ATA Newsbriefs

A former Afghan interpreter was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Connecticut after an asylum hearing at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in East Hartford.

Attorney Lauren Petersen said her client – whom she identified only as Zia – was attending the meeting as part of the process to secure a green card for himself and his family based on his service as an interpreter for U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Upon leaving the building, Zia was surrounded by immigration agents and removed to a facility in Massachusetts.

“He’s been in combat situations. He’s been in a war-torn country. This is the kind of thing I think he thought he had left behind,” Petersen said.

A court issued an emergency order that Zia cannot be removed from the country for now, and a hearing is expected in a few weeks for the government to explain its actions. Peterson said it’s not certain where Zia would be sent if deported. She said Zia came to the U.S. legally last year after being granted humanitarian parole and lives in the New Haven area with his wife and five children. Zia’s family had received support from New Haven-based Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services (IRIS).

“So, my reaction – horror, fury,” said Maggie Mitchell Salem, executive director of IRIS. “I can’t even imagine being in their shoes right now,” Salem said. “And then the fear that they must have – if he can be picked up like this, what about the rest of the family? What about others?”

KPBS (7/23/25) By Andrew Dyer

Read Full Article

The U.S. Department of Justice released guidance to federal agencies on July 14 on how to comply with President Trump’s Executive Order 14224 from March, designating English as the official language of the U.S. and revoking Executive Order 13166 from 2000 aimed at improving language access. While experts on English-learner education saw no immediate effects for K-12 schools, they say the new guidance, alongside several recent federal policy changes this year affecting English learners, raises concerns about the broader implications of EO 14224 for public education.

“The Department of Justice will lead a coordinated effort to minimize non-essential multilingual services, redirect resources toward English-language education and assimilation, and ensure compliance with legal obligations through targeted measures where necessary,” said Attorney General Pam Bondi in a memo to federal agencies. The department advises agencies, where legally permitted, to determine which of their programs, grants, and policies could be better served by operating exclusively in English.

As experts await further guidance, they are already concerned that schools may pursue English-only instruction for English learners and fall short in meeting families’ needs for translation and interpreting services.

“We’re put in a position where we want you to learn English, but at the same time, we’re going to de-emphasize anything that will help provide you the opportunity to learn English,” said Jeff Hutcheson, director of advocacy and public policy at the TESOL International Association, which focuses on English-language teaching.

EducationWeek (7/18/25) By Ileana Najarro

Read Full Article

Professional interpreters are concerned the Canadian government’s plans to cut its procurement costs could compromise public access to official proceedings in the country’s official languages (French and English).

Jeremy Link, a spokesperson for Public Services and Procurement Canada, said the department recently began a process to replace the federal government’s existing freelance interpreting contracts. As part of that process, the government is seeking to make several major changes to the procurement of services for Parliament and other institutions like the Supreme Court.

The Canadian branch of the International Association of Conference Interpreters, AIIC-Canada, said those changes include eliminating measures to protect interpreters’ hearing and adopting a “lowest bid” approach to replace the “best fit” model that considers applicants’ credentials and experience. “This change would almost certainly have the effect of pushing the most experienced freelancers off an already short-handed team,” AIIC-Canada said in a statement.

In a letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney this month, AIIC-Canada President Alionka Skup said the proposed new rules would lower the quality of interpreting services while ignoring the current “severe shortage” of accredited and qualified suppliers of interpreting services. She said about 100 accredited and qualified freelancers now shoulder about 60% of all parliamentary assignments.

Nicole Gagnon, a spokesperson for AIIC-Canada and a career freelance interpreter, said the shortage started before the pandemic but worsened as Parliament went virtual and interpreters like herself sustained injuries. Several Parliament Hill interpreters have experienced hearing damage due to poor sound quality and feedback. “With this new standing offer, odds are interpreters will decide to just hang up their headsets because it’s not worth their trouble,” Gagnon said.

Gagnon said the government is also planning to start paying interpreters by the hour rather than by the day. “That’s a fundamental change that’s totally unacceptable to us,” she said. “This standing offer goes against our standards of practice. We work by the day, we do not work by the hour. We’re not gig workers.”

Gagnon said she and other interpreters oppose the lowest-bid model because it doesn’t take credentials and experience into account. “Quite a few of us have more years of experience than others, have other degrees, be it in engineering or law or administration, and so these are additional credentials that should be taken into account when assigning interpreters,” she said. “You would want to assign an interpreter to the Supreme Court if they have done studies in law or if that’s their field of expertise, rather than send someone who has not.”

Public Services and Procurement Canada is extending current contracts with freelance interpreters until the end of the year as it works to update the procurement process. Once the new process is in place, interpreters will have to decide whether to submit bids to keep working on Parliament Hill.

Canadian Press (7/24/25) By Catherine Morrison

Read Full Article

An AI fiction translation service aimed at both traditional publishers and self-published authors has been launched in the U.K. GlobeScribe.ai is currently charging $100 per book, per language for use of its translation services.

“There will always be a place for expert human translation, especially for highly literary or complex texts,” said co-founders Fred Freeman and Betsy Reavley. “But GlobeScribe.ai opens the door to new opportunities, making translation a viable option for a much broader range of fiction.”

Freeman and Reavley said GlobeScribe conducted “extensive blind testing” of its tool. Native speakers reviewed GlobeScribe translations alongside human-translated versions of texts without being told which method had been used. According to a company statement, “The feedback consistently showed that readers could not reliably distinguish between them, and, in some cases, reviewers even felt the AI-assisted versions were closer in tone and fidelity to the original English manuscript.”

However, prominent translators and the Society of Authors’ Translators Association have expressed concern over the initiative.

“GlobeScribe may claim to unlock global access for fiction, but their approach sidelines the very people who make literature resonate across cultures,” said Ian Giles, chair of the Society of Authors’ Translators Association. “Suggesting that AI can match, or even surpass, the nuanced work of human translators on behalf of authors is flat-out wrong.”

Freeman and Reavley said that while they “recognize that parts of the industry are understandably cautious about what AI might mean for the arts,” they “believe these tools are here to stay and that they should be embraced thoughtfully and responsibly.” They added that AI could enhance creativity and help professional translators “increase their productivity and output, and that this isn’t about replacing human translators.”

“Even though I don’t think Globescribe can translate the kinds of literary texts I translate, I am gloomy about the emergence of all these new AI ‘translation’ services,” said Julia Sanches, who has translated such as works as Boulder by Eva Baltasar from Catalan into English. “They give the appearance that translation is instant, which devalues my labor, and also that it’s mediocre, which could make ‘good enough’ the new standard for the literary arts. And that’s a disservice to both authors and readers.”

The Guardian (7/8/25) By Ella Creamer

Read Full Article

A unique and expansive 13th-century text that attempted to chronicle the history of humankind is being translated and analyzed for the first time, with a University of British Columbia Okanagan (UBCO) professor spearheading the international effort.

The General e grand estoria (GE), commissioned by Alfonso X of Castile during his reign from 1252 to 1284, is considered the first universal history written in a language other than Latin—Old Spanish—and is said to include the social and cultural history of the world to that point.

In a news release, UBCO described the text as the “largest universal history written in Medieval Europe,” spanning more than 6,000 pages. It’s currently housed at the Biblioteca Nacional de España in Madrid.

With more than $2.1 million in federal funding through a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant, a global team of 55 researchers across 18 institutions, led by UBCO Professor Francisco Peña, is now translating and digitally preserving the work.

Peña said the historical text has been little known to people outside some academic circles. “Most of Spain has never heard about it, and I believe across Europe it’s not that well known,” he said. “Many relevant texts written in medieval Spain have disappeared. Through our efforts, we hope to change that and preserve this valuable piece of literature forever.”

What makes it “very interesting,” said Peña, is that, unlike most texts of its time, which were typically authored solely by Christians, the GE’s authors included Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Peña said the nearly 800-year-old manuscript offers a reminder of what’s possible when people set aside their differences to pursue shared knowledge.

For Peña, the text offers a lesson in shared human curiosity. “It gives a very interesting example of collaboration and how curiosity could be a perfect way to stop our differences in the search for knowledge.”

CBC (7/14/25) By Shaurya Kshatri

Read Full Article

Tech giant Meta has apologized and said it has fixed an auto-translation issue that led one of its social media platforms to mistakenly announce the death of Siddaramaiah, chief minister of the Indian state of Karnataka.

Siddaramaiah had posted on Instagram in the local Kannada language, saying he was paying his respects to the late Indian actress B. Saroja Devi. He also paid tribute to the actress on Facebook and X. However, Meta’s auto-translation tool inaccurately translated the Instagram post to suggest that Siddaramaiah, who uses just one name, was the one who “passed away.”

“Chief Minister Siddaramaiah passed away yesterday multilingual star, senior actress B. Took darshan of Sarojadevi’s earthly body and paid his last respects,” the garbled translation read.

In a statement, a Meta spokesperson said: “We fixed an issue that briefly caused this inaccurate Kannada translation. We apologize that this happened.”

Siddaramaiah criticized the auto-translation tool as “dangerous” in posts on Facebook and X, adding that such “negligence” from tech giants “can harm public understanding and trust.” He urged Meta to “temporarily suspend” its auto-translation tool for content written in Kannada “until the translation accuracy is reliably improved.” His office also requested that Meta work with Kannada-language experts to improve the feature.

“This poses a significant risk, especially when public communications, official statements, or important messages from the Chief Minister and the Government are incorrectly translated,” Siddaramaiah wrote. “It can lead to misinterpretation among users, many of whom may not realize that what they are reading is an automated and faulty translation rather than the original message.”

CNN (7/18/25) By Amarachi Orie

Read Full Article