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New English/Arabic Translation Site Hopes To Promote Citizen Diplomacy
Wired has mention of a new site that hopes to encourage a grassroots "citizen diplomacy" movement by combining English/Arabic translation software with a Facebook-style meeting place. "Meedan, which officially launches Monday, lets users post stories and comments in English and have them automatically translated into Arabic, or the opposite. People who don’t share a common language can have an online discussion in near real time. The name, appropriately, means 'gathering place' or 'town hall'; in Arabic.
Think of it as a social network filled with people you don't know, but want to understand."
First post!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
...what could possibly go wrong?
I wish I knew
Do you want to come back to my place, bouncy bouncy?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
So we have a service designed from the start to attract internet trolls from one end and propaganda ministries from the other. What could possibly go wrong?
I like the concept, but the real world is going to interfere with the execution.
I read the internet for the articles.
Arabic numerals?
Apparently they haven't read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" on the side effects of the Babelfish.
Good luck, though.
Among Arabic speakers who have access to the internet in the first place, the proportion who know at least basic English is quite high. There are plenty of barriers to understanding and agreement, but I'm not sure I would rate a literal inability to communicate as the main one.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I can't wait to try out ArabRoulette and see what I get!
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
I used to play FFXI and found their system of guided translation to work reasonably well. Several times I was in Japanese parties, or had a Japanese in my party and we were capable of communicating about 80% of what we wanted to. It generally produced less garbled messages than I have seen from sites like babel fish, though that may have been affected by the limited topics of discussion in an MMO.
Thanks for joining our site... you're now being followed by:
@CIA
@FBI
@DARPA
@OsamaBL
I have to say, from my experience in forums and online games, diplomacy is not a strong point in internet users...or even attempted by said group
It could be considered a "Green" site. The flames from the forum could heat several countries, thus saving the need for petrochemical or electric heating.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
"We have no word for GOD in our language, but we have a word for DOG."?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Now all of the trolls who only speak english will be able to harass other cultures around the world. Thank someone for that miracle.
@GOOGLE
Yours In Astakhan,
K. Trout
Great, so maybe now Arabs will see what their leaders say in English to the Western press, which is completely different from what they say to their own people.
Arab leader in Arabic: "Kill all non-believers, destroy the Great Satan (USA) and the Little Satan (Israel)"
Arab leaders in English to the press: "We just want to live in peace and harmony"
Western press: "Arab leaders: just want to live in peace and harmony"
until "I think your people are misunderstood in America" is mistranslated to "I think we should invade your country."
seriously, computer translations are not gonna cut it....
...when their men spoke directly to our women. In a blinding display, the new "51% Voting Block" party was formed, the Constitution amended to allow the foreign-born to become president, President Obama impeached and thrown from office, and New Zealand actress Lucy Lawless voted in as president.
The nukes were launched less than five minutes later.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
And now for something completely different...
Today on Slashdot a gaggle of humorless retards were given mod points which they then used to demonstrate their complete ignorance of the Hungarian language.
Oh wait... that's not different at all is it?
Obligatory XKCD
Bow-ties are cool.
oh, dear, didn't they read that story about the babelfish?!!!
4Chan's gonna cause WWIII with this.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I can see that phrase coming up a lot.
In the picture at the Wired article it says "Translated by Nouran" - Nouran is a female Arabic name. Does that mean they're relying on the mechanical turk method of translation? How is that going to scale?
In the 80's I remember how people's diplomacy, grassroots peace movements, helped bring the end of the denuclearization of many European countries and eventually the end of the Cold War. It really scared backed by the CIA Military Industrial Complex. Samantha Smith, the American child peace ambassador was cowardly assassinated by the CIA but it was to late to turn back the tide. Threatened with the drastically reduced funding the MIC invented a new war - the never-ending War on Terror. Now the dark cloud of WWIII once again looms on the horizon. People here are in Russia are very scared of the USA but in our hearts we understand it is not the ordinary American workers and farmers who want to attack us with nuclear weapons. Just like in the 70s and 80s we collected packages of food and warm clothing for American homeless we again are ready to talk to the ordinary American men and women directly. If this technology is indeed able to break the language barrier between Americans and Arabs (and I hope between Americans and other cultures in the future) we may see people people from the USA, Iran, Syria, Israel and Palestine come together on the Internet forums and say an overwhelming NO! to their war mongering leaders.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
Randall can tell people off for overquoting Python, but you don't get to quote Randall telling people off for overquoting Python without looking like the exact kind of person Randall is making fun of.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
That a simple sentence meant in the correct context and inflection in English gets translated and interpreted by some religious crazy over there who calls Jihad on my ass.
e.g. The forcast says that it will be a bit warm in the desert today.
I keeeeel you now!
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
I have been telling the war mongers for ten years that we need to learn arabic. Not redneck, arabic. Learn a language, learn a culture, learn more. Christians don't understand the Q'uaran because they don't speak arabic! I joined the islam american culture group and they sent me a beautiful quaran for free. Im not a muslim, but at least i am not so stupid as to dismiss their language and culture as stupid. It is in fact beautiful. They gave us such familiar things as our alphabet, the study of chemistry, and our world-view is more influenced by the middle- eastern history than can be imagined. I only hope that futting oil doesnt destroy that relationship to an irreparable condition before I can see it in person. I am only twenty five, I have been to the tip of south america, I have been in Europe, but If I die before I have a chance to spend at least one or two years in the arabic world I will die unfulfilled. So rich, so deep. In some instances, more rich, more deep than the consumerism in which I exist. Give me a light cotton robe, some people to talk to, and places to explore. I am an optomist, but also pragmatic. I have never been in a fight. I feel like if I had a chance to spend a year in Iran, perhaps travel all over the arabic world, I would only meet friends. My travels everywhere, I think everybody wants the same thing. Companionship, discussion, language, culture, food, risks, takings risks and realizing that your not that different. I think it would be great to speak arabic and travel in arabic speaking countries. I hear that the food is incredible, and the culture is so rich that it would make me cry realizing that my lost scandinavian farming culture had a similar richness that has been lost to western wealth. food and family isn't good enough. But I have hope. The asian kid from school of rock said "i'm not cool" lawrence. Lawrence is good at the piano. If this country has hope it is in our young people realizing that money does not equal wealth, rather wealth is happiness, and the only true way to achieve wealth is by having convictions, following them, and doing everything you can to show your worth. Showboating and rich is over. I am sick of watching priveleged US athletes showboating like war heroes because they did mundane details. We need to start giving them a dose of reality at a young age. When I see things happen like college athletes getting taken down for stealing, raping, and fighting, and not getting in trouble, and tech people getting in trouble for lying, cheating, and manipulating, I feel the same way. Where are the parents? Who are we holding accountable? Our leaders in business are not accountable. Our scientists are not accountable. Our politicians are not accountable. Our governments are not accountable. They have destroyed global wealth. The system is not working. Why not? What can we do to make it work?
Koalas. They're telepathic. Plus, they control the weather. -Margaret
database not connected, check your config file!
WTF?
Death to those who translate the Quran
No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood.
Yeah, I would have to agree. Giving the likes of 4chan a more direct communication mode to pretty much anyone could only lead to trouble....
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Lesson #2: Do not reply to trolls. That is all.
/.ed
Such a paradoxical construction is called a quine, after the philosopher Willard Quine.
One of his examples:
"is not a sentence" is not a sentence.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Just go an play some online games. Preferably RPGs. Then you automatically come into contact with people from all over the world.
Most of them speak English anyway. But often secondary languages like Spanish help too.
And after a while, you will have them in your instant messenger, and talk about life and things.
But I promise you, that it will be more interesting than talking to somebody on Slashdot. ^^
Oh, and by the way: ;)
I wonder if you can already find someone with the name Achmet on that site, having his status set to (deceased)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
They say they'll be back "within the hour". They also thank a bunch of websites for the "excellent" coverage (LoL).
It's non-profit
This type of service would be an excellent sponsorship candidate for google.org . Maybe they can get access to Meedan's translation service and incorparate it into google (if it's any good).
I KiiiiiLL YOU!
Yay anecdotes! Is there no lie you can't help spread?
helped bring the end of the denuclearization of many European countries...
Ending denuclearization?!?!?! You mean renuclearization of European countries?
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Great. Now we get to find out what Dirka Dirka really means.
Unless there's a solid moderation system (like /., but then you could have moderators battling it out, which probably happens here, but I don't see it) you could end up with stuff like this.
Recently at UC Irvine the Israeli Ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, had been invited to campus to speakabout Israeli-U.S. relations, but his lecture before about 500 people at the Student Center was interrupted 10 times by students denouncing Israel's treatment of Palestinians. Earlier that day, UCI's Muslim Student Union had issued a statement condemning the decision to invite a "public figure who represents a state that continues to break international and humanitarian law ... ."
After the 10th interruption, the event deteriorated further as a large group of students walked out of the conference room to jeers - and, the protesters allege, threats - by Oren's supporters. Eight UCI students and three UC Riverside students were briefly detained in another room before being released, after Oren had finished his speech. A planned 30-minute question-and-answer session with Oren was scrapped.
(follow up article at the UC Register)
!
Sure. But how many native English speakers speak Arabic? You are making the assumption that the translation site is for the benefit of the Arabs but have you considered that it is actually more for you Westerners. We non-Westerners (I'm a Malaysian Muslim) have had a lot of exposure to your Western culture, values and language. In Malaysia, English is a compulsory subject at school but we certainly did not learn it for your benefit. After more than 30 years of life, I have not found much to be gained from your Western values, culture and your vapid mindless "entertainment" that my people are so fond of aping. Maybe it is you Westerners who should take the effort to learn about other cultures to avoid being so easily mind controlled by your politician's xenophobic propaganda. P.s. to those of you who are making anti-Iran jokes: the Iranians speak Farsi, not Arabic, you dolt!
Towel is not a correct depiction of what they wear on ther heads, its more like a 'little sheet' wrapped around there heads.
Ah, but you put forth a good counterexample as to why familiarity will not necessarily breed understanding. Despite many years of contact with foreign cultures, you still have a xenophobic, nationalist view of them, in which you see the foreign values as degenerate and unworthy, in contrast to your own culture's quality values.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Also if we are trying to show off our intellect we would say Iranians speak Persian not Farsi. Just like the Germans speak German not Deutsch.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
Another language for me to pimp Ron Paul! Weeeeeee
Not to sound to insulting but asking the average man or woman (including me) to understand the cultural complexities of diplomacy is as about as successful as teaching a goldfish the complexity of quantum string theory.
Towel is not a correct depiction of what they wear on ther heads, its more like a 'little sheet' wrapped around there heads.
Somehow I don't think they would enjoy being referred to as "little sheet heads" either.
The problem is that our (western) values ARE ACTUALLY pretty fucked up... I have to agree with the malayan on this one
-- Counting backwards since 1984!
Allahu Akbar?
the Iranians speak Farsi, not Arabic, you dolt!
Correct, but most Muslims speak Arabic as a second language if it isn't their first, what with the Qu'ran being written in Arabic, and it being the language of the afterlife, etc.
It takes some time to learn to hate Americans, for example. And it takes even more time to place the blame for the American foreign policies correctly so as not needing to hate the whole culture and people. After that, and some actual visits to the country and exposure to the people after the anus has recovered from the cold hands of an enthusiastic border patrol, you might actually learn to love some aspects of America. When it comes to the issues related to something Americans feel threatening or hostile towards, it's like trying to form a meaningful friendship with a porcupine, though.
Then again, nobody should try to find the core ideas of our western civilization from Hollywood entertainment alone. One might as well try to acquire an understanding of ancient Roman values from the porn scribbles of Pompeii.
then buy stock in mass jihad.
Table-ized A.I.
There already exists an online meeting place between (angry teenage) people in the US and (angry teenage) people in the Middle East. It's called CounterStrike--The main difference is that instead of discussing politics, you act them out by shooting one another.
(For anyone who has played the HL2 mod Insurgency, you know what I mean. The English/Arabic ratio of players is about 2:1, and everyone takes turns yelling Allahu Akbar! and shooting each other with rocket launchers and M-16s and whatnot. Kind of fucked up, when you think about it, but it's also loads of fun.)
Randall can tell people off for overquoting Python, but you don't get to quote Randall telling people off for overquoting Python without looking like the exact kind of person Randall is making fun of.
Hm, no, not buying it. Mindlessly prattling off Python quotes at any moderately viable opportunity does not equate to linking to a comic that explains why that is a bad thing. Randall made a good point and I think it's worth bearing in mind.
Bow-ties are cool.
P.s. to those of you who are making anti-Iran jokes: the Iranians speak Farsi, not Arabic, you dolt!
1) A lot of us know that Iranians speak Farsi, not Arabic.
2) A lot of us know that Iranians are Persians, not Arabs.
3) A lot of us know that Iranians hate being called Arabs.
4) A lot of us are trying to piss some Iranians* off.
5) So a lot of us say Arabic/Arab on purpose.
*Some Iranians should not be construed to mean any of the Iranians who are currently protesting and demanding their rights via the Green Revolution. Those Iranians have my respect and best wishes. I'm even sympathetic towards Iranians who support the current regime but who abhor the violence used against the protesters.
Assuming Arabic means Islam, and non-Arabic means either Christian or Atheist...
Muslims believe they have a duty to kill somebody who leaves the faith. See the "Aposty in Islam" wikipedia article if you are clueless about this. There are a dozen countries where the government actually imposes the death penalty for leaving Islam.
Seriously, WTF? How can any Christian or Atheist respect such an evil load of shit?
Then there is the matter of democracy being considered immoral because it suggests that man can make laws. All law is found in the Koran (Sharia). How can you deal with a person who insists on such a thing? Separation of church and state ("give to Ceasar...") is a Christian idea.
Christians and Atheists have a big problem. Demographics are tilting in favor of Islam, via both birth rate and conversions.
Most Christians and most Atheists don't have the balls to respond to the violent Arab world. (possible exceptions: the Russians, the Chinese, and George W. Bush)
After more than 30 years of life, I have not found much to be gained from your Western values, culture and your vapid mindless "entertainment" that my people are so fond of aping.
Same here, and I'm a non-Muslim in the USA.
Note that we are both on Slashdot. That could have something to do with it.
I'll guess the people in your country who ape the vapid mindless entertainment are not Slashdot readers.
There are plenty of others that were launch sites for the USA or USSR/Russia, but only South Africa really quit.
BTW, Russia has something like 2x what the USA does. Any sort of disarmament needs to start with them, and they've been caught violating treaties numerous times.
Which ones? Personal freedoms? Individualism? Independence? Secularism?
After more than 30 years of life, I have not found much to be gained from your Western values, culture and your vapid mindless "entertainment" that my people are so fond of aping. Maybe it is you Westerners who should take the effort to learn about other cultures to avoid being so easily mind controlled by your politician's xenophobic propaganda.
Sure, let's give it a try.
30 seconds looking up information on the culture of Malaysia have found me this.
So much for "xenophobic propaganda", eh?
I guess I'll stick to my Western values of personal freedom, and respect for the freedom of other individuals to decide for themselves (but not to force their POV on others), thank you very much.
Why am I supposed to respect an all-encompasing way of life (not a mere "religeon") that insists on killing people who quit?
There are a dozen countries in which this is the law. If you are thought to have stopped being Muslim, the government will execute you.
Elsewhere, it happens without official government sanction. It is considered every Muslim's duty to kill somebody who leaves. If a Muslim becomes Christian or Atheist, they will be killed. The MUST be killed.
WTF? This is the ultimate disrespect for non-Muslims. Why in hell should I respect them? If anything, a bit of pre-emptive (before they ALL get nukes) self defense is in order.
There's pros and cons in every culture, and many are more similar than you might think. Fun fact: Malaysia's population is 1/3 ethnic Chinese, but they're not considered real Malaysians by the pro-Malay policies of the ethnocentric government, which discriminates against them broadly. Sounds oddly familiar.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The problem that no one seems to have picked up on is that Arabs don't actually SPEAK the same language. Written Modern Standard Arabic goes through translation sites OK, but not all the non-standard ways of writing Egyptian, Lebanese, Moroccan, Saudi, etc. Each of these "dialects" can be completely incomprehensible to other Arabs and could be considered a language unto themselves, except that they are not traditionally written. That's changed now that people go online to communicate with each other and have invented their own orthographies using Arabic script or Latin letters to represent sounds and words that don't exist in Standard Arabic.
My two bits says that the translation engine will totally flop AR->EN
The political leaders sucked up already by initiating so many confrontations and doing nothing to diffuse potential ones, you guys wanna be fools and follow what they think you would just add nothing to the feud but more splitting and madness. Reach out to each other and you would find that the other one is not as dreadful as they are made to appear by those controlling our media and life for their own advantage.
There are many out there who of course would benefit that an ongoing spell of hatred is so pronounced but if a proper communication is established between both sides the carpet would've been pulled from under these sly elements...
...what could possibly go wrong?
I see American soldiers in Iraq carrying a machine connected to a loudspeaker. They speak American into the machine and it says loud, in Arab: "Don't be afraid. We are your friends!".
The lameness " " (filter) prevents entering more Arabic here
The problem is that our (western) values ARE ACTUALLY pretty fucked up... I have to agree with the malayan on this one
Which ones? Personal freedoms? Individualism? Independence? Secularism?
Hedonism, greed... Not all of the values of current western civilization are good (despite Gorden Gekko).
Sure, but in the comic, the Python quote isn't topical. Mine always are, which makes it okay according to the official Python Quoting Handbook.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
They must have fifty thousand ways to say that, considering how often it's said.
An excellent point, except for where you botched it. In English, the term Farsi is used to refer to a group of related dialects of which Persian (the name for standard Iranian dialect in English) is just one, and that the comparison to German vs. Deutsch is inappropriate in this context.
Nice try with the linguistic pedantry. Don't feel bad, though - most Slashdotters hopelessly fuck up anything to do with language, or linguistics and its various subdisciplines.
Nice to know I can still write a plot that keeps 'em guessing.
I thought I knew where you were going, but then you turned 180% on me.
That's pretty much every woman ever, ain't it? :-)
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
That's not really true, in large part. In many parts of the Islamic world, it's common for people to learn to recite the Qu'ran from memory without really learning Arabic or understanding the meaning of what they're saying (they may get an interpretation of the suras, but that's more of a rough gloss and isn't comparable to actually understanding the language itself).
I wouldn't say that hedonism and greed are values as such; they are just undesired side effects from the philosophy of freedom. However, there is no way you can rid of them without scrapping the whole thing altogether, and, in my opinion, the advantages of freedom outweigh all the negatives.
It's a pretty big stretch to assume gp was referring to a group of languages rather than a single one.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
After more than 30 years of life, I have not found much to be gained from your Western values, culture and your vapid mindless "entertainment" that my people are so fond of aping.
Except reading Slashdot, apparently...