Re: [DDN] [Multilingualism in Cyberspace] Perhaps more complex than that
Dear Cindy, My feeling is that Digital divide has a positive correlation with 1.literacy / Education (language may be compounded here) 2.infrastructures 3.econmics / prosperity The fundamental problem is illiteracy and absence of basic education in the developing world. They even do not know to read and write in their own native languages and depends largely on the village interpreters (most of the time a school teacher or the post master). By changing contents language education level will not come up, neither digital divide would be bridged. Roop Dave Cindy Lemcke-Hoong [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello Dave, Most of what you analysed I agreed. Not all. I especially have problem to understand the opening statement on your post. Quote In my view Language and Digital Divde are two separate things. It would be the same as saying cultures has nothing to do with human beings??? My arguement is based on this particular discussion on Multilingualism in Cyberspace. Digitail Divide consists of two parts: software and hardware. Most concentrate on the hardware portion, but the software (content thus language) is what drives the knowledge. If I am not mistaken? Cindy [EMAIL PROTECTED] = [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message. - Yahoo! Mail Use Photomail to share photos without annoying attachments. ___ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
Re: [DDN] [Multilingualism in Cyberspace] Perhaps more complex than that
The lovely thing about the Internet, and the world in general, is that we do not make decisions like the Internet shall appear in Bengali. What we do is we make it technically feasible, and we endeavour to empower people to make their own choices, individually and aggregately, as to what their Internet will look like. It's difficult to figure out what that means, and to surrender our own prejudices. Where we is, I don't know, the folks who are in positions to move their worlds in one direction or another. Will it not be most likely that folks will write to a local or regional audience in the appropriate language, and learn and use English to participate in the more global exchanges? Dave, thank you for your message, it made me do some good thinking. FWIW, you would do yourself a favor to promote operating systems that can be popped into a different language with ease. Does anyone want to fly me from Managua to Missouri? I want to meet Sasha and all the other fabulous folks who will be congregating there. Love, Peter Abrahamsen / [EMAIL PROTECTED] Red Libre de Ometepe / Nicaragua, Central America ___ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
Re: [DDN] [Multilingualism in Cyberspace] Perhaps more complex than that
Hi every one ... In my view Language and Digital Divde are two separate things. Follwoing are my observations in thie regard Needless to say that ICTs in the developing countries have contributed in increasing divide or gap between rural and urban. Increased tele density in Indian urban area from that of about 5 % before year 2000 to that of 18-23 in the year 2005, with rural tele density still hovering about 1 % proves that disadvantaged rural population got further ignored in the current ICT enabling process. Every one knows that hundreds of call centers are catering to majority of developed countries helping their air transportation, banking, IT industries, health sectors 24/7! But none of the call center is either doing or is capable of helping next-door neighbors in rural areas in the same country! Reasons are many and the debate can be endless but in my view Characteristically -All innovations and new (technology) inceptions reaches to limited segments - offering advantages to certain groups and disadvantages to others, specifically in the first or initial phase; Poor tele com infrastructures in rural area are the biggest hindrance in percolation of ICT enabled services there; Internet would, perhaps, will be used as an access mechanism, initially, to access specific websites designed and populated for delivering custom design services by the local government for rural and urban citizens. All these applications will be in vernacular language (many of them are available today also). India Rural citizens have a very low propensity to consume and their requirements are very limited and restricted due to various reasons (education, poverty, castes etc..). Health, education and revenue matters (land transfer etc ) are few of critical service demands in Indian rural areas and non-other then local governments can satisfy these. Plethora of information on internet has no meaning for these rural people. Rural area needs services in their own language and good ICT infrastructures along with local governments commitment for delivering services in electronic form are two critical issues. People do not know reading and writing and depends on village teacher or volunteer for these activities. Modern ICTs channels would require to be integrated with the traditional last mile channel of communication (teacher or village volunteers) for deriving early results. It will takes decades before we will see elevation in poverty and education level of rural masses, and it will be injustice if we do not design a way to integrate modern ICT enabled services into their day-to-day life. Language should not e barrier in bridging digital-divide. Dave R K Peter Abrahamsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The lovely thing about the Internet, and the world in general, is that we do not make decisions like the Internet shall appear in Bengali. What we do is we make it technically feasible, and we endeavour to empower people to make their own choices, individually and aggregately, as to what their Internet will look like. It's difficult to figure out what that means, and to surrender our own prejudices. Where we is, I don't know, the folks who are in positions to move their worlds in one direction or another. Will it not be most likely that folks will write to a local or regional audience in the appropriate language, and learn and use English to participate in the more global exchanges? Dave, thank you for your message, it made me do some good thinking. FWIW, you would do yourself a favor to promote operating systems that can be popped into a different language with ease. Does anyone want to fly me from Managua to Missouri? I want to meet Sasha and all the other fabulous folks who will be congregating there. Love, Peter Abrahamsen / [EMAIL PROTECTED] Red Libre de Ometepe / Nicaragua, Central America ___ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message. - Brings words and photos together (easily) with PhotoMail - it's free and works with Yahoo! Mail. ___ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
Re: [DDN] [Multilingualism in Cyberspace] Perhaps more complex than that
Hello Dave, You post is VERY long indeed. I will try to have a short post, and perhaps later if there are more comments from others. Perhaps you might want to think why you have English as your first langauge now, and so am I. We both grew up in countries that once belong to the British Empire. In a way, if I am correct so is Cananda, Australia, NZ and many countries in the African continent etc. etc. etc. (as I am not too sure about the US, so I will let someone tell me ...I know for sure historically, you escape having to learn Dutch as first language!! So what if you speak English, come to Holland and I will assure you you can surve quite well with English, but you would be quite lost and many other things. Like me). So, what shall we do with people that was once the colonies of Spaiin, Portugal, France, Belgium, the Netheralnds to name a few? OR those that were too uninteresting to be a colony for any one of the OLD countries? According to your theory, does that mean ALMOST all of South American should drop their own langauge and learn English instead? Or the Chinese with 1.6 billiongs citizen should ignore their own language? What about Indonesia combined with Malaysia? or the German which has more millions of inhabitans than NL (only 16 millions therefore anyone can bully them into dropping their own langauge and stick to English). How about the French? They too have many former colonies in the African continent, Vietnam, Haiti, even a tiny portion of Cananda??? I don't think the French or the German are going to agree with you. German is spoken in more than just Germany. Now I just remember, Italy is another big country! And Portugal would join hand with Brazil, and Macao (tiny but ..) India is a unique case, perhaps, because Indians NEVER agreed to have one of their own language to represent thier country, instead they are using English as their official languae. You cannot say that about China. China has united their language to Mandarin since, I don't know, many centuries ago. Therefore, is it right to ask them to drop their own official/native language? Take the case of Indonesia, the country has a very lopsided rich vs. poor. Therefore the rich would not have problem with using English as defacto IT language since most of them would have had the chance of studying in the US, Australia, Canada etc. They have money. AND if they cannot speak the langauge, they can always hire someone to translate for them. I don't really know the percentage of rich vs. poor in that country. But I am quite sure it is something around the region of 10% vs 90% poor. So, what are we going to do with the poor? Ask all of them to learn another language? Forget about if it technically doable, is it ethically correct? After all we are talking about solving digital divide to leap-frog the poor. Why then the burden should be on the poor? OK. I am going to stop here. I will see if anyone would send in their arguement about the economic side etc. etc. Do not forget as well, Indonesia is one of the countries that are going to order 100 millions of the 100$ lap-top. Cindy [EMAIL PROTECTED] = [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
Re: [DDN] [Multilingualism in Cyberspace] Perhaps more complex than that
Dave, CIndy and others, Here are some interesting language statistics--just to through this into the discussion: List of languages by number of native speakers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_speakers The 30 most spoken languages of the world:http://www.krysstal.com/spoken.html The top 10 most widely spoken languages in the world: http://woi.brynmawr.edu/node/402 Most widely spoken languages in the world: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0775272.html The 50 Most Widely Spoken Languages: http://www.photius.com/rankings/languages2.html Most spoken languages of our planet: http://www.multilingualplanet.com/most_spoken_languages.htm Most widely spoken languages in the world:http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0775272.html This is a ranking of the world's most influential languages: http://www.andaman.org/book/reprints/weber/rep-weber.htm This one is interesting since Bengali has been one of the languages most talked about in this thread: http://www.matamat.com/article.php?sid=279 My point here is how can the Internet ignore Bengali or any of these languages? Also bear in mind that language and culture are closely related. There are words, expressions and ideas that cannot be fully translated. There is also a beauty in each language that cannot be conveyed through translation. Dave-- I've read translations of Rabindranath Tagore's works in English, but I'm given to understand from people who've read his works in both Bengali and English that I can derive the basic meaning, but not the richness and beauty of his language. Since language and culture are closely related... again Dave, think of the Bengali word for having fun which is the same word used for delicious. This says a lot about Bengali culture that cannot be understood in English--I personally believe we are losing cultures by insisting on English as the language of the Internet and perhaps as the language of the world. Linda Ullah Foothill College Krause Center for Innovation Los Altos Hills CA [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.foothill.edu/kci On Feb 11, 2006, at 12:33 PM, Cindy Lemcke-Hoong wrote: Hello Dave, You post is VERY long indeed. I will try to have a short post, and perhaps later if there are more comments from others. Perhaps you might want to think why you have English as your first langauge now, and so am I. We both grew up in countries that once belong to the British Empire. In a way, if I am correct so is Cananda, Australia, NZ and many countries in the African continent etc. etc. etc. (as I am not too sure about the US, so I will let someone tell me ...I know for sure historically, you escape having to learn Dutch as first language!! So what if you speak English, come to Holland and I will assure you you can surve quite well with English, but you would be quite lost and many other things. Like me). So, what shall we do with people that was once the colonies of Spaiin, Portugal, France, Belgium, the Netheralnds to name a few? OR those that were too uninteresting to be a colony for any one of the OLD countries? According to your theory, does that mean ALMOST all of South American should drop their own langauge and learn English instead? Or the Chinese with 1.6 billiongs citizen should ignore their own language? What about Indonesia combined with Malaysia? or the German which has more millions of inhabitans than NL (only 16 millions therefore anyone can bully them into dropping their own langauge and stick to English). How about the French? They too have many former colonies in the African continent, Vietnam, Haiti, even a tiny portion of Cananda??? I don't think the French or the German are going to agree with you. German is spoken in more than just Germany. Now I just remember, Italy is another big country! And Portugal would join hand with Brazil, and Macao (tiny but ..) India is a unique case, perhaps, because Indians NEVER agreed to have one of their own language to represent thier country, instead they are using English as their official languae. You cannot say that about China. China has united their language to Mandarin since, I don't know, many centuries ago. Therefore, is it right to ask them to drop their own official/native language? Take the case of Indonesia, the country has a very lopsided rich vs. poor. Therefore the rich would not have problem with using English as defacto IT language since most of them would have had the chance of studying in the US, Australia, Canada etc. They have money. AND if they cannot speak the langauge, they can always hire someone to translate for them. I don't really know the percentage of rich vs. poor in that country. But I am quite sure it is something around the region of 10% vs 90% poor. So, what are we going to do with the poor? Ask all of them to learn another language? Forget about if it technically doable, is it ethically correct? After all we are talking about solving digital divide to
Re: [DDN] [Multilingualism in Cyberspace] Perhaps more complex than that
A couple of years ago I compared data regarding the number of websites in different languages with the number of people around the world who spoke those languages. For example, at the time there were around 214 million web pages in English, and around 322 million 1st language English speakers, giving a ratio of around 1.5 English speakers per English language web pages. Compare that with 1.83 Icelandic speakers per Icelandic web pages, 28.8 people for Russian, 73 people for Mandarin Chinese, and 1583 people for Arabic. I posted a copy of this chart on my blog last year: http://www.andycarvin.com/archives/2005/03/rss_local_langu.html andy Linda Ullah wrote: Dave, CIndy and others, Here are some interesting language statistics--just to through this into the discussion: List of languages by number of native speakers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_speakers The 30 most spoken languages of the world:http://www.krysstal.com/spoken.html The top 10 most widely spoken languages in the world: http://woi.brynmawr.edu/node/402 Most widely spoken languages in the world: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0775272.html The 50 Most Widely Spoken Languages: http://www.photius.com/rankings/languages2.html Most spoken languages of our planet: http://www.multilingualplanet.com/most_spoken_languages.htm Most widely spoken languages in the world:http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0775272.html This is a ranking of the world's most influential languages: http://www.andaman.org/book/reprints/weber/rep-weber.htm This one is interesting since Bengali has been one of the languages most talked about in this thread: http://www.matamat.com/article.php?sid=279 My point here is how can the Internet ignore Bengali or any of these languages? Also bear in mind that language and culture are closely related. There are words, expressions and ideas that cannot be fully translated. There is also a beauty in each language that cannot be conveyed through translation. Dave-- I've read translations of Rabindranath Tagore's works in English, but I'm given to understand from people who've read his works in both Bengali and English that I can derive the basic meaning, but not the richness and beauty of his language. Since language and culture are closely related... again Dave, think of the Bengali word for having fun which is the same word used for delicious. This says a lot about Bengali culture that cannot be understood in English--I personally believe we are losing cultures by insisting on English as the language of the Internet and perhaps as the language of the world. Linda Ullah Foothill College Krause Center for Innovation Los Altos Hills CA [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.foothill.edu/kci On Feb 11, 2006, at 12:33 PM, Cindy Lemcke-Hoong wrote: Hello Dave, You post is VERY long indeed. I will try to have a short post, and perhaps later if there are more comments from others. Perhaps you might want to think why you have English as your first langauge now, and so am I. We both grew up in countries that once belong to the British Empire. In a way, if I am correct so is Cananda, Australia, NZ and many countries in the African continent etc. etc. etc. (as I am not too sure about the US, so I will let someone tell me ...I know for sure historically, you escape having to learn Dutch as first language!! So what if you speak English, come to Holland and I will assure you you can surve quite well with English, but you would be quite lost and many other things. Like me). So, what shall we do with people that was once the colonies of Spaiin, Portugal, France, Belgium, the Netheralnds to name a few? OR those that were too uninteresting to be a colony for any one of the OLD countries? According to your theory, does that mean ALMOST all of South American should drop their own langauge and learn English instead? Or the Chinese with 1.6 billiongs citizen should ignore their own language? What about Indonesia combined with Malaysia? or the German which has more millions of inhabitans than NL (only 16 millions therefore anyone can bully them into dropping their own langauge and stick to English). How about the French? They too have many former colonies in the African continent, Vietnam, Haiti, even a tiny portion of Cananda??? I don't think the French or the German are going to agree with you. German is spoken in more than just Germany. Now I just remember, Italy is another big country! And Portugal would join hand with Brazil, and Macao (tiny but ..) India is a unique case, perhaps, because Indians NEVER agreed to have one of their own language to represent thier country, instead they are using English as their official languae. You cannot say that about China. China has united their language to Mandarin since, I don't know, many centuries ago. Therefore, is it right to ask them to drop their own official/native language? Take the case of Indonesia, the
Re: [DDN] [Multilingualism in Cyberspace] Perhaps more complex than that
Hi all, Long post...I wrote this a few days ago, but didn't post it, and then I added some more to it, so it's grown very long. Apologies in advance...and hopefully my tagging it with a second subject tag will keep the uninterested from becoming trapped in my verbosity. I'll point out in advance that my first language is Bengali, not English (though I am most fluent in English now) and that I grew up in India. And I'm not exactly a digital native...I came in to the digital world as a result of my own personal interest and education, after finishing high school. From this perspective, it's easy to say that yes, Bengali speakers should have website content in Bangla, Chinese speakers in Mandarin, and so on. And I agree that, theoretically, it is a good thing to have online content in multiple languages. However, the process of making this happen is bound by purely economic factors, and so it's much more complex than simple US-led dominance of English or insensitivity to the needs of the third world. The fact is, if you actually grab a few Bangladeshi / Indian / Pakistani villagers and ask them if they would rather learn to use a computer purely in Bangla / Hindi / Urdu / insert-language-and-dialect here or learn to speak and read English, they will almost unanimously choose English. This is why there are thousands of programs in India teaching English for every one program trying to teach the poor to use a computer. English is a mark of education, it makes jobs available, it allows a standard of literacy, it allows further education...all of these things apply to computer education, but to a lesser degree. Especially in terms of people's perceptions of English literacy vs. computer literacy. English being the defacto language of the internet is not a status quo concept, but more akin to a movement that has momentum. The more English is used on the internet, the more incentive there is to use it. It's not a static thing that we can begin to shift because we have a more solid idealogical underpinning. It's a dynamic system that is heading more and more into English-dominated waters, with increasing momentum. Since I spoke earlier of economic factors, I'll state the economics of this here: What value is there to teaching subject X to use a computer in the vernacular, and what value is there teaching him to use that computer in English? In terms of value to the subject: English is the language of the internet, the language of the times, the language of jobs and prosperity, the language of emigration, the language of progress. Using a computer in English is infinitely more valuable than using a computer in the vernacular, precisely because it is mostly used thus...and this demand drives the constant generation of content in English. Value to me, as the teacher: Digital education in English is more difficult than in the vernacular, because I have to teach ESL as well as digital literacy, or build one program on top of the other. However, my motives as a nonprofiteer have to be tailored more to maximizing value to the user, not to myself, and so I might still choose to develop programs in digital literacy in English, because I believe they will present more value to him. Also, it's easier to get funding if I'm doing ESL + computer literacy, instead of trying to develop users of the non-English internet. Value to the economy: Businesses are marked by purely economically motives. Is it better for a business to train workers to use the internet in English or in the vernacular? Is it better for them to create positions requiring vernacular computer use (which few will ever qualify for) or in English (which many will qualify for)? Assume that enough interest was generated, somehow, to enable the production of computer hardware in Bangla (as it already exists in Korean and Japanese, to name two other examples). Would a business buy this hardware, even if they preferred Bangla as a language for their day to day activities, knowing that their staff would have to be retrained and that getting tech support would be difficult, if not impossible? As a techie, I can tell you that I would have a hard time troubleshooting a computer in Bangla, even though it's my native language. I've done tech support for machines in Japanese and Korean in the past, and it's a real pain. Since it takes me longer and I have to work harder, I charge more. Real life example: My martial arts instructor has a computer with Windows in Korean, here in Chicago. I troubleshoot his computers and network once in a while for free, in exchange for free martial arts classes. Since I usually can't fix problems with his Korean computer, and neither can his other students, it costs him a significant amount of money to use that machine...while it costs him much less to use his other computers in English. Even though he prefers the Korean machine, he is drifting slowly but surely
