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- posted by: Didhiti Ghosh
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Hits: 2918
Modlingua comes up with yet another surprise - this time, with Dr Jancy James, the first Vice-Chancellor of the Central University of Kerala and the first woman Vice-Chancellor of Mahatma Gandhi University in a historic event where she explains the facet of translation as a bonding agent throughout cultures and traditions, education and religion, motivation and progression, and people and sentience.
Dr James provides a beautiful adjunct to Mr Kumar's concept of historically describing how translation can be ordained to be an integrative addendum towards nation building in his book "Role of Translation in Nation Building" (2012). He tries to disseminate this perspective as an instrumental and important global bridge in a totalistic configuration, as in an Actor-Network modality (Latour, Law and Callon, 1986).
Dr James, apart from being the first Vice-Chancellor of Kerala University, is an active linguist, an academician and a translator. Mr Kumar praises the excellence of her words, her wisdom and dedication towards explaining the immense power network that any language heralds, with the people abilifying it as a tool to the progressive interchange of senses at an intralinguistic level. Mr Kumar wishes to complement this fact with the calibrating of the Modlingua Community Learning Institution, a revolution in the existent linguistic interchange business.
Dr James begins by paying her respect to Prof Atul Kothari, Dr Braj Kishore, Dr Óscar Pujol Riembau (Director, Instituto Cervantes) and Mr Ravi Kumar, along with all the respected participants of the conference. She confesses humorously that she is never confused, even following the principle of Prof Kothari, that if she speaks in her native Malayalam most people will be unable to comprehend her, with a helpless Mr Kumar adding to the common sense intuition.
Dr James continues by affirming that translation has been hailed high in all varieties of communication, either directly through an agency or indirectly through a proxy. She brings up the idea of Dr Pujol in an interliterary talk where a transformation has been observed, motivated and proactivated in the translation-legion of the recent years. She describes the emerging role of the translator as it evolved from being a distance-creating traitor-mediator to an originator and transcreator towards strengthening a sociocognitive interconnective medium, acting as a bridge between the seedling and the branches of the tree of linguistics.
Hailing from the literary discipline, she proudly expresses her feelings as a translator, more so as a mother to intralinguism and the creation of an emotive-translative bond among all others, like the artist's expression of the earth beholding the mountains that are a part of it.
According to her, this symphony between translation and motherhood can be seen when the mother translates the adult's language to the baby through care and nurturing so that the latter grows up successfully in its ambiental social web. This is a very important aspect thoroughly explained in the art of socio-developmental psychology. Translation, here, is equivalent to the function of the circulating blood on the brain and body by proxy of ionic inter-transmission.
She states the fact of how the present environment is a tremendous difference to what existed even a decade past in translation, where it was merely a less functional additive to communication. Now, it is a vibrant necessity per se and is exigent to contribute to the peace process, as mentioned by His Excellency.
It is an irony, according to her, that our comprehension of a subjective global relationship negates the primal existence of a historic monarchy. She takes up the aspect of translation as a communicative tool to help us accept the role of the monarchy in shaping the democracy existent today, much toward which has been the magnificent role of translation and its fellow communication facilities. Translation is a positive, unifying agent which bonds people, nations, sources of knowledge and information while interpreting is the semantics of primary, secondary and tertiary lingual emotions.
As the founder-director of a centre for Comparative Literature, she highlights how translation subsumes linguistic and literary concepts and dissociates wide to include a category of genre studies. She says that translation should be studied as a profession to help identify its geometrics and angular dimensions which might as well be subjectively flexible due to sense-to-sense attributional variables in the achievement of target-source equivalency. This highlights the multitudinous issues that are a part of a translator's profession.
The question of untranslatables and the necessity of machine translation is of immense importance, according to Dr James, who proudly communicates the introduction of a new department of Linguistics and Language Technology at her university. The same has accelerated her knowledge on advanced linguistics to be used in framing the curriculum, by including teachers from both linguistic and nonlinguistic backgrounds, with special mention to those from disciplines like Computer Science. Dr James feels good to have as the faculty member a gentleman with a Doctorate in Language Technology from Ohio University, who also has a Masters in Linguistics from JNU, apart from having a B.Tech. from a university in Kerala. This person, according to Dr James, is an inevitable choice for the new department.
The idea of using translation as a tool is a vibrant, creative, and strong one in creating intersocietal and suprasegmental links which makes global information more accessible and reachable to the common people. Translation is also the adrenaline to many thought-provoking changes in lifestyle development. During several cultural celebrations in relation to Rabindranath Tagore in the past one year, Dr James looked up the translations of the Gitanjali in Malayalam, her mother-tongue, much in an impromptu spree. In all these, she discovered a sense of sans hailing from the Bible, prominently soaked in. When the Europeans arrived in India to fulfill their missionary zeal, their very aim of translating the Bible to vernacular was based on a much subtler approach to linguistic activity, predominated by an orthodox evangelistic faith. Many of these intruders were adept in Spanish, Latin, Portuguese and English languages. During their tenure in southern India, they made a good investigation of the possible uses of Malayalam, which acted as a major game changer in creating the Malayam sans which helped in the furtherance of Malayalam literature and prose. The latter has been described as "direct", "lyrical", "simple" and "heart-touching", abilified both in a sense of "being" and as a tool to help change percepts of the people in the delicate act of providing the tender touch to Malayalam prose.
In the Gitanjali, the sense of communion with God has been an inspiration as well as an impetus to this Malayalam transgeny.
All these various possibilities excite and reinvent an enlightened Dr James who steps out of the literary domain every time that she imagines and revisualizes its projective outlets.
The inevitability and ease of Machine Translation have deluded her in the situation where cultural untranslatables come in, where in certain instances she has spent days and nights at a stretch to find the more synonymous "sense-to-sense" twin of the source word in its target.
Machine Translation, she specifies, has several supportive and complementary elements, which is per se "a different world of expression". It includes pictures and graphs to enrich its process, which is a complement to interactive translation dictation. This will be very useful to individuals interested in translation, literature, technology and peace studies, as mentioned by His Excellency. The important point is of specifically synergizing MT with humans in a harmonic configuration of translation and localization. This will assist not only the translation of information but also the same in various other colours and expectations.
She profusely thanks Mr Kumar for the opportunity and idealizes introducing Spanish as a curriculum in her university with possibilities of a near future collaboration which would be a definite addendum to the existent department of Foreign Languages. She wishes a blooming success to the conference initiated by Mr Kumar and Dr Pujol and hopes that translation uncovers a long way in its process of diffusing peace and globalization of the nation - of people and emotions, and of traditions and senses.
- posted by: Neha Galhotra
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Hits: 2162
Presentation by Ravi Kumar
Creative Summary by Neha Galhotra
In this video, Mr. Ravi Kumar explains how to add subtitles to YouTube videos by making use of transcription. YouTube is home to billions of videos which is no less than a school spreading knowledge and awareness. It is a huge platform worth exploring as with each video one has something to gain and learn. Moreover, to make these videos more accessible and comprehensive, YouTube provides its users with a subtitling option. This way the audio content of the video can be converted into visual text in the same language or other languages, making it easier to reach out to a greater audience.
Further, Mr. Ravi Kumar explains in the video the various steps to add subtitles by showing us a sample:
- Firstly, one needs to have an access to a secure link sent by the admin or owner of the respective channel.
- Secondly, after having an access to the link, one can select the language in which he wants to add subtitles.
- Thirdly, after having selected the language, the contributor must click on the option ‘Create new subtitles or CC.’
- Then, the contributor can finally make use of the Transcription i.e written form of the audio and add it in accordance with the given timings or he can edit the auto-generated subtitles, correct the errors such as spacing, spelling errors, time errors etc. The transcription done in the source language can also be used to further translate the text into various other languages and add subtitles.
- After completing this process, the contributor can save the work which will be sent to the admin of the respective channel and after his approval, the work shall be published on YouTube.
So here goes the subtitling process. One can also earn credits by contributing the subtitles for YouTube videos. Thus it is a blessing for YouTube channels to overcome lingual barriers, make their videos multilingual and globally accessible. Moreover, disturbances in the audio can be made clear and comprehensive by adding subtitles, also it comes in handy for those who deal with hearing problems or deafness, it does not restrict them from watching videos!
Mr. Ravi Kumar ends the session leaving us with the thought “Practice makes a man perfect” as he mentions that the best way to master transcription and subtitling is by practicing and exploring it yourself.
- posted by: Ana Clara Teixeira Caribé
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Hits: 1965
The Creative summary by Ana Clara Caribé
What was the Gabriele Sauberer doing in India?
The immediate answer would be: She was travelling around the country with friends to see its beautiful countryside, monuments, and people. Yes, this is the most obvious answer. And it is true. However, it’s only a part of this story. Let’s start at the beginning: Who is Gabriele Sauberer. Those in the translation industry may have heard about her and her work. Gabriele Sauberer is well-known as a terminology guru. Indeed, according to the TermNet site, she is a pioneer in the professional management of EU funded projects, in European diversity management and quality management for the language industry. She indeed visited India, travelled country with friends and established a partnership with Indian Translators Association and Modlingua Group.
Quality and terminology are terms that are always together since terminology is a key component of quality assurance (QA). Gabriele Sauberer is a campaigner to raise awareness of the crucial importance of quality standards. Terminology is essential to establish quality in India as well as in other countries. Terminology and terminology management is not an issue restricted to one specific subject field, technical, literature or law. In India, for example, terminology in the pharmaceutical industry translation is considered a primary concern since this field is very susceptible to any errors.
As a quality auditor, Gabriele Sauberer explains that those who are known as “one-person enterprise” have been following standards for years now. These professional translators are very much aware of the importance to provide high-quality product in this competitive industry. It’s a matter of survival. Nowadays these professionals have the standards of China, Canada, Europe and the USA to take in consideration. These standards along with ISO 9001 provide to the industry a guideline to measure quality. It’s important to point out that following those rules is not a requirement only for big companies. They must also be followed by that solitaire translator in a remote countryside of Brazil or Sri Lanka.
A Language certification system does exist to boost the market to good quality translation, but it is not a quick process, on the contrary, it takes quite a long time, many meetings, discussions, and training on a regular base. This process is very dynamic and continuous education is a necessity.
- posted by: Didhiti Ghosh
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Hits: 2132
Transcreation of Ravi Kumar’s talk by Didhiti Ghosh
Accepting the globalization of the translation business industry, Mr Ravi Kumar intends to filter out the actant-network descriptive viability of the former from an Indian perspective in his present demonstration. An interconnective initiative that adds coherence among countries, people, culture, value and worth, imbibing in a harmonic, generative and productive nation-building strategy that is an adhesive to the notion of developing future entrepreneurs in this mother industry, Mr. Kumar, founder-president of ITAINDIA, an FIT associate [Switzerland], founder-director of the Modlingua group, and the India-representative to the International Medical Interpreter’s Association [U.S.A.], stresses the Globalization, Internationalization, Localization and Translation [GILT] approach for disseminating dynamism in the translation community. Instead of limiting the challenges of this developing culture, he moves forward with a strong motto of challenging the limits of all translators and interpreters into building an interknitted and collaborative generation of entrepreneur-translocators who further create a strength-based B2B, B2C and B2G approach sans miscommunication in its quality assurance metrics.
A believer of the N=1, R=G approach propounded by Prahalad and Krishnan [2008], Mr Kumar respects the sentience of an entrepreneurial vibe among linguistic service providers at all levels of the present procedural hierarchy. The act of possessing and nurturing skillsets with an optimal and challenging expertise, the responsibility of persevering with a proposition and the discipline of making it happen, and the same with a definite profit motive, along with the ability to create the alpha and the omega out of sheer vacuum [in a nontechnical sense] with a beautiful exponential combinatorial transflow of intellect and knowledge to result in a strong business-network which is an addendum to the present state of employment either for oneself or for a systemic group is his definition of the term entrepreneurship.
Concentrating on an Indian perspective of the term, he believes that in a subtle yet precisely structured symbiosis, the same existed in the inherent and rigid caste system of the country, driven to a maximal significance by its businessmen. As the process directed a continuum, Mr Kumar highlights, an emergent ecosystem was parsed as well as construed with the involvement of several interested stakeholders. With the achievement of the status of an independent country in 1947, India loosened the knot of its orthodox transflow such that the existent varnas be allowed more collaboration and interconnection, thereby accelerating the synergy of the language community. He continues mentioning that with the initiative taken by the Government of India in promoting the Information Technology process, a formal structure was constructed which could bind much better with the definition of entrepreneurship in a translative-interpretative facet. A freelancer who survives more on luck and dynamism than on an aggregated, solid architecture cemented by the knowledge of strategic consulting and risk-taking, and with a mostly autoscopic marketing and self-promotional methodology in a yet-to-be-harmonized embrace with the ecosystem and the society, the investment to returns in future is mainly of time-aided knowledge, rather than capital fund leading to the processing of projects, money and the economic development of the society. They are the disseminators of information, contributors to cultural builts and composers of a supra-nationalism in a gestalt. Presently, they are the potential catalysts to the transfer-of-technology phase involved in the generation of political and sociocultural momentum, globalization and interculturalization of units who also contribute to the formulation of a peace process through the remaking of invisible and visible gaps through the transfer of technological flow. And this is the way, Mr. Kumar specifies, how translators and interpreters present themselves as synonyms of nation-builders, access-creators, and system-chargers within an actor-network interconnectivity methodology [Latour, Law and Callon; 1986] expanding on an integrative combinatorial mode with peer and teamwork focus in the target.
And, recognition is a true vitalizer to making them real-life heroes who are the giant strategists of setting up a vibrant and luminescent network base for the future language industry in a supracontinental zeal.
- posted by: anjali
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Hits: 2453
Modlingua brings to you the special interview with Professor Bell in 2009 where he shares his views on different topics like motive of a translator, Indian English and the linguistic situation in Malaysia. The interview, apart from being informative also presents the viewers with an alternative view of the multilingual language situation in India.
It was indeed a proud moment for Modlingua when Professor Bell described the presence of our director Mr Ravi Kumar as indispensable in the formation of Indian Translation Association. Being described as ‘unstoppable’ by a man of such intellect speaks itself about the dedication and commitment of Mr. Ravi Kumar who has not only been active internationally but by organizing summer internships also promotes the cause of translation locally.
As a starting point of a debate, Professor Bells thinks that the amount of precision a translator or interpreter should aim for in his work should be the same as that of any doctor or lawyer. Indeed, any professional should make it a responsibility to deliver the task to the best of his abilities. Commenting on the situation of multilingualism in India, where the three language formula has been into existence in school since the 1960s, Professor Bell considers Indian situation to be an extraordinary one but denies something like an Indian instinct for translation. The strategy like the three language formula means that most Indians are either bilingual or speak more than two languages from early on. However, this doesn’t make them translators or language teachers by birth. The art of translation is learned through practice or like Professor Bell puts it is a ‘combination of both nature and nurture’. India certainly has a large pool of potential multilingual to draw from.
English has been around for a long time India and therefore the term Indian English has made its way in Indian life and sociolinguist context. Some scholars argue that this is an established variety with developing standards. Others assert that many socially and geographically varied varieties of English are spoken in India, and these cannot be termed as one variety. Professor Bell very aptly gives the analogy of a European English fulfilling varying needs in this context. He cites an example of one of his students from Italy who wanted to learn English to be able to chat with Scandinavian blondes coming on holiday in summer in Italy. Thus, like in India English acts as a link language in Europe apart from being the language of the youth.
Lastly, having spent a long time in Malaysia, Professor Bell also tells us about the linguistic situation there. As with any other country, even in Malaysia, the dominant linguistic communities of the Malays enjoy greater privileges than the minorities. While the government provides schooling at the primary level in each of the three major languages, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil, the languages of other ethnic groups which are represented in smaller number are not given precedence.
This brief interaction with Professor Bell is thus enriching for language lovers, as in a short time they get to know new facts and different viewpoints. I thus encourage the listeners to give this interaction a go.
- posted by: Vatya Raina
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Hits: 2705
A creative summary by Vatya Raina and Smita Shenoy
Lecture on Grammarly and Modlingua Rubric by Mr Ravi Kumar
The launch of the Modlingua Quality Control Rubric—Error Control Mechanism in Content Writing and Translation—by Mr Ravi Kumar was a landmark event for current and potential translators and content writers.
After an extensive analysis of possible errors and suggestions on how to improve quality by minimizing errors—minor and major—the founder of Modlingua introduced Grammarly, an AI (Artificial Intelligence) tool for error minimisation and quality control.
Undoubtedly, technology has made the work of human beings less tiring and more effective; these days, apart from manual intervention, there are several AI tools which offer help with grammar, spelling and syntax.
Grammarly (with a rating of 4.6) is one such tool that helps in improving content in tune with the Modlingua Rubric. It also saves precious time by proofreading articles in a matter of minutes, even seconds. Mr Kumar strongly recommended Grammarly as a medium of quality control and content improvement.
One can simply go to Google to download 'Grammarly for Chrome' and add the extension. The Grammarly logo (a circular green arrow) gets added to the right-hand corner, next to the address bar, indicating that the tool is installed and ready for use.
There are two versions of Grammarly: free and paid. The paid version is much more comprehensive. It improves sentence formation, plagiarism, and more. However, to start with, the free version should be adequate for quality control as it corrects errors related to spelling, punctuation, spacing, syntax—important aspects that we tend to overlook or treat as inconsequential.
Mr Kumar demonstrated the ease of using the tool with a sample article. The steps involved are:
1) typing a title
2) copying and pasting the article from MS Word (which already does a preliminary spell and grammar check) onto the Grammarly ‘online editor’ window.
In a matter of seconds, a series of red lines highlight the errors. Click on the errors and suggested corrections will pop up.
This app is also available for mobile phones. It can be easily downloaded from Play Store. Grammarly keeps at bay all the silly mistakes that we often make.
Although it is a great tool, Mr Kumar enumerated some important points:
1) Grammarly for Chrome will only function online—for Gmail, Hotmail, etc. For offline applications, say, MS Word, Grammarly for MS Word has to be installed. Or, the 'online editor' option can be used, which allows copying and pasting content before it is saved and published.
2) Grammarly may not recognise words from foreign languages and may incorrectly suggest alternatives (For instance, vacancies for the French term vacances).
3) It is an AI tool; so, the errors highlighted and suggestions offered should be carefully reviewed.
To conclude, apart from linguistic capabilities a six-sigma standard of error control is a must in any domain, and more particularly in the field of translation and content creation. Looking at one’s own work, again and again, tends to make the author complacent. This increases the possibility of errors. The need of the hour is to get the work objectively reviewed and proofed by a friend. Grammarly is such a friend—a friend for life. If we combine Modlingua Rubric and Grammarly, we will certainly be able to improve our quality of work and at the same time reduce the time involved in editing and project management.
