Japanese dictionary of 'otaku' terms by J-pop, K-pop fans to hit bookstores - The Mainichi - The Mainichi - Dictionary

Associate professor Yoshiko Koide, right, and her seminar students working on making an otaku terminology dictionary, are seen at Nagoya College in Toyoake, Aichi Prefecture, on May 25, 2023. (Mainichi/Shinichiro Kawase)

NAGOYA -- A dictionary of "otaku" terminology written by college students who are passionate about Johnny & Associates Inc.'s idols, K-pop artists and other interests will be published this fall.

Tokyo-based Sanseido Co., known for its Japanese dictionaries, has turned its attention to the power of otaku, or geeks, as it seeks to cultivate new demand amid sluggish dictionary sales.

What inspired the publication was "Daigenkai (the great limit)," a dictionary of otaku terms created by students at Nagoya College in Toyoake, Aichi Prefecture, in a seminar class in the fall of 2022. The name was derived from "Daigenkai (the great sea of words)" -- an enlarged and revised edition of "Genkai (the sea of words)," Japan's first modern dictionary -- and "genkai otaku," which refers to "otaku whose embarrassing behavior exceeds the limit."

Divided into 11 chapters, including idols, anime and games, the soon-to-be-published dictionary contains a total of 821 words. For example, the entry for "chokkon" is "the first day of a concert. It is used to abbreviate the word 'concert' by adding the Korean word 'cho = beginning' to it." Many of the words would be unfamiliar unless you were a committed nerd of a particular pop culture genre. The original dictionary created by the students was very popular at their college festival, with some people coming all the way from Tokyo to buy it.

The students' dictionary also became a hot topic on social media. When Sanseido editor Kentaro Okugawa, 54, ordered a copy of the dictionary as a reference book, it was so well received within the company that some employees commented, "The students' passion really comes through," and, "This is just the most interesting thing." Associate professor Yoshiko Koide, who teaches the Nagoya College class, approached the publisher about publishing the dictionary, and it was quickly given the green light.

The five new members of the seminar class are busy adding and revising the terminology, and doing illustrations so that the dictionary will be ready in time for the college festival in November. Erina Kato, 19, the seminar's head student and a self-proclaimed K-pop otaku, hopes that "not only will otaku relate to the dictionary, but that people who have no connection to otaku will also learn that this world exists."

(Japanese original by Shinichiro Kawase, Nagoya News Center)

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Google Translate Decodes World's Oldest Language with AI - Analytics Insight - Translation

An ancient language with roughly untranslated documents now has a translator that works in minutes AI

The world’s oldest language, Akkadian, was translated using artificial intelligence (AI) by a mixed team of computer scientists and historians. The team, led by a Google software engineer and an Assyriologist from Ariel University, used the same technology that powers Google Translate to construct an AI model capable of instantaneously reading the ancient characters found on cuneiform tablets. 

Akkadian, the language of the Akkadian Empire that flourished in modern-day Iraq from the 24th to 22nd century BCE, presents unique translation issues. Understanding its meaning is like going without a North Star since there are no descendant languages and a lack of cultural background. The Akkadian writing system used cuneiform, distinguished by sharp, intersecting triangular symbols carved on clay tablets with the wedge-shaped end of a reed. Yet, because of their sheer volume and the restricted number of specialists who can read them, most of these texts remain untranslated and unavailable.

The vastness of existing cuneiform writings significantly outnumbers the small number of Akkadian linguists. As a result, a great bank of information about this critical early civilization, frequently referred to as the world’s first empire, remains unexplored. Linguistic attempts to translate Akkadian writings need help to keep up with the growing quantity of tablets uncovered by archaeologists. On the other hand, the incorporation of AI into the cuneiform interpretation process has the potential to change this environment.

The AI model developed by the team specializes in two types of translation cuneiform to English translation and cuneiform transliteration. The model’s translation quality, as judged by the Best Bilingual Evaluation Understudy 4 score, produced outstanding results. The model outperformed the team’s expectations, scoring 36.52 and 37.47 for the two translation categories and providing high-quality translations. The BLEU4 score goes from 0 to 100, with 70 representing the best possible result for a highly experienced human translation. 

Computer-generated translations have always been fragile and untrustworthy, unable to grasp the full complexity of idioms and nonliteral language that defy conventional grammatical constraints. Recent advances in artificial intelligence, such as the cuneiform translator, have dug into the more delicate parts of the language. Despite its outstanding accomplishments, the cuneiform AI translator still creates mistakes and hallucinations, which are frequent in AI systems. The AI model performs well for translating shorter lines and formulaic documents like administrative records. It also reproduces genre-specific characteristics during translation, which piqued the researchers’ interest. In the future, AI will be taught on greater samples of translations. The AI translator assists researchers by creating preliminary translations that human specialists may modify and check. 

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'Dictionary Project' ends after 19 years - Local News Digital - Dictionary

Courtesy - Heritage Fund.

COLUMBUS, Ind. – After nearly two decades of providing “a little yellow” gift to every third-grader in the county, organizers have announced they are closing the books on the annual “Dictionary Project.”

Since its start nearly 20 years ago, more than 20,000 dictionaries, including Spanish and Japanese versions, have been distributed to area third-graders in public, private, and homeschool classrooms as well as adult literacy and English language programs.

But, partners have decided improvements in technology since the project began have lessened the demand for paperback dictionaries as a quick reference tool.

The local “Dictionary Project” was made possible through annual grant funding from Heritage Fund and distributed by Bartholomew Retired Teachers Association with support from IUPUC Center for Teaching and Learning. In 2004, Lyn Morgan, former grants manager at Heritage Fund, researched the national program and brought the idea to CTL for help with offering it locally.

The partners believed reading was the most important skill for students to master and hoped the dictionaries helped children expand their vocabularies, encouraging them to “look it up!” Nationally more than 35 million third-graders have received personal dictionaries as part of the program.

As part of its strategic impact area of positive Youth Development, Heritage Fund will continue to explore opportunities to support students in the community.

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Student use of machine translation debated - Times Higher Education - Translation

Universities are being forced to reassess requirements for international students to compose their assignments in English, amid rapid improvements in artificial intelligence (AI) tools.

Helen Gniel, head of the integrity unit at Australia’s Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, told a Melbourne conference that students’ use of machine translation technology was “a debate we have to have”.

Dr Gniel said students were using tools such as Google Translate to convert work from their first languages into English, then polishing it with proofreading apps such as Grammarly – practices they would undoubtedly continue in the workplace after graduation.

But such behaviour was problematic while they were still at university, she said, because of the expectation that they were educated in English. If courses had been delivered in other languages, institutions were legally required to note this on testamurs.

Dr Gniel said professional bodies also wanted reassurance that foreign graduates had “adequate language”, should they remain in Australia and work in places such as hospitals. “There’s a bigger question about what it is that we’re saying students can do at the end of our degrees,” Dr Gniel told the Australian Technology Network’s Future Learning Summit.

“How much is English language a part of that? What are we trying to assess, and why? I don’t think we’ve really given deep thought to what that means now, in a world of such ready translation tools.”

Phillip Dawson, associate director of Deakin University’s Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning, criticised an “underlying” assumption that international students should be as capable in English as in their primary disciplines.

“If students think better in their own first language, what are they gaining out of hand translating rather than machine translating?” he asked.

Professor Dawson speculated that students submitting assignments on decolonisation could find themselves “in trouble” for not drafting their work in the coloniser’s language. “We have a lot of rhetoric around things like decolonising the curriculum, but we’re pretty strict on [how students] engage in it,” he said.

Ant Bagshaw, a higher education policy adviser with LEK Consulting, asked whether universities would find it acceptable for students to use live translation apps during oral examinations. Professor Dawson said it was a live question, amid the increasing use of interactive oral assessment to assess students’ learning outcomes.

He said international students’ “anxiety” around communicating in English could mask their mastery of their subjects. “To what extent can we assist students in those interactive oral assessments to better demonstrate how they’ve actually met the outcome?” he asked.

A recent literature review by Canadian PhD candidate Kate Paterson found that the “ethical and pedagogical implications” of students’ use of machine translation had not been “coherently addressed” by academics or tertiary institutions.

“Human-machine relationships…have the potential to destabilise traditional pedagogies and transform how we teach and learn languages and academic content,” she wrotes in the TESOL Journal. “The challenge…is to re-envision educational policy and practice in ways that maintain academic integrity and promote greater educational equity.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com

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Student use of machine translation debated - Times Higher Education - Translation

Universities are being forced to reassess requirements for international students to compose their assignments in English, amid rapid improvements in artificial intelligence (AI) tools.

Helen Gniel, head of the integrity unit at Australia’s Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, told a Melbourne conference that students’ use of machine translation technology was “a debate we have to have”.

Dr Gniel said students were using tools such as Google Translate to convert work from their first languages into English, then polishing it with proofreading apps such as Grammarly – practices they would undoubtedly continue in the workplace after graduation.

But such behaviour was problematic while they were still at university, she said, because of the expectation that they were educated in English. If courses had been delivered in other languages, institutions were legally required to note this on testamurs.

Dr Gniel said professional bodies also wanted reassurance that foreign graduates had “adequate language”, should they remain in Australia and work in places such as hospitals. “There’s a bigger question about what it is that we’re saying students can do at the end of our degrees,” Dr Gniel told the Australian Technology Network’s Future Learning Summit.

“How much is English language a part of that? What are we trying to assess, and why? I don’t think we’ve really given deep thought to what that means now, in a world of such ready translation tools.”

Phillip Dawson, associate director of Deakin University’s Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning, criticised an “underlying” assumption that international students should be as capable in English as in their primary disciplines.

“If students think better in their own first language, what are they gaining out of hand translating rather than machine translating?” he asked.

Professor Dawson speculated that students submitting assignments on decolonisation could find themselves “in trouble” for not drafting their work in the coloniser’s language. “We have a lot of rhetoric around things like decolonising the curriculum, but we’re pretty strict on [how students] engage in it,” he said.

Ant Bagshaw, a higher education policy adviser with LEK Consulting, asked whether universities would find it acceptable for students to use live translation apps during oral examinations. Professor Dawson said it was a live question, amid the increasing use of interactive oral assessment to assess students’ learning outcomes.

He said international students’ “anxiety” around communicating in English could mask their mastery of their subjects. “To what extent can we assist students in those interactive oral assessments to better demonstrate how they’ve actually met the outcome?” he asked.

A recent literature review by Canadian PhD candidate Kate Paterson found that the “ethical and pedagogical implications” of students’ use of machine translation had not been “coherently addressed” by academics or tertiary institutions.

“Human-machine relationships…have the potential to destabilise traditional pedagogies and transform how we teach and learn languages and academic content,” she wrotes in the TESOL Journal. “The challenge…is to re-envision educational policy and practice in ways that maintain academic integrity and promote greater educational equity.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com

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A Chinese-Language Translator Has Threatened to Sue the British Museum After It Removed Her Work From an Exhibition - artnet News - Translation

Translator and writer Yilin Wang has retained lawyers and has threatened to sue the British Museum in London for copyright and moral rights infringement after the institution did not credit her translations of two poems by the early-20th-century feminist revolutionary and poet Qiu Jin, which it included without permission in the exhibition “China’s Hidden Century.”

When confronted by Wang on social media, the museum removed both the English and Chinese texts from the show, rather than crediting and compensating the Vancouver-based translator.

The British Museum “fully accepts it made a mistake, has apologized to Ms Wang and sought to make amends financially,” the institution said in a statement provided to the Art Newspaper, adding that it had since offered Wang £600 ($780) in compensation, benchmarked to what it described as “industry rates.”

The museum has not, however, reinstated the poems with credit to the translation. Last month, Wang launched a fundraising campaign on Crowd Justice, which has raised £18,000 ($23,400) to date, in the hope of escalating the battle to the U.K. courts.

Should the museum not capitulate to the demand to reinstate Wang’s work “for the rest of the exhibition’s run, along with an appropriate credit and a modest payment for that,” Wang intends to sue for copyright and moral rights infringement. Through the money she’s raised, Wang has hired Jon Sharples of the London firm Howard Kennedy LLP, but has not yet filed suit.

“The translations came down at Ms Wang’s explicit request… there had been no engagement with the museum’s efforts to obtain their consent,” the museum told the Art Newspaper, a position it repeated to Artnet News, with a press representative writing in an email that “we have followed Yilin Wang’s wishes.”

Wang has disputed the museum’s claim on the crowdfunding page, arguing that her request was not that her work be removed from the exhibit but “to be removed unless I was promptly remunerated and credited for their use,” she wrote.

“The current position is the worst possible outcome—the public are now not only being denied the chance to see my translations, and to know who wrote them, but also the chance to read Qiu Jin’s words too,” she wrote on Crowd Justice. “The result is that two female writers of color have both had their work erased. We are not disposable.”

Should the case proceed to court, Wang has said she would donate 50 percent of any financial damages earned to start a mentorship program supporting people of color translating Chinese poetry.

“My experience of working with artists, writers, and other creatives is that the worst and most dangerous thing anyone can do to them is leave them feeling unheard, dismissed, and disrespected, and that is exactly what the British Museum have done here,” Wang’s lawyer, Sharples, said in a statement.

Wang is hopeful not only for a positive outcome in her case, but that the dispute will help raise awareness about Qiu’s remarkable biography. Sometimes called the Chinese Joan of Arc, Qiu fought for women’s rights and ran a school for would-be revolutionaries fighting against the Qing dynasty. The authorities beheaded her in 1907, when Qui was just 31.

“The British Museum should absolutely fix things,” Wang wrote on Twitter, “but I think there is also an opportunity here for another museum to do an exhibit on Qiu Jin and to do it properly.”

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1st Turkish dictionary written by Mahmud Kashgari is 951 years old | Daily Sabah - Daily Sabah - Dictionary

In a remarkable testament to Turkish linguistic heritage, the renowned linguist, ethnographer and Turkologist Kaşgarlı Mahmud, also known as Mahmud Kashgari's dictionary "Compendium of the Turkic Dialects" ("Diwan Lughat al-Turk"), celebrates its 951st anniversary.

VakıfBank Culture Publications (VBKY) has republished this unforgettable work, which serves as an important reference for preserving authentic Turkish culture, under the title "Diwan Lughat al-Turk: The First Dictionary of the Turkish Language."

During the 11th century, Kaşgarlı Mahmud extensively explored the cities inhabited by Turks, diligently studying and documenting the various dialects he encountered. He compiled these acquired words and proverbs under a comparative dictionary, presenting a comprehensive panorama of the cultural depth of the Turkish language. Unlike previous translations, the work has been arranged according to the order of the Turkish alphabet, as determined by Kaşgarlı Mahmud. The book, translated into Turkish by Mustafa Kaçalın, aimed to teach Turkish to Arabs and demonstrate that Turkish is a language as rich as Arabic.

The book provides linguistic insights and a glimpse into the cultural tapestry of the Turks. It includes the first map of the Turkic world, showcasing the places inhabited by Turks and features approximately 800 words, idioms, proverbs and samples of poetry, accompanied by Arabic translations.

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