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| Let's make all voices heard. in all languages, by sdbj @ flickr (http://flickr.com/photos/sdbj/8326434/) |
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Creative Commons started in the US, but aims to be a truly global movement. The licenses have been localized into more than 35 different jurisdictions and many different languages - in most of those countries, there are thriving local communities, mailing lists, wikis, and people meeting offline. There are lot's of inspiring examples of CC being used around the world - Overmundo from Brazil, Loftwork from Japan, French music, Arabic poetry and Finnish scifi movies! All this is something that we should be very proud of.
However, the fact remains that if people from around the world want to get involved with and contribute to the global debate around both the Creative Commons licenses and the movement that is iCommons, they will have to master English. The mailing list, the icommons website and other forums are only in English, but most importantly - the annual forum where people meet and discuss the future direction of our movement is conducted only in English.
This means that to participate in Dubrovnik, you would have to be able to speak English, and to speak it well - many of the presenters, especially the native speakers spoke fast, with lot's of difficult words and expressions. And it's interesting to see how many of the presenters (although far from all - there were awesome exceptions) were native English speakers. I spoke to several people during the summit, who admitted to only understanding at best half of what was said during the plenaries - these are people who work in an international movement, and were selected for scholarships to come to Dubrovnik... how many more did not go at all, because they didn't think it would be any point, because they wouldn't be able to communicate?
I agree with Neerup in saying that the summit should include more voices, but I am not laying this squarely at the conference organizers' feet, I think they did a great job - and we all have to work together towards 2008 to create a summit that is even more broad, representative and inclusive. But if we are going to have local educators, heads of local NGOs, local artists and activists, and not just the same globetrotting gang (who are still very much welcome!), we need to facilitate it... I hope we will be able to bring in a lot of new blood from different Asian countries to the next summit, but I know from personal experiences that there are lot's of Chinese and Indonesian activists, doing amazing stuff, who will not be comfortable giving a presentation, or asking questions in English.
So what do we do? I heard lot's of comments during the summit about the need to translate and make material on open access sites available in many languages, but none regarding our own movement. If we acknowledge that this is a challenge to us as a movement, we have to apply our ingenuity and creativity towards improving the situation. I am not necessarily suggesting that we turn into some mini-UN, with booths full of interpreters and headsets, but maybe there are other ways we could improve the situation. I am just beginning to think about this - and I'd love to hear about best practices from other global conferences and events.
Could we have an IRC channel where people were rapidly typing up summaries of what people were presenting, in different languages (#isummit08-chinese etc), or we could post summaries of each days discussions in different languages... hand out powerpoint presentations or summaries in advance, provide a way for volunteer interpreters and interpretees to match up, perhaps as simple as asking some presenters to slow down and speak clearly? I would love your input on this! Global Voices aggregates and translates information between the bloggers of the world, giving us insights into the local conversations that are going on - I'd love to know how they solve this at their summit. Are there any others we could work with or learn from?
谢;;;谢;;;, Stian
tags: norway media-events languages summit08 summit07 translation accessibility
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