Tides
What's Possible
Bringing together people, ideas and resources, Tides actively promotes change toward a healthy and just society, one which is founded on the principles of social justice, broadly shared economic opportunity, a robust democratic process and a sustainable environment. Tides believes healthy societies rely fundamentally on respect for human rights, the vitality ...learn more
GROUP DETAILS
Created: Mar 28, 2008
Updated: Jul 10, 2009
Membership: Open To Apply
Semi-Private
Internationalisation and localisation
Localisation is different from but complementary to internationalisation. What is the interaction of WE in language X groups with WiserEarth Global Communities?
It seems easier to gather people first around the more physical notion of local groups than linguistic groups. Many people in WE are multi-lingual and multi-cultural, and that's good! But most have a place from where to act.
So it is maybe easier e.g., to start a WE in Paris, France local group than to bootstrap WE in French only on linguistic basis.
Comments (1 - 4 of 4)
|
|
I think the key is to get people from diverse nationalities who are fluent in English into these 'locality' groups. Not all French people are fluent in English, but having a group to gather all who are, seems like a good way of getting potential translator who can help take WE to French. Likewise for Indonesians, Japanese, Bengal, Urdu, Swahili, etc. |
|
@ Camilla
Rgarding French people struggling with the English GUI ... hélas ... the level of foreign languages proficiency in France is a national shame. People can go through 7 years of secondary school, taking English course each year, 3 hours a week, and end up without being able to order a pizza in New York .
I can't take this as a serious argument against starting a local group. There are local groups for Mexico, Asia, Africa ... |
|
|
Good point. I agree Bernard that moving WiserEarth into different languages needs to be combined with the creation of more physical local groups as well. However, having spoken to a number of people running nonprofits in the Paris area, they say they are struggling to sign up (or add their nonprofit organization) while the site is still in English. So the site has to made available in other languages first, then WE can start to encourage the creation of local groups. |
Bernard - I have to say that I do agree - spoken English in French schools is a bit of calamity.
Anyway thanks for taking the initiative to start the Paris, France group. I look forward to seeing what evolves. I think it will be even more interesting if we have a franco-anglais mix of people.