Language Project Research Articles

TranslatingMatigari:An Interview with Spanish Translator Rafael Segovia

Translating MatigariAn Interview with Spanish Translator Rafael Segovia Natasha Himmelman After many e-mails and international phone calls to El Colegio de México (Colmex), I managed to locate Spanish translator Rafael Segovia. Once contact was made with Segovia, a meeting for an interview at his home in Tepotzlán, Morelos, Mexico, was planned. On Monday, 24 March 2008, we sat in his garden to talk about his Spanish translation of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's Matigari, published by El Centro de Estudios de Asia y África (CEAA) at Colmex in 2005. Segovia graciously shared his knowledge as translator, but also as intellectual, writer, theater director, and cultural producer. A strong supporter of the Kenyan author's language project, Segovia explains the ways in which Ngũgĩ's focus on marginalized languages resonates in Mexico, but also acknowledges the sometimes seemingly insurmountable obstacles facing indigenous languages. After all, Segovia himself was given three months to produce a translation of Wangũĩ wa Goro's English translation,2 hardly enough time to collaborate with Gĩkũyũ-language speakers or readers. Segovia is forthcoming when discussing the limitations and challenges that translators face, but looks forward to the possibility of multilingual collaborations. We also discussed how Africa is translated, literally and figuratively, into Spanish, and how he thinks his Mexican readers relate to Matigari. NH: Are you familiar with modern African literature? If so, with which novels or writers are you familiar? RS: I'm more familiar with African poetry, in a way, because the first African poet whose work I was introduced to was Senghor from Senegal, whom I loved when I was a student in France. Then I read Aimé Césaire, who is not African, but he's very close to Senghor. Many years after that, I was introduced to Coetzee, and I loved his—a couple of novels I read. I also have read a few stories by Gordimer. I've [End Page 216] read some literature that is not really literature, which is more political—polemics and so on. Actually, Ngũgĩ was a discovery for me, because, well, I had heard of him. I think I have a wide literary culture, but I had never read him, especially I think because there were no books available in Mexico. NH: So you were familiar with several African authors before translating Matigari? RS: Not several, but a few. But maybe this brings about something, you know, a reflection on the fact that there is very little cultural communication between what we call the "Third World" countries. Everything goes through the North, right? We have very little access to African literature in Mexico, even in translation. NH: You were familiar with a few African authors and their works, and you were familiar with Ngũgĩ, but not necessarily his work? What did you know about him? RS: I knew about him. I knew about his exile, the role he had played in Kenya, and I knew this particular anecdote that the police and the army were looking for a certain "Matigari" who was considered an enemy of the government. That's what I knew about him before translating Matigari. NH: There are two rather large debates in what has come to be known as modern African literature. One has to do with the role of the African writer, and the other has to do with language, specifically choice of language. Before translating, were you aware of the language debate? RS: I was familiar with the language debate in itself, in a way, because I am myself an advocate for cultural diversity, as you know, and this quickly brought me into the problem of linguistic diversity and everything that's happening with the loss of languages—languages as endangered species. I had been familiar with that problem for many years in Mexico because it's a very acute problem here. At the same time, I think I have been, for a few years now, convinced of the idea that local languages have to be spoken, have to be published, have to be in the media, have to be, you know, on TV, in cinemas, etc. NH: Do you...

Review: Biber (2006) University Language: A Corpus-based Study of Spoken and Written Registers. Amsterdam: John Benjamins

This book, the twenty-third in the John Benjamins ‘Studies in Corpus Linguistics’ series, presents extensive analyses of patterns in university language use across ten registers. The linguistic foci include vocabulary use, lexico-grammatical variation, the expression of stance, the distribution of lexical bundles, and the co-occurrence of all of the features taken together in a multi-dimensional analysis. It provides descriptions of university language that incorporate broad frequency trends as well as detailed functional analysis. The descriptions presented would be useful for those seeking starting points for further descriptive or curriculum/materials development research. In Chapter 1, the author introduces the book by setting the research context, identifying the book’s purpose, summarising some previous research and outlining major assumptions. The findings reported in the book come from the TOEFL 2000 Spoken and Written Academic Language Project (T2K–SWAL) funded by the Educational Testing Service. The project entailed the development of a corpus representing many registers of university language, a description of that language, and the development of tools to relate the linguistic characteristics of the corpus and assessment materials to each other. While Chapter 2 is devoted to explaining the development of the corpus, the rest of the book is organised primarily by the unit of linguistic analysis (Chapters 3 to 7), and the author does not truly begin to synthesise the findings until Chapters 7 and 8. The primary purpose of the book is to describe the linguistic characteristics of, and functional relationships among, linguistic features of ten university registers. It does so by comparing the many structural features within and across registers rather than by focussing on how individual features are used within a specific register.

Describing and exchanging models of neurons and neuronal networks with NeuroML

The Neural Open Markup Language (NeuroML) project is an international, collaborative initiative to facilitate the exchange of complex neural models, allow for greater transparency and accessibility of models, enhance interoperability between simulators and other tools and support the development of new software and databases [13]. The increasing enthusiasm in the computational neuroscience community for standards that allow for greater simulator interoperability and model publication is driving current efforts, which focus on the key objects that need to be exchanged among existing applications and try to anticipate those needed by future applications. Examples of these objects include descriptions of neuronal morphology, ion channels, synaptic mechanisms, and network structure. The process of creating these common specifications encourages discussion among users of independently developed applications, which leads to succinct descriptions of the essential elements of models. NeuroML is an Open Source project based on XML, as it provides the transparency, portability and extensibility required in these efforts. The openness of the standards and the encouragement of feedback from the community are some of the guiding principles of the NeuroML initiative.

A Year‐Round Professional Development Model for World Language Educators

Abstract: The Bay Area Foreign Language Program (BAFLP), one of nine regional sites of the California Foreign Language Project, offers ongoing, year‐round professional development programs for world language educators. In addition, its leadership program prepares selected educators to assume leadership positions at their school sites, building capacity for sustainable change. Demographic data from the program reveal increased opportunities for educators to strengthen their standards‐based instructional practices. Findings also indicate that the leadership program is successful in terms of participant experience, allowing educators to gain leadership skills and lend their expertise back to improving the program. Aligned to the Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century, BAFLP's model can offer guidance to school districts in crafting effective and sustainable professional development programs.

DECOMPOSITION OF WEIGHTED MULTIOPERATOR TREE AUTOMATA

Weighted multioperator tree automata (for short: wmta) are finite-state bottom-up tree automata in which the transitions are weighted with an operation taken from some multioperator monoid. A wmta recognizes a tree series which is a mapping from the set of trees to some commutative monoid. We prove that every wmta recognizable tree series can be decomposed into a relabeling tree transformation, a recognizable tree language, and a tree series computed by a homomorphism wmta; vice versa, the composition of an arbitrary relabeling tree transformation, a recognizable tree language, and a tree series computed by a homomorphism wmta yields a wmta recognizable tree series. We use this characterization result for specific multioperator monoids and prove (1) a new decomposition of polynomial bottom-up tree series transducers over semirings and (2) a new characterization of tree series which are recognizable by weighted tree automata over semirings, in terms of projections of local tree languages.

Liberating Murphy's Law: learning from change

PurposeThis paper seeks to examine learning groups as complex systems and to address three issues about learning in organizations: learning from change; factors affecting learning; and learning leading to growth and renewal.Design/methodology/approachA case study was conducted at a Singapore Engineering firm to explore its two‐year change intervention experiences. Data were gathered at two stages: laddering, non‐directive interviewing with 45 employees; and focus group discussions with 20 leaders.FindingsLearning from a state of not‐knowing gives rise to a new problem‐solving dimension, enabling individuals to thrive and survive in complexity. Understanding constraints that seemingly truncate change is ironically a generative device that frees people from being trapped by Murphy's Law.Research limitations/implicationsChange provides the stimulus for learning in complex contexts and paradigms where reciprocal relationships are sought to stabilize feedback loops and revitalize decision making. Mediating the variety of learning dynamics is an integration of two metacommunicative activities: dialogue and reflection.Practical implicationsLeaders are the connecting tissues to facilitating a learning that is highly interpretive and socially constructed. Process leadership is characterized by leaders assuming appropriate stewardship and walking the talk. A shared vision is necessary for contextualizing change and stabilizing learning conditions.Originality/valueCombining Murphy's Law with the complexity of organizational dynamics gives rise to a new understanding of learning in unpredictable contexts. It is a learning that creates a projection of language which transcends time and space, a learning that presents itself as an intertwined activity celebrated by complex systems and processes.

REVISITANDO RECORDAÇÕES DE UM ROMANCE: UM OLHAR BAKHTINIANO PARA O GÊNERO DISCURSIVO CARTAS DE AMOR

Started in 2008 as part of a Masters in Language project, our research aims to conduct a study of the language within the discursive genre of love letter. Starting with the methodological order for language studies proposed by Bakhtin (2004), the purpose is to understand its defining characteristics (thematic content, compositional construction and style). In this article, however , our study is focused mainly on thematic content and style of the studied genre. For this, we analyze a love letter produced in 1953, highlighting the identity and cultural aspects revealed on it.

MINDING OUR WORDS: AUDIO RESPONSIBILITIES IN ENDANGERED LANGUAGES DOCUMENTATION AND ARCHIVING

Linguists are addressing the predicted the loss of many of the world's languages through an emerging discipline called Language Documentation, which focuses not on theory but on data, and how the data is acquired, represented, presented, and preserved. For most endangered languages, which are not written, much of this data is audio, and unlike many corpora it is likely to be local, particular, opportunistic, and uneven. New questions are raised, such as: what audio data counts as a record of a language that is likely to disappear? how can coverage and quality be measured? for what purposes and by whom will the data be used? For those of us documenting languages, there are four key audio-related issues: audio quality, its accompanying symbolic data, the usage of data for practical purposes such as language revitalisation, and the need for enhanced sensitivities and protocol in audio access and distribution. Language Documentation has benefited from the knowledge and experience of other disciplines, but perhaps it is now sufficiently experienced to offer some useful advice to others. This paper surveys these issues, and also describes the funding, teaching, archiving and publishing activities of the Endangered Languages Project at SOAS.

Promoting the Minority Language Through Integrated Plurilingual Language Planning: The Case of the Ikastolas

In this paper we will present the main principles behind language planning in the Ikastolas (Basque medium Schools), where a plurilingual school model has been developed as a way of promoting minority languages in a globalised world. We will start by contextualising the Ikastolas’ language policy, briefly tracing their history from their beginnings as schools which ensured the right to education in the minority mother tongue (forbidden at that time), to the current Integrated Plurilingual School model, which involves the teaching and use of four languages. This model started as an Integrated Language Curriculum for language teaching, and it is now facing the challenge of creating a global framework – the School Language Project – which considers the various domains of language use within the school context (i.e. classroom management, break times, administration, school-family relations, etc) as active factors in the development of the communicative competence of the students, and therefore subject to a comprehensive school language planning policy.

Robots with Bad Accents: Living with Synthetic Speech

Synthetic speech technologies have a profound impact on how we think about and interact with computers. This text discusses parts I and II of the “Make Language Project,” a trilogy on the cultural fallout of machine generated speech as a conduit for reconsidering prejudices in synthetic speech production and humanoid robot design.

Understanding the many steps for effective collaborative language projects

New technologies are increasingly becoming a component of education, as computers are integrated into both students' lives and as a teacher's tool of management and teaching. At the same time, constructivist learning theories have had extensive effects at the level of learning paradigms and in prescribed education goals. Yet there are worrying gaps between theory and practice, especially in the use of the Internet and language teaching. Among the many possible roles of the Internet, there is the obvious appeal of direct linkage to the target language by way of collaboration amongst international language learners. However, as with any pedagogical resource, a close and critical look at the potential of the Internet for implementing a constructivist-based learning environment is imperative. This article, based on the results of an international telecollaborative project between six countries, addresses the reality that there must be more emphasis on raising teachers' awareness and knowledge about online educational project management, rather than simply focusing on basic ICT training in the foreign language classroom. The article delineates practical considerations for setting up and then managing online language learning projects, with the focus being on the teachers' role in the overall process of socially embedded, shared learning.

The Swedish Sign Language Project: Problems and Promises

The Swedish Sign Language Project: Problems and Promises

Spanish Sign Languages Project

Spanish Sign Languages Project

Executing RasMol Scripts in PyMOL

There are many freely available molecular visualization programs used by scientists to view macromolecules. Each application has advantages. However, each of these applications also has its own scripting language. For scientists to utilize multiple molecular visualization applications, they must learn each of those scripting languages. To unite these applications, it is necessary to create tools to interconvert these scripts according to the conventions of each program. We have created a plugin that can read scripts from RasMol and execute the equivalent commands in PyMOL. Challenges have included different sets of commands and object‐oriented vs. simple text formats. It is the goal of the Structural Biology Extensible Visualization Scripting Language project to create an interface that will enable use of scripts from one molecular visualization application in a variety of other applications. This will enable users to run multiple programs while only needing to develop expertise in the scripting language for one of those programs. The project is funded in part by NIGMS grant #1R15GM078077.

Authenticities and lineages: revisiting concepts of continuity and change in language

Working assumptions about what constitutes authenticity in language are crucially informed by prevailing notions of continuity and change. This preoccupation is central to questions of identity for language speakers. It is also central to the discipline of linguistics. Our experience of working alongside community members on language projects has raised our awareness of the degree of disjunction between ideas of authenticity commonly assumed within linguistics and the ideas we encounter within speech communities. In this article, we investigate types of continuity embraced by different stakeholders in language and language development. We trace the continuity narratives in two different language situations, identifying types of lineage, participant positions, and their relevance to notions of authenticity. We then examine the criteria for authenticity and lineage within linguistics, noting the disjunctions internal to the field, depending on the analyst's theoretical perspective, as well the disjunctions between lineages of authenticity as narrated within the discipline and those narrated in the wider community. Our aim is to develop a working model of language that recognizes and accommodates multiple narratives of authenticity, thereby better accommodating the full range of language and language research situations. This may in turn contribute to more productive collaborative relationships between communities and consultant linguists.

Foundations for Syriac Lexicography I: Colloquia of the International Syriac Language Project

Foundations for Syriac Lexicography I: Colloquia of the International Syriac Language Project

Foundations for Syriac Lexicography I: Colloquia of the International Syriac Language Project

Foundations for Syriac Lexicography I: Colloquia of the International Syriac Language Project

Using NeuroML and neuroConstruct to build neuronal network models for multiple simulators

Increased use of biologically detailed cellular and network models by the wider neuroscience community is hampered by the variety of simulation platforms and programming languages used to create these models. While experimentalists and theoreticians share common concepts for describing these physiological phenomena a framework for specifying models is not in common use. The Neural Open Markup Language project, NeuroML [1,2]http://www.neuroml.org, is an international, collaborative initiative to develop standards to facilitate exchange and encourage greater accessibility of models of neuronal systems. The standards, which are specified in XML (eXtensible Markup Language), are arranged in Levels, with each subsequent Level increasing the scope of the standards. Level 1 concentrates on neuroanatomical information (MorphML [2,3]) and metadata. Level 2 allows for the specification of detailed conductance based cell models with realistic channel and synaptic mechanisms specified in ChannelML. Level 3 (NetworkML) describes networks of these cells arranged and connected in three dimensions. One application which uses these standards is neuroConstruct, which has a graphical interface for building and visualizing detailed 3D network models. neuroConstruct allows the automatic generation of script files for the GENESIS and NEURON simulators, and can be used for replaying and analyzing simulated cell and network behavior. Examples of cell and network models from multiple brain areas will be demonstrated on these two simulators, as will a preliminary implementation of automatic generation of scripts for execution in parallel computing environments. The combination of these technologies allows the development of more detailed large scale neuronal network models while managing the huge complexity associated with these systems. The latest version of the NeuroML specifications is available at http://www.morphml.org:8080/NeuroMLValidator and neuroConstruct is freely available by contacting: ku.ca.lcu@noseelg.p.

Bayesian statistic methods and theri application in probabilistic simulation models

Bayesian statistic methods are facing a rapidly growing level of interest and acceptance in the field of health economics. The reasons of this success are probably to be found on the theoretical fundaments of the discipline that make these techniques more appealing to decision analysis. To this point should be added the modern IT progress that has developed different flexible and powerful statistical software framework. Among them probably one of the most noticeably is the BUGS language project and its standalone application for MS Windows WinBUGS. Scope of this paper is to introduce the subject and to show some interesting applications of WinBUGS in developing complex economical models based on Markov chains. The advantages of this approach reside on the elegance of the code produced and in its capability to easily develop probabilistic simulations. Moreover an example of the integration of bayesian inference models in a Markov model is shown. This last feature let the analyst conduce statistical analyses on the available sources of evidence and exploit them directly as inputs in the economic model.

Sociolinguistic Variation in the Use of Fingerspelling in Australian Sign Language: A Pilot Study

This article presents the results from a preliminary investigation into the use of fingerspelling in Australian Sign Language (Auslan), drawing on data collected as part of the Sociolinguistic Variation in Australian Sign Language project (Schembri and Johnston 2004; Schembri, Johnston, and Goswell in press). This major project is a replication in the Australian deaf community of quantitative investigations into variation in American Sign Language (ASL) conducted by Lucas, Bayley, and Valli (2001). In this specific study, we consider variation in the use of the two-handed manual alphabet in Auslan, based on an analysis of 2,667 utterances collected from 205 deaf signers of Auslan in five sites across Australia (i.e., Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide). The results indicate that the variation in the frequency of fingerspelling use most strongly correlates with signers' age, but may also vary according to region, as has also been reported for British Sign Language (BSL) (Sutton-Spence, Woll, and Allsop 1990).