Thursday, 15th of December 2011, 11 pm GMT
Title: Translating People: Crossing the Language Barrier in Social Media
Tweeter: An Xiao Mina (aka “An Xiao”, her artist name), @anxiaostudio, is an American design thinker and new media artist. She uses technology to build and empower communities through creative expression. She co-founded and directs the digital efforts of Bird’s Nest: Ai Weiwei in English, a translation site for Ai Weiwei’s Twitter account. Her work has been featured in venues internationally, from the Brooklyn Museum to Shanghai’s Xindanwei, and in publications like The New York Times, The Guardian, Art in America and CNNGo. Learn more at www.anxiaostudio.com or on Twitter at @anxiaostudio.
Description: “By now, we can take for granted that social media interfaces exist in different languages. Facebook has been translated into over a hundred languages, and Twitter has a dozen options. But is this really building a global dialogue? Consider Tencent QQ, a social network of over 800 million active users. They offer an intuitive, streamlined English-language interface. Most people outside China have never heard of it. Why is this?
In my Twitter lecture, I want to discuss why we need take the next step beyond translating interfaces. We need more open, embedded translation tools on social media that translate people. I will point to sites that offer these features and draw on my experience working on the translation site for Ai Weiwei’s Twitter account.”
Hashtag: #STU08
To attend: Follow the hashtag and the @SvTwuni account on twitter (in seperate windows).
Further reading
http://meedan.org/2011/10/why-facebooks-latest-feature-release-could-be-the-most-important-yet/
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/ethan_zuckerman.html
Very cool. I’m looking forward to the lecture. My research looks exactly at how the design of social media platforms affects the degree to which information is shared across languages.
http://www.scotthale.net/blog/?page_id=51