#Language Access

[languagexs]

Exploring the Rich History of the Soninke People in Mali

Unveiling the Fascinating Soninke People of West Africa The Soninke people are an ethnic group with a rich cultural heritage deeply intertwined with the history of West Africa. This article delves into the fascinating world of the Soninke, exploring their origins, traditions, and the significant impact they had on the development of empires in the region. Whether you’re a history buff, an…

[rsayoub]

🌎 Fresh off the blog! At Vamos Juntos 2025 in Mexico City, the energy was electric to say the least, debates, breakthroughs, and bold visions for the future of localization. In this new post, we unpack my conversation with Charles Campbell of TBO and Juntos Latin American Language Association, diving into why Latin America is stepping up as a major force in the global language industry. From "standards are dead" to Buenos Aires 2026, this recap is a must-read. Or you can view the entire conversation here: https://youtu.be/wFrStAf8w3I Big thanks to Charles Campbell for sharing his insights and to our host Robin Ayoub for keeping the conversation real and unscripted. #VamosJuntos #Localization #LanguageIndustry

[shadow27]

Doctor Who is celebrating 60 years by releasing over 800 episodes on BBC iPlayer.

The sci-fi fantasy show first premiered in 1963 and has cemented itself as a permanent fixture in pop culture history. This fall, fans will be able to stream the entire 800-plus episode series along with spin-offs like Sarah Jane Adventures, Torchwood, and Class, and the behind-the-scenes series Doctor Who Confidential.

Each Dr Who episode will be made accessible for all Whovians, with subtitles, audio description, and sign language options available for the very first time.

[cascadia-stack-blog]

Social Entrepreneur Update

It's been way too long since I've posted. Cascadia Stack is now a fiscally sponsored project of CascadiaNow a 501c3 nonprofit, which means for a portion of Stack's donations, I get all of the backend financial stuff taken from me, the project gets to work on it's programs without those stresses.

Cascadia Stack has held 3 events. Two Climate Resilience Circle gatherings and one Spanish preparedness workshop. The response has been lukewarm, although the Instagram followers are now over 150.

Our next Circle is Feb. 18 and the next Spanish preparedness workshop is Mar. 16. Our new website just landed, through Squarespace: www cascadiastack org

The problem is two-fold. One, finding free or very cheap indoor gathering spaces. And I believe we can solve that by partnering with organizations whose client base is our target audience, too. And that is precisely what I am working on now. Second problem is, just getting people at organizations to trust so that they spread the word to their base. Our events have had less than 10 people at each one. The money raised has not been close to what the professional facilitators should be paid.

That is the rant for now, but I am very excited for the upcoming partnerships that may be shaping!

[incognitopolls]

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[soup-mother]

it's kinda funny how English speakers will piss and shit and cry when they learn some japanese series doesn't have an English translation, and then genuinely get shocked when literally anything has (say) a spanish translation. like..... it's because people speak spanish and want to read it? you're not the only people on the planet?

it's so weird. like English is THE language that basically everything in the world gets translated to outside of very specific contexts, and with that comes an expectation that everything has to get translated into English and if it's not then life is so hard. and then at the same time it's genuinely amusing and a joke to people that people who speak other languages also want to read stuff. it's so self centred

[linguist-breakaribecca]

Today, in “I’ll take any good news I can find”:

A production of Romeo and Juliet with Deaf actors signing their lines has been referred to as bilingual! Not just “accessible” or “diverse” but also BILINGUAL!

This makes me happy because the general idea of ASL (and other signed languages) is that they’re just a manual version of the spoken language. By that logic, Norwegian is just a higher-latitude version of German. Signed languages are languages of their own! With unique vocabulary, grammar, and dialects!

[danandfuckingjonlmao]

do you ever think about how we have phannies in every field? like we have doctors and baristas and mental health therapists and geologists and audiologists and engineers and neuroscientists and authors and social media consultants and activists and child care workers and museum managers and teachers and biologists and emts and linguists and accessibility coaches and sign language interpreters and artists and musicians and editors and actors and chefs and fucking EVERYTHING. not to mention the specific knowledge bases and hobbies we have outside of our professions—coding, linguistic and cultural diversity, artistic creativity, political/social awareness, passion for justice, research, make up and hair and fashion design, media literacy, philosophy, all of our special interests/hyperfixations, etc. we could run a successful commune no problem at all. we’re so smart and talented and resourceful and powerful.

the phandom is rooted in a past of being infamously shitty, and i do see yall slipping back into old habits sometimes (mostly on twitter but sometimes here and you know it <3) but it’s pretty fucking cool how capable this community is and our ability to unify. anyway phanmune when.

(if you want, leave your knowledge base/skills in the tags or replies. can be profession, hobby, major/program of study, what you study in your free time, what you want to learn about, what you’re interested, all of the above, anything)

[meredithwillettkirby]

How do I know this? Twilight language! The Vatican uses it! So do Freemasons and many other religious groups!

By posting a brown Madonna and white child in death, the pope invokes a powerful meme! He may be referring to how the developed world suckles the teat of Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia! Ask Africa about long teats! She’s basically the Virgin Mary!

[mxystan]

taiwan travelogue by yang shuangzi tr. lin king is indeed an award-winning banger and perhaps the first time in my life i've ever felt vindicated for dual-wielding a novel with its english translation because the act of translation itself is such a big theme in the novel. big win for metafiction-obsessed himejin everywhere!!

[languagexs]

English to Mongolian Language Translation: Find Your Translator Online Now!

Discover the rich Mongolian language and culture with English to Mongolian language translation Mongolian  is a unique and fascinating part of the world’s linguistic tapestry. It offers a glimpse into the culture and daily life of the Mongolian-speaking people, who have a unique Cyrillic script and nomadic roots. This article explores the complexity of the Mongolian language, its historical…

[thunderc1an]

Hollyleaf- ms paint with a mouse

[eesirachs]

references for reading and studying the hebrew bible (named the old testament for some, the tanakh for others)—

biblegateway makes available most translations. ethical, responsible versions used in academia include the nrsvue (here with commentary) and the jps (here, on sefaria, with hebrew notations). software like accordance is helpful for those familiar with languages.

on languages—here is more on learning biblical hebrew. here are my recs on hittite, sumerian, akkadian (huehnergard, caplice), ugaritic, and aramaic.

holding the narrative alongside introductory material is meaningful—here is a list of many, and here is the book assigned in most syllabi.

finally, oxford offers entries on heuristics and methods that might help move religious study further in meaning. here are recs for my method

[carnage-cathedral]

in my humble opinion as someone with multiple cluster b disorders including bpd, the aim shouldn't be to "cure" it at all, because trauma cannot be cured and this is not an attainable goal, which sets an unfair precedent for us ourselves as victims of the disorder. the aim should instead be to heal and rehabilitate to a point where you can cope with the behaviors you've developed that are connected to the trauma. healing will happen, but the desire to "cure" all "sick" people is not a helpful stance to have and is way more damaging than it is helpful. hurt people don't need to be "cured" so much as just understood and helped. "curing" us is very much a medicalized idea that bases a person's worth on their ability to function. you and your struggles will always be valid, whether you heal or not, whether you're "cured" or not <3

[incognitopolls]

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Sara Nović for The Guardian:

Twelve days before Donald Trump took office, Charlie Kirk, media personality and rightwing activist, complained on his eponymous show about the presence of American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters at emergency press briefings for the Los Angeles fires. Another rightwing activist, Christopher Rufo, took his cue on X, calling interpreters “wild human gesticulators” who turned briefings into a “farce”. The rightwing theorist and Origins of Woke author Richard Hanania, quote-tweeting Rufo, declared ASL interpretation an “absurdity”. Around this time, Elon Musk was skulking around the platform, campaigning to bring back the R-word. Use of the slur tripled on X after his post. To those with less knowledge of disability history, these attacks might read as gross, but ultimately toothless. Activists, though, quickly sounded the alarm: the incoming administration would be coming for disabled people. “To the deaf community, the fight for accessibility is nothing new,” said Sara Miller, deaf educator and community advocate. However, Miller said she had seen a burgeoning movement against accessibility from conservatives with large platforms, including during the first Trump administration, when the National Association of the Deaf had to sue to have ASL interpreters during 2020 Covid briefings. “But when looking at the history of the first term of [the Trump] administration, and currently how diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) is being targeted, it’s not hard to see the correlation.”

Manufacturing cultural outrage to justify policy that would have previously been considered too cruel or damaging is a staple of the far-right playbook: most recently, the US has seen the move used to bolster book bans and outlaw Black history and gender-affirming care. The play-by-play is always the same: social media followers take their marching orders, hurling discontent at the specified targets and regurgitating talking points. Eventually, the ideas become so ubiquitous they are adopted by politicians who use them to engage their base. Finally, the talking point becomes the policy itself, and politicians claim they have a mandate from the people to justify stripping away the rights of the marginalized. Fast forward to 21 January 2025, when the accessibility page and all ASL content were removed from the White House website. Then, real-life interpreters were removed from the White House and across multiple federal agencies whose accommodations divisions were dismantled under Trump’s anti-DEIA orders.

Alongside “diversity” and “women”, words like “accessibility” and “disability” have also been listed as grounds to flag or reject grant applications at the National Science Foundation, sparking concerns at other federal agencies and research institutions. And last week, the Department of Justice, which is charged with enforcing the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), began to rescind key guidance, justifying the move by suggesting that accessibility is the reason for cost-of-living increases. Simultaneously, disabled children’s right to education is under fire. On 20 March, Trump signed an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education. Earlier in March, secretary of education, Linda McMahon, laid off over 1,300 people – nearly half the department – eliminating seven regional offices, large swaths of the department’s office of civil rights, as well as parts of the office of special education and rehabilitative services, though she had previously said those programs wouldn’t be affected. Twenty-one attorneys general filed a suit over the layoffs, arguing they were “illegal and unconstitutional”.

The education department funds early intervention and post-high school transition programs, and organizations like the American Printing House for the Blind and the Special Olympics. It also enforces the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the law that gives disabled kids the right to a “free and appropriate public education”. A child’s needs and services are documented in a legally binding agreement known as an Individualized Education Program, providing services like speech, physical and occupational therapy, and the use of specialized curriculum. Accommodations like closed captions, ASL interpreters, ramps and elevator keys, braille materials, preferential seating, audio books, use of a laptop or notetaker, and movement breaks can also be included.

Without these plans, disabled students may be inside the classroom, but they will not be meaningfully educated. Now the director of the office of special education position is vacant.

[...] Leaving disabled people behind is not new to the American political landscape; the US has a history of eradicating the disabled. Eugenics – the pseudoscientific belief that humans should breed for “desirable traits” and suppress the undesirable ones – rose to popularity in the US and globally during the late 19th century.

The first eugenics-based law in the world was passed in the US: Indiana’s 1907 Act to Prevent the Procreation of Confirmed Criminals, Idiots, Imbeciles and Rapists targeted disabled people in state schools and institutions and incarcerated people by mandating sterilization for “criminals, idiots, rapists and imbeciles in state custody”. The Nazis would go on to praise the US’s codified eugenics and racism in their 1934 handbook. In Germany, the convergence of two mass-disabling events – the Spanish flu pandemic and the first world war – wreaked economic strife, the rationing of food and medicine, and overcrowding in institutions and long-term hospitals. Calls from the German eugenicists to stamp out what they called “life unworthy of life” began in the 1920s, even before Hitler came to power.

By 1933, the magazine Volk und Rasse was publishing a variety of eugenics propaganda, including a political cartoon featuring images of large moneybags labeled “a slow learner”, “the educable mentally ill”, and “blind or deaf-born schoolchildren” bore the caption: “This illustration depicts the burden of maintaining the socially unfit.” That same year, a law called for compulsory sterilization of those with “hereditary diseases” including deafness, blindness, schizophrenia, epilepsy, bipolar disorder, chronic alcoholism and a host of other conditions. A 1935 expansion of the law required mandatory abortions on the fetus of a parent with one of the listed conditions. Approximately 400,000 disabled people were sterilized in Germany and annexed territories during this period.

More extensive propaganda campaigns declaring disabled people as “useless eaters” were launched through various media in Germany. The arts, including in literature, documentaries and narrative film, posed a solution: mercy killings. As Mark P Mostert outlines in his 2002 article “Useless Eaters,” one particularly popular 1941 movie, I Accuse, caused a spike in the belief that euthanasia was an act of kindness toward disabled people. In the film, a a man euthanizes his beautiful, disabled wife as an act of love, asking the court: “Would you, if you were a cripple, want to vegetate forever?” The court acquits; the movie’s final scenes declare “love is medicine”. Support for euthanasia among Germans exploded, writes Mostert, and the first disabled people were euthanized at the behest of their families, who had bought the party line that killing their loved ones would be an act of grace. In 1939, Hitler created an advisory committee to oversee the state’s first official program for the killing of disabled children, whose murders began en masse that year.

The program quickly expanded to encompass multiple killing sites, as well as disabled adults across German territories, through the program Aktion T4. The Nazi gas chambers were perfected using disabled people. There, officials first created the cover story that “patients” were being sent to take a shower, where they were poisoned with carbon monoxide gas and sent to crematoriums. When carbon monoxide proved too slow, the methodology for gassing via cyanide-based Zyklon B was tested and fine-tuned on disabled people.

The Guardian has a well-done article on the Trump Administration (and right-wing media)'s war on disability rights.