If you’re alive and have access to the internet (which I think we can safely assume since you are reading these words), then you have no doubt been exposed to some terrible medical messaging over the past year and a half. This is tragic during a global health crisis, as lives often depend on the careful, concise delivery of accurate medical information…
Read MoreThe phrase “champagne problems,” recently popularized by the Taylor Swift song of the same name, describes luxury problems that aren’t so bad in the context of everything else going on in the world. So here’s a little “champagne problem”… our efforts and the efforts of our partner, Juarez & Associates in Guatemala to promote the use of the Bloom book-creation software and Bloom Reader have worked spectacularly well, to the point that the team behind the program has had to scramble to manage all the traffic. We are happy to be victims of such success…
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…
For as long as people have had the power of language, they’ve used that power to disagree about ideas. The information age has accelerated these disagreements into a frenetic, full-scale war. Nowhere is this more painfully obvious than with the question of immunisations…
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 MoreWhile “pandemic” may be the obvious choice for 2020’s “Word of the Year,” another great option would be “pivot.” So many people have had to pivot in so many ways.
One of the ways in which WE have pivoted this past year has been with our Begin With Books project in Mali…
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