Archive for the ‘Language’ Category
Pep talk from mom: find meaning, serve others, survive
Twitter has proved an essential tool for communication in the wake of Japan’s series of disasters, when phone lines and other forms of communication have not been accessible or functioning. Not my mom. Translator Aya Watanabe has been translating tweets coming out of Japan in the weeks following the devastation they have been facing. I [...]
April 18th, 2011The charm of Indian English, filled with literary gems
The Jaipur Literary Festival has become a literary institution and event in India, over the last half decade. “And what would your good name be, sir?” asked the greeter, with the Dickensian formality that only India has preserved. So begins writer Benjamin MacIntyre’s visit to the Jaipur Literature Festival (read it all here), an event [...]
January 29th, 2011Great listen: World in Words #114 on political language & Tucson
I’ve lost count how many times a story featured on the World in Words language podcast has shown up on my site, but it continues to be a thoughtfully produced weekly pod that clues me in to stories from the news that I might otherwise have missed. (It’s produced by PRI and WGBH Boston, the [...]
January 19th, 2011America and nationality, a troubled love story
For a long time, leaders (and many citizens) saw the United States as a country of, and for, white people. This is clear in our treatment of Native Americans and our trampling of many of the contracts we drew with them, and obviously, in our treatment of African slaves who then developed an African-American identity [...]
November 2nd, 2010Modern-day “Peril”? Chinese language in American classrooms, and that long-standing friend-or-enemy dilemma
China has the second-largest economy in the world, a fact that looms ominously over the shoulder of El Numero Uno: the United States. And when you are as connected economically as China and the U.S., it behooves each side to attempt friendliness; it also means it would be nearly impossible for either side to start [...]
October 7th, 2010I’d like to buy the world a Coke…
Delivering peace, one Coke at a time… “What the world wants today” is both that elusive peace, and a Coke, as the commercial famously puts it. Buying a Coke is one form of peace, I guess; but how else do we define it? War, in the name of peace… The thought is bewildering, paradoxical, and [...]
March 4th, 2010Danger and escape along the Tumen River: North Korean refugees, the struggle to survive, and the effort to tell their story
Laura Ling and Euna Lee must have quite a story. What they have recently published, in the form of an Op/ed in the LA Times, is a brief explanation of their reason for being in that part of the world, and a narrative description of how and what happened when they were detained by North [...]
September 8th, 2009哈利 波特 or, a way to improve my Mandarin
“Harry Potter” in Chinese is one of those transliterations that is necessary when translating names across languages; and the sounds are nearly perfect– jokes aside regarding Chinese natives’ English pronunciation. 哈利 波特 literally sounds like “ha li po te,” with the “r” sound coming out like an “l.” In fact, when I say those syllables [...]
July 30th, 2009