RE: [atlarge-discuss] Geographic representation (was RE: [...

[espresso@e-scape.net]

Bruce Young replied to me:
>>Without worlwide outreach and a genuine willingness to allow people of
>>other nations to participate fully, this whole process is meaningless >or
>>worse.
>
>I agree.  And if you have a way to get them to know we're here and join us,
>please do!

Well, I think I do have a suggestion for this. Because of the way I work, I'm on dozens of mailing lists with international reach, and I've long made it a practice to tip off my colleagues when something is going on that they might be interested in. Not infrequently, some of the recipients then forward the information to their other lists. 

The effective reach of a simple posting is not really worldwide, of course, but when I pass something along to a list whose members range from Scandinavia to Papua-New Guinea, it's a lot better than just speaking to the Canadian converted. The only languages I'm personally good at are English and French so I wouldn't dare write the material in anything else; however, the translation communities I belong to cover all the European langauges (and I do mean all) while some of the more technically-oriented ones include a number of Asians. Having participated in a number of the World Bank's electronic forums, I also have contacts in the international development community in LDCs.

It just might be possible -- assuming we could agree on exactly what we wanted to tell the world -- for me to recruit some volunteers to translate the text into various languages and distribute it where it might do some good. But for this to work effectively, we'd also need to be ready to provide information to the people who would respond.

Yes, English is the second language of choice throughout most of the world, especially within the fields of science and technology, and inevitably discussions like this one tend to be conducted in English, It's not any individual's fault that they're not multilingual enough to follow a discussion conducted in German, Japanese and Hindi but it does make me wish sometimes that we'd all been taught Esperanto as children since the connotations of the obligatory use of English are not positive in all cultures. 

There's no *easy* way around this problem. The only solution I can see is to start with the outreach (as soon as we know what we're doing) and try for a volunteer in each language group who can help the effort along by providing summaries of the relevant discussion and translations of mission statements and such for the Web site. 

My own webmastering skills are pretty limited, as is my spare time, but they would extend to coding a few pages here and there and sending them along for translation, then FTPing them to a site. Meanwhile, there's a friendly software company in Bangladesh which offers free no-add Web space and e-mail accounts on a server located in the U.K. ... in fact, that's the kind of thing that makes it the World Wide Web in the first place, so I think we should be prepared to make good use of it.

Anyway, file that for future reference. What we really need to do ASAP is create a charter and bylaws for this organization we have yet to define, such that people around the world will find it worthy of their participation. Somehow I don't think one that elects somebody who recommends to ICANN that they elect somebody whose input ICANN will then ignore is sufficient reason to join anything, though that first At Large election process, flawed as it was, is ample evidence that there is a real constituency out there which would like to be adequately represented.

Regards,

Judyth la pomme

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Judyth Mermelstein     "cogito ergo lego ergo cogito..."
Montreal, QC           <espresso@e-scape.net>
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"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once 
they have exhausted all other alternatives." (Abba Eban)
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