[governance] MSism and democracy (multilingualism)

Wed Jun 8 15:59:09 EDT 2011

Yo creo que como Roxanna, todos debemos tener la posibilidad de comunicarnos en nuestro propio idioma para enriquecer el debate. Sin embargo, pienso que el idioma no debe ser una barrera para lograr comunicarnos. De hecho tambien he visto que los traductores automáticos pierden mucha informacion importante al momento de realizar la traducción.

Tal vez la idea de Daniel sea interesante y se pueda implementar. 
Tampoco creo que la lista se divida entre los que buscan usar un traductor y los que no. Creo firmemente que debemos seguir utilizando una sola. 

Cordialmente,

JUAN MANUEL ROJAS P

Ubuntu user number # 33469
Linux Registered user #533108. 

________________________________
De: Daniel Pimienta <pimienta at funredes.org>
Para: governance at lists.cpsr.org
Enviado: miércoles, junio 8, 2011 1:27 P.M.
Asunto: Re: [governance] MSism and democracy (multilingualism)

> I strongly support Roxana's argument. I think each person should have the right, recognised and automatically accepted by others, to express him or her self in the language in which he or she feels most comfortable.
I totally second Deirde's position, which has been used as a basic rule within our many virtual communities since 1988.

Is it true that one take a chance of too few people understand if, for instance, express in Haitian creole?
Yes indeed! But this a decision of that person to use it knowing that fact, or to prefer French or English, depending
on each specific situation. N'est-ce-pas?

By the way, Google Translate included now Hatian creole... but, unfortunately, Google decided it will close
its API in the coming months (see http://code.google.com/intl/en/apis/language/translate/overview.html).
¡Que malo!

As for Funredes's experiences with imbedding automatically program translation in mailing list, here is an update.
We have received some support from OIF (Francophonie) to try to create a professional open source software with
all the combinations of features we have been experimented in the past years;
unfortunalely we were not able to have the project reach the expected results.

We are investing now in a more appropriate version based on Moodle which is quite performing, and we are using
it in various contexts.

Why Moodle?
Because it got the best of two worlds : email and web (you read emails and you write in the web).
Because it cleans all the garbage threading which makes translation without moderation a mess - a mess because
netiquette has been lost even in highly digitaly educated communities and people just do reply without cleaning (see note 1).
Because it is well organized/designed (librarian style!).
We have added in Moodle our module of imbedding translation and moderation (moderation is quite
important, even if only technical, as it allows to correct the many typing mistakes, the lack of punctuation, and arrange long sentences
which all together makes automatic translation appears very poor.
The result is acceptable. Yet it has to be understood that this is NO TRANSLATION but only an aid for mutual inter-comprehension.
The experience shows anyway that to have a positive experience the community needs to be explained clearly the rule of the game.

We want to transform now the coward leave of Google Translate (after having enrich their translation data base with the help of millons
of users which gave them a unique strategic advantage, they just say good bye!) into a good news.
We always thought that the best solution would have been to have a good translation software under Linux
to interface, instead of BabelFish or Google Translate. But this dream has not yet come thru...

So we are going to check the possibility to interface a Windows based software from our Linux server and
make a real gap.

Hasta luego,
Daniel

NOTE 1: I have a dream... Imaginate a virtual world where the default reply function of mailers give an empty message :-)...
This tiny change will have huge positive impact, in terms of time and money (and even some impact in global warming!).  
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