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Barriers, like promises and piecrust, are made to be broken. Or broken down, rather. Translators, like teachers, are great breakers-down of barriers, though, like them, they are almost always undervalued. This autumn our minds and our media are full of images of razor-wire fences as refugees, fleeing war zones, try to cross borders legally or illegally in search of a safe haven.

The post Breaking down barriers appeared first on OUPblog.

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I did some illustrations for a cool series of educational/learning books from Cloverleaf books. This one is called “My Language, Your Language”. Samples below.

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In the literature on language death and language renewal, two cases come up again and again: Irish and Hebrew. Mention of the former language is usually attended by a whiff of disapproval. It was abandoned relatively recently by a majority of the Irish people in favour of English, and hence is quoted as an example of a people rejecting their heritage. Hebrew, on the other hand, is presented as a model of linguistic good behaviour: not only was it not rejected by its own people, it was even revived after being dead for more than two thousand years, and is now thriving.

The post Changing languages appeared first on OUPblog.

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I'm between audio books right now, so I'm catching up on podcasts of the NPR TED Radio Hour. Earlier in the week, I was listening to the program, "Playing with Perceptions." One segment features academic activist and poet Jamila Lyiscott. She's a first-generation American. Her parents are from Trinidad and she grew up in Crown Heights in Brooklyn. She's working on her PhD in Literature and Race at Columbia and describes herself as a "tri-tongued orator."

When she was about 19, she was asked to be a guest on an academic panel. After participating in her very best, most polished Academic English, a woman came up to her and told her she was very "articulate."

This is the poem she wrote in response to that experience.



The transcript is here if you'd rather read the poem.

I'm thinking hard about checking my perceptions at the door, especially when it comes to the languages my students speak.


Irene has the Poetry Friday roundup this week at Live Your Poem.

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Where I live, it seems winter is refusing to loosen its grip, holding back a long-awaited spring. With two feet of snow still on the ground and frigid, breezy days, it’s nice to sit inside (by the fire) and lose myself in the delights of the Reader. Forget Calgon. Reader….take me away! Here’s just a few Freshly Pressed posts that gave us pause this week.

Roger Ebert, RIP

Yesterday, the world lost more than a prolific film critic when Roger Ebert died of cancer at age 70. In Roger Ebert, RIP, science fiction author John Scalzi hails Ebert as one of his most important writing teachers, a fair, incisive film critic, and above all, a man who refused to allow a devastating disease to take away his humanity:

In these later years and after everything that he’d been through with cancer and with losing the ability to physically speak, I read and was contemplative about the essays and pieces he put up on his Web site. Much of that had nothing to do with film criticism, but was a matter of him writing… well, whatever. Which meant it was something I could identify with to a significant degree, since that is what I do here. It would be foolish to say that Ebert losing his physical voice freed him to find his voice elsewhere. What I think may be more accurate was that losing his physical voice reminded Ebert that he still had things he wanted to say before he ran out of time to say them.

Lean Together

Sheryl Sandberg’s recent book, Lean In, challenges ambitious women to seek leadership positions to help shake off the ever-competitive socio-political status quo and reshape the world of work for the better. At The Purpose of Work, Mike Gammage suggests Lean In‘s fatal flaw is that Sandberg should be addressing society’s “all-pervasive competition” to always be “on” and working in Lean Together:

Almost wherever we look, the workplace is becoming relentlessly competitive. It’s an assumed ‘passion’ that jeopardises family life. And as work becomes more hyper-competitive, women’s opportunities shrink. Pregnancy and maternity leave especially become huge issues. Sandberg acknowledges her own fears that – even at her level and with her talents – her job and prospects at Google would be diminished if she took ‘too much’ time off [that is more than a week or two] after her first child was born.

What if we try instead to slow down and step off this devilish hamster wheel that we’ve created?

First off, I think, we would want to reflect on the culture of contest that is embedded into our societies and so into our working lives. We have to recognise the myth of the inevitability of all–pervasive competition.

Cursi

At Vocabat, author Katie gives us a reflective Spanish lesson on the word cursi, which in English means “cheesy.” Katie transcends simple translation, meditating on the cultural nuances between Latino and American culture, finally embracing cursi as an unfettered expression of love:

In sum: What is love if not cursi? Love is supremely sentimental and gushy and ridiculous. And love means leaving your self-consciousness at the door, as well as your ego. I feel like you’re not really in love if you’re not regularly making a fool of yourself! But why hide our cheesiness within the safe confines of relationships? I admire people who can unblushingly own their feelings, hopes, and even disappointments without pussyfooting or pretending to not care all that much anyway. Although cursi people could use some work in the originality department, at least they care in the first place. There’s a lamentable epidemic of nonchalance and numbness and self-absorption these days, and cheesiness is a much better alternative to these terrible modes of subpar living.

Did you read something in the Reader that you think is Freshly Pressed material? Feel free to leave us a link, or tweet us @freshly_pressed.

For more inspiration, check out our writing challenges, photo challenges, and other blogging tips at The Daily Post; visit our Recommended Blogs; and browse the most popular topics in the Reader. For editorial guidelines for Freshly Pressed, read: So You Want To Be Freshly Pressed.

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I Am Different! Can You Find Me? 
by Manjula Padmanabman
A Global Fund for Children Book
Charlesbridge, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher

Recently named on USBBY's 2012 list of the 36 most outstanding international books for children and teens, I Am Different! Can You Find Me? is a celebration of languages and differences.

Each double-page spread features an illustration that has some sort of repeating pattern, and a page about one of 16 different languages spoken in the US. In each illustration, one part of the pattern is different. On the language page, the sentence, "Can you find me?" is written in the featured language.

On the language page, readers are given the sentence in it's own alphabet, transcribed into English, and with an English pronunciation guide and a note when the script reads right to left in the native language. There is also a short paragraph about the language and a bit about the culture of the people who use it. Where applicable, several English words that come from that language are given.

I love it that some of the indigenous languages of North America have been included, as well as American Sign Language.

The afterword states, "Language helps people connect with one another. How we name things -- people, places, animals, toys, even thoughts and feelings, can create special bonds within our communities. By learning languages that are different from the ones we grew up speaking, we can better understand how others see the world."

Spreading better understanding about how others see the world could be the mission statement for The Global Fund for Children, which is the nonprofit organization who developed this book and many others. For more information, check out their website: Global Fund for Children.org.

Other reviews:
Paper Tigers
BookDads

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I have been getting several comments sent to me in languages that I can't read.  Unfortunately, in the past I had gotten some that looked like they were in Chinese and it turned out they had offensive (sexual) content throughout.  Therefore, I do not approve comments that I cannot read.

If anyone can explain to me how I can post a translation, then I would be happy to do so.  Until then, I'm playing it safe and rejecting comments that are in other languages.  Sorry!

Blessings

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May is speeding by. Soon summer will be here and school vacation. 

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