Archive for
February 22nd, 2006
Stories
Found in Translation
One of the greatest challenges in curating the global online conversation is translation. To present ideas and reflections from one language and culture to another is no easy task and often ends up taking more time than writing the original post. Still, Global Voices is committed to presenting a plethora of voices in as many languages as we can. You may have noticed increased coverage of the Francophone blogosphere by Alice Backer, Arabic-speaking bloggers by Haitham Sabbah, as well as my own translations and those of numerous volunteers from Spanish into English. Likewise, Global Voices posts are frequently translated into other languages such as Portnoy's volunteer translations into Chinese and Miguel Esquirol's weekly translation of Eduardo Ávila's Bolivia coverage.
As chance would have it, yesterday was UNESCO's international Mother Language Day with this year's theme fittingly devoted to “languages and cyberspace.” It stirred little conversation in the blogosphere, but the website is full of interesting and informative resources including links to related projects and the newly revised Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger of Disappearing (how many bloggers do you know writing in Wayuu?)
Another initiative promoting multilingualism online, however, does seem to be gathering some major steam. Liz Henry of the American Literary Translators Association Blog is the driving force behind this year's first annual Carnival of Blog Translation which will take place on Tuesday February 28th.
On the day of the Carnival, a participant translates one post by another blogger, and posts it on her own blog with a link to the original. She would need to email me, or post in the comments right here, and I'll compile one big post on the day of the Carnival with links to all the participants. You can translate any blog entry that was posted in the month of February 2006. It can be your own blog entry, if you like.
Henry says the idea came from a conversation about bilingual blogging at the last BlogHer conference. Among the numerous participants are Patrick Hall who says he will translate a post from Welsh to English and Darren Kuropatwa, a math teacher in Canada who uses weblogs in the classroom and notes “the students in my school collectively speak over 50 different languages so I'm very interested in increasing accessibility to the students work in their parents native tongues.
If you are interested in taking part in the Carnival of Blog Translation, make sure to visit Liz Henry's announcement post. If you are interested in volunteering as a translator for Global Voices, please leave a comment below.
The Week That Was - Bolivian Blogs
Este post también está disponible en español.
The spotlight still remains on the actions of this new government. Some Bolivian bloggers express their interactions with members of the new team. For example, Fadrique Iglesias Mendizábal is responsible for the blog El Clavo en el Zapato (The Nail in the Shoe). He has a familiarity with the Vice-Ministry of Sports, one of the public offices that rarely makes headlines. He also rejoices that the previous officials are out, yet the questions remain regarding the money allocated for the organization of the Organization Deportiva Sudamericana (Odesur) games, which was to be held in La Paz, but subsequently cancelled. The outlook on the new administration in regards to sports is somewhat positive according to Iglesias Mendizábal, which includes the construction of a new football stadium.
Getting to know the new Ministers has not always been easy. The new President Evo Morales has been criticized for naming some top officials without much of a public sector track record. The new Minister of Justice, Casimira Rodríguez is a former domestic servant. However, Elizabeth Peredo Beltrán defends her naming in the Solon Foundation blog. There have been comments in regards to Rodríguez’ past, such as:
“Do you know why domestic workers aren’t supposed to have Sundays off? Because they end up becoming government ministers!”
Peredo Beltrán recalls meeting the Rodriguez in 1996, who was working domestically since age 13, and how she fought for the rights of domestic workers through meetings with ministers, members of parliment and household employers. She ends with the following:
What we should ask ourselves is that in spite of the endless parade of doctors, experts and other notables throughout the administration of justice and in other public institutions, why have the mechanisms of exclusion still remain? During this new stage, the challenge is still grand, but not only for Casimira Rodríguez or Evo Morales Ayma. We all should become committed to defeating discrimination, inequality, injustices and other psychological barriers. Imagining a different world is not so easy, but it still remains possible.
Lucia Rojas writes about Peredo Beltrán’s article in Observatorio Boliviano and adds important links including an interview with the current Minister of Justice and a short C.V. from the Bolivian government website.
Blogs have also served as a medium to publicize and denounce certain actions. For example, in the city of Santa Cruz, the Federation of the Press Workers Union posted their formal complaint against members of their own federation by claiming that the election of the Election Committee was against the organization’s statutes. The blogger posted the actual formal complaint complete with signatures in the self-described official weblog of that organization.
Miguel Centellas speculates on a drastic change in relations between Morales and the Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Much of this shift has to do with a recent announcement by the Brazilian government that Chavez might offer natural gas to Brazil at more than one-third of the price that their Bolivian neighbors are offering. Centellas’ blog, Ciao! also contains a preview of a chapter from his dissertation in progress.
Philippines: Landslide and rescue efforts
The IFRC (International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies) confirmed last Friday afternoon, that an entire village had been buried by a major landslide in the central Philippines following heavy rains. The landslide hit Guinsaugon village in the town of St Bernard on the southern part of the island of Leyte. The Philippine Red Cross responded by flying in a C-130 with response teams, body bags, trauma kits, emergency kits, communication equipment and food. International support is been mobilized as assessment is coming from the field.
The first situation map of the area affected was produced by the OCHA Regional office at Bangkok in Thailand. UNOSAT then requested the International Charter on Space and Major Disasters to be triggered. A few hours later, their request was accepted by the Charter and UNOSAT began to supply satellite imagery derived maps of the situtation starting with a pre-disaster overview zoom of the potentialy affected area in Saint Bernard and more have been made available over the past few days with others in the making. Please go here for further updates on relief mapping efforts.
In terms of rescue efforts, a 24/7 operations centre is supporting the coordination efforts at capital level while the President of the Philippines has been calling for Emergency Meetings occasionally. On the ground, two Battalion Commanders led the relief effort at the mudslide area. At the time there were a total of approximately 250 soldiers on the ground, with 11 officers in leading positions while one battalion commanding officer focuses on retrieval, the second one on the relief operation, with a focus on survivors and established evacuation centres.
Kurdistance:
Wow, another week come and gone so quickly…I guess we better get to business then.
A sad week for the Kurdistan Bloggers Union as they call for an official hiatus from their group work for their individual projects. However, not all group blogs are slowing. Roj Bash! has recently started a campaign in support of Marywan Halabjayi, a Kurdish writer who has published a book critisizing women’s status in traditional Islam: “Sex, Sharia, Women in the History of Islam”.
Several Kurdish bloggers have written about a new blog by Michael Totten who has been working in Northern Iraq/Southern Kurdistan including the Is-Ought Problem, From Holland to Kurdistan, Talk About the Passion and Hiwa Hopes. Hiwa writes this week about the role the Iranian Kurds will play if a conflict between the US and Iran occurs and complains about the ineffectiveness of “professional” Kurdish translation services.
Blogger Vladimir From Holland to Kurdistan was interviewed this week by RojTv about his work promoting Kurdish causes. (RojTV also has a blog if you would like to know more about them and their work.) Vladimir's interview has created quite an interest in not only Dutch media but Kurdish media outlets as well. The instances around the “Save Roj TV” campaign are quite varied but this week they have put up a wonderful primer on the work that has been done so far.
On another note: Talk About the Passion has plenty of stories this week about his work in Northern Iraq/Southern Kurdistan including a snow day and a final (maybe) showdown with the rats in his apartment.
Arabic Blogs Dreams
The following is an abbreviated translation from some of the Arabic-language blogsphere.
Some disappointment in blogging and Arab blogsphere is floating around. Here, Tarik Abu Ziad from Jordan writes; Running from forums to fall under the overpower of blog aggregators:
بدأت ظاهرية الشللية بالظهور مجددا. الاختيار حسب المعرفة الشخصية أو حسب المزاجية. ولو كانت هذه المجتمعات تمثل جهة معينة او تحمل فكرا معينا لما كانت عملية الاختيار مشكلة . فلو افترضنا وجود مجتمع اسمه: ” ملتقى مصممي الفوتوشوب” لكان الشرط الرئيسي لمشاركة مدونة ما في هذا المجتمع هو ” التصميم بالفوتشوب” ويمكن أن تكون عملية الانضمام والمشاركة في مجتمع مماثل سهلة نوعا ما. على العكس من ذلك هناك مجتمعات تحمل اسم دولة أو مدينة أو منطقة : ” كوكب الأردن ، كوكب دبي ، مدونات سعودية ” هذه المجتمعات يفترض أن تكون مفتوحة لكل شخص منتمي لتلك الدولة او المنطقة ويفترض أن لا تكون هناك جهة أو شخص يتحكم في اختيار المدونات التي يسمح لها بالمشاركة بناءا على نظرته الشخصية - بما ان اسم المجتمع أصلا ينص على أن تحديد المشاركة مرتبط باسم بلد أو منطقة.
Grouping started to show again. Selection of blogs based on personal relation or temperamental decision. If these group of blogs represent an entity or carries a specific ideology, selection would not have been a problem. For example; a group of “Photoshop Designers” means that the precondition to joini this group is “Photoshoping Design”, so joining this type of groups would be relatively easy. Contrary to that is the group of blogs that carries a country or a city or a region name: “Jordan Planet”, “Dubai Planet” and “Saudi Blogs”, are all suppose to be open to any blogger who belongs to that country or region, and no entity or person is suppose to control who might join and who may not, based on his/her personal opinion, since the names of these group blogs originally states that membership is tied with a country or region name.
And Osama from United Arab Emirates, don't think he achived what he aimed for. He write on his entry to his third year of blogging about his personal blogging experience:
أحيانا أقارن نفسي بمدونين آخرين و أحاول تصنيف موقعي بينهم، فلا أجد لي مكانا يناسبني، بل أجد انني حشرت نفسي بينههم حشرا، فذاك الذي يكتب عن التقنيات و آخر مهتم بأخبار البيئة و تلك التي تكتب عن الأدب و آخر يكتب عن أنظمة التشغيل أما أنا فجالس هنا أخربش بقلمي الرصاص و أنا أظن العالم من حولي يقرؤون هذه الشخابيط و ينتظرونها بفارغ الصبر و أنها حديث المجالس و المنتديات، و لكن الحقيقة المرة بالإمكان تلخيصها بكلمتين فقط: ” لا شيء…و لا أحد”!!
Sometimes I compare my blog with others and try to segment my blog between them, but I fail to find the right positions, in fact I find myself squeezing my blog between them, this who writes about technology and that who is interested in environmental issue and other who writes aboutn literature and other who writes on operating systems, but me, only setting here jotting with my pencil and thinks that the world around me is reading and patiently waiting and that everyone in all forums are talking about my blog, but the truth can be summed in two words: “Nothing… and No one.”
Links for Wed, 2006-02
John Guzman pens his thoughts on language and nationality, commenting that not every Latino in the United States speaks “Mexican.”
Don't burn Pakistan asks a crucial question - “What role have the Muslim leaders (not politicians, not the socalled-jihadis) played to pipe down the negative propaganda forcing people to spread hate?“
The game of cricket today has Bangladesh celebrating with quite a spirit. More at Me, Myself and Bangladesh.
Mezba reflects on how politicians in Bangladesh seem to have all the time in the world in their hands to spare.
Manjunath Shanmugam - the young man who was killed for refusing to be corrupt - would have celebrated his birthday on Feb 23rd. The Vantage Point on a trust that plans to “take up the legal battle and ensure quick justice for the murder case”.
Jeff Barry links to an article in Argentina's largest daily, Clarín about the identification of a 28-year-old man by the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo as the son of two kidnapped victims during the country's military dictatorship. Now known as Sebastián, he is the 82nd disappeared child to be identified by the group.
As the Bush administration rethinks its policy towards Bolivia's coca farmers, Ben Dangl describes his recent visit to Eterazama in the coca-producing region of Chapare. He visits a market where vendors are surprised to hear that the coca leaf is illegal in the US, talks with two coca farmer organizers, and describes the surreal situation of showing rural villagers a documentary about Bolivia's coca issue on a brand new Apple laptop.
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