According to a press release by OUP, the aim behind the launch of the dictionaries is to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism.
On the occasion of International Mother Language Day, observed on 21 February every year, the Oxford University Press (OUP) launched a bilingual English-English-Assamese Dictionary and a new edition of the Oxford Mini English-Bengali Dictionary.
The Oxford University Press (OUP) launched a bilingual English-English-Assamese Dictionary and a new edition of the Oxford Mini English-Bengali Dictionary. (Handout)
According to a press release by Oxford University Press, the aim behind the launch of the dictionaries is to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism. 34,000 words, phrases, idioms, phrasal verbs, and derivatives along with their detailed translations in Assamese are included in the newly launched bilingual dictionary. In the compact Oxford English-Bengali Dictionary, 20,000 words and derivatives with meanings in Bengali are included.
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“Oxford Dictionaries extensively cover new words and derivatives, along with spelling, grammar and pronunciation information, aiding students in mastering English through the support of their mother tongue,” said Sumanta Datta, Managing Director, Oxford University Press India.
OUP India currently publishes dictionaries in 12 Indian languages: Bengali, Assamese, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Odia, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, and Hindi. Additionally, a 13th language will soon be introduced with the release of a trilingual dictionary in Sanskrit-Hindi-English, mentioned the press release.
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Samsung’s Galaxy Buds series has been a go-to for Galaxy users because they simply work better within the ecosystem. Furthering that notion is an AI-based update that brings live translation to the Galaxy Buds series. The Galaxy Buds series is also finally getting Android’s auto-switching feature when using multiple devices.
The overall tone from Samsung in 2024 has been all about AI. The Galaxy S24 series takes that and runs with it, adding a ton of productivity value that makes use of the SoC specifically built to handle on-board artificial processing.
A new update for the Galaxy Buds shifts the earbud lineup into a position that can better match the S24 series. It looks like these features will be Galaxy-only and limited to those that pair their Buds to Samsung’s own phones and tablets, which is something not unexpected.
The biggest feature in the update is Samsung’s interpreter tool. The concept is not too dissimilar from what Samsung did with Live Translate in the Galaxy S24, allowing you to have full-on phone conversations with people who speak a different language. This update with AI-powered interpreter mode on the Galaxy Buds will allow the same, except you’ll need to wear earbuds while the other person listens to your translated speech through your Galaxy phone. Their speech will come through the earbuds, translated into your preferred language.
Samsung also notes that auto switch will be coming to the Galaxy Buds series. The feature essentially allows for an easier experience when using Bluetooth multi-pairing. When connected to two devices at the same time, Android will automatically switch the playing device if there is a phone call. This allows you to grab the call without thinking about stopping media on the other end and messing with whichever device is live at the moment.
Google’s Pixel phone debuted this feature with the Pixel Buds Pro, and it works seamlessly. A notification appears when the audio is switched, and as soon as the call ends, the other device takes over again. This is a huge feature that we’ve been waiting for on Samsung’s own earbud lineup.
The update also includes Samsung’s Auracast feature and 360 audio for immersive listening on TVs, specifically. Auracast allows multiple devices to connect to one audio source, and now Samsung’s phones and tablets will be able to stream to multiple sets of Galaxy Buds. On the other hand, the 360-degree audio feature is now coming to TVs, where users can listen in virtual surround sound through their Galaxy Buds.
According to Samsung, the Galaxy Buds 2 Pro, Buds 2, and Buds FE will get this update in late February, which should be a matter of days.
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In January, at the National Agriculture and Food Research Organisation (Naro) in Tsukuba, Ibaraki prefecture, food researcher Fumiyo Hayakawa and others were engaged in heated discussions over freshly cooked rice.
A collaborative effort is under way to refine and define the terminology used to describe rice. Photo: Getty Image
They tried to define terminology that describes differences in rice firmness or graininess, for instance. Hayakawa’s team is partnering with Itochu Food Sales and Marketing, a subsidiary of major trading house Itochu Corporation, to create the dictionary.
Naro sells an agriculture technical encyclopaedia with terms involving crops, as well as management, distribution and marketing. Its Japanese-language texture terminology describes foods including cooked white rice, shrimp, udon noodles, bread and more.
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In production, distribution and sales, experts conduct “sensory evaluations” in which they judge aroma, taste and texture. The results are used to influence the development of new rice varieties, as well as to promote products.
However, there has been concern that there is no uniformity in the recognition of expressions or that the same words are overused, resulting in less accurate evaluations.
Toshiya Amano, general manager of the rice division at Itochu Food Sales and Marketing, which sells milled rice to convenience stores and other retailers, gave an example of the descriptions of rice that have been confusing to some consumers.
“For example, some people consider ‘fresh rice’ to mean ‘sticky rice’,” Amano says.
A bowl of freshly cooked rice. Photo: Getty Images
However, since it was “unrealistic” to quantify all textures and aromas, the company sought a solution by beginning research with Naro in 2021.
First, a dozen researchers skilled in evaluation tasted 32 rice products and shared their impressions
The taste tests involved trying more than 110 types of rice, such as freshly cooked, rice that had been cooked but left out for some time, convenience store rice balls, and rice from packages for long-term storage.
“Spring in the Rice Fields” (circa 1800) by Katsushika Hokusai. Rice is Japan’s dietary staple. Photo: Getty Images
More than 7,000 terms were gathered. Hayakawa says some of the descriptions are unique, such as “a taste like natto” – fermented soybeans – or “an aroma like boiled eggs”.
“If we put them into a dictionary, we can pick up on characteristics that have been overlooked until now because they could not be contextualised,” says Hayakawa, adding they also verified what processes render such distinct flavours.
They have narrowed down the words – in the four categories of appearance, taste, aroma and texture – to about 100 and are now in the process of defining them. The meaning of even standard terms such as “glossy” and “sweet aroma” are hard to convey, Hayakawa says.
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Synonyms and antonyms are introduced, and supplements are added to provide context in evaluations.
The project is scheduled to be completed by the end of March 2025 and will later be released on Naro’s website.
Hayakawa is enthusiastic about what the dictionary will have to offer people fond of rice in its various forms.
“I want to make this a tool to convey the attractiveness of rice not only to evaluation experts but also to consumers,” she says.
Dictionary.com released its list of popular terms added for 2024. This year, Gen Z slang dominated the entries, along with a few revisions.
Gen Z members — sometimes called zoomers — were born between 1997 and 2012.
“It’s 2024, and the pace of language change is as rapid as it has ever been,” said Dictionary.com “Our lexicographers are updating the dictionary more frequently than ever, doing the human-scale work of documenting words across the vast spectrum of the always-evolving English language. And wow, the variety is real.”
Not only were there 327 new entries but also 173 new definitions and 1,228 revised definitions.
Here are 10 words inspired by Gen Z you might not have heard and definitions Dictionary.com gave them.
The ick: Noun. A sudden feeling of disgust or dislike, often in response to the actions of another person.
Mid: Adjective. Mediocre, unimpressive or disappointing.
Bed rotting: Noun. The practice of spending many hours in bed during the day, often with snacks or an electronic device, as a voluntary retreat from activity or stress.
Boobne: Noun. Informal. Pimples or a rash in the area of the breasts or on the upper back, caused by a bra that chafes, is not clean or is made of material that is allergenic or not breathable.
Pretty privilege: Noun. An unearned and mostly unacknowledged societal advantage a person has by fitting into the beauty standards of their culture.
Greedflation: Noun. A rise in prices, rents or the like that is not because of market pressure or any other factor organic to the economy but is caused by corporate executives or boards of directors, property owners, etc., solely to increase profits that are already healthy or excessive.
Barbiecore: Noun. An aesthetic or style featuring playful pink outfits, accessories, decor, etc., celebrating and modeled on the wardrobe of the Barbie doll.
Bussin’: Adjective. Great; wonderful; amazing.
Squish: Noun. An intense feeling of infatuation that is not romantic or sexual in nature — a platonic crush.
Skiplagging: Noun. The practice of purchasing an air ticket for a flight with a layover at one’s true destination, getting off at the layover point and skipping the last leg of the flight: a workaround to avoid paying a higher fare for a direct flight to one’s destination.
While these terms are new to the outlet, it’s not always new to the language, as slang is forever changing and sometimes generational. Some other terms added have been referenced and used over the years, like the turf toe, cheat code, girl dad and high-intensity interval training.
Ebony Williams
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In The Irish Times tomorrow. Derek Scally reports from Berlin on the premiere of the adaptation of Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These starring Cillian Murphy and Eileen Walsh. Anna Carey writes about how she turned her book The Making of Mollie into a play, which opens at Dublin’s The Ark next week. There is also a Q&A with Chris Agee, poet and founder of the Irish Pages literary journal.
This week’s Irish Times Eason book offer is Old God’s Time, the Booker Prize longlisted novel by Sebastian Barry. You can buy it in any store with your paper for €5.99, a €5 saving.
A prize of €1,500 is awarded by the ambassadors to the winning Irish author, and a visit to Ireland is arranged by Literature Ireland for the translator. The aim of the prize is to promote French language and culture, and to celebrate literary translation into French.
The winning author and translator pair will be announced on March 5th by Minister Peter Burke at an event to mark the start of Francophonie month, a month dedicated to the celebration of French language and culture.
Laura Cumming: longlisted for the inaugural Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction
The 16-strong longlist for the inaugural Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction has been announced, with authors from America, Australia, Canada, India, Jamaica, the Philippines and the UK. The books vary in style and genre, from gripping memoirs to innovative new histories, ground-breaking journalism and books that challenge the status quo.
The longlisted titles are: The Britannias: An Island Quest by Alice Albinia; Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts and the Death of Freedom by Grace Blakeley; Eve: How The Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution by Cat Bohannon; Intervals by Marianne Brooker; Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century by Joya Chatterji; Thunderclap: A Memoir of Art and Life and Sudden Death by Laura Cumming; Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in the Philippines by Patricia Evangelista; Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life by Anna Funder; Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood by Lucy Jones; Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein; A Flat Place by Noreen Masud; All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake by Tiya Miles; Code-Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI by Madhumita Murgia; The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes who Created the Oxford English Dictionary by Sarah Ogilvie; Young Queens: The Intertwined Lives of Catherine de’ Medici, Elisabeth de Valois and Mary, Queen of Scots by Leah Redmond Chang; and How to Say Babylon: A Jamaican Memoir by Safiya Sinclair.
Prof Suzannah Lipscomb, chair of judges for this year’s awards, said: “Reading for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction has been a revelation and a joy. I am very proud to introduce the sensational books that make up the inaugural Longlist. Our selection represents the breadth of women’s non-fiction writing: science, history, memoir, technology, literary biography, health, linguistics, investigative journalism, art history, activism, travel-writing and economics. And each author has created a masterpiece that is worthy of your attention. Buy them, borrow them – above all read them – and in so doing you’ll be elevating women’s voices and female perspectives in a whole range of disciplines and on a whole host of topics.”
The shortlist will be announced on March 27th and the winner of the £30,000 prize on June 13th.
Novelist and playwright Kate O’Brien (1897-1974). Photograph: Sasha/Getty Images)
Celebrating 40 years in 2024, the Limerick Literary Festival will run from February 23rd to 25th at the Dooradoyle Library and the Belltable. The event honours the life and works of Limerick author Kate O’Brien while attracting prominent participants from all over the world. The festival is also marking the 50th anniversary of the death of O’Brien, having started as The Kate O’Brien Weekend in 1984 to mark the tenth anniversary of her death.
Building on this significant history, the Limerick Literary Festival seeks to promote Limerick nationally as a place of literary excellence and to provide a platform where readers can meet their favourite authors and other readers.
The festival will be opened with an intimate evening of words and music by spoken-word artist and musician Denise Chaila and the full weekend programme feature authors Vona Groarke, Mary Morrissy, Antoine Laurain, Francis Spufford, Dorothy Cross, Dr Jana Fischerova, Elaine Feeney, Jane Clarke and Claire Keegan. It will also feature perennial favourite Desert Island Books, a session with Poetry Pharmacist William Sieghart and the presentation of the 2024 Kate O’Brien Award for a debut novel or short story collection from a female Irish author.
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From 1-4pm on Wednesday, February 21st, Prof Maebh Harding and Julie Morrissy, 2024 Law & Poetry Fellow, University College Dublin Sutherland School of Law, will be hosting a durational reading of the Bunreacht/Irish Constitution in the Gardiner Atrium at the UCD School of Law. The event is free and open to the public. You can drop in at any time and stay for however long you like.
By reading the Bunreacht aloud from start to finish, the aim is to emphasise the importance of collective and collaborative reading practices as a means to bolster community and spark conversations about potential changes to our society.
Paul Lynch with his Booker Prize 2023 winning book, Prophet Song.
Maynooth University has announced that 2023 Booker Prize Winner Paul Lynch has been appointed Maynooth University Distinguished Writing Fellow.
Lynch is a multi-award-winning author of five novels – his Booker winner Prophet Song (2023), Red Sky in the Morning (2013), The Black Snow (2014), Grace (2017), Beyond the Sea (2019) -- making him one of Ireland’s most prolific and critically-acclaimed contemporary authors.
Prior to winning the Booker Prize in November, his novels were nominated for or have won the Prix du Premier Roman, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, Prix Gens de Mer and the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year.
Prof Alison Hood, Dean of Arts, Celtic Studies & Philosophy, said that Maynooth University was delighted with the appointment.
“Paul’s novels are testament to an extraordinary and visionary talent. Paul was Maynooth University’s Arts Council Writer-in-Residence in 2023. This appointment means that Maynooth University welcomes Paul back as a colleague in the Department of English, where he will teach on the MA in Creative Writing.”
Muldoon's Picnic
After a successful Irish tour in 2017, 2019, and again in 2022, as well as ten sold out seasons at the Irish Arts Center in New York, Muldoon’s Picnic returns for four dates nationwide from May 13th-17th.
An omnium-gatherum of poetry, prose and music, Muldoon’s Picnic is a cabaret-style evening, hosted by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon.
Devised and developed by the acclaimed Irish poet Paul Muldoon, the show is hosted by Muldoon and house band Rogue Oliphant - a collective of musicians and composers including Chris Harford (Three Colors, Band of Changes), Cáit O’Riordan (The Pogues), David Mansfield (Bob Dylan, The Alpha Band), Ray Kubian (Electric Six, Chris Forsyth) and Warren Zanes (Del Fuegos).
On May 13th, in the Town Hall Theatre in Galway, Muldoon and house band Rogue Oliphant will be joined by Booker Prize winning novelist Anna Burns, poet Padraig Regan, and Oscar-winning musician Glen Hansard.
The Market Place Theatre in Armagh on May 15th event features TS Eliot Prize nominee Jane Clarke, composer and musician Colm Mac Con Iomaire and Booker Prize winner Anne Enright.
On May 16th at Wexford Arts Centre, author Donal Ryan, singer and harpist SÃle Denvir and poet Nithy Kasa will be the guests. The final night of the tour, May 17th, in the Pavilion Theatre in Dun Laoghaire, features Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle, guitarist, composer and author Hugh Buckley, poet Ailbhe NÃ Ghearbhuigh and author Liz Nugent.
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Two Irish illustrators have been longlisted for the 2024 Yoto Carnegies, the UK’s longest-running book awards for children and young people – Steve McCarthy for The Wilderness, an adventure book celebrating learning opportunities in the great outdoors, and Paddy Donnelly for Sarah Tagholm’s Wolves in Helicopters, a dark and atmospheric tale offering practical advice to overcome nightmares and disturbed sleep.
A total of 36 books have been selected from 20 different publishers; 19 for the Yoto Carnegie Medal for Writing, and 18 for the Yoto Carnegie Medal for Illustration.
One title has been longlisted in both Medal categories – Tyger by SF Said, illustrated by Dave McKean. Four previous winners are again longlisted for the Medal for Illustration; two-time winner Sydney Smith for My Baba’s Garden, Bob Graham for The Concrete Garden, Jon Klassen for The Skull and Catherine Rayner for The Bowerbird.
Former Carnegie Medal for Writing winner Anthony McGowen is longlisted for Dogs of the Deadland, a tale of survival inspired by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Waterstones Children’s Laureate and previous shortlistee Joseph Coelho is longlisted for The Boy Lost in the Maze, one of four verse novels recognised for the Medal for Writing. The other three are by New York Times bestselling author Kwame Alexander and debut authors Cathy Faulkner and Tia Fisher.
Eight-time shortlisted author Marcus Sedgwick has been longlisted posthumously for Ravencave, the follow-up to Wrath, longlisted in 2023. A further four previous shortlistees are longlisted: Kwame Alexander (2019), Phil Earle (2022) and Candy Gourlay (2019) for writing and Poonam Mistry, who has been shortlisted three times (2019, 2020 and 2021) for illustration.
The Yoto Carnegies celebrate outstanding reading experiences in books for children and young people. They are unique in being judged by librarians, with the Shadowers’ Choice Medal voted for by children and young people. The longlists were chosen from 129 nominations by the judging panel which includes 12 children’s and youth librarians from CILIP’s Youth Libraries Group.
The shortlists will be announced on March 13th at London Book Fair. The winners will be announced and celebrated on June 20th at a livestreamed ceremony.
The Supreme Court on Monday, in a significant order, directed that the expression ‘forest’ will continue to be “broad and all-encompassing” for the time being, and include 1.97 lakh square km of undeclared forest lands.
A Bench headed by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud passed the order on a petition challenging the amended Forest Conservation Act of 2023.
The new amendments had “circumscribed or substantially diluted” the definition of forest to two categories — declared forests and lands recorded as ‘forests’ in government records after 1980.
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In its order, the apex court ordered the government to revert to the “dictionary meaning” of ‘forest’ as upheld in a 1996 Supreme Court decision in the T.N. Godavarman Thirumulpad case.
“The adoption of this dictionary meaning to forests was made to align with the intent of the Forest Conservation Act, 1980. It is clarified that the expression ’forest’ will cover but not be confined to lands recorded as forests in the government records,” the court noted.
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Consolidated record
The Bench noted that the “all-encompassing” dictionary meaning upheld by the Supreme Court in the Godavarman case 25 years ago would continue to hold field until the States and Union Territories prepare a consolidated record of forest-like areas, unclassed and community forest lands in their respective jurisdictions as per Rule 16 of the Forest Conservation Rules.
The court said this exercise to prepare a consolidated record was notified on November 29, 2023 and would take a year.
“We clarify that pending the completion of this exercise by the States and union territories under Rule 16, the principles in T.N. Godavarman Thirumulpad must continue to be observed,” the court ordered.
The Bench ordered the Environment Ministry to issue a circular in this regard to the States and Union Territories.
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The court said the Thirumulpad order had at the time ordered States and Union Territories to constitute expert committees to identify forest lands.
On this, the Bench directed the Union government to require States and Union Territories within two weeks to forward the “comprehensive records” of the lands such expert committees had identified in pursuance of the apex court’s orders in the Thirumulpad case.
The States and Union Territories have to forward the records by March 31, 2024. The Environment Ministry has to publish these records on its website by April 15, 2024.
The Bench also directed that establishment of any “zoos or safaris” by any government or authority should not be consented to without the final approval of the apex court.
Firefox 123.0 binaries are available today ahead of the official announcement tomorrow for this newest monthly web browser update.
Firefox 123 binaries for Linux and other platforms are available for download. Firefox 123 is another incremental step forward bringing translation enhancements and other web development platform additions, albeit mostly minor this time around. Some of the Firefox 123 enhancements include:
- Firefox's local web page translation feature can now translate text within tooltips and text displayed within form controls.
- Address bar settings are now displayed within the search section of Firefox Settings.
- Firefox's Network Monitor can now save a response body to disk using the "Save Response As" context menu item.
- Support for linear RGB interpolation for SVG gradients.
- Early Hints are now fully supported via Preload and Modulepreload support.
- Support for declarative ShadowDOM.
- The Web Authentication API now supports cross-origin credential creation.
Downloads for Firefox 123.0 are available from ftp.mozilla.org.
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