Re: ICANN language translation

[Antoun Nabhan <anabhan@law.harvard.edu>]

>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?

I think that's right. Remote translation strikes me as a more viable option long-term.

>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.)

You only need one machine, but it has to be a really robust machine with a reasonably fat network pipe attached.

>> (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.  

Well, yes, that's right, too. It is the sort of situation where we can ask for five and have three step forward?

>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?

I'll defer to public comment. I hate to leave anybody out, but we do have some scarcity issues that make it necessary.

>> 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. :)

Well, since this is going out to public lists, it's now a public request. If anyone has equipment and/or bandwidth that they are willing to let us use May 25-26, please let Michael and I know. PC's running RealEncoder software should be in the same physical location as the translators; the RealServers need to be close in network-hop terms but not physically.

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