If you’ve played WORDLE, you know how quickly this online game becomes addictive. Although only one puzzle is released each day (for now), if you haven’t yet been sucked into this new online obsession, you might not want to start…
Read MoreThere is a myth that a Mother Tongue (MT) speaker of a language is automatically a competent translator into their language. Of course, there are good storytellers in every language. There are people with the gift of using words well whether orally or in written form. These are the people we want as authors in their own languages…
Read MoreI've heard literacy specialists denounce the translation of stories and other texts from one language to another and state rather proudly that they only promote original, creative writing. While it is essential to promote first language authors and create authentic cultural literature, many good reasons exist to translate other materials, such as multiplying the quantity of literature available in minority languages.
Of course, there are also valid concerns about translating text from one language and culture to another. A translated text can be more challenging to read than prose written naturally. Without care, translated texts can sound awkward and lack the natural discourse style to make them not only easier to read, but interesting, too…
Perhaps you’re excited for Sunday, February 21 this year because you’ve heard that it’s National Sticky Bun Day in the United States, and hey—we don’t blame you! Sticky buns are great! But there is another, much more significant day happening as well. A day on which we celebrate something so important that without it, sticky buns probably wouldn’t even exist…
Read MoreThere’s a scene in the movie The 5th Element where the villain, played by Gary Oldman, bloviates about how all the evil, destructive things he does are actually good, because they prompt the creation of industry and provide work for countless people. While we disagree strongly with the idea that the good that can come after evil things have happened somehow transmogrifies that evil into good, the fact remains that truly awful things—like a global pandemic, for example—can bring about some positive change…
Read MoreLanguage is not math, science, grammar, or even dancing… although it would be difficult to develop and grow in any of those fields without it, because language encompasses them all. It converses with them, with art—with every aspect of human experience—and this conversation affects what language becomes and (if it’s alive and in use) is perpetually becoming.
This means that when you translate a text from one language to another, you’re not just translating a static form of notation into another static form of notation… you’re translating a culture…
Read MoreIf you meet a Belarusian on the street and ask them their primary language, the majority will most likely tell you it’s Russian. As a proud international student from Belarus, I always take a deep breath and prepare my conversation partners for a mini-history lesson about a very interesting dynamic of bilingual life in Belarus.
Belarus, as a land-locked country in Eastern Europe, has two national languages: Russian and Belarusian. Belarusian or “biełaruskaja mova” is an East Slavic language, which has many similarities to Ukrainian and Russian. Most Belarusians can read, speak, and write in Belarusian, but they do not choose it as the language of everyday life. But why? …
Read MoreGuest Post by Dr. Mary Morgan
An orthography is defined by Google as “the conventional spelling system of a language.”
But what do you do if you want materials in a language that does not yet have a conventional spelling system? Well, you have to create one. Although I’ve had several decades of language experience in Mexico and Niger, a few years ago I found myself in just this situation when I was asked to facilitate an orthography workshop in a small Asian country.
Due to cultural sensitivities about my work in this region and the fact that the exact location is not germane to the story, I have chosen to maintain geographical anonymity. But I will use this workshop to highlight ten essential elements in a workshop dedicated to developing an effective and acceptable way to write a language that has not been used in writing for very long…
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