ICANN Language Issues: Looking Down the Road

[Olévié Kouami]

+1 at Ayden.
Ï have noticed it too.
According to the topic in discussion here ,  my question is this : is ICANN
à real mulistakeholdes oganization or not ? If it is one, so diversity and
multilinguism needs to be promoted within it ecosystem. Imho.

Happy New year 2019 to you all.
Olevie Agbenyo
Le 31 déc. 2018 12:08 PM, "Ayden Férdeline" <icann at ferdeline.com> a écrit :

> Thanks, Sam-
>
> A very small correction, I believe that comment should be attributed to
> James Gannon, and not Michael Karanicolas.
>
> Best wishes, Ayden
>
>
> ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
> On Friday, December 28, 2018 6:48 PM, Sam Lanfranco <lanfran at YORKU.CA>
> wrote:
>
> Michael Karanicolas has written: "I still believe that based on the ICANN
> meeting reports that language services are largely unused by the community
> and represent a huge overhead that we maintain purely to make ourselves
> look inclusive rather than providing a set of services that are actually
> used by the community".
>
> ICAHN is not alone with this dilemma, and I also feel that the
> expenditures mainly result in nice optics, while miss-allocating
> increasingly scarce ICANN resources. In other work that I do there are a
> variety of approaches to deal with multiple languages and equitable access
> by all. Here is an effort out of the *Bibliotheca Alexandrina* to deal
> with the language issue at the text level. While this applies to the
> language of health science, there are possible lessons here with regard to
> ICANN's overall text strategy in a multilingual world. Admittedly we are
> much less down this road when it comes to simultaneous translation, but
> savings on any linguistic front free resources for the more difficult
> multilingual issues.
>
> Sam Lanfranco
>
>
> [image: image.png]
>
>
>
> Multilingual Science
>
> There are 6500 languages in the world, but only one language of science,
> English.
>
> The Library of Alexandria and Scientists in Developing countries aim to
> change this.
>
>
>
> *"Health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being
> and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity". (WHO)*
>
>
>
> "الصحة هي حالة من الصحة البدنية والعقلية والاجتماعية الكاملة وليس مجرد
> غياب المرض أو العجز"(Arabic)
>
>
>
> Here is the WHO definition of Health in English and Arabic.  In the next 5
> years, all journals can become multilingual.
>
>
>
> The Library of Alexandria is ushering in a new era of multilingual
> science.  Reducing the burden of translation, indeed promotes openness and
> scholarship.
>
>
>
> “We build too many walls and not enough bridges” (I. Newton)
>
> One of the major walls of science is one of different languages.
>
>
>
> *We are writing to you with a simple idea.* In 2006 Vint Cerf (the father
> of the Internet) told us about google translate, and we were excited to
> build a language translator into our Supercourse, and the Library of
> Alexandria.  However, much of it produced was Gibberish.  We tried again
> five years ago, and google translate captured the “gist” of the materials,
> however, it was still a bit messy.  In the past few months we have seen a
> major improvement in translation capabilities with a new approach called Google
> Neural Machine Translation which produced marked improvement in accuracy,
> and we feel is now acceptable to build multilingual science world wide.
>
>
> *Multilingual Translation of Science *
>
> We propose to establish a beta version of a translation button to be made
> available to all journals for free.  We would capture metrics of usage, and
> concerns of translation. We would like to have you join. We are planning a
> 6-month beta version; after which we will decide whether to continue. We
> will help you add the button to your journal and site.
>
>
>
> Please contact Ronald LaPorte, Ph.D. (Emeritus professor University of
> Pittsburgh)
>
> *ronaldlaporte at gmail.com <ronaldlaporte at gmail.com>*
>
> Ismail Serageldin, Ph.D.
>
> Professor Emeritus, Library of Alexandria, Alexandria, Egypt
>
>
> ---- Original Message ----
> *From*: Michael Karanicolas <mkaranicolas at GMAIL.COM>
> *To*: NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
> *Sent*: Fri, Dec 28, 2018, 12:01 PM
> *Subject*: Re: Thoughts on the Proposed ICANN Org Budget for FY20
>
> Interesting conversation. Thanks very much Ayden for going through the
> budget doc to kick this off - which is important work.
>
> "I still believe that based on the ICANN meeting reports that language
> services are largely unused by the community and represent a huge overhead
> that we maintain purely to make ourselves look inclusive rather than
> providing a set of services that are actually used by the community. I
> haven’t looked at recent figures, but back during ICANN Dublin I believe
> that the majority of the interpretation channels were used by less than 10
> people at huge expense to the org, we need to really look at wether
> language services are actually delivering any ROI or are we merely spending
> to look good in this area."
>
> As an English speaker, I'm always a bit hesitant about jumping into this
> issue, as I know I have the privilege/advantage of having my native
> language as the default. It's quite possible that ICANN's main concern here
> is the optics, but that's not something to be entirely discounted either.
> As an organization that strives to be international and inclusive, I think
> they like having a UN-esque model of translation. Still - I wonder if there
> isn't a better way of doing things, like potentially arranging an opt-in
> system, where users could pre-request language services for a meeting, and
> they'd only be provided if a certain number of people registered for a
> given language. That could also help them be better targeted as well - and
> have interpreters in the sessions where they're most needed, as opposed to
> just in the main rooms by default. May be something that's worth raising.
>
>
>
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