Lots of books, yeah [LWN.net]

Lots of books, yeah

Posted Feb 4, 2006 12:12 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

So kids in the third world are in an ideal position to translate technical and literary works. Great. Only 1 in 10000 speaks English, they are just learning to read, they have trouble getting a decent meal every day? No problem, since they only have to translate wikipedia entries.

Seriously, this is not a very good idea. You may not know USB protocols, but you have the capability to learn and use them. Kids in third world schools cannot translate anything; some of their teachers might know English, but they would probably prefer to write their own textbooks anyway. It makes sense, too, if you disregard for a minute our tendency to believe that western culture is the only one that counts: teachers in India will prefer to use their own literary works than English ones.

Translations done by the students of today may be the staple textbooks of tomorrow

Posted Feb 6, 2006 0:15 UTC (Mon) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link]

> Kids in third world schools cannot translate anything

You said what??!?!?!?!!

There is no better way to learn a language than to speak it, read it and
write it, and to translate works from it into your own language. And
English is a language much in demand. I can think of no valid reason to
dismiss the idea of students translating international works into their
native languages for the benefit of their peers and their successors.

India's greatest modern literary works are written in English, and have
been for a century. You're certainly correct that developing countries
are better placed to write their own textbooks than Western
philanthropists, but don't underestimate the utility of a universal
language.

English is *the* Indian lingua franca. It is the only language spoken
fluently by many people in every state of India. It may even be spoken
by a majority in some states; I'm not sure. It *is* spoken by a majority
of literate people in (I think) every state but Kerala, which
incidentally is the only Indian state with >90% literacy. If you can
read and write your own language fluently, whichever of the dozens of
Indian languages it is, you can probably also read and write English and,
if you're exceptionally diligent, also one or two of the other Indian
languages.

That's the situation *today*. The result of putting networked computers
into the hands of millions of today's 'kids' as they become literate in
their several languages will be millions of connected, computer-literate
*adults* in a few years' time. Then tell us none of them can translate.

Not a good plan

Posted Feb 6, 2006 1:48 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

You said what??!?!?!?!!

I'm sorry to break the news: people out there have other priorities before learning English. I know several English teachers in Spain, within the EU, firmly planted in the west and surrounded by US brands and messages; English is being rammed down kids' throats since primary school, and yet most of them manage to avoid learning the bare essentials. Don't ask me why; theoretically it's in high demand, and yet most people don't speak the language. Certainly English is not required most of the time to get a good job, so maybe they are not so stupid after all. Still, I know kids in Spanish schools are not able to translate anything; maybe it's better in the third world, but allow me to doubt it.

IMHO teaching English to poor kids as a strategy to have more teaching materials is a bad idea. Your priorities shift when you are hungry; suddenly learning the universal language is not one of them. If it is going to be a prerequisite, as Latin was necessary to get any education at all in other times, then the $100 laptop is just a vehicle of cultural colonialism and as such it will be rejected in most third world countries, like in Africa or South America. Based on what you say India was a poor example.

Straw man not a good plan

Posted Feb 6, 2006 4:48 UTC (Mon) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link]

So you're saying that requiring fluency in English as a prerequisite for
using a computer network is counterproductive. I'm just not sure anyone
said that was the plan.

> ... most of them manage to avoid learning the bare essentials.
> ... most people don't speak the language.

As was pointed out elsewhere in the thread, no majority is necessary. A
few committed, capable individuals are sufficient.

> I know kids in Spanish schools are not able to translate anything;

I'm sure there are *some* kids in Spanish schools who *do* translate.
But as you say the demand for English in Spain is not as high as first
appearances might suggest. There is already a vast literature in the
Spanish language, partly because it's a former imperial language, still
spoken on an imperial scale. I'm quite sure it's a good No. 2 in its
global usefulness as a lingua franca.

(Several variants of Chinese have more native speakers than English or
Spanish, and written Chinese has more readers than either, but its
importance for international dissemination of information has declined
over the last three centuries. There's no saying when that might
change :-)

I don't think anyone suggested that English would be a prerequisite for
using this $100 laptop or that everyone should have English forced down
their throats. Rather, the suggestion is that, if there is demand for
information which is available 'out there' in some form, *even if* that
information is in English today, then translation is a possibility and
the computer network will facilitate it.

I don't even think anyone was saying it would in the first instance be
*children* doing the translating, though I don't see any reason why
students of a language shouldn't be translating useful, previously
untranslated work rather than rehashing the classics. Only the smallest
and poorest communities' educators would be completely unable to engage
decent writers or translators for educational purposes.

As for cultural colonialism and hunger -- yes, if your stomach is empty
and you have no roof then you are not in the prime target market for
computing hardware. But 'poor countries' are not uniformly hungry and
homeless; while there are always some very poor people and often
somewhere is in drought, the world has a food surplus to date and in any
one place famine is the exception rather than the rule. (The 40-year
exception which proves the rule is the Sahel, a vast region of marginal
rainfall which has lost its monsoon due to climate change).

Bring the price of a portable general-purpose networked computer down,
make it usable where electricity is unreliable, and its demand relative
to books and DVDs will rise.

Straw man not a good plan

Posted Feb 6, 2006 14:19 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

Thanks for your response, it makes interesting reading.

My "straw man" was in fact related to another fallacy, begging the question. The $100 laptop is supposed to improve education, yet there are no teaching materials readily available for the project. Several people suggested that some Web 2.0 artifacts (Wikipedia, wikibooks, Google) could be translated and used as reading, but this requires knowledge of English; and then it was suggested that

The very same 3rd worlders who're getting laptops are in an ideal situation to translate material on an as-needed basis.

But then the $100 laptops are supposed to be used in children education, and it is hard to get an education if your only materials are in English (or, at most, a few occidental languages). In my mind this would be similar to giving Brazilian Yanomami a bunch of scooters to move in the jungle, and hoping that "roads and gas stations will be created by the local populace on an as-needed basis".

I think that third world governments could use their scarce money more wisely creating traditional teaching materials; $100 per kid would help create a lot of textbooks. If it does not work right now, it is a good sign that the money is not available or that it is lost in the process.

the world has a food surplus to date and in any one place famine is the exception rather than the rule.

Right, hunger as a consequence of famine is probably anecdotal (even if still very serious). However hunger caused by poverty is the rule. You can see people starving right near the crops grown for export; or hungry children sleeping in the streets of otherwise prosperous towns. And poverty is more difficult to fight than famine.

Investment is the antidote to poverty

Posted Feb 7, 2006 1:19 UTC (Tue) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link]

(If you would care to continue this discussion elsewhere, my address is
jonathan, at xoddam, dot net.)

> there are no teaching materials readily available for the project.
> Several people suggested that some Web 2.0 artifacts (Wikipedia,
> wikibooks, Google) could be translated and used as reading, but
> this requires knowledge of English...

These assertions might carry some force if there was any truth to them.

For many poorer nations a major source of income and hard-currency
investment is remittances from émigrées. A large measure of
international aid consists of scholarships for developing countries'
nationals to study in the universities of the wealthy nations. The money
might stay in the West, but some benefits accrue to the recipient
country. There are many educated, even wealthy, people who speak the
languages of the poor, at home and abroad.

Online material already exists in the principal languages of literacy of
most developing countries. Inasmuch as any of these resources are
translated from English, the translation is already well underway (and
I'd be surprised if a thorough search found no Spanish schoolchildren
amongst the translators). But that's hardly the point; these 'Web 2.0
artifacts', despite being a gift of Westerners to the world, do not and
never have suffered from monolinguism.

http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portada
http://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trang_Chính
http://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halaman_Utama
http://tl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unang_Pahina
http://ms.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laman_Utama
http://th.wikipedia.org/wiki/

I can't be bothered searching out other resources in languages I can't
read (I am limited to a single fluent language and one other I can get by
in). Rest assured they exist, though I doubt any others would be as
complete as wikipedia unless created by serious forward-looking
investment (which would be as well-placed contributing to these existing
resources as establishing independent portals or preparing textbook
materials for narrower distribution). This initial investment does not
immediately and directly benefit the illiterate and the starving, but the
infrastructure it lays down will be available to them as soon as they are
ready to take advantage.

> In my mind this would be similar to giving Brazilian Yanomami
> a bunch of scooters to move in the jungle, and hoping that
> "roads and gas stations will be created by the local populace
> on an as-needed basis".

That is exactly what it *isn't*. These machines don't need a wire to be
(minimally) useful. They're running free software and aren't about
locking in a market (as petrol-burning scooters or Microsoft laptops
would be). Add a *single* connection to the wider world and voilà, an
oyster ready for the shucking.

It's not the Yanomami who will be the first customers, though there's no
reason that they shouldn't find the machines useful to some extent. It's
the kids in Cidade de Deus, and some of them *will* benefit, because they
will become better informed. I don't see this as a mere hope -- it's all
but inevitable.

> Right, hunger as a consequence of famine is probably anecdotal
> (even if still very serious).

'Anecdotal'? Hardly, but neither is it endemic, except in the Sahel
which is becoming depopulated (violently) as a result. (If we don't get
serious about carbon dioxide emissions other marginal regions will
follow.) Famine is usually not a complete interruption of the food
supply, but an escalation of food prices at the same time as a collapse
in agricultural income (as a result of poor weather, land theft or other
violence). The result is that people who, with a good season on their
own land, would have grown most of their own food and had surplus income,
lose market power to purchase the necessities of life. Alternative
income besides agriculture and money in the bank is as important a buffer
against famine as a well-stocked granary.

> However hunger caused by poverty is the rule.

I'm sure many people are hungry all the time, but I'm equally sure it's
not a majority in most parts of the world. You write as though there is
no point investing in the education of relatively poor people who already
have enough to eat and a roof over their heads and can write their names,
if there are destitute people nearby. But how can such people achieve
anything at all if the most well-off of their neighbours is barely
scraping by? Only investment in their entire community, including its
doctors and technicians and shopkeepers and teachers and lawyers, will
help the poorest in the long term.

> And poverty is more difficult to fight than famine.

Famine isn't a mere anecdote, but it is *solely* a consequence of
poverty. The best way to defeat poverty (ignoring the distortion of
agricultural markets by EU and US subsidies) is investment. Education is
investment. Am I begging a question now?

> I think that third world governments could use their scarce money more
> wisely creating traditional teaching materials;

This is the only place where we are really in disagreement, I think. The
rest of our arguments are waffle at cross-purposes. *YES* 3rd-world
governments can make better use of scarce money than spending it in the
global market (Where are these machines to be made, exactly?). Basic
needs must be tended to first. Only a smaller investment is required, as
in the example of Kerala, to achieve minimal literacy. But as Kerala's
disinvestment under 'liberal' governments in the early 1990s and again in
2001-2004 also illustrates, a failure to invest further negates the
achievement of the basics.

("The UDF government did not take any initiative to bring the 1.8 million
neo-literates to a stage where they could do more than write their name
and read the destination boards on buses." I was very disheartened to
read this story after quoting '>90%' literacy above:
http://www.indiatogether.org/education/articles/brokenlet... )

You are correct that secondhand textbooks, pencils and slates are cheaper
than a notebook computer. You would be *absolutely* correct that it is
more valuable to spend money on human teachers than to put a computer in
front of an illiterate child. But is it really more effective to 'push'
teaching materials in print than to provide students with the ability to
'pull' them?

Don't dismiss this project on the grounds that it is not the best tool to
provide the bare basics, or that it competes with food and housing for
funds in the poorest places of the world. That isn't what it's about.
The internet already competes favourably with technical books, for it can
always be opened to the right page and it is always up to date. That
it's cheaper is, to date, almost irrelevant. This project is an attempt
to cut costs to one *tenth* of equivalent technology commercially
available today. As other teaching materials become available online and
the costs of the network are driven down, it will begin to compete with
them as well.

You seem to think that anyone who is in favour of this project thinks it
is a silver bullet. It isn't. What it *is*, is an enabling technology.