New English/Arabic Translation Site Hopes To Promote Citizen Diplomacy

Wired has mention of a new site that hopes to encourage a grassroots "citizen diplomacy" movement by combining English/Arabic translation software with a Facebook-style meeting place. "Meedan, which officially launches Monday, lets users post stories and comments in English and have them automatically translated into Arabic, or the opposite. People who don’t share a common language can have an online discussion in near real time. The name, appropriately, means 'gathering place' or 'town hall'; in Arabic. Think of it as a social network filled with people you don't know, but want to understand."

I'm not sure the language barrier is the main one

[Trepidity]

Among Arabic speakers who have access to the internet in the first place, the proportion who know at least basic English is quite high. There are plenty of barriers to understanding and agreement, but I'm not sure I would rate a literal inability to communicate as the main one.

Something similar to autotranslate in FFXI?

[Nadaka]

I used to play FFXI and found their system of guided translation to work reasonably well. Several times I was in Japanese parties, or had a Japanese in my party and we were capable of communicating about 80% of what we wanted to. It generally produced less garbled messages than I have seen from sites like babel fish, though that may have been affected by the limited topics of discussion in an MMO.

You have new followers!

[LostCluster]

Thanks for joining our site... you're now being followed by:

@CIA
@FBI
@DARPA
@OsamaBL

Thank the Teachers!

[bdabautcb]

I have been telling the war mongers for ten years that we need to learn arabic. Not redneck, arabic. Learn a language, learn a culture, learn more. Christians don't understand the Q'uaran because they don't speak arabic! I joined the islam american culture group and they sent me a beautiful quaran for free. Im not a muslim, but at least i am not so stupid as to dismiss their language and culture as stupid. It is in fact beautiful. They gave us such familiar things as our alphabet, the study of chemistry, and our world-view is more influenced by the middle- eastern history than can be imagined. I only hope that futting oil doesnt destroy that relationship to an irreparable condition before I can see it in person. I am only twenty five, I have been to the tip of south america, I have been in Europe, but If I die before I have a chance to spend at least one or two years in the arabic world I will die unfulfilled. So rich, so deep. In some instances, more rich, more deep than the consumerism in which I exist. Give me a light cotton robe, some people to talk to, and places to explore. I am an optomist, but also pragmatic. I have never been in a fight. I feel like if I had a chance to spend a year in Iran, perhaps travel all over the arabic world, I would only meet friends. My travels everywhere, I think everybody wants the same thing. Companionship, discussion, language, culture, food, risks, takings risks and realizing that your not that different. I think it would be great to speak arabic and travel in arabic speaking countries. I hear that the food is incredible, and the culture is so rich that it would make me cry realizing that my lost scandinavian farming culture had a similar richness that has been lost to western wealth. food and family isn't good enough. But I have hope. The asian kid from school of rock said "i'm not cool" lawrence. Lawrence is good at the piano. If this country has hope it is in our young people realizing that money does not equal wealth, rather wealth is happiness, and the only true way to achieve wealth is by having convictions, following them, and doing everything you can to show your worth. Showboating and rich is over. I am sick of watching priveleged US athletes showboating like war heroes because they did mundane details. We need to start giving them a dose of reality at a young age. When I see things happen like college athletes getting taken down for stealing, raping, and fighting, and not getting in trouble, and tech people getting in trouble for lying, cheating, and manipulating, I feel the same way. Where are the parents? Who are we holding accountable? Our leaders in business are not accountable. Our scientists are not accountable. Our politicians are not accountable. Our governments are not accountable. They have destroyed global wealth. The system is not working. Why not? What can we do to make it work?

Re:Quoting something about not quoting something?

[treeves]

When your sig is a Python quote, you exclude yourself from eligibility to make pronouncements about when it is proper to chastize someone about making Python-quote-pronouncements. Wait, what?

Technically

[presidenteloco]

Such a paradoxical construction is called a quine, after the philosopher Willard Quine.
One of his examples:
"is not a sentence" is not a sentence.

Re:Good, if it's accurate

[twidarkling]

If you look past any prejudice, it's actually damned insightful. Remember the media blockage that was overcome by fucking TWITTER of all things? Being able to find the discrepancy between what you're told by your government and what your government is telling other countries is major.

Of course, the trick will be keeping the site from being blacklisted so hard that its servers implode.

Aready broken the barrier a long time ago:

[Hurricane78]

Just go an play some online games. Preferably RPGs. Then you automatically come into contact with people from all over the world.
Most of them speak English anyway. But often secondary languages like Spanish help too.
And after a while, you will have them in your instant messenger, and talk about life and things.
But I promise you, that it will be more interesting than talking to somebody on Slashdot. ^^

Oh, and by the way:
I wonder if you can already find someone with the name Achmet on that site, having his status set to (deceased) ;)

Re:Quoting something about not quoting something?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, see, at no point in its history did Monty Python suck.

Somebody never saw The Meaning Of Life.

Re:Good, if it's accurate

[majid_aldo]

who told you arab leaders are representative of arabs?

Re:All I can think is...

[CrimsonAvenger]

Other than that, I can't think of anything that will go wrong with a productive exchange via Internet.

The keyword here being "productive".

I'm sure you have some way of guaranteeing that the exchange via Internet will be "productive", and not a lot of name-calling by both sides?

Note that what a Syrian might consider "productive" is likely to be quite different than what an Iranian would consider "productive", much less than an American would consider "productive".

And god help us all if the translation program has a few bugs - you say "Let's talk about the Peace March in Baghdad", he reads "May I fondle your left testicle?"....