At a recent international conference, Michael Vernon Guerrero (Deputy Project Leag, CC Philippines) enjoyed high-quality, synchronized translation at relatively low costs.

The solution at that particular conference was to provide headsets to individuals not comfortable in English, the main language of conversation. When the members did not speak in English, they were broadcast to interpreters (two altogether: Spanish and Russian). The interpreters' voices were then transmitted to the rest of the conference.

This strategy seems useful in the context of the iSummit, where a majority of the participants have a strong command of English. One the otherhand, it provides the option for people to express themselves in their native language.

Realistically, I think the only venue that can accommodate synchronized interpretation is the Keynote Speeches. There we can arrange for these headsets for people requiring them. One box has about 15 sets, all operating by radio.

This sounds like something that would be doable, depending on the meeting facility. We should be able to find volunteer interpreters, if given for example free travel who could interpret some of the sessions - this would be much helped if they were given the speeches ahead of time etc. The speeches might only be interpreted to some core languages (I guess Japanese and Chinese, and maybe some other Asian language + Spanish/Portuguese/French for any W-Africans would be priorities), and perhaps we could identify people who would be available to interpret questions from the audience... (I might not be able to or volunteer to interpret the entire speech from English to Indonesian, but if any Indonesians want to ask a question and don't feel confident about their spoken English, I'd be happy to do an impromptu interpretation, etc).

There might be other ways we can help too, both at the conference and after. For example getting all the summit videos up on dotsub or a similar site, and subtitled (even subtitling in English will be a huge help, and then others can take it from there).

I'd be interested in both finding out more about what other conferences are doing about this, and talking to some of the people who went to iSummit 2007 - or who would have liked to go but didn't, and see what they would have found useful themselves.

Stian, I think that the suggestion about subtitling videos is great and very do-able. Although it may not provide synchronized interpretation, we could encourage subtitling at the end of each day/session. Dotsub is an excellent solution. This way we'd also be creating a more permanent record of the summit; it could be accessible to people not physically present and also for reference years down the line.

As for synchronized interpretation, perhaps volunteer translators are the most viable solution. People could request translators, as well as volunteer to be one, for certain sessions/speeches. This could be relatively easy to coordinate: a wiki where people can sign up, and then a central location where translators and the people requesting them can meet, and then attend the session together.

I had the opportunity to attend and participate in a two-week Strategic Planning seminar in Germany last July. Although there were 24 participants from various countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe/Mediterrenean; two sets of official languages were used therein: English and Spanish (It would be too complex if each of us would speak in our own mother-tongue). Although most of the Latin American participants were roughly bilingual (capable also to understand and speak English), allowing them to speak in Spanish removed the limitations that exist in trying to find the proper expressions (if one has to do it by oneself) that relate to what one would like to impart. Hence, to bridge the language gap between these two classes of participants, translators and equipment (headsets and microphones using radio frequency [RF]) were utilized. (See us listening to the contribution of Señor Niño of Mexico, for example: http://www.flickr.com/photos/10602697@N08/905412835/) The advantage of the available equipment was made manifest during a visit at the Fuhrungsakademie der Bundeswehr in Hamburg, where the speaker spoke in German (which only one of us, I think, understood). This was simultaneously translated to Spanish and English using two channels (out of 16), of the equipment, for the benefit of all participants.

Providing same or similar equipment for the iCommons summit(s) could be beneficial for participants who do not have the fluency in English, if the latter language remains to be the default (especially in the Keynote Speeches). For these individuals to have a meaningful experience in the Summit, and perhaps allow them to participate more actively in the Q&A, synchronized translation would be essential. Providing for Spanish (for those from Latin Americans), and Russian (for the from the former east bloc and Central Asia) -- from the vantage point of using English as an adhoc default, and without regard to the political sensitivities that may relate to such clustering -- would cover most of the iCommons' participants. Additional languages (such as that of the sponsoring country) could also be provided if the numbers of participants that could speak said language(s) are too significant for anyone to ignore.

Be that as it may, considering the limited number of participants in the seminar that I attended and relating that to the usual number of the participants in the Summit, the financial outlay in procuring the same equipment at one time for the latter might be quite too high. Considering further that the Academy invested in this system as standard seminar equipment, and utilizing this in an average of 12 international seminars every year, the spread of cost would substantially be lower than if these same system would be used only for one occasion per year. Considering thus that the equipment in the Academy is as constant as seminar room fixtures (although mobile; See us posing on a tour while listening to guide or translator: http://www.flickr.com/photos/10602697@N08/906454006/), the current costs are concentrated more in the renumeration for the actual translators utilized. It is within this context that it can be said that the synchronized translation was at a relatively low cost. (Note also that my notion of what is expensive and cheap is impaired by the purchasing power of my jurisdiction's currency vis-a-vis the major currencies: which are the US Dollar, Euro, and British Pound.)

Procuring the same equipment on a scheduled scheme (like 30 now, more later) would satisfy only those who are linguistically challenged or those who may claim to be linguistically challenged. The scheme would not satisfy the requirement where a Keynote speaker would utilize a non-English language, which is an issue that the movement might also want to rectify.

Nevertheless, the idea of pursuing equipment to allow synchronized translation remains to be viable. The only other matter which may need to be studied (if standard conference equipment would be expensive for the iCommons configuration) is to find alternative equipment (i.e. RF, multi-channel; hence, wireless) or find an alternative scheme (e.g. wired) to allow the reception of the resulting translation.

I would just like to repeat a suggestion from another thread:

We could have "daily digests" produced in several languages that summarized the events/comments of the day.

This would not solve any simultaneous interpretation issues, but it would be a constructive way to 1) create a "tangible" record of the iSummit, 2) brief people of panels they may have missed, and 3) include people who were not able to follow the proceedings due to language difficulties.

I'm not sure this thread is active anymore, but I have several comments about what has been said before.

Firstly, Russian is not commonly known in the former Eastern Block.

Secondly, simultaneous translation cannot be well done by volunteers - it's an extremely demanding work and even professionals switch often.

Thirdly, I've done some subtitling and it is slow, demanding work - a 20 minute film took me at least an hour. So this might be a difficult thing to demand of people at the end of a packed summit day.

Most importantly, I think that translating solutions fall into two categories - one includes professional, simultaneous translation, which is the only, in my opinion, means to enable people with weak command of English to participate fully. All other solutions - volunteers trying to translate in real time, minutes of meetings handed out afterwards, etc. - do not provide such a full experience. ALthough they are of course useful.

I am wondering about one thing - do we know how badly needed translation is? That is, how many people at the last summit, for instance, would have significantly benefitted from it?

Thanks for your reply, Alek.

Re # 1: Good to know about familiarity with Russian. Do you think it's a worthwhile, in general, to focus on translation into "world languages", say the 6 official languages of the UN? In your opinion, do you think we should aim to get material out in 6 languages? Or 10, 20 widespread languages? Or is this too time-consuming, redundant, and/or unnecessary?

#2: Yes, simultaneous translation is demanding. But it doesn't mean it can't be implemented to some extent. We could still have people in the room that have volunteered to help with certain languages, but who are only actively interpreting when there's a moment of unclarity.

#3: Subtitling is also demanding, but it can be crowdsourced. Speakers could provide notes or bullet points from their talks to assist subtitling.

#4: Scope and category of translation: I agree that we should be clear where our real needs are so that we can better address them. In some contexts, simultaneous interpretation may be completely unnecessary, or it may suffice just to have translated handouts. I think the community needs to be open and honest about our actual requirements -- then we can find concrete solutions.

If not, then should we even consider support for "standard languages."