By clicking on Select Language, you're able to see the EWA website translated into a variety of languages, from Afrikaans to Zulu. These translations are generated by Google Translate and are unedited.
We thought long and hard before installing Google Translate on our site. Being part of a research programme about multilingualism, we wanted to ensure that our website was as accessible to as many visitors as possible, wherever in the world they come from, and whichever language they speak. Even if we had the expertise to create and publish our content in the very wide range of languages used by the people we want to reach, we would not have the resources to translate the content into many different languages. We decided that Google Translate would enable users to get a sense of gist. However, we’re also aware that Google Translate, as with all automatic translation tools, has considerable limitations and is likely to throw up inaccurate and, at times, nonsensical translations of our content. For this we apologise.
Translation is a creative act, and one which requires human input for it to be reliably successful and appropriate for the communicative context. Only a human translator can understand all the nuances of a language, the hidden metaphorical meanings, and the way each word of someone’s vocabulary is likely to be affected by relevant social, cultural and political influences. In the future we hope to take advantage of the many languages spoken in the EWA community and work together creatively to improve translations of EWA content.
{text above adapted from the Creative Multilingualism site}
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