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‘Shōgun’is a refreshing reminder that in a time where the power of the ‘one-inch tall barrier’ still seems distastefully under contention, sometimes you need to revive the literal Tokugawa Shōgunate to bridge the cumbersome gap between worlds
In its grand finale, FX’s captivating rendition of James Clavell’s historical epic Shōgun gracefully bows out with a rendezvous with mortality.
“Please split your belly open by sunset,” and “Have a good death” echo some of what we hear with the casualness of a tea sip. Yet, to truly grasp the weight of seppuku’s socio-historical significance, honour the richness of its source material, and deftly navigate the intricacies of translation, the series stands alone in its unparalleled achievement. Shōgun employs a three-pronged approach, replete with cross-cultural exchanges, verbal fencing, and the delicate dance of understanding in an era poised on the precipice of profound change.
Dr Hilary Brown will be leading a project over 2024-25 which will explore what feminist translation means in practice in the twenty-first century.
Dr Brown has been awarded an AHRC Networking grant, together with her co-investigator Dr Olga Castro (University of Warwick/Barcelona), and will be establishing a “Feminist Translation Network” which will bring together researchers, practitioners and educators to discuss feminist approaches to contemporary literary translation in English. The Network will ask questions such as: What is feminist translation (e.g. how does it differ – or not – from translations by women/of women or from queer translation/gender-inclusive translation)? Is feminist translation a matter of identity or a matter of practice? What are the goals of feminist translation and whom is it for?
The Network will address these themes at a series of free public events held over 2024-25, beginning with a translation ‘slam’ and roundtable discussion at the Birmingham Literature Festival in October 2024.
The Network’s activities will be overseen by a steering group which includes former DoML staff member Dr Gaby Saldanha.
International holidays are set to return so we asked experts to test some of the top translation apps
SPRING HAS SPRUNG, and the summer is fast closing in, and – more importantly – international travel is returning in the coming months. This means the opportunity to immerse yourself in different locations, languages and cultures, and we’re here to assist you with that endeavour.
While learning some local lingo before you go, or picking some up along the way broadens the mind, a language translator app can be a great tool for helping you along the way – whether it’s assisting in a jam or lending a hand with learning the language.
Language translation apps are ten a penny these days, with many being free alongside some premium options. In some cases, you may not even have to download a new app, with Google and Apple getting in on the game with their own versions. Microsoft has its free offering, and lesser-knowns like SayHi and iTranslate are also making their case. We’ve tested them all to find the best one to take with you as you satisfy your 2021 wanderlust.
On April 20, we celebrate the United Nations Chinese Language Day, a day chosen to honor Cangjie, the legendary inventor of the Chinese script. In light of this, I propose that the term hanzi be officially adopted as the translation for the symbols of the Chinese script.
For far too long, we’ve relied on the term “Chinese character” as the English equivalent of hanzi. However, given the evolving nature of language, it is imperative to reevaluate this lexical equivalence and adopt a more nuanced perspective. Particularly during the celebration of Chinese Language Day, let’s spread the use of the Pinyin-transliterated term, hanzi.
The Chinese script stands as one of the oldest writing systems in the world. It is an invaluable cultural treasure for the Chinese people, a symbol of national identity, and a bridge that connects people of diverse ethnic backgrounds. But its influence doesn’t stop there. The Chinese script has had a profound impact on the languages of Japan, the Korean Peninsula, and Vietnam.
Translation has consistently been a central focus at London Book Fairs. Translators’ and scouts’ perspectives shape publishing decisions for translations. Nonetheless, their impact on the UK publishing market is limited to 3-6% of the market, which mostly belongs to anglophone writers. Over the last two years, Japanese manga made it clear: the foreign literature segment is poised for growth.
In 2023, the UK witnessed a surge in popularity for manga and cozy novels, with Japanese writers leading the market for translated titles. Seventeen of the top 30 translated authors in Britain hailed from Japan, contributing to nine out of the 20 bestsellers being originally written in Japanese. Kentaro Miura, the manga creator who tragically passed away in 2021 at the age of 54, led the pack of translators. An overwhelming 95% of manga sales came from titles originally published in Japan. Among the top 10 authors in translation who generated over £1 million in sales last year, seven were Japanese, with five of them being manga creators. The only non-Japanese names in the top 10 were Thomas Erikson (3rd) and Andrzej Sapkowski (10th).
The top 20 lists featured familiar names such as Elena Ferrante, Jo Nesbo, Paulo Coelho, and Haruki Murakami. Additionally, new faces emerged in the charts, including Bulgarian author Georgi Gospodinov.
Islamabad : Former Federal Secretary and a well-known man of letters, Muhammad Saleem Sethi has come up with a genuinely-crafted literary landmark, the Urdu translation and illustration of the famous Persian poet Fariduddin Attar’s long poem ‘Musibat Nama.’
The book gives a deep insight into the Sufis’ school of ‘Ishq’ which is commonly known as ‘Mysticism.’ It takes the readers to the less-trodden paths of human sufferings and man’s resilience in the face of ordeals. An undertone of curiosity always keeps the flame of spiritualism burning, says a press release.
In the interior parts of old Peshawar city, the Persian ‘kalam’ of Sheikh Saadi and Attar of Nishapur was read out and the family members used to sit silently and listen to the resonating Persian verses of great Iranian poets. It was that rich literary background that made Saleem Sethi undertake the gigantic task of translating Attar.
Bipartisan group supports addressing ‘strategic disadvantage’ and understanding adversaries who pose ‘serious threat to American national security’
Open Translation Centre tasked with training analystsand linguists comes amid challenges getting accurate information out of China
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.
The forthcoming language translation component won’t even require a drawn circle. Google says people will just have to long press the home button or the navigation bar and look for the translate icon. It’ll do the rest. The company showed the tech quickly translating an entire menu with one long press. Google Translate can already do this, though in a slightly different way, but this update means users won’t have to pop out of one app and into another just to check on something.
Samsung continues to break down language barriers and innovate communication for more users through Galaxy AI
Samsung Electronics today announced the upcoming expansion of three new languages for Galaxy AI: Arabic, Indonesian and Russian, as well as three new dialects: Australian English, Cantonese and Canadian French. In addition to the 13 languages1 already available, Samsung empowers even more Galaxy users around the world to harness the power of mobile AI. In addition to these new languages and dialects, Samsung plans to add four more languages later this year, including Romanian, Turkish, Dutch and Swedish, as well as the traditional Chinese and European Portuguese.
“Committed to democratizing mobile AI for all, Galaxy AI’s language expansion this year will allow even more Galaxy users to communicate beyond language barriers on a scale that is completely unique to Samsung,” said TM Roh, President and Head of Mobile eXperience Business at Samsung Electronics. “We will continue to innovate our technology and pioneer premium mobile AI experiences so that even more users are equipped with the right tools to unleash their unlimited potential.”
For the first time in history, a single language dominates global scientific communication. But the actual production of knowledge continues to be a multilingual enterprise.
The use of English as the norm poses challenges for scholars from regions where English is not widely spoken. They must decide whether to publish in English for global visibility, or publish in their native language to make their work accessible to local communities. And when they work in English, they end up expending more time and effort writing and revising papers than their native English-speaking peers.
As gatekeepers of scientific knowledge, academic publishers play a key role in helping or hindering the participation of a multilingual scientific community. So how are they doing?
As San Francisco-based OpenAI just unveiled on Friday its Voice Engine tool, which can replicate people’s voices, in small commodity hub Yiwu, East China’s Zhejiang Province, people adopted a similar domestic artificial intelligence (AI) application to help engage with foreign traders in 36 different languages as early as in October 2023.
Voice Engine, a model for creating custom voices, uses text input and a single 15-second audio sample to generate natural-sounding speech that closely resembles that of the original speaker, said the company in a statement released on Friday.
Translation algorithms have greatly improved in recent years, but can they work on literature? Human practitioners of the art are not convinced
‘Translators are stage horses of enlightenment,” the poet Alexander Pushkin wrote in the margin of one of his manuscripts. Two centuries later, the political scientist Steven Weber similarly compared translation to transportation: not of people and goods but of ideas and knowledge. Just as the world swapped horses for mechanical means of transport, multilingual communication has accelerated too – and now, with the use of AI tools, translation can happen faster than ever.
But faster doesn’t always mean better – the use of AI comes with various risks. This week the European parliament adopted the Artificial Intelligence Act, the world’s first comprehensive piece of AI legislation. It requires developers to be transparent about the data used to train their models, and to comply with EU copyright law.
The Ethical and Quality Concerns Raised by Improper Data Acquisition
In a digital world teeming with data, the art of language learning and its integration into the fabric of Artificial Intelligence (AI) stands as an eclectic fusion of human insight and technical precision. As giants of the AI arena seek to harness the power of linguistic diversity, one mammoth challenge rears its head – the flood of web-scraped, machine-translated data that inundates the datasets of large language models (LLMs).
These data sources can potentially impact the sanctity of language learning, calling education technologists, AI data analysts, and business leaders to rally against the detrimental effects of opaque data origins in our AI future..
Sunnyvale residents who don’t speak English have a new way to engage and participate in city meetings.
The city is piloting an artificial intelligence-based translation service upon request for public meetings through Wordly. The technology offers live translation in more than 50 languages. Using AI is more cost effective and efficient than human translators, according to city officials.
“We have such diversity from cultures as well as language that trying to make sure we can overcome those barriers … is a great step forward in showing what cities can do to include residents who in the past have been left out,” Mayor Larry Klein told San José Spotlight.
On its website, Wordly advertises its work with a handful of other cities, such as Gilroy. Residents attending a Gilroy government meeting in person can scan a QR code to access Wordly translations in more than 30 languages.
Mark Liberman, a linguist at the University of Pennsylvania, noted recently on the Language Log blog that English does not allow you to pair any old adjective with any old noun in a fixed expression. You may wish someone “good morning”, “good afternoon” or “good night”, but not “good weekend”. You can say that phrase if you like, but your neighbour would look at you quizzically if you lob it over the fence on a Friday evening. In other languages it is perfectly conventional.
On September 8th, the International Book Bank is celebrating International Literacy Day with the hashtag #whyiread, and we need your help to remind your friends and the world that:
Currently 775.4 million adults cannot read or write; two thirds are women. Illiteracy affects an individual’s access to education, ability to exercise her civil rights, and even impacts her health and development. The consequences of illiteracy are devastating for the individual, the community and the world.
In 1965, UNESCO declared September 8th International Literacy Day (ILD) in an effort to focus attention on global literacy issues. This year, IBB is asking our donors, partners, and friends to share why you read. Here’s how
The 1920s wasn’t just a period of decadence and flappers in a post-war haze of happiness. While The Great Gatsby drew attention to a world of insouciantpleasure-seeking, the 1920s also saw plenty of words enter the language. Some seem apt for the era, some might surprise, and all twenty selected below have survived for almost a century.
We communicate with each other in all sorts of ways, spoken and unspoken. In this hour, TED speakers reflect on how our words and methods of communication affect us, more than you might expect.
THERE are not many people who can say they invented their profession but after 40 years of hard work, John Vaughan finally has an official career.
Mr Vaughan is a vexillographer, someone who studies the history of flags and designs them, with more than 5000 flags in his collection. Next year, the words vexillographer and vexillography will be added to the Macquarie Dictionary.
Mr Vaughan said the first time the word was officially used was in an interview he did with theNorth Shore Times in 1976.
The translation news daily digest is my daily 'signal' to stop work and find out what's going on in the world of translation before heading back into the world at large! It provides a great overview that I could never get on my own.
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Estados Unidos
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