Written on October 31, 2008 – 9:32 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
The BBC reports on this hilarious road sign. As you can see the English is clear enough but the Welsh at the bottom reads “I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated.”
When officials asked for the Welsh translation of a road sign, they thought the out of office reply was what they needed.
So that is what they printed on the sign. Apparently it happens so often that a local newspaper has a special section showing all the Welsh/English translation screw ups.
This one is just amazing…
I hope you like that post!
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Written on July 22, 2008 – 11:30 am
Joop Dorresteijn, Contributing editor
It turns out that the Arabic language is not really represented Wikipedia, a problem in two ways. Here’s why: First, the people that can’t speak English have access to limited resources, and second: those who actually have Internet are usually the rich, well educated people that have no problem to talk English on the web, which creates a gap between the Arabic and Western countries.
Knowledge is power
The Herald Tribune reports about a group of Egyptians that are a little bit embarrassed about the size of their Arabic Wikipedia base. One of the organizers of an Egyptian Wikipedia conference explains: “The gap between the Arab world and the Western world is not about money or politics. It is about knowledge. There are many examples of Egyptians who travel to Europe or the U.S. and become successful. If people had access to the same knowledge …” As he underlines the importance of knowledge sharing. The Internet can play an important role in bridging this gap.
Not much Arabic content
The Arabic online Wiki content is little, in comparison: the English Wikipedia consists of over 2.5 million articles which is a fair number with over 400 million native speakers. However, the Arabic version consists of only 65.000 articles but counts a whopping 300 million native speakers. At a news conference last week, a reporter asked Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, if there was a sort of Bias against Arabic.
Wikipedia accessible for the poor
Wikipedia, with its open nature and lack of proper sources can be considered unreliable for many, but its often the only source available for the poor. For Egypt and other countries, there is little information available for some of the people. A possible reason for Egypt is that less then 10 percent of 80 million Egyptians are online, and those who have it are well educated and usually express themselves in English.
The Internet opens Egypt open to the world
The visa procedure is very difficult for Egyptians, no matter which country you want to go. Web applications such as Facebook and Wikipedia enables Egyptians to connect abroad. Nahla Ghoneim, a 23-year-old computer engineer at IT Works, said at the conference that young people in Egypt need to get involved in information technology “not just as consumers.”
English is the language on the web
The issue addressed by the Egyptians at the conference probably apply to more countries. In my opinion, the language of the web is English. The fact that everyone speaks the same language makes the Internet as powerful as it is today. However, one can’t expect the poor to talk English overnight.
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