Challenges and Distortions of Translating Grammatical Gender in Literary Texts: Julio Cortázar Translated into Various European Languages

With a focus on various translations of the short story ‘Historia con migalas’ by one of the most renowned Latin American writers, the Argentinian author Julio Cortázar, this article describes and exemplifies numerous translational problems with respect to grammatical gender. In spite of the difficulties in Spanish of entirely avoiding gender/ sex references, Cortázar deliberately endeavours (successfully) to hide the gender of the protagonist couple by tricking the reader into a heterosexual, stereotypical mindset until, at the end of the story, he reveals that the couple consists of two women, forcing the reader to reanalyse and reinterpret the entire story. As this article shows, not all translators seem to be aware of Cortázar’s subtle play with grammatical gender, and vice versa - in this case - biological gender and, therefore, entirely miss the quintessence of the story. A relevant question that arises is whether it is possible in the languages under consideration to translate this playing with gender at all, or whether constraints as to the structure of the languages impede it (for example, differences between grammatical gender and natural gender languages). Finally, some evidence is brought forward to address the question of how the (mis)translated short stories were received by reviewers.

THEORY AND PRACTICE OF STORYTELLING WITH SCRATCHJR TO DEVELOP EARLY MATHS SKILLS

This paper seeks to contribute to the debate surrounding children and digital storytelling by focusing on its application in preschool to develop early maths skills. Starting from a literature review, the paper describes a brief relevant question of how storytelling and teaching programming can be mutually supporting and outlines the educational potential of this approach. At the crossroads between the examination of some pedagogical practices, the paper shows a modality of didactic work that is relevant and practicable for conducting digital storytelling activities in the preschool.

Identifying the Maximum Concentration of Results in Bilateral Sports Competitions

There are situations in which a monopoly solution cannot be reached. In these cases, which situation represents the maximum concentration (minimum competitive balance)? It is a relevant question, given that in sports economics, measuring the competitive balance of a league is done through normalized indices. These indices require that the maximum level of concentration be known. Until now, the distribution of results that generates the maximum level of concentration has been identified in the literature as Complete cascade distribution. However, if the scoring system used does not fulfil the stability condition, which implies that the total number of points of a championship is constant, it can be demonstrated that the Complete cascade distribution does not generate the maximum level of concentration. This is the case, for example, with major European football leagues. In this article, we constructed a perfectly unbalanced distribution, which we called a Truncated cascade distribution. This distribution generates the maximum concentration level. Therefore, if we do not use Truncated cascade distribution, there is an overestimation of the concentration measured with normalized indices. Then, the calculated competitive balance will be wrong, that is, underestimated. We provided a spreadsheet for identifying this distribution.

Profiting from Enabling Technologies?

How to profit from innovation has been an important question for both innovation scholars and practitioners over the years. It is certainly a relevant question for all types of technological innovation, including emerging ones. David J. Teece’s profiting from innovation (PFI) framework [Teece DJ (1986) Profiting from technological innovation: Implications for integration, collaboration, licensing and public policy. Res. Policy 15(6):285–305.] sets forth a theory of the relevant contingencies. However, Teece’s framework focuses on technologies with applications in specific domains. We focus on the question of how to profit from enabling technologies: technologies that are applicable across multiple domains. We argue that capturing value in such circumstances is fundamentally different from profiting from less-enabling technologies and raises new issues with respect to the relevant business models and public policies. This paper’s contribution is threefold. It formally revises and extends the original PFI framework to include the case of enabling technologies, it provides empirical evidence to support the distinction between profiting from enabling and profiting from narrower “discrete” technologies, and it generates perspectives on the appropriate business models for these technologies and discusses related public policy implications, in light of the fact that the share of the benefits the innovator can capture is likely to be even smaller for enabling than for discrete technologies.

Idea of Research-Writing in Sociology: Polemics on the Loss of a Transformative Practice

Following Alwin Gouldner (1971), it is pertinent to perpetually ask a seemingly all-time relevant question. And the question is, what do sociologists do? In the manner of doing sociology of sociology, and by a polemical resurrection of fragments from the dominant practices of sociologists, this essay brings forth general understanding about the idea of research-writing in contemporary India. It underlines the anomalies in the practice of research-writing, connected with the teaching and training programmes, in a self-referential perspective. The essay substantiates the polemics with analytical reasoning, in order to reveal as to what could be reasons behind this state of sociological research-writings.

Lessons Learned From Freespans at Pipeline Watercourse Crossings

Over the past 10 years inspections (site visits, boat based surveys or diver surveys) have been completed at nearly 20,000 pipeline watercourse crossings for 20 different pipeline owners. During the last 10 years there have been 721 unique locations where an exposed pipeline was found and at 213 of these locations a freespan was encountered. Only one of the freespans resulted in the failure (loss of product) of the pipeline. This record illustrates what is now become widely accepted, that pipeline exposure does not necessarily lead to pipeline failure. The record adds to this, pipeline freespan does not necessarily lead to failure. This highlights that the relevant question for “water loading caused pipeline failure” is: Does the combination of freespan length and water velocity exceed a combination that would lead to vortex induced vibration or the exceedance of the static load limit of the pipe?

Is digital always better? Comparing two English print dictionaries with their digital counterparts

In this paper we discuss advantages and disadvantages of e-dictionaries over print dictionaries in order to answer one increasingly relevant question: is digital always better? We compare the e-content from Oxford University Press and Merriam-Webster flagship dictionaries against their most recent print counterparts. The resulting data shows that the move from print to digital, against popular perception, results in a loss of lexicographical detail and scope. After assessing the user-friendliness of the e-dictionaries’ sites in both desktop and mobile app formats, we conclude that Merriam-Webster currently utilizes the digital medium somewhat better, while Oxford University Press is the current market leader in collaborations with tech giants such as Google. Most crucially, however, both companies have yet to devise and implement optimal ways to balance advertising noise and lexicographical content. Finally, we compare the virtual popularity of e-dictionaries according to their social media efforts and product partnerships. The greatest problem e-dictionaries currently face is that content does routinely change in unspecified and even undocumented ways. Despite these significant disadvantages, the convenience of mobile online accessibility appears to outweigh the concern with the reliability and quality of content.

To the question on studying national versions of multinational languages (on the example of Mexican national version of Spanish)

This article is dedicated to examination of the currently relevant question of linguistic variation. The goal consists in the analysis of key approaches towards studying the peculiarities of Mexican national version of Spanish. The subject of this research is the specificities of systemic, logical, linguistic, and cognitive-pragmatic approaches towards studying national versions of multinational languages. The starting point is the statement that problem of determination and structurization of approaches towards studying separate aspects of the genesis, statics and dynamics (state and functionality) of this national version of the modern Spanish lingual system requires a more detailed and thorough analysis. Within the framework of this article, the author considers the systematic, logical, linguistic, cognitive-pragmatic approaches and their specificity, substantiated by the peculiarities of studying linguistic and speech means of the Mexican national version of Spanish as an independent national-cultural model of the linguistic worldview. Russian and foreign Romance philology has a number of works dedicated to the topic at hand. However, the question of systematization of approaches towards studying separate aspects of development, current state, and national-cultural specificities of functionality of phonetic, lexical, and grammatical linguistic units, which determine the differences between Mexican national version of Spanish and other versions, remains unresolved.