Hi

I've been on the list for a while but haven't been keeping up...My name is
Clodagh Miskelly,  I work at the Community Information Systems Centre at the
Uni of the West of England in Bristol UK. My work is in the area of
community media in particular in relation to digital media and narrative,
and at the moment I'm also training to be a translator.

I was interested by the issues raised by Sam, regarding linguaphobia. I
agree with Sam, I am surprised by the level of dismissal and disinterest
that there is about the unavailability of material in other languages.
Chris is probably right to say that this goes beyond the technophiles, but
we're discussing 'writing and the digital life' so why not address these
issues in that context.

When the dominance of English is raised, I often hear the arguments that one
day we'll have good automated translation technology and then everything
will be fine (and/or work arounds, improvements to counter the imperialism
of unicode).  I rarely hear anything about the work of human translators and
when I do it's to say that it's too slow or too expensive to use
translators.  Yet I'm guessing that some of the people on this list are
engaged in the act of translation every time they contribute.  There's an
historical distrust of translators by writers. Nabokov's views are well
known....

What is translation? On a platter
A poet's pale and glaring head:
A parrot's screech, a monkey's chatter,
And profanation of the dead.

I wonder how much  distrust of translation, and dismissal of any creative
aspect to that activity continues with contemporary writers and online
writers.  Maybe it is the technophobe in me but why look forward to an
automatic translation device when the world is full of multilingual people
and why assume that automation is equivalent or better than a human
translator... (Chris - i'm suggesting that's what you were saying but it is
something I hear all the time)

In any case the issue isn't really about translation, or at least
translation is secondary here.  When language or translation are discussed
in the English speaking context (on many online discussions that I
participate/have participated in) it seems to be a consideration of
translation from English or to English.  We (by which I mean the first
language english speaking world) expect non first language English speakers
to translate into English (without the aid of an automatic translator), we
(although I do speak a few languages) don't consider how they came to speak
/write English and yet 'we' aren't able to communicate in any other language
or (as here) just don't bother...We claim that we can't do anything about it
yet constantly the people with whom are communicating are using their own
and other's language resources to help us out because of 'our' monolingual
limitations.

It is not 'natural' that the web is still English language dominated any
more than it is 'natural' that I can't speak more than a few words of
Gaelic, despite being Irish.  It is to do with cultural, social and economic
power and hegemony, and the knock on effect of a lack of education in the
languages in English speaking countries - because we don't need to learn
them.  The argument that the internet and the web developed and grew in the
English speaking world does work to the extent that you might expect English
to be dominant.  But that's to ignore other (economic and social) reasons
why it expanded, for example, in the US first.  That's to ignore the high
percentage of Spanish speakers in the US, and that's to ignore that the
'WWW' was developed at CERN which is not based in an English Language
speaking country but in a part of Europe where combinations of French,
German and Italian are the most common languages.

Ok this has turned into a bit of a rant.....
personally I would like to see language and cultural domination as a  main
(month long) theme for discussion on a list like this (as opposed to within
organisations such as babels.org where we discuss these things because we
are translators...)..It seems to me that language is central to any
consideration of writing.

In any case some of you might be interested in the essays on
www.calling.org.uk which explore some related issues in a much more
articulate way than I can manage..(in relation to minority culture rather
than language).

best wishes

Clodagh