La sociedad impone su lenguaje a la RAE
La Real Academia Española ya no impone vocablos: la sociedad la obliga a asumirlos. Por eso acepta palabras como otubre, amigovio, almóndiga, pechamen o culamen. Términos populares que habrían avergonzado hace pocos años a cualquier profesor de Lengua

LORENA FERNÁNDEZ
09/11/2015 | 21:41 H.

CAMBIOS RAE NUEVAS PALABRAS LIMPIA FIJA Y DA ESPLENDOR

Diccionario de la Real Academia Española.
La lengua está viva y a la Real Academia Española (RAE) no le queda más remedio que asumir y añadir a su diccionario palabras que antes eran consideradas errores, coloquialismos o incluso vulgarismos. En sus últimas actualizaciones, la RAE ha completado su repertorio de vocablos con numerosos términos cuya mera transcripción habría avergonzado hace sólo unos pocos años a más de un profesor de Lengua. Palabras como amigovio, papichulo o toballa, son algunas de las más novedosas.

Su lema ‘limpia, fija y da esplendor’ está casi obsoleto. Un diccionario que en teoría tendría que aclarar cómo debe de escribir una sociedad evoluciona cada vez más al albur de cómo habla y escribe la gente. De hecho, ahora es la población hispanohablante de medio mundo quien le dicta a la RAE cómo hablar y escribir. 

Los cambios léxicos más destacados son aquellos que admiten la escritura de una misma palabra de dos modos diferentes: el correcto y el popular o vulgar. Ese es el caso de almóndiga o madalena, que lejos de dejar en mal lugar, como antaño ocurría, a quien osase pronunciar esas 'barbaridades', ahora están bien dichas.

Las más ‘modernas’

Espanglish. Quién no ha mezclado alguna vez términos anglosajones e hispanos y ha decidido llamarlo así. Se trata de un dialecto muy habitual entre aquellos hispanos que no dominan el idioma inglés pero les resulta imposible sustraerse a su influencia. La RAE lo ha añadido a su compendio de palabras: “Modalidad del habla de algunos grupos hispanos de los Estados Unidos en la que se mezclan elementos léxicos y gramaticales del español y del inglés”, señala.

Papichulo. Las canciones latinas asientan este término y el diccionario de la RAE lo confirma. Una palabra coloquial que el diccionario describe así: “Hombre que, por su atractivo físico, es objeto de deseo”.

Las respuestas en la red social del pajarito a la inclusión de estas palabras son numerosas y divertidas. Muchos 'twittean' lo que piensan de los nuevos vocablos. Los usuarios son conscientes de que algunos ni siquiera los conocían los académicos. Otros, no dan crédito a las nuevas acepciones y critican a la organización.

One way of predicting the future is to look back at the past. The global role English plays today as a lingua franca – used as a means of communication by speakers of different languages – has parallels in the Latin of pre-modern Europe.

Having been spread by the success of the Roman Empire, Classical Latin was kept alive as a standard written medium throughout Europe long after the fall of Rome. But the Vulgar Latin used in speech continued to change, forming new dialects, which in time gave rise to the modern Romance languages: French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian and Italian.

Similar developments may be traced today in the use of English around the globe, especially in countries where it functions as a second language. New “interlanguages” are emerging, in which features of English are mingled with those of other native tongues and their pronunciations.

Despite the Singaporean government’s attempts to promote the use of Standard British English through the Speak Good English Movement, the mixed language known as “Singlish” remains the variety spoken on the street and in the home.

Spanglish, a mixture of English and Spanish, is the native tongue of millions of speakers in the United States, suggesting that this variety is emerging as a language in its own right.


Meanwhile, the development of automatic translation software, such as Google Translate, will come to replace English as the preferred means of communication employed in the boardrooms of international corporations and government agencies.

So the future for English is one of multiple Englishes.

Looking back to the early 20th century, it was the Standard English used in England, spoken with the accent known as “Received Pronunciation”, that carried prestige.

But today the largest concentration of native speakers is in the US, and the influence of US English can be heard throughout the world: can I get a cookie, I’m good, did you eat, the movies, “skedule” rather than “shedule”. In the future, to speak English will be to speak US English.

US spellings such as disk and program are already preferred to British equivalents disc and programme in computing. The dominance of US usage in the digital world will lead to the wider acceptance of further American preferences, such as favorite, donut, dialog, center.

What is being lost?

In the 20th century, it was feared that English dialects were dying out with their speakers. Projects such as the Survey of English Dialects (1950-61) were launched at the time to collect and preserve endangered words before they were lost forever. A similar study undertaken by the BBC’s Voices Project in 2004 turned up a rich range of local accents and regional terms which are available online, demonstrating the vibrancy and longevity of dialect vocabulary.

But while numerous dialect words were collected for “young person in cheap trendy clothes and jewellery” – pikey, charva, ned, scally – the word chav was found throughout England, demonstrating how features of the Estuary English spoken in the Greater London area are displacing local dialects, especially among younger generations.

The turn of the 20th century was a period of regulation and fixity – the rules of Standard English were established and codified in grammar books and in the New (Oxford) English Dictionary on Historical Principles, published as a series of volumes from 1884-1928. Today we are witnessing a process of de-standardisation, and the emergence of competing norms of usage.

In the online world, attitudes to consistency and correctness are considerably more relaxed: variant spellings are accepted and punctuation marks omitted, or repurposed to convey a range of attitudes. Research has shown that in electronic discourse exclamation marks can carry a range of exclamatory functions, including apologising, challenging, thanking, agreeing, and showing solidarity.

Capital letters are used to show anger, misspellings convey humour and establish group identity, and smiley-faces or emoticons express a range of reactions.

Getting shorter

Some have questioned whether the increasing development and adoption of emoji pictograms, which allow speakers to communicate without the need for language, mean that we will cease to communicate in English at all? ;-)

The fast-changing world of social media is also responsible for the coining and spreading of neologisms, or “new words”. Recent updates to Oxford Dictionaries give a flavour: mansplaining, awesomesauce, rly, bants, TL;DR (too long; didn’t read).


How Oxford Dictionaries choose which new words to include.
Clipped forms, acronyms, blends and abbreviations have long been productive methods of word formation in English (think of bus, smog and scuba) but the huge increase in such coinages means that they will be far more prominent in the English of 2115.

Whether you or h8 such words, think they are NBD or meh, they are undoubtedly here to stay.

EL NUEVO DIARIO, NUEVA YORK._  La aspirante a diputada en ultramar del PLD en la circunscripción #1 Ana Vargas, pidió en una carta enviada al pleno de la Junta Central Electoral (JCE), realizar una campaña de información y orientación adecuada a los dominicanos en el exterior, sobre el proceso que hay que agotar para registrar la nacionalidad dominicana de hijos de dominicanas y dominicanos nacidos en el extranjero.

Vargas señaló que las declaraciones de esta semana del presidente de la JCE, doctor Roberto Rosario Márquez, al que felicitó por ello, advirtiendo a Interior y Policía, respecto al primer paso del registro, evidencia la desinformación existente en la diáspora criolla radicada en el exterior.

La precandidata peledeísta indicó que en los próximos días enviará una misiva a los magistrados del pleno de la JCE, para solicitarles la aprobación de esa importante campaña, ya que a ella le han llegado muchas quejas sobre el método, que según Rosario, sólo es la traducción y registración de la partida de nacimiento del país, donde nazca el futuro ciudadano dominicano.

“La aclaración del doctor Rosario es muy importante y atinada, porque creo que la mayoría casi absoluta de la diáspora, desconocía que después de traducir el acta de nacimiento, sólo debe hacerse el registro en las oficialías civiles, sea con el sistema automatizado a asentándola en los libros”, agregó Vargas.

Adelantó que según sus informaciones, el costo de la traducción de una partida de nacimiento, es de $80 dólares en los consulados dominicanos y que también pedirá que el Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores (MIREX) revise ese costo, considerándolo excesivo y abusivo por un documento como el acta de nacimiento.

Vargas señala que además, ha recibido informaciones de que en las sedes consulares, no se permiten actas de nacimiento traducidas fuera de ese entorno, lo que también considera inapropiado por parte de los cónsules que estarían adoptando esa práctica.

“Los dominicanos y dominicanas en el exterior, estamos ya lo suficientemente expoliados con facturaciones de altísimos precios, para que ahora también se nos venga a abusar con el costo del acta de nacimiento”, expresó Vargas,

Sugirió el pago de entre $10 a $15 dólares por ese documento, equivalente a lo que cuesta en dólares el mismo papel en Nueva York.

“Pero también tenemos la opción de llevar el acta de nacimiento a la República Dominicana ya traducida, donde su costo es mucho más barato en pesos que en Estados Unidos, Canadá y Europa”, exhortó la precandidata.

Prometió que de ser electa en las elecciones de 2016, donde de seguro será la candidata oficial de su partido, legislará en el Congreso Nacional, para que sea por ley y no con decisiones administrativas, que se reivindiquen las consideraciones que la diáspora debe tener del estado, “porque se las ha ganado a pulso, con el esfuerzo, trabajo y honestidad, conque sobrevivimos fuera de la patria”.

El Consejo de Gobierno vasco ha aprobado, a propuesta de la consejera de Educación, Política Lingüística y Cultura, la Orden que regula la concesión de subvenciones para el periodo

2015-2016, por un total de 500.000 euros, para la traducción al euskera de la rotulación variable de grandes establecimientos comerciales, y la capacitación en euskera de su personal.

Esta convocatoria subvencionará las actividades que se lleven a cabo en el periodo 2015-2016 dirigidas a adaptar al euskera la rotulación variable de estos comercios. En concreto, se subvencionarán los gastos de traducción de los textos, así como otros gastos ocasionados por la adaptación de rótulos, carteles o componentes correspondientes (materiales, soportes).

También se ofertarán unos cursos específicos al personal de estos establecimientos para su capacitación en euskera en el desempeño de su labor, y creación de un protocolo que establezca cómo atender al cliente que se dirige en euskera. También se incluyen los cursos de atención al cliente en base al citado protocolo, así como otras iniciativas que fomenten el incremento del uso del euskera de estos empleados.

Según ha explicado el Ejecutivo, esta convocatoria se incluye entre las iniciativas impulsadas por el Gobierno vasco para garantizar los derechos lingüísticos de las personas usuarias y consumidoras, con el objetivo de avanzar en la extensión y profundización del cumplimiento de la normativa vigente en esta materia. El plazo de presentación de solicitudes será del 14 al 28 de noviembre.

Chinese scientists claimed that they have decoded the meaning of 13 various panda vocalizations, including the noises they make during courting. Researchers found that panda "language" uses specific sounds to indicate what they are feeling, for example, hungry or sad.

As per the state Xinhua news agency, the five-year research was conducted at a conservation center in the southwestern Sichuan province. They found that when pandas court, males sound "baa," like those of the sheep, and female pandas respond with a chirping sound if interested. Sounds like "wow-wow" mean they are unhappy and baby pandas' "gee-gee" implies they need food.

The head of the China Conservation and Research Centre for Giant Panda Zhang Hemin said "Trust me - our researchers were so confused when we began the project, they wondered if they were studying a panda, a bird, a dog, or a sheep." To study their means of communication, researchers recorded the sounds while they are eating, fighting and nursing.

The scientists expressed their desire to create a "panda translator" through the use of a voice recognition technology, but no further details were given yet. "If we can understand their language, it will help us protect the animal, especially in the wild," Hemin said. "Adult giant pandas usually are solitary, so the only language teacher they have is their own mother."

With these data at hand, researchers were aiming to use these to better understand how to protect this critically endangered species. As per recent reports, it is believed that there are only less than 2000 pandas living in the wild and they are only found in China, and some 300 living in captivity and conservation centers around the globe. Despite efforts of saving its kind, they are still from under threat of extinction because of fertility problems and destruction of their natural habitat. 

“La nouvelle littérature africaine, vers une rupture ?” C’était la thématique abordée par quatre auteurs du continent noir.

Cette nouvelle génération d’écrivains africains “avec des formes et approches littéraires différentes” était présente mardi, à l’espace “Esprit Panaf”, qui se tient au Salon international du livre d’Alger depuis le 29 octobre dernier à la Safex. Avant d’attaquer la thématique “La nouvelle littérature africaine, vers une rupture ?”, Gauz Armand — photographe, scénariste, rédacteur en chef d’un journal satirique, de Côte d’Ivoire —, a voulu faire une précision sur les clichés donnés sur ces auteurs africains issus de l’émigration. “Ils nous considèrent comme des enfants de l’exil, alors que nous le nions. Nous sommes tous nés quelque part, ce n’est pas un exil mais un ‘déplacement’. Notre avantage est de posséder plusieurs cultures.”
Cette génération d’auteurs qui a vécu en Europe, a-t-elle rompu les liens avec ses ancêtres ? Sur cette interrogation, les intervenants étaient catégoriques : “Il n’y a jamais eu de rupture.” Selon Kagni Alem  — écrivain, traducteur et critique littéraire du Togo — : “La vraie rupture pour les écrivains africains, c’est la rupture linguistique dans la fréquentation du texte et sa circulation ‘traduction’ d’une langue à une autre.” Et de signaler : “Quand vous traduisez un texte d’une langue à une autre, là, il y a une rupture avec la langue des ancêtres.” En abordant le cas d’auteurs qui écrivent seulement sur l’environnement qui les entoure (le pays adoptif) et non pas sur l’Afrique, l’auteur Parkes Nii Ayikwei (Ghana), s’est insurgé en affirmant : “Ce n’est pas vrai, ces écrivains racontent leur colère et leur frustration. Cela m’énerve quand on lie l’histoire au lieu. La culture n’a rien à voir avec l’écriture. Un écrivain demeure un écrivain même s’il écrit en anglais ou en français, même s’il est Africain ou Européen. La nationalité ne change pas l’écriture. On est écrivain tout court.” Et de renchérir : “Il n’y a pas de rupture pour tout le monde, il y a des réponses individuelles.” À ce propos, Gauz Armand, rétorque : “Nous sommes une génération décomplexée qui vénère les anciens. Ce qui m’intéresse c’est l’esthétique du texte, le style, la vibration d’un texte.” Et d’ajouter : “La vibration n’a pas de frontières, je vénère la puissance d’un texte.
Je vénère le ‘saint texte’”. Après cette riche et captivante conférence, les intervenants ont laissé place au débat avec le public. Sur les remarques “l’écriture africaine reste tributaire pour la littérature française”, Armand Gauz, a rebondi en soulignant : “Pourquoi doit-on nous justifier. Il y a ce regard occidentalo-centré sur nous, pourquoi les Occidentaux ne parlent pas de leur littérature, ils ont de nombreux écrivains émigrés. Ils n’évoquent que la nôtre.” Ce journaliste et écrivain ivoirien a fait ses études en langue française et a suivi le programme français tout au long de son parcours scolaire. “Ces études en langue française ne dépendent pas de moi, mais du schéma colonial. J’ai le même diplôme que les Français. Mais, les auteurs africains  possèdent un plus par rapport aux Européens : la puissance de la culture de nos grands-parents.” Et de conclure : “L’Afrique d’aujourd’hui, a subi les changements les plus puissants, les plus violents de toute l’histoire de l’humanité. Nous les  avons encaissés en moins de 50 ans, Nous sommes forts parce que nous avons gardé notre culture et nos origines. Ils ont pensé qu’ils l’avaient effacé avec la puissance de la poudre, mais, ce n’est pas du tout le cas.”

The National Human Rights Commission says it will ensure that 80 per cent of Nigerians are aware of their fundamental human rights by the end of December, 2015.
Its Executive Secretary, Bem Angwe, made the declaration on Monday in Abuja when he received Mike Omeri, the Director-General, National Orientation Agency, at the commission’s headquarters.
“By the end of this year, we want to achieve a target of having at least 80 per cent of Nigerians aware of their rights.
“As a result of this, the commission has identified some institutions in the country to partner with.
“We commenced this partnership with parliamentarians who accepted to make available their constituencies and support the commission to promote the rights of their constituents.
“That relationship has produced resources and logistics needed to promote the rights of Nigerians in many states,” Mr. Angwe said.
Mr. Angwe said the commission had earlier partnered the NOA when its director general pledged to translate the section of the Nigerian constitution on human rights into the three major languages.
The executive secretary said that this partnership was necessary as it would enable Nigerians to read about their rights in their native languages.
“We desire that Nigerians be empowered physically, mentally and economically.
“So we will work with the agency to make this happen by ensuring that every Nigerian is able to read about their rights in their various languages,” he said.
Mr. Omeri, on his part, said that the agency was working hard to complete the task of translating the section of the constitution on human rights into the three major Nigerian languages.
“We are still working on the promise we made to translate a portion of the constitution into the three major languages and we hope to get this done as soon as it is possible,” he said.
He appreciated the commitment of the commission to ensuring that the rights of every citizen were protected by swiftly intervening whenever the rights of a citizen were trampled on.
The NOA boss expressed concern that some Nigerians were still ignorant of their rights and would not even know when these rights were being abused.
“Currently, at this phase of our development, a number of people are not aware of their fundamental human rights.
“Rights that are derived from our laws and rights that are natural and so they suffer without knowing that they have a platform to seek redress,” he said.
Mr. Omeri pledged the agency’s readiness to work with the NHRC to sensitise every Nigerian on their basic rights.
This, he said, would empower them to cry out when their rights were being infringed on even by the government.
Mr. Omeri called on the NHRC to provide the necessary tools to train its staff in the 774 local governments to enable them effectively educate Nigerians on their basic and fundamental human rights.
(NAN)

Since joining the Francophone Studies faculty this July, Assistant Professor Meryem Belkaïd has already garnered great appreciation from both students in colleagues for the many outstanding qualities and expertise she brings to the Department, not to mention her her terrific spirit and sense of humor. As senior major Sophia Namara attests, in her courses Professor Belkaïd “engages with each and every student, creating a class environment where people feel encouraged to participate and deeply engage with the subject material.” A specialist in 20th and 21st-century literature, with a particular interest in the literature, cinema, and politics of the Maghreb, she is currently teaching a seminar on “Crime Fiction as History,” examining how contemporary crime fiction serves as a rich venue for the interrogation of history, including the French colonial past and the period of the German occupation during World War II. As senior major Elena Schaef comments, “Professor Belkaïd teaches passionately about a genre that is often overlooked in both French and English literature. Her abundant knowledge of French history and the perspectives she emphasizes from francophone North African make for a fascinating class.” This semester, Professor Belkaïd has also shared her love of cinema in her Advanced French through Film course, where students learn approaches to film analysis while building their technical vocabulary and honing their writing skills. She hopes to teach a seminar on the Cinema of the Maghreb in the future. In addition to inpiring students in the classroom, Professor Belkaïd has been a dynamic presence in the Department, participating in weekly Francophone Table dinners and co-leading Francophone Studies’ annual immersion trip to Québec City.

Born and raised in Algeria, Professor Belkaïd lived for several years in France and worked in Tunisia for two years, where she has strong family ties. Trained in both literature and political science, she brings unique perspectives and wide-ranging experience to the Francophone Studies program. Before coming to Bowdoin, she taught at universities in Tunis and Paris as well as in the liberal arts college environment at Macalester and Bates. Her scholarly work and teaching interests embrace both sides of the Mediterranean. While her French doctoral thesis, which she is preparing for publication in the United States, focused on the role of the individual in contemporary French crime fiction, her current work interrogates the crime novel in the North African context, examining how the genre is transformed in a different political arena with its own particular history and stakes.

Even before her arrival at Bowdoin, Professor Belkaïd had already begun to enrich the Francophone Studies program in important ways. She brought exciting events to our campus last spring through collaborations she initiated between Colby, Bates and Bowdoin. In March 2015, Professeor Belkaïd organized the visit of Algerian-born filmmaker, actor and writer Lyes Salem to the three colleges to screen and discuss his new feature film, L’Orannais (The Man from Oran, 2014), which had premiered only months earlier in France. Later in April, she brought her brother, Akram Belkaïd—author, journalist for the Monde Diplomatique, and expert on politics in the Arab world—to all three campuses to discuss “The Arab Spring: Ten Years After.”

TRANSLATING A BOOK IN ORDER TO SAVE IT
ON THE REBIRTH OF ALESSANDRO SPINA'S 1,300-PAGE EPIC

November 4, 2015  By André Naffis-Sahely
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The line between the author and the translator can blur to the point that they become indissolubly associated. Marcel Proust and C.K. Scott Moncrieff, Gabriel García Márquez and Gregory Rabassa, Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Ralph Manheim, Fernanda Pivano and the Beat poets, Georges Perec and David Bellos, Michael Hofmann and Joseph Roth. Google one or the other, and their names instantly appear side by side. Many authors will often wait for the right translator, as García Márquez famously did with Rabassa, yet the translators themselves, even when they have produced masterpieces that stand in their own right, will receive few rewards aside from their long-delayed checks. In fact, they can sometimes be criticized for making the original work “better” in the target language, an accusation J.M. Coetzee leveled at Michael Hofmann, who, in his spirited reply to Coetzee’s review in the pages of the New York Review of Books, wrote: “Brot is not bread. Words are not like numbers, they are unstable and porous. A ‘word-for-word translation’ is a rotten proposition.” Still, whichever theories one adopts when it comes to translation, surely making it better is superior to making it worse.

Perhaps the aforementioned names jump so easily to mind because I’ve always been drawn to translators who not only forge a bond with their authors, and work on at least two or three of their books, but who also commune with said author’s culture and background. Frank Wynne, perhaps better known for his work on Michel Houellebecq and Frédéric Beigbeder, also translated two of my favorite West African novels: Ahmadou Kourouma’s En attendant le vote des bêtes sauvages (Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote) and Allah n’est pas obligé (Allah is Not Obliged). For the latter, Wynne acquired recordings of child-soldiers who had fought in the Liberian Civil War in order to find the right tone to employ for the 12-year-old narrator. As such, I’ve always assumed that any translator worth their salt aspired to similar bonds, and would thus likely spend their lives trying to find an author they adored to the point where they could no longer imagine themselves not working on their books. For a long time, I thought such a bond would elude my grasp.

Growing up in the United Arab Emirates, the only novel I ever chanced across which I believed truly examined—and excoriated—the ludicrousness of the petrocracies that had mushroomed out of the Arabian Sands in the 1920s and 30s was Abdel Rahman Munif’s Cities of Salt, a quintet of novels that sought to paint a portrait of how a little oasis in the middle of nowhere rose to become a powerful kingdom off the back of its gargantuan oil revenues, but then ultimately failed to successfully harness this new-found fortune for the benefit of its citizens. The fictional oasis, Wadi al-Uyoun, was a metaphor for Saudi Arabia, Munif’s native country, and Cities of Salt caused such a furore there that Munif’s books were banned and he was stripped of his citizenship. His crime? Daring to illustrate a simple hypothesis, that “oil is our one and only chance to build a future, and the regimes are ruining it,” as Munif told his translator Peter Theroux over lunch in Damascus in 1989. Although I could read Arabic more fluently then than now, the originals were banned in the Emirates at the time, and since the censors kept a tight grip on which titles bookshops could import, I could read Cities of Salt in its English translation in Abu Dhabi’s single public library. The first page bore the stamp BANNED in big, blood-red letters. At least the censors were consistent across languages.

For a while I toyed with the idea of translating Cities of Salt again, but decided my Arabic wasn’t good enough, and I quickly gave up the idea that I’d ever chance across a work of a similar magnitude that appealed to my sensibilities like Munif’s work had. I was wrong. Two years ago, a long night of research on a completely different topic led me to a name I’d never heard of before: Alessandro Spina, the pseudonym used by the Italo-Libyan writer Basili Khuzam. Khuzam had published widely over the course of 50 years, but all his books had gone out of print and now changed hands for hundreds of dollars each. However, a small publishing house outside of Brescia in Northern Italy had re-published Spina’s slim novels, collecting them in a 1,300 page omnibus edition entitled I confini dell’ombra/The Confines of the Shadow. When issued in 2006, the book was awarded the Bagutta Prize, Italy’s highest literary laurel. Overnight, and despite the odds, The Confines of the Shadow had become a part of literary history.

I was in between projects at the time and I took the next couple of months off and sat down with the book. It didn’t take me long to be hooked, in fact it happened when I read the incredibly—and deceptively—short preamble to Khuzam’s mammoth work:

This sequence of novels and short stories takes as its subject the Italian experience in Cyrenaica. The Young Maronite discusses the 1911 war prompted by Giolitti, Omar’s Wedding narrates the ensuing truce and the attempt by the two peoples to strike a compromise before the rise of Fascism. The Nocturnal Visitor chronicles the end of the 20-year Libyan resistance; Officers’ Tales focuses on the triumph of colonialism—albeit this having been achieved when the end of Italian hegemony already loomed in sight and the Second World War appeared inevitable—and The Psychological Comedy, which ends with Italy’s retreat from Libya and the fleeing of settlers. Entry Into Babylon concentrates on Libyan independence in 1951, Cairo Nights illustrates the early years of the Senussi Monarchy and the looming spectre of Pan-Arab nationalism, while The Shore of the Lesser Life examines the profound social and political changes that occurred when large oil and gas deposits were discovered in the mid 1960s. Each text can be read independently or as part of the sequence. Either mode of reading will produce different—but equally legitimate—impressions.

Never have a couple of hundred words betrayed such sheer ambition. Khuzam kept true to his preamble, and over the course of reading and re-reading those 1,300 pages, I realized that he’d not only accomplished exactly what he’d set out to do, but also ultimately created the repository of a world which had long since died, opening a window onto Libyan history from 1911, when modernity stormed the Libyan coasts in all its brutality—Libya was the first country in history to suffer an aerial bombardment—all the way to the 1960s, when its oil deposits were exploited and the ground was laid for Muammar Gaddafi’s coup. In order to better guide his readers, Khuzam split the 11 novels and short story collections of his epic into three distinct periods: The Colonial Conquest (1912-1927), The Colonial Era (1927-1947) and Independence (1947-1964).

Khuzam’s stories and novels are lush tapestries of history, fiction and autobiography featuring a cosmopolitan array of characters: Italian officers, Senussi rebels, Ottoman bureaucrats, chirpy grande dames, Maltese fishermen, aristocrats, servants and slaves. Against all odds, Spina also managed to describe each caste and culture with the same finesse, empathy and intimacy. Indeed, as one reviewer of Volume 1 of the English translation pointed out: “Spina can be counted among a small group of expatriate writers who are hard to classify: Home is a place they have made for themselves at the intersection of East and West. One thinks of Paul Bowles in Morocco, or of Albert Cossery.”

Unfortunately, I never got to meet Khuzam. I had drafted a letter expressing my admiration and intent to translate him, and had even started looking at flights, but he died in July 2013, just a week after I signed a contract with Darf Books in London to translate the entirety of The Confines of the Shadow. At first I thought this would seriously compromise the project. After all, unlike the French or the British, the Italians have never even begun to grapple with the horrors of their colonial legacy—and it is a horrible one considering they once lorded over Libya, Eritrea and Somalia—thus, almost nothing had been written about Spina and the Italian public in general seemed to have no stomach for anything related to their former fiefs. However, thanks to a few clues scattered amidst his books and diaries, I was able to piece together several facts about his life.

Born in 1927, to a Syrian Maronite family in Benghazi who had made their fortune in the textile trade, Khuzam had been educated in the finest schools and was fluent in four languages. When World War II broke out, his father dispatched the teenage Khuzam to Milan, where he would spend the next ten years, until his father recalled him to Benghazi to manage the family factory. Khuzam spent the next 20 years devoting his evenings to writing, but was eventually forced to leave Libya in 1979, when Gaddafi began seizing all “foreign-owned assets,” although it was quite likely that Khuzam’s family was targeted due to their faith. After a brief sojourn in Paris, Khuzam bought himself a 17th-century villa not far from Milan and led a fairly secluded life there until his death a couple of years ago.

Aside from appearing in English, The Confines of the Shadow is also being translated into French and there are plans for an Arabic edition. Translation improves a book’s chances of survival. In a way, it must. What one culture proves indifferent to, might find a better reception in another. After all, Khuzam and Spina didn’t fare well in Italian. Half way through his diary, I came across an entry he’d made in the early 1980s, when he ran into a friend at the opening of an opera in Milan. Introducing him to his wife, the poet jokingly said: “Darling, this is Alessandro Spina, who is trying to make Italians feel guilty about their colonial crimes, all to no avail of course.”

 

Volume 1 of The Confines of the Shadow was published in June 2015. Volume 2 will appear in the Fall of 2016, with Volume 3 to follow in 2017.

Abdel Rahman MunifAlessandro SpinaAndré Naffis-SahelyArabicbanned booksBasili KhuzamBenghazi is more than just the subject of a hearingtranslationUnited Arab Emirates

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André Naffis-Sahely

André Naffis-Sahely was raised in Abu Dhabi. He writes poetry and nonfiction and works as a literary translator from the French and the Italian. His writing has appeared in The Nation, The Economist, The Times Literary Supplement, New Statesman, The Independent, The Paris Review Daily, The White Review and The Chimurenga Chronic. Other work has appeared in Transition, Asymptote, Words Without Borders, Banipal and Wasafiri.

Translation of African works a game changer
BY MATOVU ABDALLAH TWAHA November 05, 2015
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SHARJAH: The Vice President of African Publishers Network, Mohamed Badi, is attending the 34th edition of the Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF), for among other missions, to open negotiations with the Sharjah Book Authority to help the continent’s authors’ works to be translated into Arabic and other languages.

“The emirate of Sharjah is the region’s cultural and reading hub, so it would be better to have it start an initiative of translating Africans’ works into Arabic and other languages,” said Badi.

English is not included among “other languages” because “most of the Africans write in English while a few others write in French.”

He contends that the doyen of Arabic culture, His Highness Dr Sheikh Sultan Bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Sharjah, will “love to have this initiative executed.”

African countries are yet to be visible on international book fair events; but SIBF, for the first time, is expecting to have Ghana represented. However, by press time yesterday, the country was still a no-show at the book fair.


“I expect to meet the Nigerian celebrated author, Ben Okri, tomorrow, and share this idea with him,” said Badi.
 

The third in a series on translated work features the prologue to one of the most famous plays in history, translated by Aaron Poochigian
By Euripides and Aaron Poochigian for Translation Tuesdays byAsymptote, part of the Guardian Books Network
Welcome to the Guardian Books Network

With the publication of a new edition of the Hebrew Bible under his belt, Rabbi Naphtali (Tuly) Weisz is set to manifest his vision for honoring and nurturing evangelical Christian support for Jews and the Jewish homeland.
It wasn’t so long ago that Christians weren’t always viewed as a Jew’s best friend. But that’s not how things are playing out today, says Weisz, the former pulpit rabbi of Beth Jacob Congregation in Columbus, Ohio. Ordained by the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary at Yeshiva University, and also holding a law degree, Weisz made aliyah four years ago to a Jerusalem suburb where he now lives with his wife and their five children.
Before he ever dreamed of producing a Bible spotlighting the central role of Israel, Weisz founded Israel365: Your Daily Connection to the Land of Israel, a website that is jam-packed with information on Israel and deploys an email list distributing Israel-centric biblical quotes. These days, the Israel365 emails that land daily in the inboxes of some 200,000 Christians and Jews – 70 percent and 30 percent, respectively – “serve as a constant reminder of the biblical commandment for Jews to make their home in the land of Israel,” Weisz, 35, says.
In recent years, the rabbi has added BreakingIsraelNews.com, a news website covering the latest happenings in Israel through a biblical lens. But fresh off its launch, Weisz sees “The Israel Bible” as the hub around which his other programming spokes revolve.
“It’s crucial to be able to see on every page of the Bible how central the land of Israel is to the holy book that both we and the Christians see as the word of God,” he tells JNS.org. Beginning with the classic 1917 Jewish Publication Society translation, the team of biblical experts added insights into each one of the multitude of biblical references to the land. The five-volume paperback set of the Torah costs $39.99 on the Israel365 website. The longer and complete Tanach version (what the Christians call the Old Testament) – 20 paperback volumes, including the Torah, the Prophets, Judges, Proverbs, Psalms, etc. – was recently completed and is now available on the site for $120.
“You can find all kinds of translations of the Bible out there – 88 percent of Americans own at least one,” says Weisz. “But this is the first to draw our attention to the absolute centrality of the land of Israel and its eternal connection to the Jewish people.”
Staying faithful to the original wording of the text, he adds, packs a special message for those who, like religious people of both faiths, read the Bible literally as the word of God.
“The Israel Bible” is a publication whose time has come, says Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, the founding chief rabbi of the Israeli community of Efrat, who penned the foreword to the new Bible.
“In these very critical and tempestuous times it is especially important to understand the inexplicable connection between the nation of Israel and the land of Israel,” Riskin says. “And this is precisely what Rabbi Tuly Weisz has succeeded in doing in this timely translation of the Bible.”
Though it is designed for all, by far the greatest number of readers of “The Israel Bible” are expected to be evangelical Christians.
“The Bible, the land and the people of Israel are one, and this new Bible reminds us of this bond,” says Pastor Keith Johnson, founder of Biblical Foundations Academy International, upon visiting Israel from his Charlotte, N.C., home. “You can’t read the Bible, the word of God, without understanding the significance of Israel – past, present, and future. In 1948, the prophecy came to pass in our own time and no one can disconnect the people from their land ever again. Now that the God and people and land of Israel are back together, history is happening here.”
Jews and Christians share a biblical heritage, and the new Bible “shows even more clearly that this is the land God chose for the Jewish people,” adds Johnson.
Sondra Baras sees the value of the new edition from both the Jewish and Christian perspectives. An observant Jew, Baras heads the Israel office of Christian Friends of Israeli Communities, an initiative that helps Christians find travel and programming experiences in Israel.
“Many in the evangelical community are trying to understand what Israel is all about and how it connects with what they’re reading in their Bibles, so coming into contact with Jews in Israel brings the Bible to life for them,” she says. “They get what we’re doing here because their Bible is clear about why Jews belong in Israel.”
Weisz writes in the new Bible’s introduction, “Efforts to vilify the Jewish state seem to expand daily across the globe, as does the number of evangelicals who stand strong with the nation and the people of Israel as an expression of their commitment to God’s word.”
The rabbi has a prayer of his own to add: “May ‘The Israel Bible’ be a small contribution in bringing about the final redemption of Israel and the world.”

TALKING POINTS
Americans can and should be learning African languages

There's big business in Americans learning African languages; and maybe some good karma, too. (Reuters/Jonathan Ernst)
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WRITTEN BY

Evan Fleischer
OBSESSION

Language
November 10, 2015
More Americans should learn to speak languages native to the African continent. There is a small, statistical base of speakers in the country—according to the 2011 US census, 884,660 individuals aged five years or older already speak a language originating in Africa. But we could have so much more.
Arguably, the most useful, indigenous African languages for Americans to learn are Yoruba (primarily spoken in Nigeria), Xhosa (South Africa), Swahili (Kenya, Tanzania, and much of East Africa), and Amharic (mainly Ethiopia). Four languages out of approximately 2,000 on a continent of 1.1 billion—but together, they share 210 million speakers.
The United States is the second biggest investor in African economies behind France. The Financial Times reports that, “the US was the top source country by number of [African] projects last year, with 67 US companies launching or announcing 97 projects—a 47% rise on the previous year’s tally.” The US was the third-ranked country for capital investment in Africa in 2014, with roughly $8 billion invested by US companies last year alone. So, economically and sociologically, there are huge impetuses for acquiring African languages.
“In most African countries a child is born in a particular linguistic community where they grow up speaking that community’s language,” Angaluki Muaka, a professor of African and African-American studies at the University of Minnesota, tells Quartz. “When they start school, they’re taught a colonial language and one of a country’s major languages, sometimes referred to as a ‘national language.’”

By the time they are in the equivalent of the sixth grade, Muaka adds, their medium of instruction is generally the colonial language—French in places like Gabon or Côte d’Ivoire, Portuguese in Angola and Mozambique, English in Kenya and Ghana. By that age, they might be fluent in as many as three languages: the colonial language, one of the country’s national, languages, and their mother tongue. In South Africa, an example of this phenomenon might be a child from a Tswana-speaking community, educated in English or Afrikaans, and fluent in Xhosa.
In short, unlike Americans, the multilingual African is the norm, not the exception.
So, if most Africans are already equipped to conduct business in multiple languages, including major world tongues like English, French, Portuguese, or Arabic, what’s the point of Americans returning the favor?
“The commercial value of learning a language depends on the number and level of income of the group of language speakers,” counters James Foreman-Peck, a professor of economics and international development at Cardiff Business School. “My impression is that most of Africa has a long way to go before its languages become commercially valuable. Law and order would help, along with a marked reduction in corruption. These would encourage economic growth and create a market worth selling to. Then there would be a demand for Nigerian languages perhaps. Even so, Mandarin must surely trump all of them.”

But perhaps the impetus to learn major, indigenous African language goes beyond the immediately visible factors, in terms of commerce.
“The difference between Chinese and American enterprise in Africa is Chinese interest in learning local languages and culture,” Angaluki Muaka says. “A new or foreign language opens incredible doors of opportunities. Americans would tremendously benefit from learning African languages, especially regional lingua francas like Kiswahili of East and Central Africa, Hausa and Yoruba in West Africa; Zulu, Xhosa, and Shona in Southern Africa; Somali in the Horn of Africa; Arabic in North Africa, et cetera.”
“We should also not overlook the growing population of African immigrants in the US,” Muaka notes. “Not only do these immigrants produce heritage learners of African languages, but knowledge of their languages would considerably enhance US government service-delivery to their communities.”
“Just yesterday a friend who is the executive director of a Minnesota-based non-profit that operates in Tanzania returned from a Tanzanian trip,” she recounts. “She told me that on that single return trip of hers between Dar es Salaam and Amsterdam, flight attendants twice called for Kiswahili and Somali speaking passengers to help them with interpretation. My Caucasian friend had to step in for Kiswahili.”
Of course, it’s worth considering the moral weight of “decolonizing” language. Beyond getting ahead of the demographic curve with strategic cultural engagement, prefiguring an eventual business relationship, the moral impulse to study African languages could, in some fashion, quietly (and very partially) redress the structural, cultural inequalities perpetuated by colonialism. It’s a plan with precedent. Consider Yeats’s advocacy for the Irish language over the course of his own life (which now enjoys official status in Ireland), how people brought the Wampanoag language back to life, or how Māori and the Hawaiian language were pretty much saved through “language nests.”
The difference here is that Americans learning African languages would not “save” these tongues from extinction. They are in no danger. And though there is no immediate, large-scale economic relevance to Wampanoag, Hawaiian, or Māori, there is to Yoruba. Or Xhosa. Or Swahili. Or Amharic. A language is accessible to a potential population in a way that the levers of a production economy are not. And perhaps enrolling in Introduction to Zulu it is the first step someone can take.
We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.
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YOUR FACE IS AN EMOTICON
Microsoft wants to guess how you’re feeling

Does not compute.(Microsoft)
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Mike Murphy
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Some people can tell how others are feeling just by looking at them; now Microsoft is trying to give computers that same ability. The company launched a new website today (Nov. 11) that uses facial recognition and artificial intelligence to try to determine the emotions of people in photos, and it wants developers to use the technology in their apps.
To test out how well Microsoft’s AI program can determine your emotional state, upload a photo to the beta test site on the company’s Project Oxford site—the home for its artificial-intelligence research. The site will then spit out a string of information in a computer-readable list format that might not seem particularly intelligible at first, but would be great for any developer looking to build this technology into an app.
The AI system breaks down your face into gradations of eight emotional states—a few more than Pixar will have us believe there are. To see how the computer thinks you’re feeling, hover over the rectangle around your face and you’ll see the emotions graded on a scale from zero to one, with one representing that you’re feeling that emotion 100%.
Microsoft believed that I was entirely happy on a recent helicopter flight—in reality my smile and thumbs up were merely covering the fact that I was absolutely terrified.
(Quartz/Jacob Templin)
According to the site, Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella was pretty happy on a recent trip to France.

PARIS, Nov. 10, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sinequa, a leader in real-time Big Data search and analytics and SYSTRAN, the world leader in language translation software, today announced that they will join forces to exhibit at Milipol to be held at Paris-Nord Villepinte - November 17-20 th, 2015. In the context of their partnership, Sinequa and SYSTRAN provide state of the art technologies enabling leading defense and security organizations to transform COMINT/OSINT data into insight.
Today's intelligence and law enforcement agencies around the world are facing ever-growing threats from civil conflicts, weapons of mass destruction, nuclear and chemical arms, money laundering to terrorist acts and cyberattacks. Intelligence analysts need an intuitive way to extract insight from massive-scale data contained in various internal and external sources - this includes everything from signals and transcripts to fund transfers, e-mails and social media. The combination of Sinequa Big Data search and analytics platform along SYSTRAN's instant translation solutions for more than 45 languages empower defense and security organizations to get real-time information at their fingertips for quick analysis and decision.
" Over the years, Sinequa Big Data Search and Analytics has been deployed by leading defense and intelligence agencies facing huge challenges in terms of data collection, indexing and text analytics," said Xavier Pornain, VP Sales & Alliances, Sinequa. " In combination, SYSTRAN's automated translation solutions and Sinequa Big Data Search and Analytics provide these organizations with powerful and innovative technology to detect and process critical information in multiple languages while providing an exhaustive view of a given topic."
" Sinequa offers strong analytics for structured and textual data in a number of languages. With SYSTRAN, our joint customers can extend the analysis of textual data to more than 45 languages," said Gilles Montier, Sales Director, SYSTRAN.
Sinequa and SYSTRAN will be exhibiting in the Transmission, Communication and Interception Hall respectively in booths #5F248 and #5G247.

Stratus Video Interpreting Examines Telemedicine as a Solution to Location and Language Barriers in Healthcare
With telemedicine emerging as a viable option for more patients, Stratus Video Interpreting explores how telemedicine and on-demand interpretation services can improve healthcare for limited English proficient (LEP) and hearing-impaired people.

PR Newswire
CLEARWATER, Fla., Nov. 10, 2015
CLEARWATER, Fla., Nov. 10, 2015 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- A growing number of U.S. patients have gained access to telemedicine services this year since the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) introduced a new provider reimbursement code for non–face-to-face healthcare services (1) and the nation's largest health insurer began offering coverage for virtual physician visits (2). Stratus Video Interpreting—a leading provider of on-demand interpretation services—applauds these efforts to expand and improve healthcare access for more Americans, and contends these developments will prove highly beneficial to many patients with limited English proficiency (LEP) and hearing impairments.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151106/284783

Telemedicine, also called telehealth or virtual care, uses telecommunications and information technology to deliver clinical care outside of the traditional office or hospital setting, enabling healthcare providers to collect data and communicate with patients independent of time and place. Evidence has shown that telemedicine has the potential to improve outcomes and reduce costs. For example, patients with congestive heart failure who checked in remotely with nursing staff had fewer hospitalizations and lower mortality rates, while patients with mental illnesses who received video follow-up visits with a mental health professional experienced better quality and efficiency of care (1).

David Fetterolf, President of Stratus Video Interpreting, asserts that telemedicine can also significantly enhance healthcare delivery for LEP patients and individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing. "Because of its ability to overcome geographic barriers, telemedicine is an obvious choice for people who live in rural areas with limited access to healthcare providers. But it can also be a game-changer for individuals with limited English proficiency or hearing impairments, since it addresses the challenges some face in making appointments or getting to physicians' offices," he asserted.

Fetterolf notes that language barriers may lead some patients to delay or avoid seeking care until their condition significantly worsens, particularly if they have experienced difficulties communicating with medical staff or if they do not drive. Evidence shows that language barriers have been linked to limited access to health services, including lack of awareness of healthcare benefits, less insured status, less frequent clinic visits and less follow-up (3).

"By integrating telemedicine with medical interpretation services, healthcare providers can remove many of the obstacles LEP and hearing-impaired patients face when seeking care," explained Fetterolf. "For example, office staff can connect to a healthcare interpreter when patients call for an appointment, ensuring there is no miscommunication concerning symptoms, severity or scheduling. And physicians that offer virtual visits can easily link an interpreter to a three-way video call using Skype, FaceTime or similar technology."

Cigna, Aetna and Anthem BlueCross BlueShield already offer some form of telehealth services; and as of January 1, 2016, UnitedHealthcare will expand 24-hour virtual care coverage to 20 million plan participants (2). Healthcare providers can partner with Stratus to offer certified medical interpreter services in nearly 200 languages, including video remote interpreting (VRI) in more than a dozen commonly spoken languages and American Sign Language.

For more information on Stratus and its healthcare interpretation services, visit www.stratusvideo.com.

About Stratus Video Interpreting:

Stratus Video Interpreting provides on-demand interpreter services by using technology to connect clients with interpreters in over 175 spoken and signed languages in less than 30 seconds. Stratus' cloud-based video solution delivers an array of unique features to virtually any Internet-enabled PC, Mac, smartphone or tablet. Stratus clients use the technology to connect with their own staff interpreters, as well as with Stratus interpreters, who have years of healthcare and courtroom experience and hold multiple certifications. With Stratus, state-of-the-art video remote interpreting is made available with virtually no capital investment. Stratus averages 65,000 video calls a day, up from 40,000 in mid-2013. Stratus Video is the sister company of The Z® (CSDVRS, LLC, dba ZVRS), which was established in 2006 and developed by and for deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals, setting the industry standard as the nation's premier Video Relay Service Provider and the first VRS Provider to receive a 5-year certification from the FCC. In 2014, Stratus was recognized as one of the fastest-growing privately held companies, ranking #3,827 on Inc. magazine's Inc. 5000 list. For more information, visit www.stratusvideo.com.

1.    Kvedar, Joseph C. "Telemedicine Is Vital to Reforming Health Care Delivery"; Harvard Business Review; October 7, 2015. hbr.org/2015/10/telemedicine-is-vital-to-reforming-health-care-delivery

2.    Japsen, Bruce. "UnitedHealth Widens Telehealth Coverage To Millions Of Americans"; Forbes; May 5, 2015. forbes.com/sites/brucejapsen/2015/05/05/unitedhealth-widens-telehealth-coverage-to-millions-of-americans/

3.    Yeo, SeonAe. "Language Barriers and Access to Care"; Annual Review of Nursing Research; February 2004. researchgate.net/publication/8345471_Language_Barriers_and_Access_to_Care

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SOURCE Stratus Video Interpreting

KOLKATA: After a long wait, Bengali films are storming the nation's screen-space. Kolkata film-makers are finally getting offers to remake their original Bengali films into Bollywood productions to appeal to a wider audience.

Instances of original directors remaking their own films weren't rare between the mid-50s to the mid-70s. After a gap of decades, it was announced recently that Shiboprosad Mukhopadhyay and Nandita Roy's 'Belaseshe', Srijit Mukherjee's 'Rajkahini' and Q's not-yet-released 'Ludo' would be remade into Hindi and other languages.

For about 20 years — starting from the mid-50s — Bengali films being remade into Hindi films were quite common. Directors like Asit Sen, Tarun Majumdar and Tapan Sinha re-directed their Bengali films into Hindi and other regional languages. But this stopped suddenly in the mid-70s, something critics blamed on the lack of universal appeal of the films being made then. Three directors doing the same in 2015 certainly sets a trend of sorts.


A big problem in adapting Bengali films in a different language and against a changed backdrop is, obviously, whether it'll still work. That Q's 'Ludo' has been picked up by Phantom Production House (run by Anurag Kashyap, Vikramaditya Motwane, Vikas Bahl and Madhu Mantena, and whose main objective, according to their Facebook page, is to make content-based films and nurture budding talent) is a huge achievement, as the film hasn't even reached the desk of the censor board yet.

Considering 'Ludo' is a horror story set in a Kolkata mall, will it still be relevant when set elsewhere? The film-maker is confident that it would. "The (Phantom) producers knew about it for long. I understand Hindi and, more importantly, I believe in Ritwik Ghatak's idea of the language of cinema. I'll not only improvise the film but also improve it," he says.

Like Srijit, who will remake 'Rajkahini' into 'Lakeer', changing the backdrop of the Indo-Bangla border to Punjab-Pakistan during Partition, Q too will change the setting to suit national taste. "The story has an interesting premise. It can have several branches. The film will be a new venture, though the core idea will remain the same," adds Q.

Shiboprasad explains the lull and the current change in situation. "Bengali films had turned into a remake industry [meaning only remakes of Bollywood and south Indian movies were being made], and the perception (of Bengali movies) in Mumbai and abroad had slid," he says. "Big production houses were responsible for this. Only in recent times has there been a change, with the advent of new film-makers with fresh ideas."

The director — whose other films, notably the critically acclaimed 'Ramdhanu' and 'Ichhe', are also being remade — feels movie themes should be universal.

"When Amitabh Bachchan tweeted about 'Belaseshe', it was because the theme was universal. The shooting for 'Ramdhanu' in Malayalam is already complete. 'Ichhe' will be shot in Marathi and Hindi. It's only because of the universal appeal of the content," he explains.

On 'Rajkahini' being remade into 'Lakeer', Shrikant Mohta of Shree Venkatesh Films says: "Mahesh Bhatt loved the film and wanted Srijit to make the film in Hindi. After Uttam Kumar's death, the kind of films that were made couldn't cater to the masses across India. 'Rajkahini' has both mass appeal and national appeal and can cater to all kinds of audience."

Why go for a remake, when dubbing a movie in a different language is always an easier option? "We never thought of dubbing," Mohta says. "The backdrop (of 'Rajkahini') is the Indo-Bangladesh border; in Hindi, it's Punjab. Considering the period, Punjab and West Pakistan were more burning issues."

But is language a problem for Bengali directors? Yes and no. While Q and Srijit are well versed in Hindi, remakes in other regional languages are indeed a hurdle. That's why Srijit took his hands off the Marathi version of 'Hemlock Society'. But Shiboprasad's team has supervisory roles for the remakes of 'Ichhe' and 'Belaseshe'.

Srijit says: "I don't think making a movie in Hindi is a problem for any film-maker who is comfortable with the language. I'm fluent in Hindi, so I'm not concerned about anything lost in translation. This is why I didn't involve myself in the Marathi remake of 'Hemlock Society'. I can't speak or read Marathi at all. I'll continue making films spontaneously and if it so happens that there is a national context to it, we might consider a remake again. For example, while 'Chatushkone' can be remade in Hindi or even English, 'Jatishwar' is entirely Bengali in essence."

Tarun Majumdar, who remade his 'Balika Badhu' into a Hindi film himself, says: "I didn't feel it difficult, as I'm well versed in Hindi and had excellent colleagues. The producers, too, were supportive."

While Shree Venkatesh Films is backing the 'Rajkahini' remake, Q's company funds all his films and the Shiboprasad-Nandita duo holds rights to all films directed by them.

Mohta says that from now on, the production house will definitely keep a note on the universality of the plot, and it might soon be a trend that some content will be taken for a Hindi-speaking market. It's a big market after all. Amen to that.

The following are tips on prioritizing content for translation in order to facilitate product or service launch on time and on budget. In existence to help its clients grow, Teneo Linguistics Company, LLC, is a full service translation company headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas.

Fort Worth, Texas (PRWEB) November 12, 2015

By the time companies plan a new product launch abroad, they typically have already gathered lots of content in their home market. Just as translating into multiple languages right away can be overwhelming, attempting to translate everything at once is a sure path to a costly failure. Here are a few suggestions on how to prioritize content while keeping cost under control:

1.    Sales & Marketing

Any content that supports sales of the actual product is typically critical for success. Think website content, any marketing collateral, and campaigns needed to promote the product in question. The consideration should be how to capture interest that results from distributing translated content. After someone reads information on a website in French, they will feel like they can send an email with an inquiry in French.

2.    Legal Content

This is the fine print and details customers need to understand so that a sale can be completed in compliance with any legal regulations in the target market. Agreements, contracts, disclaimers, forms and any other legal notices will fall into this category. Is the product regulated, like medical devices or pharmaceutical products? A proficient translation vendor should be able to help navigate the target regulatory environment as well.

3.    Product Literature

Technical documentation, user manuals, instructions for use, packaging inserts and packaging itself all fall under product literature that needs to be translated for customers once business is secured. If the product is software, consider translating (localizing) user interface as well.

How to Minimize Risk:
    Avoid falling into the trap of free online translation. There is only one chance at a good impression and free online translation engines typically do not help in that regard.
    Check that product names do not have negative connotations in the target language.
    Stay in control of core messaging. Avoid using “local” resources like distributors and/or bilingual employees. Rely on professionals who have built their careers in translation
    Use one vendor for all languages to maximize consistency and savings.
Sometimes business owners wonder if they need to translate at all. The rest of the world seems to speak English, after all. The answer is, unmistakably, that translation should take place whenever possible. Even if someone speaks perfect English, they are psychologically much more likely to be attracted to a product/service if it is presented to them in their mother tongue. Plus, taking the extra step toward a customer and meeting them in the middle represents a valuable competitive advantage.

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/11/prweb13075115.htm

Concord, NH - Saturday, November 21st, 2015, 4PM at Gibson's Bookstore.
Translator Julia Older, and musical guest Will Kindler | Patch

Anthony Lacono is a vast repository of knowledge. In the day and age of just Googling queries, to say he’s old-school is the greatest of compliments.

He’s a research librarian at the El Gabilan branch in Salinas, and a real-life resource second-to-none.

Whether it be a fourth-grader’s report on Mexican legends or an adult’s in-depth project, with 27,000 individual titles just in this tiny branch, his ability as a human to read between the lines, to “classify, catalog, and retrieve” has more importance than ever.

“A librarian is the original search engine,” he says.

Lacono received his Masters in Library Science from Berkeley in 1980. Personal computers were just starting to emerge, card catalogs still in wide use.

When asked if the expansion of the branch to four times its current space was going to make a difference, he smiles.

“Libraries are the hub of the community,” he says. “This is our best chance to serve the area properly.”

Search engines have come a long way since the mid 1990s, from Altavista’s meta-based criteria to Google’s link based algorithm. Launched in 1998, Google’s algorithm has gone from strength to strength ever since. So where do we go from here?

We can’t see into the future, but we can predict it by understanding the challenges that search engines face today.  Thanks to the advances in cloud computing and mathematics, search engines are able to apply these to finding better ways of helping users foreshorten their search for an answer.

Radically personal

The data scientists working on search engines like Google are already working on algorithms that enable them to predict the kind of search engine results users wish to see. People will no longer search for the same thing. Before long, the search engines will show unique results based on what different users want, even though the keyword they’re searching for is the same.  

For example, user A and user B may both be searching for holidays in Greece. The only difference being that Google will infer from artificial intelligence that user A shops in Harrods and wears Burberry. As a result, the results will include the websites of luxury tour operators. For user B, who shops most frequently in Tesco, Google may infer that search results should be prioritised towards the more mass-market brands like First Choice Holidays.

This will be made possible thanks to the data collected by search engines - particularly Google. The fact that Google’s Chrome website browser enjoys a 65% market share (W3Schools) and many users of their services like Gmail are signed in enables Google to collect a lot of information about a user’s website preferences.  This information allows Google to put together a reliable dataset and make predictions about what results the user will want to see to satisfy their search.

On another level, a user searching for articles could be shown articles that their peers, friends or family have liked or shared on Twitter or other social media. Search engines will statistically infer that these articles are likely to be relevant to the user.

Getting sentimental

Social media signals already play a major part in explaining why some content outranks others, despite links playing an important role (i.e. the more links from authoritative websites like the BBC, the more credible your site’s content).  If that wasn’t enough, search engines already use sentiment analysis to further qualify inbound links to your website.

Sentiment analysis is a relatively new way to help computers understand the attitude of content towards a topic. For example,  “that was an amazing holiday” would likely score positive due to the words ‘holiday’ and ‘amazing’ being predicted as a positive sentiment.  

In the next five years, search engines will go further to evaluate the sentiment of all kinds of things including tweets, images, and mobile app content about sites and brands. This analysis will give search engines a better sense of what is being publicly discussed about sites on social media and mobile apps. For example, if there are many negative tweets about a luxury furniture retailer then, despite the volume of attention the site or brand is getting, these may not show up in the user’s search for a hand-made bed. The company is relevant to the user’s demographic, but a more qualitative assessment has changed the ranking.

In effect, using sentiments could not only help the future search engine improve the search experience in terms of relevancy, but also turn search engines into artificially intelligent advisors.

Contextual image classification

If search engines think a picture tells a thousand words, we are also likely to see sentiment analysis of images and videos.  Today, there are approximately just over 2,000 machine learning experts specialising in computer vision, which is already furthering the search engines capability to understand images.

These computer vision experts are helping search engines like Blippar and Yossarian Lives to classify images in the way the everyday person would. Visual search engines  can already recognise everyday objects such as an apple by scanning a live image on a mobile phone, or typing in a metaphor to generate image suggestions.

So the progress being made will likely see search engines being able to add much more context of the images in terms of their sentiment, the types of objects in the image and so forth.  This will give search engines much more information to go on in terms of serving users the best and most original content.

In five years...

Many of these advances are likely to achieved not just because of the advances in technology but also because of the imagination of users and marketers that find new ways of searching and communicating respectively. The next ten years will become even more exciting as more information becomes available for collection and analysis by wearable technology. This will no doubt present challenges for search engines and SEOs alike.