How do you say “get lost” in ‘Elephant Language’?

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The world of languages can often throw up some odd translations due to the sheer complexity and varied ways of how diverse cultures have expressed themselves not to mention the customs of communities around the world. For these reasons, in a world of global communication professional translation services provided by professional translation agencies has played a pivotal role in connecting different language speakers as some words or expressions in one language could mean something completely different, gibberish, or worse offend in another language and in some cases it may simply not translate at all.

But in truth translation and localisation services have come so far in the recent decades and the growing amount of technological advancements in recent years has seen the acceleration of improved, fast translations amongst humans that we are now starting to look at communicating with animals!

We have already seen with the Temptations ‘catterbox’ device which is hoping to translate cat ‘language’ and how Swedish tech company Gavagai AB are hoping to gain an understanding of dolphin communications and now the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust along with ElephantVoices have developed through over 40 years of research a text/emoji to Elephant translator. So if you have ever wanted to greet your partner or tell that annoying co-worker to “get lost” like an elephant, well good news, you can do exactly that right now!

All you have to do is head over to Hello in Elephant which was launched on 12th August 2017, World Elephant Day; input your phrase or emoji into the translator and you will be shown a quick video of the elephant translation. Other selected phrases include “I love you,” “Let’s go,” and “hello” to name a few.

But behind the fun of this elephant translator comes a serious message, the number of African elephants are decreasing at an alarming rate due to poaching and the effects of an ever-increasing human population. According to the Great Elephant Census the number of African elephants being as high as over 10 million at the start of the 20th century and now less than 400 thousand there has been a major decline in the elephant population. Hopefully this elephant translator can highlight the way in which elephants communicate with each other as a way to raise awareness and as a result conserve the African elephant population.

Original story: National Geographic.

Meet the woman creating positive change in literature and translation

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It is the month of August so in the world of literature and translation services it could only mean one thing; it is Women in Translation Month. Women in Translation Month or WIT Month for short is a movement that was started back in 2014 by an Israeli-born biology grad student Meytal Radzinski who, being an avid reader and possessing the ability of reading both in English and Hebrew translations of books discovered through tracking her own reading lists in translation that there were very little female writers who had their works translated as when compared to males.

So being the scientist that she is, Radzinski identified the problem and immediately started gathering information and when she had released the statistics it depicted a vast majority of books translated into English had been written by male writers. According to the statistics on Radzinski’s blog as of 2016 only approximately 30% of new book translations are from female writers. These statistics had amassed a great deal of attention amongst writers, bloggers, literature communities and translators to name a few and thus ‘Women in Translation Month’ was born.

When interviewed by The Forward’s Aviya Kushner, Radzinski explained that after she had released these little known statistics she was urged by another blogger to start an event or carry this on as a movement over a month so she decided August was the best month as it was for her the least stressful month.

WIT Month is run in the UK by the Arts Council backed charity, The Reading Agency and aims to even up the playing field of the gender gap when it comes to translations of literature from different languages into English because of this some great books and great writers could miss out of prestige worldwide acclaim as well as receiving accolades for their works and not to mention the limited financial translation of being available to only the original audience.

This year marks the third year of WIT Month and there are signs of progression as creator Radzinski says “Last year on August 30th I happened to be in New York and I saw a shelf in Book Culture devoted to women in translation.” Hinting at a possible shift in thinking and with events happening from Dublin to New York and the movement continuing to gain momentum on social platforms further putting pressure on the publishers, it will only be a matter of time before change.

Read the full interview and Radzinski’s book suggestions here.

Image: Screenshot of biblibio blog.

The real meaning behind Despacito

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Arguably the song of 2017 and certainly the anthem of the summer has been the Spanish-written song “Despacito” (translation: “Slowly”) by Puerto Rican singer songwriter Luis Alfonso Rodríguez López-Cepero also known as Luis Fonsi featuring legendary Reggaeton artist Ramón Luis Ayala Rodríguez better known as Daddy Yankee.

The song itself has been remixed and repackaged to the English speaking world which features Canadian pop artist Justin Bieber to help the song gain popularity in English speaking countries and there is also an official Portuguese translation for the song featuring Brazilian singer Israel Novaes replacing Daddy Yankee.

The official video has amassed nearly 3 billion views on YouTube which many believe will become the most viewed YouTube video of all time as well accumulating a whopping 4.6 billion streams and counting leading Despacito to become the most streamed song in history as you can imagine the retail translation is big bucks.

But for those of us who do not possess the skills to understand or speak Spanish enjoy the songs melodic and rhythmic tone coincided with the reggaeton beats we could be forgiven thinking that Despacito is nothing more than a happy, innocent Latin American song. Well it turns out when translated into English the lyrics are more sinister than we might have originally thought.

You see the lyrics to the pop-reggaeton track are actually quite edgy with lines such as “Let me trespass your danger zones” and “I want to see your hair dance” it would be a big surprise that if the song was in English it would have even received the go ahead to be released let alone parents playing Fonsi and Daddy Yankee in front of their kids. Some of the lyrics get even more X-rated and you can see the full translation here on Billboards website.

Despacito’s lyrics were even considered bad enough in Malaysia to see the government ban the song from government-owned media platforms due to be “un-Islamic” and “not suitable to be heard” whilst advising other radio stations to follow suit.

But as the song is just so catchy we can just use the excuse that we don’t understand it and enjoy it anyway. Let us know what you think of the lyrics.