Metaglossia: The Translation World

The European government proposes levying a tax on Internet-based tech companies that make mass amounts of revenue with online advertising. Read this article by Dara Kerr on CNET News.

As Google gets bogged down with the French government over a so-called “internet tax,” the newspaper Le Monde reports that the search giant tried and failed to reach a large-scale copyright deal before Christmas.

U.S. Department of Justice representatives will visit California this month as part of an ongoing investigation into whether the state's courts are violating federal laws for failing to provide interpreters in many civil and family law cases.The...

FORT DEFIANCE, ARIZONA When Navajo Mark Charles reads the apology to American Indians next month he hopes the apology can be read in as many Native languages as possible...

Can machine translation results be copyrighted? The answer is more than dubious, because there is one key factor missing for the resulting text to be protected by copyright laws: creativity.

AFGHAN interpreters used by Australian forces fear they will be left behind to face certain death with the imminent drawing down of troop numbers.

Defence Minister Jonathan Coleman has defended the resettlement package offered to interpreters working with New Zealand troops in Afghanistan.

Labour's foreign affairs spokesman Phil Goff said the offer was lean in comparison to packages offered by other countries and could permanently scar New Zealand's reputation.

The 23 interpreters currently working with the Provincial Reconstruction Team in Bamiyan were expected to be offered resettlement in New Zealand or a three year salary payout if they remain in Afghanistan.

The offer does not include to former interpreters.

Last week 12 former interpreters wrote a formal plea to the Defence Force asking the offer be extended to them.

Spokesman for the group, Bashir Ahmad, said the former interpreters had begun to regret risking their lives as translators for New Zealand.

Coleman said the Government would consider all factors and give everyone a fair hearing.

Jerusalem’s District Court will rule in the coming days whether the Jerusalem Municipality is obliged to translate into Arabic the planning documents concerning construction of a national park on land confiscated from the East Jerusalem villages of...

El Periódico ACTUALIDAD será una tribuna para los temas de ciudad.

Producteur et réalisateur d'émissions radiophoniques à Radio Pays, Hamid Lamara produira un effort considérable y compris financier pour pouvoir mettre en place une émission kabyle quotidienne.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych (center), extends his hand to European Union President Herman Van Rompuy (left) as EU Commission Chief Jose Manuel Barroso looks on prior to their talks in Kyiv on Dec. 19, 2011 during the EU-Ukraine summit.

The chances of Ukraine signing an association agreement with the European Union are not as close as Ukrainian authorities are saying.

Aside from temporary technical obstacles, Brussels, the 27-nation bloc’s administrative capital, is putting out the message that Ukraine has to meet the democratic prerequisites if the nation wants to align itself with the EU.

Ukraine’s Ambassador to the EU Kostyantyn Yeliseyev said last month that the signing of the association agreement is not yet scheduled as Brussels is busy translating the 1,200-page document into 21 official EU languages.

While it is true that both Ukraine and the EU are currently in the final stages of translating the deal into national languages, that’s not the holdup. The EU is expected to complete the translation by the end of the year. The political situation under President Viktor Yanukovych, including the imprisonment of ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, is the sticking point.

The association agreement, part of which including a free trade zone, could move Ukraine closer to the EU, which is Kyiv's top foreign policy priority. The agreement was initialed earlier this year. In order to take full force, the deal has to be signed by the EU and Ukrainian leadership and then ratified in all EU countries and in Ukrainian parliament.

Yesileyev said the agreement's translation will be done in a few months and sought to assure that the signing of the agreement is not under threat. “Signing of the agreement will take place right after technical finishing, since it is in the interests of Ukraine and the EU,” Yeliseyev said in a televised interview on Channel 5.

THE former boss of a controversial, Delph-based court translation company has blamed interpreters for failures in the...

Allegation comes as MPs are told £300m contract awarded to Applied Language Solutions is 'unsalvageable'...

Suspects are being needlessly remanded in custody and denied a fair trial because of a severe shortage of qualified court interpreters, a Commons select committee has been told. An investigation into the privatised monopoly awarded to Applied Language Solutions (ALS) covering all courts in England and Wales heard the main professional bodies describe the agreement as "unsalvageable".

The contract, awarded by the Ministry of Justice, came into force at the beginning of February but has been boycotted by most experienced court interpreters because of low rates of pay and poor travel expenses.

Both the public accounts committee (PAC) and the justice select committee are taking evidence this month into the way in which the contract was awarded and how it is being operated following widespread complaints about cancelled court cases and the quality of service. The contract, worth as much as £300m over five years, according to some estimates, was originally granted to ALS. The services conglomerate Capita subsequently bought out the small Huddersfield firm and this summer brought in a new management team to run the business.

Giving evidence to the justice select committee on Tuesday, Richard Atkinson, the chairman of the Law Society's criminal law committee, said: "People are being remanded into custody for no other reason than the lack of interpreters. I would say they are being denied a fair trial process.

"[One] man was remanded on three separate occasions because of lack of interpreters. He spent three nights in custody." Magistrates eventually gave the suspect, with no previous record, bail and sent him to a court 50 miles away where they hoped an interpreter would be available.

"There was a crown court case at the end of September in Leicester," Atkinson added. It had been listed seven months earlier. "On the first day of the trial neither of the Albanian interpreters were available so it had to be put off for a further day.. … Crown court trials cost, at least, thousands of pounds a day."

John Fassenfelt, chairman of the Magistrates' Association, said: "I had an example recently when there was a Russian interpreter. The defendant said something. The interpreter didn't translate it. This person's job was to interpret, not to decide 'that's not important'. It was a substantial [comment] and it did affect the sentence."

Fassenfelt said a survey of magistrates had found that 90% felt the new contract with ALS "did not work well".

Seven years ago, the Authors Guild and several major publishers (including McGraw Hill, Penguin, and John Wiley) filed suit against Google for its unauthorized scanning of in-copyright books. The AG and publishers claimed that the scanning was a violation of copyright, since permission from the rightsholders to create a new book format hadn't been sought. Google argued that the scanning wasn't a new format at all, but fair use of an existing format.

A controversial settlement to the suit was crafted by the AG and Google in 2009--and rejected by the court in early 2011. Since then, the parties have been dancing around each other, with motions and counter-motions as the litigation drags on.

While the AG has stood firm in its commitment to the suit, it's long been rumored that the publishers were considering a separate settlement. Now rumor has become fact. On behalf of the litigating publishers, the Association of American Publishers announced yesterday that a settlement had been reached.

In its statement, the AAP says that
The settlement acknowledges the rights and interests of copyright-holders. US publishers can choose to make available or choose to remove their books and journals digitized by Google for its Library Project. Those deciding not to remove their works will have the option to receive a digital copy for their use.

Apart from the settlement, US publishers can continue to make individual agreements with Google for use of their other digitally-scanned works.
Other terms of the settlement are confidential. Since this is a private settlement between the parties, the terms don't have to be disclosed or approved by the court.

This, of course, leaves a raft of questions unanswered. The publishers can remove the Google-digitized books if they don't want them included--but what options do authors have? What about orphan works? Will Google be able to sell the digitized books--and if so, what share will publishers receive, and will authors benefit? The contracts for many of the books are pre-digital, and don't incorporate electronic rights--so should publishers have any control over the digitized books at all, much less receive a digital copy "for their own use"?

In a blog post at PW, Peter Brantley notes that these digital copies may be of limited utility due to the nature of Google's scanning. Even so, the settlement gives the settling publishers--and non-settling publishers, if they follow this same model in negotiating with Google--control of something they arguably shouldn't be able to possess, and appears to leave authors out of the equation. James Grimmelmann, a copyright expert and one of the most objective commenters on the Google litigation, worries that "Google is going to increasingly use the consent of the publishers as an argument that the authors don't even speak for copyright owners."

As many commenters have noted, this is a fizzle of an ending for such a lengthy litigation. It leaves Google's status unchanged, and doesn't seem to give the publishers anything they didn't already have (since Google always allowed rightsholders to opt out). The publishers have basically walked away from the legal issues involved--which may reflect litigation fatigue, but also is an acknowledgment of how much the digital marketplace has changed over the past seven years. When the suit was filed, the value of digital rights was still a subject of debate. That's no longer the case. As Andrew Albanese points out in PW's coverage of the settlement,

(Boursier.com) -- La société Systran, éditrice de logiciels de traduction automatique, a annoncé au sujet de son litige avec la Commission Européenne que le greffier de la Cour a informé les parties que l'audience pour la présentation des conclusions de l'avocat général, précédemment fixée au 27 septembre 2012, a été déplacée au 15 novembre 2012.

Le 4 mars 2011, la Commission européenne avait introduit un pourvoi auprès de la Cour de justice de l'Union européenne à l'encontre de l'arrêt favorable à Systran rendu le 16 décembre 2010 par le Tribunal de l'Union européenne.

UN DÉPUTÉ VEUT QUE LA TV DIFFUSE DES FILMS EN VERSION ORIGINALE SOUS-TITRÉE
ÉCRIT PAR TRISTAN QUINAULT MAUPOIL LE 18 OCTOBRE 2012.

PROPOSITION DE LOI - Le député UMP Denis Jacquat a déposé une proposition de loi pour que la télévision diffuse des films étrangers en version originale sous-titrée dans le but de favoriser l’apprentissage des langues. Il espère bénéficier du soutien de la ministre de la Culture, Aurélie Filippetti.

Denis Jacquat, député UMP de la Moselle a déposé la semaine dernière une proposition de loi dans le but d’améliorer la compréhension orale des langues étrangères. Les Français sont souvent pointés du doigt quant à leur mauvais niveau en langues, plus particulièrement en anglais. “La visualisation de films étrangers en version originale sous-titrée peut favoriser le développement de la compétence de la compréhension orale”, note l’élu dans sa proposition de loi.

“Ces dispositions répondent d’ailleurs à une demande de plus en plus forte des étudiants qui souhaitent s’imprégner d’une langue étrangère”, poursuit-il.

Interrogé par Fréquence ESJ, le député note qu’il est élu dans une circonscription frontalière, proche du Luxembourg, un pays souvent montré en exemple: “Les Luxembourgeois maîtrisent souvent trois à quatre langues”, assure Denis Jacquat. Bon nombre de ses administrés travaillent dans ce pays. Fort de ce constat, il reconnaît que la maîtrise d’une langue étrangère peut être un point fort pour trouver un emploi. “La mention « anglais exigé » est d’ailleurs de plus en plus souvent adjointe aux annonces d’offres d’emploi”, écrit le député.

Explican la censura franquista en la traducción literaria

09.10.2012 CENTROS DOCENTES - Los días 17 y 18 de octubre, la Facultad de Traducción e Interpretación acogerá las V Jornades sobre Traducción y Literatura, que tratarán sobre los efectos de la censura durante la dictadura.
Este encuentro, que se desarrollará en el aula 2 de la facultad, está organizado conjuntamente por la Cátedra Jordi Arbonès y el Grupo de Estudio de la Traducción Catalana Contemporánea (GETCC).

A lo largo de diferentes sesiones, se hablará de temas como la traducción y les políticas editoriales de los años 60 a la actualidad, las traducciones en la postguerra inmediata, la traducción de teatro o la censura de "la amoralidad femenina". Además, habrá sendas ponencias sobre la censura en la traducción al gallego y al vasco y se tratará específicamente sobre la censura en la traducción de poesía y narrativa alemanas.

El día 17, a las 10:30 h., inaugurará las jornadas Francesc Parcerisas, profesor del Departamento de Traducción e Interpretación, y a continuación ofrecerá la primera conferencia el traductor Francec Vallverdú, que glosará su experiencia en Edicions 62. La última sesión, el día 18 a las 13:15 h., versará también sobre las traducciones de Edicions 62 e irà a cargo de la escritora Mireia Sopena.

ABU DHABI // A confession by one of two men accused of drugs trafficking is invalid because the public prosecution's translator did not speak their language, the Criminal Court heard yesterday.

Related
The law can't be lost in translation
■ Court translators say job's importance beyond words
Topic Crime
RS and AM, both from Asia, were accused of helping to transport marijuana from Dubai to Abu Dhabi. Prosecutors said they were to be paid Dh2,000 per kilogram for the drugs, which were to be sent on to Saudi Arabia.

The two men were said to have confessed their involvement during interrogations by the public prosecution at a police station.

However, the lawyer for one of the men said his statements could not be used in evidence as the translator spoke to him only in Urdu, which the man did not understand. The lawyer said the man spoke only Pashto.

The judge then asked the court translator, Mahmoud Dawud, if he knew the translator at the police station, but he said no.

The judge then asked him if Urdu was significantly different to Pashto, Mr Dawud said it was. However, he added that many Pakistanis who spoke Pashto could also speak Urdu.

As a test, the judge asked the translator to speak to the two men in Urdu to see if they understood questions and could answer. One of the men said that he could speak Urdu fluently, but the judge noted that the other man was less fluent.

The judge told the lawyer his argument was a "good defence" and adjourned the case to October 22.

(AFP) – 2 days ago
MONTREAL — The trial of a Canadian accused of opening fire at a Quebec separatist election victory rally last month, killing one person and wounding another, was delayed Thursday so court documents could be translated into English.
Richard Henry Bain, 61, appeared at a Montreal court to face charges of first degree murder and attempted murder, but the proceedings were quickly adjourned to December 7.
The judge agreed to a defense request to have all of the relevant court documents translated into English, from French.
Bain's lawyer, Elfriede Duclervil, also pressed for the prosecution to hand over outstanding evidence for review, including a full transcript of a 38-minute interview Bain gave from prison to English-language radio station CJAD following his arrest.
The radio station played only parts of the interview in which Bain said he was delivering a message from God and called for the island of Montreal to split from the rest of the province because the ruling Parti Quebecois looked to split Quebec from the rest of Canada.
Bain, the English-speaking owner of a hunting and fishing business, is alleged to have opened fire on September 4 outside a Montreal concert venue where Quebec's premier-elect Pauline Marois was celebrating her separatist Parti Quebecois' victory in provincial elections.
A lighting technician was killed and another hall worker wounded before the shooter, dressed in a balaclava and bathrobe and shouting "The English are rising," was subdued by a police officer.
Duclervil also said she would ask for an immediate investigation of an incident that resulted in Bain showing up at a courthouse with a small cut on his forehead, claiming "a guard pushed me."

There are grave fears that without the help of the New Zealand Government, 26 Afghan interpreters will be brutally killed.

The interpreters may be given permission to move here, when our troops leave Bamyan Province early next year.

They've been helping our troops for the last 10 years, but once our troops leave, their lives will be in danger.

Afghan Association of New Zealand spokesman Mohammed Ghulami says if the New Zealand Government can help the interpreters, it should.

He says the Taliban will find and kill the interpreters for helping New Zealand troops.

Mohammed Ghulami says anti-western sentiment is growing on a daily basis, and the Afghan Government is very corrupt.

Photo: Getty Images

OTTAWA - A special program to offer a new life in Canada to people who acted as interpreters for Canadian soldiers and diplomats in Afghanistan — sometimes at the risk of their lives — has brought in nearly double the numbers expected.

Officials had planned for only 450 Afghans to eventually make the move when they began a special immigration program for interpreters and their families in 2009.

With Canada's combat mission ended and a year after the program stopped accepting applications, around 800 former interpreters and their families are now living across the country.

The original estimate was based on consultations with the military and Foreign Affairs Department about the number of interpreters or cultural advisers used by soldiers and diplomats in Kandahar, says Citizenship and Immigration.

It's unclear how many there actually were over the five years of fighting; the military has said it had more than 6,000 requests for their services.

'Terps, as they were known, were the eyes, ears and mouths for soldiers on the battlefield and diplomats in the meeting rooms of Afghanistan.

In addition to translating, they helped teach Canadians the culture and customs of the country and many were often called upon to help shore up the often-strained relationships between soldiers and locals.

But the work was risky. Between 2006 and 2011, at least six interpreters were killed alongside Canadian soldiers and many others wounded.

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Number+Afghans+resettled+Canada+doubles+former+interpreters/7356954/story.html#ixzz29BU1IiDI

Key says he understands the case being made by Afghan interpreters seeking refuge in NZ.

Prime Minister John Key says he is "sympathetic" to the plight of Afghan interpreters seeking refuge in New Zealand after working for Kiwi troops.

Labour is calling for the Government to allow the interpreters working to be offered new homes in New Zealand.

Around 26 Afghan locals reportedly fear for their lives after helping the Defence Force during the conflict against the Taliban.

Key told reporters he believed the interpreters had "a legitimate position to put to the New Zealand Government".

"I can understand that they've worked for New Zealand with New Zealand's best interests at heart and it's at least feasible that there is some risk to them if they remain in Afghanistan," he said.

"Now we need to tease and test all of that out, but I can at least understand the case they're making."

But Key said while he was sympathetic to the interpreters' argument, the Government needed to establish "whether the risks are real and genuine to them".

He said Defence Minister Jonathan Coleman was putting together a Cabinet paper with recommendations about how to proceed.

The granting of a legal monopoly on the provision of interpreting services across UK’s justice sector bodies is looking more and more like a needless mistake.
Katarzyna KASZYCA
Published: 5 days ago Last updated: 5 days ago
agencies country.uk court-interpreting legal-interpreting working-conditions

Photo credits: © Alx - Fotolia.com
Following a flurry of media reports and parliamentary questions about the contract between the UK’s Ministry of Justice and Applied Language Solutions (ALS), court interpreting has finally moved up a notch on the political agenda, becoming the focus of investigations by the National Audit Office (NAO) and two prominent parliamentary committees.
The NAO investigation
The NAO, which conducted its enquiry in June and July, has already published its conclusions. They vindicate many of the criticisms raised by interpreters and others: the company – now owned by Capita – was too small to handle such a complex contract; rules on due diligence were not followed; the government underestimated the strength of feeling among professional interpreters who refused to engage with the company and did not take their concerns on board.

More than two dozen Afghan interpreters working for New Zealand troops in Bamiyan province are pleading with the Government not to abandon them to "certain death" when the troops withdraw next year.

One interpreter was so concerned about his fate he said he would ask Kiwi soldiers to shoot him and his family rather than be left to the Taleban.

There are 26 Afghan interpreters working for the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Bamiyan.

They are "hoping and praying" they will be granted asylum in New Zealand, believing they will be captured, tortured and slaughtered by insurgent forces, along with their families.

High-level government discussions to protect the interpreters are under way and the Sunday Star-Times understands a decision will be announced soon.

The offices of Prime Minister John Key and Defence Minister Jonathan Coleman released statements to the Star-Times saying the "PRT interpreters' concerns about their safety following the withdrawal of the PRT in April 2013" were acknowledged.

The issue was under "active consideration" and any decision would rest with Cabinet.