How ‘3 Body Problem’ Gets Lost in Translation - Sean Keeley - The Dispatch - Translation

Here’s a thorny question: When was the last time Chinese pop culture made a splash in the U.S. market? Given how much China dominates our political debate, the answer is strangely elusive. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was a surprise box office smash 25 years ago, and Hollywood has shamelessly courted the Chinese market plenty (with all the self-censorship that entails). But examples of the reverse phenomenon—Chinese cultural exports finding a ready audience in the United States—are surprisingly hard to come by. 

The most notable exception may be Liu Cixin’s novel The Three-Body Problem, the sci-fi phenomenon whose 2014 English translation earned the Hugo Award and an endorsement from President Barack Obama. Now, following a 30-episode adaptation for Chinese television, Liu’s series has received the Netflix treatment from Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. And the new version, which retains some of the plot’s Chinese scaffolding but transposes most of the action westward, has provoked a telling combination of praise and censure in both countries.

The opening scene has attracted particular attention. Set in 1966 Beijing during the Cultural Revolution, it harrowingly depicts a young Chinese student watching her father’s denunciation and murder at a mass struggle session. As a result, the young woman’s ensuing trauma kicks off a chain reaction that eventually leads to her welcoming an alien invasion. (It’s a long story.) 

For some Chinese netizens, though, the scene was an American affront, an attempt to tarnish China by fixating on the ugliest part of its history. Other Chinese viewers, bucking the trend, expressed a guarded appreciation for the show’s honest treatment of the Cultural Revolution, which is handled more gingerly in the Chinese TV series. In the United States, meanwhile, some reacted with an overwrought analogy between yesterday’s Red Guards and today’s progressive activists, with one reviewer calling the scene “scarily reminiscent of where Woke is taking us.” Both of these interpretations are at best incomplete, if not outright wrong. Taken together, though, they suggest how the show has struck a nerve in both countries. 

Unfortunately for viewers, the historical controversy is the most interesting thing about the show: 3 Body Problem is an ambitious attempt at blockbuster science fiction, but its most compelling moments are rooted in historical fact. The sections involving the Cultural Revolution are vivid dramatizations of all-too-recent history, but the show’s attempts to Westernize the novel—and to smooth out its stranger wrinkles—only illustrate the creative limitations of big-budget television.    

At least the showrunners didn’t shirk from the challenge. Five years after bringing Game of Thrones to an underwhelming conclusion, Benioff and Weiss here tackle an even more unwieldy piece of fantasy literature with 3 Body Problem. It toggles between virtual-reality setpieces and a real-world detective story, draws on quantum physics and ancient Chinese history, and settles into an alien invasion narrative with echoes of calamities past and present. Juggling all these moving parts would be no mean feat for any writer, even without introducing new elements. 

It’s a shame, then, that Benioff and Weiss have tried to up the human interest by introducing … an ensemble cast of utterly generic Pretty Young Things. Where the novel’s plot unspools through the eyes of one Wang Miao, a talented physicist with a rather ordinary home life, the show gives us a proliferation of ethnically balanced twentysomethings who would be better suited to an American singles sitcom. Collectively, they represent the least convincing group of Oxford physics PhDs ever put on screen. 

There’s someone from every demographic: the beautiful daughter of Mexican immigrants who founds a nanotech start-up, a high-achieving Chinese-Kiwi engineer and her British Indian soldier boyfriend, the gifted-but-lazy African American lab assistant and his shy-but-sincere best friend from England. The problem lies not in the ethnic diversity per se so much as the actors’ utterly unconvincing rapport, and the groan-worthy dialogue they are saddled with. It’s as if the casting decisions were outsourced to Google Gemini, with ChatGPT writing the dialogue. 

Faring better are Benedict Wong as the grizzled blue-collar detective Da Shi and Rosalind Chao as the shrewd Chinese scientist whose traumatic past sets the plot in motion. Not incidentally, these two characters are carried over faithfully from the book. It’s a lesson that Game of Thrones fans learned gradually over eight seasons: Benioff and Weiss are at their best when adhering closely to the creator’s vision. The further they stray, the more the cracks show. 

In the case of 3 Body Problem, the mismatch involves tone as much as substance. Liu Cixin’s novel has a detached and unsentimental attitude that clashes with certain American sci-fi conventions. In contrast to the political idealism of Star Trek, say, or the sentimental humanism of E.T. and Interstellar, 3 Body Problem views human relations as fundamentally tragic and extraterrestrial contact as a source of mass suspicion and terror. Liu’s subject is humanity’s capacity for self-destruction and regeneration, informed by the calamities of Chinese history and the anxieties of nuclear apocalypse and climate change. Such tough-minded material is ill-suited for the sentimental subplots the writers introduce, especially the unrequited love of the teacher Will for his former labmate Jin Cheng, or the “will-they-won’t-they” romantic dynamic of two other leads.     

The show’s set pieces deliver on spectacle, at least. In one virtual reality scene, the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan commands hordes of subjects to operate as a mass human computer, with guidance from Isaac Newton and Alan Turing. In another, our scientific protagonists slice a cruise ship apart with a deadly web of nanofibers. But even these spectacles outstay their welcome. Too many scenes are hampered by the kind of rote, wonderless CGI that is all too common in the age of Marvel. It’s enough to make one long for the early seasons of Game of Thrones, which at least were filmed on real locations and carried a genuine frisson of violence and danger.

But even if this 3 Body Problem is a dud, it nevertheless tells us something interesting about the U.S.-China culture clash—albeit with different lessons for each country. 

In China, the insecure response to the opening scene suggests it’s still unable to grapple honestly with its historical tragedies. Government censorship and popular myopia ensure that today’s Chinese filmmakers treat politically sensitive subjects with kid gloves. If such subjects could be addressed openly, though, Chinese cultural exports would likely find more appeal abroad—just as Liu Cixin’s books have. The modern heyday of Chinese film in the West was the 1990s, when films like To Live and The Blue Kite treated Chinese history with nuance and care, attracting international acclaim in the bargain. Nowadays, China’s cultural organs prefer films that are either totally nonpolitical or stridently propagandistic. Non-Chinese audiences are understandably staying away.     

As for Hollywood, the creative failures of Netflix’s 3 Body Problem suggest the perils of lowest-common-denominator thinking. While Benioff and Weiss may have been lured by the books’ highbrow themes, their adaptation betrays a distrust in the audience’s willingness to go along. The show streamlines the book’s science and devotes excessive runtime to empty spectacle. For all its page-turning entertainment value, Liu Cixin’s novel always treated its audience like intelligent adults. Too often, Benioff and Weiss hedge that bet. 

That’s a particular shame after a year when U.S. audiences willingly shelled out for a three-hour biopic about the maker of the atomic bomb. One lesson of the Oppenheimer phenomenon is that some segment of today’s audience is eager for literate entertainment that uses history to thoughtfully understand our present. The best parts of 3 Body Problem suggest the same lesson, too. Truth, after all, is stranger than science fiction.

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Police: Man used translation app in robbery attempt - Sandusky Register - Translation

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The Africa Institute Global Africa Translation Fellowship 2024 (up to $5000) – Opportunity Desk - Opportunity Desk - Translation

Deadline: June 1, 2024

Applications for the Africa Institute Global Africa Translation Fellowship 2024 are now open. This is a non-residential fellowship that allows the recipient scholar to complete the work outside of The Africa Institute (Sharjah, UAE). The aim of the fellowship is to make important texts in African and African Diaspora studies accessible to a wider readership across the world.

Selected projects may be retranslations of old, classic texts, previously untranslated works, poetry, prose, or critical theory collections. The project may be a work-in-progress, or a new project feasible for completion within the timeframe of the grant.

Benefits

• The fellowship provides funding in the range of $1,000 to $5,000, depending on the quality and breadth of the project. 

Eligibility

• Applications are welcome from across the Global South.
• Grant request should be to complete translations of works from the African continent and its diaspora, into English or Arabic.
• Selected projects may be retranslations of old, classic texts, previously untranslated works, poetry, prose, or critical theory collections. The project may be a work-in-progress, or a new project feasible for completion within the timeframe of the grant.

Application

Applications must include:

•  A two-page CV/résumé including institutional affiliation, educational qualifications, including highest degree received, and key publications/works produced.
•  A two-page narrative explaining the translation to be undertaken during the fellowship period, an explanation of the importance of the work, a justification for a re-translation, if applicable, and proposed dates of completion. The project may be a work-in-progress or a new project that fits within the timeframe of the grant.
•  A 4–5-page (double-spaced) sample of the original text(s) and translation.
•  An explanation of the work’s copyright status: If the work is not in the public domain, please include a copy of the copyright notice from the original text, and a letter from the copyright holder stating that English language rights to the work are available.

Submitted applications must include a statement, sample, copyright status (if applicable), and CV, in that order into a single PDF file.

Name the file with the applicant’s name in this format: LASTNAME-FIRSTNAME.pdf. Use the same name in the email subject heading LASTNAME-FIRSTNAME application and send PDF as an email attachment to [email protected].

For more information, visit Global Africa Translation Fellowship.

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The Dictionary of Dictionaries - City Journal - Dictionary

The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary, by Sarah Ogilvie (Knopf, 370 pp., $30)

Recently, I had a friend to lunch in New York and when I showed him my study, he was struck by the magnificent edition of the Oxford English Dictionary on my shelves, which is to say the 1961 corrected reissue of the 1933 first edition, the one Vivian Ridler printed on the university press, not lithographically. To run one’s fingers over the pages of the resplendent 13 volumes in their cream and blue wrappers, with their wonderfully tactile raised surfaces, is one of those pleasures that only proper books bestow, though to read the definitions, etymologies, and illustrative quotations is a rarer pleasure still.

No serious reader can be indifferent to the glories of the OED. Its wonderfully subtle, precise, comprehensive definitions, its illustrations setting forth the historical evolution of words, and its incomparable array of cited authors are marvels of scholarship. Delight in this most authoritative of dictionaries naturally leads to interest in James Murray, the OED’s founding editor and the many men and women who helped him to compile the Dictionary. Sarah Ogilvie’s The Dictionary People seeks to satisfy that interest. Does it succeed? It may complement but it certainly does not supersede the delightful biography that Murray’s granddaughter, K. M. Elisabeth Murray, wrote of the great lexicographer, Caught in the Web of Words: James Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary (1977), which Anthony Burgess rightly praised as “one of the finest biographies of the twentieth century.” Nor does it come close to giving readers an understanding of the life of dictionary-making that Robert de Maria, Jr. gives his readers in Johnson’s Dictionary and the Language of Learning (1986). It is nothing as authoritative as Peter Gilliver’s The Making of the Oxford English Dictionary (2016).

What does Ogilvie’s offer instead? She certainly serves up a crowded gallery of pen portraits of Murray and his coworkers. She sets scenes with a brisk, affecting vividness. She writes a bubbly narrative. Yet her grasp of lexicography can be wobbly.

The OED’s founding editor is a fascinating figure. The son of a tailor, Sir James Augustus Henry Murray (1832–1915), was born in Denholm, Scotland, and left school at the age of 14, but only after proving himself a prodigy with a passion for philology. He knew the letters of the English alphabet before the age of two and the Greek alphabet before the age of seven. He knew the Latin names of plants after mastering the rudiments of Latin. He also taught himself French, German, Italian, and classical Greek. Before beginning work on what would become the OED in 1879, he worked as a schoolmaster, a profession for which he had a genuine genius. He was also a devoted family man, siring no less than 11 children. It was his wife Ada who insisted that he move his office for the Dictionary out of the family house in the Banbury Road and into the back garden, where Murray built his famous Scriptorium, the cramped iron shed in which he and his helpers toiled for 30 years. After Murray’s death, the shed was demolished and Ada remarked on the terrible void it left for her and her children, so much of whose daily lives were intertwined with the repository of her husband’s herculean research.

Toward the end of his labors, Murray was ambivalent about whether he had chosen the right profession. “The greatest sacrifice the Dictionary entailed upon me, by far,” he confessed to his eldest son—who would graduate with a first from Balliol, write a scholarly book on chess, and become Her Majesty’s Inspector of Schools—“was the constant companionship of my own children; and I doubt it was worth the sacrifice. I have tried as a husband and father, to do what should have been the work of a celibate and ascetic, a Dunstan or a Cuthbert; no wonder it has been a struggle. But has it been worth it?” That the philologist prevailed over the family man in Murray may have given him second thoughts, but it has been an enormous boon to the rest of us.

Though Ogilvie provides good portraits of the founders of the OED, Herbert Coleridge and Frederick Furnivall, as well as the editors Henry Bradley, William Craigie, and Charles Onions, she contrives to see too many of her figures—especially the more eccentric ones—as avatars of our own fashionable notions. Too many pages, for instance, are given over to an oddly gushing account of the career of “Michael Field,” the pseudonym for Katherine Brady and Edith Cooper, the rather absurd literary ladies who were for many years readers for the Dictionary. Moreover, Ogilvie sees most of the women involved in providing “slips” (the sheets of paper on which readers for the Dictionary supplied Murray with their illustrations of words) as proto-feminists, oppressed souls knocked about by unfairly patriarchal men. Whether North Oxford at the time, learned or otherwise, actually saw itself in such terms is not a question with which Ogilvie concerns herself. “Should women writers be read for the Dictionary?” she asks. “They were, of course,” she concedes, “though not in the quantity that male authors were.” That there were simply more male than female authors on which to draw does not somehow signify. For Ogilvie, despite this disparity, there ought to have been an equal number of male and female authors read. In her Whiggish history, the Dictionary People are too often dragooned into vindicating such silly prejudices.

Despite her soft spot for the Dictionary’s female readers, Ogilvie is constrained to dismiss poor Charlotte Yonge, author of the excellent Tractarian novel, The Heir of Redclyffe (1853), as “old fashioned.” Why? The novelist was “a devout worshipper in the parish church,” and her books contain “didactic messages about the duties of a Christian.” Murray, however, saw fit to quote from Yonge’s works 1,300 times, which shows the extent to which he was uninfected by Ogilvie’s faddish strictures.

Murray’s definition of “fad” is tell-tale here: “A crotchety rule of action; a peculiar notion as to the right way of doing something; a pet project, esp. of social or political reform, to which exaggerated importance is attributed; in wider sense, a crotchet, hobby, ‘craze.’” One cannot view this definition on the online site for the OED because, as the current editors explain: the “OED is undergoing a continuous programme of revision to modernize and improve definitions. This entry has not yet been fully revised.” In the OED’s second edition, edited by J. A. Simpson, the sentence regarding “social or political reform”—which so aptly skewers the whole progressive project—is predictably excised.

If the current editors are poised to bundle away what had been the provocative élan of the OED’s definitions under Murray’s tutelage, Ogilvie in her account of its helpers can be relentlessly informative about things most readers will already know. Speaking of Virginia Woolf’s father, Leslie Stephen, for instance, a frequent contributor to the Dictionary, Ogilvie tells her readers that he was also the editor of the National Dictionary of Biography, “which is still going strong today under the aegis of Oxford University Press.” Reading this, those charged with marketing the ODNB must despair of the efficacy of their efforts.

Admittedly, these might seem trifling foibles, but when Ogilvie writes of lexicography, a subject upon which she should be expected to have some reliable expertise, we can see that her misjudgments are more fundamental. “We think of the OED as a radical dictionary,” she writes, “because of its size, its scholarship, and its methods . . . But if you compare it with other languages, there was nothing about its creation in the mid-nineteenth century that had not been done before in Europe.” Yet no reasonably informed person would regard the OED as “radical:” its debt to Johnson’s great Dictionary, to name just one, is patent, as anyone can see who attends to its development of the Great Cham’s use of illustrative quotation or the frequency with which “[J]” appears throughout its pages. Secondly, most of the compilation of what would become the OED was started in the late nineteenth century, when Murray took over the reins, not in the mid-nineteenth century, though the London Philological Society might have broached the need for a new dictionary as early as 1857. Thirdly, there were no dictionaries in Europe in the middle of the nineteenth century comparable to the OED, whether with respect to the realization of its historical principles or its wide-ranging quotations from classic authors. Gilliver cites the German scholar Franz Passow’s Greek dictionary of 1826 as an influence on the OED—especially his declaration in the introduction that genuinely historical dictionaries must capture “the life history of each individual word.” Yes, Murray and his editors followed Passow in embodying this “life history” in the OED; but an influence on a great work, however profound, is not necessarily comparable to the great work itself. We do not put Holinshed on the same level as Shakespeare.

Even worse, Ogilvie, who identifies herself on the book’s jacket as “a linguist and lexicographer,” claims that Johnson’s dictionary was “prescriptive”—as opposed to “descriptive”—which is to say that it defined words as they ought to be, not as they were. For Ogilvie, in other words, Johnson’s Dictionary was given over to “telling . . . readers what words should mean, and how they should be spelled, pronounced and used.” Of course, as all readers of Johnson’s Dictionary would know, this is a crude misrepresentation of his lexicographical work.

Henry Hitchens’s superb Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Johnson’s Dictionary (2005) presents a far more accurate understanding of Johnson’s approach to lexicography. Speaking of the Preface that Johnson wrote to his Dictionary, Hitchens says that “it is magisterial, noble, imperishable . . . no one has ever written so acutely and at the same time so personally about the problems of language and lexicography.” For Hitchens, “The experience of writing the Dictionary . . . transformed Johnson’s ideas about these subjects, and accordingly the Preface feels very different from the Plan of eight years before. Johnson is reconciled to the instability of language. He understands the importance of descriptive lexicography, and has renounced his own narrowly prescriptive notions.” And to substantiate his reading of this development of Johnson’s lexicographical career, Hitchens quotes the great man himself, who insists that “while our language is yet living, and variable by the caprice of every one that speaks it, . . . words are hourly shifting their relations, and can no more be ascertained in a dictionary than a grove, in the agitation of a storm, can be accurately delineated from its picture in the water.” Only a poet could have landed on so happy a metaphor to capture the irrepressible exuberance of language. It is also the poet of the vanity of human wishes in Johnson who charts the disillusionment he experienced in persevering with his great work:

When first I engaged in this work, I resolved to leave neither words nor things unexamined, and pleased myself with a prospect of the hours which I should revel away in feasts of literature, the obscure recesses of northern learning, which I should enter and ransack, the treasures with which I expected every search into those neglected mines to reward my labour, and the triumph with which I should display my acquisitions to mankind. When I had thus enquired into the original of words, I resolved to show likewise my attention to things; to pierce deep into every science, to enquire the nature of every substance of which I inserted the name, to limit every idea by a definition strictly logical, and exhibit every production of art or nature in an accurate description, that my book might be in place of all other dictionaries whether appellative or technical. But these were the dreams of a poet doomed at last to wake a lexicographer. 

Ogilvie’s voguish leanings notwithstanding, there are intriguing things in her book. For example, there is her description of the Sunday Tramps, who were formed and led by the godless Leslie Stephen. Like all good agnostics, he and his friends—mostly upper-middle-class professional men—spent their Sundays walking instead of attending church services. Murray defined the word agnostic as “one who holds that the true existence of anything beyond and behind material phenomenon is unknown and (so far as can be judged) unknowable.” Murray, a staunch Nonconformist, would never have been asked to join the Club—he was too devout—though his professional relationship with Stephen was fairly close. Ogilvie quotes an excerpt from the speech Murray gave on his seventieth birthday that could only have met with Stephen’s disdain: “The Dictionary is to me . . . the work that God has found for me and for which I now see that my sharpening of intellectual tools was done and it becomes to me a high and sacred devotion.”

Tidbits like these may not entirely save the book from its trendier proclivities but they do make it diverting, even moving.

Photo by PA Images via Getty Images

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Reggaeton & Trap Slang Words: A Latin Music Dictionary - Billboard - Dictionary

We listen to it full blast, we sing the lyrics at the top of our lungs, and even relate to the song, but perhaps there are times we are unsure of what we’re actually singing — and that’s OK, because Billboard has curated the ultimate Latin urban dictionary of reggaetón and trap music. 

In this edition, we specifically focus on Puerto Rican slang, decoding the meaning of words such as “puñeta,” “chavos,” and “la movie,” to name a few, found in the most popular lyrics. 

“Puerto Rico is the epicenter of everything that happens with urban music in the entire world,” Siggy Vázquez, Puerto Rican hitmaker who’s worked with Myke Towers, Shakira, and more, tells Billboard. “There are many countries that have contributed to our music, we owe a lot to Panama, Jamaica, and the United States, but Puerto Rico maintained that essence and knew how to globalize the movement. I think that the slang that we Boricuas use is unique. It dates back to the neighborhood, from the experiences we go through every day, and I think that connection is marked and reflected with the slang that we use in reggaetón lyrics. Currently, it’s one of the important characteristics by which our music is influencing and reaching larger markets.” 

Evidently, Puerto Rican slang has transcended the Caribbean island and expanded into other countries. Colombian star Karol G released the empowering “Bichota” deriving from the Puerto Rican term “bichote” that describes someone who’s powerful; Dominican artist Natti Natasha dropped the provocative “Algarete”; and “Bellakeo” finds Brazilian sensation Anitta and Mexican phenomenon Peso Pluma singing about being turned on. 

“I think it’s great that other countries use our vocabulary,” reggaetón and trap artist Brytiago says to Billboard. “In this way we maintain our culture and vocabulary, and it’s a way to represent our flag and roots to other diverse cultures in music. Music is a universal language, it belongs to all of us. If our vocabulary inspires others, that’s a great thing because it helps us continue to represent the beginnings of our movement.”

“I think that was the main goal: to let the world know about our slang and have other countries be nurtured and help us diversify,” adds Vázquez. “I think the most important thing about this is that when you listen to the music and there’s a word that you don’t understand, you search its meaning and its origin. At the same time, we are talking about education and we are doing proactive things so that people can be oriented about our movement and culture.” 

From “al garete” to “corillo” to “tiraera,” check out the list below.

• Acho

  
  Slang Meaning: Deriving from the word “muchacho” (guy), “acho” is a popular Boricua expression.

  
  Lyric Example: “What? ACHO PR, ser de aquí es mi mayor trofeo, ah” (“Acho PR [Puerto Rico], being from here is my biggest trophy”) — “ACHO PR,” Bad Bunny, Ñengo Flow, Arcangel & De La Ghetto

• Acicalao

  
  Slang Meaning: Someone who is well dressed and fashionable.

  
  Lyric Example: “Fendi, Louis, Dior/Hasta la muerte acicalao” (“Fendi, Louis, Dior/I’m fashionable to death”) — “Hasta la muerte acicalau,” Bryant Myers & Jon Z

• Afincar

  
  Slang Meaning: To approach and get close to someone until they are body to body.

  
  Lyric Example: “Desde el Caribe yo vengo directo aquí/ Para asegurarte que Milagros tiene bomba para afincar” (“From the Caribbean, I come straight to tell you that Milagros has it all to afincar“) — “Bomba para Afincar,” Vico C

• Al Garete

  
  Slang Meaning: To go crazy as hell or do something out of control.

  
  Lyric Example: “Tamo’ a lo loco nos fuimos al garete” (“We’re crazy, we’re going out of control”) — “Al Garete,” Julio Voltio

• Babilla

  
  Slang Meaning: The act of bravery. Someone who is courageous and not afraid.

  
  Lyric Example: “Hay quienes creen que tienen babilla por que se atreven a matar” (“There are those who believe that they have courage because they dare to kill”) — “Babilla,” Vico C

• Bailoteo

  
  Slang Meaning: To dance

  
  Lyric Example: “En la disco bailoteo/ Mezclamo’ un fumeteo, eh-oh” (“In the club, we dance/ We’ll mix in some smoke”) — “Eso Perro,” Wisin y Yandel

• Bebecita

  
  Slang Meaning: A term used to call your girlfriend, “baby.”

  
  Lyric Example: “Bebecita, lo de nosotros es un secreto, que nadie se entere” (“Baby, what we have is a secret, may no one find out”) — “Secreto,” Anuel AA, Karol G

• Bellaco/a

  
  Slang Meaning: This term is used to describe someone who is sexually aroused.

  
  Lyric Example: “Pero lo que me mata/ Es cuando pone cara de bellaca” (“What kills me, is when she gets turned on”) — “Me Mata,” Bad Bunny, Arcángel, Almighty, Bryant Myers, Baby Rasta, Noriel & Brytiago

• Bicho

  
  Slang Meaning: Spanish for “bug,” but in reggaetón lyrics, the word is also used to describe a man’s private parts.

  
  Lyric Example: “Te gustan las mujeres, pero te encanta el bicho” (“You like women, but you like the penis”) — “La Ocasión,” De La Ghetto, Arcangel, Ozuna, Anuel AA

• Cangri

  
  Slang Meaning: A word that describes someone who’s the champion or the best at what they do.

  
  Lyric Example: “Un nuevo cangri con un nuevo ranking” (“A new champion with a new ranking”) — “El Cangri,” Daddy Yankee

• Chavos

  
  Slang Meaning: Another term used for money

  
  Lyric Example: “Mejor háblame de chavos que esos sí que uno se los disfruta” (“Talk to me about money instead, I enjoy those more”) — “Mujeres y Chavos,” Ñejo

• Combi Completa

  
  Slang Meaning: Used to describe a person who has the “whole package”

  
  Lyric Example: “Y es que yo quiero la combi completa, ¿qué?” (“I want the whole package”) – “En La Cama,” Nicky Jam

• Corillo

  
  Slang Meaning: A term used to reference a group of friends.

  
  Lyric Example: “Que Dios bendiga mi corillo” (“May God bless my squad”) — “Que Dios Bendiga (Remix),” Arcangel

• Dura

  
  Slang Meaning: Its literal translation means “hard,” but in urban lyrics, “dura” is used to describe a woman who’s all that. 

  
  Lyric Example: “Que estás dura, mano arriba porque tú te ves bien” (“You’re all that, throw your hands up because you look good”) – “Dura,” Daddy Yankee

• Fronteo

  
  Slang Meaning: To act pretentiously or show off

  
  Lyric Example: “Por eso le fronteo hasta aquel que critica lo ajeno” (“That’s why I confront even those who criticize other people’s things”) — “Naci Pa’ Ser Bueno,” Myke Towers

• La Movie

  
  Slang Meaning: Also used as “La Pelicula,” the term describes someone who creates a fantasy of their life

  
  Lyric Example: “Son muchos que dicen que ni a mi movie le van a poner stop” (“It’s a lot of people who have said that they will put a stop to my movie”) — “Liberace (Remix),” Farruko

• Mera

  
  Slang Meaning: Simply put, “mera” is another way of saying “mira,” which means “to look.”

  
  Lyric Example: “I-I-Iah, diablo, mera, woo/ No me mire’ así, que me desespero” (“Damn, look/ Don’t look at me that way that I get desperate”) — “MERA,” Dalex, Tainy & Alvaro Díaz

• Perreo

  
  Slang Meaning: To dance reggaetón erotically, with hip and thigh movements all the way down.

  
  Lyric Example: “Mujeres pa’ la disco a perrear/ Pero que él no se crea, puede jugar” (“Women, let’s go to the club to dance/ But may he not think he can play” — “Yo Quiero Bailar,” Ivy Queen

• Pichar

  
  Slang Meaning: To ignore someone

  
  Lyric Example: “Ante’ tú me pichaba’ (tú me pichaba’)/ Ahora yo picheo (mmh, nah)” (“Before you would ignore me/ But now I ignore you”) — “Yo Perreo Sola,” Bad Bunny

• Piquete

  
  Slang Meaning: Having a lot of swag

  
  Lyric Example: “Pero es que tú chica, con ese piquete” (“Look at you girl, with all that swag”) — “Me Niego,” Reik & Ozuna

• Puñeta

  
  Slang Meaning: Similar to acho, puñeta is an expression that can be used with any emotion (happy, sad, confused, surprised, and so on).

  
  Lyric Example: “Perreo flow discoteca, aunque es paisa dice ‘acho puñeta” (“Dancing flow nightclub, even though she’s paisa (Colombian), she says ‘acho puñeta'”) — “Puñeta,” Blessd, Juanka, Brray, J King & KEVVO

• Tiraera

  
  Slang Meaning: A term used in Latin urban when there are two artists in a lyrical battle.

  
  Lyric Example: “Mi forma de tiraera, chequea, que me los gano a mi manera” (“Check out my form of battling, I’ll win my own way”) — “Mi Forma de Tiraera,” Vico C

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US bill targets translation of open-source materials from China - South China Morning Post - Translation

A bipartisan group of US lawmakers introduced a bill on Thursday that would establish a research centre charged with creating publicly accessible English translations of open-source materials from China.

The initiative, to be known as the Open Translation Centre, would also train analysts and linguists to specialise in China and other countries, a full list of which will be determined later.

“The United States can’t afford to be in a position where our competitors know more about us than we know about them,” said Democratic congressman Joaquin Castro of Texas, the bill’s sponsor.

“For generations, Congress supported open-source translation programmes that helped Americans understand both our allies and our adversaries. As our investment in those programmes [has] declined, countries like China and Russia have accelerated their own – putting us at a strategic disadvantage,” he continued.

Analysts at the OTC will be tasked with translating and interpreting official and semi-official reports, speeches and journals, in addition to news and commentary.

The bill requires that contextual information be provided to the public, including biographical sketches of key leaders; descriptions of political processes, military weapons systems, important government bodies and companies; and analysis of significant concepts and phrases.

A five-member board with expertise in translation, media, international relations and other relevant disciplines would lead the centre. Two members would be appointed by the US secretary of state, two by the director of national intelligence and one by the director of the US Copyright Office.

Thursday’s bill was supported by Wisconsin Republican Mike Gallagher, outgoing chair of the House select committee on China, and Tammy Baldwin, Democratic senator of Wisconsin.

US must treat China more like a cold-war opponent: Republican policymakers

“Our adversaries, namely the Chinese Communist Party, continue to grow increasingly aggressive across the world stage,” said Gallagher.

“This poses a serious threat to American national security, and in order to understand and combat these threats, it is imperative to be able to read and understand our adversaries’ primary sources,” he added.

For the bill to become law, it must pass both the full House and Senate by January.

This latest congressional effort comes amid challenges in getting accurate information out of China, as Beijing in recent years has tightened restrictions on access to academic and corporate databases.

It also comes amid difficulties in connecting Americans with opportunities to study in China, as American universities navigate closed US government programmes in the country and contend with the State Department’s travel advisory for the mainland, which is currently set at the third-highest risk level of “reconsider travel”.

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Washington has increasingly recognised the need for Chinese speakers at different levels of the American government. But progress in staffing has been slow so far.

“We’re trying to build capacity across the [State Department] in capacities associated with the Indo-Pacific. At the core of that is an understanding both in language [and in the] history, culture of China,” said US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell on Tuesday.

But, he added, these were not initiatives that could bear fruit overnight. “It takes a long time,” he said.

The creation of a translation centre would supplement other non-governmental efforts that have popped up in recent years.

In 2022, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, established Interpret China, an initiative aimed at translating and analysing primary source material from China.

That year the Centre for Strategic Translation, a non-profit research institute, was founded with the same goal.

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US lawmakers unveil bill to set up research centre translating open-source materials from China - South China Morning Post - Translation

“For generations, Congress supported open-source translation programmes that helped Americans understand both our allies and our adversaries. As our investment in those programmes [has] declined, countries like China and Russia have accelerated their own – putting us at a strategic disadvantage,” he continued.

Analysts at the OTC will be tasked with translating and interpreting official and semi-official reports, speeches and journals, in addition to news and commentary.

The bill requires that contextual information be provided to the public, including biographical sketches of key leaders; descriptions of political processes, military weapons systems, important government bodies and companies; and analysis of significant concepts and phrases.

A five-member board with expertise in translation, media, international relations and other relevant disciplines would lead the centre. Two members would be appointed by the US secretary of state, two by the director of national intelligence and one by the director of the US Copyright Office.

Thursday’s bill was supported by Wisconsin Republican Mike Gallagher, outgoing chair of the House select committee on China, and Tammy Baldwin, Democratic senator of Wisconsin.

US must treat China more like a cold-war opponent: Republican policymakers

“Our adversaries, namely the Chinese Communist Party, continue to grow increasingly aggressive across the world stage,” said Gallagher.

“This poses a serious threat to American national security, and in order to understand and combat these threats, it is imperative to be able to read and understand our adversaries’ primary sources,” he added.

For the bill to become law, it must pass both the full House and Senate by January.

This latest congressional effort comes amid challenges in getting accurate information out of China, as Beijing in recent years has tightened restrictions on access to academic and corporate databases.

It also comes amid difficulties in connecting Americans with opportunities to study in China, as American universities navigate closed US government programmes in the country and contend with the State Department’s travel advisory for the mainland, which is currently set at the third-highest risk level of “reconsider travel”.

Professors, students say ‘no’ to Florida as new law targets Chinese

Washington has increasingly recognised the need for Chinese speakers at different levels of the American government. But progress in staffing has been slow so far.

“We’re trying to build capacity across the [State Department] in capacities associated with the Indo-Pacific. At the core of that is an understanding both in language and history and culture of China,” said US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell on Tuesday.

But, he added, these were not initiatives that could bear fruit overnight. “It takes a long time,” he said.

The creation of a translation centre would supplement other non-governmental efforts that have popped up in recent years.

In 2022, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, established Interpret China, an initiative aimed at translating and analysing primary source material from China. That year the Centre for Strategic Translation, a non-profit research institute, was founded with the same goal.

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