Facilitating Multilingual Online Events
For the next four weeks I am co-facilitating an asynchronous online event that is being held in two languages: English and Portuguese.
All the base resource texts, system help files, and main bits of the interface (Drupal) are in both languages. (The resources are texts, slideshare versions of powerpoint sets, also translated, and a few videos which are not all translated. )
We have a small team who are translating the "gists" of each post from English to Portuguese, and Portuguese to English. The translations will be edited into the original posts, but in a different color to distinguish that they are brief translations.
The rest of the facilitation/translation team is in Europe, I'm in North America and a good portion of the participants are in Brazil, so we have time zone spreads. It will be interesting to see how we manage the volume, the "time shift" of the translations and the emerging conversations which are the driving purpose of the event.
I'd be interested in hearing stories of others who have facilitated online events in multiple languages. Do you have one? Please tell it!
Tags: culture,, language,, online_facilitation,, Portuguese
posted by Nancy White at 9:52 AM
2 Comments:
Language translation is such a complex thing. Each culture wraps its words up with subtle nuances of meaning that sometimes melt away in the transition.
I once heard of a computer program which was supposed to translate English to Russian and visa versa.
The programers testing it put in the English phrase "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." They set the program to translate it into Russian, and then took THAT pharse to translate back to English.
What they ended up with read:
"The Vodka is good but the meat is rancid."
The BLESSING of translation, however, is that most people understand that the words they are using are merely symbols that attempt to convey meaning, and will give some grace if the ideas that come across are not exactly the same.
Unfortunately, all too often when speaking/writing in ONE language we falsely assume that those we converse with SHOULD gain our meaning. So we charge right on like a bull in a china shop without taking time for checks on perceptions to clariy if our intention came through right.
Words are ambiguous at best when it comes to conveying matters of the heart.
Yet even in concrete, practical matters misunderstandings are common. I teach online and often am baffled how directions I believed were abundantly clear could produce results so far from what I asked for. Right now I'm in the process of re-writing many of my course documents in hopes of gaining more clarity. I'm adding lots more feedback loops to allow for perception checks BEFORE assignments are due just to be sure my students and I are on the same page of understanding about what is expected.
I'm finding some carry over from that process to how I communicate verbally in my day to day world. That has been a good thing as well.
Belladonna, I'm finally getting back here to reply to your insights (good stuff - thanks). You come right down to the core of the issue at the end when you talk about rewriting your course materials.
I sometimes wonder if my rambling, insider writing on this blog creates more walls while I'm intending to create connections. Worth thinking about.
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