Using Translation as a Force to Address Information Poverty: AGIS 2010

I have the good fortune to reflect and report on the AGIS 2010 conference as we approach “the holiday season,” which is a time of reflection for many in the world. A time of goodwill and at least temporary good deeds for some. The conference was held in India, which can be a challenge because the basic infrastructure is still primitive, but the event went off well with very few glitches and I think AGIS is slowly building momentum.

AGIS stands for Action for Global Information Sharing, and is focused on conducting a resolute crusade against Information Poverty since its inception. The overall tone and tenor of this conference is very different from the typical conference in the world of enterprise localization (LocWorld, GALA, LISA). The focus is on making all kinds of knowledge and information accessible in places where it has never been available before, not just to sell products. There is clear evidence shared by many speakers, that shows that access to information creates the conditions for economic prosperity or perhaps even actually drives it. In some parts of the world localization is all about reducing information poverty and improving the human condition. Reinhard has provided a summary of the highlights of the event in his blog. There was also coverage here. And for those who ask why do need yet another conference in the industry, Reinhard explains below:

You might be asking yourself, “Why AGIS, why YALC (yet another localisation conference)? What makes AGIS so different?” Well, first of all, it is not owned by any particular organisation, it is not run for profit, and it is (almost) free to attend. Then, it takes place where people need localisation, not where people are rich enough to pay for it. Nothing is sold, nothing is bought at AGIS. And last but not least, AGIS attendees have a social agenda, not (just) a commercial one.

The highlights that can be also be found in the twitter stream on my Friendfeed (Scroll back to newer items to see the chronological sequence. I don’t know why Twitter has already made much of the data unavailable).  

In the keynote, Dr. Vijay Bhatkar (a digital visionary of India) pointed out how globalization and localization are tightly linked and how NLP, MT and language technologies are only just beginning their evolutionary march. He pointed out how Japan’s hopes for world dominance were stymied by linguistic issues and that access to knowledge and information in the 21st century will be key to building prosperity as an increasing part of the GDP of many nations will come from knowledge services. This is already true for India. He informed the Indians in the room, that India can not consider itself an IT power when 350 million people are illiterate and urged the community to preserve the Indian languages while continuing the push forward with English education. He also pointed out that both Telephone and TV are mostly language neutral but information cannot be, and localization is critical to broad access. 

Reinhard Schaler and the Rosetta Foundation are leading an initiative to build a platform to facilitate self configurable, distributed and shared data based global localization initiatives. CNGL and University of Limerick students provided overviews and demonstrations of these tools. Reinhard highlighted that each day 24,000 die children because of lack of access to basic healthcare information. That is 1 every 3 seconds! These deaths could be avoided if information was available more easily. This appears to be a primary motivator and raison d'etre for the Rosetta Foundation.

Ms. Swaran Lata painted a clear picture of the amazing complexity of the Indian linguistic landscape. 20+ major languages with some states having 3-4 languages and multiple scripts. The CDAC organization is attempting to solve the linguistic computing issues to ensure that Indian languages gain a stronger digital presence and are preserved. As Prof. Bhatkar asked: "Can you really say you know Hindi if you cannot  use it on a computer? This is key in the information age."  Ms. Lata described initiatives that focused on the digital education of youth, which interestingly also resulted in the knowledge being passed on to illiterate parents and grandparents. She talked also about initiatives to reach out to the “other side of India” to ensure that illiterate people are not left behind. As Indian consumers become more powerful, Indian languages are critical to reaching their purchasing power.

I spoke about how the Asia Online vision is finally coming to fruition, when we start rolling out a Thai Wikipedia comprising of translations of 3.5 million articles starting in January 2011. When all these articles are up and ready, Thailand will have the second largest Wikipedia in the world after the English one.  This is a huge boost from the current 60,000 article Thai Wikipedia, many which are just barely more than stubs. In contrast, the index alone for just the article titles in the English Wikipedia are in excess of 600,000 pages! The Asia Online project is an initiative that directly addresses information poverty. Shockingly it was also uncovered that the Hindi Wikipedia only has about 50,000 articles for a population of almost 400 million people! This means that a child that does not speak English is deprived of basic educational information access and has a fraction of the content available to an English speaking child.

Some other interesting information from the conference:

• Ravi Gupta pointed out there are 62,000 newspapers in India and 92% of these are not in English
• Subtitles do not work well in India because of literacy issues but they can also be a means of building literacy
• There are no English TV channels in the Top 100 TV channels in India but English speaking consumers are the wealthiest consumers
• Ravi Kumar, The President of  the Indian Translators Association made an impassioned plea asking that buyers and the community at large respect translators as professionals
• The CNGL team showed various elements of the open SOLAS platform they are making available to anybody who needs it
• Mahesh Kulkarni’s wonderful presentation on standards which he called traffic rules that ease both user and creator experience. He has a much more holistic and systematic view of standards than we see from the feeble standards initiatives in the traditional localization industry but he too, expressed the difficulties of getting good standards in place.
• He also pointed that that there are 670 million mobile phones in India and asked is this the end of the internet as we know it? 

 Mahesh Kulkarni and Raimond Doctor are a joy to behold; passionate, knowledgeable and driven in spite of having to deal with Indian governmental bureaucracy as part of their daily lives. Raimond is perhaps the most erudite and knowledgeable person I have met on comparative linguistics. He shares his deep knowledge and insight with a verve that draws you right into his delight for language. I hope that CDAC realize what treasures these men are, and gives them room and resources to execute on their vision and passion.

Reinhard also pointed out that the non profit world was substantially larger in terms of market potential and actual localization activities than the Fortune 500 market. Non-profit does not mean no payment, no recognition and jobs, it is in fact bigger than the energy sector in US.  

Take a look at this TED video to see how information access can change lives and empower people to learn, take control and transform their own lives.

If there is a revolution coming in translation – I think one is much more likely to see the first signs of the revolution at a conference like AGIS, rather than at more mainstream localization conferences. We see all the key elements lining up here: people focused on large scale collaboration infrastructure, community and crowdsourcing management, massive translation automation and standards and the most important ingredient of all: PASSION. We see people at this conference who are driven by a passion to change the world. We see people who are not making a lot of money but are still working long and diligent hours. We see people undertaking translation projects that will involve hundreds of millions of words on a routine basis. We see technology, collaboration tools & infrastructure and community coming together in ways that just does not happen at traditional professional translation events.  We see people who want to make an impact on the human condition. We hear and see people talking about nation building and the human right to knowledge. This kind of talk gets me all warm inside and I think this is what we all had in common, a “higher” sense of purpose and mission which does not equate to a stance of moral superiority as some might think. Many of the people here have a soul satisfying answer to the question: Why do you do what you do? Isn't that enough?

My interest in automated translation has always been related to the potential impact this technology has on improving information access and thus improving human lives across the world and also potentially improving the quality and depth of communication between linguistic groups, cultures and nations. One step on the way to Pacem in Terris? Foolish and idealistic perhaps, but we need to dare to dream first before we can actually make it happen. As a teenager, a wise man told me once, “You are the world and the world is you” and I have explored that statement ever since,  holding it close to heart as a seminal influence in my life.

Join and support the Rosetta Foundation and help make this into a movement that cannot be stopped. If you have the ability to influence a major corporate entity to get involved and support this please do so now, and join Reinhard as he forges and builds this new path to change the world for the better.

And as if that were not enough, I even had a brief meeting with former Indian Prime Minister I.K. Gujral, who even in his nineties has a stature, grace and humility that is disarming. He was impressed by the Thai Wikipedia project I am involved with, and said it would be wonderful for India to do the same in Hindi. And thanks to my friend Vishal I also got to meet several industry leaders of emerging India who seek to build transparency and a relatively corruption free government.

I was also greatly heartened to see the corruption establishment take a serious blow when Minister Raja was exposed for taking obscenely huge bribes, in excess of $40 billion I believe. What makes corruption in India especially horrific is the complete lack of remorse and shame that these public officials have. India is on the move but still has far to go as the culture of corruption is everywhere you turn, and will not die easily. One of the other benefits of free flowing information is that it also makes this kind of self dealing and abuse of trust harder to maintain. Information poverty is also an enabler and friend of corrupt officials and thus this is yet another reason to address this issue. 

Happy Holidays to you all and I hope that you explore and find "goodness" in your life. And here is the link to holiday greetings in many languages.

Inspiration from TED – Part II

I recently wrote about and listed some of my favorite TED presentations. I mentioned that my initial list was just the tip of the iceberg and there were many more presentations that are worth a look. As TED grows as a brand, a place where influential voices come forth and share observations and their vision, it is something worth monitoring on an ongoing basis. This is where the most exciting new ideas break out. As TED expands across the globe we are seeing more international perspectives. So, now interesting viewpoints from Asia and Europe are becoming more common in the TED portfolio. Here are a few more selections that I found interesting and that I think also have some relevance to the world of translation.

Clay Shirky is a prominent thinker on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies and he often speaks in favor of crowdsourcing and open collaboration. In fact he wrote a book called Here Comes Everybody. In this talk he describes the basis for his bullishness about something he calls “cognitive surplus”. I think he is one of the most insightful voices on the subject of crowdsourcing and the new collaborative initiatives that are forming around internet access and technology. I recommend this and many other presentations he has scattered across the web.

This Simon Sinek talk is a recommendation from @fabcid who summarized this talk as:” Brilliant and inspiring. A must-see.” on how great leaders inspire action. Simon Sinek has a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership all starting with a golden circle and the question "Why?"

This is a talk by Tom Wujec who studies how we share and absorb information. He's an innovative practitioner of business visualization -- using design and technology to help groups solve problems and understand ideas. This shows how childlike attitudes are so critical to successful collaboration and how so much of our formal business training actually undermines our ability to collaborate.

I first heard about “soft power” from Joseph Nye. It is something good leaders naturally have, it is the ability to shape the preferences of others. Simply put, in behavioral terms, soft power is attractive power or the power to attract rather than command a following. This is a great talk by Shashi Tharoor on India’s rise as a power. He argues that “soft" power is what makes India formidable in the long run. This is its ability to share its culture with the world through food, music, technology, Bollywood. He argues that in the long run it's not the size of the army that matters as much as a country's ability to influence the world's hearts and minds. One striking example he gives is that today, Indian restaurants in Britain employ more people than the coal mining, ship building and iron and steel industries combined.

One of the passions in my life is music and I am confident that at some point in my life I will be engaged with sound and music in a substantial way so I have also been keeping an eye on the TED stuff related to music and sound. In this talk Robert Gupta talks about his relationship with a schizophrenic that was also the subject of a movie with Jamie Foxx called The Soloist. Music is medicine, music changes us and for some music is sanity.

Finally this is another TED-like group that illustrates speeches in a very useful and interesting way that I think facilitates understanding and engagement. The talk by Daniel Pink is based on his research on motivation. This shows that human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another. I think it also shows why standards like EN15038 are flawed – they kill any creativity.

Rising Asia and its Implications

Somebody whose opinion I really value, just told me that my blog is about "men fighting" after seeing my first three posts. While I really do care about responsible free speech and will always aggressively defend it; enough about censorship and moderator abuses and let's move on.

I find the notion of "A Rising Asia" interesting,  and I think it presents a major opportunity for the localization and translation industry in the years to come. I was first introduced to this concept many years ago by Nick Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn in their excellent book, Thunder from the East.  (They were also among the first to point out the promise of China/Rising Asia, several years before the "experts" did.)  I really liked the book because it also quickly provided an economic history of the world and is a very easy read.

I thought it would be good to update and expand upon an article I wrote for GALA a little while ago. I have been surprised how little real awareness there is even in the localization industry where leaders often equate Asia with China & Japan (CJK).  This was really brought home at the #LTBKK conference, when I saw what a revelation Biraj Rath's excellent presentation on the Indian localization market opportunity was, to many industry experts. LISA, to their credit announced an India Forum shortly after the conference.

So I thought it might be useful to provide a basic primer on the broader Asian market opportunity. For some in the L10N industry this might all be obvious but here goes anyway. I am interested because:

- There are a lot of people living in Asia (maybe 95% of the next billion Internet users)

- The Internet has very low penetration thus far. Multilingual content will very likely play a key role in driving increasing  penetration and commercial opportunity.

- They will need a lot of information quickly (huge opportunity for automated translation technology)

- Largest concentration of young people in the world (also the Middle East and Brazil) 

 

Asia is extremely diverse, economically and culturally, but yet there are some strong common elements. It is also much less connected than Europe. Today, we are aware of the current economic momentum that India and China have, historically they both also had a deep and lasting cultural influence on much of Asia. An awareness of this history is very useful in developing effective business strategies for different countries. The internet is only just beginning to take root in much of Asia (18% vs. 73% for North America), however, it is expected that almost half of all Internet users will be Asian by 2013. Already, China has more people online than the US. Asia could be a major opportunity for companies that learn to tap into this new emerging online population. But this will require an understanding of the diversity and characteristics of the various segments and will also need new approaches in communication and marketing. Asian economies continue to rise in importance and growth, as both a supplier and consumer. Today China and India are the largest mobile phone markets in the world.

Some interesting and perhaps less known facts about Asia that provide a useful contrast to Europe are shown below. They also give one a sense for the different type of opportunities available and the differing reality of Asia.

-GDP per Capita in Asia (~$15,000) is less than half of the EU average and there is a much wider standard distribution and a large population living in poverty throughout the continent.
-While India and China are among the fastest growing economies in the world, the GDP per Capita is $2,800 for India and $6,000 for China and they should still be considered developing economies.
-The top GDP/Capita countries (2008) in Asia are: Singapore ($52K), HK, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea ($23K), Malaysia, Kazakhstan and Thailand ($8.5K).
-India has 22 official languages that are as distinct and different as the 23 EU languages, and also include at least 6 different scripts. English is only spoken by about 7% of the people in India. However, it is possible to get deep penetration into the Indian market with 5 key languages.
-There is very little local language content for Asian languages on the web in general. Based on a survey done by Asia Online in 2007, less than 15% of the total content on the web is in Asian languages. Almost 90% of the Asian language content is in Chinese and Japanese. There is huge need for more local language content all over SE Asia.
-Mandarin is beginning to edge out English as the preferred 2nd language in Asia
-China is now the fastest growing patent office in the world. The WIPO and others state that China is clearly an emerging scientific and technological power.
-The share of Asian country based patent filings is now in excess of 50% of all patents filed across the world.
-India has more gifted and talented students in high school than the total school student population in the US.
-China has more students in Science and Technology college degree programs than India and the US combined.
-McKinsey has identified a “Rising Asia” as a stable long term trend that will fundamentally change consumption patterns. Gartner suggests using IT to reach the market. They suggest that global companies use IT to ‘lighten’ their Asian business model to address the specific cultural, geographic reach, and supply chain considerations.
-The wealthy Asians are concentrated in major cities like Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Mumbai, Delhi, Seoul, Manila and Bangkok.
-China is now the fastest growing market for Bentley and BMW.
-More cars are now sold in China than in America.
-Even countries like Laos, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Cambodia which have very low GDP/Capita are interesting markets for cell phones and basic commodities.
-An understanding of Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism cultural perspectives can dramatically enhance your communications strategy into most parts of Asia.
-The fastest growing FaceBook markets in 2H2009 are Taiwan, Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand.
-Google is not dominant in key Asian markets, in Korea they have less than 2% search market share and they are a distant second in China and Japan. Maybe even completely out of China soon. Local companies dominate because of better understanding of local content, language and customer preferences. This suggests that standard US approaches may not work as well in many Asian markets.
-Chinese social networking startups have produced many innovations that have led to them becoming profitable much faster than US equivalents like MySpace and Facebook.  We are now seeing Asian innovation gradually making its way to the west.
-Most of Asia has been relatively unscathed by the global financial and real estate market collapse.
-India is increasingly considered a "soft power". Influential culturally way beyond it's direct sphere of influence.

-The venture capital markets in India and China are rapidly developing with help from "returning" entrepreneurs and hostile US immigration policies.

But simple strategies like simply making your web content available in the local language may not work. Asian cultures may look superficially similar and even western on the surface, but can have deep cultural differences. The localization market is estimated to be $1.5B in 2010 and could grow dramatically. My sense is that those numbers miss much of the impact of recent growth as the Facebook trends show, mobile computing and successful bottom of the pyramid marketing strategies.


All of these factors point to fundamental shifts in the global economy and indicate that many of these trends will accelerate further. Asia is a significant opportunity for informed globalization managers -- and probably key for long-term leadership for many global enterprises.

Global companies need to develop broad and unique country-specific strategies to be able to prosper and thrive in this rapidly changing world. Localization and translation will be key elements of any successful globalization plan and should present significant opportunities to vendors that prepare for this change.

It's wise to remember that the Chinese ideogram for "change" can also mean "opportunity."