Cindy Lemcke-Hoong wrote:
Hello Tom, Taran, Richard
Everytime I wanted to stop posting ...
If you mean lack of "free" content provision perhaps:
http://www.gutenberg.or
Tom: Actually they were written by Taran... no matter. I
will give one thought of my own now that you gave 2
examples of where one can find contents... both English
sites.
Your suggest lead me to the thought of:
are we all looking at this world is going to be on giant
MONOlingual (English) place? How about French, Hindi,
Swahili, Korean, Mandarin, Bahasa Malaysia/Indonesia ...
not to mention another 100 or so languages of this world !!
... I better not start another arguement about
bringing the burden of learning English (THE divide, by
the way, created by the ICT world).. :-) ..
Taran, Richard,
Re: Pushing technology ...
I have written before: as long as we are using first world
solution solving 3rd world problems, we will never get out
of this mode. Give them the tools they need, not the tools
WE THINK they should have.
Stoop DOWN to their level... One can see better together
with them
Cindy
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Im guessing you haven't seen my other post on this subject. I am a great
supporter of GNU/Linux BECAUSE of its openness to adaptability and its
language support, and because it will allow other cultures to take it
and "make it their own" in the way they best see fit.
I have worked on a project to get computers from the UK to a school in
the Philippines (my wife come from the Philippines) and I am now working
on a project to get computers to a "school" in the Cameroon. But already
in the time that it has taken to get the first project off the ground,
the Philippine linux gurus have created their own distribution. This
only caters for their national (native) language, as well as English,
and there are many languages / dialects in the Philippines (my wife
speeks three languages, her "mother dialect" Visaya, Tagalog (the
national native language) and English). But it does show what can be
achieved through free open platforms and determination. Given time there
is no reason why there should not be translations for all the major
dialects and languages in the Philippines.
Interestingly for the Cameroon project I have just been asked to install
support for French (English and French are the official languages of the
Cameroon with French being the dominant language, all be it that the
computers are going to the "English" speaking area of the Cameroon).
Anyway, before being asked to provide this I had never noticed the
language selector on the login screen before. This is what you get for
being a colonial thinking English man (me). It took seconds to switch to
French, of course once I logged in I didnt understand a word in the pull
down menus, but it proved the point. I (as in any user) had the choice
of language, and the opportunity to control my own destiny.
You are right that most of the texts provided by guttenberg are English.
wikipedia has translations although the English one is the most
supported (in terms of pages etc.). However, if it is possible to find
one person in a community that can translate into the local language,
given the right tools, it only needs to be done once. Indeed the
mediawiki tool which is the driving engine for wikipedia is "free(dom)"
software, so it could be installed locally in a school and server the
whole community as a repository of any form of information of interest
to community members.
My philosophy is to plant a seed in the right soil, with the right
lighting / shade, then come back in 5 years and see whats its managed to
achieve without me. I know what sort of tree its going to be because I
planted it, but I may be surprised by how tall, strong or beautiful it
has become.
Tom.
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