[PC-NCSG] Comment on Draft Operating Plan

[Edward Morris]

Hi Rafik,


- thanks for this. I sent previously a note to ICANN staff responsible for 
this public comment  regarding submitting late within next days. I would 
welcome adding some comments to the statement and updating it as a SG 
submission.

- at Amr I think that will be your first call as PC chair :)


Happy to help anyway I can.


- As a small comment: as I am a non-english native and expressing a 
controversial position here , I am cautious about multilingualism in 
inflating number. I am worried that can end up as a trap of not real 
engagement and instead encouraging a form of ghettoization, creating a 
dependance or worse being just a PR for ICANN. as arabic speaker, I see a 
lot of material translated in arabic language but I have no evidence that 
such measure improved the number of participants beyond the usual suspects. 
another form of trap would be conflating internationalization with 
multilingualism. 
  

Interesting. I've had a very different experience, one rooted both in law 
and in the accession of the Nordic countries into the European Union.

During the elections in the mid 90's there was no guarantee Swedish and 
Finnish were going to be used as official languages in the EU. It was felt 
that, heck, all the Finns and Swedes speak English, why bother? Well, in 
order to win the election the pro-EU folks got a commitment from the EU that 
the two Nordic languages would be made official languages. Once in the EU 
our libraries were flooded with EU materials in English, Finnish and Swedish 
(the later two being the official languages of Finland). The English 
materials would usually arrive first but I noticed my friends, mostly 
educated English speaking Finns, would wait for the materials that arrived 
later in Finnish. It was just more comfortable for them.

I have a confession to make myself. Although a native English speaker I 
prefer to write in Swedish. You may notice someday that when I'm taking 
notes at an ICANN meeting it will be in Swedish. I'd certainly like some 
Swedish language materials. I can operate in both languages but the Mayor of 
Rovaniemi, a friend, does not speak English. Only Finnish. Should he not be 
able to access basic ICANN documents in his native language? 

Most of the world does not speak English. All of ICANN must. The most 
popular language in the world is Mandarin yet ICANN couldn't even get 
Peter's name spelled correctly in Chinese characters on the ballot in the 
recent NCUC EC election. That bothers me.

I know there are cost issues involved. Yet if the EU can operate in 24 
languages is it unreasonable to ask ICANN to produce most documents in 10 
and basic documents in as many languages as possible?  Think of children 
doing research on the internet. Shouldn't ICANN strive to have a page or two 
or three online in their own language explaining what exactly this ICANN 
thing is about? Are we sure there are not people who don't get involved 
precisely because of the language issue? 

I'd be interested in knowing the perspectives of others.
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