When I did the OS in Colombia for the street kids, there were virtually no
English speakers. Since I don't speak Spanish, we discussed my not opening
the space at all. In the end, the sponsors felt that having this person who
came so far - me - be visible was part of the creation of a welcoming
space. So the approach we took was that I'd say a sentence in English, then
my partner, Andres Agudelo, would say a paragraph in Spanish filling in all
the details.
It worked.
from rainy Seattle,
Peggy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jo Toepfer" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, May 26, 2007 6:46 AM
Subject: Re: [OSLIST] Question - bilingual opening
Hi Esther,
I had a bi-lingual setting for a number of times. For me it works best if
a second person walks the circle right behind me who not pretends to be
the facilitator but rather behaves as a shadow of me who has a voice in
the other language.
Greetings from Kiev
Jo
**********************
Communications Esther Matte schrieb:
Hi all,
Yes, it was a great conference with Deb at Rococo. People there were
really impressed with OS. Hopefully, we'll gather a few people for our
FoFo in Val David this fall :-)
Deb and I learned a lot, of course, as we do every time we facilitate OS.
One of the questions we played with was the bilingual opening. We briefly
considered doing the opening together, each in one language, but quickly
realized we couldn't walk the circle together. So we cut down on the
opening text so that Deb could do it systematically in both languages
(French and English). And she did a great job! However, it was still too
long. Later in the event, people started to ask that we do just English
since everyone there understood. But we were in Montreal after all, so
Deb maintained the French, and the organizers were happy about that. They
wanted to hold a bilingual event and they wanted the French to be
present.
Now that I think about it, I'm wondering if we could have done two
circles just for the opening. To put people in the OS frame of mind and
spirit in their own language. Then, merge the 2 in 1 circle, have them
look around it, feel the energy and richness of knowledge, experience,
etc. and then start the agenda. For the other circles, keep the bilingual
format, but with bits of French here and there instead of systematic
translation.
What do you think?
Looking forward to reading your thoughts :-))
Esther
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Jo Toepfer, boscop eg
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++49-30-42018000
www.boscop.de www.joconsult.de
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