I read the Google Africa blog whenever there is new content, which honestly, isn't that often. For some reason, the fact that their Google Translate can now translate between all its current languages as well as Swahili and Afrikaans hasn't been mentioned there. I mean, this is huge! This is great! This is... reported on an unofficial Google blog?
I assume that a bigger announcement must be coming soon and they're just checking to make sure that all the conditionals are closed in the code before letting everyone know. For instance, three days ago, before the Afrikaans option was in there, I actually had to translate something from Afrikaans to English. I used Dutch for the source language option and magically, it translated fine, which it shouldn't have given the dialectic drift from Dutch at Afrikaans. I can only assume that Google Translate auto-detected the language as Afrikaans, which was lurking somewhere in the background.
There are implications with this that go above and beyond a simple announcement, specifically for Swahili. A year ago, I talked with some of the guys who work on Google's linguistic endeavors and they told me that the required corpus for Swahili machine translation was at 40% of what was needed and that was the highest for any African language. This means that in the last year, there was either a huge batch of pages in Swahili which Google had missed or there was a 250% increase in the amount of Swahili text available on the web. I'm guessing it's some combination of both as well as Google paying something get a dictionary in there because Google really wants to get established in Africa.
Whatever the case, it's quite excellent news for languages in Africa as these are the first two African languages to be included in this system. If you create the tools, you grow the language. Here's to more and soon, although I don't know what this is going to mean to the Kamusi Project...
And now apparently the Google Africa Blog has decided to write about this over a week after the fact. I feel so incredibly ahead of things right now.
Since setting up the Translation Assistant on this site, I've been chomping at the bit for more Google functions in more African languages as the Assistant only functions in the Colonial languages of Africa. That bums me out, man. According to folks at the 'Plex, the only one that's close is Swahili and the body of text needed for full-blown machine translation is only at around 40% completed or so. That's with a pretty decent blogging scene in Swahili as well as a Wikipedia in Swahili with about 11,000+ entries. So, you can just imagine how it is with other languages on the continent... That also bums me out, man, but there is hope.
Today Google announced one small step in the right direction to get more Swahili functionality on Google's systems. This is just the "search suggestion" tool and all told, it's a small thing. But, this is only the second African language to get this functionality; the first being Amharic at the start of this year. Yeah, I know, it's not machine translation, but it's something and as I'm working with two translators on a full-blown Lingala and Fula version of Maneno, it's nice to know that a big, mighty company such as Google is putting forth even the tiniest bit of effort to show that they are interested in such things. It's these such things that might help them win against the encroaching big blue monster.
One small side note in that folks should notice that in addition to the standard French translation that appears after the English, there is also a translation in Swahili. I've been really curious to know if the French and Swahili are just machine generated versions or done by someone who actually speaks the language. Anybody have feedback on that?
At the Berkeley Human Rights Center's The Soul of the New Machine conference, James Surowiecki gave a keynote talk at the end of the first day. His day job is being an author at The New Yorker, but he has also written a book which is lengthily titled, The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations. It's the subject matter of this book which is the reason he was at the conference giving a talk.
The talk was great. He quickly delved in to the pros and cons of crowdsourcing. He talked about how it's often the case that when working within the crowd/group setting, within 15 minutes, the overall intelligence of the group drops to lower than the dumbest member, as opposed to rising higher than the smartest member. The later obviously being the more desirable result. He went on to describe why this is often the case and it was enough to make me want to take a peek at his book and read more.
The one point that stuck out though was something that Surowiecki probably wasn't even aware of. I almost feel bad for citing him on it, but it's something that people (especially Americans) need to keep in mind when drawing comparisons of good and bad. He talked about the disappearance and following search for the USS Scorpion submarine in 1967. It was an interesting talking point as it showed how, when working with a crowd, John Craven was able to quite accurately figure out where this sub was on the ocean floor. It was a very compelling point and showed how well a crowd could be used for good things. It's just unfortunate that right before he said that crowds can sometimes be bad as was seen in Rwanda with their genocide. The particular "crowd" showed how the power of the crowd can go bad.
I am not saying in any way that what happened in Rwanda was not a terrible, revolting devolution of humanity, but at the same time crowds have gotten out of control in say... pre-WWII Germany for instance. Or how about less extreme examples such as Paris, France or Berkeley, California. In other words, white people crowds, in Europe and the US can be bad as well. The way that Surowiecki's comment comes off is that with the Craven example, white people do great things in a crowd, while black people in Africa do horrible, savage things in a crowd.
Like I said, I don't think that Surowiecki is even aware that he made this comparison and in listening to him, I doubt he would do this on purpose. It's just that this is an "acceptable racism" for those outside Africa, specifically in the US and Europe to see Africa as a land of savages. While I find political correctedness ridiculous on many levels (ex. people who say things like 'this is sooo gay' in passing are rarely actually anti-gay) this is one of those points that needs to paid attention to. Subjugating an entire continent to the perception that they're a bunch of bloodthirsty savages instead of regular human beings, like every other person in the world perpetuates that line of thinking, even if it's only at the back of peoples' minds. It's what keeps the broken bandage aid flowing in to Africa as opposed to more proper development aid, market connections, exports and imports, and being part of the rest of the global economy for as bad or good as that may be.
Word around the way has come to me that the US Department of Homeland Security, is specifically seeking out translators for Kinyarwanda, an official language of Rwanda as well as one that is spoken in Uganda and DR Congo. From all accounts, I've heard that this is a rather difficult language to learn. For those who don't know, it is extremely different from other languages in the region, so someone who speaks Swahili or Luganda can't just pick it up as easily as say someone who speaks Spanish learning Italian.
The fact that DHS is looking for translators isn't really a shock. They employ a great many translators of African languages as they apparently place importance in understanding what people in Africa are saying. I'm not sure whether to take it as a good sign that they are now more interested in African languages because they place for importance in Africa due to a new, more enlightened administration or a bad sign that they are now more interested because in having failed at every military incursion in the Middle East, they are going to say that Africa is a new "hotbed of terrorist extremists". I guess time will tell in the matter and let's hope it's not that later assumption.
Like I said, it's not strange that they're looking for translators. At the talk I gave two nights ago, an attendee there mentioned that a friend worked for DHS translating Akan if I remember correctly. What is weird about all of this is that DHS specifically asked Amnesty International if they knew of anyone. The implications of this are just bizarre. I suppose in one sense, DHS just assumes that AI would know of some folks because they have operated in Rwanda. In another sense, I'm wondering if DHS is just pitching this out to a great many NGOs that work in Africa because they went and tried Craigslist or some other ad website only to get no response. Whatever the case, it has to be one of the more bizarre hiring methods I've seen by a governmental agency in the US.
It's true, I have become quite fixated on Ben Affleck's adventures in the DRC. For a long time, I've been giving him the benefit of the doubt. He seemed pretty genuine about just going there and learning what he could; hoping a way to help would fall in to place. I've been over this before, here, here, and here. All seemed reasonable well and good as these celebrity things go.
It was at the corner of Altruism Way and Hubris Boulevard where the Ben made a wrong turn and the time has come for me to pass judgment on Affleck's African travels. He drifted from newbie, interested in the affairs to the dreaded ABSS (African Baby Saving Syndrome). Everything about the guy has gone awry with a recent article that he wrote in Time [Mutha-Uckin'] Magazine. What the...? Time doesn't really need this and to be honest, if Affleck were just trying to "do good" he wouldn't feel the need to write an article on what so many professional journalists have already covered.
For those used to hyperbole when it comes to Sub-Saharan Africa, the title alone says it all, "A Glimmer of Hope in Africa" Christ, did he really go there? Oh yes he did. And of course, you can't just stop there because you really need to have some stats to go along with this:
The most vulnerable suffer the worst. One in five children in Congo will die before reaching the age of 5 — and will do so out of sight of the world, in places that camera crews cannot reach, deep in a vast landscape and concealed under a canopy of bucolic jungle.
Great. That does little to really help out the four that make it and yes, I have Paul Theroux's reoccurring commentary in Dark Star Safari in my head right now of, "...and these were the lucky ones..." But, it seems that Affleck might just pull the article out of a nosedive when he says:
It is common in the West to read about African lives in grim statistical terms, so we've become inured to these huge numbers of deaths. Making matters worse, the conflict in Congo is often seen as a hopelessly byzantine African tribal war, encouraging the damning notion that nothing will ever change.
Well okay, that seems good. It seems that Affleck does get it. He baited you with a grim stat to then flip it around and go, "Aha! I gotcha! I'm about hope in this here article thang." But no, he goes on to sum up the recent history of conflict in the Kivus and tosses in bits such as:
The FDLR subjugates people either by rape (often performed in groups — and on people of either gender) or with the AK-47, a weapon so ubiquitous that it has picked up a tragic moniker: the Congolese credit card.
Man... what gives? That's just sucky news and yeah, it's everyday life for a lot of people there. I know since I saw how people live around Bukavu in my scant initial trip and it's freakin' rough. But really, if you toss in the savage crap, people just think of them as savages and are able to dismiss all of this as an primitive African problem, which is a load of crap and doesn't do anyone any good. Oh yeah... he apparently also met with now-captured rebel general Laurent Nkunda. You know, I was still going to even try and be nice to Ben until I saw that. That's just glamor crap. There is absolutely, positively no reason on the face of the earth, moon, Mars, or some undiscovered other planet made of jamón, that Ben Affleck, winner of an Academy Award for screenwriting should ever, ever, ever have met with Laurent Nkunda. What was to come of that?
Ben: "Laurent, I know how the burdens of notoriety really weigh down on you over time. I mean, I dated Gwenneth Paltrow for an entire year. So, you know, maybe you guys should disarm and go home."
Laurent: "Ben, you seem like a really nice guy coming to Congo all these times and well... yeah, okay. Boys, get your bags, we're checkin' out! Rebel times are over!"
Yeah, that didn't happen obviously. Nothing happened other than Ben being able to say he met a dangerous rebel general and possibly his pet goat. In the end, Ben is just trying to point out that the solution so far seems to be coming out of Africa. Despite everything that foreign governments have tried to do, they never succeeded in ending the fighting, but out of the countries who are involved in this, they found a solution; for now.
That's the problem. Ben's article should have focused so much more on that that and so much less on the grim elements. Because there's a good chance that there will be more rebel groups in the future while there are all the minerals in the region and everyone inside and outside Congo needs to know that there are those who can stop them. I mean dammit, some part of me still wants to encourage Ben probably out of a sense of brotherhood between two tall guys with big foreheads, but if you're going to focus on the positive, focus on the freakin' positive. Stop tempering it will all the bad. There are and will be plenty of folks doing that, probably with a lot smaller foreheads. Oh and stop feeling like you have to meet with rebel generals too. The rebel goats are still okay though.
Google is nothing if not resourceful in creating new resources. Two days ago, those crafty buggers announced a very large expansion of search languages for their African portal pages. From the site, the rundown was:
Ethiopia got Tigrinya, Oromo and Somali
Nigeria got Yoruba and Hausa
Ghana got Hausa
DR Congo got Lingala
Congo got Lingala
Rwanda got Kinyarwanda
Burundi got Kirundi
This is good news for those who don't necessarily speak the already established Google search languages of English, French, and Swahili that they offer in some capacity to these countries. Naturally, it doesn't solve the issues of connectivity to just get on the internet, but it is definitely something good and I'm pleased to see it. This should of course be no shock to anyone given that when not blogging, I'm busy working to get as many languages as possible running for Maneno.
The biggest thing to me about this announcement from Google is the fact that it was all done by volunteers. This may at first seem quite cheeky given that Google has literally billions of dollars (yes, Dr. Evil would be proud) and they could quite easily pay folks to create these translations. I at first was a bit taken aback by this seemingly crappy way to save a buck, but then, I thought about how it is to run a multi-lingual operation. Yes, you can hire someone to work on it fulltime if there is the need and the money to pay them, but this is more of a piece of occasional work here and there. Plus, you get in to dialectical issues. While I've heard that Tanzanian Kiswahili is said to be better than Kenyan, who am I (pretend I'm someone with an O in my title at Google when I say this) to know the difference? I'm not. So... how do I choose the "one" person to create the translation.
There really are strength in numbers when it comes to these things and instead of having one, single voice that might be wrong for some people, you can potentially get a group to compromise on something that generally works for everyone. Yes, okay, they're "crowdsourcing" the translations, but I have a bit of trouble with this word as it's overused these day and often stops short of the true gravity of a project. While there are groups (maybe not crowds) of people working to create these translations, it doesn't stop there. They are creating a community of their language on the web. And I admit that this is another one of the things that Maneno is trying to do in that we know, as does Google, that there needs to be more content out there in African languages, and it takes a group to make that happen.
In closing, I just want to add that if anyone out there who worked on these Google pieces would like to volunteer their time to work on the Maneno language matrix (it's maybe two hours of work), we'd love to have an Amharic, Akan, Hausa, Lingala, and/or Yoruba version available. I'm just saying!
Being that I am neither metrosexual nor gay, I read Men's Journal about as often as I get my nails done; ie never. But, apparently in an attempt to get "edgy", in this month's issue, there between Ask Dr. Bob and an article on T. Boone Pickens on Page 60 is an Emile Hirsch's account of traveling to Congo on the protected wings of Oxfam.
Obviously, this is another case of "Celebrity Goes To Africa to Raise Awareness and/or Save African Babies". I don't like these cases. They're a flash in the pan and then they're gone. People forget about what whomever it was, was talking about when they did that thing that was... you know, somewhere over there.
But to just blindly say that Hirsch is an ass would be arrogant and childish. In his account, he is very honest about what he saw, what he knew going in, and what he got coming out. He was only there for five days, but he saw a lot. Of course, given such a short amount of time and such vast ground that he was covering around the Kivus, one could say that it was all pointless. But, what good does that do? Sure, it doesn't really help anyone and I don't really support celebrities doing this, but on some level he is trying do something, although like Ben Afflecks out there, the energy is largely misdirected. For better or worse, I can say that I've read the whole article and here are a few of the things that stuck out.
And I'm reading these pages and thinking about the $600 in 20s and 50s I was told to carry for "security reasons"...
Someone really told him wrong on this front. First of all, it's a cash economy and one that runs on external cash (dollars or euros) at that. Your day to day needs are going to have to be met solely with the cash that you bring in. $600 would probably be more than enough to cover his five days there given that his stay was taken care of by Oxfam. But the "security reasons" part was laughable. First, there was no way anything was going to happen to Hirsch and secondly, if it did, $600 was going to do little to make things better.
As we wait on the runway, Lyndsay points to a demolished plane nearby. Two months ago it crashed as it tried to take off, catching fire and killing 21 people. Gulp.
Why "gulp"? That was a pathetic sub-contractor airline of the slightly less, yet still completely, abysmal Hewa Bora airline. Again, there was no way Oxfam was going to toss Hirsch on anything close to resembling a Hewa Bora flight. Also, that flight crashed in the market nearby (which was the reason for all the ground casualties.) Maybe that was another plane they were referring to as it would seem it wouldn't be where the girl thought it was?
I can't believe it, but he's wearing a Marilyn Manson T-shirt.
Apparently no one filled him on on the whole t-shirt thing in Africa. Might have been a nice thing for him to know as he could have brought extra clothes to give someone to sell at the local market.
For a boy such as Prince, the support from NGO's represent a chance to take his destiny into his own hands. And for a rape victim such as Kimanizani, donations to Oxfam go toward her medical costs and food and give her a chance to rejoin the world.
I was sorta okay with Hirsch's whole account up to this point. This chunk makes me cringe as it feels like it was written by the marketing people at Oxfam. It cheapens the whole account by him as it makes it suddenly one big sales pitch for throwing more money in to the NGO's that in all truth really aren't making much progress. They're just bandaid solutions to the much bigger issue that the government of Congo and all those in MONUC actually need to actively work for change, which they aren't. Throwing money at Oxfam is not the answer, although I'm sure that readers of this article will see it that way.
The real solution is to educate yourself and not listen to some actor who is being used as a pawn. If you actually know what is going on in Africa (and know much more than Hirsch, whose soundbite history lesson left out France's involvement in the start of the Rwandan Genocide as well as other crucial facts) you are going to understand a lot better what needs to be done. Informed people can actually do something. Otherwise you're just a very obedient sheep foolishly giving your wool to an all too eager recipient who just waits for your next wool to grow in.
As I was traveling a bit last weekend, taking the metro, train, and a bus connection in California, I watched a number of kids riding along with me and using their mobiles in a way that I usually don't in that they were texting heavily. Instead of blathering on the phone like so many people I know usually do (including myself at times), they just kept pinging text messages back and forth during their whole ride. Now, these kids had some of the latest mobiles with touchscreens and ridiculous ringtones that would play a full song when they had an incoming message, but what I was amazed at was how able they were with texting. One was using T9 and the other was using multi-tap to put in their messages. Both were just as fast as each other and were able to do this with one hand, whereas I need both my thumbs in there for any amount of speed.
But what really got me was that despite all the fancy junk that keeps getting slapped on to mobiles, it keeps coming back to the basics that I've seen in Africa in that everyone really wants a two-way text pager. In Western countries, we keep buying new mobiles that are basically worthless gadgets. I know there have been cries by a lot of folks to offer a mobile that is a simple B&W screen, rugged, and has endless battery life. While I think we all regret tossing out older mobiles (I miss my S40), people living in Sub-Saharan Africa are a lot smarter, hanging on to, fixing and continuing to use these older mobiles. Sure, there is the issue that it's done out of a cost issue, but really, when it comes down to it, a Nokia 1200 or a Nokia 3410 have to be some of the best phones suited for these areas, especially Central Africa.
It's not just the Africans using these types of phones I might add. People working for the UN and other NGO's fall back on them as well. They stand up to the environment, perform well, and hang on to battery life for a long time in an area where power can be scarce. Good luck keeping an iPhone running anywhere except in a capital like Kinshasa, Kampala, or Kigali. Of course, this isn't lost on foreign-based companies like CCT (Congo China Telecom) who offer a very simple phone for $20 USD that meets all the criteria of these older mobiles that keep circulation the region. What I regret even more than selling my S40 was not picking up one of these phones. While they are locked in to CCT, they're a very interesting example of the innovation that takes place in Sub-Saharan Africa due to environmental needs rather than by consumerist want. The big GSM Association conferences may take place in Barcelona, but the place where the most useful implementation of mobile technology is happening, is in Sub-Saharan Africa. I'll bet that whatever Web 3.0 application start popping up in the next couple of years will be based on something that happened in there first.
First off, any photographer, writer, musician, artist, or pizza delivery guy that goes by one name like Rankin does, is bound to be an ass and a bit out of touch with the "real" world. By "real" world, I mean the one in which people like you and I watch things called, "Real World" because our lives are so inordinately mundane. Now, these one named people love to do things to show that they do in fact "get it" and obviously Rankin has done such an event or I wouldn't be bothering to write about him.
Twiddling his thumbs in what I'm sure is a sunny, West End breakfast nook one day, Rankin apparently got the idea to go to DR Congo and photograph people living in Mugunga refugee camp. You can take a look at the photos. They're good photos as would be expected from a high end fashion photographer. The thought behind them was to shoot the subjects in a high fashion manner so that people could better relate to them. This is of course where the controversy started because this is asinine. They're human beings. We can relate to them no matter what. But such is the generally inept approach toward Africa. If you feel like reading more commentary, then take a look at: Uganda Scarlett Lion, Wronging Rights, and to a lesser extent Chis Blattman. These are all excellent blogs by the way, which are worth reading on a regular basis unless of course you don't like sarcasm, in which case, what the hell are you doing reading my blog?
In my mind, a better approach would have been for Rankin to "arm" locals in the area with cameras and help them to shoot what they see from their vantage. While the photos wouldn't be artistic at first, they would be honest. Rankin's work is not honest. It's a fabrication and when something is fabricated through a camera, I can't stand it. It's one of the few mediums we have that allows us a window on to another time or place that we don't immediately have access to. This is the point of it; all else is secondary. If we're to "understand the plight" of the people living in the Kivus, then we really need to actually see people living in region and know who they are. As it is, this seems like an anthropological documentation of a foreign species. It fails on all levels except getting Rankin press and making him feel like he did some good by being there for two weeks.
