Hi All
I must first thank Peter Lopez, who mentioned Jonathan Dube's "A
Bloggers’ Code of Ethics"
<http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/000215.php> in a message entitled
"On Blogging and Other Stuff =Sunday, 10-16-05", sent to the DDN
mailing-list on Oct. 16.
This code of ethics is a great text, Peter. It is so great and
stimulating that I decided to translate it into Italian for ADISI (see
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADISI>), because Swiss powers-that-be in
education are finally waking up to the fact that blogs are not just
futile and harmless toys, due to kids blogging unflattering pictures of
their profs, accompanied by even more unflattering comments.
The Geneva school authorities already reacted with "Blog sur Internet:
une arme d'information massive qui requiert de la prudence" which was
distributed to all middle school students of Canton Geneva this year
(1). Better than nothing, perhaps. However, this text seems written by
people who know how a blog works, technically, but who apparently never
have blogged and don't take blogs seriously, except in their possible
negative uses.
Blog regulation - if any is needed or advisable - must come from
bloggers like Jonathan Dube and the people who commented on his
"Bloggers' Code of Ethics", not from outside. Hence the decision to
translate Dube's text - into Italian because that's ADISI's language.
The main hurdle in this are words like "fair" and "accountable", for
which there are no equivalents in Italian (or French for that matter).
And to a lesser extent, "Code of Ethics" itself. Sure, there is "codice
deontologico" in Italian ("code déontologique" in French). But "ethics"
and "ethical" are fairly common terms in English. Not so with
"deontologia" etc in Italian, apart from the fact that "deontologia"
ecc. have an imperative nuance, which is absent in "ethics".
Sure, there are work-arounds: there always are with translation. But
paraphrasing is far less efficient than a one-word equivalent. Moreover,
fairness and accountability are key concepts in several fields:
education, communication, information - well, society in general.
So when a social group speaking a given language has no word for these
concepts, what are the implications and repercussions?
Who knows how much time was spent in order to come up with "logiciel"
for "software", "courriel" for "e-mail" and "joueb" for "blog" by
various official francophone terminology services? Would it not be more
pertinent to concentrate on how to import essential concepts like
"fairness" and "accountability"?
This would not only mean finding/inventing equivalent terms, but also
means and strategies to impose the concepts themselves in research and
debates on social issues, and on information society and information
rights in particular.
I am also posting this as a discussion topic in the "Language and
Linguistic Diversity" DDN community
<http://www.digitaldivide.net/community/languages>. If you have
suggestions and/or comments on these issues, please join the discussion
there.
All the best
Claude
(1) i.e. "Blog on Internet: a weapon of mass information that requires
caution". If you speak French and have a broadband connection, you can
download "Blog sur Internet" from
<http://wwwedu.ge.ch/sem/doc/semblog.pdf> - over 1 Mb
--
Claude Almansi
Castione, Switzerland
claude.almansi @ bluewin.ch
http://www.adisi.ch
http://www.digitaldivide.net/profile/Claude
http://www.digitaldivide.net/blog/claude
http://www.digitaldivide.net/community/languages
_______________________________________________
DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list
DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org
http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide
To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE
in the body of the message.
