Chinese Language Day—20th April

Chinese language day was initiated by the United Nations to celebrate the language, its facts, and its culture. It is observed on April 20th every year. UN Department of public information took this initiative in 2010 to celebrate multilingualism and cultural diversity. They also planned the promotion of all six languages of the United Nations throughout the organization.

History of Chinese day

Chinese got its place in the United Nations in 1946. It was not much in use and practice in the United Nations' work. However, the situation got better with the restoration of the lawful placing of the People’s Republic of China in the United Nations in 1971. Moreover, a general assembly of the United Nations included Chinese as a working language in 1974.

They selected the date of 20th April to pay homage to Cangjie, who was a legendary figure in China. He is a great historian and is also considered an inventor of Chinese characters. According to history, he invented these characters about 5000 years ago.

Significance of ‘Guyu’

They celebrated Chinese language day in 2010 for the first time. However, the date was different i.e. 12th of November. Its date was later changed to the 20th of April due to Guyu in the Chinese calendar. Chinese people celebrate ‘Guyu’ which roughly happens to start on April 20th. They celebrate Guyu in the honor of Cangjie who invented Chinese characters, deities, and ghosts, and they all cried and it further rained millet. ‘Guyu’ word literally means “rain of millet”.

Annual events

There are different events and activities held every year. At UN headquarters in New York, a three-event series which is organized by the UNSRC Chinese book club is conducted.Moreover, it has its focuses on three types of pictographs Liangzhu inscribed symbols, Dongba script, and oracle bone script. It is associated with three cultures and also refers to three UNESCO world heritage sites The archeological ruins of Liangzhu city, the old town of Lijiang, and Yinxu). The three events were

Guided tour of the Lianghzu Museum

A language class on Dongba script

A lecture on the origin and Chinese characters' evolution

Three events were also conducted within three broader contexts. Four great ancient civilizations, multilingualism, and a pristine writing system. These events were conducted via zoom starting from 19th April to 21, 2021. China’s permanent representative to the UN and ambassador Zhang Jun delivered his speech at the first event.

Final words

Chinese language day is celebrated on the 20th of April. The date was selected to honor the Chinese legendary figure who invented Chinese language characters around 5000 years ago. Chinese language speakers and enthusiasts celebrate the day by conducting different activities and cultural practices.

Good Freelance Translating Source for Korean to English

The Korean language is quite tough for a non-native speaker. English is a universal language and it always requires change into almost every other language. Moreover, everyone needs help while trying his hands at a new language. It is always tough and difficult to start with.

As for the Korean to the English language, an expert and fluent translator is the first option to cope with this problem. The best freelance translation source for Korean to English could include translators apps. When it comes to freelance human translators, that could cost a lot of money. Translators can always be hired for the task. However, for the free freelance translation source, these five apps are the best to choose from.

Naver Korean Dictionary

This app works wonders. It can translate to and from Korean. This translation app can easily be used in freelancing. It also suggests different variations and sentences to help learn the language and the right use of words in a sentence.

Papago Translate

This language also comes from the Naver, it is a great source of translator and is a dictionary as well. It is more like a lighter version of Naver so share many differences with the original one. Its interface is user-friendly and translators can conveniently use this app to translate from Korean to English or vice versa.

Google Translate

Google Translate is not something to ignore or avoid when it comes to translation. It is one of the greatest freelancing translation sources of today’s time. It is multilingual. It is a good source for translating to and from Korean. However, it is important to note that the translation apps are not good at fluency and getting the context. These do help to maintain consistency, though.

Greenlee Korean English translator

This is one of the most effective translation apps for the Korean language. It can translate via text, speech, and conversation. It also offers its services to rectify the grammar mistakes in the sentences. Moreover, it has some great features which help in learning. It also contains its collection of phrasebooks and other sentences, hence, making it one of the best choices.

Klay's-Development Korean-English Translator

This translation app is quite unique and worthwhile. It offers different ways to translate a Korean word and even caters to a few slang as well. It also sometimes can get the context. It has a pretty good grasp of the languages it offers, so making another best-translating app for freelancers.

Final words

Freelance translating sources for Korean to English could either b human translators or free translation apps. It depends on the requirement as per the complexity of the content. Hence, it is important that companies and freelancers know what they are working on and should go for a professional translation solution for Korean to English if important.

World Day for Safety and Health at Work

The world day for safety and health was observed on April 28. The international labor organization ILO started observing World Day in 2003 to prevent occupational accidents and global disease. In addition to it, it also focuses on providing the employees with a clean, safe, and healthy environment.

Why it is Needed to Celebrate the Safety and Health Day

According to the estimates of ILO, 2.3 million fatalities were observed worldwide each year due to work-related diseases and accidents. This results in over 6000 deaths every year. The organization in which hazardous substances are used causes the death of over 650,000 deaths each year. In addition, 340 million occupational deaths occur because of occupational accidents and 160 million are prone to work-related illnesses. The ILO celebrates this day to investigate occupational safety and health issues and save the lives of people.

History of Safety and Health Day

April 28 is also celebrated to commemorate the dead and injured workers. It has been organized by trade union movements since 1996. Its objective is to give honor to the victims of occupational accidents and disease and to create a worldwide mobilization for developing awareness among the masses regarding the safety and health of the workers.

Since 2003, ILO has been a part of the April 28 campaign. They got a request for this campaign from the trade union movement. This day is celebrated to mitigate occupational injuries and disease.

Prevention of Occupational Accidents and Disease

We all need to prevent ourselves from deaths and injuries on the job. This government has to provide infrastructure and SOPs to ensure that employees don’t get injured and the organization flourishes. This includes the formulation of national programs and policies and the strict legislation to make sure that health and safety policies are getting followed. As workers or employees, we need to protect ourselves and others and work safely. We can do this if we know the safety and health policies. April 28 is the day to get awareness about all this.

Wrapping Up

April 28 is celebrated to create awareness about occupational safety and health among trade unions and government and private organizations, employers, and employees. The ILO makes all the organizations responsible to create safe and healthy cultures so that injuries and deaths can be prevented in the workplace and workers and employees can return to their homes safely at the end of the day.

Celebrating World English Language Day

23 April is the world’s English language day. The United Nations has started this ritual of observing April 23, as English language day. It is interesting to note William Shakespeare’s birthday is also celebrated on the same date. According to research, the great playwright of all time William Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564. Although it is quite impossible to know the exact date of his birth, however, he was baptized on April 26. It is also believed that he was born and died on the same date. 

English language - an introduction

English language belongs to the Indo-European language family and is a West Germanic language. The language was named after Angles, he was from ancient Germanic people who migrated from Anglia. Angalia was a peninsula situated on the Baltic Sea. The closest relatives of English are Scots followed by Low Saxon. English is West Germanic and also has its words that have the influence of Old Norman French and Latin as well as Old Norse (North Germanic language). An important fact about the language is it is often referred to as a world language also named ‘Lingua Franca’ which implies it is a language that bridges the gap created by other languages.

History of English language Day

It was decided by the United Nations department of global communications back in 2010 to celebrate the language day for every six languages. They took the initiative of dedicating a day to a particular language. The main goal was to throw light on cultural diversity and highlight multilingualism.

The Observation of English language day was started in 1946 onwards and relevant people organize a number of activities on this day. Moreover, world book and copyright day are also observed on April 23. During 16th and 17th centuries, which was Shakespeare’s era, the English language was having a rough time and was going through a lot. Shakespeare through his creativity contributed to the betterment of the language and gave hundreds of words and phrases which are still in practice and use even after thousands of years. It is interesting to note here that the words such as ‘gossip’. ‘fashionable’ and ‘lonely’ were all coined by Shakespeare. Moreover, he also proposed to the world these popular phrases such as

• ‘all our yesterdays’
• ‘faint hearted’
• ‘Love is blind’

How the English language is celebrated

English is a vast and universal language. The enthusiastic speakers

 perform a lot of activities to celebrate the day. Different cultural events are organized and the day aims to entertain people with different informational activities. 

Different organizations and institutions conduct

• Book reading events
• Quizzes
• Poetry recitations
• Lituerature exchanges
• Activities to highlight and promote Shakespeare’s contribution

Conclusion

English language day is observed on 23rd April by its speakers across the globe. 23rd April also happens to be the birth and death day of William Shakespeare who has a great contribution to English literature. The evident speakers of the English language celebrate this day by conducting different events, cultural activities, and language exercises.  

The positive and negative effects of technology

Technology keeps on witnessing different advancements every day. Like every other invention, it also comes with its pros and cons. Technology has enabled people to perform different tasks with more ease and convenience. They try things in different ways and enjoy the perks that technology has to offer. Technology has always been on rising since its inception. 

However, talking about the positive and negative effects of the technology.

Here are three main positive effects of it. 

3 Positive effects of technology

Better security standards for organizations

Organizations with sensitive data and details have always suffered at the hands of hackers. They had to keep an eye on their systems to ensure there is no unethical activity that may ruin their reputation in the market. Such activity can also cause them to lose customers. Advanced technology has helped all organizations to have better and more secure safety systems now. The theft can hardly be executed completely. All the alarm and security systems warn the makers right away after the first unauthorized touch, which is a great achievement.

Managing money is safer now

Technology has enabled people now to perform most of their transactions online. They no more need to get afraid of the thieves who can snatch money from them. They can use plastic money now. There are credit, debit cards, and mobile wallets which have made monetary affairs easier for everyone.

Quick and easy data retrieval

People have suffered a lot from losing and misplacing documents before they had advanced technology. They had to redo their work from scratch. Things have been changed now, and there are software and apps that let people retrieve their lost data within minutes.

3 Negative effects of technology

Technology with its advantages has disadvantages too. However, it is up to humans how do they manage to use and make most of it while avoiding the negative effects.

Three of the important negative effects are

Digital eye strain

It is one of the most important negative effects of technology. The excessive use of tablets, cell phones, and computers has made people develop eye strain. It causes blurry vision, makes eyes dry, and also causes different neck and shoulder pain.

Cyber bluing

The anonymity and faces behind screens make people hide their original identities. They fake to be a person which they are not. It further allows them to bully people online. They blackmail others for different reasons. Excessive exposure to technology is one biggest reasons that has also caused the loss of privacy.

Sleep problems

Human mental and physical health is extremely problematic, and he can only excel at work when he feels hale and healthy. However, now technology has penetrated bedrooms and the excessive use of cell phones and other gadgets has made people suffer from sleep problems.

Conclusion

Human beings have always been into things that help them do their work in a better and error-free way. Technology has helped people in the best way possible that people never imagined. However, it has its negative effects as well, so it is always recommended to be mindful of the fact that excess of everything is bad.

How good is the development of machine translation?

 Machine translation

Machine translation is an automated translation that deals with the translation of source material from one language to another without any intervention of human resources and translators. This is relatively a new and recent idea for the masses these days. However, it is interesting to note that it has been there for decades and has evolved over the years.

Evolution of machine translation

The evolution and development of machine translation have been on spot. Although human translators are not replaceable, machine translation also plays a vital role in the quality of the translation.

An unsupervised machine translation that performs without human involvement is suitable for all the text that is plain and has rather low readability. Machine translation traditionally has been initiated for user-generated text and content such as forums, reviews, and other auctions. Machine translation can perform well for simple and business documents in many languages.

Development of the machine translation 

The development of machine translation has benefitted the text and content in the way

• Faster execution of the content in the market: the translator, with the help of machine translation and translation memory, can deal with the project in a short time and launch it into the market way earlier.

• Consistency in particular terms and terminology: consistency and accuracy are very important in a translation. Human translators can not deliver a consistent translation without the help of a machine translation.

• Maximized productivity of translators: suggestions and translation of old words, maintaining consistency and accuracy increases the productivity of translators

• A rather lower cost of the translation: earlier attempts of the translation saved terms, and the role of translation memory reduces the budges automatically.

More work in a short time

Machine translation is a limited resource without human translators, and so is the case with human translators sans machine translation. It can help translators to spend less time on translation and free them to work on more projects and other assignments, eventually serving more companies.

Machine translation can increase the translators' time and capability of spending time on a project 3 to 5 times. It enables translators and language vendors to localize the content in less time. it helps increase productivity and reduces expenses. This further lets the companies translate more content into more languages.

Beneficial for language vendors and translators 

These are a few points that have been listed down to throw light on how machine translation has developed over the years for good and for the betterment of translation projects. Companies, language vendors, and translators have been benefited from machine translation and its features for a really long now. Their experience and feedback are also enabling the developers and makers to develop and shape up further with new specialties and features.

Final words

Machine translation has been no doubt one of the important and beneficial developments. Its development has facilitated the companies and language vendors in the best way possible. It can help reduce the translator’s time by saving translation, maintaining consistency and accuracy in the content.

Technology will be the downfall of humanity

Technology penetrated human lives for some positive effects and for the betterment of humanity. Starting from the basic heads and fire to firearms and the internet. The combination of humanity’s exceptional brain and technology has worked wonders and has empowered humans like never before. It has empowered humankind to harness electricity, cover the longest distances in the shortest time span possible, and a number of other activities that humans take for granted now. Without technology, it was impossible to have these facilities and dominant life. However, technology has empowered us in great ways. On the other end, it also contains the great potential to be the reason for humanity's downfall.

This is why there is much possibility as suggested by the experts that humanity could meet its downfall and end as a result of nuclear warfare, climate change, or artificial intelligence. 

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is one of the big reasons that may cause humanity’s downfall. Robots and other models of artificial intelligence could be dangerous for humanity. Famous and renowned physicist Stephan Hawking repeatedly claimed that artificial intelligence might ruin humanity. Even the creators of this intelligence won’t be able to control these. He further mentioned that humans are already largely dependent on machines, computer intelligence, so they further can outsmart the human brain and humanity. Artificial intelligence is almost ready to replace reality with additional features like Alexa and Siri. There are many possibilities that a relatively advanced program like this may enable a robot or intelligence to think on its own and eventually lead to being a rebel against its own creator.

Nuclear war

The creation of nuclear bombs and other explosive material is one of the biggest threats to humankind. The creators and owners of this can destroy the whole world in a single press.

Technology can become the reason for the downfall of humanity due to a rapid change in the climate. This change is happening due to man-made technology. Coal and gas-burning have caused the temperature globally to increase. This is returning the favor with catastrophic weather patterns, droughts, and other hazards. Biological warfare is another problem of the same route. There are viruses and bacteria that can destroy humanity. The recent pandemic COVID-19 claimed millions of lives worldwide. Although, there is no discussion about it being a bioweapon or a natural virus. The researches in laboratories have their negative effects too. Radiations are also not good for the human body in the long run.

Climate change

Climate change has also empowered the storms and there is an increased ratio of morality in affected areas. The effect of climate change is also causing sea levels to rise. According to the experts, the sea level is expected to rise up to around 4 feet in the next eighty years, which may cause many coastal areas to go underwater. Climate has been greatly affected by advanced technology. The ozone layer is also leaving space now. The temperature has been rising every day. There are more summers recorded in recent years as compared to winters in the regions which witness all four seasons.

Final words

It's either nuclear power, artificial intelligence, or climate change, technology can surely be the reason for humanity’s downfall technology can outsmart humanity easily and further be the cause of human extinction. So, this is high time to take the charge, respond and control the technology sensibly to avoid a pitiful demise and downfall.

Resources

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