h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Several people have expressed the very real concern that if the Sail for the Albatross communications are restricted to the English language, we will fail to reach the majority of people living in countries who's fishing fleets are central to the problem.

My work currently involves communications with Spanish and Portugese speakers based in Latin America. The quick and easy solution I use is Alta Vistas 'Babelfish' The translations are sometimes quaint, (typical of all computerized translation tools I have experimented with to date) but I can always get the gist of the message. The down side of this solution is that it involves copying a passage to be translated and pasting it into the babelfish translation page.

A better alternative may be to use an automatic web translation service such as Systran I would be interested to hear from Richard whether h2g2 would be willing to make this service available on the Sail for the Albatross site, perhaps as a test for a wider application across the whole site. Obviously there is a cost associated with this, but without it, as JR says, we are preaching to the converted.
Best to all!
PB

I understood that browsers in non-english speaking countries could translate (however well?) into native languages. I have watched many a Japanese college or friend read English web sites using Japanese characters.

This is one of our major problems, not least, how do we gather attention or draw schools and people to follow us from non English speaking countries?

Could we perhaps contact sea bird biologists or students in these countries and ask them to act as a contact point? I also don’t know much about how much technology many of these countries have in schools? My sister’s school (Yorkshire) barely gets much internet access for pupils, so it may be tiny in some countries.

Perhaps we could have eloquent cover pages, in native languages and these could link straight through to H2G2.

My parents know teachers in Taiwan, I will try to contact them and get an opinion.

The project does now feel to be gathering real momentum; my granddad has been asking to see my sea-boots!

Best to all,

Matt

Having been married to a Japanese Interpreter for more than twenty years I have heard nothing but scathing reports of 'automatic' translation systems. Yes, OK for the gist, but I'd like to think we could come across qute a lot better than that.

I think it would be helpful if we identified which languages/countries we are specifically talking about and which audiences within them, and then identify the most appropriate communication channels for those countries. It may be the Internet, but maybe not.

That said, a number of Asian countries have poured millions and millions into broadband eg S Korea. The most connected country in the world by far now I believe.

Anyway then we can think about translation in real terms. I wonder if the local Birdlife affiliate couldn't help with this advice and the translation?

Nick

Having been married to a Japanese Interpreter for more than twenty years I have heard nothing but scathing reports of 'automatic' translation systems. Yes, OK for the gist, but I'd like to think we could come across qute a lot better than that.

I think it would be helpful if we identified which languages/countries we are specifically talking about and which audiences within them, and then identify the most appropriate communication channels for those countries. It may be the Internet, but maybe not.

That said, a number of Asian countries have poured millions and millions into broadband eg S Korea. The most connected country in the world by far now I believe.

Anyway then we can think about translation in real terms. I wonder if the local Birdlife affiliate couldn't help with this advice and the translation?

Nick

Having been married to a Japanese Interpreter for more than twenty years I have heard nothing but scathing reports of 'automatic' translation systems. Yes, OK for the gist, but I'd like to think we could come across qute a lot better than that.

I think it would be helpful if we identified which languages/countries we are specifically talking about and which audiences within them, and then identify the most appropriate communication channels for those countries. It may be the Internet, but maybe not.

That said, a number of Asian countries have poured millions and millions into broadband eg S Korea. The most connected country in the world by far now I believe.

Anyway then we can think about translation in real terms. I wonder if the local Birdlife affiliate couldn't help with this advice and the translation?

Nick

Having been married to a Japanese Interpreter for more than twenty years I have heard nothing but scathing reports of 'automatic' translation systems. Yes, OK for the gist, but I don't think we would come across as being serious about communication and I'd hope we could do better than that.

I think it would be helpful if we identified which languages/countries we are specifically talking about and which audiences within them, and then identify the most appropriate communication channels for those countries. It may be the Internet, but maybe not.

That said, a number of Asian countries have poured millions and millions into broadband eg S Korea. The most connected country in the world by far now I believe.

Anyway then we can think about translation in real terms. I wonder if the local Birdlife affiliate couldn't help with this advice and the translation?

Nick

I'm afraid I'm with Nick about automatic translators - having used AltaVista's Babelfish for some software we wrote for Mozambique. It would dilute our message too much to have some of the obscure translations it comes up with.

I think there are relatively few languages we have to cover - Spanish & Potuguese, Taiwanese, Korean, Japanese (which your wife could help with Nick?), and maybe French - have I left any out? That should cover the majority of countries with longline fishing fleets.

We should find a translator for each who would be willing to donate some of their time to getting a few salient web pages up and running. The web pages shouldn't be too text-heavy in any case, cause not many people will want to wade through it all. The more graphical the content the more chance we have of breaking through the language (and attention-span) barrier.

Traveller in Time on his head
"Esperanto? I do not speak it personally, but I experience I can read it with just a very little use of dictionaries ( as in english by the way). Any one developed enough to use the internet and willing to try will be able to grasp the content."