On March 10th the world language community was saddened by the loss of three interpreters in the Ethiopian Airlines ET302 crash. Suzan Abul Farag, Esmat Orensa and Gachi de Luis were travelling to Kenya on a UN mission. Here’s your monthly round-up of the most popular stories about language and translation for March 2019.
- Ideas Beyond Borders is a knowledge translation initiative that aims to remove the Arabic language barrier to knowledge through translation, so that more Arabic-speaking young people can become empowered & hopeful, and not get drawn into extremist & violent organisations
- Another language-based initiative is Found in Translation, a nonprofit that empowers low-income multilingual women to achieve economic security through a medical interpreter training programme
Found in Translation 2017 graduate Vanessa Bui (second from right) interacted with a guest speaker during class. (Image courtesy of Feda Eid Photography.)
- Do you ever refer colleagues?
- Using Google to translate English into another language is a trick used by high school students — not something you’d expect to see from candidates for the highest office in the USA
Latino outreach or Google Translate? 2020 Dems bungle Spanish websites
- As it to prove the point: Why Google Translate and language students don’t cut the mustard for professional translation
- And in San Francisco: A poorly translated Chinese language survey translated, amongst other mistakes, the Tenderloin district as “a beef filet”
- Chuddies, jibbons and fantoosh: Oxford English Dictionary added some crowdsourced regional terms
Chuddies … the Indian English term joins the OED. (Photograph: Todd Terje PR)
- There’s more to using non-binary and inclusive language in translation than, for example, just using singular ‘they’
- Colleague Caroline Alberoni continued her ‘Greatest Women in Translation’ series by an interview with Brazilian-born literary translator from Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Catalan into English, Julia Sanches
- A look at linguistics in Dutch society
- New Zealand had an inclusive response to the Christchurch terror attack: did you know that NZ sign language is one of the country’s three official languages?
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced a ban on all military-style semiautomatic weapons and assault rifles on March 21. (Reuters)
Further reading:
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