Questões Tradutor Inglês para Concursos

Woman Becomes First South African Imprisoned for Racist Speech

LONDON – If Vicki Momberg had only unleashed a high-volume tirade at the South African police officers, video of it would have been of mere passing interest. But her repeated use of a racial slur unfamiliar to most Americans, but explosive in South Africa – made her notorious, and led to demands to make her an example.

On Wednesday, Ms. Momberg, a white woman, became the first person in South Africa to be sent to prison for using racist language against someone, according to prosecutors and legal experts. Specifically, she hurled the term kaffir, considered the most offensive racial slur in South Africa so radioactive socially that it is often referred to as the k-word.

The 2016 viral video of her outburst at police officers who responded to her report of thieves breaking into her car set off a national furor, and made Ms. Momberg a symbol of the racism that persists a generation after the collapse of apartheid.

Partly because of that video, viewed repeatedly on social media and news sites, the parliament may take up a bill that would make prosecution for hate speech more common.

In a Johannesburg courtroom on Wednesday, Magistrate Pravina Raghoonandan sentenced Ms. Momberg to three years in prison, with one year suspended. Local media reported that Ms. Momberg, once a well-off real estate agent, cried as the sentence was read. The judge refused to allow Ms. Momberg to remain free on bail pending an appeal, and officers led her away from the courtroom.

Her lawyer, Kevin Lawlor, declined to comment. The decision was met mostly with celebration on social media, in a majority-black country where profound inequality coexists with memories of an apartheid system that institutionalized racial separation and oppression. [...]

Woman Becomes First South African Imprisoned for Racist Speech

LONDON – If Vicki Momberg had only unleashed a high-volume tirade at the South African police officers, video of it would have been of mere passing interest. But her repeated use of a racial slur unfamiliar to most Americans, but explosive in South Africa – made her notorious, and led to demands to make her an example.

On Wednesday, Ms. Momberg, a white woman, became the first person in South Africa to be sent to prison for using racist language against someone, according to prosecutors and legal experts. Specifically, she hurled the term kaffir, considered the most offensive racial slur in South Africa so radioactive socially that it is often referred to as the k-word.

The 2016 viral video of her outburst at police officers who responded to her report of thieves breaking into her car set off a national furor, and made Ms. Momberg a symbol of the racism that persists a generation after the collapse of apartheid.

Partly because of that video, viewed repeatedly on social media and news sites, the parliament may take up a bill that would make prosecution for hate speech more common.

In a Johannesburg courtroom on Wednesday, Magistrate Pravina Raghoonandan sentenced Ms. Momberg to three years in prison, with one year suspended. Local media reported that Ms. Momberg, once a well-off real estate agent, cried as the sentence was read. The judge refused to allow Ms. Momberg to remain free on bail pending an appeal, and officers led her away from the courtroom.

Her lawyer, Kevin Lawlor, declined to comment. The decision was met mostly with celebration on social media, in a majority-black country where profound inequality coexists with memories of an apartheid system that institutionalized racial separation and oppression. [...]

Inside the world's quietest room

If you stand in it for long enough, you start to hear your heartbeat. A ringing in your ears becomes deafening. When you move, your bones make a grinding noise. Eventually you lose your balance, because the absolute lack of reverberation sabotages your spatial awareness.

In this room at Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, all sound from the outside world is locked out and any sound produced inside is stopped cold. It's called an anechoic chamber, because it creates no echo at all — which makes the sound of clapping hands downright eerie.

The background noise in the room is so low that it approaches the lowest threshold theorized by mathematicians, the absolute zero of sound — the next step down is a vacuum, or the absence of sound.

This is the world's quietest place.

Deafening silence

The room offers a very rare sensorial experience. As soon as one enters the room, one immediately feels a strange and unique sensation which is hard to describe, wrote Hundraj Gopal, a speech and hearing scientist and the principal designer of the anechoic chamber at Microsoft, in an email. Most people find the absence of sound deafening, feel a sense of fullness in the ears, or some ringing. Very ____ sounds become clearly audible because the ambient noise is exceptionally low. When you turn your head, you can hear that motion. You can hear yourself breathing and it sounds somewhat loud, he said.

In the real world, Gopal explained, our ears are constantly subject to some level of sound, so there is always some air pressure on the ear drums. But upon entering the anechoic room this constant air pressure is gone, since there are no sound reflections from the surrounding walls. This is a novel experience, he wrote. [...]

Inside the world's quietest room

If you stand in it for long enough, you start to hear your heartbeat. A ringing in your ears becomes deafening. When you move, your bones make a grinding noise. Eventually you lose your balance, because the absolute lack of reverberation sabotages your spatial awareness.

In this room at Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, all sound from the outside world is locked out and any sound produced inside is stopped cold. It's called an anechoic chamber, because it creates no echo at all — which makes the sound of clapping hands downright eerie.

The background noise in the room is so low that it approaches the lowest threshold theorized by mathematicians, the absolute zero of sound — the next step down is a vacuum, or the absence of sound.

This is the world's quietest place.

Deafening silence

The room offers a very rare sensorial experience. As soon as one enters the room, one immediately feels a strange and unique sensation which is hard to describe, wrote Hundraj Gopal, a speech and hearing scientist and the principal designer of the anechoic chamber at Microsoft, in an email. Most people find the absence of sound deafening, feel a sense of fullness in the ears, or some ringing. Very ____ sounds become clearly audible because the ambient noise is exceptionally low. When you turn your head, you can hear that motion. You can hear yourself breathing and it sounds somewhat loud, he said.

In the real world, Gopal explained, our ears are constantly subject to some level of sound, so there is always some air pressure on the ear drums. But upon entering the anechoic room this constant air pressure is gone, since there are no sound reflections from the surrounding walls. This is a novel experience, he wrote. [...]

Inside the world's quietest room

If you stand in it for long enough, you start to hear your heartbeat. A ringing in your ears becomes deafening. When you move, your bones make a grinding noise. Eventually you lose your balance, because the absolute lack of reverberation sabotages your spatial awareness.

In this room at Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, all sound from the outside world is locked out and any sound produced inside is stopped cold. It's called an anechoic chamber, because it creates no echo at all — which makes the sound of clapping hands downright eerie.

The background noise in the room is so low that it approaches the lowest threshold theorized by mathematicians, the absolute zero of sound — the next step down is a vacuum, or the absence of sound.

This is the world's quietest place.

Deafening silence

The room offers a very rare sensorial experience. As soon as one enters the room, one immediately feels a strange and unique sensation which is hard to describe, wrote Hundraj Gopal, a speech and hearing scientist and the principal designer of the anechoic chamber at Microsoft, in an email. Most people find the absence of sound deafening, feel a sense of fullness in the ears, or some ringing. Very ____ sounds become clearly audible because the ambient noise is exceptionally low. When you turn your head, you can hear that motion. You can hear yourself breathing and it sounds somewhat loud, he said.

In the real world, Gopal explained, our ears are constantly subject to some level of sound, so there is always some air pressure on the ear drums. But upon entering the anechoic room this constant air pressure is gone, since there are no sound reflections from the surrounding walls. This is a novel experience, he wrote. [...]

Inside the world's quietest room

If you stand in it for long enough, you start to hear your heartbeat. A ringing in your ears becomes deafening. When you move, your bones make a grinding noise. Eventually you lose your balance, because the absolute lack of reverberation sabotages your spatial awareness.

In this room at Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, all sound from the outside world is locked out and any sound produced inside is stopped cold. It's called an anechoic chamber, because it creates no echo at all — which makes the sound of clapping hands downright eerie.

The background noise in the room is so low that it approaches the lowest threshold theorized by mathematicians, the absolute zero of sound — the next step down is a vacuum, or the absence of sound.

This is the world's quietest place.

Deafening silence

The room offers a very rare sensorial experience. As soon as one enters the room, one immediately feels a strange and unique sensation which is hard to describe, wrote Hundraj Gopal, a speech and hearing scientist and the principal designer of the anechoic chamber at Microsoft, in an email. Most people find the absence of sound deafening, feel a sense of fullness in the ears, or some ringing. Very ____ sounds become clearly audible because the ambient noise is exceptionally low. When you turn your head, you can hear that motion. You can hear yourself breathing and it sounds somewhat loud, he said.

In the real world, Gopal explained, our ears are constantly subject to some level of sound, so there is always some air pressure on the ear drums. But upon entering the anechoic room this constant air pressure is gone, since there are no sound reflections from the surrounding walls. This is a novel experience, he wrote. [...]