O Festival de Inverno de Bonito traz na edição deste ano, pela primeira vez recursos de acessibilidade como audiodescrição, textos em braile e tradução em Libras. A Exposição de Artes Plásticas “Série Divisão de Mato Grosso”, de Humberto Espíndola, proporciona a descrição das obras em braile.

Para quem se interessar, haverá monitores para fazer a audiodescrição ao vivo da exposição. Serão duas monitoras a disposição do público: Ivone Angela dos Santos, da Secretaria de Cultura, Turismo, Empreendedorismo e Inovação (Sectei), e Cândida Alves, do Centro de Apoio Pedagógico ao Deficiente Visual (CAP-DV/MS).

Segundo a especialista em acessibilidade cultural e técnica da Assessoria de Projetos da Sectei, Ivone Angela dos Santos, a audiodescrição é um recurso de acessibilidade que transforma imagens em palavras, por meio de informação sonora, para que pessoas com deficiência visual possam ter acesso aos bens culturais, abrindo possibilidades maiores de acesso à informação, contribuindo para a inclusão cultural e social. A audiodescrição auxilia também pessoas com deficiência intelectual, idosos e disléxicos.

Haverá também a tradução em Libras para alguns espetáculos e eventos: no dia 29, das 14h às 18h, na exposição de artes plásticas com obras de Humberto Espíndola; no dia 30 de julho, às 10h, no teatro infantil “Gaia, a mãe natureza”, do Grupo Casa; no dia 30 de julho, às 17h, no teatro “Uma moça da cidade”, dos produtores e atores Anderson Bosh, Luciana Kreutzer e Yago Garcia, e no dia 30 de julho, às 17h30, na oficina de Contação de Histórias.

As intérpretes de Libras são Luciane Gonçalves da Rosa Parreira e Tamires Bessa da Silva, do Centro de Capacitação de Profissionais da Educação e de Atendimento às Pessoas com Surdez (CAS).

Para a especialista em acessibilidade cultural da Sectei, Ivone dos Santos, será o início de grandes mudanças em benefício da acessibilidade cultural para pessoas com deficiência, considerando que o Estado possui 526.979 mil pessoas com algum tipo de deficiência, ou seja 21,50% da população sul-mato-grossense, conforme dados do IBGE/2010. “É um número considerável e o Estado precisa avançar muito nessa área. A inserção desses recursos é uma forma de garantir a todos em condições de igualdade os direitos culturais e de promover o desenvolvimento social inclusivo. É um avanço na área de política pública cultural para pessoas com deficiência”.

Ivone continua dizendo que, para que os princípios da acessibilidade e da inclusão social das pessoas com deficiência sejam viabilizados no universo cultural, além de seguir as leis e normas nacionais e internacionais, é necessário desenvolver estratégias para que a linguagem das manifestações culturais inclua essa população como parte de seu público alvo. “Conforme a Lei Brasileira de Inclusão das Pessoas com Deficiência de 2015, em seu capítulo I, artigo 53, ‘a acessibilidade é direito que garante à pessoa com deficiência ou mobilidade reduzida viver de forma independente e exercer seus direitos de cidadania e de participação social’”, conclui Ivone.

Baidu has made its second investment in a U.S. fintech company inside a month after it put an undisclosed sum of money into ZestFinance, a big data firm..

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Think back to the early days of MOOCs. Professors at Stanford and Harvard and other places were suddenly teaching really big classes, free. Hundreds of thousands of students at once were in those courses. It was an unprecedented giveaway of what had traditionally been the most expensive education in the world.

Back then, I met several students who were binging on the courses the way you might binge-watch a season of your favorite show on Netflix. They took as many courses as they possibly could, powering through and finishing as many as 30 courses in a year. When I asked why they were in such a hurry, the most popular reason was that they thought it was all too good to last. As one of those binging students told me, "I’m just afraid this whole thing might end soon." Surely, universities would change their mind about this, or the start-ups working with colleges might lock things up.


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Fast forward to last month, when Coursera did something that stirred up all of those concerns again. On June 30 the company deleted hundreds of its earliest courses, as part of a shift to a new software platform. Reaction, as you might expect, was negative on social media and blogs. One programmer called it cultural vandalism.
To be fair, many of the courses will actually be brought back on the new platform. For the company, the reason to upgrade was a philosophical shift, to offering courses that start on demand rather than just once or twice a year, as their early courses did. Coursera said it had found that completion rates were just better when people could start at their own convenience, but the episode did raise continuing concerns about the future of MOOCs. Will the free courses really stick around, and do MOOCs have staying power?

Hello, and welcome to The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Re:Learning Podcast. I’m Jeff Young, and I recently had the chance to talk with Daphne Koller, a co-founder of Coursera, about those issues. We sat down at the EdTechXEurope conference, in London.

First, a quick program note. This is a special bonus episode of our podcast, since we’re on summer break between seasons. We’ll be back on a more regular schedule starting in the fall.

Listen to the full audio. Below is an edited and adapted transcript of the podcast.

Q. Daphne, thank you for joining us today.

A. Thank you, Jeff.

Q. Obviously, MOOCs are a different conversation today than they were a few years ago. I’m curious. Some people out there are sort of like, "See. I told you so. The hype wasn’t as big." I know you were never the one saying a lot of the hype anyway, so.

A. That’s right.

Q. How would you describe the narrative now? What are MOOCs today, and where are they heading? What’s the arc of, maybe, what’s been learned from the early days, and where things are going?

A. Yeah. I found the hype in the early days to be somewhat laughable, and as well as the trough that came afterward. The first year was, "Oh, MOOCs are going to put universities out of business," which we never aimed for, nor endorsed. Twelve months later, it’s like, "Universities are still around. You fail." OK. Both of these were ridiculous points of view. I think what we’re seeing right now is that what we’re doing is providing access to an amazing educational experience, to a lot of people who, for diverse reasons, don’t have the opportunity to benefit from it. That includes people in developing countries, who might not have a well-established educational system, but also includes people like you and me, who want to learn something new, or need to learn something new because the skills that we need for our job have changed, and we’re not going to get a chance to go back to school.

Q. I have to ask. There was something I just saw in the last couple days about a little bit of grumbling about a change that Coursera’s making about some of the old original MOOCs, a large number, I think, of courses that are being taken down. You guys are making a change to the platform. Is this right, and what is your response to people who are complaining that this free resource that was there for a long time is going away?

A. First of all, there is a misunderstanding here. A lot of these courses will be migrated to the new platform. They just haven’t been yet, partly because there’s some changes that need to be made to the format to make them live on the new platform. We’re really excited about the new platform because, unlike the old one, where the courses were only live once or twice a year, here the courses are live all the time, so you can start the class pretty much every two weeks. There’s a new cohort launching, so that’s why we made that change.

Ramin Rahimian, The New York Times, Redux
Q. I know what you mean about some of the courses. They would be online sometimes and not online other times, effectively because if it wasn’t going, then you couldn’t look at it.

A. Yeah. Exactly, and now all courses are going to be going pretty much all the time, so yes, there’s a few hundred courses that we haven’t migrated yet. Most of those, not all of them, but most of them will be migrated soon.

Q. Most. OK.

A. Yeah. Some of them are obsolete, so for instance, if you taught a technology or a biology class three years ago, things have changed, and if the professor hasn’t had the time to update it, you probably don’t want it still up there. There’s some courses that will go away, but most of them will be migrated to the new platform.

Q. Yeah. I guess you’ve been around long enough that these are some of the interesting issues that end up coming up, like archiving. What is the appropriate role for the university and for Coursera to play in keeping things, and when do you refresh? Is there a commitment, or do you find yourself now thinking to make it more clear to people about what the guidelines are for you, about how long you keep something up, and when you refresh it or take it down?

A. I think that’s obviously largely up to the instructor. You can’t force somebody to update a course unless they want to, and the same way they can’t force someone to update a textbook unless they want to. It’s very similar in that respect. For courses that are very high demand, and where we actively solicit it for the university, that we provide resources to support in the creation, we do try and establish expectations on a reasonably frequent update schedule with the instruction. Again, if they say, No, I can’t do it, there’s still nothing you can do.

Q. What do you see for Coursera as the biggest challenge now? You’ve probably solved some, and new ones crop up. What is on your mind these days?

A. I think there’s still an awareness challenge. Even today, there was a Pew center study that shows, I think, that only 20 percent of professional Americans, so people who would be in our target demographic, only 20 percent are aware of MOOCs. I guess the other 80 percent don’t read The Chronicle of Higher Ed, or The New York Times, or The Wall Street Journal. I think it’s, how do you get to those people? Even more so, how do you get to those people in countries outside of the United States, where awareness is even lower, to let them know that this opportunity exists for them?

Q. I guess that is a question, because I obviously like people to read us and to read these other esteemed publications, but there’s other things that people do. Have you done bus ads, or are you thinking of other ways to get at people who have different media habits? How do you reach people who may benefit from MOOCs but not know about them?

A. That’s a really great question, and we now, only about a year and a half ago, we finally hired a marketing person who was thinking about this full time. We didn’t have one in the early days, but we have some partnerships that I think are really exciting. For instance, the one with Times Internet of India. They do billboards, and ads in traditional newspapers, including newspapers that our typical demographic hasn’t been reading, and so this was reaching out into a whole new demographic. I think that’s one direction. We’re doing partnerships with governments on work-force development. We found the ones that we’ve had, for instance, in Singapore, to be hugely impactful, both on the learners, but also on the work-force development needs in the country. I think that those are new channels that we’re exploring to reach new populations.


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Q. There’s been a lot of talk about MOOCs as an experiment because you have these large student populations that have never been gathered before. At this point, now that it’s been a few years, what’s the most interesting or important thing you’ve learned from the MOOCs?

A. I think what we learned is the extent to which, once you have learners or students who know their own mind, what they’re looking for is so very different than the kind of experience that we’ve been providing on campus. They’re looking for shorter, more-to-the-point modules of knowledge. They’re looking for things that have direct relevance to problems that they’re trying to solve, and I think one of the transformations that we see when talking to instructors is first the realization that you can’t teach your MOOC students the same way you teach your on-campus students, because your MOOC students are going to just walk away and not complete the course.

They come to a point of view, it’s like, "OK, my campus students are different from my MOOC students." The next stage of their evolution is like, "No, they’re not actually different." It’s just that the MOOC students have the option to walk away, whereas your on campus students don’t, and maybe what we should be providing to our on campus students is actually more like what we’re providing to our MOOC students.

Q. That’s really interesting, and do you find that bleeding back into the college courses?

A. Absolutely. In fact, I think that we’re catalyzing an important transformation. There has long been this narrative around how universities are not providing the skills that employers feel they need in their incoming employees, but that communication channel has been hard to develop. How do you, as a university professor, learn what it is that industry really needs? Interestingly, by teaching the MOOC, you actually learn what people who are actively employed are looking for as part of their education. We also create direct relationships between top universities and top employers, so you now have that feedback loop that can help us make university teaching more relevant.

Q. One of the curious things is, you’ve had a growth of courses. A lot of universities have joined, and how many partners do you have now?

A. 145.

Q. That’s a lot of universities.

A. Teaching in 10 different languages, which is pretty cool.


Q. Are people building more courses? Are colleges that did a few courses to start off, have they learned that they’re largely happy with that amount, and keep that, or are they growing the number, or shrinking? What is the experience of your partners?

A. It varies. Most partners have produced a steady stream of courses that is maybe three, four, five new ones every year, where an instructor raises his or her hand, and is excited about the reach that this kind of opportunity gives them. We have a number of partners, I would say around 20 to 30, that have really embraced this deeply, and are now viewing this as a huge distribution channel for them in a variety of different ways, whether it’s to attract new students, whether it’s as a revenue generator, whether it’s as part of the online degrees that we’ve started to offer, and those are the ones that are really prolific contributors. Some of those are U.S. institutions, like U. Penn is an example, Michigan, University of Illinois, Stanford, but there’s also others, like UNAM in Mexico, or EPFL in Switzerland, the University of London, right here in the U.K., are all incredibly prolific producers of MOOCs and very high quality.

Q. Let’s talk for a minute about your own story. You were obviously an accomplished researcher before your interest in education technology happened at all, or your involvement in it, and you had won a MacArthur grant for your AI research. Do you ever look up and think, "How did I end up doing this?"

A. Yeah. Especially in the early days, it felt somewhat surreal. People used to ask me, "How are you feeling about your new life?" I used to say that it feels like the main character in the movie Being John Malkovich. It’s like I’m in someone else’s life. It’s not my life, but it’s kind of cool, so I’m going along with it. It’s a very different life, but it has very different opportunities for impact, and so I’m glad that I was able to play this role in catalyzing what I think is a huge transformation in education.

Q. Yeah, and you didn’t go back to Stanford, which I know that at the beginning, it was like, take a leave from Stanford, and go start this and maybe it’ll work out. Now you’re doing this. Do you ever think that in the future, you’ll be back to doing research, or is it not a thing you’re thinking about right now?

A. I think one of the things I learned through my Coursera journey is that you never know what the future might bring. If you’d asked me five years ago what I’d be, which is just before Coursera started, would I be doing this, it’s like, "No. I’m a Stanford professor." You don’t know what the future brings.

Q. Great. Thanks again for talking with us today. I really appreciate catching up.

A. Great. Thank you. Thanks, Jeff. Good to see you again.

Jeffrey R. Young writes about technology in education and leads the Re:Learning project. Follow him on Twitter @jryoung; check out his home page, jeffyoung.net; or try him by email at jeff.young@chronicle.com.

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Re:Learning Podcast, Mapping the New Education Landscape

Science Students Learn to Use Social Media to Communicate Research
By Arielle Martinez JULY 18, 2016
Scientists these days don’t just need to be good at putting their ideas into writing; they need to know how to post them on Twitter and Facebook.

That’s the premise of an unusual course at the California Institute of Technology, "Social Media for Scientists," which was first offered this past spring by Mark E. Davis, a professor of chemical engineering, and Sarah Mojarad, a communications program manager for social media.

In the course, they taught both undergraduate and graduate students in science and engineering how to use digital platforms to communicate research to both scientists and nonscientists.

"We do think this is the first approach where you’re trying to take science and engineering students, people who are going through these very rigorous curricula, and creating a course specifically geared toward their needs," Mr. Davis says.

He and Ms. Mojarad taught the course through case studies in which students examined topics like online reputations, effective presentations, the law, and crisis management.


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Guest speakers talked to the students about their own experiences with social media and science. One speaker, Megan Frisk, a senior editor at Science Translational Medicine, says she cautioned the students against spreading misinformation.
"I told them not to cherry-pick the information they post because the people who read that are going to make inferences," she says. "You want to make sure that the information you’re putting out there is accurate and clear with the right context."

Shannon Stone, a graduate student in chemistry who took the course, says she previously never thought much about avoiding verbosity in her writing.

"Now I think about it all the time whenever I’m using a phrase like ‘We elucidated the structure,’" she says. "Do I really need to use the word ‘elucidated,’ or can I just say ‘solved’? I feel like sometime we use complicated words just to sound smart."

The course ended with a final paper in which students were asked to analyze Caltech’s use of social media and identify universities with strong social-media presences.

"I didn’t actually give them a page limit, and some of the students went so far as to create final projects that were over 20 pages long," Ms. Mojarad says. "It was really incredible to get these responses back."

Finding an Audience

John Timmer, a workshop instructor who teaches a digital-media course at the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University, part of the State University of New York system, says he doesn’t know of many programs for scientists that teach those topics in great detail.

"How many go into the legal issues like libeling somebody on Twitter? I think that’s probably pretty rare in something dedicated to scientists," says Mr. Timmer, who is also the science editor of Ars Technica, an online technology publication.

Mr. Timmer says that one of the biggest challenges in communicating science to the public through social media is reaching a desired audience.

"Anyone can set up a Twitter account, anyone can set up a Facebook page, but getting people to find it and getting people to pay attention to it is probably the biggest part of the battle," Mr. Timmer says.


For Steven Lee, a graduate student in chemical engineering who took the Caltech course, one of the most important results was a "mental shift" in his perception of social media.

Mr. Lee says he used to minimize his online presence because of "horror stories about oversharing." Now he uses social media as a tool to promote his research and accomplishments. "I try to make it easy for people to search and find me," he says, "and to show them this is who I am."

Ms. Mojarad says that she and Mr. Davis came up with the idea for the course after they first met, in July 2015, and Mr. Davis became interested in Ms. Mojarad’s background in communications. Mr. Davis says that through his experience teaching an undergraduate writing course at Caltech, he became aware of a need for instruction in the use of modern forms of communication.

"It just seemed like a lot of universities have writing courses as far as trying to teach scientists and engineers communications skills," he says, "but as far as skills using these digital technologies, they didn’t get much exposure to that."

Ms. Mojarad says she hopes the students continue to use social media to promote their research. The professors plan to offer the course again in the fall — and at registration, demand was high. Enrollment for the course filled in less than four minutes.

Join the conversation about this article on the Re:Learning Facebook page.

By Eugene Kwibuka
Heads of State and Government across Africa meeting in Kigali, yesterday, started the 27th Ordinary Session of the African Union (AU) Assembly with a focus on how to make the continent more peaceful, unified, and self-reliant.

At the centre of the agenda for the two-day meeting, the leaders were to discuss and make decisions on how to make Africa more financially self reliant as well as how to address urgent threats to peace and security on the continent.

The discussion on financial independence follow Saturday's retreat of Heads of State and Government on Financing the African Union during which a major financing model for the Union, that is set to enable African countries to fully fund the AU's activities, was presented.

The 27th summit is also set to elect the new chairperson of the AU Commission to replace Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, President Paul Kagame reiterated the critical role of unity for building a successful continent, saying it is at the centre of delivering real results in the lives of Africans.



"Whenever we gather on the basis of what unites us, there is a peaceful solution to every problem. Unity is not a feel-good slogan. It is a tool for delivering real results in the lives of Africans," he said.

The President added that, in an increasingly divided world, Africa has a lot to offer by upholding the principle of unity.

"The unity of our continent, with an emphasis on integration, among other things, should never be subject to preconditions or exceptions, because lasting solutions always involve everyone," Kagame said.

African passport

To fast-track integration across the continent, the AU Commission yesterday launched a continental passport, which member countries will start issuing to their citizens so they can travel across the continent without having to first apply for visas.

Inaugurated at the opening session of the AU's Heads of State and Government Summit, the continental passport was first issued to the Chairperson of the African Union, Chadian President Idriss Itno Deby, and President Kagame by Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the chairperson of the African Union Commission.

"It is with great honour that we report back on a task given to us to ensure free movement of people across Africa," Dlamini-Zuma said as she delivered the passport to the two leaders.

President Kagame had earlier in his opening speech for the session set the mood for the issuance of the African passport highlighting the similarities among citizens of African nations.

"We believe that a Rwandan is just an African from a particular place. The tissue of brotherhood and sisterhood cannot be amputated by lines drawn on a map in another century," Kagame said.

Kagame also shared the importance of rejecting failure and his optimism for the future of Africa.

"If Africa's challenges are treated as routine, it means we've accepted to be held back by them forever. We reject that. Africa is rising, but not as a result of impersonal forces over which we have no control. Africa is being raised, actively, by us, the people of this continent. Our job is simply to raise Africa even higher," he said.


Very critical at the Heads of State Summit is also the approval of a major financing model for the Union that is set to enable African countries fully fund the AU's activities and do away with relying too much on foreign donors.

According to Finance and Economic Planning minister Claver Gatete, AU Heads of State and Government have agreed on collecting a 0.2 per cent tax levy on all eligible imports in every member country of the AU and directly send the money to the Union's coffers.

'Unprecedented bold step'

Welcoming the new funding model of the AU and urging other Heads of State and Government to embrace it, President Deby said that the continent has taken an unprecedented bold step to be self-reliant.

"For the first time, since even the creation of the Organisation of African Unity, the continent has resolved to take its destiny in its own hands," he said.

President Kagame agreed, explaining that Africans should be the ones to pay for activities they have a stake in.

"This puts responsibility and ownership in our hands. We are capable of it, and we were shown how to do so, and I urge us to move forward with the required political will, without delay," he said.

Dlamini-Zuma lauded the Heads of State for approving the new financing model during their retreat on Saturday at the ongoing AU summit, saying they "took an unprecedented leap forward for Africa's self-reliance."

As for the urgent threats to peace and security on the continent, the Heads of State summit is mainly tackling the issue of insecurity in South Sudan pitting rival forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and First Vice-President Riek Machar.

Whether you teach in the humanities or in the sciences, there are benefits to using both forms of assessment.

Y llegó la hora de cruzar el charco en los #HangoutsTrágora para colarnos en el despacho de Tony Rosado en la ciudad de Chicago (Illinois), uno de lo

« Si tu veux te couvrir d’un éclat légitime,
Va par mille beaux faits mériter son estime ;
Sers un si noble maître ; et fais voir qu’aujourd’hui,
Ton Prince a des sujets qui sont dignes de lui. »
Avant-propos - Christine Lombez.
Tel est le conseil que Nicolas Boileau donnait à un futur écrivain dans sa Ve Satire dédiée au Marquis de Dangeau (1664), laissant clairement apparaître qu’à ses yeux, les rapports du prince et de l’écrivain sont subtilement régis par la loi d’un intérêt réciproque bien compris. Presque trois siècles plus tard, Valery Larbaud voit également dans le traducteur un serviteur : « “servir” est sa devise, et il ne demande rien pour lui-même, mettant toute sa gloire à être fidèle aux maîtres qu’il s’est choisis, fidèle jusqu’à l’anéantissement de sa propre personnalité intellectuelle. » [1] De fait, le traducteur, écrivain sui generis, n’échappe pas à des relations avec le pouvoir (temporel ou spirituel), qui peuvent se révéler des plus périlleuses. L’histoire de la traduction est remplie d’exemples révélant les risques du métier de traducteur, tel Étienne Dolet brûlé sur le bûcher place Maubert à Paris en 1546 pour avoir, dit-on, mal interprété un passage d’un des Dialogues de Platon, ou encore William Tyndale (premier traducteur de la Bible en langue anglaise) qui connut quelques années auparavant un sort analogue à celui de son collègue français. Si aujourd’hui on ne brûle plus les traducteurs en place publique pour les châtier de leurs (soi-disant) mauvaises traductions, pour autant, dans certaines régions du monde exposées à des actions militaires, les traducteurs voient toujours régulièrement leur vie menacée. Ainsi, de nos jours, en zone de conflits (Irak, Afghanistan), les interprètes locaux de l’OTAN ou d’autres coalitions internationales ont-ils dû souvent cacher leur visage pour ne pas être identifiés par leurs compatriotes. Cela ne suffit toutefois pas pour leur éviter de se faire abattre – le traducteur étant alors considéré comme un traître, version moderne et tragique du célèbre traduttore, traditore.
Pour qui pense aux liens unissant, dans l’Histoire, le pouvoir politique et la traduction, un personnage vient fréquemment à l’esprit : celui du « truchement ». Si l’étymologie du mot, « drogman » (désignant les traducteurs-interprètes qui travaillaient pour la Sublime Porte à Constantinople), atteste bien son origine levantine, l’image de mauvais traducteur, tant raillée par Molière dans ses pièces, est pourtant loin d’être une fable. En effet, les truchements falsifiaient souvent les contenus qu’ils avaient à traduire afin de ne pas déplaire au Sultan (ils pouvaient le payer de leur vie) [2]. En conséquence, les ambassades étrangères auprès de la Porte n’employaient pas des traducteurs officiels mais avaient recours à du personnel bilingue non musulman (par exemple les Phanariotes, des Grecs polyglottes vivant à Constantinople). La méfiance à l’égard des drogmans originaires d’Orient, jugés insuffisamment fiables pour défendre avec sincérité les intérêts des pouvoirs concernés eut quelques répercussions. En France, une ordonnance de 1721 modifia le statut des futurs « drogmans », afin qu’à l’avenir on pût être assuré de leur fidélité et de leur bonne conduite : désormais ces jeunes gens, fils de parents français, seraient tenus de prêter serment. Ainsi le drogman devint-il un personnage officiel assermenté, relevant de la juridiction royale. Le lien avec le pouvoir s’en trouva d’autant plus renforcé – une constante à travers les siècles, même si la pratique des traducteurs (ou des interprètes) alla en s’autonomisant au fil du temps et de la création d’un cadre légal encadrant de plus en plus étroitement leur activité (naissance d’un droit du traducteur au cours du XIXe siècle consacré par la Convention de Berne en 1886 ; existence de codes de déontologie des traducteurs et des interprètes).
Cependant, les rapports entre la politique et la traduction ont de multiples facettes et remontent à plus loin encore. Ainsi, durant le Moyen-Âge en France, marchant sur les traces du roi d’Angleterre Alfred le Grand au IXe siècle, le roi Charles V, dit « le Sage » (1338-1380) est réputé avoir accordé une grande importance à la traduction. Il en commissionna de nombreuses (Saint Augustin, Tite-Live, Aristote, ou la Bible), dynamisant ainsi l’activité de traducteurs dont les noms (Nicolas Oresme et Raoul de Presle qui faisaient partie de son proche entourage) nous sont encore connus. La Cour de France y acquit un certain lustre intellectuel. Un siècle et demi plus tard, ce fut Jacques Amyot (1513-1593) qui, appelé « le Prince des traducteurs » pour sa traduction des Vies parallèles des hommes illustres de Plutarque, lue jusqu’au XVIIIe siècle au moins (cette traduction – en version anglaise – a également inspiré Shakespeare), a aussi contribué, selon les mots de Montaigne, à sortir le français de son « bourbier ». Or en un XVIe siècle plus troublé que jamais du point de vue politique et religieux, les liens de Jacques Amyot avec le pouvoir étaient alors très étroits : dans le contexte de la Renaissance où les Humanités faisaient l’objet de toutes les attentions royales (sous le règne de François 1er puis d’Henri II), Amyot officiait aussi comme précepteur des fils d’Henri II (Charles IX, Henri III, deux futurs rois de France). Il utilisera d’ailleurs son Plutarque comme manuel pédagogique (l’œuvre avait été traduite à la demande de François 1er).
À la même époque en France et en Europe, c’est une autre traduction, celle de la Bible, qui exacerbait les tensions avec le pouvoir, qu’il s’agisse de l’autorité royale ou de l’Église. En Angleterre, en 1536, le traducteur William Tyndale, jugé coupable d’hérésie et de trahison, fut condamné au bûcher (ses derniers mots auraient été : « Seigneur, ouvre les yeux du roi d’Angleterre ! »). La Réforme avait en effet entraîné la nécessité de produire de nouvelles Bibles protestantes, une entreprise dont le risque n’était pas à sous-estimer, comme en témoigne un autre destin, celui de Pierre-Robert Olivétan, cousin de Calvin et auteur d’une traduction de la Bible en 1535 qui lui coûta sans doute la vie (Olivétan fut empoisonné et mourra à l’âge de 40 ans). Au siècle suivant, un célèbre traducteur, Isaac Lemaître de Sacy, dut à sa proximité avec le milieu janséniste de Port-Royal, alors en disgrâce auprès du Roi-Soleil, un long séjour à la Bastille. Sa traduction du Nouveau Testament, sauvée in extremis par ses amis, sera exfiltrée de France et publiée à Amsterdam sans nom d’auteur en 1667 (la « Bible de Mons »).
Les enjeux de la traduction s’amplifièrent à l’ère moderne avec des moyens de communication accrus, et ses liens avec le pouvoir et l’Histoire s’en trouvèrent renforcés : le cas célèbre de la Dépêche d’Ems (1870) [3] est là pour révéler qu’un problème mineur de traduction peut parfois déboucher sur une guerre. On sait que le traducteur français de la dépêche avait employé le terme « adjudant » afin de traduire le mot allemand Adjudanten [4] qui signifie en allemand « aide de camp ». Le faux-ami « adjudant », grade de l’armée considéré comme très subalterne en France par rapport à l’Adjudant prussien, et donc insultant, contribua à mettre davantage le feu aux poudres entre les deux pays, ce qui était, semble-t-il, l’intention de Bismarck (« il produira là-bas, sur le taureau gaulois, l’effet du chiffon rouge », aurait-il déclaré). Plus récemment et plus tragiquement encore, la catastrophe d’Hiroshima (1945) pourrait avoir eu une origine liée à une question de traduction. Pour exprimer sa réaction face à l’ultimatum américain, le gouvernement japonais avait employé le verbe mokusatsu, un mot pouvant à la fois signifier « ignorer » et « s’abstenir de tout commentaire » [5] ; le traducteur ayant interprété cette réponse comme un silence méprisant, la première bombe atomique de l’Histoire fut larguée. « War is what happens when language fails » : cette phrase emblématique de la Canadienne Margaret Atwood résume de manière saisissante les enjeux inhérents à l’acte de communication qu’est, fondamentalement, toute traduction.
Il n’est pas rare d’ailleurs que dans un XXe siècle riche en guerres et en régimes totalitaires, la traduction ait souvent été l’otage de pouvoirs coercitifs exercés à la faveur d’un conflit armé. On en trouve l’exemple en France sous domination allemande pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale (1940-44). L’Occupant marqua très vite, par des signes qui ne trompaient pas, sa volonté de mettre au pas les milieux intellectuels et artistiques : aryanisation des maisons d’éditions ainsi que de la presse et, plus largement, des moyens d’information, écrémage des bibliothèques et des librairies suivant la ligne directrice de différentes listes de censure issues des services de la propagande. La liste Bernhard (excluant les ouvrages véhiculant des points de vue antinazis ou plus généralement antiallemands) puis les versions successives (1940, 1942, 1943) de la liste Otto (répertoriant les ouvrages indésirables d’auteurs allemands, français, anglais, polonais, notamment juifs ou communistes) servirent de tels desseins. La traduction de la littérature étrangère fut également au centre des mesures édictées par les autorités d’Occupation. Ce fut l’Aktion Übersetzung (ou programme de traductions prioritaires) pilotée par l’Institut Allemand de Paris alors dirigé par Karl Epting, un ami de Céline. L’enjeu, de taille, ne visait pas moins qu’à rééduquer le lectorat français et à contrôler le processus de germanisation culturelle de la société, même si tout fut mis en œuvre pour donner l’impression que l’initiative de ces publications provenait des éditeurs français. Et face à des traductions trop visiblement récupérées par l’idéologie dominante, la réponse venait parfois elle aussi sous forme de traductions. C’est ainsi que le 14 juillet 1944 parut aux Éditions de Minuit, pour le Comité National des Écrivains (organe de la Résistance littéraire), un petit livre d’une cinquantaine de pages dont le titre, Les Bannis – Poèmes traduits de l’allemand, était à lui seul tout un programme. Dans cet exemple de « contre-anthologie », il s’agissait de rétablir une vérité et de laver l’honneur de la poésie allemande, abusivement compromise à des fins de propagande dans les deux volumes de l’Anthologie bilingue de la poésie allemande des origines à nos jours parue chez Stock en 1943 [6]. Contre le « mensonge », et au nom de la « vérité bafouée », pour défendre tout un patrimoine poétique (Schiller, Goethe, Hölderlin) indûment annexé par l’Allemagne nazie, le geste anthologique devenait essentiellement politique – la traduction de la poésie allemande servant de prétexte à une confrontation qui excédait, de loin, la volonté affichée de rendre aux poètes d’outre-Rhin leur honneur perdu.
Dans une perspective différente mais restant assez proche sous certains aspects, le cas de l’écrivain et traducteur russe Boris Pasternak, Prix Nobel de Littérature en 1958, dont la vie fut tout entière marquée par un conflit profond avec le pouvoir soviétique suite à son refus de se laisser récupérer (avec pour conséquences ostracisation et exil intérieur), est une illustration parfaite de ce que permet la traduction dans un contexte politique totalitaire. À la fois échappatoire (traduire devenant un moyen détourné pour s’exprimer et faire passer des messages subversifs, comme le révèlent ses traductions en russe de Shakespeare, notamment Hamlet [7]), la traduction se révéla aussi la « planche de vivre » (René Char) de nombreux écrivains et poètes réduits au silence. Boris Pasternak fut même, malgré lui, un cas d’école avec son Docteur Jivago, alors impubliable en URSS. Parue pour la première fois en italien, puis en français et en anglais, la traduction de son roman en Occident, si elle lui donna le Prix Nobel, valut également à son auteur le déclenchement par Moscou d’une cabale d’une violence inouïe pour trahison, qu’il paya finalement de sa vie.
Les exemples qui viennent d’être évoqués montrent, à des degrés multiples, la diversité des rapports ayant existé à travers les siècles entre certaines idéologies dominantes, les traducteurs, ainsi que leurs possibles – et très concrètes – répercussions historiques. L’ambition du présent numéro d’Atlantide est d’évoquer, grâce à une série d’études de cas [8], le destin souvent tumultueux de ces passeurs, de faire apparaître quelques traits précis de leurs liaisons parfois dangereuses avec la politique, et de souligner de facto l’importance du rôle historique (voire même idéologique) joué par les traducteurs dans un passé récent ou plus ancien.
Ainsi dans « Le génie des langues, notion poétique ou politique ? », Claire Placial pose-t-elle, à l’aide de l’exemple de la traduction de textes bibliques d’hébreu en français, une question des plus épineuses. Non dénuée d’impensés idéologiques, politiques et même racistes, cette notion de « génie des langues » sous-tendant parfois certains gestes traductifs fut véhiculée par les traducteurs des Écritures depuis la Réforme jusqu’au XIXe siècle.
Avec « Clément Pansaers et la traduction de la littérature expressionniste dans la revue Résurrection (1917-1918). Un transfert culturel franco-allemand en Belgique occupée », Hubert Roland s’intéresse au cas atypique du dadaïste belge Clément Pansaers qui traduisit des auteurs expressionnistes allemands en français en Belgique occupée durant la Première Guerre mondiale. Il questionne également l’étonnante tolérance dont ces traductions firent l’objet de la part de l’Occupant allemand en dépit de la ligne clairement pacifiste et internationaliste de la revue Résurrection dans laquelle elles parurent.
Toujours durant la Grande Guerre, l’étude d’Amélie Auzoux sur « André Gide et Valery Larbaud, deux traducteurs en guerre (1914-18) » permet d’apprécier à quel point la traduction put se révéler une arme redoutablement efficace pour Larbaud et Gide afin de promouvoir, en temps de conflit, une passionnée « défense et illustration de la langue française ».
D’une guerre à l’autre, les traductions du XXe siècle demeurèrent au centre de l’intérêt des vainqueurs qui y voyaient un moyen subtil de rééducation des territoires conquis. La nature et l’ampleur de cette emprise idéologique sont discutées par Alexis Tautou à travers l’exemple du poète germanophone R. M. Rilke (« Traduire et éditer Rainer Maria Rilke sous l’Occupation ») dont on découvre qu’il fut un auteur emblématique tenu pourtant en suspicion par l’Occupant allemand en raison de ses positions trop cosmopolites, de sa francophilie, et surtout de ses origines tchèques.
Que la traduction puisse être récupérée et orientée à des fins politiques ou idéologiques ressort on ne peut plus clairement des travaux présentés par Yanna Guo (« Michelle Loi, une combattante comme ça. Portrait d’une traductrice engagée de Lu Xun en France ») et Ioana Popa (« Traduction et sédition. Circulations clandestines transnationales des œuvres en contexte non démocratique »). Le destin de l’écrivain Lu Xun, érigé bien malgré lui en icône de la Chine communiste, dont l’œuvre en traduction française fut ensuite orientée dans un sens maoïste par Michelle Loi (elle-même très marquée politiquement), permet de se faire une idée de la responsabilité des traducteurs dans un contexte idéologiquement surdéterminé. À rebours, à l’époque de la Guerre froide et jusqu’à la chute du mur de Berlin, la traduction put se révéler un moyen efficace pour miner des idéologies dominantes comme le démontre Ioana Popa. C’est en effet par la circulation souvent illicite de textes traduits à l’aide de circuits de diffusion clandestins et/ou périphériques, que certains auteurs du bloc socialiste (Boris Pasternak, Bohumil Hrabal), réduits au silence dans leurs pays respectifs, purent faire connaître leur œuvre en Occident et y trouvèrent, au moyen de la traduction, une légitimation symbolique valant claire dénonciation des régimes totalitaires en place.
Même si elle a été souvent considérée comme une activité marginale, à la visibilité réduite, ou peut-être justement grâce à ce fait même, la traduction – et ses acteurs – s’est bel et bien révélée au fil des siècles un instrument de transmission redoutable car potentiellement manipulable, une « 4e arme » de plein droit (Eva Gravensten), dont l’impact historique et idéologique n’est plus à sous-estimer.

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‘Josa’ significa mujer en alienígeno. ‘Komi’ quiere decir hombre y ‘oku’, fotografiar. De esta manera, la frase ‘komi oku josa’ se traduce al español como “hombre fotografía a mujer”. Es normal que no te suene ninguna de estas extrañas palabras, ni el idioma al que nos referimos: lo han inventado un grupo de investigadores para estudiar la forma en que el cerebro asimila un nuevo idioma.

Aunque el inglés o el francés hubieran sido una elección mucho más normal y rápida, necesitaban que ninguno de los participantes en su ensayo conociera (ni de refilón) los términos a los que se enfrentaban. Querían simular las primeras etapas de aprendizaje de una lengua, como si se tratara de tus primeras clases de inglés.

Entender el lenguaje es una de las funciones más complejas del cerebro: debe reconocer los patrones que siguen las letras, interpretar las palabras, unirlas en frases y comprender el sentido de las oraciones enteras. Si a veces ya resulta difícil conseguirlo en el idioma materno, imagina las virguerías que hace nuestra mente para hallar el significado de uno extranjero.

No obstante, los resultados obtenidos por estos expertos en psicolingüística y neuroimagen sugieren que el cerebro reutiliza las características de la lengua nativa para ayudarnos a entender una nueva, acelerando el proceso de asimilación. Mientras estás en clase aprendiendo inglés (o cualquier otro idioma), el cerebro trata de identificar esquemas conocidos y los aplica.



Como explican en el trabajo que han publicado en ‘Journal of Neuroscience’, los investigadores no inventaron el alienígeno al azar, sino que pensaron muy bien la estructura para comprobar que la nueva información lingüística es procesada en las mismas regiones cerebrales que la ya asimilada.

Mientras los participantes en el ensayo se instruían en el idioma, los investigadores obtenían imágenes de resonancia magnética para estudiar cómo el cerebro aprende el orden correcto de las palabras y las integra dentro del contexto lingüístico existente.

Las frases en alienígeno significan lo mismo independientemente del orden del sujeto y el complemento, es decir, ‘komi oku josa’ se interpreta igual que ‘josa oku komi’ (hombre fotografía a mujer). Los voluntarios del ensayo entendían fácilmente la primera estructura (es la misma que en holandés, su idioma), pero la segunda no les resultaba familiar.



Las imágenes revelaron que cuando los participantes leían las palabras desconocidas en una secuencia extraña, se activaban en el cerebro las zonas involucradas en su lenguaje nativo –las conocidas como giro frontal inferior y córtex temporal posterior–. “Las redes cerebrales del lenguaje estaban asimilando el alienígeno”, ha dicho Kirsten Weber, autora principal del estudio. “La actividad exagerada refleja el mecanismo de construcción y refuerzo de redes neuronales para procesar los nuevos vocablos”, ha añadido.

Por el contrario, cuando se repetían los términos en el orden que les era familiar, la actividad en las mismas áreas disminuía, debido a las similitudes que encontraban entre los idiomas. “Una estructura conocida en un nuevo idioma se procesa como la de la lengua nativa; para el cerebro es más fácil incorporarla”, indica Weber.

Aprender un segundo idioma potencia las capacidades cognitivas: hablar más de una lengua supone un ejercicio constante para el cerebro, un entrenamiento que lo prepara también para realizar más eficazmente otras funciones. Por desgracia para los participantes en el estudio, el alienígeno (de momento) no ha sido reconocido como idioma.

It was a crying shame that there was no translator at the last Santa Paula hearing on the Central Coast power plant proposal. The hearing held in Santa Paula ignored the salient fact that a large population of Latinos live in Santa Paula and attended the meeting.

The California Energy Commission has agreed to hold another hearing in the community on July 28. I sincerely hope it is smart enough to bring at least two translators, so the residents of Santa Paula who are not proficient in English will have a chance to listen and speak out about their homes.

Terry Gibson, Oxnard

In today's all-digital world, it is very easy to fall into the online software translation trap. Translation versus culturalization of your marketing materials is of the utmost importance. It's not just about using Google translate or relying on an online translator to relay your message. It still takes eyeballs' experience and it is a deep understanding of the goal for the advertisement. Many cultures use words differently; in one culture a word could mean a straw, and in another market it could mean a sexual act. Understanding the nuances of language is not something easily translated by a piece of software. 
 
Often translations miss the mark and say things that hurt, confuse or completely miss the point of the advertisement altogether. Understanding the language is just one component of culturalizing an advertising or marketing campaign. Understanding the market demographic cultural backgrounds and religious references are a big part of understanding and targeting a consumer. That is the start of creating a well-rounded multicultural marketing campaign not just for international markets, but also for the US market. 
 
10 Things you should take into consideration when cauterizing a marketing campaign.
1. What language does your target market speak?
2. What age is your target consumer?
3. What is the age and gender of your target consumer?
4. How do they consume data (print, television, online or outdoor)?
5. What is that market's expendable cash?
6. Are they interested in your product?
7. Do you already have an existing relationship with that consumer base?
8. Is your marketing material or point of contact written in the language of the consumer?
9. Do you have anyone on staff that speaks a language of the culture you're trying to go after?
10. Do you have a one year, three year or five-year plan for attracting this market and slowly building on successes?
 
Over the years, I've seen all the errors that can possibly be made wasting money or simply throwing it away by trusting software to translate messaging or to create your sizzling advertisements. That silver bullet simply doesn't exist. It simply takes someone with experience to understand the purpose and the reason for the messaging and someone to culturalize the message not just simply translate the words. 
 
As my own case study, I will be following this year's political races with particular attention placed on messaging of the English versus Spanish culturalization of the English marketing and advertising efforts. My goal will be to understand if the money spent is worth the return. Tracking effectiveness of the campaign, the outlet chosen and the awareness or outcome it delivered. I will also be paying close attention to the parts of the country that get special attention in regards to culturalizing messaging for Spanish.
 
My findings should be very interesting. And should answer a lot of questions for all the marketers out there thinking of whether they should culturalize their marketing efforts or not. 

English has long been considered the lingua franca of business. But when Britain leaves the EU, the proportion of native English speakers inside the bloc will fall from 14 per cent to 1 per cent, and senior EU officials have questioned whether English should remain one of its official languages.

It’s important that UK businesses realise the value of equipping their employees with language skills to prepare them for the future. And now more than ever, the UK must heed the EU’s official language policy that “every European citizen should master two other languages in addition to their mother tongue”.

But why are languages so important, and how do employees gain the skills they need to communicate in more than one language in the workplace?

The benefits

Outward-looking firms rely on a range of languages to communicate with customers, suppliers, overseas colleagues and partners. This ensures they can retain a competitive edge in a global market, and keep talented staff. Others should follow their example.

Language skills among employees are critical to breaking down communication barriers in the workplace. These skills, in turn, can lead to greater employee satisfaction, more effective cross-team collaboration, and higher rates of productivity. Relationships with customers can be enriched by interactions in their own language, increasing sales opportunities.

Read more: Lack of language learning in schools is holding back UK competitiveness

Language training enables employees to work in a company’s overseas locations more easily. This is particularly relevant to millennials, who seek international exposure more than any other generation in the workforce.

A regional problem

For most, language learning begins at school, but it shouldn’t end there.

A survey of over 5,000 business learners from companies that provide language training to employees found that under half thought the language courses they took at school adequately prepared them for today’s workplace.

European and American companies face the biggest challenge when it comes to a deficiency in language skills, according to the survey. Workers in Europe had the highest number of language course takers in school – 90 per cent – but only 47 per cent felt adequately prepared by those courses for work. In contrast, 70 per cent of respondents from the Middle East and Africa and 68 per cent from Asia-Pacific thought they were properly prepared.

Practice makes perfect

Confidence is central to feeling prepared to use another language in a business context.

The more conversation practice a learner engages in, the more their confidence will be boosted. This means immersing yourself in the language as much possible, by reading foreign language newspapers and listening to the radio when possible.

Read more: Coding overtakes French as "second language" in schools

That said, don’t bite off more than you can chew. It often is better to concentrate intensely for short periods than to try to consume the language passively through hours of exposure at a time.

The real thing

There is no substitute for authentic conversation with natives, or speakers who are proficient in the language you’re trying to learn. And playing games, rather than trying to engineer conversation awkwardly and artificially, is a useful way to stay engaged.

When it comes to learning grammar and vocabulary, it is important to go at your own speed, and find out which way suits you best. Learning by rote is often not the most efficient method, and is likely to bore you quickly.

Exercises which encourage you to visualise the word you’re trying to remember or make use of visual aids often work better than trying to memorise vocabulary from a list.

RIO DE JANEIRO — If English is the language of world commerce, Brazil hasn't gotten the memo — only a small fraction of its 200 million people have a basic proficiency. Fluency is also rare for other languages such as German, French and even Spanish, despite Brazil being bordered by seven Spanish-speaking countries.

Many of the hundreds of thousands of tourists expected to descend on Rio de Janeiro for the Olympics in a few weeks could frequently find themselves in a linguistic muddle.

Vanderclei Silva Santos, who sells caipirinha, Brazil's national cocktail, says he struggles to communicate with foreign tourists who stop at his stand on Copacabana Beach, so he uses his fingers and toes to write prices and shapes in the sand.

Most of the time it works, but trying and funny moments are common, like the time a woman made chomping gestures to ask where she might find fresh corn on the cob, or the time a man seemed to be urgently asking to use a "banho" but really was trying to figure out where to shower.

"Communicating is tough. We move our hips, we smile, which tourists like. We find a way," said Santos, a 39-year-old who hopes to one day take a basic English course, something that until recent years generally was available only for wealthy Brazilians and is still not widely offered.

Attempting over the last year to bridge the language gap for the Summer Games, Rio de Janeiro state, the Olympic Committee and several companies have offered in-person and online English courses to several thousand service industry workers, Olympic volunteers and police — those most likely to come in contact with tourists.

"Do you know the meaning of 'I'm going to kick your butt?'" teacher Rafael Vianna asked this week to a dozen tourist police in an advanced course aimed at preparing them to help English speakers sort through any issues that come up, from harassment to robbery. "It's often used in sports and can be interpreted in different ways depending on the context."

On the blackboard, Vianna wrote and defined some words that tourists in distress may use, such as "mace, malice, mayhem and nuisance."

Vinicius Lummertz, the president of Embratur, a government agency that promotes Brazil overseas, said Rio will be ready. And he argues that any linguistic struggles will be part of the experience.

"A lack of English is a problem, but trying to communicate with Brazilians who only speak Portuguese becomes a flavor," Lummertz said. "Do you want a world that is exactly the same everywhere?"

Latin America's biggest country is roughly the size of the continental United States, which has tended to insulate its people. And vast inequalities permeate every walk of life, including education, and most Brazilians have never had a chance to study other languages.

Virginia Garcia, former head of the British Council in Brazil, said research by the council a few years ago found that only 5 percent of Brazilians spoke English at a proficient level.

Garcia said English instruction in public schools is limited, although several big events hosted by Brazil in recent years, including the Pan American Games, the World Cup and a visit by Pope Francis, have slowly pushed the country to expand language teaching.

"Twenty years ago, only people coming from the high classes could learn other languages in Brazil," Garcia said. "It's slowly getting more democratic."

Antonio Carlos de Moraes Sartini, director of the Sao Paulo-based Museum of the Portuguese Language, said Brazil's intense focus on Portuguese dates to 1750, when the Portugal's monarchy made teaching the language mandatory to create a national identity different from the surrounding Spanish-speaking colonies.

At the time, only about 20 percent of people in Brazil spoke Portuguese, while more than 1,000 indigenous languages prevailed. A few hundred of those languages are still spoken, mostly in the Amazonian region, but the vast majority of indigenous peoples now also speak Portuguese.

"The language spoken here today expresses Brazilians' expansive, affectionate nature," said Sartini.

That nature often includes having a good laugh when it comes to foreign languages.

Joel Santana, a former soccer player and coach, has parlayed his halting English into a second career in television advertising. In 2010, while coaching South Africa's national team, he gave an interview in English that was so indecipherable that it became an internet sensation. Since then, he has pitched products such as Pepsi and Head & Shoulders shampoo in commercials, throwing in barely understandable words in English.

Jens Heftoy, a journalist from Norway who has visited Brazil several times in the last decade since marrying a woman from Rio, said that in his experience even Brazilians who have a decent level of English prefer not to speak it unless they work in the tourism industry.

"Three blocks from here, you'll have problems" in communicating, Heftoy said while walking on the tourist mecca of Copacabana Beach. "It works out, but you have to be patient."

Associated Press writer Stan Lehman in Sao Paulo contributed to this report.

The anti-dubbing movement, losing Rajnikanth to Tamil Nadu and the autowallahas that produce Kannada films: Karnataka’s film industry, popularly known as Sandalwood, is fraught with unique issues.
Despite having a number of talented actors in its kitty, it is an industry abandoned by the critics. The Quint decodes Sandalwood, the film industry that lacks recognition, despite winning awards.


Shutting doors on non-Kannada films and enforcing ‘Made in Karnataka’ was easier than competing in the market with talent. (Photo Courtesy: Giphy.com)
No Phoren-maal Please
The makers of Kannada film Nannu Nanna Preeti recently sought police protection for the film’s release in theatres across Karnataka. The film will flout a 50-year-old ban on dubbed films in Sandalwood.
A lobby of Kannada film directors banned the dubbing of non-Kannada films for release in Karnataka since they ended up doing much better than Kannada films! It was easier to shut doors on ‘phoren-films’ and enforce ‘Made in Kannada’, than to compete in the market.
Nannu Nanna Preeti is the first dubbed film to be released in Karnataka after 1960. No other film industry in India has banned dubbing.

Born into a Marathi family, Rajinikanth worked as bus conductor in Bengaluru before becoming a Tamil super star (Photo Courtesy: gifsforum.com)
Rajinikanth via Tamil Nadu
In the early years, Sandalwood had an unfortunate habit of letting go of talent. The likes of Girish Karnad, Rajinikanth, Prakash Belawadi and Prakash Raj found their footing in the Kannada film industry, before they went on to achieve global critical acclaim.
Rajinikanth worked as a bus conductor in Bengaluru. Spotted by a Tamil film director, he made his debut in the Tamil film Apoorva Raagangal. He returned to Karnataka, wanting to further his film career in Sandalwood. However, no meaty roles came his way. Meanwhile, the Tamil industry gauged the fire in him, and the rest is history.
Girish Karnad’s groundbreaking plays in Kannada gave language theatre some of its best work. He directed quite a few award-winning films in Kannada, but he received recognition as an actor only in Telugu and Hindi films. It is unlikely that a Kannada film would feature in the repertoire of his most memorable roles.
Kannada actors Prakash Belawadi, Prakash Raj, and Arjun Sarja have also shot to fame thanks to Hindi, Tamil and Telugu films.

More than 400 auto-drivers from Bengaluru grouped to become film producers. (Photo Courtesy: Twitter/@ShyamSPrasad)
Autowallahs Turn Film Producers
Sandalwood is probably the only film industry where films are consistently crowd-funded and an autowalaah is a famous producer.
In June this year, more than 400 auto drivers from Bengaluru came together to fund a film. Each of them invested between Rs 1,000 and Rs 2 lakh for the two-crore budget film RG, a dark comedy. Auto Nagaraj, an auto driver who wanted to become an actor, is Karnataka’s most well-known producer and publicist.
The Kannada film Lucia set the trend of crowd-funding in Indian cinema. Director Pawan Kumar generated Rs 51 lakh in less than a month through his blog and Facebook page.

The comedy track in most Kannada films has no link whatsoever with the film. (Photo Courtesy: Giphy.com)
Welcome Bullet Prakash, Bank Janardan, Tennis Krishna
Whistling, hooting and howling, an impromptu dance near the screen; Sandalwood’s fandom doesn’t just love Kannada films. Nothing beats the grand welcome Bullet Prakash, Bank Janardan or Tennis Krishna, the famous comedians of the Sandalwood, receive.
They receive a hero’s welcome and more space on the credit rolls than anybody else, with the camera literally zooming in and out on their faces. No film in Sandalwood will ever be complete without a comedian, and audiences howl in anticipation of the first joke.

Teesside dish makes it into Oxford English Dictionary after compilers' appealed for help in coming up with a definition

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Oxford English Dictionary researchers are hungry to learn more about 'parmo'
It's a five letter word which means a lot to Teessiders.

And now the world at large will get to know about it after “parmo” became an official entry in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Last year, OED compilers called on Teessiders to help compile a definition.

They knew it existed. Maybe they’d even sampled one. But they wanted Teessiders to help to cook up a proper explanation of its cheese-topped glory.

It’s taken quite a long time - after all, you shouldn’t rush a parmo.

But here, in all its glory, is the entry food connoisseurs - and Scrabble players - the world over can now point to if its existence as a word is disputed:

“Parmo, n. Eng. regional (north-east). A dish consisting of a fillet of breaded chicken, pork, or other meat that is fried, topped with béchamel sauce and cheese, and then grilled, typically sold as takeaway food. Cf. parmesan n. 1b.”

READ MORE
Pizzas, burgers, and parmos without the guilt - this low calorie takeaway has opened in Stockton
It even includes several references to its usage in popular culture, including two from the Evening Gazette Middlesborough - yes, Middlesborough - in 2003.

Don’t worry - we’ll tell them.

The word 'parmo' has made it into the Oxford English Dictionary
The concise definition is much reduced from the original appeal, which described a parmo as “a food associated with the area of Teesside, in north-east England. It consists of a fillet of breaded chicken, pork, or other meat that is fried, covered with béchamel sauce and cheese, and then grilled, and is often sold as a takeaway meal. Both the name and the preparation are somewhat reminiscent of the Italian-American dish chicken (or veal, etc.) parmesan or parmigiana (chicken parm for short), though this always involves tomato sauce rather than béchamel sauce and is made with a combination of mozzarella and parmesan cheeses (hence the name). The American dish is in turn a carnivorous reinvention of the classic Italian dish melanzane parmigiana, made with slices of aubergine.”

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'They have become very popular' - Parm

The case of a deaf man who was unable to get a qualified sign language interpreter when he was rushed to the Saint John Regional Hospital with a suspected heart attack has highlighted the shortage of resources for the deaf and hard of hearing in New Brunswick, according to an advocate.

A 14-year-old girl ended up serving as interpreter for Mark Toner, 61, after his wife, in desperation, turned to social media for help.

"I really panicked because I couldn't get there in a timely manner and he was taken by ambulance," said Susan Toner.

The hospital does not have its own interpreter, said executive director Brenda Kinney. None of hospitals within the Horizon Health Network do, she said.

'In emergency situations Horizon would make every effort to find an interpreter.'
- Brenda Kinney, Saint John Regional Hospital
Kinney declined to discuss a specific patient's case, citing privacy reasons. But when a deaf patient arrives at the Saint John Regional Hospital unaccompanied by an interpreter, staff call the Saint John Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services Inc. for an interpreter, she stated in an email to CBC News.

"If no interpreter is available through the service and the situation is not urgent, we may reach out to the family or engage in a dialogue with the patient by writing," said Kinney.

"In emergency situations Horizon would make every effort to find an interpreter," she added without elaborating.

Toner was complaining of severe back pain on Friday, but staff at the special care home where he resides feared he might be having a heart attack and sent him to the hospital by ambulance, his wife said.

Only 4 interpreters for province

Lynn LeBlanc, executive director for the Saint John Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services Inc., said there are only two qualified interpreters in the city. Both of them were already assigned elsewhere that day, she said.

There are only four qualified interpreters for the entire province, with the other two based in Fredericton and Moncton. Together, they serve a population of 750 people.

"We deliver probably 12,000 hours of interpreting services and sadly, due to our shortage in New Brunswick, oftentimes clients do end up going without service," LeBlanc said.

She also declined to discuss Toner's specific case, but said the hospital's triage services will tell the organization if a patient is in a life-threatening situation. In those cases, if a New Brunswick interpreter isn't available, the organization will bring in an interpreter from outside the province.


Kelci Adams, 14, of Saint John, responded to Susan Toner's desperate plea for someone who knew sign language to help her deaf husband communicate with doctors at the emergency department. (Submitted)

Susan Toner said the hospital called her at home. "I was quite ill myself that day," said the 59-year-old. She called the Saint John Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services' main line and emergency line, but said she got no response at either one at first.

After several tries, she got in touch with the receptionist, who informed her that no interpreter was available.

Out of desperation, Toner turned to social media searching for anyone with a working knowledge of sign language to help her husband.

She found 14-year-old Kelci Adams through a Facebook interaction with the girl's mother, Shelley Adams.

'He seemed relieved that he could talk to, somebody that could understand him.'
- Kelci Adams
Kelci said she was nervous about interpreting for Mark Toner, but was happy to help. "He seemed relieved that he could talk to, somebody that could understand him," she said.

Susan Toner said her husband found Kelci very pleasant and said she did a remarkable job interpreting.

Kelci decided to learn sign language after being inspired from a TV show called Switched at Birth.

"Me and my friend had this project to do, a science fair project, and we decided to do it on how long it will take the average teenager to learn sign language because we also watch this show that people in it are deaf so we thought it would be a cool idea," she explained.

Shortage of qualified interpreters

Although the Toners appreciated Kelci's help, LeBlanc cautioned that using an amateur interpreter can be be risky.

"Sometimes helping isn't always helping because misinformation is given that a person can follow direction that shouldn't have been followed. You need a professional interpreter at these events," LeBlanc said.

It takes years of study and practise to be deemed a qualified interpreter for doctor, lawyer and mental health appointments because such situations can be "life-altering."

"It takes 10 years to become fluent in a language … Then there is the three-year college program. And then upon graduation … there is five years of usually an internship type of apprenticeship before you can even start working in a medical type area," said LeBlanc.

"So it takes as long for the interpreter to get qualified to interpret in these situations as it takes a doctor to learn his craft to be able to look for medical services."

The province's four qualified interpreters work seven days a week, said LeBlanc. "They put in anywhere from 60 to 80 hours a week. They work very long and gruelling hours to try to provide as much access to the deaf community as they can," LeBlanc said.

She believes the root problem is that too few people are choosing to become interpreters.

"People who are looking for careers don't necessarily look towards sign language interpretation," she said.

Only one per cent of the population is deaf and often only those exposed to the community choose to pursue it as a career, she added.

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