The Week in Review: March 10, 2023

If you regularly use English in your day-to-day life, you’ve probably heard the words “pinkwashing” and “anti-fat” at least a handful of times in recent years. But did you know that they weren’t in the dictionary until last month? Dictionary.com recently added those and more than 300 others into its database — read more on that from Smithsonian Magazine below.

And on Wednesday, we celebrated International Women’s Day — Oxford University Press shared a fascinating blog post about important women throughout the history of linguistics, while Keywords Studios sponsored the Women in Games Summit the day after.

Plus, If you’re subscribed to the print version of MultiLingual magazine, you’ll also be receiving a special edition for Women’s History Month pretty soon — be on the lookout for more opportunities to celebrate the women in our industry.

Got news you’d like to share in next week’s Week in Review? Send it over to our editorial team here.

Universal Speech Model (USM): State-of-the-art speech AI for 100+ languages (via Google)

This past November, Google announced its 1,000 Languages Initiative, an effort that’s similar to Meta’s “No Language Left Behind” initiative — the goal is essentially to develop a machine learning model that supports the 1,000 most widely spoken languages in the world.

On Monday, Google announced that it’s made a “critical first step” toward that goal, with its Universal Speech Model, which can perform automatic speech recognition in more than 100 languages.

‘A generational shift’: war prompts Ukrainians to embrace their language (via The Guardian)

Since Russia began its war in Ukraine, MultiLingual has reported that fewer Ukrainians have reported using the Russian language in their day-to-day lives than before the war. This week, The Guardian profiled a handful of Ukrainian nationals who have made a concerted effort to use Ukrainian more regularly.

Dictionary.com Adds More Than 300 New Words (via Smithsonian Magazine)

The English dictionary just got a little bit bigger — 313 words, to be exact. Plus, 130 new definitions and 1,140 revised definitions.

Some of the new additions include terms like “anti-fat,” “antifragile,” “northpaw,” and “pinkwashing.” Dictionary.com, one of the most prominent online dictionaries of American English, notes that the addition of these new terms isn’t necessarily an endorsement of them, but simply an effort to fully encompass the range of English words in use today.

“The addition of a word to the dictionary is not an endorsement, but rather a documentation of its use in the real world,” the company wrote in a blog post announcing the addition.

Women in the history of linguistics—from marginalization to recognition (via Oxford University Press)

In honor of International Women’s Day on Wednesday, Oxford University Press shared a blog post detailing the history of women-led scholarship in the field of linguistics. Read on for fun facts about Queen Isabela I’s role in developing the first grammar book of the Spanish language and the Japanese linguist and translator who helped document the endangered and highly persecuted Ainu language.

Women in Games Summit 2023 (via Keywords Studios)

And on the day after International Women’s Day, Keywords Studios sponsored the Women in Games Summit 2023, a career and networking expo to support women looking to pursue a career in the video game industry.

“Keywords Studios is delighted to announce we are sponsoring the online Women in Games Summit. Several staff from our various studios will be attending to help initiate and drive various projects,” the company wrote on its webpage.