[Chapter-delegates] Fwd: Request for participation - ISOC 'Sphere' Project

[Fred Baker]

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On Jan 23, 2008, at 4:20 AM, Louis Houle wrote:
> To be more specific, we're talking about translating the study on  
> the Governance of the contents on the Internet, for the Internet  
> community who is not familiar with French.


If you want a specific document translated, that is a whole other  
ballgame. What I would suggest is that someone (or a group of  
someones) in one of our French-speaking chapters who speaks both  
French and English fluently and is interested in doing the work  
contact Lynn and propose a price for the work or offer to do it as a  
volunteer.

> It's nice to put forward that Chapters should do the job but who  
> can I convince to translate for free a study that is already  
> available in it's native language?


I will ask you the same question. Whom should ISOC HQ choose? Is not  
ISOC's best resource in the area likely to be a member of a chapter,  
and likely to be someone interested in having the outcome happen?


My fundamental question remains, however; since I have been involved  
with ISOC (1992), we have gotten requests for translation into random  
languages. Folks have asked to translate the entire web site and  
every communication that we make. Your statement, same email, that

> For instance, ISOC World and the NARALO,s position on multilingual  
> broadcasting of documents includes French, English and Spanish (see  
> the wikis). Those three languages should be used for our minimal  
> information sharing.


is a classic along that line. The part I find most amusing is that it  
is not obviously the right set of languages - Standard Arabic,  
German, Russian, and Mandarin are also languages of commerce that are  
"the obvious choice" in their various domains, and other languages  
like Japanese come to mind.

It is easy to say that someone else should do something. The way the  
Internet came into being was not that that someone complained that  
someone else should build a network. It was not that someone built a  
network and then observed that someone else should add a capability  
to it. The way the Internet came into being was that those interested  
in the capability created it. Email, FTP, the web, Bittorrent,  
Facebook, MySpace, and the Wikipedia came into being because someone  
decided to make them so. If you want something that requires money  
and lack the money to do it, find a party to do it, propose a project  
for the funding you need, and offer to be the one who makes it  
happen. Take responsibility to be the actor and find a way to partner  
with ISOC HQ and other chapters as you need to.

But don't complain and tell me that someone else, whether ISOC HQ or  
whoever, should do something because you want it to happen. I'm too  
busy being part of the solution to other problems.
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