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New English/Arabic Translation Site Hopes To Promote Citizen Diplomacy

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the but-who-will-the-government-villainize-then dept.

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."

3 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. I'm not sure the language barrier is the main one by Trepidity · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

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    10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
  2. Something similar to autotranslate in FFXI? by Nadaka · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  3. You have new followers! by LostCluster · · Score: 4, Interesting

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