Hi- I totally agree that major and minor ICANN and ALAC documents should be
translated into as many languages as possible. We have a budget for it, do
we not? How can we get some of that money spent, Bruce? We've got a whole
website to do.
However I am much less sure of the need to translate all the committee work
discussion lists. In regard to committee work, whether we like it or not,
the ICANN bylaws are explicit in the requirement that directors,
representatives, etc are able to "work and communicate in written and spoken
English."
On the other hand, there's nothing that says that a list post can't be in
another language. But my point is very simple--that if you want to get other
ALAC members' attention and buy-in to your point of view, the most expedient
way to do that-- I would think--is to post the issue in language common to
everyone on the list. We are all volunteers and all so busy with our jobs--
why make all your colleagues take the extra time to go to a machine
translation service, every time, when you know those sites offer notoriously
poor translations? "Did you really mean this? Did you really mean that?"
is what we would end up saying.
The machine translations are awful at best, and here is a perfect example.
Consider Erick's recent response to me, which ends (according to machine
translation Spanish to English): "Sincerely of the person who less waits
for a racist commentary like which you have done to me, was of You. Erick"
Looks to me like Erick is calling me a racist, "a person with a prejudiced
belief that one race is superior to others."
Now, I could be offended and demand a public apology, or I could just fluff
it off as a mistake in machine translation. Since calling anyone a racist
would be counter to the collegial nature of ALAC, to say nothing of a
non-sequitur to my original post, I am writing it off to machine translation
problems.
It's so hard for us to decide anything together now-- so what would it be
like to have to wait for an official translator to post in several languages
before we write a response? It just doesn't scale when a committee is trying
to work. Look how long it has taken us to do the self-review document--
almost a year. We're still not done. Imagine if it were in all our mother
languages and edits were done in all those tongues. Make no mistake-- once
the committee work is done---translate it into many, many languages.
Just my opinion
JP
At 9:29 AM -0400 8/7/06, Jacqueline A. Morris recently said:
Hi Jean
My spanish isn't good, but I use a translation service to get the gist - I
haven' responded on the item yet cause I've been real busy.
Yet again, I think we need to get ourselves in gear about opening up to
other languages... If we are serious about being representative.
Jacqueline
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