vox humanitatis

Moving the blog

2008-10-18T09:29:00.000-07:00

New entries about Vox Humanitatis will be published directly on the various i-iter websites:

Diola
English
Finnish
German
Mainfränkisch
Neapolitan
Piedmontese

Cu there :-)

Mallorca ... talking regional

2008-08-08T22:28:00.001-07:00

Yesterday evening I talked with my aunt who passed many years on holiday in Mallorca. When talking about what Vox Humanitatis does, she told me that now it is some years that people there changed street signs and "refuse" to speak Spanish. That is even with tourists. She says she finds it great that they use their local language, but at least with tourists they should be willing to use Spanish, because it needs to be considered that most tourists will have problems to learn the local language.

We consider a language to be a communication platform which needs to be chosen according to the occasion. Of course we strongly support the local culture which also includes local language, but we also must remain human in doing this to those who are from another place and will never be able to understand it, so there is a need to choose the "common" communication platform, which mostly will be one of the national languages of the country you live in or in many cases English as a lingua franca.

Besides that: Mallorca lost two tourists which went there on holiday even more than once a year ... so it is also about business.

Keep your local culture alive, allow kids to learn the mother tongue, which is the local language, use it not only at home, but also for business and in education, and be aware that for example tourists love your using your local culture including the language, because it strengthens the identity of the place they are visiting and they will have a more memorable holiday but they also need your help when it is about communication and they wish to speak the languages they know and indeed it is up to anyone of us to help people to communicate.

By doing this remember: the more contact you have with people, even in other languages than your mother tongue, you can teach them about your culture and a bit here and there the will want to learn more about your culture including your language. It is all about inclusion and not exclusion.

My kids? Well I am of the generation which was not allowed to learn my mother tongue, so I understand Itzgründisch which is part of Mainfränkisch, but I am not able to transfer my original culture and mother tongue to them (for now ... since I am trying to learn my mother tongue and anyway I often translate from it into German when I write personal notes). My kids grow up with Neapolitan, Italian, German and English and they are well able to distinguish all of these languages. It is even better: knowing all these languages they have a very wide view of the world, reaching from very local to very global ... I hope they will learn also about more less resourced cultures, not only their own one ... well: they are having plenty of contacts to them :-) so chances are actually good.

This today was quite a personal post, I first of all wanted to write on my personal blog, but since it is about less resourced cultures I put it here. I am curious if you have any comments.

Cherasco and Bamberg

2008-06-04T06:09:00.000-07:00

This year we had a wonderful meet-up in Cherasco. Many things went very different from what was planned ... but well, that's ok because in the end what came out of many unforeseen things is great. I'll write about it as soon as I am back to normal.

For now we can announce the next conference for 2 and 3 May 2009 in Bamberg, Germany and I am really happy to do that since I will be near the place where I was born (Rodach).

Again Anaphraseus: new features :-)

2008-04-11T10:15:00.000-07:00

Well I just copy and paste:

2008-04-11 13:03 [1.17b] ole_yansen

* Export/Import Translation Memory Exchange files (TMX)

* Inverce Source/Target language feature

* Unicode UTF16 support for glossary files

* Progressbar for saving/loading operations

* Minor bugs fixed

One step nearer to OmegaWiki 2.0

2008-04-07T02:03:00.000-07:00

So now we are one step nearer to OmegaWiki 2.0 - At 8:43 UTC I received this note: "I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!!!!! I FINISHED IT!!!!!!! for the first time in history there is a database owm2, it's empty, but it is there".

So here we are ... a great mile stone (oh I know, I will get a nice message that I am exaggerating ... I'll answer that I am not) ... it's time to consider the days of OmegaWiki 1.0 as counted ;-) Hmmm ... that needs something special ... what about a nice glass of ... whatever you prefer?

Finally a CAT-Tool with ISO 639-3 support

2008-03-19T06:50:00.000-07:00

Many of you know for how long I have been asking for a CAT-Tool that supports ISO 639-3 codes, well, now we have one and it has been added to our potential partner projects: Anaphraseus.

A more detailed description is going to be published on my blog where it has more exposure to the translator's community a bit later on.

Yellow Pages of websites in less resourced languages

2008-01-20T15:08:00.000-08:00

From today also the Neapolitan version of I-iter has a Yellow Pages section, built in a similar way like the one that has been already online on the Piemontese I-iter portal.

Please feel free to add your link to a website with Neapolitan contents on nap.i-iter.org and of course you may also add to the Piemontese Yellow Pages, provided that the page you insert has contents in the language.

Please keep in mind that here we don't talk about business Yellow Pages, but about all websites that have contents in that languages, such as the Neapolitan and the Piemontese wikipedias.

If you would like to create such Yellow Pages for another less resourced language: well, it's not a problem, just contact us and we can help you to get your community project with I-iter going.

Catalan started on i-iter.org

2008-01-11T12:32:00.000-08:00

Well, we are growing :-) Today the Catalan version on i-iter.org was started and actually the user interface is being localized. So now there are three portals for less resourced languages: Catalan, Neapolitan and Piedmontese (in alphabetical order).

Sustainability .....

2007-10-27T15:31:00.000-07:00

One thing that just became clear to me is that we don't have a choice when it comes to sustainable development and which products to support, but to support only certified biological products whenever applicable. I just thought about that wine producer in Tramonti who has one of the rarest wines around, made from vines that are partly older than 100 years, that need to be treated biologically since otherwise this very particular and rare original wine would be condemned to die out ... and I watched a very interesting service by Spiegel TV (Germany). Only the original ways of production will lead to origial and therefore sustainable products.

Supporting projects of other organizations

2007-09-22T06:11:00.000-07:00

vox humanitatis works on a no doubled efforts principle and therefore our major aim is to co-operate as closely as possible with projects from other organizations that do what is necessary to reach our goals. This means that we are very much interested in them doing well and of course this leads to us supporting their fundraising activities where we can, such as adding a button that leads to their donation page during their fundraiser period. Many of our members are/will be involved anyway in these projects and there fore this way of dealing with it makes perfect sense.

If you feel you have a project that meets our scope, please contact us and we will look into it. It really does not make sense to double work. It is essential that our time is invested in such a way that all of us get the most out of it.

Introducing vox humanitatis

2007-09-22T00:18:00.000-07:00

vox humanitatis is going to be a not for profit organisation that cares about less resourced languages and culture (scope). We start from maintaining the languages, creating contents in the various languages and localizing software going the way of the so-called cultural localization. Many connected activities will help us to survive as an association.

We will start to blog about these activities here every now and then.