Inttranet "Linguists of the Year" for 2005
- From: "Webmaster Inttranews" <webmaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 3 Jan 2006 01:41:56 -0800
The Inttranet (www.inttra.net), the global network of professional
interpreters and translators, has nominated its "Linguists of the Year"
for 2005.
These honorary citations recognise the struggle - and sometimes the
personal sacrifice - of linguists both alive and dead who were the
focus for media attention during the past year, and have increased
public awareness of the importance of linguists and languages as a
result.
The Inttranet nominees as Linguists of the Year (in alphabetical order)
for 2004 by alphabetical order were:
Alex Waibel
Andrew Wedel
Bright Simasiku
David S.C. Chu
David W. Lightfoot
Dr. Abdul-Rahman Abd Rabu
Hussein Hanoun Al-Saadi
In memoriam: interpreters killed in the line of duty
Jack Jones
Noam Chomsky
Sibel Edmonds
The LiTgloss project
UNESCO
Valerie Fast Horse
The leading three nominees were Noam Chomsky (17.43%), UNESCO (13.76%)
and In Memoriam: interpreters killed in the line of duty (11.01%).
Backgrounder
Alex Waibel
Carnegie Mellon University researchers and German scientists
demonstrated breakthrough technology in human speech translation by
computers. The system pioneered by Alex Waibel, a faculty member at CMU
and the University of Karlsruhe in Germany, could bring closer the day
when communicating in a foreign language is as easy as speaking in a
native tongue.
Another prototype, which hadn't been given a name, uses directional
speakers to beam translations of a speech to specific listeners in a
variety of languages.
Andrew Wedel
Assistant professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona in
Tucson
A new strand of linguistic research uses the principle of "self
organization," a concept used in studying all kinds of complex systems,
from thunderstorms to the human immune system, and not just language.
Self-organization, in a nutshell, is when a system evolves a large
structure from repeated small-scale interactions between its smaller
elements, according to Andrew Wedel, an assistant professor of
linguistics at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Bright Simasiku
Co-ordinator of the Eluwa Sign Language Project
A team of teachers in Northern Namibia is developing an expanded
vocabulary for Namibian sign language to allow deaf children to learn
science. The Eluwa Sign Language Project was launched at the Eluwa
Special School for deaf and hearing-impaired children at Ongwediva
recently.
David S.C. Chu
US Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness
David S.C. Chu is the author of the Defense Language Transformation
Roadmap. "In today's world," Chu said, "we need people with a
higher level of linguistic competence. We need more people in the
civilian and military ranks with a capacity in one or more of the
'investment' languages, such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic (
and ) Farsi.
Chu said proficiency must go beyond standard speaking and reading
skills to include competence in the various dialects of a language,
slang, and an ability to write. "(Military linguists) must be able to
understand people speaking in nuanced terms or alluding to current or
historical events in a culture."
David W. Lightfoot
Director of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences at the National
Science Foundation
At the current rate, as many as 2,500 native tongues will disappear
forever by 2100. David W. Lightfoot is helping spearhead a government
initiative to preserve some of the dying languages, believing each is a
window into the human mind that can benefit the world at large.
"If we are going to lose half the world's languages that endangers
our capacity to understand the genetic basis of language,"' said
Lightfoot, who heads the directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic
Sciences at the National Science Foundation.
Dr. Abdul-Rahman Abd Rabu
Professor of Translation at Sana'a University, Yemen
"Illiteracy is a problem in society whereby people are having
difficulty accessing sources in their own native language. Because of
this, they are going to experience insurmountable difficulties in
accessing sources. Translation would alleviate many of these problems
if the Arab world would devote adequate time and resources to
developing professional translators."
Hussein Hanoun Al-Saadi
Interpreter
French journalist Florence Aubenas and her Iraqi interpreter Hussein
Hanoun Al-Saadi were kidnapped in Baghdad on Wednesday January 5 but
were released unharmed on June 11.
In Memoriam: interpreters killed in the line of duty
It is difficult to know exactly how many interpreters were killed in
2005. According to the press freedom monitoring group Reporters Without
Borders, 50 journalists and 22 journalists' assistants, such as
interpreters and drivers, have been killed during the 30 months since
the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Because they provide the real link between people, because they really
do fix things, interpreters will always be on the front line, making
them a strategic target in a war-torn world, and more necessary than
ever, wherever they are.
Jack Jones
Jack Jones was once punished for speaking his native language.
Transported by the government from his riverside home in Montezuma,
Utah, at 7 years old, Jones learned English in a Colorado boarding
school. There he was told his name was Jack; he was warned not to speak
Navajo. But the language of his people later made him a war hero.
In the winter of 1941, the federal government recruited 29 Navajos to
develop a battle code based on the Navajo language. Jones was among 180
finalists that were actually deployed overseas from among the 400
Navajos originally recruited for the program. Without the code talkers,
some say the Pacific war may never have been won.
Noam Chomsky
Professor of Linguistics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Noam Chomsky has written an interesting, thought-provoking article on
universality in language and in human rights, in which his examples are
given "so that we remember that we are not merely engaged in seminars
on abstract principles, or discussing remote cultures that we do not
comprehend. We are speaking of ourselves and the moral and intellectual
values of the communities in which we live. And if we do not like what
we see when we look into the mirror, we have ample opportunity to do
something about it. "
Sibel Edmonds
The family of former FBI translator Sibel Edmond moved to Turkey when
she was a girl, and she attended college in the United States. She
became a U.S. citizen and, shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, went to
work for the FBI, which was in dire need of Middle Eastern translators.
But at the FBI, Sibel got a disillusioning look at the management
failures, case backlogs, turf battles and bureaucratic gold-bricking
that have since been confirmed by several high-level government
investigations of the government's counter-terror operations.
The LiTgloss project
The idea behind the LiTgloss project is to use the Web to harness the
labor of far-flung translators who are not necessarily scholars, but
who volunteer their language skills to help others read works that they
love. LiTgloss is a collection of texts of literary or cultural
interest, written in languages other than English, and expertly
annotated so as to facilitate comprehension by English-speaking
readers. The project was undertaken with funding from the University at
Buffalo, and is now supported by a generous grant from the National
Endowment for the Humanities. Texts are available in many languages,
and more texts are added every month.
UNESCO
The United Nations Organisation for Education, Science and Culture
celebrated its 60 th anniversary this year. Among its achievements
during the year, the Organisation enacted a convention on protecting
cultural diversity worldwide. The goal of the proposed convention,
formally titled the Convention on the Protection of the Diversity of
Cultural Contents and Artistic Expressions, is to protect a nation's
cultural diversity and its culture from any negative effects of
globalization. It also seeks to promote a country's ethnic traditions
and minority languages.
Valerie Fast Horse
Valerie Fast Horse, IT Director for the Coeur d'Alene tribe in Idaho
helped open the tribe's new community technology center (CTC), which
makes broadband access and 40 computers available to members of the
tribe for free. It is the first phase of a multifaceted plan to bring
broadband wireless to every corner of the reservation.
Among the uses Fast Horse foresees for tribal-wide Wi-Fi broadband are
streaming video and other high-bandwidth applications, especially those
which help to teach the ancient tribal language of the Coeur d'Alene.
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