• maputo dialogue

last modified October 28, 2008 by pierre

here is what was written by pierre


Linguistic support for comcom  - scope and procedure ( proposal)


Anything we can do to parallelize lead-times instead of quietly piling them up is welcome ,

1 - how far do Judith and Gregoire want to formalize the "need  to be met"  and the "project terms of references" before starting outreaching  for the corresponding project ..

Any example of how things are  to be expressed is  welcome
This way  we can document it  and answer you

It seems to us that before we put out any call to Babelit@s to join any project, (outreach was the word you used) that the project(s) should actually be clearly defined in terms of what exactly we would like people to do:
-what languages,
-what sort of commitment in terms of length (both duration and documents), etc.

We also then need to validate a simple procedure to make sure things get done effectively.


(Pierre) here some preliminary personal views

The languages set  would be in my mind  the 4 colonial ones
The  two great divide in chats or lists are
- Spanish - English divide with Asian people on one side and Latin people on the other side
- French / west Africa  to  Spanish  and to  English

About the "simple procedure"  : embedded groups
We could opt for  creating several groups of 2 /3 people 
These groups of 2/ 3 people  would be “embedded”  in working groups of comcom on OpenFSM that have sufficient traffic and language tension 

Embedded participation ,  seems to make more sense and sustain  a " warmer " relationship  between  translator/ translated   than having  an  anonymous pool   delivering anonymous service through some "interface" people ,   which anyway would be out of context  and coming too late,  especially for chat and mail accompaniment

See the list of groups here
http://openfsm.net/projects/communication-commission/directory
( look at the state of the wiki/pages spaces  of fsm2009 groups in the green/right side of comcom directory you will see that there is no translation in most cases ....

The embedded groups would

-1/ "follow up and support linguistically " a one two or three working groups -with a limit in term of weekly "traffic" of mails and chats and documents 

The support would be :

-translating the mails on the mailing list of those groups  with some summarizing 
-translating some documents/pages edited in the openFSM ( needs some light training to learn how to create a new page )
-translating chats

2 / have from time to time ( once a month?)  some internal chat/mail  feedback with the project coordinators ( Gregoire and Judith) and some “comcom” counterparts in the present “translation for com”  list  

In this meeting the need for  "coverage" of comcom groups by the different “linguistic support groups , could be adjusted 
The meeting would also maintain an identity in the whole “ translation for com” team

3 - for some specific received  request  about some material produced in the comcom groups dubbing videos etc..  the coordinators would consult the whole project group

Steps 1  2  3 would be a simple enough procedure

Regarding  quantity : what are reasonable standards  for a volunteer group of 2 / 3 people  ?
This  could be a broad reference :  limit of    X  by 1000 ? sign mails  and Y by  5000?  sign pages per week  for each group ( let us establish these figures  )

Regarding  duration  : this is an on going project  we could  set a first period of  6 months Would make sense to have people staying in the project this long  in order for them to have time to learn the context and be fully operational
What do you think?

B (Pierre) - if there are some people that are part of  "advanced team"  ready to start "exploring the project concept " in a  " hands-on" mode,  before such needs and references evoked in 1 are finalized in this “ translation for com” group,  let us know so we start experimenting the notion of " embedded translator"  ;-) in some groups of comcom


(Judith) What does anyone else think: can we defines specific projects yet?
 

here is what comes from maputo

Antonio, Bettina, Gregoire & I had a short meeting here in Maputo during the Via Campesina general assembly.

the points we discussed were all related to interpreting/translating documents.


1 Wsf tv is one project among many other: sites with 4 different language versions & no download is difficult
Voiceover is a better option & easier to do.

2 We have no logistics for coordination of written translations, and it was too much work during wsf2008 for us to do in any realistic manner. We need to keep the amount of documents low. The amount Pierre George suggested is not realstic

3 Expanded Belem should be about 2 pages @ a time, in different strategic languages: how about aiming for English/French/Spanish/Portuguese/Arabic/Korean?

4 Audio input is important for grassroots. People will find their own translation (oral). We need to identify people who can be relays in other regions to take this on

5 Open fsm is very compicated for grassroots to use, but it's a work tool for groups like comcom

6 For theNewsletter, if there is one, we, need to organise a dedicated team as of ? (Thiago what's happening with this?)

That's about all. I have very variable email coverage at present until this day next week when I fly back to France.

Take care all,

Judith