[wsfii-discuss] Onward to Africa

[Vickram Crishna]

My own 90 paise (Indian)

While international meetings such as the recently
concluded Dharamsala Summit tend to be conducted
largely in English, it beats me why this should be
blindly accepted. 

We (Arun Mehta and I) have been providing a simple
simultaneous translation infrastructure at such
meetings since the Asian Social Forum in 2003, an
example which has I think been followed ever since by
the organisers of that meeting and its global and
regional submeetings. 

The system is just multiple FM channels locally
broadcasting at sub-50mW with simple dipole antennae,
each fed a translation from domain experts who are
reasonably proficient in a pair (at least, obviously)
of languages. The delegates listen on headphone
equipped cheap FM receivers. Such domain experts are
most easily (voluntarily) drawn from among the
delegates, and in fact, for topics such as covered in
WSFII I sincerely doubt that competent translations
could come from even highly paid professionals.

At the end of the main conference in Dharamsala, I
made this suggestion for the Africa meet, and I think
it was received enthusiastically. It will allow
delegates from Africa, and from other areas as well,
to speak in their native languages, while the other
delegates listen to the gist of the discussion in a
language of their own choice (within limits, depending
on the extent of volunteering).

Of ocurse, the problems of language do not end with a
successful summit meeting. We need volunteers to take
up the task of localising the wndw book, for instance.
We also need to enthuse more people to do FOSS
localisation, and, extending the thought to technical
subjects from other domains, to do soft translations
of health and hygiene manuals. Finally, we need to
build more networking tools (a la the Facebooks and
Myspaces of the commercial world) to help people
intercommunicate, especially verbally.

If we can do this in the near term, I think it will go
a long way in dispelling the myth of 'helping' Jeff
refers to, and come to align more precisely with
'exchanging', allowing information to positively
emerge from the disadvantaged (whose biggest
disadvantage in today's world is precisely the lack of
accessible communication tools - all other
disadvantages flow from this).

One suggestion that should strike a chord is for
simultaneous verbal translation to be available 24/7
online. It could be paid for by text advertisements
like Google has demonstrated, or by grant funding from
global foundations. Translators could be drawn from
the ranks of the physically disabled, for instance, or
from other disadvantaged communities, since this task
needs nothing beyond competence and the freedom to
stay in one place while online.

I could go on for hours with related suggestions, but
let's make a beginning with making the Africa meeting
into a rainbow of language!

---
Vickram

--- Jeff Buderer <jeff at onevillagefoundation.org>
wrote:

> 
> 		Thomas,
> 
> You put forward some important discussion issues for
> developing a realistic plan for assisting people in
> nonaffluent regions sd part of process of mutual
> empowerment.  Indeed  the first assumption that has
> to die, is that we are helping them. If we want this
> process to work we have to see that we are coming
> together to help each other see a part of reality
> that did not before that point exist for either
> group. Particularly for us since we have having been
> educated to think and see the world along the
> western molded lines that the individual is
> autonomous from reality and that the modern western
> way is supreme and superior to all others. No wonder
> so many people from the west with good intentions
> get into trouble.
> 
> I do think the key is being able to get outside of
> our western educational and consumer mindsets. As
> many of us see ourselves as dissidents in our
> societies or seeking to promote alterative models,
> we do I feel have a leg up at least in theory.
> However I think in practice many of us realize that
> despite our advertised ideologies that there is a
> embedded residue of westernism that may lead to
> problems if it is not addressed. 
> 
> One of the key issues as we saw, forsaw or heard in
> the differing approaches to the recent AJS/wsfii
> event itself, is much of the difference was about
> perspective and philosophy. One view is that
> technology is the answer in itself and this is
> echoed by mainstream tech publications like Wired.
> Others tend to be more careful in making overly
> optimistic assumptions about technology and see a
> technology approach that is integrated with a human
> development and facilitation process as an enabler
> of local development. 
> 
> So we are not just talking about intercultural
> understandings but also intracultural understandings
> (reaching consensus between differing perspectives
> within the same or similar cultures and backgrounds)
> - for in truth westerners hardly speak with one
> voice about the development.
> 
> May I suggest that we look at how we can define a
> process along the lines of what you are discussing
> that can be posted into the wsfii wiki that could be
> considered follow up to the AJ Summit and a part of
> training people in effective field work possibly as
> a prerequisite to the African event that is now
> being planned for Ghana.
> 
> Jeff
> 
> ----------------------------------------
> 
> 				From: "thomas thaler" <tt at cut3.com>
> Sent: Monday, November 06, 2006 12:11 AM
> To: Discuss list on the World Summit on Free
> Information Infrastructure
> <wsfii-discuss at lists.okfn.org>
> Subject: [wsfii-discuss] Onward to Africa 
> 
> The "World Summit of Free Information
> Infrastructure" is, in my opinion, something that
> constructs itself every time when people come
> together under the WSFII label. So it's somehow
> difficult to write about a WSFII community. The
> following therefore will only speak about the
> perspective of mainly European "Free Wireless (or in
> a broader sense also "Free Infrastructure)
> Activists". 
> 
> Venturing into the poorer parts of this planet still
> seams to be very difficult business for western
> mindsets. One may think that the huge cultural gap
> or varying government regulations are the reason for
> this. I think we better look at things a different
> way, when we talk about community centered
> infrastructure building.
> I think one can call the two main obstacles in
> dealings of this kind "Corruption" and "Lack of
> Insight". Both of them are quite tricky. 
> 
> For corruption comes in many brands and has many
> faces. Its not just about bribing policeman, it's
> more about the many things that can go wrong, when
> widely different income levels are encountered and
> different economy models clash. 
> The "Lack of Insight" problem looks plain at the
> surface. For sure, a western geek will have a hard
> time, implementing citizen based wireless
> infrastructure along European lines, when he or she
> finds out, that nearly every single pre-condition is
> missing in a certain area. But things get much more
> complicated when you dig deeper. Many westerners
> seem to have difficulties to get reliable
> information in poorer countries. Even if it is
> possible to overcome language barriers, very often
> the cultural gaps can not be bridged. 
> 
> So people rely on the help of interpreters of some
> kind. Unluckily good "interpreters" seem to be
> rarely found. Usually westerners will go for the
> counterpart they can speak to easily. But very often
> a person that can talk to a western mind is also
> orientated to the "global" western culture, and not
> so much to local communities. By communicating with
> such "interpreters" it can get difficult to get in
> touch with local communities. False information is
> given, because the "interpreter" does not possess a
> in depth knowledge about things local, because he or
> she doesn't understand and like the western
> intentions, because he or she is ashamed of the
> poverty, oppression and corruption in his country,
> and many reasons more.
> 
> When we want to reach out, to encourage the build up
> of community based infrastructure it's really
> essential to keep such matters in mind. We have to
> find good interpreters or find other ways to bridge
> the cultural gap and speak to local community
> directly. 
> This has been achieved by various initiatives many
> times before. But on the other hand is still a
> considerable break in many areas. The majority of
> "development" projects have always followed more of
> a top down approach. Many aid programs still rely on
> local power structures, even under circumstances
> where this is not mandatory. It's just so much
> easier to work with "interpreters" that you can
> "speak" to, even if it means to feed a, lot of your
> resources into chains of corruption.
> 
> When we want to see free, community based
> information infrastructures emerge in poor
> countries, we, for sure, need communities as
> partners. And we will not reach these communities by
> putting up information somewhere on the internet.
> Because the communities we are looking for are
> exactly those that have no, ore very limited access.
> So we have to find other ways, to get in contact
> with those that could have a need for the offer we
> have to make now, and from whose contributions we
> can hope to benefit in the future. 
> 
> For a start this will be communities that are
> already structured, already have a manifested need
> for information infrastructures, and are somehow
> close to the skills and recourses to support them.
> In many countries, I believe, educational
> institutions, and civil society organizations of
> different kinds, could be such partners, if the
> values of community empowerment and distributed
> ownership are shared.
> 
> This does not mean, in my opinion, that genuine
> citizen based networks are not possible, at least
> where economic conditions are a little better. Maybe
> new concepts have to be found here, because in many
> cases even the PC front-end will be hard to finance.
> But I do definitely not share the opinion, that
> community building is impossible in poor countries,
> because everybody is fighting for survival. This may
> be true for very unstable circumstances. But very
> often, especially in rural areas, you will find even
> very poor sections of society that are well able to
> support collaborative undertakings of different
> kinds.  
> 
> Many of the views stated so far, are maybe also
> applicable for the ad hoc community of a WSFII
> gathering. So the following would be the lessons
> learned for a World Summit in African in 2007.
> 
> *  Let's make sure that the "free" is not forgotten,
> that sharing, openness and creativity are values
> embraced were we go, before we go.
> 
> * Let's scout for communities that could be possible
> partners actively, while keeping the digital divide
> in mind.
> 
> * Let's choose our middlemen and "interpreters"
> wisely, and skip them where possible. 
> 
> * Let's build robust webs of trust before we go, to
> avoid the many traps caused by corruption and
> cultural gaps.
> 
> So if anybody has some money to spend, please spend
> it NOW. Spend it on a thorough survey and on
> enabling an active process of linking. This could be
> a great contribution, helping to achieve the goals
> stated above, and possibly making meshing possible
> in the end.   
> 
> 
=== message truncated ===>
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