditions, a central theme began to emerge to Witelson. The lands where the wild and savage rain animals live in legend were the mountains to the north where the rains go as they pass. Stories of rain and water animals, at times described as one-horned creatures, matched descriptions given to early colonists of unicorns with stripes or black fur. In one story, a terrible one-horned creature, distinct from a rhinoceros, is blamed for destroying homes, while a similar creature is used as the embodiment of severe thunderstorms in another. In Witelson's assessment, the one-horned antelope of the San stories is a form taken by the rain, and their depictions in rock art are connected to these stories.

In describing the African unicorn to colonists, the San people may have left out certain aspects of the story. They might have learned of the creature as a children's story, or casually as a metaphor for rain, or even believed it to be the physical embodiment of a critical resource—a spirit or god. They might not have mentioned that it was a mythical creature if they did not think of it as such. Some records of the time merely note that the locals were aware of such a creature but add no further context. Regardless of what the San people in these conversations believed or attempted to convey, the result was a literal interpretation.

Witelson writes in the article, "…the search for the unicorn in South Africa is an early precursor of the colonial science that later emerged in the Cape Colony in the mid-nineteenth century: while unicorns and the Indigenous inhabitants of southern Africa could be accommodated in European natural history, local customs and beliefs had no such place."

More information: David M. Witelson, Revisiting the South African Unicorn: Rock Art, Natural History and Colonial Misunderstandings of Indigenous Realities, Cambridge Archaeological Journal (2023). DOI: 10.1017/S0959774323000045

© 2023 Science X Network

Citation: Chance cross-cultural unicorn concepts lost in translation (2023, March 16) retrieved 16 March 2023 from https://ift.tt/HlVnJ9X

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.

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