Friday 23 November 2007

Namaku, Bahasaku, Internetku

This article is to introduce ICANN (Internet Coorporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). It was quite some time that I've been introduced to this coorporation through a friend from the internet. Being a technophobic it was really hard for me to compose an objective article. So I decided to write the shortest introduction with all the link to introduce the website. I also hope that there will be a reader who is capable to join in this activity perhaps through the fellowship as the starting point.

The title of this article can be translated into one of ICANN's project "My Name, My Language, My Internet". Personally I was really interested in the possibility to have others read our posts without the bridge blog. It will really be saving a lot of time and be more effective to have this kind of internet translation. So we can read Indonesian wikipedia in English, or in Chinese, or in Korean...small world! Off course that would really be a big leap of technology!

Translating is a difficult task, we do not just translate literally but we also need to know the culture.In the compilation of papers presented in the FIT5th Asian Translators Forum in Bogor (April 2007) there are some papers underlining the importance of cultural context in translation.

Chuichi Kamei from Japan underlined "the Domesticating and Foreignizing Approaches in Japanese-English Translation", while He Sanning from China also added the term Neutralizing approach as the third approach in the context of translating for tourist texts. In another paper presented by Wang Yinquan it was explained "Why Beijing Olympics Mascots should be Named Fuwa instead of Friendlies". Language translation is not merely about translating characters and numbers.

So, that will be a great task! A great effort is needed to make "My Name, My Language, My Internet" comes true.

On the other hand, as a citizen from a developing country (hopefully we can achieved the status "developed country" some day) I also fear that all the development of technology will be costly and it would be an additional cost for us the internet users. Even to get into the cyber world is already a struggle for the grassroot of Indonesian people, to think about additional cost is a bit discouraging...

However, it is important to have an Indonesian in that kind of projects at least for adding our voice in the global voice.

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