US Government Seeks Open-Source Translation

valdean writes "The Boston Globe is reporting that last week the United States Government began publishing captured Iraqi documents on the web in order to harness the translating talents of the bilingual public. The article calls it 'the same open source principle' that created Linux. Check out the Foreign Military Studies Office's document portal."

Comments

Good, but...

[christopherfinke]

I think it's a great idea, but how many people will have to translate a document with similar results before it can be trusted?

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Posted with the Slashdot Firefox extension.

Open-Source?

[PocketPick]

I fail to see how the term 'open-source' is applicable to a translation. Is the belief that if a number of people contribute to something, that it's open-source?

Re:Taxation

[horatio]

This is properly tantamount to a voluntary tax upon bilinguals

So, by your reasoning we should suspend activities such as:

- Big Brothers/Big Sisters
- Frats and VFW groups who do highway/litter cleanup
- Museum volunteers
- Reference desk volunteers at the local library
- Volunteers for the Red Cross and other relief orgs who are at least partially funded through tax dollars - but whose volunteers are not paid for their work
- Civics groups who put on things like Shakespeare in the Park
- Volunteer firefighters and EMTs
- College students who pay money to take their springbreak repairing the houses of dirt poor black americans in towns in the south where racism still lurks ominously. That is *double* taxation - not only have I paid to make the trip and buy the building materials, but I also spent weeks of my own time doing it. Why doesn't the gov't step in and pay me me! me!! to help these poverty-stricken people?

Maybe you got your degree from this guy so you don't understand that people who are paid by the gov't are paid out of your tax dollars. Very simple math. Gov't hires 10 more people, your taxes go to paying those ten extra people instead of whatever social program you fancy today. Give a little time as a volunteer (to do whatever, not nessecarily translate docs), and you save yourself a few dollars in taxes and get to have a little bit of civic pride. But it seems like you want us to all run around like a bunch of self-centered little dumbasses.

God forbid you should help an old lady cross the street without expecting a check for your "services".

Re:Better Analysis: Deft Ploy by American Governme

[sasha328]

I think you've missed the point. The government is not targeting insurgents, it is targeting people outside of Iraq, people who have access to the internet. Especially people in the US, so they can "see how bad the previous regime was".

I think many people project their status onto other, so if everyone you know has a computer and is connected to the internet, and just because you see insurgents advertising on the internet, does not mean that everyone has access to the internet. I've been to the Middle East (not Iraq), where the majority of people do not have computers let alone internet access.
However, you are correct, I call BS as well that they need the "public's" help to translate documents.

Hypocrite

[N8F8]

US Government doesn't give enough information to the public there US Government is bad.

US Government Gives Too Much information to the public there US Government is bad.

US Govermnet translates documents to skew them to their own meaning there US Government is bad.

US Government releases documents for the puclic to translate therefore US Government is bad.

Give me a fcking break.

And I won't even bother explaining the tons of goofy dialects that make translating Arabic from anywhere very difficult. You practically have to have a translator born in the neighborhood where the document was written. I took Arabis for a year and went nuts when learning every phrase went like: This is how the phrase is said in Saudi Arabis; this is how it is said in Egypt, this is how it is said in Kuwait, this is how it is said in this part of Bahrain... and so on.