Re: ICANN language translation

[Michael Sondow <msondow@iciiu.org>]

Antoun Nabhan a écrit:
> 
> Sorry I haven't gotten back to you sooner on this - classes are these pesky things that interfere with what I swear is my real life. Charlie, naturally, is even harder to find than me.

No problem. I've been pretty busy myself.

> Here's the story. We have 25x2servers = 50 outgoing streams of RealAudio available.

Nice.

> I think you and I were assuming that the translators are *not* on-site at the meeting. Given that condition: We can reserve x number of the outgoing streams for listening by translators, but the translators need to have their own outgoing Real Audio servers/encoders. We can provide help with that, but not equipment.

Of course. But surely they can run one realaudio stream off their
desktops, no?

> If they are on-site at the meeting, we have a different scenario but not necessarily a better one, since we need an additional encoder machine for each outgoing audio feed. My experience at Cambridge & Singapore is that a Pentium II 233 is just adequate for this. The server machine that we brought to Singapore can supposedly handle multiple encoder feeds, although we've never run it with that setup.

I don't think we want to start out planning on translators being
physically present at the meetings. Who would pay for their travel
and lodging?

As to a minimum of a Pentium II 233 for encoding, would that also
serve for the outgoing realaudio server, or can't encoding and
feeding be done from the same machine for some reason? (I'm really
totally inexperienced in doing realaudio feeds, so you'll have to
excuse my ignorant questions.)

> I do think it is a good idea to contact CABASE and any mailing lists > that might prove fruitful. 

That can be done

> (Your suggestion of Spanish, Chinese, French sounds good. I would also > advocate German, as a nod to the hosts for Berlin, and Japanese.)

Trying to do too much in the beginning is a recipe for failure.
We'll never get five translators set up in time for Berlin, IMO. 

Can we try for three? Which three languages? Yes, including German
is a good idea as a nod to Berlin hosts, but German isn't much use
globally, and the Germans themselves won't need it because they can
be present. I advocate not doing German, therefore, and
concentrating on three languages that won't be easily represented at
the meeting, for example Spanish (spoken in some thirty-six
countries worldwide), Chinese (as a sort of common Asian language),
and French (as the second-ranking international language). 

Japanese is too minority: only used in one country. Arabic would be
a good choice, since it's used in many different countries, but
perhaps the lack of developed Internet infrastructure in most of
those countries argues against it. Any other suggestions? Discussion
on the subject of how many and which languages? Charles?

> The sooner we can get translators lined up for Berlin, the better. 
> Equipment and technical hurdles will be tricky, but there's a whole 
> lot of underutilized equipment and bandwidth out in the world; all we > have to do is find the people willing to let us use it.

Perhaps. :)

> I suggest this as a next step: can you figure out what organizations 
> exist to coordinate translators? 

We have to first decide which languages will be used. Then we can
contact organizations. (Although I am copying CABASE on this, since
I assume that Spanish will be one of them, and also ap-forum and the
dnso discuss list, which may still have some diverse countries on
it.)