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M. Buna speaks to Johannes Göransson about his “Transgressive Circulation: Essays on Translation.”
In a paper, scientists at Amazon's Alexa division describe a transfer learning method that makes it easier to add support for new languages to AI systems.
When it was suggested to Joshua Blau, at the start of his professional career, that he study the letters of Maimonides, there were those who warned him not to undertake the task. The three scholars who had previously begun dealing with the letters had died unnatural deaths. The first was found deceased at his desk …
New research investigates how people sequentially add new color terms to languages over time – and the results hold surprises about assumptions linguists have made for 40 years.
At work in central Hong Kong, David Hand is surrounded by people speaking Chinese and English. But inside his home, the Welsh language rules.
At work in central Hong Kong, David Hand is surrounded by people speaking Chinese and English. But inside his home, the Welsh language rules.
Barbara Malt and her collaborators examine how we talk about objects across multiple languages—and how that reflects human thought processes.
How languages get built for fantasy and sci-fi worlds, explained.
The English and Dutch languages are closely related, and despite three 17th-century naval conflicts Britain and the Netherlands have long been connected.
"We kept our languages hidden," says a host from Central California's Radio Indígena 94.1, "but no longer." The shows appeal to farmers of indigenous origin.
Code depends on English—for reasons that are entirely unnecessary at a technical level.
This is a list of 15 helpful apps for all you working linguists out there. The list includes mono- and multilingual dictionaries, grammar and proofreading aids, linguistic article catalogues, and apps for improving productivity and organisation. Download, and enjoy! Dictionaries Oxford Dictionary of English FREE This free app offers the most comprehensive coverage of the …
Far from the reach of the Chinese government, Uyghur booksellers are protecting their language from being erased.
The first time you saw the word biopic, did you pronounce it ‘bi-OPic’, to rhyme with myopic, either aloud or in your head, before learning that it’s ‘bio-pic’, as in biographical picture? If so, y…
The lure of the greasepaint has long attracted people, from Mrs Worthingtonâs daughter to the latest contestants on reality shows to pick the next star of a West End remake. So on World Theatre Day, await the swish of the curtain, donât let the super troupers blind you, and get ready to tread the boards …
Milpa Alta – which maintains traditions from its pre-Columbian past – feels like a tiny mountain village, making it hard to believe that it’s part of Mexico City.
An article about bias in automatic language processing tools. Excerpt:
Gobo was designed to address the lack of knowledge and control that people have over how their social media feeds are filtered. It aims to give power back to the user by allowing users to adjust how their feeds are filtered along six categories: politics, seriousness, rudeness, gender, brands, and obscurity. When the user changes the filters for each of these categories, posts will either get filtered in or out of their feed, and Gobo will tell them why. […]
The rudeness filter is what stood out to me the most — not necessarily because it performed worse than the other filters, but because of those posts were being filtered out. When I set my feed to show me posts that Gobo deemed “less rude,” I noticed that many of the posts from women of color disappeared. […]
Several filters on Gobo are created with third-party tools, including the rudeness filter. This filter uses an API from Jigsaw — an incubator within Google’s parent company, Alphabet — called Perspective, which uses “machine learning models to score the perceived impact a comment might have on a conversation,” according to its website. […]
My own experience using Perspective revealed another layer of misrecognition when it comes to linguistic differences. Perspective fails to recognize AAVE. As a result, statements like “you in yo bag sis! You betta do it sis!!!!!!!!” may be inappropriately flagged as toxic, despite the meaning being positive.
Read the whole thing.
In 2017, Samanta Schweblinâs novel, Fever Dream, was released in English. The surreal, hallucinatory tale about a woman dying from a mysterious poison, expertly translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell, earned a cult-like reputation among writers and raves from critics for its sparse prose and haunting tension. Schweblinâs latest collection in English, Mouthful of Birds, …
Learning languages rewires the brain and changes how we perceive time.
The Government of Nunavut says it will work with Inuit organizations to press Ottawa for amendments to the federal Indigenous Languages Act. The federal
How is our speech shaped by what we hear? The answer varies, depending on the make-up of our brain's pathways, a team of neuroscientists has found. The research, which maps how we synchronize our words with the rhythm of the sounds we hear, offers potential methods for diagnosing speech-related afflictions and evaluating cognitive-linguistic development in children.
How is our speech shaped by what we hear? The answer varies, depending on the make-up of our brain's pathways, a team of neuroscientists has found. The research, which maps how we synchronize our words with the rhythm of the sounds we hear, offers potential methods for diagnosing speech-related afflictions and evaluating cognitive-linguistic development in children.
How is our speech shaped by what we hear? The answer varies, depending on the make-up of our brain's pathways, a team of neuroscientists has found. The research, which maps how we synchronize our words with the rhythm of the sounds we hear, offers potential methods for diagnosing speech-related afflictions and evaluating cognitive-linguistic development in children.
Professional translation agency Tomedes examines the world's most translated author, Agatha Christie, and what makes her so popular
Could that success be replicated elsewhere?
The language rooted in Spanish with connections to Turkish, Hebrew, Greek, Arabic and other languages is in danger of being lost.
Linguists are studying the last remaining speakers of Afrikaans in far flung Patagonia
Listening to someone speaking with a foreign accent makes human brains work harder which can lead to unintentional discrimination against people communicating in languages other than their own, new research suggests. But exposure to foreign accents can also change the way people speak, and over time, the ensuing accents can become new languages.
Benjamin Dreyer’s attention to gusto in language use is magical in a way that resists full explication.
UW professor works to preserve and celebrate Ladino language, a combination of Hebrew letting and Spanish.
Some members of the Mayan community see hypocrisy in spreading the term Maya without any focus on preserving the Mayan language.
On the first of February, 1884—134 years ago today—the first installment of the earliest edition of what we now know as the Oxford English Dictionary was published. In 352 pages, it covered words f…
We most often think of indigenous languages in the context of colonisation â languages used by people who originally inhabited regions that were later colonised. These are the languages that the UN had in mind when it stated a deep concern about the vast number of endangered indigenous languages. And rightly so. More than 2,400 …
Do the beliefs we hold about literature add up to something consistent and coherent? Or are they little more than random pieties? Take two crucial notions I heard repeatedly last year. First, that in a fine work of literature, every word counts, perfection has been achieved, nothing can be moved—a claim I’ve seen made for writers as prolix (and diverse) as Victor Hugo and Jonathan Franzen. Second, that translators are creative artists in their own right, co-authoring the text they translate, a fine translation being as unique and important as the original work. Mark Polizzotti makes this claim in Sympathy for the Traitor (2018), but any number of scholars in the field of Translation Studies would agree.
Editor and translator Katy Derbyshire poses the question to ten practitioners and stresses why we need to be talking about it.
