As someone who at one time spoke fluent Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, I can confirm that "spomenik" can be (and sometimes is!) translated as "memorial". Indeed, the root of the word is a verb that in its archaic sense can mean "to remember", as does the verbal root of "memorial". Furthermore, "spomenik" can also be translated as "monument".
So while the word often is used in the context of the WWII socialist memorials, the word in fact just means "monument" or "memorial". For example, here's an article using the term for a memorial to veterans ("defenders"), specifically those who died, from the 1991-1995 Croatian War for Independence: https://pakrackilist.hr/spomenik-hrvatskim-braniteljima-dovr...
I don't completely disagree with the author's idea to use the original term to add some local color, but it's not a special term, just one of the general terms used for memorials and monuments. A related term, "spomenica", is also frequently used, but I'm not sure about the nuances between these two terms.
"Spomenik" definitely means "monument" or "memorial". In a specific context, it also means "tombstone".
"Spomenica" is much less used. I'm a native speaker -- born and raised in Belgrade -- and I've only heard it in very specialized and rare occasions, so I'm having a hard time translating it correctly. In the context I've heard it used, it's an award or recognition, usually in the form of a scroll or a medal.
I like the authors use of the native word "spomenik" to talk about this specific style, but it's definitely just the author's artistic choice.
Spomenik comes from "spomen", which translates to "recalling /remembering someone dead or some event from the past". It's basically a memorial that should invoke the viewer to recall the events past and/or people who were involved.
While spomenik is used for all monuments around the world, when someone just says "spomenik" the first thing that comes to my mind are those post-WWII spomeniks - probably because there's so many of them.
I feel like monument isn't a right translation. Do you call Eiffel Tower a monument? If yes, I can tell you that Eiffel Tower is definitely not a spomenik. If that is the case, "memorial" is the proper translation for spomenik.
With modern genomic science, we can pinpoint almost the exact time and place Covid-19 jumped from an animal host (likely pangolins intermediate host from bat reservoir) to humans.
It almost certainly jumped hosts to humans in November of 2019[1]. It has not been circulating in humans for long.
Indeed, several scientific publications have come out in the past decade that more or less predicted that a similar strain of SARS would jump hosts and become a pandemic disease[2].
Also, technically the Spanish Flu was just a bad flu season, right? Now, few believe now that Covid-19 will be nearly as bad as the 1918 pandemic (at least in its current mutation), but it will almost certainly worse than the 1957 flu pandemic, which was bad enough and which resulted in many governmental edicts similar to today, with many school and library closings.
I agree we need to keep cool and not overreact or panic, but we also need to take this thing very seriously. Even the experts are trying to figure this thing out. Disease modeling has come a long way since 1918, but modelers are not seers.
Exactly. The attacker would have to try a word-based attack to benefit from the ~7 hour time-to-crack.
So I disagree with the article's advice: "Don't use words in passwords. Ever." Yes, you should use caution when using words in a password, but even if you use a password manager, a 5- or 6-word diceware password is ideal. Even better if you stick on a 4-digit numeric "salt" to your diceware passwords.
But yes, I do agree that a 3-word password is too short (~33 bits of entropy[1]). It should be at least 5 words (~55 bits). And you really need at least 6 words (~66 bits, obviously) for a master password.
1. Using EFF's user-friendly, ~1200 word list for diceware.
Cryptography can solve social problems, but the problems need to be approached from a social perspective, not a computer science perspective. There's a hint of this type of approach in the work of Keybase.
Don't know if you're familiar with the Dragonbox apps (original for algebra and Dragonbox Elements for geometry). Those are incredible learning experiences that would not be possible on paper. Even a desktop w/mouse for those apps wouldn't be ideal, whereas a tablet or mobile phone is perfect.
> You're also most likely going to pay per word, so if you can figure out a good way to not send them sentences you've already had translated you can save some money
The typical process would be to send them the translated sentences in Trados or tmx format (translation memory) and ask for a discount for 100% matches (you may even be able to discounts for "fuzzy", or <100%, matches). These discounts are often referred to as "Trados" discounts. That said, not all agencies/translators offer such discounts.
> We once caught a translator (NOT of the above-mentioned companies) located somewhere in Europe inserting some choice political statements about a specific biotech/GMO company we had as a client.
What happened then? This stunt would be a grave offense for a professional translator. A certified/sworn translator would probably lose their certification for it. I'm guessing your translator was a cut-rate freelancer doing this work on the side with little connection to the professional translator community, which generally prides itself on its professionalism.
Also, no reputable translation agency that I know of gets their translators for UpWork. They either find them through word of mouth, translator associations, or sometimes translator communities like proz.com. They don't typically "post" jobs, rather they have a list of vetted translators who have signed their confidentiality and other contracts, and whom they then email individually to ask if they're interested in job X (usually attaching the job). And the more reputable ones have their own certification process or else only work with translators certified by a reputable body (ATA, ITI, etc.). Most reputable translation agencies will also have a second translator edit or proofread the document once it's been translated.
> Fiver and maybe Upwork
If you're going that route of finding a translator for each language yourself, I strongly suggest a translator community like proz.com, translatorscafe.com, or linguaquote.com (founded by HNer luxpir). Or a translator association like the ATA (American Translators Association). They all have translator directories you can search, and the communities have places you can post projects for bidding/quotes.
Alternatively, if you want human translation as a service, there are companies like gengo.com or unbabel.com.
But I strongly recommend against Upwork or Fiver. You can find some qualified translators on those sites, but you're much more likely to find someone who really doesn't know what they're doing. There are some of the same in the translator communities and associations, but if you're judicious about your search criteria, you're much less likely to end up with such a translator.
@schacon Interesting post. I agree that language-learning is more of a marathon than a sprint. As someone who speaks several languages[1], it was interesting to read about your perception of how polyglots learn languages. You picked up on some good things (flashcards and these days spaced repetition learning programs since vocab is critical, multiple different tools and books, online tutors) but you didn't mention a characteristic that most polyglots I know share[2]: an excellent foundation in the grammar of their own language, and the inclination to spend the time necessary to build a good foundation in the grammar of whatever language they are learning. I'm sure there are exceptions to this rule, but it seems to be enough of a trend that it's worth mentioning.
Some people promote the idea of learning a language "naturally" through an immersive environment. Although immersing yourself in the language is critical once you've picked up a strong foundation, I've personally known very few people who have learned a language to near-native fluency as an adult by simply jumping into a new language environment. Kids do this all the time, but the way most adults successfully learn a new language is different from the way children do it. I've watched some people waste a lot of time trying to speak to native speakers of a language they're learning without having any kind of foundation in vocabulary and grammar. They would have done well to spend at least a portion of that time picking up a basic vocab through flashcards and learning grammar fundamentals of the foreign language in question.
And although I'm sure there are exceptions to this rule, most polyglots I know are fascinated by grammar, in addition to having a strong interest in phonology and speech/accents.
So to anyone who has tried and failed to learn a foreign language as an adult and is thinking of giving it another try, I recommend picking up both a review book on the grammar of their native language, as well as a basic but complete grammar of the language they are targeting. Spend some time with these books along with Anki and the language-learning apps, and then go out and immerse yourself in another language environment, either through online language communities, or living/traveling abroad.
And one last type for new language learners: be sure to study idioms and phrases when you use Anki or whatever flashcard program, and not just simple words. Having a good stock of idioms is critical to fluent conversation.
1. At one time, fully fluent in 4 languages, now 2 are rusty but I'm picking them and another back up. I've also enjoyed an intermediate level of fluency in an additional 5-6 languages at one time or another. (I've also worked as a professional interpreter (2 years) and translator (10 years))
2. The only exceptions to this rule have been people who have learned 3-4 languages as children, but even they have a much better knowledge of grammar than most Americans I know.
Thanks for the great comment. I agree that you need to learn the grammar of a language. I personally have a pretty hard time internalizing grammar rules. Our head curriculum designer always makes fun of me because I want to ban tables of things (conjugations, etc) from the world. I can study and memorize it and then when I go to use it, totally miss and it's frustrating. But if I hear a sentence structure 30 times in a few weeks, I will often naturally start using it.
We try in our system to teach grammar through the same spaced repetition system - presenting a rule and then giving you a cloze test and spacing it the same as vocab. So we can know, for example, that your second person plural conjugation is weak and often missed, but your first person singular is strong because you always nail it. Then we can try to show you exercises that make you practice the weaker thing when you're in a live session, to reinforce it in a different environment and make sure you can produce it orally too.
Most recent research that I've seen, and the linguistics researchers that I've talked to, seem to conclude that there is little difference between being implicitly and explicitly taught grammar. That you don't need be explicitly explained the rule to use it consistently, but that the important thing is that your focus is brought to mistakes in form and you make an effort to improve those mistakes. There are a hundred studies on this and they all seem to come out slightly differently and generally not very significantly. That said, learners often like to know the rules, even if it's not significantly helpful for long term retention and production.
I would caution against recommending that people pick up a grammar book unless it's an incredibly good one. Most are dry and difficult and assume you know the vocabulary of linguistics, which most people don't. As we said, language is a marathon and it's hard to stick with if you're immediately and mind-numbingly bored, which grammar books are good at. I personally prefer to get communicative and work on fixing my grammar as I go, since it gives me momentum.
I like the middle ground that Chatterbug has taken. The grammar testing is interactive and you can reinforce good patterns when talking with human beings in a spaced way. I know my grammar is in many cases wrong when speaking in German, but most people don't seem to find the mistakes I make at my level particularly problematic, and it gives me time and confidence to focus on the forms that I'm getting wrong.
What's really funny to me is that watching my own videos right after I do a lesson, I notice many of my own grammar errors, because I'm hearing them and have time to think about them, but I don't always have time to pull stuff properly when in the heat of trying to formulate and speak a sentence in real time. But I belive that helps me improve faster and stay motivated.
I'm glad that you're integrating grammar into Chatterbug, even if it's implicit. I do believe that learning a foreign language's grammar implicitly (via immersion) is an inefficient way to pick up grammar. I tutored languages for 5 years in university and grad school, and I always saw the light bulb go off when I explained the rules why some word behaved in a certain way in a sentence. For most people, it's very enlightening and makes language learning easier and more enjoyable.
> I would caution against recommending that people pick up a grammar book unless it's an incredibly good one. Most are dry and difficult and assume you know the vocabulary of linguistics, which most people don't.
I strongly disagree. First, grammar books very rarely use any linguistics vocabulary. And learners can find totally adequate basic grammars in the back of introductory language learning books and textbooks. They do assume you know a little grammar vocab, but not linguistics (which is, of course, a field of study completely separate from language learning). For Indo-European languages, that includes things like "indirect object", "relative pronouns", "demonstrative pronouns", etc. And for declined languages like Russian and Greek, they may use terms like "nominative" and "accusative". But they often explain these terms first, and if not, that's why I recommend people first pick up a basic book on English grammar.
And yes, if your goal is simply to get by in a language, like to the level of a serious tourist, making frequent grammar mistakes is not a big deal.
But if your goal is to learn a language fluently, and particularly if your goal is to learn more than one language fluently, you should ask yourself if it's worth the initial investment of learning the basics of grammar, to the level that you're able to follow a basic introductory grammar. For most people reading HN, I'd think this is something they could pick up in several weeks part-time, or maybe a month or two if they have absolutely no background (like, you have no idea what the subject of a sentence is, or what verb tenses refer to). And then, based on my past multi-decade experience learning, teaching, and speaking multiple languages, I'd be willing to bet that things will "click" much more than if they had no idea what these things refer to.
Finally, I do agree that grammar should not be a major focus of foreign language learning -- maybe 10-20% of the time. But that 10-20% has the potential to make the other components of your language learning voyage much, much easier.
Did you look into Media Source Extensions[0,1]? Fetching and playing the various audio formats is a bit outside the purview of Web Audio. But you can feed streaming MSE into Web Audio. If I recall, you use Web Audio's `AudioContext.createMediaElementSource()` to use a (potentially chunked) MSE source with web audio, but it's been a while since I did this.
That said, Media Source Extensions (MSE) is only supported on relatively modern browsers (IE11+) but you should be able to use it to stream mp3 to the Web Audio API on supported browsers.
There's also a way to do this without using MSE for older browsers. See the 72lions repo below for an example[2]. It's a bit convoluted, but not as much work as your workaround. As described in the README of the 72lions proof-of-concept:
"The moment the first part is loaded then the playback starts immediately and it loads the second part. When the second part is loaded then then I create a new AudioBuffer by combining the old and the new, and I change the buffer of the AudioSourceNode with the new one. At that point I start playing again from the new AudioBuffer."
I think it's more like "fetching and displaying various image formats is outside the purview of HTML5 canvas".
If you want to just show an image, you use an <img> tag, or just play an audio file you use <audio>. Canvas and the Web Audio APIs are for pages that want to make or mix their own images/audio. Though to be fair, html/javascript do make it easy to load image data from an image tag directly into a canvas; maybe there's a missing parallel for audio.
If I recall, as we did that project a year and a half ago, MSE either wasn't available at that time or the latency was entirely unacceptable. I should have noted that with the setup I described above we are able to achieve <150ms of latency in most cases; and as the system also allows remote control of matrix sources and mixers, the low latency was required in order to accurately manipulate the system under certain working conditions.
When did you last use sanic? It's far from limited, and advancing quickly. However, it's a microframework, so it's true that you'll not get a full Django-like experience (and Meteor isn't even in the same class of web framework as Django or microframeworks like Sanic, so there's nothing to compare there either).
But with respect to microframeworks, Sanic is getting pretty close to feature parity with Flask, only asynchronously. I'm not sure what kind of plugin architecture you're looking for, but you can do middleware with Sanic. Also custom protocols. Also decorators (e.g., for auth). And for namespacing, there are blueprints. I'm not sure what you mean by "conf hooks".
It does help with Sanic if you're already familiar with Flask. Sanic is very close to an async version of Flask.
For a task queue, you can run async tasks with Sanic alone using `app.add_task(some_async_function)`.
It's also simple to use apscheduler if you want a more full-feature async scheduler. Example:
As someone who at one time spoke fluent Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, I can confirm that "spomenik" can be (and sometimes is!) translated as "memorial". Indeed, the root of the word is a verb that in its archaic sense can mean "to remember", as does the verbal root of "memorial". Furthermore, "spomenik" can also be translated as "monument".
So while the word often is used in the context of the WWII socialist memorials, the word in fact just means "monument" or "memorial". For example, here's an article using the term for a memorial to veterans ("defenders"), specifically those who died, from the 1991-1995 Croatian War for Independence: https://pakrackilist.hr/spomenik-hrvatskim-braniteljima-dovr...
I don't completely disagree with the author's idea to use the original term to add some local color, but it's not a special term, just one of the general terms used for memorials and monuments. A related term, "spomenica", is also frequently used, but I'm not sure about the nuances between these two terms.
I'm sure a native speaker could fill us in.